What could one do? Lothaire was up to the challenge. He was ready for the many sufferings of which the abbot warned him. (What was it that they called him? Abbot Bailiff!—and many other names.) Lothaire was prepared for the fact that he would probably have to serve in an old barn and that on his way there he would pass a magnificent Baroque chapel turned into a tourist center with a museum and a souvenir shop or, even more painful, a Pseudo-Gothic or Neoclassical church “without architectural or historical value” that had been converted into a mosque “to meet the needs of the local population.” He had been prepared, and he was ready.
But no one was ready for what interrupted his studies.
Government troops surrounded Flavigny during Mass so that no one would detect them. But what would have changed if the seminary family had noticed before the soldiers spread out into the cells, the passages, the halls? They could have barricaded themselves and survived a few days under siege. But it wouldn’t have served any purpose. The press wouldn’t have reacted.
The faithful would have come, it’s true. They would have camped around them—with their children, with crosses, with icons. God forbid, someone would have been killed. Flavigny was liquidated by government decree, and the army that closed it was at that time two-thirds Muslim and one-third non-religious French. The latter viewed the seminary students dressed in cassocks as exotic savages, and they openly made fun of them.
While the professor patiently packed the liturgical items, trying to prevent them from falling into profane hands, one of the deacons sent Lothaire to find some empty boxes and rope. Remembering that these were stored in a closet on the second floor, Lothaire hurried up the steps. The door to Bluebeard’s chamber was wide open. There were two young soldiers—French, they were certainly French—in charge there. One sat on the floor drinking Coca-Cola from the chalice; the empty bottle stood next to him. The other man was turning the tabernacle from the training altar over in his hands with curiosity.
Entering the hall, Lothaire could not refrain from laughing. These young men imagined they were destroying the chapel.
“What are you laughing at?” asked one of the soldiers in surprise, reluctantly moving his feet. “What’s so funny, abbot?”
“I’m not an abbot yet.” Lothaire pointed a fist (which as yet bore no ordination ring) toward the weak jaw of the soldier with satisfaction, “but you are a complete idiot.”
His year in Flavigny—thirteen months to be exact, had really been too short.
“We need to get off here and switch to another track,” said the priest. Eugène-Olivier was not the only one who knew his way around the underground.
Their journey through the darkness continued uneventfully. But Eugène-Olivier Lévêque had never felt so bad and so sad in his life. Perhaps it was because he had been doing something he had never done before: imagining that he was Muslim. Not a Muslim of the present day, but one of those shahids who were so numerous at the turn of the century, when this was their method of establishing rule over half of the world:
He and his band would invade a children’s kindergarten during some jolly feast day, such as a non-fasting Tuesday when children were enthusiastically drawing cornucopias for each other, dancing, and eating small cakes. Once the children were hostages, it would be published by the willing media that for every wounded shahid, they would kill three or five children, depending on the number they had managed to capture.
Then they would set conditions which, if unmet, they threatened would result in the killing of more children—for example, abolishing the law that prohibited the wearing of the chador.
To move the media-watchers from fear to panic, they would slaughter a child before the eyes of the other children—who were too afraid even to cry. Then they would set free another child hostage and send him out the door of the kindergarten holding a photo showing a close-up of the dead innocent’s body.
Concessions to the Muslim terrorists were always given, but it always turned out that concessions bought nothing. Every agreement painstakingly negotiated with the terrorists would be inoperative once all the hostages were freed or killed. The terrorists had just one goal—to intimidate, to break.
After the first two or three hostage-takings, our grandfathers and grandmothers would beg the government to stop placing the lives of their children at risk: Let the Muslim women go to school dressed any way they liked...
Think about this: It is for this that young Muslim men are ready to die. Some of them are high on energy drinks, but more or less conscious and ready. That one over there, splattered with the blood of a child, makes a phone call to the Emirates and says goodbye to his mother, tells her he is going to meet Allah. She blesses him and tells him she has already invited the guests to “his wedding with the raven-haired maidens of Heaven.” Finally, he falls among the bodies of his victims. And then? Is there anything after that?
When the raven-haired succubi come out to meet him, do they talk first, or cut to the chase? Do they even know how to talk? What would they talk about , since they aren’t human? It is only sex, only red mouth, only white hands—two white, ghostly white, moon-like hands, hands that squeeze... The hands aren’t living. Therefore, they are dead.
“We’re here,” said Father Lothaire.
CHAPTER 9
The house of the converts
Through the window of the automobile, one could see the Cluny subway station.
“This used to be the Museum of the Middle Ages,” said Annette, barely audibly. “My grandmother took me there when I was very little, about four years old. There was a needlepoint there called The Lady and the Unicorn . I still remember it today. Later I think they burned it... You know what, we’re going to tell my household that you are my cousin from the ghetto and that your name is Nicole. I’ve always liked that name. If I had... Oh well, it’s not important.”
“My name is Jeanne.” How difficult it was to speak with someone when you couldn’t see her eyes. And how stuffy it was in the tent-dress. She’d had the opportunity to wear one before, but somehow, as soon as you take it off, you forget what a nasty experience it was. “I don’t think it’s necessary to use another name. We’re not in the ghetto.”
“And where do you live?” There was mistrust in the woman’s voice.
Jeanne shrugged her shoulders. “Nowhere,” she said, again forgetting that no one could see her.
“That’s impossible!”
“Oh, it’s quite possible. I haven’t lived anywhere for four years. There are quite a few good people who will let you spend the night, or with whom you can leave your things.”
Annette didn’t answer. Her reaction to Jeanne’s words could not be seen through the fabric of the chador.
The car passed through the gate of a fenced garden that surrounded a two-story house under a high, black roof. Many such houses were built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jeanne reluctantly observed that she had slept through the blooming of the flowers on the chestnut trees—which now glowed like pink candles. It seemed that only yesterday the chestnuts were not yet in bloom.
“Go in, daughter,” Annette left the car in front of the door, like someone used to servants.
No one had called Jeanne “daughter” in a long time, especially not so sincerely.
They entered a very strange house. Jeanne had had the opportunity to see darkened windows many times from the outside, but never from the inside. Before the Muslims came to Paris, high windows like these in their stone frames began from the floor and cheerfully filled the room with the sun’s rays. What a view they opened to the small garden with all the candles of the chestnuts!
But inside, the stone ornaments around the windows had vanished long ago in some expensive renovation. It looked to Jeanne as if she had entered a basement. She was accustomed to living in rooms that were actually underground—but to deliberately shield oneself from the light! Even in the ghetto, glass sparkled cheerfully in the little windows. Housewives easily separated th
emselves from the view of others with curtains.
If the room resembled a basement, it was an opulent basement. Even the hallway had carpets, drapery, and an enormous number of Turkish designs rendered in metal. The stairs leading up were carved to match the doors and interior arches.
An old woman opened the door for them and immediately slid somewhere behind the velvet drapery.
“Madame Aset with a guest. Oh, what joy!” The old woman was fat, and her overtly sweet voice clashed with the lines of her face—the sharp, black brows, the threatening eyes like plums, the hooked nose and dark spots above her thin lips. She was, of course, not French. That would have been obvious even if she had spoken French and not the disgusting lingua franca.
“Bring the bags from the back seat,” said her mistress, pulling Jeanne into the room. “Yes, Zuraida, this girl is the daughter of my cousin Bertha who lives, hmm, you know...”
“I hope Madame did not go to such a place!” The servant clapped her hands.
“Of course not,” the woman who introduced herself as Annette replied irritably, her voice as tense as a taut wire. “The girl was brought by a relative who has documents to move throughout Paris. But what are you waiting for, Zuraida? Hurry up!”
The old woman cast a sharp look at Jeanne. What could she see except how tall she was? But no doubt she would find a moment to peek.
When they passed into a high, large room that apparently signaled the beginning of the women’s half of the house, Annette (or Aset) casually removed her chador and threw it on the carpet. Before Jeanne could follow her example, the tinkling of small bells could be heard and a girl about fifteen ran out from the interior.
“Mama, Mama, the girl has exactly the same kind of clothes that I asked you to buy for me!” she exclaimed, throwing herself at Annette. “You see, it’s a modern color. You see?”
“It’s not exactly the same kind —this rag is yours.” Jeanne slid out of the chador.
“This is my daughter Iman,” said Annette calmly. “Iman, our guest is called Jeanne. Take her to your room and have fun, and I will ask them to bring you something to eat.”
Iman barely nodded, completely confused. Without a word, she headed for one of two rooms connected by an arch.
The silence lasted for a while. Jeanne sat in a leather armchair. She had the strange feeling that she had the right to enter the house, that she had the right to know the truth about its inhabitants.
Iman did not sit, she merely graciously leaned one knee on the same kind of leather armchair. She looked at Jeanne with eyes wide open.
Jeanne stared back at her.
Unlike Jeanne, Iman was ideally built, although it would not have hurt her to lose about ten pounds. Squeezed into black pants, her buttocks looked inflated and her naked stomach was chubby. She wore something in pink silk that looked more like an extended bra than a short top. She had bracelets with bells on the wrists and hair clasps and ornamental pins in her hair lifted at the nape. Although she was a year or two younger than Jeanne, Iman was the same height, and would probably overtake her. The rooms resembled their mistress. At the head of the bed covered with a cherry-colored bedspread there was a pink satin pillow, useless by its construction, but highly decorative with ribbons and flounces.
There were pearls of all colors in translucent boxes in such quantities that it looked like pearl barley in the kitchen of some sorceress in a fairy tale. There were muslin and silk, mosaics and children’s toys. The room only lacked for dolls, but of course there couldn’t be any of those. Instead, there were a lot of sweets that, strictly speaking, didn’t belong in a bedroom. Jeanne’s parents had chided her for such things. Here, it seemed to be expected that at any moment one could reach for Turkish delight, halvah, candy, peanuts, pistachios, cookies, or fruit.
“What can I show you? asked Iman lavishly, stretching gracefully like a cat. “Do you want to see my jewelry?”
“Sure, let’s see it,” smiled Jeanne.
Iman immediately pulled up an enormous box, sat on the floor next to Jeanne and began to play with a key. How strange she looked to Jeanne! Blue eyes, like Gaël Moussoltin, a round chin like Madeleine Méchin. But so strange! Her movements were lazy. There was so much boredom in every gesture, in her voice.
“Father gave me these bracelets for my thirteenth birthday.” Iman had already raised the lid of her box, removed her trinkets with the bells and put on her wrist something very heavy with small, symmetrical etching. “I have two, see? Father ordered the pair in the eighth district along with some other things because in that boutique they take orders two months in advance. But I don’t want to wear both. Mama and I bought this pearl; it’s just from the Lafayette Gallery, but I like it so much! But the bracelets are something unique. I think I’ll put both of them on after all! Look, aren’t they wonderful!”
“Do you use them to build up your muscles? I thought weights were banned for you people?”
Jeanne again thought of Gaël. Unlike Madeleine and herself, Gaël Moussoltin was in love, and knew how to be beautiful.
“Gaël is a real parisienne ,” Mademoiselle Teillé had sighed, patiently listening to her discourse on how “only one saucy detail is permitted in an outfit, either a décolletage with a long skirt, or a mini-skirt with a blouse buttoned to the throat. Or we call it something quite different, don’t we?” That diamonds “don’t come to life” in gold and that, in general, “gold is worse than silver.”
The Moussoltins didn’t have a lot of gold or diamonds left. But what an effect her solitary sapphire made—with its little gold prongs that could not even be seen from ten steps away, so that it looked as if the stone had merely paused on her finger to rest and would escape when it wanted to. From close up, the stone was like an eye with golden eyelashes looking at you.
“What are weights?” Iman frowned.
“They’re these heavy things you lift so your arms get strong,” sighed Jeanne.
“That’s a sport. Sports are haraam. ”
“That’s what I meant. Your bracelets are a substitute for sports.”
“You don’t like them?” Iman was surprised.
“I think they’re hideous.”
Iman closed her box, insulted. An unpleasant silence ensued.
“You want some candy?” Iman extended a shiny box to Jeanne.
“Thank you. I don’t like candy.”
“What kind of sweets do you like?” said Iman with a little bit more self-confidence, playing the role of the gracious hostess.
“I don’t know... I like caramels with Calvados.”
“Calvados,” said Iman, “That’s a place near La Manche. Do they make a candy?”
“Calvados is a brandy made of apples that used to be made there.”
“Brandy?” Iman looked up as if she had pricked herself with a needle. “You’ve tried brandy? Really? And they didn’t whip you?”
“In order to whip me, someone would have to catch me.” Jeanne was already slightly bored with this visit.
“Listen,” Iman rolled her eyes significantly. “I wasn’t born yesterday. I can see you’re from the ghetto. But surely you’re not a kafir ; you must be a convert? Is that right?”
“What do you think? Of course I’m not a kafir. It’s you who are a Saracen.”
Aset at that time was moving around in the kitchen without noticing the disapproving glances of the cook. She was lifting the lids of the pots and pans, peering into ovens and grills, trying to guess which of the dishes prepared for lunch might please the girl who had unexpectedly crossed their threshold.
She was aware that she had been exaggerating a little—Jeanne didn’t need shelter. One could tell from looking at her that she had somewhere to go in this enormous city, even without Annette. It was she who needed the girl—to spend at least a few hours in her home. She wanted to offer her something to eat and give her a present of some kind. It seemed foolish, but to Aset it seemed that if Jeanne ate at least a spoonful of what she offered he
r, it would salve her conscience a little, and help her banish the unbearable feeling of being lost.
This unbearable feeling had not left Aset since the moment she became so afraid of her poor friend Zeynab. She had always thought of Zeynab as an ambitious fool. But these were new times, and it was not Islam that invented the necessity of a woman supporting her husband by befriending the wives of his business partners. It had always been like that, those were the rules of the game. Her life included pleasant responsibilities such as running the house and educating the children—and unpleasant ones, such as socializing with a fool like Zeynab. But why had everything suddenly become so strange, why had she begun to feel a sense of horror, like a child, when the pile without a mouth next to her began to scream among shreds of glass and the shouting that came from the street? Didn’t it seem as if that were not Zeynab in her chador, but some kind of ghost—something unclean hidden beneath the fabric more horrible than the living dead?
She had felt slightly better only since this girl, Jeanne, appeared, and she wanted her to stay as long as possible.
“And who are the Saracens?” Iman couldn’t be accused of being incurious.
“The followers of Mohammed. That’s what you were called back in the times when Charles Martel completely destroyed you.”
“Charles Martel was a bandit, he was the worst of the kafirs!” Iman’s nostrils flared with anger and suddenly she looked like Gaël Moussoltin, Madeleine Méchin and Geneviève Bussy all at the same time. “He’s burning in hell! He was a filthy criminal!”
“He was your ancestor,” said Jeanne.
“That’s not important! It’s not important who one is by birth. What is important is that one confesses the true faith!”
The Mosque of Notre Dame Page 14