LA VIE EN ROSE

BY DOMINIQUE MAINARD
Belleville

Translated by David Ball

1.

On rue de Belleville, Japanese tourists who had come to see the steps on which Edith Piaf entered the world lingered under the April drizzle, protected by odd little hats of pink, translucent plastic with the logo of a travel agency on them. All the way to boulevard de Belleville, two hundred yards further down, the bright red signs in Chinese characters gleamed through the mist. Legendre turned left into the labyrinth of little cobblestone streets leading to the park, swung the wheel hard to avoid the kids playing soccer in the puddles. Arnaud was trying to drink out of the thermos of coffee his friend made when his radio had started crackling half an hour ago. They had gone to bed very late and he had a hard time waking up, but his heart jumped when he saw police cars stopped a few dozen yards up the street with their lights flashing.

Legendre parked the car at the end of the street and winked at Arnaud.

“I have to be careful,” he said. “They’ve seen me hanging around the neighborhood too much, one of them threatened to give me a ticket for obstruction of justice. You coming?”

When Arnaud hesitated, Legendre held out the car keys with a theatrical gesture.

“Okay, you’d rather stay warm,” he said. “That’s your problem. You’ll find CDs in the glove compartment. But I’m telling you, man, if you want inspiration for your book, this is the place to find it.”

Arnaud shrugged with a forced smile. He was almost sorry he’d told Legendre about it a few days ago, out of boredom, out of loneliness; but the truth is, even if he hadn’t seen the guy since college, there was no one else he could talk to about it. At the beginning of the winter, Arnaud had gone on unemployment insurance to start writing the novel he’d been thinking about for a long time; 181 days, he’d counted them, and he hadn’t even succeeded in finishing four chapters. All winter he’d paced through his apartment watching the leaves fall from the chestnut tree under his windows and onto the sidewalk, soon to become invisible. He’d felt himself sinking into the inertia and calm of his little town in the suburbs—what a cliché, he thought, a former Literature major, the ambitions, the powerlessness.

After a meal washed down with a lot of wine—he’d accepted the cigarette Legendre had offered him, and since he didn’t smoke very often he was dizzy and laughed as easily as if it had been a joint—he had dropped a few words, negligently, about this novel he’d given himself till spring to finish, adding that it was coming along, it was coming along nicely. Legendre had tried to get it out of him and finally he admitted it was a noir novel, but he didn’t want to say very much more. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t. He had only said his hero would be a private detective, his victim a woman, she’d live in Paris and work in the world of the night, a stripper or a prostitute. And who’ll be the murderer? Legendre had asked, and Arnaud had raised his eyebrows with an air of mystery. If I tell you, there won’t be any suspense, he’d answered; but the truth was, he didn’t know himself. He didn’t have a feel for crime, he hated to admit, and the five months he’d spent going through short news items in the newspapers hadn’t changed a thing. When he tried to understand what could drive a man to close his hands around a woman’s neck, he couldn’t imagine it and he told himself this was a terrible start for a novelist. Would his murderer be a pimp, a customer, a serial killer? It was absurd to already have the victim and the setting and be unable to find the murderer, as if a writer could be worse than a bad cop.

He knew Legendre worked for the newspapers and that’s what had led him to get back in touch with the guy: the confused hope that since his old friend had written stories about ordinary daily dramas, he had pierced this secret and could reveal it to him.

When he spoke to Legendre about his novel, his friend had slapped him on the shoulder, pointed to the radio on a shelf, and said: “Dig that: It’s a police transmitter. When something happens in the neighborhood, sometimes I manage to get there before they do and I sell my photos for five or six hundred euros. Come sleep over next weekend and if something happens, I’ll take you along. With a little luck you’ll get to see him, your ideal killer. Don’t kid yourself, though, there’s not much going down right now.”

But the transmitter had started crackling early in the morning, and hearing the code the police use, Legendre jumped to his feet and shook Arnaud, who was sleeping on the floor of the two-room apartment situated over an Asian produce store with its fetid stench of durian. Come on, he’d said, this is the real thing, and twenty minutes later they were turning onto rue Jouye-Rouve.

Several of the entrances to the Parc de Belleville hadn’t been closed off, so they got in without difficulty. They were not alone; onlookers were crowding the paths, teenagers especially, standing on tiptoe to peer over the metal fences and the yellow police tape stretched from one tree to another. Despite the gray sky you could see all of Paris, just slightly veiled in mist, even the Eiffel Tower to the west. The catalpa trees were in bloom, tulips were standing straight up in carefully spaded triangles of soil, and the park’s little waterfall was murmuring; but in the middle of the roped-off space there was a slight swelling under a gray tarp. The fine drizzle had almost stopped; only the smell of moss and undergrowth remained hanging in the wet air. The spectators crowded behind the yellow tape in a warm, motionless mass, and Arnaud almost felt good: It was the first time he had ever been so near a crime scene and he was discovering the silence interspersed with whispers, the strange complicity of the crowd, that morbid fascination, the almost superstitious fear—but also the hope that a corner of the gray tarp would be lifted to reveal a hand or a leg.

Legendre had gone off. Arnaud heard him murmuring a few yards away, moving from one bystander to another. After two or three minutes his friend came back, grabbed him by the arm, and led him away from the crowd.

“I got some information,” he said in a low voice. “It’s a kid, a mixed-race girl seventeen or eighteen years old, Layla M. She grew up here but she’d been living with a guy for a year. She danced in a nightclub in Pigalle and they say she also slept with the customers. She was strangled to death. See, you’ve got your story now! All you have to do is find out who did it and you’ve got your book.” He glanced at the gray tarpaulin and went on: “Got something to write with? Go question the neighbors, the people who live in the old building over there—the one with the Hotel Boutha sign on it—they might’ve seen something. I’m gonna stay here and try to grill these guys—discreetly. Hurry up, you got to be the first to question them. If you go in after the cops they won’t want to say a thing.”

Reluctantly, Arnaud walked away from the crowd. He was cold in his light jacket and he would have liked to stay in the circle, the cocoon of onlookers. “But I can’t,” he protested, “I’ve never done that. What the hell gives me the right to question them?”

And Legendre threw open his arms, exasperated. “I thought you wanted to get involved. If you’d rather sit in front of your computer tearing your hair out, that’s your problem.” Arnaud felt ashamed to have hidden his secret so poorly. “But what am I going to tell them?” he insisted, and Legendre answered with a wink before he turned away:

“Tell ’em you’re a private detective. They should like that and it’ll give you something to think about.”

Arnaud waited until Legendre went away; then he groped around in the vest pocket of his jacket, took out the notebook and pen he always carried on him, and walked to the gates of the park. Hotel Boutha was a bit higher up, and Legendre had a point: It was the only building whose windows let you see out onto this part of the park. On the façade, a notice was nailed under the old hotel sign—Condemned Building—but the apartments were obviously inhabited. In the lobby, over-flowing garbage cans almost prevented him from going in, and the mailboxes had been broken into so often that their doors were dangling from the hinges; the names on the boxes were all faded out, illegible. Arnaud wrote down these details in his notebook and even copied the red graffiti on a wall. He felt a vague sense of shame, taking advantage of the situation to get his hands on these fragments of reality, like a petty thief. Then he made his way between the garbage cans and walked up the stairs.

He rang the doorbells on the second and third floors but nobody answered; a baby was crying behind one door, but no one opened it. A little girl in pajamas opened the door next to it. Her hair was made up in dozens of braids; she looked at him in silence, but before he had a chance to say a word, her mother appeared, with hair braided the same way, and as quietly as her daughter, pulled the child back and closed the door. He started up the stairs again. The stairway smelled of urine and vegetable soup but he didn’t have the heart to write it down any more than he’d had the heart to note the serious silence of the child and her mother. For a moment he thought of going back down and telling Legendre the building was empty, but then he heard a door open on the fourth floor and when he got up to the landing, he saw an old man watching him intently from the threshold of his apartment.

The man must have been waiting for him—or the police, more likely—because a plate of cookies was sitting on the kitchen table next to the entrance, as well as cups with coffee stains in them.

“Good morning, sir,” Arnaud said, holding out his hand, “I’m a private investigator looking into the crime that just occurred down there.” And the old man shook his hand with surprising gentleness.

He was wearing a big plaid jacket even though it was quite hot in the apartment, and a woolen cap he immediately took off with an embarrassed look: “I don’t even know when I’m wearing it anymore. Come in, come in.”

Arnaud remained in the doorway with his notebook in his hand, tapping the cover with his pen. “I don’t have much time, sir,” he said. “I have to question the whole building.”

But then the old man smiled knowingly, as if he was well aware that no one had opened their door for him on the lower floors, and simply repeated: “Please, come on in.”

Arnaud hesitated. Later, he wouldn’t be able to recall how he’d guessed the old man knew something; maybe because just as he was about to refuse again, the old man’s smile had hardened and he’d looked Arnaud straight in the eye. So he nodded and said, “Just five minutes,” and with two steps he was right there, in the kitchen. An old dog was sleeping under the radiator, stretched out on a plaid blanket the same colors as the old man’s jacket, and he didn’t even open his eyes when Arnaud pulled a chair over for himself.

As the old man puttered around in the kitchen, checking that the coffee was hot, putting the sugar bowl and a glass of milk on the table, he said: “She’s a kid, right?”

“Yes,” replied Arnaud, looking out the window at the trees in the park. Between their branches, blobs of color—the onlookers—were pressing against the yellow tape. “Layla M., seventeen or eighteen years old, they told me. She died from strangulation.” He was trying for the neutral voice of the private detective he claimed to be. “That means she was strangled, see.”

The old man had his back turned. His hands were in the sink; he was mechanically running spoons and knives under the faucet. He didn’t say a word.

“Seems she grew up near here,” Arnaud continued. “She hadn’t been living in the neighborhood for a few months, but I thought some people would be bound to remember her. You yourself—did you know her, by any chance?”

The old man still had his hands in the sink. He seemed to be washing the silverware under the faucet for an interminable length of time, and Arnaud, thinking the sound of the water might have prevented him from hearing, repeated more loudly: “You know her, by any chance?”

The old man kept his head down, but stretched out his hand and shut off the water. Finally, still without turning around, he said: “Yes, sir, I knew her. I knew her very well. I loved her like a daughter.”

Arnaud remained silent for a moment. He cursed Legendre for having put him in this situation; he had no more idea how to console a man than he knew how to grill him or judge his guilt, and he remained silent until the old man finally turned around and leaned against the sink, drying his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he spoke again, clumsily: “She probably didn’t suffer, you know, she must have passed out when she couldn’t breathe anymore. And the police are there, they’re going to find the bastard who did it. Don’t worry, they’re animals but they always get caught in the end.”

The old man raised his head and stared at Arnaud without answering. He picked up the coffeepot, brought it to the table, and filled the two cups. He sat down in front of Arnaud, right next to the dog; he scratched the animal behind the ear for a long time. Then, as if he’d just made a decision, he sat up, put his two hands down on the table, and said: “I’m going to tell you a story.”

2.

You see, sir, in two or three months this building’s going to be torn down. I think about it every time I see it. Every time I turn the corner I’m glad to see its old walls still standing, and then the potted geraniums of the old lady on the third floor, they’re old as the building. She takes cuttings from them and puts them in glasses of water, they’re all over her kitchen. During the summer, with the flowers and the wash drying outside the neighbors’ windows, you’d think it’s a street in Italy. That’s what I tell myself, you see, even though I’ve never been to Italy. Every time I see the building from the street I’m happy, and relieved. As if the demolition crew might come in with their bulldozers and jackhammers before the date they’ve set, and there’ll be nothing left of my house but a pile of rubble. They’re going to build what they call a “residence,” you know, one of those high-class buildings they sell to young people for a fortune because you can see the trees in the park, as if you couldn’t go live in the country when you feel like seeing trees. Twenty years ago it was a hotel—you can still see the sign painted on the front—then they knocked down some inside walls and turned the rooms into apartments to rent to people who didn’t mind sharing a bathroom with four other apartments and a toilet out on the landing. Yes, people like me and Layla’s mother.

But I’m always afraid they’ll knock down the building without any warning, and every time I go out I take a bag with my most important things in it: my papers, the money I’ve saved up, my watch—I don’t like to wear it on my wrist—my social security card, some letters from my mother, and … these photos. That’s Layla. Take a look. She got these snapshots done in the Photomaton at the supermarket; she gave them to me on her fifteenth birthday. You can see how beautiful she is. Nobody ever knew who her father was; her mother got married and had three other kids but Layla was the oldest, from the years when her mom was going out and having a good time. The kid was conceived who knows where and she was born who knows where, in the street, she was in a hurry to see the world, the neighbors didn’t have the time to call an ambulance.

For a long time she was ashamed of it, being born in the street. The other kids in the neighborhood knew—kids always know everything—and you can bet they made fun of her. Then one day I took her by the hand—her mother asked me to watch her a lot when she was a little girl and the kid was used to coming over my place—and I took her to rue de Belleville to show her the marble plaque on number 72, where Piaf was born, you know, five minutes away from here. And then I took her to the library to show her what a great lady Piaf was, I showed her books and I made her listen to recordings too, she looked like a little mouse with those earphones—she was … oh, not more than five or six. I never had a record player and neither did her mother.

That story of Piaf who was born in the street like her … it was a good thing for her—and a bad thing too. Because she decided right away she’d be a singer, and she did have a nice little voice. She started singing all the time. Since they couldn’t handle her anymore at her place, with the three other kids squealing, she’d come to mine. She used to give me sheets of paper with the words of the songs and I had to check if she was making any mistakes, and me, I hardly know how to read, sir. When it was nice out we’d go down to the park, right next door, I’d spread out a sheet or a blanket under a tree and I’d give her what I’d made to eat, sandwiches usually, cheese or chicken sandwiches, and sometimes she’d run off to get Cokes at the nearby Franprix. Those days, when I listened to her sing, with the smell of the flowers all around, stretched out on the blanket with a piece of grass between my teeth—sometimes she sang so softly I’d fall asleep—yes, sir, no doubt about it, those were the best days of my life.

They should have given her singing lessons, of course, and taught her to play an instrument too, but they didn’t have any money for that either. For a while she thought she’d pay for them herself and she sang in the street, especially in summer at the sidewalk cafés around Ménilmontant, and there too, I’d go with her to make sure nothing happened to her; I used to take along a folding chair and I’d roll myself cigarettes until I decided it was time to go home. Yes, you see, I never had a kid, so naturally it was like she was mine, almost, what with her mother always busy with the three little ones. But she was never able to collect enough money to pay for lessons or a musical instrument.

When she grew up things got difficult. At fourteen she started changing her name all the time, saying she was looking for a stage name. She used to go to the library a lot, first with me and then alone, that’s where she learned all those names of singers and opera heroines, Cornelia, Aïda, Dorabella. Plus, you had to watch out: You couldn’t make a mistake, confuse her most recent name with the old one, or she’d get mad; it was like mentioning somebody she’d had a fight with. One day, just kidding around, I told her she was like an onion adding skins instead of taking them off, but after that she wouldn’t talk to me for a week. Maybe what the girl really missed was bearing the name of a man who was a real father to her.

She hung onto the idea of becoming a singer. Her parents wouldn’t hear of it, of course, they wanted her to get a real job, with a good salary. But she stuck to her guns. Then it began to go to her head, and it’s my fault too, because I always encouraged her. Those years, when she was fourteen or fifteen—they were the worst. Layla wasn’t going to school anymore—we learned this by pure chance because she’d steal the notes from school and imitate her mother’s signature. Her stepfather gave her a beating and she went back, but not for long, she never stopped cutting classes, she’d leave in the morning with her school bag but she’d hang out in the street all day.

Things were so bad at home that she got used to sleeping here from time to time, then more and more; her parents felt secure knowing where she was. I wanted to give her my room but she said no, she made her bed on the living room sofa, over there, she’d sleep with Milou at her feet. She said she didn’t want to bother me but mainly I think she wanted to be able to go in and out without my hearing her; I’ve gotten hard of hearing in my old age and it wasn’t so easy to watch her, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. And then, I didn’t have the guts to bawl her out, I was afraid she’d leave, that’s the way it is when you’re not really the parent, you don’t dare to be too strict. And then she started disappearing for days on end. We didn’t know where she went. I had a feeling she was traveling with a bad crowd—when she came back her breath smelled of cigarettes and even liquor, but you see, sir, she still loved to sing. So I used to tell myself that would save her, I always thought that in the end it would save her from the worst, that’s how naïve I was!

A year ago, she started telling me about people she’d met who worked in television. She told me there were shows that helped young people like her become singers or actors and she was going to try her luck, and for the first time she asked me for a little money to buy herself a dress and shoes. For the audition, she said—she’s the one who taught me the word: audition. She told me it was going to be in a suburb of Paris and she’d sleep over at a girlfriend’s place, a girl who dreamed of going on stage too. She told me all that sitting right where you are, with Milou’s head on her lap, pulling his ears the way she liked to do when she was a little girl. At the time we already knew the building was going to be torn down and she told me that when she was famous she’d buy a big house with a garden and there’d be a room for me and a basket for the dog. Yes, that’s what she said. Then she asked if she could sleep on the couch and of course I said yes. When I went to bed, she kissed me. She told me she’d keep in touch, because she’d probably have to stay a few months there in the TV studios, after the audition. She was laughing. I hadn’t heard her laugh like that for a long time. The next morning when I woke up, she was gone.

Right away I knew she’d left for a long time. She’d been to her place very early and took some money from her mother’s purse. Everybody was still sleeping. They thought one of the kids had left the door open and someone had snuck in. I didn’t say a thing, but I was sure it was her, even if she never stole before. I was hurt, less because of what she did than because it meant she wouldn’t be coming back for a long time. And also because I told myself that if I’d only given her more she wouldn’t have had to steal.

I began to spend my evenings at Samir’s, the grocer on the corner of rue Piat. He had a TV set in the back room and when he had customers he let me watch whatever channel I wanted. I watched all the shows Layla told me about, those shows for young people. I never thought there were so many kids who wanted to be famous, and that made me afraid for her. It’s true she had a nice voice and she was very good-looking, but there were lots of other kids with nice voices too, just as good-looking. I just hoped it wouldn’t ruin her life, hoped she wouldn’t be afraid to come back. I got five postcards from her over the next year, look, you can see them over there on the wall. She wrote the same thing on every one of them, or just about: I’m fine, Grandpa. Love you.

One evening I really thought I saw her on a show. I’m almost sure of it. By that time I’d lost hope, I kept going to Samir’s mainly because I wasn’t used to staying home alone anymore, especially without much chance of Layla dropping by. The girl I saw only stayed on stage for a few minutes, they didn’t even give her time to finish her song. She said her name was Olympia but that doesn’t mean a thing, you know. She had heavy makeup on, with silver on her eyelids and red lips, done up in a way she never would have dared here, a shiny dress, very short. I remember thinking, So much money for such a short dress. But her voice sounded like Layla’s and she sang a Piaf song, which is funny because the others chose much more modern music, the kind you hear blasting on young people’s car radios when they’re stopped at a light with their windows rolled down, or when they don’t shut their bedroom windows. I couldn’t get a good look at her face, it went so fast, I yelled for Samir, hoping he could help me figure out if it really was her, but by the time he got there—he was helping another customer—it was already over.

The weeks after that I kept watching the show, but the girl—Layla—she never came back. I kept hoping for months, I told myself maybe it was just the first round and we were going to see her again at some point. But I never did.

A few months later there were the rumors. Somebody claimed they saw her in a bar, a nightclub really, then somebody else, and then somebody else again. They swore it really was Layla, said she was dancing every Saturday over there, near Pigalle, then they said the words peep show. I didn’t know what that meant either, before. Around that time, her family moved out; they didn’t even leave an address—I don’t know if it was the shame of the neighborhood hearing that their daughter was dancing naked in front of men. Her mother just left a box in front of my door with the girl’s things. They’re still there, in my bedroom.

There isn’t much left to my story. One day I went there. I don’t know why, I think I was sure it wasn’t Layla, just as I had been sure that I’d seen her on TV at the gates of fame with Piaf’s song on her lips, but I needed to see her in person. The rumor had become more and more persistent and I basically knew where to look for her. I waited a few weeks, the time to get up my courage, and then I took the bus to Pi-galle one evening around midnight. I didn’t have to look far. There were photos of her at the entrance to one of the clubs. I looked at them for a long time, so long the guy watching the door got impatient and said, “Hey, Gramps, you coming in or you growing roots there?” In some pictures she was wearing dresses with slits at her thighs and between her breasts and in others she was almost naked. I had washed her when she was a baby and when she was a little girl; it didn’t bother me to see her naked. But there wasn’t one single photo where she was smiling. The lipstick was like a gash across her face, she’d lost her nice round cheeks, and her black eyes looked very big. When the guy at the entrance spoke to me I was caught unprepared, I couldn’t stop looking at her face after not having seen her for months, and when he said, “Well, Gramps?” I asked, “How much is it?” and I fumbled around in my wallet to pay the admission.

Inside the peep show, as they call it, it was dark and it smelled of sweat, the music was too loud, you’d think you were in one of the worst bars in our neighborhood. I stayed standing near the door of the room they pointed me to, men kept coming in, pushing each other, I was hot, and then I realized I still had my cap on and I took it off. The first girl was a blonde in a shiny pink slip, she couldn’t dance but the men were whistling and yelling, some of them tried to touch her but there was a strongman watching the edges of the stage. After that I didn’t have to wait long, because the next one was Layla.

I won’t tell you about how she was dancing under the eyes of those men, my poor ruined little girl. I didn’t stay very long, just enough to see her pace back and forth on the stage two or three times on her high heels, with a swaying walk I’d never seen from her, and then just when I was putting my cap on to leave—maybe it was my motion that attracted her attention—she saw me. She didn’t stop dancing but she dropped her arms, she’d been holding them over her head till then, and she twisted her ankle. I saw her mouth tighten in pain but nothing more because I’d already turned around, and I left without looking back.

I didn’t tell anyone about what I saw. Nobody asked me anything but I think a lot of people understood, because I never went back to watch TV at Samir’s. I just went out to walk the dog and shop for food. The rest of the time I stayed here sitting in the kitchen, and I tried not to think. I didn’t even wonder anymore where I’d go when the building was torn down.

I didn’t think she’d come. I didn’t guess it in her look when she spotted me at the peep show, all I saw was boredom and that new toughness, and the jab of pain when she twisted her foot, but I didn’t see joy or sorrow at the idea of what she’d lost, and I told myself she’d put all that behind her. Still, when there was a knock on the door one evening, very late, I knew right away it was her. I’d fallen asleep on the couch; since she left that’s where I usually slept, as if giving myself the illusion she was in the room next door. I went to splash some water on my face before I opened the door.

She was pale, and I realized right away she’d knocked on the door across the hall first, the door of the apartment where her family used to live. It hadn’t been rented again because of the plan to demolish the building, but two guys set up house there, with candles for light and a coal stove for heat. They drank all day and begged in front of the Monoprix supermarket on rue des Pyrénées, a little further up. She must have woken them up because the younger one, a guy with a beard, was standing in the half-open doorway looking at us. When she came in, I didn’t hear him close the door and I’m sure he stayed there waiting for her to come out again.

Oh yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking he waited for her, followed her to the park, and then what happened, happened. But you’re wrong.

She didn’t cross the threshold until I told her to come in, and it was strange, that mix of humility and provocation in her face, like she was defying me to criticize her for anything. I found her taller, maybe it was her high heels, maybe her thinness, she was wearing a jacket I recognized and she floated in it like a little bird. She sat down on the couch and looked at me with a funny smile on her face. I could see immediately she’d taken something, something stronger than a couple of drinks, and that was new too: She looked at me and then seemed to look through me, she had to make an effort for her eyes to focus on my face again. She rubbed her nose with her forefinger and then she said: “So, they left.”

Her voice was like her face, just as tough, like, grated—I know I should say grating, but it was something else, it was like they’d both been dragged over a hard surface and they’d lost all their softness. “Two months ago, yes,” I said. “But your mother left your things, they’re in my room, I can go get them if you like.”

She shrugged indifferently, as if none of it had any importance. She stayed slumped on the couch with that half-smile on her lips and that floating look, twisting a strand of hair around her finger.

“Layla,” I said, “come back. You can stay in the bedroom, you’ll be fine there, I almost always sleep in the living room now. I can help you bring over your things, if you like. We can even go there right now.”

She laughed, a joyless laugh, and I thought of the night before she left, that happy laugh I’d kept inside my ear like a good luck charm while she wasn’t here. “And to do what, huh?” she answered.

I lowered my eyes, I never felt so old, so powerless, so silly too, but I made myself go on. “You can start singing again,” I said. “Samir’s looking for someone to take care of the cash register on weekends, it’d do me good to get out of here a little, and it could help pay for lessons. Maybe that’s all you need to make it work.”

She laughed again, rolling her head against the back of the couch, and then she said: “No, Grandfather, it’s over, my voice is gone, can’t you hear? It’s not there anymore. It’s gone, that’s all there is to it.”

It hurt when she called me Grandfather because there was no tenderness in her voice like when she called me Grandpa, it was more of an impatient tone of voice, kind of scornful, like the kids playing soccer in the little square in front of the park when they think I’m not getting out of the way fast enough. It hurt, and then it made me mad. It was also seeing her like that on the couch, sprawled out like a doll, occasionally scratching her knee or her nose, looking like she was bored, not giving a damn about anything. I went and sat down next to her. “You can’t lose your voice just like that,” I said, even if it’s what I thought when I opened the door—that grated, worn-out voice, almost unrecognizable. “It’s because you haven’t worked on it for a long time. I’ll make you herb tea, lemon and honey, and then those powders Samir sells for colds, you’ll see, it’ll come back.”

But she just closed her eyes and shook her head with an angry expression, and when I held out my hand to push back a strand of hair that was falling over her cheek, she shoved it away impatiently. “No,” she said. “My voice is gone. Don’t you get it? It’s all over. Oh, leave me alone.”

She thought she was strong but she wasn’t as strong as all that; she couldn’t manage to brush away my hand and I left it there, near her cheek, even when she tried to push it away more impatiently, saying, “Stop it.”

I slid my hand down and placed it on her throat. “Your voice isn’t gone,” I said. “I’m sure I’d feel it if you sang something—there, now, I can feel it vibrating under my fingers. Your neck’s all cold, that’s why too, but it’s going to warm up.”

“Come on, leave me alone,” she repeated. “Leave me alone, I can’t breathe.” She could have screamed if she wanted to, there were neighbors, the two guys on the other side of the landing, and yet she whispered, and it was like a secret being born between us.

“Sing,” I told her. “Sing something. Sing that song by Piaf you used to like so much. ‘La Vie en Rose.’ Sing.”

Her throat vibrated under my hand when she murmured something, still softer, but I didn’t hear it. We stayed like that for a long time. She hadn’t opened her eyes again. She wasn’t trying to push me away anymore, she had her hands on her knees, quietly waiting for something, and that smile that didn’t look like hers was gone from her face. She didn’t move. I thought she was asleep.

3.

Arnaud hadn’t said a word while the old man was talking. He had opened his notebook and began mechanically taking notes after glancing over at the old man to make sure he didn’t mind. But his notes were such a mess that later he would be unable to read them or understand what they meant, aside from the last words he’d written in the middle of one page: La Vie en Rose.

Now the old man was silent. Arnaud watched him. Big, fat tears were flowing from the old man’s eyes, like a child’s tears. He never would have thought such a deeply furrowed face could have so much emotion or so much water in it. At last the old man sighed, picked up his cup of coffee, and put it to his lips, then put it back down without drinking a drop.

“When her neck began to grow cold under my palms I understood,” he said. “I took away my hands and her head slipped onto my shoulder. I didn’t know what to do, so I laid her down gently on the couch and I got up. It’s funny what goes through your head at moments like that, sir, because I wasn’t really thinking and yet I went straight to the bedroom closet where I knew that long ago I’d put away the blanket we used to take for picnics in the park. I took it, I went back to the living room and wrapped Layla in it. All that time I was wondering what I was going to do, but I must have known already. I picked her up in my arms without any hesitation—it wasn’t easy, since skinny as she was, she still weighed a lot, or maybe death just does that to you—and I walked to the door. The guy across the hall must’ve gotten tired or else he understood and didn’t want any trouble, because his door was shut.

“I walked down the three flights with Layla in my arms, I went out into the street where it was still very dark, you couldn’t hear a car, not even a moped, and I walked to the park gate that doesn’t close very well. Everybody in the neighborhood knows there’s a gate that doesn’t close and all you have to do is jiggle it the right way to open it, any ten-year-old can show you how. I pushed the gate wide with my shoulder and I took the park path to the spot where we used to have picnics back then. It must have been close to dawn because a blackbird was singing in the trees, we must’ve stayed on the couch much longer than I thought, I may have fallen asleep with my hands on her throat. The smell of the flowers was very strong that night, I was surprised spring was in the air. I think I’d hardly been out of the house since the night I saw Layla in Pigalle.

“I stopped at a tree we used to sit under. I kneeled down and I put her down on the ground. I picked her up a little to tuck the blanket under her, I laid her out with her legs together and her arms straight down beside her body, I buttoned up her jacket to hide the bluish necklace around her throat, and then I got up. I looked at her for a moment. Oh, we were so happy under this tree, me and her. As I was walking back home, it started to rain and suddenly I couldn’t stand to think of her staying out there in the rain. I went up to get a pink nylon windbreaker she’d left behind when she went away; her mother had put it in the box she’d left on my doormat. I took it out of its plastic bag, went back down, and put it on Layla; first I slipped it over her head, then I pulled her arms through the sleeves, and finally I drew the hood over her face. I could hear the sound of the raindrops falling on the plastic. Did she have her pink windbreaker on when they found her? She didn’t get too wet?”

He was looking at Arnaud imploringly, and Arnaud lowered his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said in a low voice, “I couldn’t cross the police barrier. But she was under another plastic thing, a kind of gray tarp. No, I don’t think she was wet.”

The old man shook his head with a pensive expression. He picked up the cap on the table next to his cup and wiped his face with it, then kept it in his hand.

“After that, I came back up here and waited for someone to arrive,” he began again in a weary tone. “I waited for someone to come so I could tell my story. I will follow you to the police station. But the dog … I’d just like you to leave the dog at the grocery store on rue Piat.”

Arnaud capped his pen and shut his notebook. The coffee must have been boiling for hours, it was much too strong; he felt as if it had ripped the skin off his mouth and his heart was beating very fast. He was thinking of all those newspapers he’d skimmed through since the fall, all those sordid crimes, stabbings, shootings, skulls cracked against walls, that search for evil he’d thrown himself into to find an ideal killer, and he remembered the incredibly gentle handshake of the old man. He was looking at them at that very moment, those two hands clenched on his cap, which he was stroking softly, the way you pet an animal. Then Arnaud glanced up again and forced himself to smile.

“I’m not the police, sir,” he said. “I’m not going to put you in jail. Your story …” he went on hastily. “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell anyone anything. Layla did not come to see you. You were sleeping, you didn’t hear her knock, you didn’t open your door.”

But the old man was staring at him as if he didn’t understand. “Don’t say anything,” he repeated. “Why?” He had mechanically put his cap back on, he looked ready to go, to follow the police who’d come knock on his door in a few minutes or a few hours.

“I live outside Paris,” Arnaud suddenly heard himself saying. “I can take you in for a while if you like. We can go there now. No one will know you were here last night. No one will suspect you.”

But under the woolen cap, his face still reddened by tears, the old man was looking at him with incomprehension, almost with mistrust.

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to do,” he said at last. “What you’re telling me there, that’s not my story. I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.” He continued to examine Arnaud’s face as if he was seeing him for the first time, as if he didn’t know how this stranger got into his kitchen, sitting in front of him with the coffeepot between them. He pushed back his chair and got up heavily. “Go away, sir,” he said. “Go away, please.”

Arnaud hesitated, then did as he was told. He stood up, slipped his notebook and pen into his pocket. The old man remained standing behind the table while Arnaud walked over to the door and went out. In the stairway he found the same stench of urine and soup; the door to the apartment across the hall was slightly open, but he was not tempted to take a look inside. He walked quickly down the three flights. Just as he was leaving through the doors of the building, he saw the police coming—three men who seemed to know where they were going—and he turned his face away so their eyes would not meet.

He headed back to the park. Most of the police cars had disappeared; so had most of the onlookers. When he passed through the gates, he saw that the yellow tape was still there but they’d taken the body away. He stopped on the path. He looked for a long time at the lawn, soaked by the downpour. In the grass under a tree, there was an oval in a softer green on the spot where the body had protected it from the rain. Suddenly he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. He turned around and saw his friend.

“Hey, you sure took your time,” Legendre said. “I hope you came up with something, at least. Me, I drew a blank, nobody wanted to tell me a thing and then the cops threw me out. So tell me. What happened?”

But Arnaud was looking at the soft oval of grass again. He felt tears welling up in his eyes, tears that seemed to him as big and childish as the old man’s. He didn’t know where he got that absolute ignorance of the human psyche. All he knew, with absolute certainty, was that he would never write his book; but that wasn’t what was causing this inconsolable sorrow. Legendre had lit a cigarette and was staring at him in amazement.

“For Chrissake, what’s with you, man? What did you see in that building?”

Arnaud shook his head without answering. The last onlookers were moving away, and couples, strollers, and children were coming in through the gates of the park. In a few weeks, a few months, no one would remember Layla M. except for the old man in his cell and me, he told himself. He thought of the pink nylon windbreaker the old man had taken down to cover the corpse with, and as his tears turned into sobs, he remembered the pink plastic hats the Japanese tourists were wearing a few hours earlier in front of the plaque for Edith Piaf. They had seemed so bright and cheery in the grayness of the morning.