The city had woken up. Yellow and black taxis rattled down the streets, tooting their horns, splashing slush onto people in hats and boots hurrying off to work. The homeless in cardboard boxes slept on, hungry and cold, avoiding as much of life as possible. I wondered whether Coyote was reduced to that indignity. How had he managed to sink so low? How I had longed to hold on to the past, and yet time had carried me on like a river and I had been forced to let go. My childhood in Bordeaux was lost to me, a place upstream I could never go back to. The Coyote I had loved was lost to me, too.
When I reached the shop I was grumpy, all six foot four of me. I must have been a horrifying sight: unruly hair covered in snow, blue eyes navy with fury, my mouth a grim line on a gray, unshaven face, my posture hunched and ungainly. Stanley had opened the shop. The little bell tinkled when I entered. He looked up from the desk when he saw me and I noticed him recoil. “Morning,” he said. I grunted, strode past him, and mounted the stairs to my office. I hated myself for letting my anger get the better of me, but I was unable to control it.
I sat at my desk for a long time, just staring ahead bitterly into the space that Coyote had occupied only an hour before. I could still smell the sweet scent of his Gauloise and of the recollections it aroused; the room might just as well have been filled with pine trees and eucalyptus and that damp earthy smell of the ground after rain.
I hadn’t wanted to go through my mother’s things. I had been afraid of what I would find, of what memories would be stirred. Her apartment was still as she had left it. Nothing had been moved, nothing at all. Now Coyote had returned and ripped off the dressing that had covered the wound to my heart. It hadn’t healed as it should have, but was as raw and smarting as the day it was dealt. I decided to take the day off and go through her belongings. There was no better time than the present, and the longer I left it, the longer the memories would fester and the harder it would be for me to get over her death.
Coyote’s sudden appearance had sparked my curiosity. My mother had rarely spoken about him, save to say time and again that he would come back one day. “And when he does, my love, I’ll be waiting.” I had believed her at first, and then, as the years passed, I had given up and my hurt had turned to anger. She had insisted on always laying a place for him at the table, as for an errant Elijah, right up until the very end when she had sat alone. You see, she had felt death approaching, as one feels the wind sucked into a tunnel as the train comes. She had heard it in the distance, ready to carry her off to the Heaven in which she so strongly believed. She ate alone, the tumor growing inside her, draining her life away with her hope.
I grabbed my coat and went downstairs. Stanley was with a customer, talking in a low voice over a seventeenth-century English walnut bureau. He looked at me over his glasses, his expression guarded. Esther was at the desk, the telephone receiver swallowed by her mass of curly gray hair, surrounded by untidy piles of papers and books. When she saw me she hung up and greeted me with the same warmth as she did every morning.
“What a stunning day!” she enthused, oblivious of my ill humor. “I love the snow. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved the snow.” She had a strong New Jersey accent, reminding me of the small town of Jupiter where my mother and I had settled with Coyote after our flight from France. “Do you want some coffee, Mischa? You look tired. I imagine you’re not sleeping. I didn’t sleep for a month after my mother passed. I put gin in my coffee just to keep going.”
“I’m taking the day off,” I said, shrugging on my coat.
“Good idea. Go for a walk, enjoy the snow, watch the world, deep breaths, call a friend, you’ll feel better.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, it’s my pleasure. Nothing like a brisk walk to raise the spirits.”
“You know me so well,” I said, humoring her, and feeling guilty for imposing my bad mood on so sunny a human being.
“Yes, I do,” she replied with a small shake of her head. “My father was a total shlemiel. Never smiled, walked around as if he carried all the worries of the world on his shoulders, face gray with gloom, eyes like a sad dog, grumpy as hell, lashing out at anyone who tried to cheer him up. I’m used to the type.”
“Thank you, Esther. That’s made me feel a whole lot better.”
“Good, I’m glad. That’s how I can get up every morning, because I know I make the world a better place.” I smiled, but she had said it without irony.
The little bell tinkled as I opened the door and strode out into the snow. Was I really as bad as Esther’s father? Out of the corner of my eye I saw Zebedee, the clockmaker, chatting to the mailman on the sidewalk. He raised his hand to greet me. Determined not to be a curmudgeon, I acknowledged him with a wave. “Lovely day! Shame about the snow!” he said with a chuckle, his pale eyes glancing up over the small spectacles perched on the end of his nose. When he chuckled he looked like a garden gnome. His hair was gray and woolly around the back and sides of his head, leaving the top bald and his large, fleshy ears exposed. I watched the snowflakes land on his naked pate like feathers, melting on the warmth of his skin. “Unlikely visitor you had this morning.”
“Did you see him?”
“Oh yes, I did. There are too many homeless people around here. Somebody really ought to do something about it, especially in this weather. The poor shmucks will freeze to death.”
“Had you seen him before?”
“You’ve seen one homeless guy…” He thanked the mailman, who strode off to continue his route.
“Did you see him enter?”
“I assumed he had a key. He let himself in. I thought perhaps he was an English aristocrat. They all look like they’re homeless, so I’m told.”
“He broke in, Zeb, although there’s nothing to prove it.”
“Well, I’ll be damned…Did he take anything?” I shook my head. “Well, that’s a miracle.” It had been many years since I had heard anyone say that.
My mother’s apartment was on the Upper West Side. When I entered, Marcello, the doorman, leaped out from behind his desk to embrace me. “I’m so sorry,” he exclaimed into my chest, for he was much smaller than I. “Your mother was a good woman, Mr. Fontaine.”
“Thank you, Marcello,” I replied, feeling my throat constrict again. My mother had grown into a formidable woman, but she had always smiled for Marcello. Perhaps he reminded her of Jacques Reynard; he had the same reddish hair and kindly face.
“I have collected her mail for you,” he said, pulling away and walking back to his desk. “It’s been piling up. Some of it is for you, I think. Letters of condolence, I guess. Today was the first day she received nothing. Word gets around, doesn’t it?”
“Thank you,” I said again, taking the pile and making my way to the elevator.
I couldn’t face looking through her mail. Not yet, anyway. So I put it on the table in the hall. The apartment still smelled of her and of the scented candles she had always burned. The curtains were all drawn, making the place dark and gloomy. It felt still and empty and reminded me of a crypt. There was no music, no movement, no life at all, not even flowers. I imagined she had been relieved to go. I didn’t get the feeling that she was lingering, holding on. She had gone and I was alone. I was a man in my forties and I missed my mother. It had always been the two of us. Maman and her little chevalier. Now it was just me.
I wandered the rooms in a daze, the sense of loss heavy on my shoulders, making me stoop all the more. She had always had plain tastes. She hadn’t liked fuss and frills. She remained very French, her tastes elegant and understated. The wooden floorboards were dark and polished, the furniture mostly antiques from France and England, the upholstery pale, neutral colors. A baby grand piano stood in the corner of the living room beneath neat piles of heavy, glossy books on art and decoration. She had played, although I didn’t know at what stage of her life she had taken lessons. When the curtains weren’t drawn, the apartment was light and airy. When she had lived, lilies in tall vases
and gardenias in pots had been her garden. Now the place was dark and there was no garden, just the scent of her flowers that still hung in the still, stagnant air.
I remembered her in every inch of the apartment. Her absence made the place seem much bigger and strangely unfamiliar. I noticed things I had never noticed before, the odd ornament or picture, as well as the things I remembered from our life in France, like the tapestry footstool my grandmother had made for her when she was a girl. We had left with little, or so I thought until I came across a trunk on top of the chest of drawers in her bedroom.
It wasn’t a large trunk, although it had seemed large to me when I was a child. Back then it had been filled with the dresses, hats, and stockings my father had bought her in the war. She had kept it in the stable block and only worn the clothes in private. Later, when we moved to America, she had kept them there because by then they had become sacred relics. She could have worn them, but she never did. They were part of the chapter that belonged to my father. A chapter she visited only in her dreams, because she had given her life to Coyote and started anew. That chapter was closed and I was afraid to open it.
I placed the trunk on the floor. I didn’t open it immediately but went to help myself to a drink. Mother had a little liquor cabinet behind the living room. The crystal bottles were still on the shelves as she had left them, the liquids shining silver and gold like the contents of an alchemist’s laboratory. I poured myself a glass of gin and took a handful of peanuts from the olive-green bucket that depicted greyhounds racing across the English countryside. Then, fortified by the alcohol, I sat on the carpet in her bedroom and lifted the lid of the trunk.
What first struck me was the smell. Lemon, mingled with her own unique scent. My chest swelled with sorrow as I was transported back to my childhood. That smell had meant refuge, security, and home. Enfolded in her arms I had breathed it in and everything had been all right. I lifted out a pale green chiffon dress and pressed it to my nose. In my mind’s eye she was a young woman, her hair cascading in waves over her shoulders and down her back, her skin soft and smooth like a petal, her dress dancing about her legs as she walked with a swing in her hips, back up the dusty track to the château. She had been in her sixties when she died. Her illness had eaten away at her flesh so that her bones had stuck out and her cheeks had sunk in, making her look much older than she was. Her eyes, though hollow, had remained the same. Those of a girl trapped inside a decaying body.
I put the dress on the floor. There were five more and they were all beautifully preserved. I pulled out a couple of hats I had never seen, along with gloves and stockings, each item carefully wrapped in tissue paper. Beneath the clothes there were some old books: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Nana by Zola, a couple of English children’s books and an encyclopedia. They were all beautifully bound. I wondered whether they were from her childhood, or gifts from my father. Only the children’s books were inscribed: To darling Anouk, of fairies and other magic, Daddy. I added them to the pile on the floor and delved inside again.
Fascination overcame my grief when I found a black photo album. It was bound in thin leather, the pages inside of black paper. The photographs were small, black and white, carefully slotted into little white corners pasted on with glue. My mother had written in white ink beneath each one, her writing looped and girlish, but most of the names meant nothing to me. However, the pictures of my grandparents held my attention for a long while as I tried to find traces of my own features and those of my mother in their faces. My mother had told me so little about her childhood. I knew that she had grown up just outside Bordeaux. That her French mother had met her Irish father there when, as a young man, he had traveled to the city to learn about wine. More than that I didn’t know — oh, except for my grandmother’s superstitious belief in the power of the wind.
As I turned the pages, the name Michel began to appear more regularly. He was in all the family groups, usually beside my mother, and the more I looked the more I noticed how much he resembled her. My mother had never mentioned that she had a brother. The name Michel had never been uttered. But then, she had rarely talked about her parents. She had told me her mother had died. What of her father? If she had had a brother, what had become of him? Had he died in the war — or, perhaps more likely, had her family disowned her following her marriage to my father? What struck me in the photographs was their obvious closeness and warmth. There was no doubt that they had once been a very united and loving family. Considering the album, it was strange that they had played no part in my growing up. Considering my German father, perhaps it wasn’t so strange after all.
I put the album down on the floor on the other side of the trunk so that I would remember to take it home with me to study further, then delved inside again. I pulled out a small box. Inside were a couple of letters in envelopes, a jewelry box containing a suite of diamonds I had never seen before, old medals, and another black-and-white photograph of my father, unframed. This one was very different from the one she had kept in her dressing table drawer in the stable block — more casual, more joyous. He was wearing a dark gray polo-necked sweater and slacks, his hands thrust into his pockets. His head was inclined, his handsome face smiling broadly, his short blond hair ruffled in the wind. My stomach lurched: it could have been me. I held it for a long while, mesmerized by what could have been my own reflection. Though I hadn’t laughed with his abandon for some time. Then my eye was drawn to the bottom of the trunk, for there, lost to me for decades, was my little rubber ball.
I took a large swig of gin. It left a burning trail from my gullet to my stomach, but the sensation was pleasant. I held the little rubber ball in my hands and toyed with it pensively. In my mind’s eye I saw Pistou, the bridge over the stream, the regimental rows of vines, Jacques Reynard, Daphne Halifax, Claudine, and Joy Springtoe. The sandstone walls of the château loomed into view, its pale blue shutters open to let in the sun, the white linen curtains billowing in the breeze, the birdsong, the clamor of crickets, the tall plane trees, those black iron gates, the watchful lions, and that long, sweeping driveway that carved its way up the hill. I couldn’t remember at which point in my life I had lost the ball, but now that I had found it again I recalled how important it had once been to me. It was not just my security, but the only link I had had to my father. How and when had I allowed that link to be broken? I didn’t know.
So the medals must have belonged to my father; the suite of diamonds must have been a gift from him to my mother. I had never seen her wear them. I presumed it had taken on a sanctity like the clothes, shut away in the trunk with the chapter of her life she had closed. The two letters I presumed were love letters. I couldn’t bear to read them. Not yet. I put them with the photo album and ball to take home with me. Then I lifted out a shoebox tied up with string. My mother had written “Jupiter” on the lid in black pen. I put it on my knee, untied the string, and lifted the lid. Inside were mementos: from the passage to New York from Bordeaux aboard the Phoenix, menus, soap still wrapped in paper, bus tickets, and pressed flowers. I had never imagined my mother would keep so many things. She had been so practical, running the business once Coyote had gone. I hadn’t thought there was much room for sentimentality. Her hoard of treasures surprised me.
I went through them, one by one. Each item reminded me of a moment. Each moment was more wonderful than the last. How much of those times I had forgotten. They had been good, possibly the happiest in my life. However, it was a single green feather that drew the curtain aside to reveal the stage in all its color and splendor. I twirled it between my forefinger and thumb and I felt myself smile: I could see the sign now, as clear as if I were a child again: Captain Crumble’s Curiosity Store.
17
Jupiter, New Jersey, 1949
So who is your young friend?” asked Matias, his doughy fingers toying with a long green feather.
Coyote ruffled my hair. “The chevalier or, by his more popular name, Saint Mischa,” he
replied with a smile.
Matias laughed, a great big belly laugh that echoed round his large rib cage as if it were inside a barrel. “I’ve seen saints and he doesn’t look like a saint to me! Dios mio, when did he fall from grace?”
“We escaped before he fell, Matias,” Coyote replied, pretending to be solemn. “In Maurilliac they are building him a shrine. Pilgrims will come from all over Europe with their sick and their dying. We know better, though, don’t we, Junior?” I recalled with a twinge of guilt my shameless exaggerations in the school playground and smiled up at him sheepishly.
“So, Saint Mischa, how do you like our store?” Matias asked, placing the feather behind my ear.
I liked Matias instantly and I adored the store. Matias was a giant of a man. His hair was a wild froth of black curls, his face soft and fleshy, his eyes as bright as candy. He spoke with a strong accent that I later learned was Chilean. He showed me where he came from on a map of the world pinned to the wall in the office out back. “This little slice of a country,” he said, “is so long and thin it contains the best of the continent — mountains, canyons, lakes, sea, desert, and plains — the Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth and only blossoms once every ten years. Chile is where my heart is, and one day, when I am old and no longer beautiful, I will return to Valparaiso and breed birds.” He had a way of saying things that rendered them funny, even when they weren’t meant to be. It was hard to take him seriously. Once he told me that people expected him to be funny on account of the circumference of his belly. “Fat people are here to amuse. If I became thin, no one would find me funny anymore.” Coyote and Matias loved each other, that was plain to see. They patted each other on the back constantly, shared jokes I didn’t understand, and plotted like a couple of thieves, sharing the spoils when they made money. They celebrated their successes over a bottle of champagne and commiserated in the same way, the only difference being the price of the champagne.
The Gypsy Madonna Page 14