The Missing Italian Girl

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  Dearest Maman,

  I must leave you for a while. I don’t want you to worry. And I don’t want you to believe all the bad things the police are saying about me and Angela and Pieter.

  I am not afraid! But I do think the man who killed our Angela might come to look for me. So I am going away to find a job somewhere else. I’ll come back when the police find Angela’s killer.

  Most important, don’t worry! You always said I was the strong one and knew how to take care of myself. And I will. And when I come back, I will take care of you too.

  Love, Maura

  P.S. If the police don’t find Angela’s killer, I will! I promise you!

  Clarie barely managed to get through the postscript, which could only be a piece of desperate bravado. There was no way that Maura could find her sister’s killer. And if she tried, she would be in more danger than ever.

  “You see?” prodded Francesca.

  “Yes.” Now it was Clarie emerging from some dark place.

  “She’ll be all right, my Maura. She’s the strong one.” Suddenly Francesca’s voice cracked. “And she’ll come back, she promised. She won’t leave me alone.” She grimaced as her head bowed even lower over her sewing, revealing bald streaks amid the gray in her hair.

  “Is there anything you need?” Clarie asked as she looked around the room, trying to find something, some way, to help. She glanced at the paltry collection of pots and dishes on the shelf, the clothes hanging from hooks, and at the sewing materials on the table.

  “What happened to the scissors?” There was only one blade.

  Francesca shrugged. “I found them that way after Maura left.”

  Clarie stared at the single blade. Suddenly alert, she scrutinized the room with more care. She’d never have noticed if her suspicions hadn’t been aroused. A lock of hair, dark like her own, dark like Maura’s, on the floor. What was that girl up to? Clarie imagined Maura hacking off her curls. She must have also unscrewed the scissors. Did she actually believe that a scissors blade would shield her from all the dangers facing a young woman in Paris? Or was she planning some craziness, some crime of her own?

  Determined to hide her concern, Clarie said casually, “Work must be very slow at the school in the summer. So if you—”

  “Yes, we only do one day a week,” Francesca interrupted, “but I am helping Fanny—Mme Guyot—at the laundry too. I’ll manage until, until … my girl comes back.” She looked away again, refusing to meet Clarie’s eyes.

  Convinced she was only intruding, Clarie said, “I must go. But, please, Francesca, if you need anything or hear any news about Maura, you can leave a message at the school. Promise me you’ll do that.”

  “Yes, thank you.” The words were those required by politeness. But Francesca did not rise as her guest took her leave. Clarie knew, she remembered, the crushing burden of grief and anxiety that left one immobile, wanting only to be left alone. She went out quietly, leaving the door ajar as she had found it. Sadness weighed her down as she descended the staircase and started the walk home. But her frustration pushed her forward in equal measure. Francesca, Maura, the Russian girls. They were all so alone. They could not depend upon the authorities. Indeed, they perceived the police as their enemies. And despite everything Bernard had argued, the Laurenzanos might be right. There must be something else someone could do.

  That someone appeared, as if by magic, only hours later. Clarie and Rose were each holding Jean-Luc’s hand as they walked through the Square d’Anvers. The joy of watching her boy push his chubby legs as fast as they could go toward the ice cream cart drove Clarie’s worries away. Rose, too, was laughing. It was the hottest time of day, but a lovely time of day. The park was filled with nannies or mothers with their charges hoping to catch a breeze. It was a peaceful world of women and children, suspended in leisure until the men came home, a world that Clarie, who had put on her new straw boater, could only enjoy during summer vacation.

  “Come, Rose, have something,” she urged as they approached the head of the line. Ice cream was Rose’s weakness, and it always gave Clarie pleasure to see the woman who had become almost a grandmother to Jean-Luc allowing herself a treat.

  Rose was deciding between strawberry and chocolate when Clarie heard the hawker. “Just out, L’Echo de Paris, Séverine defends the anarchists! Says they are innocent.” Clarie had vowed just that morning to block out all the Paris “noise,” but she turned sharply at the words “anarchist” and “innocent.”

  “Can you hold on to Jean-Luc for a moment?” she asked Rose, “and here, for the ice cream.” She placed a coin in Rose’s free hand. If she was going to catch the hawker before he moved, she didn’t have time for explanations or secrets. Grabbing the side of her skirt, Clarie maneuvered through the little crowd to get to the newsboy.

  He was bigger and older than some, and ruder. As she paid for her paper, he shouted, “The lady wants the latest news. What about you?”

  Embarrassed by the attention, Clarie lowered her head, so that the brim of her straw hat hid her eyes, and hastened back to find Rose and Jean-Luc. She led them to a shady spot on the side of the square. She sat there, talking to Jean-Luc, using her handkerchief to wipe the chocolate dribbles from his mouth, smiling with Rose, and waiting, ever conscious of the folded newspaper on the bench beside her. She would read it after they returned to the apartment and Jean-Luc was safely settled, playing at her feet. Clarie refused to hurry this moment, of peace and of summer, even as part of her mind kept retreating to a darker place. Finally, Rose declared that she had to start dinner, and they headed home.

  While Rose was busy in the kitchen, Clarie took out Jean-Luc’s blocks and played with him for a few minutes, until he began to concentrate on his building projects. Only then did Clarie open the newspaper. She had the vaguest notion that Séverine was a well-known writer. The article quickly revealed her political sentiments.

  The Russians, Séverine contended, Pyotr Balenov as well as the girls in prison, were unlikely perpetrators of the crimes of which they were accused. It was much more likely that the bomb had been set off by an agent provocateur acting for the police. As for the “Angel of the Goutte-d’Or,” what could she, a poor young seamstress, know of assassinations and bombs? Wasn’t there ample proof that her boss had exploited her? Yet instead of protecting the poor and the weak, the press and the police were carrying on a war against them and foreigners, and “woe be unto anyone living in France who was both poor and foreign!”

  Clarie clutched the paper, thinking, yes, yes, yes, until she got to Séverine’s last paragraph, which asserted that even if the Russians and Angela were guilty of plotting violent crimes, “they had a right to fight the hell of exploitation with a fire of their own making.” She concluded, “I will always, no matter what, stand on the side of the poor.”

  Always. No matter what. Coming from a woman. Clarie was shocked. “Papa!” Jean-Luc heard the familiar sound of his father’s key in the door.

  Clarie placed the newspaper on the fireplace, picked up her son, and went to the door. Bernard greeted them with the usual kisses. When he set his bowler on the little table in the foyer, he noticed a letter. “From Singer,” he said, examining the envelope.

  “Oh, I forgot.” And, indeed, with all that had been going on, she had forgotten that Bernard’s former colleague had just written him. “What do you think it’s about?”

  “We’ll know very soon, after I ask Luca here what he’s been doing today.”

  Bernard took Jean-Luc from her and nestled his face for a moment in the boy’s neck.Jean-Luc still pointed more than he talked. He was eager to show Bernard his block house and little soldiers, but not ready to relinquish his father’s arms. Bernard followed the boy’s gestures into the parlor and sat down with his son in his lap. “Let’s read the letter together,” he said, letting Jean-Luc help to tear the envelope.

  Clarie settled into the other chair beside the reading lamp. She relished any news from the Singers
. Noémie had been so kind after the death of Henri-Joseph and such a wonderful guide during the early weeks after Jean-Luc’s birth.

  “Any more children?” she asked.

  Bernard, who had been skimming the letter, laughed. “No, I think they are going to stop at four, and they’re growing fast.” He furrowed his brow as he continued to read, nodded, murmured “Oh yes,” and handed the letter to Clarie.

  “As you’ll see, everyone is fine. But he brings up something I’ve been meaning to talk about with you.”

  “Yes?” Despite the squirming of Jean-Luc, who was reaching for Bernard’s beard, her husband had that serious, judicial look on his face.

  “There’s a mounting campaign to reopen the Dreyfus case. Do you remember it?”

  “Of course.” The Jewish officer had been found guilty of treason while they were in Nancy. There had been a terrible upsurge of anti-Israelite sentiment and violence, even a small riot on their street a few weeks after Henri-Joseph died. “And,” Clarie quickly moved away from that past, “I remember, during our last faculty meeting, a teacher mentioned that one of the students had brought up a book about his case.”

  “Probably Bernard-Lazare.”

  “You know it?” Clarie should have guessed. Since the Nancy murders and his close friendship with Singer, Bernard had taken a particular interest in the Israelites.

  “Here, son.” Bernard gave Jean-Luc another kiss before setting him on his feet, where he swayed between his father’s legs, humming to himself. Over what Clarie considered the loveliest music in the world, Bernard continued. “I’ve been following the new developments in all the papers. On my own, really. The men at the Labor Exchange consider this a rather bourgeois affair. Upper-class officer, the army. But for me—and, of course, for Singer—it is a matter of justice. The man who is languishing on Devil’s Island might well be innocent.”

  Clarie’s mind immediately conjured up an image of the isolated, imprisoned Russian girls.

  “I didn’t want to put an extra burden on you, but I’ve been thinking of attending some meetings this week. And now with Singer’s urging,” Bernard said, gesturing toward the letter Clarie held in her hand, “I’ve even more reason. He wants a full report of what’s going on in Paris. This means I’ll miss a few of our dinners together.”

  A matter of justice. Clarie mused over these words before responding. “Of course, you must go. But there is something I need to show you, too.” She walked over the fireplace and picked up L’Echo de Paris. “Do you know anything about a woman reporter named Séverine?”

  “Séverine! She’s quite notorious.”

  “Notorious? Really?” Once again, with teaching duties, the household, and Jean-Luc, Clarie felt she was missing out on things she should know.

  “She published a newspaper with an old anarchist Communard. She’s had more than one husband. Left her children with one of them. Then she was caught with her lover—or so they say—in a public restroom. When there was a mining strike, she, a woman, went down into the mine to report ‘first-hand’ on the conditions—”

  “But surely that’s a good thing,” Clarie interrupted, “standing up for the workers.”

  “Yes, but a woman.”

  “Why not?” Why not, indeed. Clarie was not about to defend Séverine’s relationships with her husbands or lovers, although had she been a man….

  “Well,” Bernard said with a wry smile, “more recently her fame has come from columns begging alms for the poor during the winter. They earned her the nickname ‘pity on wheels.’”

  “I take it you don’t like her or her work,” Clarie commented dryly.

  “Well, she did raise quite a bit of money for charity,” Bernard conceded. “Anyway, what about her?”

  Clarie brought the article over to Bernard. “She asserts that the bomb Angela Laurenzano’s friend is accused of planting was actually the work of an agent provocateur.”

  “Hmmm.” Bernard hardly glanced at the article before handing it back to her. “She’ll always say she’s on the side of the poorest, most despised people. That’s her brand of anarchism.”

  “But isn’t that what you’re doing? Seeking justice for poor workers?”

  “Yes, as long as they stand up for themselves and don’t commit violent crimes. We’re building unions, institutions. That’s the way to go.”

  There was so much more Clarie could have said. Wasn’t beating and abusing a young girl, practically a child, a violent crime? What about women who sewed alone in their rooms for hour after hour for a pittance, with no unions to protect them, no one to be on their side? But she didn’t say any of this. It was almost dinner time, and she did not want to revisit a futile disagreement in front of Jean-Luc. Besides, if the authorities had every legal right to hold the Russian girls and Francesca would not go to the police in search of Maura, there was little that Bernard could do, even if he wanted to. Clarie sighed and got up to put the paper back on the fireplace. Behind her she heard Bernard talking to Jean-Luc about how they were all going to see plays and hear music at the Labor Exchange to celebrate Bastille Day. She opened the L’Echo de Paris again and stared at Séverine’s byline, wondering what kind of woman would stand up so courageously against common opinion.

  10

  MAURA TRIED TO HELP NICO. Really tried, although she found picking through the stinking refuse of Paris thoroughly disgusting.

  On Sunday night, she carried the lamp as Nico scoured his assigned territory in the eighth arrondissement, where the city conscientiously collected garbage from rich mansions and apartment houses. Since it was a wealthy and relatively clean neighborhood, it was much less profitable than poorer districts, like the Goutte-d’Or, where municipal collections were less regular and fastidious, and whole families of ragpickers scavenged for rags, bones, fat, metal, cork, and glass to sell and, if they were lucky, some discarded food for their shanty-households.

  Maura learned about the territories and routines quickly because there was little to learn, except how nauseating and humiliating life could be. Ragpickers could not begin work before ten P.M. and had to be off the streets by four in the morning, lest they offend the eyes and noses of their fellow citizens. And so before every dawn, this army of malodorous souls returned to their hovels, where they sorted their spoils into piles to be sold to a master ragpicker, an enterprising man or woman who had made it to the top of the heap. Whatever they could not sell or consume was strewn, in rotting mounds of filth, along the cobbled road outside their shanties, making Maura grateful she shared Nico’s oasis by the vineyard. She at least had the consolation of knowing that after the revolting task of cleaning, sorting, and selling, she’d be able to wash in the well water and sleep on the pallet that Nico had fashioned for her on the packed earth floor of his shed. She might have found the routine almost bearable, if it hadn’t been for Mme Florent.

  In their northern district, this loud, fat harridan in turban and pantaloons was the Queen of Garbage, the General of the Scavenging Army, the High Priestess of Just Rewards. Except she was neither royal nor pious nor just. Standing on one side of Mme Florent’s huge receiving tent, Maura quickly perceived that the ragpicker mistress had favorites among the pushing and yelling men and women eager to get their pay. With those who brought the biggest piles, she carried on a bantering bidding war, which always ended up in her favor. With the old and the weak, like Nico, she was stingier and nasty. She even threatened that if he and “his new helper” didn’t do better, she might not do business with him anymore.

  “Does she always talk to you that way?” Maura asked as soon as they were out of the hearing of others.

  “She is not a nice woman.”

  “She doesn’t have to be that mean.” Maura hated seeing the kind old man treated that way.

  Nico shrugged.

  Maura continued to press. “That quivering piece of flesh stands on that platform! Her helpers do all the dirty work. She’s got a purse full of money. She only pays you for what
you bring. What difference is it to her how much you collect?”

  “I believe,” Nico said patiently, “that she wants to become richer than she already is. Besides, what do I need? Only to eat, to wash, to sleep, to keep warm in the winter.”

  Clenching her fists, Maura strode ahead of her companion. She wasn’t sure what made her angrier, the uncalled-for spitefulness of the ragpicker mistress or the resignation of the old man. Resigned, like her mother. Except, Maura slowed down, he was so peaceful, not a martyr like Maman, always asking for your pity. Maura did not understand Nico, but she could not forsake him either. She stopped, closed her eyes and waited for him to catch up. Offering a lopsided smile to show she had calmed down, she lifted the basket from his shoulders and strapped it on hers. They trudged the rest of the way, across the vineyard, in silence.

  Her quiet demeanor during their washing up and preparing for bed apparently made the soft-hearted Nico believe that she was sad and in need of consolation. “The first days are the hardest,” he told her. “I remember. It can break your spirit, this work. But you are strong. And you’ll soon be going back to your mother.”

  These words did make her sad. She hadn’t realized how much she would miss Maman. But she couldn’t go home, not as long as the police were after her and there was a killer lurking about. “How did you become a ragpicker?” she asked. She wanted to think about something else.

  “That is a story.”

  “Tell me,” she said, as she lay down on the rag-and-straw mat he had set on the floor for her. She moved the bag packed with her belongings under head, using it as a pillow.

  Nico pulled a dark cloth across the window above her head. He limped to his bed and lay down with a sigh that seemed to say that there was an aching heart inside his old aching bones. “You want to hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “It might put you to sleep.”

  Maura smiled. That’s what she had been thinking, remembering her father’s bedtime tales. She hadn’t realized his story would be all too familiar.