The 6:41 to Paris

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London. It’s only normal that I would think about London. The first time I went there was with Cécile Duffaut. I had my discount from the railway, and she’d worked for them, too, the summer before we met, and she’d hardly spent a thing. That was her all over. Thrifty. Everything in moderation. Values you aren’t supposed to appreciate when you’re only twenty — they only gradually turn into values. I still admire people who can blow their entire salary at a casino in one night, or who give up everything to start all over on the other side of the planet. Except that now I know I’ve never been one of those people.

I think I was the one who first mentioned London. I was studying English, but I’d never set foot in England, not even the year I was thirteen for the three-day school trip: two days before we were due to leave I twisted my ankle during basketball practice, and I was left behind, frustrated as hell.

She said yes right away. A discreet little yes, her eyes glued to her shoes, but a definite yes all the same. I remember I was surprised. I thought she’d be one of those girls who’d rather go visiting villages in the Corrèze or the wilds of Provence so they’d be alone with their sweetheart. She added that travel was vitally important to her. So she could broaden her horizons. And take a breather. I listened to her and thought how she was full of surprises.

We were growing up in an era when flying was still the exception, and to wake up in New York or Tokyo would have seemed beyond our reach. Computers were at the experimental stage, and no one could imagine that one day we would no longer need phone booths. On the other hand, the future seemed wide open, and the planet, eternal.

She told me she would like to go to London, too, so we started planning. It was strange to be planning a trip for a whole week with a girl I intended to dump. But it wouldn’t be the first time I’d behaved inconsistently. And the thing that was disturbing about her was that every time I decided I’d tell her enough was enough, she would sidestep me in a way that revealed some hidden part of her personality. She was unpredictable. And that wasn’t a quality I had often encountered. She might be ordinary, but she had nerve. It was refreshing.

It’s horrible to rationalize like this. I’ve never claimed to be an angel. But I do hope I’ve improved over time.

There’s less room for surprise when you’re forty-seven. You’re caught up in a daily grind, a life beyond your control: relationships, divorce, children, work, social life, responsibilities. Only insomnia occasionally sets you free, by revealing the futility of everything you’ve undertaken. But I’m speaking for myself. I don’t know what sort of life she has. Other than that she visits her parents from time to time and that to go home she takes the 6:41 train.

London lingers.

The London from back then. The early ’80s. Nothing very inspiring. The punk era was over, Thatcherism was changing mentalities but hadn’t yet changed the life in the streets, the city was neither here nor there. It was neither the swinging London of the ’60s nor the business and finance showcase it would later become. It was looking for an identity. Maybe that’s why I felt so good there. I used to love London. I saw a documentary last year about the new neighborhoods along the Thames: I didn’t recognize a thing.

Cécile Duffaut’s knee.

There it is again, suddenly.

On a double-decker bus.

We are on the top deck. You can still smoke, on the top deck. The sun, relentlessly beating down on the city. We’re somewhere north of Regent’s Park, headed toward Primrose Hill. We’re on our way back from Camden. She’s leaning her forehead on the window. She’s totally absorbed by the streets, the buildings, the taxis, the bustle.

All I can see is her knee.

Her knee, peeking out from under a red skirt. It’s not a woman’s knee. It’s a little girl’s knee, and it’s easy to picture it with scrapes and Mercurochrome and Band-Aids. The kind of knee that has a special acquaintance with gravel, blacktop, and the curb of the sidewalk. A graceless knee. I’m getting annoyed with this knee. It is a distillation of everything I hate about her: her ordinariness, her lack of polish or refinement. The fact that I feel guilty makes me all the more irritated. I know I’ve been behaving badly over the last few days. This little girl with scraped knees: I’m ruining her life. Her memories. In advance. I’m mad at myself. And the madder I get, the more sure of myself I get. We have to break up. We should have done it a long time ago. I don’t know what came over me. In my memory, her knee is ugly. Lumpy. Knobbly. I wonder what it’s really like.

And now?

I should ask her to show me her knees.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I have to stop thinking about all this stuff. And anyway, she’s asleep, in the same position as on the bus in London. She looks tired. I’ll bet her weekends with her parents are no picnic. I hardly ever see my mother and her bicycle salesman. They’re always gallivanting about. They belong to that generation I’ve begun to despise. The baby boomers who never really knew any hardship. Scarcely any memories of the war — they were born in the middle of it or just afterward, and they grew up with their faith in the evolution of capitalism, an improved standard of living, comfort and health care, and full employment. Together they were marching in step toward a radiant future made of washing machines and refrigerators. A little bit too old for the unrest in 1968, but they welcomed the cultural and sexual revolutions with open arms. They had their apartment, then their little house, retirement at sixty, a long life expectancy, they have their savings accounts, and now their kids are out of the house and they fly all over the planet and so what if they are destroying the environment. They know everything will go on getting worse after they’re gone— and they don’t give a damn.

My mother and Cycleman spend their weekends in Barcelona or Venice. They sign up for cruises and play Scrabble while they listen to some band playing their favorite hits from the 1960s. They take bus tours to Eastern Europe and exclaim, Oh, how hard it must have been for the East Germans, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Lithuanians, oh my God, how awful, can you imagine — and then they go back to their bargain luxury hotel for dinner and complain because the staff don’t speak French.

I hardly ever see them. The last I heard, Cycleman bought a motorcycle — now that’s a revolution. They’re planning their first trip with their new vehicle, and they can’t make up their minds: Collioure or the Aquitaine?

I can see Mathieu’s back, as if it were yesterday. We’re eighteen years old, almost nineteen. The two of us on his motorcycle. His parents just bought it for him, secondhand. I’m insanely jealous … as far as twowheeled vehicles go, I’ve never progressed any further than the metallic blue Peugeot 103 SP moped that got stolen after only two months, and which my parents refuse to replace. “You’ll just have to use your dad’s old Solex moped instead.” Mathieu is driving fast. He’ll be going to Germany for his military service soon. He dropped out of school. He doesn’t know what to do in life. He’s been thinking of acting, but everyone keeps telling him it’s not really a profession. And recently an amateur theater director told him he didn’t have the looks for the job. He’s too pudgy. Too heavy. He’s at a complete loss. It’s fall. We’re getting lost down country roads, Mathieu and me. It’s an interlude. Nothing seems to matter anymore. I guess that when he comes back from Germany we’ll already be headed in different directions. This is probably the last time we’ll be this close. I’m convinced that something will happen — a puddle of oil, a truck inching into our lane, a collision, a violent crash and then — blackout.

Nothing of the sort.

Of course not.

No one ever warned us that life would be long.

Those easy slogans that make your heart beat faster, like “carpe diem” or “die young”—all that stuff was just nonsense.

No one told us, either, that the hardest thing would not be breaking up, but decay. The disintegration of relationships, people, tastes, bodies, desire. Until you reach a sort of morass where you no longer know what it is you love. Or hate. And it’s not as unpleasant a condition as you might think. It’s just lifelessness. With scattered spots of light. One of them is going to see Mathieu this morning, after so much time has elapsed.

Ah-hah, Cécile Duffaut is sitting up.

Had a bad night, huh?

I know what she must be going through. Life is full of bad nights, once you turn forty. Your children’s health, your own, their future, your own, the litany of work still to be done on the house, the electricity which still needs childproofing, the toilets have been leaking for three months, the vacation rental needs booking, how do you clean the spots made by permanent markers from the table in the living room, the car is making a strange noise when it’s in neutral, above all don’t forget to get gas tomorrow morning otherwise you’re sure to run out, I haven’t read a novel in ages, even though it’s something I used to love, reading novels, I have to fill out the forms for my younger boy’s upcoming school trip, lists, lists, lists, they start filling your nights — you get up, you go down the stairs, it’s three o’clock in the morning, you bump into the furniture, you shiver, you think about making a coffee but what sort of crazy idea is that, a coffee at this time of night, so you go for a citrus herbal tea, you switch on the electric kettle, see your reflection in the mirror with the kettle in one hand and the citrus tea bag in the other, you hardly know who that person is.

But when Cécile Duffaut looks at herself in the mirror, her reflection must give her a bit more of a boost, after all. When we were dating, I’m sure people pictured what we’d be like later on: she’d be a crotchety old maid and I’d be the philandering husband type, with three divorces behind me, but still in great shape. It’s mind-boggling when you find out how little you really know. When I was with Cécile Duffaut, I …

Just the thought of it, “When I was with Cécile Duffaut”: how weird is that.

This is ridiculous. I should introduce myself to her.

Oh, here comes the conductor.