by Colin Meloy
“Will sir be needing this card?” asked André. He was a Frenchman, from Aix, but his English had a high polish to it.
Charlie looked at the servant, confused. “Card?”
“The card that was in sir’s trouser pocket.”
Charlie reached out his hand; André placed a small black cardboard square in his palm. Charlie inspected it. It was a business card, though its provenance was unknown. It was nothing Charlie had collected himself. A drawing of seven gold stars made a constellation above the printed words Le Bar des 7 Coins. Below that, in smaller script, was written the address: 46 Rue Sainte-Françoise.
“Thank you, André,” said Charlie. “You can go.”
André gave a quick bow and exited the room.
Once he was alone, Charlie flipped the card over in his hand and studied it. Aside from the address and the name of the business, there was no other evident writing. He certainly didn’t recall either picking up such a card or being handed one—he instantly flashed to his last interaction with Amir, just before he’d left with Jackie. Amir had given him a pat on the arm and perhaps had brushed against him as he’d turned to leave. The boy must’ve slipped the card into his pocket; but why?
“Le Bar des Sept Coins,” murmured Charlie, as if it were an incantation. A flurry of activity in the courtyard below his window—the swing of car headlights turning into the driveway, the racket of doors being opened, the hum of titles announced and welcomes made—alerted Charlie to the fact that his father’s dinner guests had arrived. He quickly got dressed, gave his hair a short tousle in the mirror, and slipped the card into his pants pocket before heading downstairs to greet the visitors.
The evening proceeded as so many previous evenings had: Charlie was introduced to a dizzying array of new and unfamiliar faces while he tried to play the role of a diplomat’s son as well as he could, a performance that would likely get mixed reviews from most quarters. In this circumstance, the Fishers were playing host to the Päffgens, an aristocratic family from West Germany. Never was Charlie’s relatively low upbringing brought into so much scrutiny; the Päffgens (mother, father, three sons) had been landed gentry since the time of the Hapsburgs, and their conversation, gait, and table manners seemed as genetic as their impeccably chiseled cheekbones. The table conversation turned to the politics of their homeland, of a wall about to be constructed to separate the eastern and western portions of Berlin, and to the various film stars they entertained at their manor outside Munich. Charlie made a few attempts to find common ground with the Päffgens’ oldest son, Rudolph, a boy two years Charlie’s elder, but the conversation tended to bottom out fairly quickly once Rudolph discovered that Charlie didn’t own a sports car or have any interest in the success of the Bayern Football Club. Besides, Charlie was driven to distraction about the card that was currently sitting in his pocket and the business it purported to advertise: Le Bar des 7 Coins.
So driven to distraction, in fact, that he couldn’t help pulling it out and studying it while he and the Päffgen boys played billiards in the manor’s basement recreation room after dinner. The adults were smoking and drinking cognacs in the upstairs parlor. Charlie was just about to slide the card back into his pocket when Rudolph snatched it from his hand.
“Bar des Sept Coins, heh?” read the boy, his French inflected with a certain Bavarian glide. “What goes on there? You have a girl waiting for you?”
The other Päffgen boys giggled, leaning on their billiard cues. Apparently, they’d all decided that such a situation was ludicrous for poor Charlie.
“No,” said Charlie defensively. He grabbed for the card, but Rudolph snapped it out of his reach. “A friend gave that to me.”
“You’ve got some seedy friends, Charlie,” replied Rudolph, scoffing. He looked at the card one last time before mercifully returning it to its owner. “Rue Sainte-Françoise. That’s up in the Panier. The old town. Only beggars and thieves hang about up there. What’s left of it.” The Päffgens had kept a summer home in the Prado long before Charlie and his father had arrived. Rudolph and his brothers knew the city as well as any native. The Panier was, indeed, the oldest neighborhood in town. It was a home to mostly poor immigrant families. The Nazis had dynamited a good section of it during the occupation; much of the southern part of the neighborhood was still in rubble. The remainder was a warren of mazelike streets and winding alleyways.
“Yeah, I know,” said Charlie. “That’s why I like it.” He attempted a devious smile; he must’ve looked like he was suffering from gastric pain, because the Päffgen boys all looked at him uncomfortably.
“Sure, Charlie,” said Rudolph, turning to the green felted table and settling the shaft of his billiard cue on the bridge of his index finger. He took a shot; the red nine caromed into the corner pocket. “Whatever you say.”
Charlie hardly slept that night. He’d set the business card on his bedside table, leaning against his reading light, and it seemed to watch over him like an all-seeing eye. Even during his few moments of sleep, his dreams were haunted by those seven twinkling gold stars. He watched them flit in and out of the pockets of faceless strangers, always just out of his grasp. His mind barraged him with questions: Why had Amir given him the card? What was the Bar des 7 Coins?
When he finally awoke to the glint of dawn on his bedroom window, he leapt out of bed and picked up the card. His mind was decided: he would find this mysterious café. He would find out why Amir wanted him to go there. Perhaps it was all some kind of test; some kind of final lesson in his pickpocket tutorial. He opened his chest of drawers and rooted around in his clothes for his most low-key outfit. He intended to fit in, as best he could, with the residents of the Panier. He found an old pair of corduroys and pulled them on. The left knee was threadbare. He then threw on a red plaid flannel shirt, unbuttoned, over a white undershirt and surveyed himself in the mirror. It would have to do. He shoved the business card in his pocket and went downstairs to grab a bite of food before he left for his adventure.
His father was already at the breakfast table, a napkin folded into the undone collar of his shirt.
“Up early, aren’t you?” asked Charles Sr., his eyes peering down the lenses of his bifocals at the day’s Le Figaro. A spoonful of boiled egg was poised halfway between the white porcelain cup and his mouth.
“I need to get art supplies, by the Old Port,” answered Charlie, scooting himself into a chair across the table from his father.
“By the Old Port? Well, why on earth don’t you send André? Or Guillaume in the car?” His eyes drifted up from the paper to take in Charlie and his outfit. “And why are you dressed like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like a . . . Like some kind of lumberjack.” He indicated Charlie with his newspaper.
Charlie felt himself redden. “I’m not dressed like a lumberjack. I’m just dressed like me.”
Charles Sr. had no response.
“And I really need to pick the art supplies out myself,” said Charlie. “Simon insisted.”
“Simon insisted, hmm?” said his father, snapping his newspaper flat with a flick of his wrist. “You know, you’re the son of the American consul general. It may not be wise to have you just gallivanting around town like some drowsy tourist. Or a lumberjack, for that matter.”
“I’ll be fine, Father,” said Charlie. He’d poured himself some cereal and was in the process of spooning it into his mouth.
“At least take the car,” said Charles Sr. “I’ve got meetings in the afternoon, but Guillaume could be at your disposal till, say, one o’clock.”
Charlie tried to imagine rolling through the Panier in the back of the silver Citroën DS, being driven by the house’s black-capped chauffeur. It was unthinkable. However, refusing his father might seem too conspicuous. He had to accept. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”
Charles Sr. mumbled an approval and disappeared back behind his newspaper. Charlie finished his breakfast, excused himself, and went off to fin
d Guillaume.
Guillaume was enjoying a similar activity to Charlie’s father: he was reading a newspaper in the passenger seat of the silver Citroën, only he was browsing La Provence, and his short-billed cap was set back on his head. His lips dangled a lit cigarette and the smoke was lazily drifting out of the open window. When he saw Charlie approach, he quickly flicked the cigarette out onto the driveway, adjusted his cap, and waved.
“Hello, Charlie!” he called.
“Hi, Guillaume,” said Charlie. “I need a ride.”
“Oh, very well,” responded the driver. “Where to?”
“To the Old Port. The Quai du Port.”
“Your wish is my command, Charlie,” he said. He promptly climbed out of the car and opened the rear passenger-side door. “Please,” he said, gesturing to the backseat. Charlie slid in.
As they pulled into the traffic of Avenue du Prado, Guillaume glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “Where are we visiting in the Vieux Port?”
“I’m getting art supplies. From the art supply store,” responded Charlie, somewhat unconvincingly.
Guillaume didn’t reply for a moment. Then he said, “There is no art supply store on the Vieux Port, Charlie.” The car idled at a stop sign; a policeman was directing traffic. A gloved hand waved, and Guillaume guided the car leftward onto the Rue Paradis.
“I think there is,” was Charlie’s feeble reply.
“No, there is not,” said Guillaume. The Fishers’ driver had grown up in Les Catalans, a very old neighborhood just north of the Prado; his was a seventh-generation Marseillais family. “There is one in the new shopping center by the Zoological Gardens. Shall I take you there?”
Charlie chewed on his thumbnail for a second before saying, “I’d rather go to the Vieux Port, please.”
“Very well,” said Guillaume. “This is something I can do. But you will not find an art supply store there.”
Before too long, they had arrived at the Vieux Port. Guillaume expertly managed the logjam of traffic that always seemed to tangle the east end of the port at the Quai des Belges. They quickly rounded the northwest edge of the water and made their way along the Quai du Port. Charlie could see the spire of the Église Notre-Dame des Accoules, the church that marked the easternmost border of the Panier. He called out, “You can drop me here.”
Guillaume braked hard and swerved to the curb. A pair of tourists looked up from the red cover of their Michelin travel guide just in time to leap out of the way. “This is where your art supply store is?” he said cheekily. “I see no art supply store.” He offered to open Charlie’s door, but Charlie demurred.
“I can do it, thanks,” he said. He climbed out of the car and stood on the curb, taking in the gradual ascent of the winding streets, the smell of the ocean, the connective tissue of the laundry lines that linked the myriad windows of the tall stone buildings, one to another. Guillaume was standing by his side.
“Shall I wait here for you?” he asked.
“No, I’ll find my way back home.”
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Mr. Fisher,” said Guillaume. “But I think if you’re going in this direction, you be careful, okay? And be out of there by nightfall.” Here he pointed just beyond the white bell tower of the Église Notre-Dame.
“Thanks, Guillaume,” said Charlie. “I’ll be careful. And please: not a word of this to Father.”
Guillaume winked and walked back to the idling Citroën. “Out of there by dark, remember,” said the chauffeur before sliding back into the driver’s seat of the car.
Charlie turned and gave the man an enthusiastic thumbs-up. The gesture didn’t seem to inspire any kind of confidence in the Catalan driver, because he frowned beneath his bristly mustache before gunning the engine of the silver car and pulling out into traffic.
Charlie watched the car disappear around the corner where the Quai du Port curved northward between the walls of the Fort Saint-Jean. Once it was gone, he turned and looked back up the hill toward the Panier. “Here we go,” he whispered to himself, and began climbing the gentle slope of the street.
Chapter
SEVEN
Forget the broad, leafy avenues of the Canebière and the Prado, the straight-blazed lines of Cours Belsunce and Rue Paradis—each drawn out with the exacting eye of modern city engineering: the Panier was a wild labyrinth of an almost pagan design.
The neighborhood existed before the first stone was laid on the grand avenues of Marseille, and as such, the streets of the Panier appeared to wander as if they’d grown from primitive seed, tracing their own inexplicable paths like shoots from a tree. The buildings that lined these twisting thoroughfares seemed to be made of similarly organic stuff; they leaned in all directions, as if the wind had blown them into their current positions, looming precariously over the action on the streets below. Their facades were pockmarked with oddly shaped windows in strange places; wheat-pasted broadsides advertising amateur theatrical performances and political slogans of dubious merit checkered their walls. Never wider than a single lane of traffic, these streets wove a knotty thread through the buskers and Laundromats and cafés and laborers and wild-haired children and wizened women that were the lifeblood of this ancient neighborhood.
Charlie had never before ventured into the Panier; he did so now like Hercules hunting the Cretan Bull. However, unlike Hercules, he hadn’t been walking fifteen minutes before he realized he was hopelessly lost. He’d tried to keep the white bell tower of the église in sight as a sort of guiding star, but the spire had quickly disappeared behind the buildings’ walls. Indeed, he found it surprising that even the sun managed to make its way into this warren of humanity.
“Excusez-moi,” he entreated two young girls in white pinafores loitering by the stoop of a dilapidated apartment. He’d found them drawing on the pavement with chalk. “Où est la rue Sainte-Françoise?”
They looked up from their project and stared at him blankly. A woman appeared at the doorway and fixed Charlie with an intense glare. She said something quick and sharp in French, something Charlie couldn’t understand.
“I’m just looking . . . ,” Charlie began in English before quickly switching to French: “Je cherche . . .” At a loss for further words, Charlie fished the business card from his pocket and showed it to the woman.
Her eyes widened to read what was printed on the card; she immediately shouted something to the two girls, and they ran inside the building. The woman gave Charlie one final, withering look before shutting a bright green wooden door in his face.
“And a very good afternoon to you, too,” Charlie said quietly.
A horse and cart rattled up the street, led by an old rag-and-bone man in a tattered plaid suit. Charlie stepped aside to let him pass and was rewarded by the doff of a dirty fedora for his consideration. The cart was loaded to the brim with an odd assortment of bric-a-brac: piles of old clothes, washtubs, toasters, and a single coatrack. Kicking at the cobblestones, Charlie followed the cart until it stopped again and its owner began to collect a pile of tin cans that had amassed on the side of the street. Charlie screwed up the courage to ask the old man for directions to the Bar des 7 Coins.
“Excusez-moi,” said Charlie. He held out the business card. “Où est ce café?”
The man looked at the card and said something, though it was neither French nor English.
“Pardon?” asked Charlie.
The man spoke again, and this time Charlie could hear the lilt of Italian in the man’s cadence, though a variety of impediments including a grill lacking several teeth made it difficult to understand. The man must have sensed Charlie’s frustration, because he suddenly stopped talking, tapped his finger on the card, and shook his head gravely.
“No,” he said. “No go.” He then doffed his cap again and said something to his horse, who clearly had no trouble deciphering his master’s words; the cart jerked back into motion and the man and his horse continued onward up the street.
Charli
e watched the cart disappear around a bend; he puzzled over the man’s answer. He began to feel as if he would never find this strange café that inspired such a reaction from the neighborhood’s residents. Several more passersby reacted similarly to his call for help, and he began to wonder if it was not entirely safe to be advertising himself in such a way. He finally answered the demands of his aching feet and seated himself at one of the two outdoor tables in front of a small, decrepit boulangerie. The proprietor, a middle-aged woman, all but acted as if Charlie wasn’t there as she took his order for a pain au chocolat and a Coca-Cola—admittedly, hers was a welcome reprieve to the sorts of looks he’d been getting all morning long. He considered asking her about the café, but didn’t want to jeopardize their winning relationship.
Charlie sighed and sipped at the bottle of soda; he looked down the rambling street to where a small square could be seen. Something caught his eye: there, mostly covered by a neighboring building, was the edge of a sign. On the sign was a painted golden star.
He quickly slapped a two-franc coin on the table and leapt up, near running down the street toward the square. As he’d hoped, he rounded a corner and saw the gold star joined by several others on a broad sign above the storefront of a café. The words Le Bar des 7 Coins were written there.
Involuntarily, Charlie clapped his hands together and shouted, “There it is!” He caught himself just as the words escaped his lips and looked around to see if anyone had heard him. The square was empty; several tables were laid out in the midmorning sun, but they were all unoccupied. The square sat on a low terrace; beyond the railing, a woman could be seen sweeping the stoop of her apartment building. A bird whistled from the branches of a nearby tree. Charlie tried to dampen his enthusiasm as he walked toward the doors of the café.
