by E. J. Swift
“Marine takes the first tier next month.”
Léon swallows his last mouthful.
“That’s great.”
“Maman, that man is on the news again.”
“What man, dearest?”
“The prisoner.”
Charles’s and Hélène’s eyes widen in matching expressions of alarm.
“Marine, you shouldn’t be watching that!”
Hélène rushes over to the child and tries to wrestle the console from her. The child hangs on, protesting.
“Who is she talking about?” asks Léon.
Charles is distracted, watching the tussle.
“Of course, you’re new to the city… It’s that bohemian terrorist up at the hill. He was due to go to the guillotine three months ago, but those fools from Brussels keep making threats about human rights.” Charles shakes his head sadly. “No understanding of the modern world.”
“None,” Léon agrees.
“Delinquents must be put down.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“But needless to say, we are perfectly safe on the left bank.”
Hélène bustles over, brandishing the child’s console triumphantly.
“Perfectly safe,” she agrees.
“No one ever escapes.”
“Not a barbarian soul.”
“But let’s not talk of that.”
“No, it’s not a civil conversation.”
They sigh, and seem to reset themselves.
“Where were we? Yes! The coffee!”
“And a perhaps a tab of forgetting—”
“To put those dangerous bohemians out of your mind.”
Hélène pours coffee from a pot decorated with fleur-de-lis, and a glass of orange juice for the child. She accepts it sulkily and drinks the contents in one go, appraising Léon over the rim of her glass. Finished, she licks her upper lip and says:
“If you want to know about the prisoner, you need the Remembrist.”
“The Remembrist?” Léon repeats, and the child says, “Yes, in the métro,” as her mother throws up her hands and cries, “Now, you know that’s all made up, Marine! How many times must I tell her—?”
“The Remembrist is in the métro,” says the child stubbornly, and earns herself a slap.
“The Remembrist is a virus. Tell her, Charles!”
“The Remembrist is a virus, Marine,” says Charles firmly. “A piece of code.” He turns back to Léon. “Dreadful business. These renegade bohemians keep infiltrating the games networks with their wretched avatars. Children are impressionable, of course.” He takes Hélène’s hand. “Don’t worry, my love. We’ll give her a tab of forgetting later on.”
“She’s too young...”
“Half a tab, then.”
Léon interrupts. “But these bohemians, they’re... they are on the right bank?”
“Oh, yes. The few of them that remain. And when they are caught, they will be processed. You have nothing to fear.”
Léon stands.
“Thank you. You’ve been very generous. I won’t take up any more of your time.”
They nod. He has behaved correctly. Charles escorts Léon through to the brasserie. On the terrace, a young woman is scrolling through a holographic newsfeed. Footage shows a flooded town, people stranded on rooftops, helicopters circling down. A terrorist attack in Marseilles: nine fatalities. Suspected bohemian involvement. Then a man in an orange suit is herded into a building. His feet are shackled and a hood obscures his face.
As Léon turns to thank his host one more time, Charles claps a hand on his shoulder and lowers his voice.
“A word of warning, my friend. I don’t know what you’ve heard where you’re from, but here in Paris, we don’t talk about the right bank. It is... impolite?” He smiles genially. “Now, enjoy this magnificent day!”
“I will. And thank you. I appreciate the tip.”
Léon sets off down the boulevard. The second rule of any travel: keep on the move, at least until you have your bearings. It doesn’t matter where you’re going, as long as you move with intent. He thinks about what the child said. The Remembrist. The métro. He keeps walking. If he ever visited this era before, it wasn’t like this. Paris is taller, cleaner. Emptier. There are fewer people on the streets. No water rushing along the gutters because there is no litter to wash away. He sees a drone sweeping the cobbles. A garden robot pruning an ornamental shrub.
A buzzing sound from above distracts him. He spots a delivery drone flying overhead, a box hanging from its claws. The drone descends to street level, drops the box, flexes its wings and takes off. A minute later the door opens and a small, wiry man with shaggy hair steps out. He sees the parcel and a pleased expression fills his face.
“Ah! Excellent, excellent!”
He picks up the parcel, looks up and sees Léon. He waves cheerily.
“Greetings, neighbour!”
Léon returns the greeting automatically. In the distance a bell chimes, deep and resonant. He counts: nine o’clock. Commuters begin to fill the streets, heading in streams towards their nearest métro. An accordion player stands on a street corner, playing the instrument with gusto, as if to herd them on their way. Léon falls in with the crowd, moving with the general stream.
The profile of Paris has changed. The majority of people around him are white, with only the occasional black or brown face. There are no headscarves, no djellabas or kaftans, no non-Western dress at all, and certainly no religious icons. There are a lot of flags. Discreet insignia of fleur-de-lis. It’s a different population from Hallie’s time—even with the tensions of fifty years ago—and radically different from his. Léon feels unpleasantly distinct. But he has to know more. He has to know the worst.
He is crossing a small square when the sound of an explosion cracks the air apart.
Everyone around him drops to the floor, hands over their heads. Léon does the same, belly flat against the cobbles, face to the ground, a sharp, sour taste in his mouth. He listens for the inevitable screaming, the sirens. He can’t hear anything. The bomb must have blasted his hearing. He turns his head slowly to the left, bracing for the sight of rubble and smoke, bodies and blood.
There is no evidence of destruction. Of anything. The man on the ground next to Léon has a lead clutched in his hand. His dog yaps and snuffles at his shoes.
A siren sounds.
At once, everyone gets to their feet, dusting themselves off. He overhears a young woman complain. “The least they could do is leave it until the journey home. This suit was brand new this morning!”
A man in a cream blazer extends a hand, helping him up with a conspiratorial roll of the eyes and a “Fucking drills.” The commuters continue on their way, now flowing up the steps to a flyover métro line. No tickets or touch-in points. State-run, Léon thinks. He stands on the platform with the rest of the commuters, watching the approaching flash of a silvery train, and as the train on the platform opposite pulls out, he sees the station name.
LePen.
The train approaches. Léon’s sense of wrongness is expanding. He stands back, allowing others to board. Time to get out of sight. He’s been a fool, moving around so freely. When the train pulls out and the next wave of passengers moves forward, he hears a shout.
“That’s him!”
There is a shift in the crowd. Heads swivel curiously, seeking the target of the voice. Léon starts to make his way along the platform, towards the exit at the other end. A few streets away, he can hear sirens.
He makes for the stairs, now pushing his way down against the flow of commuters. He hears shouts behind him, senses pursuit.
At the bottom of the steps he finds an armed gendarme blocking the exit.
The officer appraises him. A red light is scanning down his body. Merde. Are people chipped here? The officer points to the vehicle behind her, where a crowd is gathering, held back from entering the métro. For the first time Léon sees something other than friendliness in these Parisia
ns. Irritation, that their journey has been interrupted. Excitement, at the unexpected apprehension of one of their number, their proximity to the incident, ripe for translation into anecdote. Fear slides across some faces; in others there is wariness, an occasional flash of guilt, even relief. But the majority are trying not to look at him, not to acknowledge him, not to witness any element of the scene unfolding before them.
“Citizen, get in the car.”
Léon keeps his voice calm.
“I’m sorry, officer. Is there a problem?”
“In the car, citizen.”
“I’m not sure I understand—”
“I won’t ask a third time.”
Léon knows this is over. Cornered and unarmed, there’s no way he is going to escape, but he isn’t going to go gently either. The crowd don’t try to stop him and they don’t try to help. He meets a line of gendarmes, a snarling dog. The officer approaches and lifts something. A baton. Steel. It moves slowly, without force; that’s warning enough. He rolls, but she’s too quick. At its touch he feels coldness spreading throughout his body and he goes limp. His knees buckle. His teeth start to chatter.
Someone is weaving through the crowd. A woman, her face flushed and agitated. She is still wearing her apron. It’s Hélène, who cooked Léon eggs this morning.
“Is this him?” asks the police officer.
The woman looks down at him, looks him straight in the face, and without hesitation she says, “Yes. That’s the one. He wanted to know about the Remembrist.”
“Thank you. You may go home. Take a brew of forgetting.” The officer’s voice becomes low and magnetic. “You know there is no Remembrist. The Remembrist is a lie. A story told by bohemians.”
The woman nods. She smiles. A glazed, almost euphoric expression enters her eyes, as it does the surrounding crowd. One by one they turn, and begin to climb the steps to métro LePen.
The officer turns back to Léon, paralysed on the ground.
“Process him.”
They sit him up. He sees the bag coming down over his head, tries to protest, but he’s paralysed. I’ve fucked up, he thinks. I’ve failed Hallie. He barely feels it as they lift and deposit him roughly in the back of the car.
Chapter Forty-Two
“MÉTRO LEPEN,” I say. There’s a bilious taste in my mouth.
“Yes.”
“A fascist state.”
“It seemed that way.”
“How did you escape?”
I glimpse something behind Léon’s face. A memory he is trying to suppress. A horror. I should harden my heart, but my instinct is to raise my hand, erase that memory for him and with it the damage that has been done. If only it were that easy to change the past.
“I was detained,” he says. “But when they came to transfer me, I got away.”
LÉON IS THE solitary occupant of the cell. A sweltering concrete box. There are no windows. There is one light, dim and bluish. The light flickers. At times there is a high-pitched keening sound and at times there is not, and the cell alternates between noise and not-noise at random intervals impossible to predict, though he tries; after a while he hears it all the time. He hunkers in the corner of the cell, rocking back and forth, pushing his hands against his ears. It is so hot. The sweat pours off him. His hair is soaked. He is desperately thirsty. He asks for water, then begs. Water does not come. He licks at his own sweat, and the salt makes him gag and the thirst worsens and his tongue has swollen to a leech in his mouth. Water does not come.
What comes is a man in plain clothes and a plain face. He brings a chair and sits upon it, looking down at Léon. He shows no expression. There is nothing memorable about him. A man who makes no mark, because the world leaves him impervious. Léon has met people like him.
“Who sent you to Paris?”
Léon tries to form words, but his tongue gets in the way. The man holds out an empty beaker, pours a centimetre of water from a plastic bottle. Léon downs it, gasping.
“Who sent you to Paris?”
“No one sent me.”
“Who sent you to Paris?”
“I need water.”
“Not until you give me answers. Who sent you? Was it the Germans? Are you their spy?”
“No one. I’m from Toulouse.”
“Don’t lie to me. Who sent you?”
Léon looks at the floor.
“No one.”
“The Icelandic, perhaps,” the man says. “Or should I look closer to home?”
Léon says nothing.
“Where are you from?”
“Toulouse.”
“I said, where are you from?”
“Toulouse.”
“Where are you from?”
“Fuck you. I’m French.”
“You know we will find out.”
Good luck with that, thinks Léon. I was born centuries from now, I could lay claim to a dozen different heritages.
“What do you know about the Remembrist?”
“Nothing.”
“I will warn you again: don’t lie to me. What do you know about the Remembrist and his bohemians?”
“I don’t know anything. I heard the name today for the first time.”
“Were you involved in the Montparnasse rebellion?”
“No—”
“But you recognize the name.”
“I’ve never heard it before.”
The man regards him for a moment.
“Citizen, let me explain something. At this moment, you are in a privileged position. I am sitting on this chair. There is a space between us I will not breach. In this centre, we do not use enhanced interrogation. The fourth republic is benevolent. But if you do not give me the answers I need, you will be transferred to the right bank, and I cannot speak for what will happen here. Is that what you want?”
“I can’t tell you what you want. I don’t know anything about the Remembrist, or the bohemians. I come from Toulouse and I’m a French citizen. That’s the truth.”
Seconds draw out while the man considers.
“You are a good liar,” he says finally. “But you remain a liar. Without the truth, there is nothing I can do for you.”
He stands. Picks up the chair. Raps on the door.
“We are done here, citizen.”
“It’s the truth!”
Léon manages to stand, to stagger towards the door. It clangs shut in his face. He slides to the floor and puts his head in his hands. He has been in bad situations before, but this is as bad as any of those. The light flickers. The noise returns. He puts his hands over his ears.
It feels like he has been there for days, but in fact it is only thirty-six hours before the authorities come to collect him for transfer to the prison on the hill.
“AND THAT’S WHEN I escaped,” says Léon.
I squint in the afternoon sun. “How?”
“Early on, when I first discovered the anomaly, I got myself into far too many stupid situations. I was reckless. I figured it might be sensible to learn some survival skills…”
“Tae kwon do,” I remember.
“Yes.”
“But you must have been exhausted…”
“I played it up. Let them think I was near to collapse. It wasn’t my finest hour, but I managed to… render my guards unconscious.”
I feel myself smiling.
“So now you’re a ninja?”
He returns the smile crookedly. “I’ll take that.”
“And then?”
“I took their guns. The uniform. And then I had a choice. Go back to the catacombs and wait for a flare, and hope to fuck I wouldn’t be discovered down there. Or find out why nobody talked about the right bank.”
THE NORTH OF Paris is cordoned off by a wall. On the far side of the wall is the river Seine. Léon can smell it from streets away: a fetid stench of pollution. The wall is guarded, but not heavily—there cannot be many people who wish to leave the safety of la rive gauche. The city is dark and silent, with r
egular patrols. An unacknowledged curfew. For an hour, Léon watches the cycle of the guards. He keeps an eye on the air, too; there may be drones up there. But he has to take a risk.
Léon scales the wall. His arms burn with the effort, muscles heavy with fatigue from his incarceration. Up, up, up. At the top he pauses, looking quickly back, then outwards, but all is black. A faint glimmer below. The wall is a sheer slope to the river. The stench is stronger here, and Léon pauses, but only for a moment. Then he drops.
Shock of cold. Thick, glaucous water closes overhead. He keeps his mouth shut, but it gets inside his nostrils. He fights for the surface. Breaks free, retching at the smell. He strikes out for the right bank. No shout from behind. No whir of drones. That pushes him on, across. He claws his way up the bank. Slime clinging to his skin and clothes. He snorts away water. He’s made it.
Everything is quiet. Only the faint lapping of the water below, his breathing as it settles. He lies flat in the mud, waiting for the clouds to clear and give him some moonlight to see.
When it does, he understands.
As far as he can see, half-demolished buildings protrude like rows of jagged teeth. Windows shattered, roofs collapsed, single sandstone walls laid bare to the night sky. In some places, entire streets are reduced to rubble. For long minutes, all Léon can do is stare at the devastated landscape, the place that only decades before he called his home. A dreadful coldness descends. It feels as though a part of him has died.
He begins to walk north, through the flattened streets, his progress hindered by deep blast sites cratering the ground. No evidence of human life except for a single helicopter, speeding in the direction of Montmartre. He passes through the courtyards of the Louvre. The shell of the building stands, but the windows are empty. He can hear the wind whispering through its hallways, slinking into pillaged rooms and out of holes in the roof, the wind like a thief, a faint hum surrounding the abandoned gallery. In the courtyard, a gaping hole where there was once a pyramid of glass.
Up through the places that were. Saint Lazare. Saint George. Boulevard de Clichy is unrecognisable. Millie’s is a scar in the ground. Léon feels the hum of another anomaly. Hallie’s anomaly. And with it the wrench of his own, an ever-present tug at the chambers of the heart, which feels distant now, and much harder to return to, separated as they are by the river. But he has to know. He has to know what Hallie and their friends will face.