He was holding Jacqueline’s hand and growing more and more eloquent as they continued their visit. He explained to Odile and Louis that people stayed out late on the great lawn in the summer to listen to the voices and laughter of the night. In June, there was the Cité festival — a ball in the Provinces of France building.
“You have to come see how nice it is here when it’s spring…”
He pointed out a building with a steel and glass façade.
“The Cuba building… The Cubans are great. They bring so much joy and excitement to Cité… Tell me, have the two of you ever wanted to be students?”
“You mean a student like you are?” Odile said, bursting out laughing.
A student. That was something that had never once crossed Louis’s mind, or Odile’s. How could they ever go to university?
“I can get you IDs, if you want.”
“I hope you’ll keep your promise! Will you?” Odile asked. “I’d like to be a student.”
For her, and for Louis, these two syllables had a mysterious harmony: Those who were “students” seemed as distant and incomprehensible to them as members of an Amazonian tribe.
“Everyone here is a student?” Odile asked.
“Yes.”
A group of boys and girls were scattered across the lawn and some of them were improvising a volleyball game without a net. Their shouts were in a language that Louis didn’t recognize.
“Yugoslavians,” Brossier said.
He showed them Grand Café Babel on the boulevard, which was, he said, like a branch of the university. It was so nice to have a drink there on June nights and listen to the leaves rustling in the trees. Then they walked toward Parc Montsouris.
“You see that building there, in the middle of the lawn?” Brossier said. “It’s an exact replica of the bey’s palace in Tunis.”
They sat at an outdoor table at the Chalet du Lac.
“There,” Brossier said. “Now you’ve seen practically our whole kingdom.”
And he told Odile and Louis that, if he could, he would live there forever, without feeling the least desire to venture beyond its magic perimeter. Jacqueline, his fiancée, didn’t know a thing about Paris outside Cité Universitaire and its Faculty of Sciences.
It was much better that way.
“Don’t you think so, Jacqueline?”
She said nothing, happy just to smile and take another sip of her grenadine.
They had dinner very early, in the dining hall. Its size and wood paneling made Brossier feel like he was in the reception hall of an English manor house. Next time, he said, they would have to eat in the other dining hall, which was much more modern, with big bay windows and trees all around so that you felt you were swimming in a sea of green.
“And now,” Brossier said, “let’s go back to our place.”
They walked down a gravel path to the edge of a village. The little houses shaped like bungalows, cottages, and cabins were strewn all across the meadow, among the flower beds and groves of trees.
“This is the nicest spot on campus,” Brossier said. “The Deutsch de la Meurthe area.”
They had arrived at one of the buildings, a Norman-style house with slanting roofs. A flight of stairs led up one side with a rough-hewn banister. Brossier let the others go first.
“All the way up.”
It was a spacious room, with a balcony even. Near the bed, the wall was covered with photos of Jacqueline. No furniture except a cane-back chair.
“Have a seat on the bed,” Brossier said.
Jacqueline withdrew to an adjoining bathroom and came out wrapped in nothing but a red bathrobe.
“Sorry,” she said. “I feel more comfortable like this.”
And she stepped gracefully over to the bed to sit with them.
Brossier handed them tumblers and poured them each a little whiskey. Jacqueline put a record on the player: a Jamaican song. They didn’t talk. Brossier poured them another whiskey. He had taken his sweater off, and Louis contemplated the design printed on his shirt: the sail of a Chinese junk unfolded against a pink sky, with a pagoda visible on the horizon, atop a craggy mountain.
“Now Odile can sing us ‘La Chanson des rues,’ ” Brossier said.
“If you want…”
Louis let himself sink into the listlessness that Odile, Jacqueline, and Brossier were visibly feeling too. Odile had wrapped her arm around his waist and rested her chin in the hollow of his shoulder. She listened to the music with her eyes closed. Brossier caressed Jacqueline’s shoulder as she lay next to him, her breasts visible in the neckline of her robe.
It was too bad they couldn’t abandon themselves completely to this carefree indolence. Ten o’clock — Odile risked being late to work.
They were sorry to leave. Plans were made to spend next weekend together at Cité. Or why not come back tomorrow, on Sunday, Brossier said.
When they got outside, they looked up. Jacqueline and Brossier were smiling down at them from the balcony. Silence all around them. The smell of moss. They found their way back by the lights of the other buildings. How would they get back to boulevard Jourdan and the station? From the heart of this little village, Paris seemed so far away… In the half dark, Louis could have sworn that they were in a forest clearing.
•
She was removing her makeup in her little booth off the big room when Vietti came over with the nightclub’s manager. They sat down to wait on the sofa in the big room.
“So, your engagement is coming to an end,” Vietti said.
“When?”
“Tonight.”
She had the strength to give them a smile.
“Yes, that’s right,” the manager said. “I’m afraid I have to let you go.”
Odile’s smile vanished.
“It’s not you, I have to shorten the show…”
“It’s nothing serious,” Vietti said.
“Not at all. I’m sure you’ll find a new gig very soon.”
Neither of them seemed particularly to believe it.
“In any case,” the manager said, “you were very good. I’m entirely satisfied with your work, it’s just that I have to change the formula of the show. You understand, don’t you?”
When she felt the tears rising up to her eyes, she went back into the changing room and shut the door. The men continued talking. She did not turn on the lightbulb and she rested her forehead against the door. She heard the manager’s shrill laughter. She stayed in there, in the dark.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Vietti asked.
“Would you like to have a drink with us?” the manager suggested.
She didn’t answer. Someone turned the knob to open the door, but she had latched it shut.
“Here. This is for you, the rest of your fee.”
The sound of an envelope sliding under the door.
•
Vietti turned on the radio before he headed out. A jazz tune, which he turned down.
“So are you going to stay locked in that changing room all night? Idiot…” He shrugged. “I have to go back to the office, I forgot something. Do you want to come with?”
She didn’t answer. She put her hand in her pocket and squeezed the envelope. She did not have the courage to open it in front of Vietti. She would never sing again, and nothing was left of the dream she had chased for so long except for an envelope, in which they had slipped her “the rest of your fee,” as the nightclub manager had said.
“Sulking?” he said in a slightly exasperated tone, and he put his foot on the gas. It was almost one in the morning and he was driving faster and faster down boulevard Suchet, then boulevard Lannes, both empty.