Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [68]
“Come on, leave me alone,” she repeated. “Leave me alone, I can’t breathe.” She could have screamed if she wanted to, there were neighbors, the two guys on the other side of the landing, and yet she whispered, and it was like a secret being born between us.
“Sing,” I told her. “Sing something. Sing that song by Piaf you used to like so much. ‘La Vie en Rose.’ Sing.”
Her throat vibrated under my hand when she murmured something, still softer, but I didn’t hear it. We stayed like that for a long time. She hadn’t opened her eyes again. She wasn’t trying to push me away anymore, she had her hands on her knees, quietly waiting for something, and that smile that didn’t look like hers was gone from her face. She didn’t move. I thought she was asleep.
3.
Arnaud hadn’t said a word while the old man was talking. He had opened his notebook and began mechanically taking notes after glancing over at the old man to make sure he didn’t mind. But his notes were such a mess that later he would be unable to read them or understand what they meant, aside from the last words he’d written in the middle of one page: La Vie en Rose.
Now the old man was silent. Arnaud watched him. Big, fat tears were flowing from the old man’s eyes, like a child’s tears. He never would have thought such a deeply furrowed face could have so much emotion or so much water in it. At last the old man sighed, picked up his cup of coffee, and put it to his lips, then put it back down without drinking a drop.
“When her neck began to grow cold under my palms I understood,” he said. “I took away my hands and her head slipped onto my shoulder. I didn’t know what to do, so I laid her down gently on the couch and I got up. It’s funny what goes through your head at moments like that, sir, because I wasn’t really thinking and yet I went straight to the bedroom closet where I knew that long ago I’d put away the blanket we used to take for picnics in the park. I took it, I went back to the living room and wrapped Layla in it. All that time I was wondering what I was going to do, but I must have known already. I picked her up in my arms without any hesitation—it wasn’t easy, since skinny as she was, she still weighed a lot, or maybe death just does that to you—and I walked to the door. The guy across the hall must’ve gotten tired or else he understood and didn’t want any trouble, because his door was shut.
“I walked down the three flights with Layla in my arms, I went out into the street where it was still very dark, you couldn’t hear a car, not even a moped, and I walked to the park gate that doesn’t close very well. Everybody in the neighborhood knows there’s a gate that doesn’t close and all you have to do is jiggle it the right way to open it, any ten-year-old can show you how. I pushed the gate wide with my shoulder and I took the park path to the spot where we used to have picnics back then. It must have been close to dawn because a blackbird was singing in the trees, we must’ve stayed on the couch much longer than I thought, I may have fallen asleep with my hands on her throat. The smell of the flowers was very strong that night, I was surprised spring was in the air. I think I’d hardly been out of the house since the night I saw Layla in Pigalle.
“I stopped at a tree we used to sit under. I kneeled down and I put her down on the ground. I picked her up a little to tuck the blanket under her, I laid her out with her legs together and her arms straight down beside her body, I buttoned up her jacket to hide the bluish necklace around her throat, and then I got up. I looked at her for a moment. Oh, we were so happy under this tree, me and her. As I was walking back home, it started to rain and suddenly I couldn’t stand to think of her staying out there in the rain. I went up to get a pink nylon windbreaker she’d left behind when she went away; her mother had put it in the box she’d left on my doormat. I took