(2012) Paris Trance

by Geoff Dyer

  ‘We could try the Kanterbrau,’ said Luke. The sky was blue-grey now, birds were already flying in it. The Kanterbrau had just opened. They were the first customers. No one knew what to order, whether to opt for a night-cap or a morning coffee. Luke fancied a refreshing lager. Alex thought he’d have a refreshing lager too. Nicole wanted an orange pressé. Sahra was ready for coffee. Alex changed to coffee and so did Luke. Then he changed to an orange juice and the waiter trudged off, undaunted.

  They were still full of chemically engendered expectation but that anticipation was gradually coming to refer to the past, to something that had already taken place. They were wide awake, distracted, glowing. They said things without being sure who had said them. Speaking and listening had become indistinct. Alex paid for the drinks. Their bodies were still full of the pump and colour of the music so they went back to Luke and Nicole’s and danced some more. When Alex and Sahra had gone home Nicole took a shower. She came back into the main room, wrapped in a towel.

  ‘Do you want to watch or do?’ she said.

  After a few hours’ sleep the four were back together, still spaced out, tired and not tired, overcome by a lovely nostalgia for events that had taken place only hours earlier. Luke squeezed a jug of orange and carrot juice and then, as soon as they had drunk that, he made another jugful, this time adding a knuckle of ginger. Sahra lay with her head in Nicole’s lap, drifting. Alex played records. They danced some more and reminded each other of things they had seen and felt the night before, in the club and in the film, the two parts of the evening becoming more and more deeply intermingled as they did so.

  Alex and Sahra left, Nicole went to lie in the bath ‘for two or three hours’. Luke tidied up and switched on the TV: rugby. With the sound turned down he forgot he was in France. He sat facing the screen, feeling suddenly alone, worn-out, dejected. The door-bell rang: Alex, back for something Sahra had left behind. As Luke opened the door to let him in he felt a surge of déjà vu. When Alex had retrieved Sahra’s bag Luke returned to the TV, trying to locate the origin of that sensation, the original experience of which he had just felt the tantalising echo.

  He couldn’t, of course, you never can, because although that misleadingly named sensation sends you scurrying into your past, the moment it urges you towards is that moment itself. And at that moment you glimpse the Eternal Recurrence as a potential fact, as a mechanism, rather than a metaphor. That is the solution contained in the riddle of déjà vu. All memories are premonitions, all premonitions are memories.

  For her part, Nicole was converted; after that weekend the four of them always took E when they went out dancing.

  They also decided to spend Christmas together – without having any idea of what they would do or where they would go. Ideally they wanted to find a house in the country and spend the holiday there. Sahra had an uncle who, she thought, owned a house somewhere. She wrote to him the next day but heard nothing back. Staying in the city seemed a dismal option but, they agreed, if the worst came to the worst they would do that. They would cook a huge meal, get high, and let the day ripple over them.

  In the meantime, in various permutations, they went shopping for Christmas presents for each other. Sahra and Alex went looking for presents for Luke and Nicole; Nicole and Sahra went looking for gifts for Alex and Luke. Luke didn’t go with anyone because he hated shopping.

  ‘We’ve tried to do it a couple of times,’ Nicole said to Sahra as they drifted round Magasin. ‘But then, after about ten minutes, before we’ve even tried anything on, he starts moaning about how expensive everything is. We always end up just going for coffee or to a film. The only thing he likes doing is looking at records.’

  ‘We go all the time,’ said Sahra. ‘I try on expensive cocktail dresses and Alex tries on expensive suits. Sometimes we even buy things. Not expensive things. Oh, let’s go into lingerie.’

  ‘Actually, that’s one of the things Luke does like to buy. Or at least to look at.’

  ‘Alex too.’

  ‘We’ll probably bump into them.’

  The first displays were of night-gowns. Then girdles, substantial brassières and large comfortable undergarments. As they walked further into lingerie, the items became progressively skimpier, more revealing, so that the shop seemed to be undressing itself. Then, gradually, lingerie gave way to shimmery evening wear.

  ‘What now?’ said Nicole.

  ‘I’d like a coffee.’

  ‘You’re as bad as Luke! Actually I’d love a coffee too.’

  They went to a café on rue Saint Honoré. The waiter brought their coffees and a handful of sugar cubes. The wrapping of each cube was illustrated with the flag of a different country. Nicole held them up one by one and Sahra tried to guess which country was represented. First was a tricolour: a white stripe bordered by two greens.

  ‘Nigeria,’ said Sahra.

  ‘Good,’ said Nicole. She held up another tricolour: red white and green, with a tiny emblem in the middle of the white.

  ‘Mexico.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Nicole, picking up a red flag with a yellow star in the centre.

  ‘Vietnam.’

  ‘You’ll never get this one.’ It was an absurdly crowded flag: four horizontal bands – blue, white, green, yellow – a red stripe running down the middle and a yellow star in the top left-hand corner.

  ‘Central African Republic,’ said Sahra without hesitation.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Alex and I were at a place with the same sugar last week. The same ones came up.’

  ‘Cheat! What a coincidence though.’

  ‘Not really. They’re only the flags of coffee-producing countries.’ Nicole threw the Central African Republic at Sahra. ‘Alex wanted to get Luke to come to a place where they have the same sugar and bet on how many countries he could name,’ said Sahra. ‘He knew Luke wouldn’t be able to resist it and he’d make a fortune out of him.’

  ‘He would have, I’m sure.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m in the mood for serious shopping today,’ said Sahra.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Shall we go to a film instead?’

  ‘What would you like to see?’

  ‘I don’t know, we’ll have to look in the paper.’

  ‘It’s a shame Luke’s not here. He spends so much time checking the times of films in Pariscope that he knows them off by heart.’

  ‘And Alex.’

  ‘They’re funny aren’t they, these English men?’

  ‘Nothing they say is serious.’

  ‘And everything is.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Still, at least they dress nicely.’

  ‘Too bad they look like working at that warehouse for the rest of their days.’

  ‘They love it there.’

  ‘I know. But it’s strange not to have any ambition, don’t you think?’

  ‘Luke is so lazy. He claims he came to Paris intending to write a book. I think he wrote about half a page. If that. And he has this idea of doing some stupid film about the 29 bus but he never will, I’m sure. He has learned some French but basically as long as he can play football, sleep with me, get stoned, go for drinks at the Petit Centre with Alex and go dancing at the weekend with the three of us he’s perfectly happy.’

  ‘Alex is the same.’

  ‘At least he can speak French. And he’s not obsessed by those things.’

  ‘Only because he’s got Luke to do his obsessing for him.’

  ‘Actually, do you know what I think Luke is really obsessed by?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘No. Happiness. For most people it’s incidental, almost a side-effect. But all of Luke’s energy – and that’s why he’s so unambitious in other ways – is focused on living out his ideal of happiness.’

  ‘Then I was right,’ laughed Sahra. ‘You’re the embodiment of that ideal.’

  MC Solaar came on the radio or jukebox or whatever it was. The two women knew the
song well and sang the first line together: ‘Le vent souffle en Arizona . . .’ Then they drank their coffees, tapping the table, listening.

  ‘Il erre dans les plaines, fier, solitaire

  Son cheval est son partenaire

  Parfois, il rencontre des Indiens . . .’

  ‘Alex est son partenaire,’ laughed Nicole.

  ‘They’re like that aren’t they?’

  ‘Et nous sommes les Indiens.’

  ‘Actually, that’s been a big breakthrough for Alex. We’re partners. Which is a very new thing for him. A few weeks ago he came across something in Saint-Exupéry about how love means not looking at the other person but looking in the same direction. He’s taken to that like a religious conversion. I sometimes think we’re more like friends than . . .’

  Sahra paused because Nicole appeared distracted. She was thinking about Luke and, for the first time, was troubled by the way he looked at her, the way he was so obsessed by her beauty, by having the proof of his happiness before his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nicole. ‘I was thinking about something you said. Go on.’

  ‘No, it was nothing. Nothing important.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you ever think about the future?’

  ‘Funny question. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I never do.’

  ‘I don’t either. I think that’s one of the things about taking E. It becomes impossible to think about the future. The present becomes all-consuming. Or at least the past extends back only as far as the weekend before.’

  ‘And the future as far as the weekend to come.’

  ‘Yes. It’s actually a stupid drug, don’t you think? You never have any thoughts at all when you’re on it, let alone interesting ones.’

  ‘That’s probably why the boys like it so much.’

  ‘No thought, only sensation.’

  ‘It is bad for your head though, don’t you think? It takes so long to get over it, and even when it’s over it’s not over. Two days later you mean to say one word and another comes out. You want to say chair and you say table.’

  ‘You do that anyway Nicole!’

  ‘That was only in English. Now I’m doing it in French too.’

  ‘Maybe we should think about the future,’ said Sahra. ‘Shall we try it now?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go.’ They shut their eyes and thought hard for several moments, holding hands as if at a badly attended séance.

  ‘Well?’ said Sahra.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Me neither. Unless you count Christmas presents that we still haven’t bought.’

  ‘That’s better than me. When I try to think about the future I always end up thinking of the past. As if they were the same thing, as if the future had already happened.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Luke and I slept together the first night we went out and I think that’s why. Although I hardly knew him it was as if I already knew him, as if we already had slept together. It wasn’t like he seduced me – I don’t think he’d know how to seduce anyone – or I seduced him. It was the most unsurprising thing that has ever happened. In some ways I feel I’ve always known him.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Sahra. ‘I can’t imagine you not being with each other. Maybe it’s because I met you both at the same time.’

  ‘I can’t imagine not being with him either,’ said Nicole. ‘But I can imagine him not being with me – but I can’t imagine him being with anyone else. Whereas although I can’t imagine me not being with him, I can imagine me being with someone else. Does that make sense? I’m not sure I followed it myself.’

  ‘The really difficult thing to imagine is Alex without Luke.’

  ‘Or vice versa.’

  ‘It’s like: buy one and get the other free.’

  ‘Luke says they’re like brothers.’

  ‘That’s because he doesn’t have any brothers,’ said Sahra, more sharply than she’d intended, as Solaar came to the end of his rap:

  ‘Toujours à contre-jour, c’est bien moins héroique

  Dans le monde du rêve on termine par un “happy end”

  Est-ce aussi le case dans ce quel l’on nomme

  Le nouveau western . . .’

  The café was filling up with people and smoke. It was lunchtime.

  ‘What shall we do now?’ said Nicole. ‘Shop?’

  ‘Shall we not bother?’

  ‘I’d love to not bother. Let’s go to the cinema. If we see presents on the way we’ll buy them.’

  They paid for their coffees and left. As they waited to cross boulevard Sébastopol a car pulled up beside them. The women were looking at the lights, waiting for the illuminated red pedestrian to turn green. The driver waved, catching Sahra’s eye. The women looked into the car: two men, young guys, both laughing. The men smiled. The women smiled back. The driver pointed at himself and raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘Moi?’ Nicole shook her head. He pointed across at his passenger, looked at Sahra, and raised his eyebrows again: ‘Lui?’ Sahra shook her head. ‘Non, lui,’ she mouthed silently, pointing at the green man on the lights, stepping into the road with Nicole.

  A week before Christmas, Sahra heard from her uncle: he did have a house, and while Sahra and her friends were welcome to use it over the holiday period it was probably best if they didn’t. It had always been in fairly bad repair and since he hadn’t been there for over a year – and, in any case, only used it in the summer – he had no idea what kind of state it was in now. He enclosed a map with instructions on how to get there and find the place where, if he remembered rightly, the key was hidden: if they were determined to go, that is.

  Alex and Sahra were undecided. They called Luke and Nicole to see what they thought.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ said Luke. ‘The more decrepit the house, the more exciting the adventure. When shall we leave?’

  That was another problem: Sahra’s car. She used it almost as rarely as her uncle used the house and it seemed unlikely that it would be up to such a long journey. Alex was the only person who knew anything about cars and he knew almost nothing. He ‘looked it over’ – checked the water, kicked the tyres, cleaned the windscreen – and pronounced it ‘ready to eat up the road’.

  They set off early in the morning on the day before Christmas Eve. Sahra’s uncle had written that there were no shops nearby and so, on the outskirts of the city, they stopped at a hypermarket and bought enough food and wine to last a week. Everyone else was buying food and wine to last for ever. The scale of consumption defied belief. In such a place it seemed insulting to buy in multiples of less than twelve. The queues at the check-outs – and there seemed an infinite number of them – were immense. Luke waited in line while the others went off in search of Christmas accessories: fairy lights, crackers, decorations. Their receipt, when they’d paid for everything, was almost a metre long.

  The boot was already loosely packed with bags, blankets and presents and to make room for this great haul of provisions everything had to be re-loaded. The back seat and the floor around the front passenger seat were crammed with pillows, coats and cartons of food.

  ‘There’s no room for passengers. It’s cargo only.’

  ‘We’ll have to eat everything now, just to make room for ourselves.’

  Alex and Nicole clambered in the back. Sahra (who was driving) and Luke (who claimed he had to go in the front because of his long legs) piled stuff on top of them. Then Luke got in and Sahra piled stuff on top of him too.

  The hypermarket had been on the edge of the city but this edge looked like continuing right up until the edge of the next city. When they finally hit the autoroute it began drizzling. Theirs was the slowest car on the road and everything that overtook them – cars, vans, trucks, coaches – threw up a grey spray that the wipers could only smear across the screen. The radio, likewise, proved inca
pable of making itself heard above the roar of the engine. They passed the time playing Pariscope: between them Luke and Alex had mastered the entire repertory schedule of Paris cinemas so thoroughly that if the women picked a film, ‘any flm’, they claimed, then they would give the time and place where it was showing.

  ‘Jules et Jim?’ said Sahra.

  ‘The Accatone, Monday, 17:55,’ said Luke.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Nicole, checking the magazine. ‘Days of Heaven?’

  ‘Le Champo, Thursday 13:50,’ said Alex.

  ‘Paris, Texas?’

  ‘14 Juillet Beaubourg, 19:30, daily.’

  ‘Incredible. What a waste of brains.’

  ‘We can do it the other way round too. Give us a cinema and time and we’ll tell you the film.’

  ‘Studio Galande, Friday, at four o’clock,’ said Sahra.

  ‘Too easy,’ said Alex. ‘Le Mépris.’

  ‘Thursday at nine fifteen, Le Grand Pavois.’

  ‘Now that’s a difficult one,’ said Luke. It was: there were four screens at Le Grand Pavois, showing a total of thirty or forty films a week. ‘I’m not sure but I think it’s Blade Runner.’

  ‘C’est incroyable,’ said Nicole, throwing Pariscope into the front seat.

  ‘Actually,’ said Alex, leaning forward, ‘I’ve got a question for you, Luke.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘You’re watching television. Suddenly you realize there’s a wasp crawling along your arm.’

  ‘I’d kill it.’

  ‘You go into a restaurant, the entrée is boiled dog . . .’

  Luke said nothing. His eyes met Alex’s in the rearview mirror.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Luke, ‘have you ever taken this test yourself?’

  ‘Within five seconds,’ said Sahra, ‘Alex will be doing his Rutger Hauer. I guarantee it.’

  ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,’ said Alex. ‘Attack ships on fire off the shores of Orion . . .’

  Luke joined in and they did the last lines together, perfectly synchronised: ‘All of those moments will be lost . . . in time, like tears . . . in rain.’

  Nicole and Sahra did a perfectly synchronised yawn.

  After three hours they turned off the autoroute and stopped for petrol and lunch in a smallish town. Sahra was not a great parker. As she reversed into a space she thumped into the car behind. Luke got out and looked at the damage.