Douglas Kennedy - Woman in the Fifth

I slammed the door in his face. He immediately began to pound on it.

‘You pay me one thousand euros by end of the week, or you are man who will lose his balls. You no fuck with me.’

There are moments in life when you feel as if you are in freefall. This downward spiraling motion is underscored with the knowledge that you have stumbled into something so potentially dangerous and maniacal — all because you have engaged in that most commonplace of male displacement activities: thinking with your prick.

I forced myself into the shower and into some clothes and out on to the street. Mr Beard glowered at me when I came into the cafe to collect my pay packet — did he already know what had happened as well? — but we exchanged no words, which was no bad thing just now, as any verbal utterances caused immense pain. My stomach was rumbling, I knew that solid food would also be a problem. So I hit upon a grim option: a chocolate milkshake at the McDonald’s by the Gare de l’Est. It was raining as I entered its portals. At three on a wet afternoon, there were a handful of travelers grabbing fast-food provisions before catching a train. Largely, however, the people huddled at the plastic tables eating plastic food were those who lived on the streets. Or they were immigrants — a melange of African and Middle Eastern faces — who saw this dump as nothing more than a cheap meal. Looking at my fellow diners, all I could feel was a curious solidarity with these people who lived in Paris and yet really lived outside of it; who had few opportunities here; who were quietly ignored or despised by everyone doing better than just ‘getting by’. But in expressing camaraderie with my fellow outsiders, I knew I was playing the hypocrite. After all, I longed for the other side of the Parisian divide — a nice apartment, an intellectual (yet chic) cinephile girlfriend; dinners in good restaurants; drinks at the Flore (and not worrying about the exorbitant prices they charged); a little bit of literary fame and its attendant fringe benefits (invitations to salons du livre ; being asked to write the occasional reflective article for Liberation or Lire ; more women). Instead I was a self-marginalized loser — and currently a fearful one, as I wondered if Omar really would shop my ass to Yanna’s husband.

The catastrophist in me invented ten different ruinous scenarios, all of which centered around sexually transmitted diseases and grievous bodily harm being meted out by a gang of angry Turkish gentlemen.

But once the thousand euros was handed over to Omar, then what? Paying a blackmailer does not guarantee the cessation of threats. From my extensive knowledge of film noir and dime-store mysteries, I knew that, au contraire , it usually signaled the start of an intensive campaign of menace. And Omar was stupid enough to think that he was smart enough to get me cornered and keep the hush-money game going for as long as I lived in fear of disclosure.

Which meant that I couldn’t give in to the slob in the first place. But how to cut him off at the pass?

Margit would have an interesting answer to that question. But Margit was the last person to whom I could tell any of this … for obvious reasons. I lived in dread of seeing her in two days’ time, as all sorts of questions would be raised about my distended tongue and the scratch marks on my ass from Yanna’s exceptionally sharp nails.

For the next forty-eight hours, time flowed like cement. Everything seemed interminably long, overshadowed by my fears of disclosure and disease. However, I did do something sensible: I took myself off to a walk-in medical clinic on the boulevard de Strasbourg. The doctor on duty was a thickset man in his mid-fifties with thinning hair and an indifferent seen-it-all countenance. He looked at my tongue and appeared impressed.

‘How did this occur?’

I told him.

‘ Ca arrive ,’ he said with a shrug, then explained that there was little he could do to cure a badly bitten tongue. ‘Keep rinsing it in salted water to keep the wound clean. Otherwise it must heal on its own. Within a week the swelling will diminish. I would also suggest to your “ petite amie ” that she doesn’t demonstrate her ardor in such an aggressive way the next time you make love.’

‘There isn’t going to be a next time,’ I said.

Another indifferent shrug. ‘ Tres bien, monsieur .’

I then detailed my worry about having unprotected sex with Yanna.

‘She is French?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but her husband is Turkish.’

‘But he lives here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is she an intravenous drug user?’

‘I don’t think so?’

‘Her husband?’

‘He’s a drunk.’

‘Do you think she sleeps with other men? More specifically, Africans?’

‘She’s a racist.’

‘In my experience, you can be a racist and still have sex with those you allegedly despise. Are you having unprotected sex with anyone else?’

‘Yes, but … I do not think there is any risk involved.’

‘A final question then,’ the doctor asked. ‘Might you have any cuts or wounds in or around your genitalia?’

‘Not to my knowledge. But if you wouldn’t mind taking a look.’

Another shrug — this time accompanied by a bored sigh. He reached behind him and grabbed a small bag from an easy-to-reach pile, opened it and began to pull on surgical gloves, while motioning me to stand up. I dropped my trousers and underwear. The doctor took my limp penis between his latexed fingers and then, using a small pen flashlight, peered around my testicles and crotch. The entire inspection only lasted around thirty seconds and should have been humiliating, but was carried out in such a dispassionate way that he might as well have been examining a turnip.

‘Generally, female-to-male HIV transmission needs some sort of open wound or sore in order to enter the immune system. Yes, it allegedly can swim up the urethra, but you would have to be profoundly unlucky.’

‘I can be profoundly unlucky, Doctor.’

‘The odds are still very small … Still, if you want to be absolutely certain, we can do a blood test now and also screen you for other STDs. And then we can do another in six months’ time — to give you the complete “all-clear”.’

‘I’d like the test.’

‘ Tres bien, monsieur …’

Ten minutes later, I was out on the street, a small card in my pocket with a number to ring tomorrow to get the results of the test. I knew that, privately, the doctor regarded me as a man suffering nothing more than a surfeit of guilt. Just as I also knew that when I saw Margit later that afternoon, I would have to make a clean breast of everything. There are certain things about which you can lie. And others …

Forty-five minutes later I was walking obsessively around the Jardin des Plantes, trying to work out how I’d tell Margit what had happened, terrified about how she’d react, and cursing myself for, yet again, detonating a relationship thanks to sexual transgression — a relationship I definitely didn’t want to lose. Do we ever learn anything from our mistakes? Not when it comes to sex. That’s the one arena of bad behavior in which we are recidivists, over and over again.

As I mounted the stairs to Margit’s apartment, I told myself, As long as you’re prepared for the worst, there’s really nothing to fear . But I couldn’t embrace such advice. I was guilty — guilty of so much.

I knocked on the door. A minute went by. She opened it. She was wearing a black dressing gown and smoking a cigarette.

‘Hi there,’ I said, leaning forward to kiss her and wondering if she could hear the blurriness of my speech. She accepted the kiss. I stepped inside. She led me by the hand past the bedroom and into her front room. I sat down in an armchair. Without saying anything she went to the little table where she kept a few bottles of booze and poured me a whisky. She handed it to me. I sipped it and flinched, the alcohol burning my wounded tongue. She sat down opposite me. She smiled. Then she said, ‘So who have you been fucking, Harry?’