I’m itchy. My chin itches. My neck itches. My ear does, too. I’m thinking there must be a mosquito in the room but there can’t be. It’s December, all the mosquitoes are dead. I’m sore, too. Hurting all over.
I open my eyes, groan at the pain in my head, and shut them again. What happened last night? I remember being at the Eiffel Tower—and what I almost did there. I remember Virgil and his friends. The beach. The police. I can’t remember how I got home but I do remember a weird dream about guys in eighteenth-century costumes, and dead bodies in the catacombs, and eating at the Café Chartres with Amadé Malherbeau.
I roll over, open my eyes again, and gasp. There’s someone next to me. A really hairy someone.
“Yo. Hey. Wake up,” I say, prodding him.
The guy turns to me. He has brown eyes and a long snout. As I’m staring at him in disbelief, he sticks out his tongue and licks my face.
“Dude! Gross!” I say, sitting up. It’s a dog. A huge stinky dog. I scoot away from him, sure that he’s the reason I’m itching.
“It’s all right. Hugo doesn’t bite,” a voice says, making me jump out of my skin. “Amadé. Amadé Malherbeau. Do you remember?” he asks me.
My blood runs cold as I look at him. “No,” I say. “I don’t.”
But I do. I just don’t want to. Because I thought that was all a dream and dreams aren’t real. Unless you’re crazy. I tell myself the same thing I told myself last night—it’s all a movie set and this guy’s an actor. He’s playing the role of Amadé Malherbeau, that’s all.
He’s sitting in a chair now, at the long wooden table. Sheets of music are scattered across it. Some are on the floor. He plays as I stare at him. Writes notes down. Plays again. Swears. And scratches the notes out.
Something’s worrying me, something that happened last night. What is it? I remember now. “Hey, did you put something in my drink last night? Did you?”
“Certainly not. Why would I?”
“To get me back here. In your bed.”
Amadé snorts. “Monsieur mistakes my kind intentions.”
He called me Monsieur last night, too. “Hey, I’m not a man, all right?”
He blinks at me. “You’re not?”
“No, I’m not.”
“But your clothing … no woman wears britches.”
“Enough, okay? Enough with the whole eighteenth century thing,” I say, testily.
I get out of bed, find my boots, and put them on. I don’t know where I am. I thought I was at G’s, but I’m not, and I really want to be. I want to take a shower and wash the fleas, the dog funk, the whole freakshow off me.
I look at my watch. It says 12:03. That was about the time the beach was raided. It’s stopped. I must’ve banged it when I fell in the tunnels. I really hope my father didn’t check my room last night. If he did, I’m dead.
“Where are we? Where’s the nearest Métro?” I ask Amadé.
“Métro? What is that?”
I so wish he would stop. I go to the window and pull back a heavy, dusty curtain. Paris is still there; that’s something. Then I see what I saw last night—horses and carriages. No cars. No buses. Women wearing old-fashioned clothes. Men selling firewood and milk out of cans. It’s the movie, I tell myself. Again. I look for the Eiffel Tower, but I can’t see it. Or any tall buildings. I let the curtain fall. Across the room, Amadé is still struggling with the phrase. It’s making my head hurt.
“Wrong chord. Try G minor.”
“Minor, you say?”
“Minor.”
“An unusual choice,” he muses, trying it out.
“Do you have any more coffee?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, making no move to get it.
I look around for a coffee maker and a fridge and a sink but there are none. There’s just this giant room we’re in, a fireplace, and some furniture. I open the doors to a wooden cupboard and find a jug of red wine, a chunk of hard cheese, and some wet coffee grinds in a bowl. This guy’s a bit of a slob. I pick up the bowl and look around for the trash can.
“What are you doing?” Amadé says.
“Throwing out the garbage. Where do you keep the coffee?”
“Are you stupid? That is the coffee! Put it down!”
“But it’s used.”
“Only twice. There’s flavor in it yet. I’m lucky to have that much. There’s little coffee and even less sugar coming in from the plantations now. What does get here is horribly expensive. You know that.” His eyes narrow. “Perhaps you have contacts? For coffee? And sugar? I would give much for them. I can’t compose without coffee. I can’t even think without it.”
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll get some right now.” A double espresso. For myself. Because I’m so done with him and his insanity.
“What, right now? In broad daylight? Are you mad? Don’t you know what happens to black-marketers? If you’re caught, you’ll be killed.”
I give him a look. “The joke’s getting old. Really, really old.”
“What joke?” he says, looking confused.
“You know what joke. The whole revolutionary thing. I know it’s all a movie set, okay? And you’re an actor. And it was funny for a while but now it’s not. It’s really not. Where’s the bathroom? I have to go. Bad.”
Still looking confused, he points at an old tin tub in the corner. “You’re not going to take a bath, are you?” he says. “I’ve nowhere near enough firewood to heat that much water.”
“Where—is—the—toilet?” I say. Through gritted teeth.
He reaches under the table and pulls out a chamber pot. And I lose it. Completely. I grab it out of his hands and throw it on the floor, smashing it to pieces.
“Stop it! Stop it right now!” I shout at him, feeling as if I’m losing my mind.
Amadé looks at the mess on the floor. He stands up and puts his guitar down. “I helped you,” he says, furious. “I fed you. Gave you coffee. Let you sleep in my bed. And this is how you repay me? Get out. Get out of my house.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
But I don’t get to finish my sentence. He grabs my jacket, bag, and guitar, opens the door, and dumps them on the landing. Then he stands by the door, glaring at me.
I leave and he slams the door after me. I sit down on the landing and put my head in my hands. It’s cold out here. I’m hungry. I should get going but I don’t. I’m afraid to. Afraid to stand up and walk out of this building. Afraid that if I do, the eighteenth-century world will somehow become real.
But I can’t sit here forever. I’ll pee my pants. I stand up and walk down the stairs.
It’ll be okay, I tell myself. It’ll all be okay.
70
But it’s not.
As I reach the landing on the floor below, I see a child staring at me from a doorway. She bursts into tears.
“I thought you were my papa,” she says. “I wait and wait for him but he never comes. They took him away. I want him to come back.”
A woman appears. She pulls the child inside, looks me up and down, and scowls. I ask her if I can use her WC. She tells me to use the one in the yard like everyone else.
I wonder if this is maybe some kind of student housing with common bathrooms. And maybe everyone calls the bathrooms “the yard.” Maybe it’s a French thing. But no. I find the yard and it’s a yard—full of animals and stables and stable boys giving me weird looks. I find the toilet by its smell. It’s basically a hole in the ground, out behind a cow shed. I don’t want anything to do with it but I have no choice.
I finish and head for the street. I try to find some familiar landmarks but I don’t see any. I decide to head south to the Rue de Rivoli so I can orient myself and then walk east along the Rue du Faubourg St-Antoine.
Children are everywhere. Just like they were last night. Begging. Crying. Darting in and out of alleys like stray cats. I pass peddlers, horses, newsboys. I’m splashed by one carriage, nearly run down by another. I pause by the doorway of a but
cher’s shop to get my bearings. Big mistake.
“Move!” a loud voice shouts behind me, and the next thing I know, I’m sprawled out in the muddy street, my bag and guitar next to me.
A man is staring down at me. He’s carrying a dead pig on his shoulder. Blood drips from its cut throat. “Out of my way, you ass!” he yells.
There are people nearby but no one helps me up. A few laugh at me or shake their heads. They’re wearing long dresses with aprons over them. Ragged pants and tunics. Coarse linen shirts. Stockings and breeches. They’re carrying baskets. Jugs. Loaves of bread. Their faces are wrinkled and pocked and warty. They have crooked teeth. Rotten teeth. No teeth at all. And in the bright light of morning, I see that it’s all real. There’s no makeup on their skin, no fake noses, or glued-on scars.
I stand up, covered with mud, and face the impossible—this lost world, this lost Paris, come back to life. And me standing right in the middle of it.
“Get the hell out of my way!”
I quickly turn around. It’s not the butcher this time but a wagon driver. I scramble for my things and stumble to the street’s edge. The wagon passes by. It has tall sides made of wooden poles lashed together. There are people inside of it. They gaze at me but don’t seem to see me. They are silent. Some are crying. And I realize what I’m looking at—a tumbrel, a wagon with a cage on the back. I’ve seen drawings of them. They were used to take people to the guillotine. Ragged boys run alongside it, taunting the prisoners. A small girl straggles after it, weeping.
“My God. Why doesn’t anyone help them?” I say.
A man passing by stops. “Help them?” he snarls. “They’re Jacobins! They’re finally getting what they deserve. Why help them? Unless you’re one of them.” He eyes me closely. “Perhaps you are and should join them.”
I back away from him. Away from the wagon. Away from the people, all staring at me. I walk at first, clutching my guitar to my chest, but when one of them moves toward me, I run, suddenly afraid. Down one street, and then another and then into an alleyway. After a few minutes, I stop to catch my breath.
I can still hear shouting but it’s not the people who were staring at me, it’s newsboys. They’re yelling about trials and executions. Bread prices. A riot. And fireworks. They’re yelling about the Green Man. The guard almost caught him, they shout. They injured him. He’s a wounded fox now, gone down a hidey-hole, but General Bonaparte will soon pull him out.
I start running again, hurrying away from their voices, my heart beating hard with fear. As if it wasn’t Alex they were yelling about. But me. As if I was the one they want.
71
I smell coffee, sausages, fish, strawberries, and cheese. Onions in butter. Bacon. Lemons. Peppercorns. Briny oysters. Spinach. Apricots. The smells drift from houses. They waft out of cafés. They taunt me from carts and stalls and peddlers’ baskets.
I’m heading back to the Palais-Royal now because I don’t know where else to go. I have big problems. The biggest. I’m in the eighteenth century. It’s cold and rainy and dark. I’ve walked all over Paris looking for a way out of this and I’m exhausted. My clothes are soaked. I’m shivering. But all I can think about is food. Because I am hungry like I’ve never been in my life. I haven’t eaten for twenty-four hours. A handful of Qwells and a few bites of mystery bird with Amadé don’t count.
I tried to buy a nasty-looking loaf of bread earlier. I gave a baker’s girl two euros. She shook her head and handed them back. I begged her to take them. She called the baker. He looked me up and down, then told me he’d kick my English ass if I didn’t get out of his shop with my English money. I tried again at the market stalls I passed—with no luck.
I slept earlier, too. I curled up under a tree in the Bois de Boulogne. I’d decided that this was all a hallucination brought on by the mega-amounts of antidepressants I’ve been taking and that when it finally wore off, I’d be in my bed at G’s house. That didn’t happen. Then I told myself that it was a vision quest kind of thing cobbled together by my subconscious out of bits and pieces of things I’d seen recently—the catacombs, Malherbeau’s portrait, pictures of old Paris, the diary. I pinched myself. Slapped my face. But nothing changed. I’m still cold. Still wet. Still lost. Still hungry.
I thought I was hungry the day I went busking at Notre Dame. That was nothing compared to this. This is a killing hunger. A few more days of no food, a few nights of sleeping outside, and I’ll be dead. Tears spill down my cheeks as I walk. I’d be embarrassed but no one takes any notice of me. They’ve likely seen worse these past few years.
I get to the Palais-Royal and sit down on a bench outside the entrance. Someone else is already sitting there. An old man. His clothes are weird. They don’t look like the somber outfits I’ve seen in the streets. They’re gaudy and dirty. They look like he got them out of Louis XIV’s garbage can. His shoes are styling, though. They’re made of red leather.
He tells me his name is Jacques Chaussures. I tell him mine. He asks me what’s wrong. I laugh and ask him where he’d like me to start.
“With the worst thing,” he says.
“I’m hungry,” I say. “Really hungry.”
He reaches inside his coat and pulls out a crust of bread. He snaps it in two and gives me half. It’s dry and dirty but I don’t care. I wolf it down. And only remember to thank him after I’ve swallowed the last bite.
He points at my guitar. “Can you play it?”
I nod.
“Then do so. A good musician is never completely poor.”
“Um … where?”
He looks at me as if I’m stupid. “Right behind you.”
“The Palais? Oh, right! You mean busking? Yeah, I could do that. Totally. Hey, thanks, Jacques.”
I stand up and grab my stuff. If I can just get a few coins, I can get a loaf of bread. Maybe even some cheese to go with it.
“Wait,” Jacques says, pulling a dirty rag out of his pocket. “You’re bleeding.” He dabs at my forehead. “It’s an ugly wound. Does it not hurt?”
“Yeah. All the time,” I tell him.
I say goodbye and head into the Palais. It’s a scene. Even wilder than last night. As I walk into the courts, I almost get my hair burned off by a firebreather. There’s a woman up on a tightrope. She’s pushing a wheelbarrow with a small child inside it. I see a prostitute sitting in her customer’s lap. She can’t be more than fourteen. There’s a little blind boy begging piteously. There are dancing rats. A skinny monkey on a leash. Jugglers. A muzzled bear. Gamblers throwing dice. Little girls selling lemonade.
And there’s a head. On a table. At first I think it’s a fake, but it’s not. Flies are buzzing around it. People are jeering at it. Sticking cigars in its mouth. Giving it sips of wine. I hear somebody say that he was one of Fouquier-Tinville’s, a Jacobin. The same man says it will soon be Fouquier-Tinville himself sneezing into the sack and all of Paris will turn out for it.
I walk on. Away from the head. Then I take out my guitar, put my open case on the ground in front of me, and start to play. No one cares. I play Lully, Rameau, and Bach, but I might as well be invisible. People are taunting the head, trying to trip the jugglers, messing with the rats. My stomach twists painfully. I start to feel panic-stricken at the very real possibility of starving to death. I’ve got to get money. I’ve got to eat. I’ve got to get their attention.
A girl walks by hawking colorful sweets and a lightbulb goes off inside my head. I launch into a rousing acoustic version of “I Want Candy.” I bet that’ll get some attention. I’m playing the tune for all I’m worth, and singing, too. I’d stand on my head if I could.
And then, out of nowhere, a guy stumbles up to me, drunk. He has blond hair and a stubbly beard. He stands there for a minute, swaying and listening. Then he lurches forward and a plants a big tonguey one on me. He tastes like rotten fish.
“Back off!” I yelp, breaking free.
He staggers backward, laughing, and chucks a handful of coins at me.<
br />
“I always wanted to kiss a savage!” he says. “Where are you from? Africa? The Americas? I love your braids. Are you a Mohican? I never heard such wild music. Play for me, Pocahontas! Better yet,” he adds, leering, “come home with me. I’ll make it worth your while. My name’s Nicolas. Nicolas LeBeau. What’s yours, you darling little beast?”
I’m still wiping his kiss off my mouth when the little blind kid swoops in and starts picking up the coins.
“Hey! Those are mine!” I yell at him.
The kid tells me where I can go and keeps scooping up the coins. I bend over, trying to grab a few for myself. Wrong move. The drunk guy’s got friends. One of them grabs me from behind. I spin around to smack him but he catches my hand, jerks me toward him, and kisses me. The other one drops a coin down my pants then tries to get it back.
I swing my guitar, catching the first guy in the face with it. He grabs his nose and howls and the other one’s so busy laughing at him that he lets go of me. I pick up my case, slap it together, and run.
I keep going until I’m out of the courts and under the colonnade. I’m almost out of the Palais—I can see the tall white pillars of the entrance, and the street beyond it—when another man steps out of the darkness and grabs me. I try to scream, but he claps a hand over my mouth and pulls me into a doorway. I struggle and kick, trying to break free.
“Oof! That hurt! Stop it, you fool! It’s me, Fauvel!”
I freeze. I know that name. Fauvel is the man Alex bought fireworks from.
“Stop kicking and I’ll let you go,” he says.
I nod. He lets go of me and I spin around. We face each other in the gloom. My chest is heaving. I’m breathless from fighting and running.
“I must be quick,” he says. “I cannot be seen here.” He has a sack slung over his shoulder. He opens it, lifts out a bundle wrapped in newspaper and hands it to me. I open it. There are fireworks inside. Paper rockets. And wooden shafts.
I look from the rockets to him and then realize that he thinks I’m her—Alex.