Background Noise

A short story about the person we have become

Rush hour has passed. The subway isn’t crowded, but I keep to the side. It’s still the quietest spot. My phone is dead. I’ll have to wait for my stop while staring at the tunnel blur beyond the window.

The train leaves in the direction of Villejuif.

I arrived in Paris three years ago for an internship. That time feels like another life. Running along the Seine, the cafés of the Latin Quarter, and then evenings between République and Ménilmontant. I lived in a sixteen-square-meter attic. Black market rent, but it was almost a luxury for an intern. My first home, all to myself.

Below my apartment there was a café. A wooden counter, a few tables inside, two tables on the street that took on the name of terrasse. It was calm, and I would go there occasionally to spend my mornings on weekends. I would get a coffee, a toast, sit at the corner table, and do my French homework. In spring, when the door of the café remained open, the murmur of voices coming from the canal arrived indistinctly, like low-fi background music.

Zahra was always the one taking my order. A short and petite girl who would greet you with a smile even when it rained and the place was full. She had an accent, and maybe it was why she did not care for my broken French. She wore her hair tied back in a chignon and a necklace with a small green and yellow pendant.

Sometimes, at the end of her shift, she would sit next to me and correct my French homework. One day she sighed and asked me if I ever missed home. I replied that I was fine here. She seemed to have a great nostalgia for it.

“This city kills you. The people are grumpy, there’s never a ray of sunshine. How can anyone live like this?”

Then she came closer to me and whispered:

“And I hope to find another job soon. They don’t let me wear the hijab here.”

She came from Algeria and she missed home.

I could not tell the exact moment when the city swallowed me up.

A rather renowned company offered me a job, one of those career opportunities that you can’t refuse. So I accepted. And then, some time after that, life became a scale of grey and indistinguishable noise. And time passed.

Now my routine defines me. I wake up in the morning, get ready, take the subway. Getting into the carriage is a struggle. Only thing I can see is the jacket of the person in front of me. I smell the scents, the bad mood, the heat. Depressing.

In the evening, on the way back, I’m too tired to think. I lean against the side seat, burn my eyes on my phone, scroll without really looking. Everyone does the same. Alienating.

When I think back to that first year, I find detached memories. I remember the events but forgot the feelings that define them.

Perhaps I have changed and forgotten that I was once a child. They say it’s the artificial course of life. Now it’s adulthood, a continuous whirlwind of meetings, calls, notifications, emails, subway, home. My arrival in this city is a memory from another me.

The train screeches and stops. Villejuif. Day is over.

The next day, I arrive at work ten minutes late. Leo is not at the desk next to mine. I text him, but he doesn’t reply. At lunchtime, I start to worry.

“Do you know where Leo is?” I ask a colleague, but he shrugs and goes back to work.

I call him. His girlfriend answers. Her voice trembles. She’s scared. Leo is in the hospital; he suddenly lost sight in his right eye. No, there’s no news yet. Yes, she’ll keep me posted.

When I end the call, I stare blankly at his empty desk and think back to the night before. I was leaving, but Leo was still there. He was focused on the computer screen, his fingers typing quickly on the keyboard. Two hours earlier, his boss had given him an entire report to prepare. Deadline: today at 9 a.m.

“Weren’t you supposed to meet Mélanie?” I asked.

He looked away from the screen and gave me a tired glance. His right eye was red.

“Too much work, I’ll see her tomorrow.”

I replied that I understood. “Need a hand?” I added. He shook his head. “It’s already late, go home.” He sighed. Putting his headphones back on, he muttered to himself. “I can’t wait for summer. This time, I’ll take at least a week off.”

I waved goodbye.

Too much work, I’ll see her tomorrow. His answer had seemed natural to me. Now it takes on a ridiculous, grotesque connotation. Suddenly I feel blocked, the air compresses in my lungs and stays there. It does not move anymore.

Leo has optic neuritis, and they don’t know the cause. They’re treating him with cortisone, with little encouraging results. It could be an autoimmune disease, it could be the beginning of sclerosis. From one day to the next.

I go to visit him, but I have little to say. I hug him, and he cries. He’s only thirty. He asks me, “Do you remember when we arrived in Paris?”

I nod, but I don’t really know.

“The dreams, the expectations, the excitement. The fears. We wanted to live. We’ve forgotten everything. How did we end up here?”

There’s a hint of urgency in his tone, as if he has something important to tell me before it’s too late. But at the same time he whispers, as if those words are too much for him. His half-blind gaze stabs me with sadness. I try to smile, to say that everything will be fine. When I leave, I assure him that I’ll come back during the week.

He only adds, “Enjoy your evening.”

I leave work on scheduled time. The others look at me surprised, someone asks, “Something to do?”

I have nothing to do. I walk and look around. There is life at this hour beyond my office. I grab a pain au chocolat, and cross the river on the Pont de la Tournelle. It’s sunset. My instinct is to walk fast, I always have little time.

But I stop. I turn towards the Île de la Cité. The sky is on fire beyond Notre-Dame. A ray of red light is hitting the top floor of an old building on the Île Saint-Louis. It’s the screaming beam of a burning lighthouse.

I stand there, watching the time embody in the light that explodes and then disappears.

I feel a splash of water in my brain. The sudden, unexpected reconnection of my emotions.

Now I remember what Leo told me. The happiness, the longing to live when we arrived in Paris. I feel again the surprise that hit me when Zahra told me she couldn’t be herself in this city. I lit up at every street, every bar, every sunset on the Seine. Every face I met made me dream. Everything was so alive when I arrived. Then indifference came.

I hold the railing tight in my hands, as if wanting to hold onto this moment. I return to myself, and I see the person I became as someone else. The city did not swallow her up. She sat down, sold her time, and let it flow. She turned into a machine working on command, turning on and off.

Where is the life I felt so vividly when I arrived? I look around. Honking horns. Hissing buses. Annoyed people.

If only I could take back control of my time and tune out this bulky, incessant background noise.