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 down-
stairs 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.