mouthfuls, but left the salad untouched. I imagined her alone in her flat, sitting in front of the same salad and the same glass of beer, in the depths of that silence which I still had no experience of at the time, but which is so familiar to me today.
•
I didn't tell her much of the "interesting" things I was doing. A brief reference to my vocation as an explorer and to my imminent departure for Brazil. She too, she disclosed, had spent a few days in Rio de Janeiro. In those days, she must have been my age. She was living in the United States.
I asked her some questions, and I still wonder why she answered them in such detail. I had the definite impression that she felt no kind of self-satisfaction, and that she didn't particularly enjoy talking about herself. She guessed that I was interested, though, and, as she told me several times, "she didn't want me to have a wasted evening."
It does also happen that one evening, because of someone's attentive gaze, you feel a need to communicate to him not your experience, but quite simply some of the various derails connected by an invisible thread, a thread which is in danger of breaking and which is called the course of a life.
•
While she was speaking, the fish behind her occasionally pressed their heads against the glass sides of the aquarium. Then they went on tirelessly swimming round in the blue water lit up by a little projector. They had switched off the ceiling spots, to intimate to us that it was very late, and time for us to leave. Only the aquarium light was still on.
At about one in the morning, on the pavement in the avenue, the silence was so profound that you could hear the leaves on the trees rustling with their nocturnal breathing. She took my arm:
"You can see me home …"
This time, she was looking for support. It was no longer as it had been that evening when we were walking down the Rue de la Citadelle when, for the first time in my life, I had had the feeling of being under someone's protection. And yet, after a few steps, once again it was she who was guiding me.
We came to a building with big, dark glass windows. Only two, on the top floor, were lit up.
"I always leave the light on," she said. "It's more cheerful."
She smiled. She was relaxed. But perhaps she was only pretending to take things lightly, to cheer me up. This part of the avenue was not planted with trees, but lined with buildings similar to the one she lived in, with all their windows dark. When I used to go to visit Cavanaugh, I couldn't prevent myself from passing that way. I was no longer in Paris, and that avenue led nowhere. Or rather, it was a transit zone to the unknown.
"I must give you my phone number …" She searched her bag, but couldn't find a pen.
"You can tell it to me … I shall remember it …"
I wrote down the number when I was back in Montmartre, in my room at the Explorers' Club. The following days I tried to phone her, several times. There was no answer. In the end I thought I must have remembered the wrong number.
Under the arch over the gate – a wrought-iron gate with opaque glass – she turned round and rested her grey eyes on me. She raised her arm gently and ran the tips of her fingers over my temple and cheek, as if she was for one last time seeking a contact. Then she lowered her arm and the gate closed behind her. That arm suddenly falling and the metallic clank of the gate shutting made me understand that from one moment to another one can lose heart.
I TOOK THE OIL LAMP from the bedside table and once again explored the inside of the wardrobe. Nothing. I picked up the envelope addressed to Rigaud, 3 , Rue de Tilsitt, which had been forwarded to 20 , Boulevard Soult, and put it in my pocket. Then, lamp in hand, I went down the corridor and into the other bedroom.
I opened the metal shutters, and had great difficulty in folding them back because they had rusted. Then I had no more need of the lamplight: a street lamp just opposite the
•
I didn't tell her much of the "interesting" things I was doing. A brief reference to my vocation as an explorer and to my imminent departure for Brazil. She too, she disclosed, had spent a few days in Rio de Janeiro. In those days, she must have been my age. She was living in the United States.
I asked her some questions, and I still wonder why she answered them in such detail. I had the definite impression that she felt no kind of self-satisfaction, and that she didn't particularly enjoy talking about herself. She guessed that I was interested, though, and, as she told me several times, "she didn't want me to have a wasted evening."
It does also happen that one evening, because of someone's attentive gaze, you feel a need to communicate to him not your experience, but quite simply some of the various derails connected by an invisible thread, a thread which is in danger of breaking and which is called the course of a life.
•
While she was speaking, the fish behind her occasionally pressed their heads against the glass sides of the aquarium. Then they went on tirelessly swimming round in the blue water lit up by a little projector. They had switched off the ceiling spots, to intimate to us that it was very late, and time for us to leave. Only the aquarium light was still on.
At about one in the morning, on the pavement in the avenue, the silence was so profound that you could hear the leaves on the trees rustling with their nocturnal breathing. She took my arm:
"You can see me home …"
This time, she was looking for support. It was no longer as it had been that evening when we were walking down the Rue de la Citadelle when, for the first time in my life, I had had the feeling of being under someone's protection. And yet, after a few steps, once again it was she who was guiding me.
We came to a building with big, dark glass windows. Only two, on the top floor, were lit up.
"I always leave the light on," she said. "It's more cheerful."
She smiled. She was relaxed. But perhaps she was only pretending to take things lightly, to cheer me up. This part of the avenue was not planted with trees, but lined with buildings similar to the one she lived in, with all their windows dark. When I used to go to visit Cavanaugh, I couldn't prevent myself from passing that way. I was no longer in Paris, and that avenue led nowhere. Or rather, it was a transit zone to the unknown.
"I must give you my phone number …" She searched her bag, but couldn't find a pen.
"You can tell it to me … I shall remember it …"
I wrote down the number when I was back in Montmartre, in my room at the Explorers' Club. The following days I tried to phone her, several times. There was no answer. In the end I thought I must have remembered the wrong number.
Under the arch over the gate – a wrought-iron gate with opaque glass – she turned round and rested her grey eyes on me. She raised her arm gently and ran the tips of her fingers over my temple and cheek, as if she was for one last time seeking a contact. Then she lowered her arm and the gate closed behind her. That arm suddenly falling and the metallic clank of the gate shutting made me understand that from one moment to another one can lose heart.
I TOOK THE OIL LAMP from the bedside table and once again explored the inside of the wardrobe. Nothing. I picked up the envelope addressed to Rigaud, 3 , Rue de Tilsitt, which had been forwarded to 20 , Boulevard Soult, and put it in my pocket. Then, lamp in hand, I went down the corridor and into the other bedroom.
I opened the metal shutters, and had great difficulty in folding them back because they had rusted. Then I had no more need of the lamplight: a street lamp just opposite the
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