14 A DULL SNOW
14
A D ULL S NOW
When they ran into each other in the living room the next day, they grumbled their good mornings.
Roger came out of his bedroom wearing his parka.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
He was surprised by the question just as much as its formulation.
“Me? To the dry cleaners.”
“I’d forget about that if I were you.”
“Excuse me?” He still didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You can’t leave the house.”
That put him in a bad mood. For however hurt Barbara felt, he didn’t understand how, all of a sudden, she planned to forbid him from leaving the apartment to collect the pants he’d badly stained and taken to professional hands for cleaning the week before. He needed them. He’d come to Paris with very few clothes.
“Have you looked out the window?” Barbara asked, as calmly as a magician who knows his cards are marked.
Roger drew close to the window. At that point, a dull snow was falling like loose cotton balls lollygagging their way to the ground.
“There’s a foot of snow. I’m not too scared to ...” He made a motion to leave.
“A foot, you say? There’s been almost five feet of snowfall in the span of only a couple of hours. Bertrand Delano?’s come out to warn Parisians of all types to stay inside.”
“Who is Delano??”
“The mayor. He put out a message. Everyone to be shut in until further notice.”
He looked out the window again.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No.”
“Because of the fucking snow?”
“You can remove your jacket and take it easy. They said on the radio that there’s never been so much accumulation of snow in the month of March in Paris proper since almost one hundred years ago. The strangest part is that it’s so far into the year. Today is ...”
“Monday, the thirty-first. Tomorrow, it’ll already be April 1.”
Roger didn’t take off his parka. Moved to do the opposite, he angrily went to his room, stuffed his camera in his bag, put on his wool hat, and grabbed his gloves. He’d put them on once he was outside.
“I’m going to take photos ... Today will be amazing with all the snow and empty streets.”
“Pick up your pants. Don’t forget to do that especially.”
He closed the door and went down the five floors, convinced that if the day looked up and it stopped snowing, he’d get some special shots. The extreme cold and green-tinted light was a winning combination. When he got to the door of the building, he tried opening it but found it to be difficult. The exit door resisted. He put some force into pulling it toward him. After the third tug, he managed to open it. Before him, however, was a block of snow. So much had accumulated that it had reached the height of his shoulders. It was impossible to leave. There was no way of clearing the obstruction, or jumping over it. Where could he go? Behind that shelf of snow, there must be another one. Or more. All of Montmartre must be a sea of snow five feet deep, stretching from one side of the street to the other so there was no way of moving. The exit was completely barred. He took out his camera and snapped a picture of the door walled in by the polar whiteness. The snow in front of him was still clean, with a powdery texture. Once he took the picture, he returned to the apartment.
“You’re back already?” Barbara asked as ironically as she could. “Are the dry cleaners closed on Mondays?”
“It’s amazing. You have to go down and see it.”
She had been waiting for him, feeling snide. “Or maybe you just weren’t able to leave ...”
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Roger continued, surprised by what he had seen. “Did they say it’ll last a couple of days?”
“It depends. First it has to stop snowing, and it shows no signs of stopping, and then we’ll see.”
“What’d the mayor say exactly?”
“To be patient, stay calm, make sure every family’s groceries last, because they don’t know how long it will be until we return to normal life.”
“Are we in confinement?”
“That’s the word he used, yes.”
“But there must be some prediction, he must have given a hint as to how long we’ll be ...”
He walked up and down the apartment as though he needed to pee. He finally took off his coat.
“Get used to the idea that life has stopped. Nothing’s happening. We’re fine, the heating works, we have food.”
“It’s absurd.” He set his parka on the couch. “There must be machines in Paris that get rid of ...”
“At this thickness? Throughout the whole city? Impossible.”
“I can’t make heads or tails of this situation. We’re losing out on days of our lives.”
“Now, it’ll just be—” She thought it was funny seeing how Roger took it so badly. He looked like a caged panther. “Look, it’ll be however many days it’ll be. Just don’t think of tomorrow as April 1.”
“No, it’ll be March 32 if you like.”
“Why not? Time has stopped. It’s not too bad. Sometimes it’s good for unexpected things to happen. Sometimes there are greater forces at work that destroy it all. You’ve never thought about it?”
“No.” It was an offended and contrarian response.
“It’s a good reality check. Springtime snowfalls are sometimes the worst ones. Sometimes nature puts us in our place.”
“You’re getting on my nerves.” He threw himself on the couch, lazily, surrendering.
They spent some time in silence. Roger took his camera out of his bag and looked at the photo of the snow-blocked doorway he’d taken five minutes earlier. It wasn’t much to look at, but he kept it to remember that historic snowfall. The snowfall of March 32, 2008.
Barbara sat in front of her computer, navigating through online newspapers. Each one reported the mayor’s words across the front page. All the media outlets, every single one, printed photos by people from their homes that were being posted on social media. Other outlets published photo stories that were like postcards. Back when it was still possible to travel and the snow hadn’t yet paralyzed the city, the newspapers had taken pictures of the frozen benches at the Tuileries Palace, the indiscreet footprints of a dog on the pont Alexandre III, the virgin snow covering the Rive Gauche on the Seine, or the powdered paddles of le Moulin de la Galette, unlike anything Renoir or Toulouse-Lautrec had surely ever seen. No wind could have turned the windmill blades weighed down by the heavy white. All of a sudden, the city of light, covered by snow, was a black-and-white landscape. “Hidden Paris” was the headline of the France Soir .
“In your experience,” Roger asked like he didn’t want to know the answer, “will we be able to leave the day after tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this,” she responded without turning around. “Where I’m from, it snows maybe once every twenty years. And never to this degree.”
“Of course.”
“And maybe what you’re sad about—” she started.
“What? Say it.”
“What you’re sad about is that you can’t go see the waitress.”
A low blow. He took it because he’d been expecting it.
“Hey, do me a favor. Let’s make a truce. Can you look at me, please?”
She turned the chair so Roger was in front of her. She realized she’d taken it too far. She didn’t know where that impulse had come from, but it wasn’t the time to let go.
“What’s going on?”
“I think I’ve already apologized. If we have to spend the next two or three days locked up here, let’s play nice. This is my suggestion. I know we’re in your house, and it’s your space and whatever, but I can’t go flying out the window.”
“I think it’s a smart ... pact.” Barbara couldn’t stop herself from taking a jab. “Especially coming from you.”
With a small smile that was more of an olive branch than a sincere commitment, the two entered an agreement.
It continued to slowly snow throughout the afternoon. Every time it looked as though everything that was supposed to fall had fallen, the snowflake factory would start up again. The gray sky did not foreshadow that the weather might change before the next day. Barbara sat on the couch to call her mamie and see if all was well at the retirement home. They, too, were up to the rafters in snow but had been advised not to worry. Everything was under control. Barbara explained that she had gone down to check on Jasper and to see if he needed anything. The man had made her look at his pantry, and she realized it was even fuller than her own. She didn’t have to worry about him. He wasn’t missing anything. He was prepared for war. They even shared a laugh, because Jasper had stocked up piles and piles of toilet paper just in case he needed it. Roger heard the conversation between Barbara and her grandmother from his bedroom. He didn’t listen, but he waited for them to hang up before he went back out. He had taken off his turtleneck sweater, and he had on a worn Harvard University T-shirt.
“Have you ever been?”
“Where?” Roger didn’t know what she was referring to.
“To Harvard, man.”
“No, no.” He sat on the other end of the couch. “Someone gave this to me.”
“The cold gets much worse there than it does here. These kinds of storms happen every year there.”
“It’s not for me, then.”
“It’s worth visiting. I went there once for a weeklong seminar on postwar plots in the North American novel.”
“Fascinating.”
“Very. Are you making fun of me?”
“No, no.” Roger became serious. It was a trick he pulled not to burst into laughter. “You’ve read so many novels by so many people that surely you’ve read something that gives you goose bumps. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days. Why don’t you write?”
Barbara became as still as stone. “Me?”
“Yes, of course. Your own works. I don’t know. They don’t have to be stories, since everyone tries that out.”
“Did you know no one’s ever asked me that question? What’s more”—she took off her shoes and sat on her feet on the sofa—“I’ve never asked myself that question.”
“And could you come up with a response?”
“Now?”
“No, I want it in two days. Yes, now, of course. Do we have anything better to do? There’s nothing to do in this house. There’s no television. Or books.”
“Well, that’s not true. I won’t let you have this one. My computer and e-reader are full of books.”
“Those aren’t books, woman. I mean real books, made of paper.”
“There’s also one book made out of paper.”
“The one that your grandfather gave your grandmother, it’s true.”
“I showed it to you, right? The dedication he wrote to her is so ... Did you see?”
“You told me about it, but you never actually—”
Barbara placed her feet on the ground and started to get up off the sofa. Roger stopped her, putting his hand on her forearm.
“I’m going to find it for you,” she said.
“After.”
“So that you can see it ...”
“Don’t try to get out of this.” He let her go, seeing that Barbara had sat down again and noticing they had never had such long physical contact.
“First, respond to my question.”
“I need time to think about it, Roger. It’s not the kind of thing you can respond to quickly.”
“If there’s one thing we have, it’s time.”
“That’s true,” she agreed, nodding.
“What do you think? In the middle of the twenty-first century, we’ve been given the gift to converse like it was five hundred years ago. Is there anything better? Is there anything more ancient? If we had a fireplace, we’d be like our great-grandparents.” He rubbed his hands, pulled them apart, and clapped them back together to signal she was taking too long. “So?”
Barbara started to slowly gather her thoughts. She had no choice.
“I don’t write because I don’t have anything to say. I don’t write because I wouldn’t know how. I don’t write because I’d rather read than write. I don’t write because there are millions of people who already do it and do it well. There are probably two thousand people in France alone who could do it better than I could if I tried telling a story. I don’t have an imagination, I don’t have the skill for it, nor do I have the most fascinating people around me whose lives I can pull into a book that swings between reality and fiction.”
“Uh, thanks ...”
She didn’t hear him. She’d been absorbed by the question. Now that she had started to reflect, she needed to continue the introspection.
“And I don’t do it, most of all, because I’m conscious that in life, there are two types of people: main characters and side characters. And I’m the second kind.”
“Don’t undersell yourself.”
“I’m explaining reality, the way it is. The main characters have titles. They’re on the radio. They’re interviewed. When they die, it’s news. Someone even pays for their obituary. They’re writers, but they’re also politicians and businesspeople and singers. Sarkozy’s wife—”
“Which one?”
“The third one.” Her name was on the tip of her tongue. “The singer. Carla Bruni. She was a model. She’s a singer. She’s the first lady of France ... At every point in her life, she’s been the main character. Chapeau to her. But side characters have the role of existing; we’re limited to knowing only who she is. Sometimes we buy her CDs, we hum ‘Quelqu’un m’a dit’ confidently, and, if we’re lucky and well connected, maybe one day we see a fashion show at an elegant palace where she walks down the aisle. Suddenly, right when she’s in front of you, she spins around and returns back where she’s come from. That’s it. You’ve seen a main character up close. This makes us side characters happy. Sometimes you run into a main character at a restaurant. Nothing happens. It’s a spectacle. There are few of them, there are many of us. The majority of the world throughout all of human history are side characters. We’re filler, we’re trash ... Our lives are assumed and managed. But we also have the right to be happy, god dammit. And sometimes we’re happier than even the main characters.”
“Happy? Of course. Look at you.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No, no.”
“What’s wrong? I love the work I do. I’m in the book world, I’m lucky to sell the international rights for novels, and I’m happy. I’m sure I enjoy my job more than most writers who have long lines at book signings and full theaters when they present their latest nonsense. What’s wrong, why are you looking at me like that?”
Roger had raised his brow, shocked.
“If you’ll let me ... Can I put in my two cents on the subject?”
“I have no choice but to say yes, right?”
“That’s a rather conformist perspective on life. Because everything is predetermined, there’s no reason to have ambitions ... You’ve been given the role of side character, and someone else is the main character. Bad luck. The cards had already been drawn.”
“It’s not that. Do you want tea, Roger?”
“No.”
“Sometimes, even normal people—because they work for it or play tennis well or because they write a dystopian novel that becomes a bestseller—from here to Melbourne, go from anonymity to stardom. And in that moment, we still prefer fairy tales, because a nobody has become the main character. That happens, and you know it does. You can’t say it doesn’t.”
“There have been cases, yes.”
“But it’s so infrequent that, when it happens, you appear in the newspaper. Why? Because it’s news.”
He couldn’t come up with a quick argument to refute her.
“Have you ever been in the newspaper?” he asked.
“No, nor do I need to be. And you?”
“I ...” It wasn’t the time for the long version of the story. He cut it short. “I worked in the news for a long time. I was a newspaper photographer.”
“That’s different.”
“Of course. It has nothing to do with it. At the most, my name was printed vertically next to a photo, and that’s it. By the way ...” He needed to change the subject. “Speaking of dedications. You were about to show me something from your grandfather.”
“Oh, now you want to see it?” She got up from the couch. “That’s it? So, we’re just done with the subject?”
“Come on.”
“Thank you for the therapy, then. What’d you say about the tea?”
“No. No, thanks.”
Barbara went to her room, which had been Mamie’s room before that. In any case, the book had always lived in the same place. On the dressing table, in front of the mirror, as if every day it had been opened and read and reread until it was memorized.
She returned shortly with the volume in her hands.
“It’s the last gift my grandfather gave to my mamie.” She placed an old copy of One Thousand and One Nights in his hands. Roger took it carefully. The pages, some of the edges having been frayed, still held together from lack of use. The carefully sewn seams showed through the spine. “Have you read it?”
“Let’s just say ... One Thousand and One Nights ?” He was on the verge of lying, but he figured he’d be caught and opted for the truth. “Not yet.”
“It’s the book everyone knows but no one reads.”
“It makes me feel better that I’m not an exception then.” He opened it to the middle, turned some pages, and breathed in the book’s scent. “What’s it about?”
“Oof, what a question ...”
“Tell me like you have to sell me the rights.”
She closed her eyes, thought about how to explain it, and began to thread together an appealing synopsis, as though it were a sale to a potential client. She did it passionately, like there was an editor across from her.
“Shahryar is the Persian king who, every morning, decapitates the woman he’s spent the previous night with. He executes them, convinced all women will betray him like his first wife did. But there is one woman, Scheherazade, the daughter of a vizier, who, to avoid becoming the next victim, comes up with a genius idea. Each night, she tells him an extraordinary tale, but she does it with a catch. When the sun comes up, she leaves the story at a cliff-hanger so the king doesn’t kill her, because he wants to know how the story continues the next day. Thanks to the suspense, Scheherazade is able to continue living this way for a thousand and one nights.”
Roger let her finish, and he smiled mischievously.
“I’m sure all that rings a bell from school. Nice explanation.”
“Thank you. Will you buy it or what? Do you want to publish the book?”
He hesitated. “You wouldn’t be able to write a story like that now.”
“Why not?”
“Everyone walks on eggshells these days. Maybe it could be written, but it sure wouldn’t be published. A topic like that wouldn’t be allowed.”
“No, no. Literature is past all that. It’s a form of artistic expression, and anything goes. Everyone must be free to write what they want.”
“A serial killer who goes after women? Just picture it ... No one would buy it from you.”
“Quite the opposite. Look at it this way. It’s a novel about the power of words. Scheherazade is able to tame the beast just by talking. Yes, the power of words. By speaking, people understand one another. It’s a victory for pacifism. It’s a book that transcends time.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know ... Maybe you’re right, Barbara. You know more about all that.”
He touched her forearm again. This time it was congratulatory for her convincing presentation. She slapped his hand off of her.
“Do you want to read it now or what?”
“The book?” He shook his head as if to say he had no choice. “Yes, the dedication. Can I read it?”
“That’s why I brought it.”
He moved his hand away to look for the page, dragging his eyes across the right-hand pages until he found it. It was there in front of him. Barbara watched how Roger’s lips murmured what Grandfather Damien had written for Mamie in blue ink more than sixty years ago. The writing was clear, slightly shaky with nervously drawn letters. But the text itself, centered on the page, evoked a certain tranquility. Slowly Roger discovered each syllable as he followed them with his ring finger.
Margaux,
My nights have been few. But in each and every one of them, the need to see your eyes has kept me alive. It’s impossible to love anything more than I love you.
Music and a thousand and one kisses,
Damien