Paris Nocturne

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I REMEMBER AT the Mirabeau Clinic, after the accident, I woke with a start and I didn’t know where I was. I tried to find the switch for the bedside lamp. Then, in the stark light, I recognised the white walls, the bay window. I tried to fall asleep again but I was disturbed and restless. All night, people were talking on the other side of the partition. A name kept coming up, in different intonations: JACQUELINE BEAUSERGENT. In the morning I realised I had been dreaming. Only the name JACQUELINE BEAUSERGENT was real, since I had heard it from her own mouth at the Hôtel-Dieu, when the fellow in the white coat had asked us who we were.

The other evening, at the south terminal of Orly airport, I was waiting for some friends who were coming back from Morocco. The plane was delayed. It was past ten o’clock. The large hall leading to the arrival gates was almost deserted. I had the odd feeling that I had arrived at a kind of no man’s land in space and time. Suddenly I heard one of those disembodied airport voices repeat three times: ‘WOULD JACQUELINE BEAUSERGENT PLEASE PROCEED TO DEPARTURE GATE 624.’ I ran the length of the hall. I didn’t know what had become of her in the past thirty years, but time no longer mattered. I was under the illusion that there could still be a departure gate for me. The last few passengers were making their way to gate 624, where a man in a dark uniform was standing guard. He asked sharply: ‘Do you have your ticket?’

‘I’m looking for someone…There was an announcement just a moment ago…Jacqueline Beausergent…’

The last passengers had disappeared. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘She must have boarded long ago, sir.’

‘Are you sure? Jacqueline Beausergent…’ I repeated.

He was blocking the way. ‘You can see very well there’s no one left, sir.’