Haunting Paris

by Mamta Chaudhry

  “We’re still looking,” said the older one, smiling kindly at her. He had a child who was “simple” in much the same way. She’d lost a doll, perhaps? “It’s an important job, and we take it seriously.” About to leave, he tapped his pipe absently against the mantelpiece, Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.

  Mathilde heard the signal, Open up, Mathilde, and nodded to show him that she was a big girl with her own important job, which she took as seriously as he did. She ran over to the curtain and pulled the cord. The trapdoor yawned open and Marie struck her as hard as she could. Mathilde fell howling to the floor, why was her sister angry, she had done ex-act-ly what they told her to do, but Marie refused to look at her and only when they were left by themselves again did she kneel beside Mathilde and join in her anguished wails.

  Even I, who have long known every detail of what happened that day almost fifty years ago, find myself shaken, and I can only imagine Sylvie’s distress when I see her deathly pallor. She wrenches the door open to flee the site of a tragedy whose sleeping ghosts she has willfully disturbed, her mind in turmoil at having unearthed a shard of the city’s secret history—no, not secret, it was out in plain sight—but its silent history, repressed by guilt, driven underground.

  Uncanny! It’s the first word that springs to my mind at the sight of the trapdoor swinging open, just as it sprang to Sylvie’s when the unmarked folder first fell from my desk to the floor. How right Freud was about that eerie sensation we feel when “something that was meant to remain hidden comes to light.”

  His insights about the unconscious had influenced my own work and I came to regard the conscious mind as a vaunted château, its dazzling brilliance blinding us to the dungeons equipped with their refinements of torture: the spokes of a bone-crushing wheel, the crippling pulleys of the estrapade, or a diadem of spikes encrusted with blood. Most horrifying of all, the oubliette, a pit into which people were thrown and lost forever to the world. They died of starvation, of madness, occasionally of drowning as the water rose from below, nothing left of them but bones gleaming in the dust.

  No wonder we call them oubliettes, these sites of forgetting. But in time these eloquent bones do come to light, these repressed memories return with a vengeance. Only then can we make a reckoning with the past, a reckoning that offers consolations for the present, cautions for the future.

  Sylvie has just peered into the oubliette and come face-to-face with its horrors. She now has a personal stake in the story: it is my story, Clara’s story, and the story of her daughters. The Shoah is larger than any one person, or city, or country, yet how strange is the reckoning of tragedies, where single numbers are easier to understand than the incomprehensible number: six million.

  Yet even as I long to comfort Sylvie, I cannot help feeling a renewed flicker of hope. Will she finish the quest I had begun? I hope, but cannot be certain; all I can do is wait. Despite the innumerable stories that have taken up residence in me, I lay no claim to omniscience: My terrain is not the future, but the past.

  Overwhelmed by the events of the day, Sylvie pushes open the gate, crosses the courtyard, and drags herself upstairs. But instead of turning the key in her own lock, she taps on the neighboring door.

  The Americans don’t answer at first, and Sylvie hesitates. It is late, but she can’t wait till morning, she needs the answer now, and surely Will must know. She knocks again. Will opens the door and takes a step back at the sight of her troubled face.

  “Come in, come in,” he says, and Coco makes a beeline for Alice, wagging his stumpy tail for all he is worth.

  Sylvie apologizes for disturbing them in the middle of dinner.

  “We’ve just finished,” Alice says. “Can I get you something? A cup of coffee?”

  Sylvie shakes her head, disoriented by the normalcy of the scene, a world away from what she has just discovered. “Just a quick question,” she says, pulling out the card and handing it to Will. “Do you know these lines?”

  “Do I? Do I ever!” He reads them aloud:

  “Mais si pendant ce temps je pense à toi, cher ami,

  toutes mes pertes sont réparées et tous mes chagrins finis.

  “Quite fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t do justice to the original, although what translation can? Listen to the difference:

  “But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

  All losses are restored and sorrows end.”

  Hearing his “classroom” voice, Alice thinks, Shakespeare.

  “Shakespeare,” says Will. “The thirtieth sonnet, a long reckoning of heartbreak and then this final couplet, compensation for all that is lost.”

  Alice notices Sylvie’s stricken look and shoots her husband a warning glance, but he is already launched on his lecture, “That’s where the English title for Proust comes from, you know, the opening lines of this sonnet: I summon up remembrance of things past.”

  Sylvie thinks, Proust, that at least she has read, but then the words penetrate and a wave of emotion washes over her, leaving her light-headed. She sways on her feet and the Taylors rush toward her, hold her steady. Sylvie leans against them gratefully. Earlier today, the disturbing thought had crossed her mind that despite what she said to Marie, no one waited for her at home, no one would miss her right away, no one would track her down. Suddenly she feels that of all the people she knows, Will and Alice might be the easiest to confide in, they aren’t French, the story has nothing directly to do with them.

  “I’ve had some bad news,” she says, and doesn’t know how to proceed. Can the horrifying revelations of the afternoon even be called news? It all happened so long ago, but the shock is still fresh, still immediate. Haltingly she tells them what she has discovered, and they listen in silence. Her voice trails away as she describes the paintings, and Will feels humbled by her trust in them, strangers from across the sea who have come into her life by chance.

  Alice asks if there is anything they can do to help, anything at all. And Sylvie clasps her hand and says, “You don’t know how much you’ve helped just by being here.”

  Alice accompanies her across the landing. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Sylvie nods, but when Alice is about to leave, she stops her. “Could you do me a favor? Could you take Coco down in the morning?”

  “You bet.” Alice promptly takes the leash Sylvie holds out to her. She returns to their apartment and goes back to addressing a stack of postcards in thoughtful silence. How pale Sylvie had looked, how shaken. Why don’t her children come? thinks Alice, and is surprised at the sudden wave of emotion that washes over her. Sticking on the new bicentenary stamps, she notices that Will has scribbled a P.S. on the postcard to Fabienne: Worried about Sylvie, call her kids.

  Still racked by shudders, Sylvie sits down at Julien’s desk and writes a brief note. She addresses the envelope to Marie Forrestier at rue Elzévir, the number clearly marked for the postman.

  Forcing herself to swallow some soup, she changes into her slippers and notices that blisters have formed on her feet. With a sigh she slides between linen sheets, cool against her skin after the heat of the afternoon. What good has it done her to track down Marie, to learn the full magnitude of Julien’s loss much too late to offer him solace?

  Sylvie wonders if she should have taken the other course and returned the envelope unopened to its hiding place in Julien’s desk. Then she falls asleep and dreams that she has cast the envelope into the fire, and the photograph of Clara curls and blackens in the flames, the face slowly eaten away, the dark hair lightened into smoke, until all that is left is a scattering of ash.

  Alice hesitates in front of Sylvie’s apartment, unsure whether to call out. The door is ajar, but there is no light, no sound. Is Sylvie ill? Should she ring the concierge? But it’s early yet, perhaps Sylvie is still sleeping, she looked worn-out last night. Hearing the jingle of the leash, Coco noses his way
out and runs down the stairs in conspiratorial silence. Down in the courtyard he lets out an excited bark. Ana Carvalho sees them go through the gate and thinks the scamp has taken up with the American now, has he?

  She remembers the day Coco had crept half drowned and shivering into the courtyard. He hid behind the dustbins, and no one could coax him out, but when Monsieur Julien approached, the dog came right up and licked his hand. The man knew just how to deal with animals, and people, too, for that matter. Such a pity he is gone, things aren’t the same without him.

  The concierge turns away from the window and settles into her rocking chair, crooning softly to her birds. They respond with whistles and cheeps, fluttering about the room as their feathers waft to the floor, noiseless as dandelion fluff. A budgie, bolder than the others, hops down her arm to peck at the seeds she holds out in her palm. After a while, Ana Carvalho rises to her feet with an effort. Her ankles are swollen, and for the first time she thinks about retiring to her brother’s place in Hossegor. It’s getting harder to climb the stairs to attend to the judge and his wife, to look in on Madame Sylvie, to run errands for the young man on the second floor, wasting away with a disease they do not name. Most of the old occupants have already died, and the new ones moving in barely have time to say bonjour, always in a rush. The island, too, has changed over the years, the main street constantly sticky underfoot, how many ice-cream shops do they need, why not put in something useful, like a dry cleaner.

  The concierge goes about her work, checking the minuteries on the lights, watering the clivia in the stairwell, delivering mail to the housebound man on the second floor who trembles at every knock, more afraid of eviction than death. She hums softly under her breath, Quand on s’promène, au bord de l’eau. In a few weeks, she will be off for her holidays. It will be good to put up her feet and watch the high waves roll in from the Atlantic. But she knows that by the time September comes around, she will be longing for her rentrée to the city.

  More than halfway through their trip, Will’s unfulfilled desire to know the city has acquired a feverish urgency. Or is the fever a sign he’s coming down with something? No point mentioning it to Alice, she’ll insist all he needs is fresh air and exercise, that’s what she prescribes for everyone, look at how she’s taken Coco in hand. His wife gives a new meaning to the concept of rude health, nothing but contempt for “coddlers.” Will waits till Alice is at her lesson before going to the neighborhood pharmacy and browsing its shelves crammed with tisanes and creams for every ailment, including that dreaded French malady, cellulite.

  Behind the counter, a white-coated pharmacist is listening courteously to an elderly man’s recital of his daily aches and pains. Will has a sudden impulse to join the three women who are waiting their turn to unburden themselves to a sympathetic listener. The French take coddling seriously, no one here would scold him for being a malade imaginaire.

  He buys some propolis lozenges and saunters down the island’s main street, crowded as usual with tourists. Two young women stop to admire their reflection in shop windows, and Will recognizes them as Americans just by their leisurely stride, so different from the neat, hurried steps of Parisians. He picks his way carefully through the next stretch of pavement, beloved of dogs. A man wheels his bicycle through the wooden portal of Maison Chenizot, and Will slips in after him, curious what lies behind the building’s imposing façade.

  Crossing a large courtyard with mossy cobblestones, Will wanders through an archway into a second courtyard, feeling he is penetrating into the very heart of the city. In one of the apartments, someone is practicing the harp, arpeggios drifting down like snowflakes. Balanced on a scaffold, a workman stops his painting to light a cigarette. A giant sundial chiseled into the wall marks the noon hour, and little girls in ballet slippers run out from class, their childish trebles echoing in the courtyard. In secret corners such as this, away from the cameras and curiosity of tourists, real Parisians attend to their daily concerns. Even though he has accidentally entered this self-contained world, Will realizes he will never be an insider, no matter how long he lives here, no matter how hard he tries. The city will keep all its secrets, and he will leave behind lives he can only imagine, names he will never know.

  His wandering gaze is arrested by a plaque set discreetly into the wall, and with a slight shock he realizes that he does know the name, he sees it every day by the front door to the apartment: Docteur Julien Dalsace. Peering past the FOR RENT sign, Will sees a waiting room leading to another room behind a curtained doorway, and thinks what an apt setting it provides for the work of psychoanalysis: a room within a room, in a courtyard within a courtyard, on an island within a city.

  Perhaps Sylvie was once a patient? He can see her as a young woman perched on one of the stone posts flanking the portal, remnants of the days when they protected the walls from damage by carriage wheels. He walks back through the great wooden door and out into the street, and as if his thoughts have summoned her, he sees Sylvie sitting alone in a tea shop window, looking up expectantly every time the door opens.

  I watch Will walk down the street and turn the corner toward the école maternelle, where the joyous shouts of children fill the air like brightly colored balloons. But when I look back at Sylvie, I am startled by a face at once familiar and unfamiliar.

  Even when I realize it’s my own reflection in the window, the uncanny sensation lingers. Invisibility is so much a part of me, it no longer seems second nature but my true self. As if I have never been a man of substance, have always been only a shadow. I feel a prickling at the back of my neck, a physical sensation as puzzling as a vestigial bone in a skeleton. Hastily I step back. Is it a warning that I am getting too close to events, revealing too much of myself?

  Nonsense!

  Reassured, I look again, and my reflection has vanished, leaving only Sylvie and Marie seated across from each other. The steam from their cups of cocoa clouds the window, like breath on glass, which in the end is all that separates the living from the dead.

  Sylvie wasn’t sure if Marie would ignore her note, but she has come. Without a word of greeting, the old woman thrusts a wooden box and the rolled-up canvases into Sylvie’s hands. “Here, take these. Isabelle didn’t want them, but maybe you can pass them on to Julien’s children.”

  Sylvie fingers the carved cedar before opening it, and the only treasures in the “jewel case” are a few round pebbles, a square of black lace, and a folded letter. She can hardly bear to look at the meager contents, all that is left of Clara’s life.

  “Julien told me so little about her.”

  “What was there to say?”

  Marie’s brusque response shames Sylvie. What right does she have to force anyone to break that long silence? “Perhaps you are right,” she says humbly, “perhaps it’s better to forget.”

  “How can I forget, living with Mathilde. And yet she remembers nothing.” Marie’s face twists into a painful grimace. Her eyes wander around the shop, lingering on the copper chocolate molds in the shape of rabbits and lambs and roosters. “Sometimes I wish I was the one born with the defect. What must it be like, never having to worry about how we will live, what will become of us. I’ve always had to take care of her, and no one can imagine what it cost me, I’m not speaking of money, we have our troubles but I manage, I’ve never asked anyone for anything. But it’s not easy for her, either. She looks at me with a puzzled expression sometimes, trying to understand what makes us different. And when Clara’s twins came, she kept asking anxiously, ‘Are they the same, exactly the same?’ ”

  Marie stirs her cocoa furiously, spilling some in the saucer. “When they were taken away, she couldn’t understand it, she kept calling, ‘Where are you, where are you?’ as if they were playing cache-cache. Then one day she told me, I know where they’re hiding, and pointed to the radio. She would always listen intently to the broadcasts from London, as if those messages were m
eant only for us.”

  “The blue horse is on the horizon,” says Sylvie, surprised that the words have stayed with her for, what, forty years now, forty-five? She remembers crouching in her parents’ kitchen with the drapes drawn and a towel stuffed under the door while her father tried to tune in to Radio London. Over the static of the Germans trying to jam the transmission, they heard the thrilling four-beat signature: Da-da-da-daaaa. Morse code for V, her father said, V for Victory, but Sylvie recognized the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. And then they heard the words Ici Londres, reminding them that across the Channel people were still fighting to free France.

  “The violins of autumn wound my heart,” replies Marie, her face relaxing its habitual grimness as she recalls the message that signaled the final push for liberation.

  Sylvie thinks at last a human connection had been made between them, if only for a moment, through a shared memory. Then she remembers another of the coded messages—the grandmother eats our bonbons—which Mathilde had parroted back to her. “Maybe she thought that’s where they were, with Julien in London?”

  Marie shrugs. “I don’t know what she thought. After the war was over, we were told those who survived the camps would be taken to the Hotel Lutetia, and we all crowded behind the barricades to wait for the Red Cross buses. Some people had brought flowers, but when they saw the faces of the survivors, no one had the heart to offer them. A woman dropped her bouquet of lilacs to the ground, and their scent filled the air as we trampled them in our rush.” She could still feel the surge of the crowd as it accosted the returnees, clutching their arms, clamoring, “Have you seen my husband? My wife? My child?” But the men in striped clothes and the women with hollow eyes shrank back from the loud voices and looked around vacantly. It was as if they did not see the desperate faces, did not hear the desperate voices, as if they were still among the missing.