The Woman In The Fifth Page 5

  'But in bad condition?'

  'Not good.'

  'Clean?'

  'I could help you clean it. It is down the hall from my own chambre de bonne.'

  'I see,' I said.

  'As I said, I don't want to intrude into your . . .'

  'How much is it a month?'

  'Four hundred euros. But I know the man who manages the building, and I might be able to get him to drop the price by thirty or forty euros.'

  'I'd like to see it.'

  Adnan smiled a shy smile.

  'Good. I will arrange it.'

  The next morning, when Brasseur came in with breakfast, I announced that I would be checking out tomorrow. While arranging the tray on the bed, he casually asked, 'So Adnan is taking you home with him?'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'Just what I heard from the chef, who lives down the corridor in the same building as Adnan: "He has a new boyfriend – the American who has been so sick."'

  'You can think what you like.'

  'It is not my affair.'

  'That's right, it's not your affair – as there is no affair here.'

  'Monsieur, there is no need to reassure me. I am not your priest – or your wife.'

  That's when I threw the orange juice at him. Without a pause for reflection, I made a grab for the glass and hurled the contents at him. It scored a direct hit on his face. There was a moment of stunned silence – as the juice dripped down his cheeks and pulpish bits lodged in his eyebrows. But then his shock turned into cold rage.

  'Get out,' he said.

  'Fine,' I said, jumping out of the bed.

  'I'm calling the police,' he said.

  'For what? Baptism by fruit juice?'

  'Believe me, I'll think of something unpleasant and damaging.'

  'You do that, I'll tell them about all the illegal workers you have here – and how you're paying them slave wages.'

  That stopped him cold. He pulled out a handkerchief and started mopping his face.

  'Maybe I'll just fire Adnan.'

  'Then I'll make an anonymous call to the cops and tell them how you use illegal—'

  'This conversation is finished. I'll call your "petit ami ", Adnan, and tell him to take you off to his place.'

  'You are a sick little bastard.'

  But he didn't hear the final three words of the sentence, as he was already out the door. When it slammed behind him, I slumped against a wall, stunned by what had just taken place and the crazed fury of it all.

  But he started it, right?

  I got dressed. I started packing. I fell into a guilty fugue, thinking how unnecessarily kind Adnan had been to me, and how I'd now put him in a difficult situation with his asshole boss. I wanted to leave him one hundred euros as a thank-you, but sensed that Brasseur would pocket it. Once I found another hotel, I'd come back here one evening and give it to him.

  The phone rang. I answered it. It was Brasseur.

  'I have spoken with Adnan at his other job. He will be here in half an hour.'

  Click.

  I dialed reception right back. Brasseur answered.

  'Please tell Adnan that I'll find a place on my own, that—'

  'Too late,' Brasseur said. 'He's already en route.'

  'Then call him on his portable.'

  'He doesn't have one.'

  Click.

  I thought, Grab your bag and leave now. Adnan might have been all nice and attentive while you were infirm (a little too attentive, if truth be told), but who knows what ulterior motive underscores his offer of a chambre de bonne down the corridor from his own. As soon as he gets you there, probably four of his friends will jump you, grab all your traveler's checks and what few valuables you have (your computer, your fountain pen, your dad's old Rolex), then cut your throat and dump your body in some large poubelle where it will end up being incinerated along with half of Paris's rubbish. And yeah, this scenario might just sound a little paranoid. But why believe that this guy has any decent motives at all? If the last few months had taught me anything, it was that hardly anyone does anything out of sheer, simple decency.

  I finished packing. I hoisted my bag and went downstairs. As I approached the reception desk, I noticed that Brasseur had changed into a fresh shirt, but that his tie was still dappled with juice stains. He said, 'I've decided I'm keeping the twenty euros to cover my dry-cleaning costs.'

  I said nothing. I just headed to the door.

  'Aren't you waiting for Adnan?' he asked.

  'Tell him I'll be in touch.'

  'Lover's tiff?'

  That stopped me in my tracks. I wheeled around, my right hand raised. Brasseur took a step backwards. But then, like any bully who realized that his provocation wouldn't result in instant retaliation, he looked at me with contempt.

  'With any luck, I will never see you again,' I said.

  'Et moi non plus,' he replied. The same to you.

  I showed him my back and hit the street, where I ran straight into Adnan. It was hard to hide my surprise – and discomfort – in meeting him.

  'Didn't Brasseur tell you I was coming?' he asked.

  'I just decided to wait outside,' I lied. 'I couldn't stand being in there anymore.'

  Then I told him what had transpired in the room – after Brasseur had made his charming insinuations.

  'He thinks all Turks are pédés,' he said, using French slang for homosexuals.

  'That doesn't surprise me,' I said, also mentioning what he'd said about catching the homme à tout faire with the chef.

  'I know the chef – Omar. He lives in the same building as me. He is bad.'

  And he quickly changed the subject, saying that Sezer – the manager of the building where he lived – would be expecting us within the hour. Then, taking the handle of my roll-bag (and refusing my protestations that I could wheel it along myself ), he guided us a sharp right up the rue Ribera.

  'Brasseur said he called you at your other job,' I said as we headed toward the métro.

  'Yes, I do a six-hour shift every day at a clothes importer near to where I live.'

  'Six hours on top of the eight at the hotel? That's insane.'

  'And necessary. All the money from the hotel job goes home to Turkey. The morning job . . .'

  'What time does it start?'

  'Seven thirty.'

  'But you only get off work here at one a.m. By the time you get home . . .'

  'It's about a half-hour by bicycle. All the métros stop just before one. Anyway, I don't need much sleep, so . . .'

  He let the sentence die, hinting he didn't want to keep talking about all this. Rue Ribera had a slight incline – and though it was one-lane wide and lined with apartment buildings, the morning sun still found a way of beaming down on this narrow thoroughfare. In the near distance, a father – fortyish, well dressed, well heeled – walked out of some venerable building with his teenage daughter. Unlike most adolescent girls she wasn't in the midst of a vast, perpetual sulk. Rather, she laughed at something her dad said to her, and then made a comment which caused him to smile. The rapport between them was evident – and I could not help but feel a crippling sadness.

  I stopped momentarily. Adnan glanced at the family scene, then back at me.

  'Are you all right?'

  I shook my head.

  We moved on to the avenue Mozart and the Jasmin métro station. We took the line headed toward Boulogne. When the train arrived, I saw Adnan quickly scanning the carriage – making certain it was free of officialdom – before guiding us on to it.

  'We change at Michel-Ange Molitor,' Adnan said, 'then again at Odéon. Our stop is Château d'Eau.'

  It was just two stops to our first change point. We left the métro and followed the signs for Line 10, heading toward Gare d'Austerlitz. As we walked down a flight of stairs, I insisted on taking my bag from Adnan. We reached the bottom of the stairs, then followed a long corridor. At the end of it were two flics, checking papers. Adnan froze for a moment,
then hissed, 'Turn around.'

  We executed a fast about-face. But as we headed back along the corridor, another two flics appeared. They couldn't have been more than thirty yards in front of us. We both froze again. Did they see that?

  'Walk ahead of me,' Adnan whispered. 'And when they stop me, keep walking. You go to Château d'Eau, then to 38 rue de Paradis – that's the address. You ask for Sezer . . .'

  'Stay alongside me,' I whispered back, 'and they probably won't stop you.'

  'Go,' he hissed. '38 rue de Paradis.'

  He slowed down his gait. But when I tried to stay by him, he hissed again, 'Allez rue de Paradis ! '

  I started walking toward the flics, feeling the same sort of disquiet that comes over me on those rare instances when I have encountered the police or customs officers: an immediate sense that I must be guilty of something.

  As I came into their direct line of vision, I could see the flics looking me over, their faces impassive while their eyes took in everything about my appearance. Five feet away from them, I expected the words, 'Vos papiers, monsieur.' But they remained silent as I passed by. I remounted the stairs, then stopped, loitering with intent as I waited in the futile hope that Adnan would follow right behind me. Five minutes passed, then ten. No Adnan. I decided to risk walking downstairs again. If the flics were there, I could plead that I was just a dumb American tourist who had lost his way. But when I reached the corridor again, it was empty.

  There was a moment of awful realization: They've nabbed him . . . and it's all your fault.

  This was followed by another awful thought: What do I do now?

  Allez rue de Paradis.

  Go to Paradise.

  Four

  PARADISE.

  But before I got there, I had to first pass through Africa.

  When I emerged from the Château d'Eau métro, I was in another Paris. Gone were the big apartment buildings and their well-heeled residents in their expensive casual clothes, loading well-groomed children into their shiny SUVs. Château d'Eau was dirty. There was rubbish everywhere. And grubby cafés. And shops that sold cheap synthetic wigs in garish colors like purple. And storefront telephone exchanges, advertising cheap long-distance rates to Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroun, Sénégal and the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso and . . .

  I was the only white face in sight. Though the mercury was hovering just above the freezing mark, the boulevard was crowded, with a lot of café conversations spilling out on to the street, and people greeting passers-by as if they were in a small village, and merchants selling vegetables or exotic candy from carts. No one eyed me suspiciously. No one gave me a telltale look, saying I had wandered into the wrong corner of town. I was ignored. Even the elderly black man I stopped to ask for directions to the rue de Paradis seemed to look right through me – though he did point up a side street and uttered one phrase, 'Vous tournez à droite au fond de la rue,' before moving on.

  The side street brought me out of Africa and into India. A row of curry houses, and video shops with Bollywood posters in their windows, and more telephone exchanges – only this time the rates were for Mumbai and Delhi and they were also advertised in Hindi. There were also a lot of cheap hotels; giving me a fast, grim alternative for a few nights if the chambre de bonne turned out to be beyond bad, or if this guy Sezer was a trickster and I had walked into some class of set-up.

  I had to cross the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis – a scruffy food market with more cheap shops, brimming with huddled people, their heads down against the cold wind that had started to blow through the streets. I turned right, then took a sharp left into rue de Paradis. At first sight, it looked bland. It was long and narrow – a hodgepodge of characterless nineteenth-century architecture and the occasional modern block. At street level, it seemed dead on arrival – no visible signs of life; just some large wholesale outlets for china and kitchen equipment. Then I began to pass by a place marked Kahve. It was a large, faceless café – all fluorescent tubes and gray linoleum and the Istanbul Top Forty blaring on the loudspeaker systems. I peered inside. Men were huddled over tea and talking conspiratorially. A couple of late-morning drunks were asleep at the bar, and a low cloud of cigarette smoke hung over everything. The young, tough-guy bartender turned away from some soccer match on the television to look long and hard at me, wondering why I was loitering with intent outside this establishment. His hostile stare hinted that I should move on.

  Which I did.

  There were two more kahves on rue de Paradis. There were also a handful of Turkish restaurants and a couple of bars whose shutters were still pulled down at midday. I picked up my pace and stopped examining the street in detail. Instead, I started looking up to check numbers, noting the chipped paintwork on many of the buildings. Number 38 was particularly mangy – its facade blistered with chipped masonry and large yellow blotches, like the ingrained stains on a chain-smoker's teeth. The front door – a huge, towering object – was also in need of several coats of black gloss. I looked around for some sort of entryphone, but just saw a button marked Porte. I pressed it and heard a telltale click. I had to put my entire weight against it to push it open. I pulled my bag in after me and found myself in a narrow corridor of battered mailboxes and brimming trash cans and a couple of fuse boxes from which loose wires dangled. Up ahead was a courtyard. I walked into it. Off it were three stairways – marked with the letters A, B and C. The courtyard was a small dark rectangle, above which loomed four blocks of apartments. The walls here were as ragged as their exterior counterparts, only now adorned with laundry that draped from windows and makeshift clothes lines. The aroma of greasy cooking and rotting vegetables was omnipresent. So too was a sign that dominated the far side of the courtyard: Sezer Confection (Sezer Ready-to-Wear). There was a separate stairway below this sign. I had to ring a bell to gain admittance. No one answered, so I rang it again. When there was still no answer, I leaned on the bell for a good fifteen seconds. Finally I heard footsteps on the stairs. The door opened and a young tough – dressed in a faded denim jacket with an imitation fur collar – opened the door. His upper lip boasted a meager mustache and he had a cigarette plugged between his teeth. His face radiated annoyance.

  'What you want?' he asked in bad French.

  'I'm here to see Sezer.'

  'He knows you?'

  'Adnan told me—'

  'Where is Adnan?' he asked, cutting me off.

  'I'll explain that to Sezer.'

  'You tell me.'

  'I'd rather tell—'

  'You tell me,' he said, his tone demonstrative.

  'He was controlled by the flics,' I said.

  He tensed.

  'When was this?'

  'Less than an hour ago.'

  Silence. He looked over my shoulder, scanning the distant corridor. Did he think this was a set-up – and that I had brought 'company' with me?

  'You wait here,' he said and slammed the door in my face.