civilians here.”
“Jack Saddler told me to meet him here.”
“Ah,” says the man and extends his hand. “Name’s Charlie.”
“Matthew.”
Charlie and the bartender nod to each other and then Charlie returns to his table, where he says something to another man, who glances at Matthew, and then turns away quickly.
After a few minutes, the door opens and Jack Saddler enters the room. As he approaches, a big grin under his droopy, greying moustache, Matthew notes he has put a few beer-pounds on his professional wrestler build. Being six foot one, Matthew does not look up at people often, but his neck tilts when Jack comes closer.
“Hey! The original bad penny,” says Jack and he claps Matthew on the shoulder. His hand is the size and weight of a brick.
“You’re looking prosperous,” Matthew says.
Jack grabs his belly. “I look like a fucking Buddha.”
“Suits you.”
“How long you been in town?”
“Few weeks. You still carry that copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions?”
Jack laughs. “Shit. You remember that? Well, I’ve got a confession of my own. I never read it. Just knew that one quote.”
“Now I got it!” says a voice. They turn and see Charlie coming toward the bar. “I thought you looked familiar. Journalist, right? You’re that guy. Hey, Dan,” he calls to the bartender, “Fuck me! This is the guy in Israel, you know, the guy with that man and his kid, on CNN!”
Matthew knocks back the whisky. “Time for me to go.”
“Charlie, check yourself,” Jack says, his voice low. “Now.”
The man looks stricken. “Hey, hey. Listen,” he puts his hand on Matthew’s arm. “Sorry, man. No need to go. Rules around here. You don’t want to talk, you don’t have to talk. I fucked up. It’s just not too often we get a . . . well, anyway, my mistake. You’re welcome here.” He holds out his other hand for Matthew to shake. Matthew hesitates. “Next drink’s on me, for both of you.”
Matthew looks at Jack, who nods.
“Fair enough,” says Matthew and shakes the man’s hand.
“Whisky, double,” says Jack to the barman. “See you later, Charlie.”
They take their drinks to a table, and before Matthew knows it, there are more drinks. The night ebbs and flows as people come and go. No one comes near the table. Jack asks no questions. Instead he talks of himself.
“Nearly fifty, can you believe it? I’m too old for that merc shit. Too old for the war photographer thing, too.” Jack chews the side of his moustache, as he always did when he was uncomfortable. “I needed a break, you know?”
Yes, Matthew knows.
“I’m working in a hostel. Don’t laugh. Sort of a receptionist-slash-bouncer. Gives me a little extra cash. And let’s face it, there’s something to be said for working in a place full of eighteen to twenty-eight year olds. Especially the girls. All those belly rings and pierced tongues.” His eyebrows waggle and Matthew laughs. “But that’s not my real gig. I figure I’ll do some stuff in Paris. Street shot stuff, down and dirty. The Paris the tourists don’t see. I’m thinking of a book of subterranean Paris. In fact, now that I consider it, you could even do the words. We could do it together. Me pictures, you words. What do you think?”
Matthew laughs. Josh’s face swims before him. “Maybe,” he says, “Maybe.”
“Later, when Matthew is back in his apartment, lying on his back, the bed gently rolling under the wave of booze, he wonders why it is that everywhere he goes he finds someone who’s been in Vietnam. They pop up everywhere from El Salvador to Somalia. Soldiers turned mercenaries mostly, sometimes soldiers turned reporters, like Carl. Once in a rare while some guy, apparently just wandering.
The first time he met Jack had been in Peshawar. He was thinner back then, with red leathery skin, and a dog-eared, talismanic copy of The Confessions of St. Augustine that he wouldn’t go anywhere without. Jack said he had come to the Afghan border to hook up with the legendary mujahideen fighter Abdul-Haq. He stayed for a couple of weeks, making contacts and lining up guides to take him across the mountains. He showered in Matthew’s hotel room and told stories about being a Ranger in Vietnam, Company F, 75th Infantry, trained at the Recondo School at Nha Trang. About the Saigon hookers who plied their trade in the cemeteries, about the ambushes and the unending sense of anticipation that came from never knowing when a piece of bamboo was going to jump out of the earth and impale you, or when a snake tied to a vine would swing into your face. About his well-earned psychological discharge. “Totally fucking dinky dau,” as Jack called it.
Jack had many stories and, at the time, Matthew thought most of them were probably true. Matthew was in awe of Jack’s ability to move through his own terror, which Matthew had come to understand was the true definition of bravery.
“Aren’t you afraid of getting killed?” he had asked.
“Immortality is health; this life is a long sickness,” said Jack, quoting St. Augustine.
Jack vanished into the mountains and it was a long time before he resurfaced. In the interim, he became a sort of shining ghost, a sort of mythic questing figure. A doomed hero. Matthew winces. Jack would have picked up the gun in that square in Hebron. He would have let fly, and maybe the things would have been different.
Chapter Six
Matthew and Jack arrange to meet at Odéon in the square in front of the movie theatres, to see if anything appeals to them, something to see later in the evening. From there they plan to head over to Square Tino Rossi, on the Seine across from the Institut du Monde Arabe, where Jack wants to photograph the tango dancers who gather late in the afternoons and into the evenings. As Matthew climbs the metro stairs, he is flushed and sticky with the afternoon’s heat, which the sausage-casing constriction of the subway has only worsened. Even under the shade of the plane tree, he feels heat sick.
The street is a mass of people, and there is as much English spoken, it seems, as French. Everywhere he looks wilted tourists in sensible shoes and track suits lumber along, taking pictures and gawking. The masses jostle and lurch and the cacophony from the car horns and the café crowds makes his head spin. He feels queasy, a combination of too much booze the night before and too little food today.
He looks around for a bakery, and spots one a few doors down. It is all chrome and glass and linoleum, the walls painted an eye-piercing shade of yellow. Plastic chairs circle three round metal tables and the air is thick with cigarette smoke from a group of well-dressed Italian teenagers drinking diet colas and speaking loudly. The cakes and baguettes look as far from those found in a traditional patisserie as Matthew can imagine. He is reminded of Safeway Groceries back in Nova Scotia when he was a kid, and donuts with plasticine icing in garish pink. His stomach growls again and he seeks the least offensive item in the display case.
The woman behind the counter puts her cigarette in the ashtray and steps over to him, hands on hips. She has orange hair and is heavily, if not improvingly, made up.
