chapter01-04

Now that the badweather had come, we could leave Paris for a while for a place where this rainwould be snow coming down through the pines and covering the road and the high hillsides and atan altitude where we would hear it creak as we walked home at night. Below LesAvants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and where we would be together andhave our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and thestars bright. That was where we could go.

I would give upthe room in the hotel where I wrote and there was only the rent of 74 rue CardinalLemoine which was nominal. I had written journalism for Toronto and the checks

for that weredue. I could write that anywhere under any circumstances and we had money to makethe trip.

Maybe away fromParis I could write about Paris as in Paris I could write about Michigan.

I did not knowit was too early for that because I did not know Paris well enough. But that washow it worked out eventually. Anyway we would go if my wife wanted to, and Ifinished

the oysters andthe wine and paid my score in the café and made it the shortest way back up theMontagne Ste. Geneviève through the rain, that was now only local weather andnot

something thatchanged your life, to the flat at the top of the hill.

“I think itwould be wonderful, Tatie,” my wife said. She had a lovely modeled face and hereyes and her smile lighted up at decisions as though they were rich presents.

“When should we leave?”

“Whenever youwant.”

“Oh, I want toright away. Didn’t you know?”

“Maybe it willbe fine and clear when we come back. It can be very fine when it is clear and cold.”

“I’m sure itwill be,” she said. “Weren’t you good to think of going, too.”