The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,347

know what to do. I’m not sure I can get all this paperwork done and make it to the police station too.”

“Well”—regretfully—“hey, actually you know, our offices are only open for another forty-five minutes.”

“What?”

“We close early today. Christmas Eve, you know? And we’re gone tomorrow, and the weekend. But we’ll be open again at eight-thirty a.m. on the Monday after Christmas.”

“Monday?”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” she said. She sounded resigned. “It’s a process.”

“But it’s an emergency!” Voice rasping with illness.

“Emergency? Family or medical?”

“I—”

“Because, in certain very rare situations we do supply emergency after-hours support.” She wasn’t so friendly any more; she was rushed, reciting from her script, I could hear another call ringing in the background like a radio phone-in show. “Unfortunately this is confined to urgent situations of life or death and our staff has to determine that domestic emergency is warranted before we issue a passport waiver. So unless circumstances of death or critical illness require you to travel to Paris this afternoon, and unless you can supply information establishing the critical emergency such as an affidavit with attending physician, clergy, or funeral director—”

“I—” Monday? Fuck! I didn’t even want to think about the police report—“hey, sorry, listen—” she was trying to ring off—

“That’s right. You get it all together by Monday the twenty-eighth. And then, yes, once the application is in we’ll process it for you as quickly as we can—sorry, will you excuse me a second?” Click. Her voice, fainter. “Good morning, United States Consulate of the Netherlands, will you please hold?” Immediately the phone began to ring again. Click. “Good morning, United States Consulate of the Netherlands, will you please hold?”

“How fast can you have it for me?” I said, when she came back on.

“Oh, once you get the application in we should actually have it for you within ten working days, tops. That’s working days. Like—normally I’d do my best to rush it through for you in seven? but with the holidays, I’m sure you understand, the office is a little backed up right now, and our hours are really irregular until New Year’s. So—hey, sorry,” she added, in the stunned silence that had fallen, “it may be a while. Rotten news, I know.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Do you need traveller’s assistance?”

“I’m not sure what that means.” Sweat pouring off me. Rank heated air, heavy with crowd odors, barely breathable.

“Money wired? Temporary accommodations?”

“How am I supposed to get home?”

“You’re a resident of Paris?”

“No, United States.”

“Well with a temporary passport—a temporary passport doesn’t even have the chip you need to enter the United States so I’m not sure that there are really any short cuts that will get you there a whole lot faster than I can get you there by—” Ring ring, ring ring. “Just a moment, sir, will you please hold?

“Now, my name is Holly. Would you like me to give you my extension number, just in case you run into any problems or need any assistance during your stay?”

iii.

MY FEVER, FOR WHATEVER reason, tended to spike at nightfall. But after so long on my feet in the cold, it had begun to shoot up in ragged jumps that had the jerky quality of a heavy object being hauled by fits and starts up the side of a tall building, so that on the walk home I hardly understood why I was moving or why I didn’t fall down or indeed how I was proceeding forward at all, a sort of groundless gliding unconsciousness that carried me high above myself on rainy canal side-streets and up into disembodied lofts and drafts where I seemed to be looking down on myself from above; it had been a mistake not to get a cab back at the station, I kept seeing the plastic bag in the garbage bin and the shiny pink face of the ticket clerk and Boris with tears in his eyes and blood on his hand, clutching at the burnt place on his sleeve; and the wind roared and my head burned and at irregular intervals I flinched at dark epileptic flutters at elbow’s edge: black splashes, false starts, no one there, in fact no one on the street at all except—every now and then—a cyclist dim and hunched in the drizzle.

Heavy head, bad throat. When, finally, I managed to flag down a cab on the street, I was only a few minutes from the hotel. The one good thing, when I got upstairs—bonechilled and shaking—was that they’d cleaned the room and restocked