Marek met him in Paris, and wept as they embraced. He had taken a hotel room without a bath for his cousin in order to spare his limited funds. He gave Piotr confusing instructions about a locked bathroom down the hall, advice about the French franc exchange (Piotr had in his possession the allowed one hundred dollars and nothing more), and all the local Polish gossip. Piotr, who had never lied to Marek except over Laurie, invented a university dinner. Fifteen minutes after Marek departed, Piotr, carrying the smaller of his two suitcases, took a taxi to Laurie’s new address. The names of her streets were to haunt him all his life: Avenue Mozart, Boulevard Malesherbes, Impasse Adrienne, Place Louis-Mann, Rue de l’Yvette, Rue Sisley, Rue du Regard. This year she occupied a studio-and-bath on the top floor of a new house in Rue Guynemer.
“It’s my own, Potter. It isn’t borrowed” was the first thing she said to him. “It costs the earth.” Then, incoherently, “I’m not always here. Sometimes I go away.”
The studio was bright, as neat and almost as bare as a cell, and smelled of fresh paint. So that was what Laurie was like, too. He found her face a shade thinner, her figure a trace fuller; but the hair, the eyes, the voice — no change. Now he recalled her perfume, and the smell beneath the fragrance. She laughed at his suitcase, because, suddenly embarrassed, he tried to conceal it behind the door; laughed at a beret he wore; laughed because she loved him but still she would not make love: “I can’t, not yet, not just like that.” Their evening fitted his memory of older evenings — Laurie greedy with a menu, telling Piotr in a suddenly prim voice all about wines. She was certainly repeating a lesson, but Piotr felt immeasurably secure, and tolerant of the men she might be quoting. Laurie said, “Isn’t this marvellous?” — taking his happiness for granted simply because she was so entirely alive. He remembered how, once out, she hated to go home. “But it’s a children’s hour,” she protested when he said at midnight that he was tired. Four hours, later, as they sat in a harsh café, she said, “Potter, I’m so glad I was born,” lifting her straight soft hair away from her neck in a ritual gesture of gladness. He took this to be a tribute to his presence. Piotr did not love being alive, but he absolutely did not want to die, which was another thing. At their table a drunk slept deeply with his head on his arms. The day behind Piotr lay in shreds, like the old Métro tickets and strips of smudged paper on the café floor. Laurie said that the papers were receipts — the café was an offtrack betting shop. Like the old story about the golden and the Labrador, this information contained an insoluble mystery. All he knew was that in a hell of urban rubbish Laurie was glad she’d been born. Exhaustion gave Piotr hallucinations; he saw doors yawning in blank walls, dark flights of steps, nuns hovering, but still he did not lose track of the night. The night had to end, and even Laurie would be bound to admit that it was time to go home.
They had the next day, a night, a day of sun and long walks, and a night again. From Laurie’s window he looked across to the Luxembourg Gardens, which were golden, rust brown, and the darkest green, like a profound shade of night. Each morning he walked to his hotel, unmade his bed, and asked for mail and messages. On the third morning the porter handed Piotr an envelope from his cousin containing a loan in French money, an advance on his university fees. He counted out fifteen hundred francs. The last barrier between Piotr and peace of mind dissolved.
On his way back to Laurie he bought croissants, a morning paper, and cigarettes. He knew that he would never be as happy again. He found Laurie dressed in jeans and a Russian tunic, packing a suitcase. The bed was made, the sheets they had slept in were folded on a chair; through the doorway he could see their damp towels hanging side by side on the shower rail. She looked up, smiled, and said she was going to Venice.
“When?”
“Today. In a couple of hours. I’m meeting this friend of mine.” He suddenly imagined the girl with the painted freckles. “You’ll be busy for the next few days anyway,” she went on. “You put off coming to Paris twice, remember. I couldn’t put off my friend anymore. I didn’t tell you before, because I didn’t want to spoil things when you arrived.”
He carried her suitcase to the Gare Saint-Lazare. At the station she put coins in a machine that distributed second-class tickets. He looked around and said, “Do you go to Venice from here?”
“No, they’re local trains. We’re meeting at a station out of town. It saves driving through Paris, with the traffic and all.”
An enormous hope was contained in “we’re meeting.” He understood, at last, that Laurie was going to Venice with a man. Laurie seemed unaware that he had not taken it in until now, or unaware that it mattered. She was hungry; she had missed her breakfast. “Café de la Passerelle” gleamed in green neon at the end of a dark buffet. Laurie chose from among twenty empty tables as if her choice could make any difference. Piotr, sleepwalking now, ordered and ate apricot pie. The café was shaped like a corridor, with dusty windows on either wall. He and Laurie had exchanged climates, seasons, places — for the windows looked out on slanting rain and deserted streets. Laurie slid back her cuff so that she could keep an eye on her watch. Piotr was silent. She said — sulking, almost — Now, why? What harm was there in her taking a few days off with an old friend while he had so many other things to do?
“It’s an old story, you know,” she said. “Hardly worth the trouble of breaking off. He always takes me somewhere for my birthday.” She stopped, as if wondering how to explain what the old friendship was based on. She said, simply, “You know how it is. He got me young.”
“Do you love him?”
“No, nothing like that. I love you. But we planned this trip ages ago. I couldn’t be sure you would ever get to Paris. I don’t want to hurt his feelings. You’d like him, Potter. Honestly you would. He speaks three different languages. He’s independent — enjoys running his own business. I don’t even make a dent in his life.”
“Does he love you?”
“I keep telling you, it isn’t like that. We aren’t really lovers. I mean, not as you and I are. We sleep together — well, if we find ourselves in the same bed.”
“Try not to find yourself,” said Piotr.
“What?” She seemed as candid, as confident, as tender as always. Her eyes were as clear as a child’s. Her hand shook suddenly. What was coming now? The unloved childhood? The day her mother left her at Bishop Purse School? The school must have provided clean sheets and warm rooms and regular meals, but she was of a world that took these remarkable gifts for granted. His wife, younger then than Laurie was now, had stolen food for Piotr when he lay in a prison infirmary absolutely certain he was about to die. She had been a prisoner, too, dispatched as medical aide and cleaner. She stopped at the foot of his cot. When she started talking she couldn’t stop. He saw that her amber eyes focussed nowhere — her “in-looking eyes” he was to call them. Because of the eyes and the mad rush of words and the danger she was calling down on them he had thought, The girl is insane. Then sanely, quietly, she said, “I have some bread for you.” You could not compare Laurie Bennett with a person of that quality. All the same, Piotr had guessed: his wife was insane, but only with him. Danger had reached him after he seemed well out of it, only to be caught on the danger a couple create for each other.
“Look, Potter,” said Laurie. “If you mind all that much, I won’t go. I’ll talk to him.”