Come, Barbarians (6 page)

Madame Aubanel pulled nine tapes from the shelf, marked with the date and times. The recordings for November 1 started at 5:45 in the morning, roughly twenty minutes before the departure of the first train. There were only two possible directions: north to Paris or south to Marseille. There were several stops along the way but not for all trains. Madame Aubanel synced the three tapes at 05:45. Kruse helped press play on all three at the same time.

They watched at double speed. Madame Aubanel held one of Evelyn’s passport photographs in her hand as she scanned.

“You had an argument?”

“Something like that, Madame, yes.”

“Do you fear she has left you for good?”

To finish the conversation, Kruse nodded.

He was not successful. Madame Aubanel fixed her glasses. “You have children?”

“One.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Girl. She’s gone now, Madame.”

“Gone where, with your wife? How old?”

“Nearly four.”

“A baby. This is a crime, in France, to take a child from her father.”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh. Excuse me. What was her name?”

“Lily.”

“You’re not … how did she die?”

Kruse told her.

“I read about her. About you.” The French put the emphasis on the
y
at the end of her name. Madame Aubanel looked away from the television screen for a moment. “Lily.”

No one who looked remotely like Evelyn had departed on the first four trains. They were now past five in the afternoon on the video, and the crowds in the station had thickened. The cafés were open for early dinner and passengers carried soda and snacks with their luggage. Trains arrived and Madame Aubanel slowed the tape. Watching in fast-forward was dizzying, so they took short breaks.

Evelyn appeared at the front of the station at 18:12 with a black bag. It was difficult to see her on the outdoor camera, as the mistral had blown up so much dust. White T-shirt, imitation leather pants, sneakers. She spent nine minutes in the lineup and bought a ticket.

“What is she carrying?”

He didn’t tell Madame Aubanel: a fairy wand.

“Did she kill the politician and his wife? Is she guilty?”

“No, Madame.”

Evelyn walked away from the ticket office and looked up at one of the screens showing departure times. She went straight out to the platform. The images were not perfectly clear but she was fidgeting with her ticket. She looked around constantly, not one of her habits.

“North.”

“She went to Paris?”

“The 18:28 is a night express. There are only two possible stops, Monsieur: Lyon and Paris.”

They continued watching until the express departed. The bridge was empty afterwards, but for a man in blue overalls pushing a broom.

Kruse pulled out his wallet.

“Just give me three thousand. You lost a child and, it seems, a wife. I cannot take five thousand francs from you.”

“How about you take the extra two thousand for the videotapes? I’ll buy them from you. You can say there was a technical error.”

“I hope you find your wife. If she wants to be found.” The woman ejected the tapes and gave them to him. She stuffed the money into her purse. “I wonder why the gendarmes haven’t come, with the same questions.”

The trains from Orange were finished for the day but he could drive to Avignon or Marseille. Even if he did, Kruse would arrive at four or five in the morning in a city of ten million people without a single clue. He wanted to take the train as she had taken the train, to see what she had seen: his best and only hope was some sort of psychological fusion, to enter her thoughts.

Madame Aubanel sold him a ticket for the first express of the day, departing before dawn. Would he like to pay with cash or with credit?

Kruse looked in his wallet and saw more than money. He came dangerously close to kissing the nearsighted supervisor for asking the question. “What, Monsieur? What?” She laughed along with him, missing the sarcasm.

“Do you have a telephone
cabine
in here?”

There were several, but Madame Aubanel had to lock up and leave. She was exhausted and a little nauseated, from watching the videos in fast-forward. Kruse drove around Orange, looking for a telephone, and couldn’t find one in the dark. He drove twenty minutes to Vaison-la-Romaine and parked in front of the horse stable; it was the first time in weeks that he had found a spot on Rue Trogue-Pompée. Lily had been with him the last time. Evelyn had said she wanted to spend a few hours at the library, so Kruse had driven with his daughter to the top of Mont Ventoux. It was a sunny day, warm in town but cold and windy on top. They could see the Alps in one direction and the Mediterranean in the other. On the way back down they had stopped for a picnic. And there, just like in the Astérix books, a wild boar trundled out of the bushes, looked up at them, and ran away.

When he found Evelyn he would ask her: Were you really at the library that afternoon? Madame Boutet, the gendarme, had nearly spit
out a mouthful of goat cheese when he told her that Evelyn is not the sort of woman who has an affair. Not with Jean-François de Musset or anyone else. Evelyn didn’t believe in affairs, in that sort of weakness. She wasn’t capable.

“But you said you had come to France to save your marriage.”

“Our problems weren’t like that.”

“What were they like, Monsieur Kruse?”

He told her.

“So she couldn’t be attracted to another man?” Madame Boutet looked at her partner for a moment and back to Kruse. “Your wife is really so different from every other woman in the world?”

There was a bank of two public phones at the bar-tabac that doubled as a bus station, at the limit of the terrace. He had bought a twenty-five-credit France Télécom card, but he didn’t need it for the toll-free Visa number, which was fortunate. It took twenty minutes and he ultimately had to choose the “lost or stolen” option to speak to a human being at this hour. It gave Kruse time to punish himself for waiting this long.

It was early in the morning in Canada, though the operator did not sound tired. She wanted clarity: the card was not stolen or technically misplaced. Yet he had called the lost and stolen number.

“My wife has been misplaced, and we share a card.”

“So you want to find her.”

“Yes.”

“Does she want to find you?”

“We were separated in error.”

Her latest charges were for a train ticket, a hair salon, and two restaurants in Paris. She took money out of their account only once, in Orange. There was one request for a pre-authorization but the woman on the phone didn’t have the location. Most pre-authorizations are from hotels. Kruse asked the operator if anyone else would have access to their accounts. Anyone in my position, she said. Certain law enforcement agencies, though she didn’t have specifics: Interpol, surely. Did
the operator have any way of seeing who had accessed their information, from among these organizations? Bankers, say, or police?

“Perhaps someone could see,” she said. “It’s all computerized. But I don’t have that access. Anything else I can do for you, Mr. Kruse?”

He was tempted to cancel her card, so no one else could find her. Evelyn taught art history, which offered few opportunities to think like a fugitive. Her limit at the ATM was two thousand francs a day. At the same time, if he annulled her card he would lose his connection to her. Now that Lily was gone they shared nothing else.

THE LAST TIME HE HAD BEEN IN PARIS WAS TO ACCOMPANY THE
anxious son of a pharmacy magnate to ESCP Europe, the top business school on the continent, for an interview. His father, who also owned the Denver Broncos, had received death threats for something he had done to unionized workers. The most serious danger, on that trip, had been unpasteurized milk. The boy did not get into ESCP.

The man and woman he followed off the train fell to their knees on the concrete platform so abruptly he nearly tumbled over them. A little girl and a littler boy, perhaps five and three, in a dress and a suit, sprinted into hugs. An older couple, the grandparents, looked on. “Never go away again, Papa,” said the girl, crossly.

The metro station at Gare de Lyon looked the way he felt. All but a few of the overhead lights were off and the tunnel was deserted apart from a security man smoking a cigarette, telling everyone who came around that metro drivers were on strike. The view from the front windows of the station was not encouraging: it was windy and raining
heavily, and there was a long lineup for a taxi. He bought a sturdy black umbrella at a boutique on his way out, but the gusts were so strong along the river it turned inside out with a
pop.
Kruse walked the north bank of the Seine past city hall and the Louvre to Place de la Concorde, where they had cut off all those heads. He crossed the river at Pont Neuf and stayed along the quay, as Lily would have liked. She was the sort of child who would not have noticed the rain as long as there was something pretty to see, birds to identify, and enough to eat along the way. Maybe a hot chocolate in a little bistro. It wasn’t the best day for distant views, birdwatching, or architectural wonders, as a dark cloud had collapsed over the city. She would have understood.

In the guidebook Evelyn kept on the bedside table, she ranked her chosen hotels from one to five. Her number one choice, on Rue Valadon, was impossible: it had been under renovation since the end of September. The neighbourhood immediately east of the Eiffel Tower was a hybrid of her interests: beautiful, chic, quiet, traditional, family-oriented, absolutely devoid of American chain stores. The streets were thin and in shadow most of the day, with a nearby market corridor full of bistros and grocery stores, fish and wine and cheese. There was nothing to do in this wealthy dreamland of Paris but live well. Less than a block away, on Rue du Champ de Mars, Kruse stepped into a pleasant but cramped lobby that reminded him more of a hotel in rural England than the seventh arrondissement.

The man behind the counter quietly exclaimed at the sight of Kruse, who was windswept and half-soaked. “I would not blame you for thinking otherwise, Monsieur, but the taxi drivers are not on strike at the moment.”

“I like to walk.”

“So long as you like to walk. Very good. Do you have a reservation?”

The lobby was designed and decorated like a cozy living room. Bookshelves surrounded a couch and chairs and a coffee table. Art and photography books were stacked carefully on the coffee table and all of
it was bathed in warm lamplight. The noise of the traffic outside was softened by the thick front window. “I don’t, Monsieur.”

Monsieur put on his reading glasses and said,
“Alors,”
a few times. There was one room on the top floor, but the elevator was not working so well today. Technicians were coming. Would he terribly mind five flights of stairs?

As Monsieur spoke, Kruse scanned his workspace: it was cramped but orderly, with customized ledger books holding off the dread computer. The only piece of technical equipment was a central telephone router. The man was fifty, with a well-trimmed beard. Everything he said came off slightly ironic, as though he were playing the role of a hotelier to make a subtle point about hoteliers. His cards sat in an Eiffel Tower trolley: Guy and Dianne Balon. Monsieur Balon asked for Kruse’s passport.

“I don’t have it. I am a resident here.”

“Your identity card.”

“It has not arrived yet.”

“Typical.”

“Do you get a lot of Canadians?”

“A fair number, yes.”

“How about a woman, on the first of November?”

Monsieur Balon squinted at him.

“Evelyn May Kruse.”

“A popular woman, this Evelyn.”

“In what way?”

“You are the fourth person to ask after her. A journalist was here. Then the gendarmes. And just after lunch today, another gentleman. I’m afraid I can only tell you what I told the gendarmes: I can provide no information.”

“You took her credit card number but she paid with cash. Yes?”

The hotelier zipped his lips.

“She is my wife: Evelyn May Kruse.” The consulate in Toronto had said, wrongly, that customs and the prefecture in Avignon would
demand to see a copy of their marriage certificate. Kruse had folded it into his wallet. He opened it on the desk.

Monsieur Balon scrawled tiny notes next to Kruse’s guest information—a sort of shorthand.

“What did the journalist want?”

“I run the hotel, Monsieur. That is all. The journalist, a woman, said she had a meeting with Madame at ten o’clock on the second of November. Our office opens at six but your wife had already departed by then. Madame Evelyn had left cash in our express checkout box.” Monsieur Balon pulled out a white business card from a drawer and slid it across the desk: Annette Laferrière,
Le Monde.
“You can take this with you.”

“What did Madame Laferrière look like?”

“Dark hair, thirty or forty.”

“The man who asked about her after lunch …”

Monsieur Balon took a deep breath. “Yes?”

“Another journalist?”

“No. Or I don’t think so.”

“Who was he?”

“Not a guest. He did not identify himself. I thought at first he was another policeman but the gendarmes were from the south, clearly. Their accents were unmistakable. There was something more thoughtful about this one. He had time. He was refined, and his interest in Madame Evelyn, Madame …”

“Kruse.”

“Madame Kruse. His interest in her had a kindly aspect.”

“How do you mean ‘kindly’?”

“He was seeking her to help in some way. And I remembered she had seemed sad, preoccupied. Downstairs, Monsieur Kruse, we have tables for our continental breakfast and, if you like, for a picnic lunch. I can learn a lot from a person by watching them eat. Your wife ate some fruit and cheese for dinner, when she arrived. I offered her a glass of
wine. She said no. Normally, when a foreigner arrives in Paris—especially a woman—she is filled with delight. Madame was …”

“What?”

“Haunted. And this name, Evelyn, she did not use it. She called herself Agnes. It was the journalist and the police who used the name Evelyn. She registered as Agnes May, and since I had only taken her credit card number to hold the room …”

“Her mother’s name.”

“There you go, Monsieur. We long to be our fathers and they long to be their mothers.”

Two guests, a retired couple, arrived at the bottom of the stairs and walked hand in hand through the lobby. Kruse could tell, before they spoke, they were not French. “Hello,” they said, in American English, as they passed. They left the key with Monsieur Balon and he thanked them, also in English. When they were gone, Kruse continued.

“This kindly man who came to see her, did he represent anyone or anything?”

“He wore a well-cut suit. I remember thinking, as he walked in, he is much too wealthy to stay here. Not just the suit. He was a Four Seasons man. It was the way he walked and smelled, his tie, certainly the way he spoke. His accent was … do you know of the
grandes écoles
?”

“Yes.”

“Like that.”

“An aristocrat.”

“Yes, Monsieur. Like that. An air of noblesse oblige. Perhaps that is why I had assumed he was seeking her to offer help.”

“What did he want?”

“Like you: to see her. He asked several questions. Since he was not, like you, an immediate family member, I told him nothing.”

“Can I see her room?”

“The room where she stayed? It has long been cleaned since then, Monsieur, and another guest is in there.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“She wasn’t a talkative woman.” Monsieur Balon arranged some papers on his desk. “Perhaps I should be phoning the police instead of checking you in. They did say others would come looking for her.”

“And what did you tell them? These police?”

“Monsieur, please.”

Kruse pulled out his collection of photos: the passport shots of Evelyn and Lily and another of the three of them at Niagara Falls.

“I was there once,” said Monsieur Balon. “I took a ride in the boat, to get close to the falls. There was a wax museum as well. Tasteless, no?”

“Is there anything more you can tell me?”

“No.”

“Was the aristocrat alone?”

“All right, this is peculiar. A second man stood outside, smoking, Monsieur Kruse. I might not have noticed him at all but he had no nose.”

“No …”

“No nose, no nose. You see a lot of people with quirks, as an hotelier. This was the first time I had seen a man with no nose.”

“Young man? Old man?”

“I will call the police. Together you can sort this out.”

“Please, Monsieur Balon.”

“Thirties, maybe early forties. Your age. Both men were trim, like you. You look like a small team of football players, you three together.”

“No nose. And what did the aristocrat ask you, specifically?”

“When did she arrive and how long did she stay? Did anyone visit her? Did she make any calls?”

“And you didn’t answer.”

“No. Well, yes. I told the gentleman ‘I don’t know’ to all of them, to finish the conversation. He was charming but persistent.”

Kruse used the lobby telephone to call the journalist. She was out for lunch. The metro was not an option, with the strike, so Kruse asked if Monsieur Balon might call him a taxi.

“Taxi drivers are not on strike but I grant you they are difficult to find.” He tried to phone and shrugged. “You see? Nothing. A catastrophe. But please, take one of the hotel umbrellas. They’re much stronger in the wind.”

The newspaper headquarters was a sloping rectangle of glass tucked between typically Parisian apartment buildings: stone and stately if not as imposing as the beauties along Avenue de Breteuil, the route he had taken. Kruse arrived too early. The receptionist on the main floor chuckled a bit cruelly at the idea that anyone in the newsroom would return from lunch before two. She handed him yesterday’s edition of the paper and he went for a coffee and an inferior croissant at a busy café on the corner.

His parents, Allan and Nettie Kruse, had left half their insurance policy to a centre for poor immigrants in Toronto. They were pure Mennonites, by blood and by heart, and carried a special feeling for refugees and poor newcomers. Stories around the dinner table were stories of settlement and flight, settlement and flight, as bad politics and swords and guns had chased their great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents all over Europe for centuries. Nearly all his clients in Toronto had been conservatives of some sort, from the old families Evelyn so admired to the newly rich who had trampled on friends and laws and now simply wanted to protect what they had earned—or had stolen—with a low tax regime. He had liked his clients, or most of them, and he had admired his daring wife; it wasn’t a normal woman’s mission, to transform conservative politics in a foreign country. But the Front National, at least the one he read about in the papers, sounded a lot like the sort of party that would have either repelled his ancestors at the border or discovered a religious or legal reason to chop off their heads.

A block away from the offices of
Le Monde
, there was an eighteenth-century hospital for sick children. At one in the afternoon a smoky dusk had fallen over the city. Commuters were out on their belching scooters and little cars honked peacefully at one another, but with the metro shut down it was a day for pedestrians. Even in the rain the city was a riot of finely dressed professionals, elegant grandmothers, and courageous dog walkers. It was never an amiable place but the Parisians did look up at him. In France, especially in Paris, eyes rested on his scars longer than at home, where the possibility of offending a stranger hovers like a weakly-chained dragon over Southern Ontario. Kruse walked around the children’s hospital after his coffee and croissant and settled on a park bench surrounded by hopeful, cooing pigeons. Now and then a mother and father would pass on the sidewalk, two umbrellas open, pushing their child in a wheelchair. One of the children, bald but for a few stray hairs, was so beautiful and so fragile Kruse could not look at her. Her tortured parents manufactured grins. He envied them. Nurses stepped out of taxis and walked through the hospital gates with determined sighs. There was an institute for children with blindness nearby, and they too were out for lunchtime strolls—arms linked or experimenting with a cane. Neighbourhood schools surrounded the hospital, an elementary and a lycée. The quarter was alive with laughing and crying children, exhausted parents, and tin-voiced adolescents and teenagers in the ripped jeans and flannel lumberjack shirts of Seattle.

Men in blue overalls had not yet picked up the shit from last evening’s dog walkers. In the entrance of a shuttered magazine shop, a man in layers of wet clothes lay sleeping on a pile of cardboard boxes. From Foxbar Road or from her dreary office overlooking a parking lot in the stark northern reaches of Toronto, Paris was, for Evelyn, art and wonder. She had never been to Paris but it was her definition of conservatism, the way we once lived and the way we ought to live again; children and parents and public institutions and food markets and bistros
and architecture in harmony. In the Paris of her imagination she walked Lily to school in the morning and said hello to the baker and the butcher, bought a coffee and proceeded to the Sorbonne.

The first time he had come to Paris, in the early eighties, the sight of graffiti on the side of a hand-carved and flower-gilded building made him long to have been born in another time. He saw Evelyn now, somewhere in Paris, similarly afflicted. The imperfections in the most beautiful city in the world were, at least partly, a relief from the terrible theory every child in Canada learns as they come into adulthood: that their parents and ancestors, who had chosen to settle in this wild place, had made a mistake.