Number 7, Rue Jacob

by Wendy Hornsby

We talked about the meeting with the French television people in the morning. The big question for Guido was, would he be interested in working in Paris? For one project, for several years? For the rest of his career? We knew that anything more than a brief absence from American television could be risky if he ever wanted to nose himself back into his old slot. Staying out of sight by working abroad could either be a disaster, or a huge career boost if our work received some recognition. The entire proposition was, like many things in life, akin to standing on the edge of a precipice not knowing whether, when we took the leap, we’d soar or plummet. In our twenties, and maybe into our thirties, we could risk landing on our faces once or twice. But in our forties, we don’t bounce very well anymore. Not in the world of television. So, I asked him, “Are you ready to make a commitment to work here?”

  He said, “Can I answer that tomorrow when we see what’s on offer? If anything. And you?”

  “Same answer.”

  “Max said to remind you that he’s ready to fly in if they hand us anything to sign.”

  And there we left it.

  Last fall, when we returned to Los Angeles after filming the farm and harvest seasons at Grand-mère’s Normandy estate, we had put together a short video as a pitch for our producer to show her bosses at network, to keep them interested in the project. I thought it was very good, even though it failed to beguile our producer’s immediate superior. During the short time between his return from Laos and taking off again for Paris, Guido had tweaked the video, made it a little longer and more tailored for a French audience. The three of us huddled around his laptop and watched it through twice. When the last image faded to black the second time, I refilled his glass and raised mine to him.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Know what would make it better?”

  “I’m holding my breath.”

  “Some footage of Grand-mère’s farm now, in the dead of winter, when everything is quiet.”

  “Did the airlines lose the camera equipment you were lugging?”

  “No. It’s here. You can rent anything else you need.”

  “Okay. Yeah. You coming with me?”

  “I have some things to take care of first. If you want to go in the next day or two and you need a cable puller and a sound man, my nephews, Robert and Philippe, are there, looking for something interesting to fill their time.”

  Later, at dinner, we agreed that French Mexican food had lost something on its way across the Atlantic. It was good, but it was about as Mexican as deep dish pizza is Italian. During the meal, we regaled Guido with our adventures of the last few days, and what we thought it had all been about, namely, getting access to some very valuable books. He and I agreed that if the French television people wanted to discuss a follow-up project, we would pitch them a story about the convent, the restoration, the books. By the time the crème brûlée pretending to be flan was presented, my two dates were both ready to go home to bed, but I felt wired.

  That night, I tossed, I turned, finally managed to fall asleep only to jolt awake out of a nightmare about being chased. Not wanting to wake Jean-Paul, I gave up and went out to the salon in search of something to read as a distraction. I poured a finger of apple brandy into a snifter and curled up with an old copy of National Geographic. The feature article was about the Mayans, an appropriate topic, I thought, to accompany the Mexican dinner that seemed to have fused into a hard knot that was lodged behind my breastbone and breathing fire. Maybe brandy wasn’t the best treatment, but it felt good going down.

  The house was quiet. Once, I heard the little dog upstairs yap at the wind, but only once, and nothing more. Eventually, I fell asleep, curled on the sofa around the magazine. Jean-Paul came and wakened me enough to lead me back to bed, where I slept wrapped in the safety of his arms. I can’t say that morning dawned. At some point, the sky outside the bedroom windows became a little less gray, and the denizens of the building, and Isabelle’s apartment, began to stir. I could hear water running through pipes in the walls, occasional doors close followed by footsteps on the stairs. Guido made the usual gassy morning toots as he padded down the hall toward the bathroom. Jean-Paul nuzzled my neck with his scratchy chin and asked what time it was. It was time to get up.

  The locksmith arrived before we were dressed and set to work. I put out toasted two-day-old brioche and yogurt with fruit and Guido, Jean-Paul and I somehow managed to get showered in bathroom shifts. As I pulled on jeans over my long johns, I asked Jean-Paul, “What would it take to add a second bathroom to the apartment?”

  He shrugged as he thought about it. “Permission of the owners, of course. And they’re tough, I hear. A city permit. And maybe the sale of a little Russian book to pay for it.”

  “How many bathrooms are there at your house?”

  “Three,” he said. “Plus the one in the guest house where Ari lives. It would be easier to add several to the house, if you think you need more, than to put another one in this apartment. Where would you squeeze it in?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far.”

  Thierry Dusaud called to let us know that Berg could no longer justify keeping a policeman on watch at our gate. There seemed to be no reason to continue to do so. The two men who actively stalked us were in custody. Little crouchingdragon had been shut down, and ProtX4 had been contacted and warned to back off. No one at InterCentro answered or returned calls over the weekend, but now it was Monday morning and police in England would make a visit to the London office listed on the web site. We were officially free to go about the world again. After Jean-Paul put away his phone and recounted the conversation, he said, “But watch six anyway.”

  The three of us went over the schedule for the day. Guido and I had the meeting in Issy-les-Moulineaux with our French television counterparts, and Jean-Paul needed to go into his office in La Défense to check on things and write his report about the status quo at the refugee camp he and Eduardo visited in Greece, where this strange odyssey began. The two districts, though not far apart, and both west of the city center, were on different banks of the Seine because of a meander in the river. We made a tentative plan to meet for lunch somewhere in between if the timing could be worked out, after which Jean-Paul and I would go speak with the notaire. Guido promised to stop by the locksmith’s shop on his way home to pick up the new keys. I showed him where to find my camera bag in case he felt motivated to go down and shoot the library. Or to raid the wine cellar.

  ——

  It is always difficult to know how well a meeting has gone until you get a call back later. Sometimes much later. Guido and I gave our pitch, in English for Guido’s benefit, explained our division of labor and our history of working together and apart. We showed the six people in the small conference room our Normandy video, and talked about the direction we wanted to take the film as we finished it. Originally, for American television, we had focused on my discovery of Isabelle’s family in France and getting acquainted with them; a personal piece. But for French television, we pitched the film as an exploration of the bucolic charms of traditional French country life amid the challenges of the globalization of agriculture, using the seasons on Grand-mère’s farm estate as an archetype to represent issues in common with other family-run farms. Our French counterparts loved the existential elements, or said they did. When they asked about possible follow-up projects, we pitched the transformation of the convent of the Little Sisters of St. Jérôme Émilian from orphanage to modern residence, with a valuable library caught in limbo beneath. Changing social mores stirred a good discussion, so did the recalcitrance of the Vatican. But the energy of the meeting truly picked up when a very hip-looking young woman, a vision in tones of black from her hair to her boots, asked if it was true that Freddy’s wife had tried—in her words—to rub me out to cover her embezzlement. Grudgingly, I admitted that she had, and I think that sealed the deal. We moved right from there to questions about when we would be available, and what our salary expectations were. Availability
we could answer, the salary question we deflected to Uncle Max.

  The meeting adjourned to a restaurant overlooking the river for lunch. I called Jean-Paul and asked him to join us, but he told me that Madame Gonsalves was being released from hospital and, if I would excuse him, he wanted to pick her up and make sure she was settled in her apartment before he met me at the office of the notaire later that afternoon.

  By the time coffee was served at the end of the meal, my head was abuzz from four hours of lively conversation about film and life and the relative reality of the two. Guido had a familiar light in his eyes, and I knew he was hooked. These were people he wanted to work with. And so did I. Uncle Max still had to hammer out the ugly details around money and terms, but I was ready to get started. First, however, Guido and I had to finish the unexploded bomb project, and figure out how to make our exits from California.

  Before the meeting, I had turned off my telephone’s ringer and set it to vibrate. After several days without a phone, I got used to the quiet. So, every time an incoming message buzzed in my pocket, I startled, and then had to fight back the urge to pull the thing out to check the message. It was disconcerting. After the last good-byes with our hosts, and after we reassured our companions that we could walk across the bridge to the far side of the Seine unescorted to catch a Métro, both Guido and I were antsy to see who had called during the meeting with such insistent regularity.

  Max had texted both of us several times. We found a bench in a protected alcove about halfway across the bridge, sat on the cold stone, and called him to report on the meeting. Before our meeting even began, someone from their legal department had contacted Max about setting up a time to talk terms. When he asked us what we wanted, we told him we wanted the usual, lots of freedom and lots of money, and trusted him to get the best possible deal for us.

  The next message in my mailbox came from the auction site where I had left a message the night before. Using a dummy email I set up for the purpose, I’d asked whether the Russian books that had been taken off offer could be made available for the right price. The site did not respond, but another potential buyer did. He asked to be contacted if the books were, indeed available, so that he would have the opportunity to counter any offer made. He left an email address. I sent a response: “Dear BBIC (his email moniker), Are you still interested in the Russian psalter? Contact me.” And signed it, RJ, for rue Jacob.

  When I put my phone away, Guido was on his feet, leaning against the bridge rail, looking at the high-rise buildings on both sides of the river. I rubbed my cold bottom as I walked over to him. I asked, “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s really ugly here.” Guido took my arm and we continued across the bridge toward the train station. “We could be in the middle of downtown Chicago or, except for the river, the Silicon Valley. Did you get a load of the parking lots behind the buildings? Could be L.A., too. Same companies, same architecture, same damn cars.”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  “Yeah, a little. It isn’t a deal breaker. Hell, we’ll either be out shooting or locked in an editing bay, so what does it matter? But Paris, you know? If we’re going to work here, I wish it looked more like Paris.”

  “Close your eyes,” I said. I turned him until he was facing roughly northeast. “Now, open.”

  It took him a moment before he spotted it. With a silly grin, he said, “There’s only one, right?”

  “One Eiffel Tower is enough.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “I don’t know. A mile and a half? Two? Look on your phone.”

  He did. “It’s walkable. If you’re okay getting yourself back to the apartment—”

  “Just don’t forget to pick up the keys, or we’ll all be locked out.” With a wave, he went striding off toward the Eiffel Tower.

  I had about three hours to kill before meeting the notaire, enough time to take care of a few things. At the Issy-Val de Seine station, I found the next scheduled train to Vaucresson, Jean-Paul’s neighborhood, and bought a ticket. The experimental trip out to the suburbs took less than twenty not unpleasant minutes, including two stops on the way. In a car, it would take longer than that at rush hour just to exit one of the massive parking lots Guido mentioned. I looked around the Vaucresson station for a few minutes before buying a return ticket. Back in Paris, I got off at Montparnasse and walked to the Louvre.

  With no idea how to get to the people I wanted to talk to, I pulled out one of my business cards with the flashy network logo and went to an information kiosk in the plaza outside the Louvre’s pyramid-shaped entrance. Dredging up the name of the museum contact that I had seen on the directions posted above the computers in the basement library, I stood in line, and when it was my turn, flashed a sappy American smile, hoping that I looked as clueless as I felt. Handing my card to the uniformed attendant, I said, “I have an appointment to see Madame Celine Pirenne, director of rare books collections, but I have no idea where to go.”

  The attendant smiled benevolently as she took my card, asked me to wait a moment, and placed a call. After a brief conversation, she hung up and told me to wait right there, and someone would come and get me. Who knew it was that easy?

  Standing on the leeward side of the booth, out of the wind, I pulled my scarf over my ears and watched the crowd, huddled in coats, waiting in the long queue to go inside, or taking pictures of each other, or themselves, with the iconic structure as backdrop. While I stood there, BBIC responded to my email, saying he would like very much to speak with me. He left a phone number with a forty-four prefix, the country dialing code for England. I still had a burner phone in my coat pocket. I pulled it out and dialed the number.

  “InterCentro, London office. Boris Barkov here.”

  “Mister Barkov, you left a message about your interest in some books that were posted for sale on an auction site.”

  “And taken off offer, yes. Do you know something about those books?”

  “I do.” A tall thin man wearing a beautiful coat over wool slacks, hands deep inside his pockets, necktie flapping in the wind, strode with purpose across the plaza, eyes searching the area around the kiosk until he spotted me. I took a step forward and waved at him. “I would like to meet with you. Tomorrow? Your office?”

  “Of course. I am most interested. Most. Could we say eleven o’clock?”

  “We will be there.”

  Barkov was asking for my name when I cut off the call. The man with the windblown tie was only three strides away.

  “Madame MacGowen?” He extended his hand toward me. “Guillaume Fouquet. Everyone calls me Billy. Come with me.”

  I fell into step beside him, trying my best to keep up. Looking at me askance, he said, “Madame Pirenne is afraid that she neglected to make a note of your meeting. She is not available to see you this afternoon, but she knows that Marie Volz, the curator of the religious texts collection, has been eager to speak with you.”

  “Has she?”

  “Yes.” He smiled an upside-down smile that was full of irony or something else I couldn’t read. “We have all been curious. Madame Volz was trying to get up the courage to call you.”

  “Explain to me why she would need courage to call me?”

  “I’ll let her explain.”

  I had to show identification to the armed guard at the side entrance Billy led me to, and sign in as a guest of Marie Volz escorted by Billy Fouquet, send my bag through a scanner, and stand still long enough to have a snapshot taken for my visitor badge. Once credentialed, I walked—quick-marched—with Billy along back passageways, down several floors in a freight elevator, and finally out into a vast room lined with glass-fronted cases filled with books that could be cousins to the much smaller collection under my inherited apartment building. Billy made the introduction to Marie Volz, curator of rare religious texts.

  She was a Central Casting rare-books curator. Sixtyish, thin, graying hair pulled back into a bun at the back of her neck, a below-the-k
nee woolen A-line skirt and matching gray twinset. Sturdy black shoes. And a delightful twinkle in her eye.

  “My superior asked me to sit in for her,” she said after introductions. “She does apologize for failing to make note of your meeting.”

  “Madame Volz,” I said, “I have no appointment. I was eager to speak with someone here who might know about the library in the basement at number seven, rue Jacob.”

  “Have a seat, please,” she said, ushering me into her frigid little office. “Tea?”

  “If it’s convenient, yes, please.”

  “You may not be used to our cold weather.” She signaled to Billy, who was lurking nearby, before she came all the way into the room to sit behind her desk. She shoved a stack of files aside, opening a canyon she could look through to speak to me. “I am delighted to meet you, at last, Madame. Tell me, what are your concerns about the Little Sisters of Saint Jérôme Émilian collection?”

  “Actually, I’m more interested in the books from Vladimirsky Cathedral in St. Petersburg.”

  “Ah, the Russians. I can’t tell you very much about them.”

  “I’m curious to know how it was determined that they came from the Vladimirsky?”

  Her eyebrows rose, surprised, I thought, by the question. “The information came from your mother.”

  “Before we go further: You seem to be rather familiar with who I am, and that surprises me.”

  “Does it?” She smiled. “Your mother was very proud of you. She spoke of you often.”

  I was happy that Billy brought the tea at that moment, because I did not know how to hide how very creepy that made me feel. Isabelle Martin was a stranger to me. She was not part of my life. And yet, I was very much a part of hers. I did not know how to handle the growing shadow of her that hung over my life.

  Billy handed us tea in heavy china mugs. It was hot, and lovely. I clutched the mug with both of my red, cold hands.

  “Madame MacGowen was asking about the Russians in her basement,” Madame Volz said, peering at Billy over the top of her steaming mug.