Suzie was professionally intent, though the tensions suited her, creature of sunless noons.
In climax, a smiling, androgynous youth, in leaves and panther-skin, face soft as candy-floss, gypsum-white, with cruel lips and eyes, minced from pines and dunes, naked adolescents capering around him waving garlands to shrill pipes, before rushing to maul a cloaked voyeur. A crone, his unwitting mother, spied with sickly interest and received, gloating, his severed head and rigid penis, the audience at one in laughter, bravos, rhythmical stamps.
Afterwards, red wall-lamps glowed, benches were stacked away, dancing began to a tinny record player, jewelled girls clasping unshaven, denimed youths, both sexes earringed, braceleted, with fluorescent ties, cheap stones on noses, and naked bellies, all jigging, twirling, swaying in toxic intimacy while Suzie and I clung together as if on a shifting raft, enclosed by faces, spoilt or unfinished in the Mars-light. The beat was ruthless; from a mask, yellow and black as a pansy, someone murmured that I should shout when I whispered. Suzie, eyes half-closed, fondled my hair, but her words were inaudible. Clasping her tight I was numbed, the stolid outsider amongst children of hideous sales, deals, scuffles of Occupation. But her hand was on mine, I muttered stock endearments, feeling neither alone nor fully with her, but in a bubble which distorted feelings, even appearances, to agitated flakes, spun by saxophone and trumpet, the drum, a clarinet’s dissent, febrile screeches; or were blurred by the low ceiling, the crush of mouths, jutting breasts, close walls.
A seamed face on a young body thrust between us, the owner one-armed, his grey shirt dripping. ‘They rush for answers. Sartre, Sagan. And Bardot. But find only Sartre, Sagan. And Bardot. Me, I never left my room for two years. Didn’t need to. So much went on, I had only to lie back and watch. And, mark that, to count.’
He giggled uncontrollably, Suzie steered me away, more masks and faces, hemming us in like a just-alive stockade until her own face abruptly awoke, her eyes widened in dismay, pricked by mutters, thrilled, scared or expressionless, that an Algerian snake-charmer was amongst us and had released his pet, uncharmed, charmless. Suzie tugged me. ‘Outside. Quick.’
For the first time she permitted me to escort her home, towards low-living Saint-Antoine. A momentous instant, though she was brooding, rapt in herself, small. Disdaining a bus, she finally halted at a tenement lit by a feeble lamp over the central door. At the concierge’s lodge she was dejected. ‘These goodbyes…’ As if to herself, but giving me hope, she mumbled, ‘something gone. It needn’t be so. Shouldn’t.’
She blinked rapidly, tweaked my coat, gave a short indeterminate laugh, her lips touched my mouth. The night made her small; with an incomplete swirl of her cloak she was gone. The door slammed, I was trudging away, indignant, self-pitying, wondering. Could she be ashamed of some physical blemish? Was she the dangerous woman of folk-memory, the seal-maiden, vixen-girl, snake-bride?
The week was rainy, cold, threatening premature winter, an ambiguous, surreal season, the Column halved by mist, Notre Dame in wide separated pieces, trees swollen, women furred and feathered, moving fast, overgrown. As if in repertory, I enacted the stalled lover, imperturbable officer, the spy, ready to lurk beneath her window, not yodelling to a guitar but counting her clients.
We quarrelled when I suggested we travel south, to the sun, speaking, as if from experience, of red roofs, Roman stone, midget harbours; of Antibes, Saint-Tropez, Le Touquet, Cap Ferrat, Cannes, names of pleasure and corruption, each, as the list mounted, making her angrier, her refusal adamant as a warrant. She, too, was playing parts, changeable as clouds.
The sun returned, we stood in the Bois above the deserted Grand Lac, surrounded by fern and myrtle, tawny chestnut and the soundless purr of falling leaves. Gnats hung over the water as if painted. A setting for lovers, genuine or counterfeit. Gold and russet, blacks and reds, reminders of bark and resin, spruce and oak, mushrooms and Old Men of the Earth, of Marie-Filled-with-Woes, covert offerings to Fenris, a ghost dwindling to damp air, though, in darkness, staring me to sleep. While Suzie, secluded, private, gazed into trees, black-headed gulls flurried up, like choristers turning their pages. I thought of amber gleaming on a beach, birch leaning back in the wind, brilliant surf mating with rock and sand, dragonflies zigzagging over marsh, until the North, Paris itself, shrivelled to a bleached hand in mine and a sticky groin.
Her own thoughts were probably more exceptional but indecipherable. Her head, shoulders, arms were far removed from me, and neither of us was willing to spoil the silence. Foliage blocked the late afternoon hum, and I tried to recall an Estonian belief about the language of trees, more musical than verbal. Then she smiled, not at leaf or water but up at me, sighting a friend and ally.
The sun chilled, moving us back to the Avenue, then poorer streets, lights already starting. She slipped an arm around me, insisting we walk. Windows, frontages, smells eventually became recognizable. Her door, the axe-headed concierge at her own porch. Suzie did not hesitate, and I followed her in as if by right. Storm Prince in a hurry, too excited to do more than realize a large room illuminated by a violet-shaded lamp, jazzy, mildly erotic posters, bright mats and cushions, chromium-limbed chairs, floppy pouffe, plastic flowers, a hi-fi construction, movie-stills tacked on a door. She poured me sour white wine then, on the floor, looked sylvan, fresh, in green coat, black trousers. I moved closer, to loll beside her, but she jumped up to put on a record, indescribably nasty, then placed herself on a window seat as if prepared to yell for help. My assurance ebbed, we could be cartoon stooges, caricatures of puritan courtship.
The music swung, jittered, then grounded. I was eager to plunge, grab, strip, her sigh, mock-resigned, implied readiness to succumb, when a thump shook the outside door. She swore, but despite my plea to ignore it she rushed away, while I waited, hands still at my belt, desire rampant.
A man’s voice, hurried whispers. Scuttling back, she was contrite though swiftly vanishing, reappearing in mini-skirt, light-red wrap, breasts near naked. On her toes she kissed me, in haste to depart missing my lips, smudging my chin. ‘Chérie, must go… an offer… I’ve a car. Don’t go. Will be back… André… agent…’
Left almost at the winning post I lingered on the course, held by a small fringed face, now ardent, now petulant, unexceptional and at this moment absentee, withdrawn by a dubious agent for some spurious project or let-down. Urgency stretched, slowly subsided, might not revive. Tempted to leave her to a cold, empty bed, I was simultaneously curious, to explore, uncover intimacies, be relieved to discover none.
The bedroom was small, scented, tidy, the bed narrow, unsuggestive of gasps and tumbles, Alexandrian subtleties, Manhattan vigour, Left Bank explosives. I rummaged through a small bureau, a sham-antique chest, at the dressing-table examined combs, tweezers, tiny pots, powders, then scarves still in tissue, cheap handbags, jaunty caps, an umbrella with mina-bird handle, gloves from Germany, a 1944 Montpellier visa. No diaries, address books, engagement tablets, nothing of me or anyone else. Within a jumble of empty millinery boxes and imitation-leather suitcases I did find a yellow folder, but it contained only a routine picture postcard of Pétain, Hero of Verdun, Father of the French.
Irritated, I tried the last redoubt, a wardrobe in the featureless bathroom. Therein, moth-ravaged gowns, some sheets, pillow-slips. And then. Ah! A large plastic bag buried under piled blankets, with plate-silver clasp and heavier than it looked.