Dominique Manotti - Escape

Filippo hangs up. My talent . He savours the words, letting them roll around his mouth. This evening at the Café Pouchkine. The stunning Cristina. The dream machine goes into gear.

He arrives at the Café Pouchkine early and heads for the back of the room, towards the same table as last time, and sits where she had sat, his eyes riveted on the door. In his head, jumbled thoughts, the thrill of success, my book’s going to be published , and apprehension about the coming encounter. He is no longer the lost kid who slipped a manuscript into Cristina’s letter box only two or three weeks ago. He is already a writer, but how does a writer behave? He has no idea how to inhabit the role. He loves the idea the publisher hinted at, that Cristina and he could have written the book together. It sets his mind to building a whole new world that belongs to just the two of them. They work in the same cramped room, seated facing one another on either side of a desk that fills almost the entire space, in an apartment that must belong to her, but which he can’t see clearly yet. They swap pages covered in corrections, their hands brushing, their eyes meeting, a comment from time to time, the smell of her hair. He loves these moments of intimacy, just the two of them, like the ones he experienced with Carlo in their poky cell. But it is a dream. He shivers with the almost painful desire to exist in Cristina’s eyes, re-lives the moment he first met her, one of the secret reasons, perhaps the most powerful one, that had spurred him to write in the first place, which seems completely beside the point. He can admit now, perhaps, at last. He repeats over and over, I’m a writer. I wrote the book to make her look at me. She will look at me. One day, I’ll win her, she’ll be mine . But he can’t bring himself to believe it completely, to imagine how they will get together, the first moves, a seduction strategy. He doesn’t order a drink, but sits absolutely still, devoting himself to waiting, relishing it, straining towards the woman who will soon be joining him.

When she arrives, her elegant form silhouetted against the street lights, she waves to him. His stomach is in knots. She walks towards him in the half light, wearing a loose-fitting camelhair coat, open to reveal a little tight-waisted dark brown suit jacket, a white blouse, full breasts — he can’t breathe. She sits down, raises her arms, adjusts two wooden slides holding the mass of her copper hair in a chignon and lets her hair down. Attractive. She is aware of it, she uses it, she knows what she is doing. He doesn’t want to be seduced, he wants to be the seducer, the conqueror. He is worried. Background music, the Gilbert Bécaud song:

Il avait un joli nom mon guide,

Nathalie…

She sings along.

Je pensais déjà

qu’après le tombeau de Lénine,

on irait au café Pouchkine,

boire un chocolat…

My guide had a pretty name,

Nathalie…

I was already thinking

That after Lenin’s tomb,

We’d go to the Pushkin café

And drink hot chocolate…

She smiles at him.

‘I adore the owner of this bar. He’s a Russian with a great booming voice who worked as a tourist guide in Moscow for years. And at the end of each tour, people would always ask him if they could go for hot chocolate at the Café Pouchkine, which only exists in Bécaud’s song. There’s no such café in Moscow. He got fed up and found a way to get out of Russia and come here. He opened this Café Pouchkine, which the French dreamed of, here in Paris. Now, it’s a haunt of the white Russians. It’s a lovely story, isn’t it? For a novelist … Because you are a novelist, now.’

She laughs, and changes the subject. She’s clearly in a talkative mood.

‘What shall we drink, my friend? Chocolate isn’t suitable for the occasion. Champagne here is a bit risky. I’ll have a vodka, what about you?’

Furious with himself, he stammers, ‘Same.’

She motions to the barman then turns back to him.

‘Right, now tell me. I want to know everything. How did it go?’

‘Very well, easy, fast. He gave me a coffee, the contracts were ready to be signed. I was expecting something different, more of a conflict. Some sort of battle.’

‘You said the book’s coming out in May. That’s very quick, but not a very good time of year. September, when all the major books are published would have been better. What’s the initial print run?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s in the contract.’

‘I haven’t read it.’

‘You signed without reading it?’

‘There were a lot of pages. If I’d read it, I wouldn’t have understood anything.’ He is embarrassed. ‘And I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t read.’

Inwardly he chides himself for parading his naivety and vulnerability in front of this woman who is so sure of herself and so seductive. The barman brings the vodkas, giving him the chance to collect himself. As they clink glasses, she gazes at him with new eyes. A smooth face with a strong bone structure. Pale complexion, a well-defined mouth, a mass of black hair, dark brown eyes. A youthful, offbeat look. He, a small-time crook whose fate had led him to flirting with guns, terrorism, death and now writing. And still clueless. Frankly attractive, why not admit it to herself? Now he has entered her world, a world he knows nothing about. He needs to be initiated, protected, and she knows she can do that. She even wants to. She might feel less alone, and life would be more fun. Mentor, Pygmalion, hundreds of references, a wonderful role. An opportunity for the taking.

Filippo, ill at ease under her gaze, lowers his eyes, takes a sip, tries to take back the initiative: ‘The thing the publisher wanted to know was whether I’d written the book myself, all by myself. He seemed to have doubts…’

‘Doubts? But I promised him you had.’

Filippo jumps.

‘Promised … but how can you be so certain. You don’t know me.’

Cristina leans towards him laughing, perfectly relaxed.

‘Do you imagine, young man, that I would have given a publisher friend a manuscript handed to me by a virtual stranger without being able to vouch for its authenticity, at the risk of damaging my own credibility? I found an excuse to ask Antoine, your work colleague, to come to my clinic for an occupational health check-up. We chatted, and he told me how you spent your nights writing.’

A pause.

‘Come on, relax.’ She places her hand over his, a soothing gesture of familiarity. ‘I’m delighted to say, I found your colleague entirely convincing.’

Filippo turns pale, bows his head and feels his heart contract in his breast. Cristina’s touch makes him burn, he moves his hand away sharply, and toys with his glass. The vodka is setting his guts on fire. This woman … His desire evaporates. The memory of what had happened in the mountains assaults him, clouds his vision. He had felt the same pang deep in his heart when Carlo abandoned him (the cold, the miserable bag of provisions, total solitude), without then being able to understand the source of that pain. He had repressed it, tried not to think about it any more. A wasted effort, it is still there. But right now, in this café, he knows. Carlo talked of his escape. He had told him: We part company here . He alone made the decisions. Whether or not he’d said that to protect Filippo, it made no difference. The man who had enthralled him with descriptions of meetings where each person’s view was taken into account and arose from a collective consciousness, the outbursts of violence and the elation of the anonymous and leaderless crowd that had given him so much to dream about — that man had no right to decide his fate for him and without him. That was his betrayal. Filippo now knows that in writing about the escape, he has created a Carlo faithful to himself, more real, a Carlo he could legitimately love. And now, this woman he is determined to vanquish is behaving like the Carlo of the past. Young man … vouch for its authenticity … not damage my credibility … I asked your colleague, Antoine, to come to my clinic… In her hands, he is a thing, and she had taken the liberty of inquiring about him behind his back. She still sees him as a lost kid; she talked about his past whereas he dreamed of cavalcades, invasions and victories.