The small table masked the blade from the others, but both Meurthe and Fabian could see its point as it crept lower down his belly. Fabian sucked in his breath, tightening his stomach, and then was sorry for it. Meurthe pressed the tip of the sword even closer and now Fabian couldn’t breathe at all. The worst part, Fabian thought, was the way the bastard was smiling.
Then, casually, the sword began to flick the buttons off his pants. One! Two! Bouchard remembered: Meurthe had killed a man in a duel.
“During the war,” Meurthe said in an easygoing voice, “I saw men after their intestines were perforated. Their excrement entered the bloodstream and they died in agony.” Three! Four!
Then he paused for a second.
“Fabian,” he said softly. “This is your last button...and your last chance.”
Fabian talked. It got easier as he babbled on, like confessing to a priest. He sensed that Meurthe knew most of what he was saying, but there was some piece of information he needed. And, if it would save his life, Bouchard was going to give it to him.
Then Meurthe raised his left hand as if he were bored with all this.
“Enough, Fabian.”
As he rose, the three-foot steel blade took the narrow table and flipped it out of the way. Flowers, fine crystal and wine flew. Women screamed and nearby waiters jumped back. The rapier was visible now and Meurthe brought the point up to dance in front of Fabian’s nose.
“Fabian”—the blade flashed back—“I have killed so many better people than you”—and forward again.
There was a blinding explosion in Bouchard’s brain. He thought he was dead. Then he realized: Meurthe had driven the sword into the wooden pillar next to the wattles of his neck, pinning his collar and hooking him like a fish.
“—that you are simply not worth it,” Meurthe finished. A second later, he was gone.
No one moved. The other diners averted their eyes from Bouchard’s half-undressed body and chalky face, but Maxim’s flowered mirrors reflected it all—back and forth and back again. Fabian was shaking as if he had palsy. He shook so hard that his collar came loose and he was free.
“Get away from me!” he shouted at the cluster of waiters. “Get my carriage. I’m leaving!”
But one waiter approached him anyway, holding a spritzer bottle and a pile of napkins. “Monsieur,” he whispered politely, “you have soiled yourself.”
* * *
Meurthe walked through the dark streets. He knew where he was going, and when he got there his life would be over. There was no need to rush.
While he walked, he dreamed that he was back in the balloon during the worst days of the War, flying out of Paris with the messages that would save his country. A dark mist of clouds surrounded him, and then, suddenly, the balloon rose and broke through to the brightest, most beautiful sunlight that he had ever seen, so brilliant that it hurt his eyes. The pigeons were cooing like music and far below the clouds mingled with mountain peaks.
Across from him in the basket was Alain, who reached out to him and said, “We have found it!”
“What?” he asked.
His son smiled at him and answered, “The Region of Fire.”
Then the vision vanished, and Meurthe was back on the silent streets again.
“Alain, my son,” he spoke as he walked into the darkness, “you were right to believe Man could fly. But you were wrong to believe in Man—so wrong. Men may ascend the skies like living angels, but their natures do not change.”
Chapter Twenty Nine: The Gare du Nord—Later That Evening
That evening was the most magical of Mary Ann’s life. Despite all that had happened, she was alive. The city was alive. And Harding was back.
“Come on, let’s do the town,” he said to her.
“But we don’t have any money.”
“Yes we do,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I took Neville Bishop’s silver-headed cane and pawned it.”
For the first time she understood what Paris was like for Harding when he’d been here before. He bought her a frock, a beautiful shimmering turquoise dress with a narrow waist and pearl buttons down the back. Then they rented a Teuf-Teuf, one of the little motorcycles with a sidecar that made a strange coughing sound, and explored places like Fishing Cat Street, Prideful Mountain Street, and the Street of the Four Winds.
They traveled up the hills of Montmartre where grapevines still lined the streets, and ate charcuterie in the backyard of a little inn. There they met shaggy-looking artists Harding knew who showed them paintings full of wild animals and huge splashes of green. He posed Mary Ann in front of them. She heard the artists discussing her as a model, and then saw Harding laugh and shake his head.
Then they went to the big red windmill where two bands were playing noisy disjointed melodies at opposite ends of the dance floor and joined the whirl of high-kickers doing the Can-Can. They danced until their legs gave out. She rode a wooden horse named Clovis on the double-decker merry-go-round just below Sacré-Coeur.
Afterwards they found an outdoor table at a corner cafe, fed each other strawberries and champagne, and chattered away; all the things that they had both been too angry or shy to say before. She remembered how she had passed people like this, lovers by candlelight, and been jealous. Now it was her turn. And it was all so simple.
“Who’s you’re favorite painter?” she giggled. “I mean, besides yourself.”
“Leonardo da Vinci.”
“Do you like his ‘Last Supper’ or those beautiful etchings of the flying machines that he wanted to build?”
“No,” said Harding, “what I love about Leonardo is what he did for the birds. In Milan, where he lived, they used to catch wild birds in nets and sell them to children. The children would tie the birds to strings on their wrists and walk around the city. The birds would flap and flutter until they died.”
“So what did Leonardo do?”
“He’d run through the town like a crazy old man and whenever he saw a bird on a string, he’d take a pocketful of coins and buy it from the child.”
“Must have gotten expensive. How many birds did he buy?”
Harding shrugged. “Probably hundreds.”
“So what did he do with them all?” In her mind, she saw one of those famous pictures where a multitude of birds in harness swept you up into the sky.
Harding paused. She sensed in his silence that he was wary, unsure of where the things that he was saying would lead—or if he wanted to take her there with him.
“Are you still thinking about him?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But not in a bad way. And you? Have you come to terms with your memories about what happened the last time you were in Paris?”
“I think so. Maybe it was seeing you nearly drown. Maybe I redeemed myself today, at least a little, for what I did to my wife.”
She nodded. Instinctively she reached out and took his hand, touching his fingers one by one and then putting his hand against her face. But they were interrupted when a street carnival pushed its way past them; children with painted faces riding on donkeys, goats, even pigs.
Harding stopped a vendor and bought her a little pot of heather and they climbed on board L’Impériale, the open-top deck of one of the horse-drawn buses. They rode through the summer night, looking at the moon and the way its light flooded the city streets. And then he kissed her.
The first time surprised her. The second time, she slid her hand into his and drew him closer. The kiss never seemed to end, and when it did, another one started. She could feel herself responding, almost losing her breath in the giddiness of the moment, and then she pulled away.
“You told me that you were never going to kiss me again after that time in your room,” she reminded him.
“But this time you kissed me back,” he smiled.
“We’re in a public place, you know.”
“Do you want to go somewhere?”
“Where? I can’t go back to that boat. I ju
st can’t. And neither of us has a place to live anymore. Things have changed.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I lost my job, and you lost Alain.”
“I never had Alain. But I always had you.”
“Yes. You always had me.”
Harding thought for a second.
“I know. Bishop’s railroad car. The old fool is probably still on the Bethanie, staring at the water.”
They jumped off at the Gare du Nord. Harding told her that Bishop’s railway car had been placed on a siding just outside the station, so they walked through the terminal beneath the 100-foot-high glass ceilings that looked like huge honeycombs. It was empty except for two pimps who stood under the gold clock, smoking and waiting for the young Breton girls to arrive from the country so that they could seduce them. They stared at Mary Ann—until Harding stared back.
“There it is,” he said, pointing outside and down the tracks past the shed where the round red and gray sign signaled the next train.
Neville Bishop’s private car was easy to find even in the darkness. It was a specially-lengthened Pullman with heavy purple drapes in the windows, a gilded wrought-iron railing and a gold-striped awning that extended three feet beyond the back of the car.
It was locked.
“Give me a piece of your shirt,” said Mary Ann.
“What?”
She reached out, her boldness surprising even herself, and pulled his worn, bleached-out shirt from the front of his trousers. She ripped off a piece, wrapped it around her hand, and smashed a windowpane.
“All property is theft,” she laughed as she reached through the broken window and unlocked the door from the inside.
He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.
“You’ve changed,” he said, following her inside.
She had. She didn’t know exactly how, but Alain’s death had somehow freed her, made her stronger. The pain of it had taken her to a new place in her life, like those levels that Alain had talked about, the ones in the sky. She wasn’t a little schoolgirl with a crush anymore. She was a woman. There were a million romantic poems about females who had cast themselves out of windows after their lovers had died or deserted them. Well, she wasn’t one of them. There was a life force in her that needed to be touched and molded and reformed. And tonight, perhaps, it would happen.
She gasped when she saw the interior: a fireplace lit by bottled gas, a high mahogany bar framed by crystal goblets that caught the glow of the fire, a wine rack full of rows and rows of bottles.
“My God!” she said.
“Keep going. It gets better.”
In the center of the car was a dressing room with racks of suits. Mingled among them were women’s clothes, gowns, slips, silk nighties that spoke of Sybaritic sex and jaded appetites.
Harding watched as Mary Ann posed with one of them in front of her dress. Above them, built into the ceiling, was an observation deck with windows on all four sides surrounding a huge marble bathtub.
“So Bishop could sit back and scrub his ass while he watched the world go by,” said Harding, looking up.
“I thought that he was broke,” said Mary Ann.
“Some things you just don’t give up.”
“Back here,” he heard Mary Ann call.
The bedroom was only dimly lit from the light outside and the corners were dark, but Harding could see Mary Ann in the center. Her shoes were off and she was bouncing up and down on the 12-foot bed. She was pointing and giggling. All around the top of the walls were oak carvings of nymphs and satyrs making love in all sorts of positions. And directly above the bed, on the ceiling, was a curved mirror.
Mary Ann sat on the bed; her wide eyes focused on him in the near dark. Harding could see her bosom rising and falling. He put his hand over her breast and felt her heart thumping. Darkness unleashed other senses, too. He breathed in the woman-smell of her, unmasked by complicated scents. It was erotic.
For a second he was reminded of when he had first met her at the church, and she had taken flight. Even then he had wanted her. Slowly he reached behind her neck to loosen the dress, button by sensuous button, starting at the down of her silky neck and moving toward the swell of her hips. Each time he touched her bare skin she shivered. Dress, chemise, petticoats and stockings seemed to fall off her and land in a pile on the polished hardwood floor.
He began to kiss her. She watched in the overhead mirror as he explored her with his mouth; the secret hollows, the gentle slopes, the peaks of her nipples. Soon she was kissing him back, almost in a frenzy, pulling his clothes off to join hers on the floor. They were rolling over and over on the endless bed. Then Harding raised himself on his elbows above her.
“I want to remember this moment,” he whispered.
“Me too.”
A train pulled in on the next track, rocking the walls of their personal world, its monster eye of a headlight shining through their windows for just a second. But in that second, something in her inner ear told her that things weren’t right. She tensed, and turned away.
Harding reacted to the change in her. She felt his body tighten, pull back, grow angry before he said anything.
“It’s Alain, isn’t it? You’re still thinking of Alain. He’s still here, isn’t he!” His voice rose with each syllable.
“Quiet!”
She strained her eyes as the darkness in the corner took shape. It wasn’t Alain, but someone was there. They were not alone.
Then the gunshot. At first she thought that it was inside her head, it was so loud. Then it was next to her head. Then she realized that it was inside the room.
She waited, still under him as if his body could protect her from all evil. Her right hand felt wet. She knew instinctively that this was a shot that had killed someone.
Harding drew a breath and she started to sob. At least he was still alive. He put his hand over her mouth.
Would the darkness and silence protect them? She didn’t know. She waited for another shot. It didn’t come. The flash of the gun had blinded her, but she could hear a dripping sound, like water, coming from the corner.
Harding got up. He nearly fell. The floor was slippery beneath his bare feet. He lit a lamp.
Then Mary Ann stopped sobbing, and started to scream.
In the corner sat Neville Bishop. He had been there all the time, watching them from his vantage point where the darkness was especially dense.
But he was watching no longer. He had put a gun to the side of his head, a big .45 caliber revolver, and fired. The pressure of the soft-nosed slug inside his skull had forced his left eyeball out of its socket and left a huge hole in his forehead. Gouts of brain and clots of blood were scattered like dark seed as far as the bed.
Mary Ann now knew why her hand was wet. The dripping sound had been blood running down his arm and onto the floor.
Harding recovered first. He tore the sheet off the bed and threw it over her. Then he grabbed what he could of their clothes. She was still screaming as he pulled her out of the room, through the car, and out onto the railroad tracks.
“Calm down,” he ordered. “You’ve got to stop. Someone’s going to see us.”
“Didn’t anyone hear the gunshot?”
Just then came a white light from the other side of the city, followed by the sound of an explosion. Then an even greater light, illuminating the parallel lines of endless track and the two small figures who huddled half-naked in the vast train yard. It was as if someone had taken one of those gunpowder flash pictures—but of the whole world. They braced themselves as the inevitable “KAA…RRUMPH!” came at them, upending the whole city. The earth itself shook.
“No,” said Harding, as the light faded. “I don’t think anyone noticed our little problem.”
“What happened? What was that?”
He stared at the far end of Paris, toward Montparnasse. “I’m afraid I know.”
Chapter Thirty: Tragedy at Montparnasse—Evening, July 17
A
t one time, Montparnasse had been a quarry. Because it was a hole in the ground, people tried to fill it up with trash: cans, bottles, the remains of torn-down buildings. Gradually the mountain of trash grew; home to weeds, stray cats and the students of the Latin Quarter, who would sometimes paint themselves and parade naked in the streets. As a joke, the students named it Mount Parnassus, the Greek peak that was home to Dionysius, god of wine.
Then Fabian Bouchard bought an entire city block of Montparnasse under an assumed name, and put up the biggest building in Paris. At first, people asked questions. But then the Germans came, and there were no more questions.
Maximilian loved the way that his building towered over the slums around it. He thought of it as a cathedral. All the other cathedrals of Paris were monuments to dead gods and unimportant saints. This one was meant for a living God, and the God was inside.
A sentry stopped him. The sentry had seen him a hundred times before, but made a point of asking for his credentials each time to prove that he was doing his job. Maximilian was annoyed, but tried not to show it. He could not reprimand a soldier for being alert—particularly tonight. Tomorrow the Kaiser would come in on a special train to watch him humiliate the French. To watch him fly.
Maximilian remembered how vast the workshop had looked before the airship was built—like a cavern. Now the dirigible, in its full height, took up the entire building. In daylight, illumination came from skylights in the roof, but this evening electric lights, powered by a generator, glowed dimly. There were no oil lamps or gaslights. Hydrogen, oxygen and flame were an explosive combination.
Maximilian approached the airship from the front. It was awesome—steel gray and ominous—like walking down the barrel of a gun toward the bullet inside, but it held no fear for him. He knew where he was going. Inside, at the far back, was a captain’s chair where he could sit, and be at peace, on this final night. Its high arms made him feel as if he were on a throne. Perhaps some day he would be.
He walked up the passageway at the bottom of the airship and into its belly. A guard should have been posted at this entrance, too. Then he paused for a second. There was a strange sound that he couldn’t identify.