by Jane Smiley
Of course, the other mystery was what had happened to Rania’s handbag, which might have disappeared at the same time—when Rania came back to the stall from the bathroom and found the door open, found the grooming box tipped over, found Paras gone, she had forgotten about everything but her phone, even though her handbag was full of money—she had put her whole week’s salary down on the race and won her bets. Paras had been something of a long shot—12–1—but the horses that ran second and third had been even bigger long shots—30–1 and 50–1—and since she had bet on all three of them, she had won a number of euros that Delphine shuddered to calculate. But Rania had been much more upset about losing the horse than about losing her winnings, and Delphine had not punished her for being careless—when you have to pee, you have to pee, everyone knew that. What everyone did not know was, what in the world had happened? The handbag had never turned up—Rania’s keys and credit card and phone had never turned up. Only her little mirror lay there on the gravel outside the stall, glinting in the deepening dusk—a clue, but a clue that no one could understand.
Without telling Madeleine, Delphine had spent a hundred euros of her own to call an animal psychic. They had spoken on the phone; the woman, who was in the west of Ireland, had taken her credit-card information before “casting about.” Delphine had given the woman—Áine was her name—all of Paras’s particulars, including color, date of birth, cowlicks, racing history, breeding—and at her end of the line, Áine had cast about so long that Delphine had thought the line was dead and said, “You there? You there?” Finally, Áine said that Paras was walking down the street, looking into shopwindows, but since she herself had never been to Paris and didn’t know French, she could not say what was written over the shops—all she knew was that the windows were dark, but that Paras seemed healthy and active. These remarks were so ridiculous that Delphine simply put them out of her mind and swore that she would never be fooled again. Walking down the street, looking into shopwindows, indeed! What was she looking at? Designer platform heels? A hundred euros down the drain! But even so, she found a single grain of comfort in the fact that a voice—a rather deep, warm, and lilting Irish voice—had not said that the horse was dead. She pulled her hat more tightly down over her head, and marched, shovel in hand, across the road to the stables. She still had to shovel the snow away from the door to the storage barn where she kept the little tractor.
The horses saw her coming. None of them talked about Paras much—only six of them had known her, and she had not been one of those fillies who are friendly and agreeable to everyone. When she disappeared, the horses from England (there were two of these) assumed that she had been sold away. The horses from France said, if she had been sold, why were the humans so upset? Jesse James, the single, solitary horse from America, asked if she’d been running in a “claiming race,” like they had back where he had come from, where, if you ran, another owner could pay some money and take you straight to his barn, but his accent was very strange, and no one answered him. According to the other horses, he was related to Paras—he had Northern Dancer everywhere in his pedigree—but because his grandsire was Nijinsky, he was big and brawny, a chestnut. Today, though, no one was worrying about Paras—it was cold, their blankets were dirty from lying down in the muck, the hay was a little dry. When all was said and done, they were Thoroughbreds—a day inside, a day walking, was not a good day.
SEVEN
Raoul was surprised at the snow, too—in his long life, he had never seen this much snow around Paris. Benjamin Franklin’s lap was a dome of snow, and upon his bald head was a little white hat. An icicle hung from the tip of his nose, and even the back of his chair had a white railing. Raoul had huddled in his nest all night long, and he was hungry, but snow wasn’t bad for your diet. Seeds dropped with the cold and were very nicely visible against the white. The trick was to wait until the sun had come out and melted the top surface. Later in the day, the top surface would freeze again, and an agile raven could hop gently around upon it, extracting chilly nutrients here and there. Also, anything that a human tossed landed visibly on the snow and was easy to see from above. This time of year, humans were rather careless, because they were rushing here and there, buying an abundance of things for what they called vacances de Noël. Some of these things fell out of their pockets and their bags. This time of year, Raoul allowed himself the occasional palmier, some pieces of meringue, even a stray nougat. Young humans, especially, tended to cry for something, eat a bit of it, toss it away, and cry for something more. A discreet Corvus corax could follow a small human down a street, picking up whatever he or she tossed, and be full in a short time. But he had to be discreet—if too many other Aves saw him, they would all be after the goods, and then the humans would chase them off.
The animals didn’t know it, but Étienne did know it: this was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. His great-grandmama had been up since before the sun, preparing herself for her long walk to the Mass. She had put on two pairs of socks, and some sturdy boots, gloves as well as mittens, leggings, a long wool dress, two sweaters, and her coat. Now she wrapped her head in a scarf she had knitted twenty years ago (four-ply cashmere—she could afford that then). A piece of lace, which she would wear during the service, was in her pocket. Étienne stood quietly as she patted him over to make sure that he, too, was suitably clothed. He was. It was a long walk at any time of the year, many times longer than the walk to the shops, but as far as Madame de Mornay was concerned, that only meant that you left plenty of time to get there. They opened the door and went outside. Étienne had cleared the step and the walk to the gate. Now he took along his little shovel, and as his great-grandmama moved down the walk, which had been not perfectly cleared by the city, he scraped bits of snow and ice to either side, widening her path. He was a good boy. The very few people who were out glanced at him and smiled.
It was to be a long Mass, and Étienne and Madame de Mornay got there in good time. Étienne left his small shovel outside, escorted his great-grandmama to her usual spot, about halfway down the center aisle. She did not kneel, but after she took off her coat, gloves, and scarf, set them aside, and put on her piece of lace, she sat quietly, with her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes to say her prayers. Madame de Mornay knew all the prayers there were in the book—she said them aloud even though she could not hear herself. She had once been a faithful churchgoer, in spite of her griefs, but now she could only manage it three times in the year—the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Christmas Day, and the Pentecost. Étienne took a seat behind her. When the church was almost full, and it seemed as though the Mass was about to begin, Étienne eased himself out of the pew, and out the back door. He estimated that he had two hours at least, and he ran for the Champ de Mars as fast as he could go, only stopping at his great-grandmama’s house to pick up a bag of things that he’d been saving for a long time.
The surface of the snow was like a map of which animals had walked where in the course of the morning. Under the trees, along the allées that ran the length of the Champ, the snow was flattened by the footsteps of humans and their dogs, but deeper into the expanse of the Champ, there were the paw prints of cats and foxes, of geese that had landed, walked along, taken off again. Of a hare that had crossed the width of the Champ, and a rabbit that had scurried from one den to another. Squirrels had descended from their homes in trees, scurried across the snow, leaving a few nutshells, and returned to their trees. Ravens and other birds had landed, hopped about, taken off again. And Frida had raced toward the shops—she was cold, and cold made a dog hungry. Her track was straight—away from the abutment, back to the abutment. There were no hoofprints. Étienne ran in loops around the places where he had glimpsed Paras over the last several weeks, but he could not see her. He got tired from running, set down his bag.
Paras could see Étienne, though. From her spot deep under the trees, where she was still curled up (so curled up that she
could hear her own stomach rumbling), she could see him rise on his toes with his hands on his hips, and turn in a slow circle, looking everywhere in the Champ. Paras didn’t need Frida to tell her that he was looking for her—she could sense it. And in the cold, dry air, she could just faintly smell a sweetness that would be coming from the bag. She could see that it was a big bag, and she could tell that it was a heavy bag. She had seen many bags in her day—not handbags, but feedbags. She flicked her ears and felt herself getting curious. Without thinking, she gave a little nicker. Nancy, who was huddling in her nest, all fluffed up against the cold, quacked, “Watch out!” But Nancy always quacked that. The boy had his hat pulled down so that only his nose and his mouth were showing. At any rate, Paras didn’t think he had heard her—he didn’t turn in her direction. She lay quietly, but she felt her curiosity getting bigger and bigger. Her nostrils stretched toward the boy. Her neck extended itself. Her eyes opened wider, and her ears went as far forward as they could go. Her tail stiffened, as if she were about to stand up, but she knew that she should not stand up. Or, rather, she knew that Frida had said that she should not stand up. Moment by moment, though, she was coming to think that nothing would be lost by standing up, by walking over to the boy, by nuzzling the bag, by sniffing the boy’s cheek to see what kind of boy he was.
Now the boy jumped up and down, clamping his arms around himself, and then he made a noise like a horse does, blowing air out of his nostrils. He turned around again, looked in her direction for a long moment, then turned away. “He saw you!” quacked Nancy. “But he didn’t see me! You quadrupeds don’t know how to be still, do you?”
Paras didn’t respond.
The boy opened the bag and looked into it. After a moment, he extracted something. Paras could see that it was a large carrot. He dropped it onto the surface of the snow. Although it smelled like a carrot, it didn’t quite look like a carrot; it looked dark against the blinding whiteness. He picked up the bag and walked away, every so often stopping to take out something else and lay it on the snow. Paras couldn’t sniff out what the other things were from this distance.
“He’s tricking you!” quacked Nancy. “Don’t fall for it. You know, they have these ducks that swim in the water. They look fine from above—handsome, you might say—and there they are, floating peacefully in a lake, as you are passing over, and always there is an argument about whether to stop and have a snack or whether to fly on, and the ones who stop—bam, they are dead. And those ducks that were there to begin with, they just keep floating around as if nothing has happened. Humans are horribly treacherous.”
“That isn’t my experience,” said Paras. She could see a squirrel approaching the carrot. She knew the boy had left it for her. The squirrel looked this way and that. Another squirrel was nearby, too.
One thing Paras had learned in the Champ de Mars was that, if squirrels were walking around, then humans were nowhere to be found. She extended a foreleg, hoisted herself to her feet, felt the scratch of the branches as she left the trees and bushes that were her nest. She walked past Nancy’s spot with her head down, and snorted at the squirrel as he reached his front paws toward the carrot, which smelled even sweeter and more delicious up close. The squirrel did not run away immediately, as Paras expected him to. He said, “Might doesn’t always make right.”
Paras had never spoken to a squirrel before. He said, “I’m hungry.” She looked at him, then said, “It doesn’t look as though you are hungry. You still have something in your cheeks.”
The squirrel tossed his head and ran away. Paras took a bite of the carrot, then ate it piece by piece. She looked down the Champ. There was something else that the boy had dropped. She walked toward it.
She had been hoping for another carrot, but it was a head of romaine, a little wilted, more bitter than sweet, though parts of it were crunchy. She ate every morsel, including the fibrous stem end. The next item, not sitting high on the snow but sunk into it, looked like another carrot, but when she bit into it, it had a different flavor, and at first she stuck her nose in the air and wrinkled her lip, but she was hungry, so she ate it anyway. It was large, and by the time she was finished, she quite liked it.
The boy was standing over the next thing, dark and round. He did not retreat when she approached it. He stood still, then picked up the apple (any horse could recognize an apple from far away) and held it out to her, his gloved hand flat. The apple looked and smelled good. She could have bitten it in half right away, but since she was a curious filly, even though she was hungry, she stuck her nostrils against the boy’s head and sniffed. He stood very still, but she didn’t sense that he was afraid—humans could get quite a bad smell when they were afraid. She sniffed the top of his head. Then she waited a polite moment and bit the apple neatly in half, leaving the other half in his palm. She chewed on the apple. Like the romaine, it was chilled, but sweet and crisp.
The bag was sitting at the boy’s feet. Paras did something that she knew was rude, that Delphine would have said “Ah-ah!” to: she put her head down and opened the bag with her nose. The contents of the bag smelled good—certainly more apples, romaine, and some carrots, some other things, possibly a beet. She lifted her head and stood quietly. A long moment went by. The boy took off his glove and stroked her on her cheek, very lightly. Paras nickered.
Off to her right, almost but not quite behind her, something ran across the snow. She swiveled her right eye and saw it was Frida. She did not turn her head. She didn’t want Frida to know that she had noticed her. The boy reached his hand into the bag, and now he had that very thing that no horse could get on her own, a lump of sugar. Paras lifted it neatly off his palm with her lips and took it in. She held it on her tongue and felt it begin to melt in there, the sweetest possible thing. She crunched it down and licked her lips.
Then she saw that Frida wasn’t alone—Raoul was flying along just above her, and they were having quite an argument. Paras nudged the boy lightly on the shoulder, and he did what she wanted him to do—he picked up the bag and started walking away. She followed him, the snow a little watery, a little soft. She could feel it balling in her front hooves, not a pleasant sensation. Frida and Raoul got pretty close, about to where the not-quite-a-carrot had been; Frida came to a sliding halt and sat down. Raoul raised his wings and landed just in front of her. The boy stopped, stared at them, then reached into his bag. He rummaged around for a moment, held out his hand. Paras sniffed what was in it—it smelled sharp and salty, a little like the mineral block Delphine had always kept in Paras’s feeder. Raoul cocked his head one way, then the other, then hopped over toward them. Finally, he flew up and landed on Paras’s haunches, where he took a few steps in both directions (Paras didn’t mind him walking on her—it felt like being scratched). He stretched downward, and the boy held whatever it was toward the raven in his gloved hand. Raoul took it.
“Excellent!” he said. “First quality! Provenance, the Costa Brava, or even North Africa. Very firm, and yet chewy, almost pulpy.”
“What are you eating?” said Paras.
“Tenebrio molitor!” said Raoul, his mouth full. “Mealworms!”
“I ate one of those, once,” said Paras. “It was in the oats.” She wrinkled her nose in the air again.
Raoul hopped over onto the boy’s wrist. The boy’s arm dipped, but he managed to lift it, and Raoul perched there, picking the mealworms out of his hand one by one, then gulping them down. They did look rather large. When he was finished, he dipped his head in thanks, and hopped back onto Paras’s haunches. The boy turned, picked up his bag, and continued across the Champ de Mars. Paras followed him. Behind her, Frida started barking her deep, startling bark. Raoul said, “Ignore her. As I said to her, her life with that fellow, no matter how well intentioned he was, and, yes, I admit it, affectionate for a human, and he did not abandon her—I had to explain to her what death is—”
“What i
s death?” said Paras.
Raoul said, “I keep forgetting how young you mammals are. But, to finish my thought, he had his own issues, and if indeed he preferred to live out in the open rather than to take shelter, especially in the winter, well, look where that ended up, and, yes, I know he—as we Aves say—‘flew upward’ in the summer, but damage accumulates in every species—”
“What’s the problem?” said Paras. Frida was still barking.
“She thinks you are being captured and put in jail.”
Paras stopped walking. She said, “She has mentioned that. But what is jail?”
“Oh, goodness, you know, a small enclosed space where you can’t get in and out of your own accord, but must always bow and scrape and do tricks in order to achieve some sort of self-realization.”
“A stall,” said Paras. She turned her head to look at Raoul.
“Something like that,” said Raoul.
“On a day like today, there’s much to be said for a stall.”
“Have you ever been inside a house?”
“Where humans live?”
“Yes.”
Paras, now walking along behind the boy, who was carrying his bag and moving at a decent clip for such a small human, said, “I knew a human who lived in our barn. Her horse lived in one stall, she lived in one stall, and her dog lived in the stall between them. Delphine made her move, though.” She thought again. “Sometimes humans live above us. We can hear them walking around.”
