I told her I had to go out to buy some new shoes. I had already left a note under her nightdress so that she would find it at bedtime.
I didn’t go to a shoe shop; I went straight to Arlanda and flew to Paris. In my dishonest message I had written that of course I loved her but that I needed to be alone for a few days. My love was just too overwhelming.
In Paris I found a cheap hotel not far from Clichy, slept until twelve every day and spent my nights in various bars in the Pigalle or Les Halles, which at that time were in the city centre. The whole time I was trying to pluck up the courage to approach a prostitute. The women on the street scared me. I fancied one of the women who hung out in a bar I frequented, but I didn’t have the nerve to speak to her either. Every night I slunk around like a randy tomcat, sticking close to the walls to avoid a stray kick. It wasn’t until New Year’s Eve, the day before I was due to fly home, that I ventured into one of the many bars where I thought I might find prostitutes.
Heavy curtains covered the window, a single lamp burned outside. As I seized the door handle, I had no idea what to expect. Would there be a lot of people, a lot of women? I stepped into the dimly lit room and discovered that it was virtually empty. An elderly man who resembled little more than a shadow was moving around behind the bar, the bottles sparkling in the mirrored wall. He glanced at me, assessing whether I was a punter who should be allowed in or someone who was likely to cause trouble, and gave me a nod. I had a choice: the empty tables and red chairs, or one of the leather-covered stools. The only woman in the place was sitting at the far end of the bar smoking a cigarette. I avoided looking at her, ordered a glass of wine and tried to appear as relaxed as possible. Music poured out of invisible speakers. I ordered another glass of wine, and the bartender wondered if I would like to buy the woman a drink. Naturally I said yes, and he gave her something that might have been a weak Martini. She raised her glass, I did the same. Despite the poor lighting I could see that she was in her thirties. She had brown hair cut in a pageboy bob, she wasn’t heavily made up, and was as far from my idea of a prostitute as it was possible to be. However, I was aroused by the thought that she was for sale. I had three hundred francs in my inside pocket; was that enough? I hadn’t a clue about the price of women in Paris, neither then nor now.
I stayed there until the bells had rung in the New Year on the radio behind the bar. Only one other male customer turned up all evening, and he and the woman knew one another. Perhaps he was her pimp. Just before he left they had a row about her lighter, which she insisted he had taken. It got quite nasty, and I wondered if I ought to leave. But the lighter turned up, everything calmed down, and the man disappeared. When the door closed and the curtain keeping out the cold fell back into place, the woman suddenly moved to the stool next to mine. She told me her name was Anne. I don’t remember what I said, possibly that my name was Erik or Anders. She asked where I came from; I said Denmark. What was I doing in Paris? Taking a break from my post as the manager of a bank in Copenhagen. I removed all traces of who I actually was. As if that made any difference. She asked for another drink; I nodded to the bartender, although I was starting to worry in case the drinks were sold at inflated prices. Surely the business couldn’t be profitable if they only had one customer on New Year’s Eve?
I wondered what my girlfriend in Stockholm was doing. Was she sitting in her parents’ apartment thinking about me? I didn’t know, but I was glad I had flown to Paris. When I got back I must find the courage to tell her that our relationship had no future.
Anne gently nudged me with her leg.
‘You know we can get together in the room at the back,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I know.’
I didn’t say any more; I was grateful that she didn’t push it.
It was half past twelve. From the street came the sound of the odd firework and the shouts of people celebrating. I offered her another drink; I was terrified that she would suggest we withdrew to the other room. The initial temptation was gone; all I wanted now was an escape route. We sat there in silence. Every fifteen minutes, almost as if she were obeying an inaudible signal, she lit a cigarette with her Ronson lighter. As the flame sprang into life, I saw that her nails were bitten to the quick.
I asked for the bill. I paid and gave her a hundred francs. She took the money and smiled; I stood up and left. People were still partying. In the distance I could see the flare of rockets soaring into the air in Montmartre. I lingered for a little while; after ten minutes, just as I had decided to move on, Anne came out. She was wearing a suede coat trimmed with fur and a beret. I said hello as she walked past; she looked at me as if she had been molested. I was definitely someone she no longer knew.
I walked through Paris on that long, cold winter’s night, and the following day I flew home. I hadn’t bought any shoes. Nor could I bring myself to end our relationship. It wasn’t until the beginning of February that I managed to say the words, to harden my heart against her despairing sobs, and finally to walk out never to return. Thirty years later I happened to bump into her; by then she was married and had three children. One of the first things she said was that now, with hindsight, she was very glad I had left her. If I hadn’t, our life together would have been a disaster.
I walked around Place Pigalle trying to remember where that bar had been. All the buildings looked just as they had back then, but I still couldn’t work out where it was. Eventually I thought I’d found it; I was sure I recognised the door, the closed curtains. It was still a bar. I hesitated before I went in. I was afraid I would be opening a door to the past. I even feared the same woman would be sitting there smoking her Gitanes. In order to bring myself back to the present day, I took out my phone and looked at the picture of the fire again. Should I call Jansson? I decided against it, put away my phone and went into the bar.
Everything was different. A new counter, brighter lights, a television with the sound off. A few men were sitting at the bar; there was a young barmaid with a ring through her nose and a gemstone in her left ear.
There were no other women; this came as a relief rather than a disappointment. However, the relief worried me; did I no longer know what I wanted? Was I incapable of drinking without keeping my thoughts under control?
I left the bar, hailed a taxi and went back to my hotel. I dropped my clothes in a heap on the floor and got into bed. From the room next door I could hear the sound of a television. I looked at my watch; it was quarter past two. I banged my fist on the wall behind the bed a few times, and the noise stopped.
This is the point I have reached, I thought. I’m just an old man, lying alone in his bed in a hotel in Paris, feeling unwell. My daughter is under arrest in the bowels of a French police station, and a woman who doesn’t love me is staying in a hotel nearby.
I was woken by my phone ringing: Jansson. It was six o’clock. The curtains were moving in the draught from the window; during the early hours of the morning the wind had got up over Paris.
‘The fire is out,’ Jansson said. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘No. Do they know how the fire started?’
‘Alexandersson seems to think it’s exactly the same as your house.’
‘What?’
‘The fire started simultaneously in several different places.’
‘So we have a lunatic on the loose in the archipelago. I was fast asleep when my house went up in flames, and now someone has set fire to an eighty-five-year-old lady’s home.’
‘The dog must have woken her,’ Jansson said thoughtfully. ‘If she hadn’t had the dog, the smoke could have killed her before we got there.’