Death of a Century

by Daniel Robinson

  As he crossed the hotel’s foyer, the old man raised his palsied hand and said with a smile, “Bon chance, Monsieur Gresham.”

  “Merci,” answered Joe.

  He walked out into a thick and muddy morning fog. Underneath the fog, however, the city hustled as though shaking its inhabitants from head to foot. He walked to the boulevard Saint-Germain and then along the wide street. A cadence of sounds linked sidewalk cafés—unmufflered automobiles, morning-weary prostitutes, gendarmes in their rain slickers, sleeping drunks, and roaming dogs. Joe stopped once to speak to a one-legged prostitute, turning his back on a pair of uniformed police as they walked past.

  His first stop would be the house of Marie Dillard on Saint Séverin. One of two things would result from a second visit. Either he would find out that she was as good as he hoped or as bad as he feared.

  The night’s fog held into the morning. The city’s gas lamps remained lit, casting a yellow haze across the sidewalks. The weather had changed drastically since the sun of the previous day. Joe smiled. The rain and fog were perfect for a man in exile. People on the street, including the police, kept their heads down against the dampness of the day. It was a weather in which everyone seemed to respect the autonomy and anonymity of others.

  He waited again beside the cathedral across from her building, standing under a leafless chestnut tree in the park-like ambulatory. His stomach sounded from morning hunger, but he did not want to find a patisserie and risk the chance of missing her. He knew the French well enough to know that she was not an early riser. She was not of the working class, not from where she lived nor from how she was dressed the previous day. Her day might not begin until noon, but he wanted to meet her whenever it was that she left her home.

  He waited over two hours, listening to the church’s bells twice ring in the hour as he marched in place for warmth, before he saw her door open. When she emerged from her building near eleven o’clock, Joe remained in the shadows of the ambulatory to watch her. Marie Dillard looked around but he was well back in the shadows and she moved quickly, as though nervous about something. She dropped her keys back into her purse as she fumbled with them before finally taking them out and placing them in the lock.

  He followed her as she crossed Saint Michel. She did not look behind as she walked quickly. Joe kept pace from less than a block behind. The crowds of people flowed around her like water parting around a tug and its barge. She turned along boulevard Saint-Germain, busy with people and automobiles and pigeons.

  Marie Dillard entered a café. Joe slid behind a clutch of people standing around a bus stop, newspapers raised to signal to others not to enter their little world. He waited for a moment, hands pocketed and collar up as much for anonymity as against the cold, before crossing the wide boulevard, dodging puddles and automobiles and trolleys and deliverymen in the old horse-drawn wagons bringing fresh produce from the countryside around Paris.

  The restaurant had a glassed front and long cream-colored awnings, Café de Flore scripted in green and gold on the awning. The trees in front of the restaurant were empty of leaves and wet from the fog and rain.

  Joe entered Brasserie Lipp across from the Flore, walking through the glassed entry with its tables already taken by straw-hatted Americans bent on the French experience they had heard about in their eating clubs of Princeton or Harvard. He chose a table in the restaurant’s front from which he could watch the Flore’s door.

  A waiter in black suit, white shirt, and bow tie, white apron from waist to the tops of his polished black shoes, took his order of Alsatian beer sausages. He bought a copy of the Herald Tribune from a paperboy passing through the brasserie and sat back in the wood and leather chair, watching across the street while scanning the newspaper, and he took advantage of the moment to order a meal. A man at a table opposite him in the small restaurant sat with his back to a mirror eating bread and drinking coffee slowly, as though the acts took forethought. The man, young and not quite gaunt, looked hungry and appeared to Joe to be making his simple meal of bread last as long as possible, as though exacting penance in his meager feast.

  Joe sat back and drank his beer and ate his sausage, waiting for Marie across the boulevard to finish her meal. He glanced through the newspaper again, reading a short article on the death of Rose Shaunessy, which according to the Paris coroner was a suicide: “Suicide during temporary insanity brought on by a quarrel with her lover.” He folded and dropped the newspaper on the empty chair next to him, thinking about how fiction becomes fact and fact becomes fiction. The man opposite him had wiped his plate clean with bread and sat back with a large coffee and a pad of writing paper and sharpened pencils on the table in front of him. Joe hoped the man’s manuscript, whatever it was, would not cause as many problems to as many people as Gresham’s had.

  Joe finished his lunch and the Herald and watched the man, who was dressed as a worker and looked as though he could be a worker but obviously wasn’t, for a working man would not be lounging in a café with pencils and paper as the afternoon hours passed. He drank his beer and another and ordered a third just to keep from being asked to leave, but let it sit.

  Finally, Marie left the Flore with a man whom Joe did not recognize nor could see well. He wore his trench coat with the collar pulled up and his fedora low over his eyes, and when he spoke, Marie turned toward him.

  Joe watched them as they stood in front of the Flore on the wet sidewalk, sparrows jumping around them in search for breadcrumbs. Not far away in the branches of the leafless trees, other sparrows sat puffed against the cold. Joe left a pile of coins on the table and went to stand in the glassed front with the loud Americans, college boys intent on sampling every bit of the Paris expatriate scene they had read about in the pages of Vanity Fair.

  When they separated to leave, the man turned down a side street while Marie Dillard walked back alone along boulevard Saint-Germain. Joe watched the man walk away, hunched into himself and not looking over his shoulders, before turning in Marie’s direction. He let her get ahead before he crossed the street and once more fell in behind.

  He needed her to understand what was happening, that he was not a murderer, not the person who had tried to kill her brother. It wasn’t out of sentiment that he needed her understanding, however; it was from necessity. If Paul was still alive, Joe needed to talk with him, and he needed her to take him to her brother, to help him get into Paul’s hospital room. So he would try once more before finding another way.

  After a hundred yards, he slipped up next to her on the sidewalk. He gently entwined his arm with her near arm and slowed her to a stop. A few people grumbled at the pair’s sudden and disruptive halt in the sidewalk, but soon the flow of people accommodated their little island.

  Before she said anything, Joe said, “I just need to talk with you.”

  He looked at her and saw nothing other than shock.

  He spoke quickly, not giving her a chance to interrupt, “What happened to your brother—I had nothing to do with that. I did not know your brother. Let me talk with you for a few minutes. Here,” he lifted an arm, “in the open. You choose a place where you are comfortable. I just need to talk with you for a minute.”

  She looked at him with her mouth open and her eyes tight and sharp.

  “Just give me a few minutes. That’s all,” he said, hopeful. “Please.”

  A large truck droned past on the boulevard and in the quiet that followed it, he repeated, “Please.”

  She opened her mouth as though to speak. She looked around at the people passing them on the sidewalk and at the fronts of stores and then at the sky. Then she looked at him with hard eyes. “Leave me alone. Leave my brother alone. Haven’t you done enough harm?”

  It was a good question, if Joe had time to consider it. He held out his hand. “Wait. Please,” he said.

  She looked at him, her body half-turned as she decided whether to wait or to leave. Her face was white, her eyes tight.

  Joe sighed and sp
oke softly, “Your brother has a manuscript—”

  She cut him off, turning to face him, “Stop it.” She looked at him quickly, a hard glance. “If it did not burn in his house, then it is in Tours.”

  “Tours?”

  “At the monastery there. Paul lived there until three-four weeks ago. He left some of his things behind. He was returning for them this week. Then you. . . .”

  “It wasn’t me,” he said.

  “Shut up,” she hissed. “I don’t care. I don’t care about you and I don’t care about your book.”

  “Listen—”

  She slapped him across the cheek.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, her body shaking. “Go to Tours. Tell them I sent you. I will even have a message delivered to them to expect you. Just never approach me again.” And then to punctuate her words, she added, “Bastard,” and walked away.

  He rubbed his cheek and watched her disappear into the sidewalk crowd. An old man caned over to him, a smile on his weathered face. “Femme,” he said, shaking his head as though passing on information he had learned the long and hard way. “Ils ne vous laissent jamais les comprendre. C’est comme essayer de décrire la couleur rouge.” He shrugged and added, “Elle sera de retour. Après elle sent que vous avez assez souffert, elle sera de retour.”

  He caned off, his head lowered and shaking.

  Joe only understood about half of what the man said, but he agreed. It wasn’t, however, Marie’s gender that he did not understand.

  He felt the uncomfortable tethers of being controlled by someone else. Why would she send him to Tours to retrieve the manuscript if she thought he was responsible for the fire? He would go to Tours. He didn’t understand if the rules of the game had changed or if he was in a different game altogether. But he would go to Tours the next morning.

  He checked his watch—nearly half past two—and took the Metro across to the Right Bank and to the American Express office at 11 rue Scribe where he booked a train passage for the next day to Tours. When asked, Joe gave his name as Diamond Dick Quire. The young man, an American with slicked back hair and wearing Cortland eyeglasses, was efficient and humorless when Joe said that he’d lost his passport the night before in some “café in the Latin Quarter.” With a frustrated breath, the young man issued the tickets and warned Joe to visit the embassy as soon as possible. Joe thanked him and told him that it was next on his list.

  It was a lie, of course, and right then he had more pressing matters, find Quire and then find a place to stay the night. His hotel would be watched by one or both of the groups he needed to avoid. As afternoon slid into evening, he walked. He strolled past the Hotel-Dieu on Île de la Cite, but was suspicious of too many people loitering. He walked on. The small side streets were dark and empty of people. Joe preferred the night that way. Once, looking back over his shoulder, he saw someone looking at him from a doorway. He stepped into a recess and waited, but nobody came along. Most likely he had seen someone stepping out for a cigarette before dinner. The closer he came to the boulevard Saint-Michel, the louder the street became with taxis and crowds of people, a league of languages from several continents accumulating in concert. He crossed the boulevard and walked to rue de Buci, once again to spend an hour in the shadows of a building watching, this time across from the Gentilhomme.

  Quire rounded the corner opposite him, walking along the street with his body hunched and hands tight in his overcoat and looking very much like a roughly chiseled chunk of Vermont granite. Joe stayed in the shadows and watched the street behind Quire, looking for anybody who might have followed him. He saw a handful of people milling along, but could not tell if anyone was seriously behind Quire.

  He stepped into the light of a lamppost and motioned to Quire, who raised his head, nodded, and crossed the street. A large automobile, dark in color and dark in the street’s half-light, pulled to the curb down the street. Joe watched but nobody left the vehicle and he could not see into the windows.

  “Lots of people are looking for me. Possibly for you, too,” Joe said when Quire walked up. “Let’s find someplace else to talk.”

  Quire nodded. “Fine by me. There’s always a door to walk into in Paris this time of night.”

  “First, let’s find a way to get rid of whoever is in that car back there.”

  Quire looked over his shoulder. “You sure they’re interested in us?”

  “I’m not certain of a thing anymore. They just pulled over at the wrong time.”

  “You sure you don’t want to find out?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Quire pinched his lips tight together and nodded. “Okay.”

  Quire took Joe by the arm and led him toward the large, full boulevard Saint-Germain. “In one door and out another,” he said.

  It did not take long to leave behind whoever might have been following them. Crossing streets, recrossing them, changing directions, in and out of restaurants, front doors, back doors, side doors, the Metro, and finally a taxi ride across town to Montmartre and Zelli’s Jazz Club.

  “I know a guy there,” Quire said as they crossed the rain-slick roads to the other side of town, “an American Negro in the band. He was at the Champagne with a group of Legionnaires. He can put us up for a night or two.”

  Joe agreed. A good drink was always welcome, even when caught in a tight spot, for it helped relax the mind. He felt restless, he had no other plan, so he sat back to enjoy the taxi ride for as long as it took. He watched the old buildings pass in the commencing rain and the people on the sidewalks walking quickly between doorways, some dancing on a sidewalk corner to the sounds of a small street band. There was the occasional emptiness of the city, the dark side streets and the empty trees like knife shadows on the street.

  Zelli’s Jazz Club was crowded, smoky, and noisy. The band’s music slapped them as soon as they entered. Quire stopped and breathed in a full lung of air, coughing as he exhaled. He smiled and looked around and waved to someone across the room. People were jammed tight inside the club. Joe and Quire found room at the bar. They ordered beers for dinner and stood back to watch the jam of people dancing in one place and the Negro band at their instruments, sweating and smiling and yelling to the dancers and at each other.

  “That’s him,” Quire said, leaning close to Joe’s ear to be heard over the band’s music and the noise of the crowd. “On the drums.”

  Joe nodded, watching the black man go on his drums, hard and carefree and stirring the dancers in front of him to a crescendo of movement. He smiled as he played, watching the dancers, and sometimes he would yell out to them, “Thaaat’s riiight. Yeah, thaat’s sooo goood.” And he would laugh and smile again. Joe smiled at the man’s enjoyment of his place, an infectious and unbridled enjoyment.

  The music stopped, and Quire said, “Damn fine drummer.”

  “I agree,” Joe said. “You said he was at the Champagne with the Legion?”

  “I did. There were lots of Americans, black and white, in the Legion before we actually joined the war, you know. Lots of Americans to begin with. He was one of the few who lived through that morning. The Legionnaires suffered badly, you know.”

  “Everyone knows,” Joe said.

  Quire coughed a laugh. “Shit, they probably even know in Helena.”

  The music began again. Joe and Quire slipped into a silence. Joe watched the dancers, especially a beautiful woman with very short hair who was dancing right in front of the drummer. A tall and thin woman, young, gorgeous enough to know how gorgeous she was and that every man in the room was or had or would spend time watching her that night and thinking about what they would like to do with her. He envied the man dancing with her for what they would do later that night. He also wondered if that was how his life would turn out, watching from the sidelines as other people enjoyed the game. If he lived through the next twenty-four hours, he’d give it some serious thought.

  The music stopped again. Again Quire leaned over to speak, “You fight with any
of the Negro troops?”

  “No,” Joe said. “I think most of them were farther north from where I was.”

  Quire nodded. “Any problems with talking to a black man?”

  Joe looked at Quire. He thought for a moment. “I haven’t known many, but I knew a lot of Mexicans back in Colorado when I was growing up. People treated them like niggers, but my family taught me to treat a man as a man until he proves himself otherwise.”

  “That’s good,” Quire said. “Some Americans can’t do that, hell most Americans can’t. Over here, a black man is as good as a white man. Took me a little getting used to, I admit. I was raised a tad different.”

  “Now?”

  “Now,” he shrugged. “They bleed red just like me.”

  They drank their beers and another and another while the band played through its set. They did not talk because it was easier not to with the club’s noise and people breaking between them trying to find a bartender to serve them. The band rested, each member wiping his head with a towel before stepping from the stage to join one group or another in the crowd.

  “Quire-boy, man. Hahre you?” the black drummer said as he clapped Quire on the shoulder.

  “Great,” Quire said.

  “Thaat’s good.”

  “This is a friend of mine,” Quire said, reaching out for Joe. “Joe Henry meet Jacques Ballard. Don’t let the first name fool you, he may be from Paris, but as in Texas.”

  They shook hands, the first time Joe had shaken the hand of a black man. Joe was impressed by the size and power in the man’s hands. He was not a large man, but his fingers were the size and strength of hickory sticks. He shook Joe’s hand and smiled a bright and white smile that made Joe smile in return.

  “Got a favor to ask you,” Quire said.

  “Anything, Quire-boy. You just ask.”

  Quire gave Ballard an abbreviated explanation. The man listened attentively, asking few questions and nodding, his eyes seldom leaving Quire’s and then only to look at Joe. Joe could see Ballard’s jaw muscles tighten as Quire talked of the Champagne. Ballard’s eyes were seeing images from years earlier, men literally cut to pieces by German 77s, bodies lying across barbed wire and strewn throughout the no-man’s land like stepping stones and sometimes used as such when the retreat began. That battle, long over, had left its mark in the lines on Ballard’s face as certainly as though he had been hot-iron branded. Joe knew the distanced appearance of a man looking within himself, his soul and his own foul memories, at things he was unable to keep himself from seeing. It was a cauterized look that haunted him, because he also had those lost eyes that peered into the depths of an oblivion, and, rising from his past, he thought of a prayer gone wrong, “As it was then, is now, and ever shall be.”