I shook my head and gave an embarrassed grin. “I live in the rue de l’Université,” I said. “Very near La Palette, to be honest. But that was definitely the loveliest detour of my life.”
“Oh,” she said, and blushed. “To be honest, I’d kind of hoped that.” She smiled and quickly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. I knew at that moment that I was going to love that little gesture of hers.
“And I’d hoped you’d hope so, too,” I replied softly, and my heart began to hammer again. The night embraced us as if we were the only people in Paris. And at that moment, we were. Mélanie’s bright face gleamed in the darkness. I looked at her raspberry mouth and thought that this would be the moment to kiss her.
Then we were startled by a noise. On the other side of the road, an elderly man in slippers was shuffling along the sidewalk. He looked in the window of the stationer’s shop and shook his head in disgust. “They’re mad, all mad,” he hissed. Then he looked over at us and waved his finger in the air. “Look at the lovers!” he crowed, and laughed eerily as he slouched away.
We waited until the old man had disappeared in the darkness; then we looked at each other and laughed. And then we just looked at each other. I can’t say if it was for minutes or for hours. A bell rang out somewhere. The air began to vibrate. I’m sure Robert could have explained what electrically charged particles were streaming between us like a shower of sparks.
“Might this be the moment?” asked Mélanie. Her voice was quivering ever so slightly as she said it, but I noticed it just the same.
“What moment?” I asked gruffly, and took her in my arms, and to my heart, which was hammering with the wild beat of a conductor gone crazy.
Finally we kissed, and it was just as I had imagined it would be—only far, far better.
Nine
I don’t think anyone has ever walked along the rue Bonaparte as happy as I was that night. I strode along in high spirits, my hands in my pockets. It was three in the morning, but I didn’t feel at all tired. The street was empty of people and my heart full of anticipation of everything that was going to happen. Life was beautiful, and Fortuna had just poured her cornucopia out over me.
Anyone who has ever been in love knows what I mean. I very nearly tap-danced along the gutter like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. Unfortunately, I am anything but a gifted dancer, and so I just sang a few lines of the title song and kicked a Coke can off the sidewalk.
A drunk lurched toward me from the rue Jacob, reached out his hand, then turned it over and looked at me in amazement. It wasn’t raining, of course, but I would have welcomed any drop of rain as if it were a shower of gold. My elation reached up to the skies. I felt invincible. I was the darling of the gods.
Isn’t it simply incredible that, after all the millennia this world has been turning on its axis, love is still the most wonderful thing that can happen to two people? Again and again it’s that feeling that enables us to start anew in expectation of great things.
Love—it’s the first green shoots of spring, a bird that chirrups its little song, a pebble that you boldly bounce out over the water, a blue sky with white clouds, a winding path that runs beside a sweet-smelling gorse hedge, a warm wind wafting over a hill, a hand that clasps another.
Love is the great promise of our lives. At the beginning of everything, there is always a man and a woman. And that night their names were Mélanie and Alain.
As I unlocked the door to my apartment, I could already hear excited mewing. I went in and bent down to Orphée, who was rolling voluptuously on the Berber carpet in the hallway. “So, what’s my little tiger princess up to?” I said, and fondled her gray-and-white-striped fur a couple of times.
Orphée had come to me. One morning, I’d found her sitting outside my door, mewing pitifully. She was still quite small, very thin, and at the time I’d asked everyone in the building if they’d lost a cat—and, in that way, gotten to know all my neighbors. But no one was missing a little tiger cat. In complete ignorance of the biological facts, I thought at first that she was a male and called her Orphée. Then Clarisse, who cleaned the place for me once a week, came to me, put her hands on her hips, and shook her head energetically. “Mais non, Monsieur Bonnard! What have you done? She’s a girl; that’s obvious at first sight.”
Well, if you looked closely enough, it was obvious. But in spite of that, Orphée kept her name, and I think she liked it, even if she never responded to it.
“You’ll never believe what’s happened to me today, little one. You’d be amazed.” I tickled her light-colored belly and Orphée rolled happily on her side. No matter what had happened to me, as long as I stroked her, everything was fine.
After our little greeting ritual, I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. All at once, I felt very thirsty. Orphée followed me, jumped boldly up on the sink, and thrust her hard little skull demandingly against my arm.
“All right, all right.” I sighed, and turned on the faucet a little. “But you could just get used to drinking your water from your bowl. That would be the normal thing, you know.”
Orphée didn’t listen to a word I said. Like all cats, she had her own idea of what was “normal.” And clearly it was much more interesting to drink water from a running tap than from a proper cat bowl. I watched her as she stuck her little pink tongue into the fine stream and contentedly lapped up the water.
“Your cat’s name is Orphée?” Mélanie had laughed out loud when I told her that the only woman in my life at the moment was a capricious lady cat who had accidentally been given a male name. “Does she play the lyre, as well?”
“Well, not really. But she does like to drink water straight from the faucet.”
“How sweet,” Mélanie had said. “My friend’s cat will only drink out of flower vases.”
“Mélanie thinks you’re very sweet,” I said to Orphée.
“Meow,” said Orphée. She stopped lapping for a moment, then carried on.
“Aren’t you interested to know who Mélanie is?” I threw my jacket on the kitchen chair, walked over the creaky parquet flooring into the living room, switched on the floor lamp, and fell onto the sofa. Seconds later, I head a soft padding noise. Orphée had jumped down from the sink and was approaching the sofa with sinuous steps. A moment later, she was lying on my stomach, purring. I stretched out, ran my fingers through her silken fur, and stared absentmindedly at the light shining gently through the milky white fabric shade of the lamp. Mélanie’s face seemed to be hovering directly above me. Her lips curved into a smile. I stared into the lamp and thought back to the kisses outside the dark green gate in the rue de Bourgogne, kisses that never wanted to end, but which did end when Mélanie finally freed herself from my embrace.
“I must go up now,” she said softly, and I saw the hesitation in her eyes. For a moment, I hoped that she’d ask me to go with her, but she decided otherwise. “Good night, Alain,” she said, touching her finger gently to my lips before turning to enter the code for the lock. The gate swung open with a soft hum, revealing the inner courtyard, where an old chestnut tree spread its foliage.
“Oh, I don’t want to let you go,” I said, and drew her back into my arms. “Just one more kiss!”
Mélanie smiled and closed her eyes as our lips met once again.
After that kiss, there had been another last kiss, and then a very last, very passionate kiss under the old chestnut tree.
“When will I see you again?” I asked. “Tomorrow?”
Mélanie thought for a moment. “Next Wednesday?”
“What—not till next Wednesday?” A week seemed an unimaginably long time to me.
“I’m afraid it won’t be possible before then,” she said. “I’m leaving tomorrow to spend a week with my aunt in Le Pouldu. But we won’t lose each other.”
And then I finally had to let Mélanie go, with the promise that we’d see each other again on the dot of eight next Wednesday in the Cinéma Paradis.
Sh
e waved to me once more, then disappeared in the entrance on the far side of the courtyard. I stood there spellbound for a while longer, watching the light go on in one of the windows on the upper floor and then go out a little later.
This is where the woman I love lives, I thought. And then I, too, set off for home.
Ten
The phone rang just as I was drinking my coffee the next morning. I was still quite shattered after my night on the sofa, where I’d contentedly nodded off sometime in the early hours of the morning. I got up from my chair with a groan and looked for the handset, which, as always, wasn’t where it should have been. I finally found it under a pile of newspapers beside the bed I hadn’t slept in.
It was Robert, who had already, as he did every morning before his first lecture, jogged through the Bois de Boulogne and was now obviously taking a break in his office at the university. As usual, he came straight to the point.
“So, how was it? Did the supernova explode?” he yelled into the phone in his good-natured way. He was so alarmingly awake that it made me flinch. His voice seemed even louder than usual.
“Good grief, Robert, do you always have to shout into the phone like that? I’m not deaf!” I went back into the kitchen and sat down at the little table. “I’ve only had two hours’ sleep, but it was…” Words like magic, enchanting, and romantic came to mind—all words that would mean nothing to my friend. “It was great,” I said. “It was crazy. I’m over the moon. This is the woman I’ve been waiting for all my life.”
Robert clicked his tongue happily. “Well, well,” he said. “Once you get going, there’s no holding you, is there? I hope I’m not intruding. Is the chick still there with you?”
“No, of course not.”
“What do you mean, ‘of course not.’ Did you spend the night at her place? Not bad.”
I had to laugh. “No one spent the night at anyone’s place,” I explained to my perplexed friend. “But that doesn’t matter.”
Thinking fleetingly of the hesitant look in Mélanie’s eyes as we stood outside the green gate, I sighed.
“Well … not that I’d have turned down an invitation: I did walk her home, you see. But she’s not the kind of woman who jumps into bed with a man on the very first date.”
“Pity.” Robert seemed a little disappointed, but then his pragmatism once more gained the upper hand. “Then you’ll just have to stick at it,” he said. “Stick at it, d’you hear?”
“Robert, I’m not an idiot.” I peevishly cut a slice of goat cheese from the roll and put it on my baguette.
“Okay, okay,” he began, and then broke off for a moment. He seemed to be thinking it over. “I just hope she’s not one of the complicated ones. They’re no fun at all.”
“No worries. I’ve already had a great deal of fun with her,” I replied. “The evening was lovely, and our story is only just beginning.…” I thought back to the old man who’d croaked “Lovers” at us, to the way Mélanie would sometimes simply burst out with her refreshing laugh. I did so love hearing it.
“We laughed a lot and talked a lot.… You know, everything fits so well. She likes old things—just as I do. She even works in an antiques shop with old furniture and lamps and porcelain figurines. She likes cats and her favorite film is Cyrano de Bergerac. That’s one of my favorite films, too.… Isn’t that just great?”
Robert didn’t seem very impressed. He brushed off all the wonderful things that I thought we shared with a brusque “Good, good.” Then he added, “Still, I hope you two didn’t just talk?”
“Good God, no!” I smiled as I remembered the kisses under the old chestnut tree. “Oh, Robert, what can I say? I’m immensely happy. Everything just feels so right. I can hardly wait to see her again.… She’s the most enchanting girl I’ve ever met. And she hasn’t got a boyfriend, thank God! The Eiffel Tower always makes her happy, she says. Oh, and she loves bridges,” I continued with the euphoria of all those who’ve freshly fallen in love and are sent into paroxysms of delight by every aspect of the new beloved. “Especially the pont Alexandre—because of the Belle Epoque lamps, of course.”
“Do you know how lovely it is to walk over the pont Alexandre when the reflection of the city lights starts sparkling in the water and the sky turns lavender?” Mélanie had said. “I sometimes stop under those old lamps for a moment and look at the river and the city, and every time I think, How wonderful!”
“She says that every time she walks over that bridge she always has to stop for a moment. And that Paris is wonderful.” I sighed happily.
“You sound like a damn tourist guide, Alain. Are you sure the chick really lives here? I haven’t heard such tourist-brochure kitsch for a long time. I’ve also walked over the pont Alexandre, but I’ve certainly never stopped to breathe in the wonder of Paris—at least not when I was alone. My God, so much fuss about a couple of old lamps!”
“But bridges do have a magic all of their own,” I said.
Robert laughed, obviously amused by my ravings. If he found something good about a girl, it certainly wasn’t a predilection for old bridges and Belle Epoque lamps.
“Très bien. That all sounds very promising,” he said, ending on a jovial note. “When are you going to see her again?”
Five minutes later, I was having a fight with my best friend.
“You don’t have her cell number?” He was beside himself. “Oh boy, how stupid can you get? You waffle on for hours about some dumb films and bridges and you don’t even ask her the most important thing. Tell me it isn’t true, Alain!”
“But it is true,” I replied curtly. “At the time, I didn’t think it was the most important thing. It’s as simple as that.”
I was annoyed with myself. Why on earth hadn’t I asked Mélanie for her number? The shameful truth was that I’d just forgotten to. On that first evening, which we’d wandered through like sleepwalkers, with every confidence in the fact that there was more linking us than modern technology, something as profane as a cell phone had had no place at all. But how could I explain that to my friend?
Robert could no longer remain calm. “You meet the woman of your dreams and don’t even get her number?” He laughed in disbelief. “That really takes the cake. What planet are you living on? Hello! This is the third millennium. Do you really understand anything at all? Are you going to communicate by carrier pigeon?”
“Good grief, I’ll ask her next time. I’m seeing her on Wednesday, after all.”
“And if you don’t?” Robert asked. “What if she doesn’t turn up? I find it funny that she didn’t ask for your number. Or at least give you hers. My students always want my cell number.” He laughed with quiet self-satisfaction. “That doesn’t sound much like a very successful evening, if you ask me!”
“But I’m not asking you,” I said. “Why should I care about your students? We have a firm date, and even if it’s beyond your understanding, there are still people who can wait a week, looking forward to seeing each other again, and simply stick to a fixed date without having to call each other ten times and throw the whole thing over just because something better has turned up.” I realized that I was beginning to feel like wringing Robert’s neck. “It’s not always a matter of a quick conquest, even if that’s all you’re after with your little students.”
“It’s all a question of how attractive you are,” said Robert, unmoved. “But everyone has the right to his own views. Either way, I wish you a lot of fun with your ‘looking forward.’ I hope you’re not looking forward in vain.”
It was impossible to miss the sarcasm in his voice, and I began to get mad. “Why are you getting all bent out of shape?” I asked. “I mean, what are you trying to prove to me? That I’m a complete dumbass? Granted. Yes, of course I should have asked for her number. But I didn’t. So what? Mélanie knows where my cinema is, after all. And I know where she lives.”
“Her name’s Mélanie?”
It was the first time I’d mentioned her name to Robert.
“Yes, funny coincidence. isn’t it?”
“And the rest?”
He had me there, and I was unable to speak. What could I have said? I was a complete dumbass. It was only now that I realized I didn’t know Mélanie’s surname. That was unforgivable. I tried to shake off the panic that was welling up in me. And what if Robert was right?
“Well…” I said, embarrassed.
“Boy oh boy, you really are beyond help!” Robert sighed.
And then my friend gave me a short lecture about why life is not a film where people find and lose each other, only to meet again by chance the following week at the Trevi Fountain because they’d both—at the very same time—hit on the idea of throwing in a coin and making a wish.
“But I know where she lives,” I repeated stubbornly, seeing in my mind’s eye all the nameplates beside the gate on the rue de Bourgogne. “If for any reason she doesn’t turn up next week, I can always go and ask around. But she will come; I’m sure of it. My feelings tell me that. You don’t understand these things, Robert.”
“Oh yeah?” he said. “Well, it may be so. Perhaps everything will run according to plan.” He gave a skeptical little laugh. “And if things turn out differently, you could always stand on the bridges of Paris, waiting for Mélanie to pass by one evening—she does love bridges, after all.”
* * *
Mélanie had left a message for me at the Cinéma Paradis that very same day. That was a triumph, because it proved my friend a liar. And a pity, because I wasn’t there to receive the message myself, because then I could have seen Mélanie once more before she left. And this time, I would definitely have asked for her number.
So it was François who gave me the white envelope as I arrived at the cinema at half past four. I stared at it in his hand. It had my name on it.
“What’s this?”
“From the woman in the red coat,” explained François calmly, giving me a quizzical look from behind his steel-rimmed glasses. “She asked for ‘Alain’ and then gave me this letter.”
One Evening in Paris Page 4