Jana was slightly taken aback by the lyrics, but no one else on the platform seemed to be bothered by their narrative. The woman tapped her right foot emphatically four times, then raised her other hand, palm wide open, and swung into what seemed like the refrain. “Oh la la…” she spoke. “Ooohh laaa laaa,” she sang. “Oh la la!” she proclaimed. “Ohh l’la,” she admitted.
Two young women, tourists, with a tan complexion and pitch-black hair, stood on the platform. One wore a jean jacket with stylish tears, the other a mid-waist fuchsia coat bearing multiple zippers, at the cuff, waist, breast pocket. They watched the woman and swayed their heads playfully to the singing, not understanding a single word. Then the jean-jacketed woman with her slippery dark hair crimping over the collar, reached into her orange leather purse, and took out her iPhone, the plastic cover with a pouch in the shape of a wine glass filled with purplish liquid oscillating as she moved her phone. Aiming the camera at the singer, she snapped a couple of photos, then her friend unclipped her large magenta wallet, scraped out some coins, approached the woman, dropped the coins into her paper cup and returned to her friend.
“Merci,” the woman winked, then picked up where she’d left off.
Jana glanced at the two women, who were listening to the singer, blissful for the sounds of the French language, as if the music was foretelling a romance awaiting them in the city. The singer tapped out another count of four, then just as she began swinging into her refrain, two shrill lights came from the dark tunnel and the train shoved into the station.
Jana and the two women stepped into a métro carriage.
“Oh la la…!” the singer’s voice echoed as the doors closed.
Inside the carriage, Jana glanced over the jean-jacketed woman’s shoulder as she flipped through filter options for the photo she just took. She stopped at one, showed it to her friend, who replied, “Claro, querida!” with an adorned, vowel-stretched Portuguese.
Jana got out at Ledru-Rollin métro stop, as did the two women, who walked up the stairs in front of her, then turned onto Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine and walked off into the noise and lights. Jana turned the other direction, away from the circulation around Place de la Bastille that was always alive, people drinking on the steps of the opera house, then walking down the steps and turning discretely into the graffitied wall to roll their joints.
She walked down the street, then veered left, looked up and saw that she was on the correct street: Rue de Prague. Here, there was no one. The road felt detached, reluctant to be walked on. The trees shadowed the pavement and the apartments leaned back, out of the light.
She walked gradually, spotting the street numbers, 2, 4, 6… Then she saw it, a couple of doors ahead. A discrete-looking exterior, black-painted façade, two large windows also painted in black, and a wooden door as dark as the rest. Above the door, there was a blue glowing infinity-like symbol. As she came closer, she saw it was the electric-bulb glass body of an angel, lit up with blue as if with the hottest part of a flame.
Das Herz luegt nicht. The heart does not lie.
She felt around, but the door had no handle. She put her ear to the wood. No sound came from the bar, no sense of movement, nothing except for the neon blue angel above her head. L’Ange Bleu. The Blue Angel bar.
She drew her hand out warily and gave the black wood a push. It did not budge. She pushed harder, her forearms tensing, but it was like pushing against a wall.
Lož má krátke nohy. A lie has short legs.
Mieux vaut tenir que courir. Better to hold on than to run.
She pushed again. Then again.
There flames a desolation, blazing…
…Yet, Lord, Thy messengers are praising.
9PM.
Jana slammed the door with both palms.
Come on, what did you expect? She could hear Zorka saying somewhere. You let your cunt get duped like that, Janka? She thrust her palms into the door. Is that it, Miss K—? She heard Mr Doubek’s voice chime in. Do you have a gullible cunt, Miss K—? There was something behind the door. A rasping thing. An echo. Zorka’s laughter. Not only. And Mr Doubek. Chuckling. Yes, they were inside, laughing together. There was saliva in the corners of their mouths. Their laugh was stretching towards each other, becoming one mouth, and the whites of their eyes began rolling around and around, circling the globe—Is that it, Janka? Is that it, Miss K—?
Jana rammed her shoulder against the door and the wood stunted her flesh.
The groan, however, did not come from her, but from the gutter.
It smelled warm, a spoiled dampness. Jana turned around and saw, at the kerb on the sewer grid, a pile of stained and faded blankets, inside of which there was someone, breathing. She ran her eyes over the creases and dips within the blankets trying to find the head or the feet but saw instead a set of charred fingertips sliding out from beneath the sodden covers, towards her.
There was another groan, then the full hand was present, smudged and bloated, flaking at the fingertips. It lifted and turned and curled in, and then did it again.
“Donnez moi une pièce, madame,” the voice said. Give me some change…
It was neither a man’s nor a woman’s voice, with an accent that seemed dug up like a long-buried vestige.
“J’en ai pas… désolée.” I don’t have any… Jana said without thinking.
“Madame… S’il vous plait,” the voice said again, more demanding, more unearthed.
Jana instinctively pressed her purse into her hip and shook her head.
“S’il vous plait, Madame!” the voice groaned so fully, that the blanket shifted and twisted.
S’il vous plait…! Cil ooomm shay… The begging voice was stretching in sound. Il roumm shii pay… Liiroum shdii! Lak rimi shhhffff… Lak’ rimi Shifdi! Lakrim eesi finti!
Until the phrase found its home and, all at once, Jana remembered something.
Lacrimi şi Sfinţi was the first collection by Emil Cioran, the Romanian philosopher, that Jana had read. She had almost taken up Romanian for him, despite his blatant anti-Semitism, which he later retracted becoming an à la mode nihilist in France. His lines like metaphysical threats or ancestral grudges, she kept them as company, as companionship, as a sense of self-justice – she recited them out loud the way Zorka flung her middle finger up towards the daylight.