Woman in the Fifth

‘Why don’t you want me to write it down?’

‘Because I don’t want you to write it down. 1-6-3-2-2-6. You got that?’

I repeated it out loud, then said it a second time, just to make certain that it had adhered to my brain.

‘Good,’ he said as the door clicked open. We entered a hallway lit by a single naked lightbulb. The walls were unpainted concrete. Ditto the floor. There was a stairway in front of us. Around twelve feet away there was another steel door. Behind it I could hear the low hum of … was it something mechanical? … machinery perhaps? … and the occasional raised voice? But the sound was muffled. As I strained to hear it, Kamal put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Up the stairs.’

The staircase led to another steel door. This was opened by two keys. Kamal had to put his weight on the door to finish the job and gain us access to a small room. Like the hallway, it had unpainted concrete walls. It was ten by ten, furnished with a beat-up metal desk, a straight-back chair, and nothing else. A closed-circuit television monitor sat on one corner of the desk. It was broadcasting a grainy image of the doorway outside. By the monitor was a speaker and a keypad. There were two doorways off this room. One was opened, showing the interior of an old-fashioned stand-up French toilet. You had to face front and squat as you took a dump. The toilet was also unpainted and seemed to lack a light. The other door was wooden and locked with a sliding bolt. There were no windows in the room — and the one radiator wasn’t throwing off much in the way of heat.

‘You expect me to work here?’ I asked.

‘That is up to you.’

‘This place is a shit hole — a cold shit hole with no light.’

‘The radiator can be turned up higher.’

‘I’ll need some sort of other heat.’

‘OK, you can buy an electrical heater for the room—’

‘And a desk lamp.’

‘Fine. Will you start tonight?’

I looked around, thinking, He’s looking for a deadbeat to do a deadbeat’s job — and he’s sized you up as the perfect candidate.

‘All right, I’ll start tonight — but I want some cash to buy paint and stuff tomorrow.’

‘If you want to paint the place, you will have to do it during your work hours.’

‘Fine by me. But doesn’t anyone use the room by day? Don’t you have a sentry for the morning hours?’

‘That is no concern of yours,’ he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a substantial wad of cash. He peeled off three fifty-euro notes and handed them to me.

‘This should be sufficient for the paint, the brushes, the heater, the lamp. But provide receipts, please. The boss is finicky about expenses.’

Kamal lit up a cigarette, then said, ‘So here is how the job works. You arrive here every night at midnight. You let yourself in. Once inside this room, you bolt the door behind you and padlock it shut. Then you sit down and do whatever you want to do for the next six hours, always keeping an eye on the monitor. If you see anyone in the alley who is loitering, you press the number 2-2 on the keypad. This will send a signal to someone that there is an unwanted stranger outside. They will take care of the problem. If a visitor approaches the doorway, he will ring a button which will sound up here on the desk speaker. You press 1-1 on the keypad and say one word, “Oui? ” If he is legitimate, he will answer, “I am here to see Monsieur Monde.” Once you have received this answer, you press the Enter button on the keypad which will activate the door. You then press 2-3 on the keypad which will inform the people downstairs that a legitimate visitor is on his way to them.’

‘And what will “the people downstairs” do?’

‘They will “greet” this legitimate visitor. Now if the person who rings the door doesn’t say, “I am here to see Monsieur Monde,” you press 2-4 on the keypad. This will send a signal that there is an unwanted presence in the alley. Once again, the people downstairs will take care of the problem.’

‘It sounds like the people downstairs worry about unwanted guests.’

‘I will say this once more. What goes on downstairs does not concern you — and it will never concern you. Believe me, my friend, it is better that way.’

‘And say the cops just happen to show up in the alley …’

‘No problem,’ he said, walking over to the door next to the toilet and unbolting it. ‘This is never locked. If you see the cops on the screen, you exit here. There is a bolt — very strong — on the other side. It will buy you a few minutes’ time, as the cops will have to break the door down. By the time they do that, you will be out of the building. The passage behind here leads down to a basement. There is another door there which leads to a passage into the adjoining building. When you come out of that building, you will be on the rue Martel. The cops will have no idea.’

‘This is insane,’ I heard myself say out loud.

‘Then don’t take the job.’

‘Promise me that whatever is going on downstairs isn’t so morally reprehensible …’ I said.

‘No one is being involuntarily harmed,’ he said.

I paused, knowing I had to make a decision immediately.

‘I will never have to directly meet anyone?’ I asked.

‘You come at midnight, you go at six. You sit in this room. You don’t leave. You see the people who come here on the monitor. They don’t see you. It is all very elegant.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘we have a deal.’

‘Good,’ Kamal said.

After taking me again through all the various numbers I had to press, and handing me the assorted keys, he said, ‘There is just one thing. You must never come here before midnight, you must leave promptly at six. Unless you see the police on the monitor, you must never leave the room until six.’

‘Otherwise I’ll turn into a pumpkin?’

‘Something like that, yes. D’accord? ‘

‘D’ac.’

‘So you are clear about everything?’

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘Everything is perfectly clear.’

Eight

NOTHING HAPPENED THAT first night. I set up my laptop. I forced myself to work — my eyes straining under the single naked lightbulb. I pushed myself into writing five hundred words. I turned up the radiator and discovered that it gave off no more heat. I drank the two litres of Evian. I peed several times in the toilet and was grateful that I didn’t need a bowel movement, as I couldn’t have handled standing up to do it. I read some of the Simenon novel — a dark, sparely written tale about a French actor getting over the breakup of his marriage by wandering through the night world of 1950s New York. Around four in the morning, I started to fade — and fell asleep sitting up at the desk. I jolted awake, terrified that I had missed something on the monitor. But the screen showed nothing bar the glare of a spotlight on a doorway — an image so grainy it almost seemed as if it was from another era, as if I was looking at the past tense just downstairs.

I read some more. I fought fatigue. I fought boredom. I drew up a list of what I’d buy this afternoon to fix the place up. I kept glancing at my watch, willing 6 a.m. to arrive. When it finally did, I unlocked the door. I turned off the light in the room. I closed the door behind me and locked it. I hit the light for the stairs. At the bottom of them, I stood for a moment, trying to hear any noises from the big steel door at the end of the ground-floor corridor. Nothing. I unlocked the front door. Outside it was still night — a touch of damp in the air, augmenting the chill that had crawled under my skin during those six hours in a badly heated concrete box. I locked the door, my head constantly turning sideways to scan the alleyway and see if anyone was waiting to hit me over the head with a club. But the alley was clear. I finished locking the door. I walked quickly into the street. No cops, no heavies in parkas and balaclava helmets, waiting to have a few words with me. The rue du Faubourg Poissonniere was empty. I turned left and kept moving until I came to a little boulangerie that was on the rue