The Missing Italian Girl

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  Clarie knew exactly what they would do: rely on her salary again. She knew how hard this would be on Bernard, on his pride. Until a year ago he had been the main support of the family. And that’s what he wanted to be, even if he believed in her right to work. No matter what happened, they’d get by. She was sure of it. But, rather than say any of this, she kept her own counsel. She nodded, encouraging Bernard to continue.

  “That’s why I stayed and talked with the inspector after the other police had left. I gave him my word that I had heard no one talk about bombs, that I would make sure that everyone understands the laws and tries to follow them.” Bernard shrugged. “Of course, some of our more militant members might have a slightly different view of things. But I’m not their nanny, only their lawyer. And today they got their money’s worth. The inspector said he would not recommend any actions against us. So I’m fairly sure they won’t shut us down like they did a few years ago.”

  “That must be a relief,” Clarie said, glad to hear the pride in his voice at having protected the Labor Exchange. Happy that her family was safe and secure for the time being. “But what about—”

  “The bomber. The police, who have their spies everywhere, think it was an isolated incident. No reason to panic.”

  “Well, then.” After taking in so much, Clarie couldn’t bear to sit still any longer. She got up and kissed Bernard on the cheek. “Good work, Maître Martin!”

  “So good you can give solace to a starving man?” Bernard said as he stood up and patted his stomach.

  “Of course.” The hunger of her hard-working man earned him another kiss. “I’ll warm up your supper.”

  “And I’ll go look in on Jean-Luc.”

  Clarie watched as her dear, tired husband ambled into their child’s bedroom. She took a breath and stretched her own weary back before going into the kitchen. As she lit a match under the pot and adjusted the flame, she tried to repress the dangers that lurked in what Bernard had told her. A bomb had gone off. And that explosion almost changed their lives once again. Her brow furrowed as she reminded herself of all the reasons why taking the position at the Labor Exchange had been the right thing for Bernard to do. He’d been a good judge, but hated prosecuting those less fortunate than himself. He’d often told her that the people who lived in the world of the truly poor were only one illness, one accident, one crime away from starvation, death, or imprisonment, and he wanted to dedicate his life to helping them avoid these disasters. But he’d also just told her he had come close to losing this new job. Did throwing in his lot with the poor mean that Bernard’s well-being would also be as precarious?

  9

  LATE THE NEXT AFTERNOON, THE teachers’ meeting began in a hubbub. Mlles. Calin, Veroux and Geraud, being single, lived together, and had picked up a newspaper on the way back to their dormitory. Obviously they had spent a good deal of the night talking about the dangers of Paris.

  “Can you imagine,” Fanny Calin exclaimed, “our tram passes right by the neighborhood where the bomb went off!”

  “But you, my dear, were not on it when it happened,” Mme Roubinovitch, the directrice, commented icily. She rapped her knuckles on the table. “Let’s proceed, shall we?”

  Clarie lowered her head to hide her grin. That should put an end to it. The long table in Mme Roubinovitch’s office was more crowded than usual, since both the professors—those teachers who had been trained at Sèvres—and the various arts instructors attended the meeting dedicated to deciding which students would receive the year’s prizes. In the heat, Clarie could already feel a clammy dampness spreading under her blouse. Only the slightest breeze accompanied the sun streaming in through the windows.

  Fortunately, the first part of the agenda did not take up much time. Mme Roubinovitch opened with the obligatory caution about how they were walking a fine line between pleasing the parents and rewarding the girls, on the one hand, and not encouraging unseemly pride in their female students, on the other. Clarie had heard this speech many times before. Everyone knew that public boys’ high schools ended the year with grand ceremonies, featuring important government officials wearing patriotic red, white and blue sashes across their chests. This year, Mme Roubinovitch had enlisted the mayors of the ninth and tenth arrondissements, who administered the neighborhoods in which most of the students lived, and a minor official from the Ministry of Education. Not as grand as the best boys’ schools could offer, but something.

  At Mme Roubinovitch’s urging, they quickly agreed upon the music that would be played or sung, and which students would be allowed to demonstrate their talents. They had no difficulty deciding upon the prizes for excellence in art, mathematics, science, German and English. Then came the more difficult choices that most concerned Clarie, the history and French prizes, and the awards that involved every teacher in the school, the prizes for morality and virtue.

  When Clarie voiced her hope they might find a way to reward as many students as possible, she got a swift rebuttal from Mme Roubinovitch. “Our girls must learn to accept what comes to them, and not take shining or not shining in front of others too seriously. Life will bring many disappointments.” Clarie should have known her principal would insist upon their responsibility to make young women think, and not cater to their feelings. With a nod, Clarie acceded to Mme Roubinovitch’s view and was rewarded by a smile so maternal in its affection, it made her blush with pleasure. How she loved her principal, how they all did.

  As Clarie was recovering from this swell of emotion, her friend Emilie Franchet, who taught French, leaped into the breach by nominating her choices for the literature prize, an essay on Mme de Sévigné and on the poet for whom the school was named, Alphonse Lamartine. Clarie, in turn, described her choices for history, papers on the rule of Louis XIV and the heroism of Joan of Arc. She bit her lip as she waited for questions. When none came, she sat back with a sigh. She had done well. They were moving along.

  Mme Roubinovitch herself taught the courses on philosophy and morality, and kept track of the students’ delinquencies, which, at the Lycée Lamartine, were slight and very few. The director expected no objection to her judgments. But when she announced that a Jewish student, Rachel Cahlmann, would get the award for moral example, Annette Girardet, sitting at the end of the table, raised her hand. “I need to say something about Mlle Cahlmann,” she said. The gasp was almost audible. Mme Girardet was merely an adjunct instructor who taught fancy sewing in the late afternoon to the daughters of widowers or working mothers.

  “Yes?” Although Mme Roubinovitch got her surname from her husband, a doctor born in Russia, she carried it well. She had an exotic, almost Slavic face with dark eyes and full lips. At first Clarie had thought that she was an Israelite, but she wasn’t. She was, even more than most of her staff, a professed Catholic. But she had stood up against the parents who threatened to boycott the school because of the number of Jewish students who attended. And she had won. Clarie glanced across the table at her friend Emilie. They both raised their eyebrows and did their best not to smile. The frown that greeted the sewing teacher’s objection was something neither of them had experienced, or wanted to.

  “She only stays because of her younger sister, and the fact that she has to wait for her father to accompany them home. She talks too much.” By now Annette Girardet’s voice was quivering. She took a breath and went on. “Lately, she’s been talking about this book, which claims that the traitor Dreyfus is not really a traitor. It was written by another Israelite.”

  “So our Rachel has her own ideas about things.” Mme Roubinovitch pressed her lips together and gave the sewing teacher a piercing look.

  “I just thought you should know, Mme Director.”

  “Thank you,” Mme Roubinovitch responded, as she turned toward the others. “Any other objections?”

  Clarie felt a little sorry for poor Annette Girardet, consigned to teach the so-called womanly arts, and outranked by those who had attended Sèvres and had gained the broad
ening worldview it offered. But there was no way to come to her aid, not without displaying the one quality that Mme Roubinovitch had criticized Clarie for, being too tender-hearted. So she silently took stock as the meeting came to a close. Looking around at the other professors, she felt a surge of pride. They belonged to a rare breed—educated, intellectual working women—and they served under a principal whose strength and independence she greatly admired. It had been a hard year, but a good one. She had succeeded in her first year at one of the best schools in Paris. And now, as Mme Roubinovitch asked if there were any other matters to discuss, it was almost over.

  “Well, then, we are done,” she announced, rising from her chair. “I’ll let you go, before we all melt. I’ll see those monitoring the preliminary examinations tomorrow morning; otherwise, I’ll see everyone at three sharp on Saturday afternoon for the graduation ceremony,” Mme Roubinovitch said before marching to her huge desk, which was covered with budgets and reports.

  Clarie sprang to her feet. She had only to give Emilie a special hug good-bye and Mme Girardet a sympathetic pat on the back. Then, if she could slip by the eager Mlles. Calin, Veroux and Geraud on her way to her room, she’d avoid talking about the bombing. She didn’t want to think any more about the violence that had struck too close to home.

  Clarie ran down the stairs with the minimum of dignity required of a successful, full-time professor at a Parisian lycée. She felt like cheering, like a student being let out for the summer. Soon her days were going to be so much freer! She’d play with Jean-Luc, make dinners, read all the books she’d been meaning to read.

  Her mood evaporated as soon as she swung open the door and entered her classroom. The charwoman, Francesca, sat at a student desk near the door at the back of the room, waiting for her. Clarie grimaced. She had been so busy, so preoccupied that she’d almost forgotten about her. “Francesca, I pray that your daughters have come home,” she said with a mixture of hope and apology in her voice.

  “They have,” the woman answered gravely, “this morning.”

  This should have been good news, but as she rose to her feet, Francesca couldn’t seem to control the tiny tremors agitating her lips and clasped hands.

  “They’re all right, I hope,” Clarie said, even as her mind raced to all the terrible things that could happen to young women wandering the city alone. “And you’re all right, too,” she added, searching to understand why Francesca looked so distressed.

  “It’s not me. It’s my girls. I told them about you. Told them you were kind, married to a lawyer. Angela, at least, thought you could help.”

  “If they’re in trouble,” Clarie explained, “I’m not the one to talk to. Neither is my husband. I do know that down at the Palais de Justice there are lawyers who accept cases—” Clarie hesitated as she searched for the right words, “from those who cannot pay the usual fees.” These were the cases Bernard had been assigned to for the past year, as part of his apprenticeship to the Paris Bar.

  “It’s not that kind of trouble. They’re afraid. They think someone killed their friend and might try to kill them.”

  A murder? Last time it was kidnapping and beating, now murder? Stunned, Clarie leaned against the wall. This was insane. Or perhaps it was Francesca who was a little crazy, or even lying. “Surely, if someone you know has been murdered, you must go to the police.” When Francesca stood staring at her, not responding, Clarie recalled their first conversation and the Italian woman’s claim that the police would never help an Italian immigrant. Clarie shook her head. As a wife and teacher, with a reputation to protect, as the mother of a young child, she could not let herself be drawn into Francesca’s problems. “I’m sorry, I must go,” she said finally. “I’m expected at home.”

  As Clarie started toward the front of the room, Francesca broke her silence and began to plead. “I don’t know what to do. They’ve been crying all day. And they’re scared.” Francesca’s words tumbled out faster and with more urgency. “Per favore, please, just talk to them. I brought them here and hid them in the basement. I promised them.”

  Just talk to them. Despite her misgivings, Clarie stopped. According to Francesca, her daughters were the same age as her students. Perhaps there was something she could say to them, or at least find out how much truth there was to what Francesca was telling her. She stood for a moment, all too aware of the charwoman behind her. Clarie turned. “Very well,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Bring them here. And remember I have to leave soon.” Francesca made a slight, grateful bow of her head before limping out of the room.

  Clarie thrust a few papers into her brown leather bag and began to pace in front of her desk. She’d find out if there was really a threat, give advice, just as she would to her own students. And that would be the end of it.

  When the three of them knocked on the door and entered the room, Clarie saw at once that no one would have mistaken Francesca’s daughters for her eager, crisply uniformed students. Their faces were worn and puffy from crying, and their long floral dresses were faded and rumpled. Still they were a striking pair, if only because they were so different. The almost ethereally blond Angela timidly approached the front of the room, while the tall, dark one, Maura, hung back. Francesca quietly closed the door behind them. She had obviously taken the precaution of making sure no one had seen them lurking about. This made Clarie even more wary.

  “Can you tell me who was killed?” she asked, trying to keep the suspicion out of her voice.

  “Pyotr. Pyotr Ivanovich,” whispered Angela. “And he’s been accused of terrible things. We need to find a way to prove that he was innocent.”

  Clarie’s mouth fell open. “The bomber? The anarchist? That was your friend?” She did not even try to hide her alarm.

  “He was a very good friend. So gentle, he would not hurt anyone.” Angela’s hands were clasped in front, as if in prayer. Watching her, Clarie recalled her first conversation with Francesca. Angela was the angel, the beauty, the innocent one, and so obviously her mother’s favorite. In the sunlight beaming into the closed, stifling room, the wisps of hair escaping from the topknot she had wound on her head shone like spun gold. Her eyes were an astonishing shade of blue. She was pretty, pretty enough to be in a fairy tale. But she could also be lying.

  Clarie lifted her chin toward Maura. “And what do you think?”

  Maura crossed her arms in front of her chest and answered, “Pyotr was a good man. The best we have ever known. He did not believe in violence.” Her tone was as defiant as her stance, and for that reason, and the fact that she wasn’t her mother’s favorite, Clarie’s heart went out to her. In Maura, Clarie saw something of her own younger self. She, too, had been tall for her age, tawny-skinned, saddled with thick, unruly black hair—and angry. She hadn’t understood why God had allowed her mother to die. Maura’s father had left her. Did she love him as much as Clarie had loved her mother? Was there anyone loving and sheltering her in the way that Clarie’s father, aunt and uncle had coddled and protected her, easing her pain, helping her to grow up?

  “How well did you know him? What makes you think he did not intend to plant a bomb?” The least she could do was make them understand how skeptical people would be about their version of things.

  Angela hastened to answer her. “We knew him for a year. He lived next to our building. Sometimes he carried the work up the stairs for our boss and down for us. Our sewing work, the shirts we finished.” Her lips trembled as she added, “He used to sit and talk with us. To tell us about his homeland. How people had believed in assassinations, in throwing bombs. How much worse it made things. If he had bread or a bit of cheese, he’d share it with us. He had a beautiful soul. He would never hurt anyone.”

  Clarie’s contemplated the two girls. It was obvious from the tears they had shed that their relationship with the Russian boy had hardly been casual. Angela, at least, must have been in love with him. Yet presumably they had tried to run away. Or was it that they had planned to ru
n away with him, an anarchist, a would-be assassin? No, Clarie thought, she would have nothing to do with this.

  “If you feel he is innocent, then you must go to the police,” she said finally. What else could she say?

  “You know they won’t believe people like us!” Maura spit out.

  “Maura, the professor is trying to help us,” Francesca hissed.

  The dark-haired girl responded by scowling, crossing her arms even tighter, and staring at the ceiling. Although her demeanor was extremely rude, Clarie understood her frustration. The police were unlikely to believe anything two girls, especially two infatuated girls, had to say. Francesca had been wrong to bring them here, to hide them in the dusty, spidery cellar for God knows how long, in the futile hope that Clarie could do anything for them.

  “Please, you must understand,” Angela sat down on a chair in the first row as if her knees had become weak from fear, “someone killed him.”

  “Who?” Clarie asked, before she could stop herself from being drawn in any further.

  “Maybe the police,” Maura cried. “Although people like you probably believe that they would not break their own laws.”

  Clarie shook her head. The girl was going too far. What could Maura Laurenzano possibly know about people like her? If Angela hadn’t spoken she would have turned her back on the lot. But the older girl did speak.

  “Maybe someone who saw us with Monsieur Barbereau,” Angela’s chest began to heave, “someone who—”

  “That’s right. Monsieur Barbereau,” Maura blurted out, interrupting her sister. “Our boss. He’s the one who did it. He was jealous. He beat Angela because she didn’t want to marry him.”

  Angela gasped as her sister spoke and let out a long moan. She covered her mouth and began to sob, rocking back and forth.

  Clarie walked over to her. “He hurt you, didn’t he?” she said gently. “Your mother told me.”

  Angela nodded, as her fingers quivered over her temple and cheek. Clarie took a closer look. The yellowing marks were barely perceptible, but Clarie had no trouble imagining what they would have looked like days ago, black and blue and purple. “How long has this been going on?” she asked.