Seven

“Whenever I’m looking for love, I go to the Cinéma Paradis.” Mélanie took a sip from her glass of red wine, then held it in the palms of both hands as her gaze became lost in a mysterious distance that lay somewhere beyond the windows of La Palette, and to which I had no access. Her eyes shone and she had a thoughtful smile on her lips.

That was probably the moment I fell in love with her. Her words moved me deeply, and I immediately felt my heart take flight. That one sentence, and the strange little smile that accompanied it. When I think back to it today, I remember that even then something about her words struck me as being unusual, even though I could not have said what it actually was.

A few weeks later, when I was desperately looking for the woman in the red coat, those strange words were to come back to me. They were the key to everything, but I didn’t know it then as, in a spontaneous gesture, I put my hands around Mélanie’s. It was the first time we’d touched, and it couldn’t have been any other way.

“Oh, Mélanie, that’s beautiful. You’re a poet!”

She looked at me, and once more her smile was for me. Her hands stayed in mine, and she was still holding the wineglass. We both sat there holding it as if it were a kind of happiness that, like a wild bird, you have to hold gently and carefully so that it doesn’t fly away.

“No, no, there’s no way I’m a poet. I’m just a bit nostalgic, that’s all.”

Nostalgic was a word I hadn’t heard for a long time, and it delighted me. “But that’s wonderful!” I leaned forward toward her and the red wine swayed in its round-bellied glass. “Where would we be in this soulless universe if there weren’t a few people who hold on to memories, their hearts yearning for long-lost feelings?”

She laughed. “Who’s the poet now?” she said. Then she put the wineglass down carefully on the table, and I regretfully let go of her hands. “That’s the thing about memories,” she said, and was silent for a moment. “They can sometimes make you sad, even if they’re good memories. You like thinking back to them; they’re the greatest treasure we have, and yet it always makes you a little sad because something is irretrievably past.” She rested her cheek on her right hand and painted little circles on the tabletop with her left.

“Tempi passati,” I said—quite the philosopher—and wondered whether I dared to try holding her hand again. “That’s why I love films. Everything comes back to life in them, even if it’s only for a couple of hours. And you can return to your lost paradise.” I reached for her hand, and she didn’t take it away.

“Is that why your cinema’s called Cinéma Paradis?”

“No … Yes … Maybe.” We both laughed. “To be honest, I don’t really know. I’d have to ask my uncle—he used to own the cinema, but unfortunately he’s no longer alive.”

I raised my hands regretfully. Good old Uncle Bernard! His wonderful time in the south had come to a sudden but peaceful end late the previous fall. “This is a really good wine,” he had said to Claudine as he sat one evening in his cane chair on the terrace, holding the glass up to the low setting sun. “Could you get us another bottle, my love?” When Claudine came back, Uncle Bernard was sitting with his eyes half-open, leaning back in his cane chair as if he were looking up at the tall old pines whose smell he so loved in the summer. But he was dead.

The funeral was a very quiet one. In fact, there were only Claudine, a married couple from the village whom they’d become friends with, his oldest friend, Bruno, and me. My parents, who were traveling in New Zealand, sent a wreath and a letter of condolence to Claudine. Still, it was a good and dignified funeral, no matter how sad it was. Instead of a flower, I threw an old reel of Cinema Paradiso into Bernard’s grave. I sighed as I thought about it, and gazed into Melanie’s big brown eyes, which were looking at me with sympathy. “At least he died happy,” I said. “I liked him a lot, old Uncle Bernard. In the past, I always thought he’d named the cinema after that Italian film…”

“Cinema Paradiso,” Mélanie said, and I nodded.

“Yes, that’s right, Cinema Paradiso. It was one of his favorite films. But the cinema was in existence long before the film.”

“It must be great to own a little dream factory like that.”

“Great and difficult at the same time,” I said. “It’s not going to make me rich. Everyone in my family was quite annoyed when I gave up my well-paid job in a big firm in Lyon that exported bathtubs and washbasins to Abu Dhabi just to take on an old art-house cinema.”

Oh, man, what are you saying? Do you want to show her that you’re a complete klutz? Robert’s voice sounded so real that I involuntarily looked up. But of course there was no one there except a waiter rushing busily past us to serve the people at the next table.

“Goodness gracious! Bathtubs and washbasins!” Mélanie said, putting her hand over her mouth. “Well, no matter what your family says, I, at least, am glad you’re not doing that anymore. It doesn’t suit you. And you should always be true to yourself. Or have you ever regretted your decision, Alain?”

“No, never!” I replied, and listened in my head to the echo of her voice pronouncing my name for the first time. I leaned forward and brushed a strand of hair off her face. “It was exactly the right decision.” My heart began to thump and I fell head over heels into her glistening eyes. “Most of all because otherwise I would never have met you.”

Mélanie had lowered her gaze, and then suddenly she took my hand, which was hovering near her ear, and held it against her cheek.

Oh, I could have gone on playing this game forever, the game fingers and hands, which intertwine with each other, clasp around each other, the two people aware only of this one moment, which is oblivious of all time and presages complete happiness. Don’t all love stories begin like this?

“I’m also very glad that the Cinéma Paradis is there,” said Mélanie quietly.

I held her hand, and felt the ring she was wearing, stroking the gleaming reddish band of gold with my fingers.

“In the beginning I didn’t dare to speak to you.… I thought you were married.”

She shook her head. “No, no, I’m not married, and never have been. This ring is a memento of my mother—her engagement ring. Maman didn’t wear any other jewelry, you know, and when she died, I took the ring so that I would always have something of her with me to remind me. Since then, I have never ever taken it off.” She twisted the ring pensively from side to side, then looked at me. “I live completely alone.”

I found the solemnity with which she said that very moving.

“Oh … I’m very sorry about that,” I said, and began to stammer. “I mean, about your mother.” I wasn’t the slightest bit sorry that Mélanie lived alone—even completely alone. Quite the contrary: I was very glad about it, even if I thought that that “completely alone” had sounded rather sad. “Don’t you have anyone here in Paris?”

She shook her head.

“No family? No brother? No sister? No boyfriend? No dog? Not even a canary?”

She kept on shaking her head, but in the end she couldn’t help laughing. “You’re very inquisitive, Alain, do you know that? No, not even a canary, if you put it that way. The only member of my family who’s left is my aunt Lucie, my mother’s older sister, but she lives in Brittany. I visit her there now and again. In fact, by pure coincidence, I’m going there this very weekend. It’s lovely there by the sea. And otherwise…” She hesitated a moment, then put the wineglass to her lips, drank a little sip, and put it down firmly. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it, but it wasn’t hard to guess that she’d just been thinking about a man.

“Ça y est. Things are as they are,” she went on. “But that’s okay. I have good friends, a wonderful boss, friendly neighbors, and I like living here in Paris.”

“I can’t believe that a charming woman like you doesn’t have a boyfriend,” I said, probing further. I admit this wasn’t very original, but I wanted to be certain. Perhaps that wonderful boss was the man in her life. Perhaps she was one of those women who seem to live alone but in reality carry on an affair with a married man for years, someone no one is supposed to know about.

Mélanie smiled. “And yet it’s true. My last boyfriend cheated on me with a workmate for a whole year. Then I found a green jade earring in his bed, and we split up.” She sighed in comic despair. “I have a talent for falling in love with the wrong men. In the end, there’s always another woman.”

“Not possible,” I said. “They must all be complete idiots.”