Hélène could have moved out of Paris altogether. That’s true. Or she could be dead. The Nativity of the Holy Virgin comes on September 8. Thomas goes to all the usual places even faster than before. The hunt for Hélène has become a chore. So at the end of that day he sets a deadline. If he’s not found Hélène by the Saint-Mathieu, he will search no more. No, how about the Saint-Michel, the day before the end of the month? That will give the quest a few more days. But then the Saint-Michel comes and goes and Thomas finds himself deciding that, all right, he’ll look for just one more month. He’ll keep returning to Saint-Médard off and on throughout October. The last day of his searching, the last day for his hunt for Hélène, will be November 1. The Feast of All Souls.
—
It’s the last Sunday of October. Thomas is coming over to the left bank for what he recognizes is his penultimate search for Hélène. This time, however, because it’s unseasonably warm, he’s not in an eager rush. It’s a slow saunter across the Pont Neuf – past the usual collection of charlatans and quacks, the jugglers and fortune tellers, the food peddlers and the sellers of flimsy parasols.
Thomas chides himself for having been duped by Hélène and for having wasted five months of his life. He squints to recall that when she said “Saint-Médard,” he should have been able to see something hidden in those dark eyes. She was giving him the slip. Thomas scuffs the packed dirt road as he steps off the bridge. Is this the wiser view of what has transpired, or is he just being like La Fontaine’s fox, finding a reason to walk away when he cannot grasp the sour grapes? Well, he has only this day’s search and one more after that. Then he’s done. He’ll be all right. He and Marguerite have come to an agreeable arrangement of a marriage. It is working well enough. It’s just that he wanted Hélène back in his life, at least now and again.
Today, his walk around the church and neighbourhood of Saint-Médard will not be without at least a small reward. He intends to descend rue Mouffetard to visit his tailor for the first time since before the ill-fated trip to Brittany. He is going to order a new outfit: veston, justaucorps and breeches to match. Maybe a chocolate brown. It’ll be a gift to himself, nothing more than that. Something to mark his dedication to pursuing a lost cause these past few months.
No, the new clothes are not really about Hélène. Things are going extremely well at his work in the magistrate judge’s office. There’s a hint of another position, a promotion, in the days ahead. For that he has to dress the part. A more expensive fabric than he currently wears and a superior cut. In anticipation of his climb up another rung, he needs to be measured by his Russian tailor, Pierre, to make sure his numbers have not changed. But first, he makes the obligatory spin through the parish of Saint-Médard.
As he strolls along, looking neither left nor right, Thomas mulls how things are going with Marguerite of late. He really cannot complain. If Marguerite has smelled upon him the women he occasionally visits in the stalls – it’s been only a few times – she has not said a word. One night, after he and Marguerite had a congress of their own, she took his chin in her grasp and looked deep into his eyes.
“The truth, Thomas, the truth. Have you seen that one again? That scheming former servant of mine?”
“No,” he said, in complete truthfulness, “I have not. I gave my word and I give it again here and now.”
It was only after he’d returned to his room and his own bed that he felt bad for swearing such an oath. Yes, he’d spoken the truth about not seeing Hélène, but it was not for want of trying. Avoidance of the truth is always better than a flat-out lie. Hairsplitting, yes, nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t put his honour on the line.
Self-satisfied with his reasoning, Thomas decides he must write on the subject one of these nights. Perhaps he will share it with Gallatin, who would warm to such a discussion. In fact, Thomas will compose a letter this very night once he gets back to Marguerite’s.
The spire of the church of Saint-Médard makes its first appearance up ahead. His tailor’s shop is not far now, about halfway down rue Mouffetard. There is a crowd of people beside the church, in a circle, each of them wearing a dumbfounded look and staring at the ground. Of late he ignores the pilgrims and their cult, but this is too much of an oddity for him to resist. He goes up on tiptoes. He sees a woman writhing on the ground.
“What's wrong with her?” Thomas taps the man beside him on the upper arm.
“Holy Spirit.” The man’s eyes are glazed.
“Is she shivering or too hot?”
“Holy Spirit,” is once again the reply.
“Right.” Thomas resists shaking his head. He turns and walks away.
Because of the commotion surrounding the woman on the cobbled ground, Thomas finds he can enter the church anywhere he wants. For the moment, the woman outside is the show. He goes in the door closest to the tomb of the deacon Antoine Paris. There are only a handful of believers at the tomb, but Thomas is taken aback by the sight of so many bouquets of flowers. And then there are all the crutches left behind by people who have been cured. It must be nice, Thomas thinks, to have so strong a faith. As though one were still in the time of Jeanne d’Arc. It’s a faith he has not had since he was a boy in Vire.
Thomas’s tour of the church earns him the same result as every time before. Back outside, into air that does not taste of ancient dust, Thomas sees that the crowd encircling the woman on the ground has doubled in size. There are loud shouts of exultation and cries of joy. Thomas beckons to the glazed man he spoke with a few minutes earlier, a well-dressed merchant type.
“What now?” Thomas asks.
“Two more,” the man shouts over his shoulder, not wanting to miss a thing. “Two more convulsers. The Holy Spirit is all around. Join us, friend. You could be next.”
Thomas smiles. “Maybe later.”
Walking away, he speaks softly to himself. “Or, maybe a reinette.”
He picks up his pace to select his apple at one of the fruit stands on rue Mouffetard. He inspects its rusty orange skin. First with his eyes then with his nose. It’s an important part of the pleasure, before the all-important first bite. As with a sip of wine or a gulp of beer, or anything else in life, it’s the first taste that’s best.
As he raises the apple to his mouth, he senses movement above his head. He jumps back and aside. A cascade of waste water narrowly misses his head. It splatters on the street. Thomas scowls up whence it came, but all he catches is a hand closing a shutter as quickly as it can. He looks down to see what the damage is. Not as bad as he feared. Only a few splashes reached his socks and shoes. He’ll put his apple in his pocket for now.
He hears a distant church bell sound the hour. He had not realized it was so late. He needs to go see Pierre and place his order, then get back to Marguerite before the light of day is all gone.
Round the corner, a dozen strides ahead, Thomas spies a woman with a basket at her hip. Her gait and the little side-to-side swing of her head are familiar. Yes, the woman reminds him of no one else but Hélène. Thomas hurries closer.
Behind her now, nearly close enough to touch, Thomas is not so sure. With her hair tucked in her bonnet and from the back, it could be any woman. He sees her glance sideways. His hurrying footsteps must have given her a slight alarm. He allows his pace to fall off. No, though he wants it to be Hélène, it makes no sense that he would come across her now, after all these months. She’s likely dead, or moved out of Paris, back to Évreux or somewhere else.
The woman, dressed in middling clothes, is clearly not a servant. Nor is she a lady of Marguerite’s rank. She is from the vast grey area in between. She is or has been shopping. Even from his distance he can see what her basket contains: a cabbage, a bunch of carrots and a cloth-wrapped wedge that must be cheese. To watch her moving down the street, Thomas has to admit again that this woman has the walk and shape of Hélène.
“Why not?”
Thomas mutters. He regains the quick pace. He comes alongside the woman and risks a touch upon her shoulder.
“Hé— Hélène.”
The woman stops. She turns to face the voice.
“Thomas!” Hélène beams the instant smile of someone who has just found a long lost friend. But almost as quickly a shadow crosses her face. The smile disappears. She glances up and down the street.
“My God, Hélène. Where have you been? So long I’ve searched these streets and all around the church. You are ... you were nowhere to be seen.”
Hélène gestures for him to quiet down. She begins to walk again, and at a quick pace.
“You’re safe? You’re fine?” Thomas is undeterred as he matches her stride. He reaches out to stop her by the shoulder. When she halts, he opens his arms, ready for a great embrace.
“No.” Her voice is firm. A hand comes up in defence. Her eyes warn him to step back. “Not here, not now.” She starts to move again, even more quickly than before.
“But I’ve found you. If you only knew how long I’ve—”
Hélène pauses momentarily. She places her basket between them and whispers. “Walk beside me if you wish. But I live around here. People know me. You’re a stranger who in their eyes could do me harm.” She sets off at a brisk pace.
“A stranger? Harm?”
Thomas scans up and down the street as he walks at her side. Rue Mouffetard is crowded with people going about their day. No one is paying the least attention to him or to Hélène. No, that’s not so. He spies a woman up ahead, a fishmonger with a cart, and she’s staring with what looks like suspicion at Hélène as the distance between them closes. Oh, and there’s a man with bread in his back carrier. He’s doing the same, squinting first at him then at Hélène. Thomas moves farther away and shows no more interest in Hélène than in any other stranger on the street.
“Why are we doing this?” Thomas mutters through his teeth.
Hélène comes to a halt before a butcher shop. She pretends to examine a pig’s head and its trotters on the cart in front of the shop. Thomas makes the same stop and comes to stand a few feet away from her. They take turns sniffing the air above the cart, and bending to examine the head and feet.
“You owe me some kind of explanation,” Thomas says at last.
Hélène glances up from the pig’s head but keeps her eyes straight ahead. She adjusts her bonnet in the reflection of the shop glass. “Do I?”
“You do.”
“All right.” Hélène turns to face Thomas. She clutches her basket firmly to her chest. She inhales. “I’m married.” Her eyebrows arch up.
Thomas twitches to hear such a word come off Hélène’s lips. “I see.”
Hélène turns back to the beheaded pig. This time she’s inspecting the snout. But with a gesture of her hand, she sends Thomas a message to come a little closer to where she stands.
“My husband’s shop is nearby,” she whispers. “Just down the street. We live upstairs.”
Thomas stretches to his full height. He makes a face of displeasure and at first fools himself into thinking it’s an act he’s putting on in response to the smelly pig. But if it’s an act, he wonders, why is there a tightness in his chest? And a weakness in his arms and legs?
“Don’t follow me.” Hélène sets off down the street.
Thomas’s eyes burn into the back of her head. He will do as he pleases, as he must. He comes alongside. “Married? How can that be?”
Hélène stops. “A ceremony. With a priest.”
Thomas’s chest feels squeezed, like it’s down to half its normal size. He steals a breath. “But who, Hélène, who’d—”
“Who’d marry me?” She shakes her head in disgust.
“No, who did you marry? Who is he?”
Hélène adjusts the basket on her hip. With her free hand she takes hold of the handle to a dark-green door where she has stopped. It’s the entrance to a shop. She says nothing but with her eyes she directs Thomas to look up.
He does, and takes in a hanging wooden sign he knows very well. A painting of a giant pair of scissors spread open with a man’s coat in the space above and a pair of breeches in the open space below. His tailor.
“You ... you live here?”
“That’s right.” She’s not turned the handle to the door, but neither has she let it go.
“Near Pierre?”
“With, Thomas, with. I’m Madame Kharlamov.” There comes a smile.
Thomas cannot control his eyes, nor his jaw. “But he’s at least three times your age.”
Hélène shakes her head. “And your Marguerite, is she not twice yours?”
The door of the shop suddenly opens wide. Hélène half stumbles in.
“Caution, my love,” says the man in the doorway. It’s the tailor, Pierre. As always, the man wears no wig. He still has no hesitation about showing his thinning white hair to the world. There’s a kindly smile upon his face as he grabs hold of his young wife to keep her from tumbling into the shop.
“Thank you, my husband.”
Pierre places a hand on each side of her face and transfers his affection for her with a touch of nose on nose. Then he turns to Thomas. With each word the tailor speaks, his Russian accent becomes more pronounced.
“So it is you, Monsieur. I thought so through the window. And how are you, my friend? It’s been a long while, has it not?”
“It has, Pierre, it has. I— I— A great pleasure to see you.”
Thomas makes a tight upper-body bow, which the tailor returns. The two men enter into a protracted handshake. Then Pierre clasps Thomas like a long-lost customer he’s glad to see again.
“Tell me, my friend, what brings you to my shop?”
Thomas blinks. His lips open but for the moment no words come.
“I’m going in.” Hélène touches her husband lightly on the arm as she slips by. She turns to Thomas once she has her husband between the two of them. “A pleasure to meet you, sir. You are, by the sound of it, a customer of the finest tailor in Paris, is that not so?” Hélène winks at Pierre.
“Yes, he is,” says Pierre. “His name is Thomas Pichon. Does an old man still have his memory or not?”
“That you do,” says Thomas. “And yes, Madame,” he offers to Hélène. But she is no longer where she was. She is somewhere in the darkness of the shop, out of sight.
“Very pretty, is she not?” Pierre’s eyes are asking for only one reply.
“Yes, very.” Thomas takes in a tight breath.
“She has for name Hélène,” the tailor confides. “Like one in Troy.”
Thomas frowns.
Pierre explains. “She who launched the thousand ships? You not know that tale? It’s Greek.” The tailor laughs.
“I do. Homer. And yes, you are right. Your Hélène is as pretty as that.”
“The widow of naval officer, she is. A storm at sea. Off Brest, I think. Still waiting her widow’s pension, she is. It will come, it will. Eventually from the King. Down on her luck was Hélène when we met. But not her fault, no it was not. But maybe you don’t want to hear her story, my friend.”
“No, please, Pierre, go on. I have the time.”
“She came to Paris some months back, looking for a room. And work to be had. Back in June that was. Well, at my age, my friend, I still know a pretty woman. Much younger than me, I suppose you’d say.”
Thomas hopes his expression suggests he had not noticed.
“I played my cards. Job and room. But soon, I propose. And Hélène accept. Now, Madame Kharlamov. And me sixty-three.” Pierre’s chest puffs out. There is a broad smile on his face.
“Lucky you, Pierre, lucky you.”
Thomas seeks out the tailor’s hand for what will be the second time. He clasps it hard, like he’s delighted to hear the news. But
then Pierre squints at Thomas.
“Excuse me.” The tailor takes his hand back. “You come only for talk? No, I think not. How about we step inside my shop.” Pierre gestures for Thomas to go in ahead of him.
“Right you are. I came ... to be measured for a new suit.”
“You come right place. We have new fabric. Best in all Paris for you to select.”
“Yes, I hope. Tell me, Pierre, does your wife – Hélène, you said? – does she help you in the shop?”
IV
Appearance
Paris
March to October 1731
It’s not just that it’s Easter Sunday, and a warm sunny afternoon at that, with all Paris out for a stroll. Nor is it that his thirty-first birthday is a mere five days away. Those factors contribute, of course, but there are two other elements that make Thomas’s chest swell as he perambulates along the Seine.
The first is his promotion. He’s now the senior overseeing distinguished clerk in the magistrate judge’s office. That position comes with a significant rise in status and in pay. To be sure, it’s not a job he’d select if allowed to pick anything in this world. He would be a writer of poetry, or essays, or history. Or maybe even try the new novel form if it were up to him. But no one’s going to pay him to use his quill for any of those. So he takes pride instead in being good at using his ambition and his talents in the service of someone else, someone willing to pay for what he can do.
The second reason for Thomas’s glowing mood is that today is a feast day across the land. That means he gets to spend an hour or two of intimacy with the woman whose company he enjoys the most. The complications of the first few months of his marriage to Marguerite and the fallout from the incident at the château in Brittany are now dim memories. That was four years ago – no, three and a half. Since then everything has worked out more or less the way he hoped.
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