Shadows of Paris

by Eric D. Lehman

  “Yes, but they all clammed up when I mentioned it. I could ask Cygne, I guess.”

  “Very exciting,” Lucy gushed. “It’s your own private mystery to solve, William!”

  No, you are, I thought. “I’m not really the detective type,” I said out loud.

  “Well.” Lucy stuck out her gloved hand and shook mine firmly. “We should do this again some time. But make sure to read more of those books I gave you. I want an honest opinion.” With that, she turned and marched down Rue de Rivoli past the Tour de St. Jacques.

  ****

  The next few weeks are the fondest in a lifetime of memory, I think. One can never be sure, of course, and the surrounding events have colored this time a bright blue. But those next four weekends, walking Paris with Lucy, finding cafés for a crème and a chat, will always be precious and precise. During the week I devoured the books she fed me, finding pleasure in the cleverly executed stories of Guy de Maupassant, the comedy of Voltaire, and the romances of Alexandre Dumas. I returned from the École at three, stopping at the Rue Montorgueil to buy a wheel of cheese or a fine sausage, and spent the next six or seven hours reading until bed. In the mornings I no longer relied on oatmeal, but stopped for a baguette on the way to work, devouring it slowly throughout my classes. The exception was Saturday, when I waited at the Fontaine des Innocents for Lucy to arrive. She always had a croissant and coffee in her slim hands, walking briskly toward me.

  One day we tramped the length of the Canal St. Martin, crossing and re-crossing it on splendid arched bridges. We sauntered up and down the Champs-Élysées, pretending to be rich Americans. Another day we walked to the Luxembourg Gardens and watched the bocce players for three hours, while discussing The Count of Monte Cristo and its ripple effect of prison break stories. Though it was winter, the Parisians never seemed to lose a step, and I don’t remember ever feeling too cold to walk a few miles more.

  There was one day, though, when the wind whipped along the Seine a little too smartly for my taste. Lucy and I were browsing the famous quay booksellers, and she was lamenting the decline in their quality.

  “Shouldn’t you as a purveyor of fine translations be glad that they are selling this stuff?” I picked up a plastic Eiffel Tower pin, then put it back on a shelf full of novelty Moulin Rouge windmills.

  “I suppose.” She wrinkled her nose. “But it just doesn’t speak well for our city.”

  I was cold and not really thinking when I noticed the Musée d’Orsay’s huge railroad station bulk looming to our left. We were passing the rhinoceros statue, and I turned onto the terrace. “Look! There’s always a long line, and no one today. We should check it out.” I didn’t wait for her answer and strode into building up to the guards, who patted me down roughly. Lucy was not with me, standing at the revolving door uncertainly. Only then I remembered the first experience at Rodin, but it was too late. The guards were waving me through to the ticket counter. I gave my companion an encouraging wave and mouthed, “Come on!”

  As I purchased the tickets I heard Lucy’s voice. “William,” she began. “I’m not really in the mood.” But the tickets were in my hand, and we were in front of the gift shop already.

  “We don’t have to stay long. Let’s just warm up for a bit. We can even make fun of the art if you don’t like the Impressionists.”

  “No, that’s not it.” She snapped, then said. “Don’t expect me to have a good time.”

  I tried to look in her stormcloud eyes, which were down on the floor. “I can’t imagine you not having a good time,” I blurted out stupidly.

  She chuckled, but hollowly, I thought. Nevertheless, I led her into the huge central hall, which was populated by expressive statues and a crowd of doorways to choose from. We tried one and browsed past Corot, Ingres, and Delacroix. Lucy was silent, and I tried to fill the space with banal comments, like “That guy looks mean” or “Check out the dog in the corner of that one.” No response, and her porcelain hands clenched tightly around her gloves, a posture I had never seen before.

  We wandered across the hall and found works like Monet’s wintry white La Pie and Manet’s lushly sexual Le déjeuner sur l’herbe. I was quite stunned by the collection, and it came back to me that I had not entered a museum in five months in Paris. Suddenly, I realized I had lost Lucy. I waited a few minutes in a nexus hallway, but she didn’t appear. Maybe she moved ahead, to an upper floor. I took the stairs and found Rodin’s sculptures and symbolist paintings. I stopped briefly in front of The Lamentations of Orpheus by Alexandre Seon and began to feel nauseous, gagging a little at bad memories. Now I didn’t want to be here.

  I moved through the rooms at a lightning pace, searching. The bookstore maven was nowhere. I bounded up the escalators to the top floor, where I slowed down, finding the Renoir and Degas soothing, their soft lines and bright living portraits cheering me a little. Then I saw Lucy.

  She was sitting in the next room, which was rainbowed with Van Goghs. Her foggy eyes were blank, staring at the self-portrait with its sky-blue shirt and wheatfield hair.

  “I saw another one in Amsterdam,” I offered, sitting down. “Many years ago. I was too young to appreciate it then. I was more interested in…well, in the hash bars,” I lied awkwardly.

  Lucy said nothing for a minute, and we just stared at the painting. Van Gogh’s haunted eyes bored into mine the same way hers did. Finally, a whisper emerged from deep in her throat. “You shouldn’t have brought me here.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I wish you’d tell me why.” My mind whirled through possible reasons, but my suppositions were all absurd.

  “I can’t…it’s stupid. I was a different person back then.” She shook her head.

  “Just tell me what this painting means to you, then,” I urged.

  “This one? It’s nothing, just Van Gogh’s eyes; they’re accusing, don’t you think?”

  I nodded, but for some reason didn’t want to let her escape. “Is it this place? Did something happen?”

  “It’s just a museum, William,” she snapped.

  I continued pushing, and only Van Gogh knows why. “Lucy, you can tell me. We’re friends, aren’t we?” I said, not so sure now.

  “It has nothing to do with…damn it, why did you bring me here?” Her voice rose as she stood up, then sat down again. A docent moved to the doorway in front of the Degas sculptures where he could watch us.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you. If you tell me why…” I broke off this tactic. “Listen, Ms. Doubleday!” Her eyes shot to mine. “I am your friend, and you are going to tell me what is wrong.”

  “You’re not.” She stopped and her eyes swept around the room. “This all brings up bad stuff.”

  “Bad stuff is my bread and butter. That’s why I read so much.”

  Lucy did not laugh as I hoped. But after a moment she continued. “I didn’t tell you why I came to France? No, of course not. I came here to study painting at the École des Beaux-Arts. But before, I was in an accident, a car accident. I am…afterwards the doctor told me that my hands, my small motor coordination… Well.” She drew in a deep breath as if to control herself.

  “You were on life-support.” I said, shrewdly and probably cruelly.

  “Yes, how…the scar.” Her hand went to her throat and she glanced at me with a frightened frown. “They said there was…brain damage.” I could see that she was doing everything she could not to cry. “I came that autumn to Paris, and I failed. Or rather they rejected me.”

  “And that’s when the Navarres helped you.”

  “They are trustees.” Lucy shrugged. “And they took pity on my condition.” Her hands opened and closed rapidly on her gloves. “So now you know why I’ve avoided places like this.” She looked back at Van Gogh, then at the floor again. Her shoulders were hunched, defeated.

  I wanted so badly to fold her into my arms just then. But I didn’t. Oh, for Keats’ sake, I didn’t.

  ****

  There came a day soon after that when
I couldn’t avoid Cygne any longer. He came to observe my class, though it seemed he came reluctantly, to fulfill an obligation to a rule.

  “I must watch you today, for a report,” he grumbled, shoving his huge limbs into one of the tiny chairdesks in the back. The students glanced nervously at this intruder, giving him a wide berth. They all must have had Cygne for a class at one time or another, and clearly he was one of those teachers, unlike me, who was given enormous respect.

  The subject of the day was Tennyson, and after discussing the language of “The Eagle” and “The Splendor Falls,” lost on their francophone ears, I tackled “Ulysses.” Cygne had been feigning sleep, or actually napping, I couldn’t tell. But now his black eyes snapped open and he smiled.

  “What is Ulysses saying to his crew in this poem?” I asked in a rote voice.

  The students gave me the usual silence, but one of the boys raised a hand.

  “Yes, Jacques.”

  “He is telling them that they are old.” The others laughed.

  “That’s right.” I attempted a smile. “How does he feel about his family?”

  “He loves them?” One girl snickered. “Duh.”

  “No, stupide, he hates them.” Another stuck out her tongue.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But he certainly is looking for an excuse to leave.”

  At this I saw Cygne’s broad mouth turn upside down, and he looked around at the students, as if waiting for one to disagree.

  I continued. “He’s restless, and has, as he says, a ‘hungry heart’. In other words, he is unsatisfied, and so he wants to wander again, as he did in The Odyssey, a story that I know you’ve all read.”

  A crash made everyone jump. “No, Monsieur Byrnes!” Cygne barked. The desk part of his chair had snapped off. “I am sorry, but I know this poem, and I must disagree.”

  I was completely taken aback, stuttering and stammering. “Well, there are many…interpretations, and, uh…” I muttered. The students were not looking at me anyway, but at Cygne, who was holding the broken piece of wood in his hand like an axe.

  “That may be, but how do you explain that he is…” Cygne grabbed the textbook from a terrified student, and scanned the page. “Looking for a ‘work of noble note’ and wants to ‘seek a newer world’.” The huge man nodded at the students. “He is not wandering, not escaping. He goes to explore, to fight, to be un homme.”

  I shrugged. “I suppose you could read it that way. We each see what we want to.” I looked at him with pleading eyes, trying to stop this interruption.

  “No, Monsieur Byrnes. You must see this. Tennyson writes here ‘I cannot rest from travel: I will drink life to the lees.’ This poem tells us that we must swallow the ocean, Monsieur.”

  Now I was angry. “But he leaves his wife, after she waited twenty years for him to come home. Not to mention his son. He wants to go back to the ‘frolic welcome’ of his youth.”

  “Bah!” Cygne waved the desktop, and students squealed their chairs in all directions. “S’il vous plaît. The tone of the poem itself does not allow such readings. There is no wrongdoing here, only the best of human qualities, the résistance to death, the refusal to surrender. Monsieur Ulysses will not collaborate with his mortality.”

  “Sure,” I said weakly, wanting this to be over. “That’s a good reading, Monsieur Cygne. Merci.”

  The giant lapsed into silence, placing the desktop on the floor. I finished the class by moving quickly to the “Charge of the Light Brigade,” a poem I despised, and which I lamely connected to the statements about resistance.

  The students filed out, and I heard them explode into conversation in the hall. Cygne stood up, smiling. “Je suis désolé. I should not have interfered with the progress of your lecture.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, though I was still fuming.

  “No, no. You must let me make it up to you this Saturday evening. I will take you to my favorite restaurant here in the Marais.”

  “That’s not necessary,” I protested, wanting anything but a dinner with this loudmouthed oaf.

  “I insist. You will meet me at the corner of Rue Etienne-Marcel and Montorgueil at twenty hundred hours.”

  “I really don’t…”

  “Come, Monsieur Byrnes. We must, as Tennyson tells us, ‘drink life to the lees’.” He winked at me and strode out, looking back. “That is…an order?”

  I never hated him more than at that moment.

  ****

  Lucy and I had not made plans for that Saturday, and I wasn’t sure that she even wanted to see me again. But I was at the Fountain of the Innocents anyway, thumbing through the poems of André Breton. I had lost myself in the verse, and only realized how late it was when I saw the cafés opening for lunch. She wasn’t coming and I had run out of books. Should I head to the Rose? Or perhaps somewhere else entirely, I thought bitterly.

  As I was deciding what to do, I heard my name. It was Lucy, standing awkwardly in the shadow of the fountain, and she was not alone. A younger man with long black hair tied loosely in a ponytail stood next to her, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Byrnes,” Lucy said. “This is Paul.”

  I stood up and extended my hand. “Bonjour, Monsieur.”

  He took it limply. “Bonjour.”

  Lucy indicated the canvas bag at her side. “I brought you more books. I’ve told Paul about our little literary lunches.”

  “Yes.” I was confused by this whole scene. Was this a friend of hers? A regular customer at the shop? Surely not…

  “Oui, Monsieur. When I discovered that mon epouse had a new friend, I told myself I must have to meet you.”

  I reeled momentarily. This man was five years younger than Lucy at least, and though his features looked all right to me, he wasn’t the fine Merovingian nobleman I had pictured.

  “Perhaps somewhere close by?” Lucy said, and I heard desperation in her voice.

  “Bien. I know a place.” I turned and led the couple across Les Halles, my mind in turmoil. I stopped in front of Au Pied du Cochon, right at the base of Saint Eustache Cathedral.

  “Oui, I know this place!” The young man, who I thought of as Navarre, cried. “This is for tourists.”

  “Is it?” I asked. “Perhaps another café then?”

  “No, no.” Navarre smiled. “I love these places. They are, how you say, kitsch.”

  “Right.” A smartly dressed waiter led us to a table by the windows, which looked out onto the bare winter garden, and the curve of the Bourse de Commerce. Paul began talking very quickly to the waiter in French.

  “I have ordered for us,” he announced.

  That was the beginning of one of the worst meals of my life. I picked at the food, which looked appetizing enough, and so did Lucy. Navarre wolfed down soup and bread, cheese and pâté de foie gras, while plying me with questions about books I had read, always ending with, “Oh, well. If you had read such and such, you would know…”

  Lucy said very little, only answering Paul’s more obscure inquires, when I floundered. However, when Navarre paused, taking a huge bite of bread slathered with duck liver, Lucy broke in, addressing me almost like we were friends.

  “Monsieur Byrnes, I have found your Nigerian teacher.”

  “Really?” I leaned forward with interest. “Where?”

  She chuckled. “I misspoke, I guess. Apparently the mystery is bigger than we thought. He disappeared.”

  “Well, I know that.”

  “No, I mean he really disappeared. There was a manhunt by the police, and a bit of a scandal for the École. That’s why no one talks about it.”

  “Scandal? How is it their fault?”

  “He was about to be fired for something, and the police investigated. All very hush-hush.”

  “Did they ever uncover anything?”

  “No. The most popular theories in the papers were that he got in trouble with a French girl, and either had to leave, or was killed be
cause of it.”

  “Killed!”

  “Well, it was only a theory. I think it is much more likely he fled. Besides, it could have been something else entirely. No one ever found out.”

  “Wow.”

  “Maybe there are clues at the apartment?”

  “I don’t think so, but maybe I should dig around a bit.”

  Navarre had been watching this exchange with cold blue eyes. “So, Monsieur, how is it you have come to us here? Does your wife not miss you?”

  A shock ran up my arm. “She’s…”

  “Don’t bother him about that,” pleaded Lucy.

  “Well, I just find it interesting. I am curious about the domestic relations of others.”

  Lucy looked out the window, flushed.

  I cleared my throat. “She’s not…I mean, she’s gone.”

  “Oh ho!” Navarre reached across and slapped me on the shoulder. “I am sorry, mon ami. There are so many getting le divorce these days.”

  “Well…” I began, then closed my mouth. Let him think what he wants to. I glanced at Lucy, and saw her slate eyes drilling into me, and looked away, flagging down the waiter for l’addition.

  Navarre kept it up. “I notice, however, that you wear your ring. This is unusual.”

  Infuriated, I turned on him, not thinking about Lucy. “I notice that neither of you wear yours. This is unusual, too. No?”

  “Ah, that is because I do not let her! Here in France, marriage is…society? It is for the purposes of taxes. She is no slave to wear a manacle.” Navarre laughed, draining his glass and letting me take the check.

  I looked at Lucy and saw she was blushing fiercely, and caught a flash of rage before she looked down into her lap. During the meal, I had caught wafts of that puzzling scent emanating from her brown hair. But now I recognized the smell, and snorted at my stupidity. It was the stench of books.

  Outside, we all shook hands like strangers who had just met, and Lucy offered me the canvas bag silently. I walked north, past the Cathedral, across Etienne-Marcel, and up Tiquetonne. At the apartment I found that the pencil I often kept in my pocket had been snapped into six pieces. I felt a great revulsion welling in me for Navarre, for Paris, and for myself. There were five hours until I had to meet Cygne, and I collapsed on the small couch, ready to leave France on the next plane rather than do so. Nothing mattered anymore, and this cursed city had become my hell.