The Woman in the Fifth

Nine

A BIG FUCK-OFF apartment near the Pantheon.

Those words came back to me that Sunday evening as I walked up the boulevard Saint-Michel in the direction of the Luxembourg Gardens. I had dressed carefully for the occasion: a black shirt and black pants and a black leather jacket I had bought at that second-hand shop on the faubourg Saint-Martin the previous day. It was a cold night, and the jacket didn’t put up much resistance against the cutting wind. I was around fifteen minutes early, so I stopped in a nearby cafe and ordered a whisky. Not a single malt or some other premium brand. Just a standard Scotch. When the waiter deposited the little bill with the drink and I turned it over and saw that it cost eleven euros, I tried to stop myself from gasping. Eleven euros for a shot of whisky? Welcome to the Sixth.

I would have spent a good hour nursing the whisky and reading the Simenon novel, La neige etait sale, that I had just picked up. But mindful of the seven-thirty cut-off point, I finished the Scotch, placed the necessary money on the table, tried not to think too hard about how eleven euros could buy me a day’s food, and headed off to Lorraine L’Herbert’s salon.

The address was 19 rue Soufflot. Tres haussmannien. You walk around Paris, you see dozens of examples of Baron Haussmann’s architectural left-behinds. This one was no different from the others: a large, formidable building, around six stories tall, with the requisite small baroque flourishes. Only given its location — just down the street from the Pantheon — and its elegant lobby, it was clear that this immeuble haussmannien was also a testament to imposing grand bourgeois values.

Which meant that, even before I had entered Lorraine L’Herbert’s building, I felt shabby and humbled by it.

I punched in the code. The door opened with a click. Inside was a speakerphone. I picked it up and pushed the button marked with her name. It was answered by the American who had vetted me on the phone. Voices could be heard in the background.

‘Name, please … Votre nom, s’il vous plait,’ he said.

I gave it to him.

‘One second, please … un instant …’ Then: ‘Fourth floor left … quatrieme etage gauche.’

The elevator was a small gilded cage. I took it to the top floor. Before it reached four, I could hear the sounds of loud conversation. When the elevator opened, I turned left and rang the bell. The door swung back. A short man dressed in black slacks and a black turtleneck was standing sentry. He had close-cropped hair and carried a stylish stainless-steel clipboard and an expensive pen.

‘Monsieur Ricks?’

I nodded.

‘Henry Montgomery. Madame L’Herbert’s assistant. Your envelope, please.’

I reached into my pocket and pulled it out and handed it over. He checked that my name was — as instructed — printed on its front. Having verified that, he said, ‘Coats in the first room down the corridor to your left, food and drink dans la cuisine. But after you’ve deposited your coat, you must come back here so I can take care of the introduction to Madame. D’accord? ‘

I nodded again — and followed Montgomery’s pointed finger down the corridor. It was a very long corridor, with high ceilings. The walls were white. There was a big abstract canvas — in five sections — that covered much of the wall space. Each panel was a varying shade of green, the outer ones lightish in timbre, the inner ones amalgamating nearblackish hue. From my fifteen-second assessment, it looked like Imitation Klein or Rothko, and was showing its thirty years badly.

But I decided that now was not the moment to proclaim such thoughts at the top of my lungs. Tourette’s hadn’t seized me yet.

Instead, I followed the corridor to the first door. It was already open. It was a small room with a double bed and one of those plastic blow-up chairs that were popular back at the end of the sixties, but now looked like something out of the Paleozoic era. Over the bed (in what I presumed was the guest room) was a big garish nude of a blonde, brassy woman with Medusa-like hair and a multicolored (maybe psychedelic?) menagerie of wild animals and exotic flora sprouting out of her ample bush of pubic hair.

I couldn’t imagine having a decent night’s sleep beneath such a painting. Still, its cheesy Summer of Love garishness did hold my attention. I must have lingered a little too long for Montgomery’s liking, as I heard his voice behind me.

‘Monsieur Ricks … Madame awaits you.’

‘Sorry, I was just …’

I motioned toward the canvas.

‘You approve?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes,’ I lied. ‘Especially as it’s so representative of a certain epoch.’

‘You know the artist?’

‘Peter Max?’

‘Oh, please … he was so commercial.’

And this guy isn’t?

‘So who’s the artist?’

‘Pieter de Klop, bien sur.’

‘Yeah, bien sur.’

‘And you know that Madame was his muse.’

‘That’s Lorraine L’Herbert?’ I asked, hearing the shocked tone in my voice.

‘Yes, that is indeed Madame,’ he said.

He motioned for me to follow him. We walked back down the corridor, then turned left into a large reception room. Like everywhere else I’d seen so far, it had white walls, a high ceiling and bad pop art. This room, however, was also large. Around thirty by twenty. Though it was currently black with people — most of whom seemed to be wearing black (at least, I wasn’t going to stand out from the crowd) — I could see that there were white leather sectional sofas dotted around the place, and a few more blow-up plastic chairs, and two more nude studies of Madame by the same artist. But I was steered away from the paintings by Montgomery. His hand firmly on my shoulder, he spun me around toward a voluminous woman — ample in all physical departments. She was nearly six feet tall, and must have weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds. Her fleshy face was kabuki-like, courtesy of a pancake-based makeup that tinted her near-white, offset by big red-rouged lips. There were gold zodiac symbols dangling from her neck, and every finger had a ring, all of which seemed New Age in design. Her hair — now silver — was braided, and stretched down the length of her back. She was dressed in a kaftan and was holding a glass of champagne. With his hand still on my shoulder Montgomery leaned over and whispered something into Madame’s ear. She immediately burst into life.

‘Well, hey there, Harry.’

Her accent was thickly Southern.

‘Madame L’Herbert …’

‘Now, y’all got to call me Lorraine. You’re some kind of writer … ?’

‘A novelist.’

‘Have I read anything of yours?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘Well, life’s long, hon.’

She quickly scanned the room, and reached out for a guy in his early forties. Black cord jacket, black jeans, black T-shirt, small beard, intense face.

‘Hey, Chet — got someone you should talk to,’ Madame said loudly. Chet came over, eyeing me carefully.

‘Harry, meet Chet. A fellow Yankee. He teaches at the Sorbonne. Harry’s some kind of a writer.’

With that, she left us alone. An awkward moment followed, as it was clear that Chet wasn’t going to make the conversational opener.

‘What subject do you teach?’

‘Linguistical analysis.’

He waited for me to react to this.

‘In French?’ I asked.

‘In French,’ he said.

‘Impressive,’ I said.

‘I suppose so. And you write what?’

‘I’m trying to write a novel …’

‘I see,’ he said, starting to look over my shoulder.

‘I’m hoping to have a first draft done in—’

‘That’s fascinating,’ he said. ‘Nice talking to you.’

And he was gone.

I stood there, feeling truly stupid. Harry’s some kind of a writer. Quite. I looked around. Everyone was engaged in conversation — looking animated and at ease and successful and interesting and everything else that I wasn’t. I decided that alcohol was required. I went into the kitchen. There was a long table on which sat a dozen boxes of ‘cask’ wine in the usual two colors. There were three large pans of half-burnt lasagne and around a dozen baguettes in various states of disrepair. The cheap wine and the semi-scorched food hinted that — whatever about the big fuck-off apartment near the Pantheon and the twenty euro entrance fee — Madame did the ‘salon’ on the cheap. The outlay for the food and drink couldn’t have been more than four hundred. Toss in an extra hundred for staff (there were two young women manning the ‘bar’ and making certain all the paper plates and plastic forks got thrown away), and the weekly outlay was five hundred tops. But there were over a hundred people here tonight, each paying the demanded entrance fee. A little fast math and Madame was netting a fifteen-hundred-euro profit tonight. Say she did forty of these a yeas. A cool sixty grand. And as it was all cash …

So much for Montgomery’s bullshit about shine-or-don’t-getasked-back. The salon was a business.

But, as I quickly noted, it had its habitues. Chet was one of them. So too was a guy named Claude. Short, sad-faced, with sharp features and a black suit with narrow lapels and dark glasses, he looked like a cheap hood from one of Jean-Pierre Melville’s fifties gangster films.

‘What do you do?’ he asked me in English.

‘You know I can speak French.’

‘Ah, but Lorraine prefers if the salon is in English.’

‘But we’re in Paris.’

‘No, monsieur. We are in Madame’s Paris. And in Madame’s Paris, we all speak English.’

‘You’re shitting me.’

‘I shit not. Madame does not speak much in the way of French. Enough to order dinner in a restaurant or scream at the Moroccan femme de menage if her vanity mirror is dusty. Otherwise … rien.’

‘But she’s been living here for … ?’

‘Thirty years.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘Paris is full of anglophones who haven’t bothered to learn the language. And Paris accommodates them — because Paris is very accommodating.’

‘As long as you are white.’

Claude looked at me as if I was insane.

‘Why should such things concern you? This salon … it is a wonderful souk des idees.’

‘And what idees are you peddling, Claude?’

‘I peddle nothing. I am merely a pedagogue. Private French-language lessons. Very reasonable rates. And I will come to your apartment.’ He proffered me a business card. ‘If you are trying to improve your French …’

‘But why improve my French when I can come here and speak English with you?’

He smiled tightly.

‘Very droll, monsieur. And what is your profession?’

I told him. He rolled his eyes and gestured to the crowd in front of us.

‘Everyone is a writer here. They all talk of a book they are trying to write …’

Then he drifted off.

Claude did have a point. I met at least four other wouldbe writers. Then there was the super-cocky guy from Chicago (I have never met a reserved, modest Chicagoan) in his early forties who taught ‘media studies’ at Northwestern, and had just published his first novel with some obscurantist press (but — he told me — it had still merited a short mention in the New York Times Book Review) and was spending a year in Paris on some sort of fellowship, and went off into this extended monologue about how, in ‘decades to come’, we’d all be recognized as a new ‘lost generation’, fleeing the oppressive conformism of the Bush years, blah, blah, blah … to which I could only say … in a deadpan voice, ‘Yes, we are the totally lost generation.’

‘Are you being sarcastic?’ he asked.

‘What makes you think that?’

He walked away.

I started to drink heavily. I picked up a glass of the red cask wine. It tasted rough, but I still downed three of them in rapid succession. It didn’t do wonders for my stomach — vinegar never does — but it did give me the necessary Dutch courage to continue mingling. I decided to try my luck with any available woman who crossed my path and didn’t have the sort of face that would frighten domestic animals. So I got talking to Jackie — a divorcee from Sacramento (‘It’s a hole, but I won our six-thousand-foot ranch house from Howard in the settlement, and I’ve got a little PR firm there that handles the state legislature, and Lake Tahoe isn’t far, and I heard about Lorraine’s salon in a guidebook — the place where all the Parisian artists commingle every Sunday night — and you say you’re a writer … who publishes you? … oh, right …’). And I got talking with Alison who worked as a business journalist with Reuters — a large, flirty Brit who told me that she hated her job, but loved living in Paris (‘Because it’s not bloody Birmingham, where I grew up’), even though she did find it very lonely. She came to the salon most weeks and had made some friends here, but had still not found that ‘special friend’ she’d been looking for.

‘It’s all because I’m too possessive,’ she said.

‘You think that?’

‘That’s what my last boyfriend told me. I couldn’t let go.’

‘Was he right?’

‘His wife certainly thought so. When he wouldn’t marry me — even though he promised twice that he was going to leave her for me — I waited outside his apartment in Passy all weekend. Then, when he still wouldn’t come out, I smashed the windscreen of his Mercedes with a brick.’

‘That is a little extreme.’

‘That’s what all men say. Because, like him, they’re all cowards … and little shits.’

‘Nice meeting you,’ I said, backing away.

‘That’s right, run off, just like every other coward with a penis.’

I threw back the fourth glass of wine and desperately wanted another, but feared that the mad man-hating Brit might still be at the bar. I looked around the room again. The salon’s volume was reaching high pitch now. Everyone seemed to be talking with strange animation. All I could feel was mounting despair — for the artificiality of this set-up, for the shrieking Southern Belle voice of Madame which towered over the amassed hubbub, for the undercurrent of sadness which was so prevalent in every conversation I’d had, and for my own pervasive awkwardness. Here was proof (as if it was needed) that my isolated weeks in Paris had turned me into a real Oblomov — inept when it came to social niceties or even managing to sustain a simple dialogue with someone else. I hated it here — not just because it was a sham, but because it also exposed everything I hated about myself.

Feeling just a little tight, I decided that some air was needed. So I headed out of the kitchen, weaving my way through the throng in the living room, making a beeline for the balcony.

It was a clear, cold night. No stars, but a full moon over Paris. The balcony was long and narrow. I went to the edge of it, put my glass down on the top of the balustrade, and breathed deeply — hoping the winter chill would muffle the buzz in my head. But instead the night air just seemed to deepen my lightheadedness; the sense that there was something faintly illusory about this salon, this balcony, this amazing fuck-off view. I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t yet nine. I wondered if I could catch a screening of something around nine thirty at the Accatone or any of the half-dozen other cinemas located within five minutes from here. But if I did make a film that let out at 11.30 p.m., I’d be cutting it very fine to get to work by midnight. And I didn’t want to risk not getting to work on time, just in case this was the first night when a visitor for Monsieur Monde showed up right after twelve, and word would get back to Mr Beard and the Boss that I had been negligent, and they might decide to let me go, and then I’d be back to square one in this city, and … shit … look at that view of the Pantheon from here …

‘I’m certain you’re thinking, “I merit an apartment like this.”’

The voice caught me by surprise. It was a woman’s voice — low, slightly husky, and emanating from a far corner of the balcony. I looked over. I saw a figure silhouetted in this dark nook, her figure outlined in shadow, the red ember of a cigarette lighting up the darkness.

‘You can’t know what I’m thinking.’

‘True — but I can conjecture,’ she said, continuing on in French. ‘And having seen your discomfort during the salon this evening, it is clear you are not at ease here.’

‘You’ve been observing me all evening?’

‘Do not flatter yourself. I have simply caught sight of you, from time to time, looking forlorn. A little-boy-lost who tries to chat up women without success, and then escapes to the balcony, and stares out at the Pantheon and thinks—’

‘Hey, thanks for the searing psychological profile, but if you’ll excuse me I think I’m out of here.’

I started to leave.

‘Do you always react so badly to a little gentle teasing?’

I turned back toward her, but could still only see the outline of her body and the glow of her cigarette.

‘Bizarrely, I find teasing from a total stranger just a little odd.’

‘I think you find teasing from a woman difficult.’

‘Many thanks for another slap in the face.’

‘You see, my point entirely. I make a few passing comments and you are immediately defensive.’

‘Maybe because I don’t like games like this one.’

‘Who is playing a game here?’

‘You are.’

‘That is news to me — as all I think I am doing is engaging in banter … or flirtation, if you want to give it its proper name.’

‘This is your idea of flirtation?’

‘Well, what’s your idea of flirtation? Trying to have a reasonable discussion with a crazy woman like that Alison monster?’

‘ “Monster” is a slight exaggeration.’

‘Oh please, don’t tell me you’re going to defend her after she emasculated you …’

‘She didn’t exactly do that …’

‘It certainly sounded that way to me. “Coward with a penis” isn’t exactly an ego-enhancing—’

‘How did you know she said that?’

‘I was in the kitchen at the time.’

‘I didn’t see you.’

‘That’s because you were so absorbed with that psychotic that you didn’t notice I was standing nearby.’

‘And listening to everything we said?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it was rude to listen into other people’s conversations?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

‘I was being ironic,’ I said.

‘Were you really?’

‘Sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘For making a dumb comment.’

‘Are you always so self-critical?’

‘I suppose I am.’

‘That’s because … let me guess … you have suffered a terrible calamity, and since then you have doubted everything about yourself ?’

Silence. I gripped the balustrade and bit down hard on my lip and wondered, Why am I so damn transparent?

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I obviously said the wrong thing.’

‘No — you scored a direct hit, a bull’s-eye …’

The ember on the cigarette glowed one final time, then fell groundward. As it did, she moved out of the shadows and toward me. The moonlight brought her into focus. She was a woman who had some years ago traversed that threshold marked middle age, but was still bien conservee. Of medium height with thick chestnut-brown hair that was well cut and just touched her shoulders. She was slender to her waist, with just a hint of heft around her thighs. As the light crossed her face, I could see a long-healed scar across her throat … the remnant of some surgical procedure, no doubt. Twenty years ago, men would have called her striking, rather than beautiful. She was still handsome. Her skin, though smooth, had been gently cleaved by a network of lines around her eyes. But rather than diminish her attractiveness, they seemed to enhance it.

‘You have been drinking,’ she said.

‘My, my, you are tres perspicace.’

‘No, I just know a drunken man when I see one.’

‘You want a written confession?’

‘It is not a crime, you know. In fact, I approve of a man who drinks. Especially one who drinks to soften the past.’

‘Booze doesn’t soften the past. It just blots it out … until the next morning. Nothing softens over time. Nothing.’

‘That’s a very Manichean way of looking at the world.’

‘No — it’s a very Manichean way of looking at oneself.’

‘You don’t like yourself very much, do you?’

‘Who the hell are you?’

She smiled an amused smile — her eyes brimming with mischief. And I suddenly wanted to sleep with her.

‘Who am I? I am a woman standing on a balcony in the Sixth arrondissement, looking out at the Pantheon, while talking to an American who has clearly lost his way in life.’

‘May I kiss the hem of your shmatte, Dr Freud?’

She lit up a fresh cigarette, then said, ‘Shmatte. Yiddish.

Are you Jewish?’

‘My mother was.’

‘Then that makes you Jewish. The mother carries the religion and passes it on—’

‘Like the clap.’

‘And the other part of you?’ she asked.

‘Dreary Midwestern Congregationalist.’

‘So you considered your father a dull man?’

‘You ask a lot of questions.’

‘You seem willing to answer them.’

‘I don’t talk much about myself.’

‘All Americans talk about themselves. It’s how they give themselves an identity.’

‘What an original thought.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’

‘So let me guess: you’re a professor of semiotics at the Sorbonne who has written a doctoral thesis on Symbolic Nuance in American Cultural Life …’

‘No,’ she said, ‘but I’m certain your doctoral thesis wasn’t far off that title.’

‘How did you know I was a professor?’

‘Just a hunch. And your field is … ?’

‘Was film studies. I no longer teach.’

‘You lost your job?’

‘Have we met before? Or do you have a file on me?’

Another smile.

‘No to both questions. I’m just “bullshitting around”, as they say in your country.’

‘And what’s the word for “bullshit” in your country?’

‘Two words: buta beszed.’

‘You’re Eastern European?’

‘Bravo. Hungarian.’

‘But your French … it is perfect.’

‘If you have not been born French, your French is never perfect. But after fifty years in Paris, it is serviceable.’

‘Fifty years? You must have been a baby when you arrived here.’

‘Flattery is always pleasant … and utterly transparent. I was seven years old when I arrived here in 1957 … and now I have given away a vital piece of information: my age.’

‘You look wonderful on it.’

‘Now we move from flippant flattery to absurd flattery.’

‘Do you have a problem with that?’ I asked.

She let two of her fingers touch the top of my hand.

‘Not at all,’ she said.

‘Do you have a name?’

‘I do.’

‘And it is … ?’

‘Margit,’ she said, pronouncing it Mar-geet.

‘A last name?’

‘Kadar.’

‘Margit Kadar,’ I said, trying it out. ‘Wasn’t there some Hungarian bigwig named Kadar?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the Communist stooge whom the Soviets put in place to control us. We are not related.’

‘So Kadar is a pretty common name in Hungary?’

‘Not particularly. Do you have a name?’

‘You’re still trying to change the subject.’

‘We’ll get back to me. But not until I know your name.’

I told her, then added, ‘And the H in Harry is not dropped, as every French person does it here.’

‘So you don’t like being called “’arry“. But you do speak very impressive French.’

‘Impressive because I’m American … and everyone assumes that all Americans are ignorant and unworldly?’

‘“All cliches are fundamentally true.”’

‘George Orwell?’

‘Bravo. He was a very popular writer in Hungary, Mr Orwell.’

‘You mean, during the Communist years?’

‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’

‘But if you left in ‘57, you must have escaped all that Stalinist stuff.’

‘Not exactly,’ she said, drawing deeply on her cigarette.

‘By which you mean … ?’

‘Not exactly.’

Her tone was quiet, but sharp. A hint that she didn’t want to continue this line of questioning. So I dropped it and said, ‘The only Hungarian joke I know comes from Billy Wilder. He said, “A Hungarian is the only person in the world who can enter a revolving door behind you and come out first.”’

‘So you really are a professor of film studies.’

‘Was.’

‘And let me guess — you are trying to be a novelist …

like half the people at this absurd salon.’

‘Yes, I’m a would-be writer.’

‘Why call yourself that?’

‘Because I haven’t published anything yet.’

‘Do you write most days of the week?’

‘Every day.’

‘Then you are a writer. Because you write. You actually do it. Which separates the true artist from the poseur.’

I put my hand on top of hers — briefly, but tellingly.

‘Thank you for that.’

She shrugged.

‘Now I’m certain you’re no would-be artist,’ I said, changing the subject.

‘True. I’m not a would-be artist because I am not an artist. I am a translator.’

‘French into Hungarian?’

‘Yes, and Hungarian into French.’

‘Does it keep you busy?’

‘I get by. Back in the seventies and eighties, there was plenty of work … especially as the French couldn’t get enough of modern Hungarian authors … and yes, that probably sounds comic … but one of the few things I have always respected about this society is their cultural curiosity.’

‘“One of the few things” … ?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘So you don’t like it here.’

‘Now I didn’t say that. I just said—’

‘I know what you said. But that hints at a deep antipathy toward this place.’

‘Not antipathy. Ambivalence. And what is wrong with feeling ambivalent toward a country, a spouse, your work, even a good friend?’

‘Are you married?’

‘Now, Harry — think carefully. If I was married, would I be wasting my time at this salon?’

‘Well, if you were unhappily married …’

‘I’d simply have a lover.’

‘Do you have a lover?’

‘I might … if he plays his cards right.’

I felt myself tighten. I met her smile and put my hand back on top of hers. She immediately pulled hers away.

‘What makes you think I was talking about you?’

‘Pure arrogance.’

‘Nice reply,’ she said, and now put her hand on top of mine.

‘So you definitely don’t have a husband?’

‘Why do you need to know that?’

‘Idle curiosity.’

‘I had a husband.’

‘What happened?’

‘That’s a somewhat involved story.’

‘Children?’

‘I had a daughter.’

‘I see.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t see. No one can ever see that.’

Silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like to …’

She put a finger to my lips. I kissed the finger. Several times. But when I started moving down her hand, she gently pushed me away.

‘Not yet,’ she whispered. ‘Not yet.’

‘OK,’ I whispered back.

‘So when did your wife divorce you?’

‘Talk about a mood-breaking question …’

‘You asked if I had a husband, a child. I think that gives me the right to ask you …’

‘She left me a few months ago. The divorce is in the works.’

‘And you have how many children?’

‘How do you know that I have kids?’

‘It’s the way you looked at me when you found out that I had lost my daughter. I knew immediately that you were a father.’

‘You never get over it, do you?’ I asked.

‘Never,’ she whispered.

Then she turned and pulled me toward her. Within an instant, we were all over each other. I had my thigh between her legs, and my hand on one buttock as she unbuttoned my shirt and grabbed my chest. We fell up against the wall. Her free hand was now up against my crotch, my penis so hard it strained against the zip of my pants. But when I moved my hand up her dress, she suddenly disengaged, her hands dropping to one side as she sidestepped away from me.

‘Not here,’ she whispered.

I came close again and gently kissed her on the lips, my hands away from her, even though I so wanted to hold her again.

‘Then where?’ I asked.

‘I live nearby … but not tonight.’

‘Don’t tell me you have another appointment?’

‘Just things to do.’

I glanced at my watch. It was just nine thirty.

‘I wouldn’t have been able to do tonight anyway. I go to work at midnight.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I’m a night watchman.’

‘I see,’ she said, reaching into her purse for another cigarette.

‘It’s just to pay some bills.’

‘Well, I didn’t think you did it for intellectual stimulation. What exactly are you watching over?’

‘A fur warehouse,’ I said, knowing that there was one around the corner from me on the rue du Faubourg Poissioniere.

‘And how did you land such an unusual post?’

‘That’s a long story.’

‘They always are,’ she said, igniting the cigarette with a small, old-fashioned lighter. ‘Where do you live?’

‘The Tenth.’

‘Some bobo loft on the canal Saint-Martin?’

‘If I’m doing a night watchman’s job …’

‘And if you are guarding a furrier’s, then it must be somewhere near the rue des Petites Ecuries.’

‘That’s the rue running parallel to my own.’

‘Rue de Paradis?’

‘I’m impressed.’

‘After forty-five years of non-stop residence in a city, you don’t simply know … you start to haunt it.’

‘Or it haunts you?’

‘Precisely. Do you have a ligne fixe ?’

‘No.’

‘So you live in a chambre de bonne ?’

‘You are a quick study.’

‘If you don’t have a ligne fixe, you are generally hard up. But everyone has a portable these days.’

‘Except me.’

‘And me.’

‘A fellow Luddite?’

‘I simply don’t see the need to be contactable at all times. But if you do want to contact me …’

She reached into her purse, pulled out a card and handed it to me. It read:

Margit Kadar Traductrice 13 rue Linne 75005 Paris 01.43.44.55.21

‘Mornings are bad for me,’ she said. ‘I sleep until the middle of the afternoon. Any time after five p.m. is good. Like you, I start work at midnight.’

‘It’s the best time of the day to write, n’est-ce pas?’

‘You write, I translate. And you know what they say about translation: it’s about rendering morning words into evening words.’

‘I will call,’ I said.

‘I look forward to it.’

I leaned forward, wanting to kiss her again. But she put a hand up between us.

‘A bientot …’ she said.

‘A bientot.’

And she turned and walked back inside.

I stood on the balcony alone for a long time, oblivious to the night air, the gusting wind, still lost in the strange and extraordinary encounter that had just taken place. I tried to remember a previous time in my life when I’d met a woman and was locked in a crazed embrace with her only a few minutes after first saying hello. I knew the answer to that question: this was a first for me. In the past, the sex always arrived a few dates afterward. I was never someone who could ever make a bold move. Too cautious, too circumspect. Until …

No, don’t bring that up again. Not tonight. Not after what just transpired.

Montgomery suddenly walked on to the balcony.

‘Hiding out here?’

‘That’s right.’

‘We do like our guests to mingle, you know.’

‘I was talking with someone out here,’ I said, hating myself for being defensive. ‘She just left.’

‘I saw no one leave.’

‘Do you watch every corner of the apartment?’

‘Absolutely. Coming back inside?’

‘I have to go.’

‘So soon?’

‘That’s right.’

He noticed the card in my hand.

‘Meet someone nice?’ he asked.

I immediately slipped Margit’s card into the pocket of my shirt.

‘Maybe.’

‘You must say goodbye to Madame before you go.’

That wasn’t a request, but a directive.

‘Lead the way.’

Madame was standing in front of one of her nude triptychs — with arms of war sprouting out of her vagina, only to be enveloped by Eden-like flora and fauna. It was beyond stupid. She was holding an empty glass and looked decidedly tipsy … not that I was one to talk.

‘Mr Ricks must leave us,’ Montgomery said.

‘Mais la nuit ne fait que commencer,’ she said, and started to giggle.

‘I write at night, so …’

‘Dedication to one’s art. It is so admirable, isn’t it, Montgomery?’

‘So admirable,’ he said tonelessly.

‘Well, hon, I hope you had a fabulous time.’

‘Yeah, fabulous,’ I said.

‘And remember: if you need company on a Sunday night, we’re always here.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘And I just can’t wait to read that book of yours.’

‘Nor can I.’

‘Monty, he’s so witty! We must have him back.’

‘Yes, we must.’

‘And hon,’ she said, pulling me close to her, ‘I can tell you’re a real ladykiller, a total dragueur.’

‘Not really.’

‘Oh, please. You’ve got that vulnerable-lonely-artist thing going which women just love.’

As she said that, I could feel her fleshy fingers slide into mine.

‘You lonely, hon?’

I gently disengaged my hand from hers. I said, ‘Thank you again for a very interesting evening.’

‘You’ve got someone, don’t you?’ she asked, sounding sour.

I thought of the card in my breast pocket.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I do.’