书虫5级《园会》画页

Feuille d'album

He really was an impossible person. Too shy, and he had nothing at all to say. When he came to your studio, he just sat there, silent. When he finally went, blushing red all over his face, you wanted to scream and throw something at him.

The strange thing was that at first sight he looked most interesting. Everybody agreed about that. You saw him in a café one evening, sitting in a corner with a glass of coffee in front of him. He was a thin boy, who always wore a blue shirt and a grey jacket that was a little too small for him. He looked just like a boy who has decided to run away to sea. You expected him to get up at any moment, and walk out into the night and be drowned.

He had short black hair, grey eyes, white skin and a mouth that always looked ready for tears. Oh, just to see him did something to your heart! And he had this habit of blushing. If a waiter spoke to him, he turned red!

Who is he, my dear? Do you know?'

Yes. His name is Ian French. He paints. They say he's very clever. Someone I know tried to mother him. She asked him how often he had a letter from home, if he had enough blankets on his bed, how much milk he drank. Then she went to his studio to make sure he had enough clean shirts. She rang and rang the bell, but nobody came to the door, although she was sure he was there... Hopeless!'

Someone else decided he ought to fall in love. She called him to her, took his hand, and told him how wonderful life can be for those who are brave. But when she went to his studio one evening, she rang and rang... Hopeless.

What the poor boy really needs is excitement,' a third woman said. She took him to cafés and night-clubs, dark places where the drinks cost too much and there were always stories of a shooting the night before. Once he got very drunk, but still he said nothing, and when she took him home to his studio, he just said 'goodnight' and left her outside in the street... Hopeless.

Other women tried to help him—women can be very kind—but finally they, too, were defeated. We are all busy people, and why should we spend our valuable time on someone who refuses to be helped?

And anyway, I think there is something rather odd about him, don't you agree? He can't be as innocent as he looks. Why come to Paris if you don't intend to have any fun?'

He lived at the top of a tall, ugly building, near the river. As it was so high, the studio had a wonderful view. From the two big windows he could see boats on the river and an island covered with trees. From the side window he looked across to a smaller and uglier house, and down below there was a flower market. You could see the tops of huge umbrellas with bright flowers around them, and plants in boxes. Old women moved backwards and forwards among the flowers. Really, he didn't need to go out. There was always something to draw.

If any kind woman had been able to get into his studio, she would have had a surprise. He kept it as neat as a pin. Everything was arranged in its place, exactly like a painting—the bowl of eggs, the cups and the teapot on the shelf, the books and the lamp on the table. There was a red Indian cover on his bed, and on the wall by the bed there was a small, neatly written notice: GET UP AT ONCE.

Every day was the same. When the light was good he painted, then cooked a meal and tidied the studio. In the evenings he went to the café or sat at home reading or writing a list which began: 'What I can afford to spend'. The list ended 'I promise not to spend more this month. Signed, Ian French'.

Nothing odd about that; but the women were right. There was something else.

One evening he was sitting at the side window eating an apple and looking down on to the tops of the huge umbrellas in the empty flower market. It had been raining, the first spring rain of the year, and the air smelled of plants and wet earth. Down below in the market, the trees were covered in new green. 'What kind of trees are they?' he wondered. He stared down at the small ugly house, and suddenly two windows opened like wings and a girl came out on to the balcony, carrying a pot of daffodils. She was a strangely thin girl in a dark dress, with a pink handkerchief tied over her hair.

Yes, it is warm enough. It will do them good,' she said, putting down the pot, and turning to someone in the room inside. As she turned, she put her hands up to her hair to tidy it, and looked down at the market and up at the sky. She did not look at the house opposite. Then she disappeared.

His heart fell out of the window and down to the balcony, where it buried itself among the green leaves of the daffodils.

The room with the balcony was the sitting-room, and next to it was the kitchen. He heard her washing the dishes after supper, saw her come to the window to shake out the tablecloth. She never sang or combed her hair or stared at the moon as young girls are said to do. She always wore the same dark dress and pink handkerchief.

Who did she live with? Nobody else came to the window, but she was always talking to someone. Her mother, he decided, was always ill. They took in sewing work. The father was dead... He had been a journalist. By working all day she and her mother just made enough money to live on, but they never went out and they had no friends.

He had to make some new notices...'Not to go to the window before six o'clock: signed, Ian French. Not to think about her until he had finished his painting for the day: signed, Ian French.'

It was quite simple. She was the only person he wanted to know because she was, he decided, the only person alive who was exactly his age. He didn't want silly girls, and he had no use for older women. She was his age. She was—well, just like him.

He sat in his studio, staring at her windows, seeing himself in those rooms with her. She was often angry. They had terrible fights, he and she. And she rarely laughed. Only sometimes, when she told him about a funny little cat she once had, who used to scratch and pretend to be fierce when she gave it meat to eat... Things like that made her laugh. Usually, they sat together very quietly, talking in low voices, or silent and tired after the day's work. Of course, she never asked him about his pictures, and of course he painted the most wonderful pictures of her, which she hated because he made her so thin and so dark...

But how could he meet her?

Then he discovered that once a week, in the evening, she went shopping. On two Thursdays he saw her at the window in a coat, carrying a basket. The next Thursday, at the same time, he ran down the stairs. There was a lovely pink light over everything. He saw it reflected in the river, and the people walking towards him in the street had pink faces and pink hands.

Outside the house he waited for her. He had no idea what he was going to do or say. 'Here she comes,' said a voice in his head. She walked very quickly, with small, light steps... What could he do? He could only follow...

First she went to buy some bread. Then she went to a fish shop. She had to wait a long time in there. Then she went to the fruit shop and bought an orange. As he watched her, he knew more surely than ever that he must talk to her, now. Her seriousness and her loneliness, even the way she walked—separate, somehow, distant from the other people in the street—all this was so natural, so right to him.

Yes, she is always like that,' he thought proudly. 'She and I are different from these people.'

But now she was going home, and he had not spoken to her. Then she went into another shop. Through the window, he saw her buying an egg. She took it carefully out of the basket—a brown egg, a beautiful one, the one he himself would have chosen. She came out of the shop, and he went in. A moment later he was out again, following her through the flower market, past the huge umbrellas, walking on fallen flowers.

He followed her into the house and up the stairs. She stopped at a door and took a key out of her purse. As she put the key in the lock, he ran up to her.

Blushing redder than ever, but looking straight at her, he said, almost angrily: 'Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you dropped this.'

And he gave her an egg.