I’m not black. I’m not tall as a cypress. I’m not strong. I’m not impervious. And yet I, too, have things to face. So look and be renewed … that would be good, yes. But look at what? And where?
Juliette looked up. She was wearing an oversize beige parka, borrowed from Firouzeh, and felt a bit ridiculous, like a child who’s rifled through her mother’s wardrobe. The blue scarf, wound twice around her neck, muffled her up to her nose. She breathed in the biting air through the stitches that her grandmother’s fingers had knitted one by one. Suddenly, she could see those fingers very clearly: slightly knobbly, her hands covered with those blemishes known by the rather unpleasant name of liver spots. Her grandmother’s fingers—and those of Silvia, the woman on the Métro, the one who’d decided to leave a life in which there was maybe no one left for whom she could knit scarves or simply work to make life a little more joyful—had now ceased all movement, and that stillness distorted the rhythm of the world, Juliette could feel it. She had to find something, and quickly, to set it right again.
Idiot.
She felt ridiculous. Honestly, who on earth did she think she was? She was unhappy, or rather, dejected, and she’d felt like that before Soliman’s death. She couldn’t find her place in the world—so what? Her place was where life had put her, wasn’t it, where she herself had chosen to hide away, close to the ground. And that was that …
And that was that …
It was depressing, but that was the truth.
She carried on walking aimlessly, pushing aside the dark, wet branches of a huge willow that reached the ground and blocked her path. Shards of broken flowerpots rolled underfoot, between the heaps of rotting mown grass and the little vegetable garden that Firouzeh had marked out with lengths of string stretched between stakes. There was already a small radish bed, in a corner, and winter lettuces. The freshly dug earth looked rich and dark, warm no doubt if she were to plunge her fingers into it.
A few meters away, beyond the rusty garden fence, Juliette saw a derelict shed made of planks turned gray with age. The roof had caved in, and between the planks that had come away and were broken in places she could glimpse a bright yellow patch. As yellow as the throat of a hummingbird. As the fluffy mimosa flowers with their heady perfume, which she used to buy years ago for her mother who dreamed every winter of Nice and the Riviera, but didn’t want to budge an inch from her home.
Her hand on the galvanized wire, Juliette pushed the sagging fence down and climbed over, praying that Firouzeh’s parka wouldn’t get caught on one of the barbs. Once on the other side, she jumped over a little ditch filled with stagnant water, then zigzagged between the clumps of nettles and barley-colored stems. This section of the property seemed to have been abandoned long ago and must have served as a rubbish dump: the legs of an ironing board stood in the middle of a heap of plastic containers filled with blackish liquid; stacks of rotten fabric covered a rickety stepladder. On top of the lot, she saw an iron stuck in an ancient washtub and a hat—yes, a red, spangled carnival hat, which looked brand-new.
The shed door was jammed with several sheets of corrugated iron, but an entire side of the wall was nearly flattened. A green tarpaulin covered the vehicle sitting inside, standing on chocks—like during the war, thought Juliette, when there was no gasoline left. But in those days, there weren’t any yellow cars, or were there? Of course there were. (The world wasn’t in black-and-white, despite what she’d believed when she’d seen The Trip Across Paris for the first time. In her defense, she must have been only six years old.)
She grabbed a corner of the tarpaulin and yanked it. A few bricks, placed on the roof, clattered down. She stepped to one side to avoid them and yanked again with all her strength. Sweat ran down her neck onto her back. Where did this sudden boldness come from? Juliette didn’t even know whether this land belonged to Firouzeh, or whether she rented it—the legal owner might at any moment burst out from the woods with a loaded hunting rifle and—
The tarpaulin ripped and fell back limply. On its inner side, moss made maps of improbable continents. Small animals scurried away amid a rustling of dried leaves—field mice, perhaps. She had disturbed a little living space with well-established habits, the patiently built nest between the axles harboring maybe a litter of tiny pink blind creatures—no, it wasn’t the right season. Could she be certain? Not really. You couldn’t be certain of anything that happened in the countryside, when you’ve spent so much time on Line 6 of the Paris Métro. She tended to imagine the lives of animals in their burrows like someone who has acquired all their knowledge from watching the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland.
She yanked again, dislodging a few more bricks, and at last it appeared before her, as inoffensive and appealing as a big toy, but a lot dirtier.
A minibus. Yellow.
“Is it yours?”
A breathless Juliette had burst into the studio where Firouzeh was building a totem with Zaide. They had placed several lumps of wood on top of one another, split logs with tender pink hearts, and were dribbling different-colored paints over them.
“Then,” explained Zaide, “we’ll make eyes out of modeling clay. And eyebrows. And a mouth, so it can palaver.”
She repeated the word “palaver” several times, seeking Juliette’s admiration.
“Palaver’s a good word. Did you know it?”
Juliette shook her head. “You’re very clever.”
Zaide pulled a modest face and turned over the log she was holding in her paint-stained hands. A crimson stream soaked into its fibers.
“The wood’s bleeding,” she crooned, “it’s going to die.”
Firouzeh tapped her shoulder. “The tree died when it was cut down. But this piece is going to stay alive.”
“Why?”
“Because of the palavering and the wishes. You see, when we’ve put together these two logs, there’ll be a hollow, there, just at the join. When you’re sad, or when you have a special wish, you can write it on a piece of paper and slip it inside. My grandfather taught me to do that.”
“And then what happens?”
Firouzeh looked up and her eyes met Juliette’s.
“The wood eats everything. Sorrows, hopes, everything. It keeps them safe. It leaves our hands free to release us from them or to make them come true. It depends what you tell it.”
“So,” Juliette broke in, “is it yours?”
Firouzeh showed no surprise. She simply took the time to put the lids back on the paint pots on the shelf before turning toward the window. Behind the filthy panes, it was possible to make out the dead colors of the wild patch, the shed and its deformed shape, barely visible in the fog.
“Yes. I mean no,” she replied. “It’s yours. If you want it.”