He was not disappointed. She smiled with zeal and with a knowing look, like she too could remember dancing with siblings on cold winter nights with the old gramophone playing in the corner.
“Catherine,” she said, extending a pale hand.
David gripped it, unsure why it was different, why it felt natural. He looked down; quite amazed Catherine had extended and shook with her left hand.
“David.”
“Enchanté.”
Catherine, it soon transpired, was the better dancer. The slow waltz that was playing was difficult for David. She laughed, the sound tinkling over the heads of the other dancers, as they fumbled with how to place their hands. Catherine even suggested that she be the man and put her arm around his waist. His soul felt lighter as they swung around the floor, chortling when their precarious grip broke.
He couldn’t remember how many songs they had danced to, only that after what seemed like minutes Catherine complained that her feet hurt and led the way to the bar. With drinks in hand, water in David’s and wine in Catherine’s, she made her way over to a corner table. They sat down before David realized it was the same table he had sat at last night.
With a quiet scraping, Catherine nudged her chair closer. She leaned in with a wry smile playing at her lips. The thin material of her dress gaped open as she moved, and David caught a momentary view of her cream colored breasts before she spoke.
“I’m not usually like this … dancing all night with strangers,” she said. Her words were indicative of some sort of apology, but her eyes sparkled and her tone conveyed only delight.
“We haven’t danced all night,” David said with a stutter.
Catherine leaned back, sipped her wine, shutting her eyes and sighing in pleasure.
“Not yet,” she said.
CHAPTER FOUR
February 1970
DAVID COULD SETTLE TO nothing for the next few weeks. He was overcome with the memory of dancing with Catherine, the feel of her body as it swayed against his, the rose hip perfume in her hair, and the tinkling sound of her laughter. Gilbert plowed into his apartment once again to write up the business model, believing that with David’s decade-long employment at the Université de Paris and being a native English speaker, their profits would be astronomical.
They sat at the rickety kitchen table (it wobbled on one too-short leg), Gilbert pouring over the figures, as David stared out of the window. The material world had disappeared, and the only remaining reality was Catherine’s face in front of him and the shimmer of lights in her hair as she twirled.
“David. David,” Gilbert said, snapping his fingers in front of David’s face.
“What?”
“Have you been listening?” Gilbert asked, his eyes flashed and a sneer pulled at his upper lip.
“I was listening. As of right now I don’t believe that renting premises would be wise. We don’t have a client base to support it. We will have to build up first. I will talk to St Claire and see if the Université would allow us to rent a room.”
Gilbert fell back against his chair and threw up his hands.
“You were listening after all.”
There was a note of derision in his voice and as David studied Gilbert’s eyes, he saw something closed off but eager. It was unsettling. But Gilbert smiled in an apologetic sort of way and relaxed into the chair.
“I was. Listen Gilbert I have an appointment. Would you mind if we continued this next week?”
Gilbert remained where he was as David shuffled to his feet.
“As you wish,” he said, but the man only lingered in the chair looking disdainful and flashing his white teeth; taking his time before he rose and sauntered out of the apartment.
David’s breath rushed out in a great huff and he slumped over the table. With a groan he collapsed back into the chair. He pushed the papers Gilbert had been perusing into a pile and tossed them on the otherwise pristine kitchen countertop. The apartment was quiet. For some reason, there was a lull in the background rumble of the café below, and the silence wound its way up through the floorboards like a noxious gas. After all his yearning for quiet, for some peace, it now hammered on his ears. Unable to stand it any longer, he stood, and in a flurry of movement, fled the apartment, pulling on his coat as he tramped down the stairs.
He burst out of the building and took two stumbling steps on the icy street. He sighed; his breath rose in fragile spirals, curling around his head. A heavily-wrapped woman, an orange scarf covering her face, turned to stare at him as she walked by. Heavily laden shopping bags clunked against her thighs. David glanced after her before setting off down the street and lowering his head against the howling wind.
Paris was sacred. He knew the routines of every resident in a three-block radius. In ten years there was hardly a street in the neighborhood, he had not investigated. He caressed Paris as though she were a lover. He drank everything in-her people, her food, her music. When music wasn’t available, he was drawn to the towering gothic cathedrals, the cream columns of Versailles, the soft curves of bistro chairs, and waiters who balanced a tower of thirty water goblets in one hand.
The normal ten-minute walk to Rue de la Cíte took fifteen, and he had only just crossed over the Seine, the massive churning behemoth that divided the city, as the bells from Notre Dame struck five o’clock. The Pont au Double throbbed with heavy evening traffic and the crowds of pedestrians pressed on every side. The city’s working population and a few wide-eyed tourists brave enough to walk Paris in February, pushed in a great scrum on sidewalks, that couldn’t nearly contain them. The same camel colored wool coat was everywhere, collar popped against the bitter wind. A particularly dense crowd shunted him off, down in front of the towering mass of Notre Dame. The trees and shrubs, that clung to live in the great cathedral’s shadow, were barren and screeched in the wind.
David sighed deeply; a mass of Parisians was inside the church as well. He rushed forward to one of the few empty pews and collapsed. The unyielding wood could have been a plush velvet as he relaxed into the silence and allowed his thirsty gaze to caress Notre Dame. His eyes were drawn irresistibly to the clear blue ceiling, slightly darkened by the fading winter light, looking as though it were the night sky with neatly placed rows of stars.
The room was a glorious symphony of color; the geometric blue and white inlays on the floor, the gold and creams of the beams, the pale green of the thick marble columns. The building contained beauty far beyond what any normal person experienced in their life. It was beauty that calmed, calling out that brave deeds and dreams could be realized, that a God surely must exist if man could build such a monument to him.
The five-thirty mass began and he bowed his neck to pray, an automatic response that he wasn’t sure he even believed in anymore. A black-coated figure slipped quietly into the seat next to him. David sighed. Was it really too much to ask, to have few minutes respite from people and their need to sit so close and peer into places they had no claim to? He glanced over, a scowl already on his face, at the intruder. The frown slid from his face like water on oil.
“David,” Catherine said.
She smiled briefly before turning forward and crossing herself as the priest began. David stood, as the rest of the congregation did, but was spellbound finding himself in such close proximity to Catherine. For the entirety of the service he neither saw nor heard anything. All he was aware of was Catherine’s indistinct outline in his peripheral vision. After so many weeks thinking about her, she was finally here–standing so close he might stretch out his arm and rest it on her shoulders. With every flick of her wrist and bow of her slender neck, a whiff of her rose-hip perfume drifted over the space between them and coiled itself around David’s mind. He would never be able to register the scent without a vision of her, in this place, ever again.
Catherine began to move from her seat, a black dress falling in folds from her waist; David gave a start and then followed, tethered to her wake. With slow deliberate mo
vements, she slid her arms through the supple wool coat. Was it possible to button a coat with such grace? Their footsteps echoed as they passed the transepts and neared the grand doors. Catherine didn’t speak until they had exited the church and their breath caught in their throats and their eyes watered in the sharp blasts of wintery air.
“Souper?” Catherine said, tugging up the collar of her coat.
“S’il vous plaît.”
She smiled; her eyes twinkled in the light of the street lamps as they headed down the street. With each step down the icy sidewalk, David impervious to the cold, it was as though it was the sun shining down upon their swiftly moving figures and the pale light of the lamps had transformed into glorious beams to further illuminate Catherine’s beauty.
THE RESTAURANT CATHERINE PICKED was beyond the reach of tourists. David followed her inside, breathing a sigh of relief at the warm, butter-scented air. The maitre d’ greeted her as an old friend, kissing her briefly on both cheeks, and promised to send a bottle of the new wine to her home. It wasn’t difficult to become enraptured by thoughts of Catherine’s home, of how she glided through the rooms, where she ate, where she slept. Even as they passed through the restaurant, skirting tables and passing waiters bearing heavy trays of roast pork and truffles and reine de saba cake, David busily tried to wrest his male mind back to reality.
It was difficult to sit in front of Catherine, her face bright and pink from the recent cold, and concentrate on her recommendations for dinner. He simply gestured for her to make the decision for him and fell back to watching her. When plates with gently rising spirals of steam were placed before them, Catherine fell silent. It was thoroughly enjoyable to watch her eat. She savored each bite, taking her time to taste the flavors and let the magnificence of the meal make itself known to her. Only when the dishes were cleared and they were happily swirling their third glass of wine, did she begin.
“What brought you to Notre Dame?”
“The crowds,” he said, pausing before explaining, “I’m not Catholic. It really was the crowd; there was hardly room to maneuver. So I ducked into the church.”
“I know you aren’t Catholic,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“How…?”
“You cross yourself from right to left, not left to right. A five-year-old catholic boy is taught how to cross himself properly and never forgets. You have some interest in God, or else why would you have taken shelter in a church?”
“I was raised Baptist. My siblings are all missionaries or preachers,” David said blandly.
“That’s quite a legacy.”
“What about you?”
“Catholic. My family is Russian, but I prefer Roman Catholicism.”
“Russian. In France?”
Catherine stared at him for a moment. She was sitting upright and holding her glass lightly in her hand, the contents swirled lazily.
“My father was a wealthy man. He disagreed with the regime. We left.”
It was David’s turn to stare. An opaque blankness overtook her black eyes, as though a door had shut behind them.
“Your French is impeccable, if I may say so.”
“It should be. I’ve been a French citizen since I was seven. What about you? An American complimenting my French?”
Catherine cocked her head as she spoke, trying to provoke him into a response by which she could judge him. David saw this, recognizing that she might very well stand up and leave if he gave a poor response.
“Touché,” he acquiesced, raising his glass in a toast.
“Shall we start at the beginning?”
Her voice was light; the heaviness, which had clouded her eyes, passed. David smiled and embarked on a heavily condensed version of his last ten years and the current forays he was making towards going into business for himself. Catherine regarded him with interest and gave him a sort of half smile, quite aware, David thought, that he wasn’t telling the full story.
“Why did you leave home? Why come to France? Especially to stay for ten years?”
David smiled and bought himself some time by taking a large sip of his wine. He swallowed slowly and let his gaze roam over Catherine’s expectant face and her long dark hair, which spilled over her thin shoulders. With a hitch in his throat and a feeling of plunging over a cliff David opened his mouth to answer.
“I come from a religious family in a town where four generations have lived and worked. It’s stifling to be watched everywhere you go by people who have expectations about what music you should listen to, who you should marry, what career you should pursue. My father feels that the highest calling anyone could aspire to was a life of service to God. I was not blessed with faith and resisted the pull towards ministry. In the end, I came to Paris. My father and I argued before I left. I haven’t seen either of my parents since.”
“How terribly sad,” Catherine said, reaching out her hand to lay on his.
For weeks he thought about the feel of her skin and now it sent a current through him, awakening his mind, flooding his body. He envisioned that touch across his body, what it would feel like to have her pressed against him; all too soon his male mind was consumed.
“When did you lose your arm?”
“When I was five, from bone cancer.”
He didn’t believe in ascribing the cancer more strength than it already had. His answer to the question was always the same, always clinical. The cancer simply happened. It didn’t happen to him.
“It must have been quite virulent.”
“Yes, it was. My mother taught me how to do everything I needed to do one-handed.”
“Was she also?” Catherine asked and then quickly blushed.
“No, no she had both arms. She pretended to be, though–for my sake. So we could be equals.”
Catherine smiled and swirled the contents of her glass.
“She must be very proud.”
“Before I came to Paris, I quite randomly came across the surgeon who operated on me. He said he didn’t expect me to live beyond age twenty. I was twenty-five at the time. He thought my life was blessed.”
“And is it?”
The silk-like blackness of her eyes bored through him; his mind and mouth went slack.
“It is now.”
Catherine finished her wine in a great gulp and held out her hand. A small stream of cars darted past the windows, winding their way over the ice. Their silver beams of light glinted off the aluminum frames of bistro chairs stacked by the entryway. Across the street, late night revel goers left their flats, the women’s hair expertly backcombed into bouffants, and they clattered down the pavement on towering black stilettoes. David forced his eyes from Catherine and took notice of the nightlife, which Paris gave birth to.
“You should take me dancing again,” she said, her lips barely inches from his ear.
He shivered. Her closeness was too real, too overwhelming. The hubbub of the restaurant fell away to a warm silence. The earth had ceased its revolutions around the sun. All that existed in this world was the light in Catherine’s hair, the wetness glistening on her lips.
With Paris turning all around them, the cacophony of car horns and screeching tires, the excited ramblings of revelry, the swirling winter chill, he leaned over. Her head was much closer than he had judged and so their lips met with greater force. The feel of her, his arm around her lower back, her arms thrown around his neck, was more intoxicating that any drug or alcohol. The world, which had stopped around them, now disappeared entirely. He parted his lips, reveled in the taste of her mouth, and succumbed to the fantasy.
DAVID WALKED HOME WITH a light step. In a cloud of elation, he passed over frosted streets, past alleyways with winter’s refuse, and across parks where even the grass was silent. A lone squirrel froze in his scurried ascent up the frozen bark of an old elm tree as David breezed by. But David saw nothing, neither the squirrel nor the trash heaps. Catherine’s face lay before him like a desert apparition, and he was pulle
d forward after her. In a moment his world had shifted, possibilities that he had not even considered were now open to him, and life was suddenly very dear.
Weeks went by; delightful weeks where nothing existed but Catherine. David hardly slept. After a decade of being in the city alone, there was so much more to experience. Catherine took him to beyond the confines of the fifth arrondissement, to the art installations, bistros, libraries, music halls of the wider Paris, and out to stately homes where they picnicked on the grass.
“You look beautiful,” he said as the door to Catherine’s apartment flew open.
She stood, framed in the doorway, her thin body in a beaded black dress. David tried to conceal his elation at finding himself once more in her company. It was impossible to maintain his faculties when her perfume wafted across the space between them; the beads on her dress whispered melodiously as she walked, her hips swaying.
“Come in, come in,” she said, ushering him into the apartment.
It was a beautiful set of rooms; painted white. Black and gold accents were thrown almost haphazardly about. Catherine bustled off around a corner, and he seized the moment to stare at the space around him. While his rooms were cramped and undecorated, these were quite the opposite. The far wall was hung with crisp, white curtains that pooled on the floor, framing four eight-foot tall windows, thrown wide to catch the crisp April breeze. David turned in a slow circle, drinking in the gilt-framed paintings and general magnificence. It was clear that a woman of strong personality lived here. There were paintings of Russian peasants, of the Siberian wastelands, and lovingly framed photos of her family. But it was the books that caught his eye. The bookcase, which took up an entire wall, was filled–every nook and cranny stuffed with literature (Russian, French, and American), history, haute cuisine, art, and anatomy. David licked his lips and longingly reached out his hand to touch the spine of what looked like a first edition of The Bride of Lammermoor.
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