Lost Footsteps

by Bel Mooney

  Once she left the Gare du Nord behind on her left, she noticed a change. The shops had names like Nisha Malikari and Sidi Brahim; the travel agent displayed a large placard giving airline prices to Colombo and Delhi; there was a tantalising smell of cumin, chilli and cardamom cooked in oil which teased Ana’s permanent hunger. She saw one restaurant on the opposite side of the road, and decided she would start there. Hope burgeoned; despite herself she believed they would recognize her photograph, or even that Ion would somehow be sitting there when she went in. But the waiter shook his head, and called the manager, who looked at her curiously, and agreed that they had never seen the child in the picture.

  It was the same in the Shamina Supermarket, the Boucherie Pakistanaise, the two Sidi Brahim shops and the Madras Store. When Ana saw the words, Gayathiry – Epicerie – Sri Lankan – Indo-Ceylon products, above a small shop, its window crammed with brightly coloured pictures of gods, her hopes rose again. Inside, sacks stood in a row by the door, containing rice and chick peas, and coloured powders in tones of orange, ochre and sienna. There were cassettes in stacks inside a glass case on the counter, and a woman’s voice sang in strange, lilting rhythms from a radio–cassette player. It reminded Ana of the flat in Geneva, and Tamara singing softly in the bathroom – and she was aware of a curious nostalgia even for places she had passed through, where someone had been kind.

  There was a regretful shrug, and a shaking of heads when she showed Ion’s picture to the two men behind the counter. She bit her lip, and stammered, ‘Vous êtes certains?’ They nodded, and she stood in silence, unwilling to leave. Seeing the expression on her face, one of the men held out a box of shiny, sticky puffed sweetmeats, urging her wordlessly to take one. She did so automatically and the crunch and ooze of sugar and honey in her mouth was exquisite and comforting, making her close her eyes for a second. At that the men grinned with satisfaction and said something to each other in Tamil. Then one of them put five of the sweetmeats into a paper bag, and pushed it towards her, saying, ‘Prenez, Madame, prenez! Qui!’

  Out in the street again she looked down at the bag, and raised it briefly to her face, smelling sweetness through the paper. She imagined Ion cramming his mouth, and wondered if he was glad then to have left the country where his mother had failed even to find the ingredients for his birthday cake. And what if he was glad? Such happiness in eating, in having, would not be wrong; it did, after all, justify all the suffering, almost redeeming the loss. She clutched the shopkeeper’s spontaneous gift like a talisman, vowing to make it last.

  Ana tried four more food shops, and one restaurant, but met with blank looks in each one. The street was almost empty; looking up and down it, wondering what to do next, she could fancy that its walls were closing in like a canyon, narrowing like her expectations. For a moment she found it hard to breathe, and fought the urge to cower in a doorway in terror. Deliberately she ate a sweetmeat, for consolation.

  It was at that moment she realized she had made a mistake in her systematic ‘covering’ of the street. There were two shops selling not food but fabrics, and yet she had not bothered to try the Saree Palace, or the Madras Silk House. Because of the original suggestion that Franklin had come to Paris to join a relative who worked in a restaurant, Ana had allowed the idea of food to dominate, and ignored the clothes shops as well as the travel agent.

  It was gradually getting darker, the outlines of the street blurring into a soft, mauvish dusk, shot with the gold of lighted windows. Ana crossed to the Saree Palace, and stood for a few moments admiring the vivid swathes of gleaming silk displayed in its window: purple, emerald, scarlet and cerise. The colours made her think suddenly of Radu, and the paintings he had made when they were all in their twenties. Green as vivid as the emerald silk before her … thick oil applied with a knife, its impasto carved, almost, to catch the light … the whirling vortex at the centre of the painting which, he said, was the source of the energy which must lead inevitably to freedom, flying out and away … It was the painting he had done for Ionica (in the days before Doina had eaten the egg and they quarrelled) … how stupid, how stupid, if we had know then what was to become of us all, would we have wasted such time?… and which had disappeared, along with everything else.

  She opened the door. The large shop smelt of something Ana could not identify: dye or perfume, she was not sure. Nobody came to serve; she stood for a while looking around at the bales of fabric, marvelling again at the intensity of colours which seemed refractions of pure light. She was fingering the gold weaving at the edge of one swathe of dark blue silk, draped over the counter as if someone had been interrupted whilst measuring, when footsteps approached from the back, and she snatched her hand away as if caught stealing.

  Two men came out of the room behind the counter, and she could see immediately that they were father and son – stocky and clean-shaven, both with metal-rimmed spectacles. Somehow Ana had expected to see a woman in this shop, and found herself disappointed. The father glanced at her briefly, but busied himself with folding the material spread on the counter; the son smiled at her, asking how he could help.

  Ana held out the photograph, explaining that she was the mother of this child who was … again she hesitated over that word in French … perdu. The young man stared at her, a puzzled look on his face, trying to place her accent.

  ‘Vous n’êtes pas Franchise?’

  ‘Non – Roumaine.’

  He gave a small grunt, and held out his hand for the photograph, staring at it for a few minutes. He frowned, and looked more closely – so that Ana stopped breathing, as if the tiniest sound from her might mar his concentration. But he shook his head at last, and made as if to hand the picture back. Ana’s hand was already reaching out when he paused, turned to his father, and said something in Gujerati. The older man let the silk rest, and took the photograph, examining it closely. Then he said something quickly to his son, looked at Ana, stared at the picture again – then nodded.

  She gripped the counter with both hands. ‘You have seen him … oh, vous l’avez vu …?’

  ‘You speak English, Madame?’ said the father, very slowly. ‘That is good for me. My son’s French is excellent; he has lived here a long time. But I am happier to speak English. Please tell me how it is possible for me to help you. I did see the boy …’

  ‘Where? Please tell me what happened!’ Ana wanted to lean across and shake the information from him.

  ‘He came into our shop, with another boy, an older boy, a Tamil…’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, three months ago … No, it was after Diwali. The beginning of December, I think. At first they stood looking in the window for a long time, then they went away, then they came back and entered in here. The little boy, this boy’ – he waved the photograph – ‘spoke English. When I asked what they wanted, he said they wanted to buy nothing. The older boy was stroking the silk – like this …’ He made tender, caressing movements with one hand. ‘I told him to stop because he would make it dirty, then the little boy said he wanted to touch it because he missed his mother. I did not understand, Madame. Then the older boy took from his pocket a small piece of silk, purple silk – like that one, with the gold. It was very dirty, I remember. He said, “My mother”, just like that – in English, and held it to his face – like this. And then they went away.’

  ‘No!’ said Ana, ‘They must have said something else! You must have asked them … Where did they go?’

  He frowned, took off his glasses, polished them on his sleeve, then replaced them. Ana was maddened by his slowness; she wanted to run screaming into the street, or tear the shimmering silks into shreds to make him speak. ‘I think …’ he began.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘try to remember. Anything.’

  ‘Yes … I asked if they lived near here. They said No, they lived … ah … yes, it was the twentieth. I remember now. The Tamil boy said he worked in a kitchen.’

  ‘A restaurant?’

  ‘Yes, c
ertainly … very likely.’

  ‘Please,’ she said, taking her city-plan from her pocket and putting it on the counter, ‘can you show me?’

  At that, the younger man stepped forward and took the book. He turned to the map at the back, and unfolded it, spreading it flat. ‘Look, here are we … and here is the twentieth arrondissement.’ It took Ana only a moment to realize that it was where she had walked from that day. She saw the Rue des Pyrenees bisecting the quartier, and thought of Skandarajah in his office – innocent of the fact that the boys she spoke of could have been only two streets away. Yet the Tamil office had been in the northern part; the arrondissement was so big …

  Yet a beginning, a beginning! Someone has seen Ion. He was in this shop, he touched silks like these, he spoke to this man … So I can’t afford to feel tired now, I must find him, I must start looking. Please God, you’ve brought me this far, don’t stop helping now. Please don’t stop helping me now. Give me the strength of a monster, to go on …

  But when she had thanked them and said goodbye, Ana was oppressed by the sight of the dark and empty street, disturbed by traffic but no people, and wanted to escape it. As if in a dream she turned north, and wandered along, thinking of Ion. Unable to face walking back to the twentieth, with nowhere to sleep, she decided she would spend that night on the station, and start in the morning. If she took street by street, asking at every single restaurant in the area, she had to find Ion; there was no doubt. For surely there could not be many Indian restaurants in one area? She would find him. Conviction gave her strength, so that she walked briskly for a while, not knowing where she was going, intoxicated with new certainty. She stopped after a while and ate all her remaining sweets greedily, knowing she deserved the indulgence.

  Rather than retrace her footsteps Ana turned left now, plunging into a tangle of small streets which echoed with the shouts of children. There were different sounds and smells here; quite suddenly it was as if she had stepped across an invisible border into a new land. Arab music beat insistently from the little shops; some of the windows displayed gaudy djellabas; the children playing and the men who stood smoking on street corners were all dark-skinned. Ana felt inexplicably light-hearted; for the first time since she had arrived in Paris she was affected by the otherness of this city. And yet, she thought, Bucharest used to be called ‘the Paris of the East’. Yes, for all the differences, these labyrinthine run-down streets were like the Lipscani area …

  A boy approached – about eleven, she guessed, and spoke very quickly, so she did not understand. She smiled, and walked on, more slowly now. But the boy followed, and soon he was joined by five or six others, dancing round her, smiling, she thought. She assumed they were asking for money or chewing gum, like children in Romania when she went about with the foreign journalists, who always travelled with supplies of sweets and gum to dispense, as much out of expediency as kindness.

  ‘Non … non …’ she murmured, smiling and expecting an answering response. Like Ion – the oldest one is about Ion’s size … and as black as Ionica is pale … But so handsome – what a good-looking child…

  Suddenly she felt hands tugging at her bag, gently at first, then more vigorously, while all the time the little voices chattered, like so many birds, echoing in the darkened street. Ana thought they were playing and laughed, half-teasing, half-reproachful, shaking her head. Then the darting creatures surrounded her, pulling at her garments, entering her pockets, lightly, so lightly, pinching her gently beneath her coat as if they knew that somewhere, concealed in her homemade pouch, she had some money. She felt her grip loosen on the old bag that contained the only clothes she had, including her precious American outfit.

  ‘Non!’ she shouted, shocked now, and a little frightened – but angry too. ‘Non! Allez-vous-en!’ She snatched back her bag, and pushed them roughly aside, striding purposefully on. The little flock scattered, then reformed. There was a patter of small feet, and somebody pinched her viciously on the thigh. A stream of abuse followed her, piped in high childish voices, pealing about her ears until at last it blended with the high, wailing music that floated from a shop, singing in Arabic of love.

  Out on Rue Barbes, where traffic thundered and people stood on street corners, Ana allowed herself to relax. Men stared at her openly in a way she had never experienced, she was assailed on all sides by eyes – yet nothing could be more disconcerting than those wild children. The innocence of their eyes! Then she remembered Ion’s eyes shifting away from hers, when Maryon’s fate was on his conscience, and Daniel Corianu’s bland stare a few days later, with its depth of corruption. She had no business to be surprised at anything any more.

  She walked slowly back to the Gare du Nord, watching the people in bars and restaurants, conscious of the utter strangeness of having nobody at all to talk to. She had always been solitary, it had been forced on her; she accepted loneliness as existence in its essence, mitigated at times (if you were fortunate) by human love. Every so often she would pass a set of glass telephone kiosks, backing on to each other: the people visible yet inaudible, mouths moving, talking to someone, somewhere. It was all around her, this perpetual flood of communication. She witnessed laughter, gesticulations of anger, the intense absorption of lovers, and – everywhere – conversation: in the bars, across restaurant tables, at street corners, sweeping down into the métro stations, even at upstairs windows, where a man or a woman turned and nodded to someone unseen, mouths moving, talking, talking.

  Ana could have been invisible: a spirit visitor from another world who moved in total isolation, language frozen on her tongue.

  She sat at last on the main station concourse, waiting for the night to be over. She could smell food from the brasserie; people sat out at tables as if under the Mediterranean sun, screened from passing travellers by green plants in ornate pots. Unable to bear the sight and smell of real food, Ana wandered about, examining the contents of the vending machines for such a long time that one or two people noticed and stared, although she was oblivious. She turned a ten-franc piece over and over in her hand, working out what would be the best buy. For that sum she could get three Mars bars … at the prospect she salivated, and walked quickly away. She would succumb, she knew that; but the pleasure must be postponed, it would help to fill the time. She seated herself again, this time further away from the brasserie.

  Nearby an old women sat with her legs apart, surrounded by carrier bags filled to bursting-point. Greasy white hair spread over her collar; she had no teeth and her nose was bulbous and unhealthily yellow. She threw back her head and cackled, ’C’est apres-midi! C’est après-midi!’ to every man who walked past.

  Ana had only brought one book with her, aware of the weight of her bag. Now she rummaged and pulled out the small copy of Tales by Mircea Eliade. On the flyleaf Doina had written her name in bold, curving letters, the ‘K’ of Kessler looped like a bunch of flowers. Looking at it, Ana was overcome by a fierce longing to be back in that tiny flat, the air thick with smoke from their cigarettes, her stomach aching with laughter at the jokes that rendered reality absurd. It had not occurred to her, when she left, to take a prolonged farewell; both of them knew that her obsession with finding Ion left room for no other feelings. Now she thought of the way Doina would fold her arms, as if to defy fate, and repeat the French phrase she had picked up and loved to use: ‘Je m’en fous!’ And how the thick blonde hair was forever escaping its pins and how she snorted when she laughed, especially after a taste of Luca’s liquor. It was strange that it took Radu’s absence, and shared suffering, to release them into real friendship.

  I will see you again, Doina, although I don’t know when or how. I’ll find Ion, and maybe he won’t want to stay here, maybe he is unhappy here, and will want to go home. We’ll live together; you never had a family and you like Ionica, I know you do, you made the food with him for our journey to Moldova Nova, I know he likes you too … So we could live together because there’s no point in living alone, is th
ere? This is your book. All my books disappeared. How strange that it was my old aunt who saved some of your things – the way things come together, so mysteriously, redeeming what’s gone before.

  ‘Twelve Thousand Head of Cattle’ – it’s been so long since I last read that. Ghosts, I remember, it’s about ghosts within a loop of time. The people who don’t believe in them are lucky … This is the last page, and… ‘Ionica! Unde mi-ai fost, Ionica? Te caut de un ceas, día vole!’

  … why did you do that, Eliade? Why did you set out to torture me, in this loop of time? What supernatural sadist made you end your fantastic tale with the strange woman calling in the distance, irrelevantly, to the child who never appeared: ‘Ionica! Where’ve you been, Ionica? I’ve been looking for you for an hour, you devil!’ You knew I would open the page by accident, yes you did! And earlier, I remember now because it pulled me when I first read it … Here it is: ‘Ionica!’ striga femeie. ‘Unde eşti, Ionica?’ – ’Ionica!’ called the woman. ‘Where are you, Ionica?’ What is that for, Eliade? What can it possibly mean? Unless the child too is a ghost, and she will be searching for him forever …

  There was a notice outside the waiting room which said that a valid travel ticket was necessary to use it. As it grew later, and the air was split by the piercing whistle of the late trains, Ana debated whether to enter. But she lacked the courage: it was forbidden, and that, even now, was enough to make her obey. As she sat, eyes fixed on that glass door, the concourse seemed to vibrate to a thunder of feet. She heard shouts, and laughter. Glancing to her right she saw a huge crowd of young men spilling into the station, all with very short hair, almost shaven. They lounged and jostled and laughed; some of them drew on cans of beer, all carried a shapeless bag of dark material. They came nearer. A beer bottle on the ground was kicked back and forth, clattering among their feet.