A Fine Passage

by France Daigle

  The merchant reappears, regains his position behind the sort of desk. He spreads the diamond bag carefully over the surface and sits down. Once seated, he places his elbows on the not-quite desk, pressing his hands together, as though in prayer but somewhat more loosely, without the fervour of prayer. He exhales in short bursts on the tips of his fingers, which touch the centre of his lips.

  Ever since she mailed it, Claudia can’t stop thinking about the letter the man who’d shown no sign of reading entrusted to her.

  “You look worried. Something wrong?”

  “I guess I can’t wait to go home. I’m not doing much of anything here.”

  Claudia knows she can say this sort of thing to her mother without offending her.

  “Too bad we didn’t have more free time, but your father is so busy.”

  “He looks tired.”

  The mother pauses a moment before replying.

  “I hurt him badly recently.”

  This confession surprises Claudia.

  “I was intending to tell you the whole story, but I haven’t had the nerve. Now time is pressuring me.”

  The mother pauses again, finds the courage to continue.

  “I’m not sure that I still love him.”

  Another pause.

  “To tell the truth, I think I’ve tried my best. But I can’t go on any more. It’s beyond me.”

  The mother pauses once more, then realizes there’s nothing more to say.

  “It’s awful, I know.”

  And though she recognizes that this is an ideal moment to embrace her daughter, to reassure her, the mother can’t quite bring herself to do it. She fears the worst. She fears that love no longer reassures at all.

  The diamond merchant’s slow pace is beginning to intrigue Hans. The man leafs through his reference book again, goes over a calculation, turns his gaze once more upon the six small diamonds. Hans thinks maybe he should have thrown the diamonds off the bridge yesterday. Because he did indeed walk across the Golden Gate on a Tuesday. He even stopped awhile along the railing, and he admired the gentle roiling of the sea at the bay’s entrance.

  “They’re perfect. Exquisite, even. I can’t pay you what they’re worth, but I would very much like to have them. For a jeweller friend of mine. He’s terribly talented, but to tell the truth, it’s a talent he can’t afford. Life is strange, isn’t it?”

  With this question, which is really an affirmation, the diamond merchant extends his arm almost lazily to reach a ring binder on the shelf, then brings it down, places it before Hans, and begins to turn the pages. It contains a series of photographs of original works of jewellery combining an infinite variety of metals and stones, the curves and lines of which create highly uncommon effects, as though the stones were floating or suspended in air.

  “Jewellery looks larger in photos. This one, for example, is hardly bigger than a dime.”

  Having pointed out the jewel in question, the diamond merchant continues to turn the pages of the binder.

  “He’s an odd bird, really. He lives — I should say survives — in a small village in northern Italy. But at heart, he’s a vagabond.”

  The man extends a hand, picks up a postcard, rereads it in silence, smiles at something, places the card on the not-quite desk.

  “Avignon.”

  Hans turns the pages of the binder himself.

  “Me, I’m a businessman. But I admire him because he couldn’t care less about business.”

  The man interrupts Hans’s mechanical page-turning and leafs back to a page at the end of the binder.

  “He gave this piece to a young girl who one day offered to carry an old woman’s groceries up the steep hills of her village to her house. Just like that. Gave it away. He could have sold it for three or four thousand dollars.”

  Staring at the piece in question, Hans imagines first the old lady, then the young girl, then the steep hills of the village. He goes back to those pages of the binder he hasn’t yet examined.

  “Sometimes he sells one. He has no choice. From time to time, I provide him with some material. You see, he’s a genius.”

  Terry enters the boulangerie. He’s beginning to feel at home here. They greet him like an old customer.

  “Baguette and chocolatine for monsieur ?”

  The large dolled-up woman has already begun to prepare the order. There’s little danger of her making a mistake, since Terry has been buying exactly the same thing every morning for a week now.

  As he leaves the bakery, Terry decides to stop for a quick coffee. He knows that Carmen is sleeping comfortably and decides she will appreciate the few additional minutes.

  Standing at the counter, Terry feels someone tap him on the shoulder. He turns to see a face that is not entirely unfamiliar, but that he can’t quite place.

  “This is the third time our paths have crossed. Your girlfriend, or wife, was throwing up in the washroom on the airplane. She seems to be feeling better.”

  “Yes. She’s preggers.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Now Terry remembers the man.

  “A few days ago, I saw the two of you sitting at a terrace not far from here. I gather you live nearby? I’m staying close by as well.”

  The man who’d shown no sign of reading orders a coffee. Terry finds a thread to continue the conversation.

  “You’re travelling too, then?”

  “Yes. Well . . . something like that.”

  Claudia is packing her bags in her room in her parents’ small apartment. Though she doesn’t feel completely overwhelmed, she realizes that things are no longer as they were. Which is why she concentrates on the immediate present, on one thing at a time. Her mother is seated on the bed.

  “I thought I might go back to the States. I’d like to be near you.”

  Claudia hears this but says nothing. She’s not against the idea; on the other hand, she’s not about to jump for joy.

  “I could find a job. We might even live together.”

  Again, Claudia says nothing.

  “But not necessarily. You’re a big girl. I’d understand if you didn’t feel the need.”

  Claudia still doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing.

  “Your father will stay here, I think. He doesn’t have the strength to do anything else for the moment.”

  Claudia pauses a moment, bent over an open drawer.

  “And where were you?”

  “I know. I wasn’t thinking to be gone so long, but then I ran into that man and we got to yapping.”

  Terry tells Carmen about the man who recognized him in the café.

  “And that would be tonight?”

  “I’m telling you, the fellow’s got a nice way about him.”

  While Carmen considers the proposal, Terry adds: “We’ve nothing to lose.”

  “Don’t know. It’s a bit weird, don’t you think?”

  “Not all that much. I mean, it’s only for supper. And we’re in Paris now, aren’t we? It’s not like we’re in some backwoods place.”

  “Not so sure I can wait until eight o’clock to eat. You know how it is.”

  “Well, he says he’s going there for supper anyhow, so we’ve only to join him if we feel like it.”

  “Will he be paying, then?”

  “Sounded that way.”

  Carmen looks about ready to accept.

  “Well, we ought to go by the restaurant during the day, just to make sure it’s not some dive.”

  The woman who smokes only in public is not sure how it happened, but she no longer feels helpless. She’s even confident that things will work out. And yet, she’s decided nothing, made no plan. She’s simply continuing to live.

  “You’ve seen your doctor?”

 
“No. Why?”

  “You look better. I thought perhaps you’d followed my advice.”

  “No. I just feel better, that’s all.”

  The friend who’d tried so hard to lift the spirits of the woman who smokes only in public remains sceptical.

  “I accept. That’s all.”

  “You accept.”

  “That’s right. I accept.”

  “But what exactly do you accept?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything.”

  “Yes. Everything.”

  The friend finds the woman facing her evasive, or simplistic.

  “You accept to forget?”

  “Not in the least!”

  The friend is slightly uncomfortable. She gazes out the café window, sees the people hurrying, hopes to reground the conversation by saying something banal.

  “You’re not smoking today?”

  “Oh, right. I almost forgot.”

  The friend, now completely bewildered, can only laugh.

  “That’s it. I’ve stepped through the looking glass.”

  Hans accepted the diamond merchant’s offer and went home. Lying on his bed, he thinks again about his walk across the bridge. He saw no one throw themself off, but at one point, he thought another pedestrian was looking at him strangely. Perhaps the man thought that he, Hans, would take the plunge. Something he considered, of course.

  Hans gets up, approaches the puzzle. His eye falls on a piece that he has been looking for these past few days. He snaps the piece into place, finds another and another; the pieces come forward themselves, fall into place. The jigsaw puzzle has become a mere game, something has moved.

  The days pass; a kind of lethargy has set in. Life on earth seems farther and farther away, vaporous. I move more easily among the precise suicides. I seem to fit here among them after all. I’m even getting used to the idea that compared with some of you, I really did choose to die; that in relation to some of you, there was no other choice. Suicide may not be as exact a gesture as I originally thought. I thought I wanted to live. Even here, I continued to cling to the idea of living. But with time, such convictions diminish. Both reality and one’s point of view change. Or rather, they come together.

  I would like to offer you loftier, more reassuring thoughts. I would like to comfort you in your truths. But the hours grow calm here, increasingly calm. I think I am really dying.

  Claudia snaps one of her suitcases shut.

  “It’s not so bad, really.”

  Her mother hears but does not react. She has ceased waiting for her daughter to speak.

  “Joy is still possible. We only have to know how to find it. Let’s go to the restaurant, all three of us. I’ll finish packing tomorrow before leaving.”

  Claudia does not wait for her mother’s reply before calling her father, who appears in the doorway.

  “Are you coming to the restaurant with us?”

  The father looks first at the mother, then at the daughter. He’s not sure he understands.

  “And put on your good shirt. Afterwards, maybe we’ll go dancing.”

  The father looks again at the mother and the daughter, shrugs, and submits without further entreaties.

  Hans’s skill with the puzzle that afternoon was so great that he almost forgot his appointment.

  “You have been freed, relieved of something. Something has fallen away from you like a crust. Things can now come through to you, reach you. The obstruction is gone. And something more. You’ve become a pole, a focus of attention. Your jigsaw puzzle is progressing now, isn’t it? The pieces just pop up before your eyes, don’t they?”

  Once again, the woman with the chewed-up fingers does not wait for a reply. She swivels in her chair, turns towards the Bay window.

  “Some afflictions dissipate of themselves. And in resolving themselves, they teach us things. Our bodies register all this. Our bodies know everything. Everything.”

  The woman turns back to Hans.

  “You’ve no further need to come here. You’re free. You will always make the right choices.”

  When it comes time to pay, the woman again refuses Hans’s money.

  “No. You still need it. One day, very soon, when it’s really of no use to you, you’ll have no difficulty finding someone to give it to. Go. Be happy.”

  That evening, engrossed in his puzzle, which takes shape before his eyes, Hans is convinced that he began to make the right choices the day he decided to sell all his belongings and take to the road.

  Terry and Carmen do their best to chat with the man who’d shown no sign of reading. The restaurant is packed, the decor charming, the wine exquisite.

  “The Rhone delta?”

  “Yup. We’re thinking we ought to begin from Lyons.”

  “When?”

  “Depends. We’re in no rush. And what about you? Where is it you’re going, then?”

  Carmen is amused. Terry looks so serious. As though he is trying to be a real grown-up. She feels like taking the girl’s part.

  “I was supposed to go to Israel, but I don’t feel like it any more. That’s how I travel, without any particular goal. It can sometimes be a bit boring, but I enjoy thinking through it afterwards, when it’s over.”

  “And where is it you’re from?”

  The waiter arrives with the main course before the man can reply. Terry and Carmen are impressed by the lovely arrangement of the food on the plates. The question, momentarily forgotten, is raised again later.

  “My things are in Baltimore. With a woman I love.”

  Whatever idea Terry had of Baltimore, it is severely shaken at that moment. Carmen, for her part, struggles to conciliate the practices of roaming and love. A few moments of silence pass before the next question.

  “What is it you do in your travels?”

  The man notes the somewhat baroque formulation.

  “I’m a painter, or ex-painter. I don’t know any more.”

  “Really?”

  Terry and Carmen would have liked the man to elaborate, but nothing follows. Terry therefore once again takes up the harness.

  “I suppose it must be nice to travel that way. With all there is to see, I mean.”

  The man nods his head a bit, to say yes in a way, but mostly no. Then he states flatly: “I needed to be doing nothing special.”

  Terry and Carmen acquiesce, instantly grasping the concept.

  “I admire your wish to see the Rhone delta. It’s been a long time since I had a longing like that, a real, concrete desire. I’m a little odd that way.”

  Terry and Carmen feel a great sympathy for the man, whom they don’t find all that odd. They exchange a glance. Carmen feels joyful; she nods discreet encouragement to Terry to go on.

  “Would you like to come along with us, then? If you’ve nothing else to do . . .”

  The man thanks them for the invitation, saying he can’t accept. But no sooner are the words out of his mouth than he is overcome by a sudden impulse.

  “Actually, yes. I’d like that. I’d love to come.”

  In the restaurant, Claudia’s heart is as light as a feather. She feels as though she has gone, without the slightest confusion, from being a young girl to becoming a young woman. It happened smoothly, in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. She knows now that she needs her own secrets, and that’s why she wasn’t able to tell her parents everything. What would they have understood of the wanderings of the man who’d shown no sign of reading? She preferred not to know. From now on, she needs to maintain her own point of view. This evening, dancing in her father’s arms, Claudia, not wishing to precipitate anything, tries very hard to continue to be the young girl she was. Walking towards the table, where her mother sits watching them return from the dance floor, she’s far fr
om sure she has succeeded.

  SATURDAY

  Evaluation

  “DOES HE SEEM a bit cuckoo to you?”

  “Not really. Seems nice to me. You’d think he was one of us.”

  “That’s true. I know exactly what you mean. He doesn’t yap on and on about everything and anything.”

  The man who’d shown no sign of reading has left the compartment to get some coffee.

  “How long do you suppose he’ll stick around with us, then?”

  Terry shrugs. “His bag’s not very big, is it?”

  “I like his coat. That’s the sort you ought to have.”

  Terry looks at the coat hanging on a hook.

  “Looks long to me.”

  Carmen grabs a tail between her fingers, rubs the cloth lightly. She gets up and reads the label inside the collar.

  “Just what I was thinking. Cashmere.”

  Carmen sits back down, takes Terry’s hand in hers, and inhales a deep, happy breath as she watches the scenery flow by.

  “It’s exciting, though, wouldn’t you say?”

  Hans whistles softly as he takes his time fitting the final bits into the puzzle. Fewer than two dozen pieces lie close at hand. They are coloured blue, grey, and green, and they make up the sky in the top right-hand corner of the image. Since his last appointment with the woman with the chewed-up cuticles, he has devoted virtually all of his waking time to the puzzle. He no longer knows if he is completing it for the sake of pleasure or simply to be done with it. He feels that he has already moved on to something else. The time spent fitting all the pieces together has nevertheless allowed him to think, to let his mind wander. He’s watched hundreds of possibilities flare up brightly, only to let them drift off to their separate fates. One of these, however, has continually resurfaced, and Hans knows very well that it is in this direction that he must act.

  Claudia finishes emptying her suitcases. She put away most of her things the day after she got back, but she didn’t have the heart to eliminate these last traces of her trip.

  “Here, it’s yours. Humour is almost as important as love. I would say the two often go hand in hand.”