The Foreigner - Chapitre Trois

The intimacy Winston had once felt with Paris had been declining for years. Call it the end of the honeymoon period or the start of divorce proceedings - all that mattered was this; that Winston’s relationship with the city had reached a point of no return. He could rekindle his artistic passion only rarely now because of it, and usually only in moments of intoxicated illumination in the bars of Saint Michel. Such evenings Winston felt that maybe he could break the curse, that maybe he could drink just enough to quench the thirst of his parched muse.

Such evenings would usually transpire in the poets’ circles, with each artist sat around a packed, shot-glass table, conveying his or her life story in third-person. It was cyclical and predictably outrageous; As the get-togethers swelled and the hand gestures became more and more erratic and continental, the circle would splinter into smaller, more intimate twos and threes. As the wine flowed, sophistication would give way to sensuality, and sensuality to unabated passion and from then on, just plain sleaze. By the early hours the flames fanned themselves, - men and women would take what they wanted from each other and return to the madness of the orgy. Then it was au revoir or back to someone else’s squat for drugs and frenzied sex. It did not really matter who it was, because come daybreak they would be gone - taking the memory of it all with them. Having said and did all they needed to for that night, it would be like nothing had happened by the next evening.

But unlike her artists, Paris had not forgotten Winston’s drink-fuelled lust for her the night before - and couldn’t help but feel his presence that morning was an uncomfortable reminder. It was too soon and Winston felt as though she - having been drunk herself - had awoken with a deep regret. Winston had loved her, but one night of lust could never bring that back. Winston needed a drink, but she needed her space - and was having her way.

He walked nervously, feeling suffocated by a city resenting his presence. A bead of sweat fell from his brow and disappeared into the black stubble framing his face. He walked with increasing inaccuracy, unable to work his cheap lighter. His objective was to reach the sanctuary of a red canopy in the distance. Everything would be better once sheltered in there, and he would wait for the unusual feeling to pass.

The city demanded otherwise however, and in the same fashion as how he arrived there in the first place, Winston found himself as on rails. But this time he was fully conscious of it; He was unable to control himself as he was forced into the direction of the nearby tube station to be pushed underground against its will.

She used everything at her disposition, groups of commuters and other foreigners created a funnel leading into the dark pit of Pigalle station. The tenebrous abbess began to swallow him whole, engulfing his vision. His brown, panic-stricken eyes scoured the wall of bodies for an escape, until (metres from the descending stairs) Winston broke through the suits, darting forward and grasping the metal barriers rising up from the curb. His hands scuffled and pulled his body along the crash barrier as it lead along the road and into a distant smoggy haze, although he could find not a single crossing to escape through, he was penned in!

He exhaled heavily and rapidly and clawed himself over the barrier, grappling to steady his shaking body. He gently lowered his feet one after the other, over to the other side the curb where he cautiously rose from his arched, embryonic figure.

The scream of breaking traffic stilled his nerves to paralysis, and he watched patiently for a matter of one and a half seconds as the mirror of an oncoming coach proceeded towards the side of his face.

The mighty machine delivered a blow which flung Winston back over the four-foot fence, his back pillowed by the pavement. The fat American children within pressed their fat faces against the windows. Some pointed, laughed and took pictures, others mirrored Winston’s own shock - their mouths and eyes wide open and vacant. He watched the coach arrogantly glide into obscurity.

“Winston?!”

Beckoning from the other side of the street was the blurred figure of a petite Parisian woman, squinting through her spectacles and preparing to cross over.