The Boulangerie Notre-Dame had managed on meagre supplies for much of the war. It was the city’s good fortune that apart from brief restrictions on butter, there had never been an outright loss of essentials. The display case sat half empty most of the time—Madame had kept the varieties of breads to a minimum—but customers of the Boulangerie Notre-Dame had never gone truly hungry.
I am a pilgrim in a strange land, Grenelle thought as he leaned against the marble table and tried to make sense of what remained of the stores. Octavio pulled himself up and sat on the table. Grenelle turned to the boy.
Your father was always bragging about his apprentice. That Octavio has the gift, he would say, a Notre-Dame through and through. So how gifted are you, exactly?
Octavio shrugged. Papa let me work at the ovens sometimes, he said. I helped him with the easy breads. We would make brioche all the time.
Not your mother’s brioche, I hope, Grenelle said.
No, monsieur, Papa’s special variety. The one with the herbs.
Octavio looked over at his father and smiled. Monsieur Notre-Dame was sitting in his corner of the cellar, staring up at the window.
Those I have missed, Grenelle said.
Dumping flour, yeast and water into a bowl was easy enough; it required no more than a dozen tries before Octavio and Grenelle thought the portions of salt and sugar looked correct. The boy thought hard to remember his father’s way with the eggs: the graceful toss, like a juggler, from one hand to the other; the tentative tap against the rim of the bowl, the final swift and sure blow. By his fifth attempt, Octavio had found the miraculous force: opening the egg against the rim of the bowl, letting the contents drip into the mixture, keeping the shell in his hands. By the seventh egg he managed the process one-handed. With the tenth and eleventh he could crack an egg in each hand.
Your father’s son, Grenelle said.
Mixing became a struggle, the watchmaker cursing as more dough stuck to his fingers than stayed in the bowl. Octavio climbed on the marble table. On his knees he pushed and pulled at the dough until his wrists ached. Grenelle stood by, tossing flour across the table, dropping in handfuls of butter. They finally produced a glistening globe of dough. Grenelle, covered in flour, and Octavio, panting and red-faced, stared at their creation as though it were about to explode.
Monsieur suddenly rose from his corner. Unsteady on his legs, he gripped the edge of the table. My marble, he said.
Octavio and Grenelle looked up at Monsieur’s beaming face.
Did you know, gentlemen, that it was cut in the quarries of Tuscany? A slab as tall as the cake-slice. Shipped across a sea broiling with sharks and mermaids, you know, and loaded onto a fire-breathing train, non-stop, to the banks of the Seine. They winched it onto a barge rowed by a hundred men. A full day before it entered the city. It was hoisted to a cart pulled by five stallions named for kings, four Henris and a Louis. From the quayside to here you could hear twenty hooves shaking the cobblestones from their mortar. And now here it sits, mia bella Italiana, waiting for my dough.
As he spoke Monsieur made a circular motion with his hands, rolling an invisible ball between his palms.
Grenelle began pulling handfuls of dough. He followed Monsieur’s movements, rolling each handful smooth in his own hands. Octavio found the brioche trays. Each lump became a ball; each ball was tucked in its mould in the trays. The glaze, Octavio said.
He broke an egg into another bowl, added a splash of water. With the softest of strokes, remembering how his father would guide his hand, Octavio painted the top of each ball of dough with a golden wash.
He pointed to a jar tucked in the cellar’s rafters. Papa’s secret, he whispered.
Grenelle placed the jar on the table; the smell of rosemary filled his nostrils. Octavio scooped out a fistful. Hovering over the trays, he rubbed the dried herb between his hands. A dusting of green flakes fell, like the softest snow, across the little jewels of bread. Fourteen minutes, thirty-two seconds, Grenelle said. He slid the trays of brioche onto the table: two dozen domes, some perfectly round, others deflated and burnt, all tinged with a hint of green.
Can you hear them? Monsieur said.
Octavio fumbled a brioche between his hands until it cooled. He held it to his father’s ear. The boy tapped the bread with his thumb. Monsieur grinned.
They sang, you know. The mermaids. With my marble sailing over them.
The next morning the Please Call Again sign was gone from the windows of the Boulangerie Notre-Dame. Madame Lafrouche was among the first to be served.
There were nights when Octavio would lie under the table in the cellar, listening as the oven doors shed their heat, their metallic ticks mingled with his father’s snores as the baker drifted into sleep.
Monsieur would talk in his slumber, mumbling about dry boots or warm blankets or trees that still threw shade. Octavio would then tiptoe out of the cellar and climb the stairs to the apartment at the top of the cake-slice. He would pull one of the under-stuffed chairs to the window and watch the street below.
The street was so narrow that it seemed always in shadow. Doors and windows became black holes; the surrounding buildings leaned like drunkards. A few figures—night workers, insomniacs, vagrants—would sometimes appear. To Octavio they looked to be nothing more than hats or the tops of heads. The same heads, the same hats, the same umbrellas when it was raining. Octavio thought the darkness was playing tricks: black shapes emerged from doorways and disappeared around a corner, only to tiptoe their way back to their doorways, wait for him to fall asleep, then repeat the process. The hats, the heads, the umbrellas seemed always to be leaving, never returning.
Octavio had never ventured farther from the bakery than his school. Now, watching the street from the top of the cake-slice, he wondered where everyone went as they vanished around the corner. His hands grew clammy at the thought of walking away from the bakery’s front step.
As the first streaks of morning lightened the sky, a rag woman might appear, her cart heaped with blankets, old coats, bedsheets, curtains, quilts, hats, shoes, gloves, stockings, dresses, trousers. She was a bundle of rags herself: layer on layer, socks over shoes, stockings over socks, skirts on top of trousers, scarves over coats over jackets over sweaters over vests over shirt. On her head she balanced a few hats, each brim narrower than the one beneath. The old woman would step into the light under each street lamp, then glide from one lamp to the next, disappearing only to reappear, eventually to reach the corner and be gone.
Octavio had no wish to follow any of them: the night wanderers, the rag woman. The thought of leaving the cake-slice, and what had happened to his mother and father after they left, turned his stomach over and left him in a nervous sweat.
But by then it would be time to get back to the cellar, fire the ovens and wake his father.
A barely visible haze stings the young woman’s eyes as she rounds a corner. The smell of smoke fills her nostrils. She pulls up, startled by a mass of people that seems to have risen fully formed out of the cobblestones. She keeps her head down, her hair falling out of her scarf.
No one takes any notice of her as she hovers at the edge of the crowd.
Madame Céleste convinced herself, as any parent might, that the accident had never happened. She gently guided a new dress over young Isabeau’s outstretched arms, she patiently directed the girl’s fingers as they practised bow after bow in her hair, she smiled and nodded when Isabeau, reading her magazines, would offer a little girl’s opinion on this hat or those shoes or that chemise.
In those years her private worries were for Isabeau: that the girl would suffer at the tongues of the boulevard gossips was too much to imagine. The moment they stepped from the Normande apartments, Madame did her best—a stern tone of voice hiding a nervous tremor—to shield her daughter from pointing fingers and cruel stares. You know very well, my dear, that a young woman does not venture out bare-headed. If you insist on coming with me, then for goodness’ sake
wear a scarf.
Yet as time passed, her daughter’s flaw did not fade. The more Madame Céleste tried to ignore it, the more the scar’s rawness glared at her. Her fears turned on her. She knew the colder gossips would never again consider the grand Madame Céleste as fashionable, what with that poor burned face peeking out from behind her skirts. None of them would remember magnificent, magnificent. She knew they would talk only of her failure. Such a proud mother, they would say, and look at the result. They would never blame Isabeau for her own clumsiness. No, it would be her, the shameful, shameful Céleste, who would be condemned. A mother not vigilant enough to protect her own child.
Must we go out today, my dear? The weather looks about to turn.
Isabeau strained into a teenager’s ungainly limbs. Her favourite magazines had been folded enough times that they began falling apart at the slightest touch. She moped around the Normande apartments like a graveside mourner. Finally Pascal had had enough.
Perhaps a book might distract her, he suggested to his wife. Her birthday is coming up. Could she have really grown so quickly?
Pascal handed his daughter her gift. It was dog-eared and threadbare, easily tucked in a pocket, a tourist’s guide to the Louvre. The bookseller had guaranteed that the book—note the numerous reproductions, monsieur, it is a most rare edition—was worth ten times what he was charging. Pascal’s only comment was how dull and small the paintings were. I trust the real things are worth the visit, he said, handing the bookseller half as much.
You won’t be disappointed, monsieur.
Returning home, Pascal inscribed the title page.
To our own masterpiece on the occasion of her fourteenth birthday. With love, Maman, Papa and Zouzou.
Isabeau would retreat to her bedroom for hours at a time, curled under the duvet and reading the descriptions in the guide. Studying the museum’s floor plans, following dotted-line routes through the galleries with her finger, examining the muddy images. She would argue with herself as her moods swung, choosing the most tragic pictures only to reject them for ones more cheery; drawing little stars beside her favourites, underlining names and adjectives in the descriptions, blacking out others, dreaming how the paintings—her paintings now—might appear were they to hang in her own room.
Her imaginings became a teenager’s obsessions. At the supper table she talked of little else. How beautiful her paintings must be. How their subjects must leap from the frames as you walk by, Maman, how their eyes must surely follow you around the gallery. How hundreds of people, like your customers, Papa, must visit the museum every single day.
Please, Papa, may we go too?
One Sunday, Pascal Normande suddenly awoke from his afternoon nap.
We should be seen, he said, rubbing his eyes. Seeing things—
Madame Céleste was pacing, moving vases left then right then back again. Things? she said, running her finger along a windowsill.
—the theatre, Pascal said. Plays, openings, galleries. As we did before—before—
Galleries? Madame said.
Art. The paintings in Isabeau’s book, for instance. It would be good for business, don’t you think? Mingling again with the clientele. Even Isabeau knows who visits the museums.
Mingling? Herded like sheep, you mean.
Isabeau does love them, Pascal said. How can a father deny his daughter?
You do not mean the three of us would go out?
We cannot hide her forever, my dear.
You cannot be serious.
Our charade has gone on long enough. The girl deserves to be happy.
It is not a charade. It is preservation. Think of the talk if we start parading her around. I could not bear it.
Pascal waved a hand. There is already talk, he said. Did you know we keep Isabeau chained in a cupboard like some sort of wild animal? I have overheard whispers that you yourself threw the boiling water out of jealousy. Trust me, the day after they see that scar they will chatter about something else. Ugliness makes no less fleeting an impression than beauty. Your gossips will not remember Isabeau either way. Besides, they will all be looking at you.
I would rather they didn’t, Madame said.
——
Madame Céleste insisted the trees be in full bud, the grounds of the Tuileries dry and easily walked. There would be no wind to disturb a hat or lift a dress or unravel Isabeau’s scarf. The skies would be a clear spring blue.
Her scarf? said Pascal.
The child will be wearing pink, Madame said. And one of your scarves, the peacock number, I think. Be certain she remembers how the fold should lie against her cheek, how the ends must flow over the shoulders.
Isabeau pulled her ear away from the keyhole. Her face was burning. The dread of being seen, the staring, the murmurs, seemed to bring her scar to life, crawling across her cheek. But here was her chance. She would risk anything to see her paintings. She looked at her dog.
Zouzou, the Louvre. Can you imagine?
The dog, nearly blind and entirely deaf, nuzzled into a warm spot against Isabeau’s ankle.
The Normandes joined the crush of bodies funnelling through a set of narrow doors. The crowd emerged as if sprayed from a hose, dishevelled and wide-eyed into the Grande Galerie.
Isabeau wore her father’s scarf, the ends swept over her shoulders and down her back. Clutching her guidebook, staring at the glass ceiling, she stumbled against her mother. Madame Céleste shooed her away, muttering about rushing about and what happened when one was not careful, as she smoothed the drape of her dress.
Light streamed in through the ceiling as if it didn’t exist and the gallery were open to the sky. Isabeau put a hand to her forehead, shading her eyes. The end of the hall seemed a thousand miles away. The way it appeared to vanish in the distance caused gooseflesh to climb out of her pink gloves and spread up her arms. She felt a tickle behind her knees, bristles crawling across her scalp. She shuddered at the flutters in her stomach.
Adults swarmed around her. Some leaned in toward the paintings placed at eye level, others bent back to take in those hung to the ceiling. No one noticed when they bumped into the girl with the peacock scarf.
As Isabeau inched along the gallery, there were flashes of colour: paintings she thought she knew, now hardly recognizable in their deep reds and golds, rich greens and yellows, inky blacks and blues. They were all there, her roommates, her favourites, grown gigantic compared to the grainy reproductions in her book. Some paintings stretched from floor to ceiling, their subjects ready, as she knew they would be, to step out of their canvases. The smaller ones—so much smaller than Isabeau had imagined—crowded together, cheek to ear to shoulder. There were decapitated heads on plates, grinning saints pointing skyward, serious men of business, mothers and daughters, bonneted babies, shipwrecked sailors, musicians, goddesses dancing through ancient ruins.
The current of visitors slowed and bunched together, elbowing their way to see a particular painting. Isabeau knew from her floor plans who they had found. It was La Joconde. Isabeau had never much cared for her. The reproduction in the guidebook made the woman look as grimy as a street sweeper. Isabeau had read in one of her father’s newspapers that someone had actually stolen her a few years back. For months after, thousands had returned to the museum to weep and stare at the faded wallpaper and empty hooks where she had hung. People had even left poems and flowers and letters of condolence, as though the missing woman had been their sweetheart. It was all such nonsense, Isabeau thought. The woman hanging before her now was a chubby lump, her dress was dull, her hair needed washing, and her hands were much too large.
There was someone else Isabeau was looking for. She had always looked out from the guidebook, a girl not much older than Isabeau herself, her eyes pleading not to be crowded around, or pointed at, or worshipped. She was hung amid imagined landscapes and scenes of peasant life. The small plaque beside her read: 422, The Spring, Ingres, signed and dated, 1856.
Alone in her bedroom
Isabeau had given her a few secret names—she was Tethys perhaps, or Iolanthe. Something exotic and otherworldly. But now that they had come face to face, Isabeau thought she looked more of a Sofia. She stood naked at the edge of a glassy pool in a thick green forest, balancing an urn on her shoulder, water dripping through her fingers. Her skin appeared to be lit from within; there were no blotches or freckles. No downy hair under her arms or in her private places. There were no scars.
Isabeau blushed, as though she were looking in her own mirror. Sofia made no move to cover her nakedness, yet Isabeau could see something in her pose, the way the girl’s knees tucked against each other. Isabeau pictured two sisters, alone in their own room, sharing the same shyness. Revealing to each other, between their giggles and groans, how their bodies were becoming womanly.
She admired Sofia’s face: the lips slightly parted, the beginnings of a cautious smile. Isabeau stepped closer. The girl’s eyes were like her own, large and dark, sloped at the corners. Her hair was not quite as chocolate perhaps, but not far off. And she could have been as tall though it was difficult for Isabeau to tell. She tried to see herself and Sofia standing back to back, knocking their heads against each other and laughing.
She would be the brave one, Isabeau thought. Sofia had nothing to hide. But even so, they could be sisters.
The young woman watches the smoke rising from the building across the street. Bits of paper swirl around her. She opens her hand; a few flakes come to rest. She reads the half-words and singed letters, wonders at the flashes of orange and red and green lying in her palm. On her toes, shifting back and forth, she peers between the shoulders of the crowd. In that instant she reads the name of the bakery and recognizes the man stumbling from the building, his familiar suit now covered with ashes.
The Emperor of Paris Page 9
