“How does that possibly …?”
“It does. The entrance examination for Sandhurst had a geography component. He wasn’t interested in geography and hadn’t prepared. A list of all the countries in the world was given to the candidates, and most spent months studying them as intended. Having neglected to do this, Churchill began the night before. His eye was drawn to New Zealand. Realizing that in five or six hours he couldn’t master the geography of the entire world, he stayed with New Zealand and arrived the next morning an expert on the geography of that country and no other. By the grace of God and for the salvation of England, the West, and France, the sole topic on the exam was … New Zealand.”
“So what you’re saying is that by the grace of God you studied basilar aneurysms?”
“Not exactly, but I do have time to read. I’m pretty old and my body is failing. How long does it take to train in medicine, including preparation for medical school and the professional training afterwards? Ten years, fifteen? One must tackle an enormous body of knowledge. And yet I’m interested in the subject. So, like Churchill, I threw a dart. I chose one topic each from a number of areas – esophageal diverticula, insulinoma, spasmodic torticollis, idiopathic pulmonary hemosclerosis, autosomal recessive Von Wellebrand’s disease, Ehrlichiosis, dystonia, orthostatic hypotension ….”
“Enough!”
“And, for the brain, only one thing – inoperable basilar aneurysms. The point is not that I know a lot, or that I’m accurate. I know just a little. If it had been something entirely different I still would have said inoperable basilar aneurysm, I would have been wrong, and you would not be sitting in that chair.”
“Nonetheless, we’ve not finished with you,” Nerval told him.
Jules sat back and said, “Ah! But you are for today.”
This did not sit well with his guest, but, then again, seldom did anything.
JULES RETURNED TO his own quarters where for half an hour he stared across the terrace and over the Seine toward Paris. Claude had moved the potted trees and bushes from the greenhouse back to their warm-weather stations, and there they stood guard in a light drizzle. It felt like a summer morning when the day should be bright and hot but is gray and warm, and the lights in stores are gleaming through the rain as if on a winter evening. He loved such summer mornings, with the sound of water dripping peacefully from lush foliage, and the special noise, a swoosh, that cars and buses make as they push across wet pavement.
He picked up the telephone, conscious that he would be calling élodi on his landline and she would answer, like those of her generation, wherever she was, on her cell. With a landline, holding the phone to your ear as you dialed, you would not have to race to get it before someone hung up. You didn’t have to position the instrument so it faced you, like the mirror mirror on the wall. And the buttons on a landline – no hope anymore of a dial – were a lot bigger, although thanks to his profession Jules had no lack of manual dexterity. Landlines did not double as television sets, pedometers, encyclopedias, atlases, travel agents, or teletype machines, not to mention several types of cameras, alarm clocks, blood pressure monitors, and a thousand other things that he had spent his life quite happily not carrying in his pocket. But, still, as élodi’s phone rang, he felt old and wrong.
When she answered, she had read on the screen that it was he. “Where are you?” he asked.
There was a silence. It sounded as if he were checking up on her. “Why do you ask?” she asked in return.
“I always ask when I call people on the cell phone. They could be on a boat in the Mediterranean, riding a horse in Australia, or at Buckingham Palace. That’s the best thing about cell phones, I think.”
“I was in a bakery on the Rue des Rosiers, and now I’m just about to sit down in the Place des Vosges.” Somehow, he took comfort from the fact that she had been in the Jewish Quarter. “I live on the Boulevard Bourdon.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, I was lucky. Maid’s quarters, with a separate entrance.” She sat down, happy that he was, in a sense, with her, but wishing that he were actually beside her.
“Isn’t it raining?” he asked.
“It was, but it’s fine now. The sun is out.”
“Maid’s quarters.”
“One tiny room in which I can, and have, stretched out to touch two opposing walls at the same time – with the tips of my fingers and my toes. But it has a minute kitchen, a bathroom, and the best part is the view, and that I can see water, which is wonderfully calming. The house is almost at the north end of the canal, not far from the Place de la Bastille. I’m nine storeys up and almost level with the top of the column. The gilded statue on top blazes like a chemical fire when it’s struck by the sun. My father told me that when old British warships left port some of the sailors would stand on the knob at the top of the fifty-meter masts, with no support. Every time I see the statue, I think of that.
“And he would be happy, because although he would think Paris is now very dangerous, I live just up the street from the H?tel de Police, Quatriême Arrondissement. Almost every parking space on this block is taken up by a police car, a dozen or more at a time.”
She didn’t tell Jules that the young police officers would flirt with her, and that though she found them attractive in their smart uniforms she would blush and hurry on.
“My two dormer windows are very small. From the street they look like tank periscopes. The canal is always full of yachts and barges, many of them Dutch. On the east side there’s a park with lawns and trees, and one luxuriant willow close to the water. In summer, the Place des Vosges is my garden.
“Chambres des bonnes are all over Paris, and no one knows what to do with them. The rich don’t want strangers in their buildings, and regulations and architecture often prevent conversions. The wonderful part is that when you get one it’s usually on the top floor. Under the roof it’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but I can see a hundred square kilometers and a huge sky. I was lucky. The people from whom I rent are classical music patrons. They like it when they hear the cello from upstairs.”
What she described, and the way she described it – in her language, in her voice – was so lovely and seductive that he despaired that he was not half a century or even just thirty years younger. He would have liked to have spent another lifetime with her, starting out in a room so small he could touch opposing walls, with a view of the water, and the Place des Vosges as their garden. But the energy, anonymity, and hope of youth were not his to have again.
“Do you still want to resume the lessons,” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you come here?”
“When?”
“At your convenience.”
“Tomorrow.”