I considered leaving the station, but in the end I decided it was best to stay where I was, just in case. The last thing I wanted was for René to get here and not be able to find me. I looked for an empty seat, but the nearby benches were blocked off by a group of disheveled itinerants sitting on the floor with their enormous hiking backpacks. The situation seemed hopeless. Retracing my steps, I walked past the payphone again, past the Relay, in the direction of the atrium, where a staircase led to the restaurants on the upper level. There were the usual fast foods and cafés, but nothing particularly inviting. Little had changed in the two years since I had last been here. If I kept walking, I would reach the exit, and beyond it the piazza dei Cinquecento. But then, through the window of the aptly named La Fenestro, I saw a familiar silhouette at one of the tables. It was the woman I had stood behind earlier. She was alone, facing away from me. The place looked more expensive than the others, and a glance at the menu under glass confirmed my suspicions. Even a year ago, I would have thought nothing of it, but these days my diet consisted of boiled potatoes—a Danish staple—and cans of ravioli. How had I arrived at this state of affairs? One day, I had started sabotaging my own work, purposely mistranslating documents I was given. No one had noticed—perhaps because my colleagues at the pharmaceutical firm already spoke a dialect of Euro-English—and after a while I found myself wondering if the whole mess wasn’t confined to my own imagination, if I really did write “facultative stop” in a press release … “fibrome” instead of “fibroma” … or if I only thought about doing these things. I decided to put an end to it—whatever “it” was—and told the chief of the translation department. Finding a permanent solution to such doubts was, somewhat to my surprise, an unambiguously simple and straightforward matter, for the department chief.
I let several more moments go by standing at the window. The dishes in front of her looked untouched, and from time to time she took a sip of her champagne, unless it was just soda water (or Danish water, as we call it in Denmark). She seemed to be lost in thought, and I wondered, not for the first time, where her companion Jens was, what trouble he could be in. How long had she been waiting for him? Perhaps he wasn’t even in Italy but in a neighboring country, his movements restricted as he waited for the right opportunity to cross over. I glanced at the billboards showing the timetables. It could be that the train she had mentioned on the phone wasn’t even leaving today. Perhaps she had been here, at Roma Termini station, for several days already. Or longer. In the end, I gave up on finding something to eat—I wasn’t really hungry anyway—and returned to the main waiting area, which was slightly less crowded than before, as though a train had pulled in and departed during my absence. I found a vacant seat among the benches and sat down, between a Buddhist monk in full regalia and a young woman engrossed in a book with her feet propped atop her luggage. It had been too long since I had read anything for pleasure. Whatever book I picked up I started translating in my head, a habit from my ten years as a translator, and the smallest ambiguity in the text that I couldn’t elucidate to my satisfaction bothered me to the point where I soon gave up reading for pleasure altogether. In the past, I would take with me on my travels whatever documents I happened to be translating, and once again I had found myself packing my classeur, only to remember that there was nothing in it except for some old papers and my list of frequently translated pharmaceutical terms. I didn’t plan on staying very long in Rome, and, accordingly, I had brought only the strict minimum: changes of clothes, a toothbrush, my old mini-disc player and a bottle of pastis bought at a Nicolas near the Gare de Lyon as a last-minute housewarming gift. I’d considered getting something for Gémanuelle, whom I hadn’t seen in almost two years. Finally, I had decided against it; I didn’t want René to get the wrong idea. In any case, I told myself, she was no longer a shy and studious eight-year-old. How many ten-year-olds still liked what they’d liked when they were eight? Especially a ten-year-old starring in her second film. Perhaps she had already forgotten me.
Someone asked if the seat next to mine was taken, and I said there was no one—the girl with her book had left, at some point—and in that same moment I realized that I had been addressed in Danish. Without thinking, I had answered in French; but it didn’t really matter—I had already given myself away. Even before I looked up, I knew who it was.
“So I was right.” Sitting down, she gave me a slow once-over. “I bet you’ve listened to a lot of conversations, haven’t you? You and the black girl in Munich. I would’ve said something to her, too, if Jens hadn’t stopped me. I can see why they sent you, given that you couldn’t look any less Danish if you tried.”
“I’m from southern Denmark,” I said, which was my habitual retort to questions concerning my background on occasions when I didn’t feel like explaining for the nth time, to a stranger at a party, that I was adopted. But she didn’t seem the least bit interested in my background. Instead, she barked out a laugh.
“I’ve made that joke many times,” I said. “But you’re the first to laugh at it.”
“It wasn’t the joke but you that I found funny. Now tell me the truth: who are you working for?”
“No one at the moment. Believe it or not, I’m unemployed.”
“Who hired you to follow me?”
“I wasn’t—”
“Don’t deny it. I saw you outside the restaurant.” She smiled at my surprise. “The walls have mirrors. You’re not very good at your job. I was watching you as much as you were watching me.”
“I was looking for a place to eat when I noticed you through the window—”
“So you admit you were looking for me.”
“No, I was looking for a place to eat.”
“Do you take me for an imbecile?”
I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to answer that, so I didn’t. She went on, “You despise us, don’t you? For what we’re doing together. I imagine Karl must have briefed you already.”
Us? I realized she meant her and Jens, her Arlesino, her partner in crime.
“I’m sure Jens has his reasons for not being here,” I said. “Sometimes there are unforeseen circumstances. You shouldn’t think he meant to break his promise.”
“What do you know about our promise?”
Even as I told her I didn’t know anything, it occurred to me that proving one didn’t know something was a lot harder than proving the opposite. That was the whole problem, as I saw it.
She narrowed her eyes. “If I ask you for your name, will you tell me?”
I told it to her—after all, why not?—hoping I didn’t sound like a liar.
“You even have a Danish name, possibly the most Danish of all.”
“It’s my real name.”
She nodded, and I wondered if she was only humoring me, playing along. “Mine is Signe.” She held out a hand, and I thought about not shaking it. Her hand was on the large side, though the nails were impeccably done—no doubt by a professional—their iridescence catching the light as she held it aloft, waiting. I had a feeling she would wait all morning if she had to. With a sigh, I gave in. Her grip was unexpectedly firm, and I wondered if Signe was really her name or if she had given me something made up because she thought I had done the same. Then again, “Signe” was as common as “Jens,” a name shared by half the men in Scandinavia. Perhaps the latter was not his real name, either. I was surprised at how easy it was to think along these lines.
“So,” she said, “you stood behind me when I was on the phone with Jens. What did you tell that guy disguised as a beggar? I saw you talking to him. Is he your contact here?” She nodded with satisfaction at my reaction before continuing: “From the mezzanine level I watched you circling the concourse. Then you stood facing the row of benches for a very long time, like someone who has no idea what to do next. I will say this: you are without a doubt the most incompetent agent I have ever encountered. Frankly, I’m surprised you managed to find me at La Fenestra at all—”
“F
enestro,” I corrected her. “It’s Esperanto. Either that or a mistake.”
“Are you trying to imply something?”
“No, nothing at all.”
“You then went back to the main waiting area where you proceeded to stare blankly into the distance. Smiling faintly at something, it would seem. Like someone reliving a happy memory, I remember thinking.”
“I’m not sure who you think I am,” I said, “but I’m not anyone’s hired man, or whoever it is you’ve mistaken me for! I used to work at Sanofi, a pharmaceutical firm in Paris. I was a translator there. I don’t know what I am now. Nothing, I guess.”
“What are you doing here in Rome?”
Yes, what was I doing? I could get up and walk out of the station, René be damned. How far would this woman go? More importantly, where would I go? I concluded that, for the time being, I was stuck here, like a stateless person in an airport.
I told her that I had come to see my friend and his daughter.
“And where is this friend of yours?” she asked, surveying the concourse the way I’d done earlier, as though expecting to spot him among the travelers.
“I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been asking myself. He’s had his hands full lately because his daughter is in a film.”
Why had I told her that?
“Your friend is an actor?”
“No, his daughter is. She just turned ten.” I thought she’d ask for her name, but Signe seemed lost in thought.
Suddenly, she said, “This isn’t your first time visiting him.”
“How did you know?”
“Watching you earlier, I couldn’t help thinking to myself, There’s someone who knows his way around, but still seems hesitant in his gestures. Like someone retracing his steps…”
I was starting to wonder who was spying on whom at this point.
Signe went on, “I told you earlier that from the mezzanine I saw you smile. What were you thinking about?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Oh, I think you do. The look you had then, it was the same look you had in your eyes just now, when you mentioned your friend’s daughter.”
“You don’t miss a thing, do you?” I couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or irritated by her powers of observation and deduction. “If you must know, I was accused of something. Of pretending to be something—someone—I wasn’t, with my godchild. In any case, he’s forgiven me.” Or that was what he claimed, though sometimes—like today—I couldn’t help but wonder … Had he forgotten on purpose? Had he changed his mind about letting me see Gémanuelle?
“No,” I went on, in reaction to her questioning expression, “it’s not what you think.” I knew that no one would have questioned our closeness if she had been my daughter. We understood each other, Gém and I, in a way that René, though he had given her his genes, didn’t. But the fact remained that she wasn’t my daughter.
“If you didn’t do anything, why does your friend—”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Or you don’t want to tell me?”
“There’s nothing to tell.” I added, “He’s always been jealous of my closeness with Gém, or that’s what he claims.”
“Your closeness.”
“We used to play a game where I would pretend to be her father. But it was just a game. That was all it was, really. I understand her, Gém, in a way that her biological father never will.”
“You understand her, sure, but does she understand you?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Have you talked to her about any of this?”
“Of course not. I’m not crazy.”
She made an ambiguous sound. “And your friend? Does he know that you’re in love with his nine-year-old daughter?”
“She’s ten. And I’m not in love with his daughter!” I glanced around, but the Buddhist monk appeared to be asleep. No one else was paying us the smallest attention. My outburst had gone unnoticed, and even if someone had heard me, would he have understood the Danish words?
“One day,” I told Signe, “I found her practicing the lines René had written for the character she was to play in her first film. This was two years ago, here in Rome, at René’s place in San Lorenzo. When I walked into the room, Gém had her back to me, and at first, she didn’t notice me next to her. The script she was reading from didn’t resemble the one my friend had shown me. He had changed everything in such a way that Gém wouldn’t be exposed to any of the violent elements in the film. René had managed to write another, completely different plot, just for her. The rest of the actors were in one film, and she was in another, all by herself. But my friend had made the two versions intersect in such a way that, on camera, it was like they were one and the same.”
In the version he had written for Gém, the crows—enemies in the film—were now her friends. It didn’t take long for me to see that he had written his own version of “The Seven Ravens”—not the original story told by the Brothers Grimm but the adaptation staged at the Crous where I had taken her. René must have gone to see the puppet show for himself. At the time, Gém had gone on tirelessly about how much she liked it, and whereas I had thought it had fallen on deaf ears, he’d been listening all along. He had made her the heroine of her own puppet play.
“A part of me always thought that he wasn’t a good father to Gém, but for the first time I realized that it didn’t matter what kind of father he was. It was enough that he was her father.”
“That was your grand revelation?”
I ignored the irony in her voice.
“It was like something fell into place for me, watching my godchild reciting the lines that René had written for her. She seemed so vulnerable, and at the same time untouchable. None of the violence in the film could touch her. It was there, all around her, within hand’s reach. But René had protected her from it. For the first time in years, I started thinking about someone I had once known, long ago, when I was a student in Paris. Her name was Fumiko. I’m not saying that Gém reminded me of her, or any such thing. They were … are … nothing alike. For starters, she was Japanese, the girl I knew. Like my biological parents. All these years, she’s haunted my dreams. Sometimes I think I’m still in love with her.”
“Wait a minute. What does this girl have to do with your friend’s daughter?”
“Nothing. That’s just it: I don’t know what made me think of her all of a sudden. Maybe it’s the guilt I’ve always felt about … what happened to Fumiko. We’d been going out for a year when she locked herself in her room one day. It wasn’t even the first time. I thought she would come back out soon enough, I really did. But she never did.”
I had never told anyone—not even René—about Fumiko.
“She killed herself?”
“Yes. And I let it happen. Gém deserves someone better than that, no?”
“Why didn’t you call for help?”
“I don’t know. It’s a question I’ve asked myself more times than you can imagine.”
Every time René did something like this, forgot to return a call, failed to meet me, I was left wondering if there wasn’t a deeper, hidden meaning behind his actions; if he wasn’t telling me, without telling me, that he suspected something. Perhaps, without fully realizing it himself, he had always known that I was a menace, a danger, to those around me. That anyone I got close to would come to a bad end, sooner or later.
“All right,” Signe said, leaning back in her seat. “As stories go, it’s not bad, not bad at all. A convincing performance.”
I stared at her. “Why would I lie about this?”
“To make me think we have something in common.”
“You were the one who wanted to know about my friend’s daughter!”
Would I ever convince her that I was telling the truth? For several long moments, neither of us spoke. I felt exhausted, and at the same time, strangely relieved. An emptiness descended on me, as though someone had taken away the
last ten years of my life.
“I believe you,” she said at last. “Everything that you’ve told me.”
“Then why…”
“To test you, to see if I might be wrong about you.” She nodded, as though to herself, her gaze focused on the timetables. “I had to make sure I had chosen the right person to hear the story of Signe and Jens.”
I was too surprised to say anything, much less protest, when she started telling me about the two of them. Jens, it turned out, was her brother, a brother she hadn’t known existed until two years ago.
Later, I came to the conclusion that her skepticism, the brigade of men hired to keep tabs on her, all of it had been an invention, a pure formality: she’d needed a reason to continue talking. Out of everyone at the station, why did she choose me? How could she have known? We were like two spies in a movie who meet at the drop-off point to exchange information. After spotting each other, we put down our briefcases; I reach for hers and she reaches for mine. We go our separate ways. She doesn’t look back, and neither do I.
These are the contents of her briefcase:
“I was born in Vejle, though on my birth certificate it says Haderslev. My mother was fifteen when she had me, and immediately afterwards I was given up for adoption. She came from a prominent family who knew how to contain its scandals. Eight years later, my mother—by then respectably married—had my brother, Jens. He grew up thinking he was an only child. He was twenty-nine when we met, here in Rome, at a gala given by the Danish embassy. I was there with my then husband, who was the cultural attaché. When Jens looked at me from across the room, it was like my world crumbled to dust. Until then, I had drifted through life in a daze of indifference and dullness—that’s what I realized that night, for the first time. As though we had planned to meet like this, each of us made our way to the exit. We walked to the Sofitel a few streets away and checked into a room. I don’t think we exchanged a single word.
Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost Page 20