The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (19 page)

The three of them went for walks along the Moskva, bought ice-cream sandwiches at Gorky Park or sat in overheated cafes eating
pelmeni
and borscht with great dollops of cream. Armand
veered from feeling anguished to thinking that he couldn’t imagine being any happier than he was now. All week he waited for the weekend when they might be out together. It was always the
three of them and they always met outdoors, never at his flat. Armand felt that by having them over to his place he would be crossing a line. He had probably crossed it already, by spending so much
time with his two students outside school hours, but he didn’t feel he was doing anything wrong.

The main thing was that he and Amir were never alone.

One Saturday afternoon Amir knocked on his door. Armand did not ask how the boy knew where he lived. Instead he let him in and offered to make coffee. The boy looked around the flat. He was
flushed and sweating.

‘Have you been running?’ Armand asked. The boy was a stellar long-distance runner. Armand had seen him in action, leading the others out of the school and towards the athletic
grounds where the sports teacher, a ruddy Corsican, took his classes.

Amir ignored the question and with a gesture of impatience pulled his shirt off. He acted as though he wanted to get this over with. Armand knew he should be sending the boy away but the sight
of his hairless torso and dark nipples, the fast pace of the boy’s breathing, kept him paralysed. If he could have moved, he would have made a run for it, bolted down the stairs and into the
relative safety of the courtyard with its bundled-up children and hazardous play equipment, but his feet were rooted to the ground.

Now Amir was standing before him in his boxer shorts, with his arms loosely by his side. Did he smile,or was Armand imagining it?

‘Can I use your shower?’

Night was falling. Mid-afternoon and already the overcast sky was fading into black. Armand stood close to the window and stared at the muddy streets below, cutting dark trails through a blanket
of snow. How would Amir get back now? It was too dark and cold. He would have to drive him. A woman wearing a scarf around her head went past, pulling a shopping trolley. A couple of black-winged
birds trailed each other in the sky. He could hear the lift creaking as it made its way down. The sound receded until, for a single minute, there was complete silence. Then the slushing of tyres,
the sound of shrieking, a door slamming somewhere close by.

When he turned, Amir stood before him stark naked. His wet hair fell across his forehead. He still held his hands by his side. His cock stood proudly between his legs, erect and big. Much bigger
than anything you’d expect on a boy, but then Amir was sixteen. Technically did that make him an adult, or close enough that the distinction didn’t matter?

The silence lasted so long, the swelling in Armand’s heart so quick and overwhelming, that he wondered whether he would be able to stand it and for how long.

‘You’d better get dressed.’ He heard his own voice, ragged and harsh.

Amir shrugged in an exaggerated gesture of indifference. He turned and walked back into the bathroom.

They drove back to Amir’s place in complete silence. The boy lived in an exclusive apartment block close to the school.

‘Goodnight,’ Armand said.

‘Thanks for the drive.’

‘Sure.’
Thanks for dropping by
, he almost said, but it would have sounded flippant and it was the wrong thing to say to this boy. A
boy
, his
student
,
Armand reminded himself.

When he got home, Armand poured himself a shot of vodka. He sat at the kitchen table without bothering to turn on the light. He wanted to cry but felt he didn’t deserve to. He thought of
France, of home, and wondered about what had driven him to come here. It seemed like the very thing he had tried to escape had found him anyway.

A series of bleak days followed. It didn’t help that it was night-time before classes even ended. Armand spent Christmas alone and woke up in a stupor the next afternoon.
The silence and the utter pointlessness of it all frightened him into action. He found himself knocking on his Russian neighbour’s door and being invited in. Before he knew it, he was sharing
the man’s lunch in his equally stuffy apartment.

The man introduced himself as Volodya. Later they sat at the table amongst the remains of their shared meal, talking about Russian authors. Armand confessed he wasn’t fond of Pushkin. The
man’s response was to scrape his chair back and stand to deliver an impassioned tirade on the poet’s genius. They talked about Tolstoy’s feelings towards Anna Karenina as he wrote
her character, and Chekhov’s humanism. For that hour, the world outside this messy, lived-in flat ceased to exist for Armand.

The man then said he had to leave shortly to pick up his girlfriend from the orphanage where she worked, an hour out of the city. The Russian was a university lecturer and his girlfriend a
nurse’s aide. Normally she would get a lift home with a colleague who had a car but the colleague had gone home sick at lunchtime.

‘It’s a long and boring drive. I could use some company,’ the man said. He was tall and unshaven, with a mop of dark hair. Fingers stained with nicotine. In his mid-forties,
Armand guessed. There was something strange about the way he stood, and Armand realized it was because of his left arm, which hung by his side, the fingers of the hand permanently curled.

‘I’d love to come,’ he told Volodya. His Russian wasn’t fluent by any means but he managed. Volodya smiled and offered him another cup of tea before they left.

They took the ring road, the streets thick with salt to melt the ice, and drove through a succession of dreary suburbs that all looked the same to Armand’s weary eyes. It was terribly hot
in the car and the Russian played pop music at full volume, but Armand didn’t protest. Once they’d left the suburbs the road became treacherous and once or twice Volodya lost control.
The car slid into the opposite lane, but there was no traffic about. He turned the radio down then and drove more carefully.

Armand dozed and woke, blinking through whiteness. Naked birch trees and the sun like a ghostly halo. The pressure from the all-encompassing whiteness made him squint. There was no way to gauge
the shape of the world. After a while he gave up and he let his eyes settle on nothing, exhausted.

Driving up through a tunnel of trees garlanded with snow, the orphanage loomed up unexpectedly. There was nobody around. The building was cold and grey. For a moment Armand imagined that
everyone inside had frozen, icy statues on each landing waiting to be thawed. He wanted to turn and flee.

‘We are here,’ his neighbour said, and before he knew it, they were knocking on the door and being let in.

It all seems like such a long time ago, Armand thinks as he reaches the outskirts of Paris. It has been a long day and he’s having trouble maintaining his concentration.
By the time he reaches his
arrondissement
, he’s starving. He stops at a supermarket and buys bread and fruit. It’ll have to do; he’s too tired to cook.

It’s close to midnight when he reaches the faculty. There is no one about and there is no sound coming from behind the closed doors. He has never walked down the carpeted hallway so late
and the thought that he might be the only person still awake in the building unsettles him.

He opens the door quietly so he doesn’t wake César up. The boy is fast asleep in his bed, the covers drawn up to his chin. There is an unfamiliar smell in the room. Perfume, maybe,
or air freshener. Armand tries to think what it could be. He is too tired to let it worry him.

He undresses down to his shorts and slides in next to the boy. César moans something in his sleep. Armand cradles the boy’s body – half hoping he will wake up, even though he
doesn’t want to disturb him either. But it’s too dark, too quiet here. There is an unpleasant scurrying sensation in his head, as though a swarm of insects has invaded his brain.

He thinks that he should never have made the trip to Brittany. What had he been hoping to achieve? Seeking comfort like that from a relationship that had died a long time ago.

He is exhausted but still he can’t get to sleep. After a while he gives up trying and goes to the kitchen to make himself a hot drink. Two scoops of Nesquik and milk, which he heats in the
microwave. There is a copy of today’s
Figaro
on the table. Armand is surprised. César never reads the newspapers. He sits down with his drink and leafs through the paper,
hoping to distract himself from his thoughts.

The story is on page three, headlined ‘Serial killer?’ A woman called Elisabeth Guillou has been found dead in her house. Police say it was foul play. Another woman was found dead a
week earlier. The reporter wonders whether there might be a link, though the police will not confirm whether they see the murders as being the work of a single killer. The lack of information is a
minor inconvenience which doesn’t seem to have fazed the reporter. ‘There is a killer on the loose and he is targeting elderly women. What are the police doing about it?’ he says.
The article ends with a commentary on soaring crime rates and how vulnerable the elderly are.

Armand sits still for a long time, forgetting to drink from the cup in his hands. Then he gets up and goes over to César. He shakes the boy, gently at first, then harder, until
César opens his eyes. As soon as he is awake, he sits up, as though he has been trained to do so. Armand sits next to him. The boy’s expression is impossible to read.

‘Get dressed,’ Armand says.

The boy stands up and does as he is told.

Marie Latour had a list of grievances as long as the Amazon. She could list them if anyone asked. Before she opened her eyes in the morning she would hear the neighbour’s
front door slam and wonder what sort of person makes a point of letting the world know they are off to work. The rubbish truck came rumbling down her street and once she heard the men calling to
each other in the pre-dawn stillness, in a language she didn’t recognize. It made her wonder why, with so many unemployed, they needed to bring foreigners all the way here to do the job.
Whenever she left Maisons-Laffitte to go into Paris, which wasn’t often these days, she found herself frazzled. Dog shit on the footpaths, people of all shades jostling for space in a city
she now barely knew. Everything moved too fast.

Though she didn’t dare tell her to her face, she thought the suburb where her daughter lived – and in which she was currently residing – particularly vile. If she hadn’t
been meeting Guy, she might perhaps have never ventured out.

‘How dreadful Paris has become,’ she told Guy. Ever since her husband’s death three years ago, Marie made a point of meeting once a week the man who had been Hector’s
best friend for thirty-five years. Guy was alone too, and their friendship with its enduring loyalty brought them both a great deal of comfort. They agreed on most things. For instance that the
country they lived in today might as well be Morocco, with all the foreigners that lived here.

‘Of course they want to live here, who can blame them? Coming from those dreadful places. But enough is enough,’ Guy said, and Marie could only concur.

She had not told her daughter that she was going out. But what harm could it do, after all? She was just meeting her old friend and would head straight back afterwards.

Now they stood together before a painting by Matisse, whose work Marie secretly admired; but she would wait to see what Guy said before pronouncing herself. Matisse had painted this work during
his stay in Morocco and there were things that she knew Guy would disapprove of. Take, for example, the portrait of the young dark-skinned boy. She felt embarrassed looking at it, with Guy by her
side. It was all too – well,
physical.

Still, it was her admiration for Matisse that had made her suggest that she and Guy meet at the Arab World Institute, a rectangular and modern building on Rue des Fosses Saint-Bernard, in the
fifth
arrondissement.
She arrived early, and as she waited for Guy she gazed for a while at the structure. The sun was high in the sky. She watched the play of light and shadow against the
building’s glass and metal facade and wondered what she thought about it. Sometimes it was hard to tell what one’s true feelings were. Especially with something so foreign.

As usual, Guy was happy to impart some of his encyclopaedic knowledge and to help Marie form an opinion.

‘The inspiration is Moorish,’ Guy said when he arrived and saw Marie looking at the building. Marie wasn’t going to ask what Moorish meant and she simply smiled. ‘See how
behind the glass wall they’ve installed a metallic screen with geometric motifs,’ he said. ‘These motifs are actually 240 photo-sensitive motor-controlled apertures –
shutters, if you like. They open and close to control the amount of light and heat entering the building from the sun. It’s rather clever, I think. Even if the building itself is a little
terse.’

Clever but terse, Marie thought. That sounded about right.

They spent an hour viewing the Matisse exhibition. Afterwards, they sat together in the cafe and sipped from tiny glasses of tea packed with mint leaves and sugar. Marie had never tasted
anything like it. It was immensely invigorating. The Arabs did do some things extremely well.

‘Where shall we meet next?’ Guy asked.

‘Perhaps next time you should come to Maisons-Laffitte,’ she ventured. She didn’t mention that she was living with her daughter. Hopefully that would not last much longer.
Suzanne clearly found her presence trying. Why else was she always working so late?

‘What on earth would we do there?’

‘I could make us a nice lunch.’

‘It’s a long way for me to go.’

‘Well, it’s a long way for me as well, coming into Paris,’ she said.

Not another word was spoken while she and Guy finished their tea. Marie feared that she had perhaps been a little abrupt and wondered what she might say to break the silence. She thought about
the place their friendship held in their lives. Neither saw their children often. This weekly get-together was the thing she looked forward to most.