How did they know how to live like this, surrender to the moment, this murmur of voices, these reflections in glass, without it having to lead anywhere? I always had a desire for plot, motivation, story – a little sparkle to chase through the night. I wondered if this was the American in me, an urge to conquer. I did not understand that I was simply in the world.
For the next three nights Chantal took me to the boulevard, to the parties in tents along the beach. They were all the same: “Bad, loud music and bad, thin wine,” the diary reminds me. Sometimes we came across Americans who were so drunk their eyes were full of tears. They boasted about their expense accounts: “All receipts say ‘Heineken!’” Everything they said, they shouted. I stayed with the Swiss.
At one party, the bouncer wouldn’t let me in because I didn’t have an invite, so Mark slid his over the gate. As I pushed my way through the crowd to thank him, he was suddenly shy. I had dismissed him as a handsome boy who had not fully committed himself to any cause. But at four in the morning we were still there, talking about the French political scene (which I knew nothing about), compulsory military service and the Swiss policy of neutrality. Perhaps at that moment I wished for a little less neutrality.
In the fall I would meet the man who would become my husband. I would not again be so adrift in a strange city, in the smallest hours of the night, when it is no longer clear that time is moving forward. Now as many years have passed as I lived then. I found the diary this spring when I was clearing out boxes, and these people – whom I never properly thanked for their kindness, who I never saw again – were returned to me.
I like to think I learned something from them. How to be comfortable with the present; drink wine only for its lightness on the tongue; to linger over a regular, simple meal; not to want, to want, to want without end.
