In Paris With You
By gabrielle
- 451 reads
In Paris With You
He arrived towards the tail end of the afternoon, almost the early
evening, streetlights flickering on, struggling up the darkening stairs
with his bags, breathless with the effort. She had been waiting for him
all day, since his tense and short phone call of the day before,
shopping quickly early in the morning, cleaning the flat before
mid-day. After months of waiting, the last hours had gone so slowly and
her pent up anxiety meant that she couldn't stop herself from asking,
straightaway, what had happened, she had expected him in the early
afternoon, what had been the delay?
"Please don't ask me what happened," he said, "I am here aren't I?
It's enough for now."
He was as angry as he was exhausted. He threw his shabby bags down on
the floor of the flat's main room and collapsed into one of the chairs,
closing his eyes, his head slumped onto his chest, while his hands
gripped the arm rests. They did not touch, she was shocked at his
appearance, he looked older, greyer, so unhappy.
She sniffed back a tear and stared out over the view of Paris that she
had come to know so well. It was not the view of the travel brochures,
nothing like, just the side of another apartment block, painted a
fading beige, with another beyond that, beige with pink. Hers was beige
with grey. The evening was clear, the sky turning from turquoise to
indigo, there was even one or two stars, she stared out into them,
their twinkling intensified by the tears in her eyes.
This was not the wonderful reunion that she had envisaged. She didn't
know whether to be sorry for herself, or sorry for him. She didn't know
what to do for him.
"I have some food," she said timidly "Are you hungry?"
As she said it, she knew it was a stupid question, he was always hungry
and today after the journey, and then finding his way alone across a
strange city, he was bound to be hungry. He was so much thinner than
she remembered he must have been going hungry for a long time.
She went into the tiny windowless kitchen, and started to wash the
vegetables at the sink. She sensed him behind her. He put his arms
gently round her, and kissed the back of her neck, just below her left
ear. She felt her knees buckle, and closing her eyes relaxed into his
hold. She had not felt his touch for so long. It was the same
touch.
"I am hungry." he said "And tired. And confused. I shouldn't be cross
with you. I'm so sorry."
He seemed to slump slightly, although his arms still held her so
tenderly.
She wriggled out of his arms and faced him, this time she took him in
her arms. She realised that she was now the powerful one, the one who
knew what to do, where things were, who to talk to, how to get things
done. She would have to share her newfound strength with him.
She looked up at him, at his not handsome, but for her, exceptional
face. He looked as though he had not shaved for days, it made him look
darker, almost villainous. It was no wonder he had so much trouble with
immigration at the airport. And having to deal with that had made him
angry.
She cooked for them, while he had a shower. She had bought things for
him a long time ago, and kept them for him, not knowing when he would
be able to get to her, if ever. These included shaving things,
after-shave, shower gel, a dressing gown. French things. Expensive
things. Saved for and bought with much care and thought.
He was using them now.
Then they sat opposite each other at the tiny table, looking at each
other, his naked shower warm feet around her small slippered ones,
ignoring the view from the window at their side, eating the simple
food, sipping the cheap wine. The evening had turned into night.
They hardly spoke, and apart from their feet, they did not touch, but
they looked at each other, as if now, after all the long months of
separation they just could not believe that they could really see each
other, that it was not their imagination.
His tenseness had gone, he was her old lover back again, his black hair
was shiny, his skin the bronzed colour that she loved. He smelt of the
after shave she had so carefully chosen for him. He opened up and told
her about his journey, how difficult it had been at the airport, how he
had thought he was going to be turned away at the last minute even
though his papers were all in order. How humiliating it all was, how
small and unimportant he had been made to feel, how powerless.
" I had not thought that Paris would be like this." he said
eventually, turning and looking out over the other blocks, down to the
traffic below.
"Nor I." she agreed. " But the bit we dreamed about is still very
close. A short ride on the RER. We can go and stroll along the Seine,
anytime, as long as we catch the last train back!"
He reached for her hand across the table.
"But not tonight."
"Not tonight."
"Where are the other women you share with?" he asked.
"Working. Cleaning. They will be back much later, they have to catch
the last train."
She felt nervous. It had been so long. They had been through such
emotion, such uncertainty, so much fear that she was scared about how
they now felt about each other, whether the simple emotion of love
would be able to wipe out all the other complex ones.
She cleared away the plates, whilst he looked around the rest of the
cramped flat, the bathroom with its drying clothes hanging above the
bath, the two small bedrooms. He moved his bags into the one they were
to share.
Even though it was not the right setting, and the evening was not as
either of them had dreamed, it was still a wonderful evening. So it was
not a honeymoon and it was so long since the simple ceremony that had
bound them together, but this day, this evening was the start of their
life together. A new life.
Maybe they had dreamed that the moon would shine through the Eiffel
Tower into a more luxurious room, casting a romantic shadow over them
rather than the yellow sodium lights of the housing estate, which
glared through the uncurtained window. That the gentle sound of
accordion music would drift up from a pavement cafe below rather than
the sound of an American Cop programme from the neighbour's TV through
the thin walls, but that did not seem to matter in the end.
They drank more wine as they lay in her single bed. She sighed, but
with happiness rather than the sad sighs of the last lonely months. The
peeling walls of the bedroom didn't seem so hopeless now. He was here
with her now, they could re-paint the walls, or they might even find a
place of their own.
He was leaning on one elbow watching her. She realised that he must
have given up smoking, he had not reached for a cigarette after the
meal, nor now.
"Tomorrow " she said "We will get the train into the centre, I will
show you the Louvre...."
He put his finger on her mouth.
"Do you mind if we don't go to the Louvre?"
"I don't mind."
"That we forget the Eiffel Tower?"
She laughed. This was from an English poem that they knew. One that
they had first shared so long ago. A poem shared along with their
french lessons together and dreams of travelling.
He went on " No Montmartre? Not yet. I don't need them."
She pulled him close to her.
"Do you remember how often we said that this would happen?" he
continued. "How we planned where we would go to, as soon as we earned
enough to travel? That the first place would be Paris for our
honeymoon?"
She closed her eyes. He went on.
"And then, with all the troubles, how it was not going to be a choice
to travel, to leave home, but necessity."
She opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling, with its cracks.
"Escape." she said.
"I have missed you so much." he was saying " I think it was worse
being stuck somewhere else, when I knew that you had made it to
here."
"In Paris, supposedly the city for lovers, on my own."
"And when I saw this place, I thought that our dreams were still not
coming true."
"I felt the same."
"You didn't tell me in your letters."
"I didn't want you to change your mind."
"Where else would I have gone? Who else would I want to be
with?"
She stroked his chest. "Will we ever go home?" she asked
"I think we will. Things will get better one day. We won't always be
refugees. But now we should just get on with our lives. We can't think
about what is happening there, it changes day by day, but we can't rely
on having a future back home."
But he knew that they would both always be thinking about home, about
the people they had left behind, how things might have been.
" I don't expect anyone here will accept my qualifications, take any
notice of my experience. I will have to start again." he said, trying
to sound optimistic, but the thought of having to go through it all
again, in a strange country, in a language he hardly knew, was so
terrifying, especially after the way he had been treated today, as
though he had no rights, although he was hardly human.
"And we will learn to speak French really, really well." she said
brightly, almost reading his thoughts, and added quietly "It is so
awful working as a cleaner."
"Tomorrow will be the start of our lives together.," he said, very
seriously. "I won't be going to the Champs Elysees or the Pompidou
Centre, not until I have my work permit. I won't visit them as if I was
a tourist, passing through. I will visit them as a Parisian."
"We will look for a room of our own," she said tentatively.
"I love you," he said. "I loved you back home, I will love you
wherever we end up."
"Even if it is no better than this? " she was almost teasing.
"But even this, is better than home, at the moment. It might be
different to how we had dreamt it, but it is Paris."
She curled up to him, pulling the thin sheet over their eyes, so that
the yellow sodium light did not shine so brightly. Incredibly, the
neighbour's TV was softly playing accordion music.
" We are in Paris, just as we dreamt. " she said "I am in Paris with
you."
He kissed her tenderly. "And I am in Paris with you."
They fell asleep intertwined in each others arms, while over the
neighbouring block the moon rose and eclipsing the street lights, shone
through their window.
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