Dora Bruder Read Online Free PDF Page B

sixth volumes of Les
Misérables . Victor Hugo describes Cosette and Jean Valjean,
tracked by Javert, making their way across Paris, by night,
from the Barrière Saint-Jacques to the Petit Picpus. You can
follow part of their itinerary on a map. They are near the Seine.
Cosette begins to tire. Jean Valjean carries her in his arms.
Taking the back streets, they skirt the Jardin des Plantes and
come to the riverbank. They cross the Pont d’Austerlitz.
Scarcely has Jean Valjean set foot on the right bank than he
thinks he sees shadowy figures on the bridge. Their only
means of escape—he tells himself—is to take the little Rue du
Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine.
    And suddenly, you have a sensation of vertigo, as if Cosette
and Jean Valjean, to escape Javert and his police, have taken
a leap into space: thus far, they have been following real Paris
streets, and now, abruptly, Victor Hugo thrusts them into the
imaginary district of Paris that he calls the Petit Picpus. It is
the same sense of strangeness that overcomes you when you
find yourself walking through an unfamiliar district in a
dream. On waking, you realize, little by little, that the pattern
of its streets had overlaid the one with which, in daytime, you
are familiar.
    And here is what disturbs me: at the end of their flight
across a district whose topography and street names had been
invented by Victor Hugo, Cosette and Jean Valjean just
manage to escape a police patrol by slipping behind a wall. They
find themselves in “a sort of garden, very large and of
singular appearance; one of those gloomy gardens which seem to
be made to be seen in the winter and at night.” This garden
where the pair hide is that of a convent, which Victor Hugo
situates precisely at number 62 Rue du Petit-Picpus, the same
address as that of the Saint-Coeur-de-Marie school where
Dora was a boarder.
    â€œAt the period to which this history relates,” Victor Hugo
writes, “a boarding-school was attached to the convent.  .  .  .These
young girls  .  .  .  were dressed in blue with a white
cap.  .  .  .There
were in the inclosure of the Petit Picpus three perfectly
distinct buildings, the Great Convent, in which the nuns
lived, the school building, in which the pupils lodged, and
finally what was called the Little Convent.”
    And, having given a minute description of the place, he
continues: “We could not pass by this extraordinary,
unknown, obscure house without entering and leading in those
who accompany us, and who listen as we relate, for the benefit
of some, perhaps, the melancholy history of Jean Valjean.”
    Â 
    Like many writers before me, I believe in coincidence and,
sometimes, in the novelist’s gift for clairvoyance—the word
“gift” not being the exact term, for it implies a kind of
superiority. No, it simply comes with the profession: the
imaginative leaps this requires, the need to fix your mind on points
of detail—to the point of obsession, in fact—so as not to lose
the thread and give in to natural laziness—all this tension, this
cerebral exercise may well lead in the long run to “flashes of
intuition concerning events past and future,” as the Larousse
dictionary puts it, under the heading “clairvoyance.”
    In December 1988, after reading the notice about the
search for Dora in the Paris-Soir of December 1941, I thought
about it incessantly for months. The precision of certain
details haunted me: “41 Boulevard Ornano, 1 m 55, oval-shaped
face, gray-brown eyes, gray sports jacket, maroon pullover,
navy blue skirt and hat, brown gym shoes.” And all enveloped
in night, ignorance, forgetfulness, oblivion. It seemed to me
that I should never succeed in finding the faintest trace of Dora
Bruder. At the time, the emptiness I felt prompted me to write
a novel, Voyage de noces , it being as good a way as any of
continuing to fix