The Radiant City (31 page)

Matthew feels a great weight fall to the pit of his stomach, and at the same time he has the sensation of cold air around him. “Jesus,” he says.

“So, what do you think?” Jack sits before him, his hands clasped so tight the knuckles are white.

“I think they’re incredible. Hard to look at, to be honest, but impossible not to look at. Have you shown these to anybody else, like to a gallery?”

“I’m doing the rounds. No takers yet.”

“Won’t be long. You have real talent.”

Jack’s face breaks into a huge grin, which he tries to suppress. “You think?”

“I know.”

“Well, I wanted to show them to you.”

Matthew isn’t certain, but it’s just possible that Jack is blushing. “I’m glad you did.”

They are in the trough, past the longest night of winter, but not yet broken through to a new year. The sky looks like a drawing taken from the pages of a child’s bedtime story. Something about Dream Weavers perhaps, with cloud ships, their sails billows of ether-silk, ready to set out for the land of Nod. The full midwinter moon is so bright it gives the impression the clouds are backlit and outlined in orange as the city lights bounce off their under-bellies. The vast space beyond is nearly purple, and the stars, the airplanes twinkling red and green, the satellites moving across the heavens, are ludicrously crisp and clear. On such a night it is easy to see why poets have long flocked to live in Paris.

Matthew and Jack stroll across the city, the Eiffel Tower, the Trocadéro, the grey-and-gold lantern-bedecked bridges spanning the Seine—it all looks as though it has been staged by the world’s best cinematographer. The air is cold, but the vision of the platinum-white moon has drawn many people out on this night between Christmas and New Year’s. Bundled up in scarves and hats, they meander about, slightly drunk on beauty.

Matthew and Jack have finished off a dinner of steaks,
frites
and salad topped off with a fine red wine and a
tarte fine
at a good cheap bistro on boulevard de Grenelle. Now, with a flask safely snuggled against Jack’s belly in the pocket of an army surplus jacket that was a Christmas gift from Suzi, they head off in the direction of what Jack has described as his in-country cave. Matthew doesn’t know what he means by that, but the spell of the night is upon him and he surrenders to Jack’s lead.

“I talked to my ex over the holidays,” says Jack.

“How’s your son?”

Jack looks disgusted. “Felony-stupid.”

“Something happen?”

“Ah, he broke into his school, trashed some computers and stuff. The thing is, the kid’s so dumb he decided it wasn’t enough to just screw around, right? He had to have a little something to show for it, so he steals the security video camera—while the camera’s recording to a remote. I mean, he doesn’t steal the videotape of him and his buddies jacking the camera—no, that’s someplace in the basement. He steals the actual camera, leaving the videotape so the cops have a real good shot of him, closeup, hands reaching for the goddamn thing. Jesus.” He glares at Matthew. “What are you laughing at?”

“Sorry, Jack. But you gotta admit—”

“Yeah, I guess. He got expelled but they’re not going to press charges apparently.”

“Well, there’s that at least.”

“What the fuck’s he going to do with no education? Go into the army for Christ’s sake? He’s talking about it and just hangs up the phone when I tell him he’s crazy.”

“Sorry, Jack.”

“I don’t want him to end up like me, you know? Not that I’m doing so bad, but this kid’s got a world of possibility and no draft to fuck him up. Why does he want to risk ending up in Yemen or Somalia or something? I thought I’d see him be somebody, you know?” He looks sideways at Matthew. “Same way Joseph’s mother feels about him, I guess.”

From what Matthew understands, Jack has been keeping his distance from Saida’s son and there is no point in picking at a scab. “Jack Junior’s just a kid,” Matthew says. “Kids get in trouble. He’ll probably pull himself out.”

“Last time I called, his mother couldn’t even get him to talk to me. Said he was just going someplace. I said I’d come back and kick the crap out of him but she said no, that’s the last thing he needed. She’s got him believing I’m some whack job. I gotta get back there sometime soon. Real soon.”

“So why don’t you go back? Maybe she’ll change her mind if you make the effort to go all that way.”

“Well, there’s other reasons. I shouldn’t probably go back right now.”

They walk toward the porte de la Muette, handing Jack’s flask back and forth.

“What about you?” Jack asks. “Any yuletide greetings?”

“No.”

“Nothing from the woman in the photo?”

“Nope.” In fact, Matthew has put the photo away. He has not thrown it out, but it is no longer on his shelf. It is in a box, along with a photo of his mother, a collection of coins from various lands, a Swiss Army knife he had had as a kid, and a yellowed copy of the first story he ever published. It had taken him a whole night to put that photo away. A whole night, three almost-dialled phone calls and a bottle of scotch.

“That okay with you?” Jack says.

“It’s the way it needs to be.” Matthew sees no reason to tell Jack he spent Christmas Eve with Saida and her family. They took him to midnight mass at the Lebanese church, where they sat not on pews but on straight-backed chairs, and the pictures around the walls of saints were all black-haired and bearded and far more biblical-looking than the blond blue-eyed Jesus of Matthew’s Protestant youth. Then they went back to Saida’s little apartment, the five of them, and ate stuffed crepes called
attayef
and
S
-shaped shortbread cookies called
ghrybeh
. They gave him a navy-blue and green plaid scarf, which he now wears tucked up inside his coat. Matthew gave Joseph a Buddy Guy CD and a book of
American Roadside Attractions
that kept them all laughing. He gave Saida a cedar candle in a glass holder. The next day he went back with Anthony, they ate lamb, vine leaves and the sweet-potato pie Anthony had made. They sang songs and ended the evening playing, of all things, Monopoly. Matthew lost his shirt even though he owned the three green properties and all the railroads. Saida’s father won.

The main traffic artery separating that-which-is-Paris from that-which-is-not-Paris is called the
périphérique
, and even at this late hour it is a rush of rubber and metal below them as Matthew and Jack cross the footbridge to the outer boundary of the great Boulogne woods. During the day the forest is mostly joggers and dog walkers and pram pushers, spattered here and there with white vans along the roadsides in which burly, silicone-breasted prostitutes ply their trade. Men stand next to trees and shrubs, allowing themselves to be perused by other men, who wander the pathways like gourmands through a truffle market.

As twilight falls, however, the fresh-air fanatics and families disappear. The homeless, who move into the city during the day, return at nightfall and creep into the dark recesses of the wood, where smoke can sometimes be seen rising from their campfires. They shy away from the paths and roads—these are strictly the domain of the prostitutes who are dropped off by pimps in cars, vans and minibuses and the sexual adventurers who often arrive in Jaguars and Mercedes. A fleet of flesh that, until this night, Matthew had only heard about in stories.

They are not a hundred meters inside the woods when the first figure steps into their path. She is tall, wide in the shoulders and slim in the hips, and she wears a fake fur coat open to show long legs encased in high black boots and black stockings hooked to the garters of a red-and-black corset. A tiny scrap of lace covers her sex. She purrs at them and reaches for them and Matthew thinks this is why Jack has led them here and he doesn’t want it. The wood is full of such forms—wearing dog collars and leather, leopard skin and tiny skirts—and some look like men beneath the makeup. Matthew swarms with contradictions. He is repulsed and yet intrigued, embarrassed and yet emboldened. He is also, he realizes, slightly afraid, for the woods are dark even with the shining moon and the voices call out like perverse mermaids, singing from the shoals of his self-loathing.

Jack puts his hands up to ward them off, like beggars in a market, and is harsh with them and they sense something in him and back off. Matthew and Jack continue and at a certain distance Matthew looks over his shoulder and is amazed at the carnival of sexual possibility. The sirens sway and touch themselves, cup their breasts in their palms, put their hands between their legs and touch themselves, and the feminine ways are often too delicate, too practised to be true so that Matthew wonders what is beneath those tiny skirts and scraps of lace. He thinks how cold they must be.

“
This
is your favourite place?” he says.

Jack laughs. “Wild, ain’t it? But no, not here.”

As they near one of the main roads Matthew sees that cars move slowly, crawling, as the men and sometimes couples, choose and shop and compare. Now and then a door opens and someone gets in, someone gets out. It is a bustling, bursting place and Matthew’s head spins. He looks around at the sad-eyed, weary, slightly desperate faces, pro and john alike, he wishes they looked as though they were having a better time. Several women appear to be ill, with track marks and bruises on their legs and arms, sores on their faces. Wads of tissues and used condoms shine white and wet on the hard earth. Without the cover of summer foliage, couplings are only semi-hidden by the shadows. A figure on her knees, in front of a man wearing jodhpurs and riding boots, and there, another pair, one with her face pressed to tree bark. In his pants, against his will, his penis flickers, twitches, stirs, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and looks away.

Jack leads them to a crossroad near a restaurant where every path is filled and every tree root seems to writhe and moan. A sign on the restaurant advertises itself as a venue for conferences and wedding receptions. Jack points to the Pré Catalan Garden gates.

“Through there,” he says.

The gates are locked, but are not high and pose no major obstacle.

The garden is serene, a circular parkland with a path leading around pristine lawns and flowerbeds. Weeping willows dip their branches into a stream to the right, and on the far side a small log house built to look like an alpine chalet nestles under beech and poplar trees. To their left, at the far edge of the grass circle, a huge, perfectly symmetrical tree grows, its branches a fan of black lace against the eggplant sky. There is not a sound here, as though all the furtive mumbles and moans of a few feet away are barred at the gate. The moon is a weird fairy-light as they amble along the path.

“Quite a transition,” Matthew says. “You’d think this place would be more popular, even at night.”

“Guess the hookers don’t see any reason to make their customers hop the gate when they’ve got the wide, wide woods to play in, and the homeless guys seem to prefer the deep forest. I guess it’s harder to roust them from there. Although I never have seen a cop in here.” Jack’s breath forms a soft cloud around his face.

“You come here often?”

“When I need to be alone. When I need to think.”

A noise in the bush to their left makes Matthew’s heart thud. “What was
that?
”

“You spook too easy.” Jack kicks the bush. There was a squawk and a chicken runs into the path. It is white with black spots and a red comb. It glares at Jack with an indignant eye.

“What’s a chicken doing in here?” Matthew says.

“Somebody probably had it as a pet and dumped it.”

“A chicken?”

Jack shrugs. “Some people think snakes make good pets.”

The chicken pecks at the ground and takes a few steps toward them.

“If it’s still there when we come back maybe I’ll take it home,” says Jack. “Maybe give it to Anthony. If we leave it here, one of the homeless guys’ll cook it.”

Jack fumbles in his army surplus jacket, which seems to have a thousand pockets, until he finally produces a packet of crushed soup crackers. He tears it open and scatters crumbs for the bird, and it wastes no time. “Attila the Hen,” he says.

They leave the chicken, which scuttles back under the bush as they continue along the path.

“The air smells different here,” Matthew says, breathing deep. “Good. Clean.” He thinks of how snow smells—light and pure—and how it squeaks under your boots when the temperature is very low.

Jack points to another gate at the curve of the path. “In there.”

A small sign reads “Jardin de Shakespeare.” This gate is somewhat higher and they scramble up the rock wall to get footing. As they jump down on the other side, Matthew sucks the blood off his palm where he caught his hand on a jagged stone.

“What do you think?” Jack looks as proud as if he had built the place himself.