Due Preparations for the Plague
Page 14
“I have been told so,” he says, and she laughs again. “You are making fun of me,” he protests.
“I’m told the French have no sense of humor whatsoever. They are incapable of laughing at themselves.”
“This is what the English mistakenly believe,” he says gravely, “because les doubles sens in French are too intricate for English speakers to understand. The French have beaucoup d’esprit.”
“So I have been told,” she says. “By many French people. The English have jokes, but the French have wit and linguistic finesse.”
“Wit and finesse, yes. Your French is very good.”
“You’re being kind. But I’m improving. I’ve been living in Paris for two months.”
“Vraiment? You are not a tourist? Why are you living here?”
“I teach English to French businessmen for Berlitz. But I’m also a travel writer. That’s why other travel writers interest me, especially the history of travel writing.”
“My own interests,” he says, “are biography and fiction.”
“Travel writing’s both.”
“Comment?” he says, startled.
“Travel writing reveals more about the observer than the place observed. In that sense, it’s autobiography, don’t you think? A book like this … it makes me ask myself how many blind spots and how much ignorance I’m exposing every time I write. You know, twenty years from now, when a Frenchman picks up my articles on Paris in some bookstore and kills himself laughing …?”
“A travel writer and a philosopher,” he says, amused. “This is a great coincidence. I am a publisher.”
“Imagine,” she says dryly. “A writer and a publisher in a bookstore, both checking out other people’s books. What a surprise.”
This time, it is he who laughs. “Touché. For someone who is English, you have beaucoup d’esprit.”
“Monsieur,” she says, with mock outrage. “You must never tell an Australian she is English. It offends us to the core of our being.”
“Vraiment? It is like calling a Corsican French?”
“Very similar, I would think.”
“Mademoiselle l’Australienne, enchanté,” he says, taking her hand and bowing over it, mock formal. “Je me présente: Tristan Charron, éditeur.”
“Tristan! What a name for a publisher. You’re not going to believe this, but I’m Genevieve.”
“C’est génial.” He has not let go of her hand and Genevieve marvels that so much sensation, none of it to be trusted, can pass between epidermal layers. “Et aussi un peu provocant, n’est-ce pas?”
“A mismatch, I’d say”—politely, she pulls her hand free—“since both were victims of grand passion, but not for each other.”
“Comment?”
“Tristan and Genevieve, as handed down to us by Chrétien de Troyes. Both doomed. Both victims of passion.”
“Victims!” He is shocked. “Why are the English terrified of passion? Victims? Au contraire. They were gifted for love, Tristan and Genevieve. Great love was their destiny.”
“In literature. Love’s usually on a grander scale there.”
“There is a Brasserie Camelot,” he says, “not far from here. Vraiment. We could debate this subject.”
“Camelot ended in ruins,” she parries. She thinks his eyes, and the way he uses them—Frenchmen are so good at this, so practiced—give an unfair edge. “And the thunderbolt of passion wrecked Tristan’s life, so take warning.” She is aware of disconcerting physical reactions in her body: movements of blood, engorgements, liquefactions. She imagines running her tongue over Tristan’s lips. She imagines the taste of him. She is mesmerized by a smudge of birthmark beneath one eye. “This meeting is full of risky omens,” she says flippantly, “but at least you’re not Lancelot, thank God.” The comment pops up like a champagne cork and mortifies her. She busies herself with book spines, runs her finger over titles, pulls out a volume and fans through it. She sees nothing, puts it back, and pulls out another.
“In literature,” he says, “as your Shakespeare has stated so well, the world is well lost for love.”
“Yes, in literature. Madness comes off quite well there too.”
“Ça, c’est l’amour. Divine madness. Tristan drank the love potion and was divinely insanely happy. Love was his destiny.”
“And he and Iseult lived tragically ever after. Are Frenchmen always this—”
“Yes,” he says. “We are.”
She says nervously, too brightly, “Well, if we could find an edition of Chrétien de Troyes in this bookstore, that would spell destiny no doubt, and a pot of gold at the next coup de foudre.”
“Every good bookstore in Paris has at least one edition of Chrétien de Troyes,” he assures her, “and I will certainly find it,” which he does.
“Impressive. Do you always get what you want?”
“Yes,” he says. “I do. It is one of my rules. Listen.” He flips to the tragic romance of Sir Lancelot du Lac, reads a little in Old French, then translates freely into modern French and broken English and franglais. “He is tout à fait comblé by the golden hairs of Genevieve, he is prostré, he has chair de poule—how do you say …?”
She splutters with laughter. “Goose bumps.”
“Yes. He is sick with passion.”
“You see? That’s ridiculous. Sick with passion over hairs in a comb. Can you imagine any man—”
“Yes,” he says. “The French can imagine that without difficulty. L’amour est le destin.”
“Ah, the Mack truck of destiny.” She makes an extravagant Sarah Bernhardt gesture, hand over heart. “If you’re marked, you can’t get out of its way.”
“Mack truck?” he says, puzzled.
“Um … lorry; juggernaut … camion, that’s it … No. That won’t work in French. Um … le poids lourd du Destin.”
“C’est vrai,” he says. “One must celebrate as one surrenders. Voulez-vous une coupe de champagne?”
“What persistence.” She laughs. “Okay, you win.”
And so it begins, from bookstore to brasserie to more bookstores and cafés, a flirtatious friendship between two people who read a lot and argue a lot, and then Tristan invites her to a small publishing party, un cocktail for the launch of a book, and in the middle of the crush of reviewers and writers and hangers-on, hemmed in by gossip, noise, champagne, fizzing currents of sexual invitation, she senses something, she puts a hand to her cheek, she feels heat, she feels a magnetic pull. From across the room, Tristan is looking at her and has been looking for who knows how long, and she experiences vertigo, she reaches out for something to hold onto, and it is Tristan who takes the flute of champagne from her hand and drinks it. “That is a dangerous thing to do,” she says unsteadily, because she is suddenly without edges or definition, and they seem to be down by the Seine near the Pont Marie and she can feel the impress of a mooring ring against her back and then Tristan is carrying her up the stairs of a small hotel on the rue de Birague and they are falling into bed, and then someone is banging on the door and the policeman is saying: “Your flight is boarding now, mademoiselle. You may proceed to Gate 12.”
Genevieve supposes the policeman has escorted her, since here she is at Gate 12 with no recollection of the passage from waiting room to the boarding area. The words of the policemen go around like a stuck record in her head (your lover works in Intelligence … trafficking … espionage) and the little doubts of seven years, all the misgivings, all the mysterious silences and absences that did not quite add up, all the evasions, all the sudden appearances of photographers, all of them coalesce into something towering and menacing, with a gargoyle face.
She stares through the plate-glass window at the plane, seeing nothing.
“Génie,” Tristan says, tapping her on the shoulder.
She startles. “Oh, Tristan, it’s you. I thought it would be the police again.” She can scarcely bear to look at him. “Well, I suppose it is.”
“Tu blagues!”
“I’m flying to New York,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because you are. Because you sent me a fax to say you were coming, but I didn’t get it till a few hours ago.” Their eyes meet at last, warily, and then steadily and intensely. “I’ve been following you for three days.” He puts his hand up to touch her cheek and she covers it with her own. “I bought a ticket for this flight as soon as I read your fax.” He reaches for her other hand, and they stand there, like two children, fingers entwined.
“Why didn’t you meet me in the Hôtel de Sully?”
“In the Sully?”
“In the bookshop.”
“What do you mean?”
“You asked me to meet you there.”
“Wait,” he says. “This is too confusing. Let’s back up a bit. Why are you in Paris?”
“Because you asked me to come.”
“You can hear my wishes?”
“You didn’t fax me?”
“Fax you? How could I fax you?”
“In extremis, the fax said. Please come at once. Signed, Tristan.”
“I never even know which country you’re in. You vanished. No forwarding address, no phone number. That was so cruel, Génie, so unnecessary—”
“Swear to me that you didn’t fax me.”
“I swear by this”—on instinct, reckless, he kisses her, a long, hungry, tongue-in-mouth kiss—“that I did not fax you.” He kisses her again. “If I did have your number, I would fax you and phone you every day.”
Her head is against his chest. She comes just to his shoulder. “Tristan,” she says, looking up at him. “Please don’t lie to me. For God’s sake, give me that. Don’t lie to me.”
“I swear by every time we made love that I’m not lying.”
“The police claim you’re involved in espionage, and trafficking on the side.”
“What? Trafficking! That’s bullshit.” He laughs. “Trafficking in manuscripts, they mean. I got caught in Prague last week trying to smuggle a manuscript out. I guess the cops here must have informers in Prague.”
“And espionage?”
“Only if that’s what meeting Czech writers is. And I didn’t fax you.”
“Then who did? Who knows us well enough to know I’d drop everything and fly to Paris? I mean, if you said it that way: I’m in extremis.”
“No one does.”
“Someone does. Someone who knew us when we lived together. Françoise, for example?”
He frowns. “She probably saw that card you sent with the lamp. She used to go through my pockets.” He opens his wallet and pulls out a grubby and dog-eared scrap of parchment. Génie reads her own faded handwriting: Simply say I am in extremis while rubbing the lamp, and abracadabra: Génie appears. “See?” Tristan says. “Still got it. Carry it with me like a talisman.” He grins at her. “Rubbed it in the prison cell in Prague, and look what’s happened.”
“Françoise used to go through your pockets?”
“Yes, but we haven’t had contact for years.”
Over the address system, rows fifty and higher are summoned for boarding.
“What’s your seat number?” Tristan asks.
“11A.”
“Mine’s 29B. I think the flight’s full. When I bought my ticket there were hardly any seats left, and those would have gone to the standbys. But maybe we can change places with someone.”
“After takeoff, maybe.”
“Excuse me,” a young woman with a camera says, nudging them aside. “I wonder if you’d mind moving …?” The young woman presses the shutter once, twice, recording for history the family about to board the plane: a father, a mother with a baby, a little girl with a teddy bear. The child, who is wearing a blue coat with a blue velvet collar, waves to Genevieve and Genevieve waves back. “Hi, Samantha.”
“You know them?” Tristan asks sharply.
“I don’t know them. I saw them in the coffee shop.”
“The woman with the camera,” Tristan says. “I’ve seen her before. I think she lives with Françoise. Shares her apartment, I mean.”
Genevieve’s eyebrows lift. “So you do stay in touch with Françoise?”
“No. God, no. I bumped into her a few weeks ago, and she was with that American woman.”
“You bump into each other often?”
“No. Hardly ever.” He frowns. “But Françoise …” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. She never wanted to let go. I’m sure she moved into that apartment on Avenue des Gobelins because you were in the same building. It’s the kind of thing she would do.”
“Could she have kept track of me?”
“You used to give her the key to your apartment.”
“To water the plants, yes, when I was traveling, but that’s centuries ago.” She thinks about it. “She could have found the Wandering Earthling’s address—”
“They won’t give out any information on their writers,” Tristan says. “I tried that myself. No luck.”
“But you tried?”
“What do you think? I went crazy.”
“You’d given me very clear marching orders.”
“You had to know I didn’t mean it. Not literally.”
“I’m not the type who sits around waiting to be dismissed.”
“I nearly went berserk.”
“I was pretty miserable myself.”
“If you’d called … if you’d sent a postcard, even …”
“I had to protect myself.”
“That was so wrong, what you did. You should never have left.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time wishing I hadn’t. But you tried to clip my wings, Tristan, and I can’t … I just can’t … Clip them? What am I saying? You tried to cut them off.”
“I know, I know, I was stupid, con et fou à la fois. But I’ve learned my lesson.” He puts his hand on his heart. “I swear to God. Couldn’t we start over?”
“Perhaps we could.”
Five minutes later, when their rows are called, they are still hand in hand. The stewardess who checks their boarding passes is flustered. “We’re way behind schedule,” she explains, “because of all the extra security.”
“What’s the reason?”
“They never tell us anything. Usually turns out to be some crank bomb threat, but we don’t want them taking chances, do we? At least this way, you may miss a connection, but you know you’re safe.”
At Row 11, Génie kisses him. “After takeoff,” she says, “I’ll sweet-talk my neighbor into switching.”
But the man who arrives to occupy 11B does not look promising.
He arrives late, after almost everyone else has boarded.
“Hi,” Genevieve says. “Were you held up for interrogation too?” He ignores her so completely that she supposes he is deaf. He has no carry-on luggage at all. He concentrates on buckling his seat belt, his left arm across the armrest, invading her space. He is a short, stocky man with tanned skin, a shock of dark hair in his eyes, a good-looking man. A hum of intensity—of concentration, of impatience, of nervousness perhaps, or maybe anger—comes off him. He looks vaguely familiar, and Genevieve wonders if he might be a football player, one of the Algerian bleus, or from the Marseilles team, perhaps? She thinks she must have seen him on television or in the newspaper.
She tries again. “Did they make you check your hand baggage in?” And then he looks at her. Fully. Intently. She could almost say he attacks her with his eyes, his expression cold to the point of hostility. Genevieve flinches. He waits, saying nothing, and she wonders if his rudeness has been intentional, or if he simply does not understand.
“Vous avez dû enregistrer vos bagages á mains?” she tries. He does smile then, but in a way that makes Genevieve’s heart lurch like an elevator whose cable has been sliced through. The smile is macho, backlit with an innuendo of violence. He is Egyptian, perhaps? Algerian? Saud
i? About forty, she thinks. He holds her gaze for seconds too long, and then suddenly the sense of threat vanishes and he is charming, full of warmth and remorse. He touches Genevieve’s arm. “Forgive me,” he says, in excellent English. His accent is British. “I’ve been preoccupied. My taxi was caught in a traffic jam and I thought I would miss the flight.”
“Did you go to school in England?” she asks, curious.
He laughs. “England. Riyadh. Paris. New York. I’m a nomad, like you.”
She is startled. “Like me? What makes you say that?”
“Just guessing. But I’m highly intuitive. You speak English, but your French is very good. Therefore you travel.”
“Very perceptive. I’m a travel writer. And I lived in Paris for a couple of years.”
He says, “So did I. For quite a few years.”
“Where do you live now?”
“Oh, here and there.”
“What do you do?”
“Import, export. I represent my clients’ interests in foreign countries.”
“I’m Genevieve, by the way.”
“Mohammad.”
Perhaps she has seen him in the business pages. “Would I have seen your picture in a newspaper?”
“Possibly.” A smile plays about his lips. He is pleased to be recognized; no, it is more than that, she decides. He is both amused and delighted by the fact. He gives the impression of enjoying a private joke. “I’ve been on TV,” he says.
“I thought so. I knew I’d seen you somewhere.”
They lapse into magazines and silence during takeoff and for twenty minutes thereafter, but when the flight attendants distribute pretzels and drinks, she ventures, “Could I ask a favor?”
Again, momentarily, his smile and his eyes—basilisk, that is the word, she thinks—cause a stab of uneasiness, but the coldness is fleeting, he is charming, he is solicitous, he touches her wrist, and she doubts her own earlier perception. She feels confused.
“Yes?” he says.
“I have a friend sitting farther back. We haven’t seen each other for years and we were wondering—”
They are interrupted by the flight attendant and when Mohammad passes her the Bloody Mary she has ordered, his sleeve rides up on his forearm and she sees the S tattooed on his wrist. A fugitive memory alights, quivers, vanishes again, hovers half seen on the other side of a filmy curtain, and extinguishes itself. She has seen that tattoo before. She knows it, though no context presents itself. The sensation is maddening. The sensation has the smell of slept-in sheets and of dreams going out with the tide. It is like trying to hold onto the skein of a sleep in which crucial revelations have occurred. One wakes into the awareness, the certainty, of momentous truths just unfolded, but what? But what are they? They seep into morning and no amount of clutching at the bedding will make them stay.