Paris: The Novel (108 page)

The affair between Luc and Louise lasted several months. At first, they would meet in the afternoons at his house. But after a little while, he found her an apartment. “It belongs to a businessman I know and it’s in a good quarter of the city, just north of the Palais-Royal and near the stock exchange, the Bourse. That’ll be convenient for getting to Chanel as well.”

“Won’t it be expensive?”

“No. He’s a rich man. His daughter was using it, but she’s left and he hasn’t decided whether to sell it or let it. For the time being, he’d be glad to have a respectable person there. Assuming he thinks you’re respectable, he wouldn’t charge you any rent, but you’d have to leave if he wanted the place back. That ought to suit you rather well.”

She’d met the man, a middle-aged stockbroker with a respectable family, who had been suitably impressed by her background. Sometimes Luc would join her there for the night, and sometimes she would go up to his house on the hill of Montmartre.

She quite liked the house. It was a little masculine, as one might expect, and it was permeated by a faint aroma of coffee and Gauloises, like a bar, but it was comfortably furnished with pieces that he had probably found in sales over a period of time. The salon contained a large sofa in the Directoire style, some Second Empire chairs, prints of Napoleonic soldiers on the walls and a thick carpet which, he informed her, he had laid himself. The bedroom contained a large bed made of the best African
mahogany and handsomely inlaid. The kitchen contained a gas cooker and a fridge. He was a good cook, on the rare occasions that he took the trouble, but she liked to cook for him.

Luc was a wonderful lover. He was skillful, strong and considerate. In later years, she would say simply: “It was the right time for me.”

They met several times a week. Often they would explore the city together. She had thought she knew Paris fairly well, but soon she began to see it not as a big city but as a series of communities. She shared his memories of characters who had lived their eccentric lives in every corner of the city. She discovered ancient street markets, the places along the river where she could buy good flowers cheaply; he showed her where to eat the food of Normandy, or Alsace, or Provence; he showed her where the licensed brothels were, and where the old prisons and gallows had stood. He paid for everything, for he always seemed to have cash, and since she was living free, she could save not only her modest allowance but the small sums she got from modeling as well.

One benefit of working for Chanel was that, once in a while, she might be given small items of clothing. But most of all, she found that she was developing an eye for fashion. And with the advice from the other models, and information from Luc, she was able to assemble a little wardrobe that was getting quite chic.

It also amused her that, though he did not always say anything, Luc’s eye missed nothing. A grunt of approval meant that he had noticed the new blouse she was wearing. And once in a while, if she was carrying some elegant little bag she’d picked up somewhere, he’d ask sharply, “Where did you get that?” For he didn’t like to think that there was any bargain in the city that he didn’t know about. And she would say, “I shan’t tell you. A girl has her secrets.” And then, on and off, he might question her, “Was it one of those secondhand shops behind the rue Saint-Honoré, or that Moroccan dealer on the rue du Temple?” And even if he guessed right, she would always deny it. And though he would pretend to be annoyed, she knew he liked the challenge of these little games, and others that she learned to play, to tease him.

Yet despite all the time they spent together, she never discovered anything about his business. If he was out, he was out. That was it.

“Never ask a man his business,” he told her. “He’ll either get his whip or get bored.”

“Bad alternatives,” she said with a laugh.

“Voilà.”

She had the impression that he might be part-owner in other bars and clubs, and that there might be properties from which he collected rents, but that was all she knew.

Meanwhile, she was happy in the new quarter where she found herself. With the stockbrokers and financial men around the Bourse, the area was less residential than most other quarters of the city. But it had a feature of particular charm—a whole network of glass-covered arcades and halls, some of them more than a century old, that housed all kinds of stores and places of refreshment. She would often walk about these intimate malls, exploring happily for an hour at a time.

Only once during all this time did she glimpse another side of Luc—and even then, it was hard to say what she had seen. It happened at dawn, on a summer’s day, up at his house on the slopes of Montmartre.

She was suddenly awoken by a cry beside her. Luc was thrashing about wildly in the bed. Before she could do anything, his hands encountered her, and then suddenly seized her by the throat. She tried to pry them off, and scream, but his grip was so strong that she couldn’t even breathe. She was completely in his power, and he was still asleep. She hit out wildly, slapped his face as hard as she could. His eyes opened. He looked startled and confused. His grip relaxed.

“Luc, what are you doing?” she gasped.

“A nightmare.” She could see that he was still struggling into consciousness.

“Evidently. But you almost throttled me.”

“
Chérie
, I am so sorry.”

“Who were you trying to strangle?”

“A dog.”

“A dog?”

He propped himself up on one elbow and stared at her.

“A dog. I can’t explain. It was a crazy nightmare. Without any sense to it.”

And then he gave her a strange look.

“Did I cry out anything?”

“No.”

“A name?”

“You mean the dog had a name? What’s he called? Fido?”

“I didn’t call anything out?” He was fully awake now, and he was
watching her in a strange way. She’d never seen him look like that before, and she found it disquieting.

“Nothing. You were thrashing around in the bed. That woke me up. The next thing I knew, you were strangling me.”

He continued to look at her. Then, apparently satisfied, his expression changed to one of tender concern.

“I hardly ever have nightmares. It must have been something I ate. Are you all right?” He kissed her softly on the forehead. “You had better hold me. I was afraid.”

They lay together for a little while. She held him. His fear subsided, and his courage grew. But just when she thought he was going to start making love, he got up from the bed, and went to the window. Opening the shutter, he looked down into the little garden behind the house. His eyes seemed to be fixed on something.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Nothing. I was listening to the dawn chorus. One could be in the middle of the country.”

“Come back to bed.”

“In a minute.”

And soon he did, and they made love, and everything was back to normal.

But she couldn’t forget the strange expression on his face when he was questioning her, even though she had no idea what it meant.

The girl. It was a long time since that vision had troubled him. Luc knew it was said that murderers revisit the scene of the crime, but he had never gone down into that cave again. The girl must surely be whitened bones by now. Even her name was forgotten. After all, it was more than ten years since she’d disappeared. A world war had come and gone. Millions had died. Bushes had grown across the hidden entrance behind the little shed in his garden. One would have to cut them down even to get into the caves now. There was no reason to give the girl a thought.

Nor did he, during his waking hours. But sometimes, in his sleep, her face rose up before him. Her pale face, her eyes angry and accusing. And he would know that she was a ghost, and be afraid.

But that night the dream had been different. He had seen her skeleton, in among the others in the cave. But a strange plant had been growing
from the bones, sending out long shoots. And one of the shoots had turned into a long stalk that had started winding its way along the passage, yard after yard, until at last it found its way to the entrance hidden behind the shed in his garden, and somehow it had managed to creep around the back of the shed and out onto the grass where it lay, apparently exhausted by its efforts to make its way out of the darkness into the light. And from the end of the green stalk, now, small flowers like lilies began to grow.

Perhaps the plant might have remained there, doing no harm, had it not been for the dog that suddenly appeared. Luc had no idea where the dog had come from, but it seized the plant, and began to pull on it. Luc took the dog by the collar and tried to drag it away, but the dog would not be dissuaded from its task. It pulled on the long stalk and dragged it several feet. Then it leaped forward and grabbed the stalk farther up, and pulled that out from the tunnel too. Far underground, the skeleton of the girl began to move, and now Luc realized that if the dog kept pulling, it would pull the dead girl all the way up until she was back in his garden. He must stop the dog, before it dug her up again.

And it was then, in his dream, that he had grabbed the dog by the throat, and started to throttle it, squeezing harder and harder, to choke the life out of the animal.

Luc waited a month before he suggested to Louise that it was time for them to part.

It was not because of the dream, though that perhaps had shown him that she was getting too close to him. Too close.

He had always intended that, when his work was done, their relationship should move into a different phase. He led up to it gradually.

“Chérie,”
he said kindly to her one afternoon, “will you promise me one thing: when our affair comes to its natural end—as it will—we shall remain friends. It would pain me very much if, when you left, you were no longer my friend.”

“I have no plans to leave at present.”

“That is good to hear. But one day you will. It’s only natural. You will go forward with your life. But I shall be left with wonderful memories, the best of my life. And those will make me happy, as long as we remain friends.”

“The best of your life?”

“Absolutely, I assure you.”

“I was very ignorant.”

“You are not at all ignorant now. Not in the least. You are wonderful.”

“If so, I have you to thank.”

“I could only bring out what was already there. The gardener does not create the flower.”

There was a pause.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“You’re getting too cynical.”

“I learned that from you.”

“Only for your own protection. I’m protecting myself as well, you know, by being realistic.” He smiled. “I am a middle-aged man of no importance. You should move on, get yourself a rich lover, as Madame Chanel told you.”

He had let her think about it for a couple of weeks, then told her that he had to leave Paris on business for a little while. It was quite true, as it happened. He had to go to Amsterdam for a week. “When I get back,” he said, “we shall be friends.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Always ask me for help, whenever you need it, whatever you need.” And seeing her look doubtful, he added: “Remember, I should be hurt if you did not.” He smiled a little sadly. “My only fear is that you will never need me anymore.”