Little Jewel

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IT MUST HAVE been about twelve years since anyone had called me Little Jewel. I found myself at Châtelet metro station at peak hour. I was in the crowd heading along the endless corridor on the moving walkway. There was a woman wearing a yellow coat. The colour of the coat caught my eye and I observed her from the back on the walkway. Then she headed down the corridor marked DIRECTION CHÂTEAU DE VINCENNES. Now we were all squashed against each other in the middle of the staircase, waiting for the barrier to open. She was standing next to me. I saw her face. She was so like my mother that I thought it must be her.

I remembered one of the few photos I have kept of my mother. It’s as if a searchlight trained on her face had made it loom out of the darkness. I’ve always felt uneasy looking at this photo. Every time it appeared in my dreams, it was like an identikit photo that someone was showing me — a police superintendent, an employee at the morgue — so that I could identify this person.

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