If You Are There

by Susan Sherman

  She walked up the steps and into the vestibule, where she dipped her fingers in the stoup, and crossed herself before going on into the nave. There she stopped to take it all in: the soaring arches, the stained-glass windows depicting the stations of the cross, the domed apse, the chancel with its carved altar, and all the saints standing comfortably in their stone niches. She recognized Saint Genevieve, Saint Martin of Tours, Saint George with his dragon, and Saint Hilaire. In the last niche, on the Epistle side of the church, stood another female saint. From where Lucia was standing she could see only a stiff stone skirt and a pure white foot encased in a marble sandal. Then as she came down the aisle, passing the old women praying their rosaries, she saw that the statue was a girl holding a tray. Her heart lurched when she recognized the two objects on the tray. They were the eyes of Saint Lucyna. They had been plucked out when she refused to marry a pagan. She had lost her eyes, but not her sight, and she saw clearly where others more powerful were blind. Here was Lucia’s patron saint waiting for her. Here was the maiden who had come to comfort her and take up her burden. She was no longer alone. She raised her hands and gave thanks to Lucyna and then to the Blessed Virgin Mother, who had surely brought her here to find comfort in knowing that her life would soon be sorted out.

  That day Lucia found an advertisement in one of the papers for a maid-of-all-work in the rue de la Glacière. It was in a modest neighborhood, and because a salary wasn’t mentioned, she assumed the pay would be low. It was odd that applicants were instructed to arrive after 7 PM. She never heard of such a thing. Interviews were conducted during the day, usually in the morning, never at night. Still, she couldn’t imagine there would be many applicants for such a strange notice, so she decided to go and have a look.

  The rue de la Glacière was a narrow street off the boulevard de Port-Royal in the 13th. While the boulevard was wide, busy, and bright, the street was dark and deserted at night. The only light came from an occasional lamp at a window, a weedy glow that cast a halo into the misty air and was quickly swallowed up in the shadows. Lucia wanted to turn around, but instead she pushed on past the patisserie on the corner, the charcuterie, the butcher shop, and the wine shop, their doors shuttered, their windows blind.

  She tried to focus her attention on the numbers over the doors, but she kept hearing rustling in the corners, bursts of furtive activity in the deepest shadows, and flitting movement just out of sight. She was on the verge of giving up when she found the number over a greengrocer, a poor dusty shop at the end of the block. She took a step back and looked up at the iron balconies above it. The first two floors were dark, but the third was aglow with a strange blue light. It might have been a blue curtain over the French door, or perhaps a lampshade, but it shone like a lean ray of light, a star leading the way.

  The door was answered by a small woman wearing a dusty black dress. She had an intelligent face, marred by smudges of fatigue under her eyes and a high sloping forehead half hidden by a froth of ash-blond hair. Lucia assumed that this was the maid who had given notice, but then the woman opened her mouth to speak and banished all such thoughts.

  “You’ve come about the advertisement.”

  A sudden rush of relief. The familiar accent, the rhythm of home. “You are Polish,” Lucia exclaimed. Jesteś Polski.

  “I jesteś zbyt.” And you are too, I see.

  “Yes, from Warsaw. From Powiśle. From Dobra Street near the river.”

  The woman gave her an indulgent smile. “There are many of us here.” She stepped aside. “Come in, Dobra Street. We cannot let a patriot stand out in the cold.”

  It was a small apartment, shabbily furnished with a few wooden chairs and a white worktable. A man was seated at one end puzzling over a gray notebook while he combed his long fingers through his clipped black beard. He looked up briefly when Lucia walked in, but quickly returned to his work without a word, absently shoving a dirty plate aside to make more room. The only bright spots in the parlor were a gauzy blue curtain hanging over the French door and a bunch of sunflowers listing to one side in a blue vase.

  The Polish woman led the way into the kitchen where another man, this one much older, sat reading a journal at a table covered in a blue checkered oilcloth. “Who is this?” the man asked brightly.

  “I don’t know yet,” the woman replied.

  “Well then, I’ll let you find out,” the gentleman said, folding his paper and rising with a sigh.

  “Is she asleep yet?” the woman asked.

  “I think so, but I’ll go in and check.”

  “Don’t wake her.”

  The old man gave her a withering look and left the room.

  The kitchen was humble but well organized. Everything had a place; a colander hung on the wall by the sink, a dish towel was draped over a rack below it. A large stewpot sat on the stove, bubbling away. The flame was too high, but Lucia said nothing. It wasn’t her place. A pencil outline drawn on the wall indicated where the stewpot hung when it wasn’t in use. All the pots and pans had their outlines traced on the wall, along with other utensils: a large ladle, a spatula, and a rusty sieve.

  “When were you last in Warsaw?” the woman asked, motioning to a chair.

  “Six months ago.”

  “Six months ago,” the woman repeated wistfully. “That’s not very long. Is that confectionary still there? The one on the ground floor of the Church of Visitation?”

  “The one next door to Monsieur B. Wosinski’s watch shop?”

  “Ah, Monsieur B. Wosinski,” the woman laughed. She pulled a face and stuck her nose in the air.

  Lucia laughed along with her. “Yes, it’s still there.”

  “Do they still have those devil’s eyes?”

  “The ones that make your eyes water?”

  “My favorite was red.”

  “Mine too.”

  “They always made my teeth ache. I remember if you wanted them fresh you had to buy them on—” And here they both said Tuesdays at the same time.

  Lucia grew still when the woman wanted to know why she had come to Paris. Here is where it would all come to nothing. For one brief moment she wished she were more like Marta. She wished she could spin a story and have it turn out right, but that quality was not within her. She couldn’t lie no matter how much she needed the position. She would have to tell the truth and accept the consequences.

  With some difficulty she described her situation at the Babineauxes’, the duties that she performed, emphasizing the sauces she had made and the dshes she had cooked. She told her about the dinner party, about Madame Clos’s illness, and finally about getting sacked the next morning. The woman didn’t try to interrupt her as the others had done. She sat there listening, her gray eyes fixed on Lucia, her features even and enigmatic.

  When Lucia had finished, the woman thought for a moment and then surprised her by saying: “I need someone to help with the child. My father-in-law does what he can, but he needs someone to watch Iréne when he goes out, and I need someone to cook simple meals and keep up with the housekeeping. We can’t pay much, but you’ll have room and board.”

  “Are you offering me the position?”

  The woman nodded.

  “And you don’t mind that I was let go?”

  The woman peered at her matter-of-factly. “No, should I? I thought it was pretty obvious.”

  “Obvious?”

  “Yes, of course. She did not want another cook in her kitchen.”

  Lucia started to object, to dismiss the idea as she had done with Marta, but then a detail came back to her, one that she had forgotten or perhaps she didn’t think was important at the time. She remembered the way Madame Clos’s hands trembled when Madame Babineaux came in to praise the meal. How the cook’s eyes were fixed on the food grinder; how her face was smooth and still. It was just possible that this woman was right. Maybe Madame Clos did think highly of her that night, so highly in fact that she wanted to be rid of her. Maybe it wasn’t her pride that brought
her down, but Madame Clos’s envy.

  A sudden wave of affection for the cook caught her by surprise. A pang of longing so intense she thought she might cry. This was followed by the profound understanding that she would never see her cook again—that Madame Clos would always remain just a memory.

  Her eyes slid back to this strange woman sitting across from her. How was it that this stranger understood so much from so little? She had brought Lucia to an understanding, had lifted her guilt and her spirits, and she didn’t even know the woman’s name.

  A child cried out from the bedroom. The woman jumped up. “Tell me your name,” she said, stopping by the door.

  “Lucia. Lucia Rutkowska.”

  “Very well. You will do nicely, Lucia Rutkowska.” She said this in Polish. Her hair was lit by the glow from the parlor making a reckless halo about her face. There was something familiar about those gray eyes set under a heavy brow, the high forehead, the firm mouth—a needling memory just out of reach. Then Lucia had it; the portrait of the Holy Mother hanging in the Church of Mary Magdalene near Babusia’s house, the same aura of incorporeality, of someone apart and yet very present.

  The woman was about to turn away when she stopped and said: “Oh. And I am Madame Curie.”

  CHAPTER 5

  November 1902

  Gabriel knew that if he didn’t sit next to the medium, there would be little hope of discovering her tricks, so he made sure he was the first one to arrive at the flat in rue Saint-Jacques. The flat was located in the Latin Quarter over a restaurant that looked crowded even at this late hour. The maid brought him into the front parlor, a thoroughly conventional room, except for a medium’s cabinet that took up one corner and a large table covered with a white tablecloth that sat in the center of the room.

  He was alone for quite some time until a middle-aged couple arrived, looking intense and dreary, and took their seats across from him. The woman was dressed in black, a cheap fabric that was supposed to look like silk, unadorned and ill fitting, most likely made on her kitchen table. She wore a defeated little hat decorated with a feather, unfashionable but brushed with care. She had moist, protruding eyes that were fixed on the tablecloth. Her cheeks and jowls seemed weighed down, and her mouth was a bleak line of despair.

  Her husband was a slight man looking uncomfortable in his shirt and collar. Gabriel respected their kind. They lived in his neighborhood. They were small shopkeepers and artisans, hardworking, defiant, and easily abashed in unfamiliar surroundings. The husband was the protector. He had taken on the role with a grim resolve. His eyes drifted from the window to a Turkish tapestry on the wall to the little bronze dogs on the mantel, always coming back to his wife to see if she was all right. She was not all right. The dark splotches under her eyes and her vacant stare attested to the sleepless nights of her recent bereavement.

  Two devotees of the spiritualist movement arrived shortly after that, within minutes of each other, and took their seats at the table. They were members of a growing number of adherents mostly from America and Europe, from every social stratum, the privileged class and the working class, who joined spirit circles and conducted séances in their homes and attended larger meetings in rented halls. The woman was middle-aged, rouged and powdered. She wore an enormous turquoise cuff around her wrist and several turquoise rings on her fingers. She took the seat next to the couple, while the gentleman, smartly dressed, sat next to her. It was obvious from their familiarity that these two knew each other, perhaps from their time in the movement or from other spirit circles. Before long the woman was showing off her cuff to the gentleman, saying that she had just returned from America where she had purchased it from a genuine Navaho Indian. “You know Navaho?”

  “Of course,” the gentleman sniffed, his mouth barely moving beneath his imperious moustache.

  “I’ve been to the pueblo,” the woman said. “They are very spiritual, you know. They regularly speak to the spirits and not just to the human ones. They speak to all kinds.”

  “I know,” the man said, folding one sharply creased trouser leg over the other. “I know all about them.”

  The woman remained unruffled and turned to the couple on her left. She asked them if they had been to this medium before. The woman in black made no response. Her husband merely shook his head.

  Fortunately, two university students, a girl and her male companion, had just arrived and had taken their seats next to Gabriel. The girl stepped in to save the garrulous woman. She said she had heard that the medium was a brilliant clairvoyant. Both the woman and the girl had heard she was young, a schoolgirl really, and wasn’t that unusual for a medium with such strong powers? The girl’s companion, a young man with greasy blond hair that kept falling into his eyes, whispered in her ear. She gave him a sour look and fingered her earlobe, feeling for the pearl earring that adorned it.

  “You can go if you like,” she said, lowering her voice. She wasn’t pretty, but her thick dark eyebrows, white square teeth, faint moustache, and dusky complexion gave her a sultry look, and that was enough to keep her companion by her side.

  Eventually, an older gentleman came into the room and introduced himself as the medium’s father. He was heavyset and jowly; his eyes lay in a pair of crinkled caverns set deep under a fringe of curly eyebrows. His rough features were tempered by a well-tailored suit that gave him the substantial air of a professional, a lawyer, or perhaps a doctor. He informed the intimate group that his daughter was feeling a little tired tonight, but that they should not be concerned. “Noémi has contacted her spirit guide, who has told her to go on with the circle. So, she has been resting all afternoon. She will join us shortly.”

  Noémi Thibeau didn’t look much older than a schoolgirl, but one who had dressed up for the occasion, perhaps borrowing her older sister’s clothes. She took her seat at the head of the table and welcomed the sitters to her circle, exhibiting a quiet authority that seemed out of place for one so young. She was at once sympathetic, authentic, and shy. She gave an inspirational talk that incorporated such words as spiritual forces, cosmic magnetism, and interconnectedness. Although there was a hint of her roots in the pronunciation of certain words, for the most part Noémi appeared to be an educated young lady, poised, correct, determined, a solid member of the middle class. Gabriel was impressed.

  While her father lowered the gas and lit the candles, she sat there motionless: back erect, hands on the table, eyes closed. Some time passed before she began to hum a strange tune that was made all the more eerie by her clear, high voice. Gabriel thought he recognized it. It may have been a song from his childhood, familiar and unnerving, simple and strange.

  Soon Noémi was adding a few words to her tune, chanting them over and over again, words that Gabriel could not make out no matter how closely he listened. They were in another language, one that was strange and decidedly not Indo-European. The woman with the jewelry caught his eye and mouthed Indian to indicate that the medium was speaking a Native American dialect. Gabriel made a note of it in his notebook, the one he had managed to smuggle in. Indian, he wrote and then, where is the father? The father had slipped out sometime after the séance had begun, a fact that Gabriel found worthy of note.

  After a few minutes one end of the table began to rise. It was the south end where the medium was sitting and it rose slowly but steadily, until it was about a foot above ground. It stayed there for nearly a minute, swaying back and forth, behaving like a gently rocking cradle. The bereaved wife clutched her husband’s sleeve, her face pale and still. Then, without warning, it came crashing down, startling the sitters.

  Noémi stopped singing after that, resting her hands on the table, palms up. Slowly her head began to sink, her shoulders slumped, and her hair fell in a cascade about her face. After a few minutes she straightened and opened her eyes. She seemed to be focused on a point above the table.

  “Yes,” she said vaguely. “Yes. Tell her I am here. Tell her she must come forward or I won’t be able to
speak to her.” Gabriel felt a rush of cold air and noticed that the temperature in the room had dropped suddenly. He chided himself for not bringing a thermometer. His brother would have remembered one.

  “Yes, I will tell them.”

  Then to the assembled she said in a voice that was dreamy and melodic: “It is Mapiya. She is here with us. She welcomes you. She is grateful for your presence and wants you to know that there are many spirits among us to—” She stopped and stared at the point above the table. “Did you hear that?”

  The husband sat up, tense, fierce, and wary, but then realized that she wasn’t talking to the living. He had taken his wife’s hand to comfort her. Hers was small and pale; his was trembling despite his efforts to appear firm and in control.

  “Who is that, Mapiya?” the medium went on. “Who is that child with you?”

  Gabriel heard muttering, a dim flutter of a conversation. It seemed to be between two people, a child and a woman with a high, quavering inflection. He tried to make out the words, but they were too faint. The child appeared to be crying. The woman was soothing.

  “I see a little girl,” Noémi said, her eyes fixed on the spot. “Yes, that one, Mapiya. The one in the red coat. What are those on her collar? Daisies?”

  A cry from the woman in black. She clamped a hand over her mouth and nose while her husband slipped his arm around her shoulders and held her close.

  Noémi muttered, “Daphne?”

  “Yes, Daphne,” the woman cried eagerly. “It’s me, Maman. Can you hear me?”

  Gabriel glanced around at the others. They were frozen in their chairs. Only their eyes shifted from the medium to the spot that held her attention and back again. Even the skeptical young man forgot to brush the greasy hair out of his eyes.

  Another whoosh of cold air.

  “She is worried about her house,” Noémi said.

  “The doll house.”

  Several sharp raps on the table, and the sitters jumped. “She does not want Lotte to play with it.” Here her voice went up an octave and she whined like a little girl. “Lotte will break it, Maman. She breaks everything.”