In Paris

When he was wearing a hat – walking along the street or standing in a Metro carriage – and his close-cut reddish hair could not be seen to be turning sharply silver, going by the freshness of his thin, shaved face and the upright bearing of his thin, tall figure in the long waterproof overcoat that he wore both summer and winter, he might have been given no more than forty. Only his light eyes looked out with dry sadness, and he spoke and held himself like a man who had experienced a lot in life. At one time he had rented a farm in Provence, had heard a lot of caustic Provencal jokes, and in Paris he sometimes liked to insert them with a grin into his always concise speech. Many knew that while still in Constantinople he had been abandoned by his wife and had lived since then with a constant wound in his soul. He never revealed the secrets of that wound to anyone, but he sometimes unwittingly hinted at it – he would joke carelessly if the conversation touched upon women: “Rien n’est plus difficile que de reconnaitre un bon melon et une femme de bien.”

One day, on a damp Paris evening in late autumn, he dropped by to have dinner in a small Russian eating house on one of the dark side streets near Rue Passy. As an annex to the eating house there was something in the manner of a grocer’s shop – he unconsciously stopped in front of its broad window, behind which on the window sill could be seen pink conical bottles of rowan-berry vodka and yellow cube-shaped ones of sweetgrass vodka, a dish of dried-up fried patties, a dish of rissoles that had turned grey, a box of halva, a box of sprats; further on – the counter, covered with hors d’oeuvres, and, behind the counter, the shopkeeper, with an inimical Russian face. It was light inside the shop, and he was drawn to that light from the dark side street with its cold and seemingly greasy roadway. He went in, bowed to the shopkeeper and went through into the still empty, dimly lit room adjoining the shop, where tables covered with paper showed up white. There he unhurriedly hung his grey hat and long coat on the horns of the coat stand, sat down at a table in the very furthest corner and, absent-mindedly rubbing his hands with their ginger, hairy wrists, began reading the endless list of hors d’oeuvres and main dishes on a greasy card, partly typed, partly written in lilac ink that had run. Suddenly his corner was illuminated, and he saw approaching him in a neutrally polite way a woman of about thirty with black hair parted in the middle and black eyes, wearing an embroidered white apron and a black dress.

“Bonsoir, monsieur,” she said in a pleasant voice.

She seemed to him so good-looking that he grew embarrassed and replied awkwardly:

“Bonsoir… But you’re Russian, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I’ve got into the habit of speaking to customers in French.”

“Do you have a lot of French people, then?”

“Quite a lot, and all of them are sure to ask for sweetgrass vodka, pancakes, even borsch. Have you already chosen something?”

“No, there’s so much here… You suggest something yourself.”

She started running through the list in a pre-learnt tone:

“Today we have naval cabbage soup, rissoles Cossack-style… you can have a veal chop or, if you wish, a Karsky kebab…”

“Splendid. Be so kind as to bring me the cabbage soup and the rissoles.”

She lifted up the notepad hanging from her belt and made a note on it with a stub of pencil. Her hands were very white and noble in form, her dress well worn, but evidently from a good house.

“Will you have a drop of vodka?”

“Gladly, the damp outside is terrible.”

“What would you like to go with it? There’s wonderful herring from the Danube, red caviar, which we had in not long ago, lightly pickled Korkun cucumbers…”

He glanced at her again: the embroidered white apron on the black dress was very pretty, protruding prettily beneath it were the breasts of a strong young woman… her full lips were not made up, but fresh, there was simply a coiled black plait on her head, but the skin of her white hand was well looked after, the nails shiny and slightly pink – evidently a manicure…

“What would I like to go with it?” he said, smiling. “If you’ll permit me, just herring with hot potatoes.”

“And what wine would you like?”

“Red. The ordinary wine – what you always serve here.”

She made a note on the pad and moved a carafe of water from the next table onto his. He shook his head:

“No, merci, I never drink either water or wine with water in it. L’au gâte le vin comme la charrette le chemin et la femme – l’âme.”

“You do have a high opinion of us!” she replied indifferently, and went to fetch the vodka and the herring. His eyes followed in her wake, watching the way she held herself, the way her black dress swayed as she walked… Yes, politeness and indifference, all the habits and movements of a modest and worthy office girl. But good, expensive shoes. Where from? There’s probably an elderly, well-to-do “ami”… He had not been as animated as he was this evening for a long time, thanks to her, and this last thought aroused in him a certain irritation. Yes, from year to year, from day to day, you secretly await only one thing – a happy amorous encounter – you live, in essence, only for the hope of that encounter – and all in vain…

The next day he came again and sat down at his table. She was busy at first, taking two Frenchmen’s order and repeating it out loud as she noted it down on the pad:

“Caviar rouge, salade russe… Deux chachlyks…”

Then she left the room, came back, and went up to him with an easy smile, already as to an acquaintance:

“Good evening. It’s nice that you liked it here.”

He cheerfully rose a little from his seat:

“Your good health. I liked it very much. What should I call you?”

“Olga Alexandrovna. And you, may I ask?”

“Nikolai Platonych.”

They shook hands with one another, and she lifted up her notepad:

“Today we have wonderful rassolnik. We have a remarkable chef, he worked on Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich’s yacht.”

“Splendid, if it’s to be rassolnik, then so be it… And have you worked here long?”

“This is my third month.”

“And before that where?”

“Before that I was a sales assistant in Printemps.”

“I suppose you lost your job because of staff cuts?”

“Yes, I wouldn’t have left of my own free will.”

He thought with pleasure: “It’s not a matter of an ‘ami’ then,” and asked:

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“And what does your husband do?”

“He works in Yugoslavia. A former participant in the White movement. You too, probably?”

“Yes, I took part in both the Great and the Civil War.”

“It’s obvious at once. And probably a general,” she said, smiling.

“A former one. Now I’ve been commissioned to write histories of the wars by various foreign publishing houses… How is it that you’re by yourself?”

“I just am…”

On the third evening he asked:

“Do you like the cinéma?”

Putting a bowl of borsch on the table, she replied:

“It can sometimes be interesting.”

“Well, there’s a remarkable sort of film on at the Cinéma Etoile at the moment, they say. Would you like to go and watch it with me? You do, of course, have days off?”

“Merci. I’m free on Mondays.”

“Well, then we’ll go on Monday. What’s today? Saturday? So the day after tomorrow. Does that suit?”

“Yes, it does. You evidently won’t be coming tomorrow?”

“No, I’m going out of town to see acquaintances. And why do you ask?”

“I don’t know… It’s strange, but I’ve already grown accustomed to you somehow.”

He glanced at her gratefully and blushed:

“And I to you. You know, there are so few happy encounters on earth…”

And he hastened to change the subject:

“So the day after tomorrow. Where are we to meet? Where do you live?”

“By the Metro Motte-Picquet.”

“You see how convenient – a direct journey to the Etoile. I’ll be waiting for you there at the exit from the Metro at exactly eight thirty.”

“Merci.”

He bowed jokily:

“C’est moi qui vous remercie. Put the children to bed,” he said, smiling, to find out whether she had a child, “and come.”

“That’s property I haven’t got, thank God,” she replied, and smoothly took away his plates.

He was both touched and frowning while going home. “I’ve already grown accustomed to you…” Yes, perhaps this actually is the long-awaited happy encounter. Only it’s too late, too late. Le bon Dieu envoie toujours des culottes à ceux qui n’ont pas de derrière…

On Monday evening it was raining, the hazy sky over Paris was a dull red. Hoping to have supper with her on Montparnasse, he did not eat dinner, but dropped into a café on Chaussée de la Muette, ate a ham sandwich, drank a glass of beer and, lighting a cigarette, got into a taxi. He stopped the driver by the entrance to the Metro Etoile and got out onto the pavement into the rain – the fat driver with crimson cheeks trustingly waited for him. The smell of the bathhouse wafted from the Metro, people came up the stairs thick and black, opening up their umbrellas as they walked, and beside him a newspaper vendor cried out abruptly in a low, duck-like quack the names of the evening editions. All of a sudden she appeared in the ascending crowd. He moved joyfully to meet her:

“Olga Alexandrovna…”

Smartly and fashionably dressed, she raised her black-lined eyes to him freely, not the way she did in the eating house, and with a ladylike movement she gave him her hand, on which there hung an umbrella, gathering up the hem of her long evening dress with the other – he was even more pleased: “An evening dress – so she thought we’d go on somewhere after the cinéma too,” and he turned back the edge of her glove and kissed the wrist of her white hand.

“Poor thing, were you waiting long?”

“No, I’ve only just arrived. Quick, let’s go to the taxi…”

And with an excitement he had not experienced for a long time he followed her into the semi-darkness of the carriage, which smelt of damp cloth. At a turn, the carriage lurched violently, its interior was lit up for an instant by a streetlamp, and he involuntarily supported her by the waist, sensed the smell of powder from her cheek, caught sight of her big knees beneath the black evening dress, the gleam of a black eye and her full lips in red lipstick: a completely different woman was sitting beside him now.

In the dark auditorium, gazing at the radiant whiteness of the screen, across which, with a droning buzz, spread-eagled aeroplanes flew obliquely and fell in the clouds, they exchanged quiet remarks:

“Do you live alone or with a girlfriend?”

“Alone. It’s dreadful, really. It’s a clean little hotel, warm, but you know, it’s one of the ones you can drop into for the night or for a few hours with a girl… The fifth floor, no lift, of course, the red carpet on the stairs ends at the third floor… At night in the rain it’s terribly depressing. If you open the window, there’s not a soul anywhere, it’s a completely dead city, God knows where down below there’s a single streetlight in the rain… And you’re a bachelor, of course, and live in a hotel too?”

“I have a small apartment in Passy. I live alone too. A Parisian of long standing. At one time I lived in Provence, rented a farm, wanted to withdraw from everyone and everything, live by the labour of my hands – and couldn’t endure that labour. I took on a Cossack to help – he turned out to be a drunkard, a gloomy fellow, terrible when tight – I got chickens, rabbits – and they’d die, one day the mule almost bit me to death – a really vicious, clever animal… And the main thing was the utter loneliness. My wife left me while still in Constantinople.”

“Are you joking?”

“Not a bit. A very commonplace story. Qui se marie par amour a bonnes nuits et mauvais jours. But I didn’t even have very many of either the one or the other. She left me in the second year of our marriage.”

“And where is she now?”

“I don’t know…”

She was silent for a long time. Some imitator of Chaplin was running foolishly around the screen on splayed feet, in absurdly huge down-at-heel shoes, and with a bowler hat on the tilt.

“Yes, you must be very lonely,” she said.

“Yes. But still, one must bear it. Patience – médecine des pauvres.”

“Very sad médecine.”

“Yes, cheerless. To the extent,” he said, grinning, “that sometimes I’ve even taken a peep inside Illustrated Russia – there’s a section there, you know, where they print something akin to marriage and love advertisements: ‘Bored Russian girl from Latvia would like to correspond with sensitive Russian Parisian, who should please send photograph… Serious auburn-haired lady, not modern, but attractive, widow with nine-year-old son, seeks correspondence with serious aim with sober gentleman no younger than forty, materially provided for by driving or some other work, who likes family comforts. Cultured ways not essential…’ I understand her completely – they’re not essential.”

“But surely you have friends, acquaintances?”

“No friends. And acquaintanceships are poor comfort.”

“And who does your housekeeping?”

“My housekeeping is modest. I brew my own coffee, I also get breakfast myself. Towards evening the femme de ménage comes.”

“Poor thing!” she said, giving his hand a squeeze.

And they sat like that for a long time, hand in hand, united by the gloom, the closeness of their seats, pretending to be looking at the screen, to which the light from the cubicle in the rear wall passed above their heads in a smoky, chalky-bluish strip. The imitator of Chaplin, whose battered bowler hat had come away from his head in horror, was flying furiously towards a telegraph pole in the wreckage of an antediluvian motorcar with a smoking samovar chimney. The loudspeaker roared musically in a range of voices, and from below, from the pit of the auditorium, smoky from cigarettes – they were sitting in the balcony – there thundered, together with applause, desperately joyous laughter. He leant towards her:

“You know what? Let’s go on somewhere, Montparnasse, for example – it’s terribly dull here and there’s no air to breathe…”

She nodded her head and began putting on her gloves.

Climbing once more into the semi-darkness of a carriage and gazing at the windows sparkling in the rain and constantly flaring up with multicoloured diamonds from the streetlights and the play – now of blood, now of mercury – of advertisements in the blackness on high, he again turned back the edge of her glove and gave her hand a protracted kiss. She looked at him with eyes that were also sparkling strangely, their lashes large and coal black, and with loving sadness she reached her face, her full lips with the sweet taste of lipstick, towards him.

In the Café Coupole they began with oysters and Anjou, then they ordered partridges and red Bordeaux. Over the coffee with yellow Chartreuse they were both slightly tipsy. They had smoked a lot, and the ashtray was full of her blood-stained cigarette ends. In the middle of the conversation he looked at her flushed face and thought she was quite the beauty.

“But tell the truth,” she said, removing crumbs of tobacco in little pinches from the tip of her tongue, “you have had encounters over these years, haven’t you?”

“I have. But you can guess what kind. Night hotels… And you?”

She paused:

“There was one very difficult episode… No, I don’t want to talk about that. A wretch of a boy, in essence a souteneur… But how did you and your wife part?”

“Shamefully. There was a wretch of a boy as well, a handsome young Greek, extremely wealthy. And in a month or two there wasn’t a trace left of the pure, touching little girl who had simply worshipped the White Army, all of us. She started having supper with him in the most expensive dive in Pera, receiving gigantic baskets of flowers from him… ‘I don’t understand, can you really feel jealous of him and me? You’re busy all day, I have fun with him, to me he’s simply a sweet boy and nothing more…’ A sweet boy! And she herself was twenty. It wasn’t easy to forget her – the former, Yekaterinodar her…”

When the bill was brought, she looked it over carefully and told him to give no more than ten per cent for the service. After that it seemed even stranger to both of them to be parting in half an hour.

“Let’s go to my place,” he said dolefully. “We can sit and talk some more…”

“Yes, yes,” she replied, getting up, taking his arm and pressing it against her.

The night driver, a Russian, drove them to a lonely side street, to the entrance of a tall building, beside which, in the metallic light of a gas streetlamp, the rain was sprinkling onto a tin rubbish bin. They went into the illuminated vestibule, then into the cramped lift, and they were slowly drawn upwards, embracing and quietly kissing. He managed to get the key into the lock of his door before the electric light went out, and he led her into the hallway, then into the small dining room, where only one bulb lit up miserably in the chandelier. Their faces were already tired. He suggested drinking some more wine.

“No, my dear,” she said, “I can’t drink any more.”

He began persuading:

“We’ll have just one glass of white each, I’ve got an excellent Pouilly standing outside the window.”

“You have a drink, dear, but I’ll go and get undressed and have a wash. And to bed, to bed. We’re not children, I think you knew very well that since I’d agreed to come to your place… And in general, why should we part with one another?”

He could not reply from agitation, he silently took her into the bedroom, put the light on in there and in the bathroom, the door into which was open from the bedroom. Here the bulbs burned brightly, and everywhere there was warmth coming from the heating, while in the meantime the rain was beating rapidly and steadily on the roof. She immediately started pulling the long dress off over her head.

He left the room, drank two glasses, one after another, of icy, bitter wine, and could not restrain himself, but again went into the bedroom. In the bedroom, in the large mirror on the opposite wall, the lighted bathroom was brightly reflected. She was standing with her back to him, completely naked, white, strong, bent over the washbasin, washing her neck and breasts.

“You can’t come in here!” she said and, throwing on a bathrobe, but without covering her ripe breasts, her strong white stomach and her taut white hips, she came up to him and embraced him like a wife. And he embraced her like a wife too, the whole of her cool body, kissing her still moist chest, which smelt of toilet soap, her eyes and lips, from which she had already wiped the make-up…

Two days later, giving up her job, she moved in with him.

One day in the winter he persuaded her to take a safe in her own name in Crédit Lyonnais and to put into it everything he earned:

“Precautions never do any harm,” he said. “L’amour fait danser les ânes, and I feel just as if I’m twenty. But who knows what might happen…”

On the third day of Easter he died in a Metro carriage – reading the newspaper, he suddenly threw his head against the back of the seat and his eyes rolled…

As she was returning in mourning from the cemetery, it was a nice spring day, spring clouds were floating here and there in the soft Parisian sky, and everything spoke of life that was youthful, eternal – and of hers, that was finished.

At home she began tidying the apartment. In the corridor, in the cupboard, she saw his old summer greatcoat, grey with a red lining. She took it off the hanger, pressed it to her face and, as she did so, sat down on the floor, her whole body jerking with sobs, and cried out, begging someone for mercy.

26th October 1940