The Story of My Purity by Francesco Pacifico

Author:Francesco Pacifico
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

12

A few days later, out of breath, having climbed up Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in the Pigalle neighborhood, I passed through the street door of a large early-twentieth-century apartment building. Preceding me was Clelia’s uncle, Leo, who made his living renting out the apartments he owned. The day before, he had called to confirm my interest and set up an appointment for Saturday afternoon. Beyond the street door, on the left before the gravel courtyard with potted plants, Leo stopped to unlock a four-panel glazed door.

“It’s six flights of stairs. You see how thin I am, thanks to stairs?” In midflight he suddenly turned, his eyes wide, his broad forehead shining. “What an idea, eh? They kept the city this way, without elevators. Now they have a city of people with no circulation problems—not the city, and not the people’s veins. Oof.”

Leo the Jew was a short man, about one meter seventy, with a small frame, unlike Clelia, and furnished with a lovely Jewish nose, squashed at the tip, as if not permitted to exceed a prescribed length. Above the nose a pair of heavy-framed glasses, light brown and semitransparent, teardrop-shaped, almost as tall as they were wide; below an almost imperceptible double chin.

When we got to the top, we were both out of breath. The stairwell was topped by a glass cupola, slightly obscured with limescale, capturing what little light was left of the sunset. Green wallpaper, carpet runner of a darker green, golden handrails, and atop it all the glass dome.

With the key in the lock of the half-open door, he said, “I don’t know what state we’ll find it in, heh-heh … Just kidding! I came by last week.”

The apartment didn’t smell stuffy. It had parquet floors and white walls; a large bedroom, a living room, a bathroom that was long and narrow, just like the kitchen beside it. The right-hand wall of the hallway was convex, following the oval of the stairwell; in the kitchen, a high little window gave onto the same stairwell and received light from the glass dome. Molded ceilings, and a windowless bathroom with bathtub. A remarkable apartment, filled with dark old furniture and select IKEA reinforcements, white shelves and plastic chests of drawers. It even had a terrace, nothing more than a deep cornice with a railing, and as I stood there Leo pointed out on the right, standing modestly among the rooftops, the dome of Montmartre’s Sacré-Cœur Basilica.

“Look, I just want to keep this place alive, keep it from rotting. Now and then it’s empty because it’s big like the Bastille place, but people like the Bastille neighborhood better, there’re more stores, more bars, it’s not so hilly. And I tend to rent to friends of friends. But Pigalle’s not so bad, you know? It’s just that not everybody is up for living around the corner from the strip clubs.” He sought my gaze. “But it’s gentrifying, I can assure you. The strippers’ days are numbered. Go see ’em before they disappear.”

He was talking to me as if I were looking to buy.

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