“You’ve handed in your notice.”
Clasping his knee, Soliman rocked back and forth on his chair. When his knee banged against the table, he swung back again; the bookshelves behind him stopped him and sent him back toward Juliette, toward the subdued light of the lamp with the green shade, so the lower part of his face was alternately bathed in light or lost in the shadows again.
Juliette said nothing, because it was a statement rather than a question. She simply nodded, with a vigor that also seemed unnecessary.
“I gave them a book. Before leaving,” she said.
“Only one?”
“No. One for Chloe, and one for Monsieur Bernard.”
“Wait.”
Two of the chair legs scraped across the floor noisily, and Soliman reached out to pick up his notebook, turning the pages with a strange frenzy.
“What day is it again? I ought to have a calendar here, a diary, I don’t know…”
“Or a mobile phone,” added Juliette, repressing a smile.
“I’d rather die.”
He stopped short, frowned as if an unpleasant thought had just occurred to him, then shrugged.
“The thirteenth of January? No, the…”
“Fifteenth of February,” Juliette corrected him.
“Already. How time flies. But I had a meeting yesterday at … it doesn’t matter. Let’s get back to work. Give me the address of your estate agency, the names of the readers, the approximate time … I always advise checking the time when you pass on a book, it’s very important—”
“Why?”
He looked up from the notebook in which he had just drawn a horizontal line with a ruler. She noticed that he was paler than usual, and that there was a red streak under his cheekbone.
Maybe he’d cut himself shaving. Today, his black hair, disheveled as always, looked dull and lifeless.
“What do you mean, why?”
“You don’t even know what day it is.”
“Oh? You must be right…”
He kept quiet while she gave the information he’d asked for. He hadn’t answered her question except by ignoring it, and a vague, inexplicable sadness made her shiver.
“As a matter of fact,” he suddenly broke in, “the time … I don’t know whether you’ll understand, you’re still a novice. But time … Do you pass on a book in the same way at six o’clock in the morning as you do at ten o’clock at night? I write all this down so that you—you and the others—can refer to this notebook at any time. That way, you’ll remember. It will even be better than a memory, because the mention of the date and the time encompasses an infinite number of things: the season and the light, to mention only the most obvious. Were you wearing a heavy coat or a summer dress? What about the other person? How were they dressed? How did they move? Had the sun already set? Was it skimming the rooftops or flooding dark courtyards, the ones you can barely make out between stations? Was there not, in one of those courtyards, a woman at her window, no, a child, who waved as the train passed, as if wishing good luck to friends setting off on a long journey? If it was in December, you would only have been able to guess at the light of a lamp behind the windowpanes, perhaps the rapid swish of a curtain being drawn back and the pale smudge of a face…”
With those last words, Soliman’s voice had dropped to a whisper. He was talking to himself, Juliette realized, evoking a particular memory. A memory she couldn’t share, even though the scene seemed almost alive, more real than her own presence in that office. She always came back to the feeling that overwhelmed her as soon as she set foot in the room, the sense she was walking through a mirage—one of those beautiful shimmering images that desert caravans see from a distance, so she’d learned as a child, but which recede as the thirsty travelers approach. She, Juliette, had walked straight into that illusion and ever since had been battling at night against books rising up from their stacks and flying like birds in a courtyard enclosed by high walls, and tables without legs, and doors made of dense, colored fog; pages sometimes escaped from them and whirled around, flying so high that they fluttered out of sight …
“Juliette,” said Soliman abruptly, “I’d like to ask you a favor.”
She blinked, disconcerted. She had almost seen the books jump from the shelves, and was no longer certain she wasn’t dreaming.
“Yes, yes, of course,” she hurriedly replied. “If I can help you, it would be a pleasure. I have time, lots of time, now.”
“I’m delighted. For selfish reasons.”
He stood up and began to pace up and down the room, although “pace up and down” wasn’t the right expression, Juliette thought; the space was so cluttered. It would be more accurate to say he walked sideways, crablike, taking two steps, going backward, brushing the cover of a book or placing his hand on it heavily. Perhaps that way the words passed through the cardboard or the leather; permeated his skin and nourished the scrawny body swaying slowly in the half-darkness.
“I’d like to know … whether you could … move in here.”
Juliette stared at him openmouthed. He had his back to her, but her silence must have alarmed him, and he swung round, waving his hands in denial.
“It’s not what you think. Let me explain.” And he executed a strange sidestep, which took him back to his table where he sat to one side, his arms folded.
“I have to go away. For … a while.”
“Go away?” echoed Juliette. “Where?”
“It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I can’t take Zaide. And that there’s no one to take my place here. You are the only person I can ask to do this.”
There was such anguish in his eyes that Juliette couldn’t find the words to reply, even less the breath she felt sucked up, crushed by a revelation that was late in coming but the weight of which could already be felt, inside them, between them.
At last, she took a breath and was able to say: “Are you … all right?”
“I’ll be fine. In a few months. I’m certain. But I want to spare my daughter any worry. She thinks I’m going on a journey, and that you’re coming to live here to take care of her, that’s all.”
He raised a hand, palm toward Juliette, as if putting up a barrier. No questions, his eyes said.
No questions, Juliette silently assented.
“Under the gallery, next to our place, there are two free rooms. They need a lick of paint, but I’ve had a shower put in, hot plates … if it suits you … rent-free, of course. And I’ll pay you for—”
“Can I see them first? And then … I’ll need a little time to think. Let’s say until tomorrow. That’s it: I’ll give you my answer tomorrow. That won’t be too late for you?”
He smiled and stood up, visibly relieved.
“No, of course not. I’ll see you out.”