Excerpts from
Room for Love
By Anne Marie Løn
“My name is Edith,” she says with a smile, narrow but kindly enough like the
hand she holds out to me. I hear her name as though in an echo at the very
moment he utters the words that Edith is dreadfully afraid of water and thinks
she is going to drown.
I can hear that the name tastes good in his mouth, something that is
immediately confirmed when the back of the hand he reaches out to me strokes
her cheek. His eyes rest soothingly on
her for a moment before, without moving in his seat, he cautiously looks over
his shoulder, offers me his hand to shake as firmly as can be done in the tight
conditions, introduces himself as Jean-Luc and says that he guesses I must be a
journalist.
“Exactement,” I reply in a complementary tone.
“The case,” he laughs. “No mistaking it.”
“But it’s not a tape recorder case even if it looks like one.”
The time has come to explain that I’m right enough a journalist in theory if
not in fact, because I simply drift around and only occasionally write for the
newspapers at home after carefully selecting some performance on a basement
stage that I am dying to write about, while I avoid anything that tastes of the
establishment whether in the theatre or anywhere else.
The case is at my feet, oblong and with square corners in shiny leather with a
flap in front and an extra pocket outside at the back for notepads and pencils.
I look down at my informant, who in this case has been a good help to me
because it suits me fine to give the impression of being a respectable person,
and I know perfectly well that having a job gives one legitimacy as such in the
eyes of most people.
Unexpectedly, in view of the unpretentious arrangement, he suggests that we
should use Christian names.
I nod happily.
“Bon. Where do you fancy going today?” With a cautious sideways glance at her
so as not to unsettle anyone in the boat, he settles in the driving seat.
“Doesn’t matter. Just a trip anywhere. I’m happy to be with you … the woods,
perhaps the Bois de Boulogne.”
“Aha, the Bois de Boulogne.”
He turns his face towards me and rolls his eyes.
“It’s more than twice as far by the river. The Seine makes some enormous twists
and turns and goes due south after the Trocadéro Gardens and the Pont d’Iéna,
and that’s why you can’t see the Eiffel Tower from here.”
I smile and nod with delight at my good luck; more than twice as far is much
more than twice as good for me.
We set out on our trip. I hear his cheerful voice, as he declutches and engages
the gears in front of me.
Translated by W. Glyn Jones
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