Haunting Paris

by Mamta Chaudhry

  Yes, thinks Sylvie, that’s how family secrets are forged, on these intimate pacts of silence, and she is still amazed that it has fallen to her, Sylvie la timide, to break that long silence.

  Alexandra shakes her head. “I’m still reeling. What must it be like for Christine?”

  “Hard to imagine.”

  “Should I call her now? Should I drive there?”

  “Doucement, chérie,” Sylvie replies. “It takes time to build a family from scratch.”

  “Like us?”

  “Yes, like us.”

  Alexandra and Sylvie smile at each other. Luc observes them with interest, and meeting his piercing blue gaze, Sylvie’s heart turns over. So much like Julien, a resemblance that has skipped a generation to show up so markedly in him. And now he knows his love of painting has a direct line of descent as well. As Luc studies the landscape with the ruined châteaux, Sylvie feels a rush of love for Julien’s grandson; they are linked by that painting, and she is the link, both receiver and transmitter of memory. Luc sees Sylvie observing him, and a shutter quickly comes down. But before he can retreat, she asks, “This winter, shall we try Florence?” The expression on his face is answer enough.

  The next day Sylvie finds herself looking forward to the party with unaccustomed pleasure; no doubt Alexandra’s presence accounts for it. She will know exactly how to handle things, she is her mother’s daughter after all. Already the dinner is well in hand and she has transformed the apartment with a few deft touches. An old paisley shawl is draped invitingly over an armchair and there are candles everywhere, on the mantelpiece and in the grate. Sylvie admires the new arrangements, but what gratifies her most is that even with Julien gone, Alexandra feels that quai d’Anjou is still home.

  When Will and Alice knock on the door, Coco greets Alice with transports of happiness, as though he hadn’t seen her only that morning. Dogs measure separation by a different clock, thinks Will, looking around the room in surprise. He imagined it with dark walls and opulent draperies, but it is sparely furnished, with uncurtained windows framing magnificent views of the river. Well, he’s managed to cross the sacrosanct French threshold that Fabienne talked about, so that’s something. The judge and his wife enter on a gust of vetiver-scented cologne, holding a bouquet wrapped in cellophane. Will notices that the French carry flowers differently, not cradled in their arms like a baby but held upside down like a plucked fowl.

  Madame de Cheroisey remarks it is très jolly to be together like this; she hears Alice is expecting, quite a souvenir to take back from Paris. The judge goes into the kitchen to greet Alexandra. He still can’t believe she’s a grown woman, seems like yesterday she and her brother were playing their gramophone records all day long. Alexandra whispers that dinner will be very simple on account of the Americans, just some hamburgers and a frozen gâteau au chocolat from Picard’s. He pales in alarm, but then sees she is pulling his leg: there are artichokes in the pan, duck roasting in the oven, and potatoes prepared correctly, with real butter and cream, not any old butter, but beurre d’Isigny, lightly salted, just the way he likes it. He helps her choose the wines, opens the red to breathe, and leaves the white to warm slightly—people make the mistake of serving it too cold, it isn’t lemonade—and expertly uncorks the champagne, which he pronounces quite passable. High praise for anything not from his own cellars.

  Alexandra whisks the salad dressing and the delicate aroma of shallots fills the air. Luc comes into the kitchen for the appetizers, and seeing the look Alexandra gives her son, the judge thinks, some trouble there, drugs, if he had to bet, but it is none of his business. “Georges-Henri,” his wife calls out from the drawing room and reluctantly he leaves the kitchen.

  Léonie is telling the Americans they must visit their country house in Normandy, mustn’t they, nounours, and he nods, though he knows very well she wouldn’t have volunteered an invitation if there was any danger of their accepting. The judge looks furtively at his pocket watch. He’s missing his favorite political show on television, and for what? He can’t make out half of what anyone is saying, people mumble terribly. He leans forward to help himself to another gougère before Léonie notices. But he is well enough for his age, and poor Léonie sickly as ever, despite being a slave to every fad. The first time nouvelle cuisine made an appearance at his table, he had announced, might as well bury me now, Léonie. She probably would anyway, and without going to pieces, unlike Sylvie. Ah well, he’s had his flings, but when push came to shove he chose comfort over passion and stuck with Léonie. He can’t imagine how Mitterrand does it, living officially with his wife but going home to his mistress every night, downright uncomfortable all that dodging about. He picks up another gougère.

  Sylvie observes the judge sitting in abstracted silence, his deafness isolating him as her shyness used to isolate her. She brings over a platter of grapes but he shakes his head and raises his glass. “I prefer them crushed.”

  “A true connoisseur.”

  “Speaking of which, do you remember when the Rothschilds bought the Hôtel Lambert on a lark, what, ten years ago, fifteen maybe, and madame la baronne had a little at-home for the neighbors? Charming woman, charming. And the wines they served! Romanée-Conti, Gevrey-Chambertin, Puligny-Montrachet, bottles worth as much as her pearls.” He is flattered by Sylvie’s attention, he can tell when someone is listening or only feigning interest. Léonie doesn’t even pretend anymore but fobs him off by saying he should write his memoirs. Maybe he will one day, the recollections of great men are part of the nation’s patrimony, not that he is claiming greatness for himself, but he has certainly kept company with the great.

  “Yes, I do,” Sylvie replies. “I couldn’t believe I was standing in the very spot where Chopin used to play.”

  “And while the baroness was showing the rest of you around, her husband took me for a tour of his cellar. Halfway through, another guest barged in, boasting to the baron about a priceless bottle he had acquired at auction, vintage 1865, liquid gold he called it, meant to be drunk on one’s knees. A Sauternes, of course, and not just any Sauternes, but the very finest, Château d’Yquem, a bottle so rare he was willing to bet there wasn’t another in the entire city, and would the baron do him the honor of drinking it with him one day? I hid a smile. The baron had just shown me a whole case of that very wine, and what an irresistible cue for him to pull out one of his bottles and say, no time like the present. But the baron merely smiled and held his tongue. Now, that’s what I call class, true class.”

  Sylvie smiles to hear her mother’s familiar words in the judge’s mouth.

  Listening to Léonie de Cheroisey instruct Alice on what to expect in the coming months, Will finds the French attitude to babies bracingly unsentimental. Then the phrase “priceless bottle” catches his ear, and his attention shifts to the judge and Sylvie. Will leans over and asks, “About that article, any chance the Jefferson bottles are genuine?”

  “Doubtful. In any case, I’m sure by now the wine tastes like vinegar.”

  Alexandra calls them to the table and tells the Americans that for the finest French food they must travel to Lyon. The judge objects that the grand cuisine of France comes from Normandy, but yes, the food in Lyon is passable, quite passable. Madame de Cheroisey praises the tarragon mayonnaise, she can tell it’s fresh, not from a jar. She breaks off to look warningly at her husband as he helps himself to more potatoes. “Nounours, you know you shouldn’t…”

  Irritably he says, “What is it? Speak up, speak up, don’t mumble.”

  Too stubborn to turn on his hearing aid, Léonie thinks sourly, let him suffer from indigestion then if he doesn’t want his pills.

  Under the table, Coco mulls over his next prospect. Alexandra has already rebuffed him; why do people love the word non, so disagreeable to a dog’s ears? He rests his face on Luc’s knees. The boy succumbs to that wheedling gaze and stealthily drops mo
rsels of food to the floor. Coco is gratified, but not surprised; he has long recognized the generous hand of providence.

  The cheese course is followed by an apricot tart, and the judge thinks if they don’t linger too long over coffee, he can at least catch the weather report, although he doesn’t need la météo to tell him it is exceptionally hot, the evidence is plain as the nose on his face, quite purple and painful now but it’ll subside once the weather turns cooler; he can’t wait for fall when the coings show up in the markets, it’s wonderful how just one quince ripening on the windowsill can perfume an entire room.

  “The clivia is blooming,” says Alice. “It’s a shame Ana left without seeing the flowers, such a blaze of orange in that dark stairwell.”

  “Chiaroscuro,” murmurs Luc, his thoughts far away in Italy, in Florence.

  Chiaroscuro. The word is like a spell, it changes the register of the evening, and conversation retreats from the brightness of company to more contemplative shadows. The candles burn straight and true, there isn’t the faintest breeze tonight. So many candles, such extravagance. Sylvie can’t help thinking of Clara, writing by the guttering stub of a single candle. How often must Julien have called her to mind, all that youth and promise scattered to the winds. Her attention veers to the play of candlelight on Alexandra’s face, on her hair so much like Isabelle’s. Ah, that dinner at rue de Bièvre, it has held her in thrall for all these years. But something tonight has loosened the other woman’s hold upon her. She might never be entirely free of Isabelle, but for this evening, at least, she no longer feels her presence over her shoulder.

  “Hard to believe we’re leaving in a few days,” says Will.

  Sylvie smiles. “Maybe you’ll come back to France next year.”

  “Or maybe you will come to America,” Will says. He hopes Sylvie knows Fabienne is not her only friend in Florida.

  Luc’s face brightens. Florida! Mot magique. He looks at Sylvie, and she nods; Florida, why not?

  “My father loved to hear Sylvie play,” Alexandra says. “He could listen for hours.” There is no sign of rancor in her voice, though Sylvie listens closely for it. The pardon she sought from Isabelle has never come, but here is her daughter, forgiving her freely. When Alexandra asks her to play, Sylvie sits down at the piano without hesitation.

  The judge, cradling his snifter of brandy, looks at Sylvie’s face and for the first time he can understand why Julien chose passion over comfort; leaning forward to listen, Will, too, is struck by how the music reveals her hidden depths.

  Maybe it is a trick of the light, but Sylvie can almost see Julien in the chair where Luc sits, his blue eyes opaque, his thoughts far away, dreaming perhaps of a future that must seem as distant to him as foreign lands to her.

  Imagine, Julien, America! Italy! Just look at me.

  She comes to the end of the piece, and the last note hangs in the air, elongated, endless, sustained not by her foot on the pedal, but by her reluctance to let it die away. But when it does finally fade, no one breaks the silence, and it seems amazing that a world so filled with perpetual motion should be capable of such stillness. Sylvie lifts her hands and thinks that subtle harmonies are the hardest to play, offering satisfactions as deep as they are modest. That’s what she must learn now, to be grateful for life’s modest satisfactions. And even as she thinks that, life magnanimously unfolds its hand and offers her more:

  I’m looking, chérie, I’m looking.

  I know Sylvie will not come to the window tonight. The living encircle her now, and down here in the shadows I relive the nights when I was among them, how she would glance toward me when the music ended. And I would look at her and look at her, filled with abiding thankfulness that I would see that beloved face every waking morning of my life.

  Reluctantly I turn away from her window and make my solitary way to the river. On the stone walls of the pier, I trace my name, the outline visible for an instant and then it vanishes, to be overwritten by other names, other stories. It is inevitable that in time our little lives should enrich collective memory, that breath should become spirit.

  And the spirit of the city claims me now as I look down on the river, deep as time. The cathedral across the tip of the island floats like an ark over dark waters. That its towers still rise toward the sky is a miracle. The retreating German army was ordered to burn it down, burn Paris and leave behind its smoldering remains. But even though the bridges were mined with explosives, the German general surrendered to the French without giving the order to detonate. By one of those grace notes that history sometimes provides, the city was saved and here we are, buffeted but still standing.

  I think of that cloudless day when Paris was liberated, on the feast day of the king who prayed for France to be rid of its Jews, the Saint Louis for whom the island is named on which I stand, as others did on that August dawn forty-five years ago, when the bells of Notre Dame, silent through the long years of the Occupation pealed out, the sound hovering in the air like a kestrel before dispersing in ever-widening circles toward the horizon. Then the cathedral’s deep-voiced bell, which had over the centuries intoned the coronation of kings and the end of wars, fell silent at last, its reverberating echo lingering in the air like a doubt resolved, announcing to the world, I AM.

  Alone tonight in the silence I feel it suffused still by the music, like a dream that leaves its impress on our already forgetful waking. I am no stranger now to miracles, and if Lilou can be raised from the dead by the relentless efforts of the living, then the living, too, can be lovingly—oh-so-lovingly—awaited by the dead. After the span allotted to her by capricious Time, one day Sylvie will push open that curtained door to come to me, and despite all that I have known, at the sight of her I will finally believe all losses are restored and sorrows end.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With love and thanks to Ruth and Arnold Greenfield for introducing my husband and me to Paris, which we love deeply both for its own sake and for theirs.

  I’m grateful to Francine Danzon for sharing her recollections of the roundup of French Jews during the Nazi occupation, a family history recounted by her son Marc Danzon in Le Cordon; to Hafiz Nouri of Galerie Bamyan for opening so many doors on Île Saint-Louis; to Didier and Marie-Jo Desmet, for allowing us to feel chez nous at quai d’Anjou; to Marie Houzelle for her helpful suggestions on the first draft, and to Véronique Schürr McMillan for her invaluable feedback on the final version. À vous tous, mes remerciements et mes amitiés.

  I’m fortunate to be accompanied on this journey by dear friends who are gifted writers and perceptive readers, especially Anabella Schloesser de Paiz, Rosalind Palermo Stevenson, and Lola Willoughby. I am also grateful to Ellen Levine for early encouragement and sage advice.

  Many thanks to Judy Sternlight, whose brilliant suggestions proved to be the turning point in the book’s trajectory; to my amazing agent, Marly Rusoff; and to my lovely editor, the inimitable Nan Talese. I’m also deeply appreciative of Carolyn Williams, Todd Doughty, Charlotte O’Donnell, Hannah Engler, Bette Alexander, and the superb team at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday for all the ways in which they have contributed to this book. Un grand merci to Emily Mahon for the dazzling jacket, which captures the spirit of Haunting Paris even better than I had hoped.

  A big thank you to Robert and Peg Boyers for including me in the wonderful literary community they’ve created through the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College; to my mother for fostering a lifelong passion for books; to the wise and generous teachers who have shaped me (though any errors in the book are my own); and, most of all, to MR, last and best of my teachers.

  A Note About the Author

  Mamta Chaudhry’s fiction, poetry, and feature articles have been published in the Miami Review, Illustrated Weekly of India, The Telegraph, The Statesman, Writer’s Digest, and The Rotarian, among others. Much of her professional career was spent as an inte
rviewer, announcer, and program director at television and classical radio stations in Calcutta, Gainesville, Dallas, and Miami. She lives with her husband in Coral Gables, Florida, and they spend part of each year in India and France. Haunting Paris is her first novel.

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