Paris Nights and Other Impressions of Places and People: A Collection of Stories

Sakupov Bakhtiyar

He was late for a quarter of an hour. But when speaking about the project, he lacked focus and was absent-minded, and his thoughts constantly returned to that moment when the stranger looked at him. Deo gratias, Jean had enough ingenuity to refer to indisposition when he noticed that the meeting is becoming a failure. Nobody doubted that he had caught a virus.

One shouldn’t think that in the world of business, all people are sticks and stones, especially if there’s potential profit. That’s why Jean was given time for recovery and a second chance.

The week after, Jean wandered like a ghost down Myurzhe street, hoping to come across the stranger. But he was in vain. He literally saw the features of that young lady in every woman, those chestnut ringlets causing in him a sensation of real happiness, hope and fear.

For the first time, he didn’t think over what he would do if he met her again. The only thing he knew was that it was necessary to meet her again.

It didn’t look like him. It differed a lot from his way of life, his thoughts, his essence of being, so much that these changes were noticed by all the people around him. However, Jean continued his fake excuse of weakness, which more or less worked also in Bougival, among his friends and family.

After a week of fruitless searching, Jean grew thin, lost weight, and even looked slightly older. However, his emotions and feelings became more faded against the background of another project meeting. When he crossed the threshold of the office, it was evident that he was sick – he looked like that. But that didn’t prevent him from delivering a brilliant speech, and he received the long-awaited carte blanche on the project’s realization.

* * *

We were sitting by the fireplace and looking at the person who had never believed in love and, of course, love at first sight.

He experienced the strongest blow of his life. And now, he says, smiling sadly: “I am not sure anymore that it was love. Some delusion. And, probably, it has passed. If it were love, Destiny would have surely presented me with – us – a second chance. But now – I don’t even know her name.”

He entered our hostel by chance, just for tonight, because his car broke down. The mechanic promised to repair everything in the morning. Jean, obeying some internal feeling, chose our hostel, giving it a preference among many similar ones, to say nothing of luxurious Parisian hotels. Here, when we were sharing our stories, the old Jean’s wound opened; and he understood how it was important for him to tell someone his story, to share his emotions, right up to the moment when even his nearest and dearest didn’t know what was the problem with him and what he was recovering from. Telling the story now, he re-experienced all his feelings, emotions and shock from his own irrational behavior, so unusual for his nature.

The listeners’ reactions weren’t the same, but all agreed that it was one of the saddest love stories in the world. It’s a love story that died without having even managed to begin.

We were sitting with Jean and thinking over the possible variants of his behavior. What would everyone else do in his place? And it is possible to do anything, and it is worth doing now when it has already been more than half a year?

The only thing Jean was sure of was that it was silly to deny love, and particularly to explain it with chemistry and physics. But he couldn’t take it for granted, either. He had received a lesson, and perhaps this lesson wouldn’t have been so cruel if Jean was ready for sentiment. Relationships were always a simple game for him, and he had never thought until this situation that he could hurt somebody’s feelings. Now, he was undergoing a phase of loneliness; and still subconsciously tried to discover in his girlfriends’ features that only ONE who went away in the autumn morning. The women felt it; and slowly, the circle of his girlfriends melted…

* * *

At about 2 a.m., Jean smiled guiltily. He noticed with surprise that he was holding not a cup of coffee, but a glass of wine. Referring to the fact that he has an important meeting with a great number of questions in the morning, he asked for permission “to take a leave”. Our friendly company wished him sweet dreams, having prepared (to tell the truth) to “pick him to pieces” with doubled enthusiasm as soon as he left the living room.

But suddenly, the doorbell tinkled soundly; and the next visitor of our hostel turned up. Thin and a bit clumsy like a teenager, she was wearing a yellow chiffon dress, a knitted striped jacket with a knitted striped hat, and caramel-colored flats. She had big eyes in a milk-chocolate shade.

Doing up her chestnut ringlets, which flipped out from the heading, she charmingly smiled and said: “Hello, I am Marie. Is there a place for me by the fireplace? I’m awfully frozen!”

The ring of the broken glass that dropped out of Jean’s hands seemed like a prothalamion. And when the eyes of these two met again, I swear that in the whole drawing room, we could hear only the beating of hearts; and we literally could see how Marie’s and Jean’s eyes met somewhere in the middle, giving a rise to the biggest electric wave that flew up and burst into multicolored fireworks.

This love story can have a magnificent continuation, and let it never come to an end!

Chapter 2. Betrayal

We really enjoyed Luke’s company. He was an elderly Frenchman living in the hostel for the third day. And if he was at his best every evening, brimming with various stories from his life, today he was simply irresistible. It is probably because today, his company was shared by a young blonde girl: slender, pretty, giggly and, contrary to popular opinion, definitely sensible.

Luke was about sixty years old and homely: average height, with some excess pounds and some gray hair on head and hands. But his eyes and his charm could captivate any woman. He had an exquisite sense of humor, tremendous talent for mimicry, and a constantly positive temper. That all made him the pet of society and one of the favorites of our “sit-round the fireplace” routine. It seemed that the atmosphere became warmer and nicer with him around. At once, we wished to share our thoughts, feelings and experiences.

That’s why nobody was surprised when we saw a young nymph-like lady in his company, about 25 years old with a model’s appearance, and who seemed to be absolutely fascinated by the elderly gentleman. They looked so perfect together that nobody felt jealousy or scorn, or desired to give Luke a lecture about good morals or anything regarding his family hearth, which he had mentioned several times before.

Hey, yeah. Luke was married. Unlike many others, he had a lucky marriage, as he told us himself. He loved his wife, with whom he had lived about thirty years already and who (again, according to him) was a real godsend and perfection. And here, against the background of those telling their stories, we watched Luke, who slightly embraced his young companion at the waist, and made an absolutely crazy tea mixture from a set of herbs. He listened to our talk, occasionally inserting a remark or laughing with his slightly hard baritone.