The PowerBook Read Free Page B

‘What about you? What brings you to Paris?’
    ‘A story I’m writing.’
    ‘Is it about Paris?’
    ‘No, but Paris is in it.’
    ‘What is it about?’
    ‘Boundaries. Desire.’
    ‘What are your other books about?’
    ‘Boundaries. Desire.’
    ‘Can’t you write about something else?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘So why come to Paris?’
    ‘Another city. Another disguise.’
    We went up onto a little wooden bridge and lounged against the metal rail. The broad view of the river was a cine-film of the weekend, with its amateur, hand-held feel of lovers and dogs and electric light and the spontaneous, unsteady movement of people crossing this way and that, changing their minds, pausing, going out of focus, looming too close. The ribbon of film that was the moving river fluttered and unrolled and projected itself against the open sky and the jostle of the Ile de la Cité.
    Frame by frame, that Friday night was shot and exposed and thrown away, carried by the river, by time, canned up only in memory, but in itself, scene by scene, perfect.
    I thought, ‘This is all I have, all I can be sure of. The rest is gone. The rest may not follow.’
    There was a woman near me, eating an ice cream with the intensity of a sacrament. The look on her face, her concentration, belonged to the altar.
    A man knelt down and fastened his Scottie dog into a little tartan coat. Feet passed round him. His fingers fumbled with the buckles.
    A child, holding its mother’s hand, was crying over a punctured Mickey Mouse balloon and then, the limping, failing helium ears and deflating black nose lurched over the railing and slipped down flat on the water.
    Away it went—mouse, dog, ice cream, now. Already we were in another now, and the pink of the sky had faded.
    ‘Where’s the restaurant?’ you said.
    ‘I don’t know. I thought you knew.’
    ‘No—I thought you knew.’
    ‘Well, what was the name?’
    ‘Ali’s. A Turkish place.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘We can call the hotel. The concierge will know.’
    ‘We’re going to be late.’
    ‘There’s plenty of time.’
    She smiled and rested her arm around my shoulders. I tried to look natural.

    ‘Are you usually so friendly with strangers?’
    ‘Always.’
    ‘Any particular reason?’
    ‘A stranger is a safe place. You can tell a stranger anything.’
    ‘Suppose I put it in my book?’
    ‘You write fiction.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So you won’t lash me to the facts.’
    ‘But I might tell the truth.’
    ‘Facts never tell the truth. Even the simplest facts are misleading.’
    ‘Like the times of the trains.’
    ‘And how many lovers you’ve had.’
    I looked at her curiously. Where was this leading?
    ‘How many have you had?’
    ‘Nine forty-eight,’ she said, sounding like a platform announcement.
    ‘Was that the previous one or the one here now?’
    ‘The one here now is not listed in the timetable.’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘It means I’m married, but not to him.’
    ‘Then to whom?’
    ‘Oh, to a man built like a dining car—solid, welcoming, always about to serve lunch.’
    ‘Don’t you like that?’
    ‘There are nights when I’d prefer a couchette.’
    ‘Is that why you’re in Paris?’
    ‘And there are nights when I’d prefer nothing at all.’
    ‘A structure without cladding.’
    ‘As you get older, the open spaces start to close up.’
    ‘You seem to have slipped through.’
    ‘I get reckless. I risk more than I should.’
    ‘Have you left your husband?’
    ‘No, just lied to him.’
    ‘Can you lie to someone you love?’
    ‘It’s kinder than telling the truth.’
    ‘Are you still close?’
    ‘As close as two people growing apart can be.’

    She walked ahead, her sweater swinging against her back. Then she turned to me.
    ‘You keep the form and the habit of what you have, but gradually you empty it of meaning.’
    ‘If you feel like that, you should leave.’
    ‘I still love him.’
    ‘You can love someone and leave them. Sometimes