THIRTY-TWO
The café owner from Leuvray had dropped me off somewhere in the 17th arrondissement. I squinted at the Métro map but decided to walk instead. Never had Paris felt more strange, even when I had first arrived. I couldn’t shake the sense that people on the sidewalk did not see me, that I was invisible and insubstantial, so that people walked through me unawares. I stopped into a place called Le Bar Honcho and ordered a Pernod. Mounted on the wall, a video monitor displayed numbers for some kind of lottery. The barman had a special machine for placing bets. Every so often the numbers on the screen would change. I had another Pernod. The numbers changed. At the next traffic circle the bar had no lottery machine; after bringing me my Pernod, the bartender returned to his copy of L’Équipe, picking a scab on his bald pate while he read. A few traffic circles and several Pernods later, my surroundings seemed almost familiar, but still I did not know where I was.
Did I even know my destination? My destination, I was surprised to discover, was Miriam’s apartment building. I had punched in the code and begun climbing the stairs before I realized where I was. I sat for a moment on the landing and went down again. By the time I reached my own apartment, the fumes of the Pernod had boiled up in my throat like gases of putrefaction. I had not been to my own apartment in weeks. I had simply abandoned it when the affair with Miriam began. I discovered when I arrived there that I had not locked the door when I’d last left. A stale odor greeted me when I walked in, and the droppings of some creature dotted the countertop. Two oranges on the table had dried out, hard and light now as Christmas ornaments. The window protested when I tried to open it, then burst open as the blare of traffic shouldered into the room.
I lay down on the bed. I would think.
When I woke a hulking, brass-plumed creature, hissing like a jet of flame, had grasped the sill in its talons. I tried to roll away from its heat, but I could not move. When I truly woke I understood that the creature had been the sun, a sun now mollified, half-sunk under the horizon. Thirst gripped me, but all I found in the refrigerator was a carton of spoiled milk.
—
I returned to our café, the café Miriam and I frequented on the rue de Vaugirard. It had not changed, the waiters, the clientele, all the same, even, it seemed to me, the river of pedestrians flowing by. There was no reason why I should not stop and have a glass of wine, a bottle of eau gazeuse, a cigarette. The waiter greeted me with a nod of dry recognition and took my order.
Sipping my wine, I stared at the feet of the passersby, not their faces. The faces were too human. My gaze steadied on the pavement beneath the blur of shoes, sandals, and stroller wheels. After my second glass of wine, I thought that staring at the pavement was like standing at the edge of the sea, where the spent waves slide back into the surf. As a child, I liked to stand where the surf, sheeting up, loosened the sand beneath my feet and opened it. With each wave my feet sank a little deeper, and the sand settled in around my ankles as though pulling me into it. If I waited long enough, the sand would have locked me fast, however lightly it seemed to grasp my calves. Only by jerking each foot up with all my strength could I free myself. That’s what it felt like, staring at a single spot on the sidewalk, as though beneath the weight of my gaze the pavement would soften, would welcome me in. After my fourth glass, the waiter had begun to ignore me. I paid what I thought I owed and left. It was getting dark.
—
The épicerie at the corner was out of my Corsican wine, and the grocer pretended not to know what I was asking for, thrusting at me a different, costlier bottle. “Vin de Corse, monsieur. Voulez pas? You don’t want it? Well, it’s what you asked for.” I left with a case of cheap rosé from the Languedoc. Sitting at my window, my head against the railing, I poured the orangish wine into a tumbler, the kind mustard comes in, the kind you’re meant to wash and keep. The first glass tasted a little like mustard, then like a berry bubblegum I used to buy with my allowance. The last glass tasted like nothing at all.
—
How long did this go on? Two days, four days, five? At some point, I resolved to go out and get something to eat. After rising from my chair in the morning (having failed once again to leave it for my bed), I passed out while standing at the toilet. When my vision swam back into place, I was slouched on my back in the tub and warm water was dripping from the showerhead into my mouth and nose. Only when I had grasped the sink and hauled myself upright did I understand that the dripping had not been water but blood flowing from a cut over my eye. The room began to spin again. I managed to step into the bath again before vomiting; a coil of pinkish phlegm swirled in the water and refused to pass down the drain.
My only clean clothes consisted of the suit I had brought from the States and had never worn and a shirt, pressed but stale, hanging inside the suit on the same hanger. I got dressed and lay down on the bed again to avoid another spell of dizziness. I must have slept, waking up on my face, the pressed shirt soaked with
