Under the Net (29 page)

I was leaning on the parapet. With no diminution of warmth the darkness was coming, in a granulation of deeper and deeper blues. A cart passed by with an accordion band, and a crowd running at its tail. A man in a paper hat ran up to me and threw confetti in my face. Some students were singing on the Pont Saint-Michel. A little crowd came marching behind a flag. I began to think that perhaps after all I'd have a drink. So precarious is solitude. When suddenly, high up in the air, there was a sizzling explosion tailing away into a murmur. I looked up. The fireworks had started. As the first constellation floated slowly down and faded away a delighted ‘aaah' rose from thousands of throats and everyone stood still. Another rocket followed and then another. I could feel the crowd gradually solidifying behind me as people began to come out on to the
quais
for a better view. I was crushed against the parapet.

I am afraid of crowds, and I should like to have got out, but now it was impossible to move. I calmed myself and started watching the fireworks. It was a very fine display. Sometimes the rockets went up singly, sometimes in groups. There were some which burst with a deafening crack and scattered out a rain of tiny golden stars, and others which opened with a soft sigh and set out almost motionless in the air a configuration of big coloured lights which sank with extreme slowness as if bound together. Then six or seven rockets would come shooting up and for an instant the sky would be scattered from end to end with gold dust and falling flowers, like the chaos on a nursery floor. My neck was getting stiff. I rubbed it gently, letting my head resume its usual angle, and I looked idly about upon the crowd. Then I saw Anna.

She was on the other side of the river, standing at the corner of the Petit Pont, just at the top of the steps which led down to the water. There was a street lamp just above her, and I could see her face quite clearly. There was no doubt that it was Anna. As I looked at her, her face seemed suddenly radiant like a saint's face in a picture, and all the thousands of surrounding faces were darkened. I could not imagine why I had not seen her at once. For a moment I stared paralysed; then I began to try to fight my way out. But it was absolutely impossible. I was in the thickest part of the crowd and pinned firmly against the wall. I couldn't even turn my body, let alone struggle through the packed mass of people. There was nothing for it but to wait for the end of the fireworks. I pressed my hand against my heart which was trying to start out of me with its beating, and I riveted my eyes upon Anna.

I wondered if she was alone. It was hard to tell. I decided after watching her for a few minutes that she was. She remained perfectly motionless, looking up, and however deep the murmur of delight which this or that exceptionally splendid rocket evoked from the crowd, she did not turn to share her own pleasure with any of the people who stood about her. She was certainly alone. I was overjoyed. But I was in anguish too in case when the crowd disintegrated I should lose her. I wanted to call out to her, but the murmur of voices all about us was so strong and diffused that my call would never have reached her. I kept my glance burning upon her and called out with all the power of my thought.

Then she began to move. The crowd on the other bank was less dense. She took two paces and hesitated. I watched in terror. Then to my relief she began to descend the steps to the riverside walk directly opposite to me. As she did so she came fully into my view. She was wearing a long blue skirt and a white blouse. She carried no coat or handbag. I was moved to the point of frenzy and I called her name. But it was like shooting an arrow into a storm. Thousands and tens of thousands of voices covered up my cry. The steps were covered with people sitting and standing on them to watch the fireworks, and Anna was finding it quite hard to pick her way down. She paused half-way, and with an unutterably graceful and characteristic gesture which I remembered well, gathered up her skirt from behind and continued her descent.

She found a vacant place on the very edge of the river, and sat down, curling her feet under her. Then she looked up once more to watch the rockets. The river was black now under the night sky and glassy, a black mirror in which every lamp raised a pole of light and the conflagration in the sky above dropped an occasional piece of gold. The line of people on the other bank was clearly reflected in it. Anna's image was quite still beneath her. I wondered if in the river, which at that point on the left bank came fully up to the wall of the roadway, my own reflection was as vividly shown. I agitated my hands, hoping that either I or my image might attract Anna's attention. Then I took out a box of matches and lit one or two close to my face. But in such a galaxy of lights my little light could not attract much notice. Anna continued to look up. While I flapped and waved and flung the upper part of my body about like a ridiculous puppet, she sat as still as a spellbound princess, her head thrown back and one hand clasping her knee; while a stream of stars fell from the sky almost into her lap. A moment later something dropped with a sharp clatter on to the parapet beside my hand. Automatically I picked it up. It was the stick of one of the rockets. As I lifted it, in the light of the next star burst, I read the name which was written upon it: BELFOUNDER.

I held it for a moment in a kind of astonishment. Then taking a careful aim I threw it into the water so that it fell directly into Anna's reflection, and at the same time I waved and called. The image was scattered and the glass disturbed for a long way between the two bridges. Anna lowered her head; and while I leaned towards her until I nearly toppled head first into the river, she fixed her eyes upon the rocket stick which was now moving very very slowly in the direction of the sea, offering thereby a sensible proof that moving water can render an impeccable reflection. Then someone behind me said,
‘c'est fini!‘
; and I felt the pressure beginning to lessen at my back.

Poised, I watched to see what Anna would do. The people on the other bank were beginning to go up the steps at both the bridges. Anna got up slowly and shook out her skirt. She bent down and rubbed one of her feet. Then she began to make her way back towards the Petit Pont. I struggled along in the same direction. I could see her mounting the steps. Then I lost sight of her. I crossed the bridge against a stream of people. Voices and laughter were blowing like a gale. Under the bright lights faces pressed for a moment against me, were each one wrenched to a smile, and then whisked away. I got to the other side and began to move towards the Pont Saint-Michel. I saw a golden coronet of hair some way ahead, and followed it; and as I crossed the Boulevard du Palais I could see that it was indeed Anna who was ahead of me in the crowd. I felt less anxious now. I could have caught her if I had struggled very hard, but I let the crowd carry us both along, and waited until it should clear a little. In this way we went the length of the island.

Anna crossed the Pont Neuf to the right bank, and so we came to the pavements beside the Louvre which were very much less packed; and when we had got past a crowd which was gathered at the Pont des Arts she was only about sixty yards ahead of me and showing as clear as day in the brightness of the floodlight facade. I could see that she was limping a little, perhaps her shoes were hurting her; but she was walking nevertheless with strength and determination, and it then occurred to me for the first time that she was not walking aimlessly. I could now have caught her easily. But something made me pause. It would do no harm to see where she was going. So I continued to walk behind her until at the Pont Royal she turned inland.

What was Anna seeing, what filled her golden head at that moment, I wondered. What image of sadness or of promise blotted out for her the scene into the centre of which she kept moving with a dreamer's pace? Was she thinking perhaps about me? Was Paris as full of me for her as it was full of her for me? It was partly in the foolish hope of receiving some sign that it was so that I restrained myself from running up to her. Something which Anna and I had often used to do was to go into the Tuileries gardens at night. The Tuileries are impregnable from the
quais
, the Concorde, and the Rue de Rivoli, but if you approach them from the Rue Paul-Deroulède they are guarded only by a grassy moat and a low railing. On ordinary nights there are
gendarmes
whose task it is to patrol this vulnerable region: a hazard which gives to the Tuileries by night the dangerous charm of an enchanted garden. Tonight, however, it was probable that the ordinary rules would be relaxed. As I saw Anna turning towards the gardens my heart leapt up, as the heart of Aeneas must have done when he saw Dido making for the cave. I quickened my pace.

The roadway was glowing with light. On one side the Arc du Carrousel stood like an imagined archway, removed from space by its faultless proportions; and behind it the enormous sweep of the Louvre enclosed the scene, fiercely illuminated and ablaze with detail. On the other side began the unnatural garden, with its metallic green grass under the yellow lamps, and its flowers self-conscious with colour and quiet as dream flowers which can unfold and be still at the same moment. A little distance beyond the railings the garden ran into trees, and beyond the trees an explosion of light announced the Place de la Concorde, above and beyond which was raised upon its hill the floodlit Arc de Triomphe standing against a backdrop of darkness, with an enormous
tricolore
which reached the whole height of the archway fluttering inside the central arch.

Anna was already walking upon the grass, still limping slightly, and passing among the white statues which populate these lawns with laurelled foreheads and marble buttocks in various poses of elegant asymmetry. She came to the railings, just behind the bronze panthers, at the point where we had so often climbed over. She had mounted the grassy bank and hitched up her big skirt, and I was so close to her then that before she was across the railing I saw the flash of her long leg up to the thigh. As I vaulted over she was thirty paces ahead of me, walking between flower beds. Only a little farther and the grass ended and the trees began. I saw her outlined against the forest like a lonely girl in a story. Then she stopped walking. I stopped too. I wanted to prolong the enchantment of these moments.

Anna bent down and took off one of her shoes. Then she took off the other one. I stood in the shadow of a bush and pitied her poor feet. Why did the silly child always wear shoes which were too small for her? As I stood still and watched her the perfumes of night were rising from the ground and swirling about me in a cloud. She pawed the cool grass with her white feet. She was wearing no stockings. Then very slowly she began to walk along the grass verge carrying her shoes. As one set in motion by a tow-rope I followed. In a moment we should be entering the wood. It stretched before us now, very close, its rows and rows of chestnut trees, the leaves clearly showing in the diffused light, those tiny leaves that seem peculiar to the chestnut trees of Paris, etched with clarity and turning golden brown along the edges as early as July. Anna walked into the wood.

Here the grass ended and there was a loose sandy soil under foot. Anna stepped on to this surface without any hesitation. I followed her into the darkness. She advanced a short way down one of the avenues and then she stopped again. She looked around at the trees; and going up to one of them she thrust her two small shoes into a cavity at its root. After that she walked on unencumbered. This thing moved me enormously. I smiled to myself in the obscurity, I very nearly laughed and clapped my hands. When I drew level with the place where Anna's shoes were I could not but pause and look at them, where they lay half hidden and curled up together like a pair of little rabbits. I looked at them for a moment and then obeying an irresistible urge I picked them up.

I am not a fetishist and I would rather hold a woman any day than her shoes. But nevertheless as my grip closed upon them I trembled. Then I walked on, holding them one in each hand, and in the sandy avenue my feet made no sound. At the moment when I had paused to pick up the shoes, Anna had turned aside into another avenue. Diagonally now through the trees I could see her white blouse like a pale flag in front of me. We were now in the thickest part of the wood. I began to make haste. That she was thinking of me now, that she was ready for me, I could not after this long pursuit any longer doubt. This was a rendezvous. My need of her drew me onward like a physical force. Our embrace would close the circle of the years and begin the golden age. As the steel to the magnet I sped forward.

I caught up with her and spread out my arms.
‘Alors, chérie?'
said a soft voice. The woman who turned to face me was not Anna. I reeled back like a wounded man. The white blouse had deceived me. We looked at each other for a moment and then I turned away. I leaned against a tree. Then I set off running at random down one of the avenues, looking to left and right. Anna could not be far away. But it was extremely dark in the wood. A moment later I found myself beside the steps of the Jeu de Paume. Beyond the iron grille were the blazing lights of the Concorde, where in a mingled uproar of music and voices thousands of people were dancing. The noise broke over me suddenly and I turned my head away from it as if someone had thrown pepper in my eyes, and plunged back under the trees.

I ran along calling Anna's name. But now suddenly the wood seemed to be full of statues and lovers. Every tree had blossomed with a murmuring pair and every vista mocked me with a stone figure. Slim forms were flitting along the avenues and pallid oblique faces caught the small light which penetrated through the forest. The din from the Concorde echoed along the tops of the trees. I cannoned into a tree trunk and hurt my shoulder. I sped along the colonnade towards a motionless figure which confronted me with marble eyes. I looked about me and called again. But my voice was caught up in the velvet of the night like a knife-thrust caught in a cloak. It was useless. I crossed the main avenue, thinking that Anna might have gone into the other half of the wood. A man's face stared at me, and I stumbled over someone's foot. I ran to and fro for some time like a lost dog.