Little Jewel by Patrick Modiano Page B

replied no, and I would not have felt as if I were lying. That July day when my mother took me to the Gare d’Austerlitz and hung the label around my neck—Thérèse Cardères, c/o Mme Chatillon, Chemin du Bréau, Fossombronne-la Forêt—I knew it would be best to forget Little Jewel. Indeed, my mother had made a point of telling me not to speak to anyone or say where I had lived in Paris. I was simply a boarder coming back on holiday to her familyin Chemin du Bréau, Fossombronne-la-Forêt. The train left. It was crowded and I was standing up in the aisle. It was lucky I was wearing my label, otherwise I would have got lost among all those people. I would have forgotten my name.
    â€˜I don’t really want to see the film,’ I said.
    The other morning, I’d been terrified by something I heard a woman say at the next table, in the café at Place Blanche: ‘The skeleton in the cupboard.’ I felt like asking Moreau-Badmaev if, over time, film stock decomposes like corpses. In that case, the faces of Sonia O’Dauyé and Little Jewel would be eaten away by some sort of fungus and their voices would not be heard again.

    He told me I looked pale and suggested that we have dinner nearby.
    We walked down the left-hand side of Boulevard Jourdan and entered a large café. He chose a table in the indoor terrace.
    â€˜Look, we’re right opposite the Cité Universitaire.’ He pointed to a building on the other side of the boulevard that looked like a castle. ‘The students from Cité Universitairecome here and, because they speak all sorts of languages, they call this café Babel.’
    I looked around the café. It was late and there weren’t many people.
    â€˜I often come here and listen to people speaking their different languages. It’s good practice for me. There are even Iranian students but, unfortunately, none of them speaks Persian of the plains.’
    At that time of night, they were no longer serving meals, so he ordered two sandwiches.
    â€˜And what would you like to drink?’
    â€˜A whisky, neat.’
    It was at about this time the other night when I’d gone to Le Canter, in Rue Puget, to buy cigarettes. And I remembered how much better I’d felt after they’d made me drink the glass of whisky. I could breathe better; the anxiety had dissipated, along with the heaviness that was suffocating me. It was almost as good as the ether from my childhood.
    â€˜You must have had a good education.’
    I was worried that my voice might be tinged with envy or bitterness.
    â€˜Only the baccalaureate and the School of Oriental Languages.’
    â€˜Do you think I could enrol in the School of Oriental Languages?’
    â€˜Of course.’
    So I would not have told a complete lie to the pharmacist.
    â€˜Did you pass the bac?’
    At first I wanted to say yes, but it was too stupid to lie again now that I had confided in him.
    â€˜No, unfortunately.’
    I must have looked so ashamed and upset that he shrugged his shoulders. ‘It doesn’t really matter, you know. Lots of amazing people don’t have their bac.’
    I tried to remember all the schools I’d been to: the boarding school, to begin with, from the age of five, where the big kids looked after us. What had happened to Thérèse since that time, long ago? She had at least one distinguishing feature I would have recognised: the tattoo on her shoulder, which she told me was a starfish. And then I’d been to Saint-André, when I lived with my mother in the big apartment. But, after a while, she started calling me Little Jewel and wanted me to have a role alongside her in the film,
The Crossroad of the Archers
. I was no longer attending Saint-André. I also remember a young man who looked after me fora very short time. Perhaps my mother had found him through the red-headed fellow at the Taylor Agency who had sent me to the