The List of My Desires (6 page)

Until a certain day comes.

I go back up the Rue Jean-Jaurès to the Boulogne-Jean Jaurès metro station, line 8 going in the direction of the Gare d’Austerlitz, and change at La Motte-Picquet. I look at my piece of paper. Take line 8 towards Créteil-Préfecture and get out at La Madeleine, cross the Boulevard de la Madeleine, go down the Rue Duphot and up the Rue Cambon on my left to number 31.

I hardly have time to put out my hand before the door is opening as if of its own accord, thanks to a doorman. Two steps and I’m in another world. The air is cool. The lighting is soft. The salesgirls are beautiful and discreet; one of them comes over to me and whispers, Can I help you, madame? Just looking, just looking, I murmur, impressed, but she’s the one who’s looking at me.

My grey coat is old, but incredibly comfortable, my flat shoes – I chose them early this morning because my feet swell in the train – my shapeless, well-worn bag . . . she smiles at me. Don’t hesitate to ask me anything you’d like to know. She moves away, discreetly elegant.

I go over to look at a pretty cotton and linen tweed jacket in two colours: 2,490 euros. The twins would love it. I ought to buy two: that would come to 4,980 euros. A lovely pair of PVC sandals with 90 mm heels: 1,950 euros. Tapered fingerless lambskin gloves: 650 euros. A very simple white ceramic watch: 3,100 euros. A beautiful crocodile bag, Maman would have loved one like that but would never have dared to carry it: price on application.

Where does a price on application start?

Suddenly an actress whose name I can never remember makes her way out of the boutique. She is carrying a large bag in each of her hands. She passes so close to me that I can smell her perfume, something heavy, slightly nauseating, vaguely sexy. The doorman bows to her, but she takes no notice. Outside, her chauffeur hurries to take the bags. She dives into a large black car and disappears, swallowed up behind the darkened glass.

What a fuss!

I could do that too – I, Jocelyne Guerbette, the Arras haberdasher. I could ransack the Chanel boutique, hire a chauffeur and go about in a limousine, but what for? The loneliness I’d seen in that woman’s face frightened me. So I discreetly leave the dreamy boutique, the salesgirl gives me a politely regretful smile, the doorman opens the door but doesn’t bow to me, or if he does I don’t notice.

Outside, the air is keen. The sound of car horns, the threat of impatience, drivers’ desire to murder each other, the kamikaze messengers in the Rue de Rivoli a dozen or so metres away – all that suddenly seems reassuring. No more thick carpet, no more oily bowing and scraping. Just plain ordinary violence. Petty pain. Sadness that doesn’t go away. Strong smells, vaguely animal and chemical, the sort you get just beyond the station at Arras. My real life.

I make for the Jardin des Tuileries, clutching my ugly bag, my safe, to my stomach; Jo told me to watch out for the lowlife of Paris. There are gangs of kids who’ll rob you blind before you notice a thing. Women begging with newborn babies who never cry, can hardly move because they’re knocked out with denoral or hexapneumine. I think of Hieronymus Bosch’s
The Magician
. Maman loved that picture, she knew every detail of it, like the nutmegs on the swindler’s table.

I go back up the Allée de Diane to the north portico, where I sit down on a small stone bench. There’s a puddle of sunlight at my feet. All of a sudden I’d like to be Thumbelina. Plunge into that golden pool. Warm myself in it. Burn in it.

Oddly enough, even surrounded by cars and horrible scooters, jammed between the Rue de Rivoli and the Quai Voltaire, the particles of air look cleaner and clearer to me. I know that’s not possible. It’s the product of my imagination, of my fear. I take my sandwich out of my bag; Jo made it for me this morning, when it was still dark outside. Two slices of bread and butter, tuna and hard-boiled egg between them. I said, Oh no, don’t bother, I’ll buy something at the station. But he insisted. They’re all thieves, especially at railway stations, they’ll sell you a sandwich for eight euros and it won’t be as good as mine. You can’t even be sure it’s fresh.

My Jo. So thoughtful. Your sandwich is really good, Jo.

A few metres away there’s a statue of Apollo in hot pursuit of Daphne, and another of Daphne pursued by the very same Apollo. Further off there’s a callipygous Venus;
callipygous
, adjective. I remember finding out its definition during drawing lessons: having a beautiful bottom. Meaning big, fat. Like mine. And here I am, Jocelyne from Arras, sitting on my beautiful bottom and eating a sandwich in the Jardin des Tuileries like a student, while carrying a fortune around in my bag.

A terrifying fortune, because I suddenly realise that Jo is right.

Even at eight euros, twelve, fifteen, no sandwich would be as good as the one he made me.

Later, and I still have time before my train leaves, I forage about in the Marché Saint-Pierre, the big textiles market in the Rue Charles Nodier. This is my Ali Baba cave.

My hands plunge into the fabrics, my fingers tremble at the contact with organdie, fine felt, jute, patchwork. I feel the intoxication that must have been felt by that woman who was shut up all night in the Sephora cosmetics store in their lovely advertising film. All the gold in the world wouldn’t buy you that dizzying feeling. All the women here are beautiful. Their eyes shine. Looking at a piece of fabric, they already imagine a dress, a cushion, a doll. They make dreams; they have the beauty of the world at their fingertips. Before I leave I buy some Bemberg lining, some polypropylene webbing, cotton rickrack braid and beaded pompons.

My happiness costs less than forty euros.

I spend the fifty minutes of the journey back to Arras dozing in the hushed atmosphere of the high-speed train. I wonder whether Romain and Nadine will want anything, now that I can provide it. Romain could open his own crêperie. Nadine could make as many films as she likes and not have to depend on their success to live comfortably. But will that make up for the time we haven’t spent together? Holidays far apart from each other, going short of things, hours of cold and solitude? Fears?

Does money cut distances short, bring people together?

And what about you, Jo, what would you do if you knew about all this? Tell me, what would you do?

J
o was waiting for me at the station.

As soon as he saw me he quickened his pace without actually breaking into a run. He took me in his arms on the platform. This unexpected show of emotion surprised me; I laughed, almost embarrassed. Jo, Jo, what’s all this about? Jo, he murmured in my ear. I’m so glad to see you back.

There we are.

The bigger the lie, the less we see it coming.

He let go of me, his hand slipped into mine and we walked home together. I told him about my day. I quickly invented a meeting at Filagil Sabarent, the textiles wholesale firm in the 3rd arrondissement. I showed him the wonderful things I’d bought in the Marché Saint-Pierre.

And what about my sandwich? Was it a good sandwich? he asked. I stood on tiptoe and kissed his throat. The best in the world, I said. Like you.

F
rançoise rushed into my shop.

Guess what! she cried. She’s gone to collect her cheque! It’s a woman. It says so in the
Voix du Nord
, a woman from Arras who wants to remain anonymous! There, look! Do you realise, she waited till the last minute! I’d have gone off right away, I’d have been so scared they might not pay me the eighteen million. Think about it, Jo – OK, so it’s not as much as the hundred million won by a ticket in Venelles, but that was a syndicate of fifteen people, they got six million each, while this woman won eighteen million all to herself, eighteen million, over a thousand years of work at the minimum hourly rate, Jo, a thousand years, just think! Danièle arrived as well. She was red in the face and carrying three coffees. Oh, my goodness, she breathed, what a thing! I looked in at the newsagent’s, no one knows who it is, not even that sly shampoo girl at Jean-Jac’s. Françoise interrupted her. We’ll soon see a Maserati or a Cayenne around the place, then we’ll know who she is. No, those aren’t the kind of cars a woman would buy. More likely a Mini or a Fiat 500.

Or perhaps she won’t buy a car at all, I interrupt, killjoy that I am. Perhaps she won’t change anything in her life.

The twins laughed heartily. Because you wouldn’t change anything, is that it? You’d stay here in your little haberdashery shop, selling odds and ends to keep bored women occupied, women who aren’t even brave enough to take lovers? said Danièle. No, you wouldn’t! You’d do the same as us, you’d change your life, you’d buy a lovely house by the sea, maybe in Greece, you’d go for a wonderful holiday, buy yourself a nice car, spoil your children – and your friends, added Danièle. You’d get a new wardrobe, you’d go round the Paris boutiques, you wouldn’t think twice about the expense, and, well, if you felt guilty you could always make a donation to cancer research. Or multiple sclerosis, or whatever. I shrugged my shoulders. I can do that without winning the lottery, I said. Yes, but it’s not the same thing, they replied. Not the same thing at all. You can’t . . .

A customer came in, and that shut us up; made us stifle our laughter.

She looked without much interest at handles for bags, tried the feel of one in her hand, then she turned round and asked me how Jo was now. I reassured her and thanked her.

I hope he liked my waistcoat, she said. The green one with wooden buttons. And then she started to sob and told me that her grown-up daughter was in hospital dying of the horrible flu that was going round. I don’t know what to do, what to say to her. You use such lovely words in your blog, Jo, what can I say to her when I say goodbye? Can you give me some words? Please.

Danièle and Françoise disappeared. Even if they’d had eighteen million euros, even if we’d all had eighteen million euros, still we’d have nothing, face to face with this mother.

When we got to the hospital, her grown-up daughter had been moved to intensive care.

I
’d hidden the cheque under the insole of an old shoe.

Sometimes, at night, I’d wait for Jo to start snoring before getting out of bed, tiptoeing over to the wardrobe, putting my hand into my shoe and taking out the paper treasure. Then I’d lock myself in the bathroom, sit down on the lavatory lid, unfold the cheque and look at it.

The figures made my head spin.

On my eighteenth birthday, Papa had given me the equivalent of two thousand five hundred euros. That’s a lot of money, he’d said. You could use it to pay the deposit on an apartment, you could take a nice holiday, you could buy all the books on fashion you want, or a little second-hand car if you’d prefer that. And I had felt rich. I realise now that I was rich in his confidence, which is the greatest wealth of all.

A cliché, I know. But it is true.

Before he had the stroke that has imprisoned him ever since in a loop of six minutes of the present, he worked for over twenty years in the ADMC, the chemicals factory in Tilloy-lès-Mofflaines, four kilometres from Arras. He supervised the manufacture of didecyl ammonium chloride and glutaraldehyde. Maman made sure that he took a shower as soon as he got home. Papa smiled, and accepted her insistence with good grace. While glutaraldehyde was indeed soluble in water, the same couldn’t be said of didecyl ammonium chloride. But the tomatoes we grew never turned blue, our eggs did not explode and no tentacles grew on our backs. Obviously good Marseille soap worked miracles.