by Rose Tremain
‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘Where is Violette?’
‘Seventh floor,’ she said. ‘Now take your dog out of here.’
We had to walk out of the building and in at another door to find the stairs. On the concrete pathway there was a disgusting splurge of vomit we had to step round. Sergei doesn’t always know the difference between fresh and recycled food.
Near the second door there were two lifts, gaping open, but they looked broken somehow, and dark like coffins, so we started going up the stairs.
I forgot to count the floors and there were no numbers or signs anywhere. I imagined guys coming home stoned and trying to get into the wrong apartment. Then I realised that each floor was painted a different colour; this was another marvel thought up by the architect at four in the morning. He expected the residents would identify with their colour and take pride in being green or yellow. The first line of a song out of my childhood flashed into my mind. It’s not easy being green. I didn’t know who sang this or when. To some youths smoking on the stairs, I said: ‘What colour is seven?’
They started giggling. Some of them had shaved heads and some had blond dreadlocks. I’d been told at school that you could turn your hair into dreads just by washing it regularly in Badedas. I stood by the wall, out of breath and foreign and pale. With a single movement of their tattooed arms, the Badedas guys could have lifted me up and thrown me down the stairwell.
‘What’s your dog’s name?’ one of them asked.
I held tightly to Sergei’s lead. ‘Michel,’ I said.
They fell around, laughing. Then they began calling ‘Michel . . . Michel . . .’ and Sergei looked at them haughtily. We were on floor orange. It could have been five or six, I hadn’t a clue, but I tugged Sergei on up the next flight. The youths called after me: ‘Where do you come from, kid? Are you German? Heil Hitler!’
I thought they were going to follow me, but they didn’t. It had never occurred to me that anyone would want to steal Sergei, but now it did. I just told myself to keep going, even though my ribs were aching and my legs felt weak. I wished I hadn’t come here. I wanted to call out to Babba, wherever she was hiding; I wanted her to put her velvet arms round me.
The next floor was red, so we set off down this red corridor. It seemed to go round in a circle, on and on, dark and blank. I heard a sound like a dentist’s drill coming from behind one of the doors, so I stopped and listened. The sound came and went. Then I noticed a name on a card that was taped to the door: Arletti, Jean-Christophe, Chirugien Dentiste. I wondered if I was on a kind of trade floor, with doctors and solicitors and private detectives behind all the doors, but then I saw that the dentist’s apartment also had a number, 729. The numbers were so minute, you could hardly read them, but with the 7 coming first I figured I must be on the seventh floor, so I rang the dentist’s bell.
A nurse opened the door. She was black and wore a bright white uniform. I wondered if she might be a relation of Babba’s. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for Violette.’
‘Not this apartment. This is the apartment of Doctor Arletti,’ she said.
‘Can you tell me where I can find Violette?’
‘Violette who?’
‘Babba . . .’ I stammered.
The nurse turned back into the room and said something to the dentist. Sergei gave an involuntary whine, as if he was getting impatient and wanted to be back in the sunshine, in the Paris that he knew. I felt a bit the same. It would have been so easy to find the coffin lifts and drop down and walk away through the yellow leaves.
The nurse came back and said she didn’t know the person ‘Violette Babba’ and nor did Doctor Arletti. I thought, I expect you’re afraid of dentists, Babba, and have never been near one in your life. I expect you would scream if a man tried to put his fingers into your mouth.
We found her door by going along and reading every name. Hers was apartment 741. On a piece of pink card was written: Babbala, Mile Violette. Before I rang the bell, I wiped my face with my sleeve.
I had to ring three times before anyone answered. Then I heard slow footsteps and I knew they belonged to Babba because of the slowness. When she saw me, she said: ‘Mon Dieu! Que fais-tu ici?’
She was dressed in a sleeveless T-shirt and a thin flowery skirt and her feet were bare. Her flat smelled of sweat and disinfectant and it was shadowy from lack of light from the teardrop windows. As I walked into it, she said again: ‘Louis, what are you doing here?’
Sergei was barking and jumping up, so I let go his lead and Babba had to give him some attention, while I looked quickly round the room. I was scanning it for voodoo offerings – a wax doll, a skull, a dead chicken – but there was hardly anything in the room at all, only a double mattress on the floor and an old leather chair with its stuffing coming out and a table spread with oilcloth and on the walls a poster advertising the Tour de France. Lying on the mattress, with nothing covering him, was Pozzi.
Babba closed the door, holding Sergei by the collar. She stared at me crossly. ‘Louis,’ she said, ‘how you find your way here? What you want?’
I didn’t say anything, I was so out of breath and scared. One of the things I was thinking was, how did they get that huge motorbike up to Floor 7?
Pozzi woke up and began grizzling. Babba let go of Sergei and gathered Pozzi into her arms, from where he stared at me through his tears. I felt as though I would like to cry, too, and only the resolution to act like François Seurel, who never blubbed, not even when things started to get sad, kept me from giving in. I sat down on the leather chair and stared up at Babba.
‘Something’s happened, Babba,’ I said.
‘What’s happened? What “something”?’
‘Something bad. Why haven’t you been to work? Why haven’t you been to the rue Rembrandt?’
‘You know why,’ said Babba.
‘No, I don’t. You just didn’t come . . .’
‘I telephoned Madame.’
‘When?’
‘When Pozzi get ill. And Madame say, “No, you stay home, Babba, and take care of him.”’
‘When? When did Pozzi get ill? When did you telephone?’
‘I don’t know what day. Monday.’
‘And you spoke to Madame?’
‘Yes. Now, what’s this thing happened? Louis? What’s this thing?’
I looked over at the mattress. In the space where Pozzi had been lying was a damp patch on the nylon sheet. Next to this dampness lay a man doll dressed as a soldier that reminded me of Elroy.
‘Madame’s disappeared,’ I said.
They all three stared at me when I said this: Babba, Pozzi and Sergei. Nobody whined or spoke or cried. They just looked at me and I looked at them. Then Sergei turned in a circle and lay down on Pozzi’s bed. He seemed to know that we might be there a long time. After a moment, Babba said: ‘Louis, you want some Orangina?’
She had a little kitchen next to the room with the bed, the kind of kitchen where there is just space enough for one person to move around. The cooker had only two rings, but the fridge was huge, like the kind of fridge you see in old American movies. Babba got out the Orangina bottle and poured some into a plastic mug and gave it to me and I drank and drank, like people drink in desert commercials for beer, when they’re parched dry.
Then I sat down with Babba and told her about Grisha and the black-and-white dress Valentina had been wearing when she went into the Hôtel de Venise. I said: ‘She waved at me from the revolving door and she hasn’t been seen since.’
Babba looked around and around the room, as if she were lost and trying to orientate herself. Pozzi quietened down and went to sleep in her lap.
When Babba had scanned the room for about the third time, I said hesitantly: ‘You didn’t do anything, did you, Babba?’
‘What you mean, Louis – do anything?’
‘I mean, you didn’t ask the spirits . . . to do anything?’
She looked at me gravely and shook her head. ‘Nev
er,’ she said. ‘I never would hurt Madame.’
I had to believe her. I couldn’t go on pestering her and it was true that Pozzi seemed a bit ill, sort of listless and snotty. I wondered if he’d got ill because he missed the motorbike. People can fall sick for the oddest reasons. I read in a paper about a woman who had died of heartbreak over the loss of her pet rat. Neighbours were reported as saying: ‘From that moment, Elsie was never the same woman.’
After a few minutes, in which we were just quiet, listening to the weird sounds of the building, one of which was a tambourine being bashed, I asked Babba if she was ever going to come back to the rue Rembrandt. She stroked Pozzi’s head and said she would come, but she didn’t know when. She couldn’t leave Pozzi yet; his temperature was still too high. I said: ‘You could bring Pozzi with you. We could put him to sleep in one of the spare rooms.’
‘No,’ said Babba. ‘Madame told me, “You can’t bring your child to work. A child would disturb me.”’
‘Madame isn’t there,’ I reminded her.
Babba shook her head sadly. ‘You sure she didn’t go to Russia, Louis?’
‘No. I’m not sure. I’m going to find out. I’m going to speak to Grigory Panin. Then, after that, we’ll have to go to the police.’
At the mention of the word ‘police’, Babba looked anxious. ‘Police,’ she said, ‘they don’t care ‘bout anyone. All they care is about papers and permits.’
So then I realised a bad thing: when the police were told about Valentina, they might start questioning everyone; and their ‘everyone’ would include Babba and they would discover she was an illegal immigrant and send her back to Benin. Her life would be ruined. She would have to go and live in her village, where there were no launderettes and even the old trucks were stolen, and all her dreams of making a life in Paris would be at an end. And I would be responsible.
I changed the subject. I asked her why she didn’t call herself by her real name, Violette.
She smiled and shifted Pozzi on her knee. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I call myself Violette. I am Violette. It is only the Parisians who invented the word “Babba”, from my father’s name, Babbala.’
On the way home in the métro, I remembered what Alice had said in the morning – that Valentina would be there in the apartment when I got back and that she and Alice would make me a meal. So now I started to imagine this: Valentina standing in the kitchen, surrounded by shiny vegetables – peppers and aubergines – and bits of garlic and bottles of olive oil, singing softly to herself as she chopped and stirred, as if this intermission of her absence had never happened.
Then, when I got out at George V and started to walk up the rue Washington, I thought, why have I suddenly got this stupid surge of hope? I keep getting it. I’m as deluded as Hugh, who hopes his hut will turn out like a summerhouse, when he knows in his heart that, brick by brick, he’s building a toilet.
And then it came to me why, in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov takes all the watches and jewellery that he’s stolen and puts them under the stone. He could sell them to make his pitiful life better, but he doesn’t, he leaves them under the stone. He leaves them there because he’s the exact opposite of me: he no longer hopes for anything; he knows he’s doomed.
Coming into the rue Rembrandt, I bumped into Moinel, who was turning in from the rue de Courcelles. He was wearing white, as usual, and his hair looked the colour of a clementine. He gave me a kind of half-smile and said in English: ‘How are you enjoying Paris?’
Sergei looked up at Moinel and barked. Moinel’s hairdresser could have said to him: ‘Let’s go for the tone of an Irish Setter rather than a tangerine,’ but he hadn’t, unfortunately, and I think it was Moinel’s hair that Sergei was barking at.
I said I was enjoying Paris.
Moinel smiled again. It was the kind of smile that looks as if it’s causing the smiler a minute amount of pain. ‘I expect Mademoiselle Gavril is spoiling you,’ he said. ‘I hear she’s very generous.’
His English sounded really good, as if he’d learnt it at Oxford or somewhere. This good English of his made me like him and feel less worried about his peculiar hair. I pulled Sergei towards me and stopped in the street, not far from our apartment door. Moinel stopped too, when I turned to him.
‘Did you hear what’s happened?’ I said.
‘What has happened?’
‘Something frightening. You’re Monsieur Moinel, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. That’s me. Everybody just calls me Moinel.’
I looked up at Valentina’s apartment. I saw that the windows of the salon were wide open and I gazed at them for a second, wondering if I was going to see a puff of Russian cigarette smoke come through them into the hot evening air.
‘It’s Valentina,’ I said. ‘Mademoiselle Gavril. She’s vanished.’
‘Vanished?’ said Moinel.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you serious? I know the English like to joke about everything.’
‘Yes, I’m serious.’
‘Well, if it’s true, it’s quite ingenious, you know. She devised it herself, surely? Didn’t she? She’s playing a game. She’s acting out one of her medieval stories!’
I stared at Moinel. Smiling as he was, I noticed how beautiful his eyes were, very wide and grey. ‘Why would she do that?’ I said. ‘She’s meant to be working really hard on her new book. That’s why we’re here, so that my mother can do the English translation straight away.’
‘Publicity, chéri! I know writers. I know stars of all kinds. “Famous writer missing”. “World-wide search for famous writer”. What better advertisement for a new book than that? The publishers will adore it. Perfect for her genre of fiction. And, of course, in a few days she will turn up safe and well. How long has she been gone?’
‘Nearly three days.’
‘Voilà! It’s not long. She’s probably hiding out down in Monte Carlo. You’ll see.’
I was about to say to Moinel that I thought if Valentina had been going to do a stunt like that she would have told me first, but then I remembered that it was only in my imagination that she confided in me, not in reality. So I couldn’t find anything to say and just gaped at Moinel like a dorade. He resumed his progress towards the apartment door. He walked with tiny little steps, as though he were wearing a skirt too tight for his thighs.
Inside the building, he went straight to the lift and, although I normally walked up the stairs, I hung around, so that I could say something more to him before we went into our separate flats. I didn’t really know what it was that I wanted to say, so when the lift came we just got in and rode up in total silence. Then, at the top floor, I stammered: ‘If she doesn’t come back . . . will you help me find her?’
Moinel’s grey eyes didn’t even flicker. ‘Bien sûr,’ he said. ‘I love a mystery. Count on me.’
Valentina wasn’t in the kitchen chopping vegetables. The apartment was cool and silent and I thought at first that no one was there, but then I found Alice by herself in the salon, reading a letter from Hugh.
I sat down opposite her. I thought, the time has come for her to stop pretending that nothing unusual is happening. But I couldn’t talk to her yet; I was so hungry, I felt dazed, so all I said to her was: ‘Please can I eat something? I’m dying.’
She came over to me and put a kiss on my head. It was a long time since she’d done this. She said she’d made a lamb casserole with haricot beans, which was a meal she used to make in Devon and serve with a huge dish of mashed potato.
I couldn’t talk while I ate the casserole and potato. I just had to eat and eat and Alice watched me with a smile on her face, waiting for the moment when I’d eaten enough to behave like a civilised person again. When I looked up from my plate, I said: ‘Valentina said she never, ever, wanted to be hungry again. Do you think she’s hungry wherever she is?’
Alice began rolling a cigarette. I looked at the freckles on her thin, elegant hands. After she’d lit the cigarette, she said: �
��I talked to Mrs Gavrilovich. She’d spoken to Grigory Panin and he’d sworn to her that Valentina wasn’t with him in Moscow. She wants me to go to the police tomorrow.’
All I said was, ‘Yes.’ What I was thinking was, now it’s really final. We’re not going to pretend any more that we just have to go out somewhere and by the time we’re back Valentina will have turned up.
And so this is what we talked about for the rest of the evening – about which commissariat we had to go to and what we were going to say to the police when we got there. The subject of the spell Alice was casting over Didier never got mentioned. It was like part of me wanted to mention it and another part wanted to hide it inside a huge airship of silence, where it would float around, sealed in, for ever.
The next day, I went back to working on Valentina’s computer. I’d been thinking, if the detective Porphiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment had had computer files and not just pawn tickets at hand, he would have looked there for clues to the mystery. And I’d decided he’d be my role model from now on: I’d follow every single trail and never give up until Valentina was found.
I could tell at once that the alphabetised menu of files was different. I can remember lists of things in a photographic kind of way and I saw immediately that the APAL file, which had been at the top of the menu, was no longer there. I scrolled down, searching for it, knowing as I did this that it’s impossible to de-alphabetise a file menu; the computer just overrides you. The file had been wiped.
Alice, I thought, I’ve never, as long as I’ve been alive, really known what was in your mind. Hugh doesn’t know either. He thinks you’ll be happy in a garden hut. But I know that you’re hardly ever happy anywhere, in any season.
And then I remembered something: when we took our bird kite out to the cliffs and took turns to fly it and watched it fluttering miles above us, a look would come into Alice’s face. A look we hardly ever saw. It was as if this grey-and-white paper bird was the one and only thing in Alice Little’s existence she could truly admire.
For about ten minutes I sat staring at the place in the file where APAL should have been. I reminded myself of Elroy, stuck in one position, with his eyes locked on to a near or distant object, unable to move them. What I was thinking was, our household in Devon will never be the same now, no matter what happens.