Lisette's Paris Notebook

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘Do you believe in curses?’ I asked, subsiding onto her client chair. My forehead was hot where the woman’s finger had been. I didn’t want to believe it, but I was also, at the same time, spooked and thrilled. I’d been cursed! What a great story to tell! Hugo would love it, so would Ami.

  Madame Christophe gave an elegant shrug. ‘It is what they are good at,’ she acknowledged, hesitating between her words. ‘I would be foolish not to believe a little.’

  ‘Can you lift it?’

  ‘Not entirely, but I also have some power. You will wash your face with this.’ She rummaged around in the desk drawer and drew out a gauze bag containing some soap. ‘And then come back to me. I will prepare something. It will not disappear the curse. You will have always been touched, but that may be a good thing, who knows?’

  The soap smelled of plain old comforting lavender. I checked in the mirror but there were no visible signs of the curse.

  ‘It was the dogs I minded most,’ I said when I’d finished, ‘they weren’t happy. They didn’t want to be with her. That’s why I stared back. I’d have been scared if it hadn’t been for those poor dogs but they made me angry.’

  Madame Christophe nodded. ‘She didn’t pick the right person,’ she said. ‘She didn’t know you were Australian. We will cleanse you now.’ She lit a stub of herbs and waved it around me and chanted something I couldn’t understand. I wanted to laugh. I was in Paris, I’d been cursed by a Romany in the metro and now I was being smudged by a French clairvoyant wearing stilettos and a leopard-print scarf.

  ‘It is done,’ Madame Christophe said after a while. ‘Of course, you have still been cursed. But we have done what we can to turn it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I was wobbly all of a sudden. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Go and rest. It is the smudging and the curse in battle. You will be tired.’

  She was right, although I didn’t think it was due to an internal battle between good and evil. I was still in shock. The smoke didn’t help. Its slightly acrid smell was lodged in my throat and my eyes watered. I stumbled upstairs, drank a glass of water, pulled the curtains shut and slipped into bed. I registered how cool the sheets felt before falling fast asleep.

  I woke when smells of cooking wafted up the stairs. There were a couple of other tenants who had stayed for the summer but they were mysterious beings. I hardly saw them – just caught the sound of a heel on the narrow stairs, or smelled their food. Someone on the floor below lived on Moroccan takeaway. I was hungry. Was it too soon to text Hugo? The yellow daisy bag was perched on my bed. It was so perfect for my Paris dress! I should at least text him and thank him again. Maybe he’d want dinner?

  But when I stretched out my arm, the numbers had smudged, some even obliterated except for a faint trace of blue ink. How had that happened? I’d only been asleep, not swimming!

  It was the curse.

  I’d been stupid not to take it seriously. Despite Madame Christophe’s cleansing smudge sticks, it had worked. I stumbled downstairs to the shop.

  ‘Look!’ I held out my arm for her to inspect.

  ‘Ah, Lisette. Did you sleep?’

  ‘My arm.’ I waved it in front of her. ‘Where Hugo wrote his number.’

  Madame put her designer specs delicately on her nose and then held my arm still. Her fingernails were bright pink. They matched today’s leopard-print scarf perfectly. ‘Wrote his number?’

  ‘He had an appointment. He’d run out of cards. He wrote his number on my arm. The curse washed it off.’ I realised that tears had filled my eyes and I stopped babbling, ashamed.

  ‘Alas, yes. There is only a fragment of the number left. But why is this so important?’

  ‘Because . . . I don’t know. He lives with his uncle. He listens. He understood the whole . . .’ I paused, trying to work out whether Madame Christophe would understand ‘House of Estrogen’. I settled on ‘House of Women’ instead.

  Madame Christophe nodded, still holding my arm. ‘So, you think he is important to you?’

  ‘We’ve only just met.’

  ‘But you are crying,’ she pointed out, letting go of my arm and offering me a tissue from the packet for distressed clients that she kept in her drawer.

  ‘I’m cursed,’ I said, sitting down in her client’s chair, blowing my nose. ‘I’m cursed and he never had a chance to become important. She needn’t have cursed me, you know. I was already cursed. My father never had a chance of being important either. Mum hid him. No wonder I’m crap at men.’

  ‘Your mother hid him?’

  ‘She hid his photos from me.’

  ‘But you have them now?’

  ‘Yes, but I could have seen them earlier. She could have told me more. I might have been able to meet my father. Now he’s dead.’ Tears welled in my eyes and I scrubbed at them with the moist tissue.

  ‘Did you ask?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but she made it impossible. She wanted a life without chips or cracks. She didn’t let me ask.’

  ‘She was humiliated,’ Madame Christophe said slowly. She sat down behind the desk and Napoléon jumped onto her knee. ‘I think you understand humiliation, Lisette?’

  Heat rose in my face. First Ben and then Anders and Gabi! Oh, yes, I understood humiliation. I nodded, shamefaced.

  ‘It is difficult to simply brush off humiliation. Your mother, she would have thought everything was settled. She and your father would live together, happily ever after. He thought the same, perhaps. Then, when he thought that ever after would not, perhaps, suit him, he left her. She was seven months pregnant, Lisette.’

  ‘I know,’ I whispered, ‘but he was my father. And now all I have is some of his money – well, I will have when the estate is settled. He got married, Madame.’

  Madame Christophe nodded. ‘I know this. But you are his only child. You were never forgotten.’

  ‘But is that enough? What if Mum had talked to me about him, what if I’d tracked him down?’

  Madame Christophe shrugged and scratched Napoléon behind the ears. ‘We always expect the what if to be better than the what was,’ she said. ‘But it is not always true. Let us play a different version of this game. What if you had found him, and he had turned his attention from his painting – he was an artist, yes? – and said, very nice, lovely, now please, I have no time?’

  ‘I would have – I don’t know.’

  ‘I think you, too, would have been humiliated. And then perhaps bitter and you would have thought, he does not love me and nor has he ever loved me. When perhaps the truth was that he did love you, in his own way. He did not forget you. When he made his will, he made provision for you. He would have thought, I will leave Lisette something, enough for her to find her way in the world as a young woman.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Madame Christophe agreed. ‘Now, Lisette, wash your face and put on your Paris dress that goes so well with your new handbag and let us proceed to dinner.’

  ‘You and I are going to dinner?’

  ‘With Napoléon, of course,’ Madame Christophe nodded. ‘It will celebrate surviving the curse.’

  ‘But Hugo’s number didn’t survive.’

  ‘I would not worry about that. You can always find him. You have wi-fi.’

  She had a point. I could easily track Hugo down – if he and his uncle were the kind of businesspeople who had a website and checked their emails. That didn’t really fit with my idea of eccentric antique dealers, but then I remembered Hugo’s smart phone. Maybe I could do that. Maybe I would do that. I cheered up and the idea of dinner out – a real French dinner out – sent me speeding up the stairs to get dressed. My reflection smiled at me as though that young woman was ready for whatever life offered her. I blew her a kiss, just because.

  Mackenzie said that a mini-crini sounded like a fat-saturated, high-salt, hidden-sugar treat that the Americans would invent. I told her it was Vivienne Westwood’s much-abbreviated take on the crinoline. It is so good to
have a friend in Paris to hang out with. She and Goldie are the best, although I feel closer to Mackenzie. She’s Canadian, after all. That’s almost Australian!

  The bistro was one I’d walked past a dozen times before but never gone into. Unlike the other cafes, there were no tables outside, and sometimes it was open and other times not. Madame Christophe sailed in and was greeted by the waiter with a warm kiss on each cheek. I was introduced and then Madame was called out from the kitchen to meet us. Madame was a short, fat woman who rolled her ‘r’s’ with a guttural passion. When she gently pinched my cheek, as though checking whether or not I was ripe, her hands smelled of lemon and flour and I was suddenly very hungry.

  ‘I will order for us, yes?’ Madame Christophe didn’t wait for my reply, but conferred with both the waiter and Madame, whose accent made it impossible for me to understand anything. I smiled and nodded, hoping my enthusiasm made up for my lack of comprehension. Everything on the menu was discussed at length and then everything that wasn’t on the menu was also deliberated over until, eventually, choices were made that caused everyone pleasure.

  ‘This is food from the real France,’ Madame Christophe said. ‘We will eat like peasant royalty tonight, Lisette. This is the last place in Paris you can eat food that tastes of the countryside, the soil that grew it. You will let your mother know of this – it will interest her greatly.’

  The waiter appeared with a bottle of wine and poured a little into Madame Christophe’s glass. He beamed at her as she tasted the wine.

  ‘Superb,’ she said, ‘which is what I expected. Lisette – to your health.’

  ‘And to yours,’ I stammered, raising my glass.

  ‘Lisette was cursed by a Romany this afternoon,’ Madame Christophe confided to the waiter, ‘but I did a cleansing and now she is left, perhaps, with only the wisdom of the curser. Who knows?’

  The waiter tutted and exclaimed and there was talk of the healing power of food and then toast arrived along with a chunk of some kind of terrine. Madame Christophe smiled and fed Napoléon a small corner. ‘You will never taste terrine as good again,’ she said, ‘it is all about the choice of pigs. Madame has a brother. He takes the pig foraging. They are pigs that are delighted with life. You can taste their delight.’

  The terrine was salty with a slight tang of aniseed. Did delight taste of apples and hazelnuts? I hoped so, for the sake of the pigs.

  By the time we finished our meal, we were the only ones left in the bistro and I was practically in a food coma. The waiter came to the table with a tray of coffees, an unmarked bottle and some glasses. Madame came out of the kitchen and I noticed through my daze that she’d taken her apron off, swiped on some lipstick and tidied her hair. Coffee was passed around, more alcohol came out and they both sat down with us. I’d have thought that the alcohol would make it harder for me to understand Madame, but it was as though it had loosened not just my speech but also my hearing. I stuttered out my thanks for the wonderful meal and told her that I understood she’d been brought up on a farm and had learnt cooking from generations of country women. Both she and the waiter crowed over my French as though they, themselves, had taught me. More of the sharp, warm liquor was poured and Pascal made a toast to Madame, whose name was Jeanne. Then the table was cleared and Madame Christophe produced some tarot cards and began to read their fortunes, while I sat back sleepily.

  There was happiness due in Pascal’s life, she told him, and he agreed. Proudly he admitted that his daughter was having a baby boy in early winter. Madame Jeanne, Madame Christophe prophesied, would receive good news from abroad. Madame made us all accept another glass of liquor. Her friend was coming from America, she confided. They had been corresponding by email and had decided it was time to meet in person. She disappeared to the kitchen and brought back – of all things – a tablet, found a Facebook page and passed it around so that we all had a chance to admire the photograph of a smiling, rotund man brandishing barbeque tongs.

  ‘He has his own restaurant,’ she said, ‘but he is leaving it in the hands of his son and daughter-in-law. They specialise in Tex-Mex. France will open his eyes to the real food. I will take him to my brother’s farm. He will learn.’

  ‘So, how did you meet?’ I asked through a fog of eau de vie.

  ‘On the internet,’ she said, ‘that is how everyone meets these days. It is – what do they call it – a village of the world?’

  ‘It is Lisette’s turn,’ Pascal announced. ‘Madame Sylvie, you must read the cards for Lisette.’

  ‘Ask a question,’ Madame Christophe ordered, ‘and shuffle the cards.’

  The only question I could think of was whether or not I’d see Hugo again. I asked that and moved the cards around the tabletop. I thought it was a silly question – of course I wouldn’t see him again, the curse had erased his number. I was destined to be single forever. I’d have to become a crazy dog lady. I asked anyway.

  Madame Christophe began to lay the cards out and Pascal and Madame Jeanne leant in to see, as though my future was as important to them as their own.

  ‘This is the foundation of your question,’ Madame Christophe said. ‘A young man, creative and business-minded.’ ‘Ooh.’ Madame Jeanne gave me a knowing look. ‘A young man! Is he handsome?’

  I blushed. ‘I suppose so,’ I admitted, ‘he has a nice smile, but I don’t really know him.’

  ‘This is in the past’ – Madame Christophe flipped up another card – ‘another man, but not so pleasant. This is someone who is cruel and wilful. He is a source of unhappiness.’

  I pretended to be mystified but my colour heightened. It was clearly Anders.

  By the end of the reading I still didn’t know if I was ever going to see Hugo again but I had learnt that I needed to see beyond the superficial and that an unexpected gift was going to lead to happiness. Pascal and Madame Jeanne exchanged meaningful glances as though they could both see my future quite clearly.

  ‘A good outcome,’ Madame Christophe said, gathering up her cards, shuffling them and putting them back in the velvet bag. ‘Yes, Lisette, a very good outcome. Fortune will smile upon you.’

  I tried to be suitably pleased but yawned instead. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I think it’s all the cognac.’

  Madame Christophe nodded. ‘Not to mention the curse. You are possibly still involved in internal conflict. It is tiring.’ ‘That woman did the devil’s work,’ Madame Jeanne agreed and crossed herself discreetly. ‘The next time you pass a church, Lisette, you should light a candle.’

  To my surprise, Madame Christophe paid for our dinner. She waved my protests away. ‘I invited you,’ she said, ‘you are my guest. It was a pleasure, Lisette.’

  Despite the food, the wine and the cognac, it took me a long time to go to sleep. I thought about what Hugo had said – how his uncle had buried himself in things from the past, to avoid the pain of his own past. Did my mother create order and perfection to make up for my father walking out on her? Sometimes her fussing drove me mad – I wanted to tear the petals off her roses or write something rude right across the mirror in the studio. At other times, walking in and seeing the pretty cups on a tray, the vase of fresh flowers and smelling the essential oils she vaporised made me calm and happy.

  ‘So do you feel you’re looking after your uncle?’ I’d asked Hugo at lunch.

  ‘I used to think he’d just disappear without me. He’d burrow so far into his books he’d never come out again. Lately, though, I’ve noticed he actually does have a life of his own. It was a bit of a shock, to be honest. I’d thought I was indispensable, but I’m not. He has friends. He goes to the pub. He plays snooker on Saturday nights and darts on Thursdays.’

  ‘At least you’re doing something real,’ I’d said gloomily.

  ‘For the next while,’ Hugo had said. ‘I might do something else in a few years. Anyway, you want to be an art historian, don’t you?’

  ‘I thought I did. But I don’t know – it’s all so remote, isn
’t it?’

  ‘It’s an education.’

  ‘The problem is that all the art’s hanging on gallery walls,’ I’d said. ‘You can’t, you know, take it down, look at it properly. You can’t touch it. That’s why I like clothes. Or jewellery. I like things you can pick up, turn around or wear. I’d like – I don’t know, to buy things for movie sets.’ I had sounded so hopelessly young and stupid that I’d ducked my head in embarrassment. It was like saying you wanted to be a fashion designer – how many girls wanted that? Naturally, I’d wanted to do that, too. I didn’t tell Hugo.

  ‘Or go into the antique business?’ Hugo said. ‘That’s what Unc and I do – pick things up, turn them around and then sell them. When we’re lucky.’

  It didn’t sound like a bad job, I thought. I wasn’t at all sure what I’d do with an art history degree, even if it was an education. Once I’d thought of it as a way to somehow get closer to my father – that one day, if we ever met, I’d be able to tell him I was working in his field. It was never going to happen now. We would never be able to have the conversations I’d imagined throughout my childhood.

  In honour of my education, I decided the next morning I’d visit the Louvre. I announced this to Madame Christophe over breakfast. I thought she’d applaud my choice but instead she shook her head vehemently.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, you must visit next door – the museum of the arts decorative. There is an exhibition there of underthings. It will interest you.’

  ‘Underthings?’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘I would accompany you, but alas, I have clients booked. Perhaps you should ask that girl with the boy’s name? She would enjoy it, I am sure.’

  I stomped back upstairs to see what Madame Christophe could possibly mean and discovered that there was an exhibition of underwear, including crinolines and bustles, on at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Mackenzie would enjoy that, I thought, and Ethan had gone back to Canada, so she might want cheering up. I texted her straight away.