April In Paris, 1921

by Tessa Lunney

  ‘Or fear. Sometimes fear works better, especially with women.’ He saw me raise my eyebrow. ‘Or I should say, especially with mothers.’

  ‘And would you work alone?’

  ‘This is very detailed,’ he raised an eyebrow in response to mine, ‘for a hypothetical theft.’

  ‘And if it wasn’t hypothetical?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t. I know Olga Stepanovna too well.’ He smiled at me. ‘Alas, I have too much honour.’

  ‘Terrible for business.’

  He laughed. ‘Beautiful Australienne, why did you want to speak to me? I don’t think you have an offer for me from Pablo.’

  I cursed under my smile. ‘I do come from Pablo . . . but not with an offer exactly, although he may change his mind about you, depending on your answers,’ I lied, but it worked.

  Lazarev leaned in. ‘Anything.’

  ‘Your art dealing business—’

  ‘I’m an art lover. My passion makes it my business.’

  ‘Who is your buyer?’

  ‘Ah.’ He fiddled with his tea glass. ‘That is a strange part of the business. I have never met him, but his name is Hausmann.’

  I leant forward now, so I was only a foot away from Lazarev.

  ‘He’s German,’ he whispered.

  ‘Quite the secret. How did he contact you?’

  ‘By letter, through my friend Katya – Yekaterina Dimitryevna – although the letter was delivered to her when she was away. It was given to me by the woman staying there, what’s her name, a silly, vain woman.’ He helped himself to my plate of pastries, his large hands articulate and graceful. I pushed the plate further towards him.

  ‘A flower name . . . Violet, that’s it,’ he pronounced it the French way. ‘She was at Pablo’s the other day, looking very British – scandalised and trying to hide it, like she’d stumbled on her sister making love with the stableboy.’

  I laughed but made frantic mental notes.

  ‘Yes, Pablo’s work does that to some people,’ he said. ‘A little while ago, she called me to say that a letter had come for me at Katya’s. The letter was from this Hausmann, asking to procure for him any Picasso. He’s a businessman, apparently, and wants portable assets.’

  ‘Not an alien sentiment for you.’

  ‘Unfortunately not. But this business, no handshakes, all by letter, it does not seem entirely . . .’

  ‘Honourable?’

  ‘Exactement!’ He spoke French with the same flourish that he swung his cane. ‘And when the revolutionaries take your house, your history, everything but the raiment you can escape with, honour is the only currency you have left.’

  ‘How noble.’

  He laughed then, throwing his head back in delight at my sarcastic tone. ‘We Russians love to be dramatic – that’s what you English say, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m Australian, actually. We take an even dimmer view of high feeling.’

  ‘I’m glad that I don’t disappoint.’ He gave a mock bow and dropped another piece of pastry in his mouth. He called to the aunt for more tea and cake as he finished off the little crepes.

  ‘Do you know where Violet is living?’ I asked.

  ‘The English woman? At Katya’s while Katya’s in Italy. I believe she’s been there for some months already. Do you need the address?’

  I nodded and he scribbled down an address not far from here. He got up and kissed my hand when he saw that I was leaving.

  ‘If you hear from Picasso, dear lady, please talk to me. I’m always here.’ He waved to the sumptuous marble interior of the teahouse.

  ‘Just one more thing—’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘What is Hausmann’s first name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘The letter was signed only with an E.’

  16

  Dardanella

  MY FEET DECIDED WHERE TO GO. The morning streets burst with spring flowers and sweetheart postcards. They bustled with newspaper boys and fruit sellers spruiked out of laneways. I could smell bread and cigarette smoke, horses and car exhaust, dead flowers and coffee and old wine. I kept a lookout for any newspaper boys who might be following me, but I saw none who left their corner. My feet had decided to take me to the hospital where Maisie George Chevallier had said she volunteered each week. I had no idea if she’d have time to see me – normal people had routines, they had shifts and obligations, they weren’t like myself or Harry or the artists of Montparnasse. But I needed her. The lonely chill of last night hadn’t quite been chased away.

  In the usual ironic style of hospital buildings, this temple of health was a crumbling mansion. The stones needed scrubbing, the iron railing sported a patina of rust, pigeons nested in the hidden corners. But the windows shone and all manner of people – nurses in blue, clerks in black, patients and visitors in pale tones – walked in and out of the high double doors with purpose. I joined the throng.

  As a married woman, Maisie wasn’t allowed to do paid work, but she was allowed to be on the wards, administer medicine, sign patients in and out. Most married women worked to raise funds, but Maisie’s great skills and terrible French meant she did more conventional hospital work. I heard her before I saw her, her hooting laugh followed by some near incomprehensible French as she stood behind the registration desk. A young veteran stood by the counter with his one good arm and had clearly taken on the role of language tutor.

  She saw me and waved. ‘Katie King!’ She leant over the counter to kiss me on both cheeks. ‘French style, eh? I’m learning, slowly.’

  The young veteran looked me up and down, bent over and kissed my hand. ‘Louis, mademoiselle.’ He was as flirtatious as a one-armed man in pyjamas could be.

  ‘Kiki,’ I said. ‘If you want to improve her French you have to get her to stop laughing.’

  ‘Katie, don’t speak so fast, I can’t keep up—’ Maisie protested.

  ‘How could I ask her to stop laughing? She is laughter itself.’

  ‘She is sunshine, I’ve always thought,’ I said, ‘but sunshine audible is laughter.’

  ‘Indeed! And you are a poet!’

  ‘A café philosopher.’ I smiled. ‘I know published poets and they’re all mad. I prefer my sanity.’

  Louis laughed and Maisie cocked her head in a ‘Well?’ gesture.

  ‘Have you finished your shift yet?’ I said in English. ‘I need hugs, coffee and gossip.’

  ‘Just as soon as . . . ah! Here she is. Bonjour, Eloise!’

  Eloise looked harried as she reeled off four excuses as to why she was almost late, shooing Maisie out of the way and Louis off the counter just as the sour-faced matron clipped by. We waved goodbye to Louis as he sauntered back to the ward, giving Maisie a second and third glance over his shoulder.

  ‘You’ve got an admirer there,’ I said, linking her arm with mine.

  ‘Oh, not really, he’s just bored. You know how it is.’

  ‘He looked back—’

  ‘He’s shortsighted. It’s probably why he got the clap.’

  We shouted with laughter as we made our way to a café.

  ‘So, what was it you said you needed – gossip, coffee—’

  ‘And hugs.’

  ‘Well, I can deliver there,’ she said, and before I could sit down she hugged me so tightly that she almost lifted me off the floor. She was taller than me and stronger too, especially as it’d been two years since I’d lifted patients and moved beds. People around us hid their smiles.

  ‘Everyone who went through our war needs a hug, I reckon,’ she said as we sat down. ‘Do you think I can order lunch already? Is it noon? I’ve been working since six, I’m famished.’

  ‘Are you asking me to order for you?’

  ‘No! But if you’re ordering for yourself . . .’

  I ordered a coffee for me and the set lunch for her, with a bottle of crisp white wine to share. The waitress was like the café: old-fashioned and upholstered in velvet. We sat on red velvet seats, two chandeliers
hung over the diners, thick brocade curtains of faded gold framed the windows. Most of the other diners were a generation older than us, but it was the closest café to the hospital building that wasn’t full of other nurses, visitors and patients.

  ‘You’ve got your hug, you’ve got your coffee—’

  ‘Now I just need to gossip.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  So I did. I handed over all the jumbled thoughts from the bath, from the bed, from my lonely trips around gloomy streets when Paris wasn’t my Paris. This was even better than Harry – Harry was the mother I should have had, but Maisie was a sister. She took it all in and sorted it out in her matter-of-fact way. All the women in my life were sensible and strong; it was the men who were fragile, needy and sensitive. Yet another strange outcome of the war.

  ‘Well, I can’t say I’m sorry that Tom has come back into your life,’ said Maisie as she wiped up the sauce on her plate with a piece of bread.

  ‘It makes things more complicated.’

  ‘You love complicated.’

  ‘Not like this—’

  ‘Rubbish. If anything is settled, you go out of your way to add another lover, another job, a risky bit of Paris AWOL to your nights to spice things up. In fact, if Fox weren’t such a bastard, I’d be glad that he was in your life too.’

  ‘Maise!’

  ‘I’m serious.’ She popped the bread into her mouth. ‘A gossip columnist – really, Katie? You’re too smart for that.’

  ‘It takes a lot of work!’

  ‘Fine. You’re too honest for that, then. You’re too outspoken, too fierce. Can you honestly tell me that you enjoy those parties that you write about?’

  I harrumphed.

  ‘And can you honestly tell me that you’re not just a little bit excited to be a spy once again?’

  I grinned.

  ‘I didn’t think so.’

  ‘So you know me better than I know myself, do you, Maisie?’

  ‘I wasn’t your tent mate for three years without learning a thing or two,’ she said. ‘Besides, I’m not living the danger, Katie King. I’m not drunk on risk.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘You know you love it or you wouldn’t have said yes to Fox.’

  ‘I said yes because of Tom—’

  ‘No, you didn’t, Katie.’ She finished her wine and refilled our glasses. ‘And this thing with Tom – you love it because it’s risky. If he was just a farm boy from central New South Wales . . . well, you wouldn’t look twice.’

  ‘So what do I do about it?’

  She clinked her glass with mine. ‘You enjoy it, that’s what you do,’ she said. ‘And you keep me up to date with all your gossip.’

  ‘Now that I can promise.’ This was why I loved Maisie. Whatever she said about me, it was she who was honest and outspoken and fierce. She wasn’t afraid of what I might think; she told me the truth and trusted that I would recognise it. I knew, then, that two years without her sunshine had been two years too long.

  ‘So which of your men are you seeing tonight?’

  ‘None. Tonight I have a society party to go to – one of my gossip columnist duties. Care to join me?’

  ‘Would I! I’ve always wanted to go to one of those posh parties.’

  ‘Don’t you go to them with Ray?’

  ‘Oh no, they’re bureaucrats, not aristocrats. They talk politics together while the women push their husbands to speak to the right people. Not a foxtrot in sight.’

  I was finally relaxed enough, or drunk enough, to feel hungry again. We ordered delicious slices of lemon tart to top off the meal. It was just the right mixture of sweet and sour, with rich pastry that melted on the tongue. Maisie entertained me with stories of the hospital, glad that she finally had someone who would understand. The freckles stood out on her nose in the slants of sun that came through the windows. Maisie insisted on paying for us and I walked her to her metro stop with a promise for tonight.

  IT WAS STILL WITHIN THE LUNCH HOUR and the sun was high overhead. I was full of cake and caffeine and lightened by Maisie’s sunshiny nature. With the address from Fox in my handbag, I bought a fresh packet of cigarettes – Gauloises, with the little blue helmet on the packet and that distinctive smell of French trenches and frontline estaminets – and hailed a taxi for the strange part of town.

  The cab driver asked for the address twice, read the envelope and looked at me for a long time before he finally set out. He wound through the streets, crossed the river, and it wasn’t until he went further and further into the slum areas of Paris that I understood why. Obviously bourgeois mademoiselles like me didn’t venture into places like this – part dark city slum, part shantytown – unless they were up to no good. Which was most likely true, although what kind of ‘no good’ I’d be up to I’d yet to find out. I hoped, at least, it’d include a pretty young someone with a drink.

  The cab driver stopped at the top of a cobbled lane, narrow and flanked by dark-eyed houses.

  ‘It’s down there.’ He pointed into the gloom. ‘But I wouldn’t go down there if I were you. Mademoiselle, let me—’

  ‘Let you what?’

  He was silent.

  ‘I have a good friend down there,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry but I doubt that very much.’

  ‘Doubting Thomas, you’ll have to believe it. How much?’

  ‘Let me take you home. You can pay me then.’

  ‘I have no idea how long I’ll be—’

  ‘Where do you live? With the other foreigners in Montmartre? Montparnasse?’

  ‘Monsieur.’ I put on my wickedest smile. ‘I do not need you to wait for me, or protect me, or lecture me on how to live. You can either leave with my money or without. Which is it to be?’

  He sighed and shook his head. I gave him the usual price for a cross-town fare and got out, not looking back. I heard him pull away and felt a pang. The man was trying to look out for me and I wouldn’t let him. But that was the point – what right did he have to tell me who I could and could not see? I hadn’t left my father in Australia to be lectured by a cab driver in Paris, however well intentioned. I pulled my coat around me and strode down the alleyway.

  The stench over the cobbled path was almost a miasma, as it mixed with the steam that seemed to appear from between the houses. I was hit with a familiar waft of piss and cabbage water and rot; I knew it from the waste trenches behind some of the more ‘civilised’ army hospitals. People openly stared at me, incredulous and hostile and mocking, as I walked along in my star-patterned shoes and cream coat. I flashed one young woman a grin and she smiled back, a ray of light in that gloomy alley.

  ‘Do you know this address?’ I couldn’t tell if she was younger than me or simply shorter. She stared at the envelope and I read out the address.

  ‘Who lives there?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but I need to see them.’

  ‘Marie!’ she yelled across the alley and a dozen heads appeared in doorways and windows. ‘Who lives at number 14?’

  ‘One-Eyed Luc,’ said the called-for Marie, a short, stout girl with a basket on her hip. She looked me up and down and turned to my smiler. ‘I’m going there now.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ I picked my way through the street sludge.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ She turned and walked briskly into the darkest part of the alley.

  The walls were wet in a way that looked permanent. Although it was as dark and dank as any London slum, the doorsteps of the houses were scrubbed clean, the windows were clear and half of them had window boxes of geraniums and herbs, their subtle scent alleviating the stench from the gutter. Marie clipped quickly over the cobbles, winding through another alley and then another.

  The alleys began to widen and lighten and the boxes of geraniums became bigger and brighter. Some of the windows even had coloured shutters as though this part of Paris was a village. But as we turned a corner, the shadows suddenly deepened and darkened. Over the alleys loomed an e
normous factory with three black chimneys that blocked out the sun. The houses around the factory were black with soot, and spidery metal staircases wound round the outside. Marie clipped onto one staircase with her basket, her footsteps a fierce clang.

  I caught a glimpse of a man with a limp. I turned but there was no one else in the street. The limp was familiar but I couldn’t place it.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Marie called. I followed her up the staircase. I knew thousands of veterans must be limping around Paris, but there was something in the jaunt, the heft of it, that I’d seen before.

  Marie opened a dark door into a tiny room containing the aptly named One-Eyed Luc. Although ‘One-Eyed’ was kind, as he was also missing both legs at the knee and his right hand. The half of his face that lacked an eye was so scarred it looked like a map of Paris. He stared at me with his one eye as Marie fussed over him, plumping pillows, laying out bread and cheese, pouring wine, putting on the kettle to make tea. The apartment smelt strangely of stale breath, soap, tobacco and sickness, but Marie made no move to open a window. She glanced at me once or twice but mostly ignored me as she tended her pet. He ignored her and spoke directly to me.

  ‘Who are you working for?’ His voice was gravel, strained with injury.

  I was taken aback by his bold, and correct, assumption. I decided that honesty would work best. ‘Fox. In London.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘That’s probably just as well,’ I said, staring right back at him, ‘but I’m Mademoiselle Renarde’ – his eyebrows shot up – ‘and I need information.’

  ‘What are you offering?’

  I looked around, at the cracking walls with their peeling paint, at the gas ring on the floor, at the warped skirting boards, at the threadbare patches on the cushions, blankets and throws. I could offer a lot. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Let’s exchange.’ He leant forward as his voice scraped against his throat. ‘A name for a name.’

  I didn’t know that I had any names, but I put on my most knowing face and took the seat he pointed to with his stump. Marie brought tea and started to massage his legs but he dismissed her with a gruff, ‘Later.’