by E. J. Swift
Part Nine
The Source of Joy
Chapter Forty-Six
Paris, 2018
I WAKE IN my studio knowing that I have had nightmares. My shorts and T-shirt are damp around me; the sheets are twisted into coils. My heart is racing. In the first disorientated minutes I remember nothing, and then his name comes into my head and the full force of memory hits me all over again. I turn into my pillow and heave dry, painful sobs.
When the storm of grief is exhausted I lie and listen to my heart contracting in my chest, its rhythm not quite settled even now, the sunlight warm and strong through the shutter cracks. I listen to Paris’s siren song, lodged in the whorl of my ear. I feel fragile, not quite substantial, but I feel alive.
I have to get used to sleeping through the night again. And I have to decide what I’m going to do with my life.
TEN O’CLOCK, THE sixth of July. In two months I will have been in France for a year—if you count the clock in the present moment, that is. In other, unaccountable ways, I’ve been here years. I’ve aged. I open the shutters and light floods the room. I pad around the tiny apartment, straightening things, blowing dust away, waiting for the coffee to percolate on the detachable hob. I drink the espresso wedged into my balcony, spine pressed against concrete, knees to my chest. Watching pedestrians crossing the street below. Pigeons on the rooftops. The world goes by, with or without me.
I have a shower. I brush my teeth. I get dressed.
I wonder if the sense of missing someone ever goes away.
Since my return the anomaly continues to sing, though the song is muted, and somehow I am able to ignore its voice, or at least to pretend I cannot hear it. In fact, I feel quite detached from everything. Detached enough that I pick up my phone and call Gabriela, who I have not seen since she tried to blow up the keg room, almost killing us both in the process and effecting our banishment from Millie’s.
GABRIELA AND I eat ice cream on the banks of the canal Saint-Martin. The water is cluttered with boats. It is a blazing day. The concrete paving sears the backs of my legs, and I am grateful for the arc of spray when a speedboat jets past the bank.
“So why did you call?” asks Gabriela. She has not looked at me directly since we met at Stalingrad. Hasn’t forgiven me, I suppose.
“I wanted to say sorry.”
“And?”
“And I’m sorry. For getting you involved. For not listening to you. For getting sucked into the whole travelling thing. All those things. And I’m sorry for what I said about you not wanting to go home…” I hesitate. “It wasn’t my place.”
“Hallie...” Gabriela dips one toe into the canal. She trails it back and forth. I wait until she is ready. “I accept the apology. And I am sorry too, about the explosion. It was a moment of madness. But we cannot be friends the way it was before. It is... things have changed. I need some space, at least for a time.”
“Gabriela—”
“There is no point in arguing. I know my mind. This is it.”
“But it was so perfect.”
“Yes. It was.”
My thoughts flit to Millie, to Rachel, to others I have known and loved. I spread myself too thinly, I think. I loved Paris indiscriminately, and there wasn’t enough of me left to sustain the present. That’s what Léon was trying to tell me. That was his experience.
“I’m not going to try and convince you,” I say. “But I hope you’ll change your mind, however long it takes.”
We sit on the canal bank. A pedal-boat drifts down the channel and spins three hundred and sixty degrees, its occupants shrieking as they attempt to steer.
“Kit asked me to work again,” says Gabriela.
For a moment my old grievances flare up: anger, jealousy, an awful fear that Gabriela will reach the anomaly where I cannot.
“Are you going to?”
“Yes.” She shrugs. “It is my life, Hallie. But not yours, I think. Not forever.”
“You may be right.”
The pedal-boat has received assistance: two rowers are grabbing its hull and hauling it around. Their banter drifts across the water.
“Have you called your family?” asks Gabriela.
“Not yet.”
“Call them. Remind them you are alive. And then go home, make your amends. One of us must.”
I look at her. “What do you want, Gabriela? Honestly?”
Gabriela leans across. She brushes away a strand of hair that has stuck to my face, strokes my cheek. For that brief gesture, she is my old friend and confidante again.
“Who knows what I want?”
She hesitates, then takes something out of her bag: a photograph. She hands it to me. It is a scene I recognise, though I have not looked at it for a long time. It is the same scene as the Polaroid photograph I brought with me to Paris, only this time, the frame is wider, and I can see what lies beyond the wall where I stood with my mother and brother and sister. To the right of the photograph is a métro entrance.
“I found the place,” says Gabriela.
I stare at the photograph, a lump rising in my throat, not knowing how to respond. Gabriela gets to her feet.
“I should go. I work at six.”
I watch her making her way back down the canal path. She stops to say hello to a young whippet running off the lead and the whippet leaps up to greet her rapturously, as if she is the best of acquaintances. I remember Gabriela in Café Oz, the wizard at the end of the road, Gabriela in the cemetery, talking excitedly about Transfusion. We’re all of us trying to find out who we are, I think. Perhaps some of us never do.
MÉTRO HÔTEL DE Ville. There is the familiar art nouveau sign, the green-painted metal railings housing the entrance to underground. Two men manoeuvre a buggy down the steps. A woman with a guitar on her back takes the stairs two at a time. To the right of the entrance, a newspaper stand displays copies of Le Monde and Le Figaro, with front page images of the new refugee camps that have sprung up in the forests of Calais.
I stand there for a while, surveying the scene. I go over to the wall, touch my fingertips to its rough stone. Sandstone. Eocene. I stand where I was standing, follow the path of my mother’s arm, waiting for a flash of memory, a moment of revelation; but nothing comes. I was here, I think.
This is the source of joy.
LATER THAT DAY I top up my French SIM card and call Sussex. The landline rings. Long-short: an English tone, which I have not heard for months. There is a string of clicks and scuffles as the phone is picked up, and then my mother’s voice.
“What!”
“Hello, Mother. It’s me.”
“Which one?”
“Hallie.”
I wait for the intake of breath.
“Oh, Hal,” she says breezily. “Haven’t heard from you in a while. How’s uni? Have you had your exams yet?”
“What?”
She raises her voice and enunciates with undue stress.
“I said, how’s university? Hideous line, isn’t it, sweet pea? I think it must be the revenge of British Telecom, they’ve severed some wires or something. Or maybe it’s your end, are you in a field?”
“You’re not with BT,” I say. “Look, what do you mean, ‘How’s university’? I’m not at university. I deferred for a year.”
“Oh.”
There is a pause and a human mewing sound; I realise she is talking to the cat-who-does-not-belong-to-us.
“Mum?”
“Well, where are you, then?” she asks. “I must say, we were wondering when you didn’t come back for Christmas. I suppose you had a fall-out with Theo, did you?”
I force myself to take a deep breath.
“I’ve been in France,” I say. It’s so hot. My head is spinning. How can travel through time feel as real as the skin on my hands, and yet my own mother sounds like a fantasy?
Somewhere in the room, a fly buzzes.
“France? That’s rather bohemian of you. What are you doing, darling, looking at rocks?”
I cannot be having this conversation, I think.
Then again, I haven’t spoken to them in months. I’ve forgotten.
“No, I’m not looking at rocks. Are you honestly saying you thought I was at university?”
“Where else would you be?”
“In France?” The fly zigzags around my head. I grab a tea towel, wrap it around my damp free hand.
“Well, isn’t that bizarre! We might have been worried, darling, if we didn’t think you were at university. But Aberystwyth’s such a safe place, I never worry about you there. Whenever I think of you in Aberystwyth, I always imagine you looking at rocks. Oh, by the way, I found those binoculars you wanted for birdwatching. They were buried in the back of my wardrobe, in a mouldy old rucksack. No wonder we couldn’t find them.”
“Jesus Christ. That was over a decade ago.”
I swipe the tea towel and miss the fly. I open the shutters. The full heat of the sun hits my face. I curl into the balcony wall, her voice tinny in my ear.
“Time flies like the birds.” She chuckles. I have not heard this laugh in nine months, and hearing it now I realize I haven’t missed it. I haven’t missed her; what I’ve missed is an idealized version of what I’ve always wanted her to be, against all reason or logic or even fairness.
“Hal? Is it alright if I keep them, then? New sculpture.”
“Sure,” I say. “Sure, you go ahead.”
“Thank you, darling. They’ll be perfect.”
“Are you working on a new exhibition?”
“I am. It’s going to be a big one.” Her voice turns confidential, girlish. “The big one. I haven’t been so excited about a project in years. If this all goes to plan—and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t!—your father will be able to drop the teaching for good. Isn’t that fantastic?”
“That’s great,” I say. “That will make him happy.”
“You will come to the exhibition, won’t you? I must say, it was funny not seeing your solemn face around in the winter. You always seem to fit winter. And then the electricity got cut off, and the man told us it was in your name. He seemed to think that was rather odd. We had to change it back again. I had to work by torchlight for a week.”
She plays an out-of-tune arpeggio.
“We do miss you, darling.”
I don’t know whether to believe her.
“Are you coming back soon?” she asks.
“Not straight away. But I’ll need to collect my stuff before term starts. I’ll let you know.”
A miaow.
“This cat,” she says uncertainly, “is always hungry.”
“It’s just angling for food,” I say. “It’s trying to play you.”
“Yes. Yes, you’re probably right.” She brightens. “They are such foolish creatures!”
“I’ll let you go, Mum. I’m sure you’ve got a million things to do for the exhibition.”
“That’s true, sweetpea. I’m hellishly, hellishly busy.”
“We’ll speak soon, then. Bye, Mum.”
I cut the call before she can reply.
I sit on my balcony in the infinite sunshine. My head aches. There’s something pushing at my chest, compressing it, trying to squeeze me in upon myself. I lean back and reach for the pint of water on the floor inside, and upend it straight over my scalp. Water runs down my face and neck and under my clothes. I tell myself that it’s all water, but I can taste the salt. I realise it’s a relief to admit it, that I can cry, I can sob until my eyes are swollen and my throat is raw, I can let it all out. When the sobs subside I feel a strange calm settle over me.
She’ll never be the woman I once hero-worshipped, lying outside her studio, plotting expeditions into the wilderness. What woman could be? We’ll never have the implicit understanding she shares with Theo and George. But somehow the balance has shifted. I could tell her all the things I’ve survived in Paris; I could try to impress her with tales of chronometrists and Nazi-occupied Paris and a girl called Millie who became an entrepreneur. But I don’t need to. I no longer have anything to prove.
TWO MONTHS UNTIL I’m back at university. I check my bank account and plan a full itinerary. I book my train from Gare de Lyon to Rome via Milan, and another train from Rome to Pompeii. It’s time to lay the volcano’s ghost. After Pompeii, Naples, and a return flight to London mid-September. I leave a couple of days to collect my things from Sussex before returning to Aberystwyth.
I call my landlord and tell him I’m breaking my contract. He’s not happy, but I don’t care. I throw my clothes crumpled and unwashed into the suitcase. I put the spare key to the studio in an envelope and drop it into Gabriela’s mailbox, with a note saying if she’s quick she can get her hands on my furniture before the landlord claims it.
Several times in those last few days I go and stand on the boulevard, opposite Millie’s, and through the screen of tourists I watch people come and go. On the last occasion, Dušanka, stepping outside for a cigarette break, spots me loitering. She strides across the boulevard, ignoring an oncoming bus, which screeches to a halt to avoid flattening her. I hold my ground, expecting recriminations, prepared to fight. But Dušanka takes out a packet of Luckies and passes one to me. I offer her my lighter and think I see her mouth tweak.
“Will Gabriela forgive me?” I ask.
“Oh, she’ll come round. She always does.”
“When?”
“Don’t wait for it.” Without looking at me, she says, “You remember what I said to you, that first night?”
“That this life is a dream.”
“And it is. For most of us, it is an interlude.” She sucks in smoke. “Simone and Isobel have left now. Mike, too.”
I feel a wash of sadness.
“I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“Mike is in Chicago,” says Dušanka. “You can look him up. With this internet savagery of the modern age, it is impossible not to find a person, even when one does not wish to be found. I will leave soon myself, but no doubt these people will find me too.”
“I’m sure you’ll bear it with dignity,” I say.
“What happened to Léon?”
“He went to Rome.”
Dušanka makes an annoyed sound. “So rude, not to say goodbye. But he always was a strange one.”
“Everybody leaves,” I say.
“That’s how it is.”
“I didn’t think you’d remember. What you said to me.”
“I have an excellent memory.”
“And where will you go?”
“To Greece.”
“For Socrates?”
Dušanka looks at me in outrage. “Do you have any idea how completely the ancient Greeks suppressed the female voice? Sappho. My god.” She takes a long draw, holding the smoke in her lungs before exhaling slowly. “I don’t know what happened in there,” she says deliberately. “But it doesn’t matter. Do you understand what I am saying? None of it matters. None of it is real.” She peers at me. “You and I,” she says. “We have other things. I have philosophy. You have rocks.”
“What if it’s not enough?”
“These things are important.” Dušanka tosses down her cigarette and grinds it into the pavement. “You should not underestimate them. My break is over.”
“I’ll see you around, then.”
“You might,” she condescends. “But I make no promises.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
THE TWELFTH OF July, my last night in Paris. At seven o’clock tomorrow morning the SNCF to Milan will pull out of the station. I will watch Gare de Lyon recede into the distance as we rush through the outskirts, the suburbs, the open fields, heading south-east. Rome beckons.
But before I go, I have to say our goodbyes.
The heat wave broke earlier today and the air smells of warm rain. I leave the apartment wearing flip-flops and harem trousers, my suitcase clattering along behind me. Midnight. Outside, street lamps flood the roads with orange. A crocodile of tourists
muddles uphill, past the shuttered fabric stores, the crepe vendors, the men with their cotton bracelets, and up, and up, to the Moulin Vert where I watched as the first boulder was laid. Where a student found her cello. Where Aide Lefort preaches for a new bohemia. I turn the other way, downhill, joining the boulevard between a kebab stall and a shop peddling discount sportswear of dubious provenance.
The road is restless, cars and scooters intercut by pedestrians, each convinced of their right of way. A warm night breeze brings the blood to my face. Instinctively I hurry my step, weaving in and out of the tourists, ignoring the wolf whistles and low-voiced salut, mademoiselles. Horns blare. Men slip out from red-curtained entrances, looking furtive. Bars spill onto the street, pichets of wine and cigarette smoke, laughter and music and the sound of dancing. Le Chat Noir, the Musée de l’Érotisme, La Diva, the Moulin Rouge. On the central aisle, drugs change hands and volunteers on a Moulin Vert stall hand out day-old baguettes.
HERE I AM, outside Millie’s, back where it all began. The bouncers are filtering the queue. Kit and Eloise are at the doors, walkies clipped to their waists. A floor skivvy comes out to the terrace, stacks empty pints, gets out his notebook to write down a dozen orders he cannot yet remember. Someone has squashed a pink Stetson on his head.
The floor skivvy shoulders open the door and I catch a glimpse of Gabriela on the bar, a feather boa around her neck. I set my suitcase down and sit on it. I seem to have come impossibly far, and nowhere at all.
I always imagined that it was possible to cast off those elements of myself that I disliked or did not want. I had come to Paris cleansed; in my wake was a trail of the undesirable, stretching back like flotsam after the tide. I didn’t plan to look back. But that’s an impossible ambition. Your identity is an evolution in itself. It is sedimentation. Each new facet compresses the one before, but can never entirely erase it. Below the smooth, polished face we present to the world, we have fault lines, glitches, air bubbles. If we were made from rock, our history would be as decipherable as mineral, and like sandstone, the fossils buried in our pasts can, and will, emerge to haunt us. But it is up to us if we allow them to dictate the future.