The Woman in the Fifth (24 page)

'What?' I said, sounding as if my mouth was filled with dental cotton wool. That's when I realized that speech was virtually impossible.

'You give me one thousand euros today. Or else you are dead man.'

'I don't understand,' I said, though the sentence came out all muffled and distorted. As in:
jenecomprendpas
.

'Why you can't speak?'

'Bad cold.'

'Liar. She bit you, yes?'

Now I was very awake and scared.

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'I see you this morning. Very early. Leave bar.'

'I wasn't in a bar . . .'

'Bar closed. Shutters down. Shutters then open.
She
looks out, looks both ways. Coast clear. You come out. Shutters close. Got you.'

'That wasn't me.'

'Bullshit. I am coming down street. I see her open bar. When she gives nervous look, I duck into doorway. Hidden. I see you. Now I tell Nedim – when he comes back next week – that you fucked his wife. How you like that, American? Nedim will cut off your balls. Unless you pay me to keep my mouth closed.'

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 café 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 mélange 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
Libération
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.

'
Ça 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. '
Très 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.'

'
Très 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?'

'I
DON'T KNOW
what you're talking about,' I said.

'Liar,' she said with a laugh.

I sipped some whisky and winced again.

'What's wrong with your mouth?'

'I bit my tongue.'

'Liar.'

'Haven't you ever bitten your tongue?' I asked.

'What was her name?'

'I'm telling you—'

'You are telling me shit. Which is fine by me. I don't care. Any more than I care if you slept with someone else – which I know you did. So what was her name?' Pause. Then, 'Yanna.'

'Turkish?'

'Half-French, half-Turkish.'

'How did you meet her?'

I explained.

'And how did the fuck happen?'

I explained.

'Did she did bite you before or after penetration?'

I explained.

'And when you were finished?'

'She threw me out.'

'And let me guess – you didn't use a condom . . .'

'I'm sorry.'

'But why?'

'Because now . . .'

'Now what?'

'Now perhaps you won't want . . .'

'To have sex with you?' She laughed again. 'Sometimes, Harry, you become infantile.'

I hung my head . . . and felt infantile.

'Surely that doctor you consulted . . .'

I looked up at her.

'How did you know I consulted . . . ?'

'Here we go again. Harry, you are so charmingly predictable. And you are so American when it comes to your need to feel bad about everything to do with sex. So let me guess: the doctor told you there's nothing to worry about. But you're still worried – still calculating the millionto- one possibility that you might have contracted—'

'Stop,' I said.

'But why,
chéri
? You feel guilt about fucking someone else. But instead of properly hiding it, you wear it on your sleeve. And when I call you on it, you admit all – and hand the guilt on to me.'

'That wasn't my intention.'

'I don't care what you did. I don't care into which of her orifices you shoved your penis. All I care about is being treated as an adult by an adult. But when you enter my apartment, cowering—'

'It's not just the sex,' I said, cutting her off.

'Even though the doctor gave you the virtual all-clear?'

'I am being blackmailed.'

'By whom exactly?' she asked

I gave her the complete run-down on Omar, then said, 'The guy has a certain animal cunning. He thinks he's got me cornered . . .'

'But he does have you cornered.'

'So what do I do?'

'You don't pay him the money.'

'But he will make good on his threat . . .'

'Let him. You can always deny it. And believe me, Madame Teeth Marks will deny it too.'

'That won't change his mind. At best, I'll get my face smashed in.'

'The thing to play for is time. Tell Omar you will give him the money, but you don't have the cash right now. Tell him you'll get it to him in a few weeks. If he pushes you, be firm. What's he going to do? Go ahead and tell her husband? If he does that he doesn't get the money. That's all he's after – the thousand now and whatever he can bilk from you later. So keep him on the long finger. Meanwhile, I think you should make contact with Madame Teeth Marks and let her know what's going on. She can definitely help you contain things. Suggest to her that she tells her husband that Omar tried to make a pass at her late one night while he was away burying his uncle. Suggest to her that she gives him graphic details of the pass he made . . . how he attempted to touch her everywhere. She really needs to make it sound as grubby as possible. Once she's done that, Omar's credibility will be zero. He can tell him anything about you, and the husband won't believe it. Because he'll think Omar is simply trying to offload blame on you.'

I looked at her, impressed.

'That's a very elegant, nasty solution to the problem.'

'It comes with a price, however.'

'Which is what?'

'I want to know what happened to you in the States – what you did that was so shockingly terrible that you had no choice but to flee over here.'

A long pause – I downed the whisky, even though the alcohol burned into the wound and hurt like hell.

'You owe me this, Harry,' she said.

'Because of my transgression?'

'No – because I've told you so much about my past. Whereas you . . .'

'You'll think it such a banal story.'

'If it destroyed your life, it's hardly banal. Anyway, you
want
to tell me.'

'Could I have another shot of that whisky?' I asked.

'Dutch courage?'

'What other courage is there?'

She poured me out a hefty shot. I downed half of it, my eyes watering up as it went down.

'
On y va, monsieur
,' she said. 'Get on with it.'

I finished the whisky. I took a deep breath. I started to talk.

'I suppose I should first tell you about my wife. I met Susan in grad school in Michigan. She was doing drama – and had all these great plans for becoming a professional theater director. I was getting a doctorate in film studies and wanted nothing more than a nice secure tenured job at a nice secure university which wouldn't be too taxing, would allow me to teach something I genuinely liked, and would also give me plenty of time to write "the novel" – check that: "
the novels
" – that I knew I was destined to write. From the moment I met her, Susan struck me as the ideal "life partner". She was attractive . . . in a very wholesome Midwestern way. She certainly wasn't chic – that would have been anathema to her. But yes, she was genuinely cute.'

'A horrible word, cute. And let me guess: she always wore jeans and hiking boots and crème-colored sweaters and a ski parka and . . .'

'Do you want to tell this story?'

'I'm right, am I not?'

'Yes, you're right. And yes, we got married before we both got our doctorates. And yes, we both found jobs at the same middle-ranking small college – Crewe, in Ohio. No mean feat that, considering how hard academic jobs are to come by. I was an instant hit with my students. . . .'

'And Susan? Was she too a hit in the realm of "student drama"?'

'Susan – as it turned out – had difficulty fitting in at the college. Everyone saw that she was a very talented director – great creative vision and all that – but she wasn't the easiest of teachers, and several students complained that she was too demanding on them, that she expected standards far higher than those kids at Crewe College could obtain . . .'

'Was she hypercritical of you as well?'

'Yes, she could be rather finicky around the house. And yes, she did push me very hard professionally – as we both came into the college as assistant professors, and both had to get enough articles and the like published in order to get tenured.'

'Let me guess what happened next. You got tenured and she was turned down?'

'That is precisely what happened. The thing that decided it against her wasn't her lack of professional accomplishment – it was her inability to relate to her students.'

'So suddenly she was out of a job, and you had the permanent post you wanted, which meant that you were stuck in this little town – which was the original master plan, except that now that your wife had nothing to do . . .'

'Well, she did get a few more small directing gigs at some small regional theaters – but again, there would always be some blow-up with the cast, some dispute with the scenic designer, or she would rub management up the wrong way . . .'

'An endlessly angry woman?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'So the next obvious plot twist of this story is . . . like your mother, she gets pregnant?'

'Bravo.'

'Well, what else would she do, being now out of work and thirty . . . ?'

'Thirty-two to be exact. And yes, within two months of not getting tenured she was pregnant. Though we both adored Megan straight away, it was Susan who was around the house most of the time – and within a year or so, the strain started to show.'

'Didn't she try to get other work?'

'Of course she did. The problem was, with all her regional theater opportunities dried up, the only directing jobs around Eaton, Ohio, were high-school productions. Totally rinky-dink stuff which further played into her growing despair.'

'And that despair continued to grow for the next . . . how old is Megan now?'

'Fifteen.'

'So for the ensuing thirteen years, she floundered?'

'Well, she did have our daughter, and she was a very attentive mother. But as Megan got older and entered school, not only was there less and less for Susan to do, but she also hinted from time to time that she resented being a mother and wife . . . telling me several times during a squabble that, if she wasn't rooted to Eaton because of her husband and daughter, she'd be having a proper high-flying career in a big city like Chicago where they would naturally appreciate her high professional standards and wouldn't get offended by her acerbity.'

'Such a happy woman. How did you deal with all that?'

'I chose to ignore it . . . especially as it always came out when she'd had a few glasses of wine.'

'So she was drinking heavily?'

'Hey, we were living in a small town with not much to do at night – and she was, for all intents and purposes, depressed. So what else do you do
but
drink? Like I started to hit the hard stuff a bit as well. Largely because her own negativity was beginning to corrode things between us . . .'

'So you decided that the only way to combat this
negativity
was to have an affair?'

'It was actually she who had the first affair . . . though I didn't know that until some time later.'

'And who was the lucky man?'

'Around two years ago, the college got a new Dean of the Faculty – a true smoothie named Gardner Robson.'

'They actually name people such things in the States?'

'White Anglo-Saxon Protestants do. This guy was a real Mr Preppie. Ex-Air Force. Ex-management consultancy. Early fifties. Super-fit. Super-straight. Super-corporate – and brought in by the Board of the College to "streamline management", whatever the fuck that meant. There was a reception for Robson when he became Dean – and, having already met him briefly at some administrative thing, I remember telling Susan on the way over to the party that she was bound to loathe him – as he stood for everything Republican and conservative that she hated about Bush's America.