Paris Nocturne

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LATE AT NIGHT, a long time ago, when I was about to turn twenty-one, I was crossing Place des Pyramides on my way to Place de la Concorde when a car appeared suddenly from out of the darkness. At first I thought it had just grazed me, then I felt a sharp pain from my ankle to my knee. I fell onto the pavement. But I managed to get up again. The car swerved and collided with one of the arcades surrounding the square in a shower of broken glass. The door opened and a woman stumbled out. A man who happened to be at the entrance of the hotel under the arcade ushered us into the lobby. We waited, the woman and I, on a red leather sofa while the man made a phone call from reception. She was cut along the hollow of her cheek, on her cheekbone and on her forehead, and the cuts were bleeding. A huge man with short brown hair came into the lobby and walked towards us.

Outside, they surrounded the car, which stood with its doors hanging open, and one of them took notes as if for a report. As we got into the police van, I realised that I was missing my left shoe. The woman and I were sitting side by side on the wooden bench. The huge brown-haired man sat on the bench opposite us. He was smoking and glanced at us coldly from time to time. Through the barred windows I could see that we were driving along Quai des Tuileries. I hadn’t been given time to collect my shoe, and I thought about how it would stay there, all night, in the middle of the pavement. I could no longer tell whether I’d lost a shoe or an animal, the dog from my childhood that had been run over when I lived on the outskirts of Paris, Rue Docteur-Kurzenne. Everything was getting muddled in my mind. Perhaps I hit my head when I fell. I turned to the woman. I was surprised she was wearing a fur coat.

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