He whispers to himself: it is you.
Amid the millions of words written on the subject, the memories of a first blush, the retelling of when-we-met stories, there was no logical explanation. Science and religion offered no biological causes or revealed truths. The snowflake beginning the avalanche remained unseen; the dewdrop that started the deluge could not be identified. Yet there were theories, plenty of those, concerning how one found love.
A boy-god’s arrow, some would claim, hitting its mark from behind a billowy cloud. A softening of the brain, others said, the pleasant result of too much wine. The phases of the moon, the alignment of stars, the coming of spring. Forbidden fruits and tempting serpents. The light in a smiling eye, the dimple at the corner of a shy mouth.
Each of these, and countless more, had turned an invisible switch, quickening the pulse and raising the heat in the room. And all without warning: a glimpse of someone, for an instant then gone, as they stood on the opposite platform in the Métro. The bumping of shoulders on a crowded boulevard. A dropped umbrella rescued, shaken dry, returned with a bow. The inexplicable turn of a head in the Tuileries; an overheard story.
One’s thoughts were somewhere else when it happened: finding a place—in the attic, under the stairs, squaring a shelf—for the day’s purchases; or turning a page in an absorbing chapter; or contemplating the weave of a great kilim map. One minute alone in one’s own head, the next staring at someone they had never seen before, or had seen a hundred times, but now with a changed pair of eyes.
What was that? they might have wondered. A twinge in the stomach. A thump, an offbeat skip, a sudden pounding under the breastbone. Had the trees somehow turned greener? Had the breeze, together with the children’s boats, stopped moving across the pond?
It might have been the book she was reading, such an aubergine purple. The simple cut of her dress. The slope of her legs, ankles crossed, shoes off, heels resting on the edge of the pond, toes cooling in the breeze. How she held her head, turned down and away, with her face, what he could see of it, inches from the page.
Or the way she looked up from behind her scarf as he passed.
Octavio shuffled across the gravel in the Tuileries: preoccupied as always with keeping the day’s bundle from dragging; planning where each book would find its place in the cake-slice. As a gust of wind rippled the boat pond, he turned his head, saw a flash of colour. Peacock blues and greens, a corner of scarf caught in the breeze. A young woman was reading. Looking up from her book, she caught the end of the scarf, pulled it tightly to her cheek and looped it over her shoulder.
It couldn’t be her, he thought.
Octavio quickened his pace, his feet stumbling as they knocked against his bundle. Don’t run don’t run don’t run she’ll see you don’t trip keep your feet the trees into the trees watch out for the branches breathe just breathe it was impossible she couldn’t be.
Octavio concealed himself in the shade and pressed his hand against his heaving chest. He watched as the woman closed her book. She slipped on her shoes, dragged her chair back to the edge of the trees. She checked the knot of her scarf, looked for a moment toward the trees, and walked back to the Louvre.
Octavio followed her. He stopped as she disappeared through the crowds milling around the museum’s entrance. Realizing the twine around his books was cutting into his hand, he dropped his bundle. Three or four volumes this day, in shades of tattered brown, came loose and tumbled to the cobbles.
He knew he had seen that face before—obscured in the shadow of a long lock of hair. It was all too unbelievable, he thought. She couldn’t be. The woman in the Tuileries could not be the portrait hanging in the bakery. His bakery.
The wind in the museum’s forecourt seemed suddenly to stop blowing.
For weeks Octavio returned to the shelter of the trees. The woman would appear as the sun reached midday. She would walk to the edge of the trees, find her chair and drag it to the boat pond. Every Sunday the same chair, the same spot. Every Sunday a book.
He needed only one word to imagine a hundred stories: she—was a dancer; cooling her feet after a morning of twirls and leaps.
was the daughter of a sea captain, remembering her childhood as the toy boats crossed the pond.
was an empress hiding among her subjects, shielding her face with a scarf made from the silk of ten thousand worms. Five thousand green, five thousand blue.
was a teacher, a lover of learning, patient and gentle with her students.
She—was a reader.
He had a library.
It could not continue this way. The clammy palms, the butterfly stomach, the light-headedness. He could not keep watching her and do nothing. He had no idea how—if—he should approach her. He could ask Grenelle for advice but then where would he begin to explain? The fellow would enjoy the story, of that Octavio was certain, but it might be just another fit of imagination to the blind watchmaker. Customers at the bakery would laugh and pump his hand and offer enough contrary advice to make his head spin even faster. And the gossips would have it all over the eighth by the time the morning rush had settled. The thought of that gave Octavio the chills. Then he pictured his father on the bakery’s steps.
A beginning then, Emile whispered.
——
Henri Fournier laughed. You are quite mad, my friend.
Octavio said it wasn’t funny. Every detail of the drawing that now hung in the bakery he had seared in his mind. He had memorized the woman reading in the Tuileries. They were the same person. There was no mistake.
As you wish, Henri said. Then let us suppose that your brain has not run amok. Does this young woman know you have her portrait?
I don’t know. How could she know? Do you think she knows?
Have you introduced yourself?
Should I? How should I? What should I say? What would you say?
Take a breath, my friend. You could ask her what she is reading.
I couldn’t do that.
Why not?
She might ask me what I have been reading.
This woman, shall we say your woman, is obviously a lover of books. So you show her your day’s purchases. Or you tell her about my stall. I could certainly use the business.
We shall not say. She is not my woman.
The point is, you may not be a reader like she is, but there’s no finer storyteller. Share one of your tales with her.
I cannot speak to her.
Let the story do the talking.
I wouldn’t know where to start. Would she give me a word? What word? What if I don’t know the word she gives me? What if I can’t think of anything?
Henri rolled his eyes. Let us try a different approach, he said. Your woman sits in the same chair, correct?
Every Sunday.
Then leave something for her. Write her a note. Be anonymous if you’re going to be so nervous. Be mysterious, like her.
I can’t write something. I don’t know how—where to begin.
For goodness’ sake, a gift then. Flowers are a nice gesture. Or something from your bakery, a token only you could give. Or better yet a book. At least you know she likes those.
She would look up at him, shading her eyes to see who had interrupted her. There would be a moment’s pause. She would smile as he asked if she was enjoying her book. I am, she would say, but what are you hiding behind your back? He would bow and hand her his gift. Something from my library, mademoiselle. But I have done nothing to deserve such generosity, monsieur. It made me think of you, he would say. I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures, they can tell remarkable stories all by themselves. She would take the parcel and feel the weight of a good book beneath its elegant wrapping paper, her hand lingering on his. Do you have a favourite of these pictures, monsieur? He would nod. Then please join me, she would say. My name is—
Next? Octavio said, catching his hand in the bakery’s till.
It was an easy thing to find her chair in the trees. Octavio pulled it
to the boat pond and set it as she would have, facing the sun. The precise angle as the back legs dug into the gravel, the exact distance between chair and pond.
The morning promised a warm July day to come. A few children had already taken up their places around the pond. They were preoccupied with their boats, pushing them out, blowing against the little sails, coaxing them to make the great crossing.
He placed the package, wrapped in its iridescent paper, on the woman’s chair. He paused, wishing he had the courage to linger under the trees, to see her reaction. To turn and leave contented, knowing that she now knew he had found her.
A small mound of burnt scraps lies in one hand, the other grips the wrapped Arabian Nights.
Her accident had become a scar; the scar then a reflex. In turn it had become an instinct. How she might appear to others. Since the day the bandages were removed that instinct had clung to her. She had honed it like a sixth sense: the ability to step away, to look at herself with someone else’s eyes.
What they see now is a young woman in a plain dress and scuffed shoes, the poor thing sweating and covered in ash, a beggar in need of a bath and a comb. Tears streak the soot on her face. What once might have been an elegant scarf, now faded, is wrapped in a tangled mess around her head. It hides nothing, enhances nothing, and only makes her appear all the more ridiculous.
Yet she had been beautiful once. In an artist’s eyes.
Enough, she thinks.
The sun slid past noon as Isabeau arrived in the Tuileries. She stood by the boat pond, trying to unravel this curiosity. A chair—was it hers?—was already at her customary place. A parcel, beautifully wrapped, lay on the seat. Someone must have forgotten it, she thought. She listened for the sound of footsteps on the gravel, someone running toward her. A mother and son perhaps, their arms waving frantically, eyes wide with worry. You see, Maman? the boy would gasp. I knew someone would find it. Pardon us, mademoiselle, his mother would say. The boy can be such a trial sometimes, but he refused to get on the Métro until we looked.
Isabeau picked up the parcel. She could feel a book inside, a familiar and comfortable weight. The perfect gift, she thought. It would be a shame were someone to lose it. She waited a few minutes more. People strolling around the boat pond paid no attention to her. Finally she sat and pulled her own book from her bag. After a few pages without asterisk or exclamation point or a circled paragraph, Isabeau gave up. She could not concentrate. She looked around the boat pond, then into the trees. No one was coming.
She took the parcel from under her chair and unwrapped it, taking care to not tear the paper. She flipped the book over, read the title. She put it to her nose. There was a vague odour of dust. Isabeau fanned the pages, stopping here and there at a colour plate. Genies, flying carpets, ships teetering at the edge of the world.
She rummaged through the wrapping paper for a card, something that might say who had received such a present, or who had been so generous in the giving. Again she flipped through the book. Inside the back cover she found a tiny, scrawled notation:
F F F From teh the liba library fo of Oct a v oi io ND.
Boula ger ieNoterNotreDame. 8th. Parsi Par ppp Paris.
From one child to another, Isabeau thought. She looked up to see a groundsman raking the gravel near the trees. Their eyes met and Isabeau held her breath, thinking she had been found out, that he knew the book was not hers. The groundsman turned back to his work. Isabeau rewrapped the Arabian Nights and slid it into her bag.
That evening as she left the museum, the book nagged at Isabeau. Apart from its scrawled ownership and a few gently curled corners, she had found few flaws. There were no opinions scribbled in margins, no underlined passages. Its pages were firm in their binding; there were no ripped edges where a reader so anxious to learn what happened next had turned the page too quickly. If it had come from someone’s library, Isabeau thought, it had rarely been read. At least not the way she would have read it.
Tightening her scarf under her chin, she stepped into a tobacconist’s shop and asked for a telephone directory. She slid her finger down column after column of Notre-Dames: accountancies and antiquarians and barbers and barristers and cafés and cheesemongers and dentists and flower shops and jewellers and notaries and opticians and patisseries and pharmacies and tobacconists; cathedrals, chapels, rectories, sisterhoods, benevolent societies and shops offering religious paraphernalia.
There were a few Notre-Dame bakeries, and only one in the eighth. Isabeau fumbled through her bag for a pencil and a scrap of paper. In her neatest handwriting, she copied out the address and hurried out of the shop.
Henri Fournier slouched in front of the bookstall. Though the summer crowds had passed in waves along the quay, there had been only one interested browser. His regular Sunday customer had arrived earlier in the day. He had purchased three books. Henri dared not imagine where he would be were it not for his most curious, painfully shy, but reliably punctual baker.
Henri was dozing off. He needed distraction. The quay had quieted to a few tourists milling near the end of the Pont des Arts. He began pacing in front of the stall, his eyes closed, his hand running along the spines.
He stopped at his grandfather’s book. His fingers knew well the front cover’s embossed diamond, the pinholes at each corner, the slippers with their curled toes. He had long since memorized the colour of blood oranges.
Henri pulled the book from the shelf. He drew a forefinger across the edge of the pages and found the middle. In one smooth motion he opened the book across his arms. As though it might crumble at the slightest movement, he lowered it to the ground.
Left on the verso right on the recto.
Henri closed his eyes. He lifted his arms out from his shoulders, stretching his fingers as wide as he could.
Lightly, Henri. As weightless as feathers.
Henri curled his toes around the cool smoothness of eggshells. The eggs dissolved into sand and he felt himself sinking. He was at the edge of the sea, the waves eroding the beach around his feet. He wiggled his toes. Another wave slid up the shore. Henri thought he was losing his balance. He opened one eye to catch himself, expecting to see a line of giggling tourists staring at him.
The quay had vanished. The bookstall, the trees, the lamps, the tourists, the bridge, the river, all gone. Henri looked down. His feet were still on the book. But rather than seeing pavement, rooftops were now slowly sliding underneath him. He could see lines of flags and light bulbs strung between the buildings, then remembered the holiday was only days away. With the book lifting him higher, the city fanned out in a great circle, the ribbon of the Seine snaking through a maze of streets and boulevards and gardens. In the distance were hills, church spires, fields, orchards; and then through the clouds, far in the distance, a thin blue smudge of seaside.
Henri laughed and closed his eyes and felt the wind cooling his face.
He did not see a young woman hurry past, then stop suddenly and return to the stall. She rummaged through the selection, ran her hand over an embossing here, inspected an endpaper there, lifted a volume to her face and breathed deeply. She admired the drawing of the boy and his boat. Then, realizing the time, she rushed off in the direction of the Pont des Arts.
She told herself that she would have to return to the bookstall. But where was my head to have not seen it before now? she thought. It was impossible to miss, painted such an interesting shade of green.
She was halfway across the bridge by the time Henri stepped off his grandfather’s book and returned it to its place. He adjusted his stool and leaned his back against the stall. A smile spread wide across his face.
Isabeau reached the end of the bridge and turned toward the Tuileries.
Below her, at the river’s edge, an old man crouched on his haunches, a ragged carpetbag beside him. In his hands was a square of canvas. He laid it gently on the water and slid it back and forth. The soft colour wash of buildings, the pearl sky, the green bookstalls, a yellow d
ress walking along the quay, all slowly dissolved, their trails drifting with the current.
As Isabeau passed the boat pond, she resisted the urge to stop. Another Sunday and she would be sitting across the way, content with her reading, looking up from the pages now and then to see if her story man was in sight. She loved those Sundays. But she knew this day’s errand was important. Someone was missing their book. And if she didn’t return to the Tuileries until later, if it turned out she had missed her story man, then no matter. Next week would come, the pond would be waiting and life would return to its routine.
Isabeau looked under the trees, saw that her chair was where it should be, and hurried on.
The scarf falls away. Lowering her head, the young woman pulls a lock of hair from behind her ear, letting it fall across her cheek. She looks up, one chocolate eye peering out at the baker.
I have something of yours, monsieur.
She holds out the book. From your library, I believe.
The baker reaches for the Arabian Nights, then hesitates. My—I—you found it.
The young woman reassures him with a nod. I had hoped for a story, she says.
The baker takes the streak of white in the young woman’s hair and moves it back behind her ear. She watches his eyes: the brightest grey, searching for a beginning. She smiles and ties her hair back with her scarf.
Tell me how we came to this, she says.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The epigraph is taken from the Penguin Books Great Ideas edition of The Painter of Modern Life by Charles Baudelaire, translated by P.E. Charvet, copyright 1972.
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