He picked up the telephone, conscious that he would be calling Élodi on his landline and she would answer, like those of her generation, wherever she was, on her cell. With a landline, holding the phone to your ear as you dialed, you would not have to race to get it before someone hung up. You didn’t have to position the instrument so it faced you, like the mirror mirror on the wall. And the buttons on a landline – no hope anymore of a dial – were a lot bigger, although thanks to his profession Jules had no lack of manual dexterity. Landlines did not double as television sets, pedometers, encyclopedias, atlases, travel agents, or teletype machines, not to mention several types of cameras, alarm clocks, blood pressure monitors, and a thousand other things that he had spent his life quite happily not carrying in his pocket. But, still, as Élodi’s phone rang, he felt old and wrong.
When she answered, she had read on the screen that it was he. “Where are you?” he asked.
There was a silence. It sounded as if he were checking up on her. “Why do you ask?” she asked in return.
“I always ask when I call people on the cell phone. They could be on a boat in the Mediterranean, riding a horse in Australia, or at Buckingham Palace. That’s the best thing about cell phones, I think.”
“I was in a bakery on the Rue des Rosiers, and now I’m just about to sit down in the Place des Vosges.” Somehow, he took comfort from the fact that she had been in the Jewish Quarter. “I live on the Boulevard Bourdon.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, I was lucky. Maid’s quarters, with a separate entrance.” She sat down, happy that he was, in a sense, with her, but wishing that he were actually beside her.
“Isn’t it raining?” he asked.
“It was, but it’s fine now. The sun is out.”
“Maid’s quarters.”
“One tiny room in which I can, and have, stretched out to touch two opposing walls at the same time – with the tips of my fingers and my toes. But it has a minute kitchen, a bathroom, and the best part is the view, and that I can see water, which is wonderfully calming. The house is almost at the north end of the canal, not far from the Place de la Bastille. I’m nine storeys up and almost level with the top of the column. The gilded statue on top blazes like a chemical fire when it’s struck by the sun. My father told me that when old British warships left port some of the sailors would stand on the knob at the top of the fifty-meter masts, with no support. Every time I see the statue, I think of that.
“And he would be happy, because although he would think Paris is now very dangerous, I live just up the street from the Hôtel de Police, Quatriême Arrondissement. Almost every parking space on this block is taken up by a police car, a dozen or more at a time.”
She didn’t tell Jules that the young police officers would flirt with her, and that though she found them attractive in their smart uniforms she would blush and hurry on.
“My two dormer windows are very small. From the street they look like tank periscopes. The canal is always full of yachts and barges, many of them Dutch. On the east side there’s a park with lawns and trees, and one luxuriant willow close to the water. In summer, the Place des Vosges is my garden.
“Chambres des bonnes are all over Paris, and no one knows what to do with them. The rich don’t want strangers in their buildings, and regulations and architecture often prevent conversions. The wonderful part is that when you get one it’s usually on the top floor. Under the roof it’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but I can see a hundred square kilometers and a huge sky. I was lucky. The people from whom I rent are classical music patrons. They like it when they hear the cello from upstairs.”
What she described, and the way she described it – in her language, in her voice – was so lovely and seductive that he despaired that he was not half a century or even just thirty years younger. He would have liked to have spent another lifetime with her, starting out in a room so small he could touch opposing walls, with a view of the water, and the Place des Vosges as their garden. But the energy, anonymity, and hope of youth were not his to have again.
“Do you still want to resume the lessons,” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you come here?”
“When?”
“At your convenience.”
“Tomorrow.”
“What time?”
“Late in the afternoon? Around four? I have ballet until two. I started when I was little. There’s no future in it for me, but I’ve kept it up because I like it and it keeps me fit.”
“Don’t bring your instrument.”
“No? Why not?”
“We’ll use the one here.”
Élodi, Jules, Duvalier, Arnaud, and Nerval
THAT EVENING, JULES was driven and possessed. Though he would see Élodi the next day, he went to a website that he could enter as a faculty member, and saw her address on the Avenue Bourdon. He was shaking as he did so, as if committing a crime. “That’s enough,” he said out loud, thinking it would stop him. But it didn’t, and he left the house to walk to the RER.
Increasingly nervous all the way to Paris, he went not to the Place de la Bastille but, pulling against himself, to his office, hoping that whatever was driving him would dissipate and that he could then return home. He sat down at his desk and turned on the lights, but in the sudden glare all he could see was her face. Alternate surges of magnetic pull, fear, excitement, and a kind of dizziness ended up getting him on his feet and eventually walking fast toward the Bassin de l’Arsenal, where the barges were moored in front of her building.
It was possible to walk from his office to the Cité de la Musique, which for reasons of self-preservation he had never done even in daylight. And the bridges crossed the Seine in such a way that it was plausible that in going there he would pass by her house. But not this late. Driven on and feeling the terrible pleasure of madness, he thought at one moment that there would be none but happy consequences and at another that it would be the end of everything. And yet he kept going, even past La Pitié-Salpêtrière.
His thoughts raced until he was giddy with guilt, hope, and pleasure, and he moved as if falling forward. He had at least to look at the building where Élodi lived. He hoped to ring the bell if he could bring himself to do it. He found himself loving – to the point where it reverberated throughout his body like a warm wave – the innocent and artless charm that she could not contain, and which had caused her to write “dernier étage” after her address. It had carried into the computer. She hadn’t had to supply such detail. It was a sign, somehow, of her goodness.
Pushed and drawn as if against his will but entirely as a result of it, he went directly past La Pitié. At times, memory was so strong it was as if Jacqueline were still there and alive. If he turned into the ancient and depressing precincts of La Pitié might he not be able to go past the yellow awnings, the banana trees, the tired nurses and doctors coming off shift, ascend to the room in which Jacqueline had died, to find her there, alive, to speak to her, even if just for a moment, to tell her how much he loved and missed her, that above all he wanted to join her, and that now he knew he would? She would smell like the sea, which was what had happened with the intravenous liquids that had flowed into her before the end, but it wouldn’t matter. The question was answered by his legs, and soon he was crossing the Seine.
Once on the Right Bank, and with guilt so sharp it had become physical, all his emotion turned toward Élodi. He wanted her as if he were young, as if after making love there would be no “Now what?” but rather a magical subtraction of the fifty years between them. Twenty-five again, with time not a dying horse but a young one, full of unconscious energy and ignorant of what was ahead except that the very end could be neither seen nor felt.
Walking along the canal, on the west side of the Avenue Bourdon, he passed the police station and came to her address, closer to the Place de la Bastille than he had thought. What if he encountered her on the street? What would he say? He
feared but wanted it. Everything was quiet. On the highest floor, one in a row of tiny dormers – the tops of which were level with the peak of the roof – was lit, her light. She was right there. All he had to do was press the buzzer, and she would come down. It would be either the end or the beginning.
One thing among the many things Jules didn’t know about Élodi was that she wore contact lenses and was extremely nearsighted without them. When home for the evening she took them out and put on glasses, the clear lenses of which in magnifying her eyes brought to them a strange perfection and clarity – in blue of course – and the frames of which, in combination with her hair falling past the temple bars, added another irresistible attraction. Perhaps had he seen her relaxed on her bed – her legs folded beneath her as she read – slowly and carefully reaching for a cup of tea while keeping her eyes on the book, deeply absorbed, utterly beautiful, he might not have tried so hard to keep his promises.
He took a step toward the door, but then he thought how shameful and ridiculous it was for an old man to pursue a young girl, and he knew he was old, and he knew it was unmanly to do such a thing, for it showed that he was unable to face what he had become and what was in store. He turned away from the door and toward the empty street, and with deep, inconsolable regret, he walked on.
MURDER IS ONE THING when a distraught lunatic kills his wife and children, sits in his car for two hours pointing a gun at his head and, before anyone gets wind of what he has done, pulls the trigger. Case closed, except for the sad and difficult gathering of evidence and stories, but it’s mainly paperwork after the first few days, and is usually wrapped up in a week or two. An idiot high on drugs robs a little grocery store and kills the old Moroccan woman behind the counter. Witnesses see his beaten-up Fiat and get a partial license plate. They notice that it has a little flower on the aerial, to help the idiot find the car either in a parking lot or after he robs a store. Ten minutes later, he’s speeding and running stop signs, a tail light is out, and his muffler is dragging. Two patrol officers pull him over. He bails. They chase. He turns with a gun. They fire. Case closed and, again, wrapped up in a week.
On the other hand, a carefully plotted murder or the murder of a stranger can take years, might never be solved, and, if you are a police officer, can assume for you the character of a job you go to month after month where you work hard most of the time, although sometimes not, and sometimes find a break, but never quite get there. It makes you feel that your life is a waste, that the world is cruel, dangerous, and impossible, and that you will always be unhappy.
It had been months since Duvalier Saidi-Sief and Arnaud Weissenburger had begun the case of the Bir-Hakeim Bridge. Their prime witness, Raschid Belghazi, who believed the Comédie-Française was a pornographic movie house, had said he told them everything he knew, and been cleared to leave Paris. Now he was gone. The families of the murdered boys were voiceless and oppressed. They had no special pleading anywhere, much less in a ministry, and their communities had recently rioted anyway about something else and quickly settled back. It was the kind of case that was forgotten, or at least pursued halfheartedly.
But, Weissenburger, because he was a Jew and the evidence pointed toward a Jew who had murdered two Arabs, was absolutely determined, in the name of fairness, objectivity, and laïcité, to solve it. Saidi-Sief, hating his own people’s lower orders who disgraced their long traditions by embracing rootlessness and delinquency, suspected that the events had a twist no one had envisioned, and was just as eager as Weissenburger. Further, their devotion to their work dissolved their differences and brought them together in a way that both hoped could be the future of France, even if both were highly skeptical that it would be.
They went over the surveillance footage too many times, looking for something they might have missed. They stared at the lab reports until they could dream them. They used every informant they could contact, and begged other officers for favors that in the end turned up nothing. At one point, Houchard called. “How’s it going?”
Duvalier said, “For several months we spent eight to ten hours a day looking at traffic surveillance tapes. It was fun.”
As the time passed, the only thing they really had was the rowing club. What were the chances that whoever killed the two boys and jumped into the river was a member of this club, and knew he could pull himself out on its dock and seek shelter there until morning traffic would camouflage his escape? Did he plan it that way in advance? It was a thin and unlikely thread, but as it was the only one they had, they followed it.
The judge was adamant that he would not give them blanket authority to collect DNA samples from all the members. Theirs was astoundingly too broad a request, based on a highly improbable supposition. But he did agree that if they narrowed it down enough he would issue warrants, and he did agree that if they needed to go outside Paris, he would arrange it. Houchard, the OPJ, wasn’t doing anything, and the judge liked that the two young APJs were so stubborn. So they investigated each member before they would seek an interview, make a visit, and ask for a cheek swab. Then they went ahead. As they suspected, most people were cooperative. It all had to be done politely and diplomatically, which took time.
They learned a lot about rowing clubs. You can hardly buy real estate on the river, so no matter how rich you are, if you want to row in Paris you have to join one and move among the musty lockers and garbage cans that tend not to be emptied because no club member thinks it’s his job to do so. There were some billionaires or almost-billionaires who racked their boats in the drafty, rough-hewn boathouse, as well as semi-impoverished rentiers who would eat or not, depending upon interest rates. There were horribly arrogant lawyers; obsessive professors; dull-as-paint businessmen; a few women, some of whom were young and beautiful, with goddess-like, lithe bodies; retirees who could barely get their boats in the water and wouldn’t have lived through the fight on the bridge; even a policeman; and a bus driver.
It would have been easy had Arnaud and Duvalier had some mechanism with which to sort out the Jews, of whom there could not have been that many, but this was strictly forbidden. Arnaud did it anyway, using computers in Internet cafés, but other than names and the occasional suggestion in an article or posting, which left little certainty, there was not much to go on over the Internet. They had to approach the subjects one by one. The few who refused a cheek swab were put on a list for heightened attention after all the subjects had been examined.
One thing they discovered was that athletic people who had single shells tended to live in beautiful places, mostly in houses, but, if in apartments, the kind that take up whole floors or more than one and have expansive terraces with colorful awnings, lots of geraniums, and distant views. It was an education, and their visits were interesting. They always went together. Both the innocent and the guilty were able to conceal much less when faced with two questioners, on opposite flanks, two men of different character supporting one another and observing. It was human nature not to lie as well to two people as to one, because it was human nature to be jangled by two sets of eyes at two different angles.
When Duvalier and Arnaud got around to Jules they had found out what they could about him, checked his address, and looked on Google Earth to see where he lived. Because the estate was shielded by many layers of trusts, they had no idea that it wasn’t his, and thought he was, in fact, their biggest billionaire, as he would have been had he had Shymanski’s wealth. Looking forward to seeing the gardens and the interior, and to being offered refreshments as in several other luminous houses they had visited, they were curious to see the compound.
They thought it highly unlikely that an aging billionaire would smash someone’s head against an abutment, slide down stone stairs on top of someone else, kill him at the bottom with a martial-arts punch in the throat, and escape by throwing himself into the Seine. But they were open to the possibility. And because they were detectives they had the habit of scoping things out before they moved. The more inform
ation in advance, the more time to think, to give play to intuition, the better prepared they would be. There was a kind of magic in it, or, as Duvalier liked to say, an art.
After Élodi had arrived, they did. Not wanting to be noticed, they parked on the street and waited, hoping that the feel of the place might give them something unexpected to go on in the interview.
ÉLODI, WHO WAS wearing the yellow silk print, had some music in a portfolio, and no cello to burden her. As Jules watched her walk from the gate to his door he realized that from a distance he’d never really seen her move without the cello. Although she had been graceful even with it, when she was without it he witnessed something of extraordinary beauty. If someone walks when she knows she is observed it can make her stiff and awkward, but Élodi took not a single, self-conscious, unbalanced step. In the fading, primarily reflected light, with the sun, now high over the Western Atlantic, draping the eastern parts of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in shadow, the color and sheen of the silk made it glow. As he had noticed before, it was tight on her. But now he didn’t avert his eyes, and as she came closer he saw her body moving against the material, and the slight shuffle of the fabric as she made her way forward. He knew that were he to cup his hand around her side as he pulled her into an embrace, what he would feel through the silk would be intoxicatingly firm and strong.
When they were sitting down in the same places as before, she asked, “Why not bring my instrument? Is there something wrong with it?”
“No, it’s perfectly fine. But I can’t teach anymore.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“Or, rather I mayn’t teach anymore. I have a cerebral aneurysm, and I collapsed on the train. The aneurysm is wrapped around my brainstem, partially at least, and inoperable. I shouldn’t quite say that. It is operable, but the risk of damage or death is so great that it’s better just to let it run its course and see how long I can live.”