I slap the book closed. I can’t concentrate. Can’t sit still. I get up, rummage in the kitchen for something to eat but don’t find anything, then walk back to the case, key in hand, like Bluebeard’s idiot wife.
I get the diary out and page past the first entry. As I do, something flutters out and lands on the table. It’s a newspaper clipping, small and fragile.
GREEN MAN STRIKES AGAIN
Paris, 2 Floréal III—The Green Man, a street name for the outlaw who has been terrorizing the citizens of Paris with destructive firework displays, struck again last night, causing damage to property on the Rue de Normandie.
No one knows the purpose of his pyrotechnical displays. Some believe the Green Man—so named because of the fresh leaves fire-workers once wore to protect themselves from sparks—is sending up rockets to signal foreign armies. Others think the fireworks are coded communications between members of an insurrectionary force within the city.
General Bonaparte, commander of the Paris Guard, was grilled by the Assembly this morning as to why the Green Man remains at large. Bonaparte assured them that he was doing everything within his power to capture the miscreant.
“I have increased the number of guards on the streets and have placed a bounty of one hundred francs upon the Green Man’s head,” he said. “He will be caught—it is only a matter of time. And when he is, justice—swift and severe—will be served.”
“Two Floréal,” I say aloud. I remember that word—Floréal—from my class on the Revolution. The Assembly banished the old Julian calendar and made September 22, 1792—the day France became a republic—Day One of Year One. They declared that time would begin again—with them. The III stands for Year Three or 1795, I think.
But who’s the Green Man?
I flip back to the first entry. The writer mentions a green man in it. She says it’s the last role she played. But she’s a she, not a he. Her name is Alexandrine. Did she pretend to be a man? Why? And, if so, what was she doing with the fireworks? Other than pissing off Napoléon Bonaparte, which doesn’t seem smart. Dude had a temper. And an army.
“Who are you?” I say out loud. To nobody.
My cell phone goes off. I nearly jump out of my skin.
“God, Vijay! You scared the hell out of me. What do you want?”
“What do you want? You left me a message.”
“Yeah, I did. Sorry. You’ll never believe this. I just found this diary. It was hidden in an old guitar case. I think it might be really old. Like, from the Revolution.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, it is a wow. There’s an old newspaper clipping in it. It has a weird date—two Floréal three. Any idea what month that corresponds to?”
“May, maybe?” he says. “Hang on a minute.…” I hear him typing on his keyboard, then “Okay, got it. April 21, 1795.”
“How’d you do that so fast?”
“I found a conversion chart online. So what’s it say?”
“I’m not sure yet. I just started reading it, but—”
“Vijay!” I hear in the background. “How can you study on an empty stomach? Why haven’t you eaten the breakfast I made for you?”
“Because I’m on the phone, Mom!”
“Fooling around with your friends again! Who is that?”
“Ahmadinejad.”
“Oh, my goodness! What is he saying?”
“That he wants to see Jeezy at the Beacon tonight. Putin’s going, too. He scalped a ticket from Kim Jong Il. All tha gangstas are going.”
“Don’t be so fresh, young man!”
“Gotta go,” he says to me. “Enemy forces have dropped a Momshell.”
“Fall back, soldier. Over and out.
“April 1795,” I say to myself as I hang up.
I run my hand over the leather cover of the diary, thinking about the girl who wrote it, and how she’d hoped to get it out of Paris. That didn’t happen, because here it is, more than two centuries later, still in Paris.
What about her, though—Alexandrine? What happened to her?
Didn’t G say the guitar was found in the catacombs? She must’ve put it there. It sounds like she was on the run. Maybe she hid it in the catacombs for safekeeping and then couldn’t get back to get it. Or maybe something bad happened and she died down there. And the case stayed hidden underground until the cave-in, and the guy who found it never tried to open the false bottom because who expects a false bottom in a guitar case? And anyway, he didn’t have the key.
But I do. Somehow I have it. How did that key get from eighteenth-century Paris to twenty-first-century Brooklyn?
Did she escape to New York instead of London? With the key in her coat pocket? And it somehow ended up in a box of junk at a flea market? Or maybe Truman’s key isn’t her key at all. Maybe it’s just some old generic key that opens instrument cases. That seems a lot more likely.
Either way, I don’t think the hidden compartment has been opened for a long time. I don’t think the diary and the miniature would still be in it if it had been. I don’t think it’s been opened since Alexandrine herself locked it and ran. Or locked it and died.
Not until now.
Not until me.
I tuck the clipping back into the diary and keep reading.
20
22 April 1795
It was luck that brought me to him. Or so I once thought.
It was a Sunday in April. Years ago. In 1789. Robespierre outlawed Sundays. And 1789, too. But I go by the old calendar, not the new.
It was before. Before the people of Paris pulled down a prison, a palace, a king.
My family was at home in the damp, miserable room we shared. My grandmother was stirring a soup. Rabbit, she said, but no one believed her. Too many cats had gone missing.
We came home—my father, my uncle, and I—without our trunks and boxes.
Where are the puppets? my mother asked.
We were giving a show, my father told her, about the revolution in America. We were set upon by the guard. They called the show seditious. They trampled the puppets, toppled the theater, and set fire to all.
My God, we are ruined! my mother cried. How am I to feed these children? What will we do? Tell me!
We’ll make new puppets, my uncle said.
So the guard can trample them, too? my mother asked.
We’ll make farting puppets, my uncle said, and our fortune. He turned to my father and said, Paris wants farts and farces, not high ideals, Theo. You must do this.
I must do this. I must do that. I am your puppet, René, my father grumbled.
He was a playwright once, my father, and the rest of us his players. His plays were tragic and sad, like the man himself, but the theaters refused them, for they spoke of liberty and an end to kings. Because he could not stage his plays in theaters, he staged them in the streets, and three times the censors arrested him. The third time, they banned him from performing ever again. So he made puppets and had them say the words he could not.
Papa will do it, won’t he? my sister Bette said to our mother. I’m so hungry!
We were all hungry, all thin, for the harvest had been poor and the winter long. We saw bodies in the street every morning, blue and stiff. Men, women, little children. Dead of hunger and cold. Carried off to the morgue like planks.
Only Bette was not thin. How she stayed plump in the midst of a famine mystified us. My mother suspected worms. My grandmother, biliousness.
My father and uncle continued to argue about the puppets. My mother wept. My brothers, all five of them, joined her. My grandmother scolded.
And I? I decided to try my luck reciting Shakespeare at the Palais-Royal. I would do Juliet, Rosalind, and Kate, then pull on a pair of britches and do Hamlet, Romeo, the young King Henry.
The Palais is a sad place now—the empty rooms gather dust and vagrants sleep under the trees—but once it was the very heart of Paris, a dazzling pleasure arcade of shops, card dens, restaurants, and brothels. It was a place
where one could buy a glass of lemonade, or the girl selling it. A place to see an Amazon in naught but a tiger skin. A place where a duchess might pass by, trailing furs and civet, and a beggar would show you his rotting wounds for a sou. A place where acrobats, all bosoms and bare legs, tumbled and jumped, and painted boys strolled, and quacks displayed dead monster babies with two heads and four arms in pickling jars.
How I loved it.
The Palais was owned by the Duc d’Orléans. I had never seen him, for he lived in rooms high above the broiling courtyards, but he was known to be the richest and wickedest man in all of France.
I hoped to get a few coins there. I would not find them elsewhere. I had auditioned the day before at the Comédie and the Opéra. I’d tried out for farces at five boulevard theaters, too, but I’d got nothing. Not even a maid’s part. I could do more than maids’ parts, even then. I could do leads. But I am a plain girl, not pretty, so it mattered not.
I was just putting on my jacket when my sister went to the wall to admire herself in a cracked glass. She thought no one was watching, but I was and I saw her fish something out of her pocket and stuff it into her mouth.
It was cake. The fat pig ate cake while the rest of us ate cat soup. I saw her sneak another morsel. My brother Émile saw, too. He reached for a bite, but she slapped his hand away. He screeched and my vexed mother, not seeing what transpired, slapped him again.
I saw Émile, who cried because he could not get enough to eat. And my mother, who cried because she could not give it. And then I went to Bette and ripped open her pocket. A chunk of butter cake fell to the floor.
Look! She has cake and shares none of it! I shouted.
Tattling bitch! Bette hissed. You’ll be sorry you ever opened your mouth, I swear you will!
My father and uncle, still arguing, did not hear us, but the rest did. My grandmother looked up from her soup, my aunt from her sewing.
My mother turned white. She picked up the cake. Where did you get this, girl? she said.
From Claude, Bette said, her cheeks reddening.
Claude was a kitchen boy in a noble’s house, a gangling clotpole whom Bette fancied.
Claude’s cake has made Bette fat! I taunted.
Be quiet, you fool. It’s not Claude’s cake that’s done it, my grandmother said.
He’ll marry you! my mother shouted. If I have to drag him to the priest by his ear!
He cannot! Bette cried.
Why not? Has he someone else? Answer me, you little trollop!
No, Mama! He has a year left on his indenture. He swears we will marry the day he is free. The very day!
The shame of it, Bette, my mother said. You with a big belly and no husband. How will we show our faces in the street? How will I feed another mouth?
Bette ran sobbing to my grandmother and put her head in her lap. Because she and my mother had stopped shouting, we could hear my father, who had not.
And if I make these farting puppets of yours, what then, René? he yelled. What good will it do? No one comes to watch us. And even if they did, even if we made a thousand livres a day, there’s no bread to be had for it. Here in Paris we starve, while at Versailles they eat cake!
Bette picked up her head. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. Cake? There is cake at Versailles? she said. Why do we not go there? We shall have plenty!
* * *
Bette was wrong about Claude. He never did marry her. She was wrong about Versailles. She did not get as much cake there as she’d hoped.
But she was right about me. I am sorry, very sorry, I ever opened my mouth.
Why was she sorry? I wonder. And as I do, I get that feeling again—the feeling I got when I first started reading—a scared feeling. And I don’t want to know.
I don’t want to know what made that girl sorry. Or why she thought she wouldn’t last long. Or how the guitar got into the catacombs—a huge, sprawling graveyard underneath the streets of Paris. Because whatever the reasons are, they can’t be good and I’m holding steady right now. I’m not fighting with my father. I’m doing my work. The pills are keeping the sadness at bay. And I want to stay that way.
My stomach growls again, painfully, and I realize that I’m starving. The last thing I ate was a ham and cheese crêpe on my way back here last night. I close the diary and put it in its case. For good this time. I’ll tell G about it when he gets home. And the miniature. He can deal with them.
I shrug into my jacket and grab my bag. I’m going to make a quick food run, then come back and keep reading about Malherbeau. I’ve got a lot to do between now and Sunday.
No more sad stories for me.
Not today.
I’ve got a plane to catch.
21
After a ten-minute walk, I’m at a grocery store on the Rue du Faubourg St-Antoine. Just as I’m about to go inside, I remember that I took out money yesterday, a couple of times, but I spent it all, so I walk a few blocks to an ATM. I’m standing there, waiting for my cash, when a message comes up telling me I can’t access the account. I figure I messed up my password and try again, but no dice.
I get my card back and call my father. He doesn’t answer. Of course he doesn’t. He’s not hungry. He’s probably having afternoon tea with the president. I dial another number. There’s some transatlantic static, then a voice says, “Minna Dyson.”
“Hey, Minna.”
A few seconds tick by while the Cylon on the other end runs a voice-recognition program. Then I hear, “Andi? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it is. Um … I just tried my ATM card. It’s on Dad’s account. And something’s wrong. I’m trying to get something to eat and it won’t let me get any money.”
“That’s because I put a stop on the card,” Minna says. “There were two withdrawals an hour apart yesterday. For one hundred euros, and then two hundred. The bank called me. I thought the card had been stolen.”
“That was me. I needed money for some stuff.”
“You needed three hundred euros?” Minna says. “That’s a huge amount of money, Andi. You can’t just go around taking out three hundred euros whenever you feel like it.”
“Are you, like, the CFO now?”
Silence. Then, “Ask your father for money.”
“Tried that. He’s not answering his cell.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I’m sure you have some change left over from your spending spree. Get a sandwich.” The line cuts out, comes back. “—got to go. I’m at the lab.”
“Wait! Minna? Hey, I’m hungry here!” I shout into the phone.
She hangs up. I can’t believe this. I’m so damn hungry now that I’ve got the shakes. I shove my phone into my jacket pocket and feel something else in there. A coin. I pull it out. It’s a shiny golden euro—the one the old man gave me on the quai yesterday. I forgot I had it. Won’t do me much good, though. I couldn’t even buy half a sandwich with it.
Then it dawns on me: if I got one euro playing on the quai, where hardly anybody goes in the winter, how many more euros could I get if I played where the tourists are?
I run back to G’s and grab my guitar.
22
I’m playing shit-tar.
It’s so cold that my fingers are numb and I’m not hitting the right notes.
I’m playing near the Eiffel Tower. The place is teeming with tourists. I’ve been here for hours. Playing my heart out. Trying to ignore pigeons, snowflakes, and the hordes of guitar heroes getting in my face.
It’s nearly six now and dark, and I’m hungrier than ever. I’ve got some coins in my case, maybe five euros in all. Barely enough for some bread and cheese.
I fumble my way through “All Apologies,” put the guitar down and blow on my fingers, but it doesn’t help.
“Stick them in your armpits.”
I look up. A guy’s standing there in an orange coverall. There’s a bag of tools at his feet. He looks like a serial killer.
“What?”
“Like this,”
he says, crossing his arms over his chest and shoving his hands into his pits. “It works better than blowing on them.”
I try it. He’s right.
“I like your playing,” he says. “Want to jam?”
“Dude, with what? A hammer?”
He turns around. He’s got what looks like a mandolin case slung over his back.
I shrug. “Yeah. All right.”
I’m thinking we might sound better together. Or at least louder. Either way, we might get more money, and I need more money. He warms up and we play “Pennyroyal Tea” and then some tunes by Elliott Smith and Nada Surf. People stop to listen. A few toss coins. We play for about an hour, then divvy the money. It works out to just over seven euros apiece.
“I’m Jules, by the way,” the guy says. “I work over there,” he points west with his thumb, “for a furniture maker.”
That explains the orange coverall. I hope.
“I’m Andi,” I say.
“You want to come to Rémy’s with me? It’s a café. On the Rue Oberkampf. I play there on Wednesdays and Sundays. I haven’t played for a couple of weeks, though, because one of the guys I play with … a guitarist? He took off. Went back to Moldova to get his teeth.”
“His what?”
“His teeth. He loaned his dentures to his brother for his wedding. To look good in the pictures. He said he could take them on his honeymoon, too. Which was really nice of him, you know? But now his brother won’t give them back. He didn’t mail them like he was supposed to. So the guy? Constantine? He had to go get them. Anyway, you want to go? We can take the Métro. Rémy will feed us.”
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