Justin Go - The Steady Running of the Hour

— You mean the events in dreams, he says. You’re asking if they really happen.

Imogen nods. — If they happen somewhere. It needn’t be here.

Ashley considers for a moment.

— I expect you want a better answer. But they’re just dreams. I suppose our minds need something to work on in the night, so everything’s let loose, fear and desire. We may dream about real people and places, but that doesn’t make the dreams real.

— But this hardly seems real, Imogen says. It’s only been a few days and here we are together.

— This isn’t ordinary.

She smiles.

— No, she says. I suppose it isn’t.

Imogen sets the empty cup and saucer on the tray and climbs into bed beside Ashley, staring up at the ceiling. She says that at times this world seems certain to her, but at other times the world of dreams seems equally certain, or even more certain, for dreams cast a shadow over this world, while the present world hardly figures in the world of the night.

Imogen sits up and asks which of the two domains is more human, for this world is cold and stark and banal, and here all is governed by exacting calculation, from the moment of our birth to the chemical causes of our death. She says that all of science and mathematics is but the feeble discovery of these ruthless mechanisms, and in this world all the affection or pathos one could ever summon would not shift a single physical atom. She says that it is an unholy world where human souls are decided through mean reckoning of the trajectories of bullets or the multiplication of diseased cells.

Ashley moves to touch Imogen, but she catches his hand and grasps it.

— We deserve more than that, she says.

It is the domain of dreams, Imogen continues, that is crafted on the scale of the human heart and constructed of the same materials, and for this reason feels warm and vivid and familiar even as it is strange. It is in the world of the night, she tells him, that we are at last set loose from the trivial and the crass, and left to seek what is truly worthy. Imogen says finally that in dreams neither distance nor even death can prevent the meeting of two hearts of sufficient will, and surely this is the way our world ought to have been fashioned, and if it was not so fashioned she wants no part in it.

— It isn’t fair otherwise, she says. It just wouldn’t be fair.

Ashley comes to Imogen and wraps his arms around her. He holds her tight, watching her eyelids sink slowly with fatigue. When her breathing becomes soft and regular, he sets a feather pillow beneath her head.

Clothed only in his underwear, Ashley goes to the desk and takes a white card from the drawer. He writes a few lines on the card and studies them. He frowns and tears the card up, droppings the pieces in the wastebasket. He writes another card and reviews it carefully. When he is satisfied he hides the card inside her bag where it is not easily seen.

Ashley goes to the window and begins drawing the curtains closed with the rope. Through the paneled glass he sees the sky lightening faintly at its edges. He wonders if dawn is truly breaking, or if he is only imagining the coming of this light. He wishes he had not seen it. The two curtains meet in the center and cinch shut. Ashley climbs back into bed. He looks at the sleeping girl beside him.

— You’d want me to wake you, he whispers. We ought not to sleep tonight.

He smoothes the dark band of hair on her forehead. She stirs slightly. Ashley lies down beside her and shuts his eyes.

It’s my last night in Paris and I want to see as much as I can. When I come up the métro stairs at Châtelet the sky above is blue and black, beneath this a chandelier of yellow streetlamps. I cross the Seine on the Pont d’Arcole, the water riding fast below, and I sit on a bench in front of Notre Dame. For half an hour I stare at the cathedral, snapping photos and sipping wine from my water bottle, imagining the laborers and masons and bishops that pulled Notre Dame from the dirt of the Île de la Cité. They knew what they were doing. Even if it took a hundred years, they got it right in the end.

I take the Petit Pont to the Left Bank and pass into the Latin Quarter, skirting the periphery of the Sorbonne, then I climb the hill to the Pantheon, mausoleum of dead French heroes. On a nearby side street I pass a bar that looks interesting. I walk on half a block, then I turn back and go inside. The walls are layered with posters blackened from years of smoke. I sit on a stool and order a pression . The bartender pulls a small glass of lager from the tap and flips a beer mat before me and sets the foaming beer down.

On the way to Paris I’d bought a tin of cigarillos from a duty-free store in the airport. I’d seen them in pictures and always wanted to try them. I take the tin from my shoulder bag and light a cigarillo, smoking it until my throat begins to ache. A girl stands beside me, leaning on the counter as she waits to be served. She asks if I can spare a cigarillo. I pass her one.

— I can give you a cigarette in return, she says in French.

The girl has cropped hair and light gray eyes and there is a white flower pinned to her blouse. I thank her and tell her I don’t need a cigarette. We talk a little and when the girl learns I’m American she switches to English, which she speaks fluently with only a slight accent.

— That’s a beautiful camera. Can I see it?

I look at the girl. She wears a wool skirt and ballet flats, dressed up as though she expected to go somewhere nicer than this grimy bar. She asks the bartender for a whisky and soda. I unsling the camera from my shoulder and hand it to her. She turns it slowly in her hands.

— Where did you get this?

— It was my dad’s.

— He was kind to give it to you. You can’t buy such things these days.

The girl looks through the camera’s viewfinder toward the front door.

— How does it work? It’s different from my camera.

— See the two images in there? You have to line them up. It’s dark in here, you’d better open the aperture all the way. Probably won’t come out anyway. Maybe if you prop your elbows on the bar. And hold your breath—

She points the lens at me and turns the barrel to focus, sucking in a breath.

— Don’t move.

She pushes the shutter button gently. There is a faint click. The girl smiles and hands me back the camera.

— I don’t think I did it right.

— That’s OK. Half of my photos never turn out anyway.

— Are you in Paris to take pictures?

— No, I was doing research in some libraries. I got here on Sunday and I’m going to Amiens tomorrow—

The girl raises her eyebrows.

— Why would you go there?

— More research. Historical stuff about the Great War.

— That’s funny, she says. I grew up near there.

The girl explains she is from Noyelles-en-Chaussée, a commune in the Somme département not far from Amiens. Her name is Mireille and her friend farther down the bar is named Claire. They are both in their first year of art school. When she hears her name Claire smiles at me from down the bar, making a circular wave as though polishing an unseen window. Claire sits beside a studious-looking man in eyeglasses, the man speaking to her with intense concentration.

— A friend of hers? I ask.

Mireille leans in and smiles. — They just met.

— You’re out to make new friends in Paris?

— Claire wants to make new friends, Mireille says. She says I’m staying in my apartment too much, like an old lady. So we got dressed up and went out.

The bartender comes around again and I order another beer.