One of her excuses for frequent escape is the two apartments in her former building. One of these, on the third floor, she owns, but had to abandon it and rent one on a lower floor when the stairs became too much. When she wants to collect her mail, Fernande makes her way up there on her own, and if Zorica isn't there and she can't manage to open her door, she stands on the stairs yelling "Is there anyone home?" in a pathetic voice that is full of power, until someone shows up. Invariably she has the wrong key, or the overhead light bulb has blown, and the concierge has to be called out. He arrives with a cigarette to the side of his mouth, a ladder and a new bulb, giving her a side look across his pencil moustache. Then he wrestles her three sets of keys from her, opens the door, puts her sitting down inside and leaves Zorica or one of the others to decide what to do with her.
Both of Mme F's apartments are monuments to a kind of kitsch which Susan Sontag never dreamed of. Fernande calls it untidiness, and only apologises for it vaguely, as for a crime perpetrated by someone else. The rented apartment is the most kitsch of the two, as if Mme F had made up for Georges' absence, and her descent to the first floor, by a flurry of foreign holidays and purchases. Glassfronted cupboards overflow with dolls of every shape and size, from every ethnic grouping. Dolls from some demented Carmen dance across chests of drawers, and, like Zorica's flowers, look as if they are about to make a getaway across the ceiling and walls and back to some eternal rave or other. A check has to be done upstairs as well, in the smaller room she and Georges shared for some 60 years, as the door seems loose and everyone is worried about possible squatters.
In the upstairs apartment, squatters would be comfortable if in a sort of time warp. The kitsch here is slightly less frenetic, with reminders and black-and-white photos of her and him all over the place. Lace doilies cover a small early-model TV set and radio. A well-worn carpet occupies the middle space. Old post office calendars block up missing window-panes. A wallbed clad in Formica looms large on one side of the room. Fernande turns on her heel with an agitated sigh and walks back down, having wiped all memory of this life from her mind. Let the cousin have it when she dies. The room, for her, died with Georges.
SHE is much more intrigued by the notice of a registered letter she has received from the concierge, and is adamant that she wants to go to the post office and get it, in spite of warnings of standing in a queue and needing an ID. Clasping the notice to her front, she sets off for the post office on Zorica's arm, with a determined air.
Out on the street it is hot. There is a hum of sewing machines in the air. Bags of offcuts from the morning's work have already been left out for the bin collection. Mme F tells Zorica the city hall has invited her to the old folks' annual dinner in a local restaurant. "Used to invite us once a month," she adds, "before the Right got in. Now the Left are back, it doesn't look like they'll go back on it." It doesn't occur to her that Zorica, past the age of retirement but a foreigner and therefore nonvoter, is invited nowhere. Mme F makes jokes about voting for Le Pen in the European elections, and there is no guarantee she wouldn't do so. Yet she isn't racist. Several young men sit on a doorstep and study the two old ladies with interest. One, of North African origin, is looking for a row. When Mme F refuses to mount the high footpath near him because she avoids steps of any kind - he asks aggressively, "Afraid to walk right by an Arab, are you?" "Didn't know you were an Arab, did I?" retorts the bold Mme F, quick as a flash, He doesn't quite know what to say to that.
Zorica too is no stranger to righteous indignation, although she has never been able to sufficiently develop it. The finest example she has never forgotten is the day, shortly after her arrival, when - having learned what it was and how to ask for it - she ventured into a bakery shortly before midday and asked for a croissant. The bakery assistant glowered, consulted her watch and bellowed at the now deeply embarrassed Zorica: "The idea!", and looked to the other customers for confirmation of the misdeed. Trying to buy a croissant near midday! Parisians made the laws, and would make sure everyone else followed them. If not, they might erupt in violence again as they had done in 1789. The threat was there. It was effective. French farmers frequently made use of a similar threat, by throwing vegetables and fruit around the motorways, or dumping animal carcasses in front of a local Mairie. In Paris, the threat had reached its finest expression in righteous indignation, and required no further action.
They are in luck - at the post office there's no queue and Mme F actually has her ID card with her. They limp over to the desk. "This looks like Monsieur F," says the official behind the counter, examining the envelope. "Couldn't be, he died three years ago," says Mme F. "Let's see the letter anyway," says Zorica. The clerk returns with a letter from the electricity company addressed to Monsieur Georges F, which he says he cannot give to Mme F because it is not addressed to her. "But Georges died three years ago and I've been paying the bills ever since," says Mme F. The man behind the counter studies her briefly, but he has no intention of giving in: "Have to produce a death certificate." he says. Mme F doesn't bat an eyelid. Drawing herself up to her full, unrheumatic height, she makes an announcement, to all and sundry, at the top of her voice: "Elle est belle, la France." Then she and Zorica limp defiantly out for the long walk home. Zorica has to refuse her offer of drinks at every corner bar.
The minders take care of the registered letter - which was about nothing important, in fact. Mme F is admonished again about unaccompanied journeys abroad. The next time Fernande turns up chez Zorica she is considerably dishevelled, but wearing crumpled mauve from head to foot. She leans on the new walking stick, defiant. There's a nephew she likes to whom she'd like to leave the room when she dies, but it would cost him huge state taxes since he's only a distant relative. Maybe she'll just sell it and give him the money. She'll think about it. Let the minders go to hell, she says. She never carries more than 100 francs in her purse, so there's no point in anyone trying to rob her. And they're hardly likely to want to rape her, now. She and Zorica have iced tea from the painted bottle, cooled by plastic coloured golf balls from Zorica's freezer. There's no shortage of atmosphere.