The Hands of Strangers Read online

  While Jon was growing up, his mother taught him to speak French and she talked often of the small town she was from at the foot of the Alps. They would sit on the front porch swing and she would look across the treetops of the flat neighborhood and ask Jon to imagine mountaintops off in the distance, reaching into the clouds, littered with white no matter the season. She described a fresh snow, the purity of the river after a rain. She talked of train rides and of the smell of bread as you walked down the street. As he got older, he asked more questions, wondered why they never visited. She would only frown, then make up an excuse and laugh it off. But it was plenty to intrigue him and his second year of college he decided to study abroad in France to see if the things his mother had spoken of were true.

  He studied in Blois, a busy town in the Loire Valley, an hour train ride from Paris. He had it better than the other American students because he spoke the language and he soon found himself irritated by their dependence on him as translator. So he avoided them, made time in the cafés and bars with the locals, made friends with the son of a vineyard owner, discovered the music, discovered the women. He wanted to give his time abroad more than a semester, and he needed to work to stay, so he took advantage of his Swiss citizenship and headed for Geneva. When he called home to give the news, his mother laughed and said, “So. You were listening.” He heard his father moan in the background.

  He found the Genevois predictable and tranquil and it was a good place to adapt, as the rituals of good food, good drink, less work were alive and enforced. He lived in a small room in a hostel and worked in a pub in the Old Town that was full of British and Irish expatriates. It was one of the few places in Geneva where night occasionally grew into morning and he had many drunk friends with thick accents who were easier to understand after four or five pints. But he found the pub to be too close to America and he’d walk by the cafés in the afternoons, see the same old men sitting in the same windows day after day, and he knew this is what his mother meant. So he quit the pub and found work at the Café Commerce, a small restaurant with only five bar stools and eight tables on the inside and four tables on the outside. He took a picture of it and mailed it to his mother.

  The regulars asked him about America, about big cars and overtime. He exaggerated his replies, claimed his father worked sixty-five hours a week, that children were required to wear red, white, and blue to school every day. After a few months, Lucien, the café owner, gave him a raise and he moved out of the hostel and into four rooms above the café that Lucien’s daughter was leaving to get married. In a few more months, as Lucien grew more comfortable with him, Jon was allowed to open and close, to hire and fire, to make recommendations for the plat du jour. He particularly liked the hiring, as waitresses came and went almost as often as customers. He had developed his father’s simple good looks, a sharp brow and broad shoulders, and he did what any young man in a new country would do, he hired possibilities, which kept both him and the old men happy no matter how badly the service suffered.

  After a year at the Café Commerce, he felt like he had been delivered to the kind of place that his mother had spoken about and it seemed as if he had always been there. He had realized since he first arrived in Blois that he wasn’t going back to the place he had called home and it was time to call and explain. He knew his mother would understand. After he talked to her, she handed his father the phone and he explained again. “I’ll be home for holidays and big deals,” Jon said. His father took it the best he could and his mother swore they were coming to see him.

  In the next year, he made two trips home. One trip had been for his mother’s funeral. She had smoked right up until the time that she had to stay in the hospital and even then the nurses were constantly chasing after the cigarette smoke coming from her room. Jon had looked into the casket hoping for the stylish woman who had raised him to think past the city limits, but she wasn’t there, only an elegant impression of her. Six months later his father passed away. Dropped dead in the tomato patch he had planted in the backyard, discovered by neighborhood kids chasing after their soccer ball. At his father’s funeral he found himself wishing it would have been the other way around so that he could have brought his mother back with him to die in the place she belonged. After his father was in the ground, he returned to Geneva feeling more alone than he had before.

  He spent more hours at work and the Café Commerce became his home, as he seldom wandered into the city. Never to the lake, never to the markets, never to the cinema. He would close the café at night, go upstairs to his apartment, then smoke cigarettes and have a few drinks and read and fall asleep on the couch. The morning would come and he would go down to the café, hours before anyone else arrived, have several espressos, smoke more cigarettes, read the paper. Then the help showed up, then the customers showed up, and before he knew it, he was sitting on the couch again.

  Another year got away from him and one slow winter afternoon, the sun gone for weeks and business at a crawl, he sat on a bar stool in the quiet, the door closed to block out the street noise. He looked at his hands, looked at himself in the reflection of the café windows. He thought he was alone, then a man said in French from a back table, “You don’t behave like a young man.” Jon turned and the man was a regular, one of the old ones. The man had a thick white mustache and in the winter he kept a red scarf tied around his neck.

  “I know,” Jon answered. “I don’t think this is the life she used to talk about.”

  “Who?” the man asked.

  “My mother.”

  The next afternoon, he gave Lucien a month’s notice. With Jon running the café, Lucien had found time for a girlfriend across the river in Carouge, and with a wife and three more daughters still at home, he agonized over having his afternoons again filled. Lucien offered him a raise, a better apartment, more liberty with the waitresses, but Jon declined. He spent the month saving every cent, selling furniture and clothes, sorting through what to keep and what to toss. He didn’t like the boyish image on his Swiss passport, so he had a new one made. In the mornings, instead of reading the Geneva newspaper, he would walk to the newsstand at the train station and pick up a copy of Le Figaro, the Paris daily. Then he bought a pocket guide of Paris so he could get a grasp of the addresses of the apartments for rent, of the jobs offered. But he had never been to Paris, and while he understood it was a bigger, faster city than Geneva, the map overwhelmed him, an endless array of red, blue, yellow, and green lines that crossed and looped and crossed again. Which arrondissement is affordable? What addresses are near a metro line? What’s a good neighborhood and what isn’t and how long will it take to find work? He grew frustrated, timid. Wondered if he hadn’t made a wrong decision. Two nights before he was to quit Geneva, he sat in his apartment repeating the same worries over and over until he got up from the couch, walked into the kitchen, and dropped the pocket guide in the garbage. The next morning he would ask for his job back.

  He turned to the kitchen window and opened it and looked down into the street. The light of the tram shined blocks away and he watched it move in his direction, quiet people stepping in and out of the quiet tram in a quiet night. It approached his building and slid by, the click of the tracks no louder than a pencil tapping on a table. The air was cold and refreshing. A mother and a daughter walked along the sidewalk, the child singing a short, repetitious melody. The store windows of the street were dark.

  And then he understood something about his father—why he was never interested in packing a bag, getting on a plane, and going somewhere where the people talked funny and he couldn’t read the menu. He leaned out of the window, heard music coming from somewhere. He wondered how his mother felt about having never been back home and he wished he had sent her a plane ticket.

  He walked to the garbage and picked out the Paris pocket guide. He flipped through it once more, then went into the bedroom and tossed it into a half-packed duffel bag. I’ll figure it out
when I get there, he thought. He took his American passport and dropped it in the garbage where the pocket guide had been. Then he went down to the café and sat in the shadows and drank a glass of wine to help him get to sleep.

  A light snow fell on Geneva the morning Jon walked to the train station. He carried two duffel bags and in his coat pocket was his ticket, the morning copy of Le Figaro, and the pocket guide. The train was scheduled for 10:43 a.m. He was taking the TGV and in three hours he would be in Paris. He found the train on the departure board and walked to Voie 6. Passengers gathered and waited along the open corridor—men and women in business suits, mothers and daughters going shopping, a stray teenager here and there. The train was announced and in minutes it pulled into the station, silver and streamlined with a sharp orange streak running along its side. Jon found his car and climbed on with the other second classers. He put his bags in the luggage rack over the seat, sat down, took a deep breath. Others took off coats, pulled out magazines from purses and backpacks, put on headphones. Jon sat still with his arms folded, as if Paris were only around the corner.

  The train sat for fifteen minutes as passengers boarded. Jon’s seat was next to the window and he leaned against it, stared out at the people coming and going. He sat still, almost hypnotized, and was startled when the young woman with the heavy backpack fell into his lap.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she apologized. “The bag made me fall.” She spoke a quick French, the accent sharper than the French of Geneva. “It’s okay,” he said, and she pulled herself up. He stood and helped her lift the backpack into the overhead, then they both sat down.

  “Books,” she said. “Books that he never reads. My father sends me here twice a year to buy from my uncle’s bookshop, though my uncle has never been to Paris to buy flowers. It’s like a bag of stones.” She spoke looking ahead, as if speaking into a mirror. “Next time say no, Estelle.”

  Jon smiled and looked once more out of the window. Unwrapping her scarf, she elbowed him in the side of the head. He grimaced and she apologized again.

  “I’m Jon,” he said.

  “I’m Estelle.”

  “I know. I was listening before. Why would your uncle need to buy flowers in Paris?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, and she sat back, looking mildly embarrassed. Her brown hair flipped up around the collar of her coat and her eyes were green like limes. The tip of her nose was still red from the cold.

  “You’re an American,” she said. “I can tell from the accent. So many Americans in Paris, they have their own sound.”

  “I was. American, I mean. But not anymore.”

  “Then what are you?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure. In three hours, I guess Parisian.”

  “Are you moving there?”

  “For now. I don’t know if I’ll stay.”

  She smiled. “You’ll stay. At least for a while. It’s difficult to leave.”

  “Well. I hope.”

  “Only remember that the cold does not last forever.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “How is your head?”

  He touched it and felt the tender spot. “It’s good.”

  A whistle sounded and the train doors closed. The train eased forward. People who had been whispering as the train sat still began to talk. Estelle pushed a button on the armrest and leaned her seat back. The train station moved by slowly in the window and, once clear, the train gathered speed and Geneva passed by faster and faster. Jon watched as the city blocks disappeared, as the neighborhoods disappeared, and the train became a bullet shooting out of Switzerland and across the snow-scattered farmlands of France. He looked at Estelle and her eyes were closed and her hands folded in her lap. A strand of hair had fallen across her cheek. She stuck out her bottom lip and tried to blow the hair away but it didn’t move. Jon reached over and moved it from her face. She opened her eyes and said, “Thank you.”

  Halfway to Paris, Estelle admitted she spoke English, though not very well. She asked him to speak it to help her practice. He found out that she and her family had lived in Paris her entire life, that she was an only child, that she spent a month in London one summer but had never been to the States. Her family owned several flower shops in different parts of the city. He explained his Swiss mother and that though he had spent a semester in Blois, he’d never taken the trip to Paris.

  “Why are you going now?” she asked.

  “I could have gone south to Italy but I don’t speak Italian. Germany is no good. No Spain for the same reason no Italy. I need to be somewhere that I can speak so I can get a job.”

  “Paris is much different than Geneva.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  “But the best thing to do is find a neighborhood. If you find a neighborhood that you like, then sometimes you forget that Paris is so big.”

  “Okay,” he said, and he pulled out the pocket guide. He pointed and asked questions about neighborhoods and she would put her finger to her chin, think for a moment, then answer. She frowned on some of the arrondissements, mentioning things like too many old people or not enough metros and Jon scribbled question marks on top of these. Some she smiled at, the ones she liked, named the good restaurants and shops and shady park benches. He asked where he could find the most cafés and she told him that anywhere close to the river would be a good place to look for work.

  “If you would like, when we arrive, I will take you to a street close to where I work where there are many inexpensive hotels. Not so fancy, maybe.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Okay. Whatever you like.”

  “But maybe I can help with the giant bag. And we would be even.”

  “The bag,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I forgot about the bag.”

  They arrived at the Gare d’Austerlitz and Jon bought a luggage roller for her backpack, ignoring the money she tried to put in his hand as he paid for it. They exited the station and walked through Jardin des Plantes and its wide, pebbled pathways. Despite the cold, women pushed children in strollers, curious eyes peeking out between scarves and sock hats. Old men sat on the park benches reading the newspaper. The trees were bare and thick. They came to the Quai Saint-Bernard and walked along the river. Estelle walked ahead as Jon was slower with his duffel bags and he kept stopping to look around. She would look over her shoulder every few steps to make sure he was still there. They continued along the river until the Île de la Cité was in sight and he recognized Notre-Dame from pictures. Estelle said, “You won’t find anything cheap in that direction.” She turned left, away from the river and the sights, onto rue Saint-Jacques. The street ran uphill and she pointed and said, “Go this way. Once you get to the top of the hill you will see many small hotels.”

  He put down his bags and said, “What does Estelle do on the days that she is not traveling to Geneva for her father?”

  “Estelle helps her father with the business.”

  Jon looked away from her and up the hill. “I was thinking that maybe tomorrow you could show me where to eat lunch. If you can get away from work again.”

  She nodded, her nose and cheeks red from the cold. “Yes, but only because you bought me these wheels for the backpack.”

  “Can I call you after I find a place?”

  “No,” she said. “Meet me here tomorrow. Right on this spot. At midday.”

  “Midday,” Jon said, and he leaned to her and they exchanged two kisses and then he gave her a third.

  “Not anymore,” she said. “Only three in Geneva. In Paris, we give two. You need to start thinking like a Parisian.”

  “I’ll remember,” he said, and she turned and walked away from him, and when she turned the corner, he kicked himself for not getting a number, an address, something. Though he knew that if she didn’t return to this spot tomorrow, a phone num
ber would be of no good anyway.

  He found the Hôtel de Medicis, simple and small and easy on the budget. His room was on the fourth floor and he could stand in the middle, stretch out his arms, and nearly touch all four walls. The window opened onto a mini-balcony and he stepped outside. There was a chair and a terra-cotta pot was filled with cigarette butts and a copy of L’Étranger had been left behind in the chair. Across the street was a lamb kabob stand, a fruit and vegetable grocery, a flower shop. He wondered if it was Estelle’s. From somewhere he heard an old man’s voice singing. Scooters and pint-size cars zipped down the narrow street. He hoped it would snow.

  He barely slept. The thin mattress sagged with his weight and he kept dreaming he was in his warm bedroom in Geneva, only to wake to hear footsteps up and down the staircase. He woke early and walked. Shop owners sprayed sidewalks and men in green jumpsuits picked up the garbage. There was no snow but a light mist. He stopped three times for coffee, each time measuring the café to see if it was a place he might want to work and each time leaving uninterested. He walked through the Latin Quarter and so many signs written in English helped him realize that he didn’t want to work there, so he made his way up the river and as he walked he forgot about finding a job and he forgot about finding a place to live as he soaked in the flow of the river and the hustle of the traffic and the detail of the architecture. He paused at a couple of book stands but didn’t linger long as he wanted to keep walking, keep watching. Closer to noon the sun fought its way through the clouds for an instant and shined a fresh light on the city and added a pep to Jon’s walk. It was then that he realized that he wasn’t sure how far he was from the street corner where he was to meet Estelle and he looked at his watch and it was ten minutes until noon. He traced his steps back along the river, back through the Quarter, back toward the hotel, and back down the hill and he arrived five minutes late. He waited and watched in all directions. Another five minutes passed and he told himself he would give her another five. Another five came and went and he gave her another five. And as those five disappeared he told himself to shrug it off, that there were millions of other people in the city waiting to meet him, and he shoved his hands in his pockets and started across the street toward a newspaper stand and that was when he saw her coming toward him with a blue scarf wrapped around her neck.