In Paris With You Read online

  I’m sure that you recognise this feeling.

  Love is so astonishing,

  the way it gives sudden shape to our formless expectations,

  intense colours to our inner landscape,

  upgrades our life to high definition

  and convinces us that everyone else

  is still trapped in the cave

  from which we have escaped.

  Later, when we’ve come down

  from this 3D IMAX romance,

  when the happiness we feel is more balanced,

  more gentle, more nuanced, less mental,

  and we meet the eye of another,

  someone who is obviously in love,

  their vision razor-sharp, their eyes so wide, we know what they’re thinking of us, inside:

  Poor girl, her life’s so grey.

  And we envy them a little, even as we smile

  at their arrogance

  and we want to reply:

  Ah, but I’ve seen

  the same things you’re seeing now,

  I’ve seen it all and I expect

  that I’ll see it all again someday.

  Because those love goggles that you’re wearing,

  those universe-altering specs,

  those glasses that make you feel so daring,

  I’ve worn them before, and I daresay

  that I’ll wear them again someday.

  Crushed by the wait, he was tempted to write to

  her. He started dozens of texts and emails. But he couldn’t

  decide on anything,

  not the beginning, not the middle, not the end

  Dear Tatiana

  Hello Tatiana

  Hi Tatiana

  Hola guapa

  I wanted to warn you that I’ll be there on Saturday

  ‘warn’ sounds a bit threatening,

  doesn’t it?

  I’ll see you Saturday flat I will probably be able to

  make it to the museum on Saturday

  impersonal

  There’s a chance I may be present on Saturday

  stupid phrasing

  It is possible that I will come on Saturday

  it’s possible we’ll both come on Saturday

  This was, he knew, becoming an obsession.

  Dear Tatiana, I’ve been thinking about

  you a lot, since the other day how to

  Tatiana, I haven’t really thought about

  much else since the other day make

  Oh Tatiana, you are literally all I have thought

  about since the other day a girl

  My darling Tatiana, I find it completely

  impossible to get you out of my head freak out

  So, in the end, he didn’t write to her at all.

  Besides, what would have been the point? He would be

  there on Saturday – she would see that for herself.

  All these hesitations

  were also, in private,

  connected to the uncertainty felt by Eugene

  regarding the nature of Tatiana’s relations

  with her thesis supervisor.

  He could hardly make a grand declaration

  before finding out if she had a thing for that moron.

  Saturday would be his chance to observe them together

  (how that word together made him sick),

  to seek out clues as to whether

  their relationship was more than platonic:

  those singular glances, dense with significance, that pass

  between two people caught up in a romance,

  particularly when it’s a secret;

  the way they keep touching each other on the arm or the

  shoulder for no reason whatsoever,

  those incomprehensible allusions,

  giving rise to wry smiles

  that vanish in confusion.

  That week, the role played by Leprince in Eugene’s

  fantasies, though relatively minor, was also intriguing:

  sometimes he was an antagonist, the bad guy,

  catching them unaware,

  behind the statue of the polar bear.

  Furious, he threatened them.

  Tatiana then told Eugene

  that Leprince was guilty

  of sexual harassment, so the two men fought

  and Eugene won, obviously.

  In other daydreams, Leprince’s name came up in the

  middle of a discussion

  on the pillow that he shared with Tatiana:

  she told him no, we’re not sleeping together;

  we tried it once, but the poor man

  suffers from erectile dysfunction.

  So that was how Leprince was seen

  in all the scenes of Eugene’s daydreams:

  an old man, successively aggressive and impotent,

  sexually obsessive, lonely and obscene.

  It never crossed his mind that Tatiana might have her

  heart set on someone else, someone younger, a student, a

  childhood friend, some guy she met on Tinder.

  Leprince was the enemy,

  not some ordinary Lucas/

  Thomas/Xavier.

  It was Leprince, that loser,

  that ancient, pompous poseur,

  who he had to annihilate for her.

  (I’m no psychologist,

  and besides it’s really none of my business,

  but don’t you have the feeling that

  the evil/impotent old bore

  in Eugene’s fantasies might have rather

  less to do with Leprince and a little more

  to do with Eugene’s relationship with his father?)

  At last Friday night arrived. In his attic flat,

  filled with demonic energy, almost a sort of rage,

  Eugene cleaned and tidied, dusted and swept,

  changed the sheets on the bed,

  threw out all his old crap and kept

  only what might impress his new love:

  he reordered his books (Perec in front, Asterix behind),

  put a pack of condoms in the drawer of his bedside table –

  open the box or leave it shut?

  open makes me look like the kind of guy who invites girls

  to his pad every night – a slut –

  but closed makes me look like a virgin,

  either that or the guy

  who bought the pack just for tonight,

  what did I do the last time I brought a girl home?

  (the last time was several months ago)

  I don’t know. I didn’t care last time – that’s the reality:

  I couldn’t have cared less what that girl thought of me.

  In the end he opened it, left the twelve silver-coloured

  blister packs twelve? is that all?

  I should have bought more in the drawer.

  Just before midnight he messed the flat up again

  because he thought it looked too neat,

  casually tossing a shirt

  over the arm of chair

  as no one ever does, anywhere,

  untidying up his desk –

  three paperclips, two pens

  scattered improbably over a pile of concert tickets/bank

  statements/an advert for a play,

  and finally went to bed, and finally

  it was tomorrow: Saturday,

  finally, this day he’d waited for so long,

  finally this bus he’d ridden a hundred times in his head,

  finally this queue of tourists outside the Musée d’Orsay,

  inexplicable

  finally this glass door, rhinoceros

  finally this polar bear,

  against which they’d made love

  a thousand times in his fantasies,

  finally this Room 32, where she was preparing to speak …

  finally her!

  He drank her in,

  noting things

  haphazardly:r />
  dark turquoise poplin dress, accentuating her hips,

  black jacket, black boots, black hair tied back,

  the curve of her calves matching the curve of her lips,

  small watch – grey leather strap –

  on her wrist

  and a pair of pearl earrings, pale pink. That’s it.

  Ten seconds of disappointment – That’s Tatiana? That’s all?

  She’d starred

  in his dreams in too many guises, too many roles,

  that, in truth, it was hard,

  inevitably,

  not to be a little bit put out by the sight

  of Tatiana shrunk by reality.

  But then,

  in the eleventh second … joy:

  Yes, that’s Tatiana! That’s all

  Tatiana!

  Eugene felt stunned by her singular wholeness,

  her only Tatiana-ness: it was her,

  he recognised her,

  and she was a thousand times more

  than the thousand shes she’d been before.

  Floored by this miracle,

  he contemplated her the way

  a mouse might contemplate the Milky Way.

  As for Tatiana,

  standing in front of her painting,

  if she was surprised to see Eugene

  in her field of vision

  between

  View of Rooftops and Pinks and Clematis

  (Effect of Snow) in a Crystal Vase

  (Caillebotte/Manet

  in case you’re interested)

  well, she didn’t let it show.

  Tatiana was there

  to talk about Young Man at His Window,

  a Caillebotte canvas rarely shown in exhibition,

  from the private collection of an American,

  currently on loan to the museum.

  The picture represented a man, from behind, observing,

  through the window of a Parisian house,

  an almost empty avenue,

  where a young woman was walking,

  dwarfed by the Haussmann-style buildings all around;

  behind her, a horse pulled a carriage.

  All was bathed in sugar-white sunlight.

  Tatiana was there

  to communicate her knowledge and love of this painting to

  a motley group of people:

  friends of the museum, tourists, students, and others

  drawn only by curiosity;

  and facing her on the wooden floor,

  sitting cross-legged, wide-eyed and chubby-cheeked,

  was a handful of children.

  Tatiana was not there

  to focus on any one particular person in the audience,

  and while, yes,

  she had to confess

  she was a little intrigued by Eugene’s presence

  I like that Fair Isle jumper (and beauty)

  it shows off his shoulders

  she wasn’t about to let that distract her from her duty.

  TATIANA Thank you for coming, thank you, everyone,

  for coming this afternoon, are you sitting

  comfortably? not too cold on the floor?

  everyone okay?

  Good, then I’ll begin.

  Who can tell me okay, we’ve started

  nice easy question

  who can tell me what they see in this picture?

  CHILDREN A man!

  TATIANA A man, very good. And what is he doing,

  who can tell me what he’s doing, this man?

  CHILDREN He’s looking out the window!

  TATIANA He’s looking out the window. Very good.

  And what is he looking at do you think?

  CHILDREN A horse!!!

  CHILD 1 I’ve been horse riding at Nan’s house.

  CHILD 2 Me too. I rode a horth wonth.

  ADULT 1 I reckon he’s looking at the pretty girl!

  (Laughter)

  TATIANA Maybe he’s looking at the horse, maybe he’s

  looking at the lady in the street,

  we don’t know maybe what he’s looking at

  is

  hidden from our view by his body,

  or maybe he’s not really looking at anything

  in particular.

  Don’t you just sometimes look

  through the window at nothing

  in particular?

  CHILDREN Yes!!! (sometimes I / but one time / shhh

  / I’ve got a window / my mum says /

  [inaudible] / mustn’t lean out the window)

  TATIANA In your opinion,

  why is he there, this man,

  looking out the window?

  ADULT 1 He’s unemployed! He’s on benefits. He’s

  got nothing to do all day but stare out the

  window.

  (Laughter)

  Eugene added this man to his mental list

  of people to be eliminated:

  he daydreamed about shooting him in the head

  right here, in this hall,

  his brains spurting out in a gush of pink and red

  splattering over the Pissarro on the wall.

  Then he started thinking of gentler things,

  lulled by the soft music

  of Tatiana’s voice as she continued her presentation,

  punctuated by the joyful cries of the children

  and interrupted occasionally by that intolerable clever dick;

  he watched as she restored order, subtle and serene,

  with her diagonal voice, which piped up like a flute,

  slender, silver, soothing,

  slicing through the philharmonic murmur of the group.

  He wanted it all to himself, that soprano calm,

  all for him,

  that sinuous melody,

  winding itself around him like a dream.

  This need he felt was more than desire,

  a fact from which Eugene drew a weird pride;

  he imagined not only

  that he held her

  tight to his chest,

  not only

  that he undressed her

  while his tongue described

  the curve of her breasts,

  but also – and most of all –

  that she embraced him in turn,

  and took him by the hand,

  delicately, aware of his fragility.

  (Kind of surprising,

  since up to then,

  fragile was not something he thought

  that he could be.)

  TATIANA So, in the nineteenth century, there was

  in the literature of the time,

  a particular type of person

  who observed, who didn’t

  do anything very much

  except observe the city, does anyone know

  what we call people of that kind

  yes, over there? no, not you, professor

  that’s cheating, you already know the answer.

  Even Leprince and his pompous pontifications –

  ‘Flaneur’ was the term in vogue for such people, it’s said

  – and Tatiana’s teasing replies

  Yes, a flaneur –

  one who strolls, one who is idle

  well done, professor, have a gold star

  even the amusement of the crowd

  did not render Eugene homicidal,

  so at peace did he feel in his heart.

  He felt a sort of certainty deep inside:

  he and Tatiana would kiss, within an hour,

  an hour and a half, and after that,

  everything would be simple. No more anxiety

  concerning performance or rivalry;

  she would ditch the audience, come to his flat,

  and everything would be all right.

  He would be with her,

  be with her,

  be with her …

  Applause.

  Eugene awoke. It was over. He wasn’t too sure of wha
t

  she’d said,* but still …

  Confident, he advanced towards her, cleaving a way

  through the crowd

  of visitors who waltzed this way and that, headed

  for the exits, until

  they were left alone,

  but no:

  Leprince too had taken a few steps in her direction,

  and then

  she was surrounded by friends, in a hubbub of bravos and

  congratulations.

  But all the same, he noticed that Tatiana’s eyes

  kept coming back to him, as if magnetised;

  in fact, it looked to Eugene

  as if she were keen

  to get rid of all these others

  as quickly as she could.

  She thanked them for their thank yous

  * That it didn’t matter, in fact, what the young man was looking at / that the fascination of the painting lay in its ambiguous gaze / the way nothing was resolved, all the ways / it failed to make things clear / the way it revealed itself by hiding / or hid itself by revealing / that art is not there to show / but that it can / place an opaque body in front of a window / and objects in the background /and yet speak only / truly, only / of what is invisible.

  let’s have coffee one afternoon!

  really nice to see you again,

  yeah the thesis is going well,

  I’ll tell you all about it soon,

  I don’t want to keep you out too late …

  all those things that we say to make someone go away,

  she tossed them out like confetti to everyone

  see you next time thanks for coming

  while seeming to check

  through the moving cracks

  in the wall of human beings

  that Eugene

  was still there:

  a smile at someone Eugene’s still there

  a kiss on someone’s cheek great to see you, bye

  yes, still there

  a handshake with an American tourist who had just posed

  a very long question –

  an involuntary distress signal sent to Eugene:

  don’t go I’m coming; I’ll just be three

  seconds – thank you I’m delighted

  you enjoyed it

  and then, at last, the biggest obstacle

  of all:

  Leprince, who was strolling over

  to her.

  Eugene pretended to admire a work of art,

  just for something to do.

  Auguste Renoir, Alphonsine Fournaise.

  What a godawful name