The Long Summer of Monsieur Loiseau

There are two kinds of coffee shops that journalists often go to. One is for those who go alone for a light lunch, stay for no more than 10 minutes, and leave in a hurry with a sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil. The traces of mayonnaise are mostly stained in this kind of place.The other, which takes the interviewee, is quiet and expensive, with ostentatious chandeliers and mirrors of unknown purpose, and the shirts of the waiters are as spotless as the marble floor tiles.Serving time ranges from one and a half to three hours, and what is served is often a few wilted asparagus soaked in sauce, tiny and melancholy against the huge plate.

Harry went to the first.

It's been half an hour since the lunch rush, and most of the tables haven't been cleared yet, with food crumbs and ashtrays full of unextinguished cigarette butts.There were no tables and chairs in the dimly lit shop, and the seats overflowed onto the sidewalk. They chose a table that didn't wobble so much, and sat down.Alex looked at the menu written on the small blackboard, the chalk writing on it was already blurred, but the regular customers obviously no longer need the reminders from this blackboard, and most of those who need this blackboard will not become regular customers.

"Don't order anything but coffee and a ham sandwich," Harry advises. "I'm pretty sure this tuna salad sent our Geneva correspondent to the emergency room."

"And you guys haven't put this place out of business yet."

"Too late, it has formed a symbiotic relationship with the journalists on Boulevard Osman."

It took a long time to lure the waiter out of the dark shop like a lazy eel.Both ordered coffee, but no food.Alex lit a cigarette, tilted his head slightly, and exhaled the smoke.Harry noticed some long, long-healed welts on his wrists, and Alex caught his gaze and tugged at his sleeves to hide the scars.

"Break the glass," he explained casually, shaking the ashes into the saucer.

"This kind of bad luck happens from time to time."

"really."

The coffee arrived, thick and piping hot, looking as if it had been pulled from a tar pit.No one touched it and watched it cool slowly on the saucer.Harry stared intently at the smooth surface, where the slender shadows of the branches overhead were reflected like cracks in a mirror.

Alex took another drag on his cigarette, "Is your father okay?"

Harry looked up at him, and it took a long time before he said, "Have we gotten to this point? Are we being polite to each other?"

"We." Alex said one word, changed his mind, and looked down at the shadow of the tree on the table. "It's been three years, Harry."

"I've been looking for you everywhere."

"I know."

"Can't you just write me a letter?"

"Letters?" Alex asked back, laughing, that dry, barbed smile. "Haven't I written enough?"

"You know I didn't mean not to reply, my—"

"Your job, I know." Alex interrupted Harry, putting out his cigarette on the saucer. "No one knows better than me, sailor."

The epithet stung Harry, the discomfort it caused was so real that he flinched, like touching a hot iron.To prolong the silence, Harry took a sip of his lukewarm coffee, which tasted as bad as ever, bitter and mingled with the smell of burnt wood.On the other side of the street, a young nanny with her hair in a bun slammed open the window on the second floor, and moved a potted plant with plump green leaves into a small patch of sunlight falling on the window sill.Their small apartment at 55 Juniper Street had the same kind of window with flower trellises and wooden shades, and Harry couldn't remember whether it was open or closed in midsummer three years ago, it seemed to be open, Because that summer was extremely humid and hot.The nosy retired police officer upstairs probably heard every word they said, especially since neither of them lowered their voices.

"Can't you work at Oxford like you used to?" Alex asked, not looking at Harry, staring at the typewriter, one hand on the keyboard, even though there was no manuscript paper on it.

They had been circling this topic for two days, and finally they couldn't escape.Harry threw the shirt in his arms into the suitcase, and said in a half-joking tone: "Stay here and continue to write bicycle theft cases and common vegetable growing guides? No, thank you."

"If I remember correctly, you used to write happily too."

"That was before." Harry walked back into the bedroom, took out the portable typewriter, and searched for a suitable place for it among the half-full suitcases.Alex answered in a low voice, but Harry couldn't hear clearly. He rolled up two shirts and filled the gap between the typewriter case and the suitcase. He raised his head and asked Alex what he just said.

"I'm writing a new story."

Harry sighed, "That's good, congratulations, I'm sure you'll do well."

"You're just teasing me."

The accusing tone of the other party completely burned Harry's faint impatience: "Forgive me for not being able to play children's games with you like before. Didn't you notice that I have a job?"

"What does 'children's play' mean?"

Harry closed the trunk lid heavily: "Forget it, pretend I didn't say it."

"Harry Prudence, explain 'children's play.'"

"For God's sake Alex, your 'story'! You live in a little bubble of your own imagination and never come out. Not everyone is so lucky to be lying on a trust fund, Shut out the real world."

"And you've been at Viewpoint for a few months, and you feel like you've seen through the 'real world'?"

"I don't understand why you keep looking down on my work."

"I never—you know that's not what I mean."

"That's what you sound like."

"You're talking like the Harrow crowd now, the walking dead who think they're sophisticated."

"It's not someone else's sophistication, Alex, it's because you haven't grown up, are you going to be a three-year-old entertaining yourself all your life?"

Alex stared at him for a long time, without answering, stood up, went straight into the bedroom, and slammed the door heavily.Harry stood in the messy living room for a while, then slumped down on one of the single sofas, rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly.

A middle-aged man wearing a dark gray beret was riding by, his pockets bulging with a rolled-up newspaper. He rang the bell for a woman who was crossing the road with a dog, and the dog barked.By the window on the second floor, the nanny with her hair tied in a bun disappeared after cleaning the glass, leaving only the potted plant with its leaves stretching greedily towards the light.Harry looked at Alex, wondering if he remembered the same summer, if he missed earlier, sweeter summers, used them to fill wounds, as Harry often did.But he didn't dare to ask, he had already lost this power.

"I thought later, you were right." Alex lit a second cigarette, "You and your real world, me and my fairy tales, no one is wrong, but it's better not to touch each other .”

"No." Harry shook his head, "I shouldn't have said that, I was wrong."

Alex's eyes fell on him again, examining him, it was difficult to see what emotion it was, Harry felt that he was facing a high stone wall, he didn't know where to hit, and he used How loudly you have to shout to get an answer.As far as he could remember, Alex had never been a man with a mean smile, always carrying a lingering childishness because of his dimples.However, the person sitting across the table at this moment gave Harry a sense of deja vu alienation, and he suddenly understood what Alex said in the sunroom almost 20 years ago, "It's as if he wasn't here".This made Harry uneasy and tried to grab Alex's hand on the table, but he didn't dare.

"I haven't written anything anymore, you know?" The smoke floated between them, penetrated by the cloudy sunlight, Alex played with the lighter, his hands trembling, "All my stories are written for Yours, maybe you should have said that sooner."

Should have said it sooner, Harry thought, but maybe it wouldn't make any difference.He tried not to think about those idle afternoons at Oxford, Alex on his shoulder, whispering unfinished passages, about murder, about secret love, about strange shores and skies, about skeletons and six-year-olds Endless adventures.Every word is written for him.

I love you too, thought Harry, without saying it.

Alex smiled at him, dropped the unfinished cigarette into the coffee mug, stood up, and held out his hand to him in an obvious gesture of farewell.

"Can I." Harry cleared his throat. "I can see you again, right? Like a friend?"

"Probably not." Alex shook his hand lightly and let it go. "Goodbye, Harry."

-

"He was going south, maybe to the other side of the river, or to take the subway to Marais." Prudence said, tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair as he was used to, "I'll go back Go to the newspaper office, deal with the afternoon in a daze, go home, get drunk, and go back to work the next day with a hangover. No one except Miss Minie dared to ask me what happened, or maybe no one except her. People noticed something was wrong with me. She did care about me, but I had nothing left to give her. 1961 was very busy, Mr. Rivers, we had the Algerian War of Independence, Kennedy, Congo and the United Nations, and Satellites and manned spaceflight, which was unheard of at the time, and the French Air Force, which nearly shot down Brezhnev in Guinea. Nothing is better at creating noise and chaos than humans.”

"For a new column, I went to Geneva before Easter to interview an American diplomat. When I got back to Paris, I had the whole vacation time to figure out how to write the manuscript. I'm the kind of person who likes to stay at home. People who work don’t like going to coffee shops very much, and they really don’t like crowds. On holidays, I’m used to getting up at nine o’clock, making tea, opening letters, answering everything that needs to be answered, and then sitting in front of the typewriter.”

"Around four o'clock in the afternoon, the phone rang. I thought it was Editor-in-chief Schmidt asking me how I was doing. I can get it to the newspaper and show it to him.”

"But it wasn't Editor-in-Chief Schmidt on the other end of the phone."

"The man has a Marseille accent, and my French is not very good. I struggled for at least 5 minutes before I finally figured out what he wanted to say. It was a call from the hospital. A Mr. Loiseau was admitted yesterday because of alcohol. Or medicine or something, he said very vaguely. No one knows how to contact the relatives of the patient. The old gentleman who sent him with a missing leg left the phone number of the newspaper, and the newspaper gave me my personal number. They finally found me. The hospital wanted to ask me if I would like to go there, and if so, when can I go. "

"'Now', I told the nurse, 'I'll be right there'."

tbc.