Free Allan Stein by Matthew Stadler Page B

turned to rain and I closed my eyes, wanting more sleep.
    While I try to be gracious I am in fact made uncomfortable by strangers. Paris was a stranger, and I was in it. That fact, plus the airplane ride, had so drained me that when we pulled up to the forlorn garden wall of the Dupaignes' house—a quaint cottagelike building wedged between towering apartment blocks in a rather ugly district—I asked the driver to find a hotel where I could rest. He stared at me, saying nothing, then drove on. Out the car's back window I saw a boy watching from an upper story of the house, leaning on a window casement, his oversized sweater falling from one shoulder. This was
Stéphane .
    The hotel lobby was cold and empty, like a drained aquarium, and I took my bags upstairs and collapsed onto the bed. I dreamt of nothing, flopping on the covers like a stunned fish, kept from my dreams, from anything beyond sensory impressions, by some kind of synaptical failure I blamed on the long trip. I felt cut in pieces, diced, like a man pressed through a sieve, as if a web of knowingness, a coherence, had been dragged out of me when the plane took off. Sleep helped. Waking up, several hours later, I looked at my watch and it told me the time back home. Herbert was alone in the city now, without me, not due to leave for Jimmy's until the next morning. For an instant, as a kind of reflex, I considered inviting him out for a drink, but of course I couldn't do that. I showered and got dressed and asked the concierge for a map. It was half past five and my appetite and humor had returned. I thought a drink would be nice, and maybe some fresh oysters, after which I'd take on the Dupaignes.
    The biting cold and sleet of my arrival had disappeared and a deep blue sky, evening to the east, tapered away between buildings. The breeze smelled of flowers and rain and car exhaust. It was pleasant where it touched my face and neck. I undid the heavy coat I'd brought on the plane and looked around the nearest corner, wondering if the morning's storm might be lodged there, hiding in the shadow of some courtyard, but there was nothing. The concierge had made a map on which he marked a garden, the Jardin du Luxem bourg, and I could see it, grand chestnut trees all billowing and wet behind a forbiddingly spiked black fence, just a few blocks away. I walked there first, in no great hurry.
    The garden was crowded with boys, some of them playing basketball at a hoop among the chestnut trees. I sat on a metal chair and watched them. A small fist of cloud shifted, blocking the last sun, and it became dusky where I sat. These boys did not move well. Their bodies were new to the game, and they lurched and stopped like apprentice drivers maneuvering trucks. They had no idea how poorly they played. Each success thrilled them, so they would strut and slap if a simple layup went in. I smiled at their successes, as I did at school when my students discussed philosophy.
    Smaller children sailed boats in a pond and their mothers sat on benches with nannies, smoking cigarettes and talking. I read that Allan Stein played in this garden when Gertrude took him on walks. How odd to be sitting in it. (Once Allan played with an American girl, Edith Rosenshine, and Edith was horrified when he asked her to go to the toilet with him. Gertrude assured her it was the French custom, and she went.) Evening came and policemen cleared us from the park. The boys unlocked their bicycles from the fences where they'd chained them, and mothers and children drifted away through traffic.
    I walked alongside the park, enjoying the smell of trees, to the rue Vavin, where a perfectly fine cafe was open. It was simple and fairly crowded, and that appealed to me. I wouldn't bother with oysters, not at so plain a place, but wine must be decent everywhere. The evening's chill was coming on, so the outside tables were empty and I took one. Two young women watched through the glass front of the cafe, their table