– What?

– Dieu! Vous êtes ici? Pouvez-vous m’entendre?

– English, my child.

– I saw a child’s corpse today, oh Lord.

– Yuck. Where?

– Outside the hospital. A couple were carrying him in their arms to the emergency room, they were running but I saw that the child was already dead.

– That’s hard, I said.

– Why did you take him, O Lord?

– Why blame me? I was nowhere near that kid!

She fell silent for ten minutes then said Where are you, Lord?

– In the bathroom.

– WHERE ARE YOU, LORD?

– IN THE BATHROOM!

– What if after the baby’s out, nothing’s changed?

– Are you nuts? A baby changes everything.

– But inside me? In my blood.

– Astrid, have you been to the doctor’s?

– Yes, God, I’ve been to doctors in Austria & in Italy & in Greece & in Germany & in Turkey & in Poland & they all say the same thing. I have the healthiest blood they’ve ever seen.

– Well, there you go. Did you really go to a doctor in Turkey? Did he wash his hands?

– I’m doomed.

– You’re imagining it. There’s nothing wrong with you. Everyone says so. You’ve been given a clean bill of health. You can’t go on imagining there’s something wrong with your blood. That’s just crazy talk, OK?

– OK.

– Are we together on this?

– Yes, Lord.

– Good. Now what’s for dinner?

Three in the Morning

Tonight I worked!

Eddie- without consulting me- convinced someone to give me a job.

– I didn’t authorize you to do that.

– You’re almost out of money. You’ve got a child to think about now.

– Well, all right then, what will I be doing?

– You’ll be working with me. Loading crates.

– That sounds all right.

– It’s hard, backbreaking work.

– I’ve heard about that kind of thing I said wondering why people always boast about doing something that breaks your back.

Pont Neuf at dusk- no boats. Dark waters of the Seine, not flowing. We waited on the stone banks of the river & watched the brown water just sit there.

– What do we do now? I asked.

– We wait.

Boats & barges ambled languidly by. A soft rain fell & night fell down with it. Colored city lights reflected on the body of the river. Rain fell unabated.

Two hours later Eddie said Here we are then.

The boat came forward relentlessly, a nightmare littered with heavy packing crates. Two men stepped off, faces hardly visible between where beanies stopped & scarves began. We worked wordlessly in the anonymous night clearing crates one by one from the boat & carrying them up the ramp to the street where truck was waiting.

Driver of truck had sluggish dozy eyes & as we worked I tried guessing his inner sufferings but couldn’t come up with anything other than “hates to work at night.” Eddie & I unloaded those heavy crates for hours while others shouted orders to each other in harsh whispers. By end as the empty boat putted out to sea my everything hurt.

Driver of truck gave Eddie envelope & we walked off together sweating in the cold moonlight. Eddie handed envelope to me, in an attempt to get me to keep all the money to feed my sudden & unwanted family but I gave him half- my greedy self chafing against my principled self.

I came home & was distressed to see I was spotless after heavy night of toil. Imagined my face would be covered in black soot but there’s just no soot in lifting crates no matter how heavy they are.

– How was it? Astrid asked as if I’d been to see a much-hyped movie. I looked at her belly & it occurred to me there was nothing inside not a baby not even a digestive system just a vacant hollow shell puffed up with air & I walked over & put my hand on her growth which she took as a loving gesture & she kissed my hand which made me feel cold all over & I thought I am incapable of loving this woman the mother of my child, and maybe I won’t be able to love the child either. And why am I like that? Is it because I have no self-love? I have self-like but is it enough?

A Week Later an Accident

We work night after night, silent silhouettes sweating in the dark. The hours grind by & I make time pass by imagining I’m an Egyptian slave constructing one of the lesser pyramids. My reverie broken when I mistakenly articulate it to Eddie by saying when we drop a crate for the third time Come on Eddie, for the love of Ra!

Tonight when I came home Astrid was on the floor.

– Are you OK? What happened?

– I fell down the stairs.

First compassionate thought was for the baby- his head will be dented & all squashed in at one side I thought.

I took her to bed & fed her & read to her like my mother read to me tho she was by all appearances unharmed by the fall. She lay in bed staring with only the whites of her eyes. Her pupils lay there like little broken pieces of night. She told me not to fuss. Do you think the baby’s all right? I asked. Should we take your stomach to the hospital?

– You don’t want this baby, she said not looking at me.

– That’s not true! I shouted defensively. I didn’t want this baby but now that it’s coming I’ve accepted the inevitable I lied hoping to talk myself into stoic fortitude. It didn’t work.

Tonight

Something happened tonight. Laboring away as usual, a useless moon shedding diffused light through a thin veil of clouds, the night like a bite of cold apple- it made my teeth sting. Tied the boat to the pier & thought how if someone bottled smell of wet rope & sold it over the counter I’d buy it.

Sudden shouting. Above us a group of four Arabs descended the steps walking closely together- a tough-guy walk, a mean bounce. Long black coats & longer faces. The Arabs shouted something & our guys shouted back & stopped working & grabbed whatever was handy, pipes crowbars metal hooks. The two groups argued in a spattering of French & Arabic. I didn’t know what they were arguing about but tension chewable. The two groups menacingly close to one another & there was a little show of pushing & shoving & they looked so much like rival football supporters full of beer the whole scene made me homesick.

Eddie said to me We should keep out of it. What do you think?

Didn’t tell him what I thought because what I thought was this: Everyone here but Eddie & me has a beard.

Couldn’t pick up the meaning of all those guttural sounds- only the hostility was clear. After the group broke up & climbed back up the sloping ramp the leader of the Arab group spat on the ground, a gesture that always says to me I’m too scared to spit in your face so I’m just going to put some phlegm about half a meter from your left shoe OK?

Dawn

Am I changing? Is a man’s character changeable? Imagine an immortal. Revolting to think he might be making the same old booboos over the centuries. To think of the immortal on his 700,552nd birthday still touching the plate even when someone has told him it’s hot- surely we have deep capacity for change but our 80 years doesn’t give us ample opportunity. You have to be a fast learner. You have to cram infinity into a handful of lousy decades.

This morning passed horribly deformed beggar who was for all practical purposes merely a torso rattling a cup- was it really me who gave him 100 francs & said Take the day off? It wasn’t me, not exactly. It was one of my selves, one of the multitudes. Some of them laugh at me. Others bite their nails in suspense. One snorts with derision. That’s how they are, the multitudes. Some of the selves are children & some are parents. That’s why every man is his own father & his own son. With the years if you learn enough you can learn how to shed your selves like dead skin cells. Sometimes they come out of you & walk around.

Yes I’m changing. Change is when new selves come into foreground while others recede into forgotten landscapes. Maybe definition of having lived full life is when every citizen in the hall of selves gets to take you for a spin- the commander the lover the coward the misanthrope the fighter the priest the moral guardian the immoral guardian the lover of life the hater of life the fool the judge the jury the executioner- when every last soul is satisfied at moment of death. If only one of the selves has been nothing but a spectator or a tourist then the life is incomplete.