Time Was Soft There

by Jeremy Mercer

  Exhausted by my panicked rush from Canada, I didn’t feel much of anything. After landing at Charles de Gaulle, I rented a room near Porte de Clignancourt, an African neighborhood at the northern tip of the city. The hotel was down a dog-spattered side street and the air was filled with the ceaseless throb of traffic from the Périphérique. The room itself was a grueling walk up six flights of stairs, and once inside, you could touch all four walls without moving your feet. Still, I couldn’t complain. It was fit for modest budgets and provided a perfect place to discreetly regain one’s bearings.

  There had been scant preparation for my departure, and Paris had been chosen with only minor calculation. Having been hired by the newspaper before completing my final year at the university, I was still one credit shy of graduation. As a self-assured young reporter, I’d never imagined something so mundane as a diploma would be necessary, but now that my future was a gaping void, I thought it a good time to finish my degree. The missing credit was a French-language course, and having convinced the university to let me take lessons in France to meet my academic requirements, I booked a last-minute plane ticket for Paris.

  The news that I was abandoning my apparently productive life unnerved my family, though. My parents are the epitome of decent and responsible people, my mother a manager for a technology firm and my father a guidance counsellor at a local high school. My sister and I were raised with devotion in a comfortable downtown neighborhood and were given every opportunity to succeed in life: music lessons, Little League baseball games, family vacations to the lake, and the other trappings of a middle-class upbringing. Yet, as a result of several adolescent misjudgments on my part, I had already subjected my parents to an unwarranted amount of suffering. All they wanted was a normal level of stability for their son, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell them of my fresh troubles. Finally, a few days before my flight left, I confessed that I had quit my job and was leaving the country, with no set plans to return. I tried to spin enough lies to spare them worry: The job had become too depressing; I needed to explore the world before the passing of my thirtieth birthday; I didn’t want to spend the first hours of the millennium waiting for somebody’s holiday to be ruined by death or traumatic injury. There were shadows of suspicion, but eventually my parents accepted my story.

  As for the actual cause of my predicament, although I’d survived that last week, there had been one disturbing moment. Just when I’d thought I was taking that midnight phone call a little too seriously, there was a break-in at my apartment. I’d gone back a few days after receiving the threat to gather up my belongings and prepare for the next tenant. Sometime during that day of packing and cleaning, I’d stepped out to the restaurant around the corner. When I returned, my door was ajar, a few boxes were out of place, and the butt of a cigarette was floating listlessly in my toilet. I could have convinced myself I’d left the door unlocked and hadn’t remembered the exact position of my boxes, but I knew for certain I didn’t smoke. Somebody had paid me an unannounced visit.

  By taking a plane to Europe, I’d avoided the physical threat, but there was still a knot of problems to sort out. Foremost was money. I’d earned a generous salary at the newspaper and enjoyed modest royalties from the true-crime books I’d written on the side. Yet somehow I’d frittered it all away. Drinks and meals out most every night, winter vacations to sunny islands, a German car that wasn’t really needed, a ridiculous array of computer gadgets, rack after rack of rarely played CDs … . For one embarrassing year, I’d even bought disposable plates, forks, and cups just to spare myself the strain of household washing.

  With this lifestyle, I’d dug myself into such a hole that when the phone call came, I had exceeded the limit on my credit card and I barely had enough cash money for a bus ticket to Montreal, let alone an escape to Paris. Leaving the newspaper helped sort things out a bit, as I had several weeks in unused vacation time and I was given two thousand dollars as compensation. This got me to France and left me with some money in my pocket, but it wasn’t going to last forever, maybe six weeks if I budgeted well.

  It was obvious that something was going to have to be done about the future, but it would have to be done on the ground. I’d run and I’d run fast, not wanting to look back at the mess I’d left behind. I had no plans, just the loose thought to stretch my life out and try to understand how I’d ended up in such a dark spot.

  By manipulated coincidence, one of my best friends was in Paris when I arrived. I’d met Dave at the university, where we both worked for the student newspaper. Those were heady times and we had become close after discovering we shared a taste for late nights. Now, Dave was taking a year away from his job reporting on the stock market to circle Europe and then snowboard in the Austrian mountains. Having received word of my difficulties, he’d detoured into France so he could greet me that first morning.

  We hugged out in front of my hotel and his presence was instantly cheering. Dave was a tall, thin fellow with curly brown hair and an insatiable enthusiasm for life that was contagious. After assurances that he’d help me forget my worries, he bounded ahead, eager to show off the city as he knew it.

  “Paris is welcoming you,” he shouted, pointing up to where the chronic winter clouds were parting. “I’ve been here for three days and this is the first time I’ve seen the sun.”

  As we walked, I was awed by the consistent beauty. Even the most ordinary of intersections was graced with carved stone doorways, handsome wooden shutters, and sculpted iron streetlamps. Such decadence was a stark contrast to the place I’d left, where the predominant architectural concerns were economy and utility. The sudden change in aesthetic was one more reason to feel transported.

  After a maze of these glorious streets, we arrived at the base of an enormous flight of stairs. Dave climbed them two at a time, insisting the effort would be rewarded. Sure enough, when we arrived, Paris dropped before our feet.

  We were at the top of Montmartre. Behind us were the chalk domes and stone horses of Sacré-Coeur; before us lay Paris, block after block, until the buildings blurred into the horizon. You could play spot the monuments with the Panthéon, the Louvre, the Opéra, and, if you leaned out along the rails, the iron grid of the Eiffel Tower. Just twelve hours before, I’d been in the frigid snow and ice of Canada, thinking only of making it to the airport and away. Now I stood above one of the world’s great cities with the sun on my face and my future a blank canvas. For the first time since that phone call, the oxygen reached the bottom of my lungs.

  There was a café halfway along a cobbled side road, and even though it wasn’t yet noon, we switched our order from coffees to a bottle of red wine. We sat outside, warm enough in our shirtsleeves, catching up on each other’s lives.

  Dave bubbled with tales of his travels. He’d been on the road for months and his eyes were wide with life beyond North America. In Sofia, he’d showered with an enchanting young poet. In Madrid, there were nights with a graffiti artist on a wayward quest to tag the great cities of Europe. In Tangier, golf balls of hashish sold for only a few dollars, and for those with Western passports, money could be earned by carrying several kilograms back on the ferry to Spain. Dave had wisely declined the offer.

  As we sipped our wine, I mentioned that I, too, had faced narcotic-related temptations but hadn’t been as disciplined. At the newspaper, I had done a considerable amount of work on the local medical marijuana network and earlier that year I’d accepted an offer to become a “sponsor.” This meant I was one of four people who donated one thousand dollars to pay for the rent and electricity at an indoor grow room. The crop was supposed to yield twelve kilograms and each sponsor was to get one kilo as repayment for his donation, with the rest of the crop funneled back into the network of AIDS and cancer patients. I felt it was noble work and thought of it as a research project for my crime books.

  Days before the crop was ready to harvest, the drug police broke down the door. Two sponsors were arrested on the spot, and the poli
ce had followed my car to and from the grow room on three separate occasions. The month before I escaped to Paris, detectives came to my office to question me, and it was only the careful work of a lawyer friend that prevented the pressing of charges. It was a black cloud over my head, one that made my decision to leave Canada that much easier to make.

  The sun was high overhead now and at some point during the conversation, we’d ordered a second bottle of wine. This now stood empty, as well. We must have been a boisterous pair, for a street artist approached to complain we were scaring customers away and the waiter declined us further service.

  We retired to the front steps of Sacré-Coeur and for the rest of the afternoon watched the tour buses disgorge their school groups. Dave had with him a cheerfully wrapped bottle of Christmas gin, a gift from his girlfriend back in Canada. We sipped this bottle dry, too, as the sun set orange over the evening city. At one point, Dave tripped down several steps of the long concrete staircase and was left writhing on the ground. His ankle swelled an alarming purple, but otherwise all was good with the world. That evening, I stumbled back to my hotel room, distinctly pleased to be in Paris.

  New Year’s Eve was a rabid parade of people, light, and noise. A few minutes before midnight, the clock the city had installed on the Eiffel Tower malfunctioned, so the great countdown was scuttled, but the fireworks filled the sky with lightning and falling stars. On the Champs-Elysées, the Ferris wheels were unveiled, and as they turned, out came soaring acrobats, spinning drums, and thousands of white helium balloons. The crowds thronged and Dave and I were pulled along in a merry chaos of kisses and champagne. Amid this enormous crowd in this foreign city, I felt weightless, drifting on the currents of life, ready for anything. When a party of Hare Krishnas came dancing past and fed Dave and me honey bread from their handwoven baskets, I even felt a tug to follow them into the unknown. In the end, all was peaceful in Paris and around the world. Despite the grim predictions, the millennium arrived with goodwill. I couldn’t help but be buoyed by the thought that the happy dawn to this new era might mirror my own new beginning in life.

  Then things got a little more real. The next day, there were the inevitable hangovers and a steady gray rain. The Ferris wheels were packed away, save for a mammoth contraption at la place de la Concorde that tourists rode for thirty-five francs. Dave, bad ankle and all, took the train to Austria. Paris settled back to its sober winter routines.

  For the first weeks, I did little to address my future. I read in parks, toured the museums, completed my French lessons, attempted a semblance of ordered life. But I knew this couldn’t go on forever. The hotel bill needed to be paid and money was dwindling. I thought of finding a job, but I didn’t have work papers or any contacts in the city or even an idea of what I could do.

  Depression crept over me. One lonely night, I drank a bottle of cheap wine while sitting alone by the Seine and then fell asleep on the night bus back to the hotel. I was roused by the smell of something burning. It turned out to be my hair. Sitting behind me, three large men held up a lighter and smirked wildly. The city that had once shined upon me was turning hostile.

  By the end of January, desperation set in. I could afford the hotel room for only another week at most. Day after day, I walked the city, numbing the hours, waiting for something to happen, hoping there would come a sign of what I should do with my life. I was on such a walk when the skies opened in front of Notre Dame.

  4.

  “Tea?”

  “The tea party is about to begin.”

  The woman introduced herself as Eve. She had a bob of dark hair, a porcelain doll’s smile, and spoke English with a wisp of a German accent. Sensing my confusion, she reached across the desk and patted my arm.

  “There’s a tea party upstairs every Sunday.”

  She pointed toward the back of the bookstore. Although my first moments at Shakespeare and Company had been decidedly odd, I followed her directions. The storm raged outside, curiosity was beginning to tickle, and, it must be said, it wasn’t every day a woman with such a sweet smile invited one to tea.

  At the back of the store, just past the stain-glass alcove and beside the German books, there was a wooden staircase. Red-carpeted stairs led up to another book-filled room, this one decorated with a mirror and a bunk bed surrounded by children’s books. An antique copy of Alice in Wonderland lay open on the velvet cover of the bottom bunk and a pair of slippers were off to one side.

  From here, there were two doors to choose from, and I chose the one on the right. It led into a small room with more walls of books, a wooden cabinet, two beds with neatly folded blankets at their feet, and two men hunched over a portable gas burner. One was slicing an onion while the other crumbled instant noodles into a pot.

  “Tea party?”

  “No, no. Soup. Would you like some?” asked one of the men, proffering a bent spoon.

  Too surprised to answer, I backed out of the room and considered the second doorway. Painted over the frame were the words BE NOT INHOSPITABLE TO STRANGERS LEST THEY BE ANGELS IN DISGUISE. This door led into a narrow book-lined corridor that had a window, a metal sink filled with miniature drinking glasses, and a strange wooden cubbyhole with a curtain stretched across its entrance. I paused when I heard the faint clicking of typewriter keys, but a bony hand shot out from behind the curtain and tapped on the handwritten sign pinned beside the cubbyhole. WRITER AT WORK, it read. PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB.

  Mumbling apologies, I hurried to the end of the corridor and found myself in the main room on that floor. Here, every wall had a bookshelf that went two books deep; I also noted a writing desk with a typewriter perched on top, a large wooden door with black metal girding, and two more narrow beds. The front window looked down onto the entrance of the store and out across to Notre Dame.

  “You’re in the library.”

  Puzzled I hadn’t noticed him when I entered the room, I now realized there was a man with short black hair and a frayed wool sweater sitting quietly on the corner of a bed. On his lap were a French grammar textbook and a French-Mandarin dictionary.

  “The tea party is upstairs,” he continued, pointing to the big wooden door. “Two more floors. Go, go. Many interesting people.”

  Beyond this door was the common staircase for the building that housed Shakespeare and Company. From above, I could hear the hum of voices mixed with the occasional clatter of plates. Two flights of stairs later, I found a gray metal door that stood ajar, but before I could knock, it swung open and a woman of breath-stealing beauty swept toward me.

  “Do you have tobacco? I must have a cigarette.”

  This woman had deep red lips and wore three layers of skirts and a torn sweater that revealed a most delicate shoulder. I cursed myself for not smoking, sure it would stand as one of my life’s great failings. Shaking her head at my impotence, the woman heaved a sigh and fled down the stairs.

  The only thing left was to cross the final threshold. I found myself inside a book-lined sitting room with a haphazard collection of furniture and an even more haphazard collection of people. An elegant woman with scarves in her hair sipped tea at a round wooden table while a one-eyed white dog slept at her feet. She was speaking with a man wearing a black trench coat, knee-high black boots, and a scowl of perpetual disillusionment. On a raised red velvet couch, a dapper middle-aged man with a well-kept beard discussed the current political climate in the former Yugoslavia. At a square table beside the window, a couple with matching University of Georgia sweaters were holding glass jars of tea and looking very much bewildered.

  “You came!”

  It was Eve, and she led me to a second velvet couch at the back of the room. With great authority, she opened a wedge of sitting space and pushed me into it. Then, after placing a jar of hot tea into my hand, she disappeared around a corner.

  It was now I who sat bewildered. There were more than a dozen people in the room, a number of whom I would classify as extremely unusual. They were engaged in tu
mbling conversations, all in English, and all conducted at wild pitches that suggested they wished to be overheard. If a mental asylum had a Sunday tea party where the inmates could dress however they liked, it wouldn’t be much different than this.

  The books here were well-bound hardcovers and seemed more precious than those elsewhere in the store. There were several volumes of Marx, biographies of the heroes of the Russian Revolution, a history of European socialism. I was inspecting a book by Studs Terkel when I felt a tug on my sleeve. Beside me was an earnest-looking man with a slight paunch and graying hair worn too long at the back.

  “I’m a poet,” he said.

  “That’s … good?” I offered.

  Encouraged, he began to talk. There’d been a divorce back in America, a job in a hardware store in Pittsburgh, where he’d worked night and day for seven years to pay debts, then the move to Paris to chase literary dreams. The man had given readings across the city, including one right here at Shakespeare and Company, and he’d published a book of his poems, which he happened to have with him, if I was inclined to take a look.

  While the poet dug in his satchel, Eve returned with a tray of custard cookies. Famished, I took a large handful, but before we could speak properly, she was besieged by other guests. Instead, a man with long greasy white hair, a leather vest, and the stink of alcohol put a stool down in front of me. He looked like a filthy pirate.