A bomb went off under my bed the other morning. It was early on a grey Tuesday when I heard a flock of ambulances somewhere near my Left Bank Street, making that forlorn, politely insistent two note bleating all Paris ambulances make. i went downstairs and outside and found nothing. The street sweeper with the green plastic broom was sweeping; the young woman who keeps the striped pajama boutique across the street was reading her Paul Auster novel. ("You left New York for Paris?" she demanded incredulously when I introduced myself not long ago.) Only in the early afternoon, when
Le Monde came out, did I realize that the Islamic terrorists who are now working in Paris had left a bomb in an underground train and that, give or take a few hundred yards, it had gone off beneath the second-floor refuge on the Left Bank that my wife and I had found this summer, after a long search. The ambulances were heading for the Gare d'Orsay, where the wounded were being taken.