Fishing in Beirut

He kept on sending letters. Aria was at the kitchen table, the clock at half past one, and she read through once more, slowly.
It was wrong. She could not continue this correspondence, though she knew he meant her well. It was all too long ago. Placing the letter down, she clasped her hands together, stretching. A page swept off the table.
He was a guy she’d met in LA. Visiting some friends there, in her 16 year old summer, she’d met this English DJ and told him all her thoughts. They’d held each other’s hand. They’d written for a while, but then she changed her mind. Things became difficult in her life. Since she moved to Paris, he’d got back in touch.
This letter today was the sixth. The first had come in March, after a silence of two and a half years. It had been exciting, and she’d replied instantly. Told him all her news. He knew nothing of the trauma, the pictures or the pain, but that’s not what she mentioned, because it was the past.
And this was exactly the problem.
How to talk to someone who doesn’t know you now? She guessed he must be 23. Did he not understand this? You don’t drive a nail into the empty sky. She had stopped writing after the third letter. It just seemed better that way. She picked the fallen page up, and placed the whole thing back in its envelope. She smoothed the tiny creases.
Today was easy sunshine. It was the middle of June, the 18th. She poured a glass of water. She leaned out the window and looked at the trash cans, spilling a few drops as she did so. Today she was free from work.
She went for a walk by the canal. She watched the rippling water. A Twix wrapper struggled for life, ducking under and re-emerging, and Aria on the bank smelt smoke from a cigarette. She stopped and stood in silence.
This neighbourhood felt real to her, her flatmate and her flat. The bakery, the streets. Rue Bichat, rue Alibert, rue Saint Maur. A taxi motored past. She sat down by the water, and trailed her finger in the flow. She knew three different bakeries, and they varied greatly in quality.
Why was he writing now? Should she be scared or not? She felt probably not. She flicked her wet hand, and water splashed on the concrete. It made a peculiar design. It might have been a troll’s face, but there is no such thing as trolls. She made another pattern alongside it.
There was something she wanted to feel. A definitive reaction to these letters. She wanted to feel a definitive reaction, and know her mind, unequivocally. What did she think of him writing?
Later she went to the movies. It was enjoyable how so many in Paris went on their own. All these small cinemas, no popcorn, no lights, and you sat comfortably with strangers, happy in the dark. She was mid-way down, sharing the space with six others.
It was a Spanish movie. Hable con Ella. Parle avec Elle. Talk to Her. Aria watched with full concentration – crystal images, Spanish words, French subtitles. Music from hearts that were lonely. She tied back her hair.
The film was low and gentle, the kind you’d like to speak of with a stranger in an airport. The silence of a coma. She cried a little, with the music and the pulse. She smiled. There was a woman somewhere sniffling in the gloom, talking calmly to herself. It wasn’t annoying at all.
Aria saw this film as being about belief. A belief some might find intolerable perhaps. It was bubbling up with truth. When she left the cinema, which was just off rue Beaubourg, she walked over to the piazza and sat looking up at the Centre Pompidou. There were tourists all around.
She got up suddenly and left. Crossing rue Beaubourg, she entered le Marais, and strolled easily down rue Rambuteau. There was a cranky old man selling strawberries. He shouted gruff obscenities at passers-by, insulting both his customers and those who ignored him. Aria was among the latter.
She reached the intersection with rue du Temple. Turning left would have pointed her homeward, so she went straight through. Why go home when it’s sunny? The streets were clean here, the moneyed and tourists mixing freely. Catty men leaned from extortionate boutiques.
She was on rue des Francs Bourgeois. There was sunshine on the street. She walked its length, arriving at Boulevard Beaumarchais, and turning right onto Place de la Bastille. Over the far side, skaters were practising.
A man laughed easily, sitting outside a smart looking café. His companion took his hand. She rolled it softly in hers, and Aria saw this in passing, all the tiny moments of the moving, living mass. A dog inspected a lamp post.
She sat down for a while, and watched the skaters. This was all the boys ever did back home. They jumped and rolled and tripped and crashed, and there was padding, and a lingo. She was sure there was a French lingo too. She flicked a fly from her trainers.
Traffic kept occasionally obscuring her view. Whenever one of them completed a manoeuvre, he immediately engaged in a complicated handshake with all the others. White boys, with their slaps and chest thumps. They nodded and kept their cool, balancing and failing, and starting once again.
“You are American, I believe.”
A man sat down beside her, lighting a cigarette.
She shifted, startled a little, this thick French accent taking her by surprise. Her body folded and curled.
“Tell me your name, American girl. Beautiful American girl.”
She went to get up, but his hand touched her arm.
“Beautiful American girl.”
She froze for a moment, but then turned to look at him full on. A smoker’s face, searching eyes. He coughed twice, and she thought he must be in his forties, a sleepy rumble in his chest. His hand went to brush her hair.
She was walking quickly. She was conscious of nothing, just her movement on the street, and all her tingling senses were honed in on this act. The muscles were tight. She dodged pedestrians, rounded bends, kept her body streamlined as she cut through gaps and space. Eventually she began to slow, and finally stopped and shook.
The energy expelled, and she knew she was alright. She smiled in sweet relief. No, she definitely wouldn’t be writing to that guy from LA.

Aria was at work. Customers came and went – coffee, bagels and currency, blurrily changing hands. She sighed and wiped her brow. It was another two hours before she finished, and she was feeling stressed today, being the only one on the till. Someone was looking for banana bread.
She explained it was gone and he didn’t understand, and she had to explain again, feeling stupid and pretty pissed. “It is gone?” he said in faltering English, like they always do, when they just won’t listen to your French. “Yes,” she answered. “That’s what I already told you.”
The owner came in, and observed her, hawk-like, from a distance. She was paranoid about staff giving so much as a biscuit to a friend. She hovered in a corner, fingers clicking, and pursed her mouth as if trying to remove a gum-trapped morsel. Aria tried to ignore her.
The smell of the bagels was sick-sweet. In the beginning, she had loved their taste and smell, but now they made her queasy, and she never took one herself. Still, the job was fine and untaxing, and if it didn’t feel that way today, at least she was aware this was an exception. She tied back her hair during a free moment.
“Hey,” said Laura, brandishing a student paper. She’d just walked in off the street. The owner visibly stiffened, Aria noticing out of the corner of her eye. She contemplated giving Laura a whole pack of biscuits, and giggled in her mind. Laura had made page six of the paper.
“Look,” she said. “It’s that thing I wrote about Lorca. I really didn’t think they’d print it.”
Aria wanted to read it, but unfortunately she couldn’t right then. It would have been tantamount to biscuit-giving in the eyes of some. A guy wanted to pay for a cappuccino, and she clanged open the cash register and deposited the change. The owner left abruptly.
“Read it to me,” said Aria. “I want to hear it, but I just can’t read right now. Go on, there aren’t too many customers.”
“OK,” said Laura. “It’s not too long anyway.”
She folded the paper and cleared her throat. Aria laughed, and Laura started reading.

“Garcia Lorca and the Children Still Unborn,” she declared, “by Laura Taylor.”

“‘We walk on
an unsilvered
mirror,
a crystal surface
without clouds.
If lilies would grow
backwards,
if roses would grow
backwards,
if all those roots
could see the stars
and the dead not close
their eyes,
we would become like swans.’

– “Earth” by Federico Garcia Lorca

“Lorca was…” Laura began, and then the owner cut her short. “I don’t pay you for this,” she said in English. Aria coughed and apologised, and Laura stepped back in surprise. Neither of them had seen her re-enter. Aria messed with her hair, and Laura moved towards the doorway. The owner exhaled dramatically.
There were no customers to deal with in that moment, so Aria was forced to busy herself doing nothing, while she was silently rebuked. Needless to say, it was a long moment. She heard a car horn from outside, and the yell of some irate pedestrian. A DJ yapped on the radio.
Eventually the owner left again, skulking away like a creature of the night. Aria relaxed, and rolled her shoulders. She felt like a scolded schoolgirl, and fiddled with a sugar packet as a distraction. Nobody in the café now. Very soon this day would be over, or at least this portion of it. She would not be regretting its loss.
The sun spread out on the tile floor, revealing dirt patches she thought she’d cleaned. She turned off the radio abruptly. The bagel smell wafted round her, and all the other smells and sounds. The coffee, the coffee machine. She looked at the mop in the corner, at the tea towel on the counter. “As long as there is people, there’ll be sun and death and rain,” said a sign on the wall. Aria yawned in boredom.
A woman came in and ordered soup, and so it was Aria and this woman together alone, the server and the served, like a woodcarving or a sketch. Supermarket soup, at a price to make you blush.
“Oh, c’est delicieuse,” exclaimed the woman, beaming.
Aria thanked her and smiled.
“C’est vraiment delicieuse,” the woman repeated, the type of woman who would never buy supermarket soup. “Mmm, mmm!”
Aria went back behind the counter, and asked her if she wanted the radio on. She didn’t, and the silence was sweet. They each went about their business in the afternoon, the woman eating, and Aria cleaning absently. She dusted and pottered about.
The clock wound on, and then she could finally close the shop. The metal shutters rolled down, and she was free for the day, and happy. The sun hit her pupils, or her retinas, or whatever part increases the seratonin levels and gives you that smiley something. She passed down the street like a leaf.
She made a detour by the river, and leaned against the wall on Pont Neuf, watching the sparkling water. There were readers and strollers on the banks, and a tourist cruise ship lay berthed to one side. A queue was forming for the next sailing, and she wondered what it was like to see the city in this way, and whether any queuing tourists would mistake her for a native. Une vraie Parisienne.
She started heading home, cutting across the square at the back of the Pompidou Centre, down rue Rambuteau, and up rue du Temple, to Place de la Republique. It was about a twenty minute walk, all in all. She felt that big-city lull and comfort – a peace in the eye of the storm sensation. Millions of dreams and thoughts, all around.
She crossed over Republique, and took the back streets to the canal. Here she paused again on one of the hump-back bridges – slow, placid water, perfect underneath. Two old men were fishing to her right, and a guy working in a video shop over the other side had stepped out for a smoke. The water caught the setting sunlight.
As she reached l’Hopital Saint Louis, she turned her head to the left, and a jutting piece of the Sacre Coeur shone between the buildings. It was illuminated already, though the sun had not completely sunk. Aria rounded the corner and the view disappeared, and now she was on her street, with the old and battered cobblestones. She would be home in less than a minute, and was dying to read Laura’s piece.

The car pushed through the world, in darkness. The girls were happily drunk, talking and laughing in the back seat. Aria knew she was going to get hiccups. The taxi flashed down the Right Bank Expressway, and she craned her neck around to see the Eiffel tower. At night it gave her goose bumps.
It was April. The car ascended, and began moving northeast towards Republique. Aria fumbled for the fare, not wishing to delay the man when they got there. They were dropped at l’Hopital Saint Louis, and walked home in two minutes. Laura started making toast.
“Do we have any of that wine left?” she asked over her shoulder, scanning the fridge for butter. Aria saw a half bottle on the counter.
“Yeah, there’s lots.”
They drank and ate, the light flickering softly, the bulb nearly gone. It was cooler now than in February, especially at night. March had been fine, and now April had taken this little dip. Presumably it was temporary. Aria worked in a café selling Swedish bread, American cookies, and overpriced French supermarket soup. Very rarely did she misunderstand an order, and Laura was amazed by this. Two months is not long, when you’re trying to pick up a language.
Laura always said it was to Aria’s advantage that she’d never done a French course, but Aria wasn’t sure about this. Whether it was true or not, not a day went by without Laura cursing her Sorbonne study. “Je deteste le grammaire,” she’d shout, screeching and laughing at once. The windows would shake when she did so.
They had jam, butter, wine and bread. They spilt crumbs everywhere. Aria loved this French wine, its simple, correct taste. Red wine in the evenings was lovely.
They heard a noise from outside. There was this guy who kept coming around, shouting obscenities about American girls. They heard the sound of a trash can being kicked, and knew it was him. He called out now about American foreign policy, and the treatment deserved by degraded American girls. He cursed and swore. Aria hated this, much more than Laura did, and she was terrified to even look out the window. It made her feel sick.
After a while he left. It was probably only five minutes, but it felt longer. Aria rolled her shoulders. Laura peered out to check he was really gone. It was bad enough having strange, silent men eye you malevolently on the Metro, without feeling trapped in your own home. They drank some more without speaking.
The evening had been fun; out in a few bars, exchanging a few glances. They tried to dwell on this part, rather than the other. Why wouldn’t that jerk just leave them alone? The toast was only half-eaten, and it was cold now, and Aria felt sad and ashamed just looking at it. This guy dug up her past for her unwanted, and the fact he didn’t know what he was doing was slim consolation. She felt small and unsure.
Soon after they went to bed. Someone was revving an engine, again and again and again, and Aria lay in silence, listening. She pulled the blankets tighter, and thought of her mother and sister. Two months was the longest she’d ever been away, and a little sentimentality can be excused now and then. She cried softly, and felt warmer.