Paris Trance (4 page)

We shook hands. He had the handshake of a thin person who has learned how to make a good impression by shaking hands firmly even though that strength always feels as if it is made up of bones and nerves. He knew there was
a way of getting an intensity of feeling into shaking hands but he had not learned how to do it. He was one of those people who have to learn everything. I say ‘one of those people’ and I am not sure why. Perhaps because, as I got to know him better, he came to seem so emphatically himself, so individual. Perhaps it is from people like this that we come to an understanding of types. When I met him that day – or so it seems to me now – he was poised on the brink of becoming himself, as I came to know him.

‘Vas
-
y
,
’ said Bernard. ‘Je vais te dire comment qu’on fait.’ Which was to clamber up to the second tier of storage racks and catch the packages of books thrown to him by Daniel before throwing them down to Matthias who piled them on to the trolley which Ahmed trundled into the post room. There had been some debate as to whether chaining packages like this was the most efficient way of getting them from the storage racks into the post room. Possibly it was not, but for anyone who had seen footage of soldiers – of the Eighth Army ideally, wearing shorts in the blazing heat of north Africa – tossing supplies from one man to another, it had an inescapable attraction. Also, there was that slight – very slight – element of fun, of sport, of risk, which comes from throwing and catching anything, even dull packets of textbooks. On Luke’s first day, though, there was no time to relish these finer aspects of the job. A sudden rush of orders had come in, all needing to be dispatched that day. Lazare was banging on the office window constantly, phone in one hand, cigarette in the other, gesturing to Bernard to hurry, demanding to know why the order for Auxerre had not been sent out.

‘
Parce que c’est pas à expédier avant jeudi.’

‘Pas celle-là merde, je te cause de la commande pour l’autre boîte. Comment elle s’appelle déjà?’

‘Ouais, celle-là elle est partie hier.’

At which Lazare would permit himself a smile before ushering Bernard back into the warehouse and calling out, ‘Et qu’est-ce que tu as fait avec celle pour Lyon?’

He was a good boss, Lazare. Once you realized that whipping himself into a froth of anger and irritation was essential to his contentment it was easy to work with him. He had two children and a sweet-tempered wife. She came by occasionally and told us how, if Lazare had expended enough angry energy in the day, he would sleep perfectly. She was able to gauge his days by his mood in the evenings. If he was cranky and short that meant it had been an easy day without problems. If he came home smiling, relaxed, a bottle of wine in hand, that meant there had been a series of deadlines, problems and escalating difficulties.

‘Le stress est son truc,’ she said.

We worked late that first day. By the time we left it was growing dark and Luke’s arms were numb with effort. We went to the Café Roma for a beer, another beer and a bowl of pasta each. We were all tired and the beer made us light-headed. Although Luke had hardly spoken to anyone he already felt that he belonged, was part of the group: an unexpected side-effect of Lazare’s abrasive ‘managerial’ style was that the staff quickly developed a group identity. Luke didn’t mention the book he had come to write. He didn’t mention anything much. He spent most of that first evening sitting quietly, smiling, laughing readily enough but not initiating conversation with anyone.

We paid for the meal, tossing a pile of notes into the middle of the table and getting up to leave before the waiter came to collect them.

Outside, the sky was turquoise, streaked black with cloud. People waved goodbye to each other, began heading home. Alex asked Luke where he lived.

‘In the First, rue de la Sourdière. For the moment.’

‘Are you taking the Métro?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay, we’ll walk together. I live near there, near the Métro.’

People talk about love at first sight, about the way that men and women fall for each other immediately, but there is also such a thing as friendship at first sight. Although Luke and Alex had said little to each other there was an immediate ease and sympathy between them. Alex was shorter than Luke, strongly built. His hair was cropped army short. He walked fast, exuding energy, as if the idea of a stroll had never entered his head. Appropriately enough, he had come to Paris in March – though not, like Luke, with the idea of pursuing any kind of literary project – and had been working at the warehouse since late June. He’d been in the south of France for most of August and had only been back at work for a couple of days when Luke started.

‘What’s it like living in rue de la Sourdière?’

‘Awful. The street is OK but the neighbourhood’s not so good. And my apartment – well, it’s a sad place. It’s seen better days.’

‘How long have you been there?’

‘Almost two months.’

‘And it’s the first place you lived in?’

‘Yes.’

‘Everybody starts out in a dump. It’s a rite of passage. You do your time in a cesspit, you’re about to kill yourself, and then, hopefully, something better comes up.’

‘What if it doesn’t?’

‘Then you go ahead and kill yourself.’

‘And no one notices.’

‘Neighbours, generally, are alerted by the stench.’

‘My place smells bad enough already. No one would notice.’

‘That’s probably the previous tenant. Where would you like to live?’

‘Round here.’

‘You should. It’s great.’

They walked in silence for a few moments, Luke hoping that Alex would suddenly remember that a friend of his was leaving an apartment just a few blocks away. Instead he asked Luke if he wanted a drink at the Petit Centre, the bar on rue Moret that is not there any more.

The Centre was crowded: overspill from a gallery opening nearby. They stood at the bar until two stools became available. Then they found themselves in the best position in the place: sitting at the end of the bar, part of the crowd but not engulfed by its pushing and shoving. Alex ordered two beers.

‘My arms are so tired I can hardly pick up my glass,’ said Luke.

‘I know what you mean. Christ, what a day!’

‘Bridge on the River Kwai.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s not often like that.’

‘How long have you been there, at the warehouse, I mean?’

‘Since April, but I was away for the summer. I like it.’

‘Tell me about the guys who work there. I wasn’t sure who was who.’

‘OK, Bernard is the number two, the foreman. He’s French and so is Daniel. He and Matthias—’

‘The German?’

‘Actually he’s Swiss but you wouldn’t know it. Anyway he and Daniel are great friends – that is they’re both great dope smokers. They do a lot of acid as well.’

‘At work?’

‘It has been known. Daniel deals a bit too.’

‘What? Grass?’

‘Mainly. But he’s pretty good for most things if you give him a couple of days’ notice.’

‘How convenient.’

‘It is actually. Then there’s Ahmed who’s Algerian. He’s the guy I see most, out of work. And that’s it. There’s a woman called Marie who comes in occasionally to do secretarial work but you never know when she’s going to show up. Like Didier. The guy whose job you’ve got. He was becoming less and less reliable. Today was the straw that broke the camel’s back, Lazare’s back anyway. He’s been pissed off with him for a while but his not showing today clinched it.’

‘I thought Lazare was pissed off with everybody.’

‘That’s just front. It’s not even that his bark is worse than his bite. He’s all bark, no bite.’

‘So you think I can stay?’ said Luke.

‘Sure. I don’t see why not. Where are you from anyway?’

‘I lived in London for five years.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Brixton.’

‘Me too. On Shakespeare Road.’

‘I was on Saint Matthews Road.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Just off Brixton Water Lane.’

‘I had friends who lived near there. Josephine Avenue.’

‘What number?’

‘I forget. A big shared house. They gave a lot of parties. The people I knew were called Sam and Belinda.’

‘Was it the house with the purple door?’

‘Yes.’

‘I went to a party there.’

‘Were you at the one the police raided?’

‘By mistake?’

‘Yes, exactly. They got the address wrong.’

‘Yes. So we were at the same party. I bet we knew other people too. Did you know, oh what was that guy called? The artist, he had that great name—’

‘Steranko!’

‘Exactly.’

They had known the same people, eaten in the same places, drunk in the same pubs, and now they were drinking in the same bar, in Paris. It felt like an achievement. Luke pointed at Alex’s glass which would soon be empty. ‘D’you want another drink?’

‘Ah, I see. We’re doing it English-style: ordering another drink before we’ve finished the first. Yes. Please.’

As Luke collected his change a guy came in and slapped Alex on the shoulder: an American, in his fifties, drunk. He was with a Spanish woman who was also drunk and a friend who was French. Alex introduced Luke and then began speaking French. Luke sipped his beer, understanding odd words but unable to join in. Then the American – Steve? – started talking at him in English, telling about the private view they’d just come from: paintings of people looking at paintings in a gallery, seen from the paintings’ point of view. Over their shoulders, over the shoulders of the people in the paintings, you could sometimes see some other paintings.

‘Not that you could get anywhere near the paintings,’ said the American. ‘It was far too crowded. Are you an artist?’

‘No,’ Luke smiled. People always assumed he was an artist. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why he felt so little need actually to create anything.

‘You look like an artist.’

‘Thank you. How’s that?’

‘The hair, the clothes . . . What about me? What do I look like?’

‘He looks,’ said another man who had just pushed into the corner, ‘like an overweight homosexual trying to pick up boys half his age.’

‘That is not fair. Do you think I’m overweight?’ Before Luke could reply he said, ‘Have you met Michael?’ Luke smiled and shook hands. ‘Doesn’t he look like an artist, Michael?’

‘He look very nice. Look at that shirt.’

‘You like this shirt? It’s my favourite shirt,’ said Luke.

‘His shirt is a work of art.’

‘It matches his eyes.’

‘
He
is a work of art.’ There was such a hubbub in the bar now it was necessary to yell things like this to get heard. Michael bought Luke a drink and began talking to someone else before Luke even had a chance to thank him. Alex had given up his stool for the Spanish woman who was actually Peruvian and who spoke neither French, Spanish nor English.

‘As far as I can make out she speaks no language whatsoever,’ Alex said, turning to Luke. ‘How’s your French?’

‘Terrible.’

‘You have to learn.’

‘I know. If only it didn’t require any effort.’ Someone else Alex knew, an English woman, Amanda, had just been to a film. Luke asked her about it and she began summarising the plot. It was as if something were at stake. She had to recount what happened, in exactly the right sequence, omitting nothing, incorporating each twist of the unfollowably complex plot. Once, realizing she had made an error in chronology, she even retraced a couple of minutes of exposition and started over from the point where the mistake had been made. After that hiccup she really got into her stride. There was no stopping her. Luke nodded. Alex was communicating, somehow, with the Peruvian woman and was apparently paying no attention to this scene-by-scene reconstruction of the film. Luke wondered if he could endure any more of it when Amanda’s attention was defected, briefly, by the guy she had been to the cinema with. Alex turned towards Luke again.

‘Quite a summary,’ he said.

‘I hate it when people do that. What makes them want to summarise plots like that?’

Alex shook his head. ‘I like submarine films.’

‘
Above Us the Waves
,
Das Boot
?’

‘Exactly.

‘
The Hunt for Red October
?’

‘No.’

‘Essentially, you’re a Second World War man?’

‘Through and through.’ They slapped hands: allies.

‘The Wolf Pack,’ said Luke.

‘The convoy.’

‘Torpedoes: tubes one and two.’

‘Depth charges.’

‘Periscope depth.’

‘The sea ablaze with oil. Survivors leaping into the blazing sea.’

‘Crash Dive!’

‘Two hundred fathoms down. Depth charges exploding all around.’

‘No one making a sound.’

‘Sonar.’

‘Or is it Asdic?’

‘I’m not sure. Sweating, unshaven.’

‘Bloodshot eyes. Worried glances at the depthometer.’

‘Well past maximum safety depth.’

‘“Take her deeper!”’

‘“She won’t stand it!”’

‘Creaking. Rivets pinging out like bullets.’

‘Every eye bloodshot and every bloodshot eye fixed on the depthometer.’

‘The hull about to be crushed by the pressure . . .’

Quite suddenly they ran out of steam. The bar had thinned out. People were still arriving, Luke thought, but more people were leaving than were arriving.
Alex’s glass was empty. Amanda and Michael were saying goodbye to everyone, including each other. Alex asked Luke if he wanted another drink.

‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘Always yes.’

‘Irrespective of the question?’

‘Almost.’

Alex paid for two more beers and passed one to Luke. ‘It’s a great bar isn’t it?’ he said. ‘In fact it’s the best bar in the world, brackets: indoor category.’

‘What about outdoors?’

‘The San Calisto in Rome. Do you know it?’

‘I’ve never been to Rome.’

‘Me neither,’ conceded Alex. ‘But it’s something we could discuss.’

‘Places we haven’t been?’

‘No. What makes a great bar?’

‘Ah, a
bar
conversation.’

‘I have pretty strong views on the subject.’

‘And?’