The Train to Paris (12 page)

I spent a while by the window, watching the pedestrians on Rue Saint-Sulpice. And then, as if by accident, I found myself lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling while my vision blurred and whirled. It was a balmy evening, but the fan stayed off and the window stayed closed, because I was stuck to the bed, incapacitated. I had trouble sleeping that night.

Part II

12

A lot can happen
over the course of four months, and yet it is just as possible for nothing to happen. University began in September, and while this did provide some distraction, I was haunted by my unplanned holiday in Biarritz. My nostalgia was so profound that I slipped into lethargy. I slept for long hours and inoculated myself with caffeine for what little of the day remained after I had woken up and dressed.

Every day I waited for Élodie to call. Whenever the telephone rang and my pulse quickened it was only ever Sophie on the other end. She would report whatever was going on in New Zealand—the drinks she had with friends that I had forgotten about, and the gossip of their lives. We would discuss the art she was studying, and she would email me her essays to read. I would edit them severely. Sometimes I would send her one of my essays in return, and she would have no suggestions for improvement. ‘It's good,' she would say. ‘It's really good.' And that would be that.

During this time I accompanied Ethan to his gigs, which were in dank bars over in the Eleventh and the Fifth. He performed solo with his guitar and his keyboard and his laptop and his microphone, wearing sunglasses and purple trousers, and he would command his audience. Sometimes he would remove his shirt and throw it into the crowd. The French worshipped him, and they would all buy him a drink afterwards and fawn over him while I stood off to the side and tried to find somebody else to talk to. Inevitably he would find a girl to bring back to the apartment, and I would be relegated to my bedroom for the rest of the night.

On those rare occasions when we found ourselves alone, without the company of his French artist friends and their outrageous opinions on everything, we were able to drink and talk about philosophy and books as we used to. He knew all the grimy student bars around the Latin Quarter. One in particular served sangria and had a jukebox that played nothing but old jazz songs. It reminded me of Spain. I was glad to spend hours there, listening to Ethan read me his poetry. I asked him what the point of it all was, and he told me that there didn't need to be a point. He expressed whatever was on his mind, and he did not need to justify it.

The rest of my time I spent trying to live like a Frenchman, drinking wine and eating bread and cheese. University required me to spend most of my spare hours reading. Élodie would have been quick to point out that this pastime was designed for such a terrific bore as me. In my imagination, I responded by asking what pastime was designed for such a terrific whore as her. This was perhaps the result of spending so much time in my own company. I tried hard to rid myself of such thoughts, but Élodie haunted me.

Paris returned to its usual bustle as the year went on. I would walk out into the street after a morning of reading, and let the ebb and flow of humanity dictate where I ended up. Sometimes this took me as far as Boulogne, or Montmartre, or down to the Place d'Italie. I remembered Élodie mentioning her pied-à-terre in the Eighth, and I would walk up and down the Boulevard Haussmann, hoping to catch sight of her emerging from a boutique or a gastronomic restaurant with an inconspicuous doorway. Of course, it never happened. There was nobody but a throng of tourists, photographing the Arc de Triomphe on their mobile phones and eating snails and frog legs in overpriced bistros.

I turned twenty-one in November and I pretended that it hadn't happened. Ethan would have insisted on a celebration if he had remembered. Sophie called in the morning and reminded me that her family never celebrated birthdays, in an effort to cheer me up. I told her she should be here in Paris with me. She told me that she missed me and to treat myself to another wander through the Musée d'Orsay. I did not leave the apartment for the rest of the day. I asked myself why I was clinging to Sophie when she was the lone reminder of what I had left behind. It was because I needed a friend, I told myself, and she was a good friend who had loved me for who I was, back in the days when I knew who I was.

The weather cooled in early December, and the grand overcoats and scarves returned to the shop windows. It was more excusable to be badly dressed in the summer, since I could have called myself a tourist at that time. But now, in cafés and bars, I could sense that the locals disapproved of my fraying clothes. I had kept Élodie's acquisitions, but lacked the occasion to wear them. Her scent stayed on the collar of the jacket for weeks. Where had she found such a potent perfume?

So it happened that one day I decided to line up all of my clothing and make an assessment. I went through everything, and decided that they were consistent only in their ragged hemlines and misshapen cuts. ‘One simply cannot go around Paris in an oversized brown shirt,' as Élodie might have said. I collected the rags together in a bundle and heaped them in my suitcase. They needed to be replaced. Wallet in tow, I left the apartment.

The shops at this end of Saint-Sulpice were no good. Those that did not have dead flowers inside and whitewash over the windows were cheap and bleak. I walked past the more conventional shops at the western end of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, reasoning that Élodie would disapprove of them too. I waited at the intersection with the Rue Bonaparte and planned my next move. The buildings in the foreground were bathed in shadow, and the Tour Montparnasse at the end of the street reflected the gold of the setting sun. A folk band played outside the church across the road, attracting a crowd.

The shops changed as I walked down the Rue du Cherche-Midi, which was narrow and quiet. An old woman walked by with her papillon, and little boys in suits and ties were hurried along by their nanny. Halfway up the street I came across the right sort of a place, which had no display windows but did advertise menswear, comfortably removed upstairs.

The assistant on the third floor was the master of his realm, and I was an intruder. He wore a low-cut shirt that showed his chest hair and baggy trousers and suspenders. I was out of place here. I began to search through the racks for something that would not make me look like him. He came over to stand behind me.

‘Oh my friend,' he said. ‘You need help.'

His words made me wonder if I had misunderstood. I had not, and the next hour was spent in the midst of a flurry of clothing and accessories that I could not fight my way out of. There were no other customers. I was imprisoned with the assistant as he turned me around and then around again, pressing more items into my arms. I might as well have been one of the mannequins.

‘This is a miracle,' he said, as I withdrew from the dressing room in a violet cardigan and a tight pair of jeans. ‘You have the perfect body for everything.' He could not contain his excitement, and he clapped his hands as he searched through the racks for yet another combination. ‘Has nobody ever told you this before? Well, hear it from me. You are an object of envy, young sir.'

By the time he had finished revising my wardrobe, satisfied that I could be seen in public again, he collected the items together in a pile and followed me down the staircase.

The female voices on the first floor were heated. I paused on the corner of the staircase as I recognised one of them: a lightning-fast, confident French tongue with the accents accentuated and the Rs rolled. I stopped breathing.

‘This is an illegal policy,' she said. ‘I bought this two weeks ago. Therefore I should be able to return it, since it does not fit.'

The shop assistant tried to explain something, but Élodie must have thrown her arms up. She clicked her heels across the tiles. I stood rigid, halfway up the stairs. She wore a woollen overcoat, which did not flatter her frail figure in the same way that her summer dress had, but the jewellery and the make-up were there. Her skin had lost all of its radiant tan, and it was a Hellenic shade of white. She paused at the doorway, putting on a pair of sunglasses even though it was overcast. Her head drew up and our eyes were briefly brought together. I stood paralysed, waiting for her to react. But before I could begin to move, she pushed the sunglasses down like a visor and strode into the crowded street.

My first impulse was to run after her. But she had walked away too fast, and I needed to pay for the clothes.

‘Who was that woman?' I asked the assistant at the counter.

‘She demanded to return the dress that she bought here two weeks ago. We have a strict no-returns policy. Why do you ask? Do you know her?'

‘I thought I recognised her. Perhaps not.'

‘She is old enough to be your mother.'

I laughed at this, in such an airy way that I could have been Élodie. The male assistant wrapped my new acquisitions in white paper, all the while explaining what a stroke of good luck my presence had been.

The female assistant took my credit card. ‘There aren't many men who could do that,' she said with something close to sincerity. ‘Have you ever considered modelling?'

‘No, I haven't. I'm not the type.'

‘You most certainly are. You should think about it. Male models are always needed in this city.'

I excused this as her attempt, however flattering, to validate the sale.

All faces were replaced by Élodie's as I walked up the Rue de Rennes. They were impossible to ignore, all judging me in much the same way that she had, as though I were a bad memory that needed to be repressed. I shuffled past them all. It had been thrilling to see her again, although it had also been shocking to find her so changed. She could have aged ten years. I thought back to Selvin's claim that she was forty-five. In the summer I would not have believed him. But now I could see that she was old, as old as my own mother. And why had she come to the Sixth to shop for clothes? She had not even thought to call me, and she knew that I lived around the corner.

Ethan was at home. He stared as I entered. This confused me, until I remembered that I was carrying more than one shopping bag for possibly the first time in my life.

‘What have you been up to?'

I dropped my bags by the dining table. ‘Just giving my wardrobe a bit of an overhaul,' I said.

‘A bit of an overhaul? It looks as though you've bought up the whole of the Left Bank. What's the occasion? First date?'

‘You know I'm not dating.'

‘It has to be something. A monk like you doesn't go out shopping for no good reason.'

I was about to explain the assistant's opinion that I could be a model, but I caught myself. Ethan would tease me about it. I went through to the bedroom.

‘Aren't you going to give me a demonstration?' he called out.

‘Not right now. I'm going to have a bath.'

I needed sanctuary. I liked the bathroom because it was the least dilapidated room in the apartment. The walls were covered in faux-marble tiles and the ceiling was plastered. The other rooms showed the warped wooden beams, and I always found this disconcerting, because it suggested that the whole building could fall down at any moment.

I drew the bath too hot, and it took me a few minutes to adjust to the change in temperature.

Soon my mind filled with possibilities. Élodie had come over from the Eighth for a reason. It could not have been accidental. Élodie never made mistakes. And then I realised that she must have wanted me to run after her. That much should have been obvious. Perhaps it would happen again, and I would have the confidence to seize the opportunity. But did I want to?

I wore one of my new outfits when I emerged from the bathroom. I had tucked a pink silk shirt into a pair of high-waisted trousers, which were held up by a plaited leather belt. The jacket was a deep red lined with satin. Ethan would never have worn it. All of his clothes came from second-hand shops, and he chose them according to what his friends wore.

Ethan was working on a track and I had to tap him on the shoulder.

‘What do you think?' I asked as he took his headphones off.

‘Man,' he said in amazement. ‘You really could have stepped out of the fifties. What were you thinking?'

‘I was bored. There's no point in letting my money waste away in a bank account.'

‘I don't buy that. You've met someone, haven't you? She likes the whole vintage fashion thing, so you're trying to impress her.'

‘Sounds more like something you would do. I don't need to impress anyone. I have better things to do.'

‘What, like searching for the meaning of life? At least you're dressed for it now. Add a pipe and a tweed jacket and you'll be a theorist in no time.'

I went to change back into my old clothes.

‘By the way,' he called from the other room, ‘you're coming to my gig tomorrow night. Café Molotov, eight o'clock.'

‘Sorry,' I said. ‘I have work to do.'

‘Come on, you always say that. It will be good times. I'll introduce you to Marguerite.' He stuck his head around the door. ‘You're coming. I'm worried about you, man. You need to cut loose.'

‘All right,' I said. ‘So long as it doesn't go on too long.'

‘Something's definitely wrong with you,' Ethan continued. ‘Is it about Sophie?'

‘No, of course not.'

‘Let me guess: she thinks you're going nowhere, and she wants you to come home.'

‘Maybe she does. I don't know. How can you tell?'

‘Oh, I can tell. But who cares? You're here, man, in Paris. You've got to live it. She can wait. You should stop taking it so seriously. There are more important things. Like coming to this gig. You might meet the girl of your dreams. And, who knows? She might like your vintage clothes.'