Haunting Paris

by Mamta Chaudhry

  She brought me such happiness. In the autumn of my life.

  “Not autumn,” she would correct me. “It’s only midsummer yet.”

  Yes. Well.

  And yet she never estimated herself at her true worth. Just because she didn’t have a concert career like Fabienne or wasn’t as well known in her field as I was in mine, does not make her any less extraordinary. Never in all the years we were together did I see her do an unkind thing or say an ungenerous one. Her shyness often made her tongue-tied, but she never stayed silent when it was important to speak up. And she was gifted with an exquisite, instinctive tactfulness. Tact, I’ve found, is an underrated virtue, helping to lubricate the cranky machinery of human interactions.

  I watched her mount a long and patient campaign to win the children’s trust. Especially Alexandra, what a wildcat she was then, flying fur and extended claws. But Sylvie never gave up on her. It was only when Alexandra asked impulsively if Sylvie could come with them to Vandenesse that I took the full measure of Sylvie’s success. But then Alexandra quickly realized how unthinkable it was and flushed bright red. “Never mind,” she said, “she’d probably rather stay here with you anyway.”

  And I wonder if I should not have been so quick to let the matter drop when Sylvie said she didn’t want a child of her own. Does she regret it now? I certainly regret not asking her again.

  Now that she is alone, Sylvie is gripped by the bizarre notion that Isabelle will finally invite her to join the family at Vandenesse, to play for them, perhaps, reinstated in that circle. She shakes her head to dispel the absurd fancy, it’s clear Isabelle will never forgive her, and what does it matter anyway, it won’t alter anything between them.

  Sylvie wishes she had not wasted precious time on such profitless rivalry. She can’t help recalling the disastrous evening with the Gouffroys soon after she moved in with Julien. Returning from a conference in Zurich, he had bumped into Max and Sabine at the station and invited them over for fortune du pot, but when the three of them showed up, it was to find paint cans everywhere, the roasted chicken tough as leather, and Sylvie in tears at the thought of that memorable dinner at rue de Bièvre. But Julien only smiled and shrugged. That’s why it’s called potluck, sometimes the pot is lucky, sometimes it’s not, he said, as he whipped up an omelet.

  All through dinner, Sylvie toyed with her food and kept looking anxiously at Julien. She knew he had noticed the changes to the apartment, but he hadn’t said a word. While he was at the conference, Sylvie had tried her hand at decorating and Madame de Cheroisey referred her to an upholsterer who was très smart. After the Gouffroys left, she asked eagerly if he liked the transformation. He stared at the imitation tapestry on the wall, the chairs covered in celadon silk, then remarked ironically, “You forgot the mirror.”

  Sylvie’s eyes filled with tears. How humiliating that he should recognize it for what it was, yet another attempt to imitate Isabelle, like the bottle of her signature perfume L’Heure Bleue hidden in the armoire, or Sylvie’s newly precise way of speaking, so that a color was not simply green or blue but, like the Turkish stone, turquoise. How naïve to think that she could learn what was proper merely by copying someone who was raised comme il faut.

  Without saying a word, Sylvie left the apartment and walked for hours, crossing and re-crossing the river by one bridge or another, until, hardly aware of what she was doing, she turned down rue de Bièvre, overcome by an impulse to knock on Isabelle’s door and ask for her advice. But as she approached that familiar doorway, she realized her folly and hurried past with her head down, turning on Boulevard St. Germain, glad to be caught up and carried along by crowds of people going about their business.

  It was dark when she returned to the island, and still she lingered in the street, looking up at the lighted casements. Most people had already drawn their curtains, but a few windows remained unshaded. In one room, a nurse fed an elderly woman, dabbing up her spills with a napkin; in another, chic young people danced to music Sylvie could not hear. Eventually even those lights were extinguished. The partygoers stumbled out to the street where a purring Bentley awaited, and the chauffeur drove them away in a plume of exhaust.

  A chill wind off the water reminded Sylvie that it was late, it was cold. She had barely eaten all day, and now the shops and restaurants were closed, the quay deserted. Time to go home. Her pale face glimmered in a darkened storefront, and she stopped to stare at the reflection. You forgot the mirror. She suddenly realized she had misunderstood, Julien hadn’t meant to mock her at all but to reassure her; no need to turn herself into a second-rate imitation of Isabelle, he loved her as she was. And then it struck her that there would come a time when she would look back on the day’s squandered hours with regret. She walked faster and faster back toward him, breaking into a run when she saw the wrought-iron gates, aware that being separated for even an instant longer now would lengthen the long separation yet to come.

  Julien was pacing back and forth in the courtyard, waiting for her. Even before opening the gate, he reached through the bars to grip her. “Don’t leave,” he said.

  “Never,” she said, “never.”

  But they both knew that he was the one who would leave, who had a history of leaving.

  When Julien was alive, Sylvie slept through everything, even the loud stuttering of jackhammers as old buildings were renovated up and down the quay. Now she wakes at the slightest sound, thunder in the distance, rain on the roof tiles, a sudden silence after the storm. She cannot go back to sleep, troubled by a strange dissonance, a dissonance that in life, as in music, seeks resolution.

  She gets up and crosses the room noiselessly in her cloth slippers. Coco is instantly alert. His tail thumps on the floor as he considers the delightful prospect of an unexpected walk. But Sylvie does not put on her shoes, and Coco sighs and lowers his head again.

  Convinced she has overlooked something significant, Sylvie goes to Julien’s desk, pulls out Marie’s card from the envelope, and studies the two lines of poetry that she had only skimmed before. Rereading them now, she is struck by their beauty, the palpable yearning for a dear friend whose mere remembrance assuages all grief. But it is the unremarkable words cher ami that she dwells on with a pang of jealousy.

  More than ever she is certain that the contents of the envelope are not random but meaningfully linked. Perhaps Marie, if she is still alive, can provide the link. But how in the world will she find her?

  Sylvie draws back the curtains and looks out. The rain has stopped, the puddles in the street reflect the first streaks of dawn. She makes herself some coffee, then calls to Coco, who bounds ahead, down the stairs and out to the pavement.

  Sylvie crosses the street and leans over the stone wall to look at the river. The water has risen after the rain, the island seems like a boat floating on the waves. Nowhere else in Paris does the city’s coat of arms feel more apt: a ship with the motto FLUCTUAT NEC MERGITUR: floundering but not submerged. The same is true of her, she thinks, here she is, shaken, but still standing.

  Alice Taylor calls out “Bonjour,” smiling at the sight of Sylvie wearing pearls just to walk the dog. Coco wags his stumpy tail as Alice jogs past, lolloping beside her for a few yards before stopping to look over his shoulder. The dilemma is clearly written on his face. But then, without being called, he turns and trots back to his mistress. Loyal, thinks Alice, but surely the dog needs more exercise than he gets, cooped up in that apartment all day, he should be out running with her.

  Alice’s shoes squelch softly on the wet pavement and she feels the familiar exhilaration of hitting her stride. On quai de Béthune, she glances up at a third-floor apartment. It still gives her a thrill to imagine Marie Curie at the window. As she rounds the corner into quai d’Anjou, Alice’s face is dripping with perspiration, and she wonders how Frenchwomen never seem to sweat. Walking into the courtyard, she finds the main door ajar and Ana
Carvalho beckoning her into the stairwell.

  “Regardez.” She points out a plant flourishing in the dim light.

  “Very nice.”

  “Il faut regarder,” Ana Carvalho insists.

  Alice looks closer and sees a tightly curled bud. “In the dark? That’s impossible!”

  Ana Carvalho waves a reproving finger. “Remember what Napoleon said, nothing is impossible for the French.”

  Alice smiles. She’s always thought of the “can-do” spirit as typically American, while the French veer more toward the “can-can” spirit, bright and sparkling like their champagne, or like their croissants, airy and light.

  I’m amused at how Alice puts us in our place. This is what the glories of French civilization are reduced to, feathered costumes, flaky confections. And the cream of the jest is the croissant isn’t even French. It comes from Vienna, famous for the pastries we still call viennoiseries. According to legend, a seventeenth-century Viennese baker—up before dawn, like all bakers—heard enemy troops tunneling underground and sounded the alarm. The Ottoman invasion was crushed and the enterprising baker created a pastry shaped like the vanquished crescent. Voilà, our croissant.

  As for our “can-can” spirit, tourists who flock to Moulin Rouge to see an authentic example of la gaieté parisienne might be surprised to discover it’s just borrowed feathers: Offenbach was born in Germany, the son of a Jewish cantor, and the risqué dance now inseparable from his music came originally from Algeria.

  In omnivorous Paris, foreignness is absorbed into Frenchness like gravy into bread. Even my dear Ana Carvalho, born in Lisbon, feels as much a Parisienne as the judge’s wife, quoting Napoleon with such assurance to Alice Taylor.

  But, of course, Napoleon wasn’t French, either.

  Given our penchant for assimilation, I’m also amused at how we always say, quite without irony, “Vive la différence!” I wish I could share these reflections with Sylvie, to watch her eyes brim again with laughter on my account instead of with tears.

  Sylvie overhears Alice and Ana Carvalho discussing the clivia in the stairwell. “Discussing” is perhaps too strong a word, the concierge is talking volubly while Alice just listens and nods. Walking upstairs, Sylvie encounters Madame de Cheroisey on the landing and calls Coco to heel, she knows the older woman doesn’t like the dog coming too close. Not that Coco has shown any desire to frisk around either the judge or his wife; in his own way he is quite as snobbish as they are.

  “Ah, bonjour, and how are you managing with our Americans?” Madame de Cheroisey inquires, as if the Taylors are a shared tribulation.

  So the judge’s wife now thinks they are on the same side of the divide? Sylvie smiles and replies that frankly she finds them a breath of fresh air.

  “It doesn’t derange you, having them so close?”

  “Not at all, it’s a great comfort.”

  “Très cozy, no doubt,” Madame de Cheroisey sniffs as she goes back inside.

  Sylvie is amused by this reminder of one of the unspoken rules of les riches: Being exclusive always entails having someone to exclude. She grew up hearing about les riches; her mother observed them as an anthropologist might some reclusive tribe. Returning from work at Madame Wanda’s, Ewa would say, “Les riches are nervous people, very anxious about their fine things but they hate to admit it. If a guest spills red wine on a rug they shrug as if they have hundreds of Aubussons rolled up in the attic, but the maid knows they’ll make her scrub the stain for hours. Food makes them anxious as well, they think soup is vulgar, because you can see bits of meat and vegetables, so they order potage, with everything pureed, or even better, consommé clear enough to see the pattern inside their Limoges bowls.”

  “Why do you fill the child’s head with rubbish?” asked her husband, lowering his newspaper. “Is she likely to dine with a duchess?”

  “I’m sure Hrabina Wanda will come through for her.”

  “I’ll thank her not to do us any favors.” No more cast-off clothes, no more chipped dishes. As if they would make up for the incessant ringing of Madame’s silver bell to summon Ewa, and when she came running, Madame would ask her for a thimble or a piece of lace that she could have reached herself by stretching her hand. Madame Wanda needed her services and paid for them and that was that, no reason for Ewa to curtsy and carry on about her precious countess. He would never truckle, would rather take to the barricades to fight, he was a Frenchman through and through.

  Sylvie glanced at the veins bulging in her father’s forehead, at her mother’s pinched lips, and thought, Please, God, please don’t let Maman bring up Father Tadeusz right now. But of course she did, and her father crumpled the pages of L’Humanité and threw them on the floor. His wife refused to understand that the church was in cahoots with the rich, they told the poor they would inherit the earth so they wouldn’t rise up and claim what was due to them now.

  Sylvie bent her head over her copybook, trying to fit each letter neatly into its own square, but then she started coloring in the squares and noticed that each color made a particular sound, and she arranged the colors so that they made a pleasing melody, and then the melody filled her with such happiness that she forgot the quarrels that filled the kitchen and remembered only the times when her parents would dance to songs on the radio.

  How often had I pictured that scene to myself: Sylvie as a child, the same age as Clara’s twins, in the same city, at the same time. A time of terrible darkness, when children vanished from an occupied city, leaving no trace behind. Beset by troubling visions of girls her age—not more than six—fallen in the river, picked up by the Germans, lured into a brothel, I imagined the worst not because I have a particularly lurid imagination, but because in my work and in my life I have witnessed the worst impulses of human nature overcome the basic decency of people. But the idea of Sylvie was comforting in its very ordinariness: a child with both her parents beside her, doing her homework secure in the knowledge that there is dinner on the stove and school the next day. An ordinary scene, and it was only the extraordinary times in which it was set that rendered it as luminous as a stained-glass window, before which I lingered while around me darkness gathered with visions so terrible that they threatened to engulf all light.

  I closed my eyes to dispel those visions, and when I opened them again but a moment later, my life with Sylvie had just begun.

  And then, in the blink of an eye, it was over.

  When Sylvie told her parents she was moving in with Julien, they were silent at first with disbelief. They knew she was “different” and could not think how to talk her out of her decision; shy she might be, but she was also unshakeable. After the initial shock had subsided, her mother thought it was a shame that if Julien had to be old, why he couldn’t be a widower as well; the way things were, his wife would keep the name, the house, everything. A pity, it would be nice for Sylvie to marry “up,” but of course Ewa couldn’t say that to Didier, he would erupt that they were as good as any toff. She hoped he would at least be civil to Julien for Sylvie’s sake.

  Julien had invited them to dinner at a nearby restaurant, and over apéritifs the waiter’s advice was sought and given at great length. Drinking her kir royale, Ewa regarded Julien appraisingly. She could see why her daughter was head-over-heels in love, such a serious girl, not like herself at that age. Although Ewa herself would have held out for marriage, there was no doubt that Julien would make Sylvie happy, and she raised her glass to his health.

  Didier, too, thawed in Julien’s presence, reassured his politics were not those of les riches, he was an intellectual, with leftist sympathies no doubt, maybe even a socialist like himself, now that he had resigned from the Communist Party after the Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest. Julien said he needed a bit of advice and Didier looked at him suspiciously. Was the doctor making fun of him? What the hell kind of advice could he give, he was not an educated man, a
plasterer and proud of it, if it weren’t for working stiffs like him les riches would rot to death. But Julien was serious, the paint had started peeling off his walls, and he had no idea why. Didier explained that effervescence was a sure sign of leaks, he wouldn’t worry about the walls so much as the roof.

  Sylvie was happy her parents had enjoyed the evening and had not openly, at least, shown any signs of hostility. Hard to believe they had made it through the entire dinner without a single mention of les riches. And her truculent father, always on the lookout for slights, had not perceived anything to make him bristle. On the contrary, Julien had listened respectfully as Didier showed his skill in his métier rather than holding forth about his own work. But when they were walking home, she looked back on the evening that had put them all at ease and it slowly dawned on her that without saying a word about his work, Julien had amply demonstrated his expertise.

  She stopped suddenly in the middle of the street and flung her arms around him. He kissed her passionately and a passing bateau-mouche caught their clasped silhouettes in its net of light. At that most Parisian of sights, a cheer went up from the boat. Then the searchlights moved on, releasing them to the sudden dark.

  Le grand amour! Late in my life I discovered the kind of love which comes once in a lifetime, if at all. Sylvie could not make my life whole again, but she did make it complete. Yet the grandest of passions must fall prey to devouring Time. An old story, and no matter where it begins or how it is told, the ending is always the same.

  A deluge of emotion washes over me and I’m swept into a strange marriage ceremony, the tying of an indissoluble knot, not between a man and a woman but a king and the city he loved more than the woman he married to get it, loved more than his soul even. A lifelong Protestant, Henri of Navarre turned Catholic for the sake of Paris.