On the top of the world

by Madeleine Ruh

financial head, a French woman, seems to be upset as taking a long flight to Australia in the next morning, and asserting we should have already arrived, and she won't have time except to book an Uber car. Pat is with her daughter, I'm on my own, but I don't mind.

  Suddenly, the bus stops, and the driver goes back, people shout as scared to have the breaks broken, and suddenly to fall. Then he stops the bus, and begins yelling at someone in Korean in his cell phone. It's like a panic in the bus. People are not calm any longer, stress at the idea of having spent all this time in the bus for nothing.

  Pat says to the Korean guy and also the Japanese one that they should do something as their Asian and perhaps the driver would understand them. They talk to him, and we discover that the driver is Korean.

  The guy says we're too heavy. The only way to go is to find another way to go to the house and call the host. Which we do, and five minutes later our partner arrives.

  The bus finally follow the car, and we arrive safe at the house. It's a beautiful architect house, in the middle of the trees, and in the fog, althoug it's a sunny day.

  I say hello to Helana, his wife, they're both Russian. We eat Russian food, and I underline to Helana that she has a lot of picture of her two children, she says something as "There is more", but is compelled to take care of the Indian children, that run in the stairs, and have let the cat enter in the big room.

  I analyse that he and her being Russian, they don't mind not to have the sun, and they must like the landscape, wild and with a lot of trees.

  Around the big table in the kitchen, the partners. Pat and her daughter are here and talks a lot. The fat guy with the spanish woman is an "amateur" of wines, and he compares French Bordeaux to Chianti and to Napa Valley wines. The Italian guy says that everything is ok when there's wine at a party, according ot him the food is less important. As Helana must have prepared dishes during days, I add "Thank you Helana for being the perfect host", and she smiles and asserts :" You're the perfect guests, coming from all the countries in the world, I'm proud to have you at home, please enjoy."

  Pat's daughter has bad teeth and her device doesn't make it easy for her to talk. But she says she steals her mother smartphone to text to friends or to surf on internet. We had already the discussion with Pat, I think when you're fifteen, you just want to look as your friends, and you need to behave like them, else you're rejected. It's complicated for Pat to undestand. She seems drunk but Pat seems to be proud of her, and then explains she was born in Arizona, and that all her friends stayed less than four miles of their parent's house, how strange. The spanish woman asserts that even young people in Spain prefer being out of job instead of going out of the country and later to come back.

  I take another bread filled with meat and onions, I don't remember the name, and I take a third glass of wine, a Sonoma bottle. The little bread with hot meat and onions is excellent, it's a Russian speciality. Delicious, it tastes as home receipes.

  I feel alone in the noise of the party. But it's OK. I'm used to it. Since I'm a little boy it's like I'm never completely in the mood of other people, like disconnected. At the same time, I like to be with them and listen to their gossiping and laughters.

  Then Helana asks me if I'm interested to see more pictures. I'd had already forgotten that I told her I was surprised by their numbers, and I say : "Yes, for sure."

  She smiles, and open her bedroom's door. Inside we can see a big bed, with a Jesus Christ cross just above on the white wall, and twenty big pictures of her family, the elder, them as a couple, and the children at all ages, playing cards, music, climbing, singing, playing with the dog…

  While saying " Wow, impressive, it's amazing", I feel it's weird to have sex under the pictures of your parents and your children.

  I feel happy not to have a family and not being engaged.

  I think I will wait untill the end of the week in San Francisco for ending my relationship with Pat.

  No particular reason. I'm not in love. She's not appealing to me. I was alone and feeling vulnerable, I'm still as lonely. You know, whatever happens to me or anyone, we were born alone, and we die alone. And finally, I don't know what matters on earth. Meeting people like tonight, and feeling the humanity gathered in one small room, from all the cultures, or living day after day with the same person you learn to love and respect, sharing emotions, values, a way to think of the future and of the past, a way to live something on earth, like we're not just busy ants in an empty universe.

  I can't kiss Pat and put my tongue in our mouth. I don't know why, but it seems disgusting and inappropriate to me.

  I'm sure you think I'm odd. Perhaps. I don't know. I lack of feedbacks. People feel ill at ease when I stare at them a long time.

  I wonder if I shouldn't tell the Korean, the guy that makes strange noises with his nose, to call the driver outside to come back to our white prestigious Downtown hotel. Perhaps we should wait for the desserts, not to make Helana upset, she's a nice person, and our guest too.

  I like their house and the paintings of their children. They're gifted if they also play piano and clarinette. Nice family.

  I mean it.

  Annecy August 2015

  Myriam and the house near Limoges

  I was alone, eating at a table in a restaurant. I've read somewhere that in big cities, it's a trend, lonesome guests.

  Close to my table, just behind, a woman came to meet another woman. I couldn't see them, I could just hear their discussion and laughs. They looked happy to see each other. I was not particularly hungry but I asked the menu to choose another dish and ask another Coke with ice.

  I had time, and I liked the tone of their voices. One of them was a story teller, I could guess it when she began the story. I didn't hear everything because of the noise of the glasses at the bar, but here is what I understood.

  Myriam was a friend of the family. Her sister met her one day, reading an advert in a bakery near her house. The text said, I can do the house cleaning, I love kids.

  Myriam was married at thirteen in her village, raped by her husband, an old and fat guy, her family sold her to. She made three daughters. When she was seventeen, she left the house one day. She came to the big city nearby. She met people, and as she never met any men in her house, she was genuine and she trust the first man smiling at her saying he would help her to earn money. Instead of that, he put her in a house, and she was raped by men. It was an awful period of her life.

  At that moment of the story, I hear the voice of the other woman, upset, asserting it's unbelievable to think it's still happening in our century, and close to our country, and that women are not free, and the situation is even worse if we consider India or North Africa, not even mentioning Daesh or the Talibans.

  The voice that has drunk and smoked, warm and wrapping us, goes on. Then Myriam met another girl like her. They decided to flee to France. She escaped one night and paid a guy to go by boat from Tunisia to Marseille. Here she met people helping her to go to Paris by car. The story goes on :

  "That's when my sister met her. And it saved our daily life as she was the perfect house keeper, and so nice and helpful with the children. We were in our thirties with my sister. Not young mothers, but new mothers. When we came out of the hospital with our first baby she helped us to do the right gestures. She was already a mother for sure."

  The waitress interrupted my listening by giving me the note and adding water to my glass. The street is noisy in this street of Paris.

  The voice says : "Myriam met a guy, a nice one. She decided to have only one child. Her dream was to build a house. Ten years after she left us to live in a beautiful tiny house that her husband built year after year. We were devastated to have her out of our daily life. Me and my daughter. My sister and her boys. We came here from time to time for vacations, just to keep in touch, she was so happy to have us as guests. As a reward of her life, proving she could have her own one, taking care of her family, not spending a lot, but living in the comfort
she never had before."

  I was asking myself how this daring and courageous woman, who indeed had two lifes one after the other, could deal with leaving her daughters behind without being in deep sorrow, when the voice nearly whispers, as revealing a secret.

  "Myriam continued to come in her village in Tunisia. To see her family, the one that helped her, not her parents that were dead. To see the girls. They refused to meet their mother that betrayed them according to the father and his family. Myriam always came with presents. She gave them to a friend that gave them to the girls mentioning her name. The presents were always accepted, but the girls never accepted to meet their mother. She tried many years, she still sends clothes for the grand children, some food, material for the kitchen, fabrics purchased in France."

  I was wondering how you manage to be happy knowing that you can see your daughters in the street but they won't look at you, nor talk to you for ever, when the voice slowly said : "Then Myriam began her third life. When her son was eighteen, and as her husband didn't touch her anylonger, she talked to him asking explanation. He answered, that's life, that won't change, I don't have any desire for you anylonger. Myriam was very proud and still beautiful, even if less thin than she was when she