Thomas takes a deep breath. The Seine smells different in the dark than it does during the day. He prefers the pungency of the nighttime to the choke of day. He inhales its aroma. The vapour is cleaner, almost vinegary, which Thomas supposes must keep away the foul evils and frenzies that afflict so many in the city. He has been lucky in that regard, though in this world luck lasts only so long. One must enjoy good fortune while one has it, because once it’s gone, it’s gone. He takes the wafting smell of the Seine as an omen that the evening ahead holds promise.
A chill wind rises from the river. Thomas rubs his hands and shakes his arms. He fastens the top button on his greatcoat. He may soon need a warmer coat. Paris is already cold and this only the beginning of the winter. Of snow there’s a hint, but the rain when it comes is stingingly cold. Already he has burned through nearly a quarter of a cord of firewood to keep his room warm. The unexpected cost is another reason why in winter he doesn’t stay in any more than he has to. It’s cheaper to go to inns and taverns and have a long, slow drink, where someone other than Thomas pays for the heat.
He is still living in the same room atop the building on Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre where he and Hélène first landed after the diligence came in from Évreux. He could afford better now, but he is attached to the dump of a place and the oddball characters in the building. He really does like Bazoches, the failed lawyer who lives on the second floor. The man is often drunk and to see him stagger up or down the stairs is quite a sight. With each intoxicated step Bazoches writes a drama to those standing nearby. Thomas missed the time the lawyer fell, but he heard about it from Rooster. The “flight of angels” is what Rooster called it. Rooster himself can be funny that way. Back Bazoches went all the way down, ass and legs in a whirl, amazingly unhurt when he came to a heap at the bottom.
Another character who intrigues Thomas in his building is the Polish count. Like Bazoches, he too is on the second floor. The count never misses an opportunity to tell Thomas why he’s in Paris. “I went into exile with my king, as duty and honour dictate. Not one regret.” If you have no regrets, Thomas often muses silently when they speak, why do you talk of nothing else?
And there’s the widow Auger on the fifth floor. Pressed to make ends meet, she takes paying customers in her bed several times a week. Yet she never entertains anyone from the building, Thomas notes. He admires the widow for the restrictions she has set.
And then there’s the cabinetmaker with fingers as slender as a pianist’s. He lives on the fourth floor. Actually it’s not him but his young wife who draws Thomas’s interest. He loves her scent. She has the smell of roses when the two of them pass on the stairs. Perhaps he has looked too often or too long, because lately she averts her eyes from Thomas when they meet.
As he stands on the bridge a little longer in the chill night, Thomas notices a few stars push through the cover of clouds that broods above the statue of Henri IV. He recognizes his own sign, the Scorpion, just above a roofline in the sky to the south. The zodiac sign sends him a message that it’s time to move on. His friends at the Le Procope will be awaiting his arrival.
Striding off the Pont Neuf, beginning to head up rue Dauphine, a warm aroma captures Thomas’s attention. He recognizes the scent of roasting turkeys, a scent as a boy he loved to catch when he was out late in the right part of town. Here on this Paris night the scent is coming from a poultry shop where the rotisserie men cook until dawn to be ready for the morning trade. Thomas always makes a point to stop in front of their shop when he’s near here at night. He imagines the sizzling fat dripping into the pan beneath the turnspit, pooling in a golden greasy bath. It makes him hungry just to think of it. He’ll get something to eat at the Procope when he gets there.
—
At Le Café Procope Thomas’s friends are just where he hoped they’d be, filling a table as close to the fireplace as they can get. That’s smart on a night like this. They must have got here early. He’s eager to warm up his chilled frame. However, he sees from a distance that there’s not a seat left for him. Didn’t they know to expect him?
Thomas asks at a table near the front where there’s a spare chair if he might take it away. The two men at the table, two actors is his guess judging by their stage-managed postures and elaborate gestures, and the fact that he knows the Comédie Française is nearby, indicate with a flourish that he may indeed have the chair he wants. Thomas carries the chair above his head as he makes his way through the café. He taps the broad-backed Caylus on the shoulder when he gets there to let him know that he wants in. Caylus and Tinville say nothing, but they exchange understanding glances as they shift apart. Each slides his drink and his respective bundle of papers as they move left and right. They create just enough room for Thomas to insert his chair and sit down between them. It’s warm in the café and he sheds his greatcoat and puts it on the back of the chair.
“Aha,” says Fougre, known lovingly to his friends as Bougre. Well, Bougre is the nickname used most often. There is one other that Fougre does not like to hear. The bookseller Jean Gallatin, seated at the far end of the table this night, sometimes calls him Pokus. It’s a Latin affectation Gallatin often adopts, since he’s a devoted reader of Roman history. His use of Pokus – the long version of the nickname is Pokus Inter Anus – is Gallatin’s way of pointing out Fougre’s preference for men over women.
Fougre takes a drag on the stem of his clay pipe then gives a long plume of exhale. He sends a wink toward the long-faced La Coste, who is seated beside Gallatin. La Coste shrugs off the wink prefering to study the pipe in his hands. Fougre turns to Thomas instead.
“Halt, dear colleagues, our Norman friend, sweet Thomas, has arrived. If you would …” Fougre offers an outstretched arm in Thomas’s direction, pretending to welcome him in.
Fougre is a sometime essayist who alas is rarely published anywhere that anyone at this table ever sees. But he tells them that he is being published and no one ever demands the proof. More typically Fougre is a writer of pornographic tales. He writes for the yellow press, an occupation that brings in enough money for food and rent. He always gives Thomas a warm greeting when he shows up. If Thomas didn’t know better, he’d say the older man is in love with Thomas’s brown Norman eyes. So Thomas plays it up to make Fougre happy. More than that, Fougre occasionally buys him a drink. On this particular evening, as if he were a nobleman or knight, Thomas offers Fougre a half bow from the waist and a sweep of one arm. No one other than Fougre laughs or even smiles. Dear Fougre, however, is attentive and all smiles.
“Speak, friend,” says Fougre, who at nearly forty is twice Thomas’s age. “What torrid scene makes you come so late to our gathering? A little lovemaking on a cold night? Ah, why not? The Venus chamber has its charms, so I’ve heard. But do give us details, because it’s details I need. Grist for the mill, as we say. It’s been a while since I’ve been with a lady friend so I’m eager to hear that which I have forgotten. The lumps, the humps, the little Venus cleft and … is there anything else? Do tell, Thomas. Any tale you can share is surely better than what has been said so far around the table this night.”
Thomas glances around to see if that’s everyone’s assessment. But no one is paying the least attention to what Fougre has been saying.
“Bougre,” says Thomas loud enough for the whole table to hear, “let me buy you a drink for a change.”
“What’s this?” Caylus slaps the tabletop. “The Norman opening up his purse for a friend? My oh my. News for the Nouvelles à la main is it not?” “Indeed it is,” chimes in the bookseller Gallatin, much louder than his normal voice. “Be wary there, Pokus. The innocent Norman lad may not be so innocent after all. Plying you with a free drink.”
Thomas tenders a tired look. There’s truth in what they say. He is frugal because frugal is the way to be – waste not, want not – but can this crowd not overlook the slightest chink in anyone’s armour?
Thomas stands to go get something to drink for Fougre and for himself. As he walks over to the counter he wonders where he’ll get the best tidbits tonight. He has to have something for Collier later on. He has a recipe he aims to follow when he comes to be with his friends. Three quarters of an evening’s talk is for his own pleasure; the remaining quarter he shares with Collier. He figures it’s a fair enough deal. Life’s an exchange, a choosing of choices, the good with the bad. It’s important to have a moral compass. That’s what he has.
Walking back toward his friends Thomas sees that he may have picked the wrong end of the table this night. The two writers he is sitting between, Caylus and Tinville, look particularly silent and glum. Caylus, the toad-faced poet, appears already drunk while La Coste is puffing on a pipe and staring with intent focus into a mug of something clasped between his hands. If only, thinks Thomas, I’d picked up their moods earlier, I’d have tried to squeeze in at the other end.
Down at the other end of the table Jean Gallatin is holding forth in a way that Thomas does not often see. The bastard usually keeps to himself, except when he is being pithy and sarcastic. But tonight the bookseller’s jaw wags up and down and his hands are gesturing this way and that. Thomas comes in late, but it’s a tale about some curé in Provence. The priest has lately run amok in his parish. None of Gallatin’s tablemates are paying more than half-hearted attention to the story, but Thomas’s interest is piqued. The tale is clearly one Gallatin wants to tell, and to provide every sordid detail. Anything to besmirch the Church and its clergy is Gallatin’s rule. The whole table knows that, and Thomas doesn’t complain. And judging by the volume of Gallatin’s voice and the motion of his hands, he’s determined to lay this particular story out in all of its sad details. No one interrupts or asks the bookseller to stop. In other words, Gallatin has a completely free hand. Interesting as a debauched priest may be, there’s nothing in the story that Collier will want to hear. His focus is on only one thing: Paris and the threats to the powers that be.
Thomas turns back to those at his end. Maybe he can get something out of the glum Tinville. The fellow has his pencil out and is scribbling something in his notebook at a feverish pace.
“What’s wrong, my friend? Such a long face and the evening still so young.”
“Nothing a little grease on the pole couldn’t fix.”
Tinville glances up from what he’s writing. He wants to see if his crude line might have won some kind of reaction. There is none, but he doesn’t give up. “It’s a cure, you know, sex is, for near everything.” Blank faces all round, and back to his notebook Tinville goes.
Delayed by his own drunken state, Caylus reacts to what Tinville said a few moments earlier. “Fuck and be fucked, that’s what you’re saying?” Caylus reaches out and pokes Tinville’s right hand, the one with the pencil.
“Hey!” Tinville scowls.
“Oh sorry,” the drunken Caylus says, “but that’s the crux. Of what you’re saying? It’s all about the cock?”
Thomas gives Caylus a wary look, but he’s the only one. Everyone else looks at Caylus with understanding and sympathy.
“What, what’s going on?” Thomas asks.
Fougre is the one to reply. He jerks a thumb toward Caylus. “He says he’s lost it all. He has nothing left.”
“It’s true,” the poet Caylus says with a slur, and he takes another swig.
“Lost all of what? What’s true?” Thomas senses that maybe there’s something here after all he’ll be able to share later on with Collier.
“The Mississippi,” the poet replies, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s smoke. On a mirror.”
“Oh, John Law,” says Thomas. “But no, that’s not what I hear.”
Caylus’s head is looking wobbly on its neck, yet he is keeping Thomas fixed in his gaze.
“Three days ago I sunk a thousand. All I have. Correct me: all that I had. Now, it’s lost.” Caylus waves a hand at the far end of the table. “It’s lost. I’m lost. Me. Nothing left.”
Tinville looks up from his notebook. He nods to Thomas that it’s true.
“But why? The Mississippi is golden everyone says. A way to get rich.” Thomas searches the table of sad faces with his wide eyes.
“Past tense, dear boy, past tense.” Fougre scratches the back of his neck. “Ask the bookseller. Right, Gallatin?”
Unable to get the attention of Jean Gallatin, who is in conversation with a nearby table, Fougre thumps the tabletop with both hands.
“Here, over here. Bookseller! Gallatin! Stop your rants about our blessed Church and its priests. Tell Thomas what you’ve heard. About the Mississippi and John Law.”
Gallatin presents a stern face, chin upraised, not happy about Fougre telling him what he should do. “The Norman is no dummy. He can read and see for himself.”
“Yes, but he’s obviously not seen what you have on the rue Quincampoix. Tell him.”
“Oh that,” says Thomas in a quiet voice, reluctant to admit it. “No, I’ve not yet been over to the street. But I hear the place is a madhouse. Doesn’t that mean the business opportunity is good?”
“Well, you go and see for yourself.” Gallatin rolls his eyes. “Know this, Thomas, and the rest of you for that matter. Whenever everyone wants in on something, that means it’s time to get out. It’s a bubble, that’s the new saying. A bubble. That’s your John Law and his Mississippi scheme.”
There is a silence around the table, with all eyes focused on the bookseller. Gallatin cannot resist taking advantage of the stage they are giving him, so he continues on.
“Our government, our people of rank, they are supposed to look out for us, are they not? Yet what are they doing? I ask you that: what are they doing about this ruinous scheme?”
Caylus glances down and examines his fingernails. La Coste issues a burp. The rest keep their eyes on Gallatin, including Thomas, whose expression says he is the most taken aback. He’s absorbing what the bookseller just said. Does the man realize he is speaking in a public café, where anyone could overhear?
“Nothing, that’s what.” Gallatin looks even more smug than usual. “Not a thing. The regent is a fool. Or else he’s bewitched by John Law. I’m not sure which is worse. Either way, it’s a crime. We’re led by a fool, the regent, I say. That’s all there is to say. And it’s suckers like Caylus who eventually pay. The Mississippi is a scandal and the regent a dupe.”
Thomas feels his eyes pop. He looks at Caylus, who is burying his head in his hands. Gallatin is calling the man a dummy and a sucker too. And what he has said about the regent is even worse, because words like that bring trouble deep. Thomas will be able to use some of Gallatin’s rant with Collier, but he’ll have to temper it a bit. Or else, pity the loudmouth Gallatin.
“So, there you are,” sings out Fougre, trying to lift the mood of the table. “And with that little lecture by our bookselling friend, I say we forget our cares by getting drunk. Thomas, may I return the favour? A brandy, perhaps?”
“Brandy it is,” says Thomas. “Thank you, kind sir.”
“Hey,” says Tinville, turned around in his chair. He’s staring at the door to the street. “Look who’s here. Who would have guessed that he comes here too, just like us?”
Everyone at the table turns toward the entrance to Le Procope. A man and a woman have just come through the door. They are the centre of attention down at that end of the café. Half a dozen people are milling around them, shaking hands, kissing cheeks and exchanging greetings.
Thomas can hardly believe his eyes. It’s Hélène, his Hélène from Évreux. It’s the first time he’s seen her since she was curled in their bed asleep in their attic room four years ago. He worried for weeks she’d been raped and murdered, but
when he neither heard nor saw a thing about her she’d gradually vanished from his thoughts. But here she is, right here at Le Procope.
She looks a little older, and with much finer clothes than what she had to her name back then. Now she’s dressed like a well-to-do lady. She has a fancy brocade dress and nothing less than the latest headdress, the commode. Despite the change of fortune, it’s her, there is no doubt. As slim as ever and still not shy about showing off her charms. The top halves of her breasts are well exposed after the domino cloak is cast off. From what Thomas can see, Hélène is enjoying the attention of those gathered round her table. The pretty face Thomas knew four years earlier has if anything grown prettier still.
“He’s got a new name, have you heard?” Tinville is speaking in a hushed voice.
Thomas turns Tinville’s way. “Who are you talking about? Who has a new name?” Thomas notices for the first time that there is a man beside Hélène. He is skinny, with an amused grin stuck on his face.
“That, my friend, is Arouet. Well, he’s calling himself Voltaire now. It’s a pseudonym he’s picked. Bit pretentious, I’d say.” Tinville makes a sour face.
Thomas, A Secret Life Page 17