by Cara Black
“Time for a glass?” Gaetan asked.
“Twist my arm and I might,” René said. Gaetan’s uncle and René’s mother had become friends when she’d foraged through the shop for props for her act.
“How’s your uncle?”
“Spry, as usual. He escaped from the home last week,” Gaetan nodded. “But his leg gave out. He didn’t get far.”
His uncle’s wooden leg, a souvenir from the Austerlitz battlefield hospital, intrigued René. After the war he’d refused a prosthetic, saying so many had died, he’d been lucky to get the stump, and he wouldn’t let anyone forget that. René felt empathy for him. “Makes a nice pair of salt and pepper shakers,” he’d heard some workers laugh behind their backs, “a tall cripple and a short one.”
At the secretary’s desk, littered with piles of yellow invoices under a stuffed hedgehog, Gaetan cleared a place for René. He reached back and pulled out a dusty, unlabeled bottle. In the pencil holder he found a corkscrew, then rinsed two long-stemmed wine glasses with bottled Evian, flicked the water into the waste bin, and poured.
“Château Margaux nineteen seventy-six?” René swirled the rich rust-red liquid, sniffing the cork.
“Close. You’re quite the connoisseur. Nineteen seventy-five was a vintage year.”
René wondered how Gaetan managed to get hold of such excellent wine. He wouldn’t mind a bottle.
Gaetan shrugged. “Fell off a truck in Marseilles,” he said.
Comme d’habitude—as usual—René thought. Business must be booming, or else he was paid in wine.
“Didn’t I miss your party this year? . . . Here’s a late present. Don’t drink it all once. Happy birthday.” Gaetan pushed another bottle toward René.
“Salut.” They clinked glasses. The wine poured down his throat like raw silk, full-bodied yet light.
“Merci, Gaetan.”
Gaetan’s prop shop overlooked a narrow passage. Beyond lay a dirt lot, fenced in by jagged aluminum siding and stone building walls pockmarked by old, peeling wallpaper.
“Wasn’t there a ceramic factory here?” He remembered his mother buying a piece of faience, a flowered vase from the flawed seconds batch. It had sat in the kitchen hutch for years. He still had it.
“The patron died. No one to run it. Soon to be a parking lot,” Gaetan said, making a moue of disgust. “Developers!”
A pity, René thought. He went to the window. But he couldn’t read the construction sign which had been defaced by silver and green graffiti.
Gaetan would know about Mirador. He’d grown up in the quartier. “I hear Mirador’s hiring Romanians to kick people out of old buildings.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, but I know nothing firsthand,” Gaetan said. He broke into a wide grin as he announced, “I’m getting married. Remember Giselle?”
The long-legged dancer who taught at the dance studio. “Of course, lucky man!”
“We’re moving to Tours.”
“Félicitations! But your business?”
“Pierre, my cousin, is the manager now, he’s more involved.”
“Where’s Pierre?”
“Hiking in the Pyrenées. He deserved a vacation.”
René’s brow furrowed. “I need information about the evictions.”
“Not your style . . . Aaaah, it’s one of your friends, non?”
So he told Gaetan what had happened; about Aimée and the story Josiane supposedly was working on. By the time he’d finished, darkness had descended over the tiled rooftops.
“René, I’d like to help, but I’m hardly here these days,” Gaetan said, looking away. “Not everything in life checks out.”
But René could tell Gaetan was withholding something.
“There’s a load of returns in the yard,” he said, standing up. He flicked on the switch, flooding the office with light. “You know your way around; stay as long as you like.”
Was he afraid?
“Look, I’m worried about Aimée. You must know someone who can help me.”
“Don’t take this detective stuff so seriously,” Gaetan said. ”Look, genius, your métier’s computers.”
“She’s blind, Gaetan,” he said, “and my job might go down the toilet with this picky Judiciare.”
Gaetan picked up a folder of invoices, tucked them under his arm. He avoided René’s eyes. “Desolé. Don’t forget your wine. I’ll send you a wedding invitation.”
“Here’s my cell phone number,” René said. “Pierre might know, or be able to give me someone who does.”
DEJECTED, RENÉ didn’t know which way to turn. Calling Mirador and asking them about evictions probably wouldn’t garner information. On his way back, René passed the fenced-in lot, but he still couldn’t read the graffiti-covered sign.
After some blocks, rounding a corner, he just missed running into an old woman. She wore a faded scarf knotted at her neck, and a sealskin coat that had flaked off in patches. She stood in front of the dark Gymnase Japy. Yellow pools of light from the just-lit streetlamps glistened on the wet brick walls. She was knocking on the tall wood door.
“I promised Maman to do better. Every time the teacher says fois in the dictée I will write it correctly,” she said, then repeated in a falsetto voice, slow and measured:
“Il était une fois une marchande de foie qui vendait du foie dans la ville de Foix. Elle se dit ma foi c’est pour la pre-mière fois que je vends du foie dans la ville de Foix.”
She uttered the passage again and again, faster and faster. René watched her, unsure of what to do. How could he help?
A blue uniform turned the corner. A young flic on his beat. “Bonsoir, Madame,” he said, taking in the situation. “The gym’s closed now.”
“But the tutor’s supposed to meet me. He’s waiting . . .”
“Not tonight, eh, it’s late. Let me accompany you.”
The old woman gave him a toothless smile. “Maman would like that.”
“Bon,” said the flic, taking her arm gently, “let’s take you home, it’s time for your supper, non?”
“But they won’t let me back in,” she said. “I tried.” She pointed her ragged glove at a bricked-up, soot-coated, eighteenth century hôtel particulier facing the square. A jewel in its heydey, René thought. Fronted by doric columns, with arabesques of rusted iron balcony railings and nymph-bordered plaster detail. A crane with a dirty black wrecking ball stood suspended over the building. Large placards across the door said “Villa Voltaire—Luxury Apartments Ready Soon.”
“Alors,” said the flic, “they’ve moved you someplace, non?”
The old woman shook her head. “I want to go home.”
“We’ll just go find out now.”
The flic noticed René. “Do you know Madame?”
Before René could shake his head, a second floor window opened and an old man leaned out, a pipe in the side of his mouth. “Madame Sarnac’s lived in the quartier all her life,” he said. “Right there.” He took the pipe from his mouth and pointed at the hôtel particulier.
“Can you help, monsieur?” the flic asked, his tone polite. “She’s confused.”
“That was where she lived. She worked in the magasin below,” he said. “She went to school here. So did I.”
“But where does she stay now? I don’t want to bring her to the Commissariat.”
“It’s sick, throwing old people out. Armée du Salut sheltered some and the Maison des Femmes, too. But just the ones who had no families to take them,” he said. “She’s here everyday, doesn’t know what else to do. Me, I took action. It was I who got them to put up that plaque.”
He pointed to the plaque on Gymnase Japy that was just visible in the fading daylight. René could only read the last part. It was signed the ASEJD: Association en souvenir des enfants juifs déportés du XI.
The flic walked away, escorting the old woman, and the man shut his window. But now René knew who to ask about Mirador.
Looking around, René observed BANQ
UE HERVET lettered in silver, a small beauty salon and dimly lit brasserie. Beyond was a fire-gutted building—scorched black stone and broken windows— overlooking the gym opposite the center of the square.
He turned and stood under the rippled glass awning held by curlicues and spokes of wrought iron. A chipped and faded hotel sign was wedged inside an iron circle. The bubbled glass of the door was covered by a metal grillework pattern of flower bouquets and palmettes. He pushed the buzzer.
The door opened to display a diamond-patterned black-and-white tile foyer. The tiles were cracked and worn but the period staircase of white marble and swirls of scrolled ironwork retained its grandeur.
René climbed. His short legs pumped up the wide stairs. The ache in his hip increased. Tired, he’d resolved to make it the last interview of the day. On the second floor landing, he knocked on the door.
“Oui?”
René’s eyes lifted to the old man’s face, wreaths of smoke coming from his lit pipe. His white hair curled around his ears and down over the collar of a gray wool cardigan. He wore Moroccan leather slippers with turned-up toes and kept one hand in his pocket.
“I’m with Leduc Detective,” René said, flashing Aimée’s detective badge quickly.
“I don’t talk to strangers,” the man said, peering down at René.
“Neither do I,” René said, “but you saw me with Madame Sarnac, didn’t you? I want to help her.”
“A detective, eh? I didn’t know they made them so small.”
René flinched. He’d sat behind the keyboard too long. He’d forgotten it was always like this.
“You seemed the helpful type,” René said. “Guess not. I won’t stay up nights worrying when it happens to you. Being evicted, I mean.”
The old man leaned over and peered closer at René. “Who did you say you work for?”
“Leduc Detective. I’m investigating the reporter’s murder.”
“The landing’s drafty, come in,” he said, tugging at René’s shoulder. “Vite.”
Surprised at his change in attitude and the swift tug at his shoulder, René followed him inside. The scent of sweetish cherry-laced pipe tobacco filled the air.
The old man’s apartment, high-ceilinged and surprisingly tidy, faced the square on two sides.
“Let me introduce myself: Yann Rémouze,” he said, gesturing to a chair. “I didn’t want to talk out there . . . the walls have ears. Please sit down.”
René used a low ottoman to heave himself up onto a comfortable chintz armchair. He’d promised to call Aimée but it would be better to have some information to give her when he did.
“Bet you see a lot from your windows,” said René.
“I hear a lot, too.” Yann remained standing, surveying René.
René noticed a collection of flutes and woodwinds on a shelf ringing the wall. “You’re a musician?”
“Once I had an instrument shop; I made flutes,” he said. “Now I do repairs for a few old clients.”
An antique silver flute gleamed on the shelf.
Yann followed René’s gaze. “That belonged to a man who created color. That’s what a virtuoso flutist does. Plays with a simplicity that’s vivid.”
This old man lived in his memories, but René didn’t share them.
“Monsieur Rémouze, what happened to Madame Sarnac and those in her building?”
“Should I trust you?”
“Why not? You’ve already let me into your apartment.”
“Good point.” Rémouze sank into the chair beside René. His eyelids were heavy, tired. “Last week, the démolition signs went up and the trucks came. But the place had been emptied the week before that. I heard them in the middle of the night.”
“What did you hear?”
“Nothing that hasn’t happened time and again. Only this time instead of flics rounding up the juifs for the Gymnase and deportation or Apaches collecting interest on an overdue loan, it was Romanians hustling them out at three in the morning.”
“Mirador hired them?” René kept his tone even.
The old man nodded. “Let’s put it this way. Not long ago, a man on the fifth floor was offered a cheque to vacate the apartment he’s lived in for forty years. He refused, his neighbors got similar offers and refused too. Everyone was incensed. Suddenly, returning from Marché d’Aligre where he shops every day, he was attacked. Broken bones and bruises, then his heart gave out in L’hôpital Saint Antoine. Now lots of old people are awakened in the middle of the night, told they’re lucky not to get their hips broken. Now they don’t even get an offer of a cheque. They fold like a deck of cards. Intimidated.”
That agreed with what Brault, the architect, had told him.
“But why hasn’t someone gone to the authorities?”
Yann rolled his eyes. He lit a match, stuck the burning tip in the pipe bowl, and puffed in a steady rhythm.
“Think about the complaint system, the forms one has to fill out . . . no one’s stupid enough to identify himself. And for the rest, pockets are lined to look the other way.”
“Give me names,” said René. “Then I can do something.”
“No one will point a finger,” he said, “so it’s all hearsay. One of the flics said the old people are haunted by phantoms from the past. Poetic, probably true, but a nice excuse for inaction.”
“What do you mean, phantoms?” Was the old man going to ramble now? René wished Aimée was listening, instead of him. She had a better take on criminals than he did. She heard old men and women talk and put their stories together. She could find the thread. For such a restless person, she had a fund of intuition.
“Past indiscretions, like informing the Milice,” he said. “Ignoring black shirt thugs looting apartments of the deportees.”
“That’s long ago,” René interrupted. “What does it have to do with now?”
The old man puffed several times then looked up. His eyes were wide and full of an almost palpable sadness.
“What doesn’t it have to do with now? The past informs the present. Memory makes the map we carry, no matter how hard we try to erase it.”
True. René still didn’t see how it related. Paris had legions of the old, sitting on park benches or at kitchen tables telling stories of the war to grandchildren or others hostage to politeness.
“Some talk about it,” Yann said. “Many remain silent.”
René had enough problems without going back to what happened during the war. Leave that to those whose memories stretched that far.
“Can you read it, the plaque?” Yann beckoned René to the window.
To the memory of the more than 600 children, women and men of the 11ième arrondissement, assembled here and then interned in Loiret camp before being deported to Auschwitz. . . .
“Do you know how long it took our association to erect the plaque for our classmates?”
René shook his head.
“Simon was my friend; he lived down the hall,” Yann said. “Big family. Poor, but Simon had a beautiful steelie marble, topaz cat’s eye. Superb. He let me borrow it one day, his treasure, but he was like that. Generous. And I didn’t give it back. He asked me again and I stalled. Kept saying I’d forgotten it. And then one night we heard noises down the hall.”
Yann looked at René, his eyes clouded. But René felt he wasn’t seeing him. Just the past.
“Those noises. The ones making you hide your head under the covers, the frantic whispers of Maman telling me not to look out the window. And they were gone. Never came back. The apartment taken over by someone else, their belongings too.”
“So this is how you return the marble to Simon?”
A bittersweet smile crossed the man’s face. “Fifty years too late.”
True, there was no escaping the past, but René wanted to pull the focus back to the evictions and Josiane Dolet.
“Look, I can’t find out about the thugs unless I know where to look.”
“After they do their job, they do
n’t stick around for coffee,” he said. “Big mecs, bodybuilders, East European by the look of their clothes.”
“How’s that?”
“Hard to say, but a lot of them wear those track suits, the cheap designer copies with words misspelled.”
René knew the knockoffs sold at street markets. A Tommy Hilfiger with an F missing. Romanian chic.
“One wore a ponytail,” he said, “stringy hair. You know the type.”
“What else?”
“One night I heard this runt below my window calling out. ‘Draz,’ ” he said.
“Draz?”
“That’s all I understood. Then this gorilla, this Draz with the ponytail, beat him into pulp against the wall.”
René said, “Here’s my card.” He knew Aimée handed hers out all the time. It looked professional. And ran up a high printing bill. “Please call if you remember anything else.”
By the time René reached his car, the line for the outdoor soup kitchen, part of a network organized by Coluche the comedian, snaked up boulevard Beaumarchais. He knew authorities left a Métro station open when severe cold hit. A well-kept secret among the clochards and junkies. He hoped Madame Sarnac wouldn’t end up there.
Thursday Evening
IN THE HÔPITAL QUINZE-VINGTS waiting room, Aimée heard the evening sounds from Bastille and inhaled the Seine’s scent from the open window. She remembered seeing a teddy bear floating in the swollen Seine in the spring. After so much rain, the river had overflowed the quais. The image haunted her all day . . . had a child dropped it from a bridge, a spiteful older brother tossed it? Did wet tears soak a pillow and an anxious parent rush off to the Samaritaine Department store to replace it . . . as her father had tried?
When she was ten, her doudou, a ragged mouse named Émil, dropped from her bookbag into the Seine. Émil was the one thing left from her mother. The only thing her father hadn’t had the heart to throw away. Stained and threadbare, with missing whiskers, Émil had been the subject of her mother’s drawings and stories. The day he fell from Île St-Louis ranked as the second worst day in her life. The first was when her mother left and never came back.
