Emerging from my reverie, I found two missed calls and a text message from Julian. And when we met two days later in his flat above the Alsatian brasserie, I outlined the problem to him.
‘Perhaps you should think of writing a book of your own,’ he said.
‘Yes, but what?’ I pushed my hand up through my hair. ‘God, I can’t do a sort of Heroines of the Resistance thing with pictures of pretty girls.’
‘Well. Let’s think. Have a cup of tea. That’s what we do in England when we have to work something out.’ He lifted the pot. ‘Just because such books have been a bit cheap before doesn’t mean to say you couldn’t write a serious one. Something that gave a real feeling of the nature of the experience. Maybe six essays. Or eight, or ten. Pick your most exciting or illustrative cases. See what they say about the nature of patriotism or nationalism or whatever we call it. Because it’s certainly interesting that British women died for France. And also because British and French patriotism are completely different emotions. Ours is a bit shamefaced and populist, theirs is the province of the intellectual. So your women’s stories would be gripping in themselves but also a way of getting at something abstract and almost academic. Then it would be a proper book you could be proud of.’
‘No one’s going to commission me to write that. I’m unknown.’
‘That means you’d be cheap. They wouldn’t have to pay you much. Write a clear, solid outline. That’s what I did with de Musset. I tried to make it sound irresistible, a low-risk thing for them. As though they couldn’t lose.’
‘And—’
‘I’ll put you in touch with my editor.’
‘That’s very kind, Julian, but really …’
‘Really what?’
I was thinking, ‘really’, that no one had talked to me with such sympathy since Aleksandr, ten years earlier. It was as though Julian had given a lot of thought to it.
‘I remember Aleksandr urging me to write a book,’ I said.
‘Your Russian poet?’
‘Playwright.’
‘I know. Tell me about him. You never really have.’
‘I think I might need another cup of tea first.’
‘When it gets to six o’clock we can have something stronger.’
‘Why not before?’
‘The pubs don’t open till six.’
I felt I was beginning to understand Julian’s idea of humour.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll come clean on tea alone.’
Seventeen
Botzaris
For a few days after what had happened between me and Clémence I felt strange. Sensations I had no name for seemed to take me over. The good thing was that in most ways I felt calm – part of the world in a way that I had never done before. I felt connected to … to what? My home, my family, my past … Something to do with who I was, deep down, where I’d come from. Berber, Bedouin, Muslim, French, African … I was all these things, but I no longer felt limited by them. I sensed that I was part of something larger, more invigorating.
Two days afterwards, I had an SMS from Jamal, asking if I’d go and meet him at a café in Sevran, a notoriously hard-line Muslim suburb some way out on the RER.
‘Is Hasim still angry with me for quitting?’ I texted back.
‘Nothing to do with H.’
Something to do with drugs then, presumably – something not even Jamal wanted to spell out.
On the way to my rendezvous, I found that something seemed different and it took me twenty minutes on the dirty RER train to see what it was. I wasn’t looking at the women in the carriage in the same way as usual. I still noticed that some were more attractive than others, but I didn’t picture in detail what each one might be like beneath her clothes. I was able to think about other things. Perhaps the change would only be temporary, but I had to admit that while it lasted it was something of a relief.
From what I’d read in advance online in an English popular newspaper, I expected Sevran to be full of men in Taliban headgear and women in burkas. But it turned out to be an ordinary suburban town, still French, with just a few more immigrants than average. I met Jamal in a run-down café with a green sign showing a racehorse and the letters PMU. It was famous, according to the newspaper, for not serving women. The proprietor put down his cigarette and welcomed us. Jamal ordered coffee, I asked for Coke. The place was poor, but it wasn’t threatening. The bar guy was really nice and there were three girls at a table by the door. So much for the newspaper.
‘Why are we meeting here?’ I said.
‘It’s my day off work and I’m visiting a friend,’ said Jamal. ‘Listen, boy, you know you said you’re going home soon.’
‘Yes. I’ve saved enough money for an airline ticket. But I haven’t decided on a date yet.’
His face broke into a smile. ‘Will you do something for me? Deliver an envelope to someone in Tangier.’
‘What’s in it?’
‘Money.’
‘What do I do with it?’
‘You hand it over. And that’s it.’
‘Is it legal?’
‘To give money to someone? Of course it’s legal.’
‘It’s not some terrorist thing, is it?’
‘No. I told you. I’m not religious. And I’m a man of peace. I think those terror people are crazy.’
‘So who’s the money for?’
‘People like me. To help them with their lives.’
‘And where’s it from?’
‘A charity in Saint-Denis.’
‘All right.’ I was thinking about the flight. I’d only been on a plane once before, when I was about three and my mother took me to Paris. So I’d been told.
‘Have you read the book I gave you yet?’ said Jamal.
‘The Koran? No. And you just said you’re not religious.’
‘I’m not. But the charity has religious backing.’ He smiled again. ‘And for your own sake. Your education, boy. You ought to know what we don’t believe in.’
‘I’ll have a look. I’m not a big reader.’
Jamal looked at me over his coffee. ‘I don’t know exactly who’ll come to meet you in Tangier. It’ll be no one I know.’
‘You don’t know anyone outside Paris, Jamal.’
‘Sure. But suppose this guy’s a believer. That’s another reason it might be better if you had an idea of what he believes in. It would be polite.’
‘Okay. I’ll try.’
It was not just that Jamal had never been outside Paris, he’d hardly ever been out of Saint-Denis. But there was concern in his eyes as he looked at me. And maybe a little embarrassment as well – from shame at the narrow life that was all that history had allowed him. I felt like an actor in an old-fashioned play: a young messenger being despatched by a homely uncle worried for his safe journey.
His gaze held mine. As I think I’ve said before, Jamal was a decent guy. I put my hand on his shoulder.
‘I’m having a party on Friday. For my birthday. Do you want to come?’
‘Where is it?’
As soon as I told him, I knew there was no chance. He was never going to come into the Second arrondissement.
‘I may be busy. I’ll have to see.’
Busy … Of course. The social life of Medina-sur-Seine, the cocktail parties, the receptions … ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘See how you go.’
When I let myself into Hannah’s flat, there was a woman there I didn’t know.
She stood up with a smile and said in English, ‘Hi, I’m Jasmine Mendel. I bet you’ve heard a lot about me.’
She thrust out her hand and I shook it.
‘I’ve come for your birthday party.’
‘You what?’
‘Hannah told me about it. And I wasn’t going to miss it for the world.’
She had brown hair and a big smile. She gave off energy like the powerful compressor that thuds away by the permanent roadworks at the medina gate. I liked her straight away, but I was worried she was teasing me.<
br />
‘It’s all right, man. To level with you, I had some time off work. And, like all Americans, I adore Paris. So when Hannah e-mailed me, I made a reservation that afternoon.’
‘So, it’s not just my party that—’
‘No, don’t worry. But there is a party, right?’
There was. We met at the tapas place in the rue Vivienne, like I’d planned. Inside, the walls were bare stone, so it was like being in a cave. There was me and Hannah and Jasmine and Julian Finch, the guy Hannah was always having dinner with. Jamal and Hasim didn’t show, but Hannah had also asked two people from the library where she went to listen to her old ladies – a Frenchwoman called Florence and a German called Leo. So there were six of us, which was not much of a party, but it was better than nothing and the food was really great and they all said how good the wine was, too, though I was drinking beer.
Jasmine was curious about everyone and kept asking questions about how we all knew each other. She seemed especially interested in Julian, the Englishman, and when we sat down at a table with candles on it, she put herself next to him.
Although he must have been over forty, this Julian was friendly to me, not treating me like some sort of strange pet that Hannah had picked up. He asked me about life at home and my college and he seemed to know a lot about Morocco. He said he’d been to Fez and Marrakesh, but not Tangier.
I noticed Hannah looking anxiously from time to time at Jasmine and Julian, but I didn’t know why.
It was interesting to see older people getting drunk. They were all so used to wine that they probably didn’t notice how their behaviour changed. After another bottle or two, we had dessert, then Florence, the Frenchwoman, and Leo the German both said they had to go. They’d drunk the least. I was meant to be paying because it was my party, but Hannah said she’d invited Florence and Leo, so they were her guests, and Julian said he’d like to pay for me, as his birthday present, so I ended up paying almost nothing, not even for the taxi, which Jasmine, who’d drunk the most, paid for when it dropped the four of us back in Butte-aux-Cailles, showering euros on the pavement.
Hannah said that as it was my birthday I could smoke in the apartment, so I had a little of Jamal’s best to get my levels up to theirs. Jasmine insisted on a giant toke as well.
Somehow we got onto people’s problems with understanding French. Julian said he had trouble when he first arrived when he was invited to somewhere ‘sans vin’.
‘I expected a dry evening,’ he said. ‘So I stopped at a bar on the way. Turned out it was the number of the house, cent vingt. A hundred and twenty.’
‘I had a moment the other day,’ said Hannah, ‘when I heard someone say, “Mais après tout nous sommes tous daddons.” I looked up daddon in the dictionary, but there was nothing there. Finally I worked out she meant we were all descended from Adam. Nous sommes tous d’Adam.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Jasmine. ‘I’m a daddon till the day I die.’
‘After we had the onglet and the anglais,’ said Julian, ‘I invented a story for Hannah. The quand one. Do you remember?’
‘Not word for word,’ said Hannah.
‘It was something like … Quel cant qu’on raconte quand que le Comte est con qui recompte ses comptes. Quant à la conte du concombre, par conséquence, quand il danse le can-can dans le camp à Caen …’
‘However you look at it, everything comes out con,’ I said. ‘Story of my—’
‘Tariq!’
I think it was Jasmine who called out my name, pretending to be shocked, but it could have been Hannah. It certainly wasn’t Julian, who carried on chatting to me while both women went to the bathroom. He was quite handsome in a middle-aged way, like one of those film actors who play the dad of the troubled teenager. Or maybe the slightly inspiring high-school teacher. He had a really nice jacket, too.
But the thing you noticed above and beyond all else about Julian, the thing that was so obvious that it was almost embarrassing – so obvious that even I was aware of it – was that he was completely obsessed by Hannah.
In the tapas bar he’d kept glancing past Jasmine and Leo to check on her. Now when she came back into the sitting room with a bottle of wine and wrestled with a corkscrew, the look on his face was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was as though he’d never really looked at a girl before and was struggling to get to grips with a miracle of nature.
Perhaps I’d changed. The weed, what had happened with Clémence … I don’t know. But to see someone look at someone else like that … It was touching, to be honest. And Hannah did look nice that evening. She was no beauty, as I’ve said, but the light caught her hair, the black and brown together, as she worked away at the cork.
You could see that Julian wanted to help, but something made him hesitate. Not wanting to patronise her? Enjoying the flush on her skin? I don’t know, but I decided to try some wine from a bottle that was already open and see if I could get to like it. It tasted fine.
‘And I so love your British accent,’ Jasmine was saying.
‘Thanks, but I’m afraid there’s no such thing,’ said Julian. ‘There’s Scottish, English, Welsh and Northern Irish accents. Hundreds of each. But no such thing as a British accent.’
‘Don’t be so snippy, Julian,’ said Hannah, still wrestling with the bottle.
‘I didn’t mean to be. The French have never understood either. They always say English to mean British. Even their politicians. But the idea that a nation is composed of four parts is really not that complicated. It does make you wonder about the French claim to being such a reasonable and intellectual people if they can’t even grasp that. I don’t say Burgundians to mean French.’
‘How’s the research going, honey?’ said Jasmine.
‘… particularly hard on all the Scots and Welsh and Ulstermen who lie buried beneath French soil after their attempts to keep Alsace-Lorraine for France to be known as “English”. It’s a bit—’
‘It’s a bit … Overwhelming,’ said Hannah with a gasp as she eventually pulled the cork out. ‘I’ve got more material than I can use and some of it doesn’t seem to fit the academic pattern. Some of the oral witness, the audio files, have been … surprising.’
‘Are they reliable?’ said Jasmine, who was sitting close to Julian again.
‘I think so. Tariq’s helped me a bit. With translation and so on.’
Maybe it was the wine, or the weed, or both, but I found myself saying, ‘What makes you think these women in the recording booth were telling the truth? They were all pretty old and they might have been forgetful. But also, has it ever occurred to you that they went in there and just made the whole thing up?’
Hannah pushed her hand back through the front of her hair. ‘There are ways of checking. And if I can’t verify anything, I’ll put it at arm’s length. Or drop it.’
‘That’s what I’d do if I was them,’ I said. ‘Just go in and make up a good story.’
The conversation began to really spin along then, with everyone talking over each other.
For the first time in my life, I felt I was getting the hang of wine. Maybe we had the wrong stuff at home, because this French wine gave you a real blast. There were no palpitations or white sweats, you just felt really fond of everyone.
Take Jasmine, for instance, who’d come all the way across the Atlantic to see her friend. That was so nice of her that I wanted to cuddle up and put my face between her breasts in the clean white shirt she’d put on for the party. And Hannah, still shooting anxious glances that I couldn’t read at her two friends, but looking so vulnerable. I’d never thought of my landlady that way before, but I wanted to put my arms round her – not to bury my face in her sweater, à la Jasmine, not at all, just to somehow look after her a bit. And there was Julian, this English guy, and the hilarious efforts he was making not to gawp at Hannah.
I had some more wine.
‘Warren sends his love,’ said Jasmine. ‘He was in New York last week. You know he’s
moving to Heinz? He’s doing real well.’
‘Who’s Warren?’ I said.
‘My brother,’ said Hannah. ‘He’s kind of a big shot in canned goods. If you see what I mean.’
‘I tried to get him to come,’ said Jasmine, ‘but he was going to Pittsburgh. And then I said what about your parents, why don’t they come to Europe, come and see you, and he said they don’t have passports. Is that true?’
‘I guess so,’ said Hannah.
‘And are you having a good time in Paris, Tariq?’ said Jasmine.
‘Wonderful,’ I said, which was at that moment true.
‘What do you like most? The Eiffel Tower? The Latin Quarter?’
‘No, I like the Métro best.’
Everyone began laughing, so I laughed too as I poured myself some wine. ‘I like the stations. Their crazy names. I love the funny smell, like gas and burnt rope. I like the girls I see in the carriages. And the people I come across there. One day I met this guy who does a puppet show every day on Line Twelve. He’s called Victor Hugo.’
‘I bet he is,’ said Jasmine.
‘Sometimes he’ll go on another line, though, for a change. And we’ve been to this place called “Flunch” where you can eat as much as you like.’
‘What’s your favourite station name?’ said Julian.
‘So many to choose from,’ I said. I was really flying now. ‘I like the long weird ones like Réaumur–Sébastopol. But I like short ones, too. Botzaris. Hannah teased me that I didn’t know any of these guys they were named after. Or the famous dates in history.’
‘Yeah, it was all Botzaris to you, wasn’t it?’ said Hannah.
‘Yes, but some of them are just streets or places, aren’t they? Bastille? Invalides. Étoile–Charles de …’
They were all laughing even more by now and I suddenly wasn’t feeling quite as good as a minute ago, so I made an excuse and went to the bathroom, where I fished out my cell phone and did some searching. Had I made a stupid mistake? Bastille, for instance. Don’t tell me there was a painter called Auguste Bastille. No. All clear, it was just a prison, just a place. What other ones had I mentioned? Marie-Louise Invalides, a famous dancer? No. Fine. Charles de Gaulle–Étoile. It was Étoile because of the star shape of the roads radiating from the Arc de Triomphe. Obviously. And Charles de Gaulle?
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