The Death-Defying Pepper Roux

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  Pepper was not taken in: He could see her hands shaking and the way she fretfully bit her lip. He had half a mind to explain what had happened and put her out of her ignorance. Because he knew very well why Konstantin Kruppe was dead: There was the suit of clothes that had done him in.

  That murderous nun who had attacked him in the street: that must have been Saint Constance, making her saintly rounds, scouring the streets for a runaway fourteen-year-old. Recognizing Pepper’s clothes, thinking it was he, she had tried to wrest him away to Heaven. Foiled by the ambulance service, doctors, and nurses, she had sent assassin angels to the city hospital, and they too had seen the clothes and made the same mistake. They had sucked the breath from the wrong set of nostrils, snatched away the wrong soul.

  So close! They had come so close! Pepper’s mended hands clutched the pillow so tight that the soft white cotton tore.

  Head nurses, doctors, and police murmured together in the corridor. There was someone else out there—a monumental shape in white, palely looming beyond the glass door, wanting access to the ward. But the police, smug about catching up with Kruppe, were treating the place as their own, denying entry. It was probably only a doctor, but Pepper saw angels in every flicker of light, every splash of white. He slipped out of bed, took down the coat hanger, dressed in his familiar scruffy shirt, jacket, trousers, shoes. Finding the wads of lilac prayers still crumpled at the bottom of the jacket pockets, he even stopped to write on one: Rest in peace. And left it on Konstantin’s chest.

  They say that God moves in mysterious ways, but Pepper had seen quite enough to know that God’s saints and angels couldn’t organize a duck hunt in a shooting gallery. Yet again they had taken aim at Pepper, missed, and flattened the wrong duck. He was not about to let them get their eye in and hit the target.

  NINE

  GOOD NEWS BOY

  There is always a bicycle rack outside a hospital.

  Pepper chose the smallest bike parked there and rode away. For two days he cycled, feeding himself on sunflower seeds plucked from flowers as big as dinner plates that grew alongside the road. The sunflowers looked back at him blankly, taller by a head than he was, their crispy ripe faces bent downward as if in sadness or shame. Perhaps they were ashamed of having nothing better to offer him: Sunflower seeds are not very filling.

  Pepper himself was not terribly ashamed. After stealing a ship, it did not seem so terrible a crime to help himself to sunflower seeds, or even a bike. A bike equips a person to make himself useful—to be a telegram boy, for instance. Pepper, you see, had come up with a plan. He would cycle until he reached a sizeable town, then enlist as a telegram boy.

  There is no such thing as a telegram man or telegram woman. Only boys will do. As he cycled, the years fell away and he was thirteen again, free of the burden of being doomed, en route to a career delivering good news to kindly people. He had had so many names that he wrote “K.K.” on the cuff of his shirt, to remind him of who he was now. As soon as he reached Aigues Mortes, he searched out the offices of the Postal and Telegraphic Services of France and offered his services.

  “Name?”

  “Konstantin Kruppe, sir.”

  “Do you know the area, Kruppe?” asked the head of telegrams. “You need a sound knowledge of every street to do this job.”

  “Of course!” groaned Pepper, who could suddenly see the glaring snag in his plan. It had not occurred to him before.

  Luckily, the telegram supervisor misunderstood of course and took it to mean that “of course” Pepper knew the city as well as the creases in his own bike saddle. He gave Pepper a round peaked cap and an armband and assigned him a stool to sit on in the outer office. “You are working for tips, you understand? Not a wage.”

  “Of course,” said Pepper, undismayed.

  He was glad to see there were two other boys already sitting there, clasping their caps on their knees. With luck, the office was so overstaffed there would be no work for Pepper to do: He needed time to think.

  “You’ll be Zee,” said one, looking him over.

  “All right,” said Pepper, who liked to oblige.

  “I’m Exe. He’s Why. The Kaiser in there”—he nodded toward the Telegraph Office—“he’s working his way through the alphabet. He can’t remember names. What’s your real name?”

  “Konstantin Kruppe.”

  “In that case, you’re better off with Zee,” said Why.

  “What happens after me?” inquired Pepper, having been assigned the last letter of the alphabet.

  Why shrugged. “He goes back to the beginning, I s’pose.”

  Exe nudged Pepper. “Or maybe you’re the end of the line.” And they laughed, but not unkindly.

  Within five minutes Exe was dispatched to rue des Amandiers with a telegram. Within ten, Why had been sent to the Hôtel St-Georges with another. Pepper looked out of the window, noticing how enormous the town had grown since he’d last looked: Every district a web of streets, every street a row of buildings, every building a clutch of separate lives. How could a boy from out of town even begin to—

  “Here, Zee. Here’s one for the Lost Luggage Office!” called the supervisor of telegrams.

  Pepper gave a whoop of joy. The Lost Luggage Office had to be at the railway station! And there were street signs to the station! With the tip he was given there, Pepper would buy himself a map of the city, study it all night, and by tomorrow be as ready as anyone to dart around Aigues Mortes delivering good news. He closed his eyes and slipped the cap onto his head—remembering, remembering—folding his ears forward but finding no need; the cap fit perfectly. Go ye into all the world, the Bible said, and spread the good news. Pepper had every intention of being the best telegram boy in the south.

  Following the signs for the railway station, Pepper rode into the center of town for the very first time—a town so beautiful, so astonishingly old, that he lost his way a dozen times just staring around him. Cobbles jolted loud shouts of pain out of him, and huge walls barred his way, so he had to keep retracing his route. When he finally found his destination, the man in Lost Luggage gave him a lecture about riding a cycle on railway property.

  Pepper stood there, waiting for his tip, looking around him at the treasure trove of things left behind by careless train passengers. Baskets, coats, books, parcels, and umbrellas, of course, but a stuffed bird, too, and an accordion. There were three suitcases in three different sizes—as though they belonged to the Three Bears. Perched on a high shelf, like Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear, each case had initials embossed into its brown hide: AAB, GGB, EPB. He wondered where the family had been going, how they had all three lost their luggage, and what bears kept in their suitcases. There were also a car wheel and a crutch; a shotgun, a wheelbarrow, a hookah. What kind of people had owned these things, and how were they feeling now that they had lost them? Or how would it feel to own such things but leave them all behind one day in jumping down from a train, going on your way empty-handed, free…?

  “No reply, I said!” snapped the man in Lost Luggage, and dismissed Pepper with a flick of his hand.

  No tip?

  No tip meant no map!

  Pepper sat astride his bicycle, head sunk between his shoulders, and took off his cap. He knew nothing of this city, its labyrinth of streets, walls, and towers. Too late in the day to bother going back to the Telegraph Office—besides, without a map he was unfit to serve. He was finished as a telegram boy.

  Women at windows plucked the curtains shut. The alleyways filled up with dark. Flames flared up in the faces of strangers as they passed, lighting cigarettes. All the old fears mustered, just out of sight, weaving nets out of the darkness, bunching the nets in their hands ready to throw over him.

  On the other side of the street, the doorway of the Hôtel du Gare was a golden glow, its windows a column of golden dashes rising into the sky. Pepper had the old, overwhelming desire to get up high and check for approaching danger. He went inside, walked directly to the elevat
or, and rode up to the roof.

  Lights, stationary and moving, reflected or flickering, greeted him as he stood on the parapet and looked out over the city. Somewhere an ambulance bell sounded. A handful of vehicles moved along the distant highway. The ancient city walls formed a black arc devoid of light. The sea was the end of the world. Pepper checked the sky for flaming chariots and found it hysterical with stars. He checked the streets below for saints patrolling. Any one of the glimmering cigarette tips, the cone headlights, might be someone searching….

  Pepper wondered if it was possible to die of loneliness, and if that was why God had divided Himself into three—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: for want of companionship.

  On his way out of the hotel, between the elevator and the revolving doors, he passed a rack of leaflets and maps. A detailed street map of Aigues Mortes showed him every street.

  “Please, may I take this?” he asked the receptionist.

  “Take anything you like,” she said without even looking up. “Everyone else does.”

  Night after night, Pepper studied the map, memorizing the street names, famous landmarks, shortcuts. In the early morning he rode the same streets for two hours at a stretch, noting the culs-de-sac, the worst hills, the most excruciating cobblestones: learning his trade. Then he reported in to the Telegraph Office and joined Exe and Why on the three stools in the outer office. They talked to him; they liked him. And then there were the dogs….

  Almost everywhere he called with a telegram, his knock was answered by hysterical barking. Pepper approved. Dogs are what he would have spent his money on, if he’d had any. He liked dogs—liked the whole idea of dogs—and dogs seemed to know it, because they never barked at him for long. Of course, that probably had something to do with the biscuits. And the biscuits had something to do with why he still had no money. Now he spent his tips on biscuits, which he fed to the dogs until their tails wagged.

  Exe and Why hated dogs—were always getting nipped or chased when they delivered telegrams. So Pepper bought them biscuits, too, and explained the whole biscuit/wag ratio. They were so grateful that they said he could sleep at their place, a loft on the rue de la Poste. Outside the tiny fanlight windows, starlings filled up the gutters each evening, like running water. They skittered across the roof tiles on their tiny claws; their clamor was louder than the church bells.

  “We could buy a dog between us!” suggested Pepper, looking around him delightedly at his new home.

  Exe and Why could not see the appeal. “We’re not made of money,” they said. And Pepper certainly had none left after buying dog biscuits for three.

  But it was wonderful. He delivered telegrams of congratulations to wedding feasts, where they made him join in the dancing and plied him with wedding cake. He delivered word of jobs won and exams passed.

  “I have a granddaughter!” said the woman on the rue Carrefour, and kissed him and gave him ginger ale. A man who had inherited ten thousand francs even gave him ten francs and told him not to gamble it away.

  Mièle Rosette, who had an odd sort of boardinghouse on the place des Marins, got regular telegrams. She took them from Pepper and thrust them away into her bosom without a glance while, with the other hand, she loosened his tie or ruffled his hair. Seeing the “K.K.” on his shirt cuff, she asked what it stood for. It seemed absurd to say that it stood for “Zee.”

  “Konstantin Kruppe, madame.”

  “Oooh! That’s a big name for a little man,” she purred, and sprayed him on the ear with a little bottle of perfume she was holding. Sometimes she answered the door in her dressing gown, and once—not. For years Pepper had been innocently confessing in church to “unclean thoughts,” and doing penance for them, without ever knowing what they were. He reckoned he had a credit now on the unclean thoughts front—enough to cover him for a few sightings of Mièle Rosette in her negligée.

  Of course, there was the old man whose telegram told him his wife had died in a sanatorium far away in Switzerland. “I can’t remember her face,” he said to Pepper. “Can you remember?” And Pepper had helped him search the bureau—“Can you remember what my Renée looked like?”—until they found a photograph of the wife.

  And there was that lady who screamed….

  The franc she had tipped him was still in his hand as he reached the bottom steps of her apartment. Then the scream came. Looking up, he saw a window smash and the woman’s hand emerge, shards of glass glittering high overhead, slitting the light into colors: a shattered rainbow. When he got back to the Telegraph Office, Why had pointed out two sharp shards still stuck in the shoulders of Pepper’s jacket.

  “She’ll have lost someone in Africa,” said Why, the voice of experience. “Lots of deaths right now. Had two this morning. Hate delivering those ones.”

  “Sometimes they even thump you. Like it’s your fault,” said Exe, nodding gloomily. “Who’d join the Legion when there’s a war on?”

  “Who’d join the Legion?” said Why.

  Pepper looked down at his palm and saw that the one-franc tip had made a round, black bruise in his tightly closed fist. Like a bullet hole.

  So after that, Pepper—or Zee, as the boys in caps called him—opened all the telegrams before he reached the delivery address. He found that when the yellow envelope was too well sealed, he could wet it in a puddle and it came open easily. If the news was good—a baby, a marriage, friends visiting—he delivered it with a smile and a salute, and in the sure and certain hope of a tip. If it was news of a death, a prison sentence, a bankruptcy, then Zee…well, Zee obeyed his conscience.

  Tragedy was not what he had pictured as he cycled between the sunflowers with a high heart and an empty stomach. His calling had been to make people happy. Perhaps the escaped convict Kruppe, in wearing Pepper’s jacket for a night, had stained it with more than his sweat, blood, and hair oil. Take what you want: That had been Konstantin’s religion. Now Pepper was infected with that same ruthless desire to have what he wanted. And he wanted people to be happy.

  “My bike skidded, and I was in the canal before I knew!” said Pepper to Madame Falconnier.

  “You poor boy,” said Madame F. “Sit down. Take off that wet coat. You’ll catch your death.”

  Pepper assured her that the accident did not matter at all—except it had made him lose the telegram he was bringing her. “Scooped it out…came apart…like wet bread…nothing left…,” he explained sorrowfully. He had had time to read some of the words, though, and would she forgive him?

  Madame F. sat down, hands pinned between her knees to stop them shaking. “Something terrible’s happened, hasn’t it?” she said at last. “My boy. My Marius. Something’s happened to him.”

  “No!” Pepper hastened to tell her. “No, of course not!” Her son Marius had quit the Foreign Legion after he had become nearsighted and couldn’t hit the target anymore during rifle practice. (A shame, because he had just been promoted to captain for bravery.) Hearing tell of Brazil, he had decided to go there with friends and pan for gold until he had enough to buy a ranch in Argentina. Or Patagonia possibly. He might be gone a long time. Ten years. More. But she was not to worry, because somewhere her Marius was getting fat on roast beef and riding beautiful horses over the pampas. Praying for her every night before bed.

  “I think they have the same saints in Brazil. They’ll deliver prayers between you. On Sundays. Maybe.” Pepper added this personal footnote to the lost telegram. There were all kinds of other details he had wanted to add but thought it best not to. After all, how much could one telegram plausibly have said? Wishful thinking would fill in the gaps. In the future, Marius’s mother would look up at the moon, and it would be the same moon that shone on her distant, daring son. And for her there would always be the possibility that one day the adventurer would come home, riding up the street—a Patagonian caballero in leather chaps, silver bolo tie, and solid-gold spurs.

  Deep in Pepper’s pocket, in among the lilac prayers, stained by no one’s tear
s but his own, lay the undelivered telegram. Interfering with official mail was a heinous crime—but not so bad (Pepper thought) as telling a mother by telegram that her boy has been shot for cowardice and buried in the desert sand. Even in Pepper’s own skull, those words slopped about like molten lead.

  “Are you crazed!” shrieked Why. “That’s tampering, that is! They can get you for tampering!” Pepper only shrugged. He had more fearful enemies than the French telegraphic service.

  Now when he dreamed, the saints came after him wearing post office uniforms, telling him to report at once to Hell. He tried to run, but his pockets were too full of lies. So they covered his head with a hood and stood him against a wall and took aim on his heart….

  But by day, Pepper delivered happiness, spreading good news—nothing but good news—as far and wide as his stolen bicycle would carry him.

  He did not deliver, to the girl whose sweetheart had jilted her, the telegram that read:

  MET SOMEONE STOP

  DO NOT LOVE YOU NO MORE STOP

  LEAVE ME BE STOP

  He told her instead that her fiancé had joined the Foreign Legion and been killed in Africa, her name on his lips.

  He told the man whose telegram read:

  EMPLOYMENT HEREBY TERMINATED STOP

  that the Hongriot-Pleuviez Amendment had forced the company out of business, but they wished him well in his future career and thanked him for his hard work.

  A young singer called Chantal dreamed of studying opera at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris, so her hopes would have been dashed by the callous words

  REGRET APPLICATION UNSUCCESSFUL STOP

  Instead, Pepper told her that the principal conductor had fallen madly in love with her during her audition and, being a married man and a good Catholic, dared not invite her to work nearby him day after day, for fear of temptation.