At the time I speak of I was without a long-term female friend, and being a romantic I craved the company of a like-minded person. I went to where Chopin lies, a little south of Bellini and east of Cherubini, near the Carrefour du Grand Rond. The paving stones glistened from the soft rain that had fallen a little while ago; the sky was grey and gentle, the trees sympathetic; almost I could hear a shadowy mazurka as I approached.
I stopped about three metres from the tomb to watch a young woman who was standing before it. She was looking at the marble muse who sits grieving for the departed composer. At the muse’s feet were fresh flowers. Below her, in an oval inset on the plinth, is a relief profile of Chopin.
The woman was wearing jeans, black boots, a yellow wind-breaker, and a black baseball cap with the insignia of the New York Yankees. She had a large shoulder bag. She was short and plump, with a round face and short straight blonde hair. She shook her head sadly and put her bag on the ground, then she took a half-bottle of champagne and two glasses out of it. I was not close enough to read the label on the champagne. She popped the cork which flew straight up, then fell at my feet; she filled the glasses. She raised one to the marble muse, then poured it over the flowers. The second glass she raised to Chopin’s profile, then drank.
Again she shook her head, took a paper bag out of the shoulder bag, put the two glasses in it, placed the bag on the ground and stamped on it. I moved towards her. ‘End of a romance?’ I said.
She turned to me with tears running down her face. I held out my arms and she moved into them. That was how I met Victoria Fawles. The champagne was Pol Roger; I have kept the bottle.
The next stop was Laroche-Migennes; after that came Tonnerre. Sometimes the window filled up with sky, leaving only a thin residue of earth at the bottom of the glass as we continued in a southeasterly direction. Montbard came next. The old woman and the young man had left the train at Tonnerre and there were other people in the compartment now but my mind and my vision did not focus on them. Superimposed on the wall opposite me was the mental image of the tympanum of the west portal of St Lazare. Although Christ is the judge he seems to be pinned there like a butterfly with outspread wings. If there were a God, might He have punished His only son in this way? Might He have said to Christ, ‘You and your big ideas! You took it on yourself to be a ransom for the many; now the many are your problem, and you can judge them through all eternity.’ What a thought.
Sometimes there were hills. It became sunny and we were at Dijon. Here the train stood for a long time while backpackers drank mineral water and Coke and bought things at the vending machine while their shadows did the same. Does Solange remember when we shared an orange at Dijon? I licked the juice that ran down her chin.
South of Dijon we passed vineyards. Next came Beaune, then Chagny, a peaceful little station where I and several others left the train for the 16.43 bus for Autun. Our driver was a short sturdy woman who conversed non-stop with a friend in the first seat while smoothly passing oncoming traffic in streets only wide enough for one car. Then up and down on winding roads through vineyards we went, through Nolay, Epinac, Sully and many smaller towns and villages to arrive at Autun at 18.06.
Through the October darkness I walked slowly up the hill to the Hôtel de la Tête Noir, putting my feet into the footsteps of nineteen years before. Almost I expected to smell the fragrance of Solange’s hair if I turned my head. I registered at the hotel and was given, as I had requested, the key to Room 309, attached by a ring to its miniature bottle. I bought a half-bottle of Pinot Noir, then went up to the room where Solange and I had lain in each other’s arms, had slept and awakened together. I had told myself that I was not going to relive the past but of course this is not possible: what we call the present is only the accumulated past.
I went to the window and raised my glass to the lights of the Champ de Mars and the Mairie. When I had finished the wine I went out and walked to St Lazare past the same dim cafés and ancient houses as before while cars and mopeds passed me going up the hill. At the cathedral I stood with my back to Le Petit Rolin and looked up at the tympanum that Solange and I had looked at together. ‘Speak to me,’ I said to Christ. ‘Speak to me as the son of God. Tell me something.’
‘I have nothing to say,’ said Christ. ‘This is all there is.’
‘But meaning,’ I said, ‘there must be meaning.’
‘Reality has no meaning,’ said Christ, ‘it is only itself. I am only myself; I am an image carved in stone. Gislebertus hoc fecit.’
‘That is not a good enough answer,’ I said. ‘You’re being evasive. Ideas are part of reality. There came to me the idea to travel here to see you and it meant something to me.’
‘What?’ said Christ.
‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking you.’
‘I don’t know what this idea meant; sometimes people say they’ve come to see me when they really want to see someone or something else. Maybe God knows.’
‘Are you saying there is a God?’
No answer.
I begin to be tired of talking about this. The next day I looked at the tympanum by daylight and still Christ said nothing. As I turned to start down the hill the bells shouted, ‘There is a God! Believe us!’ I waved goodbye without turning around, and walked down to the Hôtel de France where I had coffee and Poire William. Then I took the bus to Le Creusot where I got the TGV train to the Gare de Lyon; from there the RER to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and from there I walked home. No longer was I looking for meaning but still I wanted something and I had no idea what it might be.
15 Roswell Clark
Last night I dreamt that Jennifer and I were with some kind of tour group; I don’t know where we’d come from or where we were going. We’d had to move out of one hotel into another and we were worried about flight connections. A bellhop in a red jacket with brass buttons said, ‘Would you like to upgrade your menu?’ and gave us two very large shiny menus with illustrations in colour. We couldn’t make out what the pictures were and there were only a few words in English, randomly jumbled together with several other languages. It was a sickening sort of dream, and when I woke up out of it I fell back into it.
It’s true that I’m not sure where I’m coming from and I don’t know where I’m going. I’ve had to move out of what was before and I don’t know how to make the connection to whatever’s coming next; I’ve no idea what’s on the menu although I’d like something better than what I’ve had on my plate since Jennifer’s death.
About six months after the crash I went to see a Dr Wakem. He was Martin Gold’s therapist and Martin swore by him. ‘A no-bullshit kind of guy’ was how he described him.
‘Depression,’ said Dr Wakem to me, ‘is anger turned against the self.’
‘It’s more than anger,’ I said. ‘I hate myself.’
Dr Wakem was a stocky man with close-cropped sandy hair and a bullet head that looked as if he could knock down walls with it. His blue eyes also seemed very hard. He fixed me with a cold stare, then lowered his bullet head as if he might butt me through the wall behind me. ‘Why do you hate yourself?’ he said.