“Lewis,” it said again, and gestured to the woman, (now sitting open-legged on the bed) offering her for his pleasure.
Lewis shook his head.
In and out, in and out, part fiction, part fact.
It had come to this; offered a human woman by this naked ape. It was the last, God help him, the very last chapter in the fiction his great uncle had begun. From love to murder back to love again. The love of an ape for a man. He had caused it, with his dreams of fictional heroes, steeped in absolute reason. He had coaxed Phillipe into making real the stories of a lost youth. He was to blame. Not this poor strutting ape, lost between the jungle and the Stock Exchange; not Phillipe, wanting to be young forever; certainly not cold Catherine, who after tonight would be completely alone. It was him. His the crime, his the guilt, his the punishment.
His legs had regained a little feeling, and he began to stagger to the door.
“Aren’t you staying?” said the red-haired woman.
“This thing. . .” he couldn’t bring himself to name the animal.
“You mean Phillipe?”
“He isn’t called Phillipe,” Lewis said. “He’s not even human.”
“Please yourself,” she said, and shrugged.
To his back, the ape spoke, saying his name. But this time, instead of it coming out as a sort of grunt-word, its simian palate caught Phillipe’s inflexion with unnerving accuracy, better than the most skilful of parrots. It was Phillipe’s voice, perfectly.
“Lewis,” it said.
Not pleading. Not demanding. Simply naming, for the pleasure of naming, an equal.
The passers-by who saw the old man clamber on to the parapet of the Pont du Carrousel stared, but made no attempt to stop him jumping. He teetered a moment as he stood up straight, then pitched over into the threshing, churning ice-water.
One or two people wandered to the other side of the bridge to see if the current had caught him: it had. He rose to the surface, his face blue-white and blank as a baby’s, then some intricate eddy snatched at his feet and pulled him under. The thick water closed over his head and churned on.
“Who was that?” somebody asked.
“Who knows?”
It was a clear-heaven day; the last of the winter’s snow had fallen, and the thaw would begin by noon. Birds, exulting in the sudden sun, swooped over the Sacré Coeur. Paris began to undress for spring, its virgin white too spoiled to be worn for long.
In mid-morning, a young woman with red hair, her arm linked in that of a large ugly man, took a leisurely stroll to the steps of the Sacre Coeur. The sun blessed them. Bells rang.
It was a new day.