11 BIRDS LOVE, AND GIVE GIFTS
11
B IRDS L OVE , AND G IVE G IFTS
On Friday, once the sun stopped beaming on the cactus, Barbara took a shower. She stayed there for a while. Beneath the flow of water, she collected her thoughts and what remained of the day. She took even longer drying her hair. She held up the blow dryer in one hand, and with the other, she dried her wet ends, which, like a clapper in a bell, insisted on ringing against her shoulder. After successfully clasping her bra, she went back into the bathroom to do her makeup. She had a vanity in her room, but with the light from the street in sharp decline, she couldn’t see herself well enough to line her eyes. While Roger was grumbling around in the kitchen, she placed a drop of Mamie Margaux’s perfume on her wrist and another behind her ears—a hazy scent with notes of lavender—the last touch before looking herself up and down to make sure she approved. She finally emerged from the cave to show off her look. Her burgundy cocktail dress was fitted, low-cut, and long-sleeved, and landed right above her knees.
When she came out of the living room, she ran into a Roger that did not look quite like Roger. He was standing impatiently next to the couch, looking impeccable.
“Wow. You clean up nice, man.”
He kept himself from returning the praise. He didn’t want to even the score with a compliment that might have been fair and well-deserved. But he was in a rush.
“I looked through my brother’s wardrobe. He didn’t have any decent clothing.” He excused himself. “Luckily, Marcel and I are the same size, and I found this. Will I stick out much?”
Like a lethargic model, he stretched out his arms and let Barbara look him over with a glance. He had on a turtleneck sweater and a dark blazer. She looked at him without any timidity. Neither the colors nor the textures matched, but he had nice shoulders and gave off a sense of style, and she knew there would be very little lighting at the party.
“Very fitting.” After three weeks of seeing him in jeans and lumberjack sweaters, she had feared something worse. “How should I say it? It’s a very ... Parisian outfit.”
“It looks good on me, then?”
“It looks good on you.”
“Thanks.” Roger picked up her evening coat, and she understood they were in a rush. “Come on, we don’t want them to close the photo exhibit on us.”
“Ready for a double feature?”
“Ready. Excited to get there.”
He opened the door so they could leave at once.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without your backpack,” she said once they were on the fifth-floor landing. “Do you know how to walk without your camera equipment?”
“Yeah, I do honestly feel a little naked.”
As they passed the second floor, Jasper opened his door to see who was clanking so loudly with their heels. The click-clack resounded throughout the whole stairwell. He saw Barbara and didn’t hide his surprise. He’d never seen her wear such high heels, with tights that made her legs look strong and a snug dress the color of wine peeking out beneath the double-breasted coat she wore open. He couldn’t stop himself from commenting on her elegance, something that might very well have been a genetic inheritance from Margaux, a family matter. Jasper, with Hulshoff as his inseparable witness, never missed an opportunity to give her grandmother little compliments, not even indirectly. He asked where they were going so nicely dressed, but right as Roger was about to respond, Barbara cut him short:
“A wedding. Good evening.”
Out on the street, the temperature was plummeting faster than the sun. She hurried to fasten her black herringbone coat, which went down to her ankles, and once buttoned up, she slipped on her leather gloves. Roger wrapped the Cambridge scarf that smelled like Marcel twice around his neck. Slowly, they walked down Clichy Boulevard to catch a taxi. Between the cobblestones and the stilettos, it would have been easier for Barbara if she leaned on Roger’s forearm. But she didn’t dare grab on to him. She did, however, ask him to walk slowly. Alert, she concealed the dangers she saw all around without losing her balance or dignity. Walking next to her, Roger didn’t for a moment think to help her.
“What must he think?” Barbara wondered.
“Who?” There was no one in the street. Roger couldn’t make out who she was referring to.
“Him.”
With her hands in her pockets to avoid them freezing, Barbara signaled with her chin to a bird flitting across the street.
“That one?” He hadn’t even noticed the house sparrow, occupied with his own business. “What do you want him to think? The same thing as everyone else. ‘What’s for dinner?’”
“Don’t be—”
“If there’s one thing we have where I’m from, it’s birds.” He didn’t think she could hear him with his mouth covered, so he lowered his scarf to explain himself better. “Empordà is a seaside plain, overflowing with fruit-bearing trees. It’s a paradise for birds. A festival. I’ve seen people do all kinds of things to protect the apples from the birds ... I mean, my father could have given a master’s-level course on each bird species.”
“Are they able to think or not?”
“Who? Birds?” He panted. “Birds think, remember, love, and give gifts.”
Barbara raised an eyebrow incredulously. Roger was familiar with this response.
“Nests. Think of nests. They’re complicated to build, right? They’re not just built instinctively. There’s so much intelligence that goes into each step of its construction, into placing branch by branch with a beak. Have you ever tried making a wicker basket?”
“Never in my life.”
“Well, if it’s difficult to do with hands, imagine having to do it with a beak.” He pursed his lips and extended his neck like a blackbird. “I’m not sure if it’s a crow, but there’s a bird in Japan that throws nuts on the street so cars crack them when they drive by. Then it goes back to gather the pieces and eat them. Birds are cool. They kiss to console each other. And when their partner dies, they grieve. Some even get depressed.”
“It’s the opposite here sometimes. You get depressed if your partner takes too long to die.”
“Humans, you mean?” He hadn’t gotten the joke.
They lifted their arms at the same time to flag down an empty white taxi. Roger opened the door for Barbara to enter first. The gesture had the appearance of chivalry, even if it was more selfishness than anything. His legs were longer, and he’d fit better if he didn’t have to sit behind the driver. Neither of them said where they were headed, and the driver of the Peugeot coughed to prompt them for an address.
“To the BHVP,” Roger said, trying to make himself pass off as a local.
The chauffeur, who was from even farther away than Roger was, didn’t understand a thing. He looked at them through the rearview mirror to check if they were messing with him. Or to read their lips so as to understand the destination.
“To the Bibliothèque historique ... on rue Pavée,” said Barbara. “In the Marais, please.”
The barrier that separated the front seats from the back muffled any type of sound. It didn’t look as though there was a hole. Tired of being robbed or out of fear of it coming to that, the taxi driver had installed a bulletproof piece of plastic, converting his Peugeot into a police car.
“And are birds happy?”
“I see you’re fond of the topic.”
“You’re fond of it ... You’ve poured more of your heart out in five minutes than you have during the three weeks you’ve been in the house.”
“Happy? I don’t know. I’m sure birds have feelings.”
“And you?”
“Me?” He didn’t know what she was referring to. “What about me?”
“Are you happy?”
Suddenly, he was hit by the dart he never expected Barbara to throw. Inside that taxi, closer than they’d ever been, knees pressed up against each other’s since there was no extra room, and with the partition preventing them from clearly making out which neighborhood of Paris they were passing through, she left him speechless. What a question to ask. In his thirty-three years, he’d never thought about it. Was he happy? He simply was. Or acted like it. He moved forward without taking stock. These types of questions that came on their own only confused a person, in any case, when life was on the decline. Up to that moment, he was, he did, he located, he photographed, he classified ... he lived. Each verb was a movement, an action. Stopping or thinking or settling the score were romantic ideas for another phase of life he couldn’t even imagine. The time for taking inventory had yet to come for him, of missing people and places, of understanding himself, of melancholically comparing decades, of assessing the fears of old age, of resigning himself to a little arthrosis, of getting excited over something small and contemplating nature like it was infinite. But it wasn’t yet time for the cracks to appear. He’d get to the age where he’d understand poets and buy comfortable shoes. As long as there was more future than past, he took being happy for granted. Shortly and simply:
“I don’t have any reason not to be.”
They passed the next few streets in silence. Each of them looked out their respective windows. To the left, Barbara saw the columns of the entrance of the Palais-Royal and the lights of the Comédie-Francaise theater, where she’d seen some Molière with her grandmother. To the right, Roger could make out the terraces of Saint-Honoré, with blankets on the chairs and a lit stove for every other table. Only the bravest dared sit there that Friday, March 28, which had already begun its countdown to the next day.
When the taxi pulled up to the last stoplight of the avenue de l’Opéra, Barbara whispered into Roger’s ear.
“Do you think we’ll make it there?” she asked, making sure the unsociable chauffeur couldn’t make out her words through the rearview mirror.
“Why do you ask?”
“Haven’t you noticed?” She lifted her finger to motion for him to be quiet. “It’s shaking like a Chihuahua.”
“Now that you mention it ...”
“The car must be cold too.”
“Maybe it’s because of the diesel motor. Or the exhaust pipe is wobbling. It happens sometimes, if it’s not properly clamped.” Roger waited for the taxi to shift into first gear. “Listen to it now. When it moves, it doesn’t make so much noise ... right?”
“You know about cars too?”
“I know more about motorcycles.”
“Racing motorbikes? Do you race?”
“Not at all.”
“Do you race against the birds?”
“No.” Roger laughed sincerely. “But I’ve ridden one my whole life. It’s a passion. Have you ever been on one?”
“I wasn’t allowed to ride them. ‘You’ll hear about it if we ever see you on a motorcycle.’ My parents never let me get on one, not even as a passenger.”
“And you listened to them?”
“Only child. What more do you want from me?”
“At some point, everyone falls off a motorcycle. I don’t know anyone who rides that hasn’t had ... It’s not even alarming. ‘How many times?’ we ask each other, and we already know what the other person is asking. Someone says, ‘Three times.’ ‘Once for me.’ When someone says, ‘I haven’t,’ they better start praying ...”
“I thought you were going to say, ‘You better start shaking,’ like this wagon we’re in.”
They laughed. The grouchy taxi driver reproached them with a fierce look through the mirror.
Roger had told her he didn’t race, but each year he planned a trip that was sort of like a race. More tiring and riskier than a race. It was a bet against himself that he set every summer solstice along with three of his motorcycle friends. They’d start the longest day of the year at around a quarter after six with the sunrise at the lighthouse of the Cap de Creus, and hours later, they’d catch the sunset at the tip of Fisterra, the aim being to arrive there by ten in the evening so they would still have about fifteen minutes of light left. They traversed the whole Iberian Peninsula, from the easternmost end to the point at which the sun set, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, while there was still light out. They had to ride at full steam to cross the 832 miles before the sun was completely hidden. From coast to coast. From sun to sun. Roger shared this anecdote with Barbara.
“And then what?” Barbara asked.
“Then? Nothing.”
“Men.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Just that. Men.” She repeated the word in a more disparaging tone. “You do all that just for the sake of it? To say you did it, and that’s it?”
That confused him.
“I don’t know. We get there, and then we eat, sleep, and rest, and the next morning, we go back without rushing. We get there when we get there.”
“That’s good ... Let’s call it a tradition among friends. You say it’s once a year?”
“Yes, some people meet up for a barbecue; we do this. For the last six years. The summer we buried my father, my friends saw I was sad, and they thought about doing this. We had fun, and it’s become like an obligatory appointment with the motorcycle gang. Is there anything you do once a year with your friends?”
“Rue Pavée. The Bibliothèque. We’re here,” the taxi driver shouted.
Barbara insisted on paying. She took off her gloves to open her wallet, and Roger held them before they exited. The taxi driver grumbled, because they’d opened the door without looking and were inches away from hitting a Vespa.
Coats were more of a nuisance at the BHVP. They took them off and kept them in their arms throughout the whole visit. Roger even balled his scarf to fit into his coat pocket. There were people in the exhibit, but there wasn’t a line to enter the galleries. The social media controversy and the mayor’s unconvincing excuses had created a certain frenzy to see the city under Nazi occupation. But by the time they arrived, there were more people exiting than entering. Some were writing something in a gold book that had been placed next to the exit.
“What do you want me to see?” Barbara entered the exhibit decisively. “Just so you know, I hate surprises.”
“We have to take a lap. They’re photographs. Paris, as you can see. Paris during the four years of German occupation during the Second World War. There are some black-and-white photos, but the color photos have never been seen before.”
“Have they been recolored for this exhibit?”
“No. This photographer was the only one who could take color photos. The only or the first. He had film rolls other people didn’t. They’re slides. Some two hundred and fifty, they say.”
“They’ve never been seen before?”
“Not the color ones. They’ve arranged it by neighborhood. Each room is a different district of Paris.”
Barbara walked slowly, a few feet in front of Roger. From time to time, she approached a frame, looked closely at some detail, read about the specific street pictured, and retreated to continue to the next photo, following the subtly marked path on the floor. Only sometimes did she call attention to something. “All the skies are blue,” she said. “It doesn’t look like Paris with these beautiful days.” Then she pointed out, “The people are very dressed up, don’t you think? It doesn’t give the impression they’re at war.” She spoke, and Roger agreed. He didn’t want to influence her. “Such beautiful women. The sunglasses look so modern. The terraces are bursting with people. Did you see Les Deux Magots café? Filled to the brim. How funny is this Mickey Mouse announcing theater-ticket sales? Look, there’s finally a woman with a yellow star on her chest. There must have been many in the streets, but they hardly appear in these photos. And barely a Nazi soldier either. So few. All these happy people make quite an impression. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Now we’re entering Montmartre,” Roger noted like a docent.
“It’s so lively on the boulevard de Clichy. The Cabaret de l’Enfer. The Moulin Rouge was a movie theater, did you see? ‘Permanent spectacle,’ it’s written. And the Sacré-Coeur covered in snow. And do you see how smooth the streets are with the snow blanketing them? ‘1942,’ it says. The streetlamps are the same ones we have now. Are all the pictures from the same photographer?”
“All of them.”
“From the liberation too?”
“Yes.”
“So much color, so much festivity, so many people ... French flags, finally.”
“‘August 26, 1944.’ It’s written right there.”
“Of course. August 26, 1944. They’re beautiful. All of them. Wow ...” She turned to look at Roger. “That’s what you must say, since you understand them.”
“Very beautiful.”
“André Zucca?”
“Yes.”
“An Italian last name.”
“But he was from here. From Paris itself. He worked for the Germans. They hired him to take these pictures. Propaganda. But well-done propaganda. This is where the controversy of the exhibit originates.”
“But this isn’t the real Paris of the time.”
“It is real. But it’s just one part. He framed only the prints that showed happiness.”
“Or normal life. And there was no normal.” Barbara wasn’t sure if they were supposed to move on to the next room or if they had seen what Roger meant to show her. “Is that it?”
“No, there’s still one left.” Roger pointed the way. “Here are the black-and-white pictures the photographer published in a German magazine. There are some really beautiful ones too. There’s a collection of women on bicycles you need to see. Come on.”
Once in the exhibit, he left her alone again. He stepped back carefully so Barbara could see all the women smiling at the camera from their bicycles. They all posed, comfortable in front of the lens. They were all splendid. They were a tribute to life. Leaning on the handlebars, their backs straight, a collection of hats and high heels.
“What a joke, pedaling with heels. They’re even sharper than mine.”
He didn’t say anything. He let Barbara scrutinize the well-focused images, each one more beautiful than the last. In one, she noticed a woman adjusting her skirt, in another she liked the shadows of the wheel spokes projected onto the ground. She laughed at a three-year-old girl sleeping like a log on a bike while her mother walked beside it, hand on the handlebar, toward the Arc de Triomphe. If she had to pick one photo, she would’ve chosen the one with a dark, fuzzy dog sticking its head out of the front basket. In all the photographs, the city was but a sunny, peaceful, and docile scene. Out of context, no one would have guessed they were taken sixty years prior, even less that they were snapshots captured during a time of war and bombings. Roger let Barbara’s eyes arrive at the photo. The one he had seen in the tin box beneath the bed. It was beautifully executed and impossible to ignore for too long. And now that he had it in front of him again, he was sure it was the same one. He had planned for his landlady to accompany him to the exhibit so she could have that image in front of her and really be forced to look at it.
“It can’t be!” Barbara exclaimed.
Staying quiet, he walked up next to her to see her reaction.
She clasped her hand to her mouth and continued, “I can’t believe it ...”
“Believe what?” he asked innocently.
“That woman ... Do you know who that is? You knew who I’d think it was ...”
Not at all. That was precisely what Roger wanted to know. He got closer to look at the sign.
“There’s only a date here. It doesn’t have a name.”
“I could swear ... I could swear it’s my grandmother. Mamie Margaux.”
“Your grandmother? She was a girl here.”
“What year is written?”
“‘1942.’”
“A girl, yes. She was ...” Despite her shock, she did the calculations quickly. “Seventeen. Eighteen at the oldest.”
“Are you sure it’s your grandmother?”
“Without a doubt.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Because I know her. Look at her eyes. It’s the same look she has now. And also because I was an exact copy at her age. Everyone has always told me, and I’ve seen photos from that time.”
“And this one ... Have you seen this one before?”
“This specific picture, I’d say no. Or I don’t remember it at least.”
Barbara hadn’t taken even half a step back from the wall. Her eyes were glued to each fold of her grandmother’s dress.
“This is one of those coincidences, one of the big ones,” Roger said emphatically. “The kind that happen once in a lifetime. How exciting, huh?”
“Of course. Of course. I don’t know how ...”
“Honestly, she looks very happy. Like she posed for the picture.” He treaded lightly but was clever enough for Barbara to catch his drift. “Does it make sense for your grandmother to be in this exhibit?”
“What do you mean?” Suddenly, her expression changed. “Do you think my grandmother was a ...”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking,” he responded with a tone of false candor.
“Collaborator? That’s not what we were told our whole lives.” Barbara was confused. She became defensive of her family. “My family never fell for the Nazi games. Quite the opposite. Our history is altogether different.”
As she insisted, she hoped with all her might that Margaux Dutronc’s version of the war was as neat as the photograph in front of her.