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...occupants make through the winter without being gassed or blown up, some of them all the same risk succumbing to the cold. As I write this I am wearing my mountaineer's cap and a scarf, and am wrapped in a blanket and siring with a hot-water-bottle jammed between the chair's back and mine. It's only in this way that I can sit down in the apartment for any longer than it takes to pull my boots on and leave it.
That's what I usually do here--in the winter because of the cold, in the summer because of the lack of light--and that's what I did this morning, when I pulled on my boots and went out to the cafe Le Vison Bleu to get warm and decide what I was going to do with my day. I was halfway through my coffee and was wondering whether or not to buy cigarettes when Ayesha walked in off the square, with a new wig on and her teeth in. "I'm going to get married," she said. "The father of my children has said he is going to marry me." This wasn't the first time I had heard this story. I didn't doubt the truth of it what I believe is that the father of Ayesha's children keeps changing his mind, or perhaps Ayesha changes hers, considering what I know about the father. But I knew what it was really about. "So you don't want to get me a drink, do you?" I had recently come by a little money so I said I would get her a coffee, or a hot chocolate. "Come on," she said. "Why don't you get me a cognac? I'm getting married." "Sorry," I said. "If you want to sit and talk to me you can have a coffee or a hot chocolate. Otherwise, you can go and talk to somebody else." Ayesha looked around the bar. "I don't care what you do if you do it with somebody else," I said "But when you start drinking at this time of the day it depresses me by the time I see you in the evening, and you'll lose your new wig and your teeth and you'll say something silly because you won't recognise me when I pass." Jeannot was at the bar with his hand wrapped around a Ricard. "Besides," he said, "It's not good to drink alcohol if you're going to be out on the square all day in this cold. It thins the blood." "I'm not going to be out on the square all day," said Ayesha. "If you lose your teeth," said Jeannot, "you'll be out on the square all day." Ayesha ate the foam off her hot chocolate with a spoon and looked out through the steamed-up window onto the square. "It's terrible, this weather," she said. "It makes me miss the desert." "What are you talking about, the desert?" said Alexandre from behind the bar. "You were born in Marseille." "I was burn in Toulon," said Ayesha. "That's a bloody desert," said Jeannot. "In any case it doesn't make any difference,"...
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