‘Nothing.’
The concierge mumbled a few words and started down the stairs. Daniel thanked her, said something about demain, and entered the flat.
For our final meal, we returned to the Italian restaurant across the street where we’d gone on our first night. After the waiter had taken our order and brought out bread and olives I thought of asking Daniel what he’d done with the book but refrained; he would know that again I’d trespassed.
We filled the minutes with talk about London, what we would do once we got back, what awaited us where. We spoke, but it was small talk.
Our food arrived quickly.
Daniel sliced his pizza in two with a sharp knife.
‘He was quite taken with you, wasn’t he, our nobleman?’
‘Only at first.’
‘Or perhaps it was more you who were taken with him.’ He tore the halves of his pizza apart, then cut each half into quarters. I reached for my knife and did the same to mine.
‘And yours, will you miss him?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but we’ll write.’
‘You really disappeared when he was around.’
‘Marie, it was a unique opportunity for me. I never meet anyone like him.’
‘But that’s your choice.’
‘Will you miss him too?’
‘Pierre? He wasn’t much more than a phantom, to be honest.’
‘I think he’s shy around women.’
‘Well, you seemed blind to them when he was here.’
He gave me a quizzical look. ‘Meaning?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I thought you’d understand.’
I finished off my wine and refilled the glass.
‘Your mood hasn’t exactly been jovial,’ he added.
‘Well, our trip took an odd turn.’
‘Trips often do.’
‘I guess so.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So, what time does our train leave tomorrow?’ I asked.
‘Ten fifteen.’
Halfway through dinner a large black spider dropped on to the table — having lowered itself, presumably, from the air vent in the ceiling directly overhead — and scurried across between the dishes, vanishing over the white drop of the tablecloth.
Daniel still had many euros left over and insisted on paying the bill. We traipsed back across the street, through the green doors that felt heavier than ever as I gave them a push, and up to the flat to prepare for our departure. Daniel tackled his desk, returning papers to folders and folders and books to bag, while I packed up my own things, my only purchases during the trip a guidebook, a scarf, some candied chestnuts, and a eucalyptus candle I’d found at a street stall.
It took us no more than an hour, albeit an active one, to divest the flat of our presence. Once we had finished all traces of our visit were withdrawn, our scenes rolled up and waiting by the door. I retired to my room, Daniel to his.
The next morning the concierge rang our bell half an hour earlier than agreed. After a brief march through the flat during which she kept wiping her hands on her apron though I’m sure they weren’t wet, she concluded it was in the same state, if not better, than when we arrived, and seemed content with Daniel’s tip. Her son, a spindly teenager we’d glimpsed only a few times during our stay, helped carry our bags.
Thirteen
The flat smelled as if a dozen cigarettes had been lit, smoked and half put out, the last of them still smouldering in the ashtray. A different kind of cigarette from Pierre’s — the odour suggested filterless and handrolled. Before even seeing him, I knew Lucian had spent the last few nights in our home.
I was still in the corridor with my bags when he emerged from the kitchen, a cigarette between his lips, a mug of tea in each hand. Upon seeing me he bit down on his cigarette and murmured something, arching his eyebrows in surprise. Seconds later Jane appeared in a black lace negligee. At first I thought it was Lucian’s female doppelganger. Her hair had gone from medium brown to a purple black and was so shiny it looked lacquered, as if the shadows from her face — loneliness, disappointment — had risen and receded into her hair. Over the past weeks, I could see, she had transformed herself into one of Lucian’s Goth heroines, Lucretia or Annabel Lee.
‘What happened to your cheek?’ Jane asked the moment she saw me. The line had been turning a darker crimson as it healed.
‘I was scratched by a feral cat.’
She didn’t enquire into which cat or where, yet staying on the subject of fauna began telling me about the insect invasion that had taken place in our flat while I was away, a constant hum and buzz, especially at night.
‘What sort of insects?’
‘Well, mostly moths but also some weird little purplish black ones, I’m not sure what they were.’
‘And what did you do with them?’
‘I put out loads of strips and even swatted a few.’
I looked around.
‘Where are they?’
‘Oh Marie, it was disgusting, the strips looked like bristly unshaven legs, I had to throw them out.’
‘All of them?’
She rubbed her eyes.
‘Yes, I… Come, we’ve just made tea, have some with us.’
I followed her to the kitchen, Lucian doing a U-turn with the mugs.
‘Did you get any painting done?’
‘Only my room and then the paint ran out,’ Jane said, pouring me some tea. ‘Maybe next month we can do the rest of the flat together?’
I reached for the jar of honey. Stuck to the inside wall were two cocoons.
‘So… how was Paris?’
When I entered my room and glanced over at the shelf the landscapes looked old, oxidised, depleted, as if over the past two weeks they’d been drained of their vitality. As I drew closer, I saw that most of the moths on them had disintegrated, the crumbling beige of their wings hardly distinguishable from the crumbling beige of their torsos.
At that moment a fly buzzed into sight and perched on the slope of the mountaintop, crawled a few paces, then moved on to the volcano, where it briefly circled the red crater before flying off.
I picked up an eggshell, the one with the tiny door into night, and held the doorknob between my thumb and forefinger and pulled. For the first time ever it seemed to resist so I pulled harder. All of a sudden the door was in my hand, a rectangular gash out of which night could come spilling out, yet when I peered in I saw only dull black dabbed with spots from a silver metallic marker.
Next I picked up the autumn eggshell and brought it close to the lamp. I could only focus on the clumps of glue that fastened the rough paper leaves to matchsticks. When I turned to the mountain and volcano they too seemed like something pawed at with impatience by a child. They had never appeared so crude, nothing more than coarse dioramas by an amateur, and the more I stood back and stared the more I felt the landscapes vanishing before my eyes.
But maybe all landscapes vanish after a while or one just comes to prefer others. My great-grandfather’s final years were lived out in a cottage at the bottom of a field in Yorkshire. For days on end he wouldn’t exchange a word with anyone; the silence of low ceilings and unclipped hedges was more appealing than any human voice, he said, and his eyes had taken in enough faces to fill three lifetimes.
Only after my trip to Paris could I understand the weariness he once described as he was nearing the end of his time at the Gallery. After forty-six years there who could blame him, but even I, after a mere decade, felt pangs of disenchantment, my feet growing heavy as I climbed the steps to the staff entrance the following Monday. At first I was so indifferent to everything around me I almost forgot to check the plaque to see whether any names had been added while I was away but, needless to say, nothing eventful had taken place in my absence. When I put on my uniform the greyness spilled over my insides too, pressing down on my chest and ribs, cancelling out all colour. My tie kept coming out crooked, as if in two weeks I’d forgotten how to knot it, and I had to ask a colleague for help. At least I was assigned the Sainsbury Wing that day, I would’ve sunk into mortal tedium with the Impressionists, but even the gilt on the medieval panels and paintings refused to shine and not a single saint beamed himself out to distract me. At lunch I had no desire to tell Roland about Paris, though he bombarded me with questions and was more animated than usual, clenching his jaw with a mania I’d never seen before.