“My father used to love Mozart,” he said after a while when they were drinking, slowly, a thick, black, almost syrupy coffee. “He named my sister and me after characters in the opera Zaide. My daughter is also called Zaide.”
“What about your mother? Was she okay with that?”
Juliette, aware of her blunder, turned red and put her cup down.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes I say whatever comes into my head. It’s none of my business.”
“There’s no harm done,” he replied with the ghost of a smile that softened his sharp features. “My mother died very young. But for a long time, she hadn’t really been with us. Absent … in a way.”
Without offering any further explanation, he let his gaze wander over the boxes piled up against the partitions, neatly stacked, almost nested—a second wall, insulating the little room from the light and noise outside.
“Have you heard of the principle of releasing books into the wild?” he went on after a few moments’ silence. “An American, Ron Hornbaker, created, or rather developed, the concept of BookCrossing in 2001. Turn the whole world into a library … a lovely idea, don’t you think? You leave a book in a public place—a station, park bench, cinema—someone picks it up, reads it, then releases it elsewhere a few days or weeks later.”
He pressed his hands together under his chin, forming an almost perfect triangle.
“What was needed was a way of tracking the books that had been ‘released,’ following their journey and allowing readers to share their impressions. Hence the BookCrossing website, where each book is registered. It is given an ID which must be included on a label on the cover, with the website URL. Anyone picking up a book can register the date and place where they found it, add an opinion or a review—”
“Is that what you do?” interrupted Juliette.
“Not exactly.”
He stood up and went over to the piles of books reconstructed by Juliette as best she could. He took a book from each one.
“Here, we have a fairly random assortment of potential reading. Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The Sorrow of Angels by Jón Kalman Stefánsson. Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky. Winter’s End by Jean-Claude Mourlevat. Nothing Holds Back the Night by Delphine de Vigan. Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart by Chrétien de Troyes. The next passeur who comes into this room will have the responsibility of passing on all these books.”
“Responsibility?” asked Juliette.
“They won’t release them into the wild or leave them on a train. In other words, they won’t leave it to chance for the books to find their readers.”
“But how—?”
“The passeur has to choose a reader. Someone they will have watched, even followed, until they are able to intuit the book that person needs. Make no mistake, it’s a very demanding task. You don’t allocate a book as a challenge, on a whim, to upset or provoke. My best passeurs have a tremendous capacity for empathy: they feel, in their very bones, the frustrations and resentments that build up deep in a body which, at first glance, looks no different from any other body. Actually, I should say my best passeur, singular, because the other one left us very recently.”
He put the books down and turned around to pick up, delicately, between two fingers, a photo enlarged to A4 format.
“I wanted to put this on the wall of this office. But she wouldn’t have liked that. She was a self-effacing woman, quiet, secretive even. I never found out exactly where she came from. She just appeared one day, like you. Nor do I know why she decided to end her life.”
Juliette felt a lump in her throat. The walls of books seemed to be closing in on her, compact and menacing.
“You mean she—?”
“Yes. She committed suicide two days ago.”
He nudged the photo across the table toward Juliette. It was a black-and-white shot, slightly grainy, the details blurred by the distance and the poor quality of the print; but she immediately recognized the woman with the thickset body, bundled up in a winter coat, in three-quarter view.
It was the woman with the cookery book who rode Line 6 of the Métro, the one who often looked out with a mysterious, expectant smile.
“I’m so sorry … how stupid of me!”
After the fourth or fifth time that Soliman repeated these words, he brought Juliette a box of tissues, another cup of coffee, and a plate—not very clean—onto which he tipped the contents of the tin of biscuits.
“Did you know her?”
“Yes,” she managed to reply. “Well, no. She took the same Métro line as I did in the morning. It’s true I didn’t see her yesterday or the day before. I should have guessed … I should have done something for her…”
He moved behind her and clumsily rubbed her shoulders. Surprisingly, she found his rough, firm hands comforting.
“No, you shouldn’t have. You couldn’t have done anything. Look, I’m sorry, very sorry…”
Juliette began to laugh nervously.
“Stop saying that.”
She straightened up, blinking back her tears. The little room seemed to have shrunk even more, as if the walls of books had taken a step forward into the room. Which was impossible, of course. As impossible as the curve she seemed to see above her head: Were the books in the top row really leaning toward her, their hard backs ready to whisper words of comfort?
Juliette shook her head and stood up, brushing the cookie crumbs from her skirt. They’d been soggy, with a strange taste—too much cinnamon, probably. Soliman hadn’t eaten any. The clouds of steam still rising from the percolator—which at regular intervals made a slight clicking sound—formed a veil in front of his face, blurring his features. She had stared at him covertly, looking away when his eyes met hers. When he’d come over and stood behind her, she’d felt relieved. It seemed to her that she had never seen such black eyebrows, such sad eyes, despite the permanent smile that softened the hard outline of his mouth. It was a face that made her think at the same time of storms, of victory and decline. How old could he be?
“I really must go,” she said, more to convince herself than for his benefit.
“But you’ll come back.”
It wasn’t a question. He held out the parcel of books, which he’d fastened with a canvas strap. Like in the past, she thought, when children carried schoolbooks—rigid, heavy bundles that dug into their backs as they walked. She wasn’t surprised; she couldn’t imagine him using a plastic bag.
“Yes. I’ll come back.”
Wedging the books under her arm, she turned her back to him and made her way over to the door. Her hand on the knob, she stopped.
“Do you ever read love stories?” she asked without turning around.
“This will surprise you,” he answered. “Yes, sometimes.”
“What happens on page 247?”
There was a pause. He appeared to be thinking about her question. Or perhaps dredging up a memory. Then he said: “On page 247, all seems lost. It’s the best moment, you know.”