William Boyd - On the Yankee Station - Stories

There are lots of girls I’d like to fuck who do courses with me at the Centre. Lots. I sit there in the class with them and think about it, unable to concentrate on my studies. I’ve spoken to a few people but I can’t as yet call any of them friends. I know a Spanish girl and an English girl but they both live outside Nice with their parents. The English girl is called Victoria and is chased all day by a Tunisian called Rida. Victoria’s father was a group captain in the R.A.F. and has retired to live in Grasse. “Out to Grasse,” Victoria calls it. Somehow I don’t think the group captain would like Rida. Victoria is a small, bland blonde. Not very attractive at all, but Rida is determined. You’ve got to admire his persistence. He doesn’t try anything on, is just courteous and helpful, tries to make Victoria laugh. He never leaves her side all day. I’m sure if he perseveres, his luck will turn. Victoria seems untroubled by his constant presence, but I can’t see anything in Rida that would make him attractive to a girl. He is of average height, wears bright-coloured, cheap-looking clothes. His hair has a semi-negroid kink in it which he tries to hide by ruthlessly brushing it flat against his head. But his hair is too long for this style to be effective and it sticks out at the sides and the back like a helmet or an ill-fitting navy cap.

There are genuine pleasures to be derived from having a room of one’s own. Sometimes at night I fling back the covers and masturbate dreamily about the girls at the Centre. There is a Swedish girl called Danni whom I like very much. She has big breasts and long white-blond hair. Is very laughing and friendly. The only trouble is that one of her legs is considerably thinner than the other. I believe she had polio when young. I think about going to bed with her and wonder if this defect would put me off.

***

My relationship with Mme. D’Amico is very formal and correct. We converse in polite phrases that would not disgrace a Victorian drawing room. She asks me, one day, to fill out a white fiche for the police — something, she assures me hastily, every resident must do. She notices my age on the card and raises her eyebrows in mild surprise. She says she hadn’t supposed me to be so young. Then one morning, apropos of nothing, she explains why she reads everything that appears on TV. It seems that Mme. Franchot is illiterate. If Mme. D’Amico didn’t relate them to her, she would never even know the names of the old films we watch nightly on Monte Carlo TV. I find I am surprisingly touched by this confidence.

One evening I go to a café with Rida after our courses and meet up with some of his Tunisian friends. They are all enrolled at one educational institution or another for the sake of the carte d’étudiant . They tell me it’s very valuable, that they would not be allowed to stay in France if they didn’t possess one. Rida, it has to be said, is one of the few who actually tries to learn something. He shares a room with a man called Ali, who is very tall and dapper. Ali wears a blazer with brass buttons which has a pseudo-English crest on the breast pocket. Ali says he bought it off a tourist. The English style is très chic this year. We drink some beer. Rida tells me how he and Ali recently met a Swiss girl who was hitch-hiking around Europe. They took her back to their room and kept her there. They locked her in during the day. Rida lowers his voice. “ On l’a baissé,” he tells me conspiratorially. “Baisser. Tu comprends?” He says he’s sure she was on drugs, as she didn’t seem to mind, didn’t object at all. She escaped one afternoon and stole all their stuff.

The café is small, every shiny surface lined with grease. It gets hot as the evening progresses. There is one very hard-faced blond woman who works the cash register behind the bar; otherwise we are all men.

I drink too much beer. I watch the Tunisians sodomise the pinball machine, banging and humping their pelvises against the flat end. The four legs squeal their outrage angrily on the tiled floor. At the end of the evening I lend Rida and Ali twenty francs each.

Another phone call when I’m alone in the flat. It’s from a doctor. He says to tell Mme. D’Amico that it is all right for her to visit her husband on Saturday. I am a little surprised. I never imagined Mme. D’Amico had a husband — because she always wears black, I suppose. I pass on the message and she explains that her husband lives in a sanatorium. He has a disease. She starts trembling and twitching all over in graphic illustration.

“Oh,” I say. “Parkinson’s disease.”

“Oui ,” she acknowledges. “C’est ça. Parkingsums.”

This unsought-for participation in Mme. D’Amico’s life removes another barrier. From this day on she uses my first name — always prefixed, however, by “Monsieur.” “Monsieur Edward,” she calls me. I begin to feel more at home.

I see that it was a misplaced act of generosity on my part to lend Rida and Ali that money as I am now beginning to run short myself. There is a postal strike in Britain which is lasting far longer than I expected. It is quite impossible to get any money out. Foolishly I expected the strike to be short-lived. I calculate that if I radically trim my budget I can last for another three weeks, or perhaps a little longer. Assuming, that is, that Rida and Ali pay me back.

***

When there is nothing worth watching on television I sit at the window of my room — with the lights off — and watch the life going on in the apartments round the courtyard. I can see Lucien, the patron of the Cave Dante, sitting at a table reading a newspaper. Lucien and his wife share their apartment with Lucien’s brother and his wife. They all work in the café. Lucien is a gentle bald man with a high voice. His wife has a moustache and old-fashioned black-framed almond-shaped spectacles. Lucien’s brother is a big hairy fellow called Jean-Louis who cooks in the café’s small kitchen. His wife is a strapping blonde who reminds me vaguely of Simone Signoret. One night she didn’t draw the curtains in her bedroom properly and I had quite a good view of her undressing.

I am now running so low on money that I limit myself to one cup of coffee a day. I eat apples all morning and afternoon until it is time for my solitary meal in the university restaurant up by the fac du droit . I wait until the end because then they give away free second helpings of rice and pasta if they have any left over. Often I am the only person in the shining well-lit hall. I sit eating bowl after bowl of rice and pasta while the floors are swabbed around me and I am gradually hemmed in by chairs being set on the tables. After that I wander around the centre of town for a while. At half nine I make my way back to the flat. The whores all come out at half nine precisely. It’s quite amazing. Suddenly they’re everywhere. Rue Dante, it so happens, is right in the middle of the red light district. Sometimes on my way back the girls solicit me. I laugh in a carefree manner, shrug my shoulders and tell them I’m an impoverished student. I have this fantasy that one night one of the girls will offer to do it free but so far I’ve had no success.

If I’ve saved up my cup of coffee for the evening, my day ends at the Cave Dante. I sit up at the zinc bar. Lucien knows my order by now and he sets about making up a grande crème as soon as I come in the door. On the top of the bar are baskets for brioches, croissants and pizza. Sometimes there are a few left over from breakfast and lunch. One night I have a handful of spare centimes and I ask Lucien how much the remaining bit of pizza costs. To my embarrassment I still don’t have enough to buy it. I mutter something about not being hungry and I’ve changed my mind. Lucien looks at me for a moment and tells me to help myself. Now every night I go in and finish off what’s left. Each time I feel a flood of maudlin sentiment for the man, but he seems uneasy when I try to express my gratitude.