Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [94]
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. 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 Od� I saw that the caf�had spread themselves over half the road, and in the Rue de l'Ancienne-Com�e 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