Iris Murdoch - Under the Net

Paris was beginning to tremble with the excitement of the quatorze. I started to walk along the Boulevard Saint-Germain. I was in my shirt sleeves, but still feeling extremely hot, although the day had softened into evening. I walked slowly, passing Diderot, where he sits amid the acacia trees looking with understandable dubiety in the direction of the Cafe de Flore. There were a great many people walking up and down, and a confused hum of voices and laughter rose above the traffic. All Paris was out of doors. When I reached the Odéon I saw that the cafés had spread themselves over half the road, and in the Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie people were already dancing to the sound of an accordion. Above them strings of coloured lamps were burning in the evening daylight. I sat down for a while to watch.

If like myself you are a connoisseur of solitude, I recommend to you the experience of being alone in Paris on the fourteenth of July. On that day the city lets down its tumultuous hair, which the high summer anoints with warmth and perfume. In Paris every man has his girl; but on that day every man is a sultan. Then people flock together and sweep chattering about the city like flights of brilliantly coloured birds. Amid unfurling of streamers and bursting of rockets and releasing of pigeons and popping of corks the unit of gaiety becomes, as the evening advances, larger and larger. No one is left outside; until the whole city has turned into one enormous party. To be alone in such a carnival is a strange experience. I decided to refrain from drinking. After a few drinks I knew that a sentimental loneliness would begin to spoil my detachment. Whereas to be the cool and collected spectator of scenes of mad revelry, the solitary man who brushes aside with a wan smile the women who accost him and coloured streamers in which the enemies of solitude hasten to entangle him; this was the pleasure which I promised myself for that evening, and I had no mind to let such rarely compounded moments of contemplation be ruined by miserable yearnings for a woman I could not find.

With these good resolutions I picked my way through the dancers and began walking down the Rue Dauphine. I wanted to be by the river. As I came near to it the crowd increased, their voices flying about like bats in the thick evening air. A feeling of expectancy came over me. My feet were led. I walked out on to the Pont Neuf. It was not yet dark, but the flood-lighting had already been switched on. The Tour Saint-Jacques stood out in gold like a tapestry tower and the slim finger of the Sainte Chapelle rose mysteriously out of the Palais de Justice, with every spike and blossom clearly marked upon it. High in the air the Eiffel Tower cast out a revolving beam. Down in the Vert Galant there was shouting and laughter and the throwing of things into the river. I turned away from this. I needed to see Notre-Dame. I walked through the Place Dauphine and regained the mainland at the Pont Saint-Michel. I wanted to see my darling from across the river. Jostled by revellers, I fixed myself to the wall and looked at its pearly towers behind which the night was beginning to gather. How curiously this church is dwarfed by its beauty, as some women are. I began to make my way towards it, until I could see mirrored beneath it in the unflecked river a diabolic Notre-Dame, sketched there but never quite motionless, like a skull which appears in a glass as the reflection of a head. Very gently the illuminated image bulged and fragmented, absorbed in its own quiet rhythm, ignoring the crowds which across all the bridges were streaming now in both directions.

I was leaning on the parapet. With no diminution of warmth the darkness was coming, in a granulation of deeper and deeper blues. A cart passed by with an accordion band, and a crowd running at its tail. A man in a paper hat ran up to me and threw confetti in my face. Some students were singing on the Pont Saint-Michel. A little crowd came marching behind a flag. I began to think that perhaps after all I'd have a drink. So precarious is solitude. When suddenly, high up in the air, there was a sizzling explosion tailing away into a murmur. I looked up. The fireworks had started. As the first constellation floated slowly down and faded away a delighted 'aaah' rose from thousands of throats and everyone stood still. Another rocket followed and then another. I could feel the crowd gradually solidifying behind me as people began to come out on to the quaffs for a better view. I was crushed against the parapet.

I am afraid of crowds, and I should like to have got out, but now it was impossible to move. I calmed myself and started watching the fireworks. It was a very fine display. Sometimes the rockets went up singly, sometimes in groups. There were some which burst with a deafening crack and scattered out a rain of tiny golden stars, and others which opened with a soft sigh and set out almost motionless in the air a configuration of big coloured lights which sank with extreme slowness as if bound together. Then six or seven rockets would come shooting up and for an instant the sky would be scattered from end to end with gold dust and falling flowers, like the chaos on a nursery floor. My neck was getting stiff. I rubbed it gently, letting my head resume its usual angle, and I looked idly about upon the crowd. Then I saw Anna.

She was on the other side of the river, standing at the corner of the Petit Pont, just at the top of the steps which led down to the water. There was a street lamp just above her, and I could see her face quite clearly. There was no doubt that it was Anna. As I looked at her, her face seemed suddenly radiant like a saint's face in a picture, and all the thousands of surrounding faces were darkened. I could not imagine why I had not seen her at once. For a moment I stared paralysed; then I began to try to fight my way out. But it was absolutely impossible. I was in the thickest part of the crowd and pinned firmly against the wall. I couldn't even turn my body, let alone struggle through the packed mass of people. There was nothing for it but to wait for the end of the fireworks. I pressed my hand against my heart which was trying to start out of me with its beating, and I riveted my eyes upon Anna.

I wondered if she was alone. It was hard to tell. I decided after watching her for a few minutes that she was. She remained perfectly motionless, looking up, and however deep the murmur of delight which this or that exceptionally splendid rocket evoked from the crowd, she did not turn to share her own pleasure with any of the people who stood about her. She was certainly alone. I was overjoyed. But I was in anguish too in case when the crowd disintegrated I should lose her. I wanted to call out to her, but the murmur of voices all about us was so strong and diffused that my call would never have reached her. I kept my glance burning upon her and called out with all the power of my thought.

Then she began to move. The crowd on the other bank was less dense. She took two paces and hesitated. I watched in terror. Then to my relief she began to descend the steps to the riverside walk directly opposite to me. As she did so she came fully into my view. She was wearing a long blue skirt and a white blouse. She carried no coat or handbag. I was moved to the point of frenzy and I called her name. But it was like shooting an arrow into a storm. Thousands and tens of thousands of voices covered up my cry. The steps were covered with people sitting and standing on them to watch the fireworks, and Anna was finding it quite hard to pick her way down. She paused half-way, and with an unutterably graceful and characteristic gesture which I remembered well, gathered up her skirt from behind and continued her descent.

She found a vacant place on the very edge of the river, and sat down, curling her feet under her. Then she looked up once more to watch the rockets. The river was black now under the night sky and glassy, a black mirror in which every lamp raised a pole of light and the conflagration in the sky above dropped an occasional piece of gold. The line of people on the other bank was clearly reflected in it. Anna's image was quite still beneath her. I wondered if in the river, which at that point on the left bank came fully up to the wall of the roadway, my own reflection was as vividly shown. I agitated my hands, hoping that either I or my image might attract Anna's attention. Then I took out a box of matches and lit one or two close to my face. But in such a galaxy of lights my little light could not attract much notice. Anna continued to look up. While I flapped and waved and flung the upper part of my body about like a ridiculous puppet, she sat as still as a spellbound princess, her head thrown back and one hand clasping her knee; while a stream of stars fell from the sky almost into her lap. A moment later something dropped with a sharp clatter on to the parapet beside my hand. Automatically I picked it up. It was the stick of one of the rockets. As I lifted it, in the light of the next star burst, I read the name which was written upon it: BELFOUNDER.