Another Country

Returning to the studio, she was amused, as though hearing again remarks they’d made through the evening. She felt the glow of laughter, of the wine, and the absurd, pretty lights in the vines around the bistro entrance. She wasn’t, after all, alone. She opened the small door, let herself in, and turned on the lights, harsh against the night. The single window in the living area glinted; across the courtyard she saw the light had been left on in the corridor toilet. She was tired; instead of undressing and getting into bed, she moved about dreamily, taking out a book but not looking at it, playing a song to which she was at present attached. She thought of smoking, and didn’t. Tiredness always took her this way, and the moment just after society found her as though congratulating or encouraging herself. See? Wasn’t it all right? But this conversation gave way to a tiredness that became more profound, and a sense of the smallness, strangeness, and meanness of the studio, its cunning provisional arrangements, like the platform bed and the folding chair. She didn’t go to bed for some time, for she didn’t look forward to waking up in the silence of this strange cubbyhole, and it was the same silence, at first apparently interrogatory, but in no time again indifferent, unchanging, that met her now.

Chapter 5

Rain: the day was chill and wore sad weeds. Inside the school, damp breathed through the corridors. Leela stood near the notice boards, unpacking her bag. Yes, her students’ exercises were there, a file’s worth of expensive paper, much of it squared and punched so that it could be filed; most people did their brief assignments on the ‘copies’ school children used. Pens, pencils, yes; hair band; tampons (she didn’t take them out); wallet, keys (the heart always fluttered as the fingers probed in the satchel with faux nonchalance, then open desperation); random bits of paper and receipts; Carte Orange; the novel she was reading; unidentified fluff.

She began to put it back, in similar disorder. Now again, inevitably, it would take nearly a minute to locate the Carte Orange at the turnstile; finding her key at the hobbit-like door of the studio would lead to the usual cardiac suspension.

Towards the end of the repacking, a small hand patted her elbow. She heard Nina’s friendly laugh. ‘Did you lose something?’

‘No, I just do this pathologically every time I arrive here or leave.’ Leela scoped the corridor to see if any of her students were about; they were quite far away. ‘I think it expresses my lack of composure about the job we do.’

Nina burst into an ongoing chuckle and held Leela’s arm again. She was sharply dressed, her fair hair piled up, red lipstick matching her cherry-red boots; her stockings were lacy. She smiled at Leela’s examination of her. ‘You’re developing the Parisian bitch-stare, eh.’

Leela laughed. ‘I might be. I couldn’t believe it when I first got here …’

Nina was still clutching her arm, and they began to walk towards the exit. ‘I know, they’re amazing, eh? That up-down when you get on the métro …’

‘Yeah. “Those shoes with that dress?”’

Nina said, ‘I went for a run the other day. I only took my Carte Orange and when I got on the métro at Tuileries these women were just looking at me because I was hot and sweaty and in a tracksuit.’

They were on the street, outside the school’s seedy looking entrance. A man cycled by, grizzled hair close-cropped, charcoal clothes indefinably stylish. The rain mizzled down.

‘What are you doing now?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Leela, hesitant to suggest lunch.

‘I’ve got loads of correcting to do.’

‘Yeah, me too.’

‘Want to come to my place? We could do our corrections together, maybe have something to eat? Nothing fancy, but I’ve got some nice cheese, and we could get some bread.’

‘Okay, I’d love to.’ Smiling, she let the other girl lead her towards the métro.

In the station their conversation became more muted, as though it were a misdemeanour to talk in English. They made their way to the platform, and sat on a bench. Both stared ahead, mesmerised by a pair of enormous posters. One showed a model in an embroidered top and jeans, smiling; the second, the same model in the same pose, but wearing underwear that matched the outfit.

‘Basically everything here is advertised with breasts?’ Nina asked.

‘Yep.’

‘I saw a poster in a shoe shop in Les Halles, with a naked woman and a pair of sneakers.’

‘Look at that.’ Leela pointed at a furniture ad: a photograph of a sofa, over which a voluptuous yet toned naked woman sprawled.

‘Hm.’

With a rushing and a clattering, the small train rattled into place, its lights flashing. Leela and Nina, an elderly lady near them, and a disaffected looking youth in baggy jeans and white hooded sweatshirt all moved towards the doors and reached for the handles.

The building Nina lived in was bourgeois in a quieter way than Leela’s; smaller, more subdued. There was no elevator. They walked through a dark hall, up a wooden staircase and to the third floor. Doisneau, said the name plate. Nina brought out a key.

The flat was unexpected – why? It had all the traces of another life, an established life not like Leela’s or her friends’: a hall table, letters, bills, an umbrella stand, pictures; in the living room, two tall, shuttered windows that opened onto a balcony. There was a table in one corner, a divan bed, a kilim, and a succulent plant that looked insolently comfortable. Leela was surprised to feel a pang of longing.

‘This is my room.’

She followed the other girl, who moved quickly, like a small nervous animal, pulling a curtain, opening a door.

The room was narrow and long; Nina’s bed lay against a wall, and there was a desk, with her laptop, a plant, a bookshelf, a hanging wardrobe.

‘It’s lovely,’ Leela said.

‘Do you want to see my family?’ Nina pointed at pictures in a collage on the wall: a balding, tall, outdoorsy man, and a plump woman with fine eyes stood outside a Scandinavian looking house on a hillside.

‘I like your house,’ Leela said.

‘It’s very typical of houses in New Zealand. There’s a lot of modern architecture, and trying to bring the outside in. That’s my brother.’ This was a tall, blond young man, handsome but pained.

‘He’s gorgeous. Is he coming to visit?’

Nina laughed. ‘No plans. He’s a poet, did I tell you? Or he wants to be one.’ She sighed. ‘He’s working in a petrol station, he’s got no money. It’s not easy.’

They passed again through the narrow room, into the small hallway, then back into the living room. Nina went to the kitchen, a neat, 1970s cupboard-lined area with colourful glass here and there, to make tea and take out the cheese. Her face crinkled. ‘Do you feel like a little glass of wine? I have a bottle open.’

Leela laughed. ‘Okay.’

They sat on either side of the table, their folders out and their faces growing warmer, their expressions more indistinct as they drank and laughed and ate cheese and bread and salad. A spear of sun slanted in through the window behind Nina, lighting part of her hair. Leela watched dust fall. She felt dazed, not by the wine, or the overtures of friendship as Nina told her more about Thomas, the guy from the concert. They’d gone out once or twice. ‘It’s not serious,’ she said, but her face was eager. ‘I’m not sure how much we have in common.’ It was instead the unspoken sense of their homes, in other countries: Leela’s a strange place familiar only from early childhood and emotion, the India to which her parents had unexpectedly returned, a place of silence, bird calls, a balcony next to her room, trees outside, and the life of the facing building; and Nina’s, the modern house in an open landscape, near a beach where Christmas Day was celebrated with a barbeque, and a student world of working in a Mexican restaurant in Auckland, and not getting New Year’s Eve off. For each girl, the other’s home was non-concrete, but superstitiously to be believed, in the way of a story heard in infancy; it held a reality that had nothing to do with experience. Both knew it, and it made them feel tender, as though for their own lives, which might have been continuing elsewhere.

‘I was wondering whether to bring him to Kate’s party, eh?’ Nina said.

‘Party?’

‘They’re having a party on Friday, remember? Kate said we could bring people.’

Leela thought she would ring Patrick; she could legitimately invite him to a party, with real French people. Surely he’d be glad. She turned self-consciously to the page in front of her and looked for mistakes.

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