The Emperor of Paris (18 page)

Octavio did not stop his search. About what? he said.

Who, actually. Your father. He had quite an imagination, didn’t he? All of France, even the sheep, in mourning I mean.

Octavio nodded.

My grandfather was the same, Henri said. The old man claimed you could tell what a book looked like by closing your eyes and feeling it. I would run my fingers along the spines, as you are now, for hours on end guessing at colours and leathers and linens and foils and embosses. All the while he told me stories. He had a favourite about an Arab who wandered the desert with a library. The fellow would tie stacks of books to the
hump of a worn-out camel and the two of them, man and beast, would follow the nomads across the sands. My grandfather would pretend he was this ancient library man, pulling his coat over his head like a shroud and shuffling all over the quay, tugging on an imaginary rope, swatting at invisible flies and cursing an animal only he could see.

Octavio laughed. My father was a baker, he said. The Boulangerie Notre-Dame was his shop. But he always had a story. His best was about how Napoleon had stolen the N from the sign above the bakery’s doors. He would crouch on his knees and act like he was the general himself, wobbling on a ladder as he pulled the letter off the sign, then hiding it under a giant hat and sneaking off into the night. The shop is mine now, but the letter is still missing.

I would wager he’d have had a story to tell about my drawings here. What would he have said about the boy and his boat?

Octavio thought for a moment. He might have said—here was a boy who dreamed.

Of what? Henri said.

Of—being the captain of a ship with a hundred black sails. Of voyaging a hundred times around the world: once for every square of canvas. Of standing at a wheel made from the bones of sea monsters, of
running down enemy armadas and cannibals in war canoes and murderous pirates. Of crossing the ocean without so much as a puff of wind.

It was Henri’s turn to laugh. And the woman? Fortuna?

Octavio looked into the half-hidden face.

My father would have said—she was a—a princess. That she had travelled to one thousand and one strange lands and knew a thousand secrets more. She had seen lands of flying horses and one-eyed monsters, bargained with thieves in caves filled with treasure, met beggar boys rubbing magic lamps, flown on carpets, sung with mermaids, sailed off the edge of the world and lived to tell it all.

Henri watched the man’s grey eyes light up. How can I say no to the son of a man who clearly appreciates art? he said. I suppose a few francs are little enough to hear a woman’s secrets. Name your price and Fortuna is yours. I have no doubt your father would approve.

A Monday like any other in the bakery. Until a customer glanced up from surveying the morning’s selection in the display case.

And who, I wonder, is
that
? they said.

All eyes followed the customer’s finger in the direction of the cellar. Above the door, the beer calendar
with Our Lady Herself was gone; in her place, the portrait of the woman from Fournier’s stall. All heads turned in the direction of Octavio; a few sly grins began to appear.

Has our baker been keeping secrets? a gossip said.

Someone new in your life, monsieur? said another.

Not as much Our Lady and more
your
lady, Octavio?

The clock behind the counter ticked to 9:16. Blind Grenelle entered. He made his way through the crowded shop and stopped in front of the display case. He pointed to two golden brioche sprinkled with a hint of rosemary and looked up at Octavio.

I see we are under new management, he said.

The young woman stumbles as she steps away from the bakery window, fighting for balance, her eyes wide in shock. As unconsciously as breathing, she raises a hand to her face.

On condition, she had said.

She remembers the artist applying his final strokes, rubbing a spot here and there with his thumb. He was moving to reveal the finished portrait when she had stopped him.

I know what I look like, she had said.

A
s she paid for her sourdough, Madame Lafrouche asked Octavio why he hadn’t been to the Louvre lately.

I’ve been busy with something else, he said, knowing full well that the woman had watched him every Sunday as he returned to the cake-slice with his bundles of books.

You and your father always loved the museum, Madame Lafrouche said.

It has been a while, madame. Have you ever been?

My Alphonse would take me once in a while, a very long time ago now.

It is a grand place, Octavio said.

It would be nice to visit again, Madame Lafrouche said. Bring back a happy memory or two. There was a note of sadness as her voice trailed off.

Why don’t you come with me, Octavio said. We could go this Sunday.

Give your book collecting a bit of a break then, Madame Lafrouche said.

Octavio had never seen Madame Lafrouche wink before.

Circular benches rose like islands from the parquet of the Grande Galerie. Here laces could be loosened to free pinched toes, children hushed as they collapsed in bored tantrums, guidebooks thumbed. All with the faces of the gallery looking down from their walls.

Having managed half the length of the gallery, two women had come to rest. Grey and soft in their best Sunday dresses and pinned hats, they folded their hands in their laps and set their sensible shoes firmly on the floor.

They considered the canvas in front of them: a gentleman, his youthful beard rendered in wisps of ginger, posed in a tunic of fine embroidery. In his graceful fingers: a long wooden flute.

You know, said the stouter of the two friends,
someone once said there was no beauty in the flawless.

And where did they say it would be? said the shorter one.

In the flawed, as I remember.

Who said this?

I don’t recall. Some great thinker, I imagine.

What’s the title of this one then?

Stout read from her guide.
Portrait of the One-Eyed Flautist
.

Painted when?

The book says it is a masterpiece of the Renaissance.

Short cocked her head and asked about the artist.

It doesn’t say who painted it, Stout said.

I wouldn’t have signed it either. It is quite awful.

He has lovely hands, though. I imagine his would be a very soft touch.

The man is missing an eye, my dear. And the one left behind stares us down as though we were the ones who plucked its mate.

Well I think he is handsome.

Grotesque, you mean. I can barely look.

I wonder how he lost it.

His beauty?

The eye.

——

Octavio and Madame Lafrouche emerged from the flow of visitors moving along the gallery and stopped in front of the flautist.

Here’s a fellow I remember, Octavio said.

Very handsome, Madame Lafrouche replied.

I could tell you about him, madame. If you wish. All I need is a word to start me off.

Any word?

Anything will do fine.

Madame Lafrouche looked hard at the flute player. She scanned the young man up and down, settling on the telltale squint where his eye had been.

Wounded, she said.

Octavio furrowed his brow. Very well. Here we have the portrait of a—wounded—soldier. To the delight of his father he has followed in the family trade and become a young lieutenant. His mother is very proud. But handsome uniforms and cavalry charges are not in his dreams. Music is what fills his head. By day he serves his family’s hopes and brings honour to their name. Yet by night, alone on the parade ground, he plays his flute for no one but the moon. Then one day during a fencing exercise, to everyone’s horror, our young man loses his eye to a poorly aimed foil. Tragedy! His military career is lost forever. But wonder of wonders, he is maimed for life! Even
shunned by friends and family, his wildest wishes have at last been—

Excuse us, monsieur.

Octavio and Madame Lafrouche had not noticed the two women sitting behind them on the bench. Short was scowling at them.

You and your friend are blocking our view, monsieur. And what is all this nonsense about the fellow wishing to lose an eye? Who would want such a thing?

Hush, Stout said. It is a charming story. Makes the poor fellow’s flaws almost disappear. Please continue, monsieur.

Yes, Madame Lafrouche said. Please continue.

Octavio motioned the three women to huddle in close. And so our handsome flautist plays, he whispered, to this very day. All the happier for his poke in the eye.

It had been so long since she had seen her story man in the museum. In those weeks and months after the first Sunday he did not appear, Isabeau had lurched from worrying that something might have happened, a horrible accident perhaps, to anger that he
had
seen her that day in the watercolour salon, had noticed her scar and was repulsed, to resignation that she would never see him again.

Isabeau watched as he leaned in among the three women. She did not hear what he said to them, but their blushing smiles made her wish she were his audience.

Over their years together, Madame T eventually warmed to Isabeau. Though she maintained a proper distance from her young protégé, and Isabeau knew her own place in the museum’s order of things, a shared truth connected them. Madame T could sense Isabeau’s silent longing would only grow with the story man’s absence. She knew the loss the girl was feeling, had watched Isabeau lose herself in her work, moreover in her books. Madame T knew too well that Isabeau would not find the comfort of her story man in any book. And it broke her heart.

They sat at their tables waiting for Vermeer and Rembrandt. Two obscure works were scheduled to be re-hung in the museum and would need cleaning. The paintings were overdue from storage.

Reading again? Madame T said. Always with your head in a book.

Just finishing, Isabeau said. Would you like to borrow it?

Thank you but no. I don’t read much these days.
Books are an amusement for when you are young and in love.

In love? Isabeau said. She quickly closed her book.

I’m sure the museum’s gossipers have said I would know nothing of love. But I did fall once. I wasn’t much older than you are now.

I was passing Saint-Sulpice on my way home from the museum. I had just started working here. It was April, pouring rain. I stepped into a bookshop to get out of the weather. I dropped my umbrella and suddenly a young man appeared from behind a shelf. He picked up the umbrella and shook off the raindrops. If it is books you like, he said, then I shall have to start reading.

Such a bold move, Isabeau said. An image in her mind, Madame T as a younger woman, took shape. She had been beautiful once, Isabeau thought, angry with herself that she hadn’t noticed before.

I suspect that is why I fell for him, Madame said. We talked in the bookshop for quite a while. It was nervous chatter mostly, books we were reading, books we had enjoyed, that sort of thing. As it turned out we had very different tastes.

Which ones did you like? Isabeau said.

I told my gentleman that Victor Hugo was a master and that I had hung on every word of
Les Misérables
.
He said he had wished it were shorter. Now Monsieur Verne, he said, there was a fine writer. When I offered my opinion of such silliness he looked completely deflated. I remember looking in his eyes and being so afraid I had said the wrong thing.

But surely that wasn’t the end of it, Isabeau said.

Very much a beginning, Madame T said. We would meet every Saturday. Sometimes at the bookshop, other times at a café on the rue de Rivoli. We came to agree, finally, on Flaubert.

You mentioned a library, Isabeau said.

He told me he had a library, or rather his family did. They had been successful in the wine trade and owned a house in the country. One wing of the house—really it was just a long room, he said—they had turned into a library. His father had named it the Wisdom.

Isabeau raised an eyebrow.

My gentleman told me of the glass cases covering every wall, rising to the ceiling, containing hundreds of books. There were chairs and settees that had their own hinged reading table and lamp. There were padded lapboards, mechanical footstools and adjustable headrests. It was a room devoted to nothing but words, he said. But even his description, in that smooth and soft voice of his, did not do it justice.

You saw the Wisdom? He took you there?

Madame nodded. The floor was covered with a giant carpet, she said, a map of the world. The Mediterranean had been woven with aquamarine threads and across the ocean were knitted greens and yellows of the New World. To the east, brown and grey strands of the Himalayas twisted into the blues and reds of the Orient. North and south were thick white weaves of polar ice.

Madame forced a smile. I asked him to take me away, she said.

My gentleman pointed at the centre of the carpet. A bunch of grapes, stitched in shades of purple and pale green, marked the valley of the Loire and his family home. He suggested I take my shoes off and curl my toes around the grapes. Where would you like to go? he said.

I stepped once or twice to the east. China it is then, he said. I moved west over the mountains. Venice, he said. I took two more steps and stood with one foot on Madrid, the other on Lisbon. Iberia, he said. A few more strides and I had crossed the ocean. And so to America, he said.

I asked him if he knew these places. I know of them, he said. So you have travelled, I said. Not so very far, no. I laughed at him and asked what could he know if he hadn’t been anywhere.

He said he knew a place where a stone wall stretched for thousands of miles, concealing a suspicious kingdom
from its neighbours. He knew a city where the streets were filled with water and its citizens moved about in boats shaped like black slippers. He knew a land of castles where old men in rusting armour attacked windmills, believing them to be giants. He knew a country covered in trees where warriors painted their bodies so they might drive fear into the hearts of their enemies.