It wasn’t the first time I’d heard people clap, but before, it had always been an audience of parents. These people had no connection to me except the music, and I hadn’t even played anything fancy, but there was something in that response that I wanted in my life. It was like the moment when you know you’ve found a friend.
The toddler scampered off to his mama, and I got up off the floor just as Vivi was saying, “Oh my gosh, it’s eleven-thirty! We’ve got to leave right now if we’re going to walk all the way back to the bookstore by midnight.”
Giselle nodded, and I headed for the table where we’d left our violin cases.
“Bravo!” Mrs. Montoyo said. “You must come visit us again!” She touched her cheek to mine—not a kiss exactly, but so warm and friendly. “May we give you a ride home?”
“Why are you so kind?” I said. “We only just met a few hours ago, but you fed us dinner and now this.”
“You love our music,” Mrs. Montoyo said. “That is not nothing to us. And you made something beautiful for our children. Girls such as you do not walk through this door every day. Now tell us where to take you,” she said as I packed up my violin. “You are students, yes?”
“Oh, right,” I said. I’d forgotten hours ago that we were pretending to be grown-ups. She had been so kind; I hated to lie.
“We’re music students from Berlin,” I said. “We came to Paris for a music contest at the Sorbonne. I wish we lived close enough to come back, but the truth is we are moving back to the States in a few weeks. My dad is retiring from the army; I don’t think I’ll ever be in Paris again.”
I looked around the café, drinking in the details. Of all the places I’d been on this crazy trip, this little restaurant, with its clutter of tables and faded wallpaper, was the place I wanted to remember most.
“Ah, the army,” Mrs. Montoyo said. “You are American Gypsies then.”
“Exactly.” I laughed. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.
“Good for you to have your music.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “It is a thing …” She searched for a word in a language I’d know. “A thing large … but light to carry.”
I gave her hand a squeeze back, thinking of Arvo carrying his boy choir songs into the Soviet army and all the way to East Germany.
“It’s good for making friends,” I said.
“Come, come,” Mr. Montoyo interrupted us. “Here is your ride. Our friend will take you home.”
The musician with the gray turban gave us all a very serious smile and said, “Salaam, young ladies. It is my custom to offer a special rate for fellow musicians.”
“Let me guess,” Giselle said. “A song?”
“If you please.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Vivi said, chewing at the corner of her lip. “I can’t sing.”
“Vivi,” I said with a smile, “if you can breathe, you can sing.”
Five minutes later, we were climbing into a taxi that smelled like pipe tobacco and cinnamon sticks. The driver put our instruments in the trunk, and we hugged all the Montoyos goodbye.
“Cinquième arrondissement, s’il vous plaît,” Vivi said confidently as we settled in the backseat fumbling for nonexistent seat belts. Our cabdriver didn’t have a request, so we sang every verse we could remember of “This Land Is Your Land,” which only got us a dozen blocks. We made up new verses from our trip: “From the Latin Quarter to the Luxembourg Gardens,” and everything else we could make fit the tune—Australian schoolgirls and black turtleneck spy guys. It was lots of fun.
We drove through a roundabout that had one of those tall skinny steeples with Egyptian writing on it, but no church of any kind was attached. The traffic got heavier as we came close to the river. When we finally got to the bridge, we could see a film crew shooting a movie and a very bored-looking policeman waving traffic over to a different bridge. We poked along with the rest of the traffic and finally crossed the river on a bridge I hadn’t seen before. I was trying to concentrate on where we were, just in case, but the driver had turned on what must have been the news in Arabic, and I was yawning and rubbing my eyes by the time we stopped at the little fountain in front of Shakespeare and Company.
The front door was closed and the lights were off.
“No!” Vivian said. “What time is it? How can it be midnight already?”
I looked at the clock in the cab. It was 12:15. “Oh man, fifteen minutes!”
“Someone is awake,” our cabdriver said. He pointed to the third window down from the door; a glow of lamplight came from inside. “There.”
We piled out of the cab and peeked in the downstairs window. There was a lamp on a little table, and a sofa with a pillow and blanket on it, but I didn’t see anyone in the room. The window was open an inch.
“Is this the poetry section?” I said. “Because I am not climbing in here if it is.”
A voice came from inside. “Do you really hate poetry that much?” The Einstein guy stood up from a rocking chair in the corner.
“You have no idea!” Giselle said.
“Well, as luck would have it, this is the philosophy section.”
“Thank heavens,” Vivian said. “Can you please unlock the door, please? We were only a tiny bit late.”
“No, I’m sorry, Annalies keeps the keys, and she is very particular.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Giselle said. “All of our stuff is in there.”
“You look plenty spry to me,” the Einstein guy said. He slid up the window and held out his hand.
The driver got out of the cab laughing and set our instruments on the sidewalk. “Crazy Americans,” he said, and drove away.
“Come on, Vivi.” I made a step with my hands. “I’ll give you a boost.”
She stepped up on my hand. After Vivian got in, we handed her our violins and the cello, and Giselle gave me a boost. Then she put her hands on the windowsill and jumped up high enough to haul herself in headfirst and land in a heap on the threadbare carpet. A cascade of thick and dusty philosophy books followed her to the floor.
“There now.” The Einstein guy viewed the destruction of the philosophy room with some satisfaction. “Tell me that wasn’t fun.” He gave Giselle a hand up and then started picking up the books. “Wittgenstein hasn’t had this much fun in decades, I guarantee,” he said, brandishing a book with that name on it. “Nor Hegel. Now tiptoe upstairs, little ducklings, and don’t worry about the troll from the poetry section. He met an untimely end earlier today.”
“What happened?” I said. I picked up books from the floor and set them back on the shelf.
“George found out about the charming invitation you were offered this afternoon,” he said, and then, noticing the looks we gave each other, he added, “George may look absentminded, but he knows about everything that happens in his shop.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.” He slid the window shut and placed the bar across to lock it. “There are only a few rules here. Make your bed in the morning. Read a book every day. And most importantly, writers deserve to be respected and cared for. When George heard what our resident poet had said to you, he hunted up a hardcover copy of Lolita, beat him over the head with it, and threw him out of the store.”
“Wow!” Giselle said.
“You’ve got to be kidding! Mr. Whitman did that?” Vivian said. “He doesn’t look sturdy enough to hit anyone.”
“Doubt his sanity if you like—we all do. But don’t doubt his strength or his faithfulness to his convictions.” The Einstein guy straightened up the last of the spilled philosophy books and brushed the dust from his rumpled plaid shirt. “George is a remarkable man with a keen instinct for the best and the worst in human nature. Stay here just a little while, and he’ll change you.”
“We’re leaving in the morning,” Vivi said. She smiled, picked up her violin, and headed for the door. “So we’ll have to settle for being changed just a little bit.” We followed her out.
“T
hank you,” I said, turning back at the door. “It was very kind of you to wait up and let us in.”
“It was no trouble,” the philosophy man said a little wistfully, which made me wonder if he had daughters of his own somewhere.
We took off our shoes to tiptoe down the hall and up the stairs. I don’t think I’d ever been more relieved to see a bed.
“We made it!” Giselle flung herself into the top bunk without even bothering with pajamas or a toothbrush.
“Hey, look,” Vivian said. “Blank sheet music.” She held up a sheaf of papers. “Oh man!” she said. “You promised Mr. Whitman you’d write something!”
“Oh, right. I remember.” I took the pages from her. “You go ahead and sleep. I’ll just get started.”
Vivian kicked off her shoes, yawned, and was asleep in five minutes, hogging the whole pillow and way more than half the blanket. I didn’t really mind. I was tired but too wound up to sleep.
I turned on the lamp that stood beside the armchair, went to the picture-book section, and pulled out a hardcover book that was big enough to be a lap desk. It was going to be tricky to write a viola part for my composition, especially since I didn’t have the other parts to work from. I paced back and forth in the room singing the violin and cello parts quietly to myself and thinking of what the viola could add. I didn’t have any brilliant ideas.
I tripped over a book on the floor as I was pacing from the chair to the window. It was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I flipped through a few pages, and the book fell open to chapter five. There was a stack of hundred-franc notes plus fifty American dollars. It made my hands tingle to hold that much money. Who on earth could have left so much in a book? A little parade of things I wanted ran through my head. I shut the money in the book and put it on the shelf. Those Gypsies who gave us dinner and shared music with us didn’t have a lot, but I’d way rather be like them than like Arvo.
It was their music I couldn’t get out of my head—the sadness of it and the power. I wanted to write something like that. There had been a bit of a melody in my mind all weekend that I’d thought of while we were riding the train. I pictured the Montoyo boy dancing in the rhythm of a train. I dug a pencil out of my backpack, sat in the armchair, and started to write a new song.
next morning I woke up still in the chair with pages of half-written music on the floor in front of me. It was hard to decide which felt worse, sleeping in a chair or not brushing my teeth. Giselle and Vivi were sound asleep in the bunk bed, still in last night’s clothes. The sun was up, spilling light in through the dusty window.
“Oh my gosh!” I said. “What time is it? Vivian! Giselle! Wake up!”
I looked all around the room for a clock and then remembered that Vivian had a watch. She was still wearing it; quarter to seven, whew, plenty of time to catch our train. I gathered up the pages and set them on the windowsill, where Mr. Whitman would find them later.
Vivian and Giselle were not morning people. They growled and grumbled and pretended not to hear me. Annalies poked her head in the door and said, “Sunday! Free pancakes in the dining room in ten minutes.”
That did the trick. Giselle and Vivi were up and dressed in a flash. Just a few of the bookstore residents were there. I heard snoring from one of the rooms along the hall. Mr. Whitman presided over the stove with a large bowl of extremely thin pancake batter that he ladled into a skillet and tossed in the air to flip. The pancakes were more sour than sourdough, and the syrup was watery. The only thing that tasted normal was the butter. If I hadn’t been worried about hurting Mr. Whitman’s feelings, I might have eaten a plate of butter for breakfast.
As people finished and walked out the door, Mr. Whitman called out various chores to be done around the bookshop. People grumbled as they went out, and sometimes they traded jobs in the hallway, but I heard someone scrubbing the bathroom and saw people walking past with brooms and dustpans, so housekeeping must have been part of the Sunday-morning drill.
When we had eaten as much of the pancakes as we could stand and cleared our places, I said, “Do you have a chore for us? Because we need to do it fast. We’ve got to catch the nine-o’clock train.”
Mr. Whitman smiled and ate a pancake from the pan with his fingers. “You did your chore last night giving William a bath. I’d forgotten what a pleasure it is to have a clean cat.” He put the stopper in the sink and started running hot water. “But I won’t say no to some help with these dishes.”
“No problem,” Giselle said, turning up her sleeves.
“I’ll get the table,” said Vivian. She grabbed the dishrags from the counter and tossed one to me. “I wonder if anyone left a tip.”
“Oh my gosh, that reminds me! I’ll be right back,” I said.
I went to the room where we’d slept and hunted for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I had been so groggy the night before, it was hard to remember where I’d put the book. Eventually I found it on a top shelf behind the door. The money was right where I’d left it.
“Mr. Whitman,” I said when I returned, “this book was on the floor last night, and there’s money in it.” I opened to chapter five.
“What?” Giselle said, turning to look as she dried a dish. “Holy cow! That’s hundreds of francs!”
“Twelve hundred francs and fifty dollars American,” I said. “Do you think someone lost it?” I handed Mr. Whitman the bills.
“Twelve hundred francs? Really?” Vivian came and looked over my shoulder.
“It’s not lost,” Mr. Whitman said. “This bookstore is my bank.” He extended his skinny arms and gestured toward the rest of the building. “When I have a little extra, I make a deposit. When I need a little more, I can usually find some.”
“Are you crazy?” Vivian said. “Haven’t you heard of interest? If you’d kept this in the bank for just three years, you’d have another hundred francs by now.”
Apparently, for Vivi, it was never too early in the morning to do math.
Giselle shook her head, her eyes still on the money. “Anybody could walk in and steal it from you,” she said.
Mr. Whitman folded his arms across his chest. “I find most people do not. And tell me this, Vivian. If I were to go to the bank and say, ‘Please tell me the character of the young women who are staying in my shop,’ will they tell me?”
“Well, no,” Vivi said, a little flustered.
“You set that book out last night where I would find it!” I wasn’t sure whether to be glad I’d passed his test or worried that he’d tried to trap me. What if we hadn’t earned enough money to get home last night? What if we hadn’t eaten? That money would have been really tempting.
“So, do you have enough money to get home?”
“Yeah,” Vivian said. She turned to me with a smile. “Thanks to our genius booking agent.”
“She’s going to arrange all our tours of Europe from now on,” Giselle said, laughing.
“Are you sure?” he said. He pulled out a hundred-franc note. “Do you need money for the Métro?”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re just going to give us money?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Whitman. “From each according to his ability, to each according to her need.”
“I’ve heard of that,” I said, remembering our talk under the bridge with Arvo. It seemed like months ago and not four days.
“You are a student of Karl Marx?” Mr. Whitman looked impressed.
“Oh great!” Giselle said, smiling and shaking her head. “Another Communist! We’ve had trouble with you people before.”
“You’re a Communist?” Vivian said. “You own a business and everything.”
Mr. Whitman smiled. “I’m sure in many records of the French FBI it says I’m a Communist. It might be more correct to say I’m a socialist.”
“You do this all the time, not just for us?” I asked.
Mr. Whitman nodded.
“So that’s why you fed fifteen people on three dollars’ worth of ingredients, a
nd there’s a hole in your shoe?”
Mr. Whitman busied himself stacking up the clean plates. “Am I richer knowing you three are sleeping in the street? When our philosopher came up last night to tell me you had safely lighted upon his windowsill, cheerful, healthy, and unharmed, I felt like the richest man in Paris.”
“So that’s all there is to socialism? It’s just being nice to people?” I said.
“Not entirely.” Mr. Whitman smiled. “Would you like to borrow a book?”
“We are so going to be grounded if we come home socialists,” Giselle said, and Vivian nodded earnestly.
Mr. Whitman laughed. “Off you go then,” he said. “Don’t miss that train.”
“We won’t,” I said. “Promise.” We went to the children’s room, packed up our stuff, and made the beds. On the way down the stairs, I noticed a sign over a doorway that I hadn’t seen before. It read BE NOT INHOSPITABLE TO STRANGERS LEST THEY BE ANGELS IN DISGUISE.
We headed for the Métro. It was a beautiful morning; the sights and sounds of Paris already felt like familiar friends. We walked down the Rue Dante with its little shops and brightly colored awnings and then turned onto the busier Boulevard Saint Germain. We walked past round kiosks with movie posters on them and newsstands with papers in dozens of languages. Across the street from the Cluny Museum, we went down the green staircase to the Métro station. The clock said quarter after eight, plenty of time to catch our train.
It was not very crowded on a Sunday morning. There were a few people who looked like college students and an older couple who were definitely American tourists, but there was also a family with kids, and they were staring straight at us and whispering. A businessman was staring, too, and then he went back up to the street. Just when I could feel the rush of air that comes in front of the train, there was the sound of men running and a command voice.
“You there! Stay where you are!”
We turned around to see two gendarmes thundering down the stairs to the subway platform. A third was a few steps behind talking on his radio in rapid-fire French.
Second Fiddle Page 14