The Missing Italian Girl

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  “I’m Jobert, incidentally,” he added.

  “My son,” she said through gritted teeth. She felt like a slice had been taken out of her.

  “We’ll find him and bring him. You sit for a while.” The man stood up. “Get that bastard out of here and send for two cabs,” he ordered. Two uniformed men began dragging the strangely silent Michel Arnoux away.

  “You all right?” Maura bent over to peer at Clarie. There were other faces. A small crowd had gathered.

  “How did everyone get here?” Clarie asked, pressing hard against the burning cut.

  “Your friend,” the voice boomed from above, “ran up, got a policeman and then led us around like a god-damned pied piper until we found you.”

  “And you?” Clarie tried to will the fuzziness out of her head as she looked up at Jobert.

  “Me? When your husband came to talk to me this morning, he told me that Arnoux might be coming to the Parc. Didn’t say anything about you bein’ here. Fortunately, you had a friend keeping an eye on you. You’re a very lucky woman.”

  Or a foolish, brave girl, Clarie thought, remembering Bernard’s words of many years before. No, she stared at her shaking fingers, red with her own blood. She was confused. The foolish, brave girl is Maura.

  “Torcelli will stay with you until we find your son and send you home in a cab. In the meantime,” he reached and grabbed Maura, “we’ll be taking this one with us. She needs to answer some questions about Barbereau.”

  Maura tried to yank herself away, but Jobert was too strong.

  “No,” Clarie protested. “Don’t take her. Let me up. Don’t—” She struggled to get up. Again, the rough-looking man helped her with gentle hands.

  “She’s a good girl.” The old musician stepped forward and pleaded. “Don’t take her to prison.”

  Maura kept trying to wrench her arm away and didn’t stop until Clarie stood face to face with her. “We will help you,” Clarie said. After she told Bernard that Maura had likely saved her life, he’d have to help.

  Before responding to Clarie, Maura turned to the musician. “Nico, don’t worry. They’ll help. I’ll see you soon.” Clarie saw Maura’s strength and determination, even a new kindness. She was a girl so worth saving.

  When she looked at Clarie, her green eyes were neither hostile nor skeptical. “When you see my mother,” she said before Jobert dragged her away, “tell her I’ll be home soon.”

  Epilogue

  Sunday, 6 February 1898

  CLARIE READ TO JEAN-LUC UNTIL his eyelids drooped in peaceful surrender. Her boy had had a busy Sunday morning, visiting his idol, the six-year-old Robert Franchet, and walking home through the cold, gray drizzle that was Paris in February. Clarie waited to make sure he was asleep before pressing the blankets around his shoulders and neck. Rubbing her hands together for warmth, she went into the parlor where Bernard had just built a fire.

  “Done,” she announced in a whisper. She glanced at the papers waiting on her desk and decided she could take an hour from her work to enjoy the fire and her husband’s company. He was already settled in his chair, reading Le Temps.

  She picked up La Fronde, her newspaper, from their reading table. “So,” she asked Bernard, “how do you think Edgar is doing with his alone-Sundays?”

  “Not exactly alone. There is his mother-in-law, the nanny, the maid, as well as little Robert.”

  “And us,” Clarie added, laughing. “You two had a lot to talk about today.”

  Bernard shook his head and frowned. “We’re not at all sure how it is going to turn out. Zola’s trial starts tomorrow. What if they find him guilty and try to put him in jail?”

  “They won’t.”

  “The army, the courts, and most of the Chamber of Deputies claim that what he wrote about their railroading Dreyfus was libelous. They don’t want Dreyfus’s guilt to be questioned.”

  “Are you really worried?”

  “About Zola? No, not really.” Bernard was a great admirer of France’s most famous writer, whom he had met during his first big case. “He’ll be all right. I don’t think they’d dare imprison him, or, at least, not for very long. World opinion would be totally against them. But….”

  “I know,” she reached over and laid her hand over his, “the riots and the scurrilous articles in the newspapers about Israelites.” There had even been a fight in the Chamber of Deputies.

  “And—”

  “Most of the men at the Labor Exchange consider this a battle between two different factions of the bourgeoisie,” she said, putting into words what troubled him the most. “They will come around eventually, when they realize what the Army did to an innocent man. And then you’ll be able to be more open about your commitment to the cause.”

  He kissed her hand and screwed his mouth into a wry smile. “Well, at least your colleagues seem to be on the right side of things.”

  “You’ve been reading Séverine!” Clarie teased. Her columns in the new all-woman’s newspaper campaigned against anti-Semitism almost every day and were avowedly pro-Dreyfus.

  “I meant at the school,” Bernard said, still unwilling to give the journalist her due. “Mme Roubinovitch protecting her Israelite students and teachers. And Emilie, of course.”

  Clarie lowered her head to hide a grin. She had overheard Edgar and Bernard talking about Emilie’s new venture. Edgar Franchet was alone on Sunday because Emilie was at La Fronde, writing a column on education and taking part in the fencing exercises that the publisher, Marguerite Durand, had set up in one of the rooms in the newspaper’s building. In principle, Bernard and Edgar believed, or thought they should believe, in her right to take Sunday off, consort with female journalists, and even learn swordplay. But, in practice, both of them seemed a little uncomfortable with her decision and its consequences: a weekly assignment for Edgar to stay with a six-year-old and a loquacious mother-in-law.

  “You could work for the paper too, you know,” Bernard said, reacting a bit defensively to her obvious amusement.

  “No,” she shook her head. “I only have Rose to help, and with Maura, it fills my days.”

  “Is Maura still doing well? I forgot to ask.”

  Clarie basked in the warmth and genuine concern in his voice. He was so busy at the Exchange and with the meetings dedicated to reopening the Dreyfus case that he seldom saw Maura when she came for lessons. But he knew that Rose and Clarie considered her almost part of the family. And Jean-Luc adored her.

  “She still wants to work at the Bon Marché.”

  “As soon as she’s ready. The salary, the security would be a great help to her mother.”

  “And?”

  Just as she could fill in his sentiments about his colleagues at the Exchange, she knew what he could leave unsaid about her and Maura. “And she’s still young. Strong. Willful. And all I can do is help,” Clarie conceded.

  If Bernard hadn’t turned back to Le Temps, after nodding his agreement, she might have gotten up to kiss him. He had been the best help of all, rescuing Maura from the criminal courts. With a contented sigh, honoring the peacefulness of their Sunday afternoon, she turned to her favorite part of La Fronde, Séverine’s column.

  She hadn’t read much of the newspaper before she heard a loud knock. Maura? The girl still hadn’t gotten into the habit of ringing the bell. “I’ll get it,” Clarie said, and hurried to the door.

  It was Maura, shivering in her heavy shawls, and crying.

  “Maura, my goodness. What’s wrong?”

  She only managed to sniffle and gasp, before another sob erupted from her lips.

  “Your mother? Is your mother all right?”

  “Nico.”

  “Yes?”

  “Nico’s dead. He died yesterday. They just told me. They brought me his concertina.”

  Clarie took Maura in her arms and hugged her tight, feeling Maura’s damp curls graze her cheeks and smelling the wet wool of her shawls. “Come, come,” she soothed. “Let’s get you warm
.”

  Bernard was already standing when they walked into the parlor.

  “Nico’s dead,” Clarie explained.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Maura. “Let me take those wet things.”

  Maura stood passively as Bernard lifted the outer garments from her shoulders. Then Clarie gently led her toward the fire. “Here, warm your hands.”

  Maura extended her hands over the flames. Her lips trembled. “I should have been there. I should have made him come live with us.”

  Clarie kept her arm around Maura’s waist. They both knew that Nico’s moving in with Maura and her mother was impossible. Maura had dreamed of making enough money to move to two rooms. But there hadn’t been time. Dear Nico was dead.

  “Let’s go into the kitchen and get you a hot cup of tea,” Clarie said. Bernard stood aside, a grave expression on his face, as they passed by. Once in the kitchen, Maura took the usual place at the table, where she learned her numbers and went over spelling twice a week. Clarie struck a match and lit the stove, then reached for a tin of biscuits. She set them in front of Maura and spooned tea into a pot. They didn’t say anything until the water had boiled, the tea had steeped, and Maura had her cold hands wrapped around a warm cup.

  “Do you know how he died?” Clarie asked as she sat down.

  “In his sleep. They said he was smiling. Maybe he was dreaming about Jeanne or Italy.”

  “Or you.”

  “I should have—” Maura bowed her head and pressed her lips together. It was so unlike Maura to cry in front of anyone. Clarie was glad that she felt she could do it now, here, in her place.

  “Maura,” Clarie leaned over to peer into the girl’s eyes, “didn’t you go at least once a week to see him?”

  Maura nodded, staring down at her cup.

  “Didn’t he say you didn’t have to come, but that it gave him great joy?”

  Another slight nod.

  “You gave him so much. You made his last days very happy. You know that.”

  “He didn’t need me to be happy. He was happy because he was so kind and good.”

  “But you were a gift, an unexpected blessing for him.”

  Maura sniffled and took a sip of tea.

  “And you didn’t abandon him. You could have, you know.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t, I—” Maura almost smiled. Between the arithmetic and the orthography, Clarie had often taken time to tell Maura that she was a smart, good, brave girl who would grow into a fine woman. The smile seemed to be proof that she was beginning to believe it.

  Maura grabbed Clarie’s hand. “But why do all the good people die?”

  Clarie sank back in her chair. This was not a question she addressed between lessons. She could not help but picture all the deaths in her life: her mother, her baby, Bernard’s father. All beloved. She squeezed Maura’s hand and leaned forward again. The girl had suffered so many losses. Pyotr, Angela, now Nico. And who knows what had happened to her father, or the Russian girls?

  “I don’t think they die really, altogether. They stay inside us, are part of us. Just as when you grow up, the young Maura will be part of the older Maura. They’ll all be there inside of you, helping you to be a wiser, fuller person. And besides,” Clarie tugged on Maura’s hand to try to get her to look up, “not all the good people die. Some are still with us.”

  Maura pulled her hand away and stared into her cup. “I know that,” she whispered. “I know that now.”

  “This doesn’t mean,” Clarie said, still trying to meet Maura’s eyes, “that we should not mourn, that we should not be sad. We must be, because we’ll miss them. And sometimes it’s very unfair that they leave us so early.”

  They both sat there in silence for a few moments, until they heard a commotion in the parlor. Bernard knocked on the doorframe and entered the kitchen with a very grumpy Jean-Luc in his arms.

  “Look who’s here,” he said to his son.

  The pouting toddler rubbed his eyes until he could see clearly. And then he smiled.

  After all, it was Maura.

  Historical Note

  READERS MAY WONDER WHICH OF the characters really lived and which events actually happened. Séverine (Caroline Rémy de Guebhard) was a famous journalist of the time, and Mmes. Roubinovitch and Sauvaget did serve the Lycée Lamartine. La Fronde (The Sling), mentioned in the Epilogue, was an all-women’s newspaper edited and published by the enterprising former actress and salonnière, Marguerite Durand. The first edition appeared in December 1897. The Charity Bazaar Fire (May 1897) and the bombing in the Café Terminus (February 1894) were important and traumatic events in the history of Paris.

  If you explore Clarie’s Paris, you will find the gilded entrance to the Gas Company Administration building, the Moulin Rouge, the Lariboisière Hospital, and, of course, the Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est railroad stations. The building once dedicated to a model workers’ community still remains, marked by a plaque, on the rue Rochechouart. Lycée Lamartine also lives on in a very different guise. It is no longer a breeding ground for proper bourgeois girls in uniform, but a public co-ed institution, with teenagers “hanging out” as they would near any American high school. Farther away, the Bourse du Travail (Labor Exchange), near the Place de la République, is an impressive center for labor activities. The laundry and the tenement on the rue Goutte-d’Or are long gone.

  The two Italian songs in the story are loose translations of traditional lyrics reprinted in The Folk-Songs of Italy (Arno Press reprint, 1977). “The Fiancés of the North” was one of the many popular songs written to protest the killing of nine demonstrators in the northern industrial town of Fourmies on May Day, 1891. The rapturous reading of Proudhon that Clarie heard in the working-class café is taken from one of the anarchist’s articles quoted in James Joll’s The Anarchists (New York, 1964).

  To say that the rest is fiction does not relieve the author of striving for authenticity. This means piecing together innumerable sources: general and specific histories, biographies, travelers’ accounts and guidebooks, photographs and paintings, dissertations, nineteenth-century novels, and the ever-handy Internet. Rather than present a tedious “select” bibliography, I’ll give some examples of sources that fueled the narrative, sometimes in surprising ways.

  John Savage’s dissertation on the legal culture of the Paris Bar (New York University, 1999) provided me with a number of wonderful details about the arduous path to admission (including the house inspection) and the Labor Exchange’s attitude toward lawyers. On a much smaller scale, Matilda Betham-Edwards’ Home Life in France (London, 1905) confirmed that, indeed, a Parisian housewife could buy a ready-to-eat chicken.

  Emile Zola is essential. It was only after I chose to have Maura live in the Goutte-d’Or that I remembered it as the locus of his 1877 working-class novel, L’Assommoir. Guy de Maupassant offers a sardonic look at Paris journalism in Bel-Ami (1885), loosely based upon the life of Séverine’s most notorious lover, Georges de Labruyère. John Merriman’s The Dynamite Club (Boston, 2009) details the words and deeds of Emile Henry, the Café Terminus bomber. For what Clarie called the “noise of Paris,” there are innumerable books on Montmartre and Vanessa Schwartz’s wonderful Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in fin-de-siècle Paris (Berkeley, 1998), with photographs and analyses of popular ghoulish entertainments like the Paris morgue. Finally, the best source in English on the notorious lives and impressive achievements of Séverine and her friend and colleague, Marguerite Durand, is Mary Louise Roberts’ Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France (Chicago, 2002).

  Acknowledgments

  FIRST THANKS MUST GO TO the members of my wonderful writers’ group who have saved me from countless embarrassments and infelicities as the book developed: Mabel Armstrong, Faris Cassell, Kari Davidson, Elizabeth Lyon, and Geraldine Moreno-Black. The next line of defense were willing readers of the first completed draft: Linda Frederick, Freddie Tryk, Pam Whyte, and especially George Wickes, who keeps m
e attuned, on pitch, to the cultural mores of late nineteenth-century French culture. My editor, Jessica Case, offered an incisive critique, as always, with a deft and gracious hand. Mollie Glick, my agent, continues to be the support system that any author would be grateful for.

  One of the pleasures of writing this book was exchanging emails with far-flung colleagues in French history. I thank Claire Germain, Benjamin Martin, John Merriman, and Jo Burr Margadant for the work that has been important to the Martin series and for their prompt, friendly responses. Tom Kselman gets a special thanks for sending me to Zola’s short story, “The Way People Die,” on the different social strata of nineteenth-century Paris. As for non-historical help, thanks to Dr. Lee Davidson, who graciously and promptly shared his experience with knife wounds.

  Finally, I thank my husband, Daniel Pope, for his technical help, enthusiastic support, and for just being there.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.