by Lavie Tidhar
The three little children were running among the mint sprigs and the can–openers, the roast chickens and the couscous spices, the beef sausages and the mangoes, the pirate videos and the candied lemons. The eldest, Yassine, who was seven years old, signalled to the younger ones, Leïla and Giamill, that they should go and hide behind a stall. Then, as stealthy as a fox, he approached a man in a jogging suit who was in the queue in front of the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots, and prunes. It was a jogging suit that someone must have given to the man, because from the look of his flabby stomach and double chins, it had been a long while since he’d done any sport. Before the man had time to react, Yassine has stolen his wallet and was off and away through the crowd.
The fat man put his hand in his pocket and turned round, but he was too late. Yassine, who couldn’t stop laughing and laughing and laughing, dived behind the stall where the two others were waiting for him. Then, all three ran along behind the line of stalls, moving upstream against the flow of the crowd towards the metro entrance, while the man bellowed and searched all about him, under the gaping stares of the other shoppers…
The three little children stopped in front the Couronnes metro station, still laughing and gasping for breath. They felt so clever that they would have sworn that no one had seen them. That was not true, of course. Near the metro station, first of all there was the grinder of the barrel–organ, with his brown coat and scraggly beard. He went on turning the handle but his eyes kept watch on the crowd. The three little children, the man in the jogging suit — nothing had escaped his blue–grey gaze, like a faded calendar.
But there was also a young, slim woman, with very close–cropped hair, wearing tight–fitting black leather trousers. She, too, was watching the crowd, but her gaze was even sharper and harder than the organ grinder’s. Her gaze often stopped at two young men, one of them with hair that was dyed blue… Two young men exchanging small aluminium packets for bills of money. But the young woman’s glance also flickered for an instant to the three little children who were excitedly inspecting the contents of the wallet, registering their activities as if her pupils were linked to a camcorder.
As you’ll soon find out, my little lambs, all the characters in my story were already right there in this scene. Picture it in your minds: the three little children, the organ grinder, the woman in the leather trousers, the young man with the blue hair, as well as the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunes.
I haven’t said anything about him yet, this fifty–year–old man — just as brown and dried–up as his fruits and nuts — but he’ll have his role to play.
He’s also very much part of the song.
What’s that? What about Saint Nicholas? You’re too impatient, Ivan. Hang on a bit. A good story never gives up all its secrets from the start.
An hour later, when the three little children had already left some while before, the young woman in the leather trousers signalled to a colleague of hers who was discreetly leaning against the trunk of a nearby plane tree. Together, they closed in on the blue–haired young man and his friend, but the pair had had time to toss all their aluminium packets into the gutter…
So the young woman — whose name was Mina — had to go back empty–handed to the police station after a useless stakeout.
Then the market closed. It was one thirty in the afternoon, and the market dealers took down their stalls, leaving behind mountains of gutted cartons, torn plastic bags and crates of rotten tomatoes and oranges. In a few hours, the rubbish collectors’ enormous green lorries would go to work, scooping up these mountains like famished dinosaurs, but their time had still not come. For the moment, the stallholders were grumpy because they were tired of rushing about or hadn’t sold enough that day… And, as usual, they started to bicker among themselves.
This time, it was the haberdasher and the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunes who had a right go at one another… “Having a right go” was the haberdasher’s expression, a little old–fashioned but one she liked to use a lot. So, they had a right go, over some trivial matter of a badly–parked van, but tempers flared and needless insults were exchanged.
It must be said that the haberdasher did not like the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunes. He was her neighbour, not only at the market but also where she lived — their buildings were side–by–side — and she had always found him unpleasant. The man never spoke to anyone; he was never polite to anyone. He had no friends, nor any family, nor a wife, and once the haberdasher had seen him grow violent with an old woman who’d taken an apple and forgotten to pay.
The dispute ended and each of them went back to their business.
“If you don’t know how to live with people, you should live all alone like an ogre,” the haberdasher muttered to herself in Kabylian — it was a saying her people had.
The seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunes did not hear this.
Then the stallholders all went off to have lunch, the rubbish lorries came by and the afternoon advanced under a pale sun.
Tant sont allés, tant son venus
Que sur le soir se sont pendus.
(So many went, so many came
That by evening time were hanging.)
The sun had long since finished setting. The streetlights made fairy spots appear in the freezing air of a Parisian winter.
The sky was a blue so blue that it was black. The three little children walked down the street and the world changed around them.
The houses grew larger, and they bowed over to observe the children with big, inquisitive eyes. Some scowled, those being buildings where people lived who didn’t like the children; others smiled, those were the ones where they had friends.
On the pavement, the three little children came across the creatures of the night. There were the beings with eyes of fire who lurked at the street corners, with their five rows of sharpened teeth like sharks, their leather jackets and their small caps jammed on their heads. These didn’t approach, because they knew the three little children already belonged to a gang and weren’t fair game. Then there were the dead–tremblers, the ones who stank of alcohol and concealed themselves among the homeless in order to entice the less cautious into the icy embrace of death. And finally there were the life–suckers, handsome men between thirty and fifty years old with too–white teeth, who dragged young, pretty, lost girls into their macabre dance, sucking out blood and hope before laying them out, eyes empty, in cellars and in sex–shops.
The three little children knew all the night’s secrets. They knew the truth, the one other people didn’t see because they didn’t believe in creatures from beyond. The night was deep, cruel and grew darker with each passing shadow. You could become lost within it.
Leïla was cold. Yassine, the oldest, stopped in front of a video club to take off his parka and put it round his sister’s shoulders. The telly in the shop window was explaining strange things.
On the screen, a man with shiny hair was saying that another child’s body had just been discovered in the eleventh arrondissement. The word “another” was curious; one would have said, Yassine thought, that it wasn’t the first. The man spoke of amputated members that had been found in the rubbish bins, and he used the expression “poor little Rumanian girl” as well as “band of pickpockets operating in the metro”.
Then the man disappeared from the screen, replaced by an on–the–spot report. The television grew bigger. Not by a lot, just a bit, by thirty centimetres maybe. But the picture grew with it, and the sound became louder, and the children retreated a step as if the telly was staring at them with big eyes and yelling at them in a scary way.
“It is in this seemingly peaceful neighbourhood that a monstrous killer has been at work,” yelled the voice for their benefit, and their benefit only. And the screen grew bigger still. The three little children watched it, as white as sheets. Because the horrible thing wasn’t the words, but
the pictures. The pictures of their streets, their market, and their organ grinder.
He was playing Three Little Children on his organ.
And the telly grew bigger again, until it took up the whole shop window, the whole building, the whole universe and it was nothing but a big foul mouth that yelled and yelled.
“There were three little children.”
Our three little children knew it well, this song. Giamill had learnt it at nursery school and he had often sung it for Yassine and Leïla.
But one would have said that the person who had made the report had never heard it before. No doubt the pictures had been prepared in some far–off editing room by a journalist who had never been to nursery school, or had forgotten it. Clearly, this journalist didn’t know the next verses of the song, otherwise he or she would never have picked it for a report on children who had been chopped up by an unknown killer.
Being a grown–up, he or she ignored what all schoolchildren know by heart in the form of seven verses.
The telly stopped; behind the window, the shop owner had just pressed a button. The pictures disappeared and the three little children were left standing in a street that had returned to normal, and dark. Except that everything was different. Now, they knew. The butcher was at large; he was looking for them in order to kill them.
The telly had been warning them.
There was nowhere to escape.
The children started walking again, because there was no point in remaining there. And they had an important meeting that they must not miss.
But the shadows were blacker than ever and the sky turned crueller. Behind every window at street level, big yellow eyes observed them. The tiny street fairies, usually their friends and guides when they got lost, sat on the pavement, their little feet in the gutter and laughed at them.
“The butcher is looking for you,” they whispered. “The butcher is looking for you, little children.”
“The butcher will catch you, little children.”
“No more singing, no more hopping, it’s at the butcher’s you’ll be stopping, and your bodies he’ll be chopping.”
“The butcher will catch you, and he’ll eat you,” squawked the voices, high–pitched or low–, melodious or screechy, of the wall fairies and the roof fairies, the ones on the billboards, the ones on the balconies and the ones hanging round the streetlamps, until their cries became mixed up together to make one great big scream, a hideous cacophony and Giamill cried out:
“Stop!”
Did you say something, Pierre? They only had to avoid doing as the song says… and not go into any nasty butcher’s place? You’re absolutely right. In fact, that’s just what Yassine said there in the street to reassure his little brother and little sister.
“All we have to do is not go into any butcher’s place,” he said in a brave voice, hugging Leïla in his protective arms.
But Leïla stared down at the pavement, and the tiny street fairies laughed one last time before they disappeared.
“But where is Saint Nicholas?” she wanted to know.
Yassine said nothing in reply.
Tant sont allés, tant son venus
Que sur le soir se sont pendus.
(So many went, so many came
That by evening time were hanging.)
sang a young blonde woman in the plot of wasteland by the rue de la Tourtille. The young blonde woman’s was named Karine, and like so many others, she worked for the young man with blue hair, the Prince of all the creatures of the night.
And it was with her that the three little children were supposed to be meeting.
S’en sont allés chez le boucher:
«Boucher, voudrais–tu nous loger?»
(They came then to the butcher’s door:
“Butcher, can we stay here overnight?”)
she continued, because she, too, had seen the report on the telly and unlike the journalist, she did know how the rest of the song went.
«Entrez, entrez, petits enfants,
Il y’a d’la place assurément!»
Ils n’étaient pas sitôt entrés
Que le boucher les a tués,
Les a coupés en p’tits morceaux,
Mis au saloir comme pourceaux.
(“Come in, come in, little children,
Of course there is a place for you!”
No sooner did they come inside
Than the butcher killed all three dead,
Chopped them into tiny pieces,
And soaked them in salt like li’l pigs.)
Karine had skin whiter than a bathtub and beneath its transparent surface fine blue veins pulsated. As the three little children came towards her, she watched them, her lips curled over pointed fangs.
With a sharp click, she turned off her mini–television and put it away in her bag.
“Did the cop speak to you?” she asked curtly. “About the two dead kids?”
The children stared at her.
“Cop? What cop?” Yassine asked.
“The Portuguese one, with the tight–arsed trousers and short hair.”
The children continued staring, speechless.
“If she comes to see you, keep your gobs shut,” Karine spat. “Keep them shut or you could be in big trouble. He doesn’t like snitches.”
He being him, of course, the one I just told you about. The Prince of the night creatures, the one who controlled the gang of life–suckers in the rue de Tourtille. His hair and his eyes were of blue fire and, by means of fairy powder, dream pills and the sale of fresh meat, he had already devoured the existence of so many men, so many young women and so many children that even he had lost count.
In the derelict building that was his palace, in the labyrinth that was his kingdom, in the tangle of cellars and underground night clubs linked by furtive passages with stagnant pools of black water, the Prince of the Life–Suckers held his enemies captive in blue–tinted webs of nightmares. On the ceiling, the little fairies embedded there by some ancient curse spewed out glittering powder that was the source of their gaoler’s wealth.
According to rumour, human remains had been found in the cellar of the derelict house that was his lair. They’d discovered the Prince’s competitors drowned in concrete. They’d…
“So, where’s the day’s take?” Karine demanded.
Yassine held out the one hundred and fifty francs he’d found in the wallet. It was meagre, and the woman’s incensed glare made him intensely aware of the fact.
“He won’t be satisfied with this,” she whispered.
Giamill and Leïla thought they felt a deadly breath brush against them. Giamill peered around as if seeking help. He noticed the presence of the organ grinder, sitting on some breezeblocks in the darkness and fixing his instrument as he listened to the conversation.
Giamill liked stories where a wizard with a silvery beard, a valiant knight, or a kind witch always came to the rescue of children.
But what could an organ grinder do against the life–suckers in the rue de Tourtille?
Karine also saw the old man… no doubt following Giamill’s gaze.
“I don’t care much for snoops, Nicolaï,” she snapped. “I hope you’re deaf as well as being drunk and senile.”
“What could a lowly organ grinder do against the kings of the rue de Tortille?” the musician answered softly, as if reading Giamill’s thoughts.
Karine shrugged her shoulders and turned back to Yassine.
“We thought he had a credit card,” the little boy protested. “The time before, we saw him use it.”
“But he didn’t have it on him today, is that it? Do better the next time, you little brats. Or we’ll find another use for you. I already have an idea for the girl,” she hissed.
Her eyes fell on Leïla, who felt her hopes and her life being sucked away by Karine’s mouth, into her damp lips and between her sparkling teeth…
Yassine’s voice stopped her being drawn further inside.
“We’ll make it up tomorrow.”
It’s curious how the voice of a boy of seven can become hard when it has to. Karine’s smile vanished, then she retreated into the shadows that swallowed her like a big black bird.
“All right. Tomorrow, then.”
Giamill gave the organ grinder one last look, but the latter remained bent over his instrument.
The three little children left the plot of wasteland, sidling along the hoardings until they turned the corner.
The musician found himself alone once again.
He let the seconds go by in silence. He was tired and bitter. Each day, his bones ached more and more. Memories of magic, light and the joys of children danced in his head, but the shadows gained ground with each passing year. With each shaky gesture, with each pain in his joints, he had the impression that a laugh, a glow, or a snowflake disappeared somewhere within him.
In a word, he was old. He raised his eyes. Around him, in this piece of wasteland by the rue de Tourtille, the ghosts of those who died defending the Paris Commune’s last barricade grieved over their lost hopes.
He needed to retire, or soon he himself would be a mere spectre.
Then he recalled the three children. He looked about but, of course, the little ones had left several minutes before. Yet he needed to tell them something, to warn them.
Too late.
