The Emperor of Paris

by C. S. Richardson

  Walking along the garden’s promenade overlooking the river, Octavio heard a gravelled voice behind him.

  The name’s Le Drop, monsieur.

  The small man perched on a child’s stool. He wore the remains of a tuxedo, the ends of his trouser legs trailing bits of thread and bunching around his shoes. Long fingers peeked from the sleeves of his jacket. A plank painted with piano keys was balanced across his knees. He bowed his head and with a quivering hand touched the brim of an invisible cap.

  Requests taken and requests played, monsieur. Toe-tapping tunes and tales of wonder, yours for the asking.

  Le Drop gathered his sleeves around his elbows, locked his hands together and stretched his arms in front of him. He danced his fingers from one end of the painted keys to the other. As his hands leaped off the end of the plank, Octavio noticed their tremors had disappeared. Play your best, he said.

  I happen to know just such a tune, Le Drop said. He started with a double chord, his thumbs stretched long and thin, straining for the octaves. He talked as he played.

  Came over in ’18 I did, one of the Harlem boys. Hellfighters they called us, keen as flip knives. Keen to do our bit, maybe dance with old Fritz a step or two. But the generals said music was our bit. Shipped us over as an orchestra, yours truly handling the accordion duties. So we arrive in your fair city and march up and down the Champs, looking sharp, playing tight. Tight as new shoes. Ceremonials, hymns, the ragtime when the sweat was up. Folks loved us jazzy joes. But it was the white boys doing all the fighting and we wanted in. Get us up front, we said, take us to the dance. So the generals said well if you’ve got the itch then we will surely scratch it. And they sent us off to the sharp end. You’ll tango with old Fritz now, they said.

  Le Drop paused, lingering in the middle keys.

  I guess you were too young, boy, for all that fuss.

  Octavio nodded. But my father fought. He never talked about it though.

  No surprise there, Le Drop said as his fingers wandered through the high notes. Not much to recommend it. Mile after scummy mile it was, all stumps and mud and bones. But we were ready to give old Fritz some of his own. Ready like when you’re on the dance floor, one hand cradling your honey’s soft soft fingers, your other hand looping round that silky silky waist. And she’s got that look and you’ve practised the steps a hundred times. Your toes are tapping like they’re burning inside your boots. You wait on that downbeat, praying your honey is a real twirler. Then the sergeant puffs his cheeks. You cock your heel and squeeze those fingers. He blows that damn whistle and you’re over the top. All the while your honey’s spinning like one of those dervishes and you hold on to that waist for dear life. That was how ready we were.

  A right-handed progression, soft touches through the black keys, one foot nudging invisible pedals.

  I’ll wager he was a dancer, your father. Gave your mother a turn no doubt, back in the day. We soldiers knew how to treat the mademoiselles.

  Octavio pictured his parents waltzing at a street party, patriotic banners strung above their heads. The figures were fleeting, the flags out of focus. He rubbed at his eyes.

  What was it like? he said. Your war.

  Le Drop leaned in close to the keyboard. A bit different from your father’s, if he was lucky. We dug a lot of trench. Slopping rats and freezing water. Hard labour it was. Coloured labour. Doing our bit, the generals said. So one morning we were shovelling and old Fritz started throwing shells our way. Maybe he was aiming at someone else but with the ground torn up and the front zigging and the wire zagging and the vermin and the dead bodies and all, well old Fritz’s aim became a slippery thing. But he just kept on throwing. Screamed those shells did, flying through the air like cats pushed off a ledge.

  Le Drop’s wrists crossed, hand over hand, climbing through the middle keys. Tears ran down Octavio’s face. He saw his father crouched in the cellar of a bombed-out building, mice scurrying over mouldy loaves of bread. Le Drop played on.

  Now I’d rather be called a dumb-ass ape than be pruned at the shoulders Hun style, so when those cats started screaming I dropped in six-eight time and buried my face in the slop. Sergeant said it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Called me the Chocolate Drop. Hey Drop, he’d say, you hear that cat? Just to see me jump. I didn’t hear anything but came up with a mouthful all the same. He was most annoying, the sergeant was. From Baton Rouge as I recall. Played everything in a minor key, mournful stuff. Last I saw of him his horn and him were heading home. But he left a little something behind for old Fritz. I couldn’t say what the loss of that arm did to his playing. Not much I suppose. Like I said, we were tight. Tight as new shoes.

  His fingers splayed wide, Le Drop landed the heavy chords.

  My father had a nickname, Octavio said. People used to call him the Thinnest Baker in All Paris.

  A fine name hard earned no doubt, Le Drop said, then carried on.

  The shells were persistent but I managed to keep all my pieces nonetheless. The gas though, that was something else. There’s no hole deep enough to get Le Drop out from under that creeping yellow shit, if you’ll pardon the expression. So I came back with these weepy eyes. Now there isn’t much call for a keyboard boy who can’t read the sheets but this city knows how to treat someone of my particular shade. So when old Fritz finally went home I planted some roots right where you see me. Been here most every day since. Requests taken and requests played.

  Le Drop held a final note, one finger deep in the low keys.

  He came home, Octavio said.

  Le Drop smiled. Like I said, one lucky fellow. What was his proper name?

  Octavio choked as he said it.

  It’s good to remember the real man, Le Drop said. Mine is Walker in case you were wondering. Abraham L Walker, at your service. Mother named me for the great emancipator but she and Mr Lincoln are long passed so I doubt they’d notice the change. She would have liked it though. That’s a fine one, she’d say. My boy Le Drop. A fine name hard earned.

  They sat watching the river traffic, trading stories about joints and dives and grand halls with floors like polished glass, rooms that could have held a thousand people.

  Jittering, Le Drop said. Like everyone was dancing on one set of legs.

  About how much butter to turn into the croissant dough.

  Enough to make your mouth water just to think of them, Octavio said. And to fill your belly for a week.

  About cabaret women and Japanese fans.

  So beautiful those girls actually glowed, Le Drop said. I swear you had to shade your eyes.

  About the perfect baguette.

  You need to tap it, Octavio said. The side of your thumb against the bottom of the loaf. My father called it bakery music.

  Your father sounds like a fine fellow, Le Drop said.

  I miss his stories, Octavio said.

  No doubt there was a nice melody about him.

  He loved his newspaper. Every Sunday. We would look at the pictures. When I got older we would visit the museum.

  Music and pictures, Le Drop said. Don’t they just go together, bring out the finest in people. You two ever read anything or was all this storytelling just made up from pictures? My eyes may not be what they once were, but there was a time when I read every chance I could find. Back in Harlem if you wanted a good tune you needed a good story.

  I have a book, Octavio said.

  Just one? You’re sure one is enough? Young man, you strike me as the sort of fellow who could put a whole shelf to good use.

  Octavio stepped onto the Pont des Arts. The rain had stopped. But for the crowds he could have noticed a painter working at his easel near the middle of the bridge. He could have stopped and stood behind the artist, keeping a discreet distance, crossing his hands in the small of his back as he considered the canvas on the easel. He could have thought of his father and whispered a word or two to begin their game.

  Instead, he pushed on through the crowds to the end of the bri
dge and turned in the direction of the booksellers.

  At the rear of the bakery above the cellar door, a pencil portrait hangs in a simple frame. The drawing reminds the young woman of the Old Masters: her Dürer, her David, a touch of her Ingres. She recognizes the balance of light and dark, one side alive with contour, the other shrouded in heavy shading; the lift of one corner of the mouth, the sharp glint in the one eye looking back at the viewer; the graceful line of white through the hair.

  Suddenly the feeling that she is not alone in the street disappears. She holds her breath, covers her mouth. She knows the face in the portrait.

  The war’s histories remained in the Fournier stall long after its battles had ended. Among the newspapers clipped to the front of the stall, a few dated back to black days now twenty years gone.

  One featured an illustration of a solitary grave in a country field. In the distance a stand of trees waved barren amputated limbs. A few sheep nibbled at shoots of new grass and wildflowers surrounding the smooth mound of earth. The sun was bright and high in the illustration, the sky a pale and peaceful blue. The grave was marked: a tiny tricolour curled lazily while a white cross, made from hand-split pickets and tilting to one side, rose out of the mound. A wreath of poppy blooms hung from the cross. Strands of rusted barbed wire, stretched between four curled iron posts, protected the grave. In the sky above the sheep an ornate banner of words hovered.

  Wearing a heavy overcoat Henri Fournier hunched on his stool, turned the front page, and read the old newspaper’s headlines. Every few minutes he would push his spectacles against his nose. He did not notice the man standing nearby, dressed in a suit too big for his thin frame, his hands nervously working the brim of a hat.

  VICTORY! OUR HEROES RETURNED!

  It was the word the telegram had used. Corporal Mabillon had not been wounded, he had not been killed; he was neither heroic nor returned. He had been lost. The war department might as well have said Henri’s best friend had wandered off like a dreamy schoolboy; that someone was out looking for him at that very moment. That if the corporal had been clever enough to lie his way to the front, then he was wiser still for the adventure and could now lie his way home.

  NATURE’S FINAL BLOW!

  As the war ended, the Spanish fever had taken its turn. Other friends disappeared in ways even the army could not have dreamed of.

  No, the doctor had told Henri, we cannot blame the influenza. Your grandfather and father have been lost to the river. Two lifetimes spent standing in the damp of the quays and the creeping cold finally made its way into their lungs.

  Lost. Henri remembered the gape of the doctor’s mouth as he said the word.

  Henri’s mother never again visited the bookstall. She cursed her only son, certain the evil green box on the quay would be his coffin, and not for one minute longer would she stay to watch his own suicide. She had moved to the south to live with an aunt. As she stepped onto the train, Henri had told her his grandfather would not have abandoned the books.

  Henri shook his head. The old man couldn’t leave the books, he muttered. He began to laugh.

  Visions drifted in and out. A cart piled high, drowned cats, Mabillon landing a mouthful on the head of a passing barge captain. Dreams and plans and hopes replaced by a damp life on the quay. Henri imagined himself gathering armloads from the stall, throwing everything into the river, jumping in after. He saw his body floating under the Pont des Arts, lying on a blanket of newspapers and postcards and books.

  His laughter became a fit. His spectacles hazed over, his eyes stung, his chest began to ache. A couple passing by stared at the bookseller then hurried on their way, bumping past the man still standing near the stall. Henri rubbed his eyes and wrapped his father’s coat tighter around himself.

  I remember that newspaper, said the man with the hat.

  Henri looked up.

  From when I was a boy, the man continued. My father told me it was a noble thing. Putting the grave of such an honourable man on the front of a newspaper.

  Henri closed the newspaper. An honourable man?

  The man nodded. Very noble, monsieur. All of France in mourning. Even his sheep have gathered to pay respects.

  Henri read the banner floating above the grave: REST WELL OUR BRAVE WARRIORS! Your father was a wise man, he said.

  The man did not seem to hear. He was staring at the portraits hanging in the stall: the boy and his boat, and the woman veiled in shadow. The hat flopped up and down behind his back as he leaned in for a closer look.

  Octavio fumbled through his pockets. He pulled out a handful of centimes, a few crumpled notes. Looking back and forth between the woman and the money in his hand, he counted over and over and over again.

  Henri watched the rattle of loose coins. He waited for a decision, doubting the man would buy more than a postcard. A nervous customer rarely committed to anything other than naked flesh; at best one might choose a thin volume in poor condition and then complain about the price. Yet there was something different in this one. Henri noticed how the man’s eyes darted in every direction only to return to the woman in the drawing. This one was not interested in a bargain.

  May I be of assistance, monsieur? Henri said.

  Octavio closed his eyes. He pictured his father standing beside him, stroking his chin and pondering his selections. Which ones would his father choose? There weren’t any pictures; apart from their colour each book looked the same. Would he have picked by size then? Would he walk back and forth in front of the stall, pulling a few volumes, weighing them in his hands, calculating how much he could carry back to the cake-slice? Octavio imagined his father whispering so the bookseller would not hear.

  Red, the thinnest baker might say. The colour of passion, my boy, of beating hearts and action. They’re the bold ones, the reds, sure to be full of adventure. Or we could pick the blue ones, like the wide sea and those mermaids singing us home. Or perhaps the green of the trees in our Tuileries.

  Octavio knew his father would assign each colour he saw. The golds would contain tales of treasure hunters and lost cities, the purples would conjur magic and spirits and fairy worlds. He wondered if his father would have considered black a colour at all. Regardless, he would have started with the red ones.

  Octavio scanned the books in the stall. There were so many shades of red. Light cloths, bright leathers, blood edges. He listened for his father’s voice again.

  Imagine a woman, my boy. Watch her as she steps out of a pastry shop. She does not look your way but, oh yes, you see her. Her face, her mouth, the curve of those red lips. You cannot resist. You wonder what would it be like to kiss those lips. As red as raspberries. You bump against her and find yourself sitting in the gutter. The red of raspberries, my boy. That is the colour we’ll start with.

  Octavio opened his eyes and looked to the portrait of the woman. He watched her mouth. He imagined the tip of her tongue sliding out to wet them. He felt himself leaning in and tilting his head. Closing his eyes as her mouth drew near to his.

  Octavio stumbled back from the stall. I—would like a book.

  Then monsieur, Henri said, you have come to the right place. I happen to have a few.

  Octavio dropped his money, the coins scattered. A red one, if you please.

  He quickly pointed at a narrow spine in the first row.

  The Plato, Henri said.

  Octavio surveyed the spines and pointed again.

  Flaubert, monsieur. A very eclectic choice.

  Near the end of the stall, a spine wrapped in wine-coloured linen jutted above its neighbours. Octavio pulled the book, a treatise on hydraulics, and handed it to Henri. The bookseller raised an eyebrow.

  Quite a lot of reading here, monsieur. You might prefer something, shall we say, more imaginative. Henri selected a book of poetry, bound in a textured black leather.

  Octavio shook his head. No, thank you. The red will do for now.

  Henri located a ball of twine at the back of the stall a
nd began tying the three books together. As you wish, monsieur.

  Octavio looked into the sky. The sun had moved to the west. His father murmured in his ear. Make room for the birds, my boy.

  Heading home through the Tuileries, Octavio organized in his head. The reds would be first, light to dark, golds to oranges to rusts. The blues next, then the purples, the greens, the yellows. A library in the cake-slice apartment filled his mind. Books were everywhere: lining the walls, climbing the stairs to the attic. They propped the windows, levelled his bed. Took up every nook and cranny.

  The crunch of gravel disturbed Isabeau’s reading. She looked up to see a man carrying a bundle of books. He gripped the knotted twine as though they were fragile treasure, taking care not to let them drag along the ground.

  It was her story man. The galleries, the Sundays. But he hadn’t come in weeks. She had put him out of her mind. And his companion, she thought, the old fellow. Where was he? They seemed inseparable, and such a lively pair, transforming her quiet Sundays at work. No matter. Here he was again. She felt herself blush.

  She watched him circle the pond. Of course he would be a reader, she thought. Naturally all those stories, that imagination, would be fuelled by books. She smiled. How many times had she done as he was doing now, hurrying home after poking around the bookstalls, new purchases under her arm, already planning which one to read first, where they might fit on the shelf?

  Please, she whispered, please look this way.

  As the story man disappeared under the trees, Isabeau remembered herself. Her hand adjusted the scarf over her cheek.

  Henri knew by instinct that his new customer was not a reader. Yet he never said a word as week after week Octavio returned to the stall. What the fellow did with the books was his own affair, Henri thought. He would be glad of the business and the companionship and leave it at that.

  While Henri busied himself pulling selections, Octavio would stand for a few minutes, his hat bouncing in his hands, memorizing the portrait of the woman. She reminded him of a picture in his Arabian Nights: it was near the beginning of the book, a young woman with flowing black hair and dressed in a jewelled gown. She was whispering in an old man’s ear. When Ocatvio was young, his father would point at the picture. A princess if I ever saw one, he would say. What secrets do you suppose she is telling the king?