Paris Is Always a Good Idea Page 15

  The rectangular white house with the red-tiled roof stood there peacefully, as if painted by a child, and as Rosalie unlocked the front door she was in no way prepared for what was awaiting her there.

  Nineteen

  There was always something eerie about coming into an empty house. It was as quiet as a museum, and only the click of Rosalie’s summer sandals on the parquet floor disturbed the solitude as she walked carefully through the rooms and looked around a little. Although she had already visited Max several times, she really only knew the library with its big fireplace and two massive sofas, and the terrace with its reddish round tiles, which was directly outside the library and led to the garden. The traces of his hasty exit were still apparent all around her.

  In the kitchen with its milky stone floor the used breakfast dishes were standing on a tray next to a white sink. The gardener must have brought them in before he closed and locked the big living-room window. Rosalie found the dishwasher and put in the dishes. In the library, the book that had caused the fall was still lying on the floor beside the tall wooden ladder. She picked it up and put it on the rectangular coffee table between the two sofas.

  The afternoon sun shone brightly between the opened drapes. A squirrel was sitting on the terrace nibbling at something until, scared off by the movement behind the window, it ran across the lawn and scampered up a tree.

  There was a single men’s leather slipper on the floor next to one of the two wide, light-colored sofas that stood opposite each other between old-fashioned saffron-yellow floor lamps. Rosalie had already found the other one in the hall, almost tripping over it.

  She walked past the book-lined wall and turned right where the library opened into a study. In front of the window, which also had a view of the garden, stood a desk with a dark-green leather surface. Next to the desk lamp was a framed picture of a smiling woman with friendly eyes. That must be Marchais’s late wife. Rosalie looked around on the desk, quickly finding the little book Max had asked for. Raymond Radiguet, Le diable au corps. Then she opened the right-hand desk drawer where the cell phone charger was kept.

  She glanced at the list they had just made in the hospital. Toiletry bag and aftershave—upstairs in the bathroom, on the right in the little closet. Before she left the study, she noticed an old, black Remington typewriter standing on a cabinet beside a five-armed silver candelabrum and a round silver tray with a water carafe and matching glasses. Above it, between two antiquated wine-red floor lamps, hung a large oil painting of a southern French landscape in shades of blue and ochre, just as Bonnard might have painted.

  Rosalie leaned forward with interest, but she couldn’t decipher the artist’s signature. She took a step back and stood for a while, absorbed in the painting, which captured the bushes and the soft fall of the cliffs over a gleaming summer bay so well that you almost felt you could hear the chirp of the crickets.

  When her cell phone rang, she started with fright as if she’d been a burglar. “Oui? Allô?” she asked as she pulled herself away from the picture.

  It was Robert Sherman, calling her from a café. The manuscript had arrived, and he wanted to meet her and show it to her.

  “Where are you, Mademoiselle Laurent? I’ve already been to the store, but it was closed. Due to a family emergency. Has something happened?” He sounded concerned.

  “I’ll say it has! I’m in Max Marchais’s house at the moment. He’s had an accident.”

  She quickly told Sherman about the writer’s unfortunate fall from the library ladder and ended with: “I’d actually intended to ask Max about the tiger story again, and about the dedication, but I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone that until he’s better. I wouldn’t want to press him or possibly upset him. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes … of course.” His voice sounded disappointed.

  “It’s only a couple of days, Robert. Then we’ll know more. Listen, I have to pick up a few more things here, and I don’t have much time. I’ll call you later when I’m back in Paris. Then we can meet and you can show me your manuscript, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  It was only when Rosalie was putting her phone back in her purse that it dawned on her that that was the first time she’d called him Robert.

  * * *

  HALF AN HOUR LATER she had collected all the things that were on the list. Toiletry bag, Aramis aftershave (which she’d finally found on the bedside table in the bedroom), blue-and-white-striped pajamas, a thin dark-blue dressing gown with a little Paisley pattern, underwear, socks, a pair of light leather moccasins, slippers, some other clothes, and some books. The only thing she hadn’t found was the dark-green cloth travel bag, which according to Max was somewhere right at the back of the wardrobe. She took another dive into the three-doored, polished, dark-wood wardrobe and rummaged around among shoe boxes and other cardboard boxes.

  Finally she gave up and swept the room with her gaze. Where else could the bag be? She looked in the other drawers in the wardrobe, she looked under the wide bed, carelessly covered with a bright quilt with a rose pattern, she looked in the little storeroom next to the bathroom where the cleaning things were kept. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to search the whole basement!

  She looked at her watch and tried to call Max, but he’d switched his cell phone off. He was obviously trying to have his much postponed afternoon nap. With a sigh she went back into the bedroom. She thought about where she herself might put a bag, and looked instinctively up to the top of the wardrobe.

  Bingo! Behind a couple of shoe boxes she could see two brown leather handles that obviously belonged to a travel bag.

  She took a chair from beside a chest of drawers that stood under a big mirror and put it beside the wardrobe. On tiptoe she groped for the handles, and as she tried to pull the bag forward, she dislodged a large cardboard box which slid forward, spilling its contents all over the floor.

  “Zut alors—what a mess!” she cursed as she got down from the chair and set about collecting all the papers, letters, pictures, and cards that were strewn all over the floor. She had to smile as she glanced briefly at an old black-and-white photo of Max Marchais as a young man. He looked really damn good sitting there so coolly outside a Parisian café in his light chinos and a white buttoned shirt, a cigarette between his thumb and index finger. He was leaning back in a wicker chair, laughing straight into the camera.

  Something about the picture seemed odd to her. She looked at it more closely. Was it the fact that he had no beard—or just seeing Max with a cigarette? She hadn’t known that he used to smoke.

  She carefully put the picture back in the box with the others and tidied the letters. Most of them seemed to be from Marchais’s wife, Marguerite; on one of the envelopes she saw the name of his sister, Thérèse. Max had once briefly mentioned to her that he had a sister in Montpellier, and his tone had given Rosalie to understand that the relationship between the siblings was not particularly close. Photos of Max as a child in short pants, a couple of faded pictures of his parents, Max as a young journalist at his typewriter in a newspaper office.

  As she was hastily putting away these mementos of a time long past, these fragments of a lived life, her eye was caught by the faded color photograph of a young woman. She was wearing a red summer dress with white polka dots and was standing under a big tree in a park. She had obviously been caught in a shower, because her shoulder-length blond hair, held back by a headband, was wet and she was shivering as she folded her arms over her dress with its round neckline. She was leaning forward and laughing. Her mouth was full and red, and for a moment Rosalie almost felt she was seeing herself in this young woman who was laughing so heartily. The whole picture exuded an infectious joie de vivre. Was it Thérèse? She actually looked quite nice. Rosalie turned the picture over and saw a date that someone had scribbled on the back in pencil:

  Bois de Boulogne, 22nd July, 1974

  Rosalie smiled thoughtfully as she put the pretty young woman’s
photo back in the box. Perhaps it was a childhood sweetheart of Max Marchais’s? “I wasn’t always an old man, Rosalie,” was what he’d once said to her.

  You did actually tend to forget that even old people were once young. It seemed almost as unimaginable as the certainty that you would yourself—soon, or at any rate quicker than you thought—be old. It was only with people you had known from earlier times that you could see through the layers of all the years that had settled on body and soul, extinguishing the glow of expectation in their eyes—or a wonderful smile like that, which was absolutely fixed in the moment.

  Rosalie looked around the floor once more: there was nothing left lying around. Then, just to be sure, she looked under the bed, and discovered a bundle of papers whose pages were just barely held together by a rubber band. She lay down on her stomach and, with some difficulty, pulled the papers out from under the bed.

  It was an old manuscript, or rather the carbon copy of an old manuscript in which a mechanical typewriter had etched delicate blue imprints on the paper.

  Rosalie sat up with the parchmentlike bundle in her hands. She carefully smoothed the pages and then removed the red, almost crumbling rubber band very delicately so as not to snap it.

  She felt her heartbeat becoming irregular as she looked at the title page. And then her thoughts became so confused that in the end she wasn’t thinking at all.

  She sat there like that for a while on the wooden floor of the bedroom, which was bathed in the warm light of the afternoon sun, and stared at the pale blue letters on the faded paper.

  On the thin, yellowing page she read THE BLUE TIGER. And beneath it: FOR R.

  Twenty

  He was beginning to like Paris. There was something wildly exhilarating about strolling through the little streets of Saint-Germain, which—totally unlike Manhattan—suddenly curved off to the left or the right, taking you past countless stores and boutiques, cafés and bistros. Everything was so colorful and varied, exuding an almost alarming cheerfulness that was one thing above all: life affirming. Yes, Robert Sherman was feeling particularly lively that sunny Tuesday.

  That may have had something to do with the encouraging conversation he’d had with the dean of the English faculty the day before. The dainty little man, whose hands seemed to be in perpetual motion, had intimated to him that he could not think of anything more delightful than the idea of Sherman giving his Shakespeare lectures as guest professor for the upcoming semester.

  “Since I read your articles on the Midsummer Night’s Dream, you ’ave me ’ooked, Mr. Sherman,” Professeur Lepage had said in his comical English. “Non, non, no false modesty, monsieur. We are all burning to ’ear you. I ’ope you will agree?” And, noticing Sherman’s hesitant expression, he’d added: “Do not worry, we will ’elp you find somewhere to live.”

  Perhaps the reason for the sudden burst of energy that had gripped Robert like a fresh breeze also had something to do with the simple fact that he’d slept very well for the first time since his arrival in Paris. And perhaps he had just surrendered to the charm of the city by the Seine, which, as his mother had said, was always a good idea. Yes, Paris had him “’ooked.”

  Robert smiled contentedly as he ate his breakfast—calmly and without any rush—in the secluded courtyard of his hotel, sitting in the shade and studying the Figaro.

  The café crème—invigorating. The crisp baguette, which he spread thickly with strawberry jam—invigorating. The delicate scent of roses that permeated the courtyard of the Hôtel des Marronniers—invigorating. The receptionist’s charming smile—invigorating.

  As he set off with his manuscript, which had arrived in the hotel that morning, toward the Luna Luna stationery store, he admitted to himself with some surprise that the prospect of once more seeing the attractive and somewhat prickly owner of the store, with her long brown braid, was also invigorating.

  Strangely enough, the store was closed—due to a family emergency—and when he reached Mademoiselle Laurent on her cell phone, it turned out that, to cap it all, the shady writer had fallen off a ladder and was in the hospital. She was in his house at that very moment to collect some things for him and seemed extremely concerned.

  Come on, a fractured thigh wasn’t that serious. What did she see in that old man who wasn’t even a relative and was in all probability a liar as well? Robert felt a twinge of jealousy. He was annoyed that their investigation—had the word investigation really popped into his mind?—was being held up. He would have had no problem beating Marchais round the head with his mother’s manuscript, and then they’d see what was what.

  Robert strolled on without any particular goal, turned into the winding rue de Buci, which was lined with bistros where people were sitting outside in the sunshine, chatting and eating. He passed boulangeries, greengrocers, and stalls selling oysters and grilled chickens, suddenly realizing that he was hungry, too. He bought himself a baguette from a traiteur: tuna, lettuce, and slices of boiled potato, a strange combination, but it tasted excellent.

  Then he glanced at his watch. Mademoiselle Laurent had promised to call when she got back from Le Vésinet, but that might take quite some time.

  He took out his map and decided to take a walk to Shakespeare and Company, the legendary American bookstore on the Left Bank, where Sylvia Beach had once hosted the authors of the Lost Generation, and which still existed—even if the owner (still an American, however!) had changed and it had moved from rue de l’Odéon to the rue de la Bûcherie. And even today, or so Robert had read, young writers or would-be writers could still find a place to lay their heads if they were prepared to help out in the bookstore for a couple of hours.

  It was astonishing, and absolutely anachronistic, but the spirit of Shakespeare and Company had survived down the decades, even if there had never again been such a throng of great writers as there had been in the golden age when T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway had walked through the door. Some things just couldn’t be repeated, but it was good that they had once happened.

  As Robert now walked along the rue Saint-André-des-Arts, he was reminded of Hemingway’s words. He’d once said, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” Admittedly, Robert had never lived in Paris—and if you really thought about it, what was Paris compared with New York?!—but still, he had been here once as a child, which was not something Americans took for granted. And perhaps even he had a little piece of Paris somewhere in his pocket.

  In high spirits, Robert marched part of the way along the boulevard Saint-Michel and then turned right onto the rue de la Bûcherie. A few paces more, and he was standing in front of the little bookstore—which had an old-fashioned wooden bench and a couple of little tables and cast-iron chairs outside it—looking through the window with its dark-green frame.

  The incredible abundance of books he saw there was impressive and made him feel pleasantly at home. He walked in through the open door, looking forward to browsing in the store.

  That was easier said than done.

  The little store, with its narrow passageways winding between ceiling-high bookshelves and walls of books, was as full as if they were giving things away. And that was what they were doing, in a way.

  The magic of this very special bookstore, which was dedicated to books both old and new and which had supported and lodged great writers, was still there for those who had enough imagination to see it. If everyone who was crowding into the store succeeded in doing so was questionable, but at least outwardly it seemed as if everyone wanted to take home some reflection of its glory days—even if it was only a Shakespeare and Company cloth carrier bag or a labeled paperback.

  Robert squeezed past three giggling Japanese girls. They were holding English books in their hands, pretending to read them, while an older Japanese man in horn-rimmed spectacles photographed them—in spite of the notices saying that photography w
as forbidden in the store. But no one complained about their behavior. And even the good-tempered and rather bleary-eyed student at the register—he had an unmistakably British accent and was obviously one of the help that were allowed to spend the night there—ignored their faux pas with great insouciance.

  Robert worked his way to the back of the store and found a narrow wooden staircase that led upward. In one of the rooms on the first floor he could hear music being played. Individual notes were interwoven to produce Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Robert stood aside to let the customers who were coming down pass, and then he climbed the stairs curiously and turned into the room on the right, where the slightly clangy piano music seemed to be coming from. An older woman with chin-length ash-blond hair and narrow shoulders was sitting at an old piano with her back to the door, not letting herself be disturbed in the slightest by the people who looked curiously around the room, stepping first this way and then that, before disappearing again. She had something of the reckless nonchalance of Djuna Barnes, thought Robert as he quietly left the room with the hammering pianist.

  Directly opposite the stairway there were two adjoining rooms full of secondhand books. There were also old tables with old typewriters and worn sofas. On the walls hung faded photographs of the previous owner and his little blond daughter. In the corners there were mattresses; faded blankets that might once have been red were carelessly thrown over them.

  No one here was ambitious to move with the times. The pleasant, unhurried atmosphere that reigned here seemed to spread to the people in the rooms who, as Robert noticed with a smile, moved around more carefully and considerately than normal.

  It was only when he went back to the stairs and looked around that he became aware of the notice—in English and in big black letters—over the door frame: