Thirty-four

It was a quarter to eight when I walked onto the pont Alexandre III. The first thing I saw was a bride in a full white dress, leaning on the parapet as she snuggled up to her brand-new husband. They were standing on the left side of the wide sidewalk, smiling into a photographer’s camera. Brides are like chimney sweeps: You’re always glad to see them because you think luck will be on your side. But it wasn’t just that.

When I stopped about halfway across the bridge and leaned over the stone parapet, I was suddenly surrounded by a sense of magic I had seldom felt in my life before. The air was soft and golden, and the view out over the river filled every fiber of my being with an exhilarating sense of vastness and beauty. On the left bank, the cars streamed tirelessly along the Avenue de New York; on the right bank of the Seine, where the glass roofs of the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais stood out against the sky, there was no traffic. You could see the linden trees, which in a few weeks would spread their sweet perfume. A couple of stone steps led directly down to the quiet riverbank, where a few people were taking a walk and the houseboats were bobbing up and down in the water. Beneath me, a bateau-mouche was gliding almost silently down the river; farther away, the broad arches of the pont des Invalides spanned the river, and in the distance the Eiffel Tower seemed quite small.

After all the excitement of the last few weeks, I was engulfed by a wonderful, sublime sense of perfect calm. I took a deep breath, and a single sentence filled my whole mind: Now everything will be all right. The sky began to change color and the whole of Paris was transformed into a magic lavender-colored place that seemed to be hovering a few yards above the ground.

At the very moment the lamps came on, seeming to shine on the bridge like little white moons, I saw her. An hour too early, she was coming along the bridge in a summery dress, and she seemed to be in no hurry. She was wearing red ballet flats, had draped a little cardigan over her shoulders, and with every step the hem of her dress fluttered around her legs. She was walking on the side where I was leaning on the parapet, but she was so lost in her own thoughts that she noticed me only when she was standing almost directly in front of me. “Alain!” she said. Surprise produced a dear little smile on her face, and she tucked her hair behind her ear in that little gesture I knew so well. “What are you doing here so early?”

“Waiting for you,” I said huskily. All the fine words I’d intended to say when we met were forgotten; the roses lying on the parapet behind me were forgotten. I saw her eyes, which were red from crying, and her cheeks, which were suffused with a delicate blush. I saw her trembling lips, and my heart was almost torn apart with joy and excitement and relief and happiness. “You’re the only one I’m waiting for!”

In the twinkling of an eye, we were in each other’s arms, crying, laughing. Our lips met without the need for words. We kissed, and the seconds became years, and the years became a piece of eternity. We kissed beneath an old lantern that hung over us like a moon among moons. We were kissing on one of the loveliest bridges in Paris, which at that moment belonged to us alone. We flew up into the sky, higher and higher, and Paris became a star among the stars.

We went on standing there for a long time, overwhelmed with happiness, two time travelers who had finally reached their desired destination, looking at the reflection of the lights in the river. We leaned on the parapet and our fingers entwined as they had done that first time.

“Why didn’t you just come to the Cinéma Paradis at the time?” I asked softly. “You only had to trust me.”

“I was afraid,” she said, and her dark eyes shimmered. “I was so afraid of losing you that I preferred to give you up for lost of my own accord.”

I took her back in my arms. “Oh, Mélanie…” I said softly, burying my face in her hair, which smelled of vanilla and orange blossom. I held her very tight, trying to contain the wave of tenderness that washed over me. “You’ll never lose me. I promise you that,” I said. “You’ll never get rid of me. You’ll see.”

She nodded and laughed and wiped a tear from her cheek. And then she said exactly what I’d been thinking as I stood on the bridge. “Now everything will be all right.”

There was a shuffling sound behind us. We turned around and, to our amazement, saw the old man slouching across the bridge in his slippers. He was bent over as he walked and every now and again thrust his fist into the air.

“Everything here’s a total rip-off!” he gasped angrily. “A total rip-off!”

We looked at each other and laughed.

When we walked over the pont Alexandre arm in arm a moment later to get to the other bank of the Seine and the Café de l’Esplanade, it was eight thirty.

At the spot where we’d just been kissing, a forgotten bouquet of roses lay on a stone parapet, evidence that even wise old men can occasionally be wrong.

“We’d actually arranged to meet half an hour from now,” I said. “Why were you on the bridge so early?”

“I just wanted to be here.” Mélanie shrugged in embarrassment. “I know it sounds a bit odd, but at quarter to eight I suddenly had the feeling that I absolutely must go to the pont Alexandre. I thought I could just as well wait on the bridge until we met in the café. And then suddenly you were there, too.” She looked at me and shook her head, laughing. “I suppose we both just had the same idea!”

“Yes,” I said, and smiled, too. “Looks like it!” We reached the end of the bridge, and Robert’s words came back to me. He’d been right: Life isn’t a movie where two people meet and then lose each other, only to meet by chance a few weeks later at the Trevi Fountain because they’ve both simultaneously had the idea of throwing a coin into the fountain and making a wish.

But sometimes, inexplicably, it is.