‘You can’t think that way. In the biological world children are the sole purpose. Nothing else matters.’
It was after three when we fell asleep. First Lisa. Her breathing was rapid, then slow, rapid again, silent, then it settled into a gentle snore. She slept as if she was awake. Cautiously I rested my head on her shoulder; she didn’t stir.
We woke up at almost the same moment. When I opened my eyes and turned my head, Lisa was lying there looking at me.
‘I just woke up,’ she said.
It was seven o’clock. She sat up.
‘I’m glad you didn’t throw me out yesterday.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘I shouted at you.’
‘I expect you felt you had good reason.’
She lay back down after gently moving aside my outstretched arm.
‘Thank you for not trying it on,’ she said. ‘You might have thought I came here offering myself on a plate.’
‘Why would I have thought that?’
‘Because it would have been a perfectly natural reaction.’
‘Not for me.’
She leaped out of bed and pulled back the curtain.
‘What is it that makes you different from other men?’ she asked.
‘I am the way I am.’
She looked irritated, and the conversation stalled. I got up and she disappeared into the bathroom. I stood by the window looking down into the courtyard while I waited. She had come to the hotel, and she had stayed the night. That must mean something, even if I still didn’t know what it was.
She emerged from the bathroom with the same energy about her that I recalled from the first time we met. I suggested that we should have breakfast together, but she shook her head with a smile.
‘We could have had dinner on the train if you weren’t flying home,’ she said.
She gently stroked my face before she left the room. For some reason I hoped Rachel wouldn’t see her.
After Lisa’s abrupt departure, I went down to the breakfast room even though I wasn’t hungry. Monsieur Pierre was on reception, gazing at his computer screen.
The breakfast room was very quiet, with just the odd guest concentrating on their boiled eggs and coffee.
When I couldn’t bear to sit there any longer, I went to Monsieur Pierre and asked for my bill. I paid with my card, but I was suddenly worried in case there wasn’t enough money in my account.
There was no reason to be concerned. If I didn’t start spending significantly more money, there would always be enough. In spite of everything I had a good pension from my career as a doctor.
I left a tip of ten euros and asked Monsieur Pierre to pass some of it on to Rachel.
‘She’s an excellent person,’ he said. ‘We’re very glad to have her.’
I headed towards the lift, then turned.
‘Who owns the hotel?’ I asked.
‘Madame Perrain, whose father started the business in 1922. She’s ninety-seven years old, and unfortunately she’s very ill. The last time she came here was twelve years ago.’
I thanked him and got into the lift. When I stepped out on the second floor, my key in my hand, I made a decision without really thinking things over. I would catch the same train as Lisa Modin. I wouldn’t fly. Seat 32B might be occupied, but not by me.
I slept for a few hours more then left the hotel. Even though it was still quite a long time before the train was due to depart, I took a taxi to the Gare du Nord. I was done with the city; I would return only if it was to see Louise and her family. I was ready to leave Paris for good.
The taxi driver had dreadlocks and was playing Bob Marley. I hummed along, and as we were waiting at a red light he turned and smiled. His teeth were white, but sparse on the top row. I thought about my visit to the former jazz club where they now played reggae; I asked him if he knew the place.
‘Of course,’ he replied as the lights changed to green.
I left Paris to the sound of ‘Buffalo Soldier’. I gave the driver a generous tip when he dropped me off at the station. I had arrived here the first time I came to Paris, as a very young man with terrible toothache and hardly any money. Now I was leaving. I had got into a taxi in this spot back then; now I was getting out of one. In spite of the distance between those two journeys, they were somehow linked.
I bought a ticket, assuming that Lisa would be travelling second class. I wandered around the station, trying to remember what it had looked like fifty years ago. I was sure my train had been pulled by a steam engine, and that I had sat in the very last carriage.
I called Jansson. I didn’t tell him I was on my way home. He had nothing new to report about the fire, but everyone on the islands was getting worried; they were afraid a seriously malevolent individual was on the loose.
That was the word he used — malevolent. It didn’t sound quite right on Jansson’s lips. If he had sung it in his fine tenor voice, it might have sounded more convincing, like something in an opera. I asked whether the police had found any similarities with the fire that had destroyed my house, but Jansson had no answers for me. He kept going back to the fear of something yet to happen.
I went into a newsagent’s and bought an English medical journal, which I slipped into my bag.
Half an hour before the departure time I made my way to the right platform. I stood next to one of the iron pillars supporting the roof; I wanted to see Lisa before she saw me.
She arrived fifteen minutes later; the train had just pulled in. I followed her at a distance, like a scruffy private eye. As she climbed aboard I saw that I was right: second class.
Just as the conductor was about to close the doors, I followed her on board. I stayed by the toilet until the train set off. After all these years my final journey home had begun.
I could see Lisa in the sparsely occupied carriage. Her eyes were closed, her head resting on the wall by the window. Fortunately she had chosen a spot with an empty seat opposite. I sat down as quietly as I could. After a minute or so she opened her eyes and smiled.
‘I ought to be surprised,’ she said. ‘But somehow I’m not.’
‘The first time I came to Paris I travelled by train,’ I said. ‘As I told you last night. But I’ve never left Paris on a train. I’ve stood by the roadside with my rucksack many times, hoping for a lift, but now I have the opportunity to make that missing journey home by rail.’
‘It’s good to see you,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been looking forward to this trip, but now maybe it will be different.’
‘Why did you come? I can’t make this long trek without knowing the answer.’
Before she had time to respond, the brakes squealed, triggering a memory of the very first time I arrived in the city. The same squealing brakes, people losing their balance, someone swearing. It was as if I had cracked through a shell and stuck my head out into a world that no longer existed.
We travelled through the suburbs, the train picking up speed. There was no one else in this part of the carriage. Lisa had her back to the engine; I asked if she wanted to swap places.
‘Those who were going to be executed were always transported facing away from the direction in which they were going,’ I explained. ‘It was so that they wouldn’t see the gallows or the executioner’s block as they approached.’
‘I’m fine here, thank you.’
Once again an incident from my youth came into my mind. I was standing out in the winter cold with a frightened girl; I think her name was Ada, and she had a great big Farah Diba hairstyle. I was drunk on arrak, somehow obtained from Hasse the baker’s son, the boy everyone wanted to be friends with. Before Ada had time to take evasive action I threw up all over her white shoes. The occasion was a school dance; I had been evicted because of my intoxicated state. Ada regarded herself as my girlfriend and had therefore felt obliged to share my humiliation. But now she ran straight back into the warmth, where well-behaved couples were dancing together to a jazz band with a blind double-bass player.