The Paris Hours

by Alex George

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  For Hallam

  For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.

  —JAMES BALDWIN, “SONNY’S BLUES”

  1

  Stitches

  THE ARMENIAN WORKS BY the light of a single candle. His tools lie in front of him on the table: a spool of cotton, a square of fabric, haberdasher’s scissors, a needle.

  The flame flickers, and shadows leap across the walls of the tiny room, dancing ghosts. Souren Balakian folds the fabric in half, checks that the edges align exactly, and then he picks up the scissors. He feels the resistance beneath his fingers as the steel blades bite into the material. He always enjoys this momentary show of defiance before he gives the gentlest of squeezes, and the scissors cut through the doubled-up fabric. He eases the blades along familiar contours, working by eye alone. He has done this so many times, on so many nights, there is no need to measure a thing. Torso, arms, neckline—this last cut wide, to accommodate the outsized head.

  When he has finished, there are two identical shapes on the table in front of him. He sweeps the unused scraps of cloth onto the floor, and picks up the needle and thread. After the sundering, reconstitution. Holding the two pieces of material in perfect alignment, he pushes the tip of the needle through both layers of fabric, and pulls the thread tight. He works with ferocious deliberation, as if it is his very life that he is stitching back together. He squints, careful to keep the stitches evenly spaced. When he is finished, he breaks the thread with a sharp twist of his fingers and holds the garment up in the half-light. A small grunt of satisfaction.

  Night after night Souren sits at this bench and sews a new tunic. By the end of the day it will be gone, a cloud of gray ash blowing in the wind, and then he will sit down and create another.

  He lays the completed costume on the work surface and stands up. He surveys the ranks of sightless eyes that stare unblinking into the room. Rows of hooks have been hammered into the wall. A wooden hand puppet hangs from every one. There are portly kings and beautiful princesses. There are brave men with dangerous eyes, and a haggard witch with warts on her ugly chin. There are cherubic children, their eyes too wide and innocent for this motley group. There is a wolf.

  This ragtag crowd is Souren’s family now.

  He unhooks a young boy called Hector and carries him to the table. He pulls the newly sewn tunic over Hector’s head. He turns the puppet toward him and examines his handiwork. Hector is a handsome fellow, with a button nose and rosy cheeks. The tunic fits him well. The puppet performs a small bow and waves at him.

  “Ah, Hector,” whispers Souren sadly. “You are always so happy to see me, even when you know what is to come.” He looks up at the clock on the wall. It is a few hours past midnight. The new day has already begun.

  Each evening Souren battles sleep for as long as he can. He works long into the night, applying fresh coats of paint to the puppets and sewing new clothes for them by candlelight. He stays at his workbench until his eyes are so heavy that he can no longer keep them open. But there is only so long he can fight the inevitable. His beloved puppets cannot protect him from the demons that pursue him through the darkest shadows of the night.

  His dreams always come for him in the end.

  2

  A Rude Awakening

  RAT-A-TAT-TAT.

  Guillaume Blanc sits up in his bed, his heart smashing against his ribs, his breath quick, sharp, urgent. He stares at the door, waiting for the next angry tattoo.

  The whispered words he heard through the door scream at him now: Three days.

  Rat-a-tat-tat.

  His shoulders slump. There is nobody knocking, not this time. The noise is coming from somewhere closer. Guillaume turns and squints through the window above the bed. The first blush of early morning sunlight smears the sky. From up here on the sixth floor, the rooftops of the city stretch out beneath him, a glinting cornucopia of slate and glass, a tapestry of cupolas and towers. There is the culprit: a woodpecker, richly plumed in blue and yellow, perched halfway up the window frame. It is staring beadily at the wood, as if trying to remember what it is supposed to do next.

  Rat-a-tat-tat.

  It is early, too early for anything good.

  The shock of adrenaline subsides enough for Guillaume to register that his temples are pounding. He rolls over, spies a glass of cloudy water on the floor next to the bed, and drinks it thirstily. He rubs a dirty palm against his forehead. An ocean of pain to drown in. An empty wine bottle lies on its side in the middle of the small room. He stole it from the back of Madame Cuillasse’s kitchen cupboard when he staggered in last night. It was covered in dust and long forgotten, not even good enough for her coq au vin, but by then Guillaume was too drunk to care.

  Rat-a-tat-tat.

  It feels as if the woodpecker is perched on the tip of Guillaume’s nose and is jabbing its sharp little beak right between his eyes. It’s typical of his luck, he reflects. The bird has no business in the dirty, narrow streets of Montmartre. It should be flying free with its brothers and sisters in the Bois de Boulogne, hammering joyfully away at tree trunks, rather than attacking the window frame of Guillaume’s studio. And yet here it is.

  Rat-a-tat-tat.

  The woodpecker’s head is a ferocious blur, then perfectly still again. What goes through its head, Guillaume wonders, during those moments of contemplative silence? Is the woodpecker asking itself: who am I, really, if I am not pecking wood? Am I, God forbid, just a bird?

  Three days.

  Guillaume lets out a small moan. There are lightning bolts erupting behind his eyes. He casts his mind back to the previous night. He was wandering through Montmartre, anxiously trying to outpace his problems, when he had seen Emile Brataille sitting alone in the bar at the end of his street. Brataille is an art dealer who spends most of his time at the zinc of the Closerie des Lilas, schmoozing with collectors and artists, striking deals, and skimming his fat commission off every painting he sells. He has no business in Montmartre anymore: all the painters whose work hangs on the walls of his palatial gallery on Boulevard Raspail have left Guillaume’s quartier for the leafy boulevards of Montparnasse, where the wine is better, the oysters fatter, and the women more beautiful. Guillaume pushed open the door and slid onto the chair next to Brataille.

  The alcohol lingers sluggishly in his veins. How much had they drunk, in the end?

  After they were three or four carafes to the good, Emile Brataille made his mournful confession: he’d come to Montmartre to declare his love for Thérèse, but she wanted nothing to do with him. And so here he was, drowning his sorrows.

  Thérèse is a prostitute who works at the corner of Rue des Abbesses and Rue Ravignan, next to Le Chat Blanc. Guillaume knows her, albeit not professionally: he has painted her many times. Lubricated by the
wine, he embellished this acquaintance into a devoted friendship, and suggested to Brataille that he might be able to intercede on his behalf. At this, the art dealer began to weep drunken tears of gratitude. How can I ever repay you? he asked. Guillaume scratched his chin. I don’t suppose you know any rich, art-loving Americans, he said.

  Brataille began to laugh.

  And so a deal was struck. Guillaume would talk to Thérèse, and in return Brataille would send some rich foreigners his way. And who knew what might come of that? Miracles happened: that sozzled goat Soutine had convinced an American doctor to buy every damn painting he’d ever made. Guillaume raised his glass toward the art dealer, a man he did not particularly like, and with every swallow of wine the way forward became more beautifully clear. His drunken imagination hurtled headlong toward a future of fame and untold riches.

  He does not remember staggering home.

  His euphoria has not survived the night.

  That whispered voice through the door. Three days.

  Today is the third day.

  3

  Rhapsody

  JEAN-PAUL MAILLARD CLOSES his eyes and dreams of America.

  The needle touches the spinning vinyl with the gentlest sigh of static.

  He listens, spellbound.

  That clarinet! The first low trill, fat with promise—then the solo ascent to the heavens, soaring smoothly through the registers. By the time that ecstatic high note, limpid and beautiful, pours into his ears, Jean-Paul has made his escape.

  He sweeps through the open window onto Rue Barbette and hurtles down the cobbled streets of the Marais, streaking westward across the city. In a moment he is flying over the dark waters of the Atlantic.

  The music beckons him on.

  He soars high over the city’s skyscrapered silhouette, his for the taking. He hears the rumble of the Harlem-bound A train in the orchestra’s propulsive rhythms, low and sweet. He hears new worlds in the piano’s blistering, arpeggiated attacks. Images streak past like the onrushing traffic hurtling down the arrow-straight avenues. Perfect lines of shimmying, high-kicking chorus girls, their cherry-red lips glistening in the spotlights. A liveried doorman striding onto the busy street, his hand outstretched for a yellow cab. Elegant matrons pushing through the door at Bergdorf’s. Sharp-dressed men with two-tone shoes, hats pulled down low, huddled close on a street corner.

  When Jean-Paul Maillard dreams of America, he dreams of New York City.

  But those dazzling syncopations do not last forever. The music ends, and the spell is broken. Reluctantly, Jean-Paul opens his eyes. America has retreated, as it always does, and his shabby French apartment remains. He looks around. The place used to be so bright and tidy, so clean. Now every surface is coated with a patina of ancient dust. The wallpaper is staging a slow escape from the walls. A dark brown stain has annexed a corner of the ceiling. The gramophone is still going around. The silence is gently punctuated by the soft, rhythmic bump of the needle against the spinning vinyl, as regular as a tiny heartbeat. He does not get up to switch it off. He likes the sound.

  Jean-Paul looks at the dim morning light creeping across the apartment window. It’s been years since he has slept through the night. In the early hours of every morning his ruined leg drags him from sleep. Then he sits in his armchair, listens to George Gershwin, and thinks about the lights of Manhattan.

  The first Americans he met were soldiers. Assigned to report on foreign troops who had come to France to fight in the war, he had visited a military hospital where wounded men were recuperating. Their bodies were ruined, but they were bafflingly cheerful. These young men were from places Jean-Paul had never heard of—Maine, Missouri, Montana—on the first grand adventure of their lives. Fighting for freedom on foreign soil—what could be more exciting than that? They were so tall, so handsome, so unencumbered by doubt. Not even their injuries could eclipse these men’s belief in their own marvelous destiny. Jean-Paul was trapped by his memories of the slaughter on the battlefields to the north, but the Americans turned effortlessly away from all that, distracted by what the future held.

  When Jean-Paul Maillard thinks of America, he thinks of hope.

  Hope: those young soldiers built whole worlds in their heads while they convalesced in their hospital beds. They dreamed of money, of cars, and of love—but mostly of money. Le rêve américain scrolled unstoppably across their febrile imaginations. They spun futures for themselves, elaborate edifices of unlikely fantasy, buttressed against dour reality by the force of their young wills. They did not care how improbable it all was. Optimism on such a cosmic scale was an art. And those wounded cadets were no fluke: the whole country seems to possess a magnificent, perplexing talent for it. There’s none of the world-weary cynicism that flattens the people of tired, ancient France; America is too callow to know any better. So, of course, Jean-Paul is in love with the place. He knows all about slim chances. He’s been playing diminishing odds ever since Easter Sunday 1918.

  With a grimace, he hauls himself to his feet. His knee crackles in bright agony. By now he should have discovered some warped comfort in the brutal familiarity of the pain, but every morning it still draws a gasp of fresh dismay from his lips. He hobbles toward the bathroom.

  It is time to begin another day.

  4

  Ritual and Remembrance

  THE WOMAN AND HER DAUGHTER walk out of the Métro station and stop for a moment at the top of the steps. The woman stares into the cloudless blue sky. When they had left the hotel earlier, the streets of Saint-Germain were washed in pale predawn light. Now the sun is shining brightly. It is going to be a warm day.

  There is a café on the other side of Boulevard de Ménilmontant, empty at this hour save for one or two early risers, hunched over steaming cups of coffee, and a waiter polishing glasses behind the counter. The buttery smell of freshly baked croissants floats by on the morning breeze. The girl grips a slim posy of camellias. In contrast to the beauty of the morning, her face is a thundercloud. The woman looks down at her daughter’s pinched scowl, and—not for the first time—regrets insisting that she come along this morning. For a moment she contemplates abandoning the whole enterprise. She can always come back later, on her own.

  The girl points across the road. “Can I have a croissant?” she asks.

  It’s a miracle, thinks the woman, how the young can distill so much sullen resentment into five simple words. She feels a fresh resolve, a stiffening of the spine. “No, Marie,” she says sharply. “No croissant. Come along.”

  The sigh that follows is equal parts fury and triumph. Of course there was to be no croissant.

  At this hour Avenue Gambetta is deserted but for a flock of pigeons that peck idly at the sidewalk. The pair walk up the hill in silence. The high walls of the cemetery cast the street into shadow. The place will not open for another few hours, but there is a small gate in the northwest corner, half hidden behind a crumbling wall, that is never manned and never locked.

  “I still don’t understand why you put flowers on the grave,” says the girl, for perhaps the tenth time that morning.

  “Because, ma chérie, that is how we honor the dead.”

  “It’s not as if he will know they’re there.”

  “Perhaps not. But everyone else who visits his grave will see them.”

  Another incredulous sigh. “Who visits his grave except you?”

  “I think you’d be surprised.”

  Marie is silent. She is never surprised. She is ten years old. She knows everything.

  The gate, at last. The woman looks up and down the street, and then steps inside, ushering her daughter in ahead of her.

  At this time of day the cemetery is the most peaceful place in Paris. There are no slump-shouldered mourners traipsing between the tombstones on their meandering trails of sorrow. The birds have not yet begun their day of song. Even the leaves are motionless in the trees.

  A sea of crypts and mausoleums crests the hill in front of them. The w
oman looks at the wave of polished marble that shimmers in the morning sun. The cemetery is its own city, with neighborhoods and thoroughfares, permanent residents and visitors. She sets off down the gravel path. Marie follows, her sighs reaching a quiet crescendo of outrage.

  Just once, thinks the woman sadly. I wanted her to come just once. I wanted her to understand.

  She strides ahead, not stopping to read the epitaphs of strangers or to admire the grand family memorials of Parisian aristocrats. She walks past the ranks of weeping stone angels without a second glance.

  “Maman!” gasps Marie, struggling to keep up. “Wait for me!”

  But she will not wait.

  Finally she reaches her destination, an elegant rectangle of black marble, with simple gold lettering:

  MARCEL PROUST

  1871–1922

  That is all. Amid these elaborate bids for immortality, not so much as a modest “écrivain.”

  Nineteen twenty-two, she thinks. Five years already, she’s been coming here.

  Her daughter arrives behind her, out of breath. She has been running. She does not want to be alone in the cemetery.

  “Look, Marie. You see? Someone else has been here.” A handful of irises has been scattered across the tomb, but the flowers have withered and died, their petals a sorry mosaic of faded lavender. The woman sweeps them away. She takes the camellias from her daughter and arranges them on the marble.

  Then Camille Clermont kneels down in front of the tombstone of her dead employer, and begins to weep. She turns away from her daughter, but too late.

  “Maman,” whispers Marie. “What’s wrong?” At the sight of her mother’s tears, the child’s hostility has evaporated. Now she is worried, solicitous, scared, and this makes Camille cry harder still.