The Emperor of Paris (20 page)

That evening as she left the museum, the book nagged at Isabeau. Apart from its scrawled ownership and a few gently curled corners, she had found few flaws. There were no opinions scribbled in margins, no underlined passages. Its pages were firm in their binding; there were no ripped edges where a reader so anxious to learn what happened next had turned the page too quickly. If it had come from someone’s library, Isabeau thought, it had rarely been read. At least not the way she would have read it.

Tightening her scarf under her chin, she stepped into a tobacconist’s shop and asked for a telephone directory. She slid her finger down column after column of Notre-Dames: accountancies and antiquarians and barbers and barristers and cafés and cheesemongers and dentists and flower shops and jewellers and notaries and opticians and patisseries and pharmacies and tobacconists; cathedrals, chapels, rectories, sisterhoods,
benevolent societies and shops offering religious paraphernalia.

There were a few Notre-Dame bakeries, and only one in the eighth. Isabeau fumbled through her bag for a pencil and a scrap of paper. In her neatest handwriting, she copied out the address and hurried out of the shop.

Henri Fournier slouched in front of the bookstall. Though the summer crowds had passed in waves along the quay, there had been only one interested browser. His regular Sunday customer had arrived earlier in the day. He had purchased three books. Henri dared not imagine where he would be were it not for his most curious, painfully shy, but reliably punctual baker.

Henri was dozing off. He needed distraction. The quay had quieted to a few tourists milling near the end of the Pont des Arts. He began pacing in front of the stall, his eyes closed, his hand running along the spines.

He stopped at his grandfather’s book. His fingers knew well the front cover’s embossed diamond, the pinholes at each corner, the slippers with their curled toes. He had long since memorized the colour of blood oranges.

Henri pulled the book from the shelf. He drew a forefinger across the edge of the pages and found the middle. In one smooth motion he opened the book
across his arms. As though it might crumble at the slightest movement, he lowered it to the ground.

Left on the verso right on the recto
.

Henri closed his eyes. He lifted his arms out from his shoulders, stretching his fingers as wide as he could.

Lightly, Henri. As weightless as feathers
.

Henri curled his toes around the cool smoothness of eggshells. The eggs dissolved into sand and he felt himself sinking. He was at the edge of the sea, the waves eroding the beach around his feet. He wiggled his toes. Another wave slid up the shore. Henri thought he was losing his balance. He opened one eye to catch himself, expecting to see a line of giggling tourists staring at him.

The quay had vanished. The bookstall, the trees, the lamps, the tourists, the bridge, the river, all gone. Henri looked down. His feet were still on the book. But rather than seeing pavement, rooftops were now slowly sliding underneath him. He could see lines of flags and light bulbs strung between the buildings, then remembered the holiday was only days away. With the book lifting him higher, the city fanned out in a great circle, the ribbon of the Seine snaking through a maze of streets and boulevards and gardens. In the distance were hills, church spires,
fields, orchards; and then through the clouds, far in the distance, a thin blue smudge of seaside.

Henri laughed and closed his eyes and felt the wind cooling his face.

He did not see a young woman hurry past, then stop suddenly and return to the stall. She rummaged through the selection, ran her hand over an embossing here, inspected an endpaper there, lifted a volume to her face and breathed deeply. She admired the drawing of the boy and his boat. Then, realizing the time, she rushed off in the direction of the Pont des Arts.

She told herself that she would have to return to the bookstall. But where was my head to have not seen it before now? she thought. It was impossible to miss, painted such an interesting shade of green.

She was halfway across the bridge by the time Henri stepped off his grandfather’s book and returned it to its place. He adjusted his stool and leaned his back against the stall. A smile spread wide across his face.

Isabeau reached the end of the bridge and turned toward the Tuileries.

Below her, at the river’s edge, an old man crouched on his haunches, a ragged carpetbag beside him. In his hands was a square of canvas. He laid it gently on the
water and slid it back and forth. The soft colour wash of buildings, the pearl sky, the green bookstalls, a yellow dress walking along the quay, all slowly dissolved, their trails drifting with the current.

As Isabeau passed the boat pond, she resisted the urge to stop. Another Sunday and she would be sitting across the way, content with her reading, looking up from the pages now and then to see if her story man was in sight. She loved those Sundays. But she knew this day’s errand was important. Someone was missing their book. And if she didn’t return to the Tuileries until later, if it turned out she had missed her story man, then no matter. Next week would come, the pond would be waiting and life would return to its routine.

Isabeau looked under the trees, saw that her chair was where it should be, and hurried on.

The scarf falls away. Lowering her head, the young woman pulls a lock of hair from behind her ear, letting it fall across her cheek. She looks up, one chocolate eye peering out at the baker.

I have something of yours, monsieur.

She holds out the book. From your library, I believe.

The baker reaches for the
Arabian Nights
, then hesitates. My—I—you found it.

The young woman reassures him with a nod. I had hoped for a story, she says.

The baker takes the streak of white in the young
woman’s hair and moves it back behind her ear. She watches his eyes: the brightest grey, searching for a beginning. She smiles and ties her hair back with her scarf.

Tell me how we came to this, she says.

The epigraph is taken from the Penguin Books Great Ideas edition of
The Painter of Modern Life
by Charles Baudelaire, translated by P.E. Charvet, copyright 1972.

References to Emile Notre-Dame’s habitual newspaper and its illustrations were inspired by numerous issues of
Le Petit Journal
, published in Paris, on Sundays, between 1890 and 1944.

The article Emile does not read concerning the Seine floods in January 1919 was adapted from an eyewitness account given by H. Warner Allen and reprinted in
The World’s Great Events
, published by P. F. Collier & Son in 1950.

Various images in this novel owe a creative debt to the photography of Robert Doisneau (1912–1994) and Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004).

Laura Barber and Martha Kanya-Forstner. For their hands-across-the-sea madness in taking this novel to heart, their perseverance in the face of lengthening odds that it would ever be delivered, and for their editorial wisdom, grace, and generosity throughout.

Suzanne Brandreth. Tireless guardian, champion and voice of reason.

Shaun Oakey. For his meticulous smoothing of the language and the history. Allyson Latta, for her own editorial fine-toothed comb. Any remaining errors are the author’s alone.

Kelly Hill, Terri Nimmo, Erin Cooper, and Carla Kean. For continuing to design, typeset, and produce books of the highest standard.

The houses of Doubleday Canada and Portobello Books (UK). Their support remains steadfast if still somewhat baffling.

And Rebecca Richardson. For listening to the idea that became this novel while lunching
en plein air
in front of Chartres Cathedral. For reading and rereading and rereading and rereading. For suggesting the fire. As ever, TMD.