by Louis Bayard
His face is wrinkled with disgust as he wrenches himself away from me.
“Monsieur Can-I-Go-Home-Now. You’ll go home when I fucking tell you!”
And with that, he turns his back on me and charges down the street—daring me not to follow. It is then that the question, the obvious question, startles my lips apart.
“Where are we going?”
But the hope of receiving an answer is negated by the sound of my own voice: bleating and braying, cracking me open, as it were, to reveal the small green quivering heart-fruit beneath. I resolve never again to ask him where we’re going. And I never do.
TRUTH BE TOLD, we don’t seem to be going anywhere. The drizzle has stopped for the time being, and a dandelion glimmer has plumped out the drifts of cloud. It’s a fine time for a walk.
And what a pair of strollers we make. Me in my black trousers, shiny at the knees, and the black coat vented at the elbows. Vidocq, striding like a deposed king in Bardou’s sodden rags. After some time, he pauses at a street corner to realign the leather scraps that pass for boots, and in his best honey-and-cloves voice, he says:
“I hope I haven’t distressed you unduly, Doctor.”
“Why should I be distressed?”
“Oh, some men don’t like being thrown off their schedule.”
I tell him I don’t really have a schedule. To speak of. He shakes his head.
“Doctor, may I submit that that’s horseshit? I’ve spent no more than a day following you, and I’ve already got you dead to rights. École de Médecine in the morning, nine-thirty to eleven. Followed by Le Père Bonvin, where you buy your single cup of coffee, followed by a sugar-and-water. You sneak your little newspaper into your coat. (They don’t chain down the papers at Bonvin’s, do they?) You go straight home. A little catnap, some afternoon puttering. Dinner with Maman and her boarders. A walk just before bed, with a pinch of tobacco in the left cheek. You walk around the block and no farther. You go to sleep, repeat next morning. Do I have it about right?”
So many ways to protest. I could tell him that, some mornings, I stay at the École all the way to noon. That I treat myself now and then to a chocolate at the Café des Mille Colonnes. That I only take tobacco at night if Charlotte’s cooking doesn’t agree with me.
But these are all just different ways of admitting he’s right. So I remain silent, which is in itself a confession.
“Yes, you’re a man of regular habits, Doctor, considering you’ve no—”
Job, he means to say. Life. Something stops him from finishing.
“Yes indeed,” he says, nodding slow. “I could set my watch by you.”
And then, perhaps because this strikes him as too close to an assertion of faith, he adds: “It’s the same with all criminals.”
We cross the Pont St.-Michel, we trot up the Rue des Arcis, a right on Neuve-St.-Méderic…and almost at once the streets begin funneling down. Which is to say the old Paris closes round. The roar of the boulevards gives way to the clatter of paving stones. The streets wind and dart, turn their backs on you, stop you dead. Sewers split open before you like unsutured wounds, and houses built centuries ago totter forward in raiments of black.
No great plan at work, here in the Marais, but there is a kind of unnatural order. As sure as the sun rises and sets, the late-winter rain will leave brackish tides pooling against the corner posts, and this water will merge with the slops toiling downward through blackened gutters to produce that peculiar mud, so Parisian in its odor and provenance. If you kick in your boots too hard, you’ll actually taste some, flying into your mouth like a retracted insult. You’ll smell it, too, and feel it with every step: a squelch beneath the stone and a slight release, as though the city is giving way beneath you.
Where are we going?
Not even two in the afternoon, and there’s a candle in every window, and the light seems to partake of the same medium as the air and the ground and the water, so that even when your eyes are open, you have the strangest feeling that they’re closed.
Never mind, my companion knows the way. He takes his bearings not from celestial but from human bodies. Washerwomen, wheelwrights. A ragpicker with a basket and hook. Beldams, in groups of four, gossiping on doorsteps. Vidocq knows where they’ll be before he’s even seen them. Already calling out to them, isn’t he, with the swagger of a stagecoach driver pulling into the courtyard of an inn.
“Good afternoon, ladies! Saying our rosaries, are we?…Hey, Gervaise, you pile of shit! You still owe me thirty sous on that cock of yours. Never mind, just keep a place for me at next Sunday’s fight, will you? And bring a bird with some heart in him!…Ah, is that the sun I see or Mademoiselle Sophie? Why, you’re better than the sun, it’s true….”
Even his gait changes as he approaches them. The right foot drags slightly behind him, like an embarrassed child, and the left foot skates through the drifts of mud, and his hands, those great bear claws, tease the air.
“Oho, it’s Tambour! Haven’t seen you since you went to the bagne. But what are these phials you’re foisting on the public? Herbal panaceas? Why, Tambour, I had no idea you were such a philanthropist—hey now, do any of these potions give a fellow bigger balls? My friend here might want some….”
They all stand stock-still as he approaches, with the frozen half-smiles of guests at a Tuileries garden party. It comes as a surprise when we turn onto the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux to find a man not just standing but coming toward us, with a turnip sack over his shoulder.
“Chief,” he says, in the mildest of tones.
“Allard.”
They stand there, staring over each other’s shoulders, making scraps of small talk, lofting an oath or two at the weather. And then Allard, without altering his cadence, murmurs:
“He’s inside.”
“How long?”
“Since eleven.”
Vidocq cuts his eyes north. “Woman, too?”
“Whole family.”
“Give.”
Allard swings the turnip bag off his shoulder. Before I can protest, Vidocq stuffs it into my arms.
“Don’t jiggle it, Doctor, if you’d be so kind.”
Motioning me to follow, he stops in front of a poulterer’s window, where he makes a show of interest in a Norman goose. Then, without a word, he draws me inside the adjoining building. The door closes after us, he puts a finger to his lips, he points…up.
But who would have guessed up would mean five floors? With a heavy bundle in your arms? By the time we reach the top, I’m rubbing my shiny forehead on the turnip bag, and Vidocq’s belly is swelling to twice its normal stoutness—all the more so because he’s trying to still the sound of his own breathing. A minute passes, the belly contracts…Vidocq puts his knuckles to the door and raps, lightly, three times.
“Who is it?”
“Friends.”
From inside, a scatter and a scuffle. Moments later, the door opens on a young woman—maybe not young at all—skinny as a limpet with a cat-nose and vole-eyes.
“Ah!” cries Vidocq. “La belle Jeanne-Victoire!”
“Monsieur Eugène,” she says, even as glass.
“I’m looking for Poulain, my sweet.”
“Not at home, to be sure.”
“Ahhh.” His eyes execute a quick sweep of the room. “Then we’ll just wait for him, if you don’t mind.”
She pauses to consider, but he’s already stepped around her, and the only thing left to consider is me: hat in hand, smiling with reflexive courtesy, clutching that mysterious package to my breast.
“I don’t believe you’ve met,” Vidocq calls back.
It is a strange feature of Parisian apartments: The closer they get to Heaven, the more hellish they become. A ground-floor apartment will, often as not, come with a nice fireplace, a rosewood dresser, Utrecht velvet on the armchairs, even a garden. By the time you get to the garret, you can feel the cold bleeding through the plaster cracks, you can hear the worms eating into the boards.<
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And yet people do live in the high-ceilinged pen that Jeanne-Victoire calls home. No doubt they freeze in the winter, but why bother with a fireplace when the drafts would kill any fire? Why bother with curtains when there’s no light? Or wallpaper when your walls ooze a putrid tar? Even the floor has been stripped down to its foundations, and as for furniture, there’s a pair of straw pallets, crawling with dust mites, and a table listing on three legs. Everything else is a melee of rags and old shoes and broken boards and broken bowls.
And a single baby.
I don’t see it at first. I’m just trying to find a place where I can, in good conscience, stand, and this means nudging away some old stockings and a birdcage, and it’s in the act of relocating a kettle that I see, lying atop a chafing dish, something soft and purple-cheeked and still.
So very still I’m already reaching toward it—looking for a pulse point—and then I see the eyelids shudder and the hands feint in my direction.
It holds my eye, this baby. And it never makes a sound.
“In blooming health, I see,” says Vidocq, peering over my shoulder. “I congratulate you, Jeanne-Victoire. Your third, isn’t it?”
No embarrassment in her eyes, either.
“The first with Arnaud,” she says.
“Ah, yes. You would need to start over again with Arnaud, wouldn’t you? A whole new accounting system for Arnaud.”
“Monsieur does not look so blooming himself. Police work must not be paying as well.”
He grabs a fistful of Bardou’s dirty blouse and grins like spring. “Austerity measures! Vidocq lives to serve!”
He opens his arms wide. As though he were about to embrace her and everything in the room. Squeeze the life out of it.
“You wouldn’t have a pipe, would you?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
“My mistake. I could have sworn I smelled one.”
“Arnaud keeps one around, of course. For when he’s here.”
“Of course.” Then, as if the thought has just occurred to him: “Do you mind if I look at his? I’m in the market for a new one.”
“Ah, what a pity, Monsieur. I can’t remember where he—”
“Never mind!” he cries, reaching into a broken water pitcher and pulling out a length of briar pipe. He smiles as he waggles it between his fingers. He flares his nostrils. “Mm, still smoldering. Now that’s what I call good tobacco.”
Her chin is tucked all the way down to her collarbone, as though she’s getting ready to charge. But all she says is:
“Arnaud will be so sorry to have missed you, Monsieur.”
“Not half as sorry as…”
His eyes widen. Putting down the pipe, he steps round an overturned washbasin and pauses behind an old sheet-iron furnace, angled against the wall. Then, with a look of faint regret, he tips the furnace over.
The door swings open, and out tumbles a man. The sort of man who could fit inside a furnace: small and wiry and jointy, with scabbed elbows and gray skin and eyelids squeezed so close together that even astonishment can’t drag them apart.
Vidocq gazes down at him with a dotard’s grin. “Ah, Poulain. What a stroke of luck! Say, you wouldn’t mind having a drink with us, would you?” He crooks his thumb toward me. “Me and my pal here? We’ve come to toast the new baby. You’re not too busy? Well, come on, then.”
CHAPTER 6
The Incident of the Hobnailed Boot
THERE IS NOTHING so sad, I’ve always thought, as wineshops in the middle of the afternoon. Or the women who run them. I submit to you the Widow Maltaise. A nest of white hair, uncertain in its provenance, woven into a large blue kerchief. A calico dress and a calico face, cottony with years. One eye droops low; the other draws itself imperiously high. The voice comes straight up from her feet, like coal from a seam.
“It’s Vidocq again. Death of my trade.”
He wraps his arms round her. “Ooh, I’ll make it worth your while. Don’t think I won’t.”
She fans us in the direction of a table. Minutes later: a carafe of blush, three pewter plates, and the remains of someone’s veal, fringed with tooth marks. And, of course, her disapproval, settling over us in strands.
“Has to come here,” she mutters. “Can’t do his business at Pontmercy’s. Always darkening my door…”
“Well, now, Poulain!” Vidocq cinches his arm round the man’s tiny shoulder-ridges. “It’s been too long, my friend! And how pale you are. Put some wine in the system, there’s a good fellow.”
A billiard table sits lost in shadows, one of the cues still cocked against the baize. On the bar there’s a trough of snuff, lacquered over with spit. In the corner a cat, fumed in liver, nibbling on a rat bone.
“Wine’s not bad,” mumbles Vidocq. “Veal’s a bit tough.” From his mouth, he draws out a fragment of bone. “Maltaise must be leaving bits of herself in it. Now then, Poulain, I don’t suppose you’re familiar with a gentleman named Chrétien Leblanc.”
“Should I be?”
“No, it’s just—sorry, got something stuck in my—seems Monsieur Leblanc met a final sort of end last Sunday. No, don’t look like that, I’m not saying you had anything to do with it. Things happen in Paris, I know that. Doctor, you finished with your wine? You’re sure?”
He drinks this one at a more deliberate pace. And with about a third still left, he does something unexpected: lowers the glass beneath the plane of the table and, when he’s sure Poulain isn’t looking, tips the rest of the wine onto the floor.
“Here’s my problem, Poulain. I’ve got this friend—Pomme Rouge, you know him? Over on the Rue de la Juiverie? Well, it seems yesterday morning Pomme Rouge was asked to fence a watch. Oh, I’m sorry, purchase. Not a very expensive watch, but then the watch’s owner was not well off. He did have the wherewithal, though, to engrave his monogram on the case. CXL. Chrétien Xavier Leblanc.”
Vidocq inclines his head, as though he were still sounding it in his mind’s chamber.
“Well, you can imagine my shock when I hear that this owner of dead men’s watches goes by the name of Poulain, alias Coubert, alias Lamotte. Yes, my friend, all your names. Popping up, as they will do. Why, it was enough to make me wonder if you had some—some accidental connection to the deeply unfortunate Monsieur Leblanc.
“And wasn’t I relieved to learn you were already spoken for that evening? Oh, yes, I asked around. Two extremely reliable gentlemen placed you at Mère Bariole’s on Sunday evening, from six onward. It was Bariole’s, wasn’t it, Poulain?”
The smaller man stretches out his legs, contemplates his feet.
“Well, now,” Vidocq continues, “you can guess what an ass I felt like. Even thinking you were—well, I won’t say it. But then my good friend here—oh, I’m sorry, have you met Dr. Carpentier? I know, he looks twelve, but believe me, he’s one of the most feared men in Paris. His testimony alone has sent more than a dozen men to the gallows. They call him God’s Third Eye, don’t they, Doctor? No, don’t blush, it’s true. Well, Dr. Carpentier tells me that Monsieur Leblanc, the ill-starred Monsieur Leblanc, was likely killed—when was it, Doctor?—oh, that’s right, early Sunday afternoon.”
He pauses, as if the intelligence is still filtering through. Then, speaking in tones of deep abashment:
“And, Christ Almighty, didn’t I feel even sillier! All this time, I was checking your whereabouts for Sunday evening, and it turns out the whole business went down in daylight.” He raps himself on the head. “Knock knock! I say, Vidocq, is anybody home?” Chuckling, he slides his chair closer. “And the worst thing about it, my friend, is now there’s no one to account for you. From, oh, let’s say noon to three-thirty.” He strokes the end of his nose, smiles crookedly. “But maybe you can do that for us.”
I will later learn this from Vidocq: A man either confesses on the spot or after great resistance. There are two paths only, and Poulain takes the second.
“I was with Jeanne-Victoire,” he says.
&
nbsp; “Naturally.”
“She’ll back me up.”
“Of course.”
“I was napping, Monsieur. A man like me needs his rest.”
“Working nights as you do.” And as if to demonstrate his allegiance, Vidocq lets out a hippopotamus yawn. “Doctor,” he says, rubbing his eyes, “do you still have that bag with you?”
What a surprise to find it coiled round my ankle.
“Just set it on the table, would you?” drawls Vidocq.
He grabs a hunk of snuff from the common fund and takes a stroll across the Widow Maltaise’s creaking floorboards.
“Now it’s an interesting thing,” he says, circling back to us. “On the day in question, there was a fair amount of rain. Which, I don’t need to tell you, leaves a bit of mud, eh?” He stares at Poulain, as if waiting for reassurance. “Oceans of mud. Now when I first made the acquaintance of the unfortunate Monsieur Leblanc, I noticed something rather curious. Not three feet from his person. Would you like to know what it was?”
“If you like.”
“A footprint.”
He takes another draw of snuff.
“Well, you know what they say about me, Poulain, I never forget a face. Or a footprint. Yours in particular. I checked my little file, just to be sure. Poulain, Arnaud. Size: bantam. Footprint: also bantam. Right boot bears telltale mark, crescent-shaped, from where hobnails have come out.”
Poulain folds his arms across his bird chest.
“Boots lose their nails,” he says.
“They do.”
“Footprints get washed away.”
“They do. Yes, this one would have been washed away if I hadn’t scooped it up. Every last bit of it. Why, a few hours in my office, it was hard as plaster.”
Tickling his arm into the turnip bag, Vidocq draws out a square of black clay, rimmed with straw…stamped with a single boot, like the fossil of an ancient fish.
