The Emperor of Paris Read online

  By midday a quiet cry was heard coming from the cellar. Everyone in the shop took turns grinning and slapping each other on the back, then left in search of champagne and the good crystal. Monsieur placed his newborn son in a bowl of proofing dough. He mopped his wife’s brow and smoothed her hair and chuckled at his own joke.

  Quite a loaf you’ve baked, my love.

  Everything in Madame’s head came loose and spun into blackness. Half naked, bloated and torn for anyone to see, she panicked at the sudden emptiness inside her. At feeling nothing for the trembling thing beside her in the bowl, its pink fists wavering above the rim. She waited for the joy, the relief, the excitement, the peace.

  Monsieur whispered that the boy would need a name.

  Madame looked away, her thoughts tumbling in a thousand directions. She had worn her knees raw in devotion. She had been so correct, so careful, full to bursting with faith in Gabriel’s kindness. She could not remember a day when she had not dreamed of motherhood. She had wanted this child since she herself had been a child. Now the shivers of fear would not stop. Was this Gabriel’s reward for her selfishness? To give a gift only to turn His back and deny the want of it? Madame stared at her husband, tears pooling in her unblinking eyes, flowing down her face and welling on the marble under her.

  I am trying so hard, she said.

  Monsieur forced a smile. Rest now, my love. I will think of something.

  The boy spent his first night swaddled in the drawer of his parents’ armoire. He slept, as day-olds do, peaceful and unaware.

  The following morning Monsieur’s newspaper depicted the moment after a train had collided with an elephant. The surprised animal hurtled through the air as the engineer poked his head from the engine’s cab, the man’s cheeks puffed and pink as he blew on his whistle. The headline told of A STRANGE RAILWAY ACCIDENT IN SIAM!!

  Another Sunday and Monsieur might have managed a fantastical story, one he could not wait to tell his wife when she returned from mass. Animals, birds, mythical creatures: these were his specialties. The elephant might transform into a mad runaway from an African travelling zoo. Or become a gift to the mayor of Paris, delayed on the outskirts of the city, from the Maharaj of Calcutta. He would invite Madame to join him on the bakery step, then transform into a fidgety public official rattling his watch to see if it still worked, or a grand and puffy Indian prince, bowing with apologies and trying to keep his turban on his head.

  But a new father’s mind is full of other dreams and other worries. Monsieur barely noticed the newspaper’s date: 8.8.08.

  Monsieur ran through the bakery and up the stairs to the top of the cake-slice. He could hear the fits and gasps of his wailing son. He found his wife in the bedroom trying to nurse the infant, her face turned to the ceiling.

  Octavio, he said, stretching the ayvio into ahhvio and waving the newspaper above his head. You see, my love? Eighth day, eighth month, eighth district.

  Madame’s eyes were swollen; her hair hung in drenched tangles.

  Your son, she said.

  Ours.

  His wife did not reply as Monsieur left to warm a bottle of milk. Outside, the skies above the cake-slice sagged in the summer heat, threatening a downpour.

  The baker makes for home, west now, his face toward the sun. He carries a bundle tied with twine, three books bound in green linen. The load knocks his shins with each stride; the rough string handle cuts into his hand. He nears the end of a well-travelled route, but on this day it holds no comfort.

  It had begun like no Sunday before it. He had set out from the bakery, a head full of possibilities. A week had passed, he thought. Surely she would have found his gift. She could be there even now, at this early hour, in the gardens waiting and wondering who had left such a lovely thing behind. Would she know it was intended for her?

  He had pictured her as he hurried along. She was sitting in her chair by the boat pond, loosening her scarf in the warmth of the July morning, smiling as she read. She was starting to write something. Making a note of a favourite, he was certain, the one tale in a thousand that had always been his favourite.

  Through the morning he had tried to keep his usual pace and schedule. He had visited his favourite bookstall on the quay. Yet he had barely spoken to the proprietor, had rushed through his selections and settled on the green ones without giving them much thought. He had crossed the Pont des Arts almost at a run. He had forced himself not to look as he made his way through the Tuileries toward the boat pond.

  But he had seen her empty chair. Was he behind his time, had he missed her? Or had someone else seen it, thought it forgotten, thrown it away? He had waited. The woman never appeared. Finally a groundsman began dragging the chairs strewn around the pond back to their proper places. The old fellow then picked up her chair, brushed off the dust and carried it to the trees nearby. No one had used it for some time.

  ——

  The baker passes a café, tripping over the outstretched legs of a gentleman seated on the terrace. The man pays no attention as he juggles his newspaper, grabbing at the edges, trying to fold the paper inside out, frustrated that his arms are not long enough. He closes the paper to fold it lengthwise, one hand sliding from the top corner, the other gripping the bottom. He manages only to tangle his wrists in the middle and crease the paper the wrong way. The baker regains his footing and shuffles on.

  Through a small park now. Huddled near the carousel, children surround a circus strongman, bouncing up and down as though on their own beds, their fingers stretching for invisible ceilings. The strongman holds a book in one hand. With pretended effort he hoists a chair with the other, his eyes never leaving his reading. In the chair sits a squealing girl. She waves to her friends below, their arms wrapped around the strongman’s meaty legs. On the carousel, white horses pause in mid-gallop, waiting for their distracted riders.

  The baker passes a pair of old women sitting on a bench. Each reads an identical copy of a cheap paperback. One grimaces as though stabbed through the heart and slaps her book closed. At the same moment, the other stifles a gasp with her hand, her eyes growing wide.

  A December wind armed with ice and knives gathered its skirts in a northern sea. It stepped ashore near Calais, dithered before finding the Paris road, moaned its way south through thick and ancient forests, entered the town of Beauvais along the high street, paused in front of the cathedral, circled the market square, then lifted its frozen hems and slipped uninvited under the door of the town’s only clothing shop.

  To waft around the fat thighs of Pascal Normande, kneeling behind the door and encased like so much mince in a waistcoat embroidered with peacocks, an immaculate suit, high collar, silk tie and pearl stick pin. He ran his fingers around the frame, measuring the drafts. In such a position, his face would glow an alarming shade of pink. His plump lips tightened to a sneer.

  Screw these goddamn farmers, he said.

  He grunted as he got to his feet, brushed the knees of his trousers, tugged at his waistcoat, fingered his collar and peered through a frost-skimmed window to the empty square beyond.

  Screw them all to hell and back.

  Pascal had seen no more business this day than yesterday, or the day before, or the month past, or in the year since opening Atelier Normande. Yet in a glance he surveyed the shop, reassuring himself that all was ready. Poised, he might have said were the weather not so frigid.

  Dismembered mannequins leaned against the icy walls. Shelves sagged under the weight of fabrics: bolts of browns and greens, a selection of Irish wools, rare satins, saffron cottons from the dye pots of Morocco. In the window a chorus of heads wore a collection of CHAPEAUX MERVEILLEUX!, so proclaimed the advertising card, each aeronautic brim layered in country dust. A row of ladies’ footwear, their toes placed neatly in line, stood along the counter.

  Behind which: Madame Céleste Normande. Forced by the temperature in the shop to abandon her code of daywear, she was wrapped in a rough blanket that would eventually pr
oduce a rash. She looked to her husband, a wisp of vapour escaping her clenched teeth.

  Paris, she said.

  Pascal Normande had been born in the city’s twentieth district, the bastard son of a piecework dressmaker. She had doted on her boy, only to stitch herself to death in the backroom of a musty ladies’ shop. The first suit he owned was the one he had worn to grieve her. He had made it himself, those dark days and nights at her elbow leaving their impression; his buttonhole work as fine a tribute as any eulogy. He promised her grave that he would be the Normande to improve the family’s lot.

  Céleste Renault was the daughter of a porter who had made the rounds working the finer hotels of the boulevards. As a girl she would put on her cleanest smock, tug the hem down to cover a hole in the knee of her stockings, and meet her father after his shift. She sat in his lobbies, practising grown-up postures under the potted palms, admiring the guests as they came and went. The heaps of travelling cases would bring on a fit of giggles whenever they jammed the revolving doors. On their way home, she would ask her father where the luggage had come from. The brass-riveted trunks, the leather wardrobes as tall as she was, the hatboxes decorated as though they were birthday cakes.

  How much could all that hold, Papa?

  A world entire, her father would say. The likes of which you and I will never see.

  They grew up in the twentieth, Céleste at the top of the Belleville hill, Pascal at the bottom. Yet their paths never crossed until the World’s Fair of 1900.

  Tracing through the exhibit halls and pavilions, the fair’s great attraction was the Moving Promenade: the guidebooks described it as A MARVEL OF AN AGE TILL NOW UNFULFILLED! The contraption consisted of wooden platforms sliding along at different speeds. At a slow and easy pace, the inner course was advertised as being for those of weak or infirm constitutions, women, young children and the clergy. The outer course moved twice as fast.

  Pascal, grown into a young gentleman, stood on the outside gripping the handrail and trying to look relaxed as he moved along. Near the Russian Pavilion he passed an enormous black hat on the slower course, its brim shading the face of Céleste. Though the hat was from one or two seasons past, it was the burst of orange pheasant feathers across the crown that caught Pascal’s practised eye. He knew them instantly as a bit of magic, an inexpensive trick that on the right head could distract the viewer from noticing less fashionable details of an ensemble. And he knew they had worked on him: he began shuffling backwards to stay alongside this vision. He lifted his bowler and complimented her on her dress. Céleste scanned the neatly parted hair, the athletic shoulders, the slim hips, the gleaming shoes. She offered her hand. Pascal took it and, without a moment’s hesitation, Céleste stepped from the slower platform to his. Together they moved off toward the Palace of Electricity, the feathers’ long tapered ends swaying with the speed.

  Céleste believed, once, that her husband would do as he vowed on the day the smallest of emerald rings had finally emerged from his pocket: he, the enthusiastic Pascal, would build for her a life that would see a jewel on every finger. She, his dearest, dearest heart, would live under cloudless skies. They, the newly engaged Normandes, would stride into the twentieth century with elegance and style. They may be obliged to begin that journey outside Paris, with rents being what they were, but sooner or later the city would beg them to return.

  By the evening of her first day in Beauvais, once had become a word for fables.

  Madame Céleste tightened the blanket around her shoulders and threw Pascal his scarf and gloves. A smile as cold as her fingers creased her face.

  Paris, was all she said.

  Within the week the Normandes were gone, the shop’s shutters left banging in the winter wind. The loss of a good tailor, like the arrival of the medieval armies that had once trod their fields to muck, the citizens of Beauvais shouldered with characteristic stoicism and dry humour. They would recall the December of 1907 as having the strangest sort of weather.

  Atelier Normande reopened on the first day of the new year, unveiling its windows in a Paris back street near, though not quite near enough, the prominent fashion houses. A summer collection was presented—most notices called it quaint—petits fours were served, Pascal scurried about.

  One newspaper did remark on Madame Céleste’s dress. She skimmed the article, her eyes pouncing again and again:

  The hostess’s ensemble—a fearless stroke against convention—cascades of silk and velvet—magnificent, magnificent—dangerously exciting—supple territories at the shoulder and décolletage—the women of Paris—London—New York—will think twice about their dreary wardrobes—brava! they will shout as they rip their tired seams—rework their waists and hems—brava, Madame Céleste!

  She turned to her husband. As well they should, she said.

  The August skies had cleared. Pascal Normande slid a key from his vest and locked the shop, leaving the cutters, seamstresses and pressers to work through the night. A new season approached and preparation was all.

  Pascal believed a client of Atelier Normande expected timeliness or they just as promptly took their business elsewhere. He conveniently forgot that his clients were not those of the great houses. They were a more practical sort, interested as much in the thickness of their billfolds as in the newness of their wardrobes. Just as conveniently he forgot how his mother had spent her nights.

  He pulled his handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his face. He cursed the wet heat sliding up from the river, along the boulevard, around the corner and through his front door. Convinced the day had been the hottest of the summer, he set off for home.

  One might have missed the soggy handkerchief, the stained hatband, the flushed cheeks; such was the rehearsed swing of Pascal’s walking stick. Here was a gentleman, one could assume, overdressed for the weather but still at ease with himself and his world, wanting for nothing. For Pascal Normande was in the business of illusion.

  It was an expensive business. The last francs in his Beauvais pockets had been spent moving back to the city. Every franc since went to outrageous taxes and mysterious fees. Every franc that did not pay his workers, or barely covered the rent on his apartments, or dripped from his wife’s earlobes, every centime leveraged or mortgaged or begged, threatened his end.

  And yet. Word had it a shipment of Chinese silks sat idle and cheap on a wharf in Le Havre. Simply wire the money and an autumn line, the talk of the boulevards, would appear as though from thin air. There were rumours of a baroness planning a series of fancy dress parties for the following spring. Fold a franc into the aprons of the kitchen staff and a winter’s worth of orders would materialize like aces from one’s sleeve.

  Pascal stepped off the pavement to allow a governess and her young charges to pass. He touched the brim of his hat. A few paces on, he stopped and looked back, his pink face brightening.

  A children’s collection, he thought.

  With a few mothers in the client book, no shop on earth would be more magical than Atelier Normande.

  At that moment Madame Céleste was at home selecting a hat for the evening’s opera. Carmen, box eleven. Adjusting the angle of the brim and running a hand through a nest of ribbons, she rehearsed her exit from the taxi, the discreet hoist of her hems to avoid the puddles left by the afternoon’s rain, her walk up the grand staircase, the curve of her necklace, her pause, her pose, her wave to an acquaintance, the turn of her feet as she stood waiting for the chair to be slid under her charmeuse bottom, the glare in her eye and the arch of her brow at the usher’s flustered request: would madame be so kind as to remove her hat?

  As she passed each mirror in the Normande apartments, she paused and considered her reflection. The tickets would have cost Pascal a fortune.

  Her smile, she concluded, was perfection.

  A one-room apartment hides in the shadows of a small courtyard. Inside a young woman paces the uneven floorboards, dressed only in her underwear: a cotton chemise, dull and shapeless with o
verwashing. She circles the room, stumbling over books, sidestepping memorized knotholes. She fusses over the time, rechecks the address she had written on a strip of paper. Her stomach in knots, she worries the weather will be as oppressive as yesterday’s. She fills a cup from the kitchen tap. The gulped water makes her belly complain all the louder. She frets over what to wear, frets then over her fretting. From a rope strung above her bed she takes down a hanger. Her only proper dress: summer cotton, a ghost of its former rose-petal pink, the waistline long out of fashion. The sleeves, she thinks, heaven help me what if I sweat. For a cooler fit she considers shortening them or removing them altogether. She knows she could do the alterations blindfolded, the number of times she has watched others manage it.

  She slips on a pair of canvas shoes. Flat-soled, broken in, comfortable for the walk. She adds her best scarf, the one with the suggestion of peacock feathers. Once a vivid swath of violets and greens, its colours faded now with time and wear. She checks in the mirror by the door, smoothing the scarf to each side of her face and throwing the ends over a shoulder. One motion, as mindless as breathing: the look, the adjustment, the toss.

  The young woman picks up the parcel she will deliver, running her fingertips over the careful re-wrapping, smoothing lingering wrinkles in the paper. Satisfied no one could suspect it had been opened she takes a breath and settles her stomach. Then a flash of memory: the man in the Tuileries.

  She had recognized him from the museum. He was carrying a bundle of books, which had explained the stories he told about the paintings. Her story man, she had named him.