Parisian Promises (24 page)

“This is what happens when you rely on weak women to do your bidding,” he shouted and retreated inside. In a fit of temper he yanked the billowing lace curtain off its ancient rod and trampled it underfoot.

In Jean-Michel's mind there had only been one woman who proved her unending love for her man, and that was Isabel Casamayor de Godin, the namesake of his stuffed toucan. He pictured her floating alone and naked on a balsa wood raft, the bird her only companion.

“Isabel didn't let any ten-foot caiman frighten her,” he shouted, pacing Madame's apartment. “She forged ahead down the Amazon River with the image of her beloved waiting for her in French Guiana. But I have the bad luck to depend on a double-crossing California girl and a senile Parisienne to prove their love for me!”

Enraged at the very thought of Madame, he tore her precious Doisneau photograph off the wall and hurled it onto the floor. The image of Madame's leg and of an admirer in a fedora lay unbroken on the ground, so Jean-Michel jumped up and down on top of the frame until the glass and the paper were pulverized.

This didn't calm him, so he returned to the balcony to continue his tirade.

“Look at all those idiots––anarchists, leftists, union organizers, anti-nuclear testing buffoons, starry-eyed students,” he hissed. “They're all going to feel pain now.”

Only the neo-Fascists seemed organized, Jean-Michel decided, wondering if perhaps he should consider becoming a neo-Fascist himself. But he soon dismissed this idea since the Italian neo-Fascist group
Ordine Nuovo
, or the “New Order,” were already adept at attacking rallies with hand grenades. Other, less organized political movements needed him more.

At last Jean-Michel spotted Madame, walking––practically hobbling––with the aid of Monica towards the group of anarchists, the spot where the photographer was supposedly waiting for them. He had instructed Madame to head towards the urinals, and she seemed to be doing exactly as she'd been told. So far, so good, he thought, smiling. But then, rising above all the sounds in the crowd, was some man's voice bellowing out Lola's name. Who was this man? How did he know Monica's friend? An overpowering rage flooded Jean-Michel's heart and his mind. He couldn't believe what he was witnessing.

Lola stopped to wipe sweat from her brow. She was feeling hot and anxious from dodging through the crowd to elude the persistent cop hot on her heels. She looked around to see if the coast was clear, and that's when she spotted Monica and Madame walking timidly towards the anarchists and the baton-wielding neo-Fascists. This was madness, Lola thought. Anyone in their right mind could see the potential fight brewing between the two groups.

She released her most ear-splitting whistle that made everyone––especially Monica––turn around and look at her. The crowd surged, and Lola lost sight of Monica, but at least now she knew that her friend was close by. Lola whistled again and again, as loud as she could, until her deafening siren made Monica stop.

“I have to go,” she told Madame. “Lola needs me.”

She let go of Madame's arm and pushed her way through the milling protestors, away from the anti-Fascists and towards the sound of Lola's whistle.

Madame barely noticed Monica's departure. Her mind was a blur of excitement and pride. She noticed a man with a camera, and although he didn't look at all like Monsieur Doisneau, she smiled and waved to him. Then she recalled that Jean-Michel had told her to raise her right arm stiffly before she did some other step, a step that didn't come to mind just then. Again, Madame smiled at the photographer and at the Gestapo, and she raised her hand in what she realized was a Nazi salute.

The anarchists had been waiting for a trigger to release their anger, and once they saw this provocative salute, they rushed the neo-Fascists. Punches were thrown, and men were tumbling all around her, shouting and yelling. She could hear the crunch of fist hitting bone, and blood splattered onto her Chanel suit. Madame was confused––so very, very confused. She smiled at the camera again, but now the photographer was taking photos of the men fighting. He didn't seem interested in her at all.

Then she remembered what Jean-Michel had told her to do: “Your actions today will prove to history that you are a leader of your own
maquis
, not just some strumpet pretending to be a
Résistance
fighter. When you and Monica get near the metal urinals, you will take out the play grenade,” he had shown her the toy grenade, “then you will pull out this safety pin, raise your right arm high and throw it. Can you do that?”

“But why can't I just hold the toy grenade? I don't want to be remembered for appearing violent. This is a photograph for posterity, and I'm a lover not a fighter,” Madame had said, laughing flirtatiously with her young
amour.

“Ask yourself this question––who remembers the behind-the-scenes
Résistance
fighters?”

“Well, no one comes to mind.”

“And do you know why?” Jean-Michel had asked her sweetly. “Because the world remembers bold and defiant acts. And now is the time for you to be very bold. Can you do this for you and for me?”

At the memory of Jean-Michel kissing her so very tenderly, Madame pursed her lips again as if she were preparing for his moist lips. Everyone near her had backed away to avoid getting embroiled in the fight between the anti-Fascists and the anarchists. With her lips pursed, she took out the grenade from her handbag and she pulled out the safety pin. Then, with acute clarity of mind, as if the flash from a camera had illuminated her addled brain, Madame realized that this was no toy. She only had seconds before the spark would ignite the fuse, setting off the combustible material in the detonator––and the explosion would embed pieces of metal, killing and maiming the demonstrators. Madame clasped the deadly weapon close to her body, hugging it to her womb. Then she closed her eyes and let herself fall to the ground––and onto the grenade. Her last thought was not of Jean-Michel, nor of the Viscount who loved her long ago, but of the young people in the crowd who would be saved by her action. One day, they might remember her altruistic sacrifice.

T
he concierge opened Madame's front door quietly and stood back to let Serge in. He rushed through the salon towards the balcony where Jean-Michel stood, leaned over the railing and shouting obscenities at the crowd below. As soon as the explosion echoed up from the street, Jean-Michel began laughing uncontrollably.

“That's the end of my California Girl, that two-timing slut, Monica!” he cried, and leaned farther out to observe the mayhem he had masterminded. His plan must have worked to perfection.

Serge didn't think twice. He squatted low and used all the might of his bony body to push Jean-Michel over the rail. He had seen enough evil during the war, and he had no qualms about ending Jean-Michel's life. But Serge wasn't an agile young man anymore. He used so much force to topple Jean-Michel; he hit the rail himself and catapulted over, tumbling, as if in a slow-motion, through the windy Parisian air. Serge shut his eyes and, for the last few seconds of his life, concentrated on the memory of Victoire's smile.

A voice from the crowd shouted, “
Je t'aime
,” and Serge called back, “
Je t'ai toujours aimé
.” Knowing that he had always loved Victoire filled his heart with sheer ecstasy. Just before his body hit the ground, Serge opened his eyes and smiled broadly. It was Christophe's voice shouting “
je t'aime
”––he'd recognize his voice anywhere. Serge had changed Christophe's diapers as a wailing infant; he had heard Christophe first word,
cheval
; and he had heard Christophe's laughter when he rode his first pony, Serge running alongside him in case Christophe lost his balance.

The woman's voice calling back to Christophe must be Monica. They were together again, as they should be. Serge closed his eyes and died in peace.

Unlike Serge, Jean-Michel had not fallen to the ground. He was clinging to Haussmann's dictatorial iron guardrail, legs dangling down the side of the building, and begging the concierge to help pull him in inside the apartment.

“Please, help me,” he called up to her. “You are the only true love of my life. Help pull me up, and we'll leave today for South America. We'll spend a year exploring the Amazon––just the two of us!”

The concierge stood on the balcony, her thick varicose-veined legs planted wide, as if balancing a decision between torturing Jean-Michel by not pulling him in or taunting him with fake promises of help. But really she was standing there adding up her numbers. She didn't yet have enough money to pay for her dream bird-watching vacation, but she could not trust Jean-Michel to pay up.

“I need the money first,” she said. “Do you have any money here?”

“I have some money, but I…I promise to give you more.” Jean-Michel flailed against the building, writhing in pain. When he tried to raise one arm to a higher grip of the guardrail, his other hand slipped down to a lower grip, so he was now dangling lopsided. Paris no longer seemed to be cooperating with Jean-Michel, and his only view now was disgusting: the old woman's hairy legs.

“I beg you, please help me up,” he cried, grimacing in agony.

“Where's the money?”

“High on the top shelf. Over there!” He pointed with his chin.

The concierge ambled back inside as though she had not a care in the world, and took her sweet time finding a chair to stand on, and to look for the money Jean-Michel had hidden in Madame's top book shelf.

“Yep, I see some cash here, but it's not enough,” she called. She was using all her fingers to add up the numbers. The concierge had always been dense at school, and her diminished intellect had declined even further with her bitter age. “Where have you hidden more money? I already checked the toucan's bill, and it's empty.”

Jean-Michel felt himself losing strength, his life literally hanging by his fingertips, and his anger got the best of him. “Damn you, don't touch my beautiful Isabel. Use those big, ugly milkmaid hands of yours and pull me up! You're not worth one more
franc
.”

The concierge felt a surge of resentment towards this man who demanded so much and treated her with such contempt. Fifi was barking in a locked bedroom, so the concierge clambered down from her chair and opened the door. Fifi scurried to the balcony and nipped at Jean-Michel's white and strained fingers, now barely gripping the iron rail. The concierge followed the dog out, determined to have the last laugh.

“Bite the bad man, Fifi, bite!” she commanded. As the poodle growled and nipped, the concierge lifted her trunk of a leg and kicked away his fingers, ending Jean-Michel's beastly grip on her life.

While the last act of the life of Serge––and Jean-Michel––was playing out, the crowds nearest the
pissoir
had scattered, running after Madame fell on the grenade. But a block away, protestors of every stripe now stood smiling and transfixed by the romantic drama taking place in front of them. The crowd had parted to allow a scene that can only take place in Paris, and Paris alone.

Monica cried out, “Lola, I can't see you, where are you?”

Lola whistled again, and Christophe heard Monica's panicked voice.

“Monica,” he called out, “
je t'aime
!”

The crowd applauded this proclamation of love. The lovers could not yet see one another in the dense crowd, but each one pressed forward, jogging through the human haze, towards the voice of the other.

“I'm so sorry,” cried Monica. “Please forgive me. I love you, too.”

“We will work everything out together,” Christophe shouted through the mob. “Come back and live with me at Les Charmilles!”

Voices in the crowd shouted along with him, “Yes, make love at Les Charmilles! Make love at Les Charmilles!”

During the student unrest of 1968, the dominant slogan of the protestors had been, “
Soyez realistes, demandez l'impossible
.” But as the church bells of nearby St. Sulpice and St.-Germain-des-Près rang out, and Monica and Christophe embraced, and many people in the crowd recognized that they had created a far better slogan, a more radical rallying cry for their times. “Make love, make love,” they sang out. It was not enough to be realistic and ask the impossible, in the words of their former slogan. The crowd was French, after all, and they understood George Sand's immortal words: there is only one happiness in life, to love and to be loved.

Lola, hearing the exchange between Monica and Christophe, did not whistle again. For once, she decided to stay silent and walk away. She'd kept her promise to look out for Monica, and now if was up to Monica to determine her own fate.

Lola wondered if Paris had curtailed her own voracious appetite for love and life. Yes, she'd met famous, flashy people at Le Sept; and yes, she'd had a fling with a revolutionary dud and a pompous marquis; and, of course, her curves and her signature crimson curls had caused a sensation whenever she strolled down the Avenue des Champs-Êlysées––they always did. Had she lived in Paris in a different era, perhaps during La Belle Otero's reign, she might have also been the toast of the town.

But now she had a hankering to try her luck elsewhere––at the roulette of life waiting in Monte Carlo. Lola wrapped her recently acquired Hermès scarf around her neck and picked up her pace. She was sure that something thrilling was waiting for her down south. There wasn't a moment to lose.

Christophe wrapped a protective arm around Monica and escorted her through the throngs back to Madame's ill-fated
hôtel particulier
. When they arrived at the gate, the two bodies had already been driven away by an ambulance, and the concierge stood by the main gate, holding Fifi in her arms.

“It all happened so suddenly,” she was explaining to the police. “Serge was an old friend of Madame Caron de Pichet. He came by to see how she was doing, and I told him about a suspicious man who had been visiting her of late. I told him that the man was violent.”

She lifted the sleeve of her sweater and showed them a man-size bite on her arm. The detective scribbling in his notebook frowned at the bite and nodded at her to continue.

“Serge was very upset when he saw what the man did to me,” she said. “He and I went up to Madame's apartment to check on her. Who knows what this devil could have done to Madame–– or Fifi?”

The concierge tried to snuggle up to Fifi, but the dog growled.

“Do you know the man's name?”

“One moment,” she said, and stepped back into her own apartment. When she returned, the concierge brandished a large envelope, from which she pulled three passports. “He asked me to keep this for him. You see, he has three names and he comes from three countries.”

One of the inspectors took the passports away from the concierge and eyed her suspiciously. But the concierge smiled: she had a small audience around her, and she liked being the center of attention.

“Well, obviously the devil had many aliases,” she lectured. “He was either a poet from Nicaragua, a Franciscan monk en route back to Haiti, or a chocolate salesman from Switzerland. You inspectors figure it out. But I suspect he was a nobody, a man without family or means, a vagabond devil.”