Afternoons in Paris

by Janice Law

  “There are dangers in staying,” I suggested.

  She straightened her back, a habitual gesture. “I am used to danger and I can manage Alexi. But a detective! That is a good idea.”

  “How do you select a detective?” Jules asked me later. We were standing in the little alcove that held our local tabac’s phone with the directory open to agences de détective. Jules was poring over the listings. “‘Matrimonial Our Specialty.’ I do not think we need matrimonial.”

  “That will be divorces.”

  “Infidelity seems to be keeping a lot of detectives employed,” he remarked.

  “If only we knew for certain that Pavel had entered the country. Then we could try the records of the various relief agencies. And we could be sure a French investigator is what we need.”

  “My sister volunteered for a refugee assistance group during the war,” Jules said. “I think she keeps in touch with some of the other workers. I will ask her if she knows anyone who still works with refugees.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “And a detective?”

  Jules tapped one of the entries. “‘Twenty years’ experience with the Paris Préfecture. Missing Persons, Matrimonial, Industrial.’ That covers the ground, don’t you think?”

  “I like that ‘Missing Persons’ is first on the list.”

  “Most likely lovers on the lam or runaway husbands or wives. But, yes,” Jules said. “I think we should talk to this Monsieur Chaput.”

  •••

  We went the next morning. Inessa was sitting again for her oil portrait, and in any case, she didn’t want Alexi to know about our plan. He had spells of being intensely busy, she said. Periods of late, late nights, mysterious errands, and even more mysterious calls and messages. At those times, he was irritable and unreasonable. Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, his mood would lift. “Then,” she said, “he can be charming. Then he brings flowers and chocolates and pretty clothes.” She shrugged. “I think he may be working for the commissars still.”

  That was an unpleasant thought, and remembering Igor and the bad night in the Montparnasse cemetery, I wondered just what Alexi’s work entailed. Inessa had no further information: “About his work, about how he earns the money we live on?” She drew her hand across her lips. “Not a peep.”

  I suspected that we would not get very far asking Alexi about Pavel Lagunov.

  So the next morning, Jules and I climbed the steep, dark stair to a fourth-floor office on the rue Clovis. The building was old, and the dust was older. I was wheezing by the second floor and sneezing by the fourth. Monsieur Sylvan Chaput resided behind a door emblazoned with agence de détective in faded gold-and-black letters. The office appeared dark. Jules and I exchanged a glance then tried the door. It opened into a waiting room furnished with a pair of wooden chairs and a rickety table holding two newspapers from the day before. The single bare bulb high overhead remained unlit.

  Jules cleared his throat, and the inner door opened immediately. “Bonjour, messieurs,” said the proprietor, a wiry figure with a dark, seamed face, black eyes, and a fine hawk nose. He looked too small to have been a member of any police force anywhere, but he was spry and alert, and he gave us a comprehensive look as he shook our hands.

  “Entre, s’il vous plait.” He ushered us into his office, as spare as the waiting room and as shabby as the hallway, but equipped with a row of good solid file cabinets. The large desk held stacks of paper on one side, a green glass shaded lamp and a telephone on the other. Monsieur Chaput gestured toward two chairs and sat down himself. His desk chair must have been quite a tall one, because once behind the desk he appeared of average or more than average height.

  After he wrote down Pavel’s name, age, and description, he asked, “Possible date of entry?”

  “His sister arrived in June two years ago. Pavel could not have entered France much earlier.”

  “Very good. We have a window, messieurs. About two years. These cases,” and he tapped the desk for emphasis, “are usually solved in the documents. And the documents are many. The bureaucrat, he likes paper, eh? He lives on paper like the petite book louse.”

  We agreed with this, though I was a little bit disappointed. Light reading had led me to imagine Monsieur Chaput would be an entertaining combination of Sherlock Holmes and Bulldog Drummond. Clearly, our detective was more at home trolling the archives and pestering their keepers than venturing out with cries of “The game’s afoot.”

  “We must establish some things first, messieurs. Did Monsieur Pavel Lagunov enter France? That is number one and most important. If he is not here . . .”—he raised his hands expressively—“Nothing is impossible, but that would make major complications.”

  We agreed with that. It was a long way from anywhere in the Workers’ Paradise to Paris and there were many possible stops along the way.

  “And given that he was then a boy of eleven,” Monsieur Chaput said, “with whom did he come? And for how long was he given permission to stay? These are crucial. If he entered the country and received permission for a stay of sufficient length, we can discover whether he is in Paris. And if he is, he should have an identity card and his domicile should be registered with the prefecture. It is all really quite simple.”

  My own experience in Berlin led me to believe that Monsieur Chaput was exaggerating. A teenage boy has a number of ways of eluding bureaucrats and busybodies. I’d watched them do it. But Monsieur Chaput clapped his hands together, settled with Jules the petite question de l’argent, that is to say his fee, and promised to have information one way or the other within a few days.

  He was as good as his word. The next time Jules and I climbed up to his dusty office, Monsieur Chaput opened a folder and laid a series of document photographs on the desk. “Some good and some not so good news,” he said. “Pavel Lagunov entered France at Marseilles on May 30, 1925. He was in the company of one Bogdan Anoshkin, nationality, Russian, age thirty-nine. The boy is listed as his nephew.” He looked up at us quizzically.

  “I will ask Inessa, but it is most unlikely. Their family was totally lost and scattered.”

  “The pair were granted entry for one year. Anoshkin lists his profession as banker.” With a nod, he turned over another photograph. “In July of that year, Anoshkin secured an identity card for an address on the rue de l’Odéon. The address, messieurs, suggests he may indeed be a banker.”

  “And Pavel?”

  “Now is the not-so-good news. Pavel is listed, yes. But when Monsieur Anoshkin moves in January 1926 to the rue de Fleurus, Pavel is not with him. Where is Pavel? And where is his new carte d’identité d’étranger? We do not know, messieurs.” The detective’s beaky nose twitched. This anomaly was deeply offensive to him.

  “Monsieur Anoshkin lives on the rue de Fleurus, you say? He would be the man to talk to.”

  “Indeed,” said Chaput, “but he left France in August 1926 for Turkey. Alone.”

  “But what does all this mean?” Jules asked anxiously.

  “It could mean a number of things. Most sadly, it might mean the boy is dead. But”—here he held up his hand—“there is no record of his death. I have checked very thoroughly. He is not in the mortality records. Of course, there are those who die without an identity. Sadly, this is time consuming to check.”

  I exchanged glances with Jules. Our funds were strictly limited.

  “There are other possibilities. He may have returned to Russia or left for some other country. There is no record of his departure from France, but people do cross borders unofficially.”

  “How likely is that for a boy of twelve or thirteen?” I asked.

  “It is not very likely, but it does happen. Sometimes. There is also the possibility that he has changed his name, or had it changed for him. He might also be in custody. Some boys on their own commit petty crimes and come to the attention of the police
. I will begin inquiries, but I think first, messieurs, you should find out if this Bogdan Anoshkin is a relative. If he is, there may be a way to contact him directly.”

  Jules nodded, thanked Monsieur Chaput, and shook his hand.

  “It is good that we know he entered France and reached Paris,” I said, for I could see how discouraged Jules was. “That is a start.”

  “Maybe a dead end, too.”

  “Berlin was full of boys on their own. Many had no documents, no identity cards, no permission from anyone for anything.”

  “Paris is not Berlin,” Jules said.

  We let the subject drop until we met Inessa at the theater. By arrangement, we had all arrived early, well before the rest of the cast and crew.

  “You have talked to the detective,” she said as soon as she saw us.

  Jules nodded. “We have made progress, but only a little. Pavel got to Paris and was listed as living here, but after July 1925 he disappears from the residence records.”

  “I knew he was in Paris. I felt it. He is here. We will find him.”

  She went on about this until Jules put his hand on her arm. “Monsieur Chaput needs some more information,” he said. “Pavel entered the country on May 30, 1925, supposedly with his uncle, a man by the name of Bogdan Anoshkin.”

  He started to ask if Anoshkin was a relative, but Inessa turned very white and began to wail in Russian. It was several minutes before Jules got her to sit down on the edge of the stage. She wiped her eyes, and in her now frozen features, I had an inkling of how she had survived; she converted great gusts of emotion to ice. “He is a bad man,” she said. “A big party official. Corrupt, greedy, cruel.”

  “He lists his profession as banker,” Jules said.

  “He stole enough to start a bank. But what of that? He got fat while we were starving. There were many such. No!” She muttered in Russian for a moment, then, in French, “It was that he liked children. Young boys—and girls, too. A beast! How did he get his hands on Pavel?” She jumped up again. “I know how. And I know how I got to Paris and how Alexi got to Paris. You know how?”

  Jules shook his head but I had a notion.

  “Alexi sold Pavel for our exit visas and passage out of Odessa. ‘He will be on the ship.’ That’s what he promised. ‘It is not safe for us all to go together. Your brother will be there. It’s all arranged.’ I was fool enough to believe him. I would have died to save Pavel, but, right under my nose, he was sold to pay our passage!”

  Jules tried to comfort her, but Inessa jerked away to stride back and forth. “I will kill him,” she said, adding what sounded like imaginative Russian curses. “I will kill him.”

  Jules waited until she stopped, her hands clenched at her side, her lovely face distorted. “If you kill Alexi,” he said quietly, “you’ll wind up in jail with the guillotine in your future. What good would that do Pavel? How would that help him?”

  “Don’t give up yet,” I said. “You were right all along. He got to Paris. Now he has disappeared, but probably he’s still here!”

  There was a long uncomfortable silence before Inessa would look at us, and then it was as if she saw us from a great height. “So! You are right. But I tell you now and you can believe it, if Pavel is dead, I will kill Alexi. Guillotine or no guillotine.” Without another word, she went to her dressing room and closed the door behind her.

  Jules sat down and put his head in his hands. “No need to worry about checking with the relief agencies,” he said. “The boy is in the river. Or if he’s alive, he’s confined in some house. Dear God! At thirteen! Face of an angel. Worth, if Inessa is right, two visas and passage to Marseilles. Where else?”

  Indeed, and that presented difficulties. If Jules was right, Pavel could have been outfitted with false papers, and fishing expeditions to find him wouldn’t be easy as all the brothels kept in good with the police. I chose to imagine something else. “He might be on his own. Living hand to mouth around Pigalle.”

  Jules nodded. To his mind, that was hardly a happier prospect.

  “Let us see what Chaput turns up. It’s possible the police will know something about Bogdan Anoshkin and his French associates. While we’re waiting, I will ask the street boys and search around the cafés, though it would be easier if we had a photo. A ‘face like an angel’ leaves a good deal to the imagination.”

  Jules shrugged. “It might not matter. A boy will have changed a lot in two years, especially if he has undergone hardships.”

  I’d seen something of what was possible along that line in Berlin, but there was no point in discussing that with Jules, who already had enough in the way of nightmares. Besides, if anyone knew who was young and Russian and trolling the cafés for trade of any type, it was my sometime pal Pyotr. QED as my old math teacher used to say. Pyotr had dangerous associates and serious troubles, but he was the man I needed to find. I figured that he owed me four pounds, five shillings’ worth of help.

  The difficulty was fitting a search into my busy schedule as the apprentice and Philip’s lover. Even though Hector had replaced me on the machine, my evenings were still full, and Philip and I weren’t moving in the right circles. Fortunately, I’m a creative liar, and I told Philip that my starchy and conventional ex-­military uncle was in town. I worked this character up in my dad’s image, gave him Uncle Lastings’s tastes, and conjured plans for an evening at the Folies Bergère and visits to some of the less fancy cafés. “A real tourist evening in Paris,” I told Philip, who agreed that it would be ghastly.

  “But no more than your duty, my boy.”

  I picked up on his complacent tone. Had he cast his eyes elsewhere just before he was due to leave for home? Bad luck, Francis! I wanted Philip to land in London full of longing. I wanted to be summoned by telegram. I wanted an offer of help with the design studio that was growing sharper and clearer in my imagination without coming any closer to reality. What were my chances of a patron? Maybe not as good as I’d thought. Still, as Nan always reminds me, There are other fish in the sea, but maybe not too many would land in my net as well heeled and indulgent as Philip.

  Nonetheless, I had promised Jules, and I believe in friendship. It tends to be more stable than romance. So I spent a frolicsome afternoon with Philip and ventured out on a circuit of the cafés and little restaurants that I knew Pyotr favored. No luck. A second supposed night with my “visiting uncle” brought no better results. The third night, I took off. It was Philip’s last night in Paris, and we made it a good one. I remember large drinks, rich entrees, and sweet desserts, ending up at the Moulin Rouge with what Philip, slightly drunk by that time, called “our farewell to Barbette and all the joys of Paris.”

  After the performance, we went backstage, Philip shamelessly trading on my connection to the now mildly famous Les Mortes Immortels, and so capped the night with a visit to the famous aerialist’s dressing room. Vander Clyde’s English had a pronounced flat drawl that quite enchanted Philip. As usual, the trapeze artist had already removed his long blond wig and his elaborate ball gown at the end of his act, revealing, not a beautiful woman, but a compact, muscular man. The moment was such a surprising coup de theatre that I was almost reluctant to see him in ordinary clothes.

  Philip, however, was insistent, so we squeezed in with the other well-wishers and fans to watch Barbette wipe off his makeup (amazingly subtle and good) and slither out of his trapeze tights and into a very handsome lounge suit. The goddess of the trapeze had vanished, and his metamorphosis complete, Monsieur Clyde thanked us for our compliments and strode off into the night.

  “Amazing,” said Philip in a wistful tone as we looked for a taxi. “We are malleable creatures. The universe is ours and we don’t know it.”

  I patted his shoulder, touched that even Philip, who I often found affected, had hidden longings, both suitable and unsuitable. That revelation moved me to ask, “Will I see you in London?
”

  His face closed up like a trap. “Oh, Francis! You belong to Paris, and I will never be able to think of you anywhere else.”

  As if, I thought, I was a sentimental rent boy with a poetic streak! I put him down right there as a coward and a hypocrite, and I did not see him off on the boat train the next morning, although he’d wanted me to go. But I decided in vino veritas: London was out, however sweet Philip was in the morning light of Paris. Instead, I finished up a rose-and-ivy design for Armand and took a little time at the easel to cut Inessa’s head and neck from a poster I’d filched. I gave the image a masculine haircut before pasting it onto a clean sheet of paper. I toned down the full lips, erased the stage makeup with a grease pencil, strengthened the jawline, and darkened the eyebrows. Did the resulting image suggest a boy of thirteen with the face of an angel? We’d see.

  I put the altered picture in my pocket, and by midday I had cast off caution and was headed back along the outer reaches of Vaugirard. Damn the Cossacks and full speed ahead! Or as Uncle Lasting would say, Time to go over the top. I was relying on two things: other distractions for Igor and his friends, and Pyotr’s habits. To the best of my knowledge, my treacherous friend had only greeted the dawn once—the day he stole my four pounds, five shillings. Sluggish as Pyotr normally was even at noontime, I thought that I had a good chance of catching up with him. Provided, of course, that he was still with us and not one of the unknowns floating in the Seine or unclaimed in the Paris morgue.

  I wound up retracing the steps of my initial search for my light-fingered pal, but this time when I reached Trois Étoiles, the squat little café favored by Russian exiles, I was in luck. Early summer was kind to Trois Étoiles. The trees that overhung the roof cast a dappled shade on the outside tables, and tubs of pink geraniums flanking the doorway almost tipped the scruffy café toward the picturesque. But I wasn’t thinking Impressionist scenes and Parisian charm, because sitting in a patch of shade with his big dark hat pulled low and both coffee and mineral water on the table in front of him—hangover remedies probably—was Pyotr.