Geoff Dyer - Paris Trance

Ahmed and Sally left at about four. Luke, Nicole, Alex and Sahra left later, their ears buzzing with noise. The city was at the quietest point in its day. The only people around were the garbage men and a few other strays who had been up all night. A single car circled the Bastille. It was too early and too late to go anywhere else: Lavigne’s was closed tight, and they were stacking the tables outside Lila’s. Sahra had to go in the opposite direction to the other three. Alex offered to walk her home but she was fine. They waved goodbye. Nicole and Luke said goodbye to Alex at his apartment.

Luke and Nicole showered and lay in bed. ‘It’s so lovely to go to bed and not have sex,’ Luke whispered. ‘Isn’t it?’ Nicole was already asleep. He lay on his back, unable to sleep, drifting. There will come a time, he thought, when I will look back on this night, when I will lie in another bed, when happiness will have come to seem an impossibility, and I will remember this night, remember how happy I was, and will remember how, even when I was in the midst of my happiness, I could feel a time when it would be gone. And I will realize that this knowledge was a crucial part of that happiness. . The same thought went through many remixes as he lay there, drifting, alert, sort of asleep.

They woke late but not late enough to feel rested. It began to rain. Nicole had to work. Luke washed up and meandered to his apartment. He passed a fountain he had not noticed before, struggling to hold its own in the rain. Alex came round in the late afternoon, miserable about Sahra.

‘I can’t work her out,’ he said to Luke.

‘Nor me.’

‘I mean, what does she want?’

‘Who knows?’

They were playing records, taking it in turns to flick through Pariscope , convinced that if they went through it one more time, there would be a film to go to.

‘This is the best city in the world for flms—’

‘Correct.’

‘—and there are still not enough films on.’

‘Also correct.’

‘In fact it’s useless for films.’

‘The truth is we probably spend too much time at the cinema. If we went less there would be more to see,’ said Luke. ‘Pass me Pariscope, could you?’

‘There’s nothing left to see,’ said Alex, handing it over. ‘We’ve reached saturation point.’

‘I can’t believe Strange Days isn’t on. Have you seen it?’

‘No.’

‘Now there’s a film for you, there’s cinema.’

‘I thought it was just a rehash of Blade Runner .’

‘Are you kidding? It’s the ultimate. The last word in cinema.’

‘Right up there with Chariots of Fire , yeah?’

‘ That’s what I’m in the mood for this afternoon. Something English.’

‘You’re right, it’s the kind of afternoon that makes you wish you were back in England, watching telly.’

‘What would you watch? Ideally. Apart from Chariots of Fire , I mean.’

‘Good question.’ Alex paused. ‘ Colditz , I think.’

‘Any particular episode?’

‘They were all great episodes.’

‘Basically you can’t go wrong with that genre.’

‘ Albert R.N. ’

‘ The Wooden Horse .’

‘ The One That Got Away. ’

‘Which one’s that?’

‘The one about the German fighter pilot escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp in England or Scotland.’

‘I remember asking my dad about that. About why so many English prisoners-of-war tried to escape and only one German. He said it was because they liked it in England. Good food, pleasant scenery.’

‘They’re always idyllic, POW camps.’

‘Especially Colditz, the TV one, I mean.’

‘The place in The Great Escape , that was the real Club Med of POW camps. There was so much to do there: tunnelling, getting rid of the sand, choir practice to cover up the noise of digging. .’

‘Forging papers, making escape suits out of blankets.’

‘Growing vegetables in the thin soil outside the hut.’

‘And football, always football.’

‘Elaborate systems of knocks, folding newspapers, whistling and tapping pipes to warn of approaching guards.’

‘Goons. Not guards, goons.’

‘Goons, right.’

‘Red Cross parcels.’

‘The commandant: basically a good sort.’

‘Studied in Oxford before the war. Hence his good English. Editions of Goethe on his bookshelf. Emphatically not a Nazi. Considers Hitler a vulgar little corporal, a man with no culture.’

‘The Geneva Convention.’

‘Simply a loyal officer of the Wehrmacht. Doing his duty but already resigned to Germany losing the war.’

‘But always, in the background, the shadow of the SS: the snake of threat in this carceral paradise.’

‘Still pretty nice though: a public school with the officers as prefects—’

‘The escape committee.’

‘And the odd Welsh—’

‘Taff!’

‘Or Scot—’

‘Jock!’

‘Or chirpy Cockney—’

‘Blimey!’

‘As fags, running errands. A little microcosm of England where everyone knows their place but all the classes, all ranks, muck in together.’

‘So why bother escaping? They’re home already.’

‘It’s the duty of every officer to escape.’

‘Thereby diverting troops that might otherwise have been used at the front.’

‘Plus the obligation to escape reinforces the pleasantness of being there. Without that there’d be nothing to do. Time would weigh as heavily on your hands as tunnel dirt. The purpose of escape is to make you cherish your time there, like last orders in a pub, to make you realize it’s not going to last for ever, this little public-school Eden.’

‘To escape. It’s an existential need.’

‘Plus it’s not really home. There are no women for a start.’

‘That’s not a problem. All sexuality is sublimated in the act of tunnelling. No women and no gays.’

‘There’s no boozer.’

‘Basically it’s not Civvy Street.’

‘Exactly.’

‘When I was young I used to think Civvy Street was this street in London where everyone worked and then went drinking afterwards.’

‘The border. Switzerland.’

‘Neutral Switzerland.’

‘Heading for the border, for neutral Switzerland, on the train.’

‘Sweating in your escape suit. Double-breasted, pinstripe. Trilby pulled down over your eyes, trying to hide behind your newspaper.’

‘Praying you don’t bump into that old bore Charles Bronson.’

‘Banging on about all the tunnels he’s dug. A real one track mind. Either that or throwing a tantrum about being claustrophobic.’

‘Half the passengers on the train are escaped POWs.’

‘Rush-hour on the Switzerland Express. Standing room only.’

‘The Gestapo getting on the train.’

‘Brown leather overcoats. Buttoned up. A creaking sound as they move up the carriage, checking documents, peering.’

‘Sweating even more in your escape suit, so much so that the makeshift dye is forming a small blue pool at your feet.’

‘Clutching your forged inter-rail pass.’

‘Wishing to God you hadn’t flunked German O level.’

‘And he says to you in his Rommel German: “Guten Morgen, can I see your papers?” Trying to catch you out by throwing in a bit of English.’

‘You’re about to make a run for it —’

‘Then you realize he’s an escaped POW as well, disguised as a member of the Gestapo, winding you up.’

‘Hissing at him as he sits next to you: “You’re a damn fool Hargreaves!”’

‘Ah, I feel better.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Me neither.’