The Cafe Girl

by Ian Loome

  Giraud took it all in stride. He attended church and he knew neighbors. He had associates whom he supposed could be considered friends. But for the most part, he kept his own council and lived a private life. He had plans, a route to early retirement and an eventual goal of traveling the world, seeing a better side of it than North Africa. Attachments would not help him achieve his dreams.

  He scribbled in the ledger, comparing it to the notepad he carried around the city at all times. But his eyelids felt heavy. After a few minutes listening to the monotonous buzz of the radiator, he nodded off to sleep. It wasn't uncommon and doubtless his daily wine consumption played a role.

  Giraud would sleep, and he would do so fitfully, his lithe torso jerking slightly in the chair as he dreamed. Often, it was as much fitful recollection as fantasy, and he would find himself back in his childhood, living with Oscar and Bridgette. His foster father had a lame left leg as a result of the conflict in West Africa and drew a meagre pension; his mother was an Algerian au pair whose wish for an exciting life had instead led to subservience and drug addiction in Pau, a city in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains, near the Spanish border.

  He remembered holding her hand, looking up at her olive skin and frazzled dark hair as they walked to the bus stop near their tiny country house. 'Remember,' she would insist, 'when we get there, you are to read your book and play quietly and stay in one place.'

  He'd accompanied her to her 'cleaning jobs', sometimes in great homes that dated to the time of kings, long driveways leading to elegant chateaux, twenty-room concrete houses with gargoyles and weather vanes on their roofs, flanked by topiary gardens and ornamental hedge mazes. He could see it vividly when he slept, the grand marble staircase, left alone in the lower hallway to take care of himself. And how he'd ventured up, clambering one giant step at a time, eager to see where his five-year-old legs would take him. And how he’d pushed open the grand bedroom door, to see his mother with her 'employer'. His confusion, her anger at him. Then, clambering up the giant step to the back of the bus that took them home to their rural hovel, her voice still echoing in his ears, calling him foolish. It hadn't taken too many more years for him to figure out what it had meant, and what the perils and pains in their life had meant to his adoptive parents.

  There was a knock at his office door and Giraud awoke with a start, the past fading away.

  Before he could answer for them to come in, it swung wide, blocking his view of his favorite Renoir print. 'Deputy chief, if you have a moment...'

  It was Constable Claude Mombourquette, one of his most enthusiastic and least gifted. A keen admirer of the Tintin books, Mombourquette had grown his moustache into a virulent lip bush, like the clumsy, bowler-hat-wearing detectives, Durant and Durand. He was small, and cheerful, and a firm believer in the power of the law to support and protect the general public. In essence, Giraud had decided, the man was a fool; but a pleasant one, who rarely caused concern.

  'Constable,' Giraud acknowledged, looking up from his paperwork.

  'Deputy chief, I thought I would give you a brief verbal update on the search for the cell of communist intellectuals who are believed to have supported Laszlo Fontaine...'

  'Can this wait, Claude? I have much work upon which to catch up...'

  Mombourquette recognized the cue to speed it up or lose his boss's attention. 'I just wanted to let you know sir that we believe they were operating not from Saint Denis but from within the city proper, although at least one of the members was from here.'

  It was not much more than they already knew, or had suspected. 'Is that it?' Giraud asked impatiently.

  'Yes, Deputy Chief. We shall continue to inquire after them with diligence and tenacity. And of course, as ever, it is a pleasure to serve with you, sir. I am reminded every day of what my dear mother told me before she passed, that there is no solemn duty of which to be more proud than...'

  'Mombourquette...'

  'Yes, deputy chief?'

  'Shut the door behind you, would you?'

  The young officer clicked his heels together with the last comment, elevating his chin proudly.

  It made Giraud want to throw his ink well at him.

  'Sir!' Mombourquette saluted officiously and Giraud acknowledged it with a quick and perfunctory gesture. The younger man turned on his heel and left, closing the door.

  Giraud looked at his desk. He'd been going over his own accounts and clients' purchase orders when he'd nodded off. It wasn't really necessary to do it daily, but he'd developed working habits at a young age. His mother's trips to the great houses had intended merely to provide him with food, a roof over his head. But she had shown him how much more there was to be had. Long before he was a grown man, he had learned to slip away from her at the market, to barter with the merchants, to pick the odd pocket, and to find any foothold in self-elevation that he could. If life would not offer him a stepladder to the stars, Giraud decided, he would have to build one; or, better yet, find one that wasn't really being used all that very much, and take it.

  His suburb, Saint Denis, was popular with the Nazis for its rate of productivity and for its general poverty, which made it ideal for crackdowns that had little impact on the rest of the metropolitan area. Keeping as many troublemakers as possible confined to one area made them easier for the Nazis to track and it was one of a handful of officially noted 'trouble' areas for crime. The black market in Saint Denis and the other Northern suburbs was prodigious.

  So he did not lack for police work. But he had turned delegating investigations into an art form in order to concentrate on his own pursuits. Delegation afforded him time, sometimes as much as three or four hours of each day, to find a quiet spot in north Paris with a nice view so that he could sit down and write. Notwithstanding his desire for security and success, Giraud's life plan included the immortality of publication. It would be a new world to conquer, perhaps via a profound revelation that he could share with others, or perhaps through the lyrical symmetry of free-flowing phrases, the utter abandoned joy of the painted word.

  But first, he had business to attend.

  Const. Claude Mombourquette was no one's idea of a towering intellect. But he was hard-working, moral and upright. After work, he walked for a half-hour to his apartment in Aubervilliers, past rows of similar low-cost units. He owned a bicycle but preferred the stroll, believing that one day statistics would turn in his favor and he would happen upon an accident, or crime, or fire, or other such reason for heroism. And, if that heroism were recognized by the affections of a fair maiden...

  But he never took the thought further. He had a wonderful wife waiting at home. She was pretty, and buxom, and had given him two healthy children. She seemed at times frustrated with Claude's progress through the ranks but still held out hope that one day he would become a senior officer, with a senior officer's salary. He, in turn, held out hope that the newspapers would be there when he plunged through a burning doorway, or dove into the Seine, or whatever his heroic fate turned out to be; it was destiny, he believed.

  He was a block from home, passing rows of identical townhouses, when he saw the man leaning against the building stoop, one hand in the pocket of his wrinkled raincoat, the other casually controlling a cigarette. He exhaled, and the brisk breeze threw the smoke sideways with gusto, to the accompaniment of leaves rustling past the man's feet.

  'Const. Mombourquette?'

  'Yes.'

  'I am Inspector Paul Vaillancourt, of the Internal Security division. Would you have a moment for a few words?'

  The request surprised the young policeman but pleasantly so. Mombourquette was honest to the core, and any kind of attention from his colleagues -- even in Internal Security -- was most welcome. 'Of course, inspector. '

  'You like your role, up in Saint Denis? That's a tough piece of turf to work.'

  Mombourquette's eyes shone with fierce pride. 'It is the great purpose of my life. Every day, I am honored to be able to serve the community.' />
  'Your family must be very proud.'

  'Yes, thankfully. My father is happy for my choices; my stepmother is a fine woman, also.'

  'And your supervisor, Deputy Divisional Superintendent Giraud?'

  'He is a difficult man, some say hard. But I appreciate his perfectionism and high standards.'

  'Is he harder on you than others at the station?'

  'Perhaps. But it merely means he is more concerned for my progress. It is a sign that he thinks I have potential. I know there is something that will impress him. I have perhaps been unfortunate as of yet not to discover such a device, but I persevere. One day, perhaps, I will be promoted to detective and take on the most difficult cases.'

  'For such an effective administrator, he must know the community well, yes?'

  'Oh, absolutely,' said Mombourquette. 'His sources and contacts are truly second-to-none.'

  'So he's out of the office quite a lot?'

  'More than he likes, would be my guess, judging by how much paperwork he has to pass off to me or others.'

  'The burden one must pay, I'm sure. Does he have a particular routine when he pops out? Local businesses he visits for information, perhaps? I'm sure there's much one such as I could learn from him.'

  Mombourquette felt a swell of pride. For the first time, really, someone was taking his input seriously. All his work was beginning to pay off.

  11...

  After the brief appearance at his office, Giraud gathered his notepad and his flask together and pedaled to the park he had come to appreciate so much; as ever, it was quiet, the small area of rich green grass shining from the morning rain, lucent drops slowly tumbling from the leaves and branches of the two young trees behind his bench.

  Or, 'the' bench, perhaps. But Giraud had come to think of it as his, somehow. He was visiting every other day at the least, and it had become something of an asylum, a place to simply turn off his train of thought and forego the pastiche of faces, figures, cases and sales, responsibilities that sometimes dwarfed his ability to juggle them.

  A grey-downed pigeon hopped along the sidewalk nearby. He was surprised to see it; they were caught so often for food now that sightings were rare in the city. Along with guinea pigs, they were even illegally farmed in peoples' apartments. But it seemed unconcerned by him, his uniform and obvious confidence meaning nothing in its world. It did not look for space, or hop away quickly at the sight of him. Instead, it shuffled around assuredly, as if without a care.

  'Maybe it's German,' a familiar voice said.

  Giraud glanced to his left, where Anton Levesque was leaning on his onyx silver-tipped walking stick. The newspaper editor had a smile on his face. 'Only an out-of-towner looks that unconcerned in Paris these days.'

  Giraud gestured to the other end of the bench. 'Please...'

  Levesque took his cue and sat down slowly, in deference to age and creaking joints, his cane in front of him between his knees, both hands resting atop. 'You know, when this war is over and things get back to whatever version of normal they choose to be, I shall never eat pigeon again,' Levesque vowed. 'Even those cultivated for food and not raised on a steady diet of street trash taste foul to me now.'

  Giraud had never liked pigeon, and did not partake. In the two years since food became scarce and rationing took over, he had never needed to; but he knew what it was like to not have choice. As a boy growing up near Pau, he had gone for weeks with nothing but mushrooms gifted to him by a sympathetic farmer who knew his adoptive parents were abusive addicts, without the fullest capacity to raise a child. So he knew what it was like, both to struggle for food and to hate it once he had it, for its very texture to remind him of his grinding lack of security and seemingly interminable poverty. It had been a long time since he had felt that cold disquietude, that inner shiver at not knowing how he would fill his aching belly, and he remembered it for a brief second as the pigeon strutted by then pushed it out of his mind, annoyed with himself for allowing it to even register.

  'The way you are watching it,' Levesque said, 'suggests you are none too fond either. If looks could kill, Giraud, that bird would have burst into flames by now, surely.'

  The policeman shifted his gaze to the nearby pavement, feeling foolish. 'Sorry. My mind had actually wandered to something else.'

  'You know how it is,' Levesque continued. 'Still... better than rat or guinea pig, eh?'

  'Surely.'

  Just ahead, a bus pulled up, but just for a brief moment, obviously fulfilling a mandated stop. Then it quickly rolled off.

  Giraud looked up.

  She was standing beneath the overhanging sign of the closed dress shop, on the sidewalk of the block to the left of the cafe. She held a small handbag in front of her with both hands, and the sleeves of her burgundy men's shirt -- buttoned at the neck -- had been rolled up to just below her elbows; her brown skirt was velvety, and she wore plain tan espadrilles on her dainty feet. She looked around nervously, her body language tense. She had short chestnut hair and a small upturn to her dainty nose. Her face was petite and her brown eyes large and almond shaped, and when she looked around quizzically, expecting to meet someone there, Giraud felt a sudden lump rise from his chest to his throat, as if his heart had suddenly grown far too large for one spot.

  All train of thought abandoned him.

  She had the same general size and frame as the woman he thought he'd seen twice before, but this time, she did not disappear.

  Levesque was talking about the Nazis' pledge to round up the families of spies for execution as a lesson to sympathizers, but Giraud cut him off and motioned in the other direction. 'Levesque, do you see her?'

  'I do,' he said. 'She is pretty, isn't she?'

  Giraud could feel the older man studying him, amused by the rapt attention the policeman paid, perhaps charmed by it. But he could not help himself; his eyes were fixed upon her like a man lost at sea who spots a passing vessel and the possibility of salvation. 'Who is she?'

  'I do not know,' Levesque said. 'But she was here yesterday, also. She spoke with the waitress at the cafe, Martine.'

  As if on the editor's cue, at the adjacent cafe the waitress took off her apron and handed it to the elderly man who always sat at the back table. She shook his hand while he remained sitting. Then she walked over to the piano player, Luc, and hugged him. She turned and removed a shawl from the adjacent chair and said a few words to patrons at the next table, a young couple. She put the shawl on and picked up her purse, then headed for the front patio gate. She opened it and stepped out onto the sidewalk, then turned and waved goodbye to those she'd left behind.

  Then Martine continued down the sidewalk for twenty yards, before crossing the street to the short adjacent block, where the girl in the velvety brown dress waited for her. They hugged briefly, and the new arrival said a few words to the waitress, who laughed along with her. And then they strode off together, up the hilly street and away from the quiet of the cul-de-sac.

  'Mon Dieu!' Giraud exclaimed. 'She is like sunlight.'

  Levesque could not help but smile at his younger associate's breathless assertion. 'I rather suspect the mischievous Cupid has struck you squarely between the eyes, Giraud,' he said. 'In short order, you will begin to question it, and feel slightly foolish; but you should know that it happens to the best of us, eventually.'

  'She must live nearby,' Giraud said, ignoring the editor's ramblings.

  'You shall have to introduce yourself the next time you see her,' Levesque said. 'Although I would advise, perhaps, a margin less infatuation when the moment arrives. It may seem overbearing to be quite so bedazzled.'

  'Eh?'

  'It's nothing,' Levesque said. 'Don't mind me.'

  Giraud was still staring at the street, even though both women had long since vanished from view.

  'Giraud?'

  'Eh?' The policeman rejoined reality. 'My apologies, Anton. I... found myself entranced, I am afraid to say. I have caught brief glimpses of her before n
ow, but when I finally saw her... she was...'

  'Pretty.'

  'Enchanting.'

  'Pretty.'

  'Radiant.'

  'Pretty. Look,' Levesque insisted, 'you do not know her, Giraud. There are a million -- or, in these times, perhaps a half-million -- pretty girls in Paris. Temper your expectations, my young friend.'

  That was the least of Giraud's worries. Aside from dalliances with prostitutes during his time in the Legion, he had never really known love before. If he did muster the courage up to approach her, Giraud thought, it was entirely possible he would not know what to say.

  And that was if she returned at all. He wondered for a moment if he should have risen, chased after her. Then he thought about how disconcerting that would have been for her, especially with him in his uniform. It was not that the people of Paris hated authority; it was just that trust was one of the many things in short supply.

  'And what are the two of you discussing so vividly?'

  The man's voice was deep, rich and sonorous like a cello. Both men turned to see who had joined them.

  He was tall, just heavy-set enough to need to stoop slightly, with a ruddy face and the bulbous Gallic nose of a heavy Cognac drinker. Levesque nodded his way and said, 'Hubert, you must recognize in Giraud the gaze of a man in the throes of unrequited love?' His tone was cheeky and Giraud frowned at him in exaggerated fashion.

  Then he looked their visitor over once more. Surely he would recall someone of such stature? His clothing was expensive, as well, refined; the grey topcoat was of the finest wool, the shoes real leather. 'Pardon, but I'm uncertain we've met..?'

  'My apologies, Giraud,' Levesque said. 'Allow me to introduce Hubert Rousseau, of the CNEP.'

  'A banker?' Giraud said.

  Rousseau smiled pleasantly. 'I am in fact the deputy manager of the north central branch, Monsieur Giraud,' he said. 'We have met before but it was quite brief...'

  'My apologies in return,' Giraud said. 'I knew that I knew you from somewhere but I meet a great many people in my travels around the city.' The policeman felt embarrassed; the man's branch was his own and he had not bothered to get to know him.