Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  James was already on his feet. Now that he’d found him, he had no intention of letting his brother out of his sight.

  A light drizzle had started to fall. It coated the narrow street in a slippery sheen. There were no cabs to be had. Raf didn’t seem to mind. He mumbled something about a walk doing them good and proceeded at a rapid pace. He shunned James’s minimal attempts at conversation. Only their footsteps sounded, setting up a hollow echo between the canyons of houses. These grew dingier as they wound their way through a labyrinth of alleys. Festering garbage appeared at doorways. A rat scuttled across their path. From a corner a mangy dog howled like some demented coyote.

  And then suddenly, they were on a wider street alight with cafés and thick with human traffic. A few minutes passed before James took in his fellow strollers. The men seemed to be of all kinds and classes, quietly suited, walking sticks in hand or raggedly clothed, bandanas round their necks. The women’s lips were as bright as the shawls they draped loosely over an expanse of naked shoulder. They were bare-headed. Their eyes clung to him, as they leered and gestured their availability.

  ‘Do we turn off here?’ he growled at Raf.

  ‘No, further down. Don’t fret. They won’t bite. They’re only earning their keep.’ As if to taunt him, he waved at a woman who seemed barely old enough to be in long skirts. The girl waved back with a frank, open smile. ‘Ça va, Monsieur l’Américain?’

  ‘Oui, Poupette. Et toi?’

  ‘Viens demain. J’ai à te parler.’

  ‘What does she want?’ James asked, his curiosity overcoming his distaste.

  ‘To talk. She’s a useful source. Clever. She’s got her wits about her and she tells me things. Did I mention that I was doing a bit of writing for the French papers? Anonymous, of course. Touquet helps. We’re running a little joint investigation.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘This and that. I’ll tell you another day. It’s a long story. This way.’

  Another dank, narrow alleyway. No gaslight here, only the occasional flicker of candles from curtainless windows. Shapes emerged from the shadows, a man tugging a woman into a doorway. A brazen laugh sounded.

  ‘It would have been better to come tomorrow,’ James murmured.

  Raf didn’t seem to have heard him. His pace had picked up.

  As they turned a corner, a street lamp suddenly illuminated his profile. The bleakness in it tore at him. A long-forgotten scene crystallised. Raf could only have been about four to his thirteen. Their dog had been run over by a passing cart. It lay there shuddering on the ground, its helpless whimpers heart-rending. ‘Will he die?’ Raf asked, his hand clutching at his brother’s. James nodded with an elder sibling’s casual brutality. He waited for Raf’s inevitable howl, the stream of tears. They didn’t come. Instead a look of utter bleakness settled on his little brother’s face, hollowing out the childhood pudge, instilling his eyes with a grim horror, transforming him in a matter of seconds into an old man.

  James wanted to do what he had rushed to do then – speak soft words of comfort, proffer hot chocolate, talk of new pets, anything to turn his brother back into his usual rambunctious, rather pesky self.

  Those avenues of consolation were now closed to him. Instead he said, ‘Poor Monsieur Arnhem. He’ll be heartbroken.’

  Raf shot him a darting look. ‘We’re here.’ He pushed open a dilapidated door. ‘Watch your step. It’s one floor up.’

  The stairwell was as narrow as a ladder and in the dark felt more rickety. The walls peeled beneath his hands. They gave off the musty, sour smell of cabbage and poverty. But from above came a sound which made him pause in wonder – the soft, haunting music of a perfectly pitched violin. Like children under the sway of a piper, they followed it to its source at the end of a corridor.

  Raf knocked and the music stopped. ‘Oui,’ a gruff voice called out.

  ‘Monsieur Arnhem? C’est Rafael Norton.’

  The door creaked open. The man looked up at them, his features tense, then with a glance behind him stepped towards them into the hall. ‘The little ones are asleep,’ he murmured. Through the half-open door, James made out a cramped, den-like room. A single tallow candle sat on a small corner table. Beside it, a violin. Much of the rest of the space was taken up by a bed on which two tousle-headed children lay.

  Stumbling over his sentences, Raf conveyed the terrible news. A moan came to Arnhem’s lips. He crushed his hand over his mouth to stifle it and swayed slightly, moving back against the wall for support. ‘Not Rachel. Not Rachel.’ He repeated the words over and over again.

  In the wavering candlelight he looked like a biblical prophet painted by an old Dutch master.

  Raf talked. But for the odd word – police, Madame de Landois, the Seine – James wasn’t following. He couldn’t transfer his attention from the man’s face. His eyes had become two bottomless pits of misery. All the world’s pain seemed to have taken up residence there.

  Then, as if jolted by an electric current, a fierceness came over him. He pressed Raf’s hand. ‘I do not trust the police. They are not concerned with my kind. I will not rest. I will not rest until I have found who has done this to her. You must help me.’

  ‘Depend on it. I will.’

  James found himself nodding in acquiescence, as if he, too, were party to the pledge. The act took him by surprise.

  THREE

  The Boulevard Malesherbes stretched from behind the Madeleine in a double rank of stately buildings which bore the unmistakable imprint of the Baron Haussmann’s refashioning of the city. The broad avenue was flanked by the green of chestnut trees, still fresh from their dawn shower. Nineteen had its number inscribed on a carved stone shield framed in oak leaves above a fine wooden door.

  The dappled beauty of the morning helped to disperse the tempest of graveyard prophets and waxy corpses which had invaded James’s dreams. But a cloud of disquiet remained with him. He tried to prod it away by standing back to examine the façade of the handsome building with its long rows of iron balustrades, one each for six of the seven storeys.

  From behind a window on the second floor, he thought he saw a curtain move and then quickly find its place again. He shunned the boxlike elevator and went up the stairs to the apartment.

  A young, aproned woman with protruding eyes and a frizz of pale hair opened the door to him. She took his hat and murmured him along a dim corridor towards a room in which voices already played.

  ‘Jimmy, how wonderful!’ he heard his sister’s even before he entered the long rectangular salon with twin marble fireplaces. The curtains were partially drawn, inducing a gloom in which objects and people seemed to float.

  At the far side of the room, Elinor reclined on a cushion-strewn divan with all the grandeur of a hostess in ancient Rome. She was wearing a starched white blouse and round her shoulders an aquamarine shawl which matched her smile for brightness. Seated round her were three women. With an inward groan, James recognised two of them at once.

  ‘Jimmy, how very handsome you look.’ Ellie’s tone was excited. ‘Decidedly, the groves of academe become you. You flourish in them. Even your hair bristles. Like newly mown grass.’

  He bent to brush her forehead with his lips, felt a sensation of dry heat. He stood back to examine her.

  ‘You’re not looking so bad yourself, little sister. Your letter yesterday had me half expecting a ghost.’

  As he said it, he realised that the colour in her cheeks could easily be the result of fever, so brightly did the two spots of pink stand out against her more general pallor. Beneath the high forehead, her dark eyes, too, had a hectic glow, giving her sharp, foxy features the operatic quality he always forgot in her. In his mind she was so often simply his sister that the category induced a blur which was feeling rather than sight.

  ‘Not quite a ghost yet, Jimmy, though I can’t go out to the world.’ She laughed archly. ‘But you see the world comes to me. It’s an adequate solution. Let me introduce you.’
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  ‘Oh we’ve met your brother, Miss Norton. We had the pleasure of sailing together.’ Mrs Elliott gave James the benefit of her steel-grey eyes and her determined beam. ‘We were hoping to see him again, weren’t we, Charlotte?’

  Charlotte nodded and put down her cup with an awkward clatter. ‘Are you enjoying Paris, Mr Norton?’

  James smiled politely and made an inane comment about the weather. He itched to pull open the curtains.

  ‘And this, Jimmy, is my dear friend, Harriet Knowles. You may remember her. She was part of our little women’s circle all those years ago in Boston. She’s been travelling in Italy for the last three or is it four months. I’ve missed her. But she’s back now which pleases me immensely. Harriet is a brick.’

  Elinor smiled serenely at a sturdy, grey-suited woman whose intelligent eyes made up for the scrubbed plainness of her face. She greeted James with a marked directness of manner.

  For a few minutes they all chatted about what it was essential to see in Paris and which couturiers and hatters it was worth visiting. Then Harriet rose. ‘We don’t want to tire Elinor out, ladies. We should leave her to Mr Norton. They have a great deal to catch up on, I’m certain.’

  ‘A very great deal.’ Elinor echoed.

  With the click of the front door, Elinor lay back on her pillows and closed her eyes.

  ‘Would you like to rest now, Ellie? I can come back later.’

  ‘No, no, Jim. We must talk. I’m so glad you’re here.’ She propped herself on an elbow and tucked a stray wisp of hair into smoothness. ‘Though I’m sorry it was Mother who sent you. I really wish you’d come in order to see the wondrous sights of this hoary ol’ capital. Or to find yourself a new wife.’

  He stiffened slightly. But her tone was the bantering one they always fell into, edged with flirtation, and he allowed himself to relax.

  ‘But not in order to fetch us home. Mother forced the information out of me, you know. Raf doesn’t, does he? He doesn’t think it was because of me that she sent you?’ Her voice rose in something like terror.

  ‘No, no, Ellie. Calm yourself.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘And, you see, it’s too late. There really was no need to come on that account.’

  So she knew about the death, James thought. Raf had told her. He was relieved.

  She lifted a little bell from amidst the books and water pitcher on the table beside her. Its tinkle brought the maid. ‘Encore du thé, Violette. Et la brioche, s’il vous plaît.’

  ‘Your French has blossomed into perfection.’

  ‘If only everything blossomed like that, eh Jim.’

  He couldn’t plumb the source of the tension on her proud face. It misaligned her eyes and mouth, etched a new line.

  ‘And here I thought you were having a grand old time.’

  ‘I have been. In my way.’

  ‘Let’s get some light and air in here, Ellie. It’s close. Or let me take you to a restaurant. It will do you good.’

  She let out a dry laugh as he heaved the curtains all the way back and opened the French doors to bright daylight. It made her shield her eyes with her hands.

  ‘I wish I could do that.’

  ‘Do what?’

  A dreamy little smile crept over her face.

  ‘Put one leg in front of the other. The way you’re doing now. Walk.’

  He was aghast. ‘I don’t understand. Can’t you? How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Don’t sound so stern, Jimmy. It makes your face go all ugly.’

  He sat down and studied her.

  ‘How long?’ he asked again, more quietly.

  ‘Oh not so very long. Three weeks. Four. Maybe more. I’ve lost track. Time is better measured when you can take steps. Mother, Mother, let me take a step …’

  ‘How did it happen? What caused it? Whom have you seen?’

  ‘Don’t pounce on me with your attorney’s vehemence, big brother. One question at a time.’

  ‘All right. How did it happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know, Jimmy. It just happened. My legs got heavier and heavier, too heavy for my body to move. And then they wouldn’t move at all. I’m so tired.’

  He stared at her. ‘And you’ve just been lying here. All this time.’

  ‘Oh no. I’ve got wheels. A chair. It’s downstairs. Got a bit dusty now. At the beginning, Raf would come and take me out. Even tuck me in at night …’ Her voice drifted off.

  ‘What does the doctor say?’

  ‘The doctors, Jimmy. There have been more than one. Let’s see … which diagnostician would you like to hear from first? But it’ll pass. Everything passes.’

  ‘I want to speak to your doctors.’

  ‘Horrible doctors. So demeaning. Tapping and prodding.’ Her face grew taut with a look he could only interpret as disgust. ‘I’m seeing a new one next week. Highly recommended. Raf was … But you can come with me. Yes. That will be good. Monday. But right now, I’d rather you helped me up, Jimmy. With you, I might be able to. I might just be able to. You bring with you a good solid whiff of that old American determination. Let’s aim for the terrace.’

  She slipped off the stole and edged her body round into a sitting position. Her feet touched the floor. James stared at the thick socks which protruded from her dusky skirt. They looked as if they might belong to Raf.

  A sense of helplessness overcame him like a thick blanket, muffling his movements. He grappled clumsily to thrust it aside and stepped towards her.

  ‘What have you been reading?’ he asked, seeking to distract them both as he bent to wind his arm round her back. Her bones felt frail, like a newly hatched bird’s, and as he hoisted her up, he was astonished at her lightness. Compassion flooded through him.

  ‘The French. Mostly the French. Too saucy by half for you.’ Her laugh was strained. She took a deep breath and held it.

  He could feel the effort she was making as if instructing her feet to move. The distance between brain and limbs proved too long. He half lifted her forward in little jerks so that she seemed to be hopping, though her toes dragged along the rug.

  ‘Rachilde. Monsieur Vénus. Do I shock you? You know, that woman dresses as a man. Claims it gives her the freedom of the streets.’ She babbled about scribblers, giggled strangely, hiding her nervousness. He could feel that he was holding all her weight.

  ‘Hardly sounds like the woman who left Boston clutching Emerson.’

  They had reached the window. ‘Let go, Jimmy,’ she whispered. She was gazing down at the street with a somnambulist’s unseeing stare. ‘I want to try standing on my own.’

  He released her slowly. First one elbow, then the next, and hovered beside her. For a split second, she stood upright. Then he felt as much as saw her legs crumple. He caught her.

  ‘Not bad,’ he lied. ‘We’ll try again later.’ He carried her back to the divan. A stale smell came from her mouth. It threatened to envelop him. He put her down too quickly.

  ‘What time did Raf leave you this morning?’

  ‘Leave me this morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She tightened her shawl round her. ‘He didn’t come this morning. I haven’t … haven’t seen him for almost a week. He’s so busy these days.’

  James scalded his tongue on the hot tea. ‘I don’t understand. Isn’t he living here? The address …’

  ‘Is the same, yes. But he has his own solid front door.’ Elinor pointed in a direction behind her. ‘Has had for over four months now. And he hasn’t rung at mine today.’ She laughed suddenly, a high, shrill peal, which swiftly faded into nothing.

  ‘You’ve quarrelled?’

  ‘Not exactly. No, not exactly.’

  Silence threatened. She played with the fringes on the divan blanket. His eyes strayed to the mantle where a blackbird perched, eerily lifelike in its glass tomb.

  ‘So you don’t know?’ he cut through the thickness.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘A
bout her? About Olympe.’

  ‘The beautiful Olympe. Has she seduced you, too, Jimmy? I wonder if she could.’

  ‘Hush.’

  ‘Don’t make that face, Jimmy. Is it the word seduce or the fact that offends you?’ She laughed at his expense. ‘You have the look of a man whose excessive preoccupation with virtue is beginning to stunt his intellectual growth. Yes, yes, Jim, don’t protest. If you carry on clinging to purity this way, you’ll be more alert to smut than a bevy of demi-mondaines.’

  ‘That’s enough, Ellie.’ He was angry now. ‘So you don’t know? Know about the death.’

  ‘A death?’ Panic hollowed out her eyes, robbed her cheeks of colour. He wished now that he had kept his counsel.

  ‘Whose death?’

  He didn’t speak. He barely wanted to remember.

  ‘Tell me, Jimmy. I’m not a little girl any more. I’m a grown woman. Twenty-eight. Old enough to have had a half-dozen children. Old enough to …’ She stopped herself. Ordered, ‘Tell me.’

  James stumbled. The image of that dead face had come back to him. ‘Olympe Fabre.’

  ‘Olympe dead! No. No, I won’t have it.’ A great rush of breath came from her. She fell back onto the divan.

  She was so still he thought she had fainted. Then a voice issued from her which he didn’t recognise, deep, croaking, like a swarm of frogs on a hot night.

  ‘It’s his fault. His. He drove her to it. I warned him. She was so in love with him. That’s why I told Mother. I was afraid. Afraid for her.’

  ‘Hush, Ellie.’

  ‘His fault. Poor Olympe.’

  Her eyes flew open and she sat up. ‘How did it happen?’ she asked in a strained, but ordinary enough tone.

  ‘I don’t really know. You knew her too, then? I thought …’

  Elinor nodded. ‘We were friends. Such a beautiful thing. The most delicate features … Where? Where did she do it?’

  James stared at her. So the concern about Raf and a Jewess had been all on his mother’s side. He wanted to ask more questions of Ellie, but she was too overwrought. He remembered the repeated family injunction that she wasn’t to be over-excited, over-stimulated. He had done too much of that already. He chose his words about Olympe carefully.