One could possibly sum up the situation like this: after a few days in Paris he felt the atmosphere acted like a ready-made effective tranquillizer, rather than raising his spirits and making him euphoric. This completely unanticipated outcome was a huge shock. When he’d been there two weeks and realized that he still hadn’t been to a night club or boîte de nuit — not even in his own quartier — he was astounded and scratched the back of his neck. He quickly put this down to the natural sense of bewilderment he’d experienced in those first few days. Soon after, when he realized he’d still not entered any such establishment, and didn’t feel the slightest curiosity or desire to cross their thresholds, he started to feel worried. A cursory investigation of this peculiar situation might lead one to conclude that it was caused by sentimental reminiscences afloat in Mascarell’s memory, ones related to the young lady with the kitten. This would be completely unfounded. If any wound opened by that young lady remained unhealed it was precisely the humiliation he had suffered — that he described in such terms — when she had been so frivolous as to christen the cat with his name. In other words, that situation was as absurd as ever and, consequently, deteriorated by the day.
Even so Mascarell didn’t feel out of touch with his new surroundings. He had a decent knowledge of French and expressed himself well enough. Of course, he spoke in a grating, awkward manner and his silent s’s lacked feathery warmth; he spoke French without a twang, without the bass twang of a cello. Naturally, it was also phonetically on the thin side. Nonetheless, everything else was splendid: the shape of his sentences, his vocabulary and their relevance. Like anyone who has studied a language through books, he excelled more in literary turns of phrase than common usage. When he was in a restaurant one day and a gentleman ordered an omelette baveuse he was quite shaken. He thought he knew everything about omelets in French that a foreigner could know. When he realized that an omelette baveuse was an underdone omelet, he was genuinely disgusted. But I think that his disgust was misplaced. One never finds everyday colloquial language in books — that comes with direct contact. At any rate, Mascarell didn’t live incommunicado, that’s for sure.
How then does one explain the peculiar way he mentally adapted to Paris, his tendency to stay put, his really strange withdrawal, one might almost say, his indifference? I think not even he could shed any light. It was a situation that worried him, the roots of which he couldn’t have explained at all coherently. And now he was in that frame of mind, his mood simply deepened as the days passed. Mascarell befriended the hotel owner. This gentleman soon noticed that this client was relaxed, peaceful, and not at all tapageur, and considered him to be a model customer. When he went in or out, retrieved or deposited his key in his pigeon hole, they exchanged pleasantries. Then one day they started to talk and at length. They finally became good friends. When Mascarell couldn’t think what to do — that was almost all the time — and he felt it wasn’t inopportune, he spent time in the hotel reception area. He sat in the comfy chair and when he wasn’t talking to Monsieur Paul — that being the owner’s name — he was distracted by movements in and out of the door.
Monsieur Paul was a tall, stout man with splendid bones, aged by arthritis and the sedentary life, just like his establishment. The Hotel Niort, however, was a small furnished hotel like hundreds more in Paris, and Monsieur Paul’s corpulent frame was too much for the modest size of the establishment. He’d have been better off in the generous spaces of a large hotel than in the minute area of his own tiny reception where he hardly fit. Blue-eyed and ashen-haired with a sulfur-colored mustache, he dressed like an hotelier — black jacket and pin-striped trousers. He was very given to outbursts of patriotic sentiment and speechifying, his fulsome eloquence flowed easily.
He was a man who lived in a constant bad temper. He had already once retired from business — retired to Normandy — but the war had shot down all his projects: his lack of sufficient funds had forced him to resume work for a second time, something that visibly made him indignant. He let off steam denigrating the government of the Republic and, generally, politics throughout the world. At first Mascarell listened with interest and then, as he began to grasp the drift of his sarcastic remarks, he became enthralled.
In a private, completely hidden way, Mascarell reveled in the harangues of Monsieur Paul. This gentleman was forever complaining: poor business, the growing demands of the taxman, lack of activity, and wretched profits. Monsieur Paul talked about this obsessive situation in a monotonous, bitter tone. In fact, it was precisely this pessimistic litany that most pleased Mascarell — he received a physical boost because it so contrasted with his own individual fortunes. He had come to Paris, having done his sums, that is, he knew he could spend a (considerable) amount weekly, an amount he intended to withdraw in successive tranches from the big bank on the boulevard. In fact, his sums hadn’t worked out in a quite admirable way. Mascarell spent, had spent much less — less than half — what he had budgeted for. This filled him with ineffable joy that he kept under wraps. He was in Paris and was saving money! It was an impressive outcome. He would sometimes while away his time wondering whether this astonishing situation had entailed sacrifices, hardships, or the curbing of one desire or another and was forced to admit that the life he was leading was exactly the one he liked. He wouldn’t have aspired to anything else or wanted it otherwise. So, Monsieur Paul’s somber, funereal harangues delighted him because they made him realize the excellent, positive path his own private affairs had taken. The longer Monsieur Paul’s face, the greater was Mascarell’s secret delight. One of the most naked sides to cruelty in this world is the value things assume only by virtue of such contrasts. Mascarell summed up his state of mind with a line that barely did him any credit: “I’d never have thought that I was so intelligent …”
Fortunately, his observation never reached the outside world.
It was Monsieur Paul who introduced him to Fanny.
Fanny was Catalan. She lived in the hotel by herself and had been in Paris for many years. Monsieur Paul thought Mascarell would like to meet a compatriot, who was a good customer and someone else who barely made any tapage. Mascarell was intrigued by Fanny. Via a strange process, the fact she was a compatriot led him to think that Fanny, like himself, belonged to the quartier. Fanny was in her early thirties — maybe thirty-three — short, plump, with black hair, bright eyes, a pale complexion and a freckle on her left cheek, and perhaps an overly showy sense of dress. She gave off a wonderful smell of scented soap and was good company. Fanny worked in an office on the Rue Richelieu, but Monsieur Paul told Mascarell that her earnings had been running her short for months.