We were walking by the Canal St Martin. The temperature had been at a steady zero for days now, and the sluice gates were growing beards of ice. Chantale was wearing a red felt hiking hat that she had shaped into something resembling a Stetson. The hat was a gift from an American friend called Bruno.
I wanted to meet Bruno; Chantale mentioned him often, as though I had. I got the feeling they’d been lovers, but Chantale never let on. Other names were mentioned too – an English girl called Gillian, a Scottish boy called Tom. But I never met any of Chantale’s friends and the names changed every few months as the friends, never from Paris, left and new ones arrived. When I first knew her, I’d assumed Chantale’s social life to be as busy and varied as the places her friends were from; I’d attached to her the same sort of excitement the word Paris contains for an outsider. It held many other things for me now as well, and in the same way, since I’d been back, it had become clear to me that Chantale was as much a loner as I was. An outsider in her hometown. It gave me a vague sense of displacement, repositioning in Paris my Parisian friend.
There was a lot she chose to keep from me. I knew Chantale had a sister, but the sister was never mentioned. Her parents were only referred to in terms of the past; she saw them maybe twice a year.
Chantale changed jobs as often as she did friends, and I was told about the changes only after they had occurred. Just back from taking juvenile delinquents on a skiing trip, she was running a news-stand at Gare de l’Est. If there were such a thing as an armchair itinerant, Chantale was it.
The closer we got to Stalingrad, the shabbier the streets we passed through. It was Monday – the markets and shops were closed. Plane trees stretched before us, bare and pale and dead-looking to my subtropical eyes.
Over the other side of the canal a man and a woman stopped to let their dogs greet one another head to tail.
– Qu’est-ce qu’elle est mignonne!
– Qu’est-ce qu’il est beau, le vôtre!
Otherwise, the street was empty.
– In Paris in winter, said Chantale, nobody goes out unless they have to. Nobody does anything. Everything’s put on ice, so to speak.
– Not me, I said, I’m going to get moving this winter.
– Where to?
– I mean, I’m staying in Paris, but I’m going to make things happen, you know?
Maybe they already were. I’d started giving English lessons to Rosa, the daughter of Chantale’s cousin. Rosa was a flautist, and the English lessons were conducted in her father’s study, a tiny room wooded with flutes and oboes and other instruments, ancient and modern, used and unusable. They were racked along every wall and fringed the edges of the ceiling. We worked over the gentle soundtrack of their breathing and tinkling. Was it Rosa’s musical ear that lent her a facility for pronunciation? Was it her knowledge of the grammar of music – all the chords and scales – that gave her an aptitude for English grammar? She was the same age as Laurent and she made herself hot chocolate when she got home from school. She changed her clothes by herself, she did her homework willingly, and she did it well.
– Rosa’s a relief to teach after that brat Laurent, I said to Chantale.
– She has her mother’s nature, Chantale nodded. I adore Kenza.
Over the other side of the canal the skyline dropped and rose haphazardly. Some buildings remained, small, old, sooty. Vacant lots yawned, cranes grew from hills of rubble. A housing commission block was taking shape and was partly painted in a cool blue like the winter sky.
So much variety, all this devastation and reconstruction, seemed commonplace to me. Chantale hated it.
– Paris was never like this when I was a child.
Her hands spiralled from her pockets.
– Look at it now: filthy! Falling apart! They pull down old buildings only to put up new ones even uglier.
– It’s better than the sixteenth, I said. That’s too intact, too nice.
– I just mean Paris the way it used to be. Old Paris is not all rich. But this … Merde, I’ve trodden in dog shit!
– Your right foot, it’s good luck, Chantale.
She scraped her shoe angrily across a tree grid.
– It’s the left foot, Sophie.
– Laurent told me the other day it was the right.
– He would. Rich kid.
– Maybe it’s different for his generation. Maybe the rules have changed.
– Oh, who cares. Same shit, different rules.
We reached Stalingrad. The overground métro screeched to a halt above us. The Place was busy. Half the Arab shops were open. Cheap suitcases tumbled down to the footpath, chained one to the next, from the barnlike thrift shops. We bought hot chestnuts from a vendor near the station entrance. Three Arabs stood nearby, watching us eat. One of them began to beckon us, then the other two joined in. We ignored them.
Chantale, a hasty eater, burnt her fingers, then her tongue. She panted and frowned and waved her hands in the air. I groaned inwardly, sensing her temper. One of the Arabs approached. We moved and he followed.
He said he knew where Chantale could put her tongue to make it feel better. He said it in the vous form – plural as opposed to polite – to include me in the offer.
Chantale turned on him.
– Mais foutez-nous la paix!
His face clouded over. He returned to his friends. They formed a semicircle and began to walk towards us. I took Chantale’s elbow.
– Let’s go to a café, Chantale.
The men were hissing.
– Putes, putes, putes …
Chantale threw her chestnuts into the gutter.
– Merde alors! I’ve had it! Y’en a marre des Arabes en France!
She ran across the boulevard and I ran after her. I caught up to her and grabbed her arm.
– Let go of me! I’m not going in that café, it’s Tunisian. I hate them, I hate Arabs. Look at the floor, black with grime. We’d probably get a disease from their coffee cups. They’re filthy!
– I’m sick of your racism, I said.
– My racism? And the way they treat white women?
– They’re not all like that. Kenza’s Algerian.
– I don’t give a shit! I hate Arabs. If that’s racist, I’m it, and I don’t give a shit!
– You make me sick, Chantale.
I was sick of using the same words too. It was so frustrating, getting angry in a foreign language. Chantale folded her arms contemptuously.
– Of course I do, Sophie, she said. You! You think you’re so pure.
We looked at one another in shock.
Then Chantale looked down at her feet. She shuffled them uncomfortably.
– Bon, she said, I’m not going to stand around in the cold.
We crossed back over the boulevard. The three Arabs had gone.
– I’ll come as far as Père Lachaise, I said.
We didn’t talk for the entire métro ride. We got off together at Père Lachaise and went to Bar Piaf for a vin chaud.