by Claude Izner
Joseph glanced up to find that Victor had gone.
‘I don’t know why I bother. He has no interest in anything these days. Love! Women! Granted, women are decorative in the home and indispensable to its function, but they distract a man from his true passions!’
He promised himself he would never renounce writing for the love of Valentine. Victor returned with a bag slung over his shoulder.
‘I’m going out, Joseph. I’m leaving you in charge of the shop.’
‘Again? Where are you off to now?’
‘To have a look at that inheritance, of course.’
‘I thought you hated Bossuet! And what about lunch? Madame Germaine will think I forgot to tell you she’s prepared tripes à la mode de Caen.4 You only need to heat it up.’
‘I donate the frugal meal to you.’
The carriage dropped him at Place des Pyrénées and he made his way to the cemetery via a narrow pathway running alongside a patch of wasteland where a few scrawny goats were nibbling at the scrubby grass.
He went to the chapel first, hoping to photograph the magnificent view of Paris from there. Beyond a piece of raised terrain lined with cypress trees, the grey and white city stretched out, its towers and domes outlined against the sky like an uneven row of teeth: the Pantheon, Notre-Dame, Les Invalides, the Eiffel Tower. Removing a detachable tripod from his bag, he fixed it to his camera, a Photo-Secret 9/12 with a bellows chamber, and peered into the viewfinder. A few inquisitive passers-by gathered round him and he hurriedly gathered up his equipment and moved on. A few yards above the chapel in a fenced-off enclosure, he could see the front of the crematorium with its painted trellis, and on top the two chimney flues. He had little sympathy for the idea of burning people’s bodies and he hoped it would be many years before this custom, imported from England, took root in France. Since its inauguration the previous year, the crematorium had been used on a hundred or so occasions and had already sparked off a passionate debate within the Catholic community: the archbishop of Paris had spoken out strongly against cremation. But these wrangles did not concern him; he liked cemeteries because they were little islands of green in the middle of cities where one could listen to the birds singing. And as a photographer he found the tombs highly interesting. This one, for instance, he said to himself as he set up his tripod: a headstone, two bronze hands in a tender embrace and the epitaph below:
My wife, I await you
5 February 1843
My husband, I am here
5 December 1877
Although tempted to smile at such a display of devotion, he was moved by it too. Just then, a funeral cortège passed along the avenue and he lifted his hat.
He asked one of the keepers for directions to the Valois family chapel and after losing his way a couple of times found the funerary chapel, unlocked. He entered and read the inscriptions on the walls. Odette had stood there only a few days before. He examined the altar and then the floor for clues, but found nothing.
He went back out into the avenue to photograph the chapel. As he was fixing the shot, the upside down image of a dishevelled-looking old man with white hair appeared in his viewfinder. He straightened up. Surprised, the old man stared hard at him and all of a sudden began to shout:
‘Dammit! It’s you! I know you! It’s you, in the flesh! I said I’d recognise you. Just like in your photograph. So you’ve come to get me, eh? Well, you won’t have me! Oh no! Not you! No one can get Père Moscou, not even Grouchy! To the slaughter!’
He turned and ran off, waving his arms in the air. Victor hurriedly packed his equipment away with the intention of following the old man, but he had vanished into thin air.
He wandered aimlessly, haunted by the name the old man had shouted at him. Grouchy. Had he been referring to Marquis Emmanuel de Grouchy, Marshal of France? What possible part could he play in all this? Unable to find his bearings, he wandered about until he arrived at the Rue de Repos exit, where he walked resolutely into the gatekeeper’s lodge. He found a skinny little man with large whiskers smoking his pipe and playing solitaire. On seeing Victor, the man hurriedly covered the cards with his cap and began to get up.
‘Please stay seated. Perhaps you may be able to help me – it concerns our maid. She returned home on Friday evening in a state of utter panic. My wife and I are terribly worried about the girl. We’re beginning to wonder whether she isn’t slightly unhinged.’
‘Friday, you say? She wouldn’t happen to be a blonde slip of a girl?’
‘My wife arranged to meet her in Rue de Repos, and waited there until closing time. When the girl didn’t appear, she decided to return home, assuming she would find her already there. When Denise – that’s the girl’s name – finally turned up, she was in a terrible state, stammering and gibbering about ghosts and apparitions and goodness knows what else. I couldn’t make head or tail of it, which is why I wondered whether you might have heard something about this unfortunate incident? Naturally we don’t wish to keep an hysteric in our employ.’
‘I thought as much. She didn’t seem normal to me, and I trust my instincts. Yes, she told me some unlikely story about her mistress vanishing into thin air. But don’t be too hard on her. Cemeteries can have a strange effect on people.’
‘Did you also see her mistress – I mean my wife?’
Barnabé rubbed his chin and glanced suspiciously at Victor.
‘How could I have seen her if she was standing outside in Rue de Repos?’
Victor winked at the man.
‘You never know with women. I’m not normally distrustful, but, well…it’s only natural. Having concluded that Denise must be slightly touched, it occurred to me that perhaps my wife…’
Barnabé fiddled with his cap and screwed up his face, which relaxed suddenly as he began to laugh.
‘Oh, I get it. You think your missus might have slipped off to an appointment with her…doctor! All I can tell you is I never clapped eyes on her, and your maid was in such a state she practically threw herself on me. Lucky for her it was me. I soon calmed her down and sent her packing. I’m a married man, I told her.’
‘She mentioned something to us about a tall, white-haired fellow who chased her.’
‘That’ll be Père Moscou. He’s a trifle eccentric, but harmless enough – a good sort. Hankers after the Empire – wouldn’t hurt a fly, not even when he’s the worse for drink. He’s worked here a long time. I’ve known him for fifteen years. He looks after the tombs, does odd jobs here and there, so I turn a blind eye.’
‘Where might I find this Père…What did you call him?’
‘Moscou. His ancestors were in the retreat from Moscow, hence the nickname. He lives in the Cour des Comptes on Quai d’Orsay – the one they burnt down in ’71. But you’ll be lucky if you catch him there, he’s always on the move. Do us a favour, Monsieur, don’t pick a quarrel with him or it’ll come back on me. I’ve got my job to think about and six children to feed. In any case, your maid was wrong to complain about him. If he did talk bawdy to her, it’s only on account of his being somewhat forward. But he’s no worse than your average cabman.’
‘Have no fear, I simply wish to ask him a few questions. Here, take my card. If you see him, tell him to pay me a call. I’ll make it worth his while.’
During the carriage ride to Boulevard Haussmann, Victor’s mind was engaged in an intoxicating ferment of speculation. Denise claimed she had last seen Odette at Père-Lachaise, and yet could he trust the servant girl after what he had found at Tasha’s apartment? The gatekeeper’s description of her as an impassioned female who had made advances towards him was hardly favourable. And as for Monsieur Hyacinthe, he insisted that Madame de Valois had returned home on Friday night.
I must find out the truth. And the old man in the cemetery, this Père Moscou. What was that gibberish he shouted? ‘I know you…just like in your photograph.’ What photograph? Bah! The man was probably drunk. It has no bearing on this affair.
The carriag
e had been halted by an enormous traffic jam in Rue du Havre. Victor stepped down outside the Printemps department store and soon discovered that the cause of the hold-up was a crowd of people in the middle of the road.
‘Is it a demonstration?’ he enquired of an omnibus driver who was pacing up and down alongside his vehicle, which was crammed with excited passengers.
‘Just imagine – it’s a milkman! Those fellows drive too fast. He was going top speed when he ran over that poor devil. He’s a goner from the looks of it; there’s blood everywhere.’
Victor turned round hurriedly and started elbowing his way down the boulevard. He skirted a public urinal as well as a number of the flower and newspaper kiosks that had begun springing up of late, forcing pedestrians towards the big cafés. There were other obstacles in his path: shoe-shiners’ boxes, discarded oyster shells from the oyster-sellers’ stalls, cast-iron chairs and tables. And dotted here and there were sandwich boards vaunting the merits of throat pastilles and herbal teas, while passers-by crowded around the leaflet distributors and street vendors, causing the pedestrians to risk their lives by stepping off the pavement on to the road.
Relieved to have escaped the beady eye of the concierge, who was engaged in an animated conversation with a street sweeper, Victor slipped through the entrance to number 24 and raced up the stairs. He rang the bell to the fifth-floor apartment several times. Taking a deep breath, he slid one of the keys into the lock. It wouldn’t budge. He tried another key and this time the latch clicked open.
He felt instantly aware of that particular silence of an empty house. He stood in the doorway waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark corridor, then plucked up his courage, set down his bag and tripod and lit the petrol lamp, resolving to make a thorough search of the apartment for clues as to Odette’s whereabouts.
Nothing appeared to have been disturbed since his last visit. A maze of sheet music still lay scattered on the carpet at the feet of the baby grand, whose squat form reminded him of an animal waiting to pounce. As he drew closer he noticed that the porcelain jar he’d seen on the piano had been placed on some cushions on one of the two sofas, and the vases full of wilted flowers had migrated to the fireplace. He lifted the lamp level with his eyes. The velvet drape that had adorned the piano lay scrunched up on the floor. Somebody had evidently removed the porcelain monstrosities so that they could lift the piano lid and search the tuning pins and the sounding board. Who had been back here, Odette or Denise? He made his way towards the maid’s quarters – a room barely bigger than a cupboard, with a bleak, chilly atmosphere. Odette had always been thrifty, cutting back on the heating and her servants’ salaries until she’d ended up employing only one.
As he’d anticipated, the wardrobe was empty. The bed had been made, but the pillow case was missing. The washstand near the door and the jug and basin on the floor appeared to confirm Denise’s story – unless of course she had placed them there deliberately.
He doubled back, entering Armand’s bedroom. The strong, musty odour caught in his throat – the room hadn’t been aired for weeks. He held his breath. That smell! Suddenly he was transported back twenty-three years in time to London, and the flat in Sloane Square where he’d spent his childhood. He recalled with amazing clarity a scene he thought he had buried deep in his memory.
His father scolding him, imposing and threatening, devoid of pity. And he, a little boy of seven, standing with bowed head, paralysed by a mixture of fear and loathing. What crime had he committed that justified him being locked in the cellar for hours? A mistake in one of his lessons, perhaps, or some illicit gesture? It was dark and lonely in the cellar. He’d be unable to bear it, he’d die. A silent appeal to Kenji, his father’s assistant at the bookshop, had worked. Kenji had secretly given him a candle and a book of fairy tales. He was saved! Transported by the magical story of a Chinese empress turned into a dragon, the little boy was no longer the prisoner of a damp jail. With the white dragon Fang Wei-Yu at his side, he plumbed the depths of the ocean, fought the demons of Tiger Hill and rode the waves and clouds.
He heard a clock ticking and the distant hum of the boulevard below. The images from his past dissolved, leaving only a whiff of mildew. He opened the windows to get rid of the stale air and walked around the room. It contained dusty furniture and a billiard table piled high with hat boxes whose lids had been taken off and replaced askew.
On the floor in front of a pitch pine wardrobe lay two men’s shirts with their sleeves entwined in an attitude of prayer. Having set down the lamp, which was beginning to sputter, he pulled open the wardrobe doors and found a jumble of clothing worthy of Carreau du Temple. Someone had been frantically searching for something here too. On his way out, he noticed two faded rectangles on the coppery-green wallpaper where two pictures had once hung.
He took a deep breath to master the revulsion Odette’s bedroom inspired in him, and sought refuge in the bathroom whose plush ostentation he found pleasing. The memory of his former lover at the height of their affair pervaded this space where she used to spend hours in front of the mirror banishing every last wrinkle. The sight of the Farnèse cream purchased at La Reine des Abeilles stirred him, and he had visions of her face caked in the stuff. He was tempted for a moment to breathe in its scent, but stopped himself, instead making a mental inventory of the various beauty salves, blushers, make-up accessories and perfume bottles laid out on a round, marble-topped table beside the washbasin. Ranged along a shelf, a tumbler, toothbrush, coal-tar tooth powder and coloured soaps conjured up the image of an immaculate Odette adorned with chiffon, lace and ribbons that enhanced her blonde complexion. An inspection of the little cupboard where she kept her gloves and handkerchiefs revealed a disorder identical to the one in Armand’s wardrobe.
In the bedroom he made an effort not to look at the bed, a ghost ship with sails unfurled, drifting towards the kingdom of the dead. The wardrobe would offer up more revelations. He was about to open it when a thought occurred to him and he went back into the bathroom.
He looked again at the expensive soaps, the ivory toothbrush and the tooth powder ranged under the mirror covered in black gauze. Had she eloped, it was conceivable that she might have left her toothbrush behind, but not her make-up. A woman like Odette, who took such care of her looks and her complexion, would never go anywhere, not even to a local restaurant, without her vanity case. No, the make-up shouldn’t have been there.
He hesitated, torn between the urge to leave and an almost perverse desire to stay and pursue his investigation. He looked over at the ottoman where Odette used to sit browsing through the morning papers, at the palm tree swathed in black and the mahogany table that served as an altar dedicated to the memory of Armand de Valois. Suddenly he felt giddy and the room began to sway. The rosewood wardrobe loomed before him like an iceberg. After a few moments it stopped moving and he was finally able to penetrate its depths. The inside looked as if it had been hit by a tornado: the clothes rail on the left had collapsed under the weight of an army of black dresses and fur-trimmed coats on hangers and a row of books on a shelf on the right had been swept into a heap against the side panel of the wardrobe.
He stood staring at the clothes. God, what a morbid collection! He fished a heliotrope-scented chiffon negligee out of the black mound of shoes. A sudden memory surfaced of Odette, languorous after their love-making, but hastily covering up her nudity with that frilly gown, which had all the allure of a lampshade.
Feeling foolish, he turned his attention to the books. Above them the skull’s empty eye sockets stared back at him. ‘I didn’t know Hamlet was playing here!’ he quipped, trying to reassure himself as he pulled out a few of the battered, dog-eared volumes, nearly knocking himself out in the process.
His arms full, he collapsed on to the ottoman. Reading out the titles, he piled the books up beside him: The Book of Prophecies, The Divinatory Sciences, The Occultist’s Laws, Astral Body & Astral Plane, Psychic Phenomena, The Spiritualist�
�s Doctrine.
‘For a woman who isn’t fond of reading…’ he murmured. ‘Now, what have we here? Photographs of the Astral Body. That looks amusing. I must try it some time.’
He glanced through a booklet intriguingly entitled: Account of a Table-turning Session on the Island of Jersey with Victor Hugo, by Numa Winner. Odette hadn’t read a word of the great Hugo’s prose, yet judging from the pencil marks in the booklet’s margins she was passionately interested in the conversations he claimed to have had with poltergeists during his exile in Marine Terrace on Jersey.
He discarded the booklet and opened a box file labelled: Satanism Under the Inquisition. As he examined the engravings depicting the tortures reserved for heretics by the Holy Office, he became convinced that Odette had lost her mind. Faintly nauseous, he began replacing the books and the file in the wardrobe. His hand encountered an obstruction. He craned his neck, but he wasn’t tall enough see what it was and went to fetch a chair from the sitting room.
Precariously balanced, he rummaged at the back of the shelf and pulled out a large envelope with the word Private written on it. His racing heart, sudden perspiration and another wave of nausea told him it was time to leave the apartment.
Now I know what women feel like when they have the vapours. As Kenji would say, ‘The body suffers the mind’s blows as the earth suffers those of the typhoon.’ Unless I’m simply coming down with influenza.
He left the apartment with a feeling of relief, the envelope tucked under his jacket and his bag and tripod over his shoulder.
Sitting over of a glass of beer in the smoky bar of the Bibulus, Victor contemplated the still unopened envelope lying on the barrel serving as a table. A few swigs of beer gave him the courage he needed and he pulled out a dozen or so letters from Colombia tied with a ribbon and addressed to Madame de Valois, along with an appointments diary and a sheaf of papers. Four aspiring artists in overalls burst into the bar from the passage leading to the studio, amongst them Maurice Laumier. Victor hastily stuffed the papers back into the envelope and turned away from the counter where the four painters were emptying their tankards. He thought Laumier hadn’t noticed him until he heard the man exclaim in a loud voice: