The Mule by David Quantick

Author:David Quantick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Novel
ISBN: 9781783521449
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2016-01-22T13:30:03+00:00

* * *

I must have sat on the bed for a few minutes. I would probably have sat there for an hour or more had my phone not begun to trill out its new European ringtone. I woke from my stunned state and answered. It was Frant, with the full address of the bar, which he pronounced in a French accent so exaggerated that I had to ask him to repeat it several times. Eventually, we achieved mutual comprehension and I found I had shaken myself out of my trance-like state.

There was nothing to be done about this shocking image that I wasn’t already doing. I was in Paris, the apparent current resting place of my only clue to the whole business of the girl and her disappearance. I still had no idea if what I was doing was right – in fact, I had no idea what I was doing – but the sooner I saw this Von Fremdenplatz book and was able to work out what connection, if any, it had to events, the better. I put the notebook back in my pocket and left the hotel room.

The bar was a lot further away than I had anticipated, and I suspected that Frant did not really know where he was. Unfamiliar cities are easy to get lost in, and one part of Paris – bar, boulangerie, café, bar – can look remarkably like another. I must have walked for about half an hour before I found the place Frant meant, having first picked up a small and annoyingly uninformative tourist map of the city.

Frant was on a stool at the counter. I knew why he was doing this, but he was still keen to tell me.

‘I am sitting here because they charge more at a table,’ he said. ‘This is a traditional Parisian zinc and I don’t want to be treated like a tourist.’

As he had placed his fedora on the next stool and removed his brown paisley scarf, I surmised that he was at least making the effort to look more normal, but it wasn’t entirely successful. True, he resembled no tourist I had ever seen, unless he was a tourist who was also a poet who dressed in the dark. To fit in even more, Frant was drinking something purple. I didn’t ask him what it was, because I was afraid he might tell me, so I ordered a beer for myself and sat down next to the fedora.

‘Why are you here?’ said Frant suddenly.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said. The question had taken me by surprise. Not only was it somewhat direct, but also Frant had never expressed an interest in my motives before.

‘The question is a simple one,’ said Frant. ‘Why are you here? Pourquoi êtes-vous ici? Why have you come to Paris?’

‘For the same reason as you,’ I said.

Frant looked at me quizzically. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘I am here because of a scholarly interest in the Von Fremdenplatz documents. As an author of fabulist texts, this quest pertains directly to my own interests.

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