The Coral Thief

by Rebecca Stott

  “And where will my friend find the woman who stole from him?” Fin asked.

  “In the Palais Royal,” she said, “for if he has enough livres to pay, he can have the woman steal anything he likes, from wherever he likes.”

  Each room became darker as we descended, following a single candle flame down stone steps through more curtains into the dampness of the crypt itself—the Salle de la Fantasmagorie. Here, once we had taken our seats, the assistant extinguished the guttering candle. I could hear muffled cries and laughter from Céleste and Fin, gasps and whispers from other members of the audience, but could see nothing, not even my hand in front of my face. Then the sound of wind and thunder came at us from all directions and on top of that the sound of a glass harmonica, invisible fingers tracing the curved lips of invisible glasses somewhere offstage. Robertson spoke in French and English by turns—murmuring something incoherent about immortality, death, and superstition. Despite myself, I could feel the hairs on my skin rise.

  Then a succession of ghostly figures seemed to be flung into the air above us; luminous shapes, some close enough to touch, flew out over our heads: glimmering sea creatures swimming in dark seas, an Egyptian girl, the three Graces flickering into the shape of skeletons, Macbeth, a nun, witches at Sabbath, the severed head of Medusa, Orpheus looking for Eurydice. I searched for the telltale light of the magic lantern behind the side curtains but found nothing. The phantoms moved in every direction, lunging at us, too quick to trace.

  It was in the midst of that incessant flickering of smoky lights, the spirit illusions lunging across our heads, that for a moment, just for a second or two, I saw Lucienne Bernard, her head among the other heads in the audience, only three or four rows away. Her face, lit briefly by the glare of the lamps, stared back at me, her eyes dark. I saw surprised recognition on her face, then alarm, even, perhaps, fear. But though I stood to try to find my way to her, stumbling among the seats, Robertson extinguished the lights, and when he lit them again to illuminate the next spectacle—the skeleton of a young woman arranged on a pedestal, holding a champagne glass—Lucienne had gone, her seat empty.

  “Remember the Fantasmagorie,” Robertson’s voice boomed, plunging us into darkness again. “Remember thy end.”

  We went straight to the bar in the Palais Royal after that for brandies, losing ourselves on the way. I said nothing. I was not sure of what I had really seen among the shadows and the specters. I kept looking out for her though, down the streets that ran off the place Vendôme. I was sure she was close by, watching, perhaps even following us. She would show herself, I was certain. But she didn’t.

  “These damned alleyways and cul-de-sacs, they drive me mad,” Fin complained. Take any of the names of the streets at random—say, see, on your map here—the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs. That’s the Street of the Cross and the Little Fields; the rue Vide-Gousset, that’s the Street of the Pickpocket, of course, which leads to the passage des Petits-Pères, presumably a nickname given to a monastic order; here’s the rue des Mauvais Garçons, the street of the Bad Boys, the rue de la Femme-sans-Tête, the Road of the Headless Woman, and the rue du Chat qui Pêche, the Road of the Cat Who Fishes. Alors. It’s bric-a-brac. Nonsense. A bit of this, a bit of that … all cluttered together with no logic, no plan—”

  “You are a philistine,” Céleste taunted back. “I am glad you’re not in charge in Paris. You would number and file everything. It’s beautiful. I like the old house names too, so much better than the numbers—Star of Gold and Name of Jesus and Basket of Flowers or Hunting Box or the Court of the Two Sisters. They’re like a poem.”

  Céleste was right of course, though I wouldn’t have agreed with her then. Later those streets disappeared in the renovations and the planning reforms to make way for gaslights and arcades and order. All that time, as Fin and Céleste talked and argued, the reality of my situation was becoming clearer with each step. The fact that Lucienne had left the Fantasmagorie and had failed to reappear meant only one thing: She had no intention of coming to find me or of returning my things. And if Jagot couldn’t find her, no one could.

  “Paris is an ocean,” a lawyer called Honoré said to me in a bar on the place Vendôme later that night. We were very drunk. “You can take as many soundings as you like, but you’ll never reach the bottom of it. You can survey it, draw it, describe it. But, however thorough you are, however careful and scrupulous, something is always just beyond your reach. There will always be another unmapped cave, monsters, pearls, things undreamt of, overlooked by everyone else.”

  “If only I could go to church,” I said. For a moment I longed to be able to pray for help and to have the confidence that salvation would be granted.

  “Go to church,” the lawyer said. “But it won’t help you. Kill or be killed. Deceive or be deceived. That’s the law in Paris. God has given up on this city. He has given up on you, my friend.”

  I had not been to church since I arrived in Paris, despite the promises I had made to my family. I knew where the four Protestant churches were on the Paris map; I had even walked past two of them—Sainte-Marie on the rue Saint-Antoine and Saint-Louis on the rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre. Both times I had stopped, looked up at the stone façades, and walked on. I had felt a guilty sense of liberation in that drift into the glitter of the city; my soul was no doubt in grave danger, I thought, and then I confess I forgot about the condition of my soul.

  In Edinburgh there had been rumors the previous summer about a student called John Rivers who had gone mad after several months studying anatomy in the hospitals of Paris. He had given himself up to the seductions of the infidels, Jameson had told us. He spent too long listening to the lectures of the materialists and the atheists. An English pastor had found him wandering the streets of Paris at dawn, scarcely dressed and raving about his soul. God abandoned me in the dissecting rooms of Salpêtrière, he’d said. I am already in hell. Then, once his family had sent him to an expensive sanatorium in the Alps, Rivers went completely silent for seven long months. It was a form of catalepsy brought on by overwork and spiritual conflict, Jameson said. I glimpsed John Rivers once on his return from Paris, wandering around Edinburgh in the rain, scratching at his face.

  I went to church the following day hoping to find some solace and with a new resolve to untangle myself. First I walked to the Protestant church on the rue d’Aguesseau where Bishop Luscombe’s sermon sent me to sleep so that I woke up shivering in an empty church. Then I went to the church on the rue Bouloi where Mr. Newstead, the pastor, preached about redemption and grace to a congregation mostly composed of English dissenters. Afterward, in the churchyard, I tried to talk to the pastor about redemption, but I was no longer sure what I wanted to be redeemed from.

  A few days later, Jagot climbed out of a fiacre outside our lodgings just as I was leaving. He was dressed as a laborer in dusty clothes flecked with paint and mud, a cap pulled down low over his forehead. This was one of his famous street disguises, I presumed. I came slowly down the steps, my hands in my pockets, feeling his eyes taking in details—my height, posture, clothing, even the color of my shoelaces, turning me into a report. Jagot must know everything there was to know about me by now, I thought. My name. My address. The birthmark on my back. Was there a card for me yet? What would it say?

  “I need to ask you a few questions, M. Connor,” he said.

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked.

  “You will come with me a little way, perhaps,” he said, opening the door to the fiacre. The driver looked down at me, his eyes blank. I climbed in reluctantly, fearful for my safety. Jagot took the seat next to me, closed the door, and pulled the blinds halfway down. The fiacre smelled of oranges, stale coffee, and sweat. Jagot picked up a pile of papers and a notebook inside his pocket. As the carriage lurched into movement, he pulled up the blind at the back of the fiacre and adjusted a small mirror that was fixed to the side so that he could see through into the street more easily. He thumped the roof once, and
we slowed to a walking pace. He had someone in his sights, it seemed.

  “You are in Paris for three weeks now, M. Connor. You see many interesting things. You talk to many people. You move in interesting circles. Have you seen Mme. Bernard again?” He looked closely at me as I answered.

  “No, monsieur, I have not,” I said, determined not to confess seeing something I may only have imagined.

  “You have heard the name Silveira spoken by any of your new friends?”

  “Silveira? No, monsieur. I have never heard them use that name.”

  “It seems,” Jagot said slowly, “that he too is back in Paris.”

  “With respect, M. Jagot, what has this Silveira to do with me?”

  “M. Silveira is a very dangerous man. He is the banker for the Society of Ten Thousand. I had him in my hand five years ago, but he disappeared from Paris. I sent one of my men to look for him in Leghorn and Marseilles, where he has other houses. I paid that agent to look for Silveira for three months, but he didn’t find him. But now Silveira is back in Paris, my men say. None of them has seen him yet, but he is here somewhere. And I will find him.”

  “Society of ten thousand?” I asked.

  “The Society of Ten Thousand is the thief aristocracy of Paris, M. Connor. These rich men and women take on a job only if it is worth more than ten thousand francs. Silveira is a Portugais. A Jew. A dealer in diamonds. They call him ‘Trompe-la-Mort’. The man who cheats death.”

  “It sounds like you need more men,” I said.

  “Yes, monsieur. I need more men. But first I must catch Silveira. Then they will give me more men.”

  “I still don’t understand why this has anything to do with me,” I said.

  “Davide Silveira, M. Connor, is a friend of Lucienne Bernard. Lucienne Bernard is a friend of Davide Silveira. If I have one, I have both. You understand? And Lucienne Bernard is a friend of Daniel Connor. Or perhaps Daniel Connor is the accomplice of Lucienne Bernard. You see how one thing leads to another.”

  “Accomplice?” I protested. “That woman stole from me. How can you possibly think I am her accomplice?”

  He smiled as if he were testing me, scrutinizing my reactions. I had a headache.

  “I did not say you were an accomplice, M. Connor. I said perhaps. I must consider all the possibilities. Mme. Bernard is looking for you and I don’t know what she wants. Victim? Accomplice? Innocent, guilty? Who can be sure?”

  Jagot thumped on the roof of the fiacre twice, and we came to a stop.

  “In Paris everyone is someone else,” he continued, his eyes bright. “You see that man there?” He put his finger on the mirror and beckoned for me to look closer.

  “The one in black? The one we’ve been following?”

  “Oui. That is Pierre Coignard, jewel thief. I shared a cell with him in the prison at Toulon in ’88. He escaped into Spain and became head of the Catalan bandits. Then he meets a woman in a bar called Maria-Rosa. She steals her master’s papers when he dies, and so Coignard and Maria-Rosa became the Comte and Comtesse Sainte-Hélène. Coignard even fought as the comte in Napoleon’s armies in Spain. The king received him at court only a few weeks ago. He has done very well for himself.”

  “Why are you following him?”

  “Someone he knew in Toulon recognized him. Blackmail. Coignard refused to pay and yesterday we found the dead body of Coignard’s valet in the quarries. Now, of course, Coignard wants revenge. One thing follows another unless we put a stop to it. And now with Silveira back, things will grow worse. In Paris you stop one thing and another opens up.”

  He was climbing out of the fiacre. “Excuse me, M. Connor,” he said, “I must speak with M. Coignard. The driver will take you back. Keep listening, M. Connor, and if you hear the name of Silveira spoken, or if you see or speak to the woman Bernard, you come and tell me. You will be Jagot’s eyes.”

  He closed the door and disappeared almost instantly into the street, camouflaged like a leopard in dappled light.

  But Lucienne Bernard did not appear and I came to detest my own languor. Five days later, August 20, upon waking after a troubled night, my money almost gone, time disappearing, a career lost, almost a month since I had arrived in Paris, I resolved to go to see Jagot, plead for the restitution of my passport, and return home. Paris had already changed me. Soon I would become like one of those half-human creatures in Ovid, I thought, human skin transmuting into leather or claw or hoof. I would no longer know myself.

  I packed my bags carefully, leaving them stacked near the door, gathered what money I had left, and went to find Fin at the Palais Royal. I walked past the guards at the entrance, their muskets cocked, through the arcade of shops selling jewels, china, prints, books, flowers, and ribbons, through the hazard and billiard tables, the restaurants and taverns. I climbed the dusty staircase to the second floor, walking past the apartments advertising lectures on every branch of science and philosophy on the hour every hour.

  Babylon, I thought. It was time to redeem myself.

  Walking there, through the aisles of expensive trinkets and drunken gamblers, I felt things begin to take shape again. Evil on one side. Good on the other. True. False. Now that I could see again, I thought, everything would be all right.

  I found Fin on the outer row of a crowd of fifty or sixty people who were watching a card game. Keeping to the edge of the room, I moved closer, avoiding the light of the chandeliers. Smoke from the candles, oil lamps, and cigars thickened the air, interspersed by shafts of light. I thought of Coignard, the comte, and his comtesse, and wondered how many others in the Palais Royal were dissembling, living someone else’s life.

  “Just in time, my friend,” Fin said without taking his eyes from the table. “This is a very good game. Very good indeed. Watch and learn.”

  “Fin,” I said, “I need to speak to you.”

  “Later …just let me watch this.”

  Through the thicket of standing figures I could see only fragments of the card players’ hands: white fingers, rings, a bony, yellowed, crablike hand stretching out to clutch a heap of coins. Then a face or two: the large, gaunt face of a man with deep-set eyes and grizzled eyebrows; a dry-lipped woman prematurely old, withered like her artificial flowers; a man who resembled a respectable Edinburgh tradesman I had once known, blond and soft-handed, his sleek hair neatly parted. And then a face I recognized. A half profile.

  It was her, Lucienne Bernard, but not her, for she was now a he, sitting at a table playing cards only a few feet away from me. Her face but not her body. It was Lucienne, but it wasn’t.

  I pushed through the spectators to get closer. Yes, it was her, seated at a card table, dressed as a man: green silk frock coat, silver waistcoat, neckerchief arranged artfully around her throat. And no one seemed to notice. It was like a tableau, frozen in time, a tableau of a card game in the Palais Royal. I was in it too, reflected in the mirrors behind her.

  She was winning magnificently and, judging from the gasps of the crowd that had gathered in the smoky candlelight, unexpectedly. As her fingers, delicately gloved in pale gray, adjusted the coins that had been pushed toward her in order to pass them back again to the winning point, she looked up. Her black eyes met mine, and she smiled suddenly with what seemed to me a flush of unguarded pleasure—even relief—before she dropped her gaze to the cards in her hand and continued to play. Each time her stake was swept off the table she doubled it. Many people were watching her now, but I felt certain that the only eyes she was conscious of were mine. When she looked at me again as the crowd applauded her final hand—a full house, fanned out in triumph across the green baize—she appeared to be amused.

  “A striking man, don’t you think?” Fin said. “All that green and silver. Good facial structure.”

  “Very.”

  “You’re in a strange mood today. What’s wrong with you?”

  “His mouth …”

  “The mouth?” he said. Did he not see? Did he really not see? Her lips were
a smoky crimson, rich, full, and slightly parted. She was beautiful. Not a man at all.

  “A touch too complacent, perhaps?” Fin said. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Arrogant.”

  “Good card player, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone win so much in a single afternoon. And he’s not short of money, I’d guess. From his clothes I mean.”

  As the game finished, I watched her stand and look for me, preparing, I imagined, yet another escape. I clenched my fists, feeling the nails dig sharply into my skin.

  Fin turned. “You said you wanted to speak to me?”

  “No. It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “I’ll find you at home later. There’s something I have to do first.”

  Suddenly the desire to return to Edinburgh receded; there was hope, if only I could stop her from disappearing again. One last chance, I thought, making my way as stealthily as I could toward the patch of sea-green silk that was being swallowed up by a crowd of congratulatory admirers. This time, I determined, I would take her to the Bureau, whatever the outcome, however much she protested. This time I would not be afraid of making a scene. Then at least I would know I had acted. I would have some measure of self-respect to return with even if the manuscript and specimens were irrecoverable.

  But then, as the crowd fell away and she walked slowly but directly toward me, looking slightly nervous, her brow furrowed. “Don’t give me away,” she whispered. “Jagot’s man is here, I’ve seen him, but he hasn’t recognized me.”

  I was silent. I could scarcely breathe.

  “Where have you been?” I muttered. “You promised. Everything is much worse for me now.”

  “Where have you been?” she said, virtually dragging me into a window seat in an alcove and drawing a red velvet curtain across to shield us a little. “I sent letters; I called, but the concierge, she said you had left the hotel. I looked for you in the Jardin, at the lectures. But then things were dangerous … I had to leave Paris for a while. Where did you go?”