The Paris Key

by Juliet Blackwell

  She was existing in a charming, lavender-scented bubble of good food, art, and wine; it was an oddly sensual, seductive half-life.

  “Never give up with the authorities, Genevieve,” said Philippe. “And eventually you will succeed!”

  “Thanks,” she said with a smile. “So, would you like to come in for apero? I don’t have cheese puffs, but I just came back from the store.”

  “How can I turn down such an invitation from a beautiful woman?”

  She held the door for him as he used his cane, tapping his way into the apartment.

  “It has been a long time since I am here,” said Philippe. “Pasquale, she has the magnificent dinners here—do you remember?”

  “I do,” she said. “I have dreamed of those dinners over the years.”

  “Her couscous . . . never have I found a restaurant that comes near her quality.”

  “I’ve had the same thought myself. Here, sit, and let me get you a glass of wine. White, red, or rosé?”

  She served them both glasses of chilled Muscadet, a dry white wine from the Loire Valley, then arranged a few snacks: seasoned walnuts, sliced green apples, thinly cut rabbit sausage, and an artichoke dip she had indulged in, on a whim, from a Greek delicatessen she had strolled by near the Champs-Élysées.

  Genevieve asked Philippe about his time at his daughter’s house, and he told her stories of his grandchildren and their pet hedgehog—a word for which Genevieve had to retrieve the dictionary after he unsuccessfully tried to describe the little animal.

  “Philippe,” Genevieve finally ventured, “could you tell me about my mother, what she was like when she was here?”

  “Ah, your mother, she was lovely! Très belle femme, very beautiful woman on the inside, too, in her heart. Very sensitive, very . . . passionate.”

  “Did she seem happy to you?”

  He tilted his head, considering. “I think . . . when first she comes, no. She sleeps a lot when first she comes. But then she becomes happier. She offered to help my Delphine with packing, très gentile, very nice.”

  “Do you know what happened to her arm?”

  He looked at Genevieve for a long time, his rheumy eyes focused and intense. “You do not know the story? Vraiment?”

  Truly? he asked. Genevieve shook her head.

  He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then hesitated. After another moment, he said, “Always Delphine tells me: When one does not know the whole story, one should not speak.”

  “But my tante Pasquale, she was confused when I visited and she thought she was telling my mother that she had to tell Jim—my father—something. Do you know what it was? Did it have to do with the accident?”

  “I am sorry, Genevieve. I do not know. What happened with Angela was an accident . . . she was an innocent tourist, too close to—” He cut himself off, his gaze shifting toward the courtyard. “Aha, look, your neighbors! Bonjour, ça va?”

  Daniel and Marie-Claude had approached the open window, but upon seeing Philippe they nodded stiffly, wished Genevieve and Philippe a good day, and kept walking.

  “They are the Black Feet,” Philippe said, yanking his thumb toward the window. “With very long memories, I am sad to say. Do you know about the Black Feet? From Algérie.”

  “Why are they called Black Feet?”

  “Ha! Funny name, I think. Some say it is because they stomp the grapes, stain their feet. Or maybe it is because of the dark soil, the land. I do not know.”

  “What were you about to say, about my mother? She was too close to what, or to whom?”

  “You know, these things are very complicated, Genevieve. What happened with your mother . . . it reminds me of what happened, précisément, with the Black Feet. Everything has so many sides. When Jean-Paul Sartre goes to Algérie, he sees what is happening: that now we French are the colonialists. You see, it is because of what happened with the Germans that I follow Jean-Paul in this. We fight not only with our bodies, but with our minds—we fight the colonialism, the invasion of the Germans, you see? But are we not doing the same thing in Algérie? Eh, Genevieve, this artichoke, is very good!”

  He ate some dip, took another sip of wine, sat back.

  “This is why some of us fight against the war, because this is not why our grandfathers fight the revolution against the king, against tyranny. We have a constitution; people forget the ideals of the fraternité.”

  “That does sound a lot like what happens in the U.S. when we go to war: Some people say it is only patriotic to support the war, and others say it is more patriotic to oppose it. The only thing everyone can agree on is to support the troops.”

  “‘Troops’?”

  “The soldiers. The people who are sent to fight.”

  “Ah, oui, I agree with this. The soldiers go where they are told, n’est-ce pas? And even sometimes I think this about many Germans; maybe they did not want to be here. The soldiers who arrested me during the world war, they were boys, my age at the time. War is terrible for everyone, on all the sides.”

  “So you spoke out against the Algerian War. And you suffered for it?”

  He shrugged, stuck out his chin. “I was not alone, you know. Many people were against this war. One famous group supporting Algérie is made of one anarchist, one Trotskyist, and one Roman Catholic priest! Imagine!”

  Philippe laughed so hard he started coughing.

  As he took a moment to regroup, something else occurred to Genevieve.

  “My tante Pasquale, her mother was Algerian.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Yes she was.”

  “Was Pasquale involved in this?”

  “We all were, in one way or another.”

  “Philippe, please, can you tell me what happened with my mother?”

  He looked at her with such sadness in his old eyes. “I cannot, Genevieve. I am sorry, but I cannot.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Angela, 1983

  Several long days pass before Angela is released from the hospital. The gendarmes have questioned her repeatedly; she tells them nothing. Not a thing about Xabier or Thibeaux or Pablo or the others. She is silent, tearful, the innocent American tourist.

  What they did was wrong, horrific. And yet she cannot bring herself to turn them in.

  Dave comes to sit with her; he is frightened for her welfare—she is young and healthy; she will heal. But, unlike the police, Dave is not fooled by the “innocent bystander” mien she has adopted. He peppers her with questions about Xabi. “Last name? Do you know where he lives? He is Basque, isn’t that so? Has he been involved in the troubles? Who are his friends? Angela, you must tell me before someone else gets hurt.”

  She is nauseated, cannot think. Her mind is muddled—by the drugs or the concussion?

  What baby?

  When she is allowed to go home she is tucked into the little bed in Catharine’s room, and Catharine is relegated to the couch so Angela can have privacy. Pasquale flutters about, trying to make her comfortable, but the only thing that eases the headache and the horrifying burning sensation is drugs. She sleeps.

  Her dreams are hypercolored, psychedelic. In them she is calling out for Xabi. Yelling at the young guards in front of the Spanish embassy. They can’t hear her. Pointing at the blue Renault. Running but not getting anywhere; her legs won’t carry her.

  She awakens, screaming. “Xabi, no!”

  Philippe and Delphine bring flowers and a few items Angela left at their house—her notebook, a sweater. They are so sorry for her troubles. They thank her for all her help packing, but Delphine has lost her interest in the project and wishes to join her sister in the countryside. She is disturbed by the incidents—bombings are too much, too reminiscent of another time. They are leaving Paris for a few weeks, going to the South of France.

  Before Philippe leaves, he asks Angela: Does she know an
ything more about Xabi? Where might he be hiding?

  When she shakes her head, begins to cry, they tell her to rest. The most important thing right now is to get well.

  The D’Artavels, too, have been questioned by the police about Xabi. Because Philippe was known to support the Algerian cause, he is looked at with particular suspicion. This is another reason they are leaving Paris, Dave tells Angela, accusation in his eyes.

  A few more days, and the pain subsides to a muted, incessant throbbing.

  Angela keeps thinking about the little room they found in the catacombs under Philippe and Delphine’s house. She would never be able to find her way back through the tunnels without Xabi to guide her, except . . . what about that grate in their cave, with the trapdoor beneath?

  At her suggestion, Philippe had Dave put a lock on it. Does Dave have an extra key? Even without one, Dave would know how to pop it open, probably in a few seconds. She had witnessed this how many times? He could open just about any lock, would buy old padlocks and door sets at thrift stores and the swap meet, practice constantly, just for fun.

  But if she asks for Dave’s help, he will tell the authorities. Of course he would. She would have done the same in his place.

  She would do so now, if it weren’t for the fact that she loves Xabi so desperately. How could someone on the outside understand? The gentleness in his voice, the warmth in his hands, the secrets in his eyes. His haunted heart.

  “I am already a ghost.”

  When Pasquale goes out to the market, Angela takes a flashlight and rifles through Dave’s shop until she finds his Victorian ring of skeleton keys, the ones that he told her opened most locks in old Parisian homes.

  She slips out, woozy but revived by the fresh air. She takes a cab to Philippe and Delphine’s house. Tries the skeleton keys on the front door—it opens with the third try.

  She lets herself in and moves without hesitation to the door that leads to the basement. Descends slowly and carefully down the steep stone stairs, stopping twice to rest. She breathes deeply, fighting vertigo and nausea.

  Down the hall, into the utility room. She removes the grate and once again uses one of Dave’s skeleton keys to unlock the little trapdoor.

  Lets herself down the rusty ladder. It is awkward, painful with only one arm, with her head aching and spinning. But she makes it. The catacombs are freezing, dank, and dark; the flashlight does not illuminate nearly enough. She shivers.

  At the door to the secret room, she hesitates. Listens, ear to the damp wood.

  “Xabi?” Angela says finally, knocking softly. “Xabi, are you there? It’s . . . Angel.”

  As though this is a courtesy call, as if she is welcoming him to the neighborhood. She feels like laughing—the idea is so absurd. Her thoughts are a jumble; she has to focus to keep her mind on the task in front of her.

  No answer. She is wrong, then.

  Has he fled Paris? Is he already abroad, on the run? Hiding out with relatives in the Basque country? Or . . . had he been seriously injured? Could he have already . . . ?

  Angela tries two more skeleton keys before she finds the one that opens the lock. She pushes the door in slowly.

  The beam of her flashlight sweeps the little chamber: There are more blankets on the old cot. Bottles of wine, packages of food, gauze, rubbing alcohol, and ointment. Newspapers.

  She feels an arm snake around her neck, cutting off her breath.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  “This is amazing,” said Killian. He had been photographing Philippe’s house, taking dozens of shots while Genevieve finished up with the locks on the main floor, but now they both stood in the basement, at the bottom of the stairs.

  “How long’s it been since Philippe was down here?”

  “Decades, I think,” Genevieve answered. “He’s been living over at his daughter’s house, and even before . . . I get the sense that he and his wife only used part of the house.”

  “A place like this, in this section of Paris . . . ? It would bring in a bloody fortune. Is that why he’s havin’ you fix it up, then, to sell it?”

  “I’m not sure what he wants to do with it, to tell you the truth. He seems undecided. He said something about his daughter getting a new job, and that maybe they’d have the money to fix it up. As you noticed, the plaster is falling and the plumbing’s ancient. Who knows what shape the structure’s in, underneath it all.”

  “Are we perfectly safe down here, d’ya think?”

  Genevieve smiled. “Let’s put it this way: If this house were in California, I don’t think I’d spend much time down here, waiting for an earthquake. But the earth doesn’t shake much around here, does it?”

  “Don’t think so,” he said, but his words were muffled as he held a series of cameras up to his face, focused on various corners of the old cellar, and snapped away.

  Out from the old leather bag came half a dozen different cameras: a Polaroid, a disposable, something that looked like an antique box camera. Several sported tape or pieces of cardboard attached to them.

  At her obvious interest, he said, “A camera is really just a dark chamber with light-sensitive paper. I’ve been thinking of building my own. Have you heard of Mendel Grossman, who snuck a homemade contraption into the Jewish ghettoes and took photos of them, right before they were emptied out by the Nazis? A camera can be a revolutionary device.”

  “Nothing very revolutionary down here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. . . . What about the door you told me about, the one you’re afraid to open?”

  “I’m not afraid to open it. Philippe said not to bother.”

  “I would think you’d be annoyed by such a thing. Locksmith creed and all that.”

  “How do you know about the locksmith’s creed?”

  He chuckled, pointed the camera straight at her, and took a shot before she had a chance to turn away.

  “So, really?” he continued. “You’re not even going to try to open the trapdoor? Where is it?”

  She brought him into the utility room and showed him the ornate grate. He passed the beam of his light past the grill and illuminated the little door beyond.

  Killian looked up at her, eyebrows raised. “Now, that’s interesting, isn’t it? Shall I lift the grate so we can take a closer look?”

  Genevieve hesitated. There was something about that door and that lock . . . far too much like something she would stumble across in one of her dreams.

  “Have you ever heard the tale of ‘Fitcher’s Bird’?” Genevieve asked.

  “Sounds familiar, but I don’t really remember.”

  “It’s related to Bluebeard—all about damsels who marry a rich man who gives them everything they ask for, with one catch.”

  “There’s always a catch.”

  “Right? When he goes away, they mustn’t open one particular door. All the others are okay, but this one is off-limits. So of course they’re overcome by curiosity, open the door, and find all his former wives chopped to bits.”

  “You think you’re going to find a bunch of Philippe’s former wives chopped up behind the door?”

  “No, of course not. It’s probably a waste pipe, or maybe an empty closet.”

  “That would be a disappointment.”

  “That’s what usually happens, I remember my uncle telling me. You work for hours at opening some mysterious little door . . . and then you have the triumphant moment when you defeat the lock, and then it turns out to be an empty nook, or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “He told me once he found the remains of an animal. It wasn’t pretty.”

  “But you don’t think that, this time. I can tell. You’re dying to open it.”

  “When I asked Philippe about it, he started talking about the catacombs. He worked with the resistance, and they used the catacombs to get around. I can’t
seem to get the whole story from him; it usually devolves into warnings about ghosts.”

  Killian looked at her, a gleam in his eye. “Seriously? Well then, of course we have to open it.”

  “‘We’?”

  He smiled. “I’m your moral support. I’m here to document the discovery, run for pain au chocolat, hand you your tools—whatever you want. I’m at your command. Shall I?”

  After another moment’s hesitation, she nodded.

  He lifted the metal grate and leaned it against the wall.

  Genevieve crouched and gazed at the door.

  “It’s an antique lock. I think my uncle put it on—it looks like one of his favorite lockplates. I recognize the maker and the scrollwork.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “That means I don’t want to hurt it, since it’s antique; and it might be hard to defeat, since my uncle put it on. He was the best.”

  “And now you’re set to be the best, carry on in his footsteps.”

  “That’s a little optimistic, isn’t it? I don’t even have my work per – mit yet.”

  “If you really want it, you’ll get it. I have faith in you. I recognize a stubborn nature when I see one.”

  Killian lay down on his stomach so he could inspect the door. Finally he sat up and brushed the cobwebs off his hands. “We could try removing the hinges.”

  Genevieve gaped at him, aghast.

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “Let me guess: A locksmith wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  “I should say not. That could damage the door, and the lock. And besides, it would be admitting defeat.”

  “Seems to me like not even trying is admitting defeat from the start.”

  Who was she kidding? She couldn’t say no to opening a door like this; she would dream about it the rest of her life. Better by far to be disappointed by some prosaic assemblage of ancient plumbing hidden behind the door.