place du Dublin is not a particularly pretty square and it is in a small corner of the 8th arrondissement behind the Gare Saint Lazare where there isn’t a single tourist attraction. Le Primavera Bistro on the corner sets up red tables and chairs and yellow umbrellas beneath the poplars whenever there is the least hope of suitable weather. There is also a green fountain that, like the quality of this morning’s light, pleases him. There is something about the miniature temple, with its steady streams of water flowing over the upturned arms of the goddesses Simplicity, Temperance, Charity and Goodness, that gives Matthew hope. The sunlight sparkling on the water is like laughter, transmuted at this distance from sound to shards of prismatic encouragement.
Matthew has seen a great deal of light in his travels around the world, and he has come to the conclusion that it has different properties in different places: the harsh glare of a frozen icefield, the sweet veil in a bamboo thicket, the distortion of distance and depth that follows a thunderstorm when the sun’s rays stab under the skin of cloud cover, the threatening gloom of a darkening prison cell. Light takes on the characteristics of the objects in its path, and this, he has come to believe, is what humans do as well. Light can blind as well as reveal. It can save someone who wanders too close to an unseen edge, but it can just as easily betray a person cowering in a hidden place. He has concluded that contrary to what religious imagery would try to persuade the populace, light is neutral, and indifferent.
The wounds in his body have closed over and physically, Matthew is as good as he is going to get. The mind is another matter. Diagnoses have been assigned. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Nervous Exhaustion. Still, the practical problem exists regardless of mental fragility: if you want to eat, you must have money. In a flurry of demented activity back in the United States the month before, he sold everything he owned. It put some money in the bank, but depressingly little. If he wants more, he must write the book. It is a simple equation, the execution of which has thus far evaded him.
And so, begin now. Start again. But first, scan the bookshelf above the desk to see if there is any inspiration to be had there or, failing that, any excuse to procrastinate. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee, which is Matthew’s bible. But not today. Some short stories by Grace Paley. A book by M.F.K. Fisher, a gift from someone now forgotten. The Collected Stories of John Cheever, some science fiction. Asimov, Frank Herbert, Heinlein, Ray Bradbury. Nope. Sorry, pal. Nothing for you this morning. Pick up a pen and face the page. It must be longhand, for he has long since learned the terrible temptation of the delete button. Breathe. Start where? Beirut? El Salvador? He writes about Beirut, and Sid Cameron, the Belgian photographer who wore a brown and yellow paisley vest he never washed. About the day Sid took him to the Palestinian refugee camp at Sabra, after the Lebanese Phalangists had slaughtered thousands. About the endless swelling bodies, the wandering, weeping women, the rubble, the mutilations. About how Sid had thoughtfully turned his head away as Matthew vomited and then offered him a half-bottle of warm Coke with which to wash out his mouth. “You’ll get used to it,” said Sid, who had survived his initiation in Vietnam and told stories about what napalm and bouncing-betty landmines could do.
Sabra was such a dusty place, and hot. Like Hebron. Don’t go there. Back away. Next stop, El Salvador. Still hot, but wet, damp enough to flush the dust out of memory’s mouth. The pen moves. . .
El Salvador. Carl showed me the ropes. He drove slowly, thoughtfully, on his daily rounds, taking photos of all the new corpses that appear like weird night-blooming succulents, fresh each morning. Fresh too were the strange blisters that blossom on my skin, spreading like a pale parasitic vine across my hands, my arms, and my chest. The rash grew with the rising sun and receded each night only to begin again. The blisters didn’t bother me much during the day, when they were nothing more than a soft burning, but at night, as they germinated under my skin, they itched like something crawling beneath the flesh.
Carl laughed at me as the blisters spread across my face, making me look like a pimply adolescent. “You should have seen the stuff that’d grow on you in ‘Nam. It was like farm country in your boots,” he said.
Whatever happened to Carl? Matthew wonders, back again in his body, at his desk, in this Paris apartment. Oh yes, newscaster somewhere in the American Midwest, last anyone heard. And then, knowing he should not, he reads over what he’s written. Frustration wells up from the bottom of his gut, bubbles over his chest and down to his fingertips. He thinks he should keep a large metal garbage bin next to his desk wherein he can have regular fires. It is difficult not to tear the page to shreds with his teeth. He has become, however, a very good crumpler, and his wastebasket is more than accepting.
So, there will be no more writing today. But what then? He does not want to do what he mostly does. Mostly he sits and tries very hard not to remember things. Not Josh. Not the father. Not the daughter. Not Kate. Not his own father, brother, mother. Not Rwanda. Not Kosovo. Not Chechnya. Not so many places, not so many people. Not remembering them leaves very little room in his mind for anything else.
It is now eleven o’clock in the morning, and from the window, he watches the young man at Chez Elias¸ a tiny café on the square. He wears a white apron and uses a long-handled brush to wash the glass. Now he whistles optimistically, but Matthew has seen him sitting at a table in the window, no customers in the café, poring over maps with a look of deep dissatisfaction on his face.
Matthew realizes he is jiggling his knee, tapping his foot, and he stops himself, because he knows from experience this nervous energy is not good for him. He tells himself he is adjusting to the tick-tock passing of time outside the crisis zones. He tells himself he is fine. He tells himself he should not have had that fourth cup of coffee. He tries to read the International Herald Tribune, a story about the North Africans, the san-papiers, who have occupied the Saint Bernard church in Barbès, demanding legal residence papers. It looks bad, with the government sounding tougher and tougher. It will not end well. He puts the paper aside. Folds it in a neat square and presses it flat. Looks around for somewhere to stuff his discontent.
The sweep of the clock’s hands is agonizingly slow; the voices of the children on the street below are needles in his ears. He briefly considers calling Brent, back in New York, but it is too early, and besides, he already knows what Brent will say. How’s the book coming along? Come on, pal, get yourself together.
Deciding what to do in a tourist town when one is not technically a tourist is a wretched task. Matthew has seen the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame on previous trips; he has chased the ghosts of Joyce and Hemingway through the cafés and bookshops. He does not want to stroll up the Gap-and-Planet-Hollywood-infested Champs Élysées. He certainly does not want to go to a museum. He begins pacing, which is a bad sign.
Jack Saddler. Perhaps it is the morning’s work, the memories of Sid and Carl that make him think of Jack Saddler, but the name now springs to mind and he is surprised he has not thought of it before. Jack Saddler. Vietnam vet, ex-mercenary, sometime combat photographer. The last time he saw Jack, back in Kosovo, he had said he was heading to Paris, in need of a break. Jack Saddler, who knew a thing or two about lugging a sack of skulls.
France Telecom proves helpful and a few minutes later Matthew dials a number for a mobile phone.
“Hello?”
“Jack?” This is a lot of noise in the background.
“Who’s this?”
“Matthew Bowles.”
“Hey! You in Paris?”
“Yup.”
A moment’s silence and then, “How you holding up?”
“Fair.”
“I can imagine.” The sound of car horns. “Fuck
