Woman in the Fifth

Eleven

THE NEXT THREE days were difficult. I went about my daily routine. I woke at two. I picked up my wages. I killed time at the Cinematheque. I ate dinner at the usual collection of cheap traiteurs and cafes that I patronized. I went to work. I wrote. Dawn arrived. I picked up my croissants and returned home.

So far so normal. The difference now was that every waking hour of every day was spent thinking about Margit. I replayed our afternoon together, minute by minute, over and over again: a continual film loop that kept running in the cinema inside my head and wouldn’t pause between showings. I could still taste the saltiness of her skin, still feel her nails as they dug into me as she came, still relive the moment when she threw her legs around me to take me deeper, still remember the long deep silence afterward when we lay sprawled across each other and I kept thinking how my ex-wife told me repeatedly what a bad lover I was, and pushed me away for months, and how I always tried to get her to talk about what I was doing that was wrong, and how she always shied away from what she called ‘the mechanics’, and how, when I discovered that she was involved with the Dean of the Faculty, I knew I had lost her completely, and …

Stop. You’re doing what you always do. You’re harping back to the unpleasant in an attempt to block out the happiness you feel …

Happiness? I’m being forcibly kept away from my daughter — so how could I be at all happy?

Anyway, this isn’t happiness. This is infatuation.

But in my more rhapsodic moments, it also felt a bit like love.

Listen to you, the lovesick teenager, head over heels after an afternoon of passion.

Yes — and I’m counting down the minutes until I see her again.

That’s because you are desperate.

She’s beautiful.

She’s pushing sixty.

She’s beautiful.

Have a cup of coffee and sober up.

She’s beautiful.

Have three cups of coffee …

I kept telling myself that I should brace myself for a disappointment … that, when I arrived at her place again, she’d show me the door, announcing that she’d changed her mind about continuing with our little adventure. It was all too good to be true.

When the third day finally arrived, I showed up in her quartier a good hour before our 5 p.m. rendezvous. Again I killed time in the Jardin des Plantes, then stopped in the same grocery store and bought a bottle of champagne. I loitered for three minutes outside her front door until it was exactly the hour in question. I punched in her code. I ascended the second escalier. Outside her front door I was hit by a huge wave of nervousness. I rang her bell. Once. No answer for at least thirty seconds. I was about to ring it again when I heard footsteps behind the door, then the sound of locks being unbolted.

The door opened. She was dressed in a black turtleneck and black pants, a cigarette between her fingers, a small smile on her lips. She looked radiant.

‘You are a very prompt lover,’ she said.

I stepped forward to take her in my arms. But one of her hands came up in traffic-cop style and touched my chest, while her lips lightly touched mine.

‘Du calme, monsieur,’ she said. ‘All in good time.’

She took me by the hand and led me to the sofa. Music was playing on her stereo: chamber music, modern, slightly astringent. She relieved me of the champagne I had brought.

‘You don’t have to do this every time you come here,’ she said. ‘An inexpensive bottle of Bordeaux will do.’

‘You mean, you don’t want huge bouquets of roses and stuffed cuddly animals and magnums of Chanel No. 5?’

She laughed and said, ‘I once had a lover like that. A businessman. He used to send me mortifying presents: heart-haped bouquets and earrings that looked like a Louis XIV chandelier …’

‘He must have been mad about you.’

‘He was infatuated, that’s all. Men really do have a little-boy streak. When they want something — you — they’ll shower you with toys, in the hope that you will be sufficiently flattered.’

‘So the way to your heart is to be mean and ascetic. Instead of diamonds, a box of paper clips, perhaps?’

She stood up to fetch two glasses.

‘I am glad to see your sense of irony is up and running this afternoon.’

‘By which you mean, it wasn’t up and running when I last saw you?’

‘I like you when you’re funny, that’s all.’

‘And not when I’m …’

‘Earnest. Or a little too eager.’

‘You certainly put your cards on the table,’ I said.

She opened the champagne and poured two glasses.

‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

I was going to say something slightly petulant like, I stuck to the rules and haven’t called you once in three days. But I knew that would simply re-emphasize my earnestness. So instead I changed tack, asking, ‘The music you’re playing … ?’

‘You’re a cultured man. Have a guess.’

‘Twentieth century?’ I asked.

‘Very good,’ she said, handing me the champagne.

‘Slight hint of gypsy edginess,’ I said, sipping the champagne.

‘Yes, I hear that too,’ she said, sitting down beside me.

‘Which means the composer is definitely Eastern European.’

‘You’re good at this,’ she said, stroking my thigh with her hand.

‘Could be Janacek.’

‘That is a possibility,’ she said, letting her hand lightly brush the top of my crotch, making me instantly hard.

‘But … no, he’s Czech, you’re Hungarian …’

She leaned forward and touched my neck with her lips.

‘But that doesn’t mean I listen exclusively to Hungarian music.’

‘But …’

Her hand was back on my crotch, unbuttoning my jeans.

‘It’s Bartok,’ I said. ‘Bela Bartok.’

‘Bravo,’ she said, reaching into my jeans with her hand. ‘And do you know what piece it is?’

The Woman in the Fifth

‘One of the String Quartets?’

‘Thank you for that blinding glimpse of the obvious,’ she said, pulling my penis out of my pants. ‘Which one?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, my body tightening as she began to run her finger up and down my erection.

‘Have a guess.’

‘The Third, the slow movement?’

‘How did you know that?’

‘I didn’t. It was just …’

I didn’t finish the sentence as her mouth closed over my penis, and began to move up and down, her hand accompanying the movement of her lips. When I was close to climax, I uttered something about wanting to be