‘I was going to ask how she was,’ said Luke. ‘But I think I’ll leave it at that.’
‘What happened Luke?’
‘When? What? To whom?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘To Nicole and me?’
‘To you.’
‘Nothing.’
I knew, from Nicole, some of the nothing that had happened. I knew about their last moments at the Café Bastille, knew that Luke had said he was leaving Paris, leaving her; abandoning everything, even himself. I knew that she had placed her hand on his and looked at him, and I knew what he saw: all the love in the world a man can ever be given by a woman.
‘You know, Nicole,’ he said, ‘you’ve never once tried to restrain me. Never held me back. Never tried to stop me doing what I wanted.’
‘I’ve never had to.’
‘Not till now.’
‘Not even now.’ They were holding hands. ‘Whatever you want, Lukey.’
‘What I want,’ he said, ‘is for you to get up and leave. To watch you walk away.’
‘Why?’
‘So I can see you. So I can see you until the last possible moment.’
She gripped his hand. He moved his face towards her. They kissed. Then she moved her face and he felt her lips moving by his ear. She looked at his eyes that gave nothing back. Right up until the moment that she turned and left everything was reversible, saveable. The whole course of their lives, of our lives, hung in that one ordinary moment, indistinguishable, to anyone looking on, from the hundreds of other times that he had sat and watched her walk away. Perhaps that was why it was so easy for her to comply. They had rehearsed this moment so often that it required no effort, no will. As if nothing was at stake. She put her spectacle-case into her bag. Stood up, pushed her chair back into place and he watched her walk away, banging one table with her hip as she did so. He watched until he lost sight of her. He sat for a few moments, paid the bill and then stood up. He left Paris the same evening and, until that afternoon when I visited him in London, none of us saw him again.
After Luke left, Nicole came and stayed with us for a few days. Then she returned to the apartment but we still saw her every day. I remember thinking that it was less fun like this than it had been when there were four of us, all together. I remember thinking, too, that she would never recover from what had happened. I held her in my arms while she sobbed, could feel myself, even then, desiring her, wanting her. Several months later she went back to Belgrade.
We wrote, exchanged Christmas cards, talked on the phone sometimes. She wrote to say she was married, that she’d had a baby. Then we lost touch for several years until she phoned, out of the blue, and said she was back in Paris. She had split up with her husband — her choice — and had come to Paris because of an offer of a job.
‘So you’re back for good?’
‘I hope so. What about you? How is Sahra?’
‘She’s great. She’ll want to see you. She’s not here at the moment. When can I see you?’
‘Whenever you like.’
‘What are you doing this afternoon?’
I drove over to the apartment where she was staying, in the Thirteenth. She looked older, tired. We hugged each other. It was almost a relief to find that I was no longer attracted to her. Her face looked brittle. Her skin had lost its promise. She was still thin — like Luke — but whatever it was that had made her beautiful had passed. Maybe it was Luke’s loving her that made her beautiful. Beauty, I thought, is a moment. It passes.
Her little girl was sleeping in the bedroom. She was three, a year older than our own son. We left her sleeping and went back into the kitchen.
‘How does it feel to be here again?’
‘It feels fine Alex,’ she said.
‘I spoke to Sahra before coming out,’ I said. ‘She’s dying to see you.’
‘And me she,’ she said.
‘It’s great to see you,’ I said.
Sahra and I helped her find an apartment, to get settled. We saw a lot of her. The three of us became friends again, real friends. I saw her more often than Sahra did. She had a great need to talk about the past, to tell things to me. I came to see that I was wrong. Beauty is not a moment. Or if it is a moment, it is one that can last for ever.
I had finished my beer. I said to Luke, ‘Do you have any idea of how much unhappiness you caused?’
‘I’ve done. . questionable things.’ That was the only thing he said that afternoon that made me smile. Then, serious again, he said, ‘Do you have any idea how much unhappiness I have experienced myself?’
‘Your choice.’
He shrugged. ‘There’s a café near here — I use the word café in its broadest, very unParisian sense — and I always go in there for a tea on my way back from the supermarket. The owner has a dog, a Dalmatian, and I go in there because of that, because I like the dog. When I went in there last the dog was nowhere to be seen. The owner said he was dead, he’d been hit by a car. And I sat down there and sobbed like. .’
‘Like what?’
‘Like someone still alive.’ I looked at my glass. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I was just telling you what happened in the café.’
‘Why Luke?’
‘Why am I telling you what happened in the café?’
‘No. The big “why?”’
‘That’s a question I don’t understand. It makes no sense. I don’t think about that any more. “Why?” Because that’s what happened.’
The game had ended. The two teams tramped off the field, caked in mud. Luke flipped through the channels. There was nothing on but he did not turn the TV off. I stayed another ten minutes. Then we said goodbye and shook hands and I walked to the tube.
It was not yet four and already it was almost dark. A black cab went by, For Hire, but I walked. It was not raining. There was a fifteen-minute wait for a train. I looked at posters for the latest films. London, England. It seemed awful to me: the weight of the place, the hardness. I was glad to be leaving the next day. I took out my wallet and looked at the picture of my son. A picture of a little boy like hundreds of other little boys. Except this was my son, Luke. He looked like his mother, like Sahra.
The day after getting back from what Luke had taken to calling their ‘skiing holiday’ Nicole took the train to Belgrade, to visit her mother. Luke saw her off at the Gare de L’Est. She pushed down the window of the carriage door. They kissed.
‘It’s nicer to part at a railway station than an airport isn’t it?’ said Nicole.
‘Much. More cinematic,’ said Luke. ‘You’ve got the Walkman, yes?’ She pulled it out of her pocket and held it up. Luke had some reservations about lending her his new Walkman. In his experience it was a good idea, as soon as you lent something to Nicole, to prepare yourself for never seeing it again — at least not in good working order.
‘You won’t break it, will you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Or lose it?’
‘No.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
A guard said the train was about to leave. A whistle sounded and the train began inching its way out of the station. Luke ran alongside for a few yards, as you are supposed to. They called to each other and then they waved and then the train was gone.
When Luke went to bed that night he found an envelope under the pillow. Inside were two triangular pieces of black card, L written on one, N on the other, joined by a length of her hair.