“What time?”
“Late in the afternoon? Around four? I have ballet until two. I started when I was little. There’s no future in it for me, but I’ve kept it up because I like it and it keeps me fit.”
“Don’t bring your instrument.”
“No? Why not?”
“We’ll use the one here.”
élodi, Jules, Duvalier, Arnaud, and Nerval
THAT EVENING, JULES was driven and possessed. Though he would see élodi the next day, he went to a website that he could enter as a faculty member, and saw her address on the Avenue Bourdon. He was shaking as he did so, as if committing a crime. “That’s enough,” he said out loud, thinking it would stop him. But it didn’t, and he left the house to walk to the RER.
Increasingly nervous all the way to Paris, he went not to the Place de la Bastille but, pulling against himself, to his office, hoping that whatever was driving him would dissipate and that he could then return home. He sat down at his desk and turned on the lights, but in the sudden glare all he could see was her face. Alternate surges of magnetic pull, fear, excitement, and a kind of dizziness ended up getting him on his feet and eventually walking fast toward the Bassin de l’Arsenal, where the barges were moored in front of her building.
It was possible to walk from his office to the Cité de la Musique, which for reasons of self-preservation he had never done even in daylight. And the bridges crossed the Seine in such a way that it was plausible that in going there he would pass by her house. But not this late. Driven on and feeling the terrible pleasure of madness, he thought at one moment that there would be none but happy consequences and at another that it would be the end of everything. And yet he kept going, even past La Pitié-Salpêtrière.
His thoughts raced until he was giddy with guilt, hope, and pleasure, and he moved as if falling forward. He had at least to look at the building where élodi lived. He hoped to ring the bell if he could bring himself to do it. He found himself loving – to the point where it reverberated throughout his body like a warm wave – the innocent and artless charm that she could not contain, and which had caused her to write “dernier étage” after her address. It had carried into the computer. She hadn’t had to supply such detail. It was a sign, somehow, of her goodness.
Pushed and drawn as if against his will but entirely as a result of it, he went directly past La Pitié. At times, memory was so strong it was as if Jacqueline were still there and alive. If he turned into the ancient and depressing precincts of La Pitié might he not be able to go past the yellow awnings, the banana trees, the tired nurses and doctors coming off shift, ascend to the room in which Jacqueline had died, to find her there, alive, to speak to her, even if just for a moment, to tell her how much he loved and missed her, that above all he wanted to join her, and that now he knew he would? She would smell like the sea, which was what had happened with the intravenous liquids that had flowed into her before the end, but it wouldn’t matter. The question was answered by his legs, and soon he was crossing the Seine.
Once on the Right Bank, and with guilt so sharp it had become physical, all his emotion turned toward élodi. He wanted her as if he were young, as if after making love there would be no “Now what?” but rather a magical subtraction of the fifty years between them. Twenty-five again, with time not a dying horse but a young one, full of unconscious energy and ignorant of what was ahead except that the very end could be neither seen nor felt.
Walking along the canal, on the west side of the Avenue Bourdon, he passed the police station and came to her address, closer to the Place de la Bastille than he had thought. What if he encountered her on the street? What would he say? He feared but wanted it. Everything was quiet. On the highest floor, one in a row of tiny dormers – the tops of which were level with the peak of the roof – was lit, her light. She was right there. All he had to do was press the buzzer, and she would come down. It would be either the end or the beginning.
One thing among the many things Jules didn’t know about élodi was that she wore contact lenses and was extremely nearsighted without them. When home for the evening she took them out and put on glasses, the clear lenses of which in magnifying her eyes brought to them a strange perfection and clarity – in blue of course – and the frames of which, in combination with her hair falling past the temple bars, added another irresistible attraction. Perhaps had he seen her relaxed on her bed – her legs folded beneath her as she read – slowly and carefully reaching for a cup of tea while keeping her eyes on the book, deeply absorbed, utterly beautiful, he might not have tried so hard to keep his promises.
He took a step toward the door, but then he thought how shameful and ridiculous it was for an old man to pursue a young girl, and he knew he was old, and he knew it was unmanly to do such a thing, for it showed that he was unable to face what he had become and what was in store. He turned away from the door and toward the empty street, and with deep, inconsolable regret, he walked on.
MURDER IS ONE THING when a distraught lunatic kills his wife and children, sits in his car for two hours pointing a gun at his head and, before anyone gets wind of what he has done, pulls the trigger. Case closed, except for the sad and difficult gathering of evidence and stories, but it’s mainly paperwork after the first few days, and is usually wrapped up in a week or two. An idiot high on drugs robs a little grocery store and kills the old Moroccan woman behind the counter. Witnesses see his beaten-up Fiat and get a partial license plate. They notice that it has a little flower on the aerial, to help the idiot find the car either in a parking lot or after he robs a store. Ten minutes later, he’s speeding and running stop signs, a tail light is out, and his muffler is dragging. Two patrol officers pull him over. He bails. They chase. He turns with a gun. They fire. Case closed and, again, wrapped up in a week.