A Quiet Life in Paris
On most days I don’t believe in free will. Whether it exists isn’t up for me to decide. But, on days I think about destiny, if there is such a thing, it gives me an inner peace that is difficult to attain on the days I pretend...
a short story
On most days I don’t believe in free will. Whether it exists isn’t up for me to decide. But, on days that I think about destiny, if there is such a thing, it gives me an inner peace that is difficult to attain on the days I pretend to have a say in how my life goes. Chalking up life as beyond my control lets me focus on my small corner of the world, and I stop attempting to bend reality in this or that direction.
Yet, no matter what belief I have on a given day, I always feel when I look back at the various directions and detours in my life that things could have only turned out in the way they did. As if the entire universe conspired to make things just so.
Each of us ends up with a similar pattern to life that can only be called a tragedy: everyone struggles, everyone dies. That’s just the way of things. An unwavering faith in free will seems to hold no consequence in life’s ultimatum.
On the rarest of occasions, an individual can rise above this usual pattern and tragedy, however briefly, to shape the events of their life to exactly their fancy. To do so, one almost always needs an immense passion, an enormous energy and volition for change.
It is for this reason that I consider Rollins the most admirable man I have ever met. For he did rise up above the tides of his life to create his own pattern — but he did so without a scrap of passion.
I met Rollins only once in a quiet bar in Paris. We sat two seats apart at an otherwise empty bar. I was drinking wine, as I always do after dinner; my acquaintance drank scotch. The darkness of the night sky had crept into the bar and played with the shadows of the dim overhead lighting. In my experience, Paris by night reliably brings about romance or misery, and seeing as I was married and Rollins weary and downcast, a spark of romance seemed doubtful.
He was calm in conversation, his hair disheveled and his suit ragged. He was a medical man, though he refused to allow me to call him “doctor,” for he thought it superfluous and grandstanding. I learned that he had run a lucrative practice in New York, and doubled as a highly sought consulting surgeon and cardiothoracic researcher. His findings were taught in prestigious universities, and seldom was a new medical textbook printed without his contribution.
At only 38, Rollins had cleared the threshold of financial and professional success, and quite naturally the world he occupied could not get enough of him.
Rollins’ mind, with its towering faculty and intellect, allowed him to achieve a great deal of success in a short span of time; yet his achievements had far outweighed his ambition. And for this reason I consider Rollins most fascinating: his contemporaries deemed him a savior of modern medicine, a visionary and oracle, yet none of his accolades inspired the slightest joy in him.
He accomplished so much merely because it had been easy and within his grasp. He had never desired such a life, he was thrown into it by circumstance. For over a decade he seemed to fulfill everyone’s dreams but his own. He moved through the decadence of worldly delights and lost his youth and happiness along the way. The many feathers in his cap, the accolades to his name, could all disappear and Rollins would not flinch. The reason he now found himself in Paris was to depart from a world that he felt had nothing left to offer him.
“I don’t know precisely why I chose Paris,” he said. “Perhaps for the women and the grime. Plus my French is not bad. A passionate city for a passionless man. I arrived only two days ago.”
It seemed strange that Rollins, a man so indifferent to matters of spirit and beauty, should settle in a city as resplendent as Paris. It is sophisticated and bright, with its limestone architecture and glittering lights; the romance of the city alone seemed to put him out of place. Here was an indifferent man of science imbibing in a culture of arts, a clash between the aloof and debonair.
Though his eyes were astute and narrow, I could discern a hollowness behind them. Now, they were grey and watery with a troubling aura but I imagined that not long ago they were bright and blue like a clear sky. I wondered where all his passion had gone, or whether he had had any in the first place. As a writer, my own passion burned hot like a stove; it allowed me to skip meals without concern and gave my toil meaning. Hearing the doctor’s sober account of his towering success beset me; I swapped my wine for scotch and continued listening.
“The world we occupy is a cruel one,” said Rollins. “To bestow such an acute medical capacity in me, and yet fail to give me a desire to pursue it. Surely the universe offers nothing but a random and sour fate.”
“And you think Paris will help you escape this?”
“Not escape, but at least postpone.” He gave a small chuckle and emptied his drink.
He spoke like a gentleman, articulate and educated and smiling. The words he verbalized however were steeped in cynicism and regret. Like a dog’s meow or the bark of a kitten, the speech that came out of Rollin’s thin lips did not match the tone with which he delivered them.
“Who am I to command such gifts? Why must a man who cares neither for wealth nor intellect bare the responsibility of both, and each to the utmost?”
“You’ve done it because you could,” I replied. “You should know that in no way does that make you a martyr. The people who aspire to great things usually don’t have anywhere near the capability for it. Ambition is too often mistaken for intellect, and vigor for competence.”
Then it was my turn to empty my drink. Nearby, the bartender stacked dirty chairs on top of clean tables. A cigarette hung loosely in the corner of his mouth. I watched the smoke float toward a hanging lightbulb where it danced for a moment before continuing upwards into darkness.
I looked back at Rollins as he began speaking again.
“If you do something that you despise long enough, you become good at it. Or, in my case, you become the best at it. This is a tragedy I have no desire to continue.”
He paused, looking at me as if deciding whether to continue revealing himself.
“I’ve come to Paris to try and live on my own terms, for the very first time in my life. Too long now I have fulfilled the dreams and ambitions of others, and this seems very stupid for someone praised constantly for their intellect.”
Only when the bartender refilled our tumblers did I realize how late it was and just how much we had drunk. The empty bottle shattered with a crash when the bartender tossed it in the garbage, as if hinting that our evening had ended.
“The passionless life I’ve led proved all the more unbearable because I knew I had no equal,” continued Rollins. “It was impossible to tell if those who sought my affection wanted to know me for me, or to gain access to my wealth.”
My lips tightened upon hearing this, thinking what a privilege it must be to have too much wealth, too much acclaim in a world like this. I thought of what fate had reserved for me in comparison: a modest allowance and position, a reasonable wit, a steady passion, and no such longing for change as Rollins had.
Rollins had no desire for wealth, fame or legacy and yet they were his. He was not an emotional man — instead, logical and calculating — yet he yearned for feeling and sentiment. Any depth of emotion to Rollins was wholly inexplicable. He had money to last several lifetimes over and felt that he had fulfilled more than his share of obligations to the medical world. The time had come for Rollins to cease fixing problems of strangers and begin to pursue his own devices. Though he had no set plan, in his eyes it was time for a radical change.
“Since arriving, all I’ve done is walk the streets and drink cheap liquor and sample the brothels,” said Rollins. “I settled into a vulgar and cheap flat with rats in the floorboards and filth on the walls, and I really quite like it.”
He described all this matter-of-factly, as if diagnosing a terminal illness. His handsome features looked austere, and his eyes flickered with purpose for the first time this evening. In meeting his gaze I felt a certain commiseration with him.
“I want to cultivate an ordinary life — but a mean one. As simple as the lives the masses of humanity lead, to see what I have been missing.”
Rollins' unique successes had long sheltered him from the callousness of ordinary life, and his keen perception allowed him to recognize this. From his position, he understood something that most people never have the opportunity to understand: everybody believes that they want to stand apart from the crowd, to act as a protagonist on the world stage, but nobody considers just how alienating that stage can be.
Part of what helps you and I fall asleep at night is the realization that we are just like everyone else. There is a comfort in sameness, a convenience of relatability and kinship. Most people forget about their tendency to blend in, to be an interchangeable part of a whole. That people are not so different is a fact too often taken for granted. Superior achievement deprived Rollins of each of these quiet sources of solace, and he had come to Paris in search of them.
“Well, Rollins, here’s your chance to make a life of your choosing. You may find that life, when it fails to provide rare blessings in great abundance, can be rather objectionable.”
“Ah, but it is exactly this that I seek! I long to join the crowds of men who could merely do what their fathers and fathers’ fathers have done, to trace an outline that has been traced before. It is a quiet life I seek, and that is all I expect for myself here in Paris.”
Excited, he stood up from the bar and walked outside. I followed him. Storm clouds had formed overhead. Both of us by now were a little the worse for liquor but the conversation had become as invigorating as the cold air.
For the first time I saw Rollins standing upright. He was tall with an athletic build, his broad shoulders complimenting his strong jawline and barrel chest. In every measure he appeared to be someone who would struggle to blend in regardless of his profession.
Of all the things that he could have poured his ambition into, he seemed determined to lead a quiet and ordinary existence, and this I found admirable. He seemed to know what he wanted for perhaps the first time in his life. At the very least, he knew what he did not want, and I’ve always found this to be just as necessary.
Rollins had the unusual luxury of dropping into a mean existence by choice, as well as the option to float out of it on a moment’s notice. For a man who had the world at his fingertips, I found his pursuit of a quiet life noble.
“I do not pretend to be wise,” he said as he looked up at the night sky. “But I have learned to pay close attention. Everyone I’ve ever met seemed to want what I had attained so easily. And I, in turn, wanted what they did not even know they had.”
I gave him a sidelong glance, curious as to what he meant. I felt my eyebrows raise.
“And what is it that nobody seems to know they have?”
Rollins stood there, silent and gazing upwards. Stars poked through clouds. Cold rain began falling from the sky. I opened my umbrella and I saw that Rollins did not have one. Rain drops peppered his face. He continued looking at the sky for a short while longer before he spoke.
“What I find most tragic about human beings is that they seldom notice when they are happy.”
Smiling and drunk, the most intelligent man I’ve ever known walked off into the wet and cold Paris night, in search of obscurity.
I can only assume that he found it.
