“Change places. I should make the effort to change places. And not only on the Métro.”
Juliette hadn’t been able to get those three little phrases out of her head since watching a radiant Chloe walk off down the platform at Pasteur. She passed a couple of newlyweds having themselves photographed in front of a giant poster advertising Chanel N°5. The bride wore a lemon-yellow tulle dress that made her look like a butterfly. To flutter off where? Into a tunnel. That wasn’t a positive thought, she told herself. But you couldn’t always be upbeat. All the same, running into Chloe had done her good. She’d learned, to her amazement, that Monsieur Bernard had closed down the agency. That he’d boxed up his personal coffee maker and his precious cup, and gone off to live in a house on the edge of a forest, somewhere in Ardèche. He had finally understood, he’d told Chloe, what his deepest wish was: to come out of his house in the morning and see a deer run off into the mist.
“Did you leave a book for him, too?” Chloe asked.
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
This time Juliette remembered very clearly. Walden; or, Life in the Woods, by Henry David Thoreau. She’d been torn between that and a collection of short stories by Italo Calvino. She’d decided on the basis of weight, telling herself that Monsieur Bernard would turn up his nose at a volume that was too slim: he’d always claimed that he liked people “who had substance.”
She bounced into the little street where the big rusty gate on the left cast a dark, opaque shadow. She felt good. Maybe she was capable of doing something useful with her life after all, capable of giving people a little energy, a little courage or relief through the books she passed on to them. No, she immediately corrected herself. All of this has nothing to do with you: it was chance. Don’t take on airs, my girl. Those last words had come to her automatically. They sounded like a refrain, words you intone without dwelling on their meaning but which you can’t get out of your head.
Who had said that to her? Oh yes, her fourth-grade teacher. Each time she’d succeeded, or thought she’d succeeded at something. The teacher didn’t believe in the virtues of what is now called positive reinforcement; no word of encouragement ever left her lips. If you were good at math or drawing, it was genetics, upbringing, or a complex planetary configuration that had decided thus. Chance. Chance. Don’t take on airs, my girl. It’s nothing to do with you.
Juliette reached the door. She put her hand on the cold metal handle.
Maybe it is something to do with me. Just a little.
She repeated it out loud. It was a tiny victory.
Then she noticed a detail, trivial as it was, or at least should have been but wasn’t—not at all—that chilled her. The book that kept the door slightly open had disappeared.
It’s not possible. It’s not possible.
Juliette wasn’t able to say those words out loud, but she repeated them to herself over and over, as if to erect a barrier between herself and what Leonidas had just told her, a Leonidas who had lost his Cheshire Cat smile, an ashen Leonidas whose face suddenly resembled a soft cheese running, running, to where it scared her; his face was going to disintegrate before her eyes, spread and vanish between the cracks in the concrete. All that would be left was his hat. What a horrible, strange image, especially right now …
She should never have forced her way in through the door; she should never have entered the courtyard, or turned the handle of the office door.
Not to hear that.
“When did it happen?”
She had found her voice a little. A mouse squeak.
“Three days ago,” replied Leonidas. “It took the hospital awhile to find his address. He’d given another one, a false address, naturally.”
“Why a false one?”
“I think he wanted to simply disappear. Maybe he thought he was protecting Zaide. Protecting us. We’ll never know.”
“But when you go into hospital for an operation, you have to give the name of an emergency contact person,” she objected.
“He did.” His face creased even more, and he pressed his hands together in a gesture of rage rather than of prayer. “Silvia. The woman who … you know…”
No, Juliette didn’t know. She stared at her own hands, lying motionless on her knees.
“The woman who always had a cookery book with her. The woman who … she used to take Line Six as well. Like you. Like me.”
“Oh…”
“I was in love with her and I never told her. I contented myself with watching her. On the Métro. It was before you, Juliette. You didn’t notice, I’m sure. Neither did she.”
No, Juliette hadn’t noticed. And she didn’t want to hear any more—not right now. He understood and apologized: “Forgive me.”
She remained silent, merely nodding. Soliman. Soliman was dead. He’d succumbed to the aftereffects of open-heart surgery, a risky operation which he’d put off for far longer than he should have, Leonidas explained. As if he hadn’t wanted to give himself the slightest chance, he’d added.
He’d learned all of this at the hospital.
While I was on the Métro. While I was talking to Chloe. When I was happy and a little bit proud of myself, for once.
“What about Zaide?” she asked. “Where’s Zaide?”
“Still at school. It’s early, you know.”
No, Juliette didn’t know. She felt as if she had already been sitting there forever, with that thing swelling in her gut, swelling, swelling, which was neither a life nor a promise but rather a death, a recent death that had to be sheltered and cradled, consoled and guided …
The word struck her, and she sat up straight. She had promised Zaide a journey—that’s really what their bet had been, a promise—and she would keep it. But afterward, wouldn’t she be forced to…? She couldn’t find the words to express the miserable picture that presented itself, and didn’t want to find them, at least not right now.
Leonidas cleared his throat and came over to her.
“Zaide is happy here,” he whispered. “But she won’t be allowed to stay with us.”
With or without his pipe, this man was a sorcerer. Juliette had often thought, since she’d known him, that he could see through a book’s cover; and a face was probably just as easy for him to read.
“I know. And yet I can’t bear the idea of…” No, she couldn’t go on.
Once again, he understood.
“Me neither. But the child has a mother, even if Soliman never spoke to you of her.”
“I thought … that she was dead.”
He placed his big hand clumsily on top of Juliette’s. She tensed, then allowed herself to accept the comforting warmth of his chubby fingers.
“I know where she lives,” he added. “Soliman told me. The day I showed him that Greek spirits were as good as his herbal teas. He was drunk out of his mind, and I regretted it at the time.” He bowed his head, his cheeks quivering, then concluded: “Not anymore.”