The Woman In The Fifth Read online

  Amicalement

  And I signed my name.

  I went out and placed the note in the mailbox for Sezer Confection. Then I returned to my room and rolled down the blind and set my alarm clock and pulled off my clothes and finally fell into bed. I slept straight through until 1 p.m. When I awoke, I noticed a scrap of paper that had been slipped under my door. The writing was spindly, small:

  Her name is Mme Z. Pafnuk. Her email is: [email protected]. She knows who you are and what happened.

  The note was unsigned. Leave it to Monsieur Sezer to twist the knife at any given opportunity.

  I went off to a movie. When I returned to my quartier after dusk, I stopped at the Internet café. There was one email awaiting me online:

  Harry:

  The librarian at Megan's school noticed that she was spending excessive amounts of time on the computer. When challenged as to what she was doing, she said that she was merely surfing the Net – but appeared very nervous. The librarian informed the school principal who called me, stating that he was worried she might be having an inappropriate correspondence with a stranger. When she got home, I insisted she tell me the truth. She refused, so I then demanded she open her AOL mailbox for me. That's when I discovered all your emails to her – which she had dutifully saved. Your attempts to wriggle your way back into her life – and play the caring father – are nothing short of disgusting. Just as your pathetic attempts to demonize me are contemptuous. You only have one person to blame for your disaster – and that is yourself.

  I had a long talk with Megan last night and informed her, in graphic detail, why that student of yours killed herself. She knew most of it already – because her classmates in school haven't been able to stop hounding her about it. But what she didn't know was just how horribly you had behaved toward that unfortunate girl. And now Megan wants nothing to do with you. So don't write her again. I promise you she won't respond. And know this: if you make any other attempts to make personal contact with her, legal steps will be taken to make certain you are permanently barred from setting foot within a mile from where we live.

  Don't bother to reply to this letter. It will be deleted upon receipt.

  Susan

  I found myself shaking so badly as I finished reading this email that I had to hold on to the cheap wooden table on which the computer rested. '. . . what she didn't know was just how horribly you had behaved toward that unfortunate girl.' Another lie – and one perpetrated by Robson in his campaign to ruin me. 'And now Megan wants nothing to do with you.' Pressing my fingertips against my eyes, I tried very hard to stop myself from crying. When I brought myself under control, I pulled away my hands – and saw that the young bearded guy behind the café counter was studying me. When our eyes met, he turned away – embarrassed that I caught him looking at me in such distress. I wiped my eyes and came over to the counter.

  'A drink?' he asked me.

  'An espresso, please,' I said.

  'More bad news?' he asked.

  I nodded.

  'Maybe things will change.'

  'Not this time.'

  He finished making the coffee and placed it in front of me. Then he reached for a bottle of Scotch and poured out a small shot for me.

  'Here – drink,' he said.

  'Thank you.'

  I threw back the whisky. It stung going down, but I could also feel its immediate balming effect. After gulping the refill that he poured me I asked him, 'Do you speak Turkish?'

  'Why do you want to know this?' he asked.

  'Because I need to write somebody an email in Turkish.'

  'What sort of email?'

  'A personal email.'

  'I am not a translator.'

  'It's only three lines long.'

  A pause. I could see he was sizing me up, wondering why I needed to write something in Turkish.

  'What's your name?' he asked.

  I told him and proffered my hand.

  'I'm Kamal,' he said. 'And this translation – it is just three lines?'

  'That's right.'

  He pushed a pad toward me.

  'OK,' he said. 'Write.'

  I picked up the stub of a pencil that he placed on top of the pad and wrote, in French, the veiled communiqué I had been hatching in my head since waking up this afternoon:

  Dear Mrs Pafnuk

  I am the new resident of the room which Adnan used to live in. I was just wondering if there was anything he left behind that he needs to be sent on to him. Please send him my best wishes, and tell him I remain grateful to him for his kindnesses shown to me. I think of him often and would like to offer my assistance if his family is in need of any help.

  Yours sincerely

  And I signed it with my email address.

  I pushed the pad toward the guy. He looked down at the message.

  'It's five lines, not three,' he said, then flashed me the smallest of smiles.

  'You have the email address?' he asked.

  I handed over the scrap of paper slipped under my door.

  'OK,' he said. 'I take care of it.'

  He disappeared over to a terminal. A few minutes went by. He finished typing and said, 'It's sent.'

  'What do I owe you?'

  'One euro for the coffee, the whisky is on the house.'

  'And for the translation?'

  'Nothing.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'I knew Adnan.'

  That threw me.

  'Don't worry,' he said quietly. 'I know it wasn't your fault.'

  But so much is my fault.

  I was tempted to send Megan one more email – but figured she would now report it immediately to her mother, and Susan would then make good on her threat to get a barring order, and I wouldn't have the money to fight it, and any hope of ever seeing Megan again . . .

  Abandon all hope of that. Your ex-wife has ensured that she'll despise you forever.

  I spent the next few days in a depressed fog – going through the motions of my routine, but almost catatonic with grief as the realization hit home: My contact with Megan is over. Every day I checked my email, trying to convince myself that she mightn't have listened to her mother and decided to risk contact with me. But the mailbox remained empty . . . until, around a week later, when there was a reply waiting for me from Mrs Pafnuk. It was written in Turkish and Kamal translated it for me.

  Dear Mr Ricks

  I was very pleased to hear from you. So too was Adnan, whom I visited yesterday. He said that the conditions are dreadful, but he can do nothing except try to stay sane and see the time out. He sends you his best wishes – and asks me to convey to you his feelings of friendship, and hopes that you will look around his room carefully and see if you can find a storage area where he kept something very special. He senses that you have already found it – and know its contents – but are being understandably cautious. Please contact me again by email to let me know if you have found what he hopes you have found. Once again, my husband thanks you greatly for your assistance and sends you fraternal greetings.

  Sincerely,

  Mrs Z. Pafnuk

  When Kamal finished reading the email out to me in French, he pursed his lips and said, 'She obviously hired the local scribe in her village to write this for her.'

  'How can you tell?' I asked.

  'Adnan told me she could hardly read or write. He would come here twice a week to write her – and he would dictate to me what to write, because he also couldn't read or write that much either.'

  'So you're the local scribe here as well?'

  'You run an Internet café in a quartier like this, you end up writing many emails for people. But by this time next year, this café will be no more. Our lease is up in nine months – and I know that the landlord will double the rent. Because the quartier is changing. The French are moving back.'

  'The wealthy French?' I asked.

  'Bien sûr. The bobos. They're buying up all the loft spaces in the Tenth and pushing property prices w
ay up. I promise you, eighteen months from now this café will be a chic restaurant or a boutique that sells expensive soaps. Within two years, the only Turks you will find around here will be the waiters.'

  'And what will you do?' I asked.

  'Survive, comme d'habitude. Do you want to reply to this email?'

  'Yes,' I said and reached for a pad by the computer and scribbled:

  Dear Mrs Pafnuk

  I have found what Adnan left behind. How would you me to transfer it to you?

  Yours sincerely

  I handed the note to Kamal.

  'How much money did you find?' he asked.

  'How do you know it was money?' I asked.

  'Do not worry. I will not come to your room tonight, and beat you over the head with a hammer and take it.'

  'That's nice to know.'

  'So it was a large sum?' 'A good sum, yes.'

  He looked at me with care.

  'You are an honorable man,' he said.

  'No,' I said. 'I'm not.'

  Two days later, there was a return email from Mrs Pafnuk. She asked me to send the 'item' by Western Union telegraphic exchange to their office in Ankara. 'I will be visiting Adnan on Sunday and can collect it then.'

  After translating her email, Kamal said, 'There is a Western Union on the boulevard de la Villette, near the Belleville métro.'

  'I'll head there right after this.'

  'Come on, tell me. How much money did you find?'

  I hesitated.

  'OK, don't tell me. I was just curious.'

  'Four grand,' I said.

  He whistled through his teeth.

  'You must be very rich to have decided to inform Adnan's wife about all that cash—'

  'If I was rich,' I said, cutting him off, 'I would hardly be living in a chambre de bonne on the rue de Paradis.'

  'That is true,' Kamal said. 'Then you are evidently a fool.'

  I smiled.

  'A complete fool,' I said.

  I returned to my room and crouched down by the sink and removed the tile and pulled out the plastic bag. Then I stuffed every pocket of my jeans and my leather jacket with the rolled-up money. I felt like a drug dealer. It was around 5 p.m. Night was falling, and I moved quickly through the streets, terrified that irony might strike me at any moment, in the form of the first mugger I'd encountered in Paris – a thug who would have hit the jackpot had he decided I was a suitable target this evening. But my luck held all the way to the boulevard de la Villette. At the little Western Union branch, the clerk behind the grille – an African woman with an impassive face and eyes that showed her suspicion – said nothing as I dug out roll after roll of banknotes. When she had counted them all, she informed me that the cost of sending four thousand euros to Ankara would be one hundred and ten euros – and did I want this sum deducted from the four grand?

  I did want it deducted, but . . .

  'No,' I said. 'I'll pay for that on top of the four thousand.'

  After finishing the Western Union transfer, I returned to Kamal's café and had him email Mrs Pafnuk with the reference number she required for collecting the money. When he finished sending this communiqué, he got up and went behind the bar and produced a bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch, and said, 'Come on, we drink to your honesty and your stupidity.'

  Over the next hour, we drained most of the bottle of Scotch. It had been a very long time since I had downed so much alcohol in one go – and it felt pretty damn good. Kamal told me he was born in Istanbul, but arrived in Paris three decades ago as a five-year-old. 'My parents were legal immigrants, so there was no problem with the authorities. But being sent straight into a French school in Saint-Denis was a nightmare. I didn't speak a word of the language. Happily, nor did half the other children at the school. Still, I caught on to French quickly – because I had no choice. And now . . . now I have a French passport.'

  'But are you French?'

  'I see myself as French. But the French still see me as an immigré. You are always an outsider here unless you are French. It's not like London, where everyone is an outsider – the English included – so the city is a big stew. Here the French keep to the French, the North Africans to the North Africans, the Turks to the Turks. Tant pis. It doesn't bother me. It is just how things are.'

  He didn't reveal too much information about himself. There was a wife, there were two young children, but he mentioned them in a passing sort of way, and when I asked their names, he steered off that subject immediately, turning it back to me, finding out what I did in the States, and discovering that my marriage had recently ended.

  'Who was the other woman?' he asked.

  'That's a long story.'

  'And where is she now?'

  'That's another long story.'

  'You are being reticent.'

  'Like yourself.'

  A small smile from Kamal. Then: 'So what do you do now?'

  'I'm trying to be a writer.'

  'That pays?'

  'No way.'

  'So how do you live?'

  'With great care. Six weeks from now, my money will run out.'

  'And then?'

  'I have no idea.'

  'Are you looking for work?'

  'I have no carte de séjour – and it's very difficult for Americans to get work permits here.'

  'You could ask around at the various universities and colleges.'

  No, I couldn't – because that would mean them checking up on my background, and demanding references from the college where I taught for ten years. And once they found out what happened . . .

  'That would be difficult,' I said.

  'I see,' he said quietly, then reached for his cigarettes. 'So you are in a bad place, yes?'

  'That's one way of saying it.'

  'So . . . might you be interested in a job?'

  'Like I said, I'm illegal . . .'

  'That wouldn't matter.'

  'Why?'

  'Because the job I'm proposing wouldn't be legal, that's why.'

  Seven

  THE 'JOB' WAS an easy one.

  'It is a night watchman's job,' Kamal said. 'You come into an office, you sit there, you read, you write, you can even bring a radio or television if you like. You show up at midnight, you leave at six. That's it.'

  'That can't just be "it",' I said. 'There must be more to it than that . . .'