Significance

by Jo Mazelis

  ‘I thought I heard something. A radio maybe.’

  Florian nodded and shrugged, then with a flourish he switched off the flame under the meat.

  She watched as he got plates, then sliced a beef tomato into slithers which he fanned out on each. He lifted the steaks out of the pan, and finally spooned a big dollop of mayonnaise on the side.

  He brought the plates to the table and proudly set one in front of her, before sitting down himself.

  Suzette looked from her food to Florian, and before even picking up her knife and fork, she stood up and placed her hand softly on the crown of his head.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, then leaned in close to kiss him quickly on the lips.

  He grinned.

  Then together, they ate in companionable silence.

  Halfway through, Florian remembering the wine he’d brought, went to the kitchen to fetch the bottle and two tumblers. Back at the table, he sloshed it generously into the glasses.

  ‘To life!’ he said, tapping the rim of his tumbler against Suzette’s. They each took a sip.

  ‘To good food!’ Suzette said.

  ‘To good sex!’ Florian replied, then smiled broadly and winked.

  Suzette blushing, returned her gaze to her food. She did not know what to say to that, it rendered her momentarily speechless, partly as she was remembering, in an acutely physical way, the sex they’d had just a couple of hours ago. And it had been good, so good that she wanted to do it again. Right now and to hell with the food.

  Florian watched her and noticed the blush. The way she’d coyly turned her face from him made him worry he’d said the wrong thing. He hadn’t meant to be crude, he hadn’t used a slang term.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘Suzette? Sorry, I didn’t mean…’

  She glanced at him, then looked away again.

  At first he could not quite read her expression, but then he saw an irresistible smile dance around the edges of her mouth.

  She carefully cut a small piece of the steak and dipped it into the mayonnaise and popped it into her mouth, then slowly nodded.

  He watched as she chewed, then swallowed.

  ‘It’s good,’ she said at last, composing herself enough to meet his eyes. ‘It’s all good. Really good. The best!’ She left it to him to interpret that as he might.

  They finished eating the steak, then sat at the table nibbling fruit and cheese, each waiting for what would happen next.

  Florian refilled their glasses. Outside it was hot, the sky blue, the estuary and the river glinted in the sun. The little locomotive engine set off on its scenic trip to the even smaller town of Belle Plage on the other side of the bay. The river boat, which did hour-long trips out to sea and back again, filled up with tourists. Inside in this quiet room Florian and Suzette sat on either side of a small table. Within sight was the still rumpled bed. This, then was civilisation. Food, wine, conversation. Unspoken, and unacted desire ran once more like a dangerous and unearthed electric current between them.

  How to get there; how to move from sitting and coolly drinking the Bordeaux Supérieur to touching and kissing, to undressing, to Suzette straddling him, to all that delicious and sweet passion. To climax. Then falling from one another, until the next time. The rise and rise and rise and fall of desire.

  When something good and pleasurable is experienced, one wants it again. A fairground ride, a lamb chop done in a particular way, a lover’s kiss.

  Again and again and again until it loses its meaning, its rarity.

  The table then, Suzette thought, the table offers some protection. She feared the loss of love even as she felt herself falling, falling.

  She could hardly look at him, though she knew his eyes were on her.

  God, all this stupid coyness! This fear. When all she wanted to do was rise from her chair and go to him.

  Needing courage she drank the last of her wine in two gulps. He had lifted the bottle to refill her glass, but she was on her feet standing next to him.

  She stood there in her slip, her black silk slip with its pretty lace border at the neckline and hem. She took his hand. He did not protest, but put down the bottle without pouring any of the wine. She pulled his hand gently towards her. He stood up and with her free hand she touched his neck, his face. He understood. What was there not to understand? They kissed.

  The blinds were still drawn. The sun at its edges burned with sharp white inexhaustible light. The train to Belle Plage sounded its whistle, a thick clot of people made their way onto the jetty that led to the river cruiser. Delicately, Florian slipped the shoulder straps of her slip off her shoulders and pulled the top down so her breasts were freed. He dipped his head and licked, lapped, sucked at her nipples.

  She sighed and awkwardly slid her hands under his t shirt then tugged it off over his head.

  The moment they had each privately and secretly sought, was upon them stepping crabwise towards the bed. Then. Now. In the moment. Tangled. Outside time for as long as it lasted.

  And then.

  To feel. To live, and love, and perhaps procreate. To hold onto love until death.

  Ultimately that was the end.

  So the point was to say, I lived. I felt this. While the sun shone and the locomotive once again chugged along the coast to Belle Plage, I existed.

  Suzette held onto Florian. She held on with the pretence of passion. There was passion, but also something else. Eternity. The everlasting. The moment.

  Then, a knock at the door.

  Mirrors

  Scott was shown into a small windowless room. There was an ugly metal-legged desk with a wooden top and four mismatched chairs. On the table attached by wires to a wall-mounted switch was a microphone on a small stand.

  To the left of this table a large mirror filled the entire top half of one wall.

  Yeah. A mirror? Scott had seen enough films and TV cop shows to know what was hidden by this seemingly innocent glass. He pictured shadowy figures behind it, watching him and analysing his every move and gesture.

  And actually, he reasoned, (after he had been instructed to sit on the plastic moulded chair on one side of the table and had watched himself do it in the mirror) even if it was only a perfectly ordinary mirror with a completely solid and ordinary wall behind it, it was still unnerving if only because it forced you to continually regard yourself in the guise of the accused. You became, in short, the bad guy. Or in another fictional version of this dislocated image, you became the guy who is accused, but innocent, you were the character in ‘The Fugitive’, Dr Richard Kimble, the one who is fated to hide and run endlessly in order to clear his name after being accused of his wife’s murder.

  It crossed Scott’s mind that he should have insisted on contacting his embassy in Paris, or at least tried to find a lawyer. But there again it was only an altercation in the street, a minor matter, and involving the Canadian Embassy or a good English-speaking lawyer would no doubt involve a delay of hours as well as money.

  Scott looked at the two people in the room with him, analysing their body language, the tics which betray what they were thinking or feeling; the young man, who was clearly a junior member of the force attempted, even with his young shiny little-boy’s face, to give an expression of severity. While the beautiful dark-haired woman somehow managed to emit contempt for Scott without really doing much at all. It unnerved him.

  Well, the French were singularly patriotic and while they might tolerate foreigners, even Americans with their ‘Le Big Macs’, and also their old enemies the Brits, they perhaps had little sympathy (or rather less) sympathy for law breakers who were not citizens.

  What, in his encounter with that whack job, the Renault-driving, birdman, had he missed? Was there some byelaw about right of way? Did the man have some important function which allowed him (in an emergency) to park wherever he wished? Was he a doctor for example? Or a law enforcer of some description? Or the Marie?

  The Marie of the town wielded far too much power and influe
nce. Or at least this is the impression he’d got from the sporadic conversations he’d had with his French cousin.

  With that thought it dawned on him that his cousins were the people he should contact. Not the Marie or the embassy or a lawyer. His cousin. Who lived in this town, in the very house outside which the incident had occurred. They had left a contact number pinned to the notice board in the kitchen. Except that they were in Thailand, the lucky bastards.

  When the man in the Renault would not move his car that morning, Scott should, he decided, have gone calmly into the house and rang the Clements. Clearly of all the people in the world, they were the ones who could have shed light on the situation which was unfolding on their doorstep. And who knew, perhaps the idiotic little man was waging some sort of war of attrition with them. There might have been some ongoing dispute between neighbours, something about right of way and access, but then wouldn’t they have mentioned it – warned him?

  Well, the matter would soon be sorted out. Yes, he had been wrong to hit the man’s car, but surely anyone with a reasonable understanding of human nature would see that he had been provoked. They would see too, that he was sorry, and that if there had been damage (though he was certain there was none) he was more than happy to pay for any repairs.

  The dark-haired woman asked Scott if he would like a drink, Coca Cola perhaps?

  He shook his head, no.

  Then coffee? Or tea?

  Again he shook his head. As far as he was concerned this thing would only be delayed by the making of and consumption of tea or coffee.

  She spoke very quietly to the young policeman and then slipped from the room without explanation.

  It struck Scott that the power relationships between the ordinary person and the police hit a sharp gradient as soon as one deviated from the straight and narrow. There was no other situation in which a man was so stripped of his ordinary rights and freedoms. Where another human being did not feel the need to be polite or explain or excuse themselves on leaving the room. And he was afraid to challenge them.

  Scott turned his attention to the young policeman. He was perhaps in his early twenties, though he barely looked sixteen. He was standing near the door with his feet planted ten inches or so apart while his hands were clasped loosely in front of his genitals. His hair was light brown, but his skin was the washed-out waxy pink that afflicted red heads. He would burn in the sun, unlike himself and Aaron, who had inherited the blond hair and golden skin of their Scandinavian forebears. Their height and build too, though of course that was due in part to a few generations of good diet and the advantage of not having one’s country invaded, its fields destroyed, its livestock stolen and so many of its young men slaughtered in two world wars.

  Scott looked the policeman up and down, then rested his gaze on his face. The young man glanced quickly at Scott, then shifting the balance of his weight slightly and setting his jaw, he resumed his disinterested, but nonetheless alert stare across empty space.

  A few minutes limped by.

  Scott checked his watch. He had been here for at least twenty minutes already, though it felt like a good deal longer.

  At least he still had his watch – he thought – then felt horrified to find he was even thinking that.

  At college the compulsory course Introduction to Psychology as taught by Professor Mort (the fact his name meant death seemed no coincidence given his lifeless monotone drone) was purgatory. Or it was until it was announced at the beginning of the spring semester that Professor Mort was on sick leave due to a malignant melanoma. Rumour had it that the mole in question looked remarkably like a skull. His replacement, who insisted on being called by his first name, Daniel, and whose long hair and Zappatta moustache clearly marked him out as a rebel, energised his students in his inaugural session by showing a film about the Stanford Prison Experiment as conducted by Zimbardo in 1973. Scott and his entire cohort were electrified and divided – half believing the experiment to have been valid and revealing and thrilling, the other half were horrified, disgusted and morally superior in their outrage.

  It was a pity that Scott had lost his hunger for psychology over the years, but his job in human resources for an Ottawa government agency had that effect on most of its staff eventually.

  ‘Excusez-moi?’ he said suddenly. His voice was surprisingly loud, and his French sounded rehearsed, like a phrase revised and then repeated for a school oral exam.

  When the policeman turned, Scott noticed a faint expression of fear in his eyes, though the cop covered it up quickly by raising his eyebrows and jabbing his chin upward in a gesture of enquiry.

  ‘How long am I expected to wait here?’

  The policeman merely shook his head and shrugged.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Scott asked him in English. ‘It’s a fair enough question.’

  He caught sight of himself in the mirror again. He was frowning and his mouth was set in a hard line. He looked, especially with the harsh overhead fluorescent lighting, like a bad guy; like he had evil on his mind. But his face often betrayed him like this; while he wore what he thought was a perfectly placid expression, Marilyn often said, with a note of alarm, ‘Oh, what is it? What’s wrong? Have I done something to upset you?’

  Sometimes in response he would snap angrily at her. ‘Christ! There’s nothing wrong. I’ll say if something’s wrong. Okay?’

  This would silence her, but did nothing to console her, or to disabuse her of the notion that he was in a bad mood, or that something was bothering him. And something was bothering him – had been for years. His brain had a loop of thought that turned inevitably on that dream (or was it a memory?) where he held the murderous pillow in his hands and looked with hatred upon his sleeping baby brother.

  Half the time he probably was angry, though he believed himself to be the master of his anger. But teasing and interrogation from women; his mother, Marilyn, schoolteachers, social workers tended to make him lash out defensively. This was probably why he’d been nasty to that woman the other night. He had despised her smug flirtatiousness, her prurient interest and phony concern for Aaron. And she had followed him. Though God knows why.

  Scott, still watching his grim, dark-shadowed face in the mirror, attempted to relax his expression. He blinked slowly and imagined floating in a warm salty sea while the sun beat down on him. This was what a therapist had once advised him to do when he became stressed. Not that he had really attempted it. Until now.

  He closed his eyes and imagined his body prone and the weight of his head supported by the water. Marilyn had a thing about deep water, she was always afraid of it, afraid of not being able to feel the bottom of the pool or the sea when she had tried to stand up.

  He had told her that such a fear suggested a fear about sexuality, about losing control to pleasure. He’d hit a raw nerve when he’d said that. ‘Don’t be so idiotic,’ she’d said. ‘It’s not fear of sex, it’s a fear of drowning!’ but their lovemaking that same night (initiated by her) had been explosive.

  Involuntarily he suddenly opened his eyes. The policeman had been staring impassively at him and looked away as soon as Scott caught his gaze.

  He wondered what would happen if he just got up and made for the door. He would stand up, look at his watch and say very calmly, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve spared you enough of my time. As I’ve missed my flight now, should you need to, you can contact me at the address on rue Jules Verne.’

  It seemed easy and perfectly reasonable, and yet he knew he couldn’t do it.

  The door opened and the woman with the sleek black hair entered the room, followed by a dark-haired man who was tall and rather gaunt-looking and whose skin looked like it had never seen the sun.

  The young policeman clicked his heels together and pulled himself up to his full height, somehow this made him appear younger and even more earnest.

  It also emphasised the gravitas of the older, plain-clothes police; the man and the woman in their sombre black suits l
ooking like sinisterly handsome undertakers.

  They shuffled papers and exchanged some of them. Scott could not comprehend the degree of formality his minor infraction had set in motion. Had he, somehow by his actions, caused something terrible and tragic to occur? Had he delayed the man in the Renault, kept him from stopping some terrorist plot, or from the bedside of a dying patient? No. It was absurd. This rigidity, this purse-lipped solemnity must be the French way and he should just go along with it, keep his cool and answer their questions, then pay whatever costs or fines they demanded. Christ, he’d just add it to the credit card bill he’d already sent sky high.

  ‘This interview is conducted by Inspector Paul Vivier and Detective Inspector Sabine Pelat at eleven hundred and sixteen minutes, August 1st 2007. The suspect Scott Andrew Clements has agreed to be interviewed without the presence of a representative. Also present are Jean-Luc Aubry and myself, Sabine Pelat.’

  Again, for Scott, this was familiar police procedure learned by rote via TV, film and books. It gave the experience a déjà vu quality. He had been in this room before, but as a spectator, as one of those shadowy figures who hovered behind the mirrored glass. He had never before sat in this chair, had never been the subject of the interview.

  Looked at in a detached way it was interesting. He should be grateful for this unique taste of experimental realism in psychology.

  Marilyn and her writer friends often had conversations about experience, even or more especially bad experiences, as they were the meat of poetry and prose. Then would come a roll call of famous writers’ names: Coleridge, De Quincy, Plath, Sexton, Lowell, Brautigan, Woolf, Carver, Thomas and their honesty, their suffering, their alcoholism, their drug use, their broken hearts and damaged souls and suicides. Cheerful stuff, all of it.

  If Marilyn were in his shoes now she’d be comforting herself with thoughts of the poems she’d later write.

  She was probably writing at this very minute. As long as Aaron was all right, anyway.

  He Hears a Different Drummer