Paris Times Eight (22 page)

Having a bed for a room seemed to suit Victor just fine. He flopped down upon it, unleashing a cacophony of squeaks and groans from the protesting box spring below. I had been admiring the view out our window. Paris lay at our feet. Victor motioned for me to lie next to him. “Let me get a look at you,” he said.

He gave me that look again, that all-encompassing gaze that made me feel as if I was the only other person alive on this earth, that made me feel magnificently adored. It's what had first made me stop in my tracks, really take notice of him.

But when I thought of it, I realized that our first encounter could have gone entirely the other way. I had come to the party where I had met him, our meeting having been arranged by mutual friends, wearing a hairpiece that was the same dark color as my own hair but boasted a cascade of curls that fell nearly to my waist. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought the hair made me look alluring, though in truth I probably looked more like an over-the-top actress from a Fellini film. I had cut my hair short when fighting my employer, and the fake hair symbolized my return to some kind of place of power. It fed my Rapunzel complex. But it was also camouflage: I still wasn't sure of my resurrection. I wanted to hide behind this hair and mask the real me. I still thought I was flawed. Each time Victor touched me that night, I was afraid the hair would fall off into his hands and he would see me as a pretender.

After he dropped me off that first night, I fell asleep worrying about what he'd think when he came to see me again, as promised, two nights later. I thought he'd be disappointed.

“Surprise!”

I had opened my apartment door, sans hairpiece, to the sound of his cheery knock, and waited to see what he'd say. I thought that maybe it would be a short date.

He stood on the threshold scrutinizing me. “You are even more beautiful than I remembered,” he grinned.

I opened my door wider, and he swooped in, grabbing me by the waist and twirling me in the air. He ran his fingers through my hair, my real hair, and then he kissed me.

He was kissing me again as I lay there on the hotel bed beside him. The chambermaid knocking at our door brought us groggily back to reality. She had brought us clean towels. I was unsure as to how long we had slept. It was still light outside. An hour? Maybe more? I reached for my watch. Nine in the morning Toronto time, three in the afternoon Paris time. I went into the bathroom and threw cold water on my face. Victor was already lacing up his leather boots when I came back out. “Ready to show me Paris?” he said.

I had never stayed in Montmartre before. It was off the beaten track, at the summit of a hill Parisians call the
“butte.”
It had formerly been a country village, the last to be incorporated into the city's fabric, and it still had vine-yards and the odd windmill. I had toured the district during my neophyte visits to Paris, drawn by the area's reputation as a former creative hot spot. Picasso and Utrillo and Satie and Berlioz and countless other famous people had had their studios in Montmartre around the turn of the
19
th century, when the rents had been cheap and the morals, reportedly, just as low. It had been exotic and debauched, at least in comparison to the rest of Paris, which was ordered and gentrified by Baron Haussmann's grand plan executed on the boulevards below, close to the Seine. In many ways Montmartre remained a geographic outcast. Certainly it was off the beaten track. If ever I went there in the past, it was only to visit Sacré-Coeur.

I exited our hotel and stood dazedly outside, wondering which way to turn.

“Left,” said Victor, grabbing my hand. “Let's just see where the road takes us.”

His instinct had been right. We found ourselves walking in the direction of Place du Tertre, the main square. We continued holding hands as we traversed winding streets lined by buildings so narrow they resembled a deck of cards teetering precariously on the thin edges of their foundations. Black wrought-iron lanterns pushed out from the facades on brackets with a curlicue design. Under our feet the ground was cobblestone. There were no sidewalks, so we walked in the middle of a road built originally for horses, not cars. It felt mildly subversive.

A faint buzzing drew us on ahead to where a crowd had gathered on the plaza. Trees ringed the square, and their naked branches formed a kind of overhead web, ensnaring the dreams of artists and tourists alike assembled on the square, where art was the main spectacle. Dozens of artists were there, sketching or painting work displayed for sale. On this day there was also a juggler. A small crowd had gathered around him, applauding as he threw his colored pins in the air. But Victor wasn't looking at him. He was intently watching a painter working on the portrait of a woman perched in profile on a stool before him. The artist wore a beret and a smock. He had long white hair and smoked while he worked.

A swarm of geriatric shutterbugs, released from one of the big tour buses parked nearby, closed in with their cameras. A man with an accordion played a breathy French tune. The atmosphere was noisy, silly, teeming with clichés. But Victor looked full of wonder. The dramatic character of the place had enchanted him. “I understand why my father had wanted to be here,” he said.

We took a table at a café. Le Sabot Rouge, the red clog, it was called. We hadn't had anything to eat since the plane ride over, and we ordered a late lunch of salad and sandwiches. At my prodding, Victor told me more about his father. He had been an artisan who had escaped Communist Yugoslavia after staging a field trip for Belgrade art students to Paris in the
1950
s. After relocating to Canada, he had specialized in hand carving the interiors of churches and synagogues. He had died in Toronto of a heart attack six years previously. His death had been an absolute shock, unsettling Victor's world. Victor said he could inexplicably cry when just thinking about his father. I hoped he wouldn't then. But he seemed eager to tell me more.

His father had learned his craft in Montenegro, where he had been born and raised in a mountaintop village, the eldest of five children. During the Second World War he had been an ardent Communist until the party captured his younger brother, eventually shooting him in the back. The reason wasn't clear. The brother had been called Vidoje, pronounced vee-do-yay, derived from the Serbian word meaning “sight.” A person who sees. Victor had been named for him.

He lost that trisyllabic name on his first day in a Montreal schoolroom. The teacher couldn't pronounce it. The j sounding like a y apparently had confused her, so she changed his name to something that made sense to her. Victor. Which is what everyone learned to call him, even his own mother. I declared it a most fitting appellation. “You are my victor,” I said. “The conqueror of my heart.”

We left the restaurant and started to walk again, dusk falling around us. We passed the painters and stopped to look at their art. It was mostly streetscapes with Sacré-Coeur looming predictably in the background. The houses were flatly drawn and candy colored. It was what on a good day might be called naive art, but Victor didn't dismiss it. “He could have been one of those street painters,” Victor said of his father, who had lived in Paris for two years, sending home money to the wife he had left behind, enabling her to grease the process by which they all eventually left the country.

He had stopped to peer inside the window of an art gallery. He remembered his father's pile of papers back home, gallery notices and reviews collected when he had lived in Paris. He had forgotten about them. I stared at him. He had more reason to be in Paris than I did. He might even have grown up in Paris if it hadn't been for that family connection in Canada. I felt my heart beating fast. That had been a close call.

He turned to look at me and seemed to read my mind. “All of what happened had to have happened for us to meet,” he said. “I believe that. My uncle didn't die in vain.”

We walked slowly back to our hotel. Sacré-Coeur was lit up in the dark like a lighthouse, guiding us. We came to the foot of a steep staircase and were silent as we shuffled together up the steps, holding hands. I didn't have to tell him about my family. He had already met my mother. The encounter had taken place a few weeks after I had met him, when, deep inside, I knew he was the One. I used to scoff when people would say that, the One. “How do you know?” I'd say. “You just know.” It sounded like a mystery cult. Then one day I was indoctrinated.

I had been alone in my apartment, making myself an espresso. It was morning. I looked out the kitchen window at the new day. “You are going to marry Victor,” declared a voice inside my head, just like that, as I was reaching for the sugar. The voice was sober, sensible, not inflamed by infatuation. I thought it a true voice, its message clear. I put the spoon in my cup and carefully began to stir, deeply aware that my life was about to change. But I wouldn't tell anyone, least of all Victor. No way. I was crazy in love, but not that crazy. I had been hurt before. Best to wait things out, keep my innermost thoughts to myself—just in case, I mused, swearing myself and that little knowing voice to secrecy.

That night Victor took me to Toronto's El Mocambo nightclub. We sat in a back booth, drinking Irish coffee to keep the chill away. “Isn't this cozy?” I remember saying. We leaned in to each other. Winter was on its way. “We'll soon be spending our first Christmas together,” I added, perkily. He grew silent. Had I said something wrong?

“By next Christmas,” he said after a moment, “I will have asked you to marry me.”

Astonished, I quickly unloaded the contents of my heart. I told him about the voice, and that I believed it. He threw his arms around me. Within seconds, we were both laughing and dabbing eyes filled with tears of joy. We had found each other! Imagine! Soul mates! I felt like a winning contestant on
Let's Make A Deal.
I was berserk with happiness at having chosen the right door and won the prize. It was so special, so important, that on the spot I made him promise not to tell another soul. At least for a year, which was when he'd said he'd propose to me for real, so as not to jinx it, I said. Victor agreed. That secret was our bond. But not for long. Less than a month later he spontaneously proposed, saying he couldn't wait any longer. He gave me a diamond ring; I gave him a promise for eternity.

SEEING AS WE
were declaring undying love for each other, it was time he met my mother. I had delayed the meeting for as long as I could, but I could no longer avoid the inevitable. When I called her, I coolly told her I had met someone. “And?” she had said, sarcasm rising in her voice. “And, well, I think he's very special,” I said. “I want you to meet him.” She paused. “So, who is he?” I didn't want to give too much away. I was afraid she might be critical, carelessly pop my balloon. She said she'd meet us at an uptown piano bar where she used to go in the
1980
s, when life as she remembered it had been good. My mother hadn't survived the recession, but Centro had. It was still considered a posh restaurant, whose subterranean bar was a favorite of Toronto's power elite. You ate $
50
steaks there. You wore designer clothing. You flashed your jewelry. It was where on occasion my mother still liked to go to make her feel, as she put it, “like my life might be turning around again.”

When we arrived, my mother was already nestled inside a leather banquette, nursing a large glass of Italian red wine. She was swaying to the music and calling out to the piano player to play her song, “My Young and Foolish Heart.” He was a black man with seemingly boneless fingers. He obliged her, and she sang along, a regular Doris Day. I looked at Victor with dread in my eyes.

“Just as long as I can look at you, I'm happy,” he said. “Really. It will be all right.” I led him toward his future mother-in-law.

“Mother, this is Victor. Victor, this is—”

“Call me Sylvia,” she said, flashing him a wink. How peculiar, I thought. With everyone else I ever introduced to her she was always “Mrs.” She thumped the banquette. “Slide on in,” she said. “What are you drinking?” Victor moved in beside her. I took the chair on the outside of the booth, on the aisle.

I had warned Victor that my mother was in a category of her own. I hadn't wanted to tell him too much, in case we waded into some unpleasantness. I hadn't wanted to scare him off. I told him only that she could be unpredictable, which on that night she was. Meaning surprisingly well behaved. Every story she told was about her, but Victor was a rapt listener and he flattered her with his attention. Soon she was touching his arm and being coquettish. She was laughing, the life of the party. She ordered another round before we had finished our first. When Victor momentarily excused himself, she leaned in conspiratorially across the table. “I love him already,” she said. But the good vibes didn't last, especially after she found out I was marrying him. “He's soft,” she shouted. “Like your father. And he doesn't have a bloody job. You'll be sorry, my girl. You'll be sorry.” My mother might have seen a resemblance to my father, but I did not. Victor had just been awarded a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Toronto. He didn't have a teaching position yet, but I knew that would come.

WHEN WE FINALLY
arrived back at our hotel, after sitting for a while at the top of the stairs watching the moon crest in the night sky, we crawled quickly under the sheets to hold each other tight. “Victor?” I said. I wanted to tell him something, or maybe I just needed reassurance. But he didn't answer me. He was already asleep, still holding my hand.

The next morning we had breakfast in our room—café au lait and warm baguette. It satisfied me, but Victor was used to a Canadian breakfast. He had a hungry man's appetite and wanted ham and eggs, so we left the Ermitage and searched for a bistro.