In Paris With You Read online

  Dear Reader,

  This book is in verse and the original versification and layout was created for a printed format. In ebook form, you may choose to increase the text size; however, you must be aware that this will result in some lines breaking in places that ruin the flow of the text and make it more difficult to read. For optimal reading that respects the aesthetic and poetic considerations of the original text, we recommend keeping the text size as small as possible.

  Faber & Faber

  Freely inspired by

  Alexander Pushkin’s verse novel

  Eugene Onegin (1837)

  and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s opera

  Eugene Onegin (1879)

  Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris,

  The little bit of Paris in our view.

  There’s that crack across the ceiling

  And the hotel walls are peeling

  And I’m in Paris with you.

  James Fenton, ‘In Paris With You’

  Contents

  Disclaimer

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author and Translator

  Copyright

  1

  Because their story didn’t end at the right time, in the

  right place,

  because they let their feelings go to waste,

  it was written, I think, that Eugene and Tatiana

  would find each other

  ten years later,

  one morning in winter,

  under terra firma,

  on the Meteor, Line 14 (magenta) of the

  Paris

  Metro.

  It was quarter to nine.

  Imagine Eugene, dressed up fine: black corduroys,

  pale blue check Oxford shirt, sensible collar, charcoal

  tweed jacket, a grey scarf,

  probably cashmere, frayed at the ends,

  wrapped once,

  twice

  around his neck – and above this hung a face

  that had softened

  since the last time;

  a face written more loosely,

  a face less harsh, and more patient.

  Suppler, gentler.

  A face rinsed clean of its adolescence;

  the face of a young man

  who had learned to stifle his impatience,

  a young man who had learned how to wait.

  Tatiana, funnily enough,

  had been thinking about him the previous evening.

  Which might seem an amazing coincidence,

  except that she often thought about him

  – and I’m sure that

  you, too, can brood and mope,

  sometimes, about love affairs

  that went wrong years ago.

  The pain’s not worse after ten years.

  It doesn’t necessarily increase with time.

  It’s not

  an investment,

  you know,

  regret.

  Lost love doesn’t have to be a tragedy.

  There’s not always enough material there for a story.

  But for these two,

  I’ll make an exception, if you don’t mind.

  Look how shaken they are to find

  each other again.

  Look at their eyes …

  ‘Eugene, hi, haven’t seen you for ages!’

  beamed Tatiana, a pretty good actress.

  He sat down next to her; the seat was still warm.

  On the black window reflecting his face,

  a sleeper’s forehead had stamped

  a little circle of grease

  like the watermark on a banknote.

  A record of time spent, now disappearing.

  Tatiana could see herself in the window too,

  at an angle, as the train sped up, roaring.

  The sudden surges, sharp bends and screeching stops of

  Line 14 are notoriously vicious. It’s hard to stand up or chat

  or read. But it does have an upside: it takes you from your

  first stop

  to your last

  fast.

  As they rushed from one place to another,

  Tatiana stared at the window that reflected him and her

  together.

  Eugene yelled:

  ‘So how are things? I had no idea

  you were pregnant …’

  She wasn’t.

  And yet, it was difficult to contradict Eugene at that

  moment, since on her duffle coat was a massive badge, and

  on that badge a baby grinned, a big white speech bubble

  proudly declaring in capital letters:

  BABY ON BOARD!

  And in smaller letters, just below:

  THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME YOUR SEAT.

  So it was only logical that Eugene

  (who was feeling somewhat upset by this news,

  and surprised to be upset, and a bit confused)

  should come to this conclusion.

  There was an explanation,

  which could not be given then and there:

  that because empty seats were so rare

  on the Paris metro between eight

  and nine a.m.,

  Tatiana had, a few months before,

  bought this VIP (very impregnated person) pass,

  her guarantee of a place to rest her bum.

  She loved seeing all those kind

  ladies and gentlemen

  spot her badge and leap to their feet

  as if their seat

  were on fire.

  She would thank them, flashing

  soft Virgin Mary smiles.

  And since there was nothing secret about her condition,

  it often set off shouted conversations

  about baby names,

  and baby clothes,

  and giving birth, and epidurals,

  and nurseries,

  and breastfeeding,

  and so on, and so on.

  She’d had to do some research into the mysteries of

  maternity.

  She needed a coherent story,

  for at that time of day, it was often the same

  passengers standing/swaying/sitting

  in the train carriage.

  She couldn’t claim one day that she was

  four months gone with twins,

  and the next that it was a little girl with Down’s

  that she and her husband had decided to keep,

  and the day after that that it was

  a miracle child, conceived after eight rounds of IVF,

  and the day after that that she was

  a surrogate mother for two gay men.

  No one would believe her if her story kept changing.

  This need for precision was the price she had to pay

  for a free seat every day … until spring,

  when she could ride a Vélib’ to the National Library

  without shivering.

  ‘Who’s the father?’ asked Eugene.

  ‘The father? His name’s Murray.’

  ‘Murray? Do I know him?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so – he’s British,’

  said Tatiana, who had just invented him.

  For a moment they were silent.

  Then Tatiana paid him a compliment:

  ‘You look very elegant!’

  ‘Ah, thank you,’ Eugene replied.

  ‘I’m going to my grandfather’s funeral.’

  ‘Oh! That’s great!’
said Tatiana,

  who obviously hadn’t given herself

  enough time to process this information.

  Next station:

  Gare de Lyon.

  To the right, on the other side of

  the tracks, a lush tropical forest suddenly appeared

  behind glass.

  (I remember how,

  aged seven or eight,

  I used to daydream

  about seeing snakes

  and monkeys in there.)

  The doors slid open and a voice, automated,

  intimated

  in three languages, no less,

  that passengers should exit from the left side of the train.

  Bajada por el lado izquierdo.

  (When I was young and everything

  was new and a source of wonder,

  I used to ponder

  what kind of aliens this obscure message was addressing.

  ‘It’s in case there are any Spaniards on the train,’

  my father explained.

  ‘So they know where to get off.’

  I wasn’t sure what Spaniards were.

  I imagined them tall and rubbery,

  I don’t know why.

  For months,

  whenever we came into the Gare de Lyon, I would watch,

  heart pounding, hands clasping my skirt, eager

  for a glimpse of those elastic creatures,

  who,

  disobeying the train man’s very clear directive,

  would open the door jungle side and vanish, undetected,

  into the forest of palms.)

  *

  But let’s get back to our two passengers.

  Their memories are more important than mine.

  They have things to tell each other that they can’t articulate.

  So they say other stuff, though of course it barely conceals

  what’s really on their minds.

  One of those cowardly conversations,

  on this and that and the weather,

  avoiding the heart of the matter.

  That’s what happens when everything has gone to waste:

  we can’t say it out loud;

  we chicken out.

  Thankfully someone inside us speaks in our place.

  ‘So what about you? Where are you going?’

  Eugene asked politely.

  ‘To the National Library. Like I do

  every morning,

  at precisely

  the same time … you know,

  if by any chance you’re planning to make the same trip

  tomorrow …’

  He’s going to the cemetery, you idiot!

  Tatiana yelled at herself inside her head.

  Thankfully,

  it was fine:

  Eugene didn’t notice her blunder,

  busy as he was trying to remember

  what he was supposed to be doing

  tomorrow at quarter to nine.

  ‘What are you up to in the library?’

  ‘I’m working on my thesis.

  I’m in the last year of my PhD.’

  ‘Oh yeah? What’s your thesis about?’

  ‘History of art. It’s on Caillebotte.

  Gustave Caillebotte.’

  Then she shifted into autopilot:

  Don’t worry, no one knows anything about Caillebotte …

  ‘Don’t worry, no one knows anything about Caillebotte. He

  was a nineteenth-century artist – a painter and collector,

  theoretically part of the Impressionist movement, but in

  fact his paintings are much more precise, more classical in a

  way – you might have seen one of his more famous pictures:

  a view of Paris in the rain, Haussmann-style buildings like a

  ship’s bow, with a man and a woman under an umbrella …’

  ‘I know,

  I know,’

  Eugene interrupted.

  ‘I know exactly who Caillebotte is,’ he muttered.

  ‘Ah! Perfect.

  Well then, you know everything.’

  To her chagrin, Tatiana felt that this declaration

  somehow carried the implication

  that her thesis didn’t really

  amount to much.

  Not wishing to leave Eugene with this impression,

  she started to describe to him,

  with a level of detail

  that might seem excessive,

  part of her third chapter,

  still largely hypothetical at this stage,

  about the representation of water

  in Caillebotte’s art; in this chapter,

  Tatiana demonstrated,

  in a boldly rhetorical way,

  that the liquid elements

  in Caillebotte’s paintings

  – rivers, bathwater, rain –

  were a sort of discreet reply

  to the stodgy, spongy daubings

  of certain other artists

  around at the same time.

  *

  When she finished this explanation,

  the train howled to a stop

  at the National Library metro station.

  Eugene got off too.

  ‘Is your funeral near here?’ asked Tatiana,

  not very tactfully.

  ‘It’s at the Kremlin-Bicêtre cemetery.

  I’m going to walk. I have plenty of time.’

  They stood in silence on the escalator,

  Tatiana leaning clumsily to the right,

  turned backwards

  so she could face Eugene,

  her right foot in front of her left

  to hide the ladder

  in her tights.

  Eugene seemed pensive.

  Tatiana noticed

  some fine lines on his brow

  that had not been there last time,

  though she might have anticipated their arrival

  because of all the frowning he used to do ten years ago

  to express his disapproval.

  *

  As a teen he’d disapproved of everything –

  the boy was always bored –

  while she’d been too easily pleased

  and lost in a daydream.

  She wondered vaguely if she was still in love with him.

  ‘It’d be nice to see each other again,’ Eugene told her

  halfway up the escalator.

  As this sentence prompted a thousand questions,

  Tatiana asked none of them

  and concentrated instead

  on the immediate perils of her ascension:

  her left arm,

  pulled by the handrail,

  was escaping upwards,

  faster

  than the steps.

  She checked that her scarf was not dragging on the floor,

  to make sure it wouldn’t choke her at the end of the ride.

  (She’d seen a video of a similar incident

  on the Internet.

  The guy died.)

  Can I have your number?’ Eugene asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, reciting it digit by digit.

  He texted her so she would have his too.

  She already had it.

  Apparently he hadn’t changed his number

  in the past ten years.

  Apparently he hadn’t kept hers.

  ‘How’s Olga?’ Eugene asked casually,

  as they were elbowing their way towards the

  turnstiles.

  ‘Oh … fine, you know. She’s got two daughters now.’

  ‘Ah, cool! They’ll be cousins to yours, I mean.’

  Tatiana had momentarily forgotten the whole story with

  the badge.

  This was her chance to come clean:

  ‘Listen, I’m not really pregnant. I just bought this

  thing

  so I’d get a seat on the metro every morning.’

  Eugene threw
his head back and laughed.

  But the laughter surprised him

  because it was more than laughter.

  It gave Eugene the feeling

  that he was

  like a snowdrop or something,

  one of those flowers that break

  through the white winter crust

  and suddenly breathe the icy air.

  The laughter of someone who, until that laugh,

  must not have been truly aware

  that he was alive.

  ‘I did think you were a bit young for that kind of

  responsibility.’

  ‘People always feel too young for responsibility,’

  said Tatiana. ‘Any kind.

  A kitten, a bonsai tree …

  Keeping your ticket

  till the end of your journey.’

  She sighed as if to herself. ‘I have to use tickets now.

  I didn’t renew my Navigo card – I’ve got no murray at the

  moment.’

  ‘No murray?’

  ‘No money.

  Damn it,

  I don’t know why

  I can’t speak properly today.’

  ‘But no Murray either?’ Eugene ventured.

  ‘No Murray either, no. Murray

  was an underground invention.’

  Eugene smiled and nodded, alarmed at the realisation

  that the mere

  idea

  of brushing against Tatiana – the crowd was pressed

  tight together as everyone pushed towards the exit –

  made his head swim,

  knees buckle

  and pulse race

  as though

  he were standing on the top of a high-dive board

  staring into the depths

  below.

  ‘You go first, it’ll be easier that way.’

  The turnstile must have had a sense of humour

  (or maybe it was just that their wool coats rubbed against

  each other)

  because it gave them an electric shock.

  Tatiana stuck her ticket in an ikebana of trash,

  a foul efflorescence of ash,

  in one of those bins where smokers stub their cigarettes.

  Outside, it was the usual tornado

  between the four towers of the National Library.

  In all kinds of weather,

  even in the middle of a hot August afternoon,

  while the whole city languishes, breathlessly,

  under a coal-black sun,

  those library stairways are eternally swept by typhoons.