Free Little Jewel by Patrick Modiano Page A

the handle on the window.
    She went over to the window. In her soothing voice,she asked, ‘It’s not too noisy outside?’
    â€˜No, not at all.’
    Down below was Rue Puget, a short street that I often took to cut through to Place Blanche. There was a bar on the corner, Le Canter, with yellow wood panelling on the façade. I’d gone there one evening to buy cigarettes. Two dark-haired men were drinking at the bar with a woman. Other men were playing cards in grim silence at a table at the back. I was told that I had to have a drink if I wanted to buy a packet of cigarettes and one of the dark-haired fellows ordered me a whisky, neat, which I downed in one go so I could be done with it. He asked me if I ‘lived with my parents’. There really was quite a strange vibe in that place.
    She was glued to the window, staring out. I said that it wasn’t such a great view. She made a remark about there not being any shutters or curtains. Did I find it difficult to sleep? I assured her that I didn’t need curtains. The only thing that would have been really useful was an armchair or even just a chair. But until that evening I had never had any guests.
    She sat on the edge of the bed. She wanted to know if I felt better. Yes, I honestly felt much better than earlier, when I had first seen the neon sign of the chemist. Without that landmark, I don’t know what would have happened to me.
    I wanted to ask her to have dinner with me in the café in Place Blanche. But I didn’t have enough money. She was going to leave and I would be alone again in this room. That prospect now seemed even worse than when I was expecting her to let me out of the taxi by myself.
    â€˜And how is your job going?’
    Perhaps I was deluding myself, but she seemed genuinely concerned about me.
    â€˜I work with a friend,’ I said. ‘We translate broadcasts made by foreign radio stations.’
    What would Moreau-Badmaev have made of that lie? But I didn’t want to tell her about the Taylor Agency, about Véra Valadier, or her husband, or the little girl. It all seemed too frightening to think about.
    â€˜Do you know many foreign languages?’
    And I could see in her eyes that I had gained a measure of respect. I wished it weren’t a lie.
    â€˜It’s my friend who knows most of them…I’m still a student at the School of Oriental Languages.’
    Student
. The word had always impressed me, while actually being one seemed somehow out of my reach. I don’t think the Kraut had even graduated from primary school. She made spelling mistakes, but they weren’t so obviousbecause she had such big handwriting. As for me, I’d left school at fourteen.
    â€˜So, you’re a student?’
    She seemed relieved for me. I wanted to put her mind at rest even more, so I added, ‘It was my uncle who advised me to enrol at the School of Oriental Languages. He’s a teacher himself.’
    And I conjured up an apartment in the university neighbourhood, which I barely knew and which, in my mind, was somewhere in the vicinity of the Pantheon. And there was my uncle, at his desk, by the light of a reading lamp, hunched over an old book.
    â€˜What does he teach?’ She smiled at me. Had she really been taken in by my lie?
    â€˜Philosophy.’
    I thought of the man I used to meet every Thursday, when we were living in the big apartment, my uncle—that’s what we called him—the so-called Jean Borand. We used to enjoy listening to the echo of our voices in the old empty garage. He was young and had a Parisian accent. He’d taken me to see
The Crossroad of the Archers
. He’d also taken me to the Trône fair, not far from the garage. He always wore a tie pin and, on his right wrist, a chain bracelet, which hesaid was a present from my mother. He called her Suzanne. He would never have understood why I claimed he was a philosophy teacher. Why lie?