They eventually ate a sinewy beef stew at a restaurant just at the corner of the rue de la Butte-aux-Cailles, for the simple reason that the Pot Tricolore did not exist anymore. The quarter was undergoing rapid, ugly changes, and the old inn, which had stood just at the gates of the city not very far away, had been destroyed some years before.
“It is strange that you used the name, though,” Amédée commented, with his perpetual nod. Obviously, the mention of the Pot Tricolore had reignited his wariness.
“Strange? I used an old Baedeker guide, that’s all. Why don’t you tell me your story, Monsieur Amédée,” Blankbate proposed, trying to think of another way to win his confidence.
It was the kind of story that starts with a long sigh.
“I don’t know how well you know Paris,” Amédée began, “but, with all due respect, most people don’t understand what it really is. It is a battlefield, it is a mass grave, it is a charnel house. Twice in the past fifty years, the people have been massacred in revolutions and civil wars. Dig a hole almost anywhere, under the St. Jacques Square or the new Opera, and you’ll find limestone-eaten corpses. You’ve heard about the Bloody Week, I suppose.”
“Let’s pretend I haven’t,” Blankbate essayed.
“That’s where my story begins. It was in the last days of May, twenty-four years ago, at the end of the Commune. I was a young officer, then, a ship-of-the-line lieutenant in the Second Regiment of Marine Infantry—you know, the famous Porpoises. I came from a good Breton Catholic family and I had no qualms about fighting for the Versailles troops that had the Commune under siege. I had no qualms about fighting at all, I must say. I was a part of that Blue Division that fought at Bazeilles, one of the worst battles of the Franco-Prussian wars. But a civil war, that’s something else. For one thing, I didn’t like it that the Prussians were helping us. But that was nothing compared to the rest. For a while, it did indeed look like a war. We charged, took the fort at Courbevoie, entered the city. And that is where the horror began. I was at Belleville, a workers’ neighbourhood, over there, just at the other side of Paris,” he pointed to the northeast, “and the platoon I was in charge of was given one of those de Reffye machine guns that can shoot twenty-five bullets in very short bursts. Prisoners, soldiers, and civilians, old and young, were brought in by the dozen, some captured at the barricades and some, even more numerous, denounced anonymously by their neighbours. They were lined up against a garden wall, and it was my duty to command the firing squad.”
He paused for a while, his eyes blinking. Blankbate did not know whether he was trying to summon or block out the memories.
“I did this for three days, night and day, a few steps away from the St. Jean-Baptiste church. The machine gun cut them in half, so that we had trouble getting the corpses back together. We put them in cheap coffins, and sometimes people came to take photographs; I still do not understand why. My men were tough men, but I could see they recognized themselves in the people they shot, poor people like them, who only wanted the bread and justice everyone is hungry for, and who sometimes even died shouting ‘Vive la France.’ My Porpoises reacted like soldiers; that is, they became more cruel, as if they were gunning down their own misery and shame. But I did not react that way. I discovered I simply could not take it. I felt ill. I trembled. I ordered, ‘Fire!’ with a voice that trailed off more than once. I had to sneak out to vomit. The few naps I managed to snatch ended up in nightmares. I tried to shake them off by walking, walking, walking in the city, but everywhere I went, it was the same: grinning corpses heaped or thrown in pits and covered in limestone. Paris itself was ruins and ashes, lit by fires and devoured by shadows. I walked and walked, and without even noticing, I started to run away. One dawn, I came to completely lost, not remembering what I had done. I was found and brought back to my post, but I couldn’t stay there and ran away again. This time I was tried as a deserter, but a doctor diagnosed me with some traumatic disorder. Today they call this ‘ambulatory automatism,’ and it seems that they try to cure it, but at the time it made me a lunatic, plain and simple. I found myself in Bicètre, the mental hospital for men, and it was arranged for me to leave the Navy.”
He ran his dirty hands through his greasy silver mane.
“I spent years walking around the courtyard, sometimes managing to escape, but only to walk in circles in the city that was rebuilding itself. The tourists visited it as if it were Troy or Pompeii.”
“Every city is a Pompeii,” Blankbate said, thinking of the Scavengers’ Arcaves, “and rag-picking the archaeology of the poor.”
But Amédée was not listening. He went on, his accent by and by losing its faubourg edge. Even his face was changing, Blankbate noticed, as if some former self were trying to work his way up to the surface, filling up a cheek here, pushing out some bone there.
“I was eventually discharged and I became a tramp, and then a ragpicker, because after all, this was the only sensible way I could live in my condition. I could not kick the habit of walking around for hours and hours, going nowhere in particular and sometimes very far away. I had gone from a Breton baronet to the Wandering Jew. In my milieu, as you can imagine, that was hardly a promotion. For my family, not only was I as good as dead—I would have been better dead. My wife orchestrated a plot with her notary. They found the mangled body of a tramp, declared it was mine, and I lost all my money. There’s nothing in France that a notary cannot do, you know, and what a notary has done is certainly not for a tramp to undo. Besides, they hired someone to find me and explain the situation, and under threat, I gave my word of honour that I would never try to claim anything of my former position, nor even to reveal my own identity. So far I have kept my promise. I don’t need my honour for anything else, I guess.”
“But you told me your name.”
“I shouldn’t have, it’s true. But, then, it’s my name. I can be excused for feeling the need to pronounce it from time to time. Especially to a stranger who understands the way I live.”
Blankbate acknowledged the compliment with a brief nod. He could tell that Amédée had not told the full story.
“Why did you accept?”
“Fear. Shame. Helplessness. Lucidity, too. What kind of figure would I cut in a salon with these hands and this face? I do not wish to be an embarrassment to anyone. And as I told you, now that I know that this upper-class world is built from bones and trash, I’d rather forget about it. I don’t miss any of it, believe me.” But still, the note of regret was unmistakable.
“There’s something you’re not saying,” Blankbate insisted.
“We all have our little secrets, don’t we?”
Amédée drank from his glass of rotgut. Blankbate thought the conversation was over, but he could still feel its embers glowing in the ragpicker’s eyes. He blew a little on them. “Why stay in Paris?”
“Ah,” Amédée raised his grubby finger. “You’ve got me there.”
If this was a smile, Blankbate did not wish to see another.
“My wife got pregnant during one of my spells of leave. I was already in trouble when I heard I had a daughter. Given the situation, I could not even dream of meeting her, you understand. But there is more. It was part of my wife’s bargain that my money went to my young daughter—to make her own motives less suspect, I suppose. She can still administer it until my daughter gets married, and perhaps after that, for who would like to marry a girl whose father was a certified madman who used to walk around like an automaton and then made a career of prodding dung heaps?”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I still don’t understand why you stay in Paris.”
“So I can see my daughter, of course. Sometimes. Going out of her house and jumping into a carriage. Or walking in the streets. From afar, even. It doesn’t always do me much good, but …” He struggled for words, like a man who knows he is going to say too much but cannot help himself. “It is what keeps me alive. And if remaining hidden is the only thing that can ensure my daughter’s h
appiness, I’ll do it gladly and to the end.”
The wounded dignity Blankbate had noticed now crystallized in Amédée’s face as it fought to resist the distortion of coming tears. The workings of pride never ceased to amaze Blankbate—such as in this man who ate off the pavement but would rather die than be seen crying. Blankbate thought of offering his help, but decided against it. He was of those people who think that the world would be a better place if everyone stuck to their own business.
“Now that I have made a fool of myself,” Amédée was saying bitterly, “tell me what business you have with the Pot Tricolore.”
It was Blankbate’s turn to be honest. Somehow he resented this, but there was no other way to make progress with his search. He began, “There are things I cannot say. But let us say I am, like you, a Scavenger.” He let the news sink in, but Amédée did not look surprised.
“I search for things, and I find things. Things that may not look valuable and are in fact deemed quite useless. But, like your crust of bread, these things have a hidden value.”
Amédée nodded, his gaze now focussed and attentive.
“Now, what more could a Scavenger’s heart desire but some object that at the end of his quest would represent for him not money, but instead the sacred value of his own thankless task? Something that were he to find it, would be like finding himself?”
“Like the Holy Grail,” said a Breton child somewhere inside Amédée.
Blankbate spread his hands apart. It was not for nothing that the Fisher King was the Scavengers’ patron saint.
“There. So now tell me what you know about the Pot Tricolore.”
“It was still there when I started in the trade. It was before all these foreigners came, before we had to fight against the garbage cans. We were still a family, the twenty thousand of us. Now, it was, in certain ways, a very hierarchical society. There were three levels, depending on the quality of your sack and hook: the Union of the true proletarians, who had only sackcloths, instead of baskets; the Chamber of Deputies, who were slightly better off; and above them the Chamber of the Peers, who had good wicker cashmeres, six-franc lanterns, and copper on their hooks. The Pot Tricolore was where we congregated for our assemblies, especially for the grand banquet on the first day of summer”—Blankbate smiled at this, for the Scavengers held a banquet on the very same day—“where all of these differences collapsed for a while. On such days, it was toast after toast, and wine was brought in an enormous vessel called the Moricaud—the Blackamoor—and poured out into a little earthen pot that we called the Petit Père Noir—the Little Black Father. Those days are over, but I assume that’s what you are after.”
“Exactly. I came a long way for them. A very long way.”
“Just for them?”
“We’re talking about the Holy Grail.”
“Then, Monsieur, with all due respect, I would strongly advise that you go back to wherever you came from. The Little Black Father is, I’m afraid, broken. But I know where the Blackamoor is and I wouldn’t like to put you in danger on account of it.”
“I pick garbage, too, Monsieur de Bramentombes”—Amédée flinched at the name—“and am not afraid of gettting my hands dirty. And I need your help.”
Amédée considered the notion of someone needing his help, then looked as if he had found a five-franc pièce on the sidewalk.
“You have been warned,” he answered, “but you called me Monsieur and bought me a meal. That’s the best thing one man can do for another. I’ll tell you what I know …”
To be continued …
I
The Marvellous
The following morning, the compassionate Brentford did not dare disturb the oversleeping Gabriel. He left the hotel on his own, a tad dispirited by the feeling that he was supposed to solve everyone’s problems by himself. It had always been his scourge to be deemed a man of action, although at heart, he was a thoughtful, contemplative fellow. Still, he had played the part assigned him, and most of the time he had cut a decent figure, so much so that it had caused his name to become a byword for dependability—in New Venetian families, the words “Go get Orsini” had become a catchphrase, used anytime for any problem, however trivial. And now: You’re lost in time? In a foreign country? Under Arctic conditions? Need to get back posthaste to save your city from turmoil? “Go get Orsini.”
Now, though, it was Orsini who was going to get someone.
The Salpêtrière was a city, really, with its streets and squares, its church and, well, its hospital. It took a good half hour of wandering before the Man Who Solved All Problems found the building where he might stumble on Lavis—that is, if he had understood what the grumpy concierge had muttered through his shrubby moustache.
The Intern Ward, or Charcoterie, was a small house that recalled a country inn tastefully coated with patches of verdigris-coloured moss. In compliance with the universal law that dictates that every young doctor must be a lubricious prankster with a drinking problem, its inside was decorated with smutty frescoes, including a door redesigned as female pudenda framed by enormous thighs. Brentford had sensed a strange tingle on his neck when he stepped through it, and now he looked back at this bold representation with a certain puzzlement.
“The origin of the world,” someone behind him said pleasantly enough. Brentford turned to see a black-capped intern sitting at a long table, drinking coffee from a glass. “It all goes downhill from there, I’m afraid.”
Brentford was startled to recognize Lavis. At least there was one of the Seven to whom the journey had done some good. He looked fresh and smooth, in impeccably ironed and creased elegant clothes visible through his unbuttoned smock. He even wore the sempeternal spats that the old Lavis had never been without. Brentford tried to kick into gear the rusty, leaky, smoking contraption that was his secondary-school French. He heard his accent coming out with slight Italian overtones and suddenly felt like Pulcinello on a stage.
“Would you be Jean-Klein Lavis?”
The intern hesitated, perhaps thinking about the strange corpse he had seen the day before.
“I am, yes. In what way can I help you?”
“I am Brentford Orsini, a friend of Gabriel d’Allier and Lilian Lake, whom you met yesterday under particularly painful circumstances.”
“Oh, this … Monsieur Leclou was a friend of yours too, then? Please accept my most sincere condolences. And do sit down, I beg you. Would you like a taste of our famous sock juice?”
“Well, I don’t think …”
“Ah! Sorry!” Jean-Klein chuckled. “I mean coffee.”
“Oh! That would be nice. Thank you,” Brentford said with relief, as the young doctor filled a small, bulbous glass.
Brentford sat down, still trying to come to terms with the fact that his interlocutor’s body was presently lying in a morgue somewhere, that it was a dead man who now put a hot glass before him on a table carved with obscenities. Some Italian part of Brentford’s taste buds revolted against the brown, watery decoction that he was now supposed to drink. His Scottish stomach told him it had known worse, and at least the stuff was hot.
“Hmm … Monsieur d’Allier and my other friends have spoken very highly of you. And we think that you might be able to help us with a little problem that we have.”
“You have a problem besides losing your friend? I am sorry to hear that. I would be very pleased to help you, but you’ll have to forgive me the fact that my competencies are few and exclusively medical.”
“And sartorial, perhaps,” Brentford said, intending to flatter, though he quickly noticed that he had vexed Jean-Klein Lavis. “It is said that true elegance is never noticed. So I may not be as competent as it pleases you to see me. Besides,” he said, trying to sound more pleasant, “I suppose you did not come to la Salpêtrière for a tailored suit, unless it is a straitjacket that you need.”
I may need one soon, thought Brentford. Size forty-two. Herringbone. Double-breasted, seventeen-inch velvet straight col
lar, with Russian-leather straps and silver buckles—an awful lot of buckles …
“No. It’s about a little headpiece, actually,” he said, unfastening the bag that held the couronne magnétique.
“It’s quite strange,” Jean-Klein remarked out of the blue. “I have the oddest feeling I’ve seen you somewhere.”
“I do, too, I must say,” Brentford said evasively. But it bothered him. What if the old Jean-Klein’s memories had contaminated his younger self? Like a kind of reverse self-Transpherence? Would he remember New Venice, then? Could they talk about it? Brentford was tempted to find out, if only to keep the city alive in his mind. But no, not yet. Gabriel was right. Not to a man who cracks jokes about straitjackets.
Brentford put the couronne magique on the table. “Here it is. Do you have any idea what it is or how it works?” he asked, overplaying his ignorance.
Jean-Klein’s laugh had the ring and pitch of rationalism: mirthless and slightly contemptuous. Brentford knew it well, for he had once had the same laugh himself. In his case, years in New Venice had added more than a little self-directed irony to it.
“I suppose I could explain to you what it is and how it does not work.”
“That would be a start. I’d appreciate it.”
“It’s called a couronne magique—a magical or, to be precise, a magnetic crown. You could say it started here, like so many things, with the study of hysteria. A doctor named Luys was interested in the way magnets can be used to provoke, displace, or, he discovered, suppress the painful muscular contractions that plague our epileptico-hysterical patients. He was also very adept at hypnosis, with which he obtained similar results, especially using rotating mirrors. Unfortunately for him, I think, or at least for his reputation, he worked with the wrong person, namely Dr. Encausse, who under the name of Papus practically rules the Parisian Masonic occultist underworld. Luys apparently bought into the notion that the mind, like a magnet, emits a certain field, an effluvium that can be captured and transmitted.”
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