Read The Black Notebook for Free Online Page B

had her mail sent to general delivery at Rue de la Convention. She explained that she had once lived in this neighborhood, and since that time she’d had “no permanent address.”
    She didn’t receive much mail. A single letter each time. We would stop in a café down the street, at the corner of Rue de la Convention and Avenue Félix-Faure, just opposite the metro entrance. She would open the letter and read it in front of me. And then she would shove it in the pocket of her coat. The first time we were in that café, she told me it was a relative writing from the provinces.
    She seemed sorry not to be living in the neighborhood anymore. From what I thought I understood—but sometimes she contradicted herself, and she didn’t seem to have much sense of chronology—it was the first place she had lived in Paris. Not for long. A few months. I immediately sensed a certain reluctance to tell me exactly which province, which region, she came from. One day, she’d said, “When I arrived in Paris at the Gare de Lyon . . .” and that sentence must have struck me, because I recorded it in my black notebook. It was rare for her to give such precise details about herself. It was on an evening when we had gone to fetch her mail at Rue de la Convention, much later than usual. By the time we arrived at the post office, evening had already fallen and it was almost closing time. We had ended up at the café. The waiter, who must have known her since she’d lived in the neighborhood, served her, without being asked, a glass of Cointreau. She had read the letter and stuffed it in her pocket.
    â€œWhen I arrived in Paris at the Gare de Lyon . . .” The day of her arrival, she told me, she had taken the metro. After several transfers, she had gotten off here, at Boucicaut station. And she nodded at the metro entrance outside the café window. Moreover, she had made the wrong transfer at one point and found herself at Michel-Ange-Auteuil. I let her talk, knowing how she eluded questions that were too specific: she changed the subject, as if she hadn’t heard, her mind seemingly elsewhere. Still, I asked her, “Wasn’t anybody there to meet you at the Gare de Lyon that day?” “No, nobody.” They had lent her a small apartment right near here, on Avenue Félix-Faure. She had stayed there for a few months. This was before the Cité Universitaire. I lowered my eyes. A single word, too probing a look, would be enough to stop her talking. “Later on, I’ll show you the building where I lived.” I was amazed by her offer, and especially by her sorrowful voice, as if she felt bad about leaving the place. She was suddenly lost in thought. At such moments, she looked as if she wished she could retrace her steps, realizing she’d taken the wrong path. She had put the letter in her pocket. All in all, the only contact she had retained with this neighborhood was the general delivery window at the post office.
    That evening, we walked up Rue de la Convention toward the Seine. Later, we would sometimes follow the same route when she had an appointment on the Right Bank, on Avenue Victor-Hugo, on afternoons when I would first accompany her to the post office so she could pick up her usual letter. On the way, she pointed out the church of Saint-Christophe-de-Javel, where she went regularly, she said, to light a candle—not that she really believed in God, but more out of superstition. It was when she had first come to Paris. Because of that, I’ve always had a soft spot for that brick church, and still today I have an urge to walk in and light a candle myself. But for what?
    Once at the Seine, we didn’t take the metro at Javel station, as we normally did to go to the Right Bank. Instead, we turned around and headed back down Rue de la Convention. She was intent on showing me the building where she’d lived. When we reached the