The Paris Key (19 page)

Angela, 1983

T
he entrance to the catacombs is through an abandoned train tunnel. They have to hop a fence, negotiate a steep slope, and walk down weed-strewn old railroad tracks.

Xabi moves aside a metal plate, like a manhole cover, in the side of the tunnel wall.

The opening doesn't look much bigger than a cat door.

“That's . . . the entrance?” Angela asks.

“You are not afraid, remember?” he says.

Xabi has brought a pack and he shows her the contents: a compass and a hand-drawn map of the catacombs. Flashlights (the kind you put on your head, as well as carry in your hand). Extra batteries. Water and snacks. It seems strangely nurturing of him to have come so prepared, almost Boy Scouty. Perhaps there is an equivalent group in the Basque country, Angela thinks, trying to imagine a juvenile version of the man in front of her, a scarf around his neck. Wondering how to say “always prepared” in Euskara.

The only scarf she can imagine him wearing is red, with a white outfit and a beret, ready to run with the bulls of Pamplona. That is a Basque city, she knows, having seen a documentary on the famous annual escapade. It seems fitting, now that she looks at him with that in mind. She imagines him turning and fixing a bull with an icy stare if it dared try to run him down or skewer him with its horns.

“People have been lost down there,” said Pasquale when Angela asked her about
les souterrains
, the underground. “Lost, and perhaps someone later finds their bones. Or they are simply gone, never to be seen again.”

They built on the natural caves. The Romans were here two thousand years ago, and they mined the limestone to build their buildings. But to these have been added, over the centuries, waterways and sewers and basements and storage units and even underground factories.

“You see how it is separated naturally? This little place here?” Xabi points out a tiny crevice in the stone, his hands for once not covered in chalk dust. Now she sees they are deeply tanned, with long, tapered, calloused fingers.

“Here, they put the piece of wood,
comme ça
. The air is moist—you feel it? As the wood gets more moisture, it gets bigger, and over time the split, she gets much bigger. Then the workers can get in and cut, and pull out the big piece of stone. You see? The mining created so many caves, hundreds of kilometers of unmapped caves. And then people used the caves for many things. When there were too many people in Paris and they realized the dead people caused a problem, they moved the bodies here.”

“Here?”

“Ne bouge pas,”
he says. “Don't move.” He seems to be listening, standing near the small hole in the wall about four feet off the ground. All Angela can see within is darkness.

“Allons-y,”
he says, looking back over his shoulder with a grin. She has never before seen him smile, and the sight makes her forget for a moment. Forget that she is underground, in a tunnel clearly marked
interdit
, forbidden to enter, and apparently is about to allow herself to be swallowed up by a black hole.

“In . . . in there?” she asks once the magic of that smile falls off. “That's the only way?”

“I thought you were not afraid.
As-tu peur?
”

“No,” she says, raising her chin.

She thinks about the woods where she grew up, how as a girl she would try to poke her head into the small animal burrows she would find. She had always wondered what it was like to be inside such a thing: walls, floor, and ceiling dirt, only one direction to go.

“I go first,” he says. “You follow. You are smaller—if I can go, you can go.”

She nods and watches as he steps on a chunk of concrete to hoist himself up, shining his light first, then pulling himself through with a few muffled grunts.

It strikes her, then, as she watches the bottoms of his shoes disappearing into the black nothingness: She, Angela Martin, is standing in a dank tunnel under the streets of Paris. No one in this world, other than Xabi, has the slightest idea where she is. Her brother and sister-in-law, her husband and child, her friends back home . . . she could disappear now into nothingness, float away, or melt right into this ground, leaving behind no trace, no sign. Her bones would blend with the thousands already housed here, out of time, out of place.

It is the closest she has ever come to vanishing, and it is at once seductive and disorienting, alluring and terrifying.

“Angela?” comes Xabi's muffled voice.

Angela tries to remember: Is this the first time he has ever actually used her name? He pronounces it with the soft
g
, making it sound exotic and beautiful.

“Angel, are you coming?”

•   •   •

S
ome of the tunnels are large; others are narrow and make her feel like they are entering the crypt of an Egyptian pyramid; still others have the broadly arched stone ceilings common to wine cellars and church basements. One tunnel has water running along a trough in the center, forcing them to straddle it, one foot perched awkwardly on each of the side curbs.

There are occasional medieval carvings and admonitions in Latin; some passages are marked with street signs, indicating what lies so many feet overhead.

What surprises Angela is the graffiti: it is everywhere, from the banal
(Marco was here!)
to the artistic.

Xabi leads the way through one more tiny, animal-sized hole, and they are suddenly standing in an assemblage of open rooms, as spacious as a restaurant.

“There used to be a factory down here,” he says. “For making beer.”

“They made beer in the catacombs?”

“Yes. And many other things. They grew mushrooms, too, called the
champignons de
Paris
. Maybe they still do; I don't know.”

“So this used to be a brewery? And now . . . an art gallery?”

Clearly they are not the first visitors to this locale. In fact, its walls are covered in paintings: cartoons and abstract drawings but also intricate murals: the Mayan calendar, a delicately rendered version of Caravaggio's famous Bacchus.

Makeshift tables have been set up, many holding remnants of candles, some with evidence of picnics: crumpled white butcher paper and empty wine bottles lying on their sides.

“But who paints down here?”

“Whoever wants to, I suppose.”

“You mean people haul all their art supplies in here, and then stay down here for hours, painting?” asks Angela. “Why? Who will ever see them?”

“We are seeing them.”

“But . . . why not paint them up above?”

“I think because this is a very special place. You can feel it, I think, how special it is down here, almost like a kind of cathedral.”

She nods. He is right. She feels it.

“A friend tells me in English there is the expression: art, for the sake of art,” says Xabi. “You know this?”

“Yes: art for art's sake.”

“Art does not always hang in the Louvre. Sometimes it is made for other reasons. Just for itself.”

“Like your chalk paintings?”

“Exactly.” He smiles. “Although—those chalk paintings also pay my rent.”

•   •   •

X
abi takes her deeper into the tunnels. He shows her a beautiful, deep stone well, with a circular stair leading down to the water.

“This was what they used to mix the concrete, when they were building columns to support the tunnels.”

They passed many such columns as they progressed through the underground. They seem hodgepodge, made of random stones and hunks of concrete, crooked and organically formed, like something that might grow under the ocean or appear on the pages of a Dr. Seuss book.

“They were built because some of Paris started to fall into the tunnels, because of too much weight.”

“You're saying all of Paris is held up by these columns?”

“Only part of Paris,” he says. “But, yes.”

As they continue, they walk down tunnels that become tighter and smaller. Or does it just feel that way? Occasionally Xabi stops and refers to his map, checks markings on the wall—some official, some graffiti—then continues on.

Angela is fascinated yet terrified. Does he really know where they are going? Pasquale's warnings ring in her ears: tales of people who went exploring and were never heard from again. What had possessed her to entrust herself so completely to this man?

Finally they turn a corner, and Xabi invites her to sit on a little stone ledge.

“You are tired, I think,” he says. “We will rest a while, have a snack. But first we will take a moment with the ghosts of the
souterrains
.”

He sits beside her, takes the flashlight from her hands, and clicks it off. Then he extinguishes his own light.

They are plunged into absolute darkness. The only sound is the rasp of their breathing, echoing off stone walls. Angela fancies she can hear their hearts, the blood rushing through their veins.

“Do not be afraid,” Xabi whispers. “The ghosts, they will not harm you. They only want to be seen.”

But Angela has to fight the panic that claws at the base of her throat. She has never been claustrophobic, but this is different. This is all encompassing. She reminds herself that far above them, sixty feet overhead, Parisians stride down boulevards, cars idle at lights, tourists gawk. There is daylight, and breezes, and everyday pleasures and annoyances. All the hustle and bustle still exists.

But here, in the belly of the city, they sit in the dark. Unknown, unseen.

“Where are you from?” Angela asks him. She can't think of where she is, who she is. It is all here and now, all in the moment.

“I told you. From Euskadi, the Basque country. In the mountains.”

“But . . . who are you? Why are you in Paris? Why are you here with me now?”

“Why are
you
here? Where is your husband?”

Silence. Total and utter silence, along with the dark, enveloping them.

Angela has to struggle to keep herself grounded. Closes her eyes, tries to remember, to fight against the nothingness. This was what she wanted, yearned for, as she avoided her husband, her child, wanting only to sleep, to be absent. This nothingness. This terrible, all-encompassing nothingness.

“Be careful what you wish for,”
her mother used to tell her.

“I am sorry, Angel,” Xabi says finally. “That was wrong of me to ask. And it is not important. The only thing is this. Here, now, you, and me.”

She feels the warmth of his hand cupping hers. The feeling is so welcome it is a blessing, a grace.

Another human being. She is not alone. Tears sting the back of her eyes.

And then his arm is around her, and his mouth is on hers.

The kiss is elemental, essential. The spirits of the tunnels wrap around her; the ghosts of the empire of the dead.

Beware
l'empire de la mort
.

His lips, his hands, are life. They are heat and light and connection. They are everything.

“A
nd this is the BHV,” said Killian as he and Genevieve passed by a busy corner on quai François Mitterrand. It had stopped raining, and waiters were already wiping off outdoor tables and chairs, turning on the outdoor heaters, and beckoning to passersby.

“And the BHV is . . . ?”

“A kind of general store, a department store. But not terribly fancy. Furniture, clothes, fragrances . . . and downstairs is sort of like a DIY store, with hardware and garden supplies. The sorts of things that can be hard to find in all the small little boutiques. There's also the Monoprix—that's a handy place.”

“Do they sell flowers there, to grow in window boxes?”

“Actually, if you walk the other way, on the other side of the Pont Neuf, there are a bunch of garden shops. Pet stores, too. Also, there's an open-air market near Notre-Dame on weekends, with a lot of garden stuff.”

“You're like a walking guidebook.”

“I try,” he said with a smile. “I think sometimes it takes an outsider to help navigate the city. Natives will show you the things they love, and of course you need to make time to see all the famous sites and wander through the Louvre. But sometimes a person just needs a wrench or a pencil or, I dunno, a towel. Not to mention a good cup of coffee.”

“Well, I appreciate it. I'm . . . I feel like I'm still getting my sea legs under me. It's been a little overwhelming.”

“There's always a bit of an adjustment. You've only been here, what, a few days? And besides, you're still mourning your uncle. So, you're going sightseeing tomorrow?”

“Yes, I think I should. I'm looking forward to it.”

“Too bad I have to work, or I'd volunteer to shepherd you around.”

I'd rather go by myself,
Genevieve thought. Killian looked dapper, his wet hair slicked back from his face, using the big black umbrella as a cane now that it had stopped raining. He was interesting and funny (and smelled like heaven), but the last thing she needed right now was a man clouding her thoughts and muddying her emotions even more than they already were. Besides, she had to deal with Jason (and the dissolution of their marriage) before even entertaining such notions, and she
really
didn't want to think about that yet.

She needed . . . time, she supposed. Just time.

“You're not dead, Martin,”
Mary had told her. But she had felt that way for months, maybe years: untouched by joy, by life in general. Going through the motions, phoning it in. She could already feel the magic of Paris working on her, but it took time to bring a person back from the dead.

As they strolled past a typical little Parisian corner bistro, Genevieve recognized a woman seated by herself at an outdoor table. Genevieve knew her from somewhere, but other than her neighbors, whom did she know in Paris?

The woman looked up, and her gray eyes met Genevieve's gaze.

Then it dawned on her: This was the shopkeeper from the
boulangerie
. The petite, pretty woman who made change without looking and moved like a dancer. A decidedly grumpy dancer.

Genevieve didn't think the woman would remember her, but as she and Killian walked by, the baker raised her chin a fraction of an inch in greeting.

“Bonjour,”
said Genevieve.

“Bonjour,”
the woman responded with a curt nod. She then said something too rapid for Genevieve to understand. Killian responded, and they had a brief exchange in French.

“I am Killian O'Mara,” Killian said. “And this is Genevieve Martin.”

“I am Sylviane Michel.
Enchantée.
” She lifted her chin in Genevieve's direction. “Where you from?”

“The United States.”

She rolled her eyes and made a
c'mon
rolling gesture with her hand. “Yes, I know this much. Where in the United States?”

“Calif—”

“California?”
Sylviane cut her off, smiling and sitting up straighter. “Really? I love California!”

“You know it?”

“Please, sit down.” She gestured to the seat opposite. “You have time for a
pastis
?”

“Um . . . sure,” said Genevieve.

“Alas, I'm sorry to say I have to run,” said Killian. “I have dinner plans, and I have to change into something dry. Genevieve, as always, a pleasure. Here's my number. Please let me know when you plan on going back to Philippe's so I can tag along and photograph the place. Unless you prefer to work alone?”

“No, that's fine. I'll let you know.”

He gave Genevieve a double kiss good-bye, then spoke to Sylviane in French, excusing himself. Both women watched as he ambled down the boulevard.

Genevieve felt Sylviane's curious eyes on her.

“A
pastis
?” Genevieve took the seat across from her. The iron chairs were painted robin's-egg blue, spindly yet sturdy. In French, she ventured to ask: “
Qu'est-ce que c'est?”

“You don't know
pastis
?”

Genevieve shook her head.

“No? But you must know this. You like absinthe?”

“I thought absinthe was illegal.”

Sylviane made an impatient, dismissive gesture. “It was. But that was a long time ago, when it made people go crazy and . . . what is the word when you cannot see? When the eyes do not work?”

“Blind?”

“Yes, blind,” she gestured with her pointer finger:
Exactly
. “Absinthe, before, it used to make people be this sometimes.”

“But it doesn't anymore?”

“No, I don't think so.” She shook her head, a little wrinkle of a frown between her eyebrows; then she stuck out her chin and shook her head again, with finality. “No, I'm sure it is no problem; that is why it is no illegal now. Is a shame, though, probably the ingredients were what helped all that creativity, what do you call? For the artists and musicians. But now it is safe.”

She let out a deep sigh, as though lamenting the passage to safety.

“So . . .
pastis
is like absinthe?” Genevieve asked.

“Oh! Similar, but I like it better. You like . . . what do you call? Licorice? Smell.” She lifted her glass to Genevieve.

It was a slim, tall glass, with one ice cube and a milky amber liquid. It smelled strongly of anise.

“I . . .”

Sylviane signaled to the waiter standing by the door. She gestured with her chin, holding up her glass in one hand and her pointer finger with the other.

“So, Genevieve, tell me: You are here for little visit? A vacation?”

“Not really. Actually, I'm hoping to take over my uncle's locksmith shop. The
serrurier
on rue Saint-Paul.”

“Dave? Locksmith Dave is your uncle?”

She nodded. “
Was
my uncle—he passed away.”

“Yes, yes, I know. I was so sorry; he was a wonderful man. He make us laugh!”

“He was always joking,” Genevieve said with a nod and a smile. “I remember him taking me to your shop a long time ago, when I visited as a teenager.”

“The Maréchalerie is the best
boulangerie
. Everyone, they know this.”

“Do you like working there?”

“Like? What do you mean,
like
working there?”

“I just . . . you seem a little grumpy when I go into the shop in the mornings.”

“What means ‘grumpy'?”

“Um . . . unhappy.
Triste.
”

She shrugged. “My
grandparents
work at the bakery; my
parents
work at the bakery;
I
work at the bakery. My whole life, I smell like bread.” She held out one slim arm. “Smell! Smell me. Fresh bread, isn't it so?”

Genevieve stifled a smile and made a show of smelling her arm.

“Most people think that's a good thing,” Genevieve said. “People love the smell of fresh bread.”

Sylviane made a rude-sounding snort, sipped her
pastis
, and stretched back in her chair.

“You know, there aren't many women bakers in Paris,” said Sylviane. “The men, they think the women can't do it, but my father, he has five sons: Jean-Luc, Jean-Baptiste, Jean-Marc, Jean-Paul, Jean-Claude. But not one wants to be a baker. Not one!”

“You have five brothers named Jean?”

“
Comment? Non
, they are Jean-Luc, Jean-Baptiste, Jean-Marc . . . oh, I see what you are saying. Huh, never have I thought of this! Anyway, not one want to learn to be baker, so now it's me. Like you, I think. Or there are many women locksmiths in America?”

“I wasn't actually a locksmith in America. I was a copy editor.”

“What is that?”

“I checked publications before they were printed.”

“Like books?”

“Technical manuals, mostly.”

“Sounds boring.”

Genevieve just nodded.

“Anyway, this is why I am—what is the word you called me?” Sylviane asked.

“Grumpy.”

“Grumpy, as you say. But you know what? I don't want to talk about bread—I want to talk about California! I love cinema. You like cinema? ‘Movies,' you say in America?”

“Sure, I like movies.”

“Rom-com, you know this?”

“Um . . .”

“I
love
American movies! Especially rom-com.” She squinted, lifted her delicate chin and growled, “Go ahead, make my day.”

“I'm not sure
Dirty Harry
qualifies as a romantic comedy,” Genevieve said with a laugh.

“I like all American cinema, but mostly rom-com.
Harry Met Sally
—she had a—what do you call? When you have sex and you finish? She had it right there in the restaurant!
Quelle coquine!
” She leaned over the table and pounded it, letting out a great hearty laugh that seemed incongruous with her petite stature.

The waiter chose that moment to arrive at the table with a little brown tray holding a tall, slender glass, a bowl of ice, and a small pitcher. He set the glass on the table: It was one-third full of a clear, pale amber liquid. The waiter dropped a single square ice cube into the glass, then added a little water from the diminutive pitcher. As soon as the water hit the alcohol, the liquid started to cloud up, like a chemistry experiment.

“Merci,”
Genevieve said, captivated by the theatrical presentation of the drink.

The waiter did not respond. Sylviane fixed him with a look of mild disdain, remaining silent until he left. As soon as he did, she leaned forward again.

“‘You complete me.' What does this mean?”

“It's supposed to mean that he didn't feel like a complete person until he met her—it's romantic, I guess.”

“That's what I thought.” She waved her hand, dismissing the idea. “But . . . I don't like that. Men and women don't need each other like that. You know Simone de Beauvoir? She does not wait for Jean-Paul Sartre. When he is an ass, she does her own thing; she takes many lovers. I like
Runaway Bride
; did you see this?”

Genevieve nodded, her mind reeling in the attempt to keep up with Sylviane's thought processes, careening from de Beauvoir to
Runaway Bride
in one breath. Thank heavens they were speaking in English.

“I like Julia Roberts. You remember the movie where she says Chagall paints pictures that look like the way love is supposed to feel? Like, floating. I think that is true, because Chagall was French, you see?” said Sylviane. “I like also when Julia Roberts is a—
comment dit-on?
—a
putain
?”

“A prostitute? You mean
Pretty Woman
.”

“Yes! I think I might like to be prostitute in LA—what you think?”

Genevieve opened her mouth to reply but didn't know what to say. She wasn't sure whether Sylviane was joking.

“I would not be smelling like bread, you see?”

Genevieve smiled and sipped her
pastis
. It was strong and a bit cloying—almost overwhelmingly so. It filled her nostrils with the aroma of anise, coated her tongue. The smell reminded her of the fennel bushes on the farm; she had spent half her childhood yanking out those stubborn plants.

Mostly she liked the setup, so very
not
American: the slender glass, the single square ice cube, the clear liquid gone cloudy, the tiny pitcher of water sitting at the side.

“Too strong?” Sylviane asked. “Put more water in if you want. That's why he leaves the pitcher.”

“No, it's good.”

She smiled and raised her chin. “We make a Parisienne of you, you see! So, tell me, Genevieve, you are living here now, truly? You are to be a
serruriere
, a locksmith like your uncle? Here in Paris?
Vraiment?
”

“Maybe. I'm not sure. I think I would like that. I don't yet have the right visa, though, or the certification.”