As he passed 60 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette he felt a sudden wave of nostalgia. He pictured Tasha’s miniscule loft, and the memory of the early days of their affair produced an ardent longing to share his life with her.
On Rue Fontaine he noted with satisfaction that the little notice was still up in the hairdresser’s window:
Shop and Apartment to Let
For information contact the concierge at 36b
He had made up his mind. He went in under the porch.
On Thursdays the courtyard overlooked by Tasha’s studio became the domain of the joiner’s little girls, who were energetically playing hopscotch using a wooden quoit. A washing line stretched from a second floor window to the acacia tree in the middle of the courtyard. On windy days Victor loved to watch the washing billow like the sails of a boat. He circled the water pump splashed white with bird droppings and made his way over to the back room of the hairdresser. He shaded his eyes to make out the layout of the room through the dirty window: it was a well-proportioned space. Once done up it would make a splendid photographic studio! … Yes, it was the ideal solution; he would only have a few yards to cross …
Tasha was leaning over a pedestal table mixing colours on her palette. Lemon yellow, Veronese green and Prussian blue echoed the tones of the canvas she was working on, which depicted a laurel branch and two ears of corn emerging from an iridescent vase. The slanting rays of sunshine caught the brilliant copper lights of her hair, which hung loose. On impulse Victor buried his face in the magnificent mane of red hair.
‘Victor! You gave me a fright!’ cried the young woman. ‘I should wipe my brush on your shirt! Oh, it doesn’t matter, I wasn’t getting anywhere anyway.’
She threw the corn and the laurel down beside a potted palm.
‘I’m sick of still lifes!’
Victor, sitting in a Tudor chair, watched her put the vase away in a sideboard, then turn back to her easel.
‘Tasha, am I preventing you from fulfilling your potential?’
‘Of course not, idiot, I’m just not up to it, that’s all! I’m incapable of distinguishing the incidental from the essential.’
‘You’re overworking! Sometimes less is more; take a step back. What are you trying to prove?’
‘Maurice Laumier says that …’
‘Oh please! For pity’s sake! Forget about him! He has no originality; he thinks theory obviates the need for creation. Theory, theory, that’s all he talks about!’
‘You really do hate him.’
‘I despise what your Laumier stands for; there’s a difference. He paints by numbers and he calls that art. What he’s really interested in is making a sale.’
‘First of all, he’s not my Laumier, secondly …’
‘I’m right and you know it. Good grief! You don’t have to bow to fashion! Explore your interior universe, search what Kenji calls “the chambers of the soul” … Excuse me, I’m getting carried away, but perhaps you should take more interest in other aspects of life, in people.’
‘Do you think so? That’s what Henri advocated … Come on, don’t look like that. You have no reason to be jealous; he’s just a kind friend, and he’s talented. I met him at the Salon des Indépendents6 and …’
‘I demand nothing of you, you are free.’
‘Oh, stop it, Victor. Please don’t be childish; it’s becoming tiresome.’
She knelt down before him, slid her fingers under his collar and caressed his neck. He relaxed, ecstatic to feel her so close.
‘Isn’t it hot in here?’ she murmured, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘There now, I need to see the only male model that inspires me.’
‘Now?’
‘Just a quick drawing, there, on the sofa. Come on, take everything off.’
She picked up a sketchbook.
‘I’ll call it Monsieur Récamier in the Nude. Stay still.’
She adjusted the position of his right arm across his chest. He embraced her, pulling her towards him, fumbling to unfasten her dress. The sketchbook slipped to the floor.
‘Oh well, the light isn’t very good,’ she said.
He kissed her on the nose, the forehead, the hair as she helped him to slip off her dress.
‘Tasha, marry me; it would make everything so simple.’
‘It’s too soon,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not ready; I don’t want children … Have you got any …?’
He looked at her intensely, propped on one elbow, patted the pocket of his frock coat and pulled out a box of condoms.
‘Victor, are you angry with me?’
‘You know perfectly well that I always make an effort to be careful, even without protection.’
He pushed a lock of hair back from her cheek.
‘We’ll have to wait a little before we move on to the serious business and I advise you not to laugh,’ he murmured, clasping her to him.
A little later, as they lay together on the narrow sofa, he came close to confessing that he had rented the hairdressers’ shop.
‘Tasha, I …’
But she silenced him with a kiss. Everything ceased to exist, except her. He no longer felt the need to explain. Ideas, the future; nothing mattered. She stretched; she was happy. Her eyes were shining. Her breasts rose and fell with her quickened breathing.
‘I adore you. But my back hurts. We’ll have to move to the bed!’ she said over her shoulder, already making for the alcove.
Grégoire Mercier’s sciatica was troubling him. How long had he been sheltering under the porch of this building under the suspicious eye of the concierge? Twenty, thirty minutes? And when would those two chatterboxes finally clear off?
He clutched his iron-tipped staff, anxious about his flock, left at home in the care of Berlaud. Angry that his find had been confiscated, the dog had registered his disgust by lying down and growling in Rocambole’s cubby hole. That was a bad sign, a very bad sign. Grégoire hoped he would not take it out on the kids. The dog was becoming unpredictable in his old age.
Grégoire Mercier went over to the window and turned his gaze on the woman nearest him, as if he could force her to leave by a simple exercise of will.
Unaware of the thought waves aimed at her, Mathilde de Flavignol refused to comply. Oppressed by a grief she felt unable to contain, she had come to the bookshop hoping to be comforted by the bookseller. The seductive young Monsieur Legris aroused a strange excitement in her. But she was out of luck; he was absent, no doubt off paying court to that Russian hussy. The slightly hunchbacked blond shop assistant was there on his own, munching an apple as he read the newspaper. Still, she preferred him to the other one, the Oriental with the inscrutable expression.
She had scarcely begun to explain that her mourning sash marked the suicide of poor General Boulanger in Belgium, driven to shoot himself on the grave of his lover Marguerite de Bonnemain, when a woman in a fine wool suit, her grey hair braided under a ridiculous Tyrolean hat, had come in.
‘It’s not my day; here’s the Valkyrie,’ muttered Joseph. Then, out loud, ‘Mademoiselle Becker, what a lovely surprise!’
‘Guten Tag, Monsieur Pignot. You’re going to help me out, I know!’
Madame de Flavignol learned that this German