The Woman in the Fifth (18 page)

'This is a lovely place,' I said.

'If you don't mind things being a little on the old-fashioned side. There are times when I think I should update it, move into the modern world. But that's impossible for me.'

'Because of your Luddite tendencies?'

'Perhaps.'

'You actually work on an old manual typewriter?'

'I cannot deal with computers.'

'Or with CDs?'

'My father had a fantastic collection of records, which was sent on after my mother and I left for Paris.'

'Your dad didn't come with you?'

'He died before we left Hungary.'

'A sudden death?'

'That is correct,' she said in a voice that hinted I shouldn't press further. 'Anyway, he was a music fanatic, so he had this huge collection. When we left Budapest, we traveled with just a small suitcase each. Later on, when we had
immigré
status here, we had to apply to the Hungarian government to get certain personal effects shipped here. Among the things that arrived from our old apartment was Papa's record collection. Over the years, I added to it myself – but then, when the compact disc arrived, I thought,
I have all the music I will ever need, so why switch over?
'

'You mean, you don't like that consumerist frisson called shopping?'

'Shopping is an act of despair.'

'That's extreme.'

She lit up a cigarette.

'But true. It's what people do with their time now. It's the great cultural activity of this epoch – and it speaks volumes about the complete emptiness of modern life.'

I laughed . . . a little nervously.

'Well, I certainly need a drink after that homily,' I said. 'And in "an act of total despair", I bought you this.'

I handed her the brown paper bag. She pulled the bottle out of the bag.

'I don't know if it's a good champagne . . .' I said.

'It will do just fine. Did you get it at the shop three doors up from here?'

'How did you know . . . ?'

'Because it's my local place. I even remember when Mustapha, the owner, opened it in the early seventies. He'd just arrived from Bône in Algeria . . .'

'Camus' birthplace.'

'
Chapeau
,' she said. 'Anyway, when he was new in Paris and had just opened the shop, he was timid and eager to please, and was also subjected to a lot of brusqueness, as the idea of a
commerçant
from the Maghreb in this corner of Paris offended many of the long-term residents of the
quartier
. Now, three decades later, he's fully assimilated – and subjects everyone who comes into his shop to the same sort of brusqueness he once received.'

She found two glasses in the kitchen, then placed the bottle down on a countertop and undid the foil and gently levered the cork out of the bottle. There was the decisive pop and she filled the two glasses.

'That was very professional.'

'I could say something very banal like . . .'

'". . . if there's one thing you learn after three decades in Paris, it's how to open a bottle of champagne"?'

She smiled and handed me a glass. I downed it quickly.

'Precisely.'

'But you would never indulge in banalities like that,' I said.

'It would offend my Hungarian sense of the sardonic.'

'Whereas Americans like me . . .'

'You toss back half a glass of champagne in one go.'

'Are you saying I'm uncouth?'

'My, my, you're a mind reader.'

She had her face up against mine. I kissed her.

'Flattery,' I said, 'will get you . . .'

'Everywhere.'

Now she returned the kiss, then removed the champagne glass from my hand and set it down alongside her own on the kitchen counter. Then turning back to me, she pulled me toward her. I didn't resist and we were instantly all over each other. Within moments, we had collapsed on the sofa, and she was pulling down my jeans. My hands were everywhere. So were hers. Her mouth didn't leave mine, and it felt as if we were both trying to devour each other. The idea of using a condom went south. I was suddenly inside her, and responding to her ferocious ardor. Her nails dug into the back of my skull, but I didn't care. This was pure abandon – and we were both lost within it.

Afterward I lay sprawled across her, half-clothed, completely spent. Beneath me, Margit also looked shellshocked and depleted, her eyes closed, her arms loosely around me. Several silent minutes went by. Then she opened one eye and looked at me and said, 'Not bad.'

We eventually staggered up from the sofa, and she suggested we take the champagne and get into bed. So I picked up the bottle and the two glasses and followed her to the bedroom. As we took off our clothes I said, 'Now this is a first for me: taking off my clothes after sex.'

'Who says the sex is finished for the afternoon?'

'I'm certainly not proposing that,' I said, sliding between the stiff white sheets.

'Good,' she said.

I watched her finish undressing. She said, 'Please don't stare at me like that.'

'But why? You're beautiful.'

'Oh, please. My hips are too wide, my thighs are now fatty, and . . .'

'You're beautiful.'

'And you are in a post-coital stupor, where all aesthetic discernment goes out the window.'

'I'll say it again: you're beautiful.'

She smiled and crawled in beside me.

'I appreciate your myopia.'

'And you say I'm hard on myself.'

'After fifty, all women think:
C'est foutu
. It's finished.'

'You barely look forty.'

'You know exactly how old I am.'

'Yes, I know your deep, dark secret.'

'That is not my deep, dark secret,' she said.

'Then what is?'

'If it's a deep, dark secret . . .'

'Point taken.'

Pause. I ran my fingers up and down her back, then kissed the nape of her neck.

'Do you really have a deep, dark secret?' I asked.

She laughed. And said, 'My God, you are terribly literal.'

'All right, I'll shut up.'

'And kiss me while you're at it.'

We made love again. Slowly, without rush at first . . . but eventually it built up into the same crazed zeal that marked our first encounter on the sofa. She was still remarkably passionate, and threw herself into lovemaking with ravenous intemperance. I had never been with anyone like her – and could only hope that my own ardor came close to the level that she reached.

When we were finished, there was another long span of silence. Then she got up and returned a few moments later with her cigarettes and an ashtray. I refilled our glasses of champagne. As she lit up her cigarette, she said, 'Living in Paris must have corrupted you.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Because you don't criticize me for smoking. I mean, what sort of American are you, not playing the Health Fascist and telling me how passive smoking is rotting your lungs?'

'Not all of us are that anal.'

'Well, any of the Americans I have met . . .'

'Have you ever been to the States?'

'No, but . . .'

'Let me guess. You've met the occasional anally retentive American at Madame's salon?'

'I go there very infrequently.'

'So it was my lucky night then.'

'You could say that.'

'Why do you go there if you so dislike it?'

'I don't dislike it. Madame
is
absurd – and someone who thinks that her life is her ongoing work of art . . . whereas the truth is that she is a dilettante who had five minutes of fame back in the sixties as an artist's muse, and briefly married a rich man . . .'

'Does that explain the big apartment?'

'Of course. The husband's name was Jacques Javelle. He was a big-deal film producer back then – largely soft-porn junk, but it made him briefly rich. He married Lorraine when she was this sexy, flower-girl
mannequin
, and continued seeing his two long-standing mistresses. But Madame's strange American morality wouldn't put up with such sexual compartmentalization and she exploded the marriage. She came out of the divorce with the apartment and nothing more. Her looks began to diminish and she did not adapt well to the changing times. So what did she do? Reinvent herself as a curator of people. She found her little niche in Paris, the salon brings in an income, and for a few hours every Sunday night, she can pretend she is important.
Et voilà
– the story of Madame L'Herbert and her salon. Twice a year I find it amusing, nothing more. Occasionally it is good to go out and meet people.'

'You don't have a lot of friends in Paris?'

'Not really . . . and no, that doesn't bother me. Since I lost my daughter and husband . . .'

'You lost your husband as well?'

A nod. Then: 'Since then I have largely kept to myself. I like it that way. There is much to be said for solitude.'

'It has its virtues, sure.'

'If you are a novelist, you must appreciate it.'

'I have no choice but to deal with being alone. Anyway, writing fills the hours when I do my job.'

'So what – besides writing – do you do all night?'

'I sit in a room, and make certain that no one is trying to break into the place, and also let in the staff who do all the shipping of furs.'

'I never knew that furriers ran a twenty-four-hour operation.'

'This one does.'

'I see,' she said. 'And how did you get the job?'

I told her a bit about arriving in Paris, and the horrendous experience in the hotel, and the day clerk who was such a bastard, and Adnan's kindness, and him getting controlled, and all the other strange happenstantial events that led me to rent his
chambre de bonne
and find my current employment.

'It's all rather picaresque,' she said. 'A run-in with a classic Parisian
connard
– Monsieur . . . what was his name again?'

'Monsieur Brasseur at the Hotel Sélect on rue François Millet in the Sixteenth. If you know anyone you hate, send them there.'

'I'll keep that in mind. But you do have fantastic material,
n'est-ce pas
? Getting milked by a horrid hotel desk clerk and then ending up in a
chambre
in
le quartier turc
. I'm certain, during all those years that you were practicing your French in . . . where was it that you lived . . . ?'