Free Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones Page B

hungry. Hunger is just a physical fact. If you cannot move beyond it then you cannot hope to live as we do. But you see, at that moment, the Bernard of Parisian existence has emerged from the rubble of my new being. Bernard knows what to do in a way that Millennium Three has forgotten. He—that is I, of course—he asks if she would like a wurst. To my surprise—Millennium’s, that is—she agrees. She ate two. While she is eating I manage to get a proper look at her. It’s clear she has nowhere to sleep. No roof or bed. She has just got off a train from somewhere and is new to the city. So the next thing is very obvious really. I take her under my wing. Again, nothing is said or proposed. It just happens, like the weather.
    We leave the wurst stand, wait for a tram to crawl by, cross the tracks to the station, climb more escalators. A two-minute wait on the platform during which time nothing is said, nor is there a chance to feel the cold; then the usual carriage smell of coats, beer, ash. We are on the S-Bahn heading to the east of the city. At Warschauer we get off the train and I lead her into my neighbourhood, if I can claim any as my own. Actually, this happens to be an FFF neighbourhood. But those of us who eschew the narrow floorboard have settled a spacious abandoned warehouse. This neighbourhood and the one of cobbles, trees and cafes is connected by a hole in a long wall. I show her where, and lead her through the darkness, past the fires.
    I must admit it is nice to have someone’s company. Someone to lie beneath the night with. I have a mattress and a pillow. I build a small fire. I still have a bottle of Grand Marnier given to me by a grateful woman who had wept at Rilke’s poem ‘Loneliness’. She also gave me some euros. As you know I insist on proper exchange of goods and services. The Grand Marnier was a gift.
    At last I have a name. Ines.
    Ines does not want to drink. She is tired. She just wants to lie down. I make sure she has the good side. I take the lumpy side. I give her the pillow but not before I slip it inside a clean T-shirt that I stole from the Turkish market that morning. It is red and has the Turkish crest.
    In the morning I wake to find her still there. Her African face looks beautiful against the Turkish red.
    I am surprised. But only for that moment. Then I am surprised that I am surprised. Why not? Why wouldn’t she be there? I slip outside for a pee. The fires have burnt down. Across the landscape people are sleeping. A woman wriggles out of a sleeping bag. It is like watching a caterpillar emerge from its cocoon. She is naked, and as she squats her dark pubis spreads. Behind her, sleepy young men stand around peeing carelessly. As I am peeing I realise I’m happy. Which is interesting. Very interesting to me. Because if I am happy at that particular moment, what was I before this woman arrived in my life? Briefly I reconsider my entire philosophy and political liaisons—but only while I am peeing. The crisis soon passes. The moment I do up my trouser buttons all is forgotten, all that questioning, and I return to the inexplicable arrival of this woman into my life and these new inexplicable feelings.
    For the next eight days we are together. There is no sex. At night, when we lie down together, she will allow my hand to rest on her hip. Sometimes she will talk in her sleep. I listen carefully. But it is in a language that I don’t know. We have to speak in English. She has three French words. Bonjour and merci beaucoup . She manages them quite naturally, unlike English people, who after uttering these words stand there beaming as if they require a medal to be pinned to their lapel.
    For those eight days we are together almost twenty-four hours a day. Except for two hours every afternoon when she leaves me. I don’t know where she goes or what she does. Once I tried to come along. She told me—No—she must go alone. She did