The Coral Thief

by Rebecca Stott

As the two men disappeared into the bushes, she turned to me, her eyes full of tears: “You must go back now. We agreed. It’s time. Remember what to tell the guards—that you fell asleep in the museum; you woke up and stumbled on the thieves; they were armed so you followed them out into the gardens. You tried to stop them, but they overpowered you.”

  Somewhere over to the right we heard the sound of Jagot’s dogs.

  “It’s too late,” I said, relieved at least temporarily from the pain of saying good-bye. “I can’t go back now. And anyway, Jagot expects me to bring you to him.”

  “Can you run?” she asked.

  We ran. It was a kind of instinct. We ran from the sound of the dogs through the trees. Lights started to appear in the houses to our left. I thought of Cuvier and his household rising, as if out of a hundred-year sleep, confused and in disarray—no fires lit, clothing scattered on floors, no servants awake or alert enough to tend or tidy.

  We ran past the lake with the water birds where a single flamingo raised its head and looked toward us, past the paddock with the sheep and goats and alpaca and the small ruminating animals, through the gates of the menagerie where behind us we heard the elephants bellow in reply to the sounds of the dogs.

  “We have to get to the other side of that house,” she said, pointing, “without being seen. It’s where the professors of mineralogy and agriculture live. Stick to this side of the shrubs. We haven’t got long. This place will be crawling with guards and gardeners any moment.”

  We reached the hut in the center of a field; Silveira and Saint-Vincent, who had gone ahead, had left the door open. Inside, we closed and locked the door behind us, shutting out the sound of the dogs.

  “Cuvier’s entrance to the quarries,” she said, nodding at the steps that spiraled down like an ammonite or a nautilus in the center of the stone floor. We picked up the lamp Silveira and Saint-Vincent had left us. “Number nine on Deleuze’s map. This staircase connects with hundreds of miles of quarry passageways; they stretch from here all the way over to Grenelle and Montrouge.”

  “It will swallow you up,” I said. “You said that, that night on the mail coach. ‘Paris will swallow you up.’ It’s going to swallow us both.”

  “Just concentrate,” she said, taking the first steps down. “Watch where you put your feet. These steps are wet.”

  Bits of earth or mortar, displaced by our footsteps, tumbled down from stone to stone with a dull echo. I kept my shoulder to the wall, soiling my coat and cuffs with chalky dirt.

  “Forty-nine steps,” she said. “Héricart’s book says there are forty-nine steps. It’s nine meters deep.”

  Here and there on the walls, I could see marks in red chalk where someone, possibly Cuvier himself, had circled the imprint of a small fossil in the rock, and here and there, too, were lines where he had marked out the shift from one level of strata to another. This was another of Cuvier’s theatrical stages: Cuvier, or Brongniart perhaps, had pasted various drawings and diagrams to the walls—one in particular represented a cross section of strata—labeled étages. Étage—stage, story of a building, strata. All three at once.

  At the bottom of the forty-nine steps we stood at the entrance to the quarries. I hadn’t expected the ceiling to be so flat, or the walls to be so white; even here in the darkness the walls hewn from white stone gleamed under the light from the lamp. The ceiling, low enough to touch, was cracked and split in places.

  “Silveira’s left us a mark,” she said holding up the lamp to show me a black ink mark signed underneath with two letters, DS—Davide Silveira—and a circle with a single dot inside. “All we have to do is follow Silveira’s trail through to the passage de Saint-Claire. That’s what we agreed, if we got separated. We’ve used the quarries before.”

  “You know them? You can get us out? Without a map?”

  “You can’t know the quarries. They’re like a dark polyp with a thousand tentacles that spread out underneath the streets. You have to respect them. We’ve had to hide down here several times. We have about an hour left of the lamp.”

  The numerous passages that forked off to the right and the left were all exactly the same as the one we were following—long, low, white. The light from the lamp illuminated only a few feet ahead of us; who knew what was beyond? I could imagine all sorts of horrors down there in the darkness: things with feathers, fur, claws, creatures of nightmare—or soldiers’ limbs severed and festering. Bones. I could imagine anything.

  We followed the circles with the dot at the center.

  “Be careful where you step,” she said. “There have been collapses—houses falling down, streets folding in.”

  “So why don’t they close them? Seal up all the entrances and refill the tunnels? Make them safe.”

  “There are hundreds of miles of tunnels, Daniel. What would you fill them with? They’re so big you could hide the whole population of Paris down here. The revolutionaries used the tunnels for hiding and for getting around the city. Before that, smugglers. But all sorts of people use them now. Some of these passageways open up into caverns with high roofs. I’ve seen printing presses down here, and near the Marais there’s an illegal mint under the moneylender’s house.”

  “A mint, underground?”

  “We only saw it through a crack in an adjoining wall. It was a cavern full of tools and furnaces, crucibles, chemicals, and blocks of metal, and in the middle there was a minting machine, operated by five or six workmen. People say there’s a Knights Templar temple down here somewhere.”

  We reached a crossing point where passageways met and where the ceiling stretched far up above us. It was supported by pillars, five or six roughly hewn blocks of stone placed on top of one another without mortar or cement. Some were deeply cracked. Between the pillars there were heaps of debris and broken stone that appeared to be the result of some recent catastrophe. The silence was so deep here that I could almost imagine being able to hear a spider spinning its web twenty feet across to the other side of the cavern. I could hear water dripping at regular intervals.

  “It’s much noisier at the other end, under Montmartre or Saint-Germain,” she said. “You can hear carriages on the cobbles above, sometimes, dogs barking.”

  “We’re still underneath the Jardin, I suppose,” I said. “Not much to hear.”

  “And we’re lower than usual,” she said, looking around the wall to find the next of Silveira’s marks that would indicate which of the seven or eight passageways we should take.

  She held up a silver compass.

  “I’m not going to get lost down here, not after last time.”

  She’d located a mark on the entrance to another passageway; we plunged into its darkness, picking our way around roof falls, piles of rock, and pools of water. I kept my hand on the walls, feeling the changes in texture and the cold, rubbing the powdery limestone with my fingers, remembering that it was made up of the remains of thousands of sea creatures that had died on some seabed millions of years beyond my own rememberings.

  “Look at these pillars,” Lucienne said. One good strike with a mallet, and you could knock one of these stones out. Then the whole ceiling would come in. They closed off the area under the Luxembourg Palace a few years ago after some lunatic claimed to have blown up all the pillars in the quarries directly underneath it.”

  I reminded myself, with relief, that a great river ran between me and the bones lying stacked up in the catacombs on the other side. You could become very superstitious down here, I thought.

  “I don’t want to die here,” she said suddenly, her nerve failing her. “I don’t want Delphine to die here. It’s too dark.”

  “We’re safe,” I said. “All we have to do is find the passage de Saint-Claire. It can’t be far.”

  “I have a bad feeling,” she said. “Something’s gone wrong.”

  We stopped to listen. We could just hear the barking of dogs somewhere behind us.

  “Are they loose?” I asked.

  �
�No, they keep them on ropes. They can’t go fast. But they will be listening for us, sniffing us out. Put the lamp out,” she said. “Listen. They’re too close. If we are going to rescue Delphine we have to get to the passage de Saint-Claire before they catch us. At this rate they’ll reach us first.”

  Now I could hear voices ahead as well as behind.

  “Damn. They’ve surrounded us. Put out the light.”

  “But we won’t be able to see anything,” I said, doing as she asked.

  I’m afraid of the dark, I thought, very afraid.

  A shot.

  Someone had shot a gun; the detonation echoed around in the vault. Stones fell into the pool of water at our feet. The ball from the carbine had struck the ceiling just a few feet from the arch above my head. I waited for the ceiling to fall in. It didn’t.

  “You fool,” a voice said. “You’ll bring the whole city down on top of us. Put down the gun.”

  “Say nothing,” she whispered, one hand feeling for my face in the darkness. Her fingertips traced the edges of my mouth. I felt for hers, pulling her to me in the moment in which I thought we were both about to die. Was I aroused by her or by the thought of my own death? Both were on my skin now.

  “Say nothing,” she said. I kissed her hand, smelling the scent of mud and something like animal pelt.

  “Jagot’s men are on both sides,” she said. “Our only chance of reaching the others in the passage is to take a side tunnel, but we must be absolutely silent. Totalement silencieux.”

  “No sudden moves,” Jagot shouted from somewhere close by. “No one move. Put the gun down.”

  “He thinks we have a gun,” I whispered.

  “We do,” she said. I could hear her easing something from the folds of her clothing.

  “Mme. Bernard?” It was Jagot’s voice. Lucienne didn’t answer.

  “We have your friend, Manon Laforge. And the child. Such an interesting child. A credit to you, madame. You can help me, Mme. Bernard.”

  Still she did not answer.

  He continued: “I hear you ask: How can I help you, M. Jagot? Well, Mme. Bernard, I am glad you asked. It is a good sign. You can help me by giving me the diamond and the boy. You must not harm the boy. Cuvier wants him. Now I hear you ask: ‘And what will you do for me, M. Jagot?’ And I say to you: I will let you slip away, Mme. Bernard, with your child. It is Silveira I want, and the boy. And the diamond, naturellement.”

  “It’s not true,” I whispered. “Don’t make any deals with him. He won’t let you get away.”

  “Put down the gun, Mme. Bernard,” Jagot called out, “or we will all die.”

  “Madre.” Delphine’s voice echoed in the tunnels. Then resolute, dragon-slaying Delphine called out quickly in Italian: “Madre, i ragazzi sono qui. Li ho appena visti. C’è anche l’uomo con il dente d’oro. Non abbiate paura.” Her voice went silent, muffled quickly by an unseen hand.

  “She says Silveira’s here,” Lucienne whispered. “She’s seen him.”

  “All you have to do,” Jagot called out, “is give the boy the diamond and then send him toward me. Slowly. M. Connor?”

  “Answer him,” she whispered. “He still thinks you’re his. One-word answers only. When I squeeze your arm, stop.”

  “Yes,” I called out.

  “Can you see me if I lift up my lamp?”

  “Yes.”

  I could see a group of black forms and the glimmer of a lamp at the end of the tunnel making a ruddy circle in the vault. We drew in close to the side of the wall as the circle of lamplight rose and widened.

  “Mme. Bernard,” Jagot continued. “You have no choice. You run. We run. We have light. You have none. There are six of us. Two of you. You’re not stupid. All you have to do is give the boy the diamond and send him to us.”

  “I’m not going back,” I whispered. “I’m coming with you.”

  There was a low whistle from where the gunshot sound had come. Almost inaudible. Two long, low whistles and one short. I had last heard that sound in the rue du Pet-au-Diable.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Joaquim and the other boys. Silveira must have realized we were going to be cut off by Jagot’s men before we reached the passage, so he sent for them. Look, now Jagot’s men are closing in on us from the other end.”

  The air had been thick but now I could feel a slight movement around us, not quite a breeze. She felt it too. I looked up. Above us, where the ball had hit the pillar, a deep crack had opened up in the stone. Dust was falling around us. A sudden flash lit up the cavern, and in that moment I saw boys—the boys from the rue du Pet-au-Diable, their faces blackened, like night creatures, their eyes bright and wide. There were seven or eight of them. There was a scuffle, more dust, the gasp and cry of a child.

  Something had happened. I could hear several voices shouting and above them Jagot, speaking in French, panicked, the lights from the lanterns scattering in different directions. “Where is she?” he shouted. “Where is the child? Find the damned child.”

  Then came Manon’s voice. “Delphine’s safe, Lucienne,” she called. “Joaquim and his boys have her.” Then a groan—the sound of a punch or a blow. Manon had been silenced again.

  “Daniel,” Lucienne said quietly, “you have to go with them. Call out. Tell him I have a gun to your head. Buy me some time. We have to get Manon out.”

  I didn’t hesitate. “She has a gun. She says she’s going to kill me.”

  “Mme. Bernard, put the gun down.”

  “Daniel,” she whispered. “It’s time. Take this. I’m putting it in your pocket. The diamond. Tell Jagot you have it. Tell him I’ve put the diamond in your pocket.”

  “I have the diamond,” I said. “I have the diamond.”

  “Now walk toward him,” she said. “Walk toward the light down there.” Then suddenly she pulled me back to her. She put her hands on my shoulders and brushed down my suit, smoothing out its folds. “This suit has seen better days,” she said, kissing me so the darkness turned to blue and gold. “Now walk. Walk, damn you, or I will shoot you myself.”

  As I staggered forward, there was another explosion; rock falling; noise, dust, a blow to the head. I swear I saw feathers as I fell, great wings beating down there in the darkness. That’s one way landscapes change—with a catastrophe, a rockfall, violence, and revolution, theatrical and spectacular. I heard only the dust falling and the clock ticking.

  29

  HERE DID THE GUNSHOT COME FROM? I was lucky, they said, very lucky. Lucienne’s gun had gone off accidentally, they told me, just as she released me and pushed me toward Jagot. Her gun had fired a shot upward into the ceiling and had dislodged one of the stone pillars, already weakened by the first shot. This had brought down the ceiling. Lucienne Bernard, Davide Silveira, and their child, Delphine Bernard, Manon Laforge, and Alain Saint-Vincent had all been buried under the rockfall.

  Or at least Jagot thought so. Cuvier did too. And exactly how many people died down there in the darkness of the quarries that night, M. Jagot? Two gunshots. Four thieves and a child caught in the wrong place.

  But who knows for sure? The quarries do. I do. Or at least I came to know. Not by sudden revelation—an encounter on a train; a face recognized in a crowd. No, I watched and I listened for news of them. I read newspapers and I asked questions; I waited and, piece by piece, I put fragments together. One of them was a newspaper report about the giraffe that walked to Paris.

  In 1826, the pasha of Egypt sent a giraffe to the king of France as a token of his esteem. Her keeper walked with her from Marseilles through sleepy villages, mile by mile, down the same roads the bronze Venetian horses had taken, and into the Jardin des Plantes. Crowds lined the streets. Bands played.

  In May of that year, the giraffe’s keeper walked her from the elephant rotunda, out of the menagerie in the Jardin des Plantes, past the ticket booth, under the cedar of Lebanon, and up to the top of the labyrinth and the bronze pavilion. All of this had happened, the
newspaper reporters wrote, because an inmate in the debtor’s prison who called himself Simon-Vincent, who was a botanist and had once fought in the Battle of Austerlitz, had asked to see the animal. Concessions were made. Though the botanist was not allowed to leave the prison, the warden had allowed him to climb onto the roof, accompanied of course by a guard, for a period of thirty minutes. A giraffe, the prisoner had said, was not to be missed. He had seen butterflies in Saint Helena, reptiles in the caves of Maastricht, the wings of great birds in the quarries of Paris; he would not miss the sight of the first giraffe in the Jardin des Plantes. How very French, the reporter from The Times wrote. How very French.

  I had other glimpses too—in a new encyclopedia published in Paris and all the rage in London in the 1830s. There were entries by people whose names I half remembered, including one on corals and time. I recognized the voice. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. There was no signature to the entry, just the initials LB. A thief, a heretic, and a philosopher who is buried now, I’d guess, in Italy somewhere near Florence, in a grave near to that of a diamond dealer called Silveira. Who knows what names are inscribed there.

  In 1818, The Times carried a report of a diamond that sold for a considerable sum in Madras, India. A trading agent acting on behalf of an English duke had bought it from a Portuguese jeweler’s agent called Sabalair in the back streets of the city. The agent had since vanished from Madras. A jeweler in London subsequently identified the duke’s diamond as the famous Satar diamond, which had disappeared without a trace from Spain ten years earlier and was once said to be in a private collection that had been owned illegally in Paris by Vivant Denon, artist, antiquary, and friend of Napoleon Bonaparte. The provenance of the diamond was difficult to trace, the journalist explained. It had, some said, been stolen during a robbery in the Jardin des Plantes. What The Times journalist didn’t report, but what was common knowledge among the thieves in Paris, was that a diamond had been recovered from that robbery, but that it had subsequently turned out to be a paste replica made, it was believed, in a Portuguese jewelry shop in the rue du Pet-au-Diable. The police agent leading the inquiry, M. Henri Jagot, had of course been furious at the discovery of the forgery but was said to be even more enraged by the thought that the real diamond had disappeared in the roof fall that had killed the thieves he had been pursuing.