Ségo conceded that our set-up was a strange one, that anyone else would have carted me off to the gendarmes.
—You refused to leave the kitchen, she said. I don’t know where you’d been but they’d been starving you. You were filthy, much worse than you were today, so I guessed you’d been on the streets for a while. You didn’t know how long. I gave up asking questions after a while. Though the answers were funny. Whenever I asked you a question you answered with the object right in front of you. You said your first name was knife and you came from a place called fridge. You gave us a nice look at yourself too. One day you walked into the dining room as naked as a newborn.
There wasn’t a word of this I recognized. Nor could I offer any argument. I had to sit back and admire the vagina sculpture and accept what I was being told.
—We got you cleaned up as best we could. You were pretty gamy. And the dirt under your nails. Way deep in there. We made you scrub yourself morning and night. Poor thing. It wasn’t so easy to get you under control. You spat in Amadou’s face whenever you saw him.
—No wonder he doesn’t like me.
—He likes you. We all do. We just worry about you.
—And what happened then?
—You stayed and we never asked you to leave. It would have been a cinch to contact the police. Believe me, there were days when I just wanted to turn you over. But every day that passed you seemed calmer, and you were so comfortable in the kitchen. After a while you became useful. Are you okay with all this? Say stop anytime you like. We don’t have to cover everything today.
But I was a natural, she said. Working so quietly and quickly they believed I was meditating. Ségo, who knew more than I did about myself, kept a close eye on me. She let me away with a lot. I was only occasionally moody and she put this down to the headaches.
—At the beginning. Every day the same conversation. It even became funny after a while.
—Why funny?
—Your hallucinations. You were walking a dog. Wherever you wanted to go the dog would follow and wherever the dog wanted to go was fine by you too. It was very sweet.
—What kind of dog was it?
—A bassett hound. I don’t know what kind of dog it was!
—Just asking.
—It was a dog. And then you and the dog had to catch the train because you had to go to Paris to meet someone. Some days it was Nicolas Sarkozy, other times it was Astérix. And this is perfectly normal by the way. Your brain was just scrambled. They ran so many tests. There were sedatives in your system and Hippolyte was considering prescribing you antipsychotic medicine but when your confusion faded he decided against it. He was confident it would correct itself in time. And it did. There were no more hallucinations. There had never been any paranoia, nothing like that. You were a little girl finding her way in the world. You were so worried about everything, getting the slightest thing wrong. Then you found a way to stop.
—How?
—This is going to sound weird, but I think it was because you stopped wondering. Some days I could actually see you not thinking and it made me smile. That’s all I ever wanted for you. Whatever we threw at you you picked it up. Kitchen work is hard work. It’s not for everyone. But you seemed so happy. You passed every test we set you. Until it changed. You changed.
I had enough of a grasp on reality to mark this change against the morning I had spotted Eagleback at Bertrand Rose. But I was stopped cold by what she said next.
—I’m just not sure what to do, she said. I don’t know if I made the right decision to keep you to ourselves. The right decision for your sake. Daniel doesn’t think so. Don’t you wish you knew more?
Ségo’s face was uncharacteristically solemn. I had no clue what she was thinking, whether or not I was about to be reported. Either she had that in mind or she had been in touch with the authorities, the embassy, say, already. My guess was that she would give me one more chance. Calling the authorities would have been cruel, and Ségo was anything but cruel.
She got up from the floor so that she was sitting cross-legged—this was better for her back, she said. She began stroking my hand and I asked her if she knew what had happened the night I got drunk in Daniel’s apartment.
—He won’t say what, she said.
—He won’t say or you won’t say?
—He said you kept on calling for Tony Blair.
She let this roll around her mouth, giving the vowels air.
—It’s a dream. Or an old password or something, she said. Your mind hangs on to all sorts of dumb shit.
—I don’t have any passwords.
—But you must have had, once upon a time. It’s debris. It’ll wash away.
—Ask a question, I said. When can I get a password?
—Is that what you want? Do you want to look after yourself? From the look of you this morning, you don’t do too well for yourself on the streets.
Ségo was on the money there. We turned our attention to food—the brief burst of pleasure of a roast chicken with stale bread to soak up the meat juices.
I wanted to remember my favourite meal as a child. Was it chicken? Or something bad from a packet or good from a blackened pan? Trifle or an August tomato? Whatever it was, I’m sure I licked the spoon and ate with my hands, as I did now, and with my mouth open. I hoped that once upon a time I ate better than a child whose parents had gone away for the weekend. I wondered if my manners had been better than they were now. Did I burp into my hand or a napkin? Would I have folded the napkin across my lap or made it into the shape of a bird?
We ate the meal and I washed up, making a job of it because I wasn’t sure what to do with myself now that we had finished talking. The dishes were shining and I made sure the kitchen was spotless from top to bottom. I got a kick from cleaning out her cupboards the way I did at the restaurant.
—Nobody can say you’re not good, Ségo said. You clean like some people fuck.
She asked if I wanted to watch a movie—Daniel had told her I had so many still to see. It wasn’t even six o’clock but I wanted to sleep for the night, and I dozed during something about a cartoon rat in a kitchen.
When I awoke Ségo asked me one question after another—plans, plans, plans, plans, plans, plans, plans, plans, plans, plans, plans. My refusal to answer any of them amounted to the same thing. I had been lying to her about Eagleback and I was going to continue. The door was open for my return to work, she said. She had all the power in the world over me but, when I said there was no way I could return to Gravy, she didn’t pester me to change my mind. She simply gathered up some food and some old clothes for me then followed me to her door.
—One last question, she said. Since you’re so keen on answering questions today. What did we do wrong?
I was beginning again, again—and the softness in Ségo’s tone made me want to reconsider. Before that day I’d never said goodbye to anyone and now I did so with my eyes lowered. I walked out of her apartment quietly promising a swift return, to which there was no reply.
Cellar Smells
The problems started when I got to Elias’ door. The poster with my face on it had been replaced by a handwritten note explaining his absence due to an urgence familiale. He would be gone for another week and, whether anyone liked it or not, all building maintenance would have to wait until then. He had a way with words did Elias.
His door was locked but I remembered him telling me that he had made soup in the basement. Behind an unused bicycle rack I found a distressed metal door. I pushed the door and was caught off guard when it opened. I slipped inside to find myself on a shaking metal ramp that led to a cellar housing the garbage chutes for Block D. I got used to the dry heaving surprisingly quickly, but it was the most violently epileptic barrage of smells I could ever recall. I didn’t suppose it mattered what I did down t
here but I wanted the place tidy anyway. I busied myself with the bits and pieces Ségo had given me—a couple of chef’s jackets and my first pair of jeans, some old Levis. A doorless fridge was the cleanest thing in the room and I used it to store the clothes. I didn’t go near the food she had stuffed into the cloth bag but I guessed at a few days’ worth in the bags of nuts and sweets—I counted ten bars of cooking chocolate.
The exposed bulb cast an alarming shadow on the cellar wall when I moved so I stayed where I was—operating by match light—and took in the wall-mounted orgy of fuse boxes and ventilation shafts. The dark stains on the wall in the cellar could have been blood as much as oil. It should have been scary to sleep there, but I don’t think that I was frightened because I was able to bear most things. I slept soundly amid the sound of snoring insects. But as soon as I was outside in the morning the sky felt buttery and the air—I still think about it now—was sweet.
Unstory
January 1st 2012, Rue de Bac. It’ll take a while to get over this one. A woman crying alone in the rain on New Year’s Eve. There’s an image as big as the city, as old as my heart. I bought some Dior shoes (properly uncomfortable, impractical, black as oil) and since Jerome had told me he was out of town I wanted to take them out for the night. I don’t know what the shoes looked like but it felt like I was walking along a set of sharp railings. Schiste had no free tables but it suited me to occupy a stool at the bar for an hour or two early on. There was a compulsory menu featuring some strange game bird which resembled a splatted seagull. I assured them I would drink enough expensive wine to justify not eating. Bafflement was expressed on their part, not a fuck was given on mine. There was the atmosphere of a family gathering. Some nervous characters at one table fingered their water glasses but most of the other customers had joined the waiters on the tiled floor, where they were dancing in formation to some Balkanish music. A man, the owner I think, did air-trombone. The restaurant cat hid in someone’s handbag. There was all you would need for the kind of randomly joyful scene that was out of reach of most visitors to Paris. The champagne they gave me tasted like the water you’d used for boiling an egg, and I was brow-beaten into ordering a wooden board piled hugger-mugger with snouts and what have you. Nine o’clock already? No memory whatsoever of the past hour. The water-drinkers vacated their table and wished me a sheepish Bonne Année. I wanted myself gone, too, but moving was a challenge. Very potent, that flat champagne. I had a weird premonition, no, a vision. A prolonged second or two of confusion before I copped that it was real. I don’t recall seeing him enter but there beside me, efficient as a mugger, was Jerome. Jerome, with whom I’d been expecting to spend the night. Jerome, for whom I had bought the shoes. We looked at each other—me pretending to be sober, him looking like he needed to run to the bathroom—and smoothly we went along with being strangers. Would he have disowned me if I had spoken? Would I have been able to speak at all? The wine had the better of me. I was groping the air to steady myself when I noticed the woman oozing all over the restaurant’s owner. After a few moments of this, as soon as I realised who this person was, I confirmed that I had paid my bill and then I was out of the door and down the road to Belleville métro, the rain destroying my stupid shoes, the perfect end to New Year’s Eve—the perfect thing to happen when you have just met your lover’s wife.
Ghislaine Pronounced Leaving
as Living
The courtyard was quiet. I watched Ghislaine pull the waistband of her leggings up to her midriff and tighten the laces of her running shoes several times before setting off from Léon Frot. I followed her on foot at first. Running did not come naturally to her, especially on her own. I predicted she would divert into Le Rouge Limé, either now or later.
An African family passed by, carrying bibles. Perhaps it was an appropriate day for simple truths. The little boy was getting uppity—his mother was telling him he was no genius and that she was going to kick his ass. It was difficult to keep on top of all the languages around here. But there was something about a Sunday morning that lent credibility to this visit to Eagleback’s apartment. I imagined he would be more interested in me today, too, away from work and his sing-songs—then I pictured his face before he walked away from me in the school corridor. Never mind. I was outside Block D and in a minute or two I would be looking at the real thing.
I didn’t have to wait too long for a young family to leave so that I could enter the lobby. I called the lift and pressed the button for his floor. The lift’s interior was mirrored and the combined reflections were disconcerting. I couldn’t help watching myself trying to avoid my reflection. Half-glimpses of several awkward angles. I looked nothing but startled and the more I swivelled to avoid my reflection the more the lip-licking seemed reptilian.
On the eighth floor I found a light switch and walked up and down reading the names on the doors.
Saillard, Buronfosse, Courault, Rietsch, Cooper.
His apartment was at the end of the corridor. I don’t remember ringing the bell but the door opened and there he was—as soon as he saw me Eagleback closed his eyes and held his breath.
The thing to do would have been to say hello. His hand gripped the top of the door. I followed the path of his eyes. What I could see of the apartment over his shoulder was as slick as the hospital. A step up from what I was used to—Eagleback looked fine, too. But his hand was raw-looking and now I saw that the patches on his neck, which I had thought to be a skin condition, were in fact scars—an untidy assortment of gummy dents on his forehead and on his cheeks and all the way around his neck.
He stepped into the corridor, reluctant to conduct this conversation on his own territory.
—You know me, I said. You know me. Don’t say you don’t.
—You shouldn’t have come here.
—Can we just have a conversation?
—I can’t think what we would have to talk about.
Eagleback was supposed to ask me inside. He was supposed to be pleased to see me.
—You should go, he said. Do you need money? I’m kind of busy right now. But if you need money?
Was this normal? When the person who holds the key to your past tells you he has to go, because he is busy—no more information than that, just busy. And you know what he feels for you is pity, nothing but pity, something you wouldn’t waste on an animal.
Eagleback slipped behind the door and was gone. It was another few moments before I could move my legs—one-two, one-two—to walk along his corridor and press the button for the lift.
What was I supposed to do now? Visit the Louvre?
I was, for the first time, stuck. I took a run up the hill to Belleville. Meekly I looked through the windows of Schiste. The doors were locked and, since the notebook had bestowed on the place a kind of immortality, I had to check I was looking at the right place. It was thirty degrees outside but it was winter in there, not that I could see much—the room had been leased by spiders. A perfectly good stockpot had been rolled away on its side. On the bar I spied an old reservations book with the petrified look of a forgotten bible. Where was the cat in the handbag? The owner’s trombone? Ghislaine and Jerome on that New Year’s Eve, those old songs?
He was my heart and my reason for living. I crowed this over and over.
Ghislaine stood and hugged me when I dropped into Le Rouge Limé as if by chance.
She spoke as though we were old friends.
—Care to sit together by me? Warmed milk, yes?
I was still worried the filth of the cellar had been baked into me. The sourness had to be obvious but she didn’t seem to be bothered by it. It wasn’t so much the dirt but my attitude to it, which was turning to indifference.
Ghislaine’s good manners soon gave way to something more tentative. Her face, even the amazing structure of her nose, seemed over-ripe. When I mentioned that she looked tired, her se
nse of humour for once was a little off.
—Have you been espying on me? I have no sleep. Maybe tonight I try to count the muttons.
—Good idea.
—I have a portion of information for you, she said. I am going to be leaving Jerome. I am a pigeon that will not return.
—You’re kidding, I said. What are you going to do?
—My parents at Grenoble. I cannot sleep in the same roof any more. And I have been a fountain all the day. I do not think Jerome is my teammate. This is for truth. I make it be loud and clear for him.
Even though we were opponents—that’s how I viewed us—I regarded her with a sense of kinship. Eagleback half-existed in Ghislaine, in her descriptions of her life, which was partly his life and, I was hoping, partly my life. When I considered it, I half suspected him to walk in and join us.
—It’s not like you can’t come back, I said. When you’ve cleared your mind.
—Yes, my clear mind is my premium dream. We are having immortal discourse about this. He fail. He is a quiche.
—A quiche?
—Like that. He fail so many time. For many moments anyway he is seeing this woman. I am wild awake on this and Jerome is lost in a pretty dream of his. Overwhelm completely. He become irritating when I touch him, so many perfect signs. He answer the phone when there is no ringing. When it ring he disappear. This pours over me. He turn his innocent eyes to me but a fuck is a fuck, you know? I make the performance of it. And then the crash.
Crashing on Place de la République—the busiest square in the north of the city—would have been an act of great extravagance and designed for maximum impact. We must have been bulleting gaily along Boulevard Voltaire. To recreate the scene on the square—lights, confusion—would involve teams of trained professionals. Stuntmen up first. Traffic cops. Ambulancers.
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