Number 7, Rue Jacob

by Wendy Hornsby

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “So, we were running around, shooting at each other. Cho got the keys from me and he started opening doors down there to find hiding places and make barricades. Monsieur Griffith came down and told us to shut up. I grabbed Cho and told him we had to quit. But we couldn’t find Val. We looked all over. By then it was about noon, and we were supposed to go to the train, but I couldn’t leave without Val, could I?”

  He looked at us, expecting maybe affirmation. I said, “Did you try calling his mobile phone?”

  He grimaced. “Yes, finally, when I got a little sober.”

  “Champagne?” Jean-Paul asked.

  He shook his head. “Uncle Antoine’s eau de vie.”

  Eau de vie is a wicked, aged apple brandy my cousin, Antoine—actually, he’s Philippe’s cousin, as well, but the appropriate age to be an uncle—distilled from cider produced on the family’s estate in Normandy. A short snifter as an after-dinner digestif was all that I could manage of the potent, but delicious, stuff. If those kids had been swilling it all night long, I’m surprised that only one of them got misplaced.

  “But there’s no phone signal in the basement,” Philippe said.

  “You did find him, though?”

  “Yes.” He blushed yet again. “Finally, I looked in the library. I showed it to them earlier, when we got the brandy, but I warned them that it was forbidden to go in there without me, totally off limits. But Val went in anyway, alone. I think he slept in there.”

  “Tell me Val’s whole name,” I said.

  “Vasily Barkoff. But he hates it. He gets mad if you call him Vasily.”

  I looked at Jean-Paul. “Son of Boris?”

  “Val has a temper?”

  Philippe raised his palms in a “maybe” gesture. “He’s full of himself. Brags a lot. His father has a lot of money, so he thinks that makes him an übermensch.”

  “Übermensch?” So, the kids were reading Nietzsche.

  Phillipe said, “You know, some kind of special guy. Super man.”

  “What was this übermensch doing when you found him in the library?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “Looking at books. His father is some kind of expert on old Russian books; he brags about that, too. Val found the Russian stuff and started piling it up on a table. He said he was just looking at it, but I know he was planning to steal some of it.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked.

  “Because he hid one under his sweater. I found it later.”

  “Excuse me for just a sec.” I got up and went into Isabelle’s office to fetch the little volume of Psalms. I held it up for Philippe to see. “This one?”

  “Yes. I think maybe he forgot it was there. When he stripped to go to bed, it fell out.”

  “What was he going to do with it?”

  “He said he just wanted to send a picture of it to his father, but he couldn’t get a signal downstairs, so he brought it up. I told him I didn’t believe him.”

  “And?”

  “And then Cho threw up and we all went to sleep. When we got up, it was too late to get the train. It was a holiday, so there wasn’t much to do. We just hung around, ate takeout, watched movies, went back to bed.”

  Jean-Paul leaned forward and spoke softly. “Everyone had an eau de vie hangover, yes?”

  The kid’s guilty grin was answer enough.

  “How long did you stay?” I asked.

  “Till the day after that. We didn’t have to be back at school until the fourth, so we decided we’d hang out in Paris until the third. But the next morning Cho and Val wanted to play tag again. They got really mad that I wouldn’t let them have the keys for the basement, but they got down there somehow. Maybe they followed someone who was going down. Anyway, they chased each other around until Monsieur Griffith threatened to call Papa. I told Cho and Val to grab their stuff and leave, like now.”

  “What happened with the cleaners?” I asked.

  “That was bad,” he said, sniffing the air, distracted for a moment, I thought, by the aroma of soup, and I wondered when he had eaten last. “The cleaners are nice ladies, but they’re really strict Muslims. We weren’t supposed to still be in the apartment when they came. The younger one, Saida, she’s really nice and really pretty. Val tried to mess with her, pulled off her head scarf, touched her. She got blindly upset, and they left.”

  “And wouldn’t come back.” I said.

  “I tried to apologize, but, yeah. So, when Papa called last week to schedule them to come in, they said they wouldn’t, and if he had questions, he should ask me.” He took a deep breath. “Anyway, I am sorry Mamie Izzy’s place was a mess when you got here. I was going to come and clean during the Easter holiday, but—”

  “But I showed up.”

  He nodded.

  “Val came by looking for his coat,” I said. “Will you take it to him when you go back to school?”

  He shook his head. “He left. I came back from a tutorial one day and he was gone. Just gone. Cho didn’t know where he went either.”

  I looked at Jean-Paul, and said, “Suddenly Val’s gone. Just gone.”

  “Aunt Maggie?”

  “Yes, Philippe.”

  “Do I smell Madame Gigi’s soup?”

  “If Madame Gigi is the concierge, you do.”

  He sniffed the air again.

  “You’ll stay for dinner, of course.” Jean-Paul rose to his feet. “But first, let’s go have a look at the library.”

  I pulled the keys out of my pocket and started for the front door with Jean-Paul close behind.

  “Not that way.” Philippe gestured for us to follow him to the kitchen. “This way is shorter.”

  There was a narrow door at the back of the kitchen between the washer and dryer and a small table. If I had paid attention to it, and I had not, I would assume it led to a broom closet or pantry. Phillipe asked me for the keys, unlocked a deadbolt, opened the door, and flipped a wall switch that turned on a row of recessed ceiling lights above a steep, narrow stone stairway that seemed to end in a dense, black abyss. At the bottom, he flipped another switch, illuminating a chamber that was no more than five feet square. There were bolted doors on the right and the left, and a solid wall straight ahead. Not a happy place for anyone with claustrophobia issues.

  “Wine,” Phillipe said, opening the door on the right and turning on the light. Indeed, there was a well-stocked cellar, rows of racked bottles extending into the gloom beyond the reach of the fanciful chandelier—rescued from a château?—hanging above my head.

  “Merde,” was all I could think to say, calling upon that lovely universal French obscenity once again. I stood just inside the doorway, washed over, or rather bowled over, by the heady perfume of wine-soaked wood and old cork, trying to figure out what the hell I had tumbled into by the accident of the union between my beloved late father and this enigma, Isabelle, the ultimate inconnue, the unknown, and now unknowable woman who had given birth to me. Jean-Paul walked straight inside with a happy grin on his face and started pulling out random bottles. He’d study a label and put the bottle back, except for four, which he handed Phillipe to set on the stairs to take up with us later.

  “Isabelle was a connoisseur,” he said, smiling at me. “If it’s all right with you, I’ve selected something very nice to have with soup tonight, and something to take to my sister’s lunch tomorrow.”

  I held up my palms. “Bien sûr, pourquoi pas?” Sure, why not? My wine is your wine. My wine? I needed to step out to catch my breath.

  Jean-Paul turned off the lights and Philippe locked up after him. The door on the opposite side of the stairway had a recessed pull instead of a knob of some sort. Phillipe inserted a key in a bolt and slid the door into a wall pocket, releasing a burst of chilly air into the warmer passage. He hit a switch and, after a pause, rows of filtered museum lights flickered on. Again, I hesitated before venturing inside. When I first heard about the convent’s library and scriptorium, I imagin
ed something lifted out of a medieval castle, or a movie about a medieval castle: stone walls and carved paneling and heavy tapestries. What I saw could have been a newly appointed reading room in the rare books section of any university library. I confess that I was a bit disappointed by the industrial-looking glass-front shelving, the spare utilitarian tables and chairs. Everything in the room was perfectly tidy, except for twin towers of volumes stacked at the far end of one of the tables.

  When the door was closed behind us, it disappeared, becoming just another part of the solid wall between two bookcases, a puzzling contrast to the heavy, electronically secured door on the far side of the room. Next to that door, there were two computers on small desks, above which were posted instructions for library visitors to log in and for accessing the online card catalogue.

  “Once again,” Jean-Paul said, venturing further inside, “Isabelle has surprised me. I knew nothing about this second entrance. She and I, and the curator from the Louvre, have electronic fob keys for the other door. Just so you know, for security, each key has a different signature that is recorded every time it is used. But I think that Isabelle wanted to come and go without anyone knowing. Philippe, do you have any idea when she installed the door?”

  The question merited a slight lift of one shoulder, which I read to mean that the answer was obvious. “It was always here. I mean, for as long as I can remember.”

  “You’re eighteen, Philippe?” Jean-Paul asked, and was answered with an affirmative lift of the chin. “The same as my Dom. We started the restoration when you two were just babies. So, you’re right, the door probably has been here for most of your life. I simply don’t know.”

  I looked around at the shelved volumes—old, leather-bound works—and at the long drawers for texts that needed to be stored flat. It was a cold, uncomfortable room, the temperature and humidity regulated by a machine affixed to the far wall. Not a pleasant place, at all, to hang out. Curious, I asked Phillippe, “Did your grandmother come down here often?”

  “Oh, yes. Mamie Izzy would bring her work down sometimes. It’s very quiet. The books were good company, she said. Sometimes, when I visited her, I would bring my school work, and we’d sit here and she would do her work and I would do mine.”

  “Her work?” I repeated; Isabelle, like my father, was a nuclear physicist. “She was working on a church-related project?”

  He laughed at that. “Mamie Izzy was an atheist. She thought that these books were pretty, but she said that between the fancy covers, everything on the pages was superstitious bullshit. Excuse me, but that is her word.”

  “And I thought she was so genteel,” I said.

  Jean-Paul’s snort had a sardonic edge. “But then, you never knew her.”

  “Except,” Philippe said, “for the things she called the refugees. She did like looking through those sometimes.”

  “What are the refugees?” I asked.

  “Papers that were brought here for safekeeping during the Revolution,” he said.

  I turned to Jean-Paul. “You told me about that.”

  He nodded. “The convent gave sanctuary to precious children and precious documents, both. For a price, I suspect.”

  “You think the nuns rented out space?”

  “In a sense,” Jean-Paul answered. “I’m sure that if the nuns weren’t given cash they were given special favors of some sort for the risk they took. Words can be dangerous, yes?”

  “Mightier than the sword.”

  He chuckled. “When the men whose words they safeguarded—kings and nobles and priests—were losing their heads, I’m certain the nuns knew the danger they faced. From the look of the place when we found it, no one spent a minute longer down here with the contraband than it took to open the door, shove it inside. And lock the door behind. It’s difficult to imagine now, but when the workmen found the old library, this room was a filthy mess. There were stacks of crates and chests pushed against the walls. Some had collapsed from the burdens of time and weight, and spilled. I confess I felt overwhelmed. We knew that what was here was important, but what to do with it?”

  “That’s when you called the university?” I asked.

  “Your mother did. As soon as Isabelle saw the royal crest on some crates, she called the Sorbonne, and they in turn brought in the Louvre. It was a great relief to have the experts take over sorting and organizing. Too bad they went public about the discovery.”

  “Because that brought in the Vatican and the local diocese.”

  “What a headache.” He looked around, and sighed. “Or maybe nightmare. Sometimes I wish the workmen had never opened that door to begin with.”

  I put my hand along his cheek, beside the fresh scars. “Roger that. I’m new to all this, but already I wish it would go away.”

  “You’ve no idea.” He took my hand and kissed it. “From the beginning, my role at rue Jacob has been managing financial and legal issues. Bankers, lawyers and lawsuits. So, as you have figured out by now, I did not pay very close attention to what was happening in here. Other than to check on the security system when it was periodically upgraded, I did not visit the library. For her own reasons, Isabelle neglected to mention she had put in a second door. One that is not connected to the alarm system.”

  “She could be sneaky,” Phillipe said with a grin. “But when I said she liked the refugees, I wasn’t talking about refugees from the French Revolution. It was the other ones.”

  “Sorry,” Jean-Paul said. “Which other ones?”

  “From the Russian Revolution.” He pointed to the stacks of books on the far table. “Those are the books Val was interested in, too.”

  For just a moment, the only sound in the room was the soft beeping of the humidity monitor. Jean-Paul was the first to speak. He turned to me. “The Russians. Another headache that won’t go away.”

  “When did they arrive?” I asked. “And who brought them?”

  Both Jean-Paul and Phillipe shrugged. Phillipe said, “Sometime after 1917 when the revolution began.”

  “A lot of Russian nobility, and probably clergy, fled to Paris around then,” Jean-Paul added. “We assumed that someone rescued, or looted, church artifacts and texts when the Bolsheviks shut down the churches and outlawed the priesthood, and somehow parked what they could save here. By then, the library was probably already in a shambles.”

  I looked around the room. “Philippe, from Isabelle’s back stairs, is there a way to get into the rest of the basement other than going through the main library door over there?”

  “No. You have to go back up, out the apartment’s front door, and down the main stairs. Do you want me to show you?”

  “Later maybe. Did you bring Cho and Val in here through the pocket door, or the main door?”

  “The slider,” he said, indicating the door we had come through. “I know I shouldn’t have brought them in at all, but Val is always bragging about his father and his precious Russian book collection and how it’s worth millions. It gets very boring. When we came down for the brandy, I pointed to the library door and told Val that there were very old Russian books in here, worth a ton. He didn’t believe me, so I said he could pull up the museum site and see for himself. He tried, but he couldn’t get a phone signal down here, so I took him in, but just to show him the catalogue on the computer.”

  “And he saw the list of Russian holdings,” I said.

  “Not exactly. He only saw that there were things from Russia. I’ll show you.” He booted one of the computers near the main door and pulled up the library catalogue. Besides the location on the shelves, the catalogue included a brief description, and sometimes a photograph, of the original holdings of the St. Jérôme Émilian convent library. Anyone interested in the refugees, as Philippe called the material brought into the convent for safekeeping during dangerous times, was to contact the curator of rare books at the Louvre for a catalogue of the holdings or to apply for permission to see them. Those materials were listed only as Collections: S
aint-Germain-de-Prés, Paris; Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, Paris; Saint-Sulpice, Paris. And Vladimirsky Cathedral, St. Petersburg.

  “Why aren’t the contents of the refugee collections in the accessible catalogue?” I asked.

  When Philippe, having no answer, raised his palms, Jean-Paul stepped in. “It has to do with lawsuits, as well as issues of provenance, and degree of pain-in-the-ass.”

  “I don’t see any of the royal papers in the catalogue,” I said, scrolling through the menu.

  “That’s because they aren’t here,” Jean-Paul said. “The Vatican has no claim on them, so they were shipped out to the Louvre right away. Interesting though, some of the documents were actually produced right here, in the scriptorium of the Little Sisters of Saint Jérôme Émilian.”

  “I understand how the Vatican can claim the books, texts, whatever, that were in the convent library. But can’t we pack up everything that belonged to the three local churches on the list, drop it on their doorsteps, ring the bell, and run like hell?”

  Philippe laughed. “Mamie Izzy said almost the same thing.”

  “I’m game,” Jean-Paul said. “I’m damn tired of dealing with it all. The museum lawyers and the diocese lawyers agree with you, but the Vatican doesn’t and they are happy to pay their lawyers until Judgment Day. That still leaves us with the Russians, and right now I would really like for the Russian material to be somewhere else.”

  “I don’t see how either the Vatican or the local diocese can claim any of that,” I said. “So why don’t we just truck it over to the Louvre?”

  “Because they won’t touch it with a fork,” Jean-Paul said.

  “Why not?”

  “First, the Louvre won’t accept anything that may have been improperly acquired. We have no idea who left the stuff here, or how the nuns came to possess it. Next, the museum already has enough problems getting Russia to return pieces of their collection that the Nazis stole during the war, and that the Soviets in turn stole from the Nazis. Fine French works that belong to the Louvre still hang in Russian museums.”