April in Paris

by John J. Healey

  It was only after I had pushed my way through the impressive but garish Plaza Mayor, and made my way down into the labyrinthine, narrow streets of old Madrid, the Madrid de las Austrias, that my itinerary rewarded me with an architecture and ambiance that pleased me to no end. Little taverns and restaurants, as inconspicuous as they were promising, graced the winding lanes of weathered stone. A smell of lamb chops on the grill mixed with cooler air. A younger, nicer-looking crowd lived and circulated there, mixing easily with shop owners in their seventies wearing clean aprons, people who kept neat and orderly stores from another time.

  I emerged from one of these streets onto the Plaza de la Paja, a beautiful, sloping square surrounded by grand old apartments, a church, small restaurants, and a walled-in garden open to the public that was part of a former palace belonging to someone called the Principe de Anglona. I ended up having a cup of tea at the Café del Oriente, facing the royal palace, cheek by jowl with the national opera house, pleased to be back in a city I had last visited five years earlier, just after Scarlett was buried. Remembering streets and places, comparing what I remembered with what I was seeing that day, provided me with a modicum of satisfaction. It was not a city I knew well, but now that I was identifying it with Carmen, it took on a special resonance.

  In the late afternoon I went to the Reina Sofia Museum to contemplate Picasso’s Guernica. I don’t consider it a great work of art, but as a teenager soaking up culture and doing what I could to forge an identity, to show off and to try to talk to girls, I’d spent hours in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. That was where this painting had always been, as far as I was concerned, and where I believed it still belonged. I knew its tale and the historical context that explained its voyage back across the Atlantic to Spain, but all it did for me was bring back those days of being a teenage flaneur in Manhattan, going to the movies at the Paris and Sutton theaters. I would peruse the stacks in the Librairie de France at Rockefeller Center and intentionally bump into other customers just so I could say “Pardonnez-moi.” I remembered sharing pieces of an incredibly delicious chocolate cake with a girlfriend at the Women’s Exchange on Madison and Fifty-Fifth, where I once saw Cary Grant having cocktails with Fred Astaire. Dancing the twist at Shepherds disco with the Ford sisters and Killer Jo Piro. Throwing up in the men’s room at Malkan’s. Overdoing a first French kiss at L’Interdit.

  My recollections of those afternoons spent in the MOMA were particularly sweet. Its clean lines. The leaves blown along the curb of West Fifty-Fifth Street. The Bell helicopter, Monet’s Water Lilies, Matisse’s Red Room, my callow, absurd seriousness. I had fancied myself as Stephen Dedalus, Eugene Gant, Robert Jordan, and the James Dean of Giant all rolled into one. I was both Jean-Louis Trintignant and Pierre Barouh in Un Homme et Une Femme. I was Belmondo in Pierre LeFou and Nino Castelnuovo in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The Guernica that meant so much to so many people with lives so much more tragic and serious than mine was a three-and-a-half-meter-long talisman for me.

  I managed to stay out until seven-thirty without being unduly distracted by either Carmen or Ingrid Anderson. Leaving the Reina Sofia and confronted with the ugly plaza in front of it, I stepped into a restaurant named Arzábal next door and sat at the bar, ordering Jamón Serrano and a good, cold white wine from Valdeorras. Some sort of event was going on in a private dining room. Spanish men in suits too tight for them, sporting complicated wristbands, big watches, and holding on to cell phones, came and went snatching canapés off silver trays. I wondered what Carmen might be up to, walked back to the Ritz, and read another bit of testimony before falling asleep.

  ***

  Alexander J. Conlan: “I reside at 1059 Ogden Avenue. I am the brother-in-law of the defendant. I was living with his sister in June 1916, at 1077 Ogden Avenue. The defendant was living with me there that day, June 6, 1916. I left the house at about half past seven that morning and returned after two in the afternoon. When I came back, he was standing in the doorway of my office and the first thing I asked him was, had there been any customers. He said no there had not. I called him into the shop and I said, ‘Gene, you have either got to get work or you will have to find some other quarters.’ I could not afford to keep him with us at the apartment without some return for his board, and he got kind of uppish about it, and I said, ‘Get work or get out; and the quicker you get out the better.’ I went home again. I was wringing wet. It had been raining very heavily that morning and I went home to change clothes and have some lunch. My wife asked me to have Gene bring up some kindling wood. I told Gene to bring up some kindling wood and some meat I had bought in the butcher shop. I next saw Gene about a little after four o’clock, he had just come back from the house to the shop. I said, ‘Did you bring up the meat?’ And he said yes, he had just come back.

  “After that we were both in the shop, here and there, in and out, up to about six or six thirty. Then we both took an armful of wood. We went home for supper. It was not quite ready, and we sat around the house until about seven o’clock. I left him there. He did not appear in any way excited. He appeared just like he always is. I saw him again in the neighborhood around eight o’clock standing on the steps leading to my stoop. That is where the stone wall is up there that there is so much talk about. I did not talk to him at the time. I was on the opposite side of the street. Then I saw him off and on until the time of the excitement over this little girl being found. At the time they found her I saw him in the cellar where there were quite a lot of people, men and women. I didn’t go upstairs until about three o’clock in the morning. I waited until after the coroner left. The last time I saw Gene that evening was about eleven thirty and he went upstairs at that time. The next time I saw him was on Saturday, the eighth of June, in New Rochelle.

  “I am not living with my wife now. We broke up on account of money matters. I didn’t have enough money to pay the rent. When the officer asked me where MacBride was the night of June sixth I told him that MacBride had spent the night and that I had last seen him at eleven thirty. When MacBride was in the house, I generally slept in my own bed in the front room right off the parlor. Quite often I slept with MacBride in the room there. The flat has five rooms. The bedroom where my wife and the children were sleeping leads off the parlor. The dining room is right next to the parlor. The mattress in the parlor was an extra mattress that we had. It was standing in the corner on the floor. There was one blanket on it. I had a bed right in the next room, all made up. I did not sleep in the bedroom off the parlor that night. I slept in the parlor. I just felt that way about it. It happened quite often that I didn’t occupy my room. I went in about three o’clock in the morning and there were no lights lit or anything, and there was that mattress standing in the corner of the parlor. I spread it on the floor, undressed myself and laid on it. The only reason why I took the trouble to lay out a mattress on the floor in the parlor instead of going into my own room was because I felt that way. My wife did not tell me that MacBride said he was going away. She told me that he had said for her to set the clock at six in the morning for him. I don’t know when he left.”

  – 15 –

  Breakfast in my room. Good tea. Delicious toast. Terrible croissants. The New York Times crossword completed with a minimum of cheating. iPhone news browsing. Shower.

  All that got me to eleven-thirty. I was on my way to the Prado again to buy and ship some books home to Lenox when I got a new text message from Carmen.

  Awake?

  Good morning.

  Where are you?

  On my way to the Prado bookstore.

  Are we on for tonight?

  Of course. Horcher at 9:15. Do you know it?

  A classic!

  Like me.

  Expensive.

  My treat.

  What about lunch?

  “In addition to” I hope.

  Yes. My treat.

  Following instructions, I found her two hours later at a municipal market smack in the middle of the fancy p
art of town, the Mercado de la Paz in the Barrio Salamanca. The market was relatively small and filled with an appealing mix of food stalls and places to eat. Fruit, fish, meat and fowl, vegetables, bread, wine and cheese vendors, hardware, dry cleaning, and three or four simple restaurants. The people who worked there, a blend of hearty no-nonsense Madrileños and sharp Hispanic immigrants, contrasted with the clientele, conservative and wealthy by and large, the women more attractive than the men. Many of the latter were in peacock mode; tight jeans, suede shoes with orange or red laces, and tight blue or green jackets with fake elbow patches. The slicked-back hair ending in small curls look persisted here. A foppish mix of Austrian hunting attire and Euro preppy-ism prevailed.

  Carmen was easy to find. In jeans and a short leather jacket, her hair pulled back, revealing small gold hoop earrings, I was once again smitten with this very beautiful MIT structural biologist, entirely at home in this quintessential Madrid setting. She carried numerous plastic bags of food. She smiled. We exchanged kisses on both cheeks.

  “You found it.”

  “GPS.”

  “Very crafty. I thought I’d show you how the other half has lunch here. Cheap and authentic, though somewhat chaotic.”

  I relieved her of two of her bags.

  “I’m in your hands.”

  It was called Casa Dani. It was chaotic because it was extremely popular. From what I could tell, it had at least three entrances. A long bar was filled with people already eating. The main dining area had walls of sliding glass that permitted views of the market. She knew where the most responsive line formed and how to deal with the sweating pre-heart-attack waiter who was more or less in charge of assigning tables. New customers and waiters and waitresses were squeezing through the narrow spaces between the many tables jammed with patrons from all walks of life. Workers in blue overalls stained with paint and cement dust sat alongside executives in Brioni suits with Hermes ties. The pace was frantic, the noise deafening; clattering plates brusquely set down and collected, orders hollered over multiple animated conversations.

  The food was delicious. At eleven euros a head, including a no-nonsense wine and dessert, the total for the both of us was one-third of what they charged at the Ritz for my solitary breakfast. Carmen ordered broccoli and I a rice stew with bits of lobster in it for starters. Then she had a Dorada fish grilled to perfection and I had some juicy roast chicken accompanied by homemade French fries. We drank water in lieu of wine and both of us had fresh strawberries floating in a little puddle of freshly squeezed orange juice for dessert along with decaf espressos. It was hard to hear oneself during the meal, for the place remained amazingly crowded throughout, but it was great fun. The only other tourists I noticed willing to wait on the line and put up with the hullabaloo were, of course, French.

  “This is extraordinary,” I said, practically screaming.

  “I’m glad you like it. You’ve passed a test. I was afraid you might stick your nose up.”

  “Not at all,” I said, pleased.

  “I still don’t know how the staff does this every day.”

  The last lunch we’d shared had been two days earlier at the Brasserie Balzar. It felt like two months had gone by since then.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to read any of the trial.”

  “Yes!” she said. “Pages and pages of it on the train. It’s fascinating. Gruesome and fascinating.”

  “Right? I’m about halfway through it.”

  “What do you think?” she asked, picking carefully with her knife and fork, prying bits of fish from the bone. I imagined her in a lab coat performing tasks with similar care. I widened my eyes as if to ask for clarification.

  “Do you think he did it?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “I didn’t either at first,” she said. “But now I’m not so sure.”

  “He could have. You’re right,” I said. “But I think he was framed.”

  “By whom? The cops?”

  “By somebody,” I said. “If ever there was a case for DNA testing.”

  “Have you noticed it’s all about men?”

  “Not really.”

  “The defendant, the judge, the jury, the lawyers, the cops, and 90 percent of the witnesses,” she said, using her fingers to list them.

  “I hadn’t thought of it. Interesting point. Speaking of men, there’s one staring at us through the glass behind you.”

  She turned and looked.

  “Oh my god,” she said. “What is he doing here?”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I have to deal with this.”

  “Perhaps I should stick around, in case you need anything.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll be fine. He’s just someone going through a difficult time.”

  “All right.”

  She got up and started gathering her bags.

  “I’ll take care of lunch,” I said.

  “It was supposed to be my treat.”

  “You can treat me some other time.”

  “Thank you,” she said, trying to hide how embarrassed she was.

  “If you like I could have your shopping delivered to your mother’s,” I said. It seemed unfair for her to have to deal with whoever this guy was weighed down with perishable goods. “I fibbed about using GPS to get here. I’ve got a car and driver waiting out there somewhere. If there’s someone to receive it, the driver could bring it to her door.”

  “Would you?”

  “Easy as pie. Just write down the address.”

  I was glad to be helpful. I handed her a pen and a paper napkin. She wrote it down.

  “I’ll call you later,” she said. And then she was gone.

  Handsome and closer to her in age I assumed the fellow was an ex-boyfriend. Though I could understand any man’s heartache from being spurned by her, this unsolicited and unexpected appearance was a pain. During the forty-five seconds it took her to extricate herself from the dining area, exit Casa Dani, and walk around to encounter the sulking intruder, he and I glanced at each other a few times through the glass panel.

  I waited for them to leave and then waited some more before picking up her bags of food plus one from a store called Bimba & Lola. I paid and walked through the market, most of its stalls closed or closing by then. I paused to watch how carefully one of the seafood vendors cleaned their premises. Wearing rubber aprons and wellies, strong, good-humored men with roots in the north used high-pressure hoses that hung from the ceiling to wash away scales and innards. Large unsold merluzas were carefully repacked into thick Styrofoam containers cushioned with plentiful amounts of fresh ice.

  I found the car parked on the Calle de Ayala, the driver enjoying a beer and a pincho of tortilla at a bar just next to it. I insisted he finish and then gave him the address and we made our way through the center of Madrid over to its western edge, to an elegant, tree-lined street called the Paseo del Pintor Rosales, across from a park. I waited in the car while the driver delivered her groceries and wondered how it was going with Carmen and the mystery man. I didn’t know a damn thing, but I assumed and prayed she had officially ended their relationship, maybe quite recently, and that he was unwilling to accept it and had been following her. I sincerely hoped it would be resolved that afternoon, that it wouldn’t cancel or put too burdensome a damper on the evening’s dinner with me.

  Her mother’s building was 1970s modern, eight stories tall with lots of terraces, all of them with flowers in planter boxes and some with potted trees. I wondered if she had lived there as a young girl before she went off to New York, had gone to grade school and even high school nearby, leaving and returning to this building, playing in the park across the way, smoking on the corner, making out with first beaus.

  I thought about the Bronx I grew up in. Highbridge back then had been calm, home to a successful working-class population of Irish Catholics and Jews. Though Spain had gone through a horrific civil war around th
e time Carmen’s mother was born, this neighborhood looked as if it hadn’t changed much at all in the last fifty years, whereas the Bronx had changed dramatically.

  Though I returned to Highbridge in dreams, I was unable to return there physically. It was simply out of the question. I was incapable of it. That the Judge’s house, the elegant home where my mother grew up and had her wedding party, the house featured in my dream, that that house had been abandoned and its roof caved in was irrelevant. That the doormen and the stately green awning that ran from the wrought iron filigreed doors to the curb of Undercliff Avenue had disappeared, replaced by a single smudged plexiglass door and a graffiti-smirched aluminum plaque of buzzers was irrelevant as well. Ogden Avenue had evolved from a long, meandering, tranquil road lined with brownstones, saloons, churches, synagogues, cinemas, firehouses, barber shops, and markets into a run-down, semi-abandoned Calvary of half-empty buildings, vacant lots, and bodegas. None of this did anything to penetrate the psychological wall inside me. I knew of these changes thanks to a quick drive-through I did one afternoon returning from upstate New York years ago that later required a bottle of wine to recover from. I had no idea about the real cause of my paralysis. But the expression that most reverberated within me whenever I thought about it was the scene of the crime.