Lockdown in Paris II : A Brief Aside

For weeks now I have been held in a web of neighbour-induced rage.

Last night, what with the whole not-being-able-to-leave-my-flat-for-a-month thing, it came to a head. It’s telephonic, the problem, in every sense. First, because it involves telephones. Second, because I’m surrounded by it.

Is that what telephonic means? Whatever, what I’m saying is there’s this one neighbour who spends all day arguing on the phone in the flat next door to me, and there’s another neighbour who spends all night talking on the phone in the corridor right outside my door. I’m actually not sure which induces more rage - the shout-y, fist-slamming, one-sided daytime battles of Her Next Door, or the “I’m trying to keep my voice low-ish but I’m still going to talk in the most acoustically impressive part of the building for the next three hours,” of Her Over the Corridor. 

I have to say it’s Her Over the Corridor that has had me hyperventilating by my door at 11pm, hands on hips, heart thundering in my chest, muttering very uncharitable things while rehearsing the French for THIS IS NOT A TELEPHONE BOX in my head.

Of course, I never actually did anything about it. I never swiped my keys from the hook and whooshed open the door and said “Sorry but can you please make phone calls in your apartment please? Like everyone else? Can you not stand out here for three hours a night please talking in your incredibly infuriating lowered tones please? Please for the love of God PLEASE?” Before breaking down in desperate tears. No I did not. No. 

I made a sign.

Before I made a sign though, I thought about writing a sign for about 6 weeks. I thought about what the sign would say - I fantasised about how cutting it would be, and then I wrathfully revised the imaginary sign again and again while seething in my bed as she mumbled and muttered outside my door, night after night. And then last night, on the verge of another lockdown and facing the certainty that this woman would be talking in lowered tones outside my door for 3 hours a night for a MONTH, I finally realised I had to write the sign or kill her, and I thought it best to start with the sign and work up. 

I wrote one sign and I underlined parts of it and then I thought that was going a BIT FAR, so I wrote it again, without the underlined bits. I hated myself as I neatened the edges of the paper with a ruler (I tore it - carefully - because to cut it with scissors would have just been too pathetic). I got the packing tape out, by which point I was truly committed. I admit I was hyperventilating at this point, my hands went all wobbly and I felt like I was looking in every direction at once. I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to do it - I was going to stick an incredibly polite note on the wall for all to see. I fully expected to be murdered for it. I still do. I expect a war full of words I don’t understand. I am living in fear. But at least I did something. I wrote a sign that had the words please and thank you in it.   

21h12 - The sign is still there. It has not been ripped off the wall in rage. My flat has not been vandalised. Returning from the last night of curfew, no-one accosted me when I put my key in the lock and winced as it squeaked all the way round. Closing the door behind me I literally heard myself think, “Well, I don’t have to come out again for a month, so.” I must say I think my inner voice is absolutely pathetic. And this is after I had already seriously considered taking my boots off when I got to the top of the stairs, so I could creep to my own front door. I was sure that at the clip of my heels the neighbours would all leap out and demand to know just who the hell I thought I was, telling them they couldn’t make 3-hour phone calls in the corridor. And I’m quite sure when pressed I wouldn’t know who I was, to make such an outrageous request. Lady Muck. The only thing that stopped me from removing my own shoes and making like the Pink bloody Panther through my own building was the inner notion that I had to at least pretend to be brave. Keeping my boots on was the surest way not to let the Coward in. Or out. Oh I know full well that I am the coward. She is me. But I couldn’t let her know that, could I, and I certainly couldn’t admit it to the invisible watching audience we all carry with us. And so the boots stayed on, while my cheeks burned and I thought Oh god, I’m sorry, please don’t come out and shout at me.

Of course they didn’t come out, did they. And at 11pm tonight - the first night of lockdown - she was out there, muttering and mumbling away, and my brave pathetic sign was gone.