by Jayne Tuttle
‘Sorry I’m late,’ I say, slamming the door and throwing my bag on the table. Paul sits dwarfed by the marble expanse of the kitchen table, digging at chicken nuggets with a spoon.
He isn’t half as bad as my predecessor intimated, though he does try to dominate me in the beginning. I’m his hundredth au pair, he tells me, so I guess that’s understandable. The last one, Oonagh, didn’t even say goodbye. But I mustn’t succumb. The Lesson of the Burnt Baguette helps me to not be too nice. He respects this and soon falls into line.
My job, in exchange for the Room of Good, is to collect him from school each day at four-thirty, take him to the park, give him his dinner, bathe him and put him to bed. I am also to babysit some weekends and evenings. Which turns out to be most weekends and evenings.
‘C’est dégueulasse,’ he scoffs at his plate.
‘Disgusting,’ I say. I have been grilled about speaking only English with Paul, and making sure he speaks English back.
‘Deez-guthing.’
‘Are you still hungry?’ I ask, scooping the greyish remains into the bin.
‘Ess,’ he says, ‘I am angry.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Mmm …’ He considers, puckering his lips like a middle-aged gourmand. ‘Un peu de pâtes.’
‘Pasta,’ I correct him. Paul always wants pasta. I make him a bowl of spaghetti and sit down next to him as he slurps it up, lashing his face with red.
‘What did you do today?’ I ask. He ignores me. I don’t even care what he did. I want to be upstairs with the lights off, watching the man who has just moved into the apartment opposite.
Marcel has a late work meeting. Marie sweeps into the kitchen, all perfumed and unzipped, cigarette hanging from her lips as she fiddles with an earring. She is wearing no bra and her breasts are in all directions. I know them well by now.
‘Aidez-moi Jayne chérie.’ Marie speaks no English. She is the only French practice I am getting. In the outside world I mostly stick to English-speaking places – the internet café, the Australian bar, the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, and the park, where I talk to English-speaking nannies. Mum wonders why I don’t immerse myself more in the language, but she doesn’t know what it’s like. People speak so fast, and though my language is improving, especially in boulangeries, I have never felt like such an outsider in all my life. English is the one safe place I can hide.
‘Where are you going tonight?’ I ask nervously in French, tugging her zip up over her smooth skin. She hasn’t mentioned my lateness, though she must have noticed, having thrown Paul the nuggets.
Bruno’s opening, she tells me, stubbing out her cigarette in a plate next to Paul’s bowl. I love the way she pronounces the vowels in Bruno’s name. Brewnoh. He is Marcel and Marie’s favourite contemporary artist. The walls of the kitchen feature two of his Laughing Cow collages, and in the entranceway, next to the Tamara de Lempicka, is a sculpture of a bird he gave Marie for her birthday. My favourite piece is the cigarette lighter he made, which sits in the salon – a little city made of gold, with a tiny arm that takes your cigarette on a Wee Willie Winkie journey through doorways and streets to a burning coil that lights the end before presenting it to you, filter first.
Marie twirls out the door and I put Paul in his pyjamas and read him Les Ratinos. I’ve given up trying to read him English books at bedtime, and he’s said he won’t tell. He puts his downy head on my lap and says the words, correcting me when I get it wrong.
‘You speakin’ French very bad,’ he says as I turn out the light.
‘Thanks a lot,’ I say, kissing him goodnight. I go into the salon and curl up on the endless sofa and light cigarette after cigarette on Bruno’s city. There’s a full moon and I turn off the lights. With the moonlight streaming across the old floors and up the paintings and the sculptures on plinths, the apartment feels like a museum after hours. I go out onto the balcony and smoke amongst the plants, the building opposite dead and dark. My stomach grumbles.
In the kitchen, Marie has left a pus-coloured tin of flageolet beans on the bench for me. On Tuesday it was leftover vegetables that had been served under a dish of tongue. I put the beans back on the shelf and pull out some chocolate biscuits and eat five before returning to the sofa. I stroke Ondine, staring at the moon and trying to feel at home.
Paul squeals: a nightmare. I lead him to the toilet and he pees across the side, pointing his zizi at me to wipe up the drips. I cuddle him back to sleep. His hair smells like milk.
Marie stumbles in at two am.
‘Jayne …’ she says, falling onto the sofa. Her lipstick is smudged.
‘How was the opening?’ I ask, heading to the door of the salon.
‘So, so good. Bruno, he’s so, so good.’
‘Paul went straight to sleep, but he had a little nightmare.’
‘Paul,’ she says, as though she has never heard of him. She holds out her foot to me and pouts her bottom lip. I pull off her shoe. She holds out her hand, wiggling it at me. ‘Merci, Jayne chérie,’ she says, grasping my hand. ‘Stay here tonight, in the guestroom. Can you stay here?’
Marie wishes I’d always sleep in the guestroom – live in the guestroom. It was never intended that I’d live in the Room of Good; the previous au pairs lived here in the apartment and just stored their stuff up there. The guestroom is about four times the size of my place and has a sumptuous king-sized bed, Peter Pan windows, and its own marble bathroom. But though I’ve tried twice, I can never fall asleep there. It doesn’t feel right. I like my room with its shabby bed and medieval key.
Marie has fallen asleep on the sofa. I slip out and up the stairs to my own sweet silence.
Friends
ON MY DAYS off I experience as much of Paris as I can, scratching my name in the top of the Eiffel Tower, spending entire days in the Louvre, the Palais de Tokyo, Sacré-Coeur, Musée Rodin, Musée d’Orsay. I go to plays and watch movies with no English subtitles. But having nobody to share it with, or to even see me doing these things, makes it feel like none of it’s happened. I spend time with some of the English nannies in the park, and in internet cafés writing home. But more and more I’m happiest to be in my Room of Good.
From my little square window I have a storybook view of the expansive fourth-floor apartment across the street, with its floor-to-ceiling windows/doors and ancient chandeliers. The apartment is just far enough away that I can’t make out the exact features of the man who lives inside, but I can see that he has dark hair and moves with the purpose of someone who is not too young, though his slim build tells me he is not too old either. His shirts are loose and he wears pants and bare feet, which I can see when he comes out to lean over the balcony and smoke, peering down at the street.
Whatever his age, he seems too young for the apartment, with its ornate plant pots and opulent curtains, which makes me think it belongs to his parents, or perhaps his grandmother, and he’s using it for a time. Is he American, here for the summer? No, definitely French – too much smoking, too-skinny ankles. Maybe his family have places all over the country, and in New York too. There’s something aristocratic about the arrangement. He is a prince, perhaps – a modern-day prince who wants to live a normal life, fleeing the oppression of the castle to be in Paris amongst the people. To work.
And he does work, but I can’t figure out what he does. Banker, I thought at first, because of the wealth and attire, but a banker wouldn’t hunch over his desk the way he does, wouldn’t stare out the window or walk from room to room with his hands clasped above his head. A writer, then. But he works by hand in what looks like a leather-bound folio, which he folds up and carries under his arm. Could he be sketching? No, someone who draws wouldn’t gaze so long out into nothingness. Could he be an actor, learning his lines? Making notes? It’s possible. But I don’t see him pacing, mouthing words, gesturing. No, he’s thinking. He must be a writer. A writer who writes by hand and who has already written something important, given the array of slender wo
men I have watched coming and going from his bed, gliding out in his shirts to look over the street, a different kind of thought on their faces. What is he writing?
Out in the world I see many versions of him – Corporate Prince, Bartender Prince, Métro Prince, each with the same outline but different faces. One day in the mini supermarket down the street I think I see the real him, but there is no leather-bound folio to confirm it. What would I say anyway? ‘Hi, I’m your neighbour, I watch you from across the street; what are you writing?’ Perhaps he would smile and ask me to come over and put on one of his shirts, make love to me like Vincent Perez, then let me sleep as he smoked and mused by the large pot plant, savouring the new inspiration he’d found in me for his next poem.
But I know this would never happen. If I approached him I would be breaking an important code. Here, people in windows don’t exist. It’s a contract. I learnt this from Smoking Man. Every morning, a fat naked man leans over his ornate second-floor balcony, a few floors below the Prince, smoking. He is middle-aged, with a thick head of grey-black hair and a belly so large that I can’t see his penis; even if I’m watching from the Florents’ windows, which I am often. Smoking Man is dashing despite his weight – probably a judge. He knows the rules. Life is to be enjoyed. Who cares about the little boy and his au pair giggling behind the curtains across the way? Smoking Man owns the code.
It’s comforting in some way: I’m alone and yet not. I have the Prince, Smoking Man, and the characters in Marcel’s English library, which consists entirely of Bret Easton Ellis novels. Patrick Bateman is proving an exceptional pal, especially on pages 162 to 169, which are becoming exposingly dog-eared. Plus I have the cockroaches. One day an entire community moves in and sets up. They’re small and brown, not the big black nuclear-holocaust survivors of home. At first I tried smashing them with footwear, but quickly gave up: the more I tried, the more determined they were to stay. My disgust turned to respect – their resolve was inspiring – and they soon ceased to bother me at all. On nights when it’s too hot to sleep up on the bed, they show their reciprocal respect by not climbing on me as I starfish on the floor, making tracks around my body instead, like chalk marks at a crime scene.
After putting Paul to sleep one night, I’m walking towards the kitchen door when Marcel calls out from the salon.
‘Jayne! Do you like Blackadder?’
The last thing I want to do after a long day of babysitting is hang with Marcel, but the TV is loud and colourful and my Room of Good has recently become unbearably quiet.
He is sitting on the floor, leg bent up to his crotch, shoes off, mauve socks on, a cigarette in one hand, a glass of amber liquid in the other. Rowan Atkinson is abusing Baldrick. Marcel gestures towards the vacant sofa.
‘Where’s Marie?’ I ask.
‘Out with friends. Can I get you a drink?’ He goes into the dining room and comes back with a heavy crystal tumbler with a thick band of liquid in it. ‘Try this. Ice?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Correct answer. It’s fine alcohol, I wouldn’t have let you. Taste.’
It is pear-flavoured, strong and smooth but prickly on my tongue. I allow a tiny amount to linger and spread before taking another sip. I’m not sure how to sit.
‘This series is my favourite,’ he says.
‘Yeah, I haven’t seen them all. But I love Queenie.’
‘Me too.’ We chuckle our way through several episodes, Marcel changing my liqueur at the end of each to something more exquisite and rich.
‘So, what do you do with your life?’ he asks after episode three. ‘What is your deal?’
The line makes me cringe – or perhaps it’s the way his seam cuts into his nuts as he eases forward in his pants.
‘I’m not sure yet. I think I want to be an actor. Or maybe a painter. Or a director or something.’
‘Ooh, that’s tough, the arts.’ Marcel makes a dismissive hand gesture. ‘No money. Always a struggle for the money. Don’t you want money?’
‘Yes, but, I don’t know. I want to do something I like.’
‘But how will you survive? You want to be an au pair your whole life?’
‘No, but —’
‘You must find the money. I am happy. Work – bof – but I have the money. My parents they always say that to me. They send me to a private school when I was ten, like Paul will go to school, and after I studied law and now I make a lot of money. It is good. But it will be difficult, maybe impossible, for you to make money as an artist. Unless you are very good of course. Are you good?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘You need to be very good to make money in your business.’
He gets up, brings me another drink and puts on episode six.
I wake surrounded by a delectable softness, not knowing where I am. It’s dawn. I look around and realise I’m in the guestroom bed. Top off. Jeans on.
Out the window I can see Smoking Man on his balcony, nude as ever. He seems to be looking at me, though I’m sure he can’t see in. He’s smiling.
I pull on my top and shudder. I can’t remember how the night ended. Did I just come in here and pass out?
The air is cool in the morning light. I step lightly on the bits of the parquet I know don’t make any noise and climb the dusty stairwell up to the Room of Good.
Marcel and Marie and Paul are moving to Switzerland. They are selling both 41 and 41bis, and I will have to move. My return ticket was booked for a week from today, and although I had been toying with the idea of staying I decide to use it. Paul is devastated. There is really no other option – my tourist visa only allows me to stay three months and I’m about to run out of money. What would I do? How would I work? Where would I live?
My last days are a kind of purgatory.
I walk aimlessly through the streets, ignoring signs, forgetting my guidebook. I get on and off the métro at random stations, wandering around and looking at things and letting myself get lost. I pack up my Room of Good. I take Paul to the park and buy him as many ice-creams as he wants. I stand in front of as many famous artworks as I can, and will them to go into me.
On my second-last day I arrive at a beautiful church somewhere on the Left Bank. Saint-Sulpice. The outside is covered in scaffolding and I work my way past it, through a group of tourists and down towards the back, where I discover a shrine of Mary. I close my eyes and feel nothing.
Outside, the glow of sunset is still bright. Dusk seems to last forever here. I wander the streets, losing all sense of where I am, following things that attract my eye: a strange window mannequin here, a bizarre sculpture there, a shop selling only belt buckles. I stop outside a mesmerising patisserie and stand for a long time admiring the delicate pastel colours and immaculate shapes and textures. I’m always afraid to go into such beautiful shops – what if I change my mind and don’t want anything, or I can’t afford anything? I find myself walking in.
I buy a religieuse. I have wanted to buy a religieuse since I was twelve and saw a picture of one in a textbook. A round puff full of cream, with another, smaller puff of cream on top, each covered in chocolate frosting. A lady dressed in sugar-pink builds a little paper tent around it and hands it to me in a carefully outstretched palm.
The cake is hard to walk with, especially as I approach the river, where the foot traffic increases. I hold the fragile pyramid upright in my palm, trying to avoid people bumping into it. I focus hard as I weave in and out, wanting to bite into it then and there, but it demands space and time and stillness. The crowd thins as I cross a bridge behind Notre-Dame and head down towards the riverbank. People are talking, kissing and licking ice-creams on the stone embankment, and I find a place as far away from everyone as I can, near an old man fishing. He doesn’t acknowledge me as I sit down and place the precious object on the wall beside me while I swing my legs around to a view of the booksellers and wonky buildings on the opposite bank. I’m not quite sure where I am – on the Right Bank, the Left Bank, or an island.
I think of pulling out my red book but it doesn’t matter.
The sky clouds over as I open the package and admire the religieuse. Its edges gleam. Does the name mean angel? Nun? Priest? I bite off its head. Chocolate cream mixes with the pillowy pastry and sweet buttery frosting. Oh, heaven. My head floats. Perhaps it’s called a religieuse because eating it is a religious experience. I allow the sensation to last in my mouth as long as I can before putting more in.
A pigeon lands next to the fisherman’s boot. His line stretches. Nothing.
A woman in heels passes behind me.
‘Mademoiselle?’
My scarf has fallen. I thank her and stuff it into my bag.
The priest is almost entirely in me now. Tourist boats go by, I wave. A couple on the opposite bank share a bottle of wine, legs kicking out over the river wall. The fisherman’s line creates a tiny ripple in the water. As I finish the last morsel, the clouds clear away. I look down the river and take in the entire view, the sky and the river, the rooftops and chimneys and boats. And in that moment something happens.
I see the view. Really see it. I’ve witnessed landscapes like this before in Paris, I know they’re beautiful, but for the first time it seems to exist within me. It doesn’t matter that nobody is here to see it with me, I don’t need anyone else to make it real. It is real.
My breath catches in my chest. The sweetness of the religieuse pounds through my veins. An involuntary squeak comes out and the fisherman looks over at me, then, nonplussed, back to his rod.
La Femme Nikita
INSTEAD OF RETURNING to Melbourne with a stronger sense of elf, I am more amoeba-like than ever. I move back into my parents’ place, into my old bedroom, and curl up on my mother like a baby pup. I’ve never been less sure what to do with my life. Paris has disoriented me, and I am paying for having chosen the vaguest subjects I could at university: a double degree in criminology and French was never going to lead very far.