We watch TV in Mme. D’Amico’s bedroom. She has no sitting room as such. I think that used to be the function of my room. Hugues sleeps in what was the kitchen. He has a sink unit at the foot of his bed. Mme. D’Amico cooks in the hall (I was right: it was a cooker) and washes up in the tiny bathroom. This contains only a basin and a bidet and there are knives and forks laid out alongside toothbrushes and flannels on a glass shelf. There is no bath, which proved something of a problem to me at the outset, as I’m quite a clean person. So every two or three days I go to the municipal swimming baths at the Place Magnan. Formal, cheerless, cold, with pale-green tiles everywhere, but it stops me from smelling.
The fourth room in the flat is a dining room, though it’s never used for this purpose, as this is where Mme. D’Amico works. She works for her son, who is something — a shipper, I think — in the wine trade. Her job is to attach string to a label illustrating the region the wine comes from and then to tie the completed label round the neck of a wine bottle. The room is piled high with crates of wine, which she sometimes calls on me to shift. Most days when I come back I see her sitting there, patiently tying labels round the necks of the wine bottles. It must be an incredibly boring job. I’ve no idea how much her son pays her but I suspect it’s very little. But Mme. D’Amico is methodical and busy. She works like hell. People are always coming to take away the completed crates. I like to think she’s really stinging her son.
There are lots of girls I’d like to fuck who do courses with me at the Centre. Lots. I sit there in the class with them and think about it, unable to concentrate on my studies. I’ve spoken to a few people but I can’t as yet call any of them friends. I know a Spanish girl and an English girl but they both live outside Nice with their parents. The English girl is called Victoria and is chased all day by a Tunisian called Rida. Victoria’s father was a group captain in the R.A.F. and has retired to live in Grasse. “Out to Grasse,” Victoria calls it. Somehow I don’t think the group captain would like Rida. Victoria is a small, bland blonde. Not very attractive at all, but Rida is determined. You’ve got to admire his persistence. He doesn’t try anything on, is just courteous and helpful, tries to make Victoria laugh. He never leaves her side all day. I’m sure if he perseveres, his luck will turn. Victoria seems untroubled by his constant presence, but I can’t see anything in Rida that would make him attractive to a girl. He is of average height, wears bright-coloured, cheap-looking clothes. His hair has a semi-negroid kink in it which he tries to hide by ruthlessly brushing it flat against his head. But his hair is too long for this style to be effective and it sticks out at the sides and the back like a helmet or an ill-fitting navy cap.
There are genuine pleasures to be derived from having a room of one’s own. Sometimes at night I fling back the covers and masturbate dreamily about the girls at the Centre. There is a Swedish girl called Danni whom I like very much. She has big breasts and long white-blond hair. Is very laughing and friendly. The only trouble is that one of her legs is considerably thinner than the other. I believe she had polio when young. I think about going to bed with her and wonder if this defect would put me off.
***
My relationship with Mme. D’Amico is very formal and correct. We converse in polite phrases that would not disgrace a Victorian drawing room. She asks me, one day, to fill out a white fiche for the police — something, she assures me hastily, every resident must do. She notices my age on the card and raises her eyebrows in mild surprise. She says she hadn’t supposed me to be so young. Then one morning, apropos of nothing, she explains why she reads everything that appears on TV. It seems that Mme. Franchot is illiterate. If Mme. D’Amico didn’t relate them to her, she would never even know the names of the old films we watch nightly on Monte Carlo TV. I find I am surprisingly touched by this confidence.
One evening I go to a café with Rida after our courses and meet up with some of his Tunisian friends. They are all enrolled at one educational institution or another for the sake of the carte d’étudiant. They tell me it’s very valuable, that they would not be allowed to stay in France if they didn’t possess one. Rida, it has to be said, is one of the few who actually tries to learn something. He shares a room with a man called Ali, who is very tall and dapper. Ali wears a blazer with brass buttons which has a pseudo-English crest on the breast pocket. Ali says he bought it off a tourist. The English style is très chic this year. We drink some beer. Rida tells me how he and Ali recently met a Swiss girl who was hitch-hiking around Europe. They took her back to their room and kept her there. They locked her in during the day. Rida lowers his voice. “On l’a baissé,” he tells me conspiratorially. “Baisser. Tu comprends?” He says he’s sure she was on drugs, as she didn’t seem to mind, didn’t object at all. She escaped one afternoon and stole all their stuff.
The café is small, every shiny surface lined with grease. It gets hot as the evening progresses. There is one very hard-faced blond woman who works the cash register behind the bar; otherwise we are all men.
I drink too much beer. I watch the Tunisians sodomise the pinball machine, banging and humping their pelvises against the flat end. The four legs squeal their outrage angrily on the tiled floor. At the end of the evening I lend Rida and Ali twenty francs each.
Another phone call when I’m alone in the flat. It’s from a doctor. He says to tell Mme. D’Amico that it is all right for her to visit her husband on Saturday. I am a little surprised. I never imagined Mme. D’Amico had a husband — because she always wears black, I suppose. I pass on the message and she explains that her husband lives in a sanatorium. He has a disease. She starts trembling and twitching all over in graphic illustration.
“Oh,” I say. “Parkinson’s disease.”
“Oui,” she acknowledges. “C’est ça. Parkingsums.”
This unsought-for participation in Mme. D’Amico’s life removes another barrier. From this day on she uses my first name — always prefixed, however, by “Monsieur.” “Monsieur Edward,” she calls me. I begin to feel more at home.
I see that it was a misplaced act of generosity on my part to lend Rida and Ali that money as I am now beginning to run short myself. There is a postal strike in Britain which is lasting far longer than I expected. It is quite impossible to get any money out. Foolishly I expected the strike to be short-lived. I calculate that if I radically trim my budget I can last for another three weeks, or perhaps a little longer. Assuming, that is, that Rida and Ali pay me back.
***
When there is nothing worth watching on television I sit at the window of my room — with the lights off — and watch the life going on in the apartments round the courtyard. I can see Lucien, the patron of the Cave Dante, sitting at a table reading a newspaper. Lucien and his wife share their apartment with Lucien’s brother and his wife. They all work in the café. Lucien is a gentle bald man with a high voice. His wife has a moustache and old-fashioned black-framed almond-shaped spectacles. Lucien’s brother is a big hairy fellow called Jean-Louis who cooks in the café’s small kitchen. His wife is a strapping blonde who reminds me vaguely of Simone Signoret. One night she didn’t draw the curtains in her bedroom properly and I had quite a good view of her undressing.