the Saigon hookers who plied their trade in the cemeteries, about the ambushes and the unending sense of anticipation that came from never knowing when a piece of bamboo was going to jump out of the earth and impale you, or when a snake tied to a vine would swing into your face. About his well-earned psychological discharge. “Totally fucking dinky dau,” as Jack called it.
Jack had many stories and, at the time, Matthew thought most of them were probably true. Matthew was in awe of Jack’s ability to move through his own terror, which Matthew had come to understand was the true definition of bravery.
“Aren’t you afraid of getting killed?” he had asked.
“Immortality is health; this life is a long sickness,” said Jack, quoting St. Augustine.
Jack vanished into the mountains and it was a long time before he resurfaced. In the interim, he became a sort of shining ghost, a sort of mythic questing figure. A doomed hero. Matthew winces. Jack would have picked up the gun in that square in Hebron. He would have let fly, and maybe the things would have been different.
Chapter Six
Matthew and Jack arrange to meet at Odéon in the square in front of the movie theatres, to see if anything appeals to them, something to see later in the evening. From there they plan to head over to Square Tino Rossi, on the Seine across from the Institut du Monde Arabe, where Jack wants to photograph the tango dancers who gather late in the afternoons and into the evenings. As Matthew climbs the metro stairs, he is flushed and sticky with the afternoon’s heat, which the sausage-casing constriction of the subway has only worsened. Even under the shade of the plane tree, he feels heat sick.
The street is a mass of people, and there is as much English spoken, it seems, as French. Everywhere he looks wilted tourists in sensible shoes and track suits lumber along, taking pictures and gawking. The masses jostle and lurch and the cacophony from the car horns and the café crowds makes his head spin. He feels queasy, a combination of too much booze the night before and too little food today.
He looks around for a bakery, and spots one a few doors down. It is all chrome and glass and linoleum, the walls painted an eye-piercing shade of yellow. Plastic chairs circle three round metal tables and the air is thick with cigarette smoke from a group of well-dressed Italian teenagers drinking diet colas and speaking loudly. The cakes and baguettes look as far from those found in a traditional patisserie as Matthew can imagine. He is reminded of Safeway Groceries back in Nova Scotia when he was a kid, and donuts with plasticine icing in garish pink. His stomach growls again and he seeks the least offensive item in the display case.
The woman behind the counter puts her cigarette in the ashtray and steps over to him, hands on hips. She has orange hair and is heavily, if not improvingly, made up.
“Oui, monsieur?” She does not smile. Smiling is unnecessary in Parisian commercial transactions, purely discretionary, and today it seems Madame does not care to smile.
“Pain au chocolat,” says Matthew.
“Quoi?” Madame frowns and squints as though he has a speech impediment, and so he repeats himself, adding a bottle of water to his order.
There is a shriek behind him. Matthew jumps and turns, legs bent, heart pounding. A young woman in a strapless sundress curses as she tries to manoeuvre a baby stroller containing a shrieking toddler through the door. She rams the wheels against the door jam, jarring the child. One of the young Italian girls, cigarette in hand, jumps to help her, chattering away in Italian. The woman with the baby thanks her and then casts an evil look Matthew’s way.
Matthew puts his money down on the glass, and the woman behind the counter scoops it up before he realizes she has handed him the wrong thing. He looks down at the bottle of water, and what appears to be an apple turnover. He briefly considers not making a fuss. However, even if he wanted an apple turnover, this one does not look in the least appetizing. Oozing industrial filling, the pastry gives the impression of papier-mâché. The woman looks at him irritably, for he is not moving, and gestures with her hand for him to step aside so she can serve the mother with the still-screaming child.
“This is not a pain au chocolat,” he says, in French.
“It is what you asked for,” the woman says, looking past him.
“I asked for a pain au chocolat.”
“Non!” She clicks her teeth and shakes her finger back and forth in front of him. “I gave you what you asked for.”
“You misunderstood me, then.” Matthew is aware of the young woman behind him; her impatience prickles the back of his neck. His anger rises, popping and fizzing in the veins, not quite at a boil, but fast approaching. He grits his teeth and tries to smile. “But I don’t want this.” He puts the offending pastry on the counter and nudges it toward her.
The supercilious woman takes a breath, as though readying herself to let lose a stream of vitriol. Perhaps it is some sliver of ice beneath his flushed skin, some shard of volatility that makes her hesitate. Perhaps she can sense he is holding onto the counter so as not to lunge across it and grab her by her throat.
She snorts. “It’s not my fault you speak French so badly.” She snatches the pastry off the counter, tosses it next to her pack of cigarettes near the register, grabs a pair of tongs and clamps the pain au chocolat. She holds it out to him, but it is sadly dented. He takes it, turns and stomps out.
The pastry is dry as bark in his mouth and he washes it down with the water. His stomach feels better afterward though, even if his palms are sweaty. He stands in the shade of the green-domed newspaper kiosk trying to get a little respite from the malodorous heat.
Matthew sees Jack lumbering along the sidewalk of Saint-Germain. His head is down slightly and his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans. He carries a heavy camera slung across his chest. He nearly collides with a crumpled-looking old lady in front of him who stopped suddenly to let her Yorkshire terrier relieve itself. He says something, presumably “Pardon,” and the woman pulls her dog toward her in mid-poop, the crap dangling from its trembling legs, as though she is afraid Jack might kick it. Jack steps around her and people move aside to let him pass. A mother yanks her little boy out of his path. A young man, big, but not as big as Jack, wearing a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, hesitates for a moment as though deciding whether or not to challenge Jack, whether or not to play a little sidewalk chicken and see who will move first. He makes a wise choice and at the last moment rolls over.
At the corner, Jack waits for the light to change and there is a space around him that other pedestrians do not enter. A no-go zone, it seems, picked up by osmosis. Matthew wonders how he might cultivate one of those.
Matthew stands and they greet each other, shaking hands.
“How’s it hanging?” says Jack.
“Too crowded. Too hot. Otherwise fine.”
“Tourists, huh?” says Jack. “Any movies?”
They scan the offerings at the three nearby theatres—a selection of French comedies that neither speaks French well enough to enjoy and three American action films: Independence Day, Chain Reaction, Mission Impossible. They look at each other. “Nah,” they say.
“Let’s get out of here then,” says Jack. “Up to the Seine. It’ll be less crowded there.”
They head along Saint-Germain, but as they walk they hear a commotion of some sort ahead of them, and Matthew’s skin tightens. He glances at Jack who, frowning, peers over the heads of the sidewalk crowd. There are voices, some shouting. Car horns. Someone has a bullhorn. Matthew tries to make out the words and cannot.
“Can you see what’s going on?” he says.
“I don’t know.” Jack has picked up his pace, and as before, a space opens before him. “Demonstration of some sort, I think.” Matthew follows, thinking that they should be slowing down, should be running in the opposite direction, but they do not do that. They head into whatever is before them, on instinct, on adrenaline, on training.