As we were ushered through Document Control with a wave, I asked, “May I please have my passport stamped? A souvenir?”
The airline staffer shrugged, exchanged a who-can-figure-tourists look with the Document Control officer. I got my entry stamp, and was whisked out of the terminal to a waiting car, another long, sleek Mercedes.
I still did not see my driver. Instead, a handsome young man, maybe a few years older than Casey, held the door. He wore skinny denim jeans and a form-fitting black T-shirt under a black leather jacket instead of livery. His dark hair was cropped military-short, and his cheeks were clean-shaven. Casual, but well-groomed.
The young man introduced himself as David Breton. He handed me a stiff, narrow calling card imprinted MADAME HENRI MARTIN followed by Grand-mère’s by-now familiar telephone number. He said, “Madame Martin requests that you telephone her right away.”
I felt a little uneasy as he handed me into the back seat and waited for me to buckle up. Who was that other man, the one in the good suit who needed a shave? Maybe there was another MacGowen among the passengers. Or, maybe the first man was a spotter or greeter of some sort who located the fare while the driver took care of bags and car. All things considered, I preferred being with the affable David Breton. The other man looked frankly arrogant.
I dialed Grand-mère’s number. She answered on the second ring.
“You have arrived safely, my dear?”
“Yes. Thank you for making the arrangements.”
“I must apologize for not being there to greet you personally, but I have a few little tasks to attend to this morning. And, if it is not too great an inconvenience, there is a little task that you might attend to, my dear. The administrator for one of your mother’s accounts wanted very much to see you while you are in Paris; something about needing a signature. I hope it is all right that I arranged for you to meet Monsieur Hubert at his offices at eleven o’clock.”
“Where are his offices?”
“In the Sixth Arrondissement. David knows where.”
Someone was wasting no time about settling Isabelle’s estate. I asked, “Will anyone else be there?”
“Anyone else?”
“Other members of the family?”
“No, no. Only you and Monsieur Hubert.”
I told her, “Eleven o’clock is fine.”
“Perfect. Then I will entrust you to our capable David until lunch. Anything you need, just tell him.”
When I closed my phone, I looked at the time. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock. What was I to do for two hours?
I had been to Paris as a tourist and on business several times, and always loved it. Paris is a fascinating place that somehow manages to hold on to its antiquities even as it embraces innovation: an Internet café installed in a twelfth-century building, the cockamamie glass pyramid I.M. Pei designed as the new entrance to the ancient Louvre Museum—first glance can be jarring, but it grows on you—the inside-out Pompidou Center with its plumbing running on the outside, ultra-modern in a neighborhood of stately old homes.
Every other time I visited Paris I felt the sort of eager, itchy anticipation that a kid feels before the sun comes up on Christmas morning: hurry up, let the delights begin. As we pulled away from the curb, I should have felt some of the old excitement. Instead, this time I felt wary.
David skillfully maneuvered the big car through the scramble of Charles de Gaulle Airport traffic and out onto a highway very much like a California freeway, with traffic every bit as heavy as the 405 is around LAX. Outside the car window I saw a frigid, gray day, typical, as Jean-Paul would have said, of Paris in the fall.
“David,” I said, “where are we going now?”
“I should ask you that question,” he said. “You have an appointment with Monsieur Hubert at eleven, and Madame Martin expects you for luncheon at noon, at her home in the city. She asked me to tell you that after luncheon we will drive to the family home near Lessay, in Normandy. The burial of Madame Isabelle will take place tomorrow, Saturday, in the afternoon.” His English was as flawless as Jean-Paul’s had been, textbook perfect, not infected by the argot of the street.
A slow-moving van suddenly pulled in ahead of us, sandwiching us between its rear end and a rapidly approaching car behind. I braced for impact, certain that we were about get up close and personal with the big purple rooster painted on the van’s back door. David checked traffic in the next lane, found a narrow slot between two speeding cars on the left and slipped into it inches before he would have rear-ended the van and been in turn hit from the rear. Unruffled by the near-miss, David kept talking. I had to will myself to let go of the door handle; my knuckles were white. The van switched to the right lane. I turned and watched the purple rooster disappear down an exit ramp, wondering if the driver knew how close he had come to disaster.
“If there is anything you will need for the weekend,” David said, “Madame believes it would be better for you to acquire it this morning in Paris because she thinks that where we are going you might find the shops to be quite provincial. She wanted me to tell you that she has arranged for you access to her accounts at various shops in Paris, and I will be happy to take you wherever you wish to go.”
I thought for a moment before I asked him, “What do you think I might need other than the usual sorts of things one might pack?” Combat boots? Kevlar vest?
“She suggested you might want to select something especially smart to wear at the funeral.”
“I brought a dress that I like well enough,” I said. Was she expecting me to be a hayseed in need of cleaning up? Or was she trying to impress me, or endear herself, by letting me spend some of her money? Could be a test, though what the correct response was I had no clue. I said, “I’m not a big shopper. But thanks for the offer.”
He looked at me through the rearview mirror. He had very nice, deep blue eyes that were full of mirth in lieu of an actual smile. “Perhaps Madame Martin has stayed too much in Paris, and a bit of city snobbism is the result. Believe me, there are very nice shops quite near the estate if you need something. Normandy is not a wilderness.”
“I’m sure it isn’t.”
“So, then, as we are here, in Paris, and we have a little time to fill, I wondered if you might like to see some sights, stretch your legs, perhaps.”
“I would, thank you.” A happy idea, especially if I was going to be sitting in a car for much of the afternoon. I leaned back in my seat, elbow on the armrest, and watched the ugly industrial edges of the City of Light glide past my window. “What do you recommend?”
“You have been to Paris before?”
“A few times, yes.”
“Then you have already seen for yourself that the Mona Lisa is quite small, and that the Eiffel Tower is quite tall, yes?”
I laughed. “Yes.”
“Have you ever been to the basilica at Saint-Denis? Not exactly in Paris, but very close by. And on the way.”
I told him I had not been there. He said he recommended Saint-Denis because, first, it was easy to find a parking place there; next, he knew an excellent café tabac across the square from the basilica where we could get a good coffee and a snack; and of course the basilica itself was very interesting because it was the royal necropolis, the burial church of French kings and their families dating back to the early Middle Ages. And last, there were some gardens next door and a quay along the Seine that were nice for walking.
After the noise and billboard litter of the elevated expressway, the narrow streets and ancient stone walls of Saint-Denis were a relief. From the car I could see the backside of Montmartre, the highest point in Paris, and the white dome of the basilica of Sacré Coeur at its top.
David told me that Saint-Denis had once been an outlying walled fortification on the Seine, built to keep out barbarian invaders. But as Paris expanded outward the town had become a close-in suburb.
There was a modern invasion of sorts currently underway, this time immigrants out of Easte
rn Europe and the old French colonies of North Africa, the Caribbean and Asia. A new “city wall” built largely to accommodate the newcomers rose a short distance outside the ancient one: solid ranks of cheaply built high-rise national housing towers—what we call projects in the U.S.—stretched outward from the perimeter of the ancient wall all the way to the Paris city limits. Poverty, high unemployment, disappointment, anger, youth and crime, a community always on the edge of open rioting, lay outside this historic bastion, I was told. The native French clamor about the immigrant problem and the demise of traditional culture and language, while the newcomers feel excluded, denied equal opportunity. I could have been in LA.
Inside the old city walls, people representing a rich cultural mix went about their ordinary daily business. We stopped at the café tabac David mentioned and found a table by a side window so that we could look across the ancient stone square toward the basilica. David ordered strong cafés au lait and croques-monsieur, open-face grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches.
After the third “madame” in a row, I begged David to call me Maggie, at least privately. I asked him how long he had worked for Grand-mère.
“I do not work for Madame Martin,” he said, smiling graciously; had I offended? “My parents are residents on the estate, as were their parents. When Madame is at her home in Normandy, my mother does for her, you know, tends to her meals, does some housework. It is part of their arrangement.”
“I assumed you were driving her car. I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “It is her car. She knew I was between school terms and, of course, I am going to the funeral. So she asked me to drive her.”
“And she threw in a trip to the airport and entertaining me?”
He laughed. “Maybe I should say Madame and I have an arrangement also. There are benefits for both of us.”
I looked at his open, handsome face, and said, “Dare I ask?”
“I am studying at the École polytechnique near here. There are no fees of the sort Americans pay for public universities—no tuition—and I receive a state salary. But it is very expensive to live and the salary is very small. Let’s say that Madame supplements my salary and in return, from time to time, she relies on me. It is a happy arrangement.”
He paid for the coffees and held my coat for me. “A little walk?”
As we crossed the cobblestone square, I asked, “What are you studying?”
“Chemistry and genetics. The sciences of agronomy.”
“Farming,” I said.
He shrugged that Gallic shrug and frowned. “In the end, yes.”
He told me he wanted to work on niche agriculture, localized specialty crops and farm products, so that small-holders could support themselves in the face of the globalization of commodities, and thereby hang on to their land, to the local culture, and to provide a wholesome food alternative to the over-engineered junk that comes plastic-wrapped in supermarkets. From the tone of his voice I heard disdain for the latter.
The Martin estate in Normandy, he told me, had several good examples of small-scale but profitable farming. His father was the cheese maker, my cousin Antoine made cider and Calvados—apple brandy—and others grew famous carrots in a soil amended with composted seaweed. He promised to show me around the estate.
We walked past a small formal garden with a stone statue of a headless man standing in its center. While France has some relatively modern history involving lost heads, the figure wore a medieval-era monk’s robe and held his tonsured head in his hands as if carrying a gift to a party.
“Do you know Saint Denis?” David asked, patting the statue’s cheek. He pronounced the name San-day-knee.
“We’ve never met,” I said. “But I’ve seen him on cathedrals all over France. Who was he?”
“Early Christian martyr,” he said. “He came to Paris when the Romans were still in power, third century I think. He tried to convert the people. That was, of course, a crime. So, the Romans arrested him and took him up to the top of Montmartre.” David turned to indicate the rise of Montmartre in the distance to our right. “They cut off his head, and many other Christian heads as well, as an example to the people. But Saint Denis did not die right away. Instead, he picked up his head and carried it all the way down this side of the mountain. When he got here, next to the River Seine, he sat down and God took him straight to heaven. The altar of the basilica is built directly over the spot where Saint Denis ascended. Or, that’s the story.”
“It’s a good story,” I said.
“Montmartre is named for Saint Denis and the other Christian martyrs, the martyr’s mountain.” The way he smiled, I didn’t think he bought the story. “So this is a very holy place, and that’s why the kings and their families are buried here.”
We walked through the sanctuary and then descended into the catacombs below. The place was indeed full of tombs. The more recent monarchs built extravagant marble memorials, but the earlier tombs were more interesting, fairly simple sarcophagi with life-size stone effigies on top depicting ancient kings and their queens and children, and various family members, lying prone as if they were sleeping on low beds arranged in rows throughout the ancient church structure, in the sanctuary and the catacombs beneath as well, a sort of eternal royal dormitory.
“See this?” In the catacombs, David pointed out a dark stone box roughly half the size of a child’s shoebox sitting on a shelf in a side niche among other, larger boxes. “In that little box is the desiccated heart of the last true Bourbon king, Louis Seventeen.”
I said, “I thought there were only sixteen Louis.”
He indicated a pair of simple effigies on tombs nearby. “There lie Sixteen and his wife, Marie Antoinette, and their heads, too, I believe, though the heads may be somewhere else. But here,” indicating the box, “is all that is left of their son, the last legitimate Louis, the missing dauphin.”
“Where’s the rest of him?” I asked.
That one-shoulder shrug again. “No one knows. After his parents lost their heads, he stayed imprisoned in Paris. At some point he died of tuberculosis, but nobody now knows when. And nobody knows what happened to the body; into a mass grave in the Reign of Terror, perhaps.”
“Except for the heart?”
“Yes. The royal doctor took it home for a souvenir.”
“Gee, and I settled for a stamp in my passport.” I took another look inside the niche and shuddered. “I’m afraid to ask, but what’s inside the other boxes?”
“Royal infants.” He gestured toward the stairway. “Shall we go outside and maybe walk in the gardens?”
As we walked up into the daylight, I said, “Thank you, David, for showing me your national family skeletons. Now, what can you tell me about my own family skeletons?”
He leaned his head close to mine and whispered, conspiratorially, “You can’t wait until the family Martin gathers for dinner tonight?”
“Might be too late.” I took a breath before I asked him, “Do you know my story?”
“Some of it.” He tilted his head from side to side, a yes-and-no answer. “My grandmother Marie knows everything about everybody on the estate. It is a small world perhaps, but it has its big intrigues, and my grandmother doesn’t mind talking. I have known about you all of my life. The mystery girl, stolen away to America.”
“David, if you don’t mind, before I meet my own grandmother, is there anything I should know?”
“A chart of the mine fields, perhaps?”
“Are there mine fields?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said, matter of fact. “They are a family. And to make it worse, there is some money, and these are hard times. But the Martins are okay.” He paused, thought for a moment, reconsidered. “Most of them are okay.”
I didn’t add, but one of them may be a murderer. The family in France still had not been told that Isabelle was probably the victim of a murder for hire. I was asked to stay silent while the police did some background investigation, not to alarm anyon
e. That worked for me, because I, a stranger, did not want to be the bearer of that particular piece of bad news. Carrying Isabelle’s ashes home was all the drama I was prepared to deliver at the moment.
David gave me a quick sketch of the immediate family tree. Grand-mère, a widow, had two children, my mother, Isabelle, and my uncle, Gérard. I had a half brother about three years younger named Frédéric Desmoulins, called Freddy, who had a wife and two teenaged sons.
Shortly after Isabelle’s misadventure—that is, my birth—she had married a school teacher named Claude Desmoulins whom the family thought was as good a catch as she could hope for in the circumstances. A good match, perhaps, but a miserable marriage. Isabelle and Claude separated after only a few years, eventually divorced, and rarely had any contact with each other except through Freddy. Isabelle never took her husband’s name, preferring to remain a Martin.
“One thing,” David said when we returned to the car. “Some of them will try to make you believe otherwise, but everyone in the family speaks very fine English.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I said.
“And don’t be offended when they correct your French. Think of it as the price you must pay to encourage them to speak in English.”
For the second leg of our day’s journey, I sat in the front seat next to David. As he drove out of the car park, he told me there was still some time before my appointment with M. Hubert. He asked if I would like to drive past Isabelle’s apartment—it was in the same arrondissement as M. Hubert’s office—just to see the neighborhood. He said we probably shouldn’t knock on the door because Freddy, my half brother, was staying there at the moment, and dropping in on him might be awkward. David didn’t know how Freddy had taken the news that I, the long-lost sister, was bringing his mother’s ashes home.
I told him I would like very much to see where Isabelle lived. I knew so little about her, and the more I learned, the more curious I became. I asked, “What was she like?”
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