The Missing Italian Girl

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  “It’s a friend,” Clarie finally said. “She wants to discuss something with me tonight. She wrote that she finds my advice helpful.” She looked directly at Rose, as if to prove the veracity of her words. “Monsieur Martin is going to a meeting after work, so if you could stay with Jean-Luc….”

  “Of course, Madame Clarie.”

  Longing to escape Rose’s gaze, Clarie got up and walked to her desk. “I think I’ll try to read a chapter or two, while Luca is sleeping.”

  “And I’d better get to the washing up,” Rose said as she headed toward the kitchen.

  Clarie put her hand on her desk, thankful her back was turned as Rose left the room. She stared at her bookshelf for a moment, before picking out a treatise on morality, a text from her days at the teachers’ college. She opened the book, but didn’t bother reading. She knew what it would say. It was as if the maxim “To do one’s duty is the goal of life” had been branded with a holy fire onto the cover and into her memory. How earnestly all of them, the would-be teachers of a new generation of girls, had talked of duty. Duty to family, duty to students, duty to the Republic, duty to others. Yet no one had ever spoken of anarchists, or lost girls.

  At eight o’clock that evening, Clarie did not hesitate to put on the short broadcloth jacket over her prim shirtwaist. The more covered, the more protected she felt, from the eyes of neighbors, the curiosity of the concierge, and the perplexed glances of her beloved Rose. She tiptoed through the parlor as if not wanting to awaken Jean-Luc, but really as a way of not having to explain herself again to the woman who was caring for her child. When she arrived at the café across from the Square d’Anvers, she spotted Séverine immediately. She had taken an outside table under the gas jet which lit the entrance. She stood up to greet Clarie.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

  “I almost didn’t. I can’t do this. It’s only because—”

  “Your husband is at a meeting. I know. The Society for the Rights of Man convenes only a few doors from me.”

  “You knew that.” Clarie did not even try to hide the chill in her voice. She didn’t like being manipulated.

  “Yes. If he is spending the evening answering a moral call to duty, is there any reason why you should not?”

  “And what duty would that be?” At least Séverine had dressed in a respectable manner. A collar as high as Clarie’s, a dark blue jacket veiling her rather buxom figure, her showy white-blond curls subdued by a small hat.

  “What duty? Helping a poor mother find her lost daughter. Rescuing two innocent imprisoned girls from the hands of brutal authority.”

  Clarie sank into one of the wrought-iron chairs in front of Séverine’s table. “I don’t see how I—”

  “Come with me tonight. That’s all I ask,” Séverine said as she sat down. “Perhaps you will see Maura. At least you will have a chance to listen, and to know what the anarchists are doing.”

  Anarchists? “No, I can’t—” It wasn’t only the impropriety that stopped Clarie. It was the idea of doing something dangerous and foolish. What if the Petit Parisien had been right? What if it was the anarchists who had killed Angela? What if—

  “My dear, I’m not drawing you into some kind of secret meeting,” Séverine said, almost as if she had been reading Clarie’s mind. “I’m only asking you to come with me to a poor man’s café, where this Pyotr, the Russian boy who was killed, used to hold forth.”

  Clarie kept shaking her head. “You said you had found something,” she insisted. Her voice trembled between a childish sense of betrayal and full-grown anger.

  “Yes, I have found out some things.” Perhaps in response to Clarie’s querulousness, Séverine began to sound impatient. “I know where the anarchists who are Pyotr’s friends meet. I know that Maura used to go to the café to listen. Perhaps she goes there now for solace. You’ve seen her. You’d be able to pick her out. And,” Séverine paused, “there’s this.” She picked up a piece of paper that lay near her cup of coffee. “Someone is defending the Russian anarchist. One of my sources saw a young boy and an old Italian street musician going around and singing a song that claims Angela and Pyotr are innocent.”

  “A boy?” Clarie’s lips parted. Who? The sisters had only mentioned one boy, the Russian. But, of course, he could have had an entire coterie following his example.

  Séverine handed Clarie a printed page. “They are selling these for a centime.”

  Clarie took the paper and held it up to the flickering, yellow light. When she saw the title, “Pieter’s Song,” she gasped. That odd spelling; it was like Maura’s.

  Pieter a boy from Tzarist Russia

  Loved mankind with all his heart

  He came to Paris with but one hope

  In the workers’ struggle to take his part.

  He knew the way of the bourgeois state

  Was to turn all men against each other

  He said we were born to cooperate

  Not to compete with one another

  Why can’t we all be free

  To work with joy and dignity

  To earn our bread and all we need

  To live, to love, to play, to breathe?

  Clarie exhaled slowly. So far, these lines could have been written by anyone sympathetic to anarchism.

  Our blond-haired boy, this Russian Prince

  Of goodness and gentility

  In Paris his fair Princess met

  An angel raised in poverty

  A beauty barely more than a child

  Our Angela of the Goutte-d’Or

  So innocent and sweetly mild

  She’d never loved a man before.

  This time the chorus began “All they wanted was to be free….” Of course, because Pyotr and Angela were dead. The person who wrote this must have known and loved them. Clarie’s breathing quickened as her suspicions—and hopes—mounted. Maura. She traced the next verses with a white-gloved finger.

  So often our girls tender and poor

  Get bosses who dare to want more and more

  And when she refused to be his whore

  A rain of cruel blows our Angela bore.

  In her mind’s eye, Clarie saw the faded bruises on Angela’s cheeks, the scissors and single lock of dark hair on the floor. It had to be Maura.

  The kindest of men could not bear to see

  This haughty bourgeois brutality.

  So Pieter helped his angel to flee

  And taught her what a new world could be.

  Clarie’s relief that Maura was alive was fast turning to chagrin. Did she really believe that masquerading as a boy would keep her safe from the police or a killer? She was about to say something when Séverine reached over and pointed to the last stanzas. “This is what’s going to get the authorities up in arms.”

  But this earthly world they will never see

  For both of them are dead

  Killed by a monster that still goes free

  And they are blamed instead.

  The police, the press, the men who rule,

  Why do they blacken Pieter’s name?

  Why do they say a sweet young girl

  Would want to bomb, to kill, to maim?

  Why do they tell these dreadful lies?

  Why do they innocents defame?

  Because it is their evil spies

  Who lie and bomb and kill and maim.

  It ended with a bravado flourish, so characteristic of the girl that Clarie had come to know: BOTH CHORUSES SHOULD BE SUNG IN OUR STREETS 100 TIMES!!

  “Well?” Séverine gazed intently at her companion.

  Clarie let the sheet of paper droop toward the table. “It’s Maura,” she said, furrowing her brow. “She’s parading around as a boy. When I went to her apartment I saw broken scissors and a lock of her hair on the floor. She cut it off to go around in disguise, and presumably has made the scissors into a kind of weapon.” Clarie shook her head. “Foolish girl.”

  “Very good, my dear,” Séverine
said as she retrieved the song from Clarie. “I read a certain love sickness in all this and thought it might be her, but needed confirmation.”

  “Do you think the police already know?” Clarie wasn’t sure whether or not she hoped they did. At least, if they caught Maura, she would be safe.

  “The police. Oh yes. Either they know now or will eventually,” Séverine said, with a shrug. “They’ve got their eyes out for anyone fomenting subversion. After all, there’s been one bomb explosion and two murders.”

  “Two?”

  “Barbereau and Angela Laurenzano.”

  “Maura and Angela insisted, as this song does, that their friend Pyotr was murdered too,” Clarie murmured, staring at the red-checked tablecloth.

  “Three, then.”

  Three murders. If the man has killed more than once, what’s to stop him? “Maura is making herself a target, trying to flush him out.”

  “Oh, yes. The girl’s in danger, no doubt about that.”

  Séverine said these words so dispassionately, so authoritatively, while Clarie’s head teemed with frightening possibilities. “Do you really think it’s wise to depend on the information you’re getting from the anarchists?” Clarie asked. “The Petit Parisien said the killer could be someone from a terrorist cell.”

  “No, no, no.” Again, with such authority. “That’s exactly why I want you to come with me. To show you that the anarchists are not fomenting this violence. And to help find Maura. That is, if you still want to find her….”

  Clarie’s eyes roved over the lines and blocks of the tablecloth. It was no longer the lock of Maura’s dark hair that she was seeing in her mind’s eye, but Angela’s pallid corpse. “So now, he has reason to kill Maura. But why kill Angela in the first case?”

  “We don’t know. That’s why we investigate.” Séverine tugged at Clarie’s hand. “Come with me. Tonight. If you see Maura, we can find a way to help her. If not, you’ll see that the anarchists are good men who,” she picked up the song, “only want ‘to work with joy and dignity,’ ‘to live, to love, to play, to breathe’—free.” She scrutinized the sheet as if an idea had just struck her. “This is really quite good. I think I will try to get it published. I’ll call it ‘Requiem for an Anarchist’ by an anonymous street singer.”

  At first Clarie was repelled by this sudden shift in Séverine’s tone. She wanted to grab the page and demand that the reporter not use Maura for her own gain. But almost at the same time, Clarie realized that she was seeing, tonight, who Séverine really was. She was making no effort to cover up the infamous journalist that Bernard disdained, the writer who uncompromisingly pursued her radical causes and her stories, and had no compunction about inserting herself into them. Ironically, this willing revelation of her ambitions made Clarie decide to trust her. After all, the fact that Séverine had more than one motive for wanting to find Maura, gave her all the more reason to pursue the search until she succeeded. Could Clarie do so much less?

  “All right,” Clarie whispered, “I’ll go with you. But I can’t take very long,” she insisted. “I’ve got to be back before Bernard returns.” Clarie was still a wife and mother. For Bernard to arrive home while she was still gone would be shocking.

  Séverine understood and promised that as soon as “their mission” was over, she would hire a cab and drop Clarie off at a corner so that no one would see her descending from the carriage.

  They took the now-familiar path past the Square d’Anvers, onto the Boulevard Rochechouart, and along part of the wall surrounding the great hospital. They walked rapidly, Clarie with lowered eyes and Séverine, chin jutting forward with proud insouciance, both of them signaling that no man’s flirtation and gaze would stop them. Intent on getting it over with, Clarie did not bother to observe their route. There was no reason to remember the direction of the narrow, curving, sewage-infested cobbled streets. She would never return to them. She was only here to find Maura.

  At last they got to the café, which was nothing like the working-class establishment that Bernard had taken her to. There, gas jets lit up the interior and exterior, and a piano gaily pounded out music. There had been room for dancing, and a multitude of tables big and small. But this café, hardly bigger than Clarie’s parlor, was lit only by the candles standing on a high wooden bar and on five or six equally shabby long, low tables. The nearest of these barely left enough room for Clarie and Séverine to enter and stand by the door. A hush fell as more and more of the drinkers noticed their presence.

  “Please don’t let us disturb you,” Séverine said in a loud voice, breaking the silence. “We are here to hear what you have to say. I am Séverine, the reporter.” She waited for those who recognized her name to give approving nods. “And this is a teacher.” Another dramatic pause. “Like our own Louise Michel.” By this time everyone was nodding. Clarie avoided their eyes. Her shoes lightly stuck to a floor made tacky by spilled drink mixed with ashes. The café reeked with the sour odor of hard-worked bodies, and cheap tobacco and alcohol.

  “We were about to read from the Bible,” one of the men called out.

  Clarie looked up, startled. A Bible at an anarchists’ café?

  “And what Bible would that be?” Séverine retorted with confidence, obviously pleased at having been recognized.

  “Anything by the man who said ‘Property is Theft’!” he retorted, to the laughter and clapping of his table.

  “Proudhon,” Séverine whispered to Clarie.

  Clarie had heard the name, but she certainly had not read him. She stood up straight, not wanting to touch the wall, which she feared might be crawling with vermin.

  The short stocky man waved his arm as he declared “I dedicate this reading to our bourgeois state.” This drew even more hoots and hollers. He cleared his throat, held the book near a candle, and read: “‘To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right nor the knowledge nor the virtue.’”

  “Hear! Hear!” someone shouted.

  “‘To be governed means to be, at each operation, at each transaction, at each movement, noted, registered, controlled, taxed, stamped, measured, valued, assessed, patented, licensed, authorized, endorsed, admonished, hampered, reformed, rebuked,’ and finally,” the reader said, spreading out his arms, “‘arrested.’”

  When the cheers died down, the brawny bartender, whose damp opened shirt revealed a hairy chest, turned to Clarie and Séverine. “What is it that you want with us?”

  Séverine ignored the suspicious edge in his voice. “We are looking for Maura Laurenzano. She is missing. She is the sister of the dead girl, Angela. We understand she used to come here to listen to the Russian, Pyotr Ivanovich Balenov. Have any of you seen her?”

  There was a general shaking of heads. Those who were bored, or already too drunk to care, began to lift their glasses.

  “Have any of you heard ‘Pieter’s Song’? Do you know where the street singers are?”

  “I’ve seen them,” an old toothless man raised his hand. “At the Anarchist Soup Kitchen. It’s a good song.”

  “Thank you,” Séverine responded. “Anyone else?”

  “Along the rue Marcadet, at dinner time, near a big café.” This from one of the rough-looking women in a striped dress.

  “Good!” Séverine said.

  Clarie clasped her hands together and pressed them against her queasy stomach. These were not places where she wanted to go looking for the girl.

  “And do you know where they live?”

  Those who were not drinking either shook their heads or just stared at Séverine.

  “I want to defend the young Russian anarchist women being so wrongly held at Saint-Lazare. I want to prove that they are not violent. Did Pyotr ever talk of violence? Do you believe that he planted the bomb that went off in his cart?” Clarie heard pride in Séverine’s bold assertio
ns of her intentions and her capabilities.

  “That girl who was moonin’ after him, is that the one you’re lookin’ for?” asked the bartender, wiping his counter with a dirty cloth.

  “Yes!” Séverine said, almost rising to her toes.

  “Ain’t been here.”

  Clarie grimaced. He had raised her hopes, too. She had been scanning the room, looking for Maura. There were only a few women dispersed among the men, none of them as young or as innocent as the Laurenzano girl.

  “Then let’s return to my last question. Pyotr, was he violent?” Séverine persisted.

  Clarie shifted from one foot to another, longing for an answer that would prove Maura and Angela had been telling the truth.

  “Nah, but he should have been,” one drunk retorted. “It would have done us all more good.”

  “No!” one of the younger men shouted. “He saw what violence had done in his homeland. He always spoke of peaceful ways to get our freedom. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” The answer and the nodding came from a few patrons, who slammed their glasses on the tables in agreement.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” a tall man standing amid the shadows and smoke at the back of the room said: “I think he was fooling us.”

  “What!” someone yelled in surprise.

  “Yes, I think Pyotr Ivanovich was a true revolutionary, as we all should be, and that he knew how to build a bomb and was going to kill those bourgeois ladies in the fashion district. Just like those women who died in the Charity Bazaar fire. We didn’t do it. But we could do the next one.”