Perestroika in Paris

by Jane Smiley

  The answer, as far as Paras was concerned, was “Let’s try it and see.” She went through the doorway, which was old and wide, and she clip-clopped first to the sink, where she licked the porcelain in a way that invited Étienne to put in the plug and run some water. He did so, and Paras took a long drink. When she was well and truly finished, Étienne pulled the plug. The next thing she did was to smell the remainder of a baguette that Étienne and his great-grandmama had purchased the day before. Étienne tore it into pieces; they were not especially hard, and Paras chewed them up and swallowed them down. They were not delicious, however, unlike the kale that Étienne pulled out of the refrigerator, which tasted to Paras of sunshine and summertime. There was a lot of it, and she enjoyed it very much, which was fine with Étienne, since he didn’t like kale at all, and his great-grandmama made him eat it because she said it was very nutritious.

  They moved on to carrots, parsnips, turnips, sweet potatoes, all of which Étienne was glad to see disappear from the larder (which was deep and wide, half a story dug into the ground, cool enough for extended storage; Etienne went up and down the steps several times, each time bringing up a surprise). Finally, he got to the potatoes. Paras sniffed them, and in other circumstances she might have eaten one, but now she left them alone and looked out the window. The window gave onto the courtyard. She could tell by the light that the day was coming to an end. Without really intending to, Paras continued through the cuisine, which, like the other rooms in the house, was a large space. At the far end was what had once been the door to which purveyors of food and wine had come, bringing everything Madame de Mornay or any other Mornay might need for suppers and parties. It was a large door, the same color as the wall, but Paras could smell that it led to the outside. She stood in front of it for a moment or two, investigating it, and then, by mistake, really, she bumped it with her knee and her hoof. After she did this, Étienne stepped in front of her and opened the door. This courtyard was different from the other one, not quite so large, and because of where it was situated, it contained hardly any snow, though it was somewhat gloomier and more overgrown than the courtyard outside the front door. Paras went outside and got rid of the water she had drunk from the sink. But it was still cold, so, after walking about for a few moments, she presented herself at the door again, and Étienne, who really quite liked her, stepped back and invited her in. He also gave her a lump of sugar.

  And that was how the two of them agreed upon what the house was for and what the house was not for. That she had made a small mistake in the grand salon was fine with Étienne. He found himself a bucket, threw the manure out the window into the berry patch, and did a little mopping.

  * * *

  THE MANURE WAS not unnoticed, except by Madame de Mornay, who was still sleeping soundly. If Paras had looked closely, she would have seen, in the corner of the grand salon where she’d made her deposit, a small hole in the wall where the floor molding had chipped and broken away. That hole was the entrance to a rather large estate belonging to Conrad and Kurt, father and son, two black rats who were part of a family of rats who had been living in the walls since long before the Mornays had ever been heard of. The rat family had once been quite extensive, with connections all over Paris, but some years before, a prolific tribe of cats had moved into the Champ de Mars, and reproduced to such a degree that most of the local rats, especially the smaller black ones, had either been wiped out or moved on to the Place des Invalides. Conrad and Kurt sometimes went for days without seeing, or, more important, hearing another rat in the neighborhood. The two main entrances to the rat estate were in the very storeroom where Étienne had gotten the kale and the carrots—one opening was not far from the flour bin (this one was larger, and normally used to carry provisions into the estate), and the other opening was down the wall a ways, behind the lentil bin. Kurt and Conrad and their predecessors had long since given up trying to chew their way into the various bins, barrels, crates, and even bags, because Étienne was not much good at cleaning up spilled provisions, and going down the short staircase had been too much for Madame de Mornay for years now. Kurt and Conrad were fat and lazy, though still much more stylish than brown rats. Many times every day, they went out the exit and in the entrance, picking up whatever Étienne left behind. This was largely the reason why Étienne didn’t realize that the place was such a mess—Kurt and Conrad worked as his cleanup crew.

  The estate was an enormous maze that ran all through the walls of the house and had several exterior openings as well. Conrad had sometimes gone out into the world in hopes of finding a rat or two, preferably black, preferably female, to join them in the estate. But the cat tribe was as avid and skilled as they had always been—they were everywhere, Conrad could sense them, he did not want to run into a lean and hungry feline when he was just trying to find a friend. Kurt was thus rather pleased to see, out the second-story window (his own aperture was a hole in the wall just below the sill), a certain canine pacing back and forth in front of the house. She had come at dusk, and now she walked for a moment, paused, lifted her head, sniffed, gave a single, urgent bark, then walked some more. Kurt knew which dogs were ratters and which dogs considered rats beneath them. This dog was just the sort who wouldn’t look at a rat—all about birds, these dogs were. Even though Kurt had never heard of its happening, he could imagine taking such a dog on as a protector. Conrad said that this was a ridiculous idea, but Kurt thought that it was merely “imaginative.” And Conrad agreed that, once you had a horse in the house, just about anything was possible. Conrad was old; Kurt was young. He knew that there were young female rats out there, and he thought of female rats more and more as he matured. He did not intend to give up on finding one of his own until he had at least tried something.

  Instead of taking a little nap, which he sometimes did around dusk, Kurt gazed out the aperture until the canine moped away. Then he went through the wall into one of the uninhabited chambers and chewed meditatively on some linen drapes. He knew that Conrad was down in the storeroom, waiting to see what Étienne would leave for them. And it didn’t matter to either of them that the horse might get some of what was rightfully theirs. There were plenty of provisions to go around, and always had been.

  * * *

  MADAME DE MORNAY HAD expected her outing to take a lot out of her, and it did. When she woke from her nap, she was still exhausted. She rang her little bell, the one that called Étienne to her. He came at once, because it was very important to him that his great-grandmama stay in her room, at least until some idea of where to put the horse came to him—the grand salon and the cuisine were both places where Madame de Mornay spent a good deal of time. The library was a possibility, but it had hard, slippery floors, and windows onto the Champ de Mars. And whether Paras could or would be able to negotiate stairs was a question he had to answer. But the Feast of the Immaculate Conception had done Madame de Mornay in. She sat up in bed, drank a mélange of milk and honey with dried chamomile, and fell asleep for the night over her book, which was the last volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, a book she had been reading for eighty-three years and never quite finished. She kept at it, though, because her mother had met Monsieur Proust once at a party.

  For himself and Paras, Étienne put together a pleasant degustation of shredded cabbage, withered apples (Paras smacked her lips, they were so tart and sweet at the same time), chopped beets, and more sweet potatoes. He offered her some pieces of cheese, his own favorite, but she wrinkled her upper lip and turned it down, as she also turned down the dark chocolate. Kurt, who was standing just inside the entrance to the rat palace, fluttered his whiskers at the odor of the dark chocolate. He would have liked a taste, but it was something Étienne never dropped and never left on the counter. After her meal, Paras took another long drink of water from the sink, and then went outside. Étienne huddled into his jacket and went outside with her. While they were gone, Kurt gathered up the remains of their meal, an
d also a single dried anchovy that he and Conrad must have missed from some earlier time. It was a mere fragment, but delicious all the same.

  NINE

  That night, Frida trotted back across the Pont d’Iéna exactly as if she knew what she was doing, and, in a way, she did. She hadn’t been to the Place du Trocadéro since the leaves were fluttering off the trees; it existed in her memory as a place of comfort and richness—her little hiding place in the cemetery, her enjoyment of not only the provisions but also the well-dressed passersby, the tiny dogs in their purses who would growl at her (for a long time, she’d thought that was what purses were for), the cigarette smokers lounging beside the walls (Jacques was a smoker when he could afford the cigarettes and occasionally he’d splurged on a bottle of champagne—he’d even given her some in her water bowl). Jacques had taken much pleasure in the lights and the busy social scene, had even thought himself, in a way, a part of it, since he had grown up on the Avenue de Messine, and liked walking past his old building when he could. One of Frida’s favorite things had been to sit, erect and proud, on the top step of one of the two buildings at the Palais de Chaillot (she had heard humans talking about it—a museum about buildings in a large building). Jacques hadn’t felt it worth his while to spend the money to go inside, though there were other museums he had entered, leaving Frida to guard his guitar on the street. She had also spent some time, while Jacques was asleep, exploring the cemetery that overlooked the square—he liked it because it was quiet there, enclosed, a good place for a long sleep.

  As she trotted over the bridge, she was well aware of the enormous lit Tour over her shoulder, but she didn’t turn to glance at it. She felt that she was somehow escaping its chilly aura. Once, she had asked Paras what she thought of the huge thing, and Paras had said, with bona-fide curiosity, “What difference does it make to me?,” and Frida hadn’t been able to answer that question. Raoul and other birds seemed to view it as a sort of tree/building hybrid, and he had told Frida that various flocks over the years had attempted to colonize it, not pausing to wonder, as he said, “why no flocks had dared come before them—but every bird thinks of himself as an adventurer.” Of course, he also remarked, the humans were not going to allow any flocks of Aves a free hand with that tower, not even Corvus corax in all of their many noble variations.

  Once across the bridge, which was clear of snow but icy, Frida took a chance and did a thing she could not have done with Paras in tow, which was to go straight up the hill, beside the pool and then between the two buildings, as if someone were calling her and she had a right to be there.

  And, indeed, the cafés around the square were ablaze with light, open for customers even if the night was chilly and slippery. Much of the snow had melted off during the day, or been swept to one side. The streets were shiny, and a few cars and taxis were making their cautious way here and there. Frida went over and sat beside the door of the Pâtisserie Carette, arranging herself so that she was facing outward toward the square, but also half looking in the window. She took a deep breath or two and waited.

  With the wind blowing in her face, Frida suddenly felt cold for the first time—all day long, she had been on the move, up the Avenue de Suffren, then back and forth across the Champ de Mars, then pacing in front of the house that her new horse friend had disappeared into. She had been distracted from the chill, first by the boy and then by events. At any rate, Frida was such a big, strong, muscular dog that she didn’t feel the cold the way some dogs did. Her coat was short but dense, well suited for racing into rivers and lakes after ducks or into fields after pheasants, partridges, and other birds. No body of water that she had ever seen had intimidated her, including the Seine itself, which was plenty warm, even in the winter—at least, Frida thought so. But now, in the semidarkness, with the brilliant lights of the pâtisserie shining in her eyes, and the sight of the waiters relaxing, smoking, chatting among themselves as they wondered whether any customers would come in, she began to shiver. Was it fear or dread or cold? Frida herself didn’t know. And the sky above was so dark that Frida could see nothing except the wavering lights of the giant tower across the river.

  A voice said, “What in the world are you talking about?”

  It was the voice of Raoul. Frida peered into the darkness. He was perched on the railing of the Métro entrance. Every so often, Frida had taken refuge in the Métro, but it was dangerous and loud, and the weather had to be very very rainy for her to choose the Métro. Frida sneezed, then said, “Hello, I was wondering where you had gotten to.”

  “I went to my nest, of course. A Corvus of my station has more things to attend to than one horse. But what in the world are you talking about?”

  “What do you mean?” said Frida.

  “Surely, you realize that you are always mumbling on about something?”

  “No,” said Frida. “I didn’t realize that.”

  “My heavens,” said Raoul, “I’ve been watching you since the summer. I’ve never seen such a talker. Mumble-mumble this, mumble-mumble that. I thought that that was the way Canis familiaris remembered things, by talking about them all the time.”

  Frida felt her shivering intensify. No one had ever said this to her, but she knew instantly that it was true. She hardly ever barked—Jacques had taught her that her bark was excessively loud and therefore dangerous if a dog (and a man) wanted to be left alone. And Jacques had not liked whining, and yet there were so many feelings and ideas that required expression of some sort. Even so, she said, “I don’t really know what you mean,” and Raoul commenced to grumble and chat in a very doglike voice that Frida recognized perfectly as the voice of sometimes her only friend, herself. She sighed. Then she said, “That’s a good imitation.”

  “Most Aves are adept at that,” said Raoul. “You know about Psittaciformes, of course. They are an invasive order, but humans like them for their color, I suppose—humans are very shallow in some ways. Corvus are just as adept at different dialects as Psittaciformes, but we get far less credit—”

  “What is a Psittaciform?” said Frida.

  “A parrot, in common parlance, but of course there are many species. There have to be, because so many earthly beings are reincarnated as Aves. It’s very educational for them. Or us, I might say. I feel that, in my former life, I was a government official; perhaps I was not as effective as I should have been. And look at Sid and Nancy. Terribly anxious, even for common mallards. My guess is that in a former life they were impulsive and careless….”

  Frida lay down, put her head on her crossed paws, and closed her eyes. There was a silence, and then Raoul said, “I do tend to go on, I know. It is a feature of age. I have learned so many things in my life that they just force their way out of my beak.” Then he said, “I did peek in the windows at the Rue Marinoni today. The first time, it looked as though our friend was having a lovely nap, all stretched out on the floor, and the second time, she was eating from a very large bin. The boy seems to like her.”

  “No good can come of this,” said Frida.

  “Difficult to judge that,” said Raoul. “The boy seems to do well on his own, for a boy. My view is that the danger is not to the Equus, it is to the boy. Over the years, I have observed that adult humans are very nervous if an immature human seems to be without a protector.”

  Frida’s ears flicked at that word, “protector.” With dogs, she knew, the question of who was the protected and who was the protector was always an open one. When you saw, on the streets of Paris, a human and a dog walking along, it could be either one, no matter how very small the dog was. She had seen dogs who might not even come up to her knees on the alert, not only looking this way and that, but barking, “Stay away, stay away! I will kill you if you hurt my human!” And it was true that, if there were three dogs together, it was the job of the smallest dog to keep an eye out and alert the larger dogs if danger was at hand. Had she been Jacques’s pro
tector? If so, perhaps she had not done a very good job.

  Raoul said, “Pardon me, but there you go again. Talking to yourself. Is there something that you would like to communicate?”

  Frida forced herself to remain silent for a very long moment, then said, “I suppose that communicating is rather dangerous.”

  Raoul said, “I hadn’t thought of that. For Aves, not communicating is very dangerous. You never know when some hawk or owl might take silence the wrong way.” And then he said, “Indeed. I will shut my trap now. Good practice.” He flew upward, and the door beside Frida eased open.

  The man who opened the door was not old, and he had a scowl on his face—Frida knew he intended to chase her away, perhaps to kick her—she had seen that in her day. But she felt too sad even to stand up. Let him kick me, she thought. She turned her head and stared at him. He stared back at her, and his face softened. After a moment, he squatted down and patted her on the top of her head. He said, “I have never seen such a sad face on such a beautiful dog.” He stroked her several times, kindly and smoothly, as if he knew just how.

  Inside, the man behind the counter said, “Orlande! Close the door. What a wind! I don’t know why we are even open this evening.”

  Orlande stood up, backed up, and then bowed, clearly inviting Frida into the pâtisserie. Frida was undecided—the interior of the restaurant was warm and light, and smelled good. There was no one there except the two men, but, still, it was inside. And at that very moment, Raoul flew up behind her and pecked her very smartly just above her tail. She jumped, Orlande laughed, and she stepped into the restaurant. She immediately sat down in her most dignified manner and offered Orlande her paw. He took it, shook it. From behind the counter, the other man tossed something. Orlande put his hand up and caught it, then showed it to Frida. It smelled good—it was a small warm roll. Frida took it politely, dropped it on the floor, ate it in as dignified a manner as she could. After she had done so, she dipped her head. Orlande patted her again.