Barking at Butterflies and other stories

The Intruder

David’s mother took him with her to Paris the day after his eighth birthday, which was July the Fourth.

Paris was all lights. It was the best time he ever had in his life. Even if the business with the doorbell hadn’t happened when they got back from Paris, he still would think of Paris as the best time he ever had. They were staying at a very nice hotel called the Raphael on Avenue Kleber. Hardly anyone spoke English at the Raphael because it was a very French hotel, and English was grating on the ears. David learned a lot there. He learned, for example, that when someone asked “Quel temps fait-il?” you did not always answer, “Il fait beau,” the way they did in Miss Canaday’s class even if it was snowing. He told this to Miss Canaday when they got back from Paris, and she said, “David, I like to think of the weather as being toujours beau, toujours beau.” He used to speak to the concierge on the phone every morning. He would say, “Bon-jour, monsieur, quel temps fait-il, s’il vous plait?” And the concierge would usually answer in a very solemn voice, “Il pleut, mon petit monsieur.”

It rained a lot while they were in Paris.

He and his mother had a suite at the Raphael, two bedrooms and a sort of living room with windows that opened onto a nice stone balcony. David used to go out on the balcony and stand with the pigeons when it wasn’t raining. The reason they had a suite was that his mother was a buyer for a department store on Fifth Avenue, and they sent her over each year, sometimes twice a year, to study all the new fashions. What it amounted to was that the store was paying for the suite. David’s father was account executive and vice-president of an advertising agency that had thirty-nine vice-presidents. The reason he did not go to Paris that summer was that he had to stay home in New York to make sure one of his accounts did not cancel. So David went instead, to keep her company. He wrote to his father every day they were in Paris.

Escargots were little snails, but they didn’t really look like snails except for the shell, and they didn’t taste like them at all. They tasted like garlic. David and his mother ate a lot of escargots in Paris. In fact, they ate a lot of everything in Paris. They used to spend most of their time eating. What they would do, his mother would leave a call with the desk for eight o’clock in the morning. The phone would ring, and David would jump out of bed and run into his mother’s bedroom and ask her if he could talk to the concierge for a moment. “Bonjour, monsieur,” he would say. “Quel temps fait-il, s’il vous plait?” and the concierge would tell him what kind of day it was and then he would hand the phone back to his mother and lie in her arms while she ordered breakfast. Every morning, they had either melon or orange juice, and then croissants and coffee for his mother, and croissants and hot chocolate for David. The chocolate was very good; the room waiter told them it came from Switzerland. They would eat at a little table just inside the big windows that opened onto the stone balcony. His mother used to wear a very puffy white nylon robe over her nightgown. One morning a man in the building opposite waved at her and winked.

The salon showings used to start at ten on some mornings, it all depended, sometimes they were later. Some days there were no showings at all, and some days they would go to the showing at ten and then have lunch and go to another one at two, and then another one in the afternoon around cocktail time. His mother was a pretty important buyer, so she knew all the designers and the models and they used to go back and everybody would make a fuss over David. He didn’t mind being kissed by the models, who all smelled very nice. Once, when he went back before a showing, two of the models were still in their brassieres. One of them said something in French (she said it very fast, not at all like Miss Canaday or the concierge) and the other models started laughing, and his mother laughed too and ran her hand over his head. He didn’t know what was so funny; he’d seen a hundred brassieres in his lifetime.

For lunch they used to like the cheese place best; it was called Androuet, and it had about eight hundred cheeses you could choose from. Every now and then, they would go to a ritzy place on the Left Bank, but that was only when his mother was trying very hard to impress a designer, and then he was supposed to just keep his mouth shut and not say anything, just eat. They had the most fun when they were alone together. One night, on top of the Eiffel Tower, his mother ordered red wine for him. She held up her glass in a toast, and he clinked his glass against hers and saw that she was crying.

“What is it?” he said.

“Nothing,” she answered. “Taste your wine, David. It’s really lovely.”

“No, what is it?” he insisted.

“I miss Daddy,” she said.

The next day, he sent his father a card from Notre Dame. On the back he wrote, as a little joke, “Can you find Quasimodo?” He had read that in the spring in Classics Illustrated. His father wrote back and in his letter he sent a thing that he’d had one of his art directors work up. What it was, it was a composite from the monster magazines, with very good type across the top saying, “Yes, this is Quasimodo! But where oh where is DAVID?”

The fourteenth of July, Bastille Day, fell on a Sunday and that was lucky to begin with because it meant there were no showings to attend. David woke up at eight o’clock, and then slept for another two hours in his mother’s bed and then they had breakfast and she said, “David, how would you like to take a car and go out into the country for a picnic?” So that’s what they did. They hired a car, and they drove out down by the Loire where all the French castles were, and they stopped by the river and had sausage and bread and cheese and red wine (His mother said it was okay for him to drink all the wine he wanted while they were in France) and they drove back to Paris at about seven in the evening, getting caught in the traffic around the Étoile. Later they stood on their little stone balcony and he held his mother’s hand and they watched the fireworks exploding over the rooftops. He didn’t think he would forget those fireworks as long as he lived.

The next week, they were back in New York.

The week after that, the doorbell started.

The building they lived in was on Park Avenue, and there were two apartments on their floor — their own and Mrs. Shavinsky’s, who was an old lady in her seventies and very mean. Mrs. Shavinsky was the type who always said to David as he came off the elevator, “Wipe the mud off your shoes, young man,” as though it were possible to get mud on your shoes in the city of New York. Mrs. Shavinsky wore hats and gloves all of the time, because she was originally from San Francisco. She was constantly telling the elevator operator, as if he cared, that in San Francisco the ladies all wore hats and gloves. Even though there were only those two apartments on the floor, there were four doors in the hallway because each apartment had two doors, one for people and the other for service. Their own main entrance door was on one side of the hall, and Mrs. Shavinsky’s was on the other side. The two service doors were in a sort of alcove opposite the elevator. They hardly ever saw Mrs. Shavinsky (Except she always managed to be there when David got off the elevator, to tell him about his muddy shoes) until the business with the doorbell started, and then they practically lived in each others’ apartments.

The first time the doorbell rang, it was two o’clock in the morning on July 29th, which was a Monday.

David’s bedroom was right behind his mother’s and when the doorbell rang, he sat up in bed thinking it was the telephone. In fact, he could hear his mother lifting the phone from the receiver alongside her bed, since she thought it was the phone, too. She said, “Hello,” and then the ringing came again, from the front door, and there was a short puzzled silence. His mother put the phone back on its cradle and whispered, “Fred, you’d better get up.”

“What?” David’s father said.

“There’s someone at the door.”

“What?” he said again.

“There’s someone at the door.”

His father must have looked at the clock alongside the bed because David heard him whisper, “Don’t be ridiculous, Lo. It’s two o’clock in the morning.” His mother’s name was Lois, but everybody called her Lo except David’s grandmother who called her Lois Ann, which was her full name.

“Someone just rang the doorbell,” his mother said.

“I didn’t hear anything,” his father said.

“Fred, please see who it is, won’t you?”

“All right, but I’m telling you I didn’t hear anything.”

The doorbell rang again at just that moment. In the next bedroom, there was a sudden sharp silence. From the other end of the apartment, where the housekeeper slept, David heard her yelling, “Mister Ravitch, there is somebody at the door.”

“I hear it, Helga, thank you,” my father called, and then a light snapped on, and David heard him swearing as he got out of bed. David went to the doorway of his room just as his father passed by in his pajamas.

“What is it?” David whispered.

“Someone at the door,” he said. “Go back to bed.”

His father walked through the long corridor leading to the front door, stubbing his toe on something in the dark and mumbling about it, and then turning on the light in the entrance foyer.

“Who’s there?” he said to the closed door.

Nobody answered.

“Is someone there?” he asked.

Again, there was no answer. From where David was standing at the end of the long hall, he heard his father sigh, and then heard the lock on the door being turned, and the door being opened. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then his father closed the door again, and locked it, and began walking back to his bedroom.

“Who was it?” David asked.

“Nobody,” his father answered. “Go back to sleep.”

That was the first time with the doorbell.

The second time was two nights later, on a Wednesday, and also in the early morning, though not two o’clock. David must have been sleeping very soundly because he didn’t even hear the doorbell ringing. The thing that woke him up was his mother’s voice saying something to his father as he ran down the corridor to the front door. Helga had come out of her room and was standing in her pyjamas watching his father as he went to the door and unlocked it. David’s mother was wearing the same white nylon puffy robe she used to wear when they were in Paris.

“Did they ring the doorbell again?” David asked her.

“Yes,” she said, and just then his father opened the door.

“Who is it?” David’s mother asked.

“There’s no one here, Lo.”

“But I heard the bell, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I heard it.”

“I heard it, too, Mister Ravitch,” Helga said.

“I wonder,” David’s father said.

“What do you think?”

“Maybe someone rang it by mistake.”

“Monday night, too.”

“It’s possible.”

“And left without waiting for the door to open?”

“Maybe he was embarrassed. Maybe he realized his mistake and...”

“I don’t know,” David’s mother said, and shrugged. “It all seems very peculiar.” She turned to David and cupped his chin in her hand. “David, I want you to go back to bed. You look very sleepy.”

“I’m not sleepy at all. We used to stay up much later than this in Paris.”

“How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm?” his father said, and both his mother and Helga laughed. “Listen, Lo, I’d like to check this with the elevator operator.”

“That’s a good idea. Come, David, bed.”

“Can’t I just stay to see who it was?” David asked.

“There’s probably some very simple explanation,” his mother said.

The elevator operator was a man David had never seen before, about fifty years old, but with a hearing aid. David knew most of the elevator men in the building, but he supposed this one always had the shift late at night, which is why he’d never seen him before this. The man told his father his name was Oscar, and asked him what the trouble was.

“Someone just rang our doorbell.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Did you take anyone up to our floor just now?”

“No, sir. Not since I came on, sir.”

“And when was that?”

“I came on at midnight, sir.”

“And you didn’t take anyone up to the eleventh floor all night?”

“No, sir.”

“What is it?” David heard a voice ask, and he looked past his father to the opposite end of the hallway where Mrs. Shavinsky had opened her door and was looking out. “What’s all the noise about?” she said. “Do you realize what time it is?” She was wearing a big flannel nightgown with red roses strewn all over it, printed ones. Her hair was in curlers.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Shavinsky,” David’s father said. “We didn’t mean to awaken you.”

“Yes, well you did,” Mrs. Shavinsky said, as pleasant as always. “What’s going on?”

“Someone rang our bell,” his mother said.

“Good morning, Mrs. Shavinsky,” David said.

“Good morning, young man,” Mrs. Shavinsky said. “It is far past your bedtime.”

“I know,” David said. “We’re up to catch the bell ringer.”

“Did you say someone rang your bell?” Mrs. Shavinsky asked, ignoring David and looking up at his mother.

“Yes. Monday night, and now again.”

“Well, who was it?” Mrs. Shavinsky asked.

“That’s what we don’t know,” David said. “That’s why we’re all here in the hallway.”

“It was probably some D-R-U-N-K,” Mrs. Shavinsky said.

“No, it wasn’t no drunk, ma’am,” Oscar said. “I didn’t take nobody up here.”

“Then why would anyone want to ring your bell at three-thirty in the morning?” Mrs. Shavinsky asked, and no one could answer her.

Later, David’s mother kissed his cheeks and the tip of his nose and his forehead and hugged him tight and tucked him in.

Mrs. Shavinsky told him about her demitasse cups the next day, and when he hinted that he didn’t believe such a collection existed, she asked him to wipe off his feet and come into the apartment. The apartment smelled of emptiness, the way a lot of apartments smell when there is only one person living in them. She had her demitasse collection in a china closet in the dining room. David told her it must be fun to have a big dining room table like the one she had, and then he looked at her demitasse collection, which was really quite nice. She had about thirty-seven cups, he guessed. Four of them had gold insides. She said they were very valuable.

“How much do they cost?” he asked her.

“You should never ask anyone that,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because it is impolite.”

“But you told me they were valuable, Mrs. Shavinsky.”

“They are,” she said.

“Then why is it impolite to ask how much they cost?”

“It’s not only impolite,” she said, “it’s impertinent as well.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Shavinsky,” he said.

“They cost several thousand dollars,” she said. Her voice lowered. “Do you think the bell ringer is after them?” she asked.

“After what, ma’am?” he said.

“After my demitasse cups?”

“I don’t think so, ma’am,” he said.

“Then why would he ring your bell at three-thirty in the morning?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Shavinsky, but it seems to me if he was after your cups he would ring your bell. Maybe he’s after our cups.”

“Do you have a valuable collection of demitasse cups?” Mrs. Shavinsky asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“Then how, would you please tell me, could he be after your demitasse cups, if you do not even own demitasse cups?”

“I meant our coffee cups. In the kitchen.”

“Why would he want those?” Mrs. Shavinsky asked.

“Maybe he likes big cups of coffee,” David suggested, and shrugged.

Mrs. Shavinsky wasn’t sure whether or not he was making fun of her, which he wasn’t, so she kicked him out.

That night, the doorbell rang at one o’clock in the morning.

David was asleep, but his father was still awake and watching the news final on television. The doorbell rang and David’s father leaped out of bed at the first ring and ran down the long corridor to the front door and pulled open the door without saying a word. There was no one there.

“Damn it!” he yelled, and woke up the whole house.

“What is it?” David’s mother called.

“Damn it, there’s no one here,” his father said.

“What is it, Mister Ravitch?” Helga called from her bedroom.

“Oh, go to sleep, Helga,” his father said.

David was awake by this time, but he knew better than to ask his father any silly questions. He just lay in bed watching the ceiling and realizing the doorbell had rung again, and his father had gone to answer it again, and again there was no one there. Through the wall separating his bedroom from his mother’s, he heard his father going into the room and getting into bed, and then he heard his mother whisper, “Don’t be upset.”

“I am upset,” his father whispered back.

“It’s probably just someone’s idea of a joke.”

“Some joke.”

“He’ll grow tired of it.”

“He’s got Helga scared out of her wits.”

“She’ll survive.”

“How the hell does he disappear so quickly?” his father whispered.

“I don’t know. Try to get some sleep, darling.”

“Mmm,” his father said.

“There.”

“Mmmmm.”

While David was investigating the hallway the next day, Mrs. Shavinsky’s black housekeeper came out with the garbage. Her name was Mary Vincent, but David was not sure whether Vincent was her last name or just part of her first name, the way “Ann” was part of his mother’s “Lois Ann.” What he was doing as Mary Vincent came out with the garbage was pacing off the number of steps from the stairway in the service alcove to the front doorbell.

“What are you doing, David?” Mary Vincent said.

“There are fifteen paces,” he said. “How long do you think it would take to run fifteen paces from our door back to those steps?”

“I don’t know. How long would it take?”

“Well, I don’t know, Mary Vincent. But whoever is ringing the doorbell manages to disappear before we can open the door. If he doesn’t use the elevator, he must use the steps, don’t you think?”

“Unless this here’s an inside job,” Mary Vincent said.

“What does that mean? An inside job?”

“Somebody in the apartment.”

“You mean somebody in our apartment?”

“Could be,” Mary Vincent said, and shrugged.

“Well, that would mean just my family.” David paused. “Or Helga.”

“I didn’t say nothing,” Mary Vincent said.

“Why would Helga want to ring the doorbell in the middle of the night?”

“I didn’t say nothing,” Mary Vincent said again. “All I know is she was mighty angry while your mother and you was away in France and she had to stay here and work, anyway, without no kind of a vacation.”

“But she is getting a vacation, Mary Vincent. Mother asked her if she wanted to take her vacation when we went away or in August sometime, and Helga said August.”

“That ain’t what she told me right here in this hallway, David.”

“When was this?”

“When we was putting out the garbage.”

“I mean when.”

“When you and your mother was in France.”

“Well, that sure sounds mighty strange to me,” David said.

“It sure sounds mighty strange to me, too,” Mary Vincent said, “that somebody would be ringing your doorbell in the middle of the night.”

“I don’t even see how Helga could manage it,” David said.

“Her bedroom is right close to the service entrance, ain’t it?”

“Yes, but...”

“Then what’s to stop her getting out of bed, opening the back door, ringing the front doorbell, and then coming in again through the back door and right into her bed? What’s to stop her, David?”

“Nothing, I guess. Only...”

“Only what?”

“Only why would she want to?”

“Spite, David. There’s people in this world who do things only because it brings misery to others. Spite,” Mary Vincent said, “plain and simple spite. If I was you, David, I would keep my eye on her.” Mary Vincent laughed, and then said, “In fact, I would keep both my eyes on her.”

David started keeping both his eyes on her that very night because the doorbell rang at exactly two-thirteen a.m. David had a watch that was waterproof and shock resistant which his grandfather gave him when he was seven years old. When he heard the doorbell ring, he jumped up in bed and turned on the light and looked at the watch, and it was two-thirteen A.M.

“There it is again,” he heard his father say in the next room, but David was listening for sounds coming from the back door. He didn’t hear anything. The doorbell rang again.

“Let him ring,” his father said. “If he thinks I’m getting out of bed every night, he’s crazy.”

The doorbell rang again. David still hadn’t heard a sound from Helga’s room. He kept looking at the sweep hand of his watch. It was now two-fifteen.

“Are you just going to let it ring?” his mother whispered.

“Yep,” his father said.

“All night?”

“If he wants to ring the damn thing all night, then I’ll let him ring it all night.”

“He’ll wake up Mrs. Shavinsky.”

“The hell with Mrs. Shavinsky.”

“He’ll wake up the whole building.”

“Who cares?” David’s father said, and his mother giggled, and the doorbell continued ringing. David still hadn’t heard a peep from Helga.

“Mom?” he said.

“David? Are you awake?”

“Yes. Do you want me to see who’s at the door?”

“You stay right in your bed,” his father said.

“Someone’s ringing the doorbell,” David said.

“I hear it.”

“Shouldn’t we see who it is?”

“We know who it is. It’s some nut who’s got nothing better to do.”

“Mom?”

“You heard your father.”

“Are we just gonna let him ring the damn thing all night?” David asked.

“What?” his father said.

“Are we gonna let him ring the damn thing all...?”

“I heard you the first time,” his father said.

“Well, are we?”

“If he wants to. Go to sleep. He’ll get tired soon enough.”

The bell ringer didn’t get tired soon enough. David kept watching the red sweep hand on his wristwatch; the bell ringer didn’t get tired until two forty-seven A.M., which was a half-hour after he had first begun. In all that time, Helga hadn’t said a word. It was almost as if she wasn’t even in the house.

For the next two weeks, the doorbell rang almost every night at two in the morning or a little after. David’s father let it ring each time, without getting out of bed to answer the door. Once, while the doorbell was ringing, David sneaked out of bed and went to the other end of the apartment, near the service entrance, to see if Helga was in her room. But the door to her bedroom was closed, and he couldn’t tell whether she was there or not. The doorbell woke the entire family each time, but they simply pretended it wasn’t ringing. Each time, David’s mother would come into his bedroom after the doorbell had been ringing a while, to see if it had awakened him.

“David?” she would whisper.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Are you awake?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“You poor darling,” she would say, and then she would sit on the edge of his bed and put her hand on his forehead, the way she would sometimes do when she thought he had a fever, though he certainly didn’t have any fever. The doorbell would continue ringing and his mother would sit in her nightgown in the dark, her hand cool on his head. In a little while, she would kiss his closed eyes, and he would drift off to sleep, not knowing when she left him, not knowing when the doorbell stopped ringing.

This went on for two weeks. By the end of that time, David was getting used to waking up at two in the morning and getting used to his mother’s visits each time the doorbell rang. He was beginning to think, though, that once Helga left on her vacation, the doorbell ringing would stop. He was beginning to think that Mary Vincent was right, that Helga was ringing the bell just out of spite, just to cause misery for others. But on August the twelfth, Helga went off, and that night at two o’clock the doorbell rang. It couldn’t have been Helga because she had taken a plane that morning at Kennedy Airport, bound for Copenhagen where her parents lived.

The next day, David’s father called the police.

It was David’s guess that his father had suspected Helga, too, because he told the two detectives right away that it couldn’t have been the housekeeper since she was in Denmark. That explained why he hadn’t called the police up to now; he had thought it was Helga and had expected her to quit ringing the bell after a while. The two detectives didn’t look anything like television policemen at all. One of them looked like Mr. Harriman who ran the candy store on Madison Avenue, and the other looked like Uncle Martin, David’s father’s brother. Mr. Harriman did most of the talking.

“When did your housekeeper leave?” he asked David’s father.

“Yesterday morning.”

“And you say the doorbell rang again last night?”

“Yes, it did.”

“Who else lives on this floor?” Mr. Harriman asked.

“Mrs. Shavinsky and her housekeeper.”

“Her name is Mary Vincent,” David said.

“Thank you, son,” Mr. Harriman said. “Would either Mrs. Shavinsky or her housekeeper have any reason to want to annoy you?”

“I don’t think so,” David’s father said.

“He may be after Mrs. Shavinsky’s demitasse cups,” David said.

“What was that, son?” the one who looked like Uncle Martin asked.

“Mrs. Shavinsky’s demitasse cups. They’re worth several thousand dollars.”

“If the intruder wanted her cups,” Uncle Martin said, “why would he ring your doorbell?”

“That’s just what I said to Mrs. Shavinsky.”

“Is there anything you can do about this?” David’s father asked the detectives. “Can you leave a man here?”

“Well, that’d be a little difficult, sir,” Mr. Harriman said. “We’re always short-handed, but especially in the summertime. I think you can understand...”

“Yes, but...”

“What we can do, of course, is to dust the hallway and the doorbell for fingerprints.”

“Will that help?”

“If the intruder left any prints, why yes, it could help a great deal.”

“And if he didn’t leave any prints? If, for example, he was wearing gloves?”

“Why, then it wouldn’t help at all, would it?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” David said.

“Mmm,” Mr. Harriman said, and smiled at David the way some grownups smiled at him when they meant Shut up, kid.

“Well, if you can’t leave a man here,” his father said, “and if dusting or whatever you call it doesn’t come up with any fingerprints, well... well, what are we supposed to do? Just let this person keep on ringing our doorbell forever?”

“I suppose you could spend a night sleeping in a chair near the door,” Mr. Harriman said. “That might help.”

“How?”

“You could open the door as soon as the bell rang.”

“We never know when it’s going to ring,” David’s father said, “or even if it’ll ring at all. There’s no pattern to it.”

“Well, perhaps you could spend a few nights sleeping by the door.”

“I could spend a few weeks sleeping by the door,” David’s father said. “Or maybe even a few months.”

“Well,” Mr. Harriman said.

“Well,” David’s father said, and everybody was quiet.

“Mrs. Shavinsky thinks it’s some drunk,” David said.

“It might be, son,” Uncle Martin said.

“He doesn’t use the elevator.”

“He probably comes up the service steps,” Mr. Harriman said. “We’ll talk to the elevator operators and ask them to keep an eye open. Though, you know, there’s the possibility he comes down from the roof. I’ll check and see if there’s a lock on the roof door.”

“Why would anyone be doing this?” David’s father asked.

“The world is full of nuts,” Mr. Harriman said. “This is something like calling up a stranger on the telephone, only this guy uses your doorbell.”

“But how long will he continue bothering us?”

“Who knows?” Mr. Harriman said. “It can go on forever, or he can get tired next week. Who knows?”

“Well,” David’s father said.

“Well,” Mr. Harriman said, and that was that.

That night, David’s father slept on a blanket in the entrance hall, and the doorbell didn’t ring. The next night, he slept in the bedroom, and the doorbell rang at two o’clock. The night after that, he slept in the bedroom again, but this time the doorbell didn’t ring. At breakfast the next morning, he told David’s mother there was no way to figure this damn thing out, but that night he slept just inside the entrance door again. David woke up with a nightmare at about one o’clock, and went into his mother’s bedroom. He climbed into bed with her, and she held him in her arms and said, “What is it, darling?”

“I’m afraid,” David said.

“Of what?”

“That he’ll get Daddy.”

“No one’s going to get Daddy.”

“Suppose Daddy opens the door, and he’s standing there? Suppose he kills Daddy?”

“No one’s going to kill Daddy. Daddy is very strong.”

“Suppose. What would we do?”

“Don’t worry about it. Nothing’s going to happen to Daddy.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to Daddy.”

She put him back in his own bed in a little while and he lay there and looked at his watch and wondered if the doorbell would ring that night. He was just falling asleep again when it went off. It went off with a long loud ring, and then a short sharp ring but by that time his father was on his feet, making a lot of noise and unlocking the door as quickly as he could and throwing the door open and running into the hallway. David lay in bed with his heart beating faster and faster, waiting for his father to come back. At last, he heard him close the door, and walk through the apartment to the bedroom.

“Did you see him?” David’s mother asked.

“No. But I heard a door slamming.”

“What do you mean?”

“As I was unlocking our door, just after the ringing, I heard a door slamming someplace.”

“Probably the door leading to the service steps.”

“Yes,” David’s father said. He paused. “Where’s David? Is he asleep?”

“Yes. He had a bad dream a little while ago.”

“Poor kid. What shall I do, honey? Do you think our friend’ll be back tonight?”

“I doubt it,” David’s mother said, and paused. Her voice through the bedroom wall sounded very funny when she spoke again. “Come here,” she said.

That night was the last time the doorbell rang.

What had happened, David supposed, was that his father had frightened the intruder away. He had jumped to his feet at the first long ring and was already unlocking the door by the time the intruder had pressed the bell the second time, which was probably why the second ring had been so short. The intruder must have realized a trap had been set, so he ran for the service steps just as David’s father unlocked the door. That was probably the sound his father had heard, the service steps door slamming behind the intruder as he ran away. David’s father didn’t get to see anyone by the time he rushed into the hallway, but he certainly must have scared whoever had been ringing the bell because that was the end of it.

In September, school started and Helga came back from Denmark with stories about everything she had done. David began thinking about Paris again only because Helga had just come back from Europe. He would lie in bed each night and think about Paris, and one night he suddenly got the idea. He began laughing, and then stuck his head under the pillow because he didn’t want them to hear him in the bedroom next door. He kept laughing, though, under the pillow. It seemed to him that it would be a great joke. In fact, the more he thought about it, the funnier it seemed. He took his head out from under the pillow and listened. The apartment was very quiet. He threw back the covers, got out of bed, tiptoed to the door of his mother’s bedroom, and peeked in. She was lying with his father’s arms around her, the blanket down over her hip, sort of. David covered his mouth with his hand because he felt another laugh coming on, and then tiptoed to Helga’s bedroom. Her door was closed. He could hear her heavy breathing behind it.

He went to the service door of the apartment.

Carefully, he unlocked the door without making a sound, trying his best not to laugh. Then he opened the door and peeked out into the service alcove. There wasn’t a soul in sight. It seemed to him that he could almost hear the whole building breathing in its sleep. He picked up a milk bottle from where it was standing outside the service door, and used it to prop the door open, and then went out of the service alcove and into the area just outside the elevators. He listened to make sure the elevator wasn’t coming up, and then he went to the front door.

He almost laughed again.

He listened.

He couldn’t hear anything.

This was going to be a good joke.

He reached out for the doorbell.

He rang the bell once. He heard it ringing inside the apartment. What he was going to do was run right back through the service entrance and then pretend he didn’t know what had happened, if he could keep a straight face. He was only going to ring the bell that once, as a joke. But somehow, standing there in the hallway with the building asleep all around him, he rang the bell again. And then, he didn’t know why, he rang it again. And again. As he rang it, he could remember the phone ringing each morning at eight o’clock in the Raphael, and running into his mother’s bedroom and climbing into her bed to ask the concierge Quel temps fait-il? He kept ringing the bell and ringing it. He didn’t even hear the front door when it opened. His father was in pyjamas, his mother was standing beside him in her nightgown.

“David!” she said. “What are you doing?”

David started to smile, half-expecting his mother to laugh, or run her hand over his head. But instead she was looking down at him with a very puzzled look on her face, and he decided not to smile because he had the feeling something terrible was going to happen, though he didn’t know what. He ducked his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

They were all quiet for a few minutes, and then his father said, “Why’d you ring the doorbell, David?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you rang it, didn’t you?” his father said.

“Yes.”

“Well, why?”

“I thought it would be a good joke.”

“A what?” his father said.

“A joke.”

“A joke? After all we went through last month? You thought it would be a joke to...”

“I didn’t do it last month.”

“I know that, but how could you...”

“This is the first time I ever rang it.”

“I know that,” his father said, and the hallway went silent.

“Why did you do it, David?” his mother asked.

He looked up at her, wanting to explain, but a hundred crazy things popped into his head instead. He wanted to say, Mom, do you remember the little stone balcony with the big windows where we used to have our breakfast every morning, do you remember the man who waved and winked at you? He wanted to say, Mom, do you remember the models kissing me at the salons and those two with their brassieres that time, the way you laughed, do you remember? Do you remember driving out to have a picnic lunch by the Loire on Bastille Day, and the wild traffic around the Étoile that night when we drove back into the city, and the fireworks later, do you remember holding my hand on the little stone balcony outside our room?

“Why,” she said again. “Why did you ring the doorbell, David?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You must have had a reason, David,” his mother insisted.

“No, Mom,” he said. “I didn’t have any reason.”

She kept looking at him.

His father sighed then and said, “Well, it’s very late. Let’s all get back to bed.”