We each and every one of us have something that we’ll pay good money for. Look at me. In Paris, I would take too much codeine. I get migraines, you see, and I always feel one coming on, and codeine staves them off. In Paris, you used to be able always buy codeine from a pharmacist, and the city was so filled with hypochondriacs that there was another pharmacist almost every block. Green crosses shining on the night streets. I liked a very light form of codeine called effervescent codeine. This was codeine in a tablet like Alka-Seltzer. You put it in water. It fizzed. I felt like a Schwepps Ad when I drank it.
But the French changed the law. So much has changed. Effervescent codeine when I met Natasha—ATMs—McDonald’s in Paris—but no cell phones when I met Natasha, Nathalie. We spent Francs not Euros. A solidly twentieth century memory, yet not a memory for me. More a fever-dream that happens over again. Each and every time, I still make the same mistakes.
I am light-headed and carbonated when she first appears. This story starts with me sitting ignorantly in a bar off the Boulevard de Sebastapol across the street from a McDonald’s. I am nursing an Irish beer, tired and a little horny and more than a little depressed from a stroll through the red light district. I’m from New Orleans: sin is old news to me. The women with their breasts propped up and sticking out and with their fishnet stockings and with their rumps presented because high heels put them at a delicious tilt hardly aroused me; but I did admire the women in neat outfits, pastel linen dresses or white shirts and black suits, the women you could imagine meeting tomorrow in the line at the post office or the charcuterie. They look like women coming home after making groceries, who have paused, absentmindedly, in front of the entrance to their apartment. Perhaps they have forgotten their keys.
Outside the bar, there are guys doing business. What business I’m not sure, but I can guess. Like the song says, “If you can’t give me a dollar, give me a lousy dime.’
I know I am a poseur, looking tragically into the lights of the street and thinking about love lost but also thinking about another beer and about a restaurant named Pharamond which is not far away but is probably closed on Monday. Anyway, I don’t even see Natasha until she is bending over the little table next to mine. How easy it is to come near to people in these bars and yet preserve the idea of inviolable space.
She speaks to me first in French. A murmur I do not understand. But it makes me turn my head.
The first thing about Nathalie, Natasha, I love is her face and yet, in the way of faces, it is hard to describe. A tiny face, really, made tinier by mounds of frizzy hair at the sides, small features, almost pointed like a fox, freckles over the arch of her thin nose, gray eyes. I wish I had a photograph of her; she must photograph well. She’s wearing a man’s suit coat, a little oversized, cheap, gray, shot through with iridescent threads. On a man it’d look like crap. On her it looks like high society. She’s wrapped a scarf around her neck and tucked it into the coat. A pair of dark slacks hangs off her hips so that you can’t see any hint of the legs underneath until your eyes reach her feet in their flat black shoes. If I should learn that Natasha has worked as a model or a dancer or an actress, I will not be surprised. She is that lovely, that stylish. I have been in Paris almost a week, and she is the most beautiful woman I have seen.
She sits down and repeats her question.
“I don’t understand. Je ne comprehend–”
“Allo,” she says. Her voice is sleepy. “Is that good beer?”
This cue I recognize. “Would you like a sip?”
“If it is not too important to you.”
I hand her the pint. The Guinness leaves a foam mustache that her sharp, pale tongue slowly licks off. Her eyelids droop as if we were already intimate and had just woke up together. I order two more beers. We are sitting together at separate tables.
“What is your name?”
“Marshall.” For reasons unimportant, I go by my last name.
“Marshall?” She accents the name differently than I do: Mar-celle. Marcel.
“What is your name?”
“Nathalie, Natasha,” she says. “Surname Nathalie, birth-name Natasha.”
Natasha Nathalie? OK, I’m a hick, an American from la Louisiane, but even I can tell this name makes no sense. Natasha Nathaliesounds phoney baloney.
She’s too pretty to challenge.
“Birth-name Clay,” I say. “Surname, Marshall.”
“Clay Marcel.” It puzzles her; she holds the name in her mouth to see if she likes the taste. “Clay Marcel.”
“Clay Marshall.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” As solemn as a child, she sticks out her hand. I shake it with as much ceremony as I can.
“Are you from Paris?”
She curls her fingers into a fist, leaving her thumb protruding. Then she brings her hand to her mouth and sucks on the thumb. “Since a baby,” she says.
I play the best card in my weak hand. “I’m from New Orleans. Nouvelle Orleans. In Louisiana. La Louisiane.”
Silly. But it has inspired Parisian waiters to give me the high five and say, “My man.” Being from Louisiana has a certain cachet around Paris.
“I’d like to go to New York and California,” she says.
By her second, my third, beer Natasha is jumpy. She squirms in her seat. The rapping of her fingers on the tabletop makes the ashtray rattle. She’s making me nervous, but that’s so easy to do it doesn’t count.
“Marcel,” she says. “I will have to go to work.”
“Now?”
“Money becomes necessary,” she said. “Would you lie to make love to me?”
I wish I could say that she says this impishly or flirtatiously or, most unlikely, romantically. The drooping eyelids should give a touch of seduction to this matter-of-fact proposition, but what they really reveal is that Natasha is tired and would rather not go to the trouble of standing on a corner of St. Denis if cash can be obtained more easily.
She is the most beautiful woman in Paris. And I like her. I can either decide not to like her, get all huffy and judgmental, or I can decide whether or not I can afford to make love–pathetic euphemism–to go to bed with her. If I hadn’t wanted to go to bed with her, I wouldn’t have been talking to her and buying her beers. If prostitution is corrupt, I’m already corrupted.
We discuss prices, with Natasha drawing figures on the tablecloth. We reach an agreement. 550 francs for one hour. 8 to 9. We will leave now, right? I gulp my beer.
If I’d been at a party, and Natasha stood across the room from me, she’d have been too fine and elegant for me to approach. On the street, she came to me. I’m not very proud about this.
We walk away from the Rue St. Denis, heading north for several blocks, to a neighborhood of groceries and small hotels. About a block from Boulevard Sebastapol she takes my arm. A sentimental gesture? Or she doesn’t want me to get away?
She asks, “In Paris, where do you stay?”
“In the Marais.”
I know better than to give Natasha the name of my hotel. At least, this reticence, this reluctance, this self-serving care is what passes for knowing-better. Even now that I regret it, I still recognize how sensible this decision was. Just as I never told Natasha where I lived in America or gave her one of my business cards.
“Stop.” Natasha takes off the scarf and arranges it on me. “Do you like it?”
“What are you doing?”
“A souvenir.”
I’m too embarrassed to even say thank-you. My mama wouldn’t be pleased, not that she’d exactly be pleased about anything in this interchange.
An unpromising door, a flight of stairs. We interrupt a man at his supper; he has to leave his wife and three children to come to his office, open the fat register, and give us a key. With no idea if I am renting the room for the hour or for the night, I pay him 150 francs.
Natasha gives me the keys. It seems very important to her that I have the keys and we pretend I am taking charge. Nonetheless, she has to lead me to the room. The squalid love nest.
No window, hot as hell, a double bed with an orange spread and two thin pillows, a nightstand, a w.c. with a hand basin. Natasha strips down to her black lingerie. Scallops of black lace trim the edges of her camisole and panties. Then she points to the nightstand, says “undress there,” and goes into the w.c. I follow her meaning and do so: a pot-bellied, balding forty year old man with sweat caught in his dark body hair.
When Natasha comes out of the w.c., I see her beauty is even greater than I would have guessed. Never in my life have I been about to bed a woman this beautiful.
Except….
A woman this beautiful or this thin. Unnaturally thin. Frighteningly thin.
Heroin addict? No tracks, but I’m told careful junkies shoot up between their toes for just that reason. She looks as if she’s shrivelled so far that she no longer has periods.
So I let the thinness explain the jumpiness. I let it explain why Nathalie, Natasha is in the streets. It explains why she is here with me.
Unrolling the condom over my penis, she is clumsy; after that, she is inept with her mouth. While no longer an amateur, she is not yet a professional. She is a trainee. She has learned the theory but not the technique. After a few seconds, she sits up straight, as if she’s forgotten something.
“What would you like? For me to do this or to make love right away?”
“To make love.”
“How? The woman on top or the man on top or would you like to come to me from behind?”
“The last. I think.” I would like her to like something. Of course, she doesn’t.
She’s up on her hands and knees before I can reconsider. “My rump,” she says. “From behind.”
I crawl behind her. Now I am on my knees too. Natasha says, “From my rump, not in my rump. That would hurt.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
I don’t want to hurt her. But I do want to fuck her. How do I know that I can do one without doing the other? She reaches behind her and takes my penis and inserts it for me. I like the practical touch of her fingers more than I did the efforts of her mouth. After I start moving, my penis falls out once, but hell, that’s the nature of rear entry coitus.
“Wrong hole,” she says.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, Marcel.”
But I’m a natural-born apologizer.
Her hair is held by a clasp so that I can see her thin neck. From her shoulder to her waist, she is lightly freckled. The curve of her buttocks is lovely, but there is very little fat on them. I put my hands on her thighs and feel bone.
This is not very good sex. She is too fragile. I feel like I will break her. The soft grunts she begins to make are not persuasive. They are the sounds of a woman enduring something. Maybe I am clumsy and inept. What I want to do is kiss her, cuddle her, snuggle with her under the sheets. Things I don’t imagine you are allowed to do when you pay for sex.
At least I can see her face.
I withdraw and ask her if I can see her face. I want her to climb atop me. I want to cup her buttocks in my palms and lift her over me. I want to unfasten her long hair and let it cover both her face and mine.
I want to be making love to her. Of course, the nature of prostitution forbids that. The longer a man takes, the more time he is wasting. The more attention he pays to a woman’s pleasure, the more he displeases her.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“I’d like you on top.”
“I don’t understand.”
I lie down. She grabs my penis–careful, girl–and examines the condom. She’s looking for semen. There’s isn’t any, which puzzles her because she thinks I’ve told her I’ve come. Finally, she convinces herself that some liquid is trapped there.
“Quickly,” she says. “You have not had your hour.”
“You don’t understand,” I say.
“We must buy more. I have no more.”
Is she that unprepared a prostitute? Or is she finding a reason to get what cannot be a very nice encounter over?
“Don’t look so sad,” she says. “It is not the end of the world.”
We wash ourselves and get dressed, Natasha uttering little cries of encouragement throughout. She splashes water all over the w.c. Natasha proves once again the old truth that you can’t really look stylish unless you have clothes on. Meanwhile, I dress reluctantly, considering and rejecting the notion of making a scene. I figure it’s a no-win situation; besides, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on.
My coat still lies on the night stand. Impatiently, she shakes it out and hands it to me. After I put it on, I stuff the scarf into an outside pocket. Natasha shakes her head pulls the scarf back out, and puts it back on me. Then she steps back, bites her thumb, and considers me. This consideration leads her to rearrange the scarf.
This is a lot more embarrassing than my nakedness had been.
The proprietor is standing in the doorway to his apartment. Avoiding his eyes, I give him his keys. Behind him, his wife is passing a plate with pastries on it to their children.
On the street, the evening light is still bright. I put my sunglasses on. Natasha sighs, adjusts the scarf. Whatever picture she has in mind for me and this scarf, I kept spoiling it.
“We need des contraceptifs.” She makes a circle with her fingers and thumbs and tilts her pelvis into it. “Umph,” she adds. If elephants start using condoms, you might be able to buy one the size she’s indicated.
“You flatter me.”
“I do not understand.”
Although I’ve already given her 50 francs extra, I give her 50 francs for the condoms. Limited to a five word vocabulary, it’s hard for me to explain. And Natasha only understands English when it’s in her interests.
She has another question as we walk along. “Do you smoke?” As if she’s uncertain of the English word, she mimes putting a cigarette to her lips and inhaling.
“No,” I say. “Sorry.”
“Do you have money for smokes?”
How much can smokes be? I pull a 200 franc note out of my jeans pocket and show her. She is pleased.
“We will have to rent another room. You have enough for another room?”
First we stop at a grocery. Come on, Nathalie, Natasha, you don’t buy condoms at the grocery. We don’t buy anything at the grocery; Natasha whispers to the proprietor and he shakes his head. We run out as if we’re being chased.
Across the street, a pharmacy, its green cross lit. Supplier of codeine and condoms. This time I wait on the sidewalk. Natasha reemerges. As we walk along, back toward the street corner on which we met–Jesus, just about an hour ago!–she opens the package and empties it contents in her purse. We reach the bar in which I’d sat and drunk my solitary beer.
“Now for smokes.”
“OK.”
“No, wait here.”
I wait ten minutes or twelve. Then I peek around the door. Of course I don’t see her–and she should be standing at the bar, buying cigarettes. There are plenty of ways out of this bar which she could have taken and not passed by me. Still, I walk downstairs to the toilets and telephone. She’s not there, either. It’s my fault, really; I gave her too much money for the cigarettes. Lead us not into temptation. She had no choice but to take the money and skedaddle. 200 franc for a pack of cigarettes.
The joke’s on me. The thing to do now, Mr. Marshall, is to keep your cool. Mr. Marcel.
I order another fine Irish beer and sit an hour. She might come back, you know?
But she doesn’t.
When I go to bed, back at the hotel, I am holding Natasha’s scarf in my hand. Every now and then, I lift it to my face to breathe in its smell of perfumed talcum powder. That’s how I fall asleep that night: surrounded by Natasha’s scent.
I am not Henry Miller nor do I wish to be Henry Miller.
When I wake up the next day, I wake up angry again with Natasha. I want to tell her, “Look, it was stupid to run off with the two hundred francs. You could have gotten a lot more money from me without lying.” I want to find her.
Unlike Natasha, I am in no hurry. I will look for her in the same places we were last night, at the same time as last night. Until then I will spend the day with my friend Debra. This is my last day in Paris. There is much to see. I will look for Natasha when evening comes.
A few nights earlier I stopped for a drink in a bar very much like the American folk music bar where I used to hang out in college. A short woman with an oversized newsboy’s cap got onto the tiny stage to sing and play accordion. Maybe she thought the big hat, sloping over her tiny face, made her look gaminisque.
“‘Allo,” she said in a shout.
The singer was relentlessly cheerful. Somebody must have told her some point “you have to put a song across.” So she mugged and put songs across, including many ones ordinarily poignant, Edith Piaf songs and such. Furthermore, she apparently only knew two chords, C and G, no doubt, and backed everything with them, no matter what the melody of the song. Finally, she had such a tin ear that she could play inappropriate chords and not let the melody be affected by them. In fact, it’s possible she’s actually a performance art genius.
A woman in her forties, she had talked her street vendor lover, a guy of about twenty-two, to attend the concert. She mugged particularly at him, but he ignored her performance to try to sell necklaces to the rest of us. He smelled bad and the necklaces were ugly. When the patron told him to stop hustling necklaces, he went and sat in the men’s room for the duration of her set.
Suddenly, she figured out I was American, the only American in the joint, and pitched a song my way. “Send in the Clowns.” It wasn’t hard to imagine Edith Piaf singing “Send in the Clowns,” but the accordion chords bugged me.
“Don’t bother, they’re here.”
I applauded wildly. She meant well. And we were here. We always will be. When the tip jar came round, I’d be generous.
Parisians are sentimental about dogs, although not people. The prostitutes in Rue St. Denis, soliciting men from doorways and pavement, often hold their dogs. A particularly cute dog will cause the other women to gather around to ooh-and-ah. Even Natasha, hanging on my arm as we head toward a drug deal, will stop me and insist I admire a squat, brown dog.
I find Nathalie, Natasha sitting on the sidewalk, her back rubbing a wall, where she’d left me twenty-three hours earlier. She is shaking. She is sick. On a gentle summer night, she is shivering like she’s gotten cold and never will get warm again. What is the French way of saying you’re lost? I have lost myself. Nathalie, Natasha, has lost herself.
I forget that I am pretending to be angry with her. “How are you doing?”
“Not so good.”
“Here’s your scarf back.”
Without a word, she wraps it around her neck and tucks it into her coat. For a second, she looks jaunty.
I sit down next to her. She is not surprised to see me; nor is she very interested. What is interesting to her is the possibility that the men talking and joking a few feet away may have crack. She is staring at them like she was a little girl in the park yearning to play with the older children.
I say, “Do you remember me?”
“Yes. Marcel.” She’s a little irritated. I sense her asking me, Why would you think I was that far gone? Do you think I am stupid?
At least she’s now looking at me, with her eyelids half-closed and her lips trembling. Like a model on a shoot, she carelessly brushes a strand of hair out of her face and then tidies it behind her ear. Yesterday, it would have been the sexiest sight in the world.
Not heroin, you idiot, crack. 200 francs probably was barely enough for the smokes you offered to buy her.
I say, “I am worried about you.”
“I don’t understand.” She’s pouting again. She probably knows how good pouting makes her look.
“I am concerned about you.” An American, I say this with little pseudo-French gestures and accents, as if this Pepe Le Pew imitation will make what I am saying more intelligible. Why must we become caricatures of ourselves in times of stress?
The pout again. But she’s not acting; she’s paying attention. I have to remember how slow her responses must be.
I want to say, “I will help you,” but my French betrays me. “Aidez-moi,” I tell Natasha. “I want to aidez-moi.”
She begins speaking rapidly, but in French. I interrupt her. “Write it down, if you pleae.” Today I have brought pen and paper so I can communicate with Natasha a little more efficiently.
Taking the pen and paper, she writes down 100F. If you can’t give me a dollar, give me a lousy dime.
“No, no, no. Two hundred francs.”
I show her her notation. “You said one hundred francs.”
“Two hundred francs.” She is quite definite. This is like arguing with a child.
“Did you eat today?”
She tilts her head to the right and puffs out her cheek with her tongue as she considers this question. It takes a long time for her to answer. “I think so. I have eaten aujourd’hui. Ou hier.” She pokes her stomach playfully.
“If I give you one hundred francs–”
“Two hundred francs.”
“–will you come back here and let me buy you supper?”
She cocks her head again. “Why not?”
After I give her the money, Natasha rushes the little group of men hanging out on the sidewalk. As she goes from one to the other, they all laugh at her. Some of them act angry. Why should she assume every black man on that corner deals? Others are openly dismissive. A woman joins the group and begins screaming at Natasha. It does no good. Natasha isn’t listening. I am afraid that someone, the woman most likely, is going to slap her.
Before this happens, Natasha dashes back to me. “I know where now.” She charges down the stairs of the Metro stop. At first I’m confused, then I figure it out. These tunnels are fine and private places for buying-and-selling. Parisians crowd the Metro and slow me down. I follow Natasha, but cannot find her.
Back up the stairs, she’s waiting for me. She demands something from me in French. We are discussing our mutually increasing levels of incomprehension when a trim black man intervenes. He tells me, “She wants twenty francs.”
“Twenty francs? What for?” I’m speaking to both of them.
“Twenty francs,” he says.
“Marcel, Marcel!” Natasha says. She’s stepped into traffic and is precariously crossing the street.
“I don’t know what any of this is about,” I say to the black man. “I just want to help her.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“What’s going on?” I say.
The trim black man is not interested.
But–idiot idiot idiot–I’ve lost sight of Natasha. The next hour and a half I spend hoping for her reappearance. I do not quite give up but I am in despair after the first twenty minutes.
One of the most joyous moments of my life is when I hear Nathalie, Natasha, crying out my name and then see her running toward me on the sidewalk of that dirty street. She stretches her arm as high as she can and waves to me. Upon reaching me, she falls into my stride, and tucks her hand between my left arm and ribs, so that her long fingers rest on the sleeve of my coat right at my biceps. You would think we were lovers reunited.
Is it so stupid of me to think that, no matter how mixed her motivation, she is happy to see me as well?
Maybe she is, because she now regards me as the solution to her night’s problem. She walks with me almost as if she’s proud of me. Actually, she is in a way. I am a head taller than most of these Parisians; I’ve money in my pocket; she’s been to bed with me once and knows I don’t want to hurt her: relatively speaking, I am a catch. She maneuvers me so that I maneuver her through the gang of crack sellers, pimps, and hangers-on. No matter how much they jeered at her an hour ago, now they stand apart to make room for the two of us. I may be a fool but I’m a big American fool. My right fist is clenched. Both Natasha and I stare into their faces as we force them back. For this walk, which we take more slowly than necessary, we can both pretend we are stronger than the bastards.
O.K., so I’m as sentimental as a Parisian encountering a fluffy dog.
She leads me into the McDonald’s. “To eat now,” she says. Ignoring all the people in line, she walks directly to the counter and orders something. The woman behind the counter shrugs but takes the order. Maybe the McDonald workers know Nathalie, Natasha very well, just as do the crack sellers outside. People in line curse at my Natasha. She leans against the counter and smiles at me. This is the only time I see her that she looks faded and ugly. The next order that is delivered, she tries to grab. It takes a minute for the customer and the counter-woman both to persuade Natasha that she isn’t being denied her order. Then they bring her food: one hamburger, the smallest and cheapest they sell. I am disappointed but Natasha seems pleased. She is only eating because it is part of her deal with me. By ordering the cheapest item, she’s saved money and kept her bargain.
It is a trick a daughter sure of her father’s love might play on him.
I escort her to a table. Natasha tears at the hamburger like a bird picking a loaf of bread. The idea that you’re supposed to pick the hamburger up and bite into it has been lost to her. It takes her about thirty seconds to eat, though not taste this food.
With a toss of her head, she indicates two men kneeling on the street outside. “Regardez-vous. Do you see them, Marcel? Bad characters.”
I regard them. They sure do look like bad characters. Bad caricatures. Through the plate glass, they regard me back.
Natasha says, “Do you have something to write with?”
I find the pen but not the piece of paper I’d given her earlier. I’m still slapping pockets when she frowns–precious time–and grabs a napkin. She holds up her index finger to indicate I must be patient. Once again, I notice how tapered her hands are; truly elegant.
Because she is writing on a napkin and has to be careful not to tear it, because she is writing in a language other than French, and, yes, because she is high, Natasha has trouble making the letters. The first sentence reads “Can you help me?”
I nod my head, meaning I understand and I would like to help her. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know what she wants–it would be wonderful if she wanted help for her addiction–but I’m pretty sure she wants more money.
She smiles. A pretty smile, or it would have been under different circumstances. I tell myself that because I am still trying not to admit I want to fuck such a damaged human being.
Her tongue protruding, she bents over her writing. She looks like a little girl practicing her penmanship. Again, I watch the sentence form. “I need 300F.”
“For smoke?” I ask her.
“For smoke,” she says.
Then she writes some more. “For 300F I can get enough for the night and we can spend the whole night together making love.” This sentence takes a long time to write and when she is finished she is obviously proud, proud of her ability to compose such a fine English sentence and proud of her plan.
What she offers is an excellent price. Bon marche. 400 francs would only buy you fifteen or twenty minutes with a woman working on the Rue St. Denis.
Her eyes say, how could you possibly disagree with such a fine plan? Aren’t I clever? Aren’t you lucky to find me and I to find you?
What do I want? I want to make love with her the whole night. I want to take care of her. I want her to check into a hotel on my money and shower and sleep. I want her to have a change of clothes.
She takes my hand. “Je t’aimee.”
“It’s just the money,” I say.
“I am not a prostitute,” she says. “Prostitutes will not do this.” Natasha kisses me, first on the mouth, then in the mouth. It is nice but unconvincing.
Nathalie, Natasha, I did not know and do not know exactly what I want for you, or what I want for us. After some bi-lingual haggling and lots of scribbling on napkins, you in black ink and me in blue, we agreed that I would give you 300 francs.
She is happy to tell me where the nearest bank is. Crossing the street, she leans against me. Her perfumed smell, the smell from yesterday, is mixed with sweat and funk. She is trembling; her body beats against me like the wing of a hummingbird. I put my arm around her, partly to steady her, partly to keep her from jumping into traffic–she doesn’t seem to remember traffic–and partly because I want to draw her to me.
I say, “Natasha Nathalie, that’s not your real name.”
“It is. It is. After, I will show you my identity papers.”
While I am getting a cash advance from the money machine, Natasha guards the door. “Oh no,” she calls to me. “It’s that woman. That woman is evil.”
Bad characters. I only see a gray woman in a dirty set of clothes who lies down on the sidewalk in front of the bank. I refuse to ask Natasha what is evil about this woman. Instead, knowing better the whole time, I hand Natasha 300 francs and escort her back across the street. This time, when she leans into me, her body relaxes. It feels like I am carrying her weight.
She almost teases me. She’s smiling in my face like we are old friends. “Wait here, Marcel,” she says. “I will find him.”
I wait while she goes around the corner.
She almost runs into me.
“Marcel, the man is here, and he wants cinq cents francs.” She is screaming at me.
“How much…you said….” I am more flustered than I should have been; in just a few seconds I will regret my feckless reaction bitterly.
“Cinq cents francs. Not trois cents, cinq cents.”
Fine drops of spit on my face. She is disbelieving, furious with me for not understanding cinq cents francs, for not seeing how life-and death this is.
“Two hundred more, Marcel. I need two hundred francs.”
“You will meet me here in a few minutes?”
“Yes. Yes yes yes.”
A white-haired man with a cynical grin watches as I hand Nathalie, Natasha another two hundred franc note. He knows I am a fool.
I know I am a fool.
“You will come back?”
“Wait here,” Natasha says. “Wait for me here.”
After years of trying, I have never saved anyone. Not my mother from pain, not my father from melancholy, not wives from their husbands–even my wives from me–not the random women breaking under the burden of random heartbreak that I see in bars and restaurants and on the street and to whom I always tip my hat.
Once Natasha goes around the corner, I will never see her again. I meant to demand her purse, the one with identity papers, so she had to come back. I meant to follow her but her demand that I wait was so strident I hesitate. By the time I move, like a silent film comic doing a slow-take, it is too late to catch her.
Questions I did not think to ask. In Paris, where do you stay? Who are your family? Where are you friends? How can I reach you after I leave Paris tomorrow? Do you like me? Who are you?
What am I left with? The white-haired man, who sidles up to me and asks, “Are you looking for girls?” He wants to remind me that the woman who left isn’t coming back.
You can’t punch people just for telling you the truth. You can hate them, but you can’t punch them.
Everybody on this street seems to know my business.
After I’m too embarrassed to stand by the sinister McDonald’s any longer, I go back to the same ugly bar in which I met Natasha and I order another Irish beer. When St. Peter betrayed Our Lord, it just as well could have been embarrassment as fear. Embarrassment is a lukewarm fear, isn’t it? The one God spews out of His mouth.
It’s only one day later. Maybe not even a day. I don’t have a word for me and Natasha but whatever it is we are, we’ve only been there about three hours.
The beer goes flat before I finish it. The sniggering waiter brings me another which tastes like it’d been opened the winter before. Natasha will be back in a junkie’s five minutes.
I imagine her sitting in a bedroom at the hotel–not my bedroom, no, but one convenient–freshly showered, little drops of water still caught in her hair, wearing my bathrobe. She’s trembling a little and I’ve grabbed hold of her hands. We are waiting for a doctor who’ll have some clear, calming medicine that he’ll put into a syringe.
Later, while she is sleeping, the doctor will say, “She will be fine, Monsieur Marcel. But you must get her away from this place.” As he tugs one end of his mustache, his eyes examine my face as if he is judging the worth of my character.
After an hour and a half, I feel compelled to leave the cafe. Natasha won’t come back. Why should she?
Why should she indeed, I ask myself, given that you have no faith in her return? She’s asked you to wait here.
She also said five minutes.
She came back before.
She’s playing me for a fool, and without difficulty, because I am a fool.
She came back this evening.
I have spent two days trying to eat at Pharamond and finding it closed. Instead of waiting here for Nathalie, Natasha, I should go there and eat tripe, the dish for which they are probably best-known. It is only a few blocks away; I can dine well there and then resume looking for Natasha. I don’t owe her anything.
Maybe I would have waited longer if the white-haired man had gone away. But he was still there, chatting to the crack dealers. I imagined him chatting about me and Natasha.
Pharamond is a very fine restaurant, a bistro with Belle Epoque decor, heavy, well-used cotton tablecloths, heavy, well-used cutlery. It reminds me of Galatoire’s, one of my favorite restaurants back in New Orleans. The maitre de seats me next to a French woman and an English man. They are talking in English. They are talking about health care systems throughout Europe. They are very serious.
I order my meal, including the famous tripe. A bus boy brings me a glass of water. I put effervescent codeine in the glass. Fine drops of water sprinkle my face as I lift the glass to my lips. Unlike Natasha, I can replenish the supply of my drug at almost any pharmacist. After I swallow, the headache goes away almost immediately. Happy days are here again.
To English health care expert a waiter presenting a casserole on a brazier to a diner. “That is so traditional,” she says. “it is almost a joke.” In a few minutes, when another waiter brings me my casserole bubbling on its brazier, I turn to her, jab my thumb into my chest, and shrug. A huge Gallic shrug that includes a downturned mouth. She laughs.
To my surprise, Patricia Wells’s Bistro Cooking, which does list Pharamond as one of her favorite bistros, does not include the recipe for tripe a la mode de Caen. It is complicated enough as given in The Joy of Cooking, and surely that cookbook skipped steps. Four kinds of tripe, one from every stomach, pigs feet and beef suet, Calvadoes–well, The Joy of Cooking permits substitution, but surely it has to be Calvadoes–cider, bouquet garni, onions, bay leaf, salt and pepper, and a really cold, slow oven. The Joy of Cooking doesn’t require the charcoal brazier that Pharamond serves it tripe stew on, but if you ask me, a little fanfare never comes amiss.
It is a wonderful meal, this meal at Pharamond, the best meal I eat in Paris this vacation. But I’m getting as jumpy as a crack-head, and I signal the waiter for the reckoning.
Since Pharamond is forever linked for me with Natasha, will I eat there again when I am next in Paris? Yes. I am sentimental about people, but ruthless when it comes to food. Or, if you prefer, I am more sentimental about food than I am about people.
That being said, I did not do the meal justice tonight. Because once I sat down, I was eager to be out looking for Natasha. In fact, if it did not require the services of a waiter to free me from where I am trapped behind a table, I might have left the restaurant before I finished eating. You will note that I skipped coffee, dessert, and a post-prandial drink.
My entre is 140 francs, my viandes 88 francs, my vins-cidre 80 francs, and my eaux minerales, 20. Total, service compris: 328 franc.
On the one hand, Nathalie, Natasha had offered me a complete night with her for 300 francs. On the other hand, Restaurant Pharamond actually served me the pate, the tripe, the half bottle of wine, the bottle of mineral water.
I don’t remember how much the cheapest hamburger at a Paris McDonald’s cost.
The streets of the red light district stink of piss. Searching these streets, past the women prostituting themselves and the men talking loud, I feel more weary than scared. Being a head taller than all these French men gives me an exalted sense of invulnerability, searching for Natasha, for reasons unknown, nonetheless gives me a sense of mission. Nobody had better mess with me.
And would you? Would you have chosen to mess with a crazy American who stared at you as if he thought you’d kidnapped and raped the woman he loved? Which is more or less what I did think with that part of the brain that lies below thought and nearer the heart.
How many times can you walk up and down the Rue St. Denis?
How many times do I have to?
Men come to this neighborhood in groups and when one man steps forward to engage a woman, two or three hang behind, like younger brothers. Most of the conversations are about money; the men usually end them by abusing the women and moving on. One group of men that roams the street is Japanese. From what I see, I can’t tell if any of them get laid. From what I see, none of the women are Natasha.
But Natasha does not wait for me near the McDonald’s at Boulevard Sebastapol. Or, if she does, I cannot find her.
When I am tired, I stop in cafes and order a beer and a glass of water. Then I take more codeine, eavesdrop on any English conversation that’s going, kill time. Then back out among the pimps and whores and dealers–a little less steady on my feet every time.
This has gone on for hours. It’s well after midnight. The woman who yelled at Natasha is working now. She seems to be Natasha’s enemy–but at least she probably knows Natasha.
“M’sieur?”
“I’m looking for Natasha Nathalie.”
“M’sieur?”
“Natasha Nathalie, do you know her?”
“M’sieur, I do not understand.”
On Rue Bondel, there is a woman my age, one of the women you would make chitchat with in the check-out line at the butcher, one who speaks good English and who is dressed demurely. Sobbing, I lean against the wall next to her. She exhibits mild, professional concern.
“You are looking for some girl in particular?”
“Yes.”
“Do I know her?”
“Natasha. I don’t think she’s a regular.”
“No, if she was a regular, I’d know her.”
“Thanks anyway.”
“You know the best thing you can do? You can go with me. I will make you forget her.”
“No, thank you. I am too sad.”
“I can touch you, here and here and there. I can make love to you with my mouth. It will be very nice. You’ll see.”
“I am too sad. It would be no good for either of us.”
“Too sad? That is too sad.”
The truth is, I want to believe she can touch me here and here and there and take away my sadness. What she offers to do should be very nice. Any night other than tonight she could lie to me and I would bless her for her lies.
I pull out my big old railroad watch for the last time of the night. We’re going on two in the morning. There are new prostitutes appearing on the Rue St. Denis and tired ones retiring until tomorrow. The blisters on my feet have popped open and the salt of my own sweat, my own lymph, and my own blood stings the wounds. I can walk a while longer but not too much longer.
Defeated, I leave my search. There are cabs on Sebastapol. One takes me to the hotel. I tip the driver all my loose change. What else am I going to do with it? Tomorrow I’ll be back in America.
Nathalie, Natasha, I am left without almost nothing but memory. No photograph. I gave you back the scarf. I didn’t save the napkin on which you wrote “Can you help me?” My only souvenir, a scrap of paper that, amidst all my scrawls such as “Tripe and Love,” “Kindness doesn’t keep you out of jail,” and your name, has the notation 100F in your hand.
Nathalie, Natasha, why is human life so barren of love when the human heart has too much love in it?
REID MITCHELL is a New Orleanian teaching in China. More specifically, he is a Scholar in Jiangsu Province’s 100 Foreign Talents Program, and a Professor of English at Yancheng Teachers University. He is also Consulting Editor of CHA: AN ASIAN LITERARY JOURNAL. His poems have been published by CHA, ASIA LITERARY REVIEW, IN POSSE, and elsewhere and he has a collection due out from a small press in Berlin. Way back in the 20th century, he published the novel A MAN UNDER AUTHORITY. He also had a separate career as an historian of the American Civil War.