‘Ah yes, your fortune,’ Besson said. ‘I’ll tell you it now. You’re a very delicate person. You suffer from rheumatism and asthma. But this also implies great sensitivity. You’re afraid of hurting people, and you hate tactlessness in others. You prefer summer to winter, and your favourite landscape has a lot of water and woodland in it. You’re very nervy. When you were a child you must have had a bad fall from the top of a staircase. Your favourite colour is burnt topaz. You often have dreams about horses, and you write up a private diary every night. Be on your guard — you run quite a risk of dying by the hand of a murderer.’
‘Very funny,’ said Marthe. ‘You’ve certainly got a vivid imagination. But you’re wrong about one thing: my favourite colour’s verdigris.’
‘Anyone can make a mistake,’ Besson said, and took a good pull at his beer. The young woman’s cigarette joined Besson’s in the brimming ashtray. Paper began to smoulder, giving off an acrid smell. She coughed, and poured a few drops of coffee into the ashtray to douse the fire before it got going.
‘My turn now,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Paul,’ said Besson. ‘Paul Thisse.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
‘Do you have a job?’
‘Not at present, no. I’m a student.’
‘Do you live by yourself?’
‘That depends,’ Besson said. ‘At the moment I’m living with my parents.’
‘What are their names?’
‘My father’s called Georges, and my mother Gioia. She’s Italian.’
‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’
‘No.’
She reflected for a moment.
‘All right, then,’ she said finally. ‘You’re intelligent, and rather timid. You’re inclined to be nervy too, I should say. You find it hard to make up your mind, and you don’t like people laughing at you. You had a very happy childhood, but now you’re scared of turning out a failure. You’re afraid of death, too. No, wait, I haven’t finished. The woman in your life will be called Thérèse. You’ll marry her and have lots of children. But before that happens you’ll pass through some great ordeal which will cause you much suffering. You will have an accident. You’ll be very ill. But fortunately everything will turn out all right in the end. There. Will that do you?’
‘Fine,’ Besson said. ‘But you haven’t told me my favourite colour.’
‘The colour of the sun,’ said the redheaded woman.
They went on talking like this for over an hour. All the time people kept entering and leaving the café, and the old lady in her woollen shawl never once stopped knitting. From time to time someone would put a coin in the jukebox, and the room would be flooded with music — loud, monotonous, coarse-rhythmed.
Besson asked the redheaded woman endless questions about herself and her family. He found out that she was not married. Her son was four and a half. She had been ill a few months ago. She wrote poetry. She had taken the examination for a librarian’s diploma, and was waiting for the results. When she had saved enough money, she was going to buy a small car, probably a Fiat. Her father was in business in Paris. She had few friends, and very seldom came out to the café. Besson told her things about himself, too. He said he had nearly got married several months before, but that in the end it just hadn’t worked out. He was in the process of breaking off with his fiancée. One day soon he would write her a letter, or maybe call her up on the phone, and tell her what he really felt about her. He had taught history and geography in a private school, but had given this job up some while back. He had no real idea what he was going to do now.
The young woman listened to all this with great composure, her eyes fixed on the polished nails of her right hand. Besson noticed that she wore a heavy gold ring on her ring-finger, with the initials J.S. engraved on it. This was probably the name of her son’s father, Besson thought. Jacques Salles. Or Jean Servat. Unless it happened to be Jerome Sanguinetti.
They smoked another cigarette together. Then the girl got up and went across to the toilet. Besson watched her move over the floor of the bar, holding herself very erect, hips swivelling a little under her beige jersey dress. By the time she got back Besson had paid both bills. They left the café and walked off together through the fine drizzle. After they had gone a few yards the young woman turned to Besson and began to say goodbye.
With some embarrassment Besson said: ‘I haven’t anything much to do right now — maybe I could walk a bit further with you?’
She hesitated. ‘The thing is, I have to go and fetch my son from his nursery school.’
‘That’s all right,’ Besson said. ‘I’d like to meet your son.’
They moved off again together, side by side, one couple in a multitude of men and women threading their way through the streets of the town, past endless rows of shops. Fine rain drizzled down on to their faces out of a black sky, and the drops were instantly absorbed by their skin, without trickling. They fell on their hair and foreheads and noses, sometimes even dropping through their parted lips. This rain was soft and cold, all of a piece with the wind and air and odours all around them. Cars swished by in the roadway, spattering their legs as they passed. Besson suddenly felt as though he were on a boat, or walking along a beach. With quiet persistence the falling water went about its tack of dissolution. Everything gleamed damply. Even the lights were misty and humid: the naked bulbs that contained each spark of electricity looked like grotesque globes of moisture.
The redheaded woman walked on beside Besson, wrapped in her blue raincoat, legs and hips moving briskly. Her leather handbag swung from curled fingers; she advanced as though she had a motor hidden somewhere inside her body. Her face looked straight ahead down the pavement, eyes very much alert, though half-hidden by drooping eyelids and lashes, mouth open to breathe, a regular palpitation fluttering her throat. Lower down the movement became clearly visible: her shoulders followed the rhythmic swing of her arms, her backbone oscillated to and fro, while from time to time her torso would bend either forwards, or — with an abrupt, twisting gesture — to the left or the right. The overall impression was of a powerful, smooth-running machine, working at full pressure. From its birth onwards this body had been taught the gestures and rhythms of life. These clumsy arms and crazy legs, these heavy hips — all had been permeated by some mysterious and subtle substance which now controlled them. From a mere mass of flesh and bone there had been created a woman.
Besson walked beside her, not saying a word; yet already it was as though he had been caught in the wash of some big steamer. Without even knowing it, she had taken him in tow. It was she who elbowed through the crowd, and followed a safe course down the middle of the pavement. Yet perhaps, at the deepest level, she was aware of it. It must be stamped all over her body, on every square inch of bare skin, on the moon of each separate fingernail. She was the dividing-line between life and death, a kind of figurehead that bore the distinguishing mark of humankind blazoned plainly across it. Her impassive and wellnigh immobile features, set like a mask above those thrusting shoulders, proclaimed to the anonymous, obscure and hostile mass of townsfolk that she was blazing a trail for humanity. Without either fear or hatred, simply in the awareness of her own unquestioned rights, she asserted her claim to a place among the rest; and they understood this instantly, making way for her as she approached, opening a small postern gate in their defensive ramparts to let this one small congeneric atom slip through. Sheltered by the mere proximity of the redheaded woman, François Besson advanced without fear. Eyes might stare at him now if they chose: they would not penetrate beyond the surface. The human territory he was traversing had become his domain also. He could take shelter and sleep in the houses, or drink with easy nonchalance in the cafés. He could book himself a room in any hotel. He could walk through the public squares or stare at the goods in shop windows, just as he pleased. It was a wonderful feeling not to be alone any longer.