Expatriate

Upon meeting him, one can see the lineaments of what he must have been, 18 years ago, when he first came over and to the memory of which he still clings.

His skin has not so much aged as fallen: it is still smooth and well-cared for; there are some creases in the corners of his eyes, but for the most part it seems to have fallen in long folds, from the peripheries of his brow, collected about the jowls, and a little bit hanging - markedly, because he is so thin - from beneath his chin. His hair, gone on top, wings out and up from the sides. There is a slight incongruity between the alignment of his mouth and the rest of his features, emphasized by the way in which he speaks, in the lightly affected English accent he uses (though he is not English), that leaves his upper lip immobile while, at the same time, he seems to seek backwards with his tongue and slide out words with a sideways movement of his jaw. His eyes, like his nose, are also small, and the impression one gets is that this softly folding skin might - should he stop talking - threaten to slide down one day and, without the dimming light of his eyes, bury him completely.

He has taken to drinking in the last 2 or 3 years, more than before, and is very knowledgeable about wine. He speaks here with a knowledge that is specific and assured, which he lacks when he speaks about books. His ideas in literature and art are vague, by which I mean they seem inherited and not thought through - one feels that they are taken from, and still belong to, outside sources. Pushed for specifics on his opinions, or confronted, he becomes haughty. If he has drunk too much, he can even be nasty, but for the most part he is a gentleman. If he talked less, he would seem more dignified, but talking is, in a sense, the expiation for all the words he'd never written down and of which now, with a very real terror, he is afraid even to begin to write for fear of the concrete failure it implies. So he tends to expatiate, and it is really only the tourists, caught up in the myth of the city, in which he then vividly takes part and to which, in all this talk about literature and romance, he as gladly lends himself, that are impressed. Ironically - or rather, it is not ironic at all - his discussions on wine are kept short, with a mention of the region, the type, perhaps a comparison with a more well known bottle, followed by, and always to a woman, an offering of the first sip in, it must be admitted, a somewhat regal silence.

It is surprising, knowing him now, to hear how he used to be. He is a point of reference through which many other people know each other, and very often you need only mention his name and someone in a group has heard of him. He must have cut a dashing figure in his youth, but while his small romanticism might beguile younger women - for whom, in any case, he is too old - women of his own age may at best warm to him in the way they might warm themselves beside a fire, without ever moving closer.

Sometimes, however, it works, and there is a story of him recently, upon seeing a woman from a metro, returning to the same quay the next day to chance meeting her, confessing what he had done, giving this, in fact, as his reason for approaching her, and winning her over with this, for a brief while at least until, after the first few dates, the affair ended as brusquely (she was married) as it had started.

In any case, like all romantics, he is a confirmed bachelor, and while it has not embittered him, it has, one feels, left him lonely - because he holds out a chimera in which he no longer believes but which, because it is almost the very foundation of the idea he has created of himself, and, really, the last of what he has, he cannot relinquish.

There was a moment, a few years ago, when he contemplated leaving Paris. While he never said concretely "home", as in 'I'm going home', that word and all the notions bound to it was conspicuous by its absence. He never did go, though, and when he speaks about it now, it is as if it were a missed challenge.

His eyes light up, he gets back some of that youthful vigour which had once drawn so many people to him, and I cannot help but imagine that this expression was no different from the one he had 18 years ago, on the eve of crossing the ocean, on the cusp of landing in, and ready to conquer, the land which is now as close a home as he will ever have.

Undoubtedly, among the expatriate community, he has a certain stature, sits like a kind of banished king, whether one likes him or not. Where many others have come and left, gone back to the type of life they had thought to leave behind for good, he has not; and it is difficult to say if one should abhor him for this or, in a world too rife with self-irony, of which he seems completely unconscious, applaud him.

Whatever the case may be, he grows more alone with the years. Taking to drink has certainly not helped, either; even the youngest people begin to mock him. But while it is difficult to even look at him standing there preaching, blowing hard about things in which there is a note of obtuse and desperate pride, - if, for example, you are at one of the picnics he organises, and some younger, more arrogant, more self-hardy recruits arrive - this still does not prevent you from wanting to turn around to their sniggerings, these self-assured smiles and shout "You will go", and pointing to another "And you will go" and "You most certainly will go, too"; "After your little escapades, you will all go back home! But he, he- " pointing now to where he is standing drunk on a knoll by the Seine, dressed as always in a collared shirt, with his sleeves rolled and his top button undone, seeming, in his naked exaggerations, and against the setting sun, to waver like something wafting up from the river itself: "He," you want to say , (though you don't, but just let him go on and on, turning your back to him as much as to those who mock him) " he, at least, will stay".

WILLIAM PRENDIVILLE