Chapter 32
32
10 DECEMBER
Noah and I are meeting at Bibliothèque Mazarine, the oldest public library in Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. Somewhere in the cavernous library there is a vault that holds a thirteenth-century Gutenberg Bible, a treasured artefact that will never see the light of day – although the library does have a replica of it on display. That’s part of the magic of libraries – what secrets do they house? There are so many historical documents and scrolls, and this library is known for being the keeper of a range of rare medieval manuscripts that were seized from noble families after the French revolution.
I quicken my pace and enter the library, to be greeted by the regular sour-faced librarian. ‘What’s the purpose of your visit today?’ she asks in a shrill tone. I’ve written here for years, but she asks me every single visit. I suspect it’s because my British-accented French makes her suspicious of me, as if I’m here to discover the vault and steal the Gutenberg Bible itself. There are several librarians working here but this one, who I privately call ‘The Gatekeeper’, always leaves her place at the reception desk to follow me around as if waiting for me to commit a cardinal library sin like talking above a whisper or taking too many books to my table. I could easily write in any of the other beautiful libraries around Paris, but that would mean she’s won and I don’t want to give her the satisfaction. I can be petty.
‘I’m here to work, Madame,’ I say with a bright smile, just like always.
With a distrustful frown, she waves me inside.
Does Noah get the third degree when he visits? I make my way around the library and find him sitting at a table in the back.
‘ Bonjour. ’ We kiss cheeks in the French custom and I get a little zap from the smell of his cologne. Huh. I push it from my mind. We’ve got serious business to attend to and I need to focus. Why does he smell so good? A spicy evocative scent that distracts me from my purpose here today.
I take a seat opposite him and shake the fog from my mind. ‘ Bonjour . Did the librarian ask you what the purpose of your visit is?’ I ask as I unwind my scarf and sit opposite.
‘ Non? ’
‘That’s grossly unfair!’
‘Isn’t she a darling little thing?’
I cock my head. Is he toying with me? ‘Are you joking?’
A grin splits his face. ‘She told me I reminded her of Hemingway, and that if only I was him, despite her advanced age, she’d court me, no two ways about it.’
Muted laughter spills from me and I turn to find her behind me, finger to her lips to shush. I do the adult thing and point to Noah, blaming him. Her harsh expression softens when she locks eyes with him, and she gives him a fluttery little wave before she flounces off to berate another library member who has the audacity to take a selfie. There are no photos allowed in these hallowed halls!
‘I have no words. OK, oui , I do! The woman is a tyrant. She’s sweet on you because you remind her of Hemingway and I face her wrath if I happen to breathe too loud? It’s a disgrace!’
He shrugs. ‘Hemingway survived two plane crashes. She mentions it every time I visit, as if she thinks I might be him reincarnated or something. If he can survive that maybe he can survive death – who knows?’
‘ Oui . That would explain it.’ Hemingway really is alive and well in the hearts of Parisians, even after all this time. It makes me think of our secret author, and whether she is too. Could she still be celebrated here and we just don’t know because we don’t know her identity?
Noah must read my mind because he says, ‘Sorry to say though that Adeleine Deschamps is not our author. After reading her novel, I did some research and found that she died a few years after publication. I found an article from her publisher who shared the news.’
I am instantly deflated. ‘She died?’ I’d also done some investigating and hadn’t found much on Adeleine Deschamps at all. Obviously we’re going back a hundred years, but the history books made little mention of her.
He shakes his head. ‘ Oui. From smallpox. She was only thirty.’
‘It’s always sad when a literary light goes out so young.’
‘I looked into the other two women from our list, Thérèse Fournier and Clothilde Labelle, and they’re accounted for too. Thérèse gave up writing when she married into a wealthy family, and Clothilde swapped writing for nursing and later published a memoir under her real name, her married name, about her time nursing on the battlefield.’
‘Well, I guess we knew they were a longshot. I had a thought, and I could be totally off base, but could our mystery author have published under her husband’s name? We know that happened a lot back then, women writing under a man’s name, or a nom de plume, because of gender bias, but could that be why the royalties still went to him even after she left the marriage?’ It would explain why she so vehemently wanted to drop her pseudonym, which wasn’t really a pen name; it was his name when she escaped from her husband.’
Noah slaps his forehead and yells, ‘ Oui! ’ He draws the attention of the librarian, who smiles. ‘That would explain it. It fits with why she never wanted to publish a book ever again, if she indeed wrote under his name and maybe he took all the credit for her hard work?’
‘Shall we look through the archives here? Make a list of names of men who were prolific and then suddenly stopped publishing around 1924?’
He gives me a quick nod. ‘I’m sure we’re on the right track.’
We split up and spend the next few hours going through the archives and make a solid list of potential writers. It saddens me that so many more men were published back then than women. And perhaps in order to get their words in print, they had to make sacrifices, like allow their husband to take the credit.
When we meet back at the table, we make a plan to investigate our long list of names further and meet up again later as soon as we happen on anything that feels like it might be him.
As we’re packing our papers away, Noah says, ‘Would you like to go to the Christmas market with me tomorrow afternoon before the bar opens?’
‘Sure, I’d love to.’ I’m not sure if Noah’s just being a friendly neighbour or there’s more to it on his part, but I decide in the interest of not reverting to a bland and boring life to say yes, to whatever comes my way. We’ve bonded over our shared heartbreak and now we’re bonding over the mysterious writer from suite nineteen. Whatever is in store for the future will only happen if I open myself up to possibilities. Even just the thought of a ‘one day’ romance is enough to send tingles down my body. The more I get to know Noah, the more I like him, even though he’s a mansplainer of the finest order.