I slowly made my way up the stairs to the open plaza. I didn’t turn around to see if he was following me, I knew I would be able to discreetly check whether he was behind me in the huge windows of the HSBC building. As I continued around the old carousel where children were laughing, a surreal feeling came over me. I was being followed, in broad daylight, through the Paris business district, carrying a bunch of summer blooms in one hand, the whole thing soundtracked by the laughter of children.
The minute I passed the entrance to the bank, I glanced into one of the windows and saw that he was close behind me. There was no way it was a coincidence that he was going the same way. I turned off towards the Cnit building, already knowing which way this cat and mouse game was going to go.
At every corner of the Cnit building there are small glass lifts running up to the next level. The floor above was shaped like a glass tunnel which looped around the edge of the building. There wasn’t room for more than a few people in each of the tiny lifts, and I found it hard to imagine that if you were tailing someone – and wanted to remain anonymous – you would dare get into the same lift. The man following me probably wanted to retain his faceless identity for a while longer. If one of the lifts was on the ground floor, I would be able to quickly jump in and head up to the glass tunnel. From there, I could study him more closely. He wouldn’t have time to get away. That was my plan as I headed towards the Cnit building.
The moment I stepped inside, I noticed that the lift in the far left corner was heading down, and I slowly made my way over to it. The doors opened and a handsome couple stepped out. With my eyes on the floor, I pressed the button. The doors started to close, but then someone suddenly squeezed between them, and they opened wide to welcome another passenger.
‘Hi again,’ said the man.
I didn’t reply, though I recognised him immediately. It was the man to whom I had given the flowers on the metro a few days earlier.
My new bouquet was past its best. The flowers had lost their freshness during the walk, and my hands were covered in a mix of sweat and sap. My fingers clutched the slender stalks. We left solid ground and were carried above the people down below. Nothing was forcing me to reply to his greeting, maybe he would just give up if he didn’t get any response. Maybe he would leave me in peace once the lift came to a stop, just head back downstairs again. I’d never talked to the man, so why start now?
I stared down at my black shoes, which were now embellished with a number of tiny blue petals. The lift stopped with a jolt and the curved doors opened to let us out into the glass tunnel, which I had previously thought would be my place of refuge, my vantage point.
Though I hadn’t really had time to reflect on my next move, I still managed to think logically. The man couldn’t be involved in my task, for the simple reason that I was the one who had made first contact. I was the one who had climbed on board the metro carriage, who had chosen him. I left the lift first and took a few aimless steps into the glass tunnel.
‘Maybe we could introduce ourselves?’ I heard him say behind me.
I kept walking, but I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. If I was confident he had nothing to do with Monsieur Bellivier, then maybe it was best not to chase him off. I kept walking anyway, but then I did something surprising. He was the first person who had appealed to me in a long time. And there was something about his eyes. They made me want to know what was going on.
His arms were slumped to his sides, as though his shoulders couldn’t hold them up. He wasn’t prepared to take a single step towards me. Maybe he thought he had done that already. And so I walked over to him instead. Before I reached him, I held out my hand as a peace offering. There, in the glass tunnel, above the heads of hundreds of people, we shook hands.
‘Christophe,’ he said in a gentle voice.
‘Afternoon,’ I replied.
He smiled.
‘Can I take you for a coffee?’
I realised we were still holding hands.
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
I pulled my hand away and caught a flash of disappointment in his hard-to-read eyes.
‘In that case, let me say thank you for the flowers you gave me. They’re still looking beautiful.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I replied and swallowed.
I wanted to get far away from this man. I could see that he was looking at my bouquet and that he was about to comment on it, but he decided not to. Instead, he insisted on standing in silence, and so eventually I just turned my back on him and continued down the glass tunnel towards the Hilton hotel. It was my only option.
‘Good afternoon, can I help you?’ the receptionist asked.
‘No, I’m just waiting for someone.’
‘A hotel guest? Would you like me to call up to their room?’
‘No, he’ll probably be here soon.’
The receptionist smiled and continued tapping away at her computer. The place smelled clean, almost like a dentist’s surgery. I sat down on a firm, uncomfortable seat. My flight from Christophe had raised my adrenaline levels, but that high had now started to recede and I could feel the melancholy creeping back in. The receptionist looked up and smiled. I smiled. The time passed.
‘Would you be able to give this to the man in room seven?’ I eventually asked.
‘Yes … but are you sure? I only have a lady in that room.’
‘Ah, sorry, yes. They’re for her.’
‘Who shall I say they’re from?’
‘She’ll know who they’re from.’
It felt good to turn my back on the receptionist. On my way back to the metro, I walked with my head bowed. I had no interest in finding out whether anyone was watching me, mostly because I knew no one was. I was alone.
Gradually, my feeling of melancholy was replaced by a welcome calm. After twisting and turning in bed, I got up and made some tea. My neighbour had been pacing back and forth in his kitchen, but he went to sit at the table. Though I watched him quite often, I never had the feeling that he’d noticed me. But why would he, really? He probably had other things on his mind.
With my new feeling of calm came a sense of guilt over the fact I had been so self-pitying. I wasn’t alone. My son was sleeping deeply in the room next door. I had a choice. Before I went back to bed, I pushed the door to his room ajar. Nights can cloud a person’s thoughts. The darkness can discolour reality. I couldn’t lose my nerve now.
Sundays are different to the other days of the week. The cobbler’s shop is closed. The grocer’s shop is open, but Mancebo doesn’t go to Rungis and he doesn’t pull up the grille until after lunch. But this particular Sunday is also different to all of the others. Mancebo opens up at ten, right after Fatima and Adèle leave for the hammam, and he reminds Amir that he doesn’t need his help today.
Mancebo is meant to submit his first report that evening, putting it into an olive jar which he will leave in the recycling container outside his shop. The green plastic container is far from full, just a couple of juice bottles and an empty Nescafé jar, but by the end of the day, it’ll contain something of a different nature.
The delivery of the report won’t, in itself, give Mancebo any answers as to whether he can take his new job seriously, whether the whole thing will end here or whether more pages will be written. The olive jar is just one step on the way to the truth. The definitive proof of whether he has done his job properly will depend on another jar, with very different contents. Mancebo’s compensation, or wage if you prefer.
Families with small children crowd the streets. Sunday is a family day, and on Sunday mornings, the fathers are often in charge of the kids. Mancebo likes Sundays. The people who come into his shop are grateful to find somewhere that’s actually open. And no one ever complains about his high prices on a Sunday. They’re all just happy to get hold of whatever they forgot to buy earlier. A couple of tourists from Sweden come in and ask for cigarettes, but otherwise his customers are people from the neighbourhood popping i
n to buy milk, bread or a bottle of wine. The day passes at a Sunday pace. As it should.
Nothing of note happens, nothing worth jotting down. Not until the afternoon, when Mancebo finally spots something he can use to round off his report. At exactly 14.56 – Mancebo knows this because he checks his watch – a taxi pulls up outside the cobbler’s shop and deposits the writer. He is wearing the same clothes he had on when he left, something Mancebo finds noteworthy.
The writer is carrying the same bag as before, but Mancebo has the impression that it’s heavier now, or is it just that the writer is no longer carrying it with the same ease? Mancebo feels closer to the answer as he studies the writer making his way up the fire escape. Before, there had been a lightness, an energy, a sense of freedom to the way the writer moved through space. But now the world seems to be weighing on his narrow shoulders.
The taxi driver pulls away and Mancebo lifts the binoculars to his eyes. The writer’s face looms before him, and it’s now perfectly clear to Mancebo: the writer is suffering. He can’t remember having seen such silent anguish on a person’s face before. Not that he has ever studied a stranger so closely. It feels like he has all the world’s suffering under a magnifying glass.
Before the writer makes it into his apartment, Mancebo shifts his attention to the bag, to check whether he can spot a label. If so, that would suggest it had been on a plane journey, rather than just a train. But the old-fashioned bag lacks any such marker. Mancebo feels proud that he thought of that detail. He can’t allow himself to forget that he actually has no idea where the writer spent the weekend. Not yet, anyway, but one day he’ll find out that and so much more. Right now, however, he has nothing but his fantasies to go on. All due deference to the truth, but he wouldn’t want to be without his new-found imagination.
Though what is happening on the other side of the boulevard isn’t particularly remarkable, Mancebo still gets excited. The possibilities opened up by the binoculars make him forget both his shop and himself. All that exists are espionage, the binoculars and the writer.
Mancebo moves behind the till and positions himself in the corner, by the tissues and matches. No one can see him there, he knows that for a fact, he’s checked it out. But the problem with this spot is that he can only see the writer’s hallway. There’s a shadow in the window, but it’s too dark to make out anything else. The shadow moves from the hallway, and Mancebo quickly and smoothly makes his way to the entrance so that he can watch what happens next. He really hopes no one will pay a visit to the shop.
Mancebo has put the binoculars into his coat pocket, and his eyes sweep over the three rooms: the hallway, the bathroom, the office. Suddenly, the writer appears in the office window, he’s standing with his hands on his hips. The whole thing looks a bit theatrical to Mancebo, and he starts to worry that the writer suspects he has an audience, that he’s overacting as a result. Maybe he knows that his wife hired a detective, and he’s acting as though he is in a play. If so, that would mean he has absolute power, reducing Mancebo to a marionette, with the writer holding the strings.
Mancebo becomes convinced of this when the writer sits down in his chair and stares straight towards him. Mancebo’s eyes dart back to the street, and he raises his hand in a wave to no one to demonstrate his complete lack of interest in whatever is going on in the building over the road. No one returns his greeting, it ebbs out into a city in which no one cares about an anonymous wave. In Paris, there are countless messages with diffuse addresses and senders.
After his awkward wave, Mancebo starts to sort the apples with his back towards Madame Cat’s building. When he turns around, he sees that the writer is still staring straight ahead. If his gaze is resting on the shopkeeper or the boulevard, or even on the building opposite, it’s impossible to tell, and to avoid taking any unnecessary risks, Mancebo continues to weed out the carrots which can no longer be sold. Maybe the writer has realised that the man who crashed his van on Rue de Chéroy and the greengrocer over the road from his building are the same person.
When he next turns around, the writer has disappeared and, since he can’t see him, he decides he must be in the kitchen. Mancebo pulls his stool outside, automatically places it on top of the marks on the tarmac, scratches his head and waves. This time, his greeting is aimed at someone. Madame Cannava is rushing past on high heels. The writer is back and Mancebo watches an odd spectacle as he moves from room to room with a glass in his hand. He could be listening to music, Mancebo thinks.
Suddenly, the writer disappears into the bedroom, and Mancebo imagines that he has flopped down onto the bed. This gives him the opportunity to document everything that happened between 14.56 and 15.48.
From the point of view of a private detective, Sunday has been quite eventful. Mancebo glances at his watch and smiles. He likes his new watch and wonders why he didn’t buy one earlier. But he knows the answer to that. Until now, he hasn’t needed to live his life by the hour, minute, or second. And no one has ever needed him the way Madame Cat needs him. The fate of two people lies in his hands. It could even be more than two. The choices people make send rings across the water. Many different people will be affected by the wake of a bellyflop, which is, after all, precisely what infidelity is. Never before has Mancebo thought of himself as a cog in the machine, a ring on the water, someone who is contributing to something. He can’t even remember what he used to do before he started this task.
Since nothing of interest is happening over the boulevard and he doesn’t have any customers in the shop, Mancebo has trouble keeping himself busy. What did I used to do, he thinks, scratching his head beneath his cap. But he doesn’t have to wonder for very long, because at 18.04 his subject reappears in the window. Mancebo goes back to work.
Then he decides to close up for the day. If he’s any later than usual, suspicions might be aroused. He rarely works past seven on a Sunday. Though there are still plenty of people out on the streets, very few of them pay his shop a visit.
It’s as though the Parisians are taking the chance to get some exercise after the heatwave, before the next one arrives. Because it will. The inhabitants of the city have been given the five-day forecast. A warm front is approaching from Eastern Europe, where many people have already died.
Mancebo pulls the fruit and vegetable stands inside and chases away a small bird hopping towards the shop. He still hasn’t quite worked out what he’s going to do with the olive jar. Should he empty a full jar and wash it out? Or should he save a few olives in the bottom and push the report between them?
He decides to let the question simmer and starts by tearing out the five pages from his notebook and folding them carefully. Should he write some kind of personal greeting? In the end, he decides not to – what if the jar fell into the wrong hands?
It’s now 19.12, and Mancebo is starting to feel tense. He picks up a jar of olives, empties the contents into the bin and rinses it clean in the handbasin behind the door. There is still an oily residue on the inside of the jar, but Mancebo is happy enough with the result: a half-clean, fully empty olive jar. He pushes his report inside.
With a steady grip, he takes his modern-day message in a bottle, his message in a jar, and casts a quick glance over to the building opposite. The writer is hunched behind his computer screen. Mancebo places the jar on top of the glass for recycling and leaves the green plastic tray outside the door. Suddenly, he can’t remember where he usually puts it. Right by the door, or a little way out onto the pavement? Old habits feel strange when he thinks of them. He moves the green tray a couple of times, a few centimetres here and there, before he eventually pulls down the grille and locks up.
On his way up the stairs, Mancebo hears a thud. He turns on the light and looks over to the window, but he can’t see anything. He takes a few steps towards the door and realises he is staring straight into Madame Cat’s green eyes on the other side of the boulevard.
For a fraction of a second, he thinks about raising his hand in greetin
g, but he changes his mind. She is just about to make her way up the fire escape when a taxi’s tyres screech. Her face is expressionless, without a trace of recognition when she sees Mancebo. Though there is an entire street between them, there’s no doubt that she is looking straight into his eyes. Mancebo doesn’t move an inch until Madame Cat closes the door behind her, and then he makes his way to the front of the shop and stands there with his eyes fixed on the fire escape. Not to watch anything in particular, it’s mostly to calm his thoughts before he makes his way upstairs. Right then, he notices a tiny sparrow lying motionless on the ground by the door. There is a small, red mark on the windowpane. Mancebo studies the bird’s tiny, beautiful body for a moment. It’s the same bird he shooed from his shop.
If the tiny bird hadn’t flown into the window, sacrificing itself, I would never have had those sacred seconds with Madame Cat, Mancebo thinks later in bed. During those few seconds when their eyes met, Madame Cat managed not only to show that she had faith in Mancebo, but also to convince him of something else. Though what that was, he still doesn’t know.
He had almost forgotten her green, catlike eyes. Eyes which absorbed some light, but emitted even less. Eyes which, in that briefest of moments, had managed to convey sorrow, desperation, relief and joy. If that little bird hadn’t …
Fatima turns in her sleep and stretches out an arm, which hits Mancebo on the forehead. He rolls over and closes his eyes. He knows he needs to get some sleep. Tomorrow is the start of a new week, and he can’t remember when he last slept through the night. He hears footsteps from the floor below and listens intently. His detective’s instinct now never seems to leave him. Who could be up so late? The footsteps seem light, so he guesses it must be Adèle. She’s probably up to take some painkillers or to read another chapter of her feng shui book. Mancebo smiles at the thought of their new seating arrangements.
Waiting for Monsieur Bellivier Page 9