“And the little boy is sick, desperately so. When you’re that sick, sometimes the only hope is another country, whether that’s true or not.”
The way she looked at him, and he knew it, it was clear that she was seeking someone she could love, someone who would love her as if she were once again a girl and the world was young. There was no question that he was capable of such a thing. She could see it in his face and read it in his every expression.
On the Grand Terrace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye
THINGS GO FASTER toward the end, and at the very end as fast as light. Not only because of the relation of time passed to time left, but because life, like a wide, deep river flowing into narrow shallows, is compelled by natural law to accelerate. And accelerate it did.
Empty of all but the most devoted runners, the white path shimmered in the morning heat. Even the fanatics, breathing hard, had finished up. At home they would shower in relief, bathroom windows open, fragrant steam rushing out and up, and, except for the flow of water, silence almost ringing in their ears.
The long terrace high above the Seine stretches for two and a half kilometers as straight as a rule, forests and gardens flanking it to the west, Paris floating dreamlike in the east, and, descending toward the Seine, vineyards, pastures, Guernsey cows, trees, roads, and bridges across the river over which tooting trains rush to and from Paris.
Cathérine grew up here. At evening the family would walk on the long roads and the wide avenues through the trees. Louis XIV had been born on this hill with its view east, but had turned with the rest of Europe to look west, the westward-oriented canals at Versailles symbolizing the maritime routes to the New World. In that sense, Saint-Germain-en-Laye was part of the age that made the French Revolution necessary, and still held magically encapsulated in its topography the peace and languid pace of the centuries in which clocks and machines had not ruled.
Almost since sunrise, Jules had been sitting on a bench near the circle that divides the Allée Henri IV from the Chemin du Long du Terrace. Decades before, shortly after they had moved into the Shymanski house, he had paused before the door and reflected that one day, after what he hoped would be many long years of going in and out without thinking about it, he would close it behind him, or it would be closed behind him, for the last time. And even then, in the beginning, he knew that when that happened, the time from the first to last crossing of the threshold would be compressed into absolutely nothing, all gone.
He was tired of life, but full of love. Though he had long believed that only God was capable of infinite love, the love he had for so many people and so many things seemed nonetheless to have no limit. Ashamed and surprised, only on his last day and in his last hours had he discovered that one can love infinitely not as an attribute of one’s capacities but rather as an attribute of love itself.
Such thoughts ended suddenly when he heard a loud crunching of gravel behind and to his left. An ice-cream vendor on a bicycle attached to a white freezer chest had peddled from the park. He was deeply disappointed that the Long Terrace was empty. You could see on his face that his gambit had not paid off. “Oh goddam,” he said to himself as he stopped. Then he saw Jules on the bench. Pedaling over, he looked hopeful.
“How about an ice cream?” he proposed, smiling like a child or a salesman.
“It’s eight o’clock in the morning,” Jules told him.
“Get an early start.”
“I, I don’t ….”
“Don’t be ridiculous. In summer everyone eats ice cream in the morning. People have it for breakfast.”
“I’m just about to run. I don’t want to have a full stomach and un-brushed teeth.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the ice cream vendor insisted. “It melts and goes right into your cells to give you energy. And there’s water all over the place. You can rinse.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t even like ice cream that much. I like cookies,” Jules said, as if justifying himself.
“I like cookies, too, but everyone loves ice cream, even monkeys. I can give you a chocolate bombe on a stick – it has raspberry and cherry inside – ordinarily two-and-a-half Euros, for one.”
“That’s the other thing. I don’t have any money.”
“Don’t you have a credit card?”
“No.”
“What about your watch?”
“I don’t have a watch, and if I did I wouldn’t trade it for an ice cream.”
“Your socks?”
“You want to trade an ice cream for my socks? Say that again?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m not giving you my socks.”
“You don’t really need them to run. Lots of people run without socks, I see them all the time.”
“Not me.”
“Okay. Then will you be here tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll be dead.”
“Yeah, sure. If you pay me tomorrow, I’ll let you have the ice cream today.”
“I won’t be here. I told you.”
“All right. I’ll just give it to you.” He opened the thick top and reached down. Mist arose from dry ice. The top slammed closed, making the idiosyncratic sound of freezer doors big or small, whether on a bicycle or set in a wall. “Here, take it.” He pedaled away, crunching over the gravel, and as he did Jules heard him say, “Fucker.”
On the morning of his death, Jules was holding in his hand a raspberry-cherry chocolate bombe. He took time out to eat it. It was extremely good, and for a moment he thought of nothing else.
ÉLODI AWOKE IN THE arms of her young man, happy as she had never been, the whole world in front of her and hardly a hint of what was to come as she made her way. In the remnants of summer they were going to Portugal – knapsacks, student fares, second class, staying in hostels, taking most of their meals on benches or sitting at the edge of fountains or on rocks by the side of the sea. But now, in the morning with the sun flooding in from the east, someone was downstairs and the intercom was buzzing. As she left the bed she took the top sheet, which had been cast aside because of the heat, and wrapped it around her.
“Yes?” she said to the box set in the wall. She had never ceased to think it strange that people talked to walls.
“Hedley’s, Madame.”
“Mademoiselle.”
“Mademoiselle,” the box repeated, corrected.
“What’s Hedley’s?”
“Specialized couriers. We have a delivery for you.”
“I’ve never heard of Hedley’s. How do I know …?”
“If your windows face the street ….”
“My window does.”
“You might look out.”
“Okay. Just a minute.” She looked magnificent as she crossed the floor, her hair disheveled, buoyant, and golden, the sheet draped about her more beautifully than the rarest gown. Clutching it to the top of her chest, not that anyone was looking, she peeked over the sill. On the street was a most impressive, highly polished truck, with a man in a pressed uniform standing attentively on the sidewalk beside it. She returned to the intercom. “You have a delivery for me?”
“Élodi de Challant?”
“That’s right.” She pressed the button to unlock the street door, then raced to put on some clothes.
Soon enough, standing in front of her door were two uniformed men, one carrying a cello case, the other, two bankers’ boxes. When she saw this, she thought, he’s gone or he’s dead. After she signed and they left, she opened the cello case. The instrument was old and worn, but, as she knew, it had had an extraordinary sound. On a note placed beneath the strings Jules had written, “This is left to you for the beauty of its sound and for the advancement of your career. You’ll see in documents that will follow in a few weeks that you must never sell it, only give it. But as you’ll soon discover, you won’t need to sell it.”
Élodi opened the bankers’ boxes. They were full of music. On the top of one
pile was the symphony Jules had written only recently. It opened unconventionally with a cello solo that laid down the theme. She put this part on the music stand, took the cello out of its case, and tuned it. Then she played from sight. It was a simple theme – and to her it was as beautiful as the Sei Lob itself, as beautiful as anything she had ever heard.
IN SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE even though it was still rather early it was very hot in the direct sun. Jules glistened with sweat, and had fused with nature as if he were comfortably a part of it. He had never wanted to die in bed, but, rather, like an animal, on the ground, in the sun, after struggle. Without fear, animals take death as it comes. They feel the earth, see the sky, and know they have fought.
But Jules was not quite ready either to run or for the last few seconds in which one may or, he suspected, may not see and feel the justice, love, and satisfaction for which one has struggled all one’s life. In the increasing heat, he was content to forge his past and his present, his desires and his regrets, into a molten alloy that might if he were lucky be something bright and new right before the end.
Perhaps because of history, his own circumstances, or his particular nature, he had, like so many others, spent his life unhappy to live. It had been a disservice to Jacqueline, to Cathérine, and to everyone he had known, and yet another reason to regret that he hadn’t been murdered in his infancy. But, now, in his last hour, he was finally happy to live and unafraid to die.
To the east, Paris was obscured in a mist of heat and whitening light. The sun was directly over the city, making it almost impossible to see. But he knew that as the sun rose its rays would flare against every building entry, every window, every gilded fleur de lys, sculpting them in three dimensions, adding depth by shadow, painting in color and detail. Although no jets were weaving contrails in the blue, Jules heard the drone of a propeller, as in his youth when it carried no suggestion of the antique and set just the right tone for a summer morning or afternoon.
He longed for his mother, his father, Jacqueline, Cathérine, Luc, Élodi, and Amina, even Amina, the last woman he would love. And he did love her. He had tried and failed to do right by each and every one. As he aged, everything was eroded away but love and conscience, which were left sparkling and untouched in the stream. Paris was beginning to come clear as the sun began to cross west. He decided that as soon as he felt the breeze, he would start his run.
ARNAUD AND DUVALIER thought they had set out early enough from the Passy commissariat to catch Jules at home. They had assumed that between shifts it would be quiet, but because it was a Friday in August the shifts had been rearranged and the commissariat was busy, the street in front of it clogged with uniformed police striding this way and that. Then, as Arnaud and Duvalier drove west, heavy traffic brought them to stop in a tunnel echoing with horns and cloudy with exhaust.
“Everyone’s leaving Paris because it’s Friday,” Arnaud said. “Why don’t they leave on Thursday night? What’s the difference?” He was irritated and jumpy.
“People don’t like to drive in the dark,” Duvalier answered. “Especially older people, who can’t see as well. I’ve heard they can’t smell as well either.”
“Then they should leave on Thursday morning. They don’t have jobs.”
“Why don’t you tell them that? The next time Hollande speaks, push him from the lectern and command old people to leave for vacation on Thursdays. Mussolini could have done it. Putin could do it. Why not you?”
Traffic started moving again, and because Saint-Germain-en-Laye was not far, soon they were pounding on Shymanski’s gate. Claude was south of the house, planting flowers, in his element, his hands in the loam, and the best loam it was, for billionaires can afford to buy the very finest dirt – light but perfectly dense, of the consistency of a good chocolate cake and the color of dark English bridle leather. Flowers that grew in it seemed to detonate in the air like the bloom of fireworks. The perfection of a well-planned and tended garden is a message that says life has purpose. So when Claude heard them he said, “I’m not answering. To hell with them.”
Duvalier, however, was as stubborn and as resourceful as he looked. That no one answered he took as a challenge, and kept at it for ten minutes. Then he got Arnaud to knit his hands together and give him a boost. Arnaud was so strong that he was able to extend his arms straight up and support Duvalier standing on his palms, like a circus acrobat. Duvalier easily saw over the wall. “He’s in the garden,” he said.
“Lacour?” Arnaud asked in a strained voice.
“The gardener. Hey!” he shouted. “Hey! You!”
Claude threw down his spade, spat, and started toward the gate. When he got there and opened it, he was not happy. “Why didn’t you call for an appointment?” he asked impolitely.
“We don’t have to call for an appointment,” Duvalier said. “We’re the police.”
“Yeah yeah yeah. Calling for an appointment would be efficient, and, I forgot, you’re the police, so you can’t. What do you want?”
“Lacour.”
“You missed him.”
“He left?”
“Yes he left. That’s what ‘you missed him’ means. He went out this morning. He’ll be back.”
“When?”
“In the afternoon sometime. He goes out every morning, even in winter. He exercises like a maniac. He swims, he lifts weights or something, and runs. He’s crazy, because he’s way too old for that. Then he gets the paper and reads it in a café. Then he comes home. Like a clock.”
“Which was he doing today?”
“I don’t know. Usually he does them all, unless there’s so much snow on the Long Terrace that he can’t run.”
“Can’t you tell by what he was wearing?”
“He runs and swims in the same shorts. I didn’t see if he was carrying his goggles. They help you see underwater. That’s how they can take pictures of fish on television. Start at the pool in the park if you want to look for him. We have a pool here, and Shymanski is gone. But when Shymanski lived here, out of respect for him and his family, Lacour never swam in it. He used the municipal pool instead. When he comes back, if you haven’t found him, I’ll tell him you were here.”
“Don’t,” said Arnaud.
“Why? Is this serious?”
“Just don’t.”
“There is no law …” Claude began.
“Yes there is,” Duvalier informed him, “and you can go to jail.”
“I’m not afraid of jail.”
“I am,” Duvalier said. “I’ve seen what jail is like. If I were you or anyone else I’d be very afraid of jail. You like food? Be afraid of jail.” As they were leaving, Duvalier turned back and asked, “Who’s Shymanski? Shymanski the industrialist? This is his house?”
AMINA BELKACEM WAS numbingly pretty even as she aged, and her face did not in the slightest cease to convey goodness and love. With the same driven, breathless trepidation Jules had felt when he walked to Élodi’s house, Amina returned via the Passage Livry to the hidden square where she had discovered that in the few minutes in which he had shown her around his office, and even before that – at first sight – she had fallen in love with Jules.
In near-adolescent delirium she imagined marriage, happiness, and contentment. But as she had lived a long life, she knew that she had to take one cautious step at a time. If he found her in a place he frequented, it would be obvious but also a touch deniable. She hoped that if he thought as she did he would return there at roughly the same time they had met. So she sat down at a little table and, when the old man came out, ordered tea. After he brought it to her she opened the newspaper and didn’t read it. Instead, as she stared at it, other things passed before her eyes.
Because her father was a Muslim and her mother a colon, apart from a few secret, tearful visits of the grandmothers, both families had rejected their children forever. Though Algerian by birth, her parents had met in the Paris Resistance during the war. It mattered little to them then and a
fterward that he was Muslim and she a Catholic. They lived in Algeria with great difficulty until, when Amina was seven or eight, the war there drove them out. Life in France was hardly easy. Her father was attacked on the street, Amina spat upon in school. Partly because her only friends were books, she never relinquished first place in her class.
But as she grew it was not enough to be alone and first. She had to have something to love independently and apart from her parents. She chose for that the inexact but intense memories in which the emotion and contentment of childhood were recollected in colors and sensations.
“I can bring you an umbrella, or help you move to the shade,” the old man who owned the bar said. She was in direct sun and even from inside his café he had seen that her arms glistened with hundreds of sparkling droplets, and her fresh white blouse was beginning to cling to her transparently. “It’s extremely hot, you know: you can get sunstroke.”
“I’ll be cooled by the breeze,” she answered.
“There’s no breeze here. Only in winter when the wind is strong. They enclosed it. There was a time when I couldn’t keep up with the customers. They came from the street that is now on the other side of those buildings.”
“I won’t be long,” she told him. “There’ll be a breeze on the hill above the Seine.”
In the beating, aggressive sun, she closed her eyes. Her family of three, because they didn’t fit in, anywhere, was isolated and close. At first, she thought this was the way every family was, and her childhood was a paradise of innocence. On summer holidays they would drive along the coast almost to Tunisia, doubling back on the road west from the village of Chataibi to a deserted beach south of the Cap de Fer. Several kilometers long, it went even more kilometers deep inland over dunes of the purest, whitest sand. There were only a few farmhouses just north of it. The Belkacems would camp for a week or ten days in August, carrying in many trips across the sand to their tent the food and water they brought with them. But the main course was always fish her father caught while casting from the beach. Year after year, they never saw another person, and were free there: free of allegiance, free of fear, free to love as if throughout the world Christians married Muslims and Muslims married Christians and no one thought twice about it.