The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel

by Mj Roë

  “I’m sorry.” He seemed genuinely sympathetic.

  “Yes, they were parents to me. It has been hard for me to realize they are gone. Sometimes I just think I can phone them and they’ll be on the other end as always.”

  “That’s how I felt about my mother. Even though she died two years ago, I still sometimes think of her as alive.” They were both silent, then C-C’s eyes locked on hers. “But, I’m confused. What is the connection to Grand-père? You said you met him?”

  “My grandfather left some personal items that I sorted through. Among them was a Christmas card that was sent in 1950. It was signed Guy de Noailles and Nathalie. No address, except that the envelope was posted in Strasbourg.”

  C-C dipped a piece of cooked meat in a sauce. “That would have been when my mother was very young. How did your grandfather know Grand-père?”

  “During the war. My grandfather was a flier. He was shot down over France and rescued by the members of the Résistance. I didn’t know the connection to Guy de Noailles. He never discussed the war.”

  “Then, how?”

  “It’s a long story. I thought that maybe Guy de Noailles would be able to help me resolve a question regarding something my grandfather had told me, so I visited him in late November, not knowing at all that he was your grandfather. He was so warm and wonderful and welcoming, C-C. He introduced us,” she hesitated, “ah, I mean me, to Maria and Jean-Paul. He remembered my grandfather and showed me photos of the old Résistance group. I didn’t have a clue that he was your grandfather until practically after the whole visit was over. I should have seen the resemblance…in looks, though. Actually, he’s a rather ancient version of you.” She gave him a playful look. “C-C, he even told me the story of the astronomical clock in the cathedral.”

  “But, this is extraordinary, Anna.”

  “Yes, isn’t it? And there’s more. That question I mentioned that I was trying to resolve?”

  Just then C-C’s pager went off.

  “Excuse me. It’s too noisy in here. I need to phone the hospital.” He got up from the table and went outside to use his cell phone.

  Anna took a sip of wine and set some more meat cooking. A new group of university-age young people had filled the empty table next to them. They were celebrating something. Anna couldn’t quite make out what, but they were toasting and congratulating a young woman who looked to be about twenty years old.

  C-C returned and sat down. “It’s an emergency. I’m sorry, Anna. I will have to return to the hospital. I’ll take you back to rue Beaujon.”

  They motioned to the waiter, paid the bill, donned their warm coats, and left the restaurant. Anna was still on hold with her story.

  “Tomorrow is Sunday. I will not be at the hospital or on call,” C-C was telling her. “Then it’s night duty for the next week.” They reached the car. He held the door for her. “Would you take a drive with me, Anna? Ten years is a long time. We have a lot of catching up to do.” He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  “You haven’t seen your father for sometime, then?”

  “Not since my mother’s funeral.”

  “Then I want us to drive to Rouen. It’s high time that you two made up.”

  “I’m not sure, Anna.”

  “I’m not listening. I have made up my mind, C-C. If I was the cause of your falling out in the first place, then I want to get that resolved. Anyway, there’s something I need to tell you on the way. It’s too long a story for tonight. It has to do with a discovery I’ve made.” And, she thought, I may need some information from Jacques to help me find Diamanté.

  C-C reached over and touched her hand. “I think whoever is in love with Anna is a lucky man.” He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it.

  CHAPTER 31

  Monique had waited up for Anna. The apartment felt warm and smelled of a wood fire.

  “Georges went to bed,” she said. “He is coming down with a cold or something, poor darling. He wasn’t feeling very well, so we came home from the dinner party early.” She handed Anna an envelope. “A letter arrived for you today. I forgot to tell you that I had left it on the table in the hall.”

  Anna took it, noting that it was postmarked from Obernai. It was from Guy de Noailles.

  Monique poured two snifters of cognac and handed one to Anna. “So-o-o? How did it go with C-C? I’m listening, mon amie. Come into the salon. I’ve got a fire going. It’s cozy.”

  “Let me open this first. It may have some news.”

  The letter was handwritten in blue ink on white vellum stationery in the old man’s carefully formed script. He had enclosed in it a card wishing her a Joyeux Noël.

  First of all, ma chère Anna, I must thank you and Mark for the wine that was sent from California. I have not had California wine and was surprised to find out that it is very, very good.

  Maria was thrilled with the souvenir Hollywood scarf that arrived during the past week from Mark’s office in Los Angeles. She hasn’t taken it off, as far as I know, a day since it arrived. She sends multiple big kisses (to Mark, especially) for such generosity. Finally, I must tell you that I have not yet heard from Diamanté, but I will not be very concerned about that unless Christmas comes and goes without word from him. I promise to let you know immediately if I hear anything of his whereabouts.

  “He’s such a sweet old man,” Anna remarked to herself, thinking that she would have to tell Mark about what a hit the scarf had made with Maria. She put the cognac on the coffee table. “I’m going to bed, Monique. C-C had to go back to the hospital. His pager went off. An emergency, I guess. The plans are to drive to Rouen tomorrow. I’ve got to get a spot off my charcoal turtleneck sweater, or I’ll have to wear the same thing I’ve got on tonight.”

  “Come sit and have a sip of cognac. It will do you good. You can borrow one of my sweaters for tomorrow. But why drive to Rouen?”

  Anna picked up the snifter and sat down on the gold brocade sofa, hugging a throw pillow to her chest. “I should have said maybe we’ll drive to Rouen. C-C was noncommittal. He seems distant. He still is estranged from his father. Something has happened to him. He was watching behind him all the time, as if someone were following us. In the car, he kept looking in the rearview mirror. And he’s smoking.”

  “He always did. Quite a lot, if I remember.”

  “It’s not how I had imagined, seeing him again, I mean. It just seems like our lives have taken separate turns. He seems to be so dedicated to his work. He has no family. He didn’t mention having ever been married, and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. In a way, I feel sad for him. I owe it to him to help him straighten out whatever caused the estrangement with his father. He seems to think it had something to do with me. Or at least he hinted at that. Besides, his father is the last one who may have seen Diamanté. I need to talk to that man somehow about that.”

  Monique gave her a knowing look. Anna had told her about Diamanté and what she had learned from Guy de Noailles. “Did you tell C-C about Diamanté?”

  “No. I told him about the visit to see Guy and the surprise when I found out that he was his grandfather. But I didn’t have time to get into the rest of the story.”

  “Do you have a plan to tell him tomorrow, then?”

  “Yes. I need to enlist his help in my search for Diamanté. Come to think of it, I wonder if he knows Diamanté.”

  “Here’s to your mission!” Monique held up her snifter in toast.

  “And here’s to you and Georges and your new bastide in Provence!”

  “Yes, it’s all set. We are leaving next weekend.”

  And I, thought Anna, where will I be? She shivered though it was not cold in the room. In reality, she dreaded the turn of events that tomorrow might bring.

  CHAPTER 32

  It was early Sunday morning. Anna, not wanting to wake Monique and Georges, quietly closed the door to the apartment and quickly descended the dim stairway. The air was cold and damp, and the dark
street looked as if it had rained during the night. The green Renault was parked next to the curb.

  “Did you get any sleep?” Anna asked C-C as he held the door for her.

  “Only a little. You might have to keep me from falling asleep at the wheel.” He grinned and closed the door, positioning himself behind the steering wheel. As he put the car in gear, he looked over in her direction.

  “To Rouen? Are you sure?”

  Anna noted that he had shed his doctor’s coveralls and was wearing a heavy, navy blue mock turtleneck sweater and gray trousers. He was clean-shaven and smelled of soap. There were dark circles under his eyes.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Then to Rouen.” Anna directed. “I’ll keep you awake. En route, I have a story to tell you…an amazing but true story…a story you won’t believe. I only told you half of it last night: the part about visiting Guy de Noailles and coincidentally discovering that he was your grandfather. There is another coincidence in this story. Did you know that your grandfather, my American grandfather, and my Corsican grandfather all knew each other during World War II?”

  “What do you mean, your Corsican grandfather? I didn’t know that you were part Corsican.”

  “I’m half Corsican, just like you, C-C.”

  One of C-C’s eyebrows lifted in a question mark.

  “I didn’t know it either until recently. Remember I said last night that there was a question I was trying to resolve?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, when my American grandfather was dying, he told me this incredible story about a French man who was his friend during the war.”

  “Grand-père?”

  “No. He never mentioned your grandfather. He told me about a man named Diamanté.”

  C-C slowed the car and pulled over to the curb near the Seine. The light of the streetlamps shone into the car. He stared at her. “What do you know about Diamanté?”

  “Your grandfather said that your father knows him. Do you know Diamanté, too?”

  “Diamanté occasionally visited my parents when I was a child. I remember him only vaguely. I knew he was a friend of my grandfather’s. Why would you be interested in Diamanté?”

  “Because…you see, he is apparently my grandfather, my Corsican grandfather.”

  “And your father would be?”

  “His son, Diamanté fils.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He died.”

  C-C blew air through his lips, indicating disbelief.

  “Look, I need to show you something.” She dug the two precious photos out of her purse, the one of her mother and the young man believed to be Diamanté fils and the other of the aged Diamanté that C-C’s grandfather had given her. She showed the latter to C-C. “Your grandfather gave me this. It’s a fairly recent photo of him.”

  C-C put on the car’s overhead light and studied the photo. It was unmistakably the man who had come to get him at the hospital in August. “He looks like the man I remember being Diamanté…a little older.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Not much. Whenever they were together, he and my father always spoke in a Corsican dialect. All short, choppy sentences. I couldn’t understand a thing. I remember his hands were rough, gnarled, and he was physically very strong, like my father. The most amazing eyes, too—dark…vulpine.”

  She showed him the other photo. “This is my mother and the young man who I believe is Diamanté fils. I found it in an old album of photos of my mother that belonged to my grandparents. It was taken in California in front of my grandparents’ home. There were no notes to identify the young man who was with my mother, but the face matches a face on one I saw at your grandfather’s…that one was of Diamanté and his son together. Your grandfather said that photo was taken in Corsica after Diamanté’s son had returned from California…before he went to the war in Algeria…where he was killed.”

  C-C studied the second photo. “Your mother was pretty, like you. What happened to her?”

  “She died when I was young. My grandfather never told me who my father was, until the end. Neither Diamanté knew anything about me, as far as I know.”

  “You bear a strong resemblance to both your parents. Anna, did Grand-père tell you where Diamanté is now?”

  “He doesn’t know. He said the last person who may have talked to him, as far as he knows, is your father. Diamanté called in August to get your father’s number in Rouen. He was apparently headed to Paris for some reason.”

  Yes, for good reason. C-C wished now, as he had many times since, that he had not been at La Pitié-Salpêtrière that fateful night. He would never be able to live his life again without looking behind him. Even now, on this drive, there could be a tail on him. He could never be sure.

  Outside, the air was brisk and raw, causing the windows in the car to steam. C-C turned up the heater, put the car in gear, and headed for the entrance ramp to the A13. “So, you never told Grandpère that you and I knew each other.”

  “It was all such an overwhelming coincidence.”

  He again seemed preoccupied as he drove, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror.

  “Why do you seem to be looking as if someone were following us?” Anna finally blurted out. “You did that last night also.”

  “I did?” He looked over at her. “I must have developed a bad habit or two since we last saw each other. You look very nice today.”

  Monique had lent Anna a beautiful, soft, cashmere sweater in a wine-red color. She had coiled her long hair into a simple, classic, sleek, low chignon and put on large, gold hoop earrings. She knew she looked good.

  “You changed the subject on me,” she said with a grin. “Oh, well, we probably both have…developed bad habits, that is. Mine is that I’m not as patient as I used to be.”

  He chuckled. “It’s the Corsican blood. When you found out you had it, you became impatient.”

  “Do you think it would make a difference with your father? I mean, if he learned that I have Corsican blood in my veins?”

  C-C pursed his lips. He thought about how his father had treated him when he had taken her to Rouen to meet his parents the first time. He had cut short the visit.

  “I think he would be very surprised,” he said.

  A police car came from behind and sped past them. Following it was a SAMU ambulance. Both vehicles’ two-tone sirens drowned out any further conversation for the moment.

  CHAPTER 33

  When Anna and C-C reached the outskirts of Rouen, the sky was blue and the day was crisp and clear. The winter sunshine coming through the car windows warmed Anna’s shoulders.

  To C-C, the route was familiar. He followed the quay along the Seine until they reached rue Jeanne-d’Arc. Turning right, he drove north until he was just short of the rue du Gros-Horloge, then made a sharp turn into a back alley. It was the same route the small, disguised ambulance had taken in August. As he pulled up behind the restaurant and turned off the engine, C-C looked at Anna as if to inquire, “Are you prepared for this?”

  She read his look. “He is your father, C-C.”

  Lucie La Forêt was organizing her kitchen staff for the Sunday crowd when she noticed the green Renault that had driven up to the back door of Le Canard à la Rouennaise. She wiped her hands on her large, white apron, patted her curly head of white hair into place, and motioned to her sous-chef to carry on. As she approached the door, she saw the driver get out of the car and go around to the passenger side to open the door for a young lady.

  “Oh, oh, oh, oh là là.” She cupped her two hands to her cheeks. “Monsieur Charlie!” She scurried into the alley, her large hips weaving sideways and the strings of her apron flying behind her. “Oh, Monsieur Charlie!” She grabbed C-C, threw her arms around him, and kissed him three times in succession on his, now somewhat flushed, cheeks.

  “Salut, Lucie.”

  “Beh, what are you doing here?” she sa
id in her thick Norman accent as she held his face close to hers. “We haven’t seen you in so long. We didn’t know what happened. You didn’t come back.”

  C-C motioned to her to not say anymore. He wagged his index finger at her and put it next to his lips.

  “Oh, oui, oui, oui.” She said oui three times in succession from the side of her mouth, bouncing her large head up and down in agreement. It sounded to Anna more like “oy, oy, oy.”

  C-C took Anna’s elbow and drew her beside him.

  “Anna, this is Lucie La Forêt. She is the sous-chef of my father’s restaurant.”

  Anna shook Lucie’s large hand.

  Lucie was the picture of a chef: rotund and rosy-cheeked. Her apron, though it was probably clean to begin with this morning, was already speckled with food stains from the specialties of the day.

  “Oh, she is so beautiful, Charlie,” she said.

  C-C blushed again.

  “N’est-ce pas,” he replied with a quick smile. Then it was Anna’s turn to blush.

  “Come in, come in, it’s cold out here.” Lucie ushered them into the restaurant’s warm kitchen where the staff was busily preparing dishes and chopping vegetables. The aroma of the combination of duck, chicken, apples, herbs, garlic, and spices cooking made Anna’s mouth water. She realized she was hungry.

  “Please, take off your coats,” Lucie said as she led them into the back dining room of the restaurant.

  “This is the family dining room,” C-C explained to Anna. “We always ate here so my father could keep an eye on the sous-chef,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Monsieur Charlie, what can we prepare for you for Sunday dinner?” Lucie asked cheerfully as she beamed at them. One strand of white hair had sprung loose and was sticking out from over her temple.

  “What’s the spécialité?”

  “The duck will be good today. It is still hunting season.”