The Paris Hours

by Alex George

  “I miss him, Marie,” she says. “I miss him every day.”

  “Was he a nice man?”

  “Oh yes. He was very nice. Very kind. I wish you could have known him better.” She smiles down at her daughter. “But he thought children were best enjoyed at a distance.”

  “He didn’t have children himself?”

  “Goodness, no.” Camille laughs and shakes her head. “He had the characters in his books, though. They were his children, I suppose.”

  “Did you love him?” asks Marie.

  “Very much.”

  “More than papa?”

  “Oh no. Never more than papa. And in a very different way.”

  “Different how?”

  “It’s more like you and Irène.”

  Marie’s eyes grow big. “He was your best friend?”

  “In some ways. We shared secrets, just like you and Irène. We told each other things nobody else knew.” She pauses. “That’s why I come and put flowers on his grave. I come to say hello, and to tell him that I miss him, and to say thank you for his friendship.”

  And, she thinks but does not say, to tell him that I’m sorry for my betrayal. And to forgive him for his.

  Marie nods. “I would put flowers on Irène’s grave, too.”

  Camille takes her daughter’s hand. “Come on,” she says. “Perhaps it’s time for that croissant.”

  5

  Passacaille I

  EVERY MORNING THE PIANO rescues Souren Balakian from his dreams.

  The same low notes gently tug him away from everything that he has left behind. The ghosts that haunt his sleep are chased away by the music floating up through the floor from the studio below. He opens his eyes.

  The workbench on the other side of the room. The empty stares of the puppets on the wall. A small gasp of relief escapes his lips.

  His head falls back onto the pillow as the music washes over him.

  The first theme emerges from the depths of the piano, no more than a whisper. Souren hears a heavy melancholy in the stately procession of low, single notes. Every morning he wonders what the composer has lived through, to have drawn such sadness out of himself.

  And then, through the dark clouds, a shaft of brilliant sunlight. A new melody emerges, high and clear and heartbreaking. This is what Souren waits for. The tune cleaves the gathering shadows and wraps itself brightly around his heart.

  Those first brooding tones retreat, but they do not vanish. Now the music is two intertwined melodic lines, one low, one high, one sad, one full of hope. They meet and diverge, echoing each other, dual counterpoints of darkness and light. Sometimes they come together in sweet harmony; sometimes not.

  Finally, the music resolves back to its first theme, that simple, forlorn elegy. The pianist’s left hand stretches down the keyboard into ever-lower registers, until there are no more keys to be pressed, no more notes to be played.

  Silence crowds in.

  Souren lies still, staring up at the ceiling. From the room below comes the scrape of a piano stool. A moment later, the same low notes echo up once more through the floor. He listens to the piece a second time, then a third.

  This is the only music the invisible pianist ever plays. There are no scales, no taxing etudes. Every morning he comes to his studio and performs the same tune over and over again.

  When Souren sees his neighbor from downstairs in the hallway, the two men exchange polite nods, but they have never spoken a word to each other. The musician is a short, middle-aged man, always impeccably dressed. From his perfectly combed hair to the tips of his polished shoes, he projects an aura of unruffled elegance, but Souren knows better. His solitary repertoire betrays a quiet unraveling within.

  Souren knows the comfort of the familiar all too well: like the pianist, he gives one identical performance after another. He tells the same stories, day after day. This is how he survives. That is why later on today he will pack up his puppets and cross the city to his usual spot in the Jardin du Luxembourg, beneath the chestnut trees. Then he will wait for the children to come.

  The sound of the piano continues to float up through the floor. The melody breaches his defenses and buries itself inside him. He feels the mournful pulse of those low notes deep in his bones. The music quickens his blood, and he thinks of Thérèse—her soft body beneath his, her red mouth on his. He has not seen her in months. If the audience is generous today, perhaps he’ll pay her a visit this evening.

  There is the gentlest knock as the lid of the piano closes.

  Souren moves to the window and looks down onto the street. In front of the apartment building there is a small fountain. An unsteady trickle of water emerges from the top of the stone column at its center. Beneath the fountain’s surface is a carpet of coins, tossed in by superstitious passersby. From Souren’s window they catch the reflection of the early morning sun, winking up at him.

  After a moment the pianist appears. He walks past the fountain and crosses to the opposite sidewalk. He is wearing a perfectly cut gray overcoat and an elegant hat. There is a dark flash of color, a silk scarf, at his throat. He leans forward as he walks, as if he is heading into a strong wind.

  This man’s music has become part of Souren’s mornings, as essential as the sun rising over the rooftops of the city. The familiar melody offers him a moment of quiet grace, and this gives him strength for the day ahead. The pianist knows nothing of this, of course. He plays only for himself. Souren wonders how the arc of the man’s own days is changed by creating such beauty each morning. He watches as the pianist makes his lonely way down the street. The man looks tired, defeated. He does not play for joy, thinks Souren. He plays for survival.

  * * *

  The silence that follows is almost as sweet as the music it replaces. Souren sits down at his table, languishing in the space left behind by the piano’s notes.

  Then comes a lovely echo: a woman’s voice, low and warm and rich. A second voice joins in, higher and sweeter than the first. The singers navigate the piano’s melody in perfect unison. A song without words. Gone is the tune’s melancholy. Now the music is reborn, full of life and bursting with hope.

  Souren clears a space at one end of the table and lays out two plates. He unwraps a small parcel of heavy wax paper. Inside is a wedge of pale cheese, its rind a dusty gray. He bends down and sniffs. I’ve found a new one for you, Augustin told him last night when he stopped in at the fromagerie on Rue des Martyrs. A Saint-Nectaire, from the Auvergne. I think you’ll like it. Souren places the Saint-Nectaire between the two plates, and waits.

  A few minutes later, there is a knock on his door.

  Standing in the corridor is a young girl. She is wearing a blue tunic and has long, dark hair. Big gray eyes gaze up at him.

  “You’ll never guess what!” says the girl at once.

  “Bonjour, Arielle. What?” Even after all these years, Souren’s French is awkward and cautious. It is a language, he has discovered, fat with grammatical and idiomatic peculiarities. Even the simplest sentence contains traps for the unwary. At least he knows that his young visitor will not judge him for his mistakes.

  “Maman has agreed to take me to the Jardin du Luxembourg today. Enfin!”

  Souren smiles at her. “That’s very good news.”

  “I’m finally going to see your puppet show!”

  “I like our little shows here,” says Souren. “They remind me of a girl I used to know. Her name was Amandine.”

  “It’s not the same, though,” says Arielle. “I can see you, for one thing. And that’s not right.”

  Souren inclines his head, conceding the point: seeing him is not right. He gestures for her to enter. “We have something new to try today.”

  Arielle sits down at the table and looks at the cheese in front of her. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “It’s called Saint-Nectaire,” says Souren, as he cuts two slices and puts one on each plate. “Tell me what you think.”

  They eat the c
heese in silence.

  “It’s not as smelly as some of the other ones,” says Arielle. “May I have some more?”

  Souren cuts them both another slice and then turns to the wall of puppets. “Alors, who do you choose today?”

  Arielle considers for a moment. “Those two.” She points to a young boy and a handsome knight. Souren takes the puppets off their hooks. He sits back down. Arielle eats her cheese and waits.

  All of a sudden the puppets burst into life from beneath the tabletop. The knight is regal, serene. The boy, in contrast, flies back and forth along the edge of the table. He wants to become the knight’s apprentice. He begs, he implores. Arielle watches, rapt. If you wish to be my page, says the knight, you must prove your loyalty and your bravery. Of course, of course, agrees the boy at once. And how do I do that?

  Just then there is a knock on the door. Souren breathes a sigh of relief. Sometimes when he begins a story he knows how it will end, and sometimes he does not.

  “Come in,” he calls.

  The door opens and a woman steps into the room. She smiles at them both. “How is the cheese today?” she asks.

  “Maman, you’re interrupting the story again!” complains Arielle.

  Her mother looks unperturbed. “Oh, Saint-Nectaire! How delicious!” She picks up a crumb of cheese off her daughter’s plate and pops it into her mouth. “We have some grocery shopping to do this morning, Arielle. Perhaps we’ll buy some for ourselves.”

  “I heard you both singing this morning,” says Souren.

  “Oh, I hope we didn’t disturb you!”

  “Not at all. I love to hear you sing.”

  The woman smiles. “It’s a beautiful melody, n’est-ce pas?”

  “I hope he will always play that tune,” agrees Souren.

  “I’m sure he will, until he writes something else.”

  Souren frowns, unsure he has understood correctly. “Until he writes—?”

  “Didn’t you know? He’s not really a pianist. He’d be the first person to tell you that. He says his hands are too small.”

  Souren thinks of the elegantly dressed man and his well-manicured fingers. “He sounds like a pianist to me.”

  She shakes her head. “He’s a composer. His name is Maurice Ravel.”

  Souren has never heard of him.

  “En tout cas, they say that he has not written a note for months. He comes here instead, to his studio, and plays the same piece every day.” The woman pauses. “Can you imagine how it must feel, to be put on earth to do one thing, and then not to be able to do it?”

  Souren remembers the man’s slumped shoulders as he walked down the street, away from his piano. “Perhaps that is why the music is so sad,” he says.

  The woman bends down and kisses the top of her daughter’s head. “Did Arielle tell you that we’re coming to the Jardin du Luxembourg this afternoon?”

  “She may have mentioned it,” says Souren, grinning. From the edge of the tabletop, the knight performs a deep bow. “Arielle knows the puppets so well, but she’ll see a very different show this afternoon.” He nods at the knight and the little boy, who both appear to be listening closely to every word he says. “Nobody else has ever heard the stories I tell you here,” he says to Arielle. “They are just for you.”

  “What kind of stories do you tell at the show?” asks Arielle.

  He shrugs. “Some you will know, others you will not.”

  “Stories from where you came from?” guesses her mother.

  Souren thinks of the new tunic for Hector’s puppet that he sewed together in the small hours of that morning, and nods.

  “Well, we can’t wait!” She smiles. “And if that wasn’t enough excitement, tonight I’m going to hear one of the greatest jazz musicians in the world play.” At this Souren pulls a face. “You don’t like jazz?” She laughs.

  “Don’t the musicians just play whatever notes they want?”

  “Well, they improvise, yes, so every time it’s different. But that’s what makes it so sweet.”

  Souren points to the floor, at the invisible piano in the room below. “I like things the same each time.”

  “Oh, Souren! Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  He does not respond. He has left his sense of adventure behind him, far away from here.

  6

  A Promise Abandoned, A Promise Delivered

  THEY WILL TELL YOU that Alphonse Lecroq is the most handsome man in Paris. Tales fly around the city of his extraordinary beauty. Every woman he meets falls in love with him; many men, too, so the stories go. People whisper about his face as if it is a work of art more astonishing than La Joconde—and like the Mona Lisa, he is better known by a nickname: Le Miroir, because rumor has it that even he cannot pass any kind of reflective surface without admiring himself in it.

  Guillaume Blanc stands on Rue Nicolet, watching the front door of the apartment building on the opposite side of the road. There is a small fountain on the sidewalk. A limp trickle of water splashes into its shallow stone dish. He shivers, despite the warmth of the early morning sun. He has been thinking about Alphonse Lecroq for three days.

  He never wants to see the man’s face, no matter how lovely it may be.

  Le Miroir runs a network of crime and larceny that stretches across the capital, from rat-infested squats in Belleville to the lavish opulence of town houses in the 8th arrondissement. Mostly he peddles whores, guns, and dirty heroin, but he is not averse to blackmail and extortion of the affluent and influential when the opportunity arises. An army of ruffians and hoods, poisonous and violent, does his thuggish bidding.

  As so often in Paris, beauty cannot be separated from its own mephitic stink.

  Guillaume had no idea whom he was dealing with when, after making a few inquiries, he sat in a café across from a man with a narrow, rat-like face who pushed a grimy envelope of cash across the table toward him. A small loan, just a few hundred francs, enough to tide him over until his luck changed. Once the money was in his hands he barely listened as the man set out the terms of the loan. He hadn’t eaten in days. All he could think about was the cassoulet he would soon be ordering at his favorite restaurant, and the half-bottle of something crisp and cold that would accompany it. He did not care about the preposterous rates of interest, compounded daily. He was not concerned about the promises of retribution that would be visited upon him if he failed to repay the money in a timely fashion. It would never come to that, not for him. He would sell more paintings soon enough.

  That was two months ago. Guillaume has not sold more paintings, and now the money has gone. The day stipulated for repayment by the rat-faced man came and went. Soon after that, angry notes began to appear beneath his door, demanding ever-growing amounts—his original debt was quickly dwarfed by the ballooning interest. After a while he began to burn the notes in the grate without opening them. Then the hammering on his door began, at all hours of the day and night. Guillaume lay in his bed, too afraid to move or make a sound. He stayed awake, every bulb and candle extinguished, waiting for the menacing clomp of boots on the staircase.

  Three nights ago, after the customary thump on the door, a man’s voice rasped through the darkness.

  “I know you’re in there, mon gars.” Guillaume felt the terrified prickle of ice in his veins. “But you can’t run forever. You know that, don’t you? Le Miroir won’t let you make him look like a fool.”

  It was only then that Guillaume understood how much trouble he was in.

  “With interest, penalties, and late fees, you owe twelve hundred francs,” whispered the voice. “You’ve got three days. We’ll leave you alone until then. But have the money ready when we come for it. Down to the last centime. Au sérieux.” A pause. “Three days.”

  After a moment the footsteps retreated down the corridor. The voice did not say what would happen if he didn’t have the money. There was no need.

  Today his time is up, and he has six francs in his pocket. Enough, Guillau
me thinks morosely, for a condemned man’s last meal.

  His hangover has worsened. Poison malingers in his veins. He watches the door on the other side of the street. If this is, indeed, to be his last day, he has come to bid a final, silent adieu.

  Guillaume knows all the residents who live in the building across the street. The elderly couple, stiff-backed and regally slow. The pretty woman who leaves for work at precisely the same time each day, her heels clicking as she hurries toward the Métro. The young man with the black beard who appears every morning with a large suitcase in each hand and a fierce look in his eye. The small, immaculately dressed man who comes and goes frequently, never staying for long. Guillaume watches them all, but he is waiting for somebody else.

  The next time the door opens, a woman with long hair the color of burnished copper appears, a young girl at her side. Guillaume breathes in sharply. There is a wicker basket on the woman’s arm: they are going to the market. The girl is talking excitedly to her mother. She is wearing a new coat that Guillaume has not seen before. They turn and walk down Rue Nicolet. Guillaume longs to run after them, but he just watches them go, as he always does, and his heart performs its familiar tango of longing and regret.

  * * *

  Five minutes later, Guillaume is walking back toward his studio. He gazes at the familiar landmarks of the quartier, wondering if he will never see them again. How he has loved this place! He peers into the windows of his favorite shops, admiring their wares one last time.

  Guillaume Blanc is no fool. He knows that if he stays in Paris, Le Miroir’s thugs will hunt him down and kill him. And so this morning he will go to Gare Montparnasse and spend the last of his money on a train ticket back to his childhood home. La Rochelle is an old port town on the Atlantic coast. His parents, he reflects grimly, won’t be surprised to see him. They’ve been expecting his return since the day he left. His father has enjoyed an undistinguished legal career writing wills for the town’s aging population, and his mother’s ambitions have never been loftier than a nicely kept home and a well-seasoned pot-au-feu. When Guillaume announced his intention to become a painter, they looked at their only child as if he’d sprouted an extra head. Such a bohemian aspiration was a personal affront to their own provincial, clamped-down lives, and they did not trouble to hide their feelings from him. Guillaume sighs, imagining his parents’ sour satisfaction at his return, penniless and without prospects. The thought makes him briefly contemplate taking a train to Nice instead. The weather will be more pleasant there, for sure—but then he remembers the six francs in his pocket. With all those triumphant I-told-you-sos comes food and his childhood bed. It is a price he has no choice but to pay.