In the Shadows of Paris

by Claude Izner

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  To those without whom

  Claude Izner would never have existed:

  Ruhléa and Pinkus

  Rosa and Joseph

  Étia and Maurice

  To Boris

  To our bouquiniste friends on the banks of the Seine

  When Paris closes its eyes at night

  In the dark of the cemetery

  Screams escape from the stones

  Of the wall

  Jules Jouy (Le Mur, 1872)

  So who ordered this terrible violence?

  Victor Hugo (‘Un cri’, L’Année terrible, 1872)

  Contents

  Plan of Victor Legris’s Paris

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Prologue

  Paris, spring 1891

  A WINDOW opened on the second floor and the light glancing off the panes caught the attention of a passer-by. He saw a woman leaning over a pot of geraniums, and next to it a little dog watching the comings and goings on Rue Lacépède, its muzzle pressed up against the latticed railing. The woman tipped a small watering can. Splish splash! Water dripped onto the pavement.

  The corpse lies face down on the ground. A pinkish trickle seeps from the faded blue jacket, staining the gutter. Already stiff, the fingers rest on the butt of a bayoneted rifle. A soldier in a grey greatcoat seizes the rifle; the blade pierces the lifeless body. The soldier braces himself to pull it out.

  The little dog barked; the image dissolved. The man quickened his pace, anxious to escape the past. But just as he reached Rue Gracieuse a horse yoked to a delivery cart stumbled and fell. The cart tipped on its side and began sliding down the hill, dragging the poor creature by its harness. The mare kicked, struggled and then gave up, defeated.

  The linesmen swarm before the shattered barricades. They take aim at the Communards who flee, trying desperately to rip the red stripes, their death warrant, off their trousers. A volley of machine-gun fire ploughs into a trench where a bay horse is trapped. A terrible whinnying rings out above the thud of bullets.

  A cry goes up: ‘The Versailles Army!’

  A headlong rush, caps, flasks, haversacks and belts scattered everywhere. The city has turned out its pockets.

  The man leant back against the shop front of a dairy. Eyes closed, jaw clenched, stifling a sob. He must rid himself of these images once and for all! When would they stop tormenting him? Would the passing years never drown out the horror?

  A few people had gathered around the cart. The driver, with the help of a local constable and a couple of passers-by, managed to get his horse back on its feet and with a crack of the whip he was off.

  The man moved on, calmed now by the peaceful surroundings of Rue de l’Estrapade. He passed a blacksmith’s reeking of singed hoof, then a confectioner’s and a drycleaner’s. A delivery girl came out of a bakery carrying a load of four-pound loaves. A costermonger wheeling her barrow cried out, ‘Cabbages! Turnips! Bushels of potatoes! Who’ll buy my lovely lettuces! Handpicked this morning at dawn!’

  In her curlpapers and faded calico dress she looked like a princess fallen on hard times. She winked at the man as he stepped aside to let her pass, and bawled at the top of her voice, ‘Cherry ripe! Cherry ripe! First crop of the season! Don’t be the last to taste them!’

  ‘Too dear,’ retorted a woman coming the other way.

  ‘That’s because they’re like gold dust and they still make cheaper earrings than rubies!’

  The man found himself singing:

  ‘I will for ever love the cherry season

  Those distant days have left in my heart

  A gaping wound!’ 1

  Ravaged façades of buildings, cobblestones blackened with gunpowder and strewn with belongings thrown from windows. In Place de l’Estrapade soldiers from the Versailles Army with their sabres and tricolour armbands form a firing squad. They aim their rifles at a Communard officer with double-braided silver bands on his cap.

  ‘Fire!’

  In Rue Saint-Jacques, the clatter of a passing cab freed the man from his nightmare. Some sparrows and pigeons were fighting over a pile of dung as a woman scooped it up with a shovel. A drunkard stumbled out of a bar-cum-cobbler’s, run by a man from the Auvergne.

  ‘What will those ministers of injustice cook up next to crush us common folk!’ he roared through wine-soaked breath.

  The man felt a sudden thirst and was about to enter the bar when a sign caught his eye:

  SAXOLEINE

  Certified, refined paraffin oil, deodorised, non-flammable…

  A brunette with a plunging neckline was adjusting the flame of a lamp whose red shade stood out against a bluey-green background.

  The poster was now a palimpsest. A long list appeared on the grey wall. Six columns with hundreds of names:

  WOMEN PRISONERS

  At Versailles…

  Outside a wine shop, an old man is sprawled across the pavement. He is barefoot, his legs covered in sores. A policeman leans over and presses the neck of a bottle to the man’s lips; laughter rings out. Inside, at the counter, Versailles Army officers and civilians loudly toast victory, their faces flushed with drink. In Rue des Écoles, firing squads are carrying out summary executions on a huge expanse of wasteland.2 A wagon crawls along, a pile of corpses visible through its open door. Policemen in shiny-buttoned uniforms force the locals to take down a barricade. A woman cries over some bodies, their skulls smashed in. A soldier slaps her.

  On Rue Racine, a firing squad trains its rifles on a boy accused of stuffing a handful of incriminating cartridges through the grating of a drain to help his father. The officer raises his arm.

  ‘Wait!’

  A beggar next to the boy is resisting efforts to push him forward.

  ‘I took these shoes off a dead soldier, I swear!’

  ‘Line them up!’

  Line ’em up!

  We heard the captain shout

  Stuffing his mouth

  ’N’ filling his cup

  Line ’em up!3

  The man realised that he would have to give in: he hadn’t the strength to bury the past.

  The leaves on the horse chestnuts cast pools of shade over the alleyways in the Luxembourg Gardens. Boys in sailor suits rolled their hoops around the statue of a lion guarding the Observatory steps. The man collapsed onto a bench and watched the hoops turning under the light touch of the sticks. Twenty years on, he could still see the woman.

  Clasping an infant to her bosom, her expression frozen like a death mask, she has just recognised her husband among the prisoners. She hurls herself towards him. A blow from a rifle butt sends her reeling; the baby falls to the ground.

  A hoop rolled up to the man’s shoe, wobbled and fell over.

  The sightless eyes of the statues contemplate the bodies piled up on the lawns. Rows of men, their faces pale with fright, file out of the Senate and are led over to the central pond: Communards, civilians informed on by their neighbours, people with dirty
hands or who just don’t look quite right. The rifles dispense death. The first rows of men crumple and are immediately buried under those falling on top of them. The blood flows; the soldiers doing the butchering, the endless butchering, are knee-deep in blood. The mass graves are numberless: L’École Militaire, the Lobau barracks, Mazas, Parc Monceau, Buttes-Chaumont, Père-Lachaise. Upholsterers bear the bodies away. Paris reeks of rotting flesh.

  Eight days was how long it went on for. Eight days. Every afternoon, at the foot of Pont Neuf, respectable folk gathered to witness the massacre. Twenty thousand souls put to death in Paris by court-martials and summary executions.

  Eight days that refused to dissolve into the thousands of others the man sitting on the bench in the Luxembourg Gardens had experienced. Eight days that would haunt him until his dying breath.

  The gunpowder, the blood, the hatred, the walls – people had been lined up against the nearest wall and shot.

  Would he go insane? Or would he find his own walls, his own way of meting out justice?

  A toy boat streaked across the central pond. Cries, laughter, bursts of music, a refrain:

  Here comes the flower seller.

  Buy a spray of forget-me-nots

  To brighten up your day.

  Forget? He couldn’t forget. He must act. It was the only way of freeing himself from this insufferable burden: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  Chapter One

  Two years later

  Sunday 11 June 1893

  THE train deposited a dozen punters in striped pullovers and straw boaters on the platform before letting out a long jet of steam. The passengers clogged the exit for a moment before setting off towards the riverbank, where families dressed in their Sunday best and a podgy man in a checked bowler hat were also headed.

  The man made a beeline for Pont de Chatou without so much as a glance towards the shimmering water, which was dotted with boats in the unseasonably warm spring weather. A barge whistled. The man dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief and paused to light a cigar before shuffling off again.

  Meanwhile an imposing-looking fellow sat sipping a glass of beer at a table outside Cabaret Fournaise in the middle of the island. His eyes were fixed on the potbellied figure in the checked bowler. He was momentarily distracted by the couples dancing beneath the poplars to a lively polka being played by three musicians on a nearby bandstand; tapping his foot to the music, he admired a narrow skiff as it darted out from behind the bend in the Seine. But his attention soon turned back to the portly chap, who was making the floorboards creak as he approached.

  ‘Right on time! You certainly don’t keep people waiting,’ he said, stretching nonchalantly.

  ‘This blasted heat! The sweat’s dripping off me. Is there somewhere quieter where we can talk?’

  ‘I’ve reserved a private room upstairs.’

  They crossed the restaurant where waiters were busy bringing plates of fried smelts, sautéed potatoes and jugs of white wine to the tables. A flight of stairs took them up to a landing and they entered a room at the end. They sat down, face to face, and studied each other. The man in the bowler had puffy eyes and broken veins on his fleshy face, which was framed by a mop of curly hair and grizzled whiskers. He looked like a shaggy dog.

  No wonder they call him the Spaniel, thought his companion, who had an aquiline nose and a jauntily turned up blond moustache.

  He himself had a cat-like physique. His expression was half mocking, half disdainful, and he looked constantly on the verge of laughter. He exuded an innate charm, which made him very successful with women, but so far had failed to win over his sullen companion.

  ‘Call the waiter, I’m in a hurry,’ grumbled the Spaniel, crushing his cigar stub underfoot.

  ‘Don’t worry, Monsieur, they know we’re here. I’m a regular. We’ll get the royal treatment. While we’re waiting, tell me how much I’ll be getting.’

  ‘Two hundred. It’s an easy job.’

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘Purloin a few cigar holders.’

  ‘You’re pulling my leg, Monsieur! Two hundred francs for some cigar holders?’

  ‘They’re made of amber. Will you do it, Daglan?’

  ‘How many do you need?’

  ‘About fifty – more if possible.’

  ‘And where do I find this junk?’

  ‘Bridoire’s Jeweller’s. Rue de la Paix, on the corner of Rue Daunou. If you pocket any trinkets, put them on ice – you can fence them later.’

  The door opened and two waiters came in, one carrying a roast turkey, the other a bottle of Muscadet, glasses, plates and a bowl of frites on a tray. The waiters laid the table, carved the bird, served the wine and left.

  ‘Enjoy, Monsieur.’

  The Spaniel gave a whistle.

  ‘Well, blow me, no wonder you’re always broke if you spend your money like this, my lad,’ he mumbled, piercing a drumstick with his fork.

  ‘A smile at last! I’ve a confession: the turkey didn’t cost me a penny. But then they don’t come craftier than me!’

  Indeed, in his criminal career, Frédéric Daglan had distinguished himself in many ways – enough to make the list of the ten brightest and best brigands. He had started out as a thief, substituting fake silver for real, then became apprenticed to a confidence trickster. He possessed keen powers of observation, was a talented scout and had a fertile imagination. He was also well versed in the penal system, and had become an expert in coded language, thus avoiding any mishaps should his messages be intercepted.

  ‘So this turkey cost you nothing? How very amusing! Then tell me how you came by it,’ said the Spaniel, stuffing a huge piece of roasted skin in his mouth.

  ‘Yesterday, I was hanging around in the lobby of the Palais de Justice, waiting for a friend, and I saw His Honour Judge Lamastre, you know the fellow I mean – wields his gavel with the ease of a carpenter and sends people down for nothing! That’s when I heard him mutter to a colleague: “Damned nuisance, I left my watch at home this morning. Can’t bear not knowing the time during a hearing. And I’m on duty until late tonight: the jurors are deliberating in the high court.” His words didn’t fall on deaf ears! I’ve been hobnobbing with these law lords for years, and where they live is no secret to me. I didn’t hang about. I bought a nice fat turkey, and rang our dear Judge Lamastre’s doorbell.’

  ‘You rogue!’ bawled the Spaniel, taking a swig of wine.

  ‘A servant let me in and I told him: “I’ve come to deliver this stuffed turkey, which His Honour Judge Lamastre purchased on his way to court. It’s for lunch tomorrow. He told me that while I was at it I should fetch his chronometer, which he left at home this morning, and assured me I’d be paid for my trouble.” See how polite I can be, Monsieur.’

  ‘I see that you’re a prize scoundrel.’

  ‘The servant informed his unsuspecting mistress, Madame Lamastre, who took delivery of the turkey and handed me the watch together with a fifty-centime tip – those worthies are a stingy lot.’

  ‘What did you do with the watch, you rascal?’

  ‘I sold it sharpish, for forty francs. It was worth at least a thousand. Times are hard, Monsieur, and fences are unscrupulous in their dealings with the poor.’

  ‘And the turkey?’

  ‘Early the next day, I sent my mate to fetch it. There it was already roasting on the spit, its skin turning that golden brown which is a delight to anyone who’s fond of their food. “Quick,” said my friend, “hand over the turkey. His Honour Judge Lamastre has sent me to fetch it. The thief who stole his watch is under lock and key and the court demands to see the incriminating evidence.” This explanation seemed credible to Madame Lamastre, who swallowed it whole. She ordered the bird to be removed from the spit, and given to my chum, who hurried off, not wanting to keep the judges waiting, you understand. And how is my bird?’

  ‘Utterly delicious, you devil!’ acknowledged the Spaniel, quivering with laughter.

&
nbsp; He wiped his mouth and began cleaning his teeth with a toothpick.

  ‘So, can I count on you?’

  ‘When do you need your cigar holders?’

  ‘A week today, here, same time.’

  ‘That’s not much time.’

  ‘You’ll have to manage as best you can. And if anything goes wrong, mum’s the word, all right? We’ve never met.’

  ‘Rest assured, when Frédéric Daglan’s lips are sealed, the Devil himself couldn’t prise them open. Go on, drink up and eat your fill. It’d be a shame to waste such a handsome bird, especially as I can’t promise you another one next Sunday!’

  The afternoon of the same day

  The Église Sainte-Marie-des-Batignolles with its triangular pediment and Doric columns was reminiscent of a Greek temple. Beside it, an ornamental grotto, a waterfall and a tiny stream were laid out in an oasis of greenery which overlooked the railway tracks. Frédéric Daglan strolled around the miniature lake where a few ducks were splashing. Slung over his shoulder was a case with a faded coat of arms on its flap depicting a blue and gold leopard passant. He reflected on the situation: two hundred francs was a lot for stealing a few cigar holders, even if they were made of amber. What was that fat pig cooking up? He would have him tailed – he had to cover myself.

  He stopped next to a park keeper’s hut. An elderly veteran in a shabby uniform gave him a military salute.

  ‘Good afternoon, Monsieur Daglan.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Brigadier Clément. How’s life treating you? Any pickings today?’

  ‘A teat, a stick without its hoop, a knitting needle and a comic. Oh, Monsieur Daglan, the worst thing is not being able to sit down! They’re giving me the chop, you know. They say I’m too old, even though I do my job properly. After fifty you’re a burden on the state. I’ll be gone by the end of August. The missus is worried sick, what with our boy scarcely earning his crust at the Gouin machine shop, and a growing girl at home! We’ll just have to manage on the small pension they give me. By the way, the missus said to thank you for the cherries. They’re very dear this year so she was pleased as punch. She plans to make jam out of them and a special jar of cherries in brandy for you.’