The Mosque of Notre Dame

by Elena Chudinova

  So there were believers living in the ghetto!

  “Where did they come from? Didn’t the Pope dissolve the Church?”

  “He had no authority to dissolve it. Christ told them from the beginning that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church.”

  “Why do you keep saying ‘them’? Aren’t you one of them?”

  “I’m from the Maquis, ” Jeanne said irritably. “No, I’m not from here. Don’t ask me any more questions, OK?”

  Well, fine, if I’m not supposed to ask any more questions, I won’t. But if Jeanne was in the Resistance Movement—but not the one led by Sevazmios, since they had never met—that meant they would see each other again. If he asked her point-blank if he could see her again, she would know why, and she would surely tease him. And how could he ask her anyway, since they had practically just met? No, far easier to blow up ten more qadis! He didn’t have to propose or ask them anything! He had to spend at least 24 hours here. What about her?

  “Let’s go talk to Father Lothair,” said Jeanne, jumping up. She had no doubt that Eugène-Olivier would follow her.

  Oh, what a name, Lothair! The smell of heraldic lilies permeated the half-darkness of the underground. There had been some snobs in the Lévêque family, but not even they had gone to such extremes. However, Eugène-Olivier did not want to talk to the priest, even if he was called Father Peter.

  But what could he do? He was here on business, and the priest, it appeared, was the boss. Eugène-Olivier would just make it clear by his behavior that spiritual matters did not interest him at all.

  Jeanne, however, casting a sideways glance at her guest as if it pleased her to shock him, bent down before the priest on one knee like a boy and bowed her head.

  “Jube, domine, benedicere!”

  “Hello, little Jeanne,” the priest’s lips were smiling but in his eyes, fixed on the light-colored head, there was a flash of pain. “Benedicat te omnipotens Deus...”

  “Father Lothair, this is Eugène-Olivier from the Resistance Movement.” Jeanne was already dusting her jeans. “He will be waiting with us until his new documents are delivered from Colombes.”

  “I remember, Jeanne.” Apparently, Father Lothair could not help smiling good-naturedly when looking at the girl. He turned to Eugène-Olivier. “Apparently you’ve not had an easy morning.”

  “I’ve been rewarded with a whole day of rest in a place more beautiful than the Côte d’Azur.” Eugène-Olivier was pleased that he had resisted making the shocking remark that it had been a trifle, nothing at all. It would have been very cheap, and the priest would have noted it immediately.

  “You are here for the first time,” Father Lothair said, observing Eugène-Olivier intently, confident that he had the right to be curious. “Strange place, isn’t it? It was created at a time when people thought religion was an old-fashioned eccentricity—just because they had managed to fly a few dogs and a monkey around our sinful planet. They thought a lot about the future, which they were sure would see the unimaginable flowering of all sciences and artificial forms of intelligence. I’ve read books from those years. The only thing that the worshippers of progress of that time could not imagine was our present. None of them could have even dreamed what their shelters would be used for, and by whom.”

  “I don’t believe in God.” Eugène-Olivier looked the priest in the eyes. “How could He have allowed them... to install foot baths in Notre Dame?”

  “Was He the one who allowed that?” responded Father Lothair. “We did, or our ancestors did. First, by treating Notre Dame as an architectural monument instead of the house of the Throne of God. That’s what they did during the entire 20th century: appease and appease. Speaking of ancestors, yours must have been from Normandy; I’m sure they were.”

  “Probably, I don’t remember.” The question of his origin didn’t particularly interest Eugène-Olivier, but it was clear the priest wanted to change the subject. “We lived in Versailles for a long time—before, of course.”

  “Still, there’s no question. The upper part of your face even looks like Jeanne’s.” Father Lothair glanced at the girl. “And she’s a typical woman of Normandy. When I was a boy, I saw a portrait of Charlotte Corday. It was painted almost thirty years after her death. She was rendered as a generic beauty, I think—nothing to do with the subject. But whenever I see Jeanne, I like to think that I am looking at Charlotte’s real portrait. And it’s quite likely that I am. Charlotte was a girl from Caen. And there are hundreds of girls like Jeanne in Caen today.”

  “How awful,” said Jeanne, “Hundreds of girls with thin hair and short legs!”

  “And you would prefer you looked more like Miss Universe of 2023 than Charlotte Corday?” asked the priest.

  “Miss Universe—what’s that, Father?” asked Jeanne, jokingly. “The best paid model of the year?”

  “No, just the winner of a beauty contest. They were not only models, but students and hairstylists, librarians... There was even a police officer’s wife,” sighed Father Lothair. “I always feel so terribly old when I realize how little you know about the old world.”

  Father Lothair was certainly not an old man; he looked somewhere between 30 and 35. But in order not to make him feel even older, Eugène-Olivier did not ask him who Charlotte Corday was. A nurse shot during World War I? Probably.

  Another woman, tall and slender, entered the church. Eugène-Olivier saw her out of the corner of his eye before he realized who she was.

  “Oh!” Jeanne’s eyes opened wide with surprise

  From afar she looked young, thanks to her narrow hips and quick, youthful gait. Her long, dark hair seemed to have an inner silver glow; it was straight and fell to her fragile shoulders. But when she moved closer, it became evident that the glow was because the dark strands were abundantly mixed with gray. Not only was she not young, she was at least 60. But in her narrow, black jeans, a black turtleneck, running shoes, and a light jacket, Sophia Sevazmios wasn’t exactly old. The most feared of the seven leaders of the Resistance Movement Army— Maquis for short—for the moment, she lived outside of time.

  Eugène-Olivier saw Jeanne’s gaze slide involuntarily to Sophia’s left hand, in its thin leather glove.

  “I take it off when I walk around in their neighborhoods at night,” said Sophia with a smile. You know the song, don’t you? Good day, Father.”

  “Yes.” Jeanne blushed, and Eugène-Olivier discovered with new delight that her blush was somehow English, not warm, but decidedly cool. “I’m glad to see you, Sophia,” said Father Lothair, grinning like a little boy. “This is Jeanne Saintville and I don’t think I need to introduce the young man to you. I imagine you’ve already met today.”

  “You’re an impossible man to surprise, Father.” Sophia’s hand reached toward a large pocket but seeing the altar, she changed her mind.

  “You can sit with me in the sacristy since you can’t survive half an hour without your cigarettes with the Mesopotamian name,” Father Lothair said, motioning toward the small door with his hand.

  “The cigarettes are called Belomorkanal. As far as the young man is concerned, it would seem that the late qadi —by an incredible coincidence, I must say—was responsible for the new use of the Arc de Triomphe. Of course, we didn’t know that the first victim would be Simoulin. Two days more and we might have been able to save him, but time was in their favor.”

  “We need not pity him any longer—now he pities us,” Father Lothair said, opening the metal door to let in Sophia, Jeanne, and Eugène-Olivier. “I have another guest here, but I don’t think she’ll complain about the smoke.”

  In the so-called sacristy, a room with a wardrobe, a desk and a few armchairs, there at first appeared to be no one. Eugène-Olivier’s attention was drawn by the bulky clothes hangers, each of which held vestments of velvet and brocade. Closest to him was a chasuble that even looked heavy, made of dark red brocade, embroidered with dark gold thread and eaten in places by moths. The
gold thread formed the letters “I”, “H” and “S.” Eugène-Olivier knew that they meant “Jesus,” but he couldn’t remember how.

  Hiding behind the hangers was one of the children who had been brought to hear Mass. She was apparently in the mood to play hide-and-seek.

  “Hey, I see you, come out!” Eugène-Olivier called softly.

  The little girl peeked out from behind the chasuble to one side and then the other before emerging. She was about eight years old, maybe less, and as pretty as a picture in a children’s book.

  Something else about her appearance startled Eugène-Olivier: Her light-colored curls, probably the color of flax, were so dirty that they looked like dark ash, and fell to her waist uncombed. Her sole article of clothing was a gray man’s T-shirt, printed with an advertisement for Monoprix supermarkets. The T-shirt fell over her knees like a dress. But because the neck opening was too wide, one or the other of her skinny shoulders peeked out when she moved. The little girl’s shapely bare feet stood on the tile floor as confidently as if she had never worn shoes. No wonder she had managed to cut herself! There was blood on her little feet.

  The little girl stared at Eugène-Olivier with enormous blue eyes. One tangled curl annoyed her by falling across her face. She impatiently pushed it away with her hand. On her little palm, which looked as if it had been carved from ivory, there was also blood.

  “Valerie!” Jeanne called her in a soft voice. “Valerie, I have something for you, come here!”

  The little girl paid no attention. She continued to gaze at Eugène-Olivier.

  “So you sent the devil back to hell and you think the job is finished?” Valerie finally said. “But the Mother of God is still crying. Do you know where she lives? She has a big, beautiful house with multi-colored windows. But the buttocks are in her house now. She didn’t invite them, but they came anyway. The Mother of God doesn’t want the buttocks to go there anymore. Come on, do something—you’re grown ups!”

  Father Lothair and Sophia observed the girl with sadness, but without surprise. Jeanne got down on her knees and pulled a big, round Chupa Chups lollipop from her pocket and tried to lure the girl, holding the candy toward her in her outstretched hand.

  “I don’t want it!” Annoyed, the little girl pushed the candy away. Her left hand was also wounded, quite strangely, in exactly the same place as her right—in the middle of the palm. Her bare feet were also injured identically, just above the toes. Although they were not large, all four wounds were bleeding.

  “Come on, please take it, Valerie,” Jeanne cajoled her. “I stole the lollipop just for you. The buttocks could have caught me! But you don’t want it and my feelings are hurt.”

  The little girl made a face and reluctantly took the candy but she did not unwrap it; she pressed it in her hand and approached Sophia Sevazmios.

  “Sophia, dear Sophia, do something so they can’t go there anymore! You can do it, I know you can!”

  “No, Valerie, I can’t. For you I would, but really I cannot.” Sophia Sevazmios spoke with the child as if she were speaking to an equal, although her voice softened a little. “Please understand that my soldiers and I cannot expel the buttocks from Her house as you would like us to do. My army is so small we couldn’t hold Notre Dame for a week.”

  “You can, you just don’t want to know how! And I can’t help you! The Mother of God won’t let me help you!” And Valerie burst into tears, smearing dirty rivulets on her face.

  “What is this all about? How did she hurt herself like that?” Eugène-Olivier asked Jeanne quietly. They moved away from the priest and Sophia. “Why doesn’t someone bandage her wounds?”

  “She didn’t hurt herself,” Jeanne looked at Eugène-Olivier peculiarly.

  “Look, you don’t stab yourself like that by accident! How did she get those wounds? Who would dare do such a thing to her?”

  “I guess you don’t know about stigmata.”

  “No.” The word seemed vaguely familiar, like the letters IHS.

  “The wounds of Christ... They appear of their own accord, and they bleed. It happens to some saints, to the righteous. Valerie is a fool for Christ. She knows everything about everyone; it’s impossible to deceive her.”

  “Why does she call the Muslims ‘buttocks’?”

  “Have you ever seen them at prayer—at salah?”

  “Of course.”

  “What’s the only part of them you see?”

  Eugène-Olivier whistled.

  “She’s little. She says what she sees. If only you knew how afraid they are of her! She goes all over Paris and threatens them with her fists and she stamps her foot at them... But most of all, she loves Notre Dame.”

  “Notre Dame?” Eugène-Olivier couldn’t help noticing that Notre Dame had been on his mind all day, painfully reminding him of its existence.

  “Yes, she calls it the house of the Mother of God. And she wants us to expel them from it. She often goes around crying because it’s now a mosque—“

  Just then, Valerie came runing up to Eugène-Olivier. “Your grandfather was good,” she said very seriously. “He’s in Heaven now. And you, will you chase them out?”

  She moved closer to Eugène-Olivier, then turned around and headed toward the door. She sang softly in a remarkably pure, ethereal voice:

  Meunier, tu dors,

  ton moulin va trop vite!

  Meunier, tu dors,

  ton moulin va trop fort!

  (“Miller, you’re sleeping!

  Your mill turns too quickly!

  Miller, you’re sleeping!

  Your mill goes too fast!”)

  Her little figure, a statuette dressed in rags, had almost reached the door. But first she turned, faced Eugène-Olivier once more and shook her finger sternly.

  “I don’t know anything about your grandfather,” said Jeanne, “but now you probably understand why everyone is so afraid of her.”

  Tears fell from Jeanne’s gray eyes and their black lashes as she watched Valerie depart. Jeanne did not seem to notice that she was crying.

  “No one knows where she came from or what happened to her family. She’s always barefoot, even in winter, and she sleeps in the streets. Don’t even bother offering her shoes and warm clothes. Once in a while I manage to bathe her or at least comb her hair. But for that, I have to catch her in a particularly good mood. What she is, I can’t imagine. I think sometimes she eats nothing all week except the Holy Eucharist. She loves to nibble on the leftover hosts; Father Lothair always leaves them for her.”

  “I told Father Lothair that I don’t believe in God and he intentionally changed the subject,” said Eugène-Olivier.

  “I should warn you he’s quite sly.”

  “And you... you do believe?”

  “Of course,” she said with surprise. “I’m not a fool.”

  “Thanks. Then why are you killing them? Aren’t you supposed to sit and pray or something?”

  “I asked you not to ask me that!” said Jeanne intensely. “You’ve touched a sore spot. A very sore spot. During the Crusades, I would have lived well, but my soul is really not mature enough for Judgment Day. Or maybe I’m not brave enough. Don’t laugh, but it’s true: It takes more courage to sit, pray and wait for someone to come and kill you than to fight a war.”

  “I understand.” Eugène-Olivier really did understand. Only an hour ago, he couldn’t have imagined anything of the sort.

  Sophia had finally taken her box of cigarettes, pulled one out, flattened it with her fingers, and put it into her cigarette holder.

  “Unhappy girl,” she said, blowing out smoke.

  “The girl is extremely unhappy,” replied Father Lothair. “But I’m not talking about the younger girl. I mean the older one. Valerie is above our human understanding. She has consolations available to her that we cannot even imagine. But Jeanne Saintville is torn in two by her heart and her soul. Like evenly matched horses.”

  “For you, those are two different things.
For me, they are not.”

  “Is that true, Sophia? Have you forgotten what they have threatened us with these days?”

  “Of course not. I really want to tell you something, Father. Perhaps tonight. Would that be possible?”

  “Closer to midnight, yes. Now I must go to the ghetto to someone who is dying. God knows how long I will stay there. But after that, I will wait for you.”

  Jeanne was already running through the corridor leading to the church, confusing Eugène-Olivier, who was following her. In front of the next metal gate, she stopped and pressed some kind of metal plate.

  “Here it is, the cell for guests. Normally, it’s used by visiting monks.”

  The tiny room looked more like a ship’s cabin in the old films. Only there was no porthole. The ceiling was right above one’s head, and the bed was attached to the wall. Jeanne opened and closed the wardrobe doors a few times, showing empty shelves for clothing, some folded blankets and a few books. There was a small shower behind frosted glass in one corner. There was nothing else except a glass table with a single, asymmetrical leg. At this point, Eugène-Olivier was not surprised by the small, wooden cross on the wall with some juniper branches stuck behind it.

  “Classy. Just like Hotel Lutetia.”

  “And here is the hotel map.” Jeanne pulled a sheet of paper out of the closet with a map sketched on it. “The bomb shelter is really not as big as it looks, but if you don’t know the layout, you can get lost. What kind of documents are being prepared for you?”

  “The usual, ghetto inhabitant with exit rights. What I’ll be doing outside the ghetto, I don’t know yet. Most likely a street cleaner.”

  “A collaborator’s ID is better, you have more freedom of movement.”

  “And do gymnastics? No way!”

  Jeanne nodded knowingly. The eyes of the young man and the girl met. To “do gymnastics” in young people’s slang meant salah— to bow at Muslim prayer with your fanny in the air. As far as paperwork was concerned, radical sharia law, because it forbade pictures of faces, worked in favor of underground fighters: It could be changed as many times as necessary. No one looked at faces. And since women were basically not to be seen, you could give a woman’s documents to a man.