5. To avoid interrupting the narrative, but not frustrate the reader, the author has allowed himself this footnote.
One day Moshe goes to see the village rabbi and says: “Rabbi, I’ve just heard a new word and I don’t know what it means. It’s the word ‘alternative.’ What does it mean?”
The rabbi thinks and replies: “Moshe, come back and see me tomorrow with the deeds for the little plot of land down by the river, and I’ll answer your question.”
The next day Moshe comes back. He has the deeds in his hand. “Right,” says the rabbi. “Now you’re going to go to the market in Radom, and come back with two rabbits, a vigorous buck, and a young doe.”
The next day Moshe is there with his two rabbits in a cage. “All right, Moshe, now listen carefully. You’re going to fence off the plot down by the river, where the soil is soft, and you’re going to put your rabbits in there. In a few months you’ll have twenty young rabbits, you can sell half of them in the market, and reinvest the rest of the money to buy the neighboring plot, which you will also fence. By the end of the year you will have bought all the land along the river up to the bridge and you’ll be the richest man in the village. You’ll carry on with your business and your investments, buying up all the plots on both banks and down the valley, all the way to the village of Brentsk, and you’ll be one of the most prominent men in the region. You will marry young Sarah — oh, don’t deny it, Moshe, I’ve seen the way you look at her — so you’ll marry young Sarah then, and she’ll give you two beautiful children, a boy and a girl. Meanwhile, you’ll carry on breeding thousands of rabbits, selling them in the market in Radom, Piotkrow, and Kativice, and you’ll be rich, very rich. Your children will grow up, your daughter will start seeing the doctor in Lublin, the boy will start studying at Lodz. And then, Moshe …”
“Then, Rabbi?”
“Then the water level in the river will rise, an incredible flood, you’ll lose everything, the land will be carried away, the rabbits will drown in their thousands, you’ll be ruined, your wife will leave you, cursing you for your lack of foresight, your children will refuse even to speak to you, and you’ll end up drunk and penniless like a poor schnorrer. That’s what will happen.”
“But Rabbi. I don’t understand. You were supposed to tell me what ‘alternative’ meant.”
The rabbi thinks for a moment and says: “The alternative, Moshe? The alternative is ducks.”
LOUISE AND ROMAIN
• •
AN AUSTRALIAN BIRD, called the superb lyrebird, can imitate any sound, from the noise of a diesel engine to a jackhammer. That afternoon, it would only have taken a dozen of them to reproduce the sounds of Paris.
Louise feels light, suspended in air, in love. If she really is leaving Romain, it is for this forgotten sense of lightness. The sky is an infinite gray. It somehow manages to hide the sun and the shape of the clouds. Louise would like a brighter sky, an Argentine blue. She went to Buenos Aires five years ago, and the name will always remind her of the blue of the sky slicing between apartment buildings.
The signs say TRADITIONAL BAKERY, NEWSAGENTS & LOTTERY, CRÉDIT AGRICOLE BANK. That rural word “Agricole” stranded in a city does not strike her as incongruous. Louise has always liked the adjective “incongruous,” because it is itself incongruous. On the bus stop there is a poster for an American film with Nicole Kidman, another one for a German sedan; it flips over to make way for a Korean cell phone. Louise is traveling across Paris to leave Romain, yet she is looking at advertisements. She draws energy from the light in the sky, the glistening leaves and shifting branches. She looks at posters, some workmen digging a trench through concrete, boutiques, dresses, and ankle boots. She is going to leave Romain and yet she is looking at dresses and ankle boots.
She has put on her makeup and this black dress which — she knows for sure — really suits her. She is wearing that ivy and sandalwood perfume that Romain gave her for her birthday, the one that is too woody and precious for her. She does not know why she took so long getting ready, when it would have been far more tactful to have made herself as plain as possible, to have tried to be as unattractive as possible. She wonders whether she has gone to all this trouble for him or for herself.
She knows that there are men on café terraces looking at her, right now, as she walks up the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Any woman walking through Paris may, at any given moment, have a man looking at her.
She is heading off to leave Romain. She will have the courage to tell him that she actually left him a long time ago. She is walking through Paris to demonstrate that the thread between them has broken, that she is tied to him by the children, but that can never be enough. She can no longer see herself by his side. She has already forgotten the happiness that, only yesterday, she felt beside him.
First, Louise made mental lists, lined up columns. She put together a grid as logical as the blocks in an American city. One column For Leaving Romain. One Against. Or rather, she no longer loves him the way she ought to love him to keep on loving him.
As she filled in the lines, she could have written: the way you sometimes smile, the slightly English way you have of looking bored, your slightly bitter humor, your green eyes that are sometimes gray, your long thin hands. The For and Against columns would have been full of the same words; she realizes that what once attracted her puts her off now. The almost feminine charm that seduced her no longer has any effect on her, what she wants now is fiercer. The shy way he stroked her, that she used to find so arousing, exasperates her now, she needs passionate urgency.
Louise has also made a list of their differences. At the movies, Romain always chose a seat at the back of the theater, but she preferred being close to the screen. They took buses 30, 31, 53, 27, and 21, and Romain developed incredible strategies to get seats for them both. Louise was quite happy to stay standing. They did their shopping at Franprix, Carrefour, and Monoprix, and Romain had a logical way of filling the grocery cart: not one squashed strawberry, not one crushed baguette. Louise could never manage it. They argued about bread being over- or underbaked, about the war in Iraq which should or should not have been fought, about painting the bedroom; Romain gave way with a sigh every time: it didn’t matter. Louise doesn’t know what does matter.
Yes, Louise has made lists, it is her way of organizing her life.
With Romain, she liked the smell of cut grass beside the pond in the Jardin du Luxembourg, even though she is allergic to cut grass. She liked the mermaid on the barge gliding beneath the Passerelle des Arts, and the wind lifting her skirt. She liked the cold wind of a Siberian depression blowing across Place Blanche one morning, even though she does not like the cold, or Place Blanche. She liked the pink of a sunset from the top of the park at Buttes Chaumont, creasing up her eyes to look at it. She liked the taste of her too-hot hot chocolate in a café on the rue des Abbesses, even down to how much the scalding hurt. She liked all of that, and Romain was there, with her, right when she liked it. She wonders whether she liked it because he was there.
Romain is waiting for her in a bistro on the rue Montmartre, he is drinking a cup of coffee.