The 6:41 to Paris Read Free

two days on the weekend. It was just a question of months or a few years—and then they’d move south for their retirement, build a little house, it was all planned out, ordained, on course. But then one day he had a heart attack, when he was changingMétro lines. Defibrillators didn’t exist back then. There were calls for help, people rushing over, gathering around, someone shouted, “I’m a doctor!” like in some second-rate TV show. But it wasn’t enough. For three years my mother was inconsolable, and then she met this charming bicycle salesman who had just gotten divorced. They went on long rides together.
    I’m aware that history is repeatingitself.
    I’m trying to fight it.
    I figure that bicycle salesmen and doctors are not the same thing.
    Or are they?
    I also figure that I got divorced before, that I won’t kill myself working, and that I won’t end up dead in a Métro passageway. Unless I do today.
    No.
    I close my eyes while the ubiquitous female voice announces the arrival of the train in the station. I’d like to meet her someday,that woman. I wonder what she’s like in real life. Does she spend her time recording messages such as “train number one thousand three hundred (pause) and fifty is currently delayed by (pause) five minutes?” How does she see her future? What does she like to do when she’s not at work?
    Above all I wonder how long this recorded voice has been making its announcements to passengers. I remember aday just like this. All those years ago. I took the same train—or its twin brother. I was seventeen. With Mathieu. It was the end of April, just like today. Easter vacation. We were leaving for Les Landes for a few days, to go camping. We’d been dreaming about our week on the coast for months. All the other students were green with envy. We were freedom personified. If I let myself go a little, Ican even feel the weight of the tent and the backpack on my shoulders. And the impression I had that the whole world was opening up to me.
    It was a disappointment. The campsite was deserted, so was the resort, there was nothing to do except go cycling in the dunes. The sea was still freezing and the beach hadn’t been cleaned. You had to watch out for the clumps of tar that had collected in thesand. In theend we went home one day early, relieved to be among company and laughter and noise. Or at least I was. I don’t know about Mathieu. He has always been very nostalgic about that vacation. He has often gone back to that stretch of coast. The only nostalgia I feel is for the moment of departure.
    I could do it all over again today.
    After all, no one is really expecting me. I disappear.My kids miss me a little, but mainly they are disturbed by the fact they don’t know if I’m alive or dead. So I send them a postcard to reassure them. They go on with their lives. They notice that my absence doesn’t make that much difference. At my work, they are concerned, then they react. Before long they brand me a deserter and I am fired. They find someone younger and more energetic to replaceme, and who smiles more. In the meantime I’m up in the air and I land far away—in a place where the tumult of the world might still seem like just a faint whisper—Mongolia, Bolivia, a country like that, somewhere I’ve never been to. I had plans to travel. A lot of plans. And then, I don’t know, one thing led to another, work, marriage, children, divorce. Most of the time purchasing power didn’tgo far enough. Neither did courage. I never made it very far. Spain twice, with the kids, to those concrete-covered resorts. Ireland, because Christine wanted to go there—I thought we’d find unspoiled nature and we’d be able to walk for miles without meeting another soul, and I found myself in the Mecca of European tourism. Florence, when I was young.
    Until I was twenty-five, I crisscrossed Franceby trainbecause my dad worked for the national railway so I had a hefty discount on tickets. But