Free Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matas Page A

how many times. Not to mention the absurd questions he kept asking the stewardesses, the nervous glances towards the little window and other charming touches. I took a good look at him; he was dressed all in black, from head to toe. I looked carefully at his head, examined his face in detail, and shuddered: this young man with a diabolical air and somewhat murderous aspect looked a lot like me at the time when I wrote
The Lettered Assassin
.
    At that moment, the plane took off.
    Was he an imposter, or someone completely unrelated to me, or was he me myself, quite a few years younger? Doubtless the second, and apart from the fact of traveling on flight JKK666 and his looking rather demonic, there wasn’t too much to get alarmed about. But just in case, I tried to keep him in line. I shot him another defiant glance. I gave him — as far as possible — the same icy and terrifying look I’d imagined my lettered assassin to have when I was writing the book. I thought I had stunned and confused him, but that was only wishful thinking. I was planning on not looking at him or worrying about him anymore, when he resumed his nervous habit, picking up the airline magazine and giving it a compulsive glance before putting it back in its place again. More irritated than ever, I was about to give him one last very serious and threatening reproachful glance when the thought came to me clearly that if in the 1970s, following Hemingway’s example or letting the despair of youth take him over, if this man had committed suicide, I would not be alive. I realized I had always depended on this young assassin and if he forgot about me, I would die. And vice versa, of course.
    I made a note in my diary about this and tried to get him to read it. I wrote: “Sensation of being in two times and two places at once.” The diabolical youth was too nervous to read what I was writing. I wondered what would happen if, for example, I said to him: “When you get to my age, you will want at any cost for someone to recognize that you look like Hemingway.” He would certainly take me for a madman or think I wanted to strike up an amorous relationship with him, anything but guess he was the same as me when I was young. I traveled beside him in a rigorous and repressed silence until we got to Barcelona. And when we landed in that city I let him go ahead of me in the aisle so he could get off first. “Youth first,” I said to him, venting my frustration, trying to make up with these words for what I’d suffered throughout the interminable flight. “And the devil is everywhere,” he replied insolently, almost pushing me over. I’ve never seen anyone in such an immense hurry to get off a plane, and I’ve seen some pretty nervous people.

32
     
    Hemingway said that when spring arrives in Paris, even if it’s a false spring, the only problem is to find the place where you can be happiest. I well remember the first day of the spring of 1974, not the first official day of spring, but a splendid April day. I even remember the date, April 9, a day when the rain stopped completely and everyone left their winter clothes at home and the terraces of the cafés filled up. Everything invited happiness, a grave setback for my habitual state of youthful despair. Paris is a gray and rainy city, but when spring arrives and the terraces fill and street singers seem to emerge from every corner singing
La Vie en Rose
, the city turns into the best place in the world to be happy (even if a person might not want it to be and prefers
la vie en noir
).
    On that April 9, I was about to cross Boulevard Saint-Germain with Marguerite Duras and Raúl Escari when suddenly a large black car, almost funereal and not at all spring-like, braked hard and stopped in front of us. I looked inside and saw Julia Kristeva, Philippe Sollers, Marcelin Pleynet, and a fourth person I wasn’t able to identify. Sollers rolled the car window down and spoke with Marguerite for a few seconds. I