THE POWERBOOK. A Novel

We were walking together on the broad cobbled path that banks along the Seine. Behind us, the Friday-night cars were queuing in a wrapper of brake lights and exhaust haze; the toxic red of hometime.

On the path as we walked, your sweater tied round your shoulders, compact joggers, moving faster, swerved to avoid us, while lovers, moving slower, stopped in our way, paused to light each other's cigarettes or to kiss.

We were not lovers.

Then.

The evening was stretching itself. The day's muscle had begun to relax. A girl in Lycra fixed her date for the night on her mobile phone. A man in a trenchcoat let his phone ring and ring, smiling to everyone as they glanced at his briefcase going off like an alarm.

At the boat quays couples were waiting to join one of the neon-lit dinner and dance boats, while on other boats - the barges - a cat washed itself by a smoking funnel and a woman with her hair in a scarf threw coffee into the water.

So many lives, and ours too, tangled up with this night, these strangers. Strangers ourselves.

Slightest accidents open up new worlds.

We were both staying at the same hotel. We had arrived the day before, and in the lobby our partners had suddenly spotted one another and thrown their arms around each other like they were old friends. Not surprising, because they were old friends.

You and I had never met. We hung back smiling shyly, slightly irritated by all this bonhomie we couldn't share. Then the plan had been made for the next night, to eat at a restaurant nearby, and would it matter - no, it would be fun - if those two long-lost buddies went on ahead, and you and I walked to the restaurant together, getting to know each other.

Simple. Easy.

Yes.

Not knowing you, and knowing that small talk is not my best point, I started to tell you about George Mallory, the Everest mountaineer. I'm putting him in a book I'm writing, and strangers often like to hear how writers write their books. It saves the bother of reading them.

'So you're a writer?'

'Yes.'

'I've never heard of you.'

'No.'

'Have you had anything published?'

'Yes.'

'Can I buy it in the shops?'

'Yes.'

'What, here in Paris?'

'Yes.'

'In French?'

'Yes.'

'In English too?'

'Yes.'

'Oh really?'

(I said small talk is not my best point.)

'So you're a writer?'

'Yes.'

'What kind of things do you write?'

'Fiction, mostly.'

'Stuff you make up?'

'Yes.'

'I prefer real life.'

'Why is that?'

'No surprises.'

'Don't you like surprises?'

'Not since my fifth birthday when I was given an exploding cake.'

'Could you eat it?'

'The candles were little sticks of dynamite and they blew the cream and sponge all over the room.'

'What did you do?'

'Scraped it off the walls. Tried to act normal.'

'Difficult . . .'

'Oh yes.'

(Then she paused. Then she said . . .) 'To me that's life - a cake with little sticks of dynamite on the top.'

'That doesn't sound like a life with no surprises.'

'Oh, but it is. That's just what it is. You see, I know it's going to blow up in my face.'

I looked sideways at her as we walked. To me she seemed confident and poised in soft black jeans, white shirt, a slash of lipstick, and a handbag built to take a credit card and a make-up brush. Her sweater was a ribbed cashmere crewneck, tied like a sack, hanging like a dancer.

Simple.

Expensive.

'What brings you to Paris?' (Small talk, not bad.)

'The Eiffel Tower.'

'Do you like towers?'

'I like structures without cladding.'

'OK, it's a good motto.'

'I try to let the lines show through. Not on my face, of course, but elsewhere. My work, my life, my body.'

(Suddenly, very badly, I wanted to see her body. I suppressed the thought.)

'Clean living?' I said.

'Hardly.'

'What then?'

'Clear space. The easiest thing in the world is to wallpaper yourself from head to foot and put an armchair in your stomach.'

'Sounds uncomfortable.'

'Oh no, it's very comfortable. That's why people do it.'

'But not you.'

(She suddenly took my hand.) 'This is where I feel things.'

(She guided my hand over the low waistband of her jeans.) 'Excitement, danger . . .'

(She flattened my hand on her abdomen and held it there.)

'Sex. And to go on feeling I have to keep some empty space.'

(Suddenly she let my hand drop. I looked at it sadly.)

She said, 'What about you? What brings you to Paris?'

'A story I'm writing.'

'Is it about Paris?'

'No, but Paris is in it.'

'What is it about?'

'Boundaries. Desire.'

'What are your other books about?'

'Boundaries. Desire.'

'Can't you write about something else?'

'No.'

'So why come to Paris?'

'Another city. Another disguise.'

We went up on to a little wooden bridge and lounged against the metal rail. The broad view of the river was a cine film of the weekend, with its amateur, hand-held feel of lovers and dogs and electric light and the spontaneous, unsteady movement of people crossing this way and that, changing their minds, pausing, going out of focus, looming too close. The ribbon of film that was the moving river fluttered and unrolled and projected itself against the open sky and the jostle of the Ile de la Cité.

Frame by frame, that Friday night was shot and exposed and thrown away, carried by the river, by time, canned up only in memory, but in itself, scene by scene, perfect.

I thought, 'This is all I have, all I can be sure of. The rest is gone. The rest may not follow.'

There was a woman near me, eating an ice cream with the intensity of a sacrament. The look on her face, her concentration, belonged to the altar.

A man knelt down and fastened his Scottie dog into a little tartan coat. Feet passed round him. His fingers fumbled with the buckles.

A child, holding its mother's hand, was crying over a punctured Mickey Mouse balloon and then, the limping, failing helium ears and deflating black nose lurched over the railing and slipped down flat on the water.

Away it went - mouse, dog, ice cream, now. Already we were in another now, and the pink of the sky had faded.

'Where's the restaurant?' you said.

'I don't know. I thought you knew.'

'No - I thought you knew.'

'Well, what was the name?'

'Ali's. A Turkish place.'

'Are you sure?'

'We can call the hotel. The concierge will know.'

'We're going to be late.'

'There's plenty of time.'

She smiled and rested her arm around my shoulders. I tried to look natural.

'Are you usually so friendly with strangers?'

'Always.'

'Any particular reason?'

'A stranger is a safe place. You can tell a stranger anything.'

'Suppose I put it in my book?'

'You write fiction.'

'So?'

'So you won't lash me to the facts.'

'But I might tell the truth.'

'Facts never tell the truth. Even the simplest facts are misleading.'

'Like the times of the trains.'

'And how many lovers you've had.'

I looked at her curiously. Where was this leading?

'How many have you had?'

'9.48,' she said, sounding like a platform announcement.

'Was that the previous one or the one here now?'

'The one here now is not listed in the timetable.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means I'm married, but not to him.'

'Then to whom?'

'Oh, to a man built like a dining car - solid, welcoming, always about to serve lunch.'

'Don't you like that?'

'There are nights when I'd prefer a couchette.'

'Is that why you're in Paris?'

'And there are nights when I'd prefer nothing at all.'

'A structure without cladding.'

'As you get older, the open spaces start to close up.'

'You seem to have slipped through.'

'I get reckless. I risk more than I should.'

'Have you left your husband?'

'No, just lied to him.'

'Can you lie to someone you love?'

'It's kinder than telling the truth.'

'Are you still close?'

'As close as two people growing apart can be.'

She walked ahead, her sweater swinging against her back. Then she turned to me.

'You keep the form and the habit of what you have, but gradually you empty it of meaning.'

'If you feel like that, you should leave.'

'I still love him.'

'You can love someone and leave them. Sometimes you should.'

'Not me.'

'Well, anyway, it's not my business.'

Then she made a speech. I suppose you can guess the lines.

Inside her marriage there were too many clocks and not enough time. Too much furniture and too little space. Outside her marriage, there would be nothing to hold her, nothing to shape her. The space she found would be outer space. Space without gravity or weight, where bit by bit the self disintegrates.
'Can't you understand that?'

'Yes.'

'But?'

I didn't answer. I had heard these arguments before. I had used them myself. They tell some truth, but not all the truth, and the truth they deny is a truth about the heart. The body can endure compromise and the mind can be seduced by it. Only the heart protests.

The heart. Carbon-based primitive in a silicon world.

'There's something wrong.'

'With what I say?'

'With the sweet reasonableness of it all.'

'You want me to storm out with nothing but a tapestry and a pair of candlesticks?'

'I wasn't thinking about your luggage.'

'A friend I knew did just that. Took nothing else and

left.'

'I admire her.'

'You are an absolutist then.'

'What's one of those?'

'All or nothing.'

'What else is there?'

'The middle ground. Ever been there?'

'I've seen it on the m...