Just as his eyes were closing like the shutters of a bookshop, Daniel showed him the sofa. He offered to make it into a bed but in a last flourish of energy Pierre raised his hand and said he liked sleeping on hard surfaces.
And there he slept, for eighteen hours. As far as I could tell, he didn’t even get up once to use the bathroom. Don’t worry about him, Daniel would say each time he caught me looking over. Are you sure he’s fine? I would ask, to which Daniel would answer, Of course. He’ll wake up when he recovers from his trip. But Sweden’s not that far away, I’d say, to which Daniel would reply, somewhat enigmatically, Depends how you measure distances.
As it turned out, Pierre spent half his visit asleep. Even when awake, he seemed in a permanent state of tilting into sleep, and when asleep he continued to look impeccable, his face as smooth as his hair, everything in place, elegant and unruffled. In many ways, he was the perfect guest.
He didn’t cost us much either, since he barely ate. At dinner he would take a few polite bites, fork always in left hand, knife in right, and discreetly push the unwanted food to one side of his plate. He’d then rise from his chair and walk over to the bookcase to fetch the saucer, sit down again and smoke through the rest of the meal. I knew Daniel disliked eating amidst fumes but he never protested, instead listening attentively as Pierre spoke to him about poems he had written, ‘L’après-midi d’une nuance’ and ‘Pour en faire de grands parkings’, and how the lukewarm reception of these early attempts in French had made him turn full-time to translation, although at the back of his mind he still harboured plans to write ‘le poème total’.
Every now and then Daniel would turn to check on me, but mainly his attention was riveted on his friend. Pierre’s English was bizarre, an invention seemingly his own, unlike the English of Scandinavian or Eastern European visitors to our Gallery whose origins were betrayed as soon as they came up to ask a question. When I commented on Pierre’s use of the word catarrh (he’d arrived with a mild cold) Daniel leapt to remind me that English was his fifth language, after Romanian, Swedish, French and German.
Towards the end of dinner, or, rather, as Daniel and I were finishing ours, Pierre would wash down a few pills with his wine and half an hour later, like clockwork, crumple into his chair. Sometimes we would leave him in this position, which looked far from comfortable, but usually Daniel would slip his hands under his armpits and drag his friend to the sofa and stretch him out horizontal, then remove his shoes and place them by the briefcase at his feet.
Lying there, just lying there. And yet, from the moment he appeared to the moment he departed, Pierre exerted his influence. How could it be that someone who spent most of his time immobile could have such a strong hold on my friend? From good morning to good night, Daniel was in some kind of a trance. It didn’t matter whether Pierre was awake or asleep or, as it appeared most of the time, somewhere in between. Was the temperature in the living room warm enough, Daniel wondered, or should he turn up the heating? Would the sound of the coffee grinder wake him, or the toaster’s chime?
Afternoons, Pierre tended to awaken as if by some inner alarm clock. From one second to the next the unwound toy on our sofa would start to move and sit up, and Daniel would rush over to offer him coffee, which he would down like a shot of whisky. After Pierre bathed, another activity he relished judging by the time it took him, they would slip on their coats and set out. Daniel would ask whether I wanted to come along. Half of me wanted to say yes, but then I’d imagine walking alongside them while they discussed their business, every now and then turning, out of belated courtesy, to ask me a question, and I decided I’d rather be on my own. Well, what did I expect; the balance of a ship is always tipped when someone new comes onboard.
And so I did what I had always done best. I stood back and observed, withdrew into the quiet, neutral zone that felt comfortably familiar, registering voices and movements without interfering.
Yet as the days wore on, that long, smooth expanse of patience began to curl up at the edges. Often I’d leave the two men to their hermitage and go for walks on my own. I spent an inordinate amount of time window-shopping and came to know the ornaments and mannequins in the shopfronts near us quite well, imagining a secret dialogue between the shiny black marble of the local undertakers, the bright red machines at the twenty-four-hour laundrette and the pouting plastic heads in the wig shop. I also walked further, through lavish gardens and humbler squares, down imposing avenues and narrow streets full of stalls, and entered every church I passed to warm myself for a few minutes.
Pierre stole six days from our twelve in Paris, large black Xs in the calendar. He turned Daniel’s attention away from me and I found myself wanting it back. Christmas came and went, or maybe it was New Year’s, in any case, a night like any other apart from what our guest contributed to dinner, four bottles of wine with fancy labels and a bag of white-capped gingerbread biscuits he must have found at a shop on rue Mouffetard unless he brought them from Sweden. We lit candles, worked our way through a chestnut casserole, then spent two hours tidying up while Pierre sat pensively on the sofa, saucer balanced on knee, smoking one cigarette after the other.
Late one morning when Daniel was out I decided to vacuum the flat. We had yet to do any cleaning and I’d begun noticing large dustballs in the corners that floated up whenever someone walked past. If I didn’t clean, no one would. I made my way down the corridor to the living room where Pierre lay asleep on the sofa. At first I avoided the area but after cleaning all around it, including the invisible moat encircling Daniel’s desk, I slowly advanced towards Pierre, noticing a few especially large clumps of dust by his briefcase. Despite the machine’s loud rumble he didn’t stir.
Once I finished, I returned the vacuum cleaner to the cupboard and went to have another look at Pierre. It was fascinating to see how profoundly he slept. I had never witnessed such deep sleep in my life, a sleep that seemed to block out the present so determinedly, it was hard to know in what time zone he existed.
My eyes fell on the briefcase. There it sat, just waiting to be opened and inspected. Tiny screaming devils jumped up and down in my head and, despite never having trespassed in my life, I couldn’t help but listen. The latches made a snapping sound. Pierre didn’t react. My fingers trembled as I lifted the lid.
Yet inside I found no secrets, at least as far as I could tell, only a small, personal arsenal for survivaclass="underline" eight opaque medicine bottles with labels in Swedish, two bundles of addressed envelopes from foreign lands, three felt-tipped pens, a couple of books in French by strange-looking characters named Michaux and Daumal, a thick leather address book with loose pages, six bags of liquorice coins, and a red plastic comb with two missing teeth.
Pierre mumbled something behind me. I jumped up and turned. His eyes were still closed, he was in the exact same position as before. I quickly relatched the briefcase and returned it to its place. Pierre mumbled again, something like turkey gurgling in various languages, a kind of sleeptalking Esperanto, and I took it as a warning, issued from beyond, to stop prying.
I hurried away just in time. Daniel was at the door, key turning in lock.
The following morning I rose to discover the men had gone out. Alone, I cast my eyes around the flat and after a full wander was gripped by an overwhelming magnetism, as if someone had thrown a lasso round my waist and was pulling me, towards Daniel’s desk. Until then it had been silently and unconditionally off limits but now, as the day before, I felt entitled to explore.