In Paris With You Read online

  years later, close brackets.

  And that’s all.

  *

  At the library that day, Tatiana

  did not spend a huge amount of time

  thinking about Eugene.

  Just a little bit, now and then, as you’d expect.

  With less intensity,

  with far less urgent necessity

  than ten years before. Of course, she’d been shocked

  to see him again,

  but she had notes to take, she had Caillebotte to consider,

  she had to write a summary

  of that book by Valéry

  (no simple feat) …

  there were a thousand obligations in her life these days:

  the paper for next Thursday’s symposium to reread;

  preparing for that presentation she had to deliver

  at the Musée d’Orsay

  next Saturday;

  coffee with a friend (who was taking her dissertation viva)

  at four

  and a whole list of other responsibilities, other tasks …

  Admin. A thing she kept postponing:

  preparing for her flight to San Francisco

  (she was going there soon for a research trip,

  with the possibility, if Leprince was to be trusted,

  of a permanent

  academic position on offer, but …

  later – she’d think of it later). For now:

  flight-booking, bag-packing, list-checking,

  book-buying – The Rough Guide to San Francisco? –

  to help her find places to go

  sightseeing, bar-hopping, window-shopping …

  Yet she didn’t exactly know

  why, but today Tatiana felt like putting it off.

  She’d do all that later. Focus on other stuff,

  like finding gifts on Etsy for her nieces’ birthday,

  (Olga had twins; they’d turned two yesterday),

  and booking train tickets online, the system crashed

  all the bloody time

  (she was going to her cousin’s wedding

  in May,

  at a chateau near Montpellier);

  she also had to confirm her Airbnb reservation

  (a horses’ stable until its recent renovation!)

  and then after she left the library, she had to, um, let me see

  that shopping list … oh yes, buy cat litter (clumping) for the,

  um, cat … obviously,

  and muesli

  (without raisins)

  toothpaste (sensitive gums)

  La Laitière yoghurts (vanilla/plum)

  + don’t forget (underlined three times)

  Cillit Bang (for the bathroom tiles)!

  And when she got home, she had to check her bank account

  online.

  Home, for Tatiana, was a little studio flat in

  Boulogne Billancourt; 750 euros per month in rent.

  Sasha the cat had access to the roof through a vent.

  Tatiana’s life was no longer

  what it had been when she was younger:

  a blank canvas, drum-tight,

  to be decorated with needle, scissors, thread,

  gilt-embroidered with a thousand daydreams,

  colours bright …

  No. Now it was the life of someone new: a busy,

  devoted,

  studious young woman,

  a serious scholar,

  someone

  who had lists of things to tick off on Google Calendar,

  and who also had to deal with unexpected problems

  such as this one:

  Dear Tatiana,

  In order to celebrate the imminent publication

  Of your magnificent article on Degas,

  I would like to present you with this humble invitation

  To meet me at Angelina’s at four for hot chocolate

  And delicious macarons the day after tomorrow.

  Please say yes, or I’ll be plunged into sorrow!

  G. Leprince.

  It was perhaps not surprising,

  amid the gravity-defying

  act of juggling

  that constituted Tatiana’s life forever more,

  that the place allotted to Eugene should appear

  considerably smaller than before.

  And yet,

  and yet,

  somewhere in her head, perhaps in her inner ear,

  a tiny sound could be heard, revealing

  the intermittent presence of Eugene,

  like a little jolt, repeating,

  beating,

  against the inside of her chest at times, a tension

  felt in those rare moments of inattention

  as she turned a page Eugene

  or underlined a phrase Eugene

  As she wrote a boring email,

  Eugene hissed like static

  between the lines …

  Dear Sir I am writing to you about

  Eugene Eugene

  the possibility of seeing the sketch made by

  Eugene Eugene

  Caillebotte during the summer he spent with

  Eugene

  (etc.)

  And so it was with Eugene pulsing in her mind,

  images of their reunion still flickering in her brain,

  that Tatiana took the metro home,

  and then the suburban train.

  She had lots of things to do before going to bed,

  but chose instead,

  for once,

  to go to sleep early,

  with Sasha a shapka on her head.

  She checked that she didn’t have any new emails,

  just in case,

  not that she was expecting any but anyway,

  no,

  no new emails from him.

  Nor any texts.

  He must have asked for her number just out of politeness.

  Telephone in hand, head warmed by the cat,

  she spent a long time

  observing the contours of her studio flat,

  dimly lit by a single lamp

  that crayoned the Ikea furniture in grey.

  She didn’t dream of anything special,

  but the next day,

  woken by her alarm,

  she noticed that the phone was still in bed with her,

  nestled under her arm.

  *

  That week, Eugene felt excited.

  He was filled with energy.

  He was filled with enthusiasm.

  He felt pretty glorious, all in all,

  as excited as a kid on Christmas Eve,

  waiting for Santa to call.

  He found it really really hard

  to be patient, to wait

  for the following Saturday, for their ‘date’.

  Eugene who, as an adolescent,

  had had a relationship with time

  that we might characterise as jaded,

  indifferent, passive, bored,

  who, as a teenager, had never impatiently

  waited for anything –

  seriously, nothing at all –

  had become, as an adult, like everyone else.

  (You can give his phone the credit – or the blame –

  for that particular development.) Like everyone else,

  he waited vaguely for the next thing, always the same:

  the next email, the next weather forecast,

  the next election, the next plane crash,

  the next death of a singer from the 1980s,

  the next terrorist attack, the next pay cheque;

  an adult with a miniature attention span,

  like everyone else, refreshing, updating,

  nibbling at time like a ham baguette.

  All the same, the way this adult Eugene waited

  was not – in normal circumstances – impatient;

  he rarely said I can’t wait,

  I’m looking forward to this or tha
t, it’ll be great …

  he was never in any great hurry;

  he was just a young man whose ennui,

  which had once inhabited his entire being,

  was now just

  a nagging pulse in the tip of his thumb,

  beating out the measure of the passing seconds

  by pressing an icon on a screen.

  He was used to his hope feeling numb,

  used to hoping for nothing in particular;

  not like this hope he felt now –

  for something precious, powerful, precise.

  Now, suddenly, his shapeless hope

  had taken the exact outline of Tatiana.

  Suddenly he was waiting for a soon,

  a living, breathing human;

  he was no longer waiting just to kill time

  and his hope was no longer vague and viscous,

  but vital and vivacious;

  a clear hope, easily summarised in three words –

  Saturday / Tatiana / Orsay

  – a hope that he could build and decorate.

  He dreamed of it every night and he dreamed of it every day,

  of the look on her face when she’d spot him in the crowd,

  of all the intelligent things that he’d say

  about Manet

  and Degas

  (he’d been memorising their Wikipedia pages),

  and how that conversation

  would reveal their ravenous mutual attraction,

  his insistent, hers impatient,

  how the two of them, in their desperate desire

  to be together,

  would hail a taxi …

  would zip through Paris …

  no, no, it’d take too long, they couldn’t delay,

  so they’d make love there and then, in Orsay,

  behind the big statue of the polar bear,

  or anywhere,

  really, anywhere at all: the nearest toilet stall would do!

  And when they were done, then they’d hail a cab

  and head back to the refuge of Eugene’s bed

  (note to self: change the sheets)

  all night Saturday they’d stay,

  and all day Sunday too

  (buy some croissants).

  And Eugene imagined the lovemaking

  (prolonged and beautiful).

  And Eugene imagined the pillow talk

  (profound and insightful).

  Because while there is no denying

  that Eugene was extremely eager to uncover

  just what Tatiana was hiding

  beneath her clothing,

  he also wanted to penetrate the whole

  of her; he wanted access to her heart, her mind,

  her soul;

  he wanted her hands not only for caresses

  but as commas in all the sentences she would speak,

  all the secrets she would share,

  he wanted her ears

  not only as recipients of kisses

  and whispered sweet nothings,

  but to listen

  to all the things he had to tell her

  about his childhood, his heart, his youth,

  his visions of a future that suddenly shone bright

  because of her;

  he wanted her mouth

  not only to kiss him

  but for the words it contained,

  he wanted them to pour over him

  in a rain of Tatiana-ness;

  he wanted her eyes

  not only closed in orgasm or sleep,

  but wide open, pupils dilating deep

  as she remembered, eyelids creasing with laughter,

  yet another story she just needed to tell.

  Because there was so much

  they had to say to each other after

  all those conversations cut dead

  by that sad decade,

  and now they had to continue them,

  finish them, take them in new directions,

  find themselves again lost in reflection,

  where were we again?

  oh yeah … you go first

  They’d hunger for each other’s ideas

  over plates of croissants; thirst

  for each other’s words

  over bowls of coffee.

  Eugene wanted all of this: the wordless love in bed

  and all the love and words

  and wonders in Tatiana’s head;

  to explore the universe in a grain of sand

  and taste the glory of eternity in one weekend.

  To be with her –

  that was all …

  all he yearned for and all he lacked.

  To be with her until the sun turned black.

  And on Monday morning I have to go to the library now

  No, stay with me No, really, I must Please stay

  Eugene, listen It’s important to me I know, but

  But nothing, Tatiana: stay! Oh, okay! But only for today

  But in the end, when tomorrow came,

  so would she,

  and the day after that, and the day after that, endlessly!

  This frenzy of fantasies

  was too much for Eugene’s brain:

  he was agitated, antsy, so eager for Saturday

  that life seemed to be moving

  in a slow-motion replay

  and he was like the driver of a car in a traffic jam:

  On his way to work Fuck, what’s wrong with the

  metro? Why’s it so slow?

  as if the metro might take him direct to her door.

  At the bagel store

  Where’s my bloody bagel, eh?

  I’m not just going to wait here all bloody day!

  Are you still trying to catch the smoked salmon or what?

  At the supermarket Express line my arse!

  What a farce!

  And worst of all, at work, where his impatience took on a

  somewhat

  passive-aggressive tone:

  ‘I would appreciate it if you would kindly

  respond to the last email I sent.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I must point out that you have

  not yet made the required payment.’

  ‘It might be a good idea, re: the contract (please

  find attached), if you would bother signing it the way it’s

  supposed to be signed, by initialling each page, if you don’t

  mind.’

  ‘Everything okay, Eugene? You seem a bit stressed today.’

  (Fourth colleague to the left in the open-plan office.)

  ‘Everything’s fine, although it would be nice

  if people would leave me to work in peace.’

  At times, in fact, his tone

  was active-aggressive, even rude,

  although thankfully only

  in his head, not out loud:

  ‘Relax – you might have a heart attack!’

  And you might get a knee in the nutsack

  ‘What are you doing this weekend?’

  A more beautiful girl than you’ve ever had

  And as Eugene worked in three languages, he expressed

  his impatience trilingually:

  Can’t wait can’t wait

  J’ai tellement hâte

  Ia s neterpenyem zhdu

  Saturday Samedi Subbota

  Tatiana Tatiana Tatiana

  Convention dictates

  that Eugene’s feelings be chaste,

  the kind of thing a prince might think –

  rescuing a damsel in distress or gently kissing her lips.

  But I have access to secret corridors in his mind;

  I have peeked through certain keyholes in certain doors

  and some of the things I’ve seen …

  well, I’d love to tell you more,

  but my editors are watching me.

  So make an effort of imagination.

  Picture for yourself a less censored version.

>   Inside the head of our handsome hero, then,

  the scenes overlapped, crashing into each other,

  with no respect for chronological order,

  as if someone had tangled up the rolls of film,

  so he could watch, at the same time, different shots …

  He saw an unmade bed in the middle of the museum,

  white sheets like thick whipped cream,

  and atop the bed, Tatiana,

  delivering her speech on Caillebotte,

  and as she smiled, he saw – where her teeth should gleam –

  the delicate lace of her lingerie,

  and Monet’s Water Lilies

  like a watermark on her skin.

  Sounds, too, intermingled: he heard her talk about

  painterly technique

  and listened to the bedsprings creak.

  The result was surrealist, a rhapsody

  of rapid erotica: Luis Buñuel in a blender.

  So there was something creative in his grey man’s soul; he

  wished she could have shared his thoughts in this moment.

  All these years, his imagination had been dormant,

  locked in lethargy, a Sleeping Beauty waiting

  for her to kiss his lips and finally wake it.

  The question gnawed at Eugene all that week:

  where was all this

  before their chance meeting? What he meant

  by all this was this vitality,

  heart speeding,

  this energy,

  this ascent

  to the higher sensations …

  where was it all, before she reappeared?

  This vivacity, this elation,

  were they already inside him?

  This purpose, this emotion,

  did he owe it all to her?

  It was like when you visit the eye doctor, and he changes

  your lenses:

  that little glass circle is all you need

  to bring the world into focus,

  and you exclaim inside your head

  I’d never have believed that life could be so vivid –

  where have I been? What’s this new world?

  At last, Eugene felt fully aware of his existence:

  he sensed the working parts, the cogs, the wheels,

  the minuscule movements,

  he could feel

  the private pulsing of this life inside his mind;

  this life that, before,

  had been so hazy and unformed

  shone now like a cut diamond.

  He felt convinced that he and he alone could now

  perceive this life and world as they truly were;

  that he was the only one

  to grasp its secrets.

  I was blind and now I see,

  not like all the others,

  poor bastards, they’re still stuck in that blur …