The Book of Pearl

Never in my fourteen years had I been handed a blank page like this: freedom without limits, time entirely to myself. The gift of solitude, in a tiny kingdom at the water’s edge, was all it took for the story world and real life to come swooping down on me. And from then on they would never let me go.

  5

  TREASURE

  My first morning without him began with a fresh pang of sadness, just when I thought I was over it.

  As I was putting on my own clothes again, the ones I’d arrived in and which were now clean and dry after being washed by my host, I found a blue feather in one of my trouser pockets.

  I’d picked it up in the boat on the day I first met the girl. She’d worn it in her hair for three days. On the last evening, before her disappearance, I’d stolen it back from her, as if I’d had a premonition of what would happen.

  Feeling the feather again in my pocket, between my fingers, I replayed those hours of my life in fast-rewind, from her vanishing to the moment when the girl had appeared for the first time in the water near the washhouse, framed by armfuls of reeds.

  I took out the feather and held it to my nose, but it smelled of fresh soap now. I put it down in the middle of the table, turning over a glass to trap it, the way I used to with butterflies as a small child.

  I sat down on the chair.

  As I waited for my heart rate to steady, I looked around me at the room basking in the autumn sunlight. I found myself staring at the wall of luggage glistening with its secrets. From the outset, the mystery of this place had triggered a sort of pleasurable pain in me, a calling, an unfamiliar yearning to distract me from my misery.

  By midday I was standing in the river, with water up to my knees, trying to catch freshwater crayfish. They stirred up the mud, producing clouds around me as I caught them with my fingers. I threw another three onto the pontoon before they could nip me.

  Suddenly, I looked up.

  Something had darted into the bushes, over on the other side of the water. The man wasn’t due back with his boat until the following day. When I turned to look at the dogs lying on the grass, close to the house, they hadn’t moved.

  I carried on with my fishing, occasionally glancing across to the far bank. I’d been crayfish collecting from waterfalls before, with a whole group of cousins. I remembered the creaking sounds of those black monsters in the traps, and above all our joy, bare-chested, in the freezing midsummer water. But all that belonged to another life, before the boat, before the girl, before she’d disappeared, abandoning me like a trap with a hole in it. And as I recalled that other life, I couldn’t tell whether I missed it or not.

  This time the noise came from higher up, in the alder trees over by the house. A branch must have fallen into the water. There was a beating of air, like a duck taking off, except there was no duck. Ripples spread outwards from the trees. One of the dogs had stood up, interested in a crayfish that was trying to make a getaway on the pontoon. I waded out of the water and limped through the reeds.

  I was astonished by how indifferent the dogs were. In the normal scheme of things, they’d prick up an ear at a lizard yawning a hundred metres off.

  As I approached the alders, I grabbed a stick to poke around in the roots that sank deep into the water. I glanced around me, feeling anxious for the first time, before heading back towards the pontoon. Most of the crayfish hadn’t waited for me. I put the last two in a bowl meant for bailing out the boat when it rained.

  That’s when I think I saw her.

  A sort of golden light spread itself around me, and I turned to face one of the windows, guessing that it had to be the reflection of the sun on the glass. I saw a figure go past, behind the window. My heart felt like bursting. Despite such a brief appearance, I was sure I had recognized the girl.

  I rushed barefoot towards the house. I couldn’t even feel my battered ankle any more. The dogs followed, concerned about what was happening to me. As I pushed open the door, I was struck by how dark it was inside.

  “Who’s there?” My eyes were slowly becoming accustomed to the gloom.

  I turned around and saw that the place was deserted. Nobody. Not even the dogs had followed me.

  I strained my ears for the sound of footsteps or squeaky floorboards upstairs. Nothing.

  “I saw you. I know you’re here.”

  I paced back and forth over by the windows, and searched again under the stairs.

  “Tell me where you are.”

  A dog was rubbing itself against my damp legs, trying to calm me by purring like a cat. I kicked him away.

  I must have looked like a madman when I finally stopped in the middle of the room, barefoot, my rolled-up trousers dripping onto the floor and my lips quivering.

  “Answer me.”

  I should have remembered not to leave those walls, not even for a few crayfish. I knew that my broken heart was waiting for me at the door, hidden in the reeds.

  I was alone in the world, and I began to cry like a small boy lost in a crowd. My voice grew weaker. I pressed my forehead against one of the wooden posts.

  “At least tell me your name…”

  Several minutes went by before I could accept that grief had led me astray, and that if I carried on like this I would lose my mind. I had to leave. No time to wait for the man’s return.

  If I steered a straight course, then once I’d made it to the other side of the river and walked through the woods for a few hours, I’d be bound to find my bicycle, or a road at any rate. There’d be cars, people, proper things to dream about, and perhaps more girls, dozens of girls, one of whom would, miraculously, accept all the feathers I collected for her and wear them in her hair.

  So I sat down on the bed to put my shoes on. The dogs frolicked around me, delighted that I had calmed down. But their cheery mood was forced and unnatural, like that of dogs who have just witnessed their master crying.

  I crossed the room to pick up my jacket, which was hanging by its hood from a nail and glanced one last time at the photo of Maison Pearl. Then I walked back again to pick up my bag. There was nothing missing: the camera, the Super 8 and the rest of my belongings were all inside. I was ready.

  But when I turned to face the wall of suitcases, I spotted something I hadn’t noticed before. In the midst of all that piled-up luggage, that mound of leather, canvas, handles and locks, one suitcase was wide open, propped on top of two other. There it was, gaping like a shellfish. How had I not noticed it when I’d woken up that morning? How had it opened?

  I went over to get a closer look. Inside were lots of tiny white paper packages, neatly arranged.

  For the first time, one of the dogs growled. I took another step and then stopped. I had made for the suitcase with the idea of closing it again, but the growling of the first dog, and the position of the other two, stationary, ready to pounce, pricked my curiosity.

  Gently, I led the dogs outside.

  “There you go… Guard the house.”

  Once I’d closed the door, I could hear them scratching on the doorstep.

  Alone again inside, I glanced at the windows. The dogs would alert me of the man’s return. I had nothing to fear.

  The white paper packages were of different shapes and sizes, ranging from tiny to considerably larger. A well-wrapped rectangle filled almost half the suitcase. There must have been plenty more below it. Thousands, if all the suitcases were full. I was already wiping my fingertips on my jacket. How could I resist?

  I opened the first parcel by choosing the smallest of all, as if that would make my crime less serious. The paper used to wrap the objects was always the same: printed white tissue paper of the finest quality. I was frightened of crumpling it and leaving tell tale marks.

  The first object was a thimble in a red box. I turned it over between my fingers, while holding the box in my other hand. I’d played with the old thimbles in my grandmother’s chest of drawers, at her apartment on Avenue Mozart in Paris, but none were as chiselled or refined as this. Holding it up to
my eyes, I could see that it was made of a gilded metal. A carved band spiralled downwards dozens of times like an irregular garland finer than a hair, encircling the thimble, which just fitted onto my little finger.

  When I opened a second parcel, I discovered a marble the size of a shooter, made from orange-coloured glass, which looked like a sunset in a hurricane. In the centre was an apple pip. The marble was in a silver mount, so that it could be worn as a piece of jewellery.

  I then unwrapped another pendant: a tiny ivory skull with dark, hollow eyes. And after that, in three layers of paper, a little nightshirt embroidered with pearls, white and frothy as gossamer.

  My heart was pounding. The objects were laid out in front of me on the white paper. No doubt about it. It had all become clear: the isolated house, the dogs, the black drapes over the windows at night. I was in a brigand’s cave. The man went out plundering museums and castles, then stockpiled his booty here.

  Drunk with the sense of danger, I began to open the large rectangle wedged into the right-hand side of the suitcase. I had just noticed that the white paper on all the packages was printed with the name of the shop in the black and white photo: Artisanal Marshmallows, Maison Pearl. The burglar’s treasure was masked by that deceptive wrapping, like a giant emerald concealed in a sweet wrapper.

  The fourth object didn’t look like a collector’s item. It was a scrap of wickerwork that must have come from a piece of furniture, and it muddied my explanation. Unless it was a strip torn from a toy box belonging to Cleopatra or Napoleon, I couldn’t see how it had any value whatsoever.

  How could I have guessed then that it was the most prized possession in the man’s treasure trove? That little scrap of willow, the remains of a cradle, became covered in buds each spring to attract the birds, and the man never held it in his hands without weeping.

  I wrapped each of the objects again and put them back in the suitcase, closing it carefully. It was time to leave. With my bag on my shoulder, I pushed open the door. The dogs licked my hands and watched me go, without reacting, as if they didn’t believe I was serious.

  They were right. As I stepped back into the river, I heard the same rustling as earlier, but this time at water level. The beating of a heart or a wing, the slap of a wet skirt? Closing my eyes, I managed to resist the downward spiral that was boring into me again. But I couldn’t help thinking of the girl’s blue feather: I had left it under its glass cover in the house.

  I retraced my steps, happy at the excuse to return. The house welcomed me back with its lingering haze of burnt pinecones, and that coppery light on the suitcases. It was as though it were putting on a show to keep me under its spell.

  I made my way over to the table and lifted up the glass.

  The feather was gone.

  6

  SMALL GHOSTS

  He found me asleep at ten the next morning, lying fully clothed on the bed. I didn’t dare move.

  I must have collapsed, exhausted, at daybreak.

  With my head resting on the pillow, I listened to the sound of his footsteps on the beaten earth floor. I was afraid. Did he know what I’d been up to all night? He was coaxing the fire back to life. When the kettle began to whistle, I turned my head very gently and saw that he wasn’t watching me. He had arrived with a new suitcase, which he’d left by the door.

  My plan had been to escape before his return, but sleep had got the better of me before I’d finished my work. I scanned the room. The other suitcases were all in their places and, magically, the camera seemed to have been tidied away into its bag at the foot of the bed.

  I couldn’t remember how the night had ended. But the mystery of the disappearing feather had set everything off.

  To begin with, I’d spent an hour spread-eagled on the bed, gathering my thoughts. Then, I’d taken out my camera like a handgun from its holster.

  I had a premonition: if blue feathers and girls could disappear without leaving any trace, then everything else might vanish too, as soon as I crossed the river. The house, the man, the suitcases and their contents, the pear trees leaning on the wall, the crayfish and the black dogs: all of it could evaporate into thin air. I was surrounded by small ghosts that unsettled me, creaking their pinchers or rustling their skirts by the water’s edge.

  And so I had broken all the rules, spending the rest of the afternoon and all night long photographing the house and its treasures.

  For a year now, a weapon that showed no mercy had taught me how to hunt down ghosts and pin them to the walls. I had found happiness in my father’s darkroom: a cupboard lit by a red bulb, where all the light in the world appeared on the paper you dipped into transparent baths. I could lock myself in there for hours on end.

  It was this sudden passion that had led me to the depths of the countryside. My parents had let me sign up for a course during the school holidays.

  The advert, torn from a bakery window, read:

  Enter the world of photos!

  A week in autumn

  to learn all about photography.

  I still have a vivid recollection of the drawing underneath: a hen perched on a camera.

  Every evening, in my bed, I kept turning that strip of paper – no bigger than a metro ticket – over in my hand. The hen seemed to be challenging me.

  The first day of the holidays, I was escorted to the Gare Montparnasse together with all sorts of tips and a ham sandwich. I caught three different trains, each slower and noisier than the last, before arriving into what appeared to be the smallest station in western Europe.

  I got off at the same time as two postal bags, which were thrown onto the platform. A man welcomed me, his cap tucked under one arm. He looked like the stationmaster, but turned out to be the postman.

  While I was looking for someone else on the deserted platform, he said my name.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “I was expecting you.”

  I put my bicycle in the back of his yellow van, then sat in the passenger seat. Once we were on our way, the postman explained to me that he handled the transport side of things since Rachel didn’t have a car.

  “Thank you,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  But I had no idea who Rachel was.

  The van passed through marshland covered with bushy green lentil plants, where small bridges straddled the various channels beneath a grey sky.

  “In exchange,” he said, “she gives me eggs.”

  The road had just entered a forest of russet hues.

  “Eggs?”

  He didn’t answer. I was thinking back to the hen on the advert, when he stopped in front of a farm.

  “There you go. It’s here.”

  I was still confused about the eggs.

  “See you next Sunday,” he said, waiting for me to get out of the van.

  “See you Sunday.”

  I pulled out my bicycle, which was buried under his postal bags.

  The farm looked like a giant henhouse at the edge of the forest.

  I pushed my bicycle into the courtyard, slaloming between the columns of chicks standing guard. The mistress of the house was indeed called Rachel, and my arrival seemed to take her by surprise.

  I quickly realized I was the only person who had signed up for the course and that if, by some chance, Rachel had ever been involved in photography, it was in a former life. There was no hint of a camera or a photo lab in this house.

  She cooked me an omelette. Then she showed me to the bunk beds in a small grey wooden building.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  In the middle of the night, I switched on my torch to read the advert again:

  Enter the world of photos!

  Across the yard, Rachel was listening to music.

  I fell back to sleep.

  “You’ll spend the first three days looking for your subject.”

  “My subject?”

  It was grey outside, still almost dark. Rachel was pouring me a glass of milk, head bent so as not to sp
ill any. The lenses on her glasses were as thick as ice cubes.

  “Go for a walk. Look around you. Find your subject. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  And for three days, I followed her advice. I would set off in the morning with my bicycle and my hard-boiled eggs. I was back by the evening, when we’d eat an omelette under the flickering strip-light.

  My search was over on the morning of the fourth day, when the girl appeared on a boat.

  I had found my subject. My subject was pushing her boat with a three-metre pole. My subject moved about barefoot and on tiptoes in her boat, cutting willow branches to make into bundles.

  On the afternoon of the sixth day, my subject flew away. The girl had disappeared. I found a telephone box on the side of the road and called Rachel, informing her in a flat voice that I had to go back home because my grandmother was poorly. She seemed rather relieved by the bad news.

  “What about getting to the station? Would you like me to call the postman?”

  I was holding back my sobs by gagging my mouth with my right hand.

  “I’ve got my bicycle.”

  “Sorry?”

  “My bicycle.”

  In fact, my bicycle was lying in a grassy ditch.

  She hung up. I made my way back to the forest with a broken heart.

  Five days later, there I was lying on that bed, trying not to attract any attention.

  “I saw the crayfish outside,” the man said abruptly.

  Through the gloom, he must have noticed that my eyes were open. Was it possible that my crime had gone undetected? He was talking as if he hadn’t been away at all.

  “Yes, I caught them yesterday,” I said, stretching. “Where did you go?”

  “I don’t travel very far any more.”

  He brought me a cup of hot water that carried the scent of vanilla. I propped myself up on the pillows and held out my hand, then clasped the cup hastily.

  “It’s hot,” he pointed out.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, scalding my fingers rather than letting him notice anything: my palm was covered with the lists I’d copied out during the night.