I was slowly swimming down to the bottom of the sea.
She made me welcome.
Her dark cool caresses were sweeter than any woman's;
the many little tricks she knew made her embrace the ultimate one -- the ever more fantastic pressures deeper in her body squeezed not me but the air I breathed into a nitrogen anesthetic.
yielding-Mediterranian-woman-, she soothed me, and drew me deeper into her.

I no longer knew how deep I was, somewhere under 230 feet, getting drunker, happier and more contented by the second.
The reasons for this dive seemed foolish now.
Only the dive itself had any meaning.
The metal-tasting nitrogen made me wonder if I should remove the mouthpiece and suck in the sweet water.
Perhaps if I took off the aqua-lung I could swim better, love my woman better.
I chuckled aloud, and the mouthpiece fell out.

While a hazy part of my mind concentrated on swimming down, a clear part sorted over recent events, among them my only positive act in a long time.
It was when I packed up what duds I had and went to Paris.
It was no vacation, just me getting out after a bellyfull.
I knew it wouldn't be the same.
Wild kicks never are, but I hoped to dig up a better frame of mind.

Once before I had been to Paris, long before I married Valery.
That first time was good and it stuck with me.
I was twenty-one back then, in the army, and fog put our plane down at Orly instead of Rhine-Main.
It was a Saturday evening in April with a mist-like rain, and I was a little high on the good taste of life.
I had a pocketful of money, which was unusual when I was in the army, and the plane would be grounded all night.
In less than an hour I had gotten a hotel, showered, shaved and was out on the Champs Elysees in a fresh uniform.
I felt like a Hun in Rome.

All the women were beautiful, and the men were equal to them;
everything was glamorous to my dazzled eyes.
There were some sweet machines other than women: an old Bugatti, a lean Farina coachwork on an American chassis, a Swallow, a type A40-AjK Mercedes and lots more.
There was the Arc de Triomphe and the Tour d'Eiffel -- I was no yokel, but I was young, and this was Paris!

I had champagne at Maxim's, then went into a cafe called the Jour et Nuit to ask the way to Montmartre.
I never got there.
I met Claire, which was better.
She was eating bread and cheese just as fast as she possibly could, and washing it down with red wine.
I stared.
I didn't know a human could feed so fast and still be beautiful.
She was blonde, and young, and nice and round in a tight white dress.
Maybe her ravenous eating wasn't grotesque because she was so positive about it.

When she had drained the last of the bottle and paid her bill, she came directly to my table and said:

"Handsome soldier, I have assuaged one hunger with food.
I feel another of terrible urgency.
Is your evening free"?

"Madame", I said with noblesse oblige because of the "handsome" -- "yeah".

And so off we went to her apartment.
She was a nymphomaniac, of course, the poor girl.
Toward the break of day I waxed philosophical, and drew analogies about her way of eating bread and cheese.

Now it was nine years later, and it wasn't spring but winter when I returned.

I got there on a Saturday evening.
I made the mistake of going to the Jour et Nuit.
The place was busy but I didn't feel like a Hun.
I sat waiting for Life to come along and sweep me up.
I had part of a bottle of French beer called Panther Pils (so help me), then switched to Tuborg.
After a few hours, Life hadn't showed, and I was crocked.
I went to my hotel and slept.
The next morning a little cognac made me feel better -- but what can you do in Paris on Sunday morning?
So I drank more cognac.

All that day and Monday I drank just enough to orbit but not make deep space.
I read the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer.
Elemental, but sex.
That's what was on my mind.
I was turning over the idea of a good debauchery when I dozed off.

I felt better Tuesday evening when I woke up.
My head was clear, my thinking sober and I was reconciled to this Paris idea as a flop on top of all my others.
A good binge has that kind of therapeutic value.

Sometime earlier the weather had turned cold and it was snowing.
I went out into it.
I walked around breathing the cold wine of the air until I found a park, and I sat down on a snowy bench where the light was dim and came from the sky.
There was dignity and beauty in the little white flakes falling through the blue night.
I had on only a topcoat, but I wasn't cold.
I was just miserable.

Pretty soon a woman came along carrying a folded umbrella as a walking stick.
She saw me and sat down beside me, three feet away.
Suddenly I understood why she had the umbrella.
It gave her poise and posture.
Without it she would have been drab and limp.
It gave her propriety.
It gave her the right to sit down beside me, back straight, one hand out on the handle.
I couldn't imagine her without it.
I knew all about her.
She was another human being and happened to be a hustler.
I didn't much care if she were there or not.

After a while she said with sort of an unuttered laugh, "You have snow in your hair and ears".
(I didn't have on a hat.
)

Hardly glancing at her, I smiled a bleak one which said, Thanks, baby, but I'd rather be alone.

She was silent for a while, then said, "Why are you so unhappy"?

"I'm not unhappy", I lied, staring at the snow.
She was trying to make a hole in my armor, and I didn't want it.

"Is it a woman"?
She asked gently.
She must have seen the ring on my left hand.

"Well -- women and unhappiness go together", I observed profoundly, adding, "You can wager your derriere on that".

"Ah, Monsieur, it is not my business to wager it."

This took me so funny I had to look at her.
I felt my frozen sad face crumble, and I grinned a silly one I couldn't have helped.
I even snorted a chuckle.

She smiled at me, but it was an awfully sad smile.
She was even more miserable than me.
Her eyes were smiling, too, but so sadly, and there was tiredness and infinite wisdom in them.
"Now isn't it better to smile"?
She asked.

Because I liked this sad person so much, I said, "Will you have a drink with me"?

I could see the ancient cynicism reinforce itself in her eyes, and I wondered how many men she had picked up with this same gambit.

Anyway, I pulled a bottle of Remy Martin out of my topcoat, drew the cork, and passed it to her.

I could see she was shocked.

"I'm sorry I haven't got a glass", I said.

"Non, non", she said, taking the bottle, "not for that be sorry".

She tilted up and drank, and then I drank.
It's really rotten to drink good cognac like that, but I hadn't cared before.
I wasn't going to lug around a glass.

There wasn't much light in the blue dark, but I could see her well.
No child, this tart, she must have been thirty-five or even forty.
I couldn't be sure.
Somehow she was attractive.
Not good looking, but self-confident and wise so that it made her attractive.
I liked her, and all at once I was glad she was there.

We finished the bottle -- I hadn't had a lot out of it earlier -- not speaking much to each other, and we stayed sober.

I suppose we were cold, but we didn't feel it.
We seemed to be drowsing, sadly, soberly, in the cold, cold air while the snow fell.
Then she said, "Allons", and we got up and went to my hotel without another word.

I sensed no stranger in her.
We undressed and made love with the comfortable acceptance I had once known with Valery.
I decided thirty-five was the best estimate of her age.
She had a funny little scar on her stomach, on the left side.

I think we were very tired, for we awoke at the same moment, deeply rested, surprised to see the late morning sun on the windows, which were wet where the rime had melted.

I felt wonderful, the absolute opposite of last night's melancholy.
My head was clear.
I was hungry as a wolf, and my body felt lean and vital.

"Bon jour", I said brightly, sitting up, which pulled the covers to her hips.
She looked good, with her short tousled hair and no make-up.
Maybe closer to thirty, I thought.

"Bon jour"!
She exclaimed, smiling.
"J'ai faim"!
"Yeah, but breakfast first".

With a laugh she beat me to the bathroom.
I called downstairs for food and a toothbrush for her.
She came out pink from a hot bath, and I gave her my robe.
I had brushed my teeth, showered, shaved and dressed by the time a waiter wheeled in breakfast.

"The toothbrush Monsieur", he said, presenting it.
I gave it to the woman.

"What is this for"?
She asked innocently.

"Why, to brush your teeth".

"But I already have!
I used yours".

"Oh"?
I said with round eyes.
I wondered if I ought to go use the new one myself.
But I smelled the coffee, and thinking, What the hell, live dangerously, I decided I would scald my worries away.
The coffee wasn't very hot though, made in a filter pot, but it was good.
We sent the waiter away and ate a tremendous amount of cold ham, hot hard-boiled eggs and hot garlic bread.
As we ate, we talked.
Her name was Suzanne, and mine Stephen.

We sat back comfortably on the bed with our last cups of coffee.

"You are very tactful, do you know, Stephen", she remarked.

"Um"?
I grunted, sipping.

"Yes, because you didn't run off to use that new toothbrush".

I raised my eyes to look at her in the mirror.

"I didn't really use yours", she went on.
"I carry one in my purse.
I know men never kiss les putains".

To my immense relief, she changed the subject in the next sentence: "Shall we go to the Louvre today"?

"All right".
I said with enthusiasm at the idea.
"But not immediately".
I put aside my empty cup.
She smiled all the way to her wise, sad eyes, and drained her own.

We were not rushed.

"What is this from"?
I asked, touching the scar on her stomach.
It was like a long thin line drawn through a pink circle.

"A bullet", she answered.
The cynicism was back in her eyes, a bitter wisdom, and I wondered if forty were not so far wrong after all.
She understood sex anyway, and played at it well.

We went to the Louvre for a few hours, then by Metro to a cabaret in Montmartre.

It was a nice place, not filled with smoke.
We had champagne and steamed mussels.
The sommelier brought the wine first, a magnum instead of the bottle I had ordered.
He must have thought I was a tourist.

I fixed him with a steely eye and said, "What's this for?
I didn't ask for a Jeroboam of champagne".

I thought that was pretty humorous, but I didn't laugh.