Iris Murdoch - Under the Net

There was, however, one immediate difficulty, which was that I hadn't enough money to pay the bill. I seemed somehow to have consumed four glasses of pernod to a tune of several hundred francs. Even not counting the tip, I was about fifty francs short. I was considering whether I wouldn't ask the patron to charge it to Jean Pierre, who is well known at the Reine Blanche, when there hove up on the horizon a cadger of international repute who was an old acquaintance of mine. He bore down upon me with glistening eyes; and a few minutes later I had the satisfaction of taking off him the thousand-franc note which shame and the remembrance of hundreds of drinks which I had bought him in at least three capital cities could not permit even him to withhold. I left him a poorer but a better man.

My conviction that Anna was still in Paris was after all rather irrational. It was, never, very strong; and when I had got well round the corner I made for a telephone. I telephoned first of all to the Club des Fous, a gay but enlightened boite where Anna had made her Paris debut some years earlier. But no one there had any news of her. They knew she had been in Paris, but whether she was still there, or where she was to be found, no one could say. I then rang up various individuals who might have come across her, but they all said the same thing, except one who said that he thought she had sailed on the previous day, unless it had been Edith Piaf, he couldn't remember. I then started phoning hotels, first the ones at which I had stayed with Anna, in case sentiment might have led her back to them, and afterwards more luxurious hotels which I knew Anna knew of, in case comfort had triumphed over sentiment or sentiment had worked in a contrary way. It was all in vain. No one had seen her, no one knew where she was. I gave up, and started walking disconsolately. It was very hot.

If Anna were in Paris, what would she be doing? She might be with somebody. If she was with somebody I was done for anyway. I must work on the assumption that she was alone. If she was not with any of the song or theatre people, what would she be doing here all by herself? The answer, from my knowledge of Anna's character, was clear. She would be sitting in some place which she found beautiful and meditating. Or walking very slowly along a road somewhere in the fifth or sixth arrondissement. Of course she might have gone to Montmartre; but she always used to complain so about the steps. Or to Pêre-Lachaise; but I didn't want to have to think about death. If I made a tour of our shrines on the left bank I might stand some small chance of finding her. The alternative was to get drunk. I bought a tartine and set off for the Luxembourg gardens.

I went straight to the fontaine des Médicis. There was nobody there; but the spirit of the place held me at once and I could not go. When I had been in Paris with Anna long ago we had used to come here every day; and now when I had stood in silence for a moment I could not but believe that if I waited she must come. There is something compelling about the sound of a fountain in a deserted place. It murmurs about what things do when no one watches them. It is the hearing of an unheard sound. A gentle refutation of Berkeley. The pied plane trees enclosed the place. I approached slowly. Today there was hardly a trickle down the green steps and the tall grotto swayed only slightly in the water on which a few leaves floated lotus-like. On the steps fantail pigeons waded in to drink deeply. Above them the lovers lay immobile, she in a pose of abandoned shyness exposing an exquisite body, while he cups her head in a gesture which is too concerned to be called sensual. So they lie, petrified into stillness by the one-eyed gaze of huge rain-marked, weather-stained, pigeon-spattered, dark-green Polyphemus, who leans over the rock from above and sees them. I stood there for a long time, leaning against a marble urn and meditating upon the curve of her thigh. How her right leg is drawn under her, and her naked left leg outstretched in that pure undulation which can lift contemplation and desire almost together to the highest point of awareness, the curve of a reclining woman's thigh. There she lies, braced and yet relaxed, superbly naked and smiling faintly with closed eyes. I waited a long time, but Anna did not come.

Then I recalled to mind all the things and places which Anna had liked most in Paris. She had liked the chameleons in the Jardin des Plantes. I went next and looked at the chameleons. Very very slowly they were climbing about their cage, their long tails curling and uncurling with unspeakable deliberation as with a scarcely perceptible motion they stretched out one of their long hands to grasp another branch. Their squinting eyes would stare quietly for a while until one of them would swivel very gently to another angle. I liked them very much. This is the real tempo of the world, they told me, as with an almost unbearable slowness they brought another limb into play, and then relaxed into a rigid immobility. Watching them, my sense of duration slowed down and almost stopped; and I stayed there too for a long time, where every second was lengthened out into a minute, and motion and rest almost completely reconciled. Anna did not come.

I left the Jardin in haste and ran along the quaffs. I dashed into the churches, one after the other, Saint Julien, Saint Severin, Saint Germain, Saint Sulpice, in case I should find Anna there, her head thrown back, feeding some sad wish. Nobody. I went to the garden behind Notre-Dame where the church bears down like a ship and we had often fed the sparrows. I crossed to the right bank and went to the garden with the cascade, behind the Grand Palais, which is open all night. Nobody. Then I went to Saint Eustache and wandered in a forest of multiform pillars. After that I gave up. It was late in the afternoon. Outside the; wiles they were cleaning the pavements with hoses. Fruit and vegetables coursed along the gutters. I bought some bread and a Camembert, and through crowds of fat women nibbling the ends of the long loaves which they were taking home, my feet began automatically to carry me back towards the quartier Saint Germain. As I walked, and the vision of Anna faded a little from my eyes, I began to notice that the city was more than usually decked with tricolores, and down side streets I saw little strings of flags which ran from house to house across the roadway. Some fete was on. Then I remembered that it was the fourteenth of July.

When I got as far as the Brasserie Lipp I felt ready to sit down. So I sat down and ordered vermouth. The events of the morning already seemed far away, and equally far away the moment of insight which had succeeded them. In so far as I felt anything now concerning these things it was a sort of dull stupid pain which may have been regret for the money, or may have been simply the after-effects of too much pernod at lunch-time. But my need of Anna had not lost its sharpness. Where was she at this moment? Perhaps not half a mile away, sitting on the bed in some hotel room and looking at a half-packed suitcase. As I pictured the sad angle of her head I began to find the idea unbearable. No, doubtless she was on the sea, leaning on the rail with her eyes already full of America. I could not decide which of these thoughts was the more unpleasant.

I hadn't been sitting in the Brasserie Lipp for more than a few minutes when I heard one of the waiters calling out 'Monsieur Dohnagoo, Monsieur Dohnagoo.' I have had my name called on the terrasses of cafés all over Europe, so that I was ready for this. I waved my hand. The waiter approached me holding a telegram. My first irrational notion was that it must be from Anna in New York. I seized it. It was from England; it was from Dave, who knew my partiality to the Brasserie Lipp and evidently sent the wire there on the off chance of its finding me. It read--Never mind Lyrebird won today at twenty to one.