The Girl on Paper

by Guillaume Musso

  In spite of the increasing number of luxury stores that were replacing the old bookshops and galleries, there was still something magical about the quartier. Everywhere you went in the labyrinth of back streets you breathed in a love of books, poetry and painting. Every road and every building we passed was thick with layers of rich cultural heritage. Voltaire used to write at a table in Le Procope; Verlaine would drop in for a glass of absinthe; Delacroix had his studio on Rue de Furstemberg; Racine lived on Rue Visconti; Balzac went bankrupt setting up a printer’s on the same street; Oscar Wilde died alone and destitute in a seedy hotel on Rue des Beaux-Arts; Picasso painted Guernica on Rue des Grands-Augustins; Miles Davis played on Rue Saint-Benoît; Jim Morrison hung out on Rue de Seine… It was enough to make your head spin.

  Billie was radiant, twirling about in the sunshine, guidebook in hand to make sure she didn’t miss a thing.

  We stopped at a café around midday. While I downed espressos, she treated herself to fromage blanc au miel and pain perdu à la framboise. I watched her tucking in, enjoying every mouthful.

  Something had changed between us. Our mutual aggression had given way to a new closeness. We were in this together now, all too aware that our time together was short, the moments we shared were precious and we had to take care of one another.

  ‘Let’s take a look at that church!’ she piped up, pointing to the steeple of Saint-Germain. While I got out my wallet to pay, Billie took one last gulp of hot chocolate. Then, like a child showing off, she got up and ran across the road, just as a car was coming the other way.

  She landed with a horrifying thud in the middle of the road.

  *

  San Francisco

  Lenox Hospital

  As Bonnie closed the book she was surprised to notice that half the pages were blank.

  ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to finish the story, Mrs Kaufman.’

  Ethel frowned and looked at the book more closely. It ended abruptly on page 266, right in the middle of an unfinished sentence.

  ‘Must be some sort of printing error. You should take it back to the store.’

  ‘I bought it over the internet!’

  ‘Looks like you’ve been taken for a ride.’

  Bonnie felt her face flush with annoyance. It was too bad. The book was gripping and the watercolour illustrations were really well done.

  ‘Lunchtime!’ the porter called out, pushing open the door to bring in the meal trays.

  Bonnie got a meal too whenever she was here. On the menu today were vegetable soup, Brussels sprout salad and boiled cod.

  Bonnie gritted her teeth and forced herself to take a few mouthfuls. Why was the cod still swimming in water? And the French bean soup such a strange brownish colour? And the unseasoned vinaigrette… ugh.

  ‘Not great, huh?’ sighed Mrs Kaufman.

  ‘Somewhere between the frankly gross and the downright disgusting,’ agreed Bonnie.

  The old lady smiled to herself.

  ‘What I wouldn’t give for a good chocolate soufflé. That’s my guilty pleasure.’

  ‘I’ve never tried it!’ said Bonnie, almost licking her lips at the thought of it.

  ‘I’ll write down the recipe for you,’ offered Ethel. ‘Pass me a pen and that book. It might as well be used for something.’

  She opened the book. On the first of the blank pages, she wrote in her best handwriting:

  Chocolate soufflé

  8oz dark chocolate

  2oz sugar

  5 eggs

  1oz flour

  a quarter pint semi-skimmed milk

  1) Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in a bain-marie…

  *

  Paris

  Saint-Germain-des-Prés

  ‘Open your eyes!’

  Billie’s body lay in the middle of the road. The Renault Clio had braked just in time and avoided hitting her. Traffic had stopped on Rue Bonaparte and a crowd had gathered around the girl on the ground.

  I leaned over her, raising her legs to send the blood to her brain. I turned her head to one side and loosened her clothes, following Dr Philipson’s instructions to the letter. Billie eventually regained consciousness and a bit of colour came back to her cheeks. The attack had been as brief as it was dramatic, just like in Mexico.

  ‘Hold the champagne, I’m not dead yet,’ she said drily.

  I squeezed her wrist. Her pulse was still weak, she had difficulty breathing and beads of sweat were forming on her brow.

  We’d made an appointment to see Professor Clouseau, the doctor Aurore had recommended, the following day. I hoped against hope he would live up to his reputation.

  *

  Los Angeles

  ‘Police, open up!’

  Anna looked through the peephole at the police officer banging on her door.

  ‘I know you’re in there, Ms Borowski!’ shouted Carole, holding up her badge.

  Anna unbolted the door and peered anxiously round it.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We just need to ask you a few questions regarding the book you sold on the internet.’

  ‘I didn’t steal it!’ protested Anna. ‘I found it in the garbage.’

  Carole looked at Milo, who took over the questioning.

  ‘You need to give us the address of the person you sold it to.’

  ‘I think she’s a student.’

  ‘She’s a student?’

  ‘Yeah, well, she lives on the Berkeley campus.’

  *

  San Francisco

  Lenox Hospital

  4 p.m.

  Ethel Kaufman couldn’t get to sleep. Since Bonnie left, she’d been tossing and turning. Something was wrong. And it wasn’t just the cancer that was eating away her lungs.

  It was that book, or rather what she had written on its blank pages. She sat up and took the novel from her bedside table, opening it where she had neatly written out the recipe for her favourite childhood dessert. Where had this sudden surge of nostalgia come from? Was it knowing she didn’t have much time left? Yes, probably.

  She couldn’t bear nostalgia. Life went by so quickly she had vowed never to waste time looking back. She’d always tried to live in the moment, leaving the past behind her. She didn’t hang on to memories, didn’t celebrate birthdays or anniversaries, and moved house every couple of years to avoid getting too attached to people or things. That’s what had kept her going all these years.

  But, that afternoon, the past had come knocking. She heaved herself out of bed and took a few steps over to her locker. She took out the little leather suitcase her niece, Katia, had brought with her the last time she visited. It was filled with bits and pieces Katia had found while clearing her parents’ house before it was sold.

  The first photo she took out was dated March 1929, a few months after Ethel was born. It showed a couple clearly in love, posing proudly with their three children. Ethel was in her mother’s arms, while her brother and sister, twins four years older than her, stood either side of their father. Smiling warmly in their best clothes, they radiated happiness and togetherness. Ethel put the photo down on her bed. Several decades had passed since she’d last looked at it.

  Next she lifted up a yellowed newspaper cutting of photos from the 1940s showing Nazi uniforms, barbed wire and barbarity. It brought back Ethel’s own history. She was barely ten when she and her brother were sent to the US. They had managed to leave Krakow just before the Germans turned part of the city into a ghetto. Her sister was meant to join them later, but she hadn’t made it – succumbing to typhus at Plaszów – and her parents had died in the Belzec extermination camp.

  Ethel continued on her journey back in time. She picked up a black and white postcard of a graceful ballerina dancing on points. It was a picture of her, in New York. She’d spent her teens there with relatives of her mother, who recognised and encouraged her gift for dancing. She had soon made a name for herself and been taken on by the newly founded New
York City Ballet.

  The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet: she danced the lead roles in the greatest ballets. Then at the age of twenty-eight a poorly treated fracture had left her with an awkward limp, forcing her to hang up her ballet shoes.

  Her flesh tingled at the thought of what might have been. Underneath the postcard, she found the programme for a show in New York. After her accident, she had taught at the School of American Ballet and helped stage some Broadway musicals.

  The next photo was still painful to look at, even after all this time. Her tall, dark, handsome lover. She had fallen for him when she was thirty-five, he ten years younger. A few moments of joyful abandon that cost her years of suffering and disillusionment.

  Because then the nightmare had begun.

  A nightmare that had started with the next slightly blurred photo that she had taken looking at herself in the mirror. It was a picture of her round belly.

  When she had given up thinking it would ever happen, Ethel had fallen pregnant at nearly forty. She had been overjoyed at the unexpected blessing and had never been so happy as during the first six months of her pregnancy. Of course, she hadn’t enjoyed the morning sickness and total exhaustion, but the baby growing inside her had changed her life.

  Then one morning her waters had broken, three months too early. She was taken to hospital and examined. She remembered it all so clearly. The baby was still there in her womb; she could feel it kicking and hear its heartbeat. The duty gynaecologist told her the amniotic sac had split and without amniotic fluid the child would die. The only option was to bring on labour. So then there had been the awful night when she brought her baby into the world knowing that it could not survive. After many hours of labour, she didn’t give birth, but death.

  She looked at him, touched him, kissed him. He was so tiny, but so beautiful. She still hadn’t thought of a name for him; in her head, she had always called him ‘bambino’, ‘my bambino’.

  He lived for one minute before his heart stopped. Ethel would never forget the sixty surreal seconds when she was a mother. After that, she stopped living. She pretended to go on, but all the brightness, all the joy and faith had drained out of her in that minute. The last flame in her had died along with her son.

  The tears streaming down her cheeks fell onto a small, thick envelope made from shiny paper. She was shaking as she opened it and took out a lock of her bambino’s hair. She wept for a long time, but the weight she had been carrying for many years was finally lifted.

  She was tired now, but before going back to bed she had a sudden urge to paste the photos, newspaper cutting, postcard and lock of hair onto the blank pages of the book. The collection of her life’s key moments took up a dozen or so pages.

  If she had her time again, would she do anything differently? She blocked the question from her mind. It wasn’t worth thinking about. Life wasn’t a video game with a choice of endings. Time passed and you went along with it, doing what you could more often than what you wanted. The rest was up to fate, and luck. And that was that.

  She put the book inside a large brown envelope. Then she called the nurse and asked her to hand the package to Bonnie Del Amico the next time she came in.

  *

  Women’s hall

  Berkeley campus

  7 p.m.

  ‘Try not to eat too much tiramisu in Rome,’ Yu Chan advised rather unkindly. ‘There’s at least a thousand calories in every portion and, you know, you have put on a few pounds lately.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me,’ Bonnie shot back, doing up her case. ‘The guys don’t seem to mind.’

  She looked out of the window. It was dark outside, but she could see the taxi flashing its lights.

  ‘OK, I’m outta here.’

  ‘Good luck! Give ’em hell!’

  Bonnie went out to the yellow cab and handed her bags to the driver.

  ‘Going to the airport, miss?’

  ‘Yes, but could we swing by Lenox Hospital first?’

  Bonnie spent the journey lost in thought. Why did she feel the need to go back to see Mrs Kaufman? When she’d left her at lunchtime, she had seemed tired and a little sad. And the way Ethel had said goodbye, insisting on kissing Bonnie, was too serious; it just wasn’t like her.

  As though it was the last time we’ll see one another.

  The taxi pulled up alongside a row of parked cars.

  ‘OK if I leave my bag here? I’ll be five minutes.’

  ‘No rush, I’ll park up.’

  *

  Women’s hall

  Berkeley campus

  7.30 p.m.

  ‘Police, open up!’

  Yu Chan jumped. With her roommate gone, she had leapt on the opportunity to go through her computer and try to read her emails. She sat, panicking, for a few seconds, imagining that a hidden camera somewhere in the room must have given her away.

  She scrambled to turn off the monitor and went to open the door.

  ‘I’m officer Carole Alvarez,’ Carole introduced herself, knowing full well she had no authority to enter a university campus.

  ‘We’d like to speak to Bonnie Del Amico,’ said Milo.

  ‘You’ve just missed her,’ replied Yu Chan, relieved. ‘She’s gone to the airport. She’s taking part in a chess tournament in Rome.’

  Oh shit, Rome?!

  ‘You have her cell phone number?’

  *

  Lenox Hospital parking lot

  7.34 p.m.

  On the back seat of the taxi, Bonnie’s phone was going off at the bottom of her patchwork bag. It kept on and on ringing, but the driver didn’t even hear it. While he waited for his passenger, he’d turned his radio right up to listen to the Mets taking on the Braves.

  Inside the building, Bonnie came out of the lift and crept down the corridor.

  A nurse stopped her. ‘Visiting time’s over, miss!’

  ‘I… I just wanted to say goodbye to Mrs Kaufman before I go overseas.’

  ‘Hmm. You’re the volunteer, right?’

  Bonnie nodded.

  ‘Ethel Kaufman’s asleep, but she left an envelope for you.’

  Feeling a little disappointed, Bonnie followed the woman to the nurses’ station to pick up the package.

  Opening it on the way to the airport, she was amazed to find the photos and notes Ethel had left added to the book. Overwhelmed, it didn’t cross her mind to check her phone.

  *

  San Francisco International Airport

  Runway No.3

  Flight No. 0966

  9.27 p.m.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is your chief flight attendant speaking. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you on board this Boeing 767 flight to Rome. We have an estimated flight time of thirteen hours and fifty-five minutes this evening.

  ‘We have now finished boarding the aircraft. In the seat pocket in front of you, you’ll find a safety card setting out procedures in the unlikely event of an emergency, and we would ask that you take the time to read this carefully. The cabin crew will now carry out a short safety demonstration.’

  *

  San Francisco International Airport

  Departures

  9.28 p.m.

  ‘The flight to Rome? Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just closed,’ said the girl behind the desk, looking at her computer screen.

  ‘You’re kidding me!’ fumed Carole. ‘We’ll never get our hands on that damn book. Try that girl again.’

  ‘I already left her two voicemails,’ said Milo. ‘She must have put her phone on vibrate.’

  ‘Try one more time, please.’

  *

  Runway No.3

  Flight No. 0966

  9.29 p.m.

  ‘We will shortly be preparing for take-off. May I ask you now to ensure your seat belts are fastened, your seat backs are upright and all cell phones are switched off. May we also take this opportunity to remind you that this flight is strictly non-smoking, and smoking is not allowed i
n the restrooms.’

  Bonnie fastened her seat belt and rifled through her bag to find her travel pillow, sleep mask and book. As she switched off her phone, she saw the red light was flashing, showing she had voicemail or texts. She was tempted to check, but a disapproving glare from the air hostess put her off.

  *

  Paris

  Midnight

  Our little living room was lit with the soft glow of a dozen candles. After a quiet evening, Billie had fallen asleep on the couch. As she slept, I psyched myself up to turn on my computer and open my ancient word-processing program. The awful blank page flashed up on screen, filling me with a sadly familiar feeling of queasy dread and panic.

  Write something!

  Write something!

  I couldn’t.

  I went over to the couch and picked Billie up to carry her into the bedroom. She groaned and grumbled that she was too heavy, but let herself be lifted. It was a cold night and the radiator wasn’t giving out much heat. I found an extra duvet in the wardrobe and tucked her in like a small child.

  Pulling the door to, I heard her say, ‘Thank you.’

  I had closed the curtains to block out the light from the road, so I couldn’t see her clearly when she whispered, ‘Thank you for looking after me. No one ever looked after me before.’

  *

  ‘No one ever looked after me before.’

  I was still turning Billie’s words over in my head when I sat back in front of the screen. The cursor flickered, taunting me.

  Where do you get your inspiration? That was the stock question I heard time and again from readers and journalists, but I’d never really come up with a decent answer. In order to write, I had to buckle down and cut myself off from the world. It took me about fifteen hours’ work to fill four pages. There was no magic formula, no secret recipe for success. I just had to sit at a table, put my headphones in and listen to classical music or jazz, making sure I had a good supply of coffee to hand.