by Claude Izner
Victor went back up the street and then branched off to Rue Daunou. At Avenue de l’Opéra, he went into a restaurant, where he ordered the dish of the day, rabbit in a mustard sauce. He closed his eyes, and imagined the corpse of a monocled cowboy garnished with green beans. Cowboy, cowboy, who had mentioned that word? He pulled himself together and leant back in his chair. Kenji; what have you got yourself involved in? Who did you see at Café de la Paix? Why did you meet John Cavendish a few hours before his death? Was it only you who met him? You must know he’s been killed, so why haven’t you spoken to me about it? I could have reassured you and helped you come up with an alibi …
The waiter placed before him a steaming plate and a small jug of wine. The sight of the meat made him feel queasy so he made do with picking at the potatoes with his fork. One potato, Kenji is not a murderer; two potatoes, how can I be sure? Three potatoes, Kenji has secrets, a mistress and a past I know nothing about; four, eat something, the waiter is watching you.
He managed to swallow the potatoes, but as for the rabbit, when the waiter wasn’t looking he wrapped it in a napkin and rolled it under the seat.
‘An ice cream for Monsieur? It’s included in the price.’
With his spoon in his tutti-frutti ice cream, Victor turned and tried to make out the front-page headlines of L’Événement, which the man at the next table had opened to read.
‘DEAD MAN AT COLONIAL PALACE NONE OTHER THAN EXPLORER JOHN CAVENDISH,’ announced one headline in thick letters. The man put down the paper, threw a few coins into the saucer, and got up.
‘What’s happening in the world?’ asked Victor.
‘General Boulanger is refusing to leave London, even though he has many supporters in France … We need a man like that, what with all those suicides because of Panama. The saddest thing is that it’s the small investors who have lost everything. It’s the same old story: they staked everything on those shares and now the canal’s failed, they’re sunk. No, it’s not very good news at all, Monsieur,‘the man said as he put the paper in front of Victor. ‘Here you are, I’ll leave it for you.’
‘Would you like anything else?’ enquired the waiter, looking disapprovingly at the ice cream Victor had barely touched.
‘Just coffee and the bill.’
He scanned the article on Cavendish. The American naturalist had been invited to the Exposition by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and was to have been made a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur and a member of the Geographical Society the very day that he died. His accounts of his numerous expeditions, translated into French, had been published regularly in Le Tour du Monde, Nouveau ,Journal des Voyages, the earliest ones going back to the beginning of 1857.
There followed a brief biography of the man. Born in Boston in 1828, he had travelled through the Indian Peninsula, Cambodia, Siam and Burma from 1852 to 1860, and had collected specimens of plants for pharmacopoeia. In 1863 he was in London for a series of conferences. He had then stayed in England until 1867, writing several books about his expeditions. On his return to America his government had given him the task of cataloguing the flora and fauna of Alaska, the vast territory recently bought from Russia by the United States …
Victor put the paper down. His father had engaged Kenji in 1863. So he had been in London at the same time as Cavendish. Before that, he too had travelled extensively in Asia. In his youth, Victor had loved listening to the tales of these wanderings, although he could not now remember exactly where he went and when. And besides, Kenji himself had made these facts difficult to recall by captivating the English boy with the suspense of a tiger hunt or a shipwreck on the China Seas. Victor opened his notebook and wrote under the sentence from Le Figaro: ‘Kenji, Cavendish, expeditions before 1863?’ He felt as if he had scented the right trail and he was at once excited and fearful. He paid and left.
CHAPTER SIX
Afternoon, Monday 27 June
ON Boulevard Haussmann, Victor calmed down. It was all a misunderstanding. The receptionist was probably right, and it was a different Grand Hotel. How many were there in Paris? Well … the one on Boulevard des Capucines … the one at the Trocadero … and also the Grand Hotel de l’Athénée, Rue Scribe … the Grand Hotel Paris-Nice, on Faubourg Montmartre … Kenji had met with a certain J.C. in a room number 312. Unless it was a woman: Joséphine C., Jeanne C., Judith C. To be certain he would have to question the receptionists at all the Grand Hotels in the capital and its surrounding area. No, he had to stop this dangerous train of thought. The mind can play wicked tricks. Only last year, hadn’t he been convinced that he was seriously ill, when he experienced exactly the same gastric symptoms as someone with a malignant tumour? How ashamed he had felt when, with a smile, Dr Reynaud had diagnosed a common or garden tapeworm and recommended he take a vermifuge! Though he always seemed impassive, Kenji would not have had enough self-control to feign indifference when the Comtesse de Salignac had thrust the newspaper right under his nose. If he had not reacted, it was because he was unconcerned. He probably thought that Cavendish fellow had suffered a straightforward heart attack, as had the woman on the Tower. ‘At times the truth can seem very unlikely’ — how many times had this line by Boileau been borne out in the past? How many innocent people had been the victims of miscarriages of justice because of an investigator’s overactive imagination? Kenji had travelled, as had Cavendish, but so what? They had both been in London in 1863, but why was that significant? In any case, the date on which Monsieur Legris had engaged Kenji’s services, which Victor had come across by chance in an accounts book, did not prove that Kenji had not been in England for some time already. Anything could seem true or false at a given moment; the facts could be viewed in differing ways.
Half convinced by his reasoning, Victor hurried on. A tram horn brought him back down to earth, and he nearly walked into a lamppost. Straightening his hat and smoothing his moustache, he finally looked up and saw the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Was this chance or had he been led here by his subconscious? He headed straight for the nearest florist.
They were little white suns with yellow centres, more than thirty of them, marguerites, wrapped in lacy paper and held in a man’s hand. Beneath a hat with a broad brim, dark eyes looked out at her from a slightly tense, moustached face. It was him.
She stepped back. ‘Excuse my appearance. I must look awful. I was painting.’
Victor stifled a laugh. Awful. That was women for you. Odette had used that very word when she woke up. Even done up in an oversized smock, barefoot and hair held up with combs, Tasha looked adorable. All the more adorable as he could make out her naked silhouette, or very nearly, beneath the stripy cotton material.
‘It’s hot. Would you like to have a drink with me?’
She bit her lip. He was a complex character, you could see that by the way he was holding the flowers, not quite sure whether to hand them over to her or not. Careful. Remember your disappointments with good old Hans.
‘I’m disturbing you,’ he added gloomily.
She made up her mind and took the bouquet. ‘Yes, I’ll come down to the café with you, but just for an hour. It’s the only day of the week when I can paint. I’m going to get dressed.’
‘I’ll wait for you downstairs.’
Without a word she pulled him into the room by his sleeve, and slammed the door. She gathered up the clothes scattered on the bed. The sight of the underskirt and the knickers forced Victor to turn away and pretend to be interested in the earthenware stove. She threw the flowers onto one of the strawseated chairs, as the other one was covered with canvases. Victor looked around the place, noticing the paper peeling off the walls, the piles of books in their recess. The paintings on the floor, on the furniture, on the easel, were all of rooftops: painted using impasto, the bluish grey of the zinc accentuated the pallor of the sky, that distinctive Parisian sky that even on clear days could suddenly turn rainy.
‘It’s not very elegant, but it’s all I have,’ she said, arra
nging the marguerites in an enamel pitcher. She observed him out of the corner of her eye. He held himself very erect and, with his hands in his pockets, looked every inch the mannequin. ‘Make yourself at home. I’ll be five minutes.’
She pointed towards the bed, which was the only available seating. He sat right on the edge, feeling gauche, ridiculous. She had shut herself away in the small room and he could hear the sounds of a receptacle being filled with water, then a splashing noise. She was having a wash. Although he was entirely indifferent to Odette’s ablutions, he was now having erotic visions of Tasha engaged in the same task. Had he been the selfassured man that he had always dreamt of being, he would have opened the door and looked at her boldly. He might even have gone a step further. But he chose not to run that risk, as it was probably the best way of permanently alienating her.
Used as both a studio and living space, the room was twice as cluttered as it should have been. Clearly Tasha was not an orderly woman, more one of those bohemians whose lives Victor liked to read about in serialised stories but who alarmed him when he came across them in real life. On a sideboard crammed with paintbrushes and tubes of colour, he noticed the remains of some ham and dried-up purée on a chipped plate, and a stale crust of bread. She was not eating properly. A big iridescent glass bottle attracted his attention: an expensive perfume with the seal still on the stopper. A gift from an admirer? From a lover? He suddenly thought how easily she had let him in. More dragged in, really. Almost against his better judgement, he got up and went up to the recess to try to arrange the books into alphabetical order: Hugo, Tolstoy, Zola … He noticed a black-and-white reproduction pinned to the wall: it showed a man who had collapsed over a table. It was impossible to say whether he was asleep or overcome with despair. Around him, almost touching him, circled a cloud of menacing nightbirds. Underneath, written in pencil, were the words: ‘The extravagance of reason creates monsters.’ I know that, he said to himself. Where have I seen it before?
She shouted through the door: ‘How did you get my address?’
He started and returned to his seat. ‘Marius Bonnet gave it to me. Do you mind?’
‘Why? Should I?’ Her smiling face appeared from behind the door. ‘Could you pass me those clothes on the chair? Thank you.‘A naked arm grabbed the fabric bundle. There was a rustle and then she stamped crossly. ‘Oh, hang it! Stockings are such a nuisance! I envy your being a man, you don’t know the torture of this fashion invented by men to ruin our lives! Do you know what my landlady thinks is the future for women? Trousers!’
‘Good Lord, I hope not. That would be a nightmare.’
‘A blessing, you mean. I’m just doing my hair.’
The sound of a brush in her hair was even more distracting for Victor than hearing her wash or the swish of her clothes. To divert his thoughts he picked up a sketchbook from the bedside table. Leafing through it from the end, he was surprised to see a number of rough drawings of his own face. So she had been thinking about him; he was wrong to be so reserved. He found the drawing she had been looking at on Rue du Caire: the dead woman on the Tower, a corpse lying out on a bench, three children with frightened expressions. Then three lovely studies of Redskins. The last sketch reminded him vaguely of something, but not something real. The same Redskins, drawn full-length now, stood before a railway carriage and were looking at a recumbent man and another one kneeling next to him in the midst of assorted objects — bundles, baskets, a rocking horse with its stuffing falling out, a chair with three legs. Before he could give it any further thought, Tasha emerged from the bathroom-cum-kitchen and pirouetted around the room as she looked for some knick-knack or other.
‘I’m nearly ready.’
He hid the sketchbook under a newspaper, which was also on the bedside table.
‘Where have those gloves got to?’ She turned abruptly towards him, and noticed his hand on the newspaper. She laughed. ‘Oh, I know, it’s absurd, but a friend of mine really wanted to sign the Golden Book. He asked me to accompany him and I gave in. Oh, well, so what? I’m only missing my gloves!’
He picked up the newspaper.
LE FIGARO
UNIVERSAL EXPOSITION 1889 SPECIAL EDITION PRINTED ON THE EIFFEL TOWER
This edition has been presented to Mademoiselle Tasha Kherson as a souvenir of her visit to the Figaro Pavilion on the second platform of the Eiffel To —
‘Oh, leave it, it’s silly!’ she said, taking Le Figaro from him. She threw it onto the bed and started rummaging in the wicker trunks. ‘By the way, have you written your literary column for Le Passe-partout?’
‘Yes, but I don’t know if my grumpy tone will amuse the readers. I’m taking a stand against the growing number of literary movements such as romanticism, naturalism, symbolism, and I deplore the bastardisation of the language.’
‘You’re just nostalgic for the old days. So what do you make of Victor Hugo?’
‘Nothing. I admire the man he was, I deplore his somewhat overemphatic tone, in other words I’m no hugolâtre.’
‘Hugolâtre? I don’t know that adjective. Is it in the dictionary?’
‘At the rate the language is evolving, it won’t be long before —’
‘Found them!‘She waved several pairs of lace gloves about triumphantly. She chose one pair and then threw it back into the trunk with the others, shutting the lid. ‘They’re not the ones I wanted.’
‘Do you collect them?’ he asked, amused.
‘No, I haven’t the money. They’re my inheritance from my mother. She loved beautiful clothes …’
She suddenly recalled Djina, her mother, filling a suitcase in their sparsely furnished home on Rue Voronov. She frequently relived that day from the winter of 1885 in precise detail. ‘Go, my little Tasha, go and live your dream. Go to Berlin. Aunt Hannah will help you. From there you can get to Paris. There’s no future for you here.’ Everything that had happened – her parents’ separation, the closure of the Puschkinskaia school, the move to her grandmother’s home in the hostile town of Jitomar – all of it motivated her to go. She felt guilty at deserting her mother and sister, but her desire to leave was too strong. She touched in her pocket her last letter from Djina. Four long years had passed since she had last seen her.
Victor’s presence brought her abruptly back to reality. He was looking at her with a puzzled expression.
‘Hang it all! I can’t even find my everyday gloves! When I left Russia, I couldn’t carry much luggage, so I just brought the gloves. That’s why my hands are in better condition than my feet!’ she concluded, wiggling her right ankle boot. The tip of it had completely lost its shape, thanks to her big toe.
They both laughed, and she adjusted her hat in the cracked mirror that hung by the recess. Fascinated by the little curls on the nape of her neck, Victor had to try hard not to reach out and touch them.
‘Have you known Marius long?’ she asked as she opened the door.
As he did not move, looking at her almost as if he was in pain, she stepped towards him. ‘So are you coming then? Oh, here are my gloves. You were sitting on them!’
The storm had passed, leaving behind an agreeable freshness. Victor still did not dare take Tasha’s arm. She led him down Rue des Martyrs where she knew a brasserie that Baudelaire had frequented.
‘I met Marius eight years ago in Ernest Meissonier’s studio,’ Victor said, in belated reply to her question.
‘That most illustrious specialist of military frescoes?’
‘I wasn’t there to admire his paintings, but to see a projection of animated photographs. Have you been to a zoogyroscope show yet?’
‘What kind of animal is it?’ she exclaimed, entering the café and giving the waiter a friendly wave. ‘You know, little women like me understand nothing about new technology …’
He ignored the sarcasm of her remark. ‘It’s a sort of perfected magic lantern. It gives the illusion of movement,’ he explained, offering her a seat.
His gallantry amus
ed her; she was not used to being treated with so much consideration.
‘What will you have?’
‘They make very good lemonade here,’ she said, like a regular.
He ordered a cognac. Marcel, the waiter, recommended the home-made pastries. Victor declined the offer but noticed Tasha’s momentary hesitation.
‘Don’t hold back, it’s my treat.’
‘In that case … do you have rum babas today?’ she asked Marcel, with a greedy glint in her eye.
‘So you’re a gourmand then,’ Victor said.
‘Oh, yes. And also on some days when I’m broke or I’m too idle to cook, I just eat puddings. They keep you going.’
He grew more relaxed; she was good company. With her expansive gestures and her familiar language, he felt as though he had known her for a long time.
‘So you and Marius became friends then?’ she asked with a full mouth.
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘A little. You’re so different from him. You seem to attach a lot of importance to the small things in life, though of course that’s just my impression of you. But Marius doesn’t care about anything except his newspaper.’
‘You’re right, maybe I take life a bit too seriously. You’re very independent and original. I really like your pain —’
But he did not have time to finish. A hirsute, bearded giant, with an impressive black eye, descended on them.
‘Mademoiselle Tasha!’
‘Danilo! What happened to you?’
‘May I?’
Without waiting for an answer the new arrival sat down next to Victor, who angrily shifted over.
‘Have you been in a fight?’
‘Yesterday, at the Exposition, during my lunch break, I had gone down to the Seine to practise the aria from Boris Godunov. Of course I didn’t get changed, so I was still in my Cro-Magnon furs. To give more resonance to my voice I raised my club, when a woman screamed: “Help! A maniac!” Immediately three officers of the law set upon me. Ever since two idiots decided to snuff it in the vicinity, the Champ-de-Mars is stuffed with policemen. They really went to town on me! But I didn’t just take it lying down. I think I may even have knocked one out. Then, realising their mistake, they excused themselves and assured me that they would refund my medical expenses. I’ll be back in my cave tomorrow,’ he finished gloomily.