The Missing Italian Girl (14 page)

When Robert crossed the street ahead of Clarie and Jean-Luc, he began to swivel his head, searching, and finally pointed his finger toward Montmartre. “Look. Look on top of the hill. There’s the abom … abom … abominer.” Clarie immediately knew what the boy was referring to. The rue Turgot cut through the dense neighborhood at just the right angle to give a spectacular uphill view of the unfinished Sacré-Coeur Basilica.

“Shhh,” Emilie bent down to shush her boy and took him by the arm. Then she turned back to Clarie. “I believe he is truly his father’s son,” she said, with a resigned shake of her head.

Amused by little Robert’s attempt to repeat Edgar Franchet’s words, Clarie picked up Jean-Luc to show him what had made his friend so excited. The four of them huddled at the corner of the rues Turgot and Condorcet, waiting for a few matrons, who might well be a shocked by a five-year-old’s loud condemnation of a church, to pass them by.

“Now, dear,” Emilie said to her son, when they were alone, “we all know that churches should be only about love and charity, not about condemning others. But we needn’t talk so loud about what we believe.” Clarie listened with interest to this lesson of maternal moderation, knowing that at some point she’d probably have to give the same admonition to her own son. Bernard also complained bitterly about having to witness the construction of the gleaming white edifice from his neighborhood. For all left-leaning republicans, all socialists, all anarchists, the rising national basilica was truly an “abomination” because its builders proclaimed its purpose to be retribution for the sins of those who had revolted during the Paris Commune. Men like Bernard Martin and Edgar Franchet thought of it in quite the opposite way: that it was an ugly representation of the sins of the bourgeoisie who had crushed and killed the rebellion of 1871.

“I see it every day at this corner,” Clarie said, shaking her head. The fact that it was so white, so high, so expensive and so ornately Byzantine made it particularly galling. “I’ll tell you what,” she said, changing the mood. “Of course well-behaved children are not supposed to give offence, but that doesn’t mean we can’t march right down this street to the park to show that we’re not afraid of any old church. May Robert lead?” she raised her eyebrows to Emilie, who nodded her agreement. When his mother let go of him, the five-year-old straightened up and held his arms in the slightly bent pose of a toy soldier. Then, humming a military song, he led them all up the quiet street. Clarie and Emilie laughed together at the way in which Jean-Luc tried joyfully to imitate his friend.

Half an hour later, spilled chocolate ice cream and drowsy-making sunshine were getting to Jean-Luc. “Definitely time for his nap,” Clarie announced as she picked up her sleepy son.

“We’ll walk with you.”

Clarie gratefully recognized Emilie’s offer as a way of prolonging the day. The rue Rodier formed part of a triangle with the rue Turgot, and the two streets met across from the Square d’Anvers. Clarie would only have to carry her load for half of a long block and up three flights of stairs, where Rose would employ her usual magic to get “her Luca” to take his afternoon nap.

Clarie and Emilie strolled slowly. Because they were chatting intensely, getting in their last words before parting, it was Robert who noticed a post boy, dressed in a blue uniform with a leather bag strapped across his chest, coming up the street toward them.

“Look Maman, someone is getting a ‘a little blue’!” Robert exclaimed.

“Yes, dear,” Emilie said, as she barely looked up. “His grandmother,” she explained to Clarie, “sent him a pneumatic letter while she was out shopping, then she came home and described all the tubes, and how fast the paper had traveled, and how he got a message from the Bon Marché within the hour. My mother,” she shook her head, “she spoils him, as she spoiled me.”

Clarie was once again about to disagree with Emilie’s assessment, when the boy stopped in front of her building and rang the bell. The concierge answered almost immediately and then looked up to see her. “There’s Madame Martin now,” Mme Peyroud told the letter carrier as she pointed to Clarie.

“It’s for you, it’s for you, Madame Martin,” Robert sang, dancing around her. The excitement even brought Jean-Luc out of his stupor. “For you,” he echoed.

There was a big difference between a boy, for fun, getting a “little blue,” as the Parisians affectionately dubbed their pneumatic letters, and one sent to an adult. Although Clarie tried to hide her alarm, Emilie sensed it, and offered to take Jean-Luc.

Trying to ward off anxiety, Clarie relinquished her son to her friend and took the letter from the post boy. It was from the
économe
, the lycée’s accountant.

“Perhaps they’re going to offer you a raise,” Emilie commented as she glanced at the envelope.

“Or fire me,” a feeble joke. School was over and done with for the summer. She couldn’t imagine why an administrator was sending her an urgent message. She carefully ripped open the envelope.

Madame Martin, I regret to tell you that one of our family has met a terrible tragedy. Yesterday, after working in a seamstress’s establishment in the Sentier district, a daughter of Francesca Laurenzano was stabbed and killed. A friend of Madame Laurenzano came to my office today to report the tragedy and to say that Francesca would not be working for a while. She also said that Francesca particularly mentioned you as someone who had been kind and who should know what has befallen her. I hope you do not find this news too disturbing. Yours, Berthe Sauvaget

Clarie gasped and covered her mouth.

“What does it say? What does it say?” Robert eagerly asked.

“Shush, Robert, I’m sure this is adult business,” Emilie said. “May I?” she asked concerned.

Clarie reached for Jean-Luc, who had fallen asleep, and gave Emilie the message. She clutched her son to her and kissed him on his forehead. She had to hide the clamoring in her chest.

“Did you know this Francesca?” Emilie asked, puzzled.

“I spoke to her once or twice. She cleaned my classroom.” Despite all her efforts, Clarie heard her voice falter.

“This is terrible, of course….” Emilie handed the note back to Clarie. “You’re all right? I could stay.”

“No, no.” Clarie had never told Emilie about her encounters with Francesca and her daughters. Some instinct had held her back from telling anyone except Bernard. That instinct had only become stronger when she learned the Laurenzano girls had a connection with the dead Russian anarchist.

“You’re sure?” Emilie’s brow wrinkled with concern.

“Yes, yes. I know you must go, dear Emilie.” Clarie’s eyes glistened with tears provoked by far more than their parting. “Sorry the day had to end like this.”

“Me, too,” Emilie answered as she gave Clarie a kiss on each cheek. “Good-bye, my dearest friend.”

Clarie forced a smile. Robert, like the little gentleman he was trained to be, reached up to kiss her too.

“Have a beautiful summer, sweet Robert,” Clarie managed to say to him, “and when you come back, you’ll see how big Jean-Luc will be.”

Clarie watched as Emilie and her son waved good-bye. Then she hurried through the courtyard to the stairs, away from the eyes of her concierge. Inside the darkened entryway, she began to gulp for air, but made herself be quiet so as not to disturb Jean-Luc. She pressed her hand over her mouth, smothering a sob. The question that pierced her, that would haunt her, was whether she could have done something to prevent the death of a young woman. For now she had to find the strength to get up the stairs, ask Rose to put Jean-Luc down for his nap, say she was tired, retreat to her bedroom, and decide what to do.

2

“W
HERE IS
A
NGELA
? W
HERE IS
my girl?” After Francesca Laurenzano woke up to the realization that her daughter had not returned during the night, she spent the dawn hours imploring Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Maura to tell her where her older daughter had gone.

Maura didn’t know. All night she had tossed and turned on her mattress, growing more and more afraid.
Where is Angela?
Were they cursed? Were they all in danger? Barbereau, Pyotr, now Angela? When her mother
again
dropped to her knees and raised clasped hands up toward the crucifix over her bed, Maura could stand it no longer.

“I’m not going to the laundry today until I find her,” she said. “Don’t worry, Maman, I’ll bring her home.”

Francesca reached to the bed to hoist herself up. “How can you? You told me that you didn’t know where she is.”

“Maybe she’s staying with those nice girls in the Latin Quarter,” Maura offered, fully aware that Lidia and Vera were either in prison or on a train back to Russia. “Look,” she saw, reaching in her skirt pocket, “I have money enough for an omnibus in case I have to cross the river.” Barbereau’s money. The few coins she had not sewn into the hem of her dress. Her hand trembled as she showed them to her mother. She was as shaky as she had been the night they dragged the bastard’s body to the Basin. She made a fist, squeezing the coins into the palm of her hand. What was Barbereau’s death going to cost them? Someone had already killed Pyotr. She had to think. Stay calm. Get away from her mother’s praying and weeping. And find Angela.

“You should tell Madame Guyot—”

“This is more important than the nasty old laundry. I’m going right now.” Maura was afraid if she stayed, she’d tell her mother what she planned to do: Go to the morgue. Make sure her sister wasn’t there. After that, she’d search every sweatshop and alley in the Sentier—the garment district where Angela had set out to work the day before.

Before her mother could object, Maura rushed out of the room, down the stairs, through the courtyard, toward the nearest omnibus stop. If it went to the Ile de la Cité, she’d take it.

As she hurried through familiar streets, she couldn’t help thinking about how she had once imagined that going to the morgue, where unidentified bodies were displayed free of charge, might be entertaining. She loved reading the descriptions and seeing the pictures in the cheap dailies: strangled babies dressed like dolls, murder victims nakedly revealing their wounds, wretched suicides rescued from the Seine in various stages of decomposition. She’d never dreamed that her first foray would be to look for her own sister.

On the bus, she clung to a pole for support, silently repeating over and over again, “It can’t be true. It can’t be true.” The city passed by in a blur. She barely noticed the other passengers. At least she remembered to get off as soon as they crossed the river near the Notre Dame Cathedral. The morgue, a massive low stone building, sat on a broad street behind the great church. A crowd had already gathered for the day’s viewings.

Maura frantically tried to push her way toward the front of the line. “I have to see, I have to see,” she shouted. A few refused to give up their place, muttering against her, but others recognizing her as a person of great interest—someone who could actually identify a victim—stepped aside. She heard curious murmurs. One middle-aged woman in a ridiculous hat was even bold enough to inquire, “Who do you think is in there, dearie? Your mother? Your lover?”

Disdaining to answer, Maura kept jostling until, panting hard, she got to the front of the line close to the entrance. The people ahead of her were moving with agonizing slowness into the vast viewing hall.

“Do you think she knows who ‘the angel’ is?” someone whispered behind her.

Maura gasped and turned. “What angel?”

“A beautiful blond creature,” a short, earnest working girl, in a red-and-white-striped cotton blouse, answered. “It was in the
faits divers
this morning. That’s why there’s such a crowd today.”

Even if Maura had wanted to answer them, to tell them to mind their own business, she couldn’t. Her heart had jumped into her throat, blocking her from saying anything. She could hardly breathe and would have stumbled if she hadn’t been in a crowd.

“Let her through,” the same girl shouted. “She knows the blond angel.”

Maura tried to move her legs as she was being pushed forward. Was she going to regret everything she had ever done in her life? She’d always loved the
faits divers
. Any time she could afford a newspaper, she’d devour the little paragraphs that, as they days went by, eventually grew into the big stories everyone talked about, the infamous murders with full-page illustrations in the Sunday editions. Now would there be pictures of Angela? Out of the side of her eye, she saw a policeman approach. He grabbed her by her elbow and, shoving everyone else aside, led her through the door into the viewing hall. Whispers, like stinging buzzing insects, swirled around her: “She knows one of the victims.”

And then she was there, in front of the glass window that ran all the way up to the high ceiling. At first she could not bear to look at the bodies, twelve of them, laid out in two rows, each occupying a marble slab. Instead, her eyes roved past them to the wall behind the corpses. To aid identification, clothes were hung on two rows of six hooks. Angela’s best plaid dress, the dress she put on for her first day of work, was there, right in the middle of the lower row. Maura wrested her arm from the uniformed man and spread her hands over the glass. Her breathing made a fog between her and the refrigerated bodies. She wanted the fog to last forever. She didn’t want to see. The policeman wiped the glass with his handkerchief and her eyes fell upon her sister, naked except for her private parts, her breasts exposed and the blackened wound above her heart evident to all.

“No! No! No!” she heard her voice but it came from somewhere else, somewhere above or below or behind her. She wanted to be there, somewhere else, where the No was real, not Angela’s dead body. “No!”

“You know her?” the policeman grasped her shoulder.

“She’s my sister,” she sobbed and clapped her hand over her mouth.

And then she heard a chorus behind her, “The blond angel’s sister.”

“We need to talk to you, and after that, you’ll have to get your mother to identify her and bring money to transport her if you don’t want her buried in a pauper’s grave,” the nasty policeman said.