Montholon. This took me a few minutes past my own street, but I didn’t care. I was hungry. I bought two
I slept straight through. It was strange waking up in the early afternoon — and knowing that I wouldn’t see bed again until after six the next morning. Still, I had things to do — so I was up and out the door in ten minutes. Much to my relief — because the paranoid part of me wondered if, indeed, I would get paid at all — an envelope was waiting for me at the Internet cafe. As agreed there were sixty-five euros inside it.
‘Where’s Kamal?’ I asked the guy behind the counter — a quiet, sullen-looking man in his late twenties, with a big beard and the telltale bruise on his forehead of a devout Muslim who prostrated himself several times a day in the direction of Mecca.
‘No idea,’ he said.
‘Please tell him I picked this up, and say thanks for me.’
I headed off to a paint shop on the rue du Faubourg Poissonniere, and bought two large cans of off-white emulsion and a set of rollers and a paint pan and a tin of white gloss and a brush and a large bottle of white spirit. I would have preferred bringing all the decorating gear to ‘my office’, but I had to obey the ‘No Arrival Before Midnight’ rule. So I made two trips back to my room with the gear, then headed out back to the Cameroonian dude who had sold me all the bedding and kitchen stuff. Yes, he did have an electric radiator in stock — all mine for a knockdown price of thirty euros.
Getting all the paint stuff to my office that evening proved tricky. Before setting out, I made a pit stop by the alley at around eleven and discovered that, at the start of this laneway, there was a large crevice in a wall: currently filled with rubbish and animal droppings. Never mind — it was perfect for my needs. I returned with two cans of paint and some old newspapers. As I bent down to place the newspapers on the ground inside the crevice — I wanted to avoid getting rat shit on my stuff — the fecal smell became overwhelming. I shoved the two cans of paint in, and returned to my room to bring the next load of stuff over. It took a further run after that to have everything in place.
Then I sat in a bar on the rue de Paradis, nursing a beer and waiting for midnight to arrive. The bar was a dingy joint — all formica tables and a battered zinc counter, and a French-Turkish barmaid dressed in tight jeans, and a dude with serious tattoos also working the bar, and the jukebox playing crap French rock, and three morose guys hunched over a table, and some behemoth splayed on a barstool, drinking a milky substance that was obviously alcoholic (Pastis? Raki? Bailey’s Irish Cream?) as he was smashed. He looked up when I approached the bar to order my beer — and that’s when I saw it was Omar. It took him a moment or two for his eyes to register it was me. Then his rant started. First in English: ‘Fucking American, fucking American, fucking American.’ Then in French: ‘
Without me asking for it, the barmaid brought over another beer.
‘If he hates you, you must be all right.
I thanked her for the beer. I checked my watch: 11.53. I downed the
At midnight precisely, I walked up the alleyway and unlocked the door. Then, in less than a minute, I made three fast trips to retrieve my hidden gear and bring it into the hallway. I bolted the door behind me. There was the same mechanical hum I’d heard yesterday emanating from the door at the end of the corridor. I ignored it and headed upstairs. A minute later, all the gear was in my office and the door locked. I was ‘in’ for the night. I plugged in the electric radiator. I turned on my radio to Paris Jazz. I checked the monitor. All clear in the alley. I opened the first can of paint. I went to work.
That night, nothing happened again — except that I managed to give the office two coats of paint. I did my ‘job’ as well — checking the monitor every few minutes to see if there was anyone lurking in the hallway. There wasn’t. Before I knew it, my watch was reading 5.45 a.m. — and though it was clear that the second coat wouldn’t sufficiently cover the chalky grey concrete walls, at least I knew that another night had passed.
I packed away all the gear. I washed the brushes in the sink. I left at 6 a.m. exactly. I took several deep gulps of Paris air as I walked down the still-dark street toward the
That night, I finished painting the walls. I sanded down the woodwork. I left at six. The next night, I finished glossing all the woodwork. Again, there was no activity whatsoever on the monitor. At six that morning, I moved all the empty cans and paint gear out of the office and dumped the lot in the rubbish bins at the end of the alley. When I awoke that afternoon, I went straight over to the cafe to collect my wages. For the third day running, Mr Beard with the Prayer Bruise was behind the counter.
‘Still no Kamal?’ I asked.
‘He goes away.’
‘He didn’t say anything to me about that.’
‘Family problems.’
‘Is there a number I could call him on?’ I asked.
‘Why you want to call him?’
‘I liked him. We got on well. And if he’s got some personal problems …’
‘There is no number for him.’
The tone of voice was definitive. It also didn’t encourage further questioning. So I picked up my pay envelope and said nothing, except, ‘I want to buy a few more things for the office. Might you be able to get a message from me to the boss?’
‘You tell me what you need.’
‘A small refrigerator and an electric kettle. It’s very hard to work in that room all night without coffee or hot water. I’d also like a rug. The concrete floor still gives off a bit of damp—’
‘I tell him,’ he said, cutting me off. Then he picked up a rag and started swabbing down the bar. Our conversation was over.
When I arrived at work that night, a fridge was awaiting me in a corner of the room. Though somewhat battered — with hints of rust on its hinges — it was still working. So too was the electric kettle positioned on top of it. It looked new. When I filled it with water, it boiled its contents in less than a minute. The only problem was, I didn’t have any coffee or tea on hand. But, at least, I now knew that the man in charge was amenable to certain requests — even though there was still no rug.
But there was a change in my usual routine: a visitor in the alleyway. He arrived at 1.48 a.m. precisely. The phone rang on my desk, jolting me. I looked away from my Simenon novel and turned immediately to the monitor and saw a man of indiscriminate age (the grainy image made it hard to discern his features) standing outside. I was instantly nervous. I picked up the phone and said, ‘
His voice was raspy, and French was not his first language. But he still said, ‘
I hit the 1-1 entrance code. Downstairs I heard the telltale click of the door opening, then the door being closed with a decisive thud. I pressed 2-2 to alert my ‘neighbors’ that they had a legitimate visitor. There were footsteps on the downstairs corridor. There was a knock on another door. The door opened and closed. Then there was silence.
I didn’t see or hear him exit, even though I kept scanning the monitor. There were no other visitors. There were no sounds from down below. My shift ended. I went home.
A few days later, the carpet finally arrived at work — and I began to bring my laptop in every night, forcing myself back into the novel. As there was no other work to do but
