It was almost comic, like a scene from West Side Story, as if they’d learned gang behavior from watching Hollywood films.
“Relax, goddamn it,” Leo said. “I can hear you breathe from here.”
“I’m nervous,” said Nina.
“Don’t be,” said Leo. “It doesn’t help. They can smell it, like dogs.”
So Leo knew there was trouble. It was not just her paranoia. For a second Nina felt better, confirmed—and then instantly worse.
She looked around. There was no one near. Should she look for somewhere to run?
Two of the boys could catch her while the others grabbed Leo. Could that happen here without anyone seeing? This was not the wilderness, but a cemetery in central Paris, where people came to eat lunch, to make out, or to visit the dead. A three-wheeler filled with garden tools might trawl past at any minute.
Jolts of panic alternated with the hope, no doubt false, that everything would be fine. They wouldn’t get beaten or raped or killed. No one would touch them. Maybe these boys were just strutting, muscling pedestrians out of their path. What a lucky surprise that would be: much too lucky to hope for.
It was all Nina’s fault. For once she’d made a decision, insisted on something she wanted. They wouldn’t be here if not for her. But how could she have avoided this, how could she have foreseen it? And couldn’t Leo have caused it with his obsessive belief that he would be facing the Nazi hordes at some time in the near future? It was so mean of her to suspect, even for a moment, that Leo was enjoying this because it was proving him right. For Nina to even imagine this was paranoid magical thinking. Four guys rounded a corner, that was how it began: nothing mystical or mysterious—nothing more complex that that.
The tallest thug let a few inaudible words slide from the corner of his mouth. His upper lip rippled meanly, creasing his fat bristly chin.
“What was that about?” said Nina.
Uh-oh. She shouldn’t have spoken.
All four heads had turned toward them with a choreographic snap. Once more Nina thought of gangs in ’50s and ’60s movies.
Nina and Leo kept walking. The boys sauntered menacingly toward them, slowly converging on Leo.
Nina heard herself moan softly.
“Shut up,” Leo said. “Just shut up.”
“You shut up,” Nina said.
“Bonjour,” Nina said to the boys.
They glared at her. One laughed harshly. Then they returned to the business at hand, which was staring down Leo. Small shiny badges—swastikas!—glinted on their leather jackets.
With narrowed eyes, Leo stared into the middle distance. He too looked like an actor, Gary Cooper or Clint Eastwood. Leo and these guys were playing out their separate movies, while a real person could get hurt or killed, and that person could be Nina.
The young man who stepped forward was Leo’s height and size, one of the hopped-up, whippetlike ones. His head had a pleasing bullet shape under its fuzz of dark hair. Was Nina shallow? Sex-mad? How could it even cross her mind that this vicious punk was handsome?
He walked up to Leo and stopped a few feet short of nose to nose. It still wasn’t entirely clear that anything would happen. Leo and the kid faced each other. His friends gathered around, at a distance. No one paid attention to Nina, a spectator like themselves.
Something happened too quickly for Nina to catch. Were words or a glance exchanged? Leo turned away from the guy, as if he were going to sneeze. He brushed past him so close that their arms touched. The young man laughed, shrugged at his friends—and let Leo pass.
One by one they roused themselves and ambled off much more slowly than Leo and Nina walked away from them.
“What’s the rush?” said Leo.
“That was terrifying.” Nina took Leo’s hand.
“I knew nothing was going to happen,” he said. “Those fucking sons of bitches. Nazi dogshit.”
Nina flung herself on Leo. Nothing did happen! she wanted to cry. No one was hurt or disgraced. Leo had handled himself so well, his palms weren’t even wet. What could have been a bloody mess had turned out to be nothing. She stared at Leo’s familiar beautiful face. How well she knew that mouth, those eyes, in what ranges of lights she’d seen them: interested, worried, impatient, blurred and slack with passion. How deeply Nina loved him! She was stunned, as she often was, by the force of her feelings for Leo.
Leo said, “All they wanted was the fear. The fear was what they were after. As soon as they got that, they could go away—”
“But you didn’t seem scared,” Nina said.
“You did,” Leo told her. “You knew I couldn’t protect you. And that was good enough for them.”
She knew he couldn’t protect her! What was Leo saying? Was he accusing Nina of doubting him? Of having been disloyal? And he was right! The truth was: Not for one moment had Nina pictured Leo, like some kung fu superhero, fending off a whole gang.
Nina couldn’t speak. She pressed herself into Leo, who hugged her, with less fervor. Almost at once he pushed her away. She could tell he’d seen someone behind her. Dear God, had the skinheads returned?
“Pardon?” a man said softly.
She pulled her face out of Leo’s neck. The voice turned out to belong to the elegant old man they’d seen getting his picture taken. His Buster Keaton eyes conveyed the regrettable fact that he’d witnessed their encounter with the thugs.
“Je suis désolé.” He regarded them closely. “You speak French? Both of you?”
“Oui,” said Leo.
“We’re American,” said Nina.
“In English, then,” said the old man. “These boys did not live through the War. It is a national shame. Especially it is a problem here at the Montparnasse Cemetery. They come to visit the grave of Pierre Laval—the prime minister of the collaboration government during the Occupation.”
“Laval,” said Leo. “He’s buried here? My God!”
“Over there,” the man gestured. “Lousy filthy bastard. He was worse than Pétain. He was the one who masterminded the roundup of the Jews and hunted down the Resistance with a special…” The old man licked his lips in a way that suggested a taste for blood.
Leo’s gaze was steady, worshipful. Had this man been in the Resistance? Nina knew that Leo wondered but couldn’t think how to ask. Gosh, were you in the Maquis?
Leo said, “Laval got what he deserved. Wasn’t he sentenced to death, and took poison, and they pumped his stomach and shot him right in the middle of his suicide attempt?”
“Yes, well,” the old man said. “After the war we didn’t want him here. But people think it looks bad, staying angry at the dead. Maybe there was also some feeling that the fellow had suffered enough, dying that terrible death; they had to prop him against the wall for the firing squad. Myself, I don’t think he suffered enough. We were right not to want him buried here. His grave has become a pilgrimage spot for these neo-Nazi bastards.”
Leo stared at the old man. He was seeing himself as he would have been had he lived the life he wanted to live and fought with the Resistance. The old man was sent to rescue them. He’d taken an unpleasant incident—a humiliating encounter—and given it a wider political context. Their run-in with the skinheads was larger than Nina and Leo, far more serious than whether Nina had thought that Leo could protect her. It was about the future, the past—the history of Europe!
“You have been to visit Sartre’s grave?” the old man said. He’d seen them there, too, Nina realized.
Leo didn’t answer. Nina knew what he was thinking. Suppose this elderly Gallic hero lectured these silly Americans on what a fake Sartre was. As if Leo didn’t know! As if he hadn’t told Nina!
The old man looked at Nina.
“Yes, we have,” Nina admitted.
“And Simone de Beauvoir’s grave?” he asked Nina.
“Yes, I guess so.” She guessed so? Nina smiled. The old man didn’t smile back.
Now he regarded Leo with new compassion: sympathy for t
his poor American whose girlfriend was another deluded devotee of a sour man-hating lesbian. His mobile face expressed all this; nothing had to be said. The old man shrugged, Leo shrugged. For an instant they reminded Nina of the cardplayers on the plane, with their very clear ideas about who was part of their group, and who wasn’t. It was terribly unfair, this sudden surge of fellow-feeling about the trouble Simone de Beauvoir had made for the innocent male population. Why wasn’t Leo protecting her now? In fact he was betraying her. He’d gone over to the other side.
Nina and Leo and the old man had fallen from innocent grace and no longer felt warmed by the pure light of angelic rescue. Leo avoided the old man’s eyes, nor could he look at Nina.
“I am sorry,” said the old man. “What just happened with you and those boys is happening all over Europe. It is extremely unfortunate. Enjoy your stay in Paris. I am sure you will. And now I must leave. Au revoir, Monsieur. Madame.”
“Au revoir, Monsieur. Merci,” Leo said.
“Au revoir,” said Nina.
They watched the old man grow smaller. The skinheads were nowhere around. A three-wheeled truck drove by, its sputtering engine announcing that real time had resumed.
“It was my fault,” Nina said. “It would never have happened if I hadn’t made us come here. And for what? I’m sorry, Leo.”
“Why should you be sorry?” Leo said. But his voice wasn’t forgiving. It was syrupy and ironic. Nina, I’m over here.
Leo walked on. Nina rushed to keep up. Dizzying stutters of dark and light blinked from the alleys of trees.
Walking ahead, Leo called back, “Why should you apologize? Fascism wasn’t your idea. It’s hardly your invention, Nina.”
They left the cemetery for a busy street of empty market stalls littered with rotten salad, swatches of newsprint and orange peel, reassuring proof that the living were still buying vegetables, at least as of this morning.
Leo put his arm around Nina. He said. “So far this hasn’t exactly been our most romantic trip to Paris.”
Nina wished he hadn’t said that. So many things were better left unmentioned. But Leo had simply stated a fact. This trip wasn’t their most romantic…that is, if one defined romantic in the most narrow way. A panic attack in the Catacombs, a squabble over Sartre’s grave—if that wasn’t romantic, Nina would like to know what was. Why did things keep going wrong? Leo would be sorry he joined her in Paris. Perhaps he would really leave Nina now after that practice trial run, which must have shown him just how simple the real letting-go could be.
Nina slipped her arm around Leo’s waist—insinuatingly, she hoped.
“Parts of it were nice,” she said. “It could still turn out okay.”
“Sure it could, Nina,” Leo said. “And pigs could sprout wings and fly. I wish this market were happening. I’d love to put that in my article: Where to buy provisions for an intimate picnic in a cemetery and neo-Nazi pilgrimage spot.”
Just beyond the market was a picturesque street of bakeries and groceries, windows stacked with pyramids of blue-veined cheeses stabbed with price tags written in spidery French numerals. Another window held Parma hams, air-dried beef, quail and guinea hens plucked clean around the middle but retaining their feathered heads and wings, red beaks, and yellow feet.
Bread, cheese, ham, cheap good red wine. Nina could drink a whole bottle! She looked up at the buildings around her, searching for an apartment for her and Leo to rent. They could shop for food every morning in this charming street!
“Let’s buy stuff for sandwiches,” said Nina. “And take it back to the hotel.” Hadn’t she learned her lesson about suggesting they change plans?
“Definitely.” Leo pulled Nina close. “I could use a nap.”
They leaned together as they walked, then drifted to a stop. Leo took Nina’s shoulders and turned her around and kissed the nape of her neck. She arched her back against him, right there in the street.
This heat followed them, like a draft of warm air, into the butcher’s and baker’s. Selecting and purchasing meat, cheese, wine, bottled water, lacy cookies, gleaming orange clementines, they agreed at once on everything, and all it of seemed delicious. Obviously, they were lovers on a brief furlough from bed and not office colleagues dispatched to buy provisions for their coworkers’ lunch. The erotic sparks they struck showered on the crusty baguettes, the neat packets of translucent ham, the satiny wedges of Brie.
As soon as they got back to the hotel, they unwrapped the shiny white packages and were not only astonished by how much they’d purchased but by several tasty surprises neither could remember buying: hard sweet pears, boar salami, a tiny volcano of goat cheese coated with the ash of a recent eruption.
Leo had a pocketknife. He sat at the delicate table in the pale blue bedroom and carved hunks of bread into sandwiches and handed Nina hers. With its winning mixture of taking charge and taking care, Leo’s sandwich-making filled Nina with a languor that made her stretch like a cat in the sun of intimacy and surrender.
They ate. They finished lunch. They talked. The liquid undertow of talk drew them steadily nearer, then lifted them up and out of their chairs and into each other’s arms.
They made love and stopped and started again, long after they thought they couldn’t. At one point Nina noticed they’d moved from the bed to the chair. They lost all track of time. They slept and woke and slept….
Nina opened her eyes. The clock said three. Had they slept for an hour or thirteen? The only thing she knew was that making love with Leo was more important, more serious and far more real than all the mental calisthenics and contortions she put herself through during the hours she squandered not making love with Leo.
Leo groaned and jumped out of bed.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve just got enough time to make it to the prison.”
“Prison?” said Nina. “Jesus, Leo.”
“The Conciergerie,” said Leo. “Get with the program, Nina.”
It took her a while to remember: Marie Antoinette’s last night. The Conciergerie, the Revolutionary Prison—the final phase of Paris Death Trip.
“We can take a cab,” Leo said. “The prison must stay open till six.”
“Can’t it wait till tomorrow?” Nina said.
“Why should we? We’re here. We’re awake.”
Nina was only half awake.
Leo turned on the TV.
“Look at this,” he said, as he buttoned his shirt. “A boudin noir festival.”
At a table, farmers were eating blood sausage; dark sticky crumbs of breading stuck to their mouths and chins. No need to watch a pig get killed. These pigs were dead. Long dead. A herd, a small private army of pigs must have given their blood for this.
Hiding her face in the pillow, Nina thought about fairy tales in which a hero imagines he’s completed his Herculean tasks and can finally wed the princess, only to learn that the hardest task of all still remains, saved for last. Since this afternoon in bed, she’d thought that they were home free—and now they were remanding themselves to the Revolutionary Prison and more of the hostile gloom and doom of Leo’s Paris Death Trip. How cold and depressing the jail would be, how massive, damp and chilly, what unpleasant walks they would have to take through its seeping caverns and halls.
Only a hopeless lunatic would leave this warm soft bed and go there.
“I’ll get a taxi,” said Leo. “I’ll meet you outside in two minutes.”
NINA IMAGINED MARIE ANTOINETTE rolling toward these iron gates, sitting backward in a cart, a creaking wooden tumbrel, eliciting the naked curiosity with which people stare at horse trailers barreling down the highway. Nina imagined the wobbly cart bouncing over the cobblestones, approaching the massive prison with its cylindrical turrets and conical witch’s hats. She knew that her imaginative leap was all melodrama, playacting, as she suspected it must have been for Marie Antoinette and the thousands who knew they were going to die here but couldn’t truly believe that these massive stones woul
d really grind them up and never spit them out.
Leo steered Nina through a courtyard and into a vaulted granite hall. He went to buy tickets while Nina leafed through a cheap glossy photo book of Paris tourist spots under a postcard-blue heaven. Already she felt like a prisoner staring at pictures of sky, only dimly believing that blue sky still existed.
She studied a poster advertising a ticket book with coupons for admission to more monuments and museums than anyone could want to see. Why couldn’t Leo do that for Allo!? Buy a coupon book and dutifully go every place that it let you visit. Why couldn’t he write something educational, helpful, and pragmatic, untouched by personal terror of extinction and death?
Leo appeared to be arguing with the woman at the booth. Their voices echoed through the antechamber as they politely took turns exploding in bursts of furious French. Nina went to investigate, but Leo had already given up, paid, grabbed the tickets, and intercepted her halfway.
“Fascist bitch,” said Leo.
“What’s the problem?” Nina asked.
“We have to take a guided tour. We can’t go around on our own.”
“Why?” said Nina. “I hate guided tours.”
“Bomb threats,” Leo said. “They can’t have all those sleazy Arab terrorists wandering wherever they please, stashing little packets of Semtex in French national historical monuments.”
They passed through a narrow opening in a barrier of metal grillwork crowned with spikes. First Leo and then Nina tripped down the invisible step that led into a gigantic room surrounded by dripping stone walls the color of auto exhaust. The emptiness and vastness of the underground cavern made Nina feel like a nervous spelunker, or like an astronaut cut loose by mistake and floating weightless in outer space.
The room was too dark to see very far. And why would anyone want to? Hundreds of briefcases tied with rope could be ticking away in the shadows.
“The Hall of the Men-at-Arms,” said Leo. “This is where they kept the prisoners during the Terror when they overflowed every abbey and holding pen and subhuman jail in Paris. That bitch at the ticket booth claimed this place is always being targeted by terrorists, but I’ll bet it’s a lie so they can herd us like sheep and save a couple of sous.”
Guided Tours of Hell Page 18
