9 THE MAGIC WORD
9
T HE M AGIC W ORD
Roger thought the soup at Chez Richard tasted better than ever. Hot, French, and with a touch of je ne sais quoi that gave it a nice consistency.
“Can I take your plate?” Laurence was carrying four dishes she’d collected from other tables in her left hand. She cleared away Roger’s bowl and spoon to make the most of her trip.
“Excellent.” He lifted the place settings to help her pick up. “Compliments to the chef.”
“What chef?” Already carrying a full load, she gestured with her elbows. “Do you see a Michelin star on the door? There’s no chef here. There are just two Korean women in the kitchen who make anything and everything. The meals all come out to fifteen euros—what do you think is going on?”
In addition to the stew, which contained a little bit of everything, he ate shirred eggs and an orange. For that price—a drink, two slices of bread, oily napkins, and a slice of Montmartre peeking out from behind the red curtains all included—he couldn’t ask for more.
“Where’s the boss?” Roger asked as he paid in cash at the counter.
“He’s got a hell of a cold, he said. He must be down bad if he didn’t come to manage every little thing.”
“So you’re running the ship.”
“You can count on it.” It was the first smile that Laurence had cracked in weeks.
“As the current boss, you might not have time to go out for a smoke between lunch and dinner.”
“What’s happening? You planning on taking pictures today? You’ve rethought it, huh?”
“No, no,” he murmured. “I told you ...”
“Does that offer to come over to your house still stand?”
Caught off guard, Roger reacted as seriously as possible.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Write down your address.” She placed her notebook and pen right in front of him. “I’ll go.”
“Ah ...”
“You’ll be there, I’m guessing.” She gave him a threatening look.
“Of course, yes, yes.”
“If you’re not going to be there, don’t waste my time.”
“Well, I was going to head to an exhibition now, but I’ll switch my plans. It’s okay.”
“That’s how I like it,” Laurence said quietly in a tone she hoped sounded rational.
“What time do you get out of here?”
She turned around to look at the big clock hanging over the counter, hidden behind bottles of Cointreau, Chartreuse, and Rémy Martin.
“I’ve got a good amount of time left. I still have to pass out some dinners. Pick up. Clean ... There’s still work left to do.”
A change in plans indeed. Roger would see that afternoon’s exhibition early and quickly. He searched for a metro station and went down to Saint-Paul in the Marais neighborhood. He rushed to the half-palace and half-magisterial hotel building that contained the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris, where a photography exhibition about Parisians under the Nazi occupation was being held. They had inaugurated the exhibition not even a week before, and he’d heard that there was some sort of controversy, but he hadn’t followed the conflict. When he entered the Bibliothèque historique—what Parisians, fond of acronyms, called the BHVP—he knew he couldn’t dillydally. He left his parka and backpack in the coatroom, and he entered the first dark hall without reading the photographer’s biography. He passed by the explanatory plaques and headed straight for the photos.
Right away, his eyes were drawn to a color photo of a woman holding an umbrella on a snowy bench at la Tuileries. It was the image of tranquility. It wasn’t just the photo that emanated tranquility. The Paris shown, at least in the first gallery, was a serene one that didn’t seem like a city suffering in the moment. You couldn’t see the war. You couldn’t see the occupation. German soldiers showed up only occasionally and only unexpectedly, as though they had simply wandered into the view of the lens. Among the photos, however, there did suddenly appear a perspective of the porches on rue de Rivoli lined with Nazi flags—the red drapes, the emphatic swastikas—on a blue-sky day. The streets were empty except for two workers riding their bikes. Further down was a photograph of a soldier descending the stairs of the Madeleine church, surrounded by all sorts of passersby, as if the uniform and swastika didn’t make an impression on them. The majority of the photographs, magnificent in their perspective, modern in their framing, were of a happy city. They depicted children playing with elephants at the Vincennes Zoo, children skating beneath the Eiffel Tower, movie posters of big cinema halls as grand attractions, women sorting through tchotchkes at the flea market, men in tiny bathing suits soaking in the Seine at the pont du Carrousel. The exhibition also displayed the terraces of the chicest cafés, crowded with people on Sundays at Champs-élysées or the Les Deux Magots café. Not a single empty table. Men in sport coats, ties, and fedoras with black ribbons on their heads. Dressed-up women trying to impress with fancy hats and brightly colored shoes. Roger discovered that in 1940, the penguin-like waiters had already begun wearing the same tight, white apron that Laurence wore from the waist down at Chez Richard.
The street markets were bustling with life. An absolute worldliness. The people who bought and sold, however, wore a different type of vestment. Flat hats intended for workers were widespread. Rather than sport coats and stylish vests, long, brownish coveralls were dominant in les Halles, as they didn’t stain when carrying wooden boxes and wicker baskets full of food. The more Roger looked at the photos, without dedicating more than twenty seconds to each, the more he realized the grays and purples stuck out in that range of old green tints. But sometimes a somewhat sublimated red took charge. Nothing was aggressive; it was a simple color scheme with watery hues. At any rate, he thought it all had the discolored air of memory.
Memories don’t blur with time—rather, their primary colors fade. Roger took out his cell phone and wrote down that idea, not thinking too hard of how it might come to use. After, he crossed through the two exhibit halls at a hurried pace and without stopping. They contained black-and-white photos. The images emitted more sadness and gravity, but they were just as poetic. Suddenly, a wall of photos of women on bikes appeared. Whether stopped or in motion, all of them had one thing in common. All the women, of which there were maybe thirty or forty, were looking at the camera as if posing. Smiling or not smiling, in their winter coats or a light summer scarf, blond or brunette, glasses or no glasses, they’d all become models for the photographer, who shot them from a low angle, as though he had gotten down on one knee to find the perfect proportions. Together, the cyclists were enchanting. As Roger was leaving, a single photo caught his eye. He recognized it, but he didn’t know where from. He could have sworn it wasn’t the first time he’d seen that gaze, those wheels, and that basket on the handlebars. He figured it must have been the picture from the exhibition posters on the streetlamps around the city, and he didn’t give it any more thought. He looked at his watch and left.
At the exit of the BHVP, he picked up his belongings from the coatroom and saw next to it an exhibit catalog. It was too expensive, and he would have to wait in line to pay, so he grabbed the free pamphlet for the exhibition and went on his merry way. On the metro home, he read the pamphlet and learned the name of the photographer: André Zucca. In fact, just as he’d thought, all the images he had passed by too quickly were from the same artist. The black-and-white ones were his, as well as the color slides captured on paper. Between stations, Roger thought that everything he’d seen contained the thread of history. When he was two stops away from Abbesses, it came to him all at once. He knew where he had seen that black-and-white photograph of the cyclist, the image that had captured his attention right away. Of course. It was the same woman from one of the photos he had found, in a magazine clipping in the tin box beneath Marcel’s bed. He was sure of it. As soon as he got to his room, he’d grab the Banania box and check, but he was sure of it. He didn’t make these kinds of mistakes. Who was she? He had no clue, but he would bet his life it was the same person.
The doorbell rang while Barbara was in front of her computer. She had been studying an offer for the Bulgarian translation of Simone Sicilia’s last novel. It was the last because it was the latest one she had written and, overall, because she would never write again. After finishing the manuscript and sending the proofs with red corrections to the publisher, she’d written a send-off on Twitter, placed a plastic supermarket bag over her head, and tied it tightly with two rubber bands, waiting for her final moment to arrive.
“Consumed by vengeance, I don’t have anything left to say. I’ll be living a new experience. I won’t describe it for you.” In ninety-eight characters, she’d shocked social media. Speculators considered this, that, and the opposite. It was her loyal fans, of which there were many, who guessed at what Sicilia had been hinting. When the police broke down her apartment door and confirmed her death, it headlined every one of the country’s newspapers. Until the moment of her Tweet, the writer, a member of the ’70s generation, had close to five thousand followers on Twitter. The next day, the number had multiplied by ten without her ever getting to see it. Giresse & Trésor rushed to publish the book posthumously. Once Simone Sicilia’s The Gift arrived at bookstores in paperback, its success surpassed expectations. Everyone wanted to know to what extent her uncle, a well-known socialist mayor of a city at the foot of the Alps, had abused her since she was eight years old. The bestselling author described every single one of their decade-long weekly meetings at his city hall office. It was always when the blinds were closed, always following a similar ritual. At every meeting, there was a small gift. Pierre Sicilia denied it all right away, mourning the death of his niece. By the second week of the book’s release, he’d resigned. By the third, he’d fled to Mexico, and all traces of him were lost.
The doorbell rang again, impertinently. Barbara cursed Roger for having forgotten his keys again. She got up, and without asking who it was, she pressed the intercom button to open the street door. She left the door of the apartment slightly ajar so the cold wouldn’t enter and the warmth from the heater wouldn’t escape.
Laurence was huffing and puffing when she got to the top. Even her coat was bothering her. Seeing the door slightly ajar, she tapped with her knuckles. She didn’t dare enter without Roger telling her she could pass through. She knocked again three times, waiting for an answer.
Barbara wasn’t sure why Roger was knocking if the door was open. She got back up in a swift movement to see what was going on and found herself face-to-face with another woman. They were both surprised.
“Sorry ...” Laurence took a step back.
“Good afternoon,” Barbara replied.
Laurence’s voice didn’t come out. She hadn’t expected anyone other than Roger to open the door for her. Even less, a woman.
Barbara got straight to the point. “Do you need something?”
“I must have gotten the apartment wrong.” She crumpled the paper with the address in her hand.
“It depends. Who are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. Actually ...” Laurence thought about turning around, but even fleeing would have required an excuse. “This is apartment five, right?”
“Yes, you can’t go up any higher than this. But who are you looking for?” Faced with silence, she insisted, “Tell me.”
“I’m not sure of the name.”
“You’re looking for someone, and you don’t know their name?”
“He’s a photographer.” A timid smile took over her face. “A handsome Spaniard.”
“If he’s a photographer, he lives here.”
“Ah.” She opened her eyes wide like a scared dog. It was a way of saving herself from asking if he was around or not.
“He just left ... Actually, he left in the morning, and he hasn’t come back.”
Barbara didn’t know how to interpret the coagulated silence of the woman standing in front of her. A mystery lay behind her worn coat, sad eyes, and nose, red from the cold outside. They might have been the same age, but she looked much older.
Laurence didn’t know how to get out of the uncomfortable situation. She had made an appointment with a customer, and she found herself petrified to be in front of a svelte woman with hometown advantage and hair worn the way she would’ve wanted for herself, the grace of curls that always looked like she had just woken up. At a loss for words, Laurence contemplated the woman who held the door open, and she envied those marked cheekbones and green eyes, which caused her to tremble. Why had the photographer let her come over for a fuck if ...?
Suddenly Barbara put two and two together.
“One thing, girl ... What’s your name?”
“Me?” She wondered whether she should give her real name. “Laurence.”
“It looks like you have the wrong idea. The handsome guy from Barcelona lives here, yes, but he’s not my husband. Or my boyfriend, or anything like that. He just lives here. He’s got his room. And I’ve got mine. His name is Roger. Is that all better?”
“Hello!” Roger shouted from the entryway. He’d heard voices coming down the stairwell, and he’d guessed the scene right away. “I’m here now. I’m coming up, running. I’m sorry ...”
Despite all the things he was carrying, he took the steps two at a time. Barbara returned to her office without inviting Laurence in, her sights set on the Bulgarian translation of Simone Sicilia’s novel. Laurence remained at the open door, nailed to the doormat.
“Have you been waiting long?” It didn’t seem like Roger intended on apologizing.
“I have to be back at Chez Richard at six.”
Roger looked at the Casio watch on his right wrist.
“I got held up longer than I expected. Désolé .”
He had learned that désolé worked for everything. It was a magic word. Not all languages have one that can save you. His mother had explained the luck of the French for having a word like that. You said it, and you were forgiven. You said it, and your conscience was clear. You said it and set back the counter to zero, and no one could chide you for anything.
They entered the apartment and closed the door.
To not disturb Barbara, who was working in front of the window, they went into Roger’s room. Now that Laurence remembered that his name was Roger, Barbara, who had been so consumed in her own matters since she’d met Marcel’s brother, realized he wasn’t just a month-to-month renter but a person with his own life. A handsome guy, as the woman with the sad eyes had said, the woman who had not gotten the wrong apartment.