The Radiant City. Lauren B. Davis
was down the hall, shared among the tenants. Now improvements have been made. Each apartment has a bathroom with a toilet and a shower – not an actual bath for, having been partitioned from a corner of the main room, there is no space. Still, they are pleased not to have to go down the hall, not to have to smell the shit of strangers.
The same cannot be said for all converted chambres de bonne in Paris. Immigrants, refugees, students, the poor in all forms, take what they can get. Wave after wave of people arrive from everywhere in the world, looking for safe haven, for inspiration, looking for the famous liberté, egalité, fraternité. They come from America, from Romania, from Vietnam, from Algeria, from Cambodia, from Iran, Argentina, Russia . . . from everywhere life has either been too dangerous, too difficult, or too dull.
They sleep in rooms too cold or too hot, rooms with no insulation between the walls, and they fall asleep to the sounds of someone else’s snoring, or their love-making, or their weeping, their whimpers, their flatulence, their rage. They hang their clothes out of windows on racks to air out the stench of cooking fat and cigarettes. They grow geraniums and lavender and basil in pots on the sills. They put on extra socks before they go to bed in the winter and suck on ice in the summer when the pollution is so thick the inside of the mouth tastes of diesel fuel and all the wealthy people have closed up shop and gone to Deauville or Cannes or Annecy.
Some bedrooms are in the back of the building, facing the courtyard where it is relatively quiet—only the gardienne remains down below, shaking the dust off her broom, flapping her table cloth, scolding her children. Or the sound of the neighbours’ radios and guitars and, during the day, the sound of construction: jackhammers and drills and sandblasters that make up the endless soundtrack of Paris. Saida’s bedroom, however, is at the front; she puts wax plugs in her ears so she can sleep through the rattle and clank of garbage trucks and car horns and the motorcycles and the arguing voices from the street below.
It is four o’clock in the morning now, and the garbagemen yell to each other, banging the large green bins against the side of the truck to empty them. Their yellow swirling lights send strange patterns across the walls. In her restless sleep, Saida rolls over onto her back and the sheet tangles around her crossed ankles.
She does not understand it is only the bedclothes that have imprisoned her and three beads of sweat appear on the top of her lip. She tries to kick her feet, but she cannot move them. She tries to reach down and see why she cannot move her feet, but her hands will not move. She hears her heart in her ears, loud with blood. With enormous effort she opens her eyes and it is then that she sees him. A figure in grey overalls, smeared in gas station grease. Something on his head. A hood? In a rush like electricity through her limbs she knows who it is. It is Anatole Mariani. It is her husband. Her ex-husband.
But it cannot be him. He is in jail. But it is him. How did he get in?!? She opens her mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. Her panic increases. She feels as though she is flailing, but her arms will not move, her legs will not move. She does not know if he has tied her down, because she cannot turn her head to look. She thinks perhaps he has drugged her.
Anatole has something in his hand. Saida does not need for him to step into the light slanting through the blinds to know what it is. She knows hot oil, hot enough nearly to be burning, by the metallic smell. Knows the smell of scorched iron from the pot, knows the other smell, the sick smell of melting skin. She hears his whispers in her head. Arab garbage. I thought I was marrying a good girl, not a useless bitch like you. You’re the reason I don’t get ahead. I’m tainted by you. In her head she screams for her father, for her brother, for her son. Joseph! She screams silently, willing him to hear her even if she makes no sound, Joseph! Run! Run! Run!
How did he get past Joseph without waking him? What has he done to Joseph? Anatole steps closer, so slowly, he is torturing her. He smiles, his thin pale tongue rubbing against his top teeth, as though she is something he will enjoy eating, once she is properly cooked. He stands over her, lifts the pot, his face is blackness, shiny, empty. She hopes she will die this time, and quickly.
“Maman! Maman! Wake up. You’re dreaming! You’re dreaming again."
The sound coming from her throat is like that of an animal, bellowing with the lion at its throat. Strangled. Wordless. As though her throat had been cut. Joseph shakes her and then takes her in his arms and pushes her hair back from her sweaty forehead. Slowly she comes to herself and wraps her arms around her son.
“It’s okay,” she says, “I’m all right.”
“Wake up, wake up,” he murmurs. “Wake up.”
Their tears are impossible to separate. Rain from the same sky, making the flames of her terror sizzle and hiss and steam, until they are nothing but grey ash.
Chapter Ten
It is Saturday and Matthew lies on his bed, staring up at the midday ceiling. The dull dishwater light shows up the cracks in the paint. Last night he dreamed about women. Ghost women with long fingers and pale, bruised legs. Friendly. He dreamed of Kate, and now he aches for her, knowing it is irrational. Something about holding each other. Forgiving each other. Tears. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and searches for an argument compelling enough to make him get out of bed. Here he is, come to the City of Light and what does he do? Skulks in the shadows of basement bars with ex-mercenaries, with broken down ex-cops, with hookers. Well, at least tonight he’ll be going to dinner at Anthony’s house. A change of scene from the Bok-Bok, right? Only sort of.
He moans. Sits up. Enough. Get out of bed. He smells sour. The bed smells sour. Take a shower. Do a wash. The idea of lugging his laundry to the launderette on rue de Clichy is enough to make him roll over and go back to sleep. Agreed, then. No laundry. But there must be something. There must be a reason to get out of bed.
You could write something. He moans again, louder this time. Brent leaves messages every second day. He should write something. Why not write anything and send it to him? Shut him up at least?
He drags himself to the bathroom, pisses loudly. Brushes his teeth and talks himself into taking a shower. The small shower is built into one of those fantastic French jokes, the sitz bath: a thigh-high square tub just large enough for one dainty Frenchmen to squat in, with a shelf for sitting, if one could figure out where to put one’s legs. For Matthew, at his height, it is impossible. From the ceiling hangs a chrome ring with a white plastic curtain around it and a jerry-rigged plastic hose attached to the faucet below. At least there’s lots of hot water. He strips off his underpants and steps in. The water pricks at his skin and the steam softens the air. He looks down at his hard-on. Soaps up his hand. He begins to believe there may yet be hope for the day.
Half an hour later, coffee in hand, he sits as his desk. He picks up a pen. Begin where today? Try Srebrenica. Try Herzegovina. But his mind is on women. Ghost women. And as he tries to write they haunt him . . .
There was a girl in Herzegovina. No more than sixteen or seventeen. She had a small wound on the side of her temple. So small it was astonishing to think it had killed her. By then I’d seen bodies ripped up so many times it felt as though that was the way death should be. But this small spot, so little blood, seemed impossible. Her mother or grandmother (ages were hard to guess) knelt beside her, doubled-over with arthritis, her thin grey strings of hair pulled up in an untidy knot, wearing a man’s jacket and several layers of skirts. The old woman touched the girl’s arm over and over again, as though trying to wake her. That girl was so beautiful. Death had made her beautiful. Pale and peaceful, completely lovely. Drained of all tension, all fear. So unspeakably frail and still and undefended. I wanted to touch her but when I put my hand out, the old woman grabbed me and bit the fleshy part beneath my thumb until she drew blood and I hit her on the back of her head, hard enough to make her let go. I walked away, nursing my hand, weeping for this girl, whom I had never seen alive, whom I loved and was dead. For days I dreamed of her and for weeks could not get her image out of my mind. I think she lives there still.
Later, when I came back to Kate from that time away, there was a moment when she lay sleeping on the couch. We had gone for a walk that afternoon, to see the cherry blossoms, pink and white, like a young girl’s