One Star Awake

by Andrew Meehan

  Nor was it easy to get through a conversation with someone who was looking at himself in a mirror behind you as you spoke a language you could barely understand. I did my best to explain that I was there to meet his colleague Cheeks and that I wanted, on the spur of the moment, to pick up an order that was due for delivery. It took everything I had to get my point across. He was looking at me as though I was a bald man asking for a haircut. When, to emphasise my point, I made the shape of the chocolate orb with my hands he squirmed with displeasure.

  Usually, it was a matter of attitude—it was easier to be belligerent about speaking English. Just as some people avoided eating tuna or dodged housework, I got through life in Paris with minimal French, happily withstanding the devastating winces and sighs. Not so with M. Rose. Unable to make myself properly understood in French, I substituted it with the poor English as had become my habit when I was nervous.

  —You have destabilised my morning. This cake is something like a treasure for me. Is it possible that you have retained the particular information pertaining to the cake’s final destination?

  —Quoi?

  I thought I had made it plain.

  Logic sent me out of the shop so I could enter one more time. Satisfied that I was properly humiliated, M. Rose gave me a knockout smile as I shepherded myself to the end of the queue. When it came to my turn I failed to make myself clear in either language. M. Rose would not answer any more questions. I kept on asking about Eagleback’s cake and where it had gone until he clapped his hands to silence me.

  Cheeks was sick and the order had been sent already, he said. His eyes were roving back to the mirror behind me. The cake was in the van in the street outside.

  —Howt. Seed, he said.

  Before the words had hit the air I was ducking under the arms of a baker carrying aloft a tray of bread. I felt the warm waft as I left the shop. A white van was all I saw—and I took to the road again, thumping a car’s bonnet as I passed.

  The traffic was so heavy that I was able to outstretch the van and run to the intersection where I caught my breath and waited for it to make its turn onto Voltaire, left towards République or right towards Nation. I could polish this street corner with my feet all I wanted—the van could turn either way and just slip off into the city.

  The grumble of moving traffic and the van swept past me, heading right when most of the traffic that was entering Voltaire was going left. I took off in the knowledge that he would surely lose me in a matter of seconds.

  The van rolled past and there was no more time to think when I saw that it had indicated to make a sharp turn left against oncoming traffic. Another street forked sharply off Voltaire and I got myself across the road just as the van was turning and slowing, presumably so the driver could read the numbers on doorways. The van was floating along at such an agreeable pace that I was able to walk alongside. I stopped to linger behind a strutting pigeon. Had you caught sight of me you would not have thought I was following the van at all.

  There was an empty travel agency and a recruitment bureau, but the driver was positioning the van right before the entrance to an apartment block. Number 25—I stood across the street as the van door opened and the driver tossed his cigarette before removing a familiar-looking black box. Another man—small and dark and spry in lurid blue overalls tied at one shoulder—waited with a trolley loaded with cardboard packages.

  There were plenty of rumbling cars to cover me and I dared to cross the road and study an old lady entering the building with her shopping. I memorised the code—4963—as she typed it with the care of a monk over a manuscript. Through the glass doors was a deserted courtyard where kitchen smells vied with the scent of neglected soil.

  The man in the blue overalls was the building’s caretaker and after dipping his nose into the box he said that the cake would hardly survive his morning coffee. His bottom lip was heavy and protruding and it slapped as he spoke—I could picture him spitefully choking it down in two or three bites. He placed the cake box on his trolley and made his way into the apartment complex, at which point something got a hold of me—I wouldn’t call it courage.

  I negotiated my way through the door behind him and was strolling through Eagleback’s courtyard without a thought as to how I got there or what I was about to do.

  The caretaker had a nook tucked away in a corner of the courtyard. I watched him undo his laces and step out of his boots before unwrapping a cling-filmed chicken leg. He was consuming it as if in a trance when a lady appeared at his door with two groomed dogs whose leashes had become tangled like kite strings. On went his boots and he left to help the woman.

  I should have been in work. I should have been basting pork for a famous chef. Now I was snooping around a room that looked like it was still in shock after an earthquake. There was a shelf of detective novels and a picture of a young girl and, due to the removal of his boots perhaps, a retch-inducing gaseous smell—that of a pet shop or life itself escaping.

  It looked as though the caretaker had been reusing cotton buds and exploring non-specific uses for the toilet plunger. The walls were fire-blackened and the ceiling was ornate with splattered food. The toilet paper and rusty shears resting on top of the warped filing cabinet needed no further commentary. Floating in a bucket I saw a streaked facecloth and a brick of soap in army green. There was an open wallet, too, but I ignored the urge to slip it into my pocket.

  The caretaker had done nothing with the packages. They just lay on his trolley. He wouldn’t be long untangling the dogs’ leads so I took the box and read the label.

  Ghislaine Cooper, 25 Rue Léon Frot, 75011 Paris. How could a single name imply so much? I wanted to scratch off the label.

  Again I looked at the wallet and started counting to ten—Ségo’s tactic for whenever things were getting too much for me. I got as far as three before I was brought back to earth by a shadow—and a meaty hand on my shoulder. The caretaker’s hot breath was pouring into my face. There were deep violet pools under his eyes and his nose had cauliflowered dramatically. A couple of black hairs grew straight out of it. His hair, which obeyed no worldly logic I was aware of, was sandy—as in, there was sand in it. But there was something else, eagerness in his eyes, as if he was peering at me from behind a veil. When I tried to scream he went to restrain me. He wasn’t quick enough to grab my wrists because I swung up my hand—harder than I meant to—and then he was holding his eye.

  I was not so sassy that I would strike up a conversation with a stranger—but I told him I was sorry. And, do you know what, he listened to my apology and accepted it. He didn’t seem angry, just embarrassed. When I tried to move around him he startled me by announcing his name.

  Hospitality was a priority chez Elias. He made it clear that, no matter how many times I clouted him one, I was to think of myself as his guest. The foam on the bar stool in his room had exploded through the vinyl and, as if it was a winter evening in some dimly lit tavern, he motioned for me to make myself comfortable.

  The meat I was being offered from a foil tray had been bought at the halal place on Charonne. Elias boiled it up in a five-gallon pot in the basement, flavouring the soup with herbs that appeared—forlorn and wild—in the courtyard. Elias pecked at his chicken leg with the decisive moves of a kestrel. His proudly stained overalls—his stomach stuffed into them like a sack of rice—were another of the giveaways that he lived alone. Now I recognised it—he smelled like the stock pot back at the restaurant.

  Whenever I came unstuck with my pidgin French, Elias, unable to offer assistance, folded his arms and looked away. He sat up as tall as he could on his seat and closed his eyes whenever I resorted to English. He spoke in a pungent accent and we made quite the din, talking in languages the other one couldn’t understand.

  I thought he was saying, —Roohi.

  Over and over.

  Roohi.

&
nbsp; I heard all about the work he did at home in Tunisia or about the work he used to do or would have liked to have done given the chance. He was either a bus driver in Tunisia or he took a bus to the work he did or might have done. Or there were no buses at all and he couldn’t get to work—that was the problem, he had to walk. Did he? It wasn’t easy to make him out at all. Roohi. Roohi. I knew that he had something to do with buses, perhaps driving a bus or being on one—although it was also possible he had nothing to do with buses. I imagined his hairy hands on a foreign steering wheel, anyway, holding it tight.

  The pictures in his room were of his daughter. Yasmine was in Tunisia with her mother, living in a house Elias had paid for but was barred from entering. The reason I was sitting on this stool and eating his chicken—and not down at the commissariat de police—was my resemblance to his daughter, or how he imagined she might look, since the picture on the wall had been taken over ten years ago. I didn’t want to know why he had been banished from his own home. Sooner or later we might want to reveal ourselves to one another but not yet.

  I needed help in the solving of a mystery—that’s how I put it to Elias, that casually.

  In French I asked him if a man in his position saw many comings and goings.

  In French he told me he saw a thing or two.

  In French I asked him if he knew anything about a man called Jerome Cooper

  His eyes opened—a fist-strike into his palm.

  —Le gâteau. Le gâteau.

  He took a fresh chicken leg, raising it high in the air and started to pace as if addressing a political gathering. The Coopers lived in Block D, on the eighth floor, the one facing the street. Elias had left the cake with their neighbour because they were both schoolteachers and at work. Often they went for an apéro when they were finished for the day, but today they had gone to the Grand Palais to see an exhibition about Augustus the Emperor of Rome. Ghislaine had bought the tickets online and they had arrived by special delivery. Elias made the motion of a signature to show that he had signed for the tickets himself—this was all delivered in dialect and in an excited half-whisper.

  He began wrapping up the chicken bones in old newspaper, wiping his hands and face with its pages. He was certain the Coopers were carrying the weight of recent tragic events. One day Jerome and Ghislaine were beside themselves with the joys of life and, almost overnight, it was as if some bad news had been broken. They had, when they first moved in, been the type of couple to kiss in the rain but all that seeemed over and done with. The young woman carried herself fearfully and the man, himself out of sorts, would be gone for weeks at time, even during term time.

  Et alors—there was a call to say that someone had thrown a cat off a balcony in a Block B. Elias was finished with me for the day.

  The lobby of Block D housed an empty pool and marble tiles in many shades that were not orange and not pink. It was a ten-storey building so I could have imagined traffic jams at certain hours of the day by the single golden-doored lift. I was not familiar enough with myself to know if I was the type to snoop through letter boxes—no harm from peering in one or two—but that was my inclination when I got inside. The building was silent but not serene. Even from the lobby there was the aura of an old asylum. There was another door with another keypad—4963 was no use—and on either side of the letter boxes was a stickle-board list of residents’ names. As I examined the names—Beauger, Grappe, Labet—I thought of Eagleback living here and what he might be doing. One o’clock—perhaps he had come home for lunch. I would have to get to know his routines.

  Young Girl, Go Slowly

  What if, once upon a time, I read a book that said, ‘What we had is gone, what we are is no more. I have never thought it was my place to say these things. That one’s love for another is never something to be truly sure of. Sadness is not a permanent state. There is no such thing as security without captivity. You must help yourself to what it is you think you want from life. I would like to help you realise all this, and something else too. That it is possible, when it comes to love, to use the same language but in different ways. And it is also impossible for someone to describe something they can’t see.’

  Unstory

  October 13th 2011, Café la Perle. Mum and Dad want to visit. They’re coming to see what’s become of me. They say. They want to see Paris. They say they’ll get a hotel. They’d want to get a bloody hotel. I can’t have them seeing where I live.

  October 27th 2011, Café la Perle. They’re coming by ferry. Who gets the ferry nowadays? It makes me sad just to think of it.

  October 30th 2011, La Pure Café. They want to know about parking. Is there good parking in Paris? No, Dad, there is very bad parking in Paris. Paris is full.

  November 3rd 2011, Rose Bakery. I don’t know what brought me to Paris (bonbons, music, boys) but I do know what sent me out of Ireland. My attitude to my body is one thing. It’s the sag in my mattress, the sweat on my pillow. My splintered nails, my matted hair, my sweaty pits. Dad’s is—another thing. The way he talks about it—Tony Blair yes, yes—his cancer is a dinky little thing. But I’ve seen it wash right through him, bleaching him from the inside. Your body is your life story he says, but I’d rather he stayed perfect. I’d rather he went bang. A bullet in the head, fine. He says it doesn’t matter how many times you beat cancer as long as you beat it. But I don’t think he’s beaten anything. It’s down an alley waiting to fuck him over. It’ll leave him chopped up in a bin bag. And Dad chooses to ignore this scenario with God, God, God. The day I left he adopted the tone of a TV priest—soft and persuasive and pervy. It was June 3rd, the feast day of St Kevin. As I packed I listened to Dad’s stories about this hermit monk of Glendalough. He’s told me these stories before, but I’ve a mind like a sieve for anything God, God, God. I got stood up on my first date and Dad said it was God’s will. I failed the Leaving and that was God’s punishment. What did God have to say about Tony Blair? St Kevin was a hundred and fucking twenty when he died. A man so noble and pure that when he was born his mother felt no labour pains, none at all, and the snow that fell on the day of his birth melted as it hit the ground. At the age of seven, Kevin’s parents sent him to a monastery in Cornwall or Glendalough or somewhere. One day, Kevin was kneeling with his arms outstretched in prayer, when a bloody blackbird landed in his palm and proceeded to construct a nest. Kevin remained perfectly still so as not to disturb the bird. For the full forty days of Lent. The bird fed him with berries and nuts and licorice allsorts. By the end of Lent, the last hatchlings had flown from the nest and Kevin returned to the monastery to celebrate Easter. Was this supposed to keep me in Ireland? I don’t think Dad knew what he was saying except that he was saying what he thought had to be said. Later in life, Kevin considered an invitation to Rome to gather relics for his monastery. There was still a bounce in his step but he resisted the urge to travel in order to focus on life in the monastery. Birds don’t hatch their eggs while they’re flying, he said. Righto, Dad. I told him I loved him to shut him up. He needs to hear that more often. We sat in the car and he squeezed my knee and said, God bless. I put it down to shyness. And the news blaring. Let him listen to it if he wants. He needs to hear what’s going on in the world.

  I Tried To Forget Eagleback,

  Truly I Did

  I tried to develop feelings for Amadou who told me I needed a husband, at least one. I tried to develop feelings for the fish man and the veg man and the meat man. I tried to fall for Hippolyte who would fall for anyone, anything—a bird, a little lamb—apart from me. I didn’t think it would be possible but I tried to develop real feelings for Daniel.

  Ségo and I were carrying carcasses out of the walk-in fridge. I was listening, insofar as I was taking it in, to her story of A__ B__’s visit.

  —How did he enjoy the pork?

  —Loved the pig. Too much if you ask me. Anyway, how about you
? Were you in the neighborhood and just decided to drop by?

  It’s not as though I didn’t like talking to Ségo but I’d never met and didn’t want to meet the girl who didn’t want to avoid her friends from time to time.

  —Headache? she said.

  —No. I just wasn’t here.

  —You know something, I value your honesty. I wish other people were so straightforward. It’s just your timing I didn’t appreciate.

  Even if I had been rehearsing it all night I couldn’t have come up with a good reason for my absence. Withholding my visit to Léon Frot from Ségo was a concern—as when I had forgotten to wash the salad properly, say—but I put that out of my mind because there was work to be getting on with.

  —So you still work here?

  —Hope so, I said.

  —Because I kind of got mixed messages. From you. Just that one time, yesterday, when you didn’t show up for the most important day in our restaurant’s history.

  —Sorry?

  —Are you? Because I’m worried that you’re becoming a disruptive influence, she said.