Somewhere I Have Never Travelled E-Book

Wolfram Fleischhauer

• Herausgeber: hockebooks
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 593

Beschreibung

In a similar vein as John Fowles in "The French Lieutenant's Woman", best selling author Wolfram Fleischhauer ("Fatal Tango") has created two converging suspense stories from the past and the present that turn out to be one. Historical court-room-drama as well as a gripping present-day love-story, "Somewhere I Have Never Travelled" is a highly original and deeply moving work that ingeniously blends historical and contemporary fiction. Paris in the spring of 1867: A few days before the official inauguration of the World Fair, the dead body of a child is found in the river Seine. The mother is arrested and accused of infanticide. She denies having killed her child and claims to have left it at a hospital for treatment a few days before. But nobody in the hospital remembers anything … Paris in the spring of 1992: What mystery surrounds a young French woman in a library in Paris who obsessively researches this long forgotten case of infanticide? Bruno, a 27-year-old architect who is looking for material for his thesis on the 1867 World Fair, needs some of the books the young woman is reading. Reluctantly, she agrees to share some of the material with him. Bruno soon falls in the love with her, but she refuses his advances. Until he starts taking an interest in the strange case she is determined to uncover.

Leseprobe

WolframFleischhauer

SOMEWHEREI HAVE NEVERTRAVELLED...

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

A German version of this novel was published in 1999 by Droemer Knaur as Die Frau mit den Regenhanden (The Woman with Hands of Rain). Text Copyright © 1999 by Wolfram Fleischhauer

www.wolfram-fleischhauer.com

Translation: Kate Vanovitch. Text Copyright: © 2007

by Wolfram Fleischhauer.

Wolfram Fleischhauer: Somewhere I Have Never Travelled. Novel.

Published 2016 by hockebooks gmbh.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”. Copyright 1931, (c) 1959, 1991 by the Trustees of the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright (c) 1979 by George James Firmage, from COMPLETE POEMS: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Cover Design: JHNSTL – Johannes Stoll, Berlin

Author Photo: Terri Potoczna

Author services provided by Pedernales Publishing, LLC

www.pedernalespublishing.com

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ISBN 978-3-95751-149-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-3-95751-150-8 (E-Book)

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

e.e. cummings

Prologue

Dear Bruno,

I am on my way to my meeting. I didn’t sleep much last night.

I thought about you and longed for your warm body next to mine. Now I am on the subway, surrounded by people who are all in a hurry. Time seems to be precious here. I am among equals.

Last night I wanted to write to you. I just couldn’t bear it anymore. I needed to hear your voice, but you weren’t there. Where were you? It will be at least a week before you read this. And even if it took much less time — are not all letters written by the dead, addressed to the unborn? By the time you tear open the envelope that I sealed with my tongue, everything will be different already. Oh, how much I miss the sound of your voice!

Have you made any progress translating my story? How does it sound in your language? It thrills me to think how every word I wrote passes through your mind, filling it with the images I saw. I wish I could be each of those words. It makes me jealous to imagine your eyes looking at them and your tongue moving to their sound.

I walk through this city, through the present, witnessing scenes that are just like the past. The setting is different, but the characters are not.

People in New York are friendly. The hotel porter even speaks a little French. His eyes shone when I told him that I come from Paris. “Merveyeuh,” he said. The hotel Serge recommended is now a home for the elderly. I only stayed one night and then moved here. Serge would be amazed if I told him what happened to his favorite hotel. The lobby smells of old people and disinfectant. I managed to make out a few traces of the fine house it must have been, but now it looks ransacked. Today, I heard that the city subsidizes some of the rooms for senior citizens. As long as they can somehow cough up twenty dollars a day, they are allowed to stay.

It reminds me of Marie, the life she led in Belleville back in 1867. I think of her all the time, feel close to her. I see her standing on the weir by St. Martin’s Canal, staring at the black waters below.

You know that telling her story kept me from going mad. I wanted you to read it to tell you something I couldn’t say. What we cannot speak of, we must tell stories about.

So when are you going to tell me your story? How much I miss the sound of your voice. If I could only hear it now, speaking my name.

I speak your name with every beat of my heart.

A bientôt mon amour

Mainsdepluie

Chapter I

1.

The thawbrought no cheer.

When the ice cracked in the spring of 1867 and the first floes started drifting down the Seine, they would from time to time yield up some remnant of a human being, the remains of people who had drowned in winter because they had ventured too far out on the treacherous surface. Somewhere beneath the white ceiling, they had caught fast and frozen solid. Now, as the current swirled into fissures and set chunks of ice in motion, it ripped their trapped bodies apart. The gruesome discoveries would not taper off for some weeks.

How cold the winter had actually been was a matter of opinion. The average reading had been nine degrees below freezing on the Celsius scale. A sizeable crowd had gathered each day on the Pont Neuf to consult a thermometer installed by the engineer Chevalier. Skeptics disputed its accuracy, arguing that the warm breath of inquisitive onlookers distorted the readings. Most cared little for such technical quibbles. They still measured the cold with the traditional yardstick, the number of poor souls who had frozen to death, hoping quite simply that it would soon be over.

Until ten thirty on that Monday evening in March, things had been quiet. There were four of them on duty. Duvergnier, the station inspector, was sitting in his office. The stove was drawing badly because of the cursed weather, but at least it was not as cold as last week. Lobiau and Grol were in the front room playing cards. Thermann was out on patrol. It was against the rules to go alone, but that is the way it was that Monday evening. Besides, Thermann was back before the tanner turned up.

Duvergnier had been brewing tea. The shot of rum that went with it was another little breach of the rules, but after all, nobody noticed. In any case, he never had a chance to drink his tea. He did drink the rum, later, without the tea, but nobody would have begrudged him that after what had happened. Duvergnier had seen a thing or two in the course of his work. The fighting on the barricades in 1848 had not exactly been a pretty sight. In 1858, when Orsini’s bombs struck the emperor’s carriage outside the opera house, he had heard the explosions. He saw with his own eyes the carnage the grenades had wrought among the crowd. The head wounds were the worst. He was thick-skinned about most things, but not heads. A disfigured face could haunt him for weeks. Fortunately, since that attempt on the emperor’s life nine years ago, he had been spared such nightmares. Had he known what was floating out there in the canal, he would have sent his colleagues out alone. The tanner who came to the station might have warned them about the face. But the man had merely mentioned a child.

Thermann had pulled off his wet boots and placed them by the stove when Duvergnier came out of his office into the duty room to fetch some ink from a cupboard under the counter. He was in the middle of his daily report, a task that fell to him as officer in charge. Grol had been dealt a poor hand and he was in a foul mood, too, so when Thermann asked if anyone had a piece of newspaper, he simply tossed yesterday’s Figaro across the room. Duvergnier vanished into his office again, finished the report, and filed it away. Too hastily, as it turned out, because then somebody rapped noisily at the door. Right away, Duvergnier heard voices in the vestibule, so he did not bother to go out, assuming his constables would be perfectly able to manage the affair. He heard them talking for a while in subdued tones and he was just standing at the stove to inspect his tea when his door flew open.

“Sir!” called Grol from the doorway. “Would you step out for a moment?”

“What is it?”

But Grol tilted his head toward the duty room.

When Duvergnier emerged, Lobiau was standing at the reception desk filling in an incident form. Thermann was still sitting by the stove with the Figaro on his lap, kneading his damp socks. Opposite Lobiau, a man in advanced middle age was dictating his address.

“…Passage Feuillet.”

“Number?”

“We ain’t got numbers.”

“Occupation?”

“Tanner.”

Duvergnier appeared at Lobiau’s side.

“Monsieur…?”

“Briffaut, Charles,” said Lobiau. “Monsieur Briffaut, this is Inspector Duvergnier. Would you please repeat what you have just told us?”

The man seemed impressed by Duvergnier’s uniform. At least, he pulled himself up respectfully. His straggling gray hair framed a haggard face. Under his cape, he wore a dirty leather apron and a thick gray woolen pullover. His coarse shoes had left pools of slush on the wooden floor.

“I just went down to the canal to tip out lye,” he said. “When I turned to go, the dog had gone.”

“What dog?”

“My dog. Bernadette. I called her. Then I heard her barking. Further up, near the weir. On this side, you can’t get far along the top because of the iron fence. Bernadette had crawled under it, so I had to walk up the bank a bit to pass the railings. I called her again, and when she barked, I saw her down by the canal, jumping this way and that. But she wouldn’t come back up. So I went down, as far as I could, and then I saw something lying in the water. It looked like a drowned lamb or something. So I called to the dog again, but she refused to come, just kept running back to the lamb. In the end, I worked my way through the undergrowth to fetch her. And then I saw it. There’s a baby in the water.”

“A baby?” asked Duvergnier.

The old man nodded. “No lamb, anyway. About this big, perhaps.” He indicated the length with his hands. “Floating in the water down there, yes, face down.”

“Did you pull it ashore?”

“Lord, no! I grabbed hold of my dog and climbed back up the embankment. I came straight here. That’s a job for the police, I says to myself.”

“Did you see anyone?”

The man shook his head. “No, there’s no one down there this time of night.”

“Thermann!” called Duvergnier. But the constable had already pulled his boots on again. “Grol, you go to Hôpital St. Louis and fetch a doctor. Where did you say? Just before the weir?”

“Yes, not a hundred yards away.”

“What about me?” asked Lobiau.

“You stay here and make sure the stoves don’t go out.”

Duvergnier and Grol hurried to the storeroom for oilskins and lamps. Thermann’s waterproof cape was still dripping from the hook on the door. Lobiau slid his report toward the tanner for signature. The man traced large, shaky letters in a slow hand, his tongue protruding between his lips.

When they stepped out into the street, they were greeted by a bark at the door. Briffaut untied his dog and strode down the road ahead of Duvergnier and Thermann, while Grol headed in the opposite direction toward the hospital.

As they crossed the canal on Rue des Ecluses, the bitch suddenly started barking and whimpering. The water below them was sluggish. It had begun drizzling softly and raindrops tickled the black surface of the canal. Duvergnier stopped and struck his forehead with his palm.

“Damn it, a barrow. We forgot to bring the wheelbarrow.”

Thermann turned on his heels and vanished. Duvergnier followed Briffaut across the bridge. The path along the embankment was soft and slippery. With some effort, they reached the third iron fence, crossed it, and soon found themselves above the place where the tanner guessed he had found the child. The dog was increasingly nervous, and Briffaut hissed at her angrily. Duvergnier circled the ground with his lamp. There were footprints. Duvergnier asked Briffaut to set his foot in the mud by one of the marks and was disappointed to see that it left the same print. Bernadette’s light paw was easily identified beside it.

The shrubs and bushes that smothered the bank were chest-high here. Shielding his knees with the lamp, Duvergnier cautiously carved a way through the thicket, working slowly down to the canal. The slope descended about fifteen feet to a narrow strip along the water that was free of vegetation. Briffaut kept close behind, and the dog crawled panting through the undergrowth between them. As Duvergnier emerged from the scrub, he straightened up, lifted his lamp, and scanned the canal. Briffaut stepped up to his shoulder and pointed to a spot at two arms’ length from the bank, where something pale was floating. Duvergnier moved closer, extended the lamp over the water and pulled back, startled. A dark shadow shot into the reed bed. A second followed. The bundle rocked jerkily in the water as if goaded by tiny prods. Then the motion ceased. Bernadette whimpered, crouched low, flattened her ears, and emitted two loud barks and then a warning growl.

“Tie the dog up somewhere back there,” snapped Duvergnier nervously, searching for an object to pull the bundle toward the bank. He put the lamp on the ground, began wrestling with a bush, and after considerable pains, managed to break off a thick branch. Then he turned back toward the canal, picked up the lamp, and stared uneasily at the child, now floating calmly again on the water. He could see that the tanner had been right. It was lying face down. The head was almost totally immersed, but Duvergnier could make out the back of the skull and a tuft of dark hair above the surface. The baby was wrapped in a cloth that had fallen loose at the shoulders and begun to unwind in long, insipid swathes. The arms were out of sight. He saw the hint of pale pants, but the legs, like the arms, were hidden under the water.

Duvergnier carefully maneuvered the tip of his branch toward the child and tried to hook it below the arms. The body turned easily. As it faced him, the policeman shuddered at the sight of dark patches along its side. He fixed the top of the bundle with his branch and drew it carefully toward the bank. It glided compliantly through the water, and after a few seconds, it came to rest at Duvergnier’s feet. Briffaut had joined him now and watched the pale flotsam in dread. The back was creamy white and glowed in the light of the lamp. The arms and legs were still invisible. The back of the neck was tinged dark. The child seemed to be peering down at the canal bed with its arms and legs tucked firmly beneath its chest.

Duvergnier gave Briffaut the lamp to hold, laid the branch aside, and removed his black raincoat. He knelt down, eased his coat under the corpse, folded it over the bundle, and hauled it out of the canal. For a moment, he stood there undecided, waiting until the bulk of the water had drained from the salvaged cargo, and finally lowered the coat with the baby inside to the ground. He looked at Briffaut, but the tanner was silent, gazing anxiously at the black dripping oilskin package before him.

Further down the canal, three specks of light appeared on the bridge, making their way across like will o’ the wisps. Duvergnier grabbed the lantern, waved it to and fro, and was gratified by a silent echo from the second light up on the bridge as it flickered on and off.

“Another ice corpse?” asked Briffaut.

Duvergnier shook his head.

“No,” he answered gravely. “This child has not been dead long.”

“Who would do a thing like that?” he heard the tanner say.

“Animals,” said Duvergnier.

“No, an animal wouldn’t do that.”

It was still drizzling. Duvergnier shivered. The two men stood side by side in silence.

“Shouldn’t we take a look?” ventured Briffaut after a while.

Duvergnier shook his head. “I’d rather wait for the doctor. There’s nothing more we can do, anyway.”

How had the baby gotten here? It must have been thrown in the canal at the weir. Or could it conceivably have been an accident? Nobody had reported a missing child. The doctor would establish how long the body had lain in the water. Then they could work backward and ask the other stations whether they had heard anything. The current from the weir flowed toward the city. That meant that the child must have entered the water somewhere on the hundred-yard stretch up to the weir, presumably from this bank, but they could not be certain, so they would need to search both banks for clues. They might find footprints or items of clothing. Duvergnier was tempted to uncover the corpse, but he could not bring himself to do it. No, the doctor could have that task. The first examination was always crucial. Duvergnier had seen Dr. Tardieu in court on many an occasion and learned how even the most unassailable evidence of a violent crime could turn out to be an optical illusion once it was subjected to scientific analysis. It was so easy to make a mistake. And more often than not, the police were to blame because they were taught so little about forensic techniques.

Steps resounded on the slope above. Duvergnier recognized Thermann’s call and answered him. The bushes began to sway and the glow of a lantern appeared between them. Briffaut went to his dog, which was barking again, and sought to calm her. Thermann and Grol emerged from the thicket, followed by another man with a leather case. Duvergnier quickly told the doctor what had occurred and indicated the black oilskin on the ground. The doctor was breathing heavily, apparently exhausted by the expedition. He was short, but fat. His glasses had misted up and he took them off to wipe them as he listened to Duvergnier’s account. When the policeman had finished, he bent over the bundle without further ado and pulled the wet oilskin aside. Thermann and Grol retreated a little. Duvergnier stood motionless, observing the doctor as he performed his duty.

The corpse was lying on its side. The head was tilted back. The eyes and mouth were closed. A dark gray cloth was wrapped around the head and knotted under the chin.

The doctor took one tiny arm. He managed to move it a little each way, but the limb itself was rigid. He turned away to open his bag. He drew out a thermometer, placed it to one side, then took hold of a pair of scissors to cut open the seat of the pants as far as the crotch. Then he walked around the corpse, held the crotch apart with his thumb and index finger, and slid the thermometer inside.

“Would you kindly record this?” he asked, looking at Duvergnier. “And you, gentlemen, might I have some more light?”

Duvergnier took out his notepad as his two colleagues came closer with their lanterns. The little creature lay there in a huddle, its legs tucked up against its belly, its arms folded across its chest, as if it had been trying to fit into a small box. The back was very bent, suggesting to these onlookers that its mother might have been carrying it before her in a sling.

“When did you remove the body from the water?” came the doctor’s matter-of-fact question.

“Just before you arrived. About ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

“At least we are being treated to a complete body, after all the bits and pieces of recent weeks.”

Duvergnier did not respond to this tasteless quip. The doctor was feeling the groin and began to dictate.

“Monday, twenty-fifth of March. Deceased is six to eight months old. Found floating in the water by the east bank of St. Martin’s Canal half an hour before midnight. Recovered without force…”

Duvergnier conscientiously transcribed the doctor’s monotonous words. Thermann and Grol stood close by in quiet conversation with the tanner. Fragments of the forensic protocol wafted over.

“…rigor mortis in embryonic posture…no goose pimples…face and entire body livid…traces of grease on the cheeks…slight discoloration at the back of the neck…tongue not swollen, but tip lodged behind closed lips…corrugated skin on the hands and feet…time of death estimated between twelve and twenty-four hours ago…thorax hard and taut…no external signs of maggots…traces of rodent bites on soft facial tissue and left thorax…”

Duvergnier stared mechanically at the ground, where the lifeless body was now fully unclothed. “…internal temperature…are you taking this down?”

With a start, Duvergnier caught the doctor’s eye, then looked again at the baby’s face. The cheeks had been gnawed away. He sensed a bitter taste in his mouth and something gripped his throat. He barely made it to the bushes. He could not banish the image in his head, the face floating on the water, staring down, the sharp mouth swimming toward it, tearing a slither of skin with its sharp teeth.

Thermann came over and laid a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Shall I take over?”

Duvergnier nodded and handed him the pad.

“Carry on,” said Thermann.

The doctor turned back to the body and looked again at the thermometer. “Ambient temperature…”

Duvergnier staggered up the slope. At the top, he stood erect and took several deep breaths. Then he spat for a while to rid himself of the disgusting taste. His nose and throat burned with acid vomit, and every time he remembered what was lying back there, his stomach would well up and cut off the air to his lungs. Slowly he regained control, and twenty minutes later, when he descended the embankment, the examination had been concluded and the corpse lay rolled up in his oilskin. Grol and Thermann carried it between them. Once the report had been completed, the body continued its way to the morgue, arriving at around four in the morning. And so it was that by Tuesday it was available for public view.

The contentious practice of placing corpses on public display at the Morgue reaped rewards once more. That same day, a water carrier from Belleville identified the body with the help of clothing that had been discovered that very morning nearby and laid out beside the body.

The mother, one Marie Lazès, was arrested in the evening.

2.

On that same Monday, Antoine Bertaut spent his lunch break on the Pont Louis Philippe, observing the place where only days before the entangled barges had forced the river back upon itself. The proceedings before the Sixth Criminal Chamber had been adjourned at twelve thirty. Jozon, acting for the plaintiff, had thwarted Antoine’s defense strategy with a shameful ruse, so shameful his hands still trembled with rage. But that was not the only cause of his discomfort. At twenty-eight, he had just suffered his first crushing defeat. He, Antoine Bertaut, the son of one of the most celebrated lawyers in Paris, had succumbed to that wily fox Jozon. He had completely underestimated Jozon. He knew the jurors would return after lunch and find the accused Vrain-Lucas guilty. That is why he had fled the hectic bustle of the lobby in the west wing of the Palais de Justice, where the renovation was almost complete, and taken a quiet stroll to the Ile St. Louis in preference to eating with his colleagues on Boulevard Sebastopol.

His first big case, and he had acquitted himself like an amateur. The offense in itself was relatively harmless, but the affair had attracted attention. The courtroom was packed with spectators. There had been more than six hundred applications, with the usual wrangling over entry tickets. As always, the audience was a faithful mirror of Parisian society: at the front, with seats reserved for them, the silk and lace, and behind them aloft in the galleries, blue-scarved workers; down below, the sweet scent of perfume, up above, the stench of garlic sausage.

Jozon knew exactly how to play to a crowd. Even so, the audience warmed to this Vrain-Lucas far more than to the remorseful geographer and mathematician Chasles who had placed him in the dock.

Vrain-Lucas had offered to sell Monsieur Chasles some letters that Pascal had apparently written to the English chemist Robert Boyle. Chasles read the letters with relish. This was terrific! The letters proved that Newton had taken the credit for ideas that had really been developed by Pascal, the true author of the laws of gravity. Pascal’s letters were assimilated into the Academy records.

But some members of the Academy soon harbored doubts about the authenticity of these letters, as Pascal seemed oddly to be expressing himself in relatively modern French. To counter these reservations, Monsieur Chasles submitted letters that Pascal had written to Sir Isaac Newton. The skeptics bowed to the weight of this evidence. However, to silence his final adversary under a flood of monographs, Monsieur Chasles decked the tables of the Academy in the ensuing months with bundles of correspondence ranging from Galileo via Luther to Charlemagne.

The source of all these wondrous epistles was Vrain-Lucas. Allegedly, he had acquired them from the enormous collection of a certain Monsieur de Boisjourdain, the impoverished son of an ancient noble family who had been obliged with a heavy heart to part with some of his treasures. As he had no desire to appear personally in these dealings, he had entrusted the sale of the letters to Vrain-Lucas. This mysterious reservoir of letters was evidently so great, that Monsieur Chasles was able to request whatever document he needed to defend his theories in the Academy of Science against his opponents. These were growing in number. Even scholars from abroad gradually began to join the interesting debate. Monsieur Chasles parried with one new discovery after the next. Evidently, he had thrown common sense to the winds, and the moment arrived when his credibility risked a similar fate.

The Academy’s meeting in September 1866 was a tragic one for Chasles. That day he produced a letter from Galileo in which the great scholar referred to the preface of a study written about him in the eighteenth century. Like a man who has lost everything, Monsieur Chasles was forced to admit that he had been deceived. He immediately reported the counterfeiter to the authorities. Vrain-Lucas was easy to arrest, as Chasles had begun having him followed, not because he suspected him of forgery, but because he feared his supplier might run off to foreign parts and take his treasures with him.

Lengthy investigations were initiated. An inspection of the documents revealed some amazing facts. Monsieur Chasles’ collection contained not only letters from famous scientists, but also manuscripts by well-known Ancients. There were letters from Archimedes, Cato, Vergil, Alcibiades, Nero, Caligula, Plato, Socrates, Anacreon, Cicero, Peter, Paul, Herod — in fact, everyone who had ever played a role in world history. Chasles told the court that he had found it a little strange that all these Ancients had written in French, but Vrain-Lucas had provided a plausible explanation: Alcuin, Charlemagne’s minister, had collected all these letters in the abbey at Tours. Seven centuries later, no less a person than Rabelais had uncovered them there and translated the bulk of them. Most of the translations could, therefore, be attributed to Rabelais, and this opus had found its way into the possession of the aforementioned Monsieur de Boisjourdain.

Since bringing the matter to court, the victim of this deception, sorely lamenting his ruined fortunes as a collector, began cherishing the fond hope that at least some of his manuscripts might prove genuine. Some even claimed that he felt greater resentment toward the scholars and Academy members who poured scorn on his illusions than toward the delinquent who had so shamelessly hoodwinked him. Perhaps he had not forgotten the hours of joy that the villain had afforded him when his trust had been unsullied. That very morning, a colleague repeated to Antoine something he had heard a juror say: “The simpleton probably still can’t help believing just a little in the existence of our mysterious Monsieur de Boisjourdain.”

Antoine stared gloomily across the water. He could not forgive himself for being so overconfident and imagining that he had the jury on his side. There was nothing more dangerous than jurors you thought you had won over. In every case, you had to address them from an angle they did not expect. It was a lesson he would never forget. And Brunet, the presiding judge, had actually played into his hands.

“Tell me, though,” Brunet had asked the plaintiff, “surely you had your doubts, for some of these so-called manuscripts are seriously misdated?”

“Yes,” replied Monsieur Chasles. “Many of them seemed to me to be suspect, such as a letter signed by Luther’s widow, and another by Mohammed.”

The jury giggled.

“…but Monsieur Vrain-Lucas threatened that he would return my money and demand the documents that I wished to keep.”

Of course, Antoine had not been ingenuous enough to think his client would be declared innocent. But was Monsieur Chasles not at least partly to blame for the magnitude of this deceit?

“I ask you, esteemed members of the jury, is the plaintiff perhaps a little responsible, and did Monsieur Chasles not in some way provoke Monsieur Vrain-Lucas, through his own ignorance and his presumptuous desire for glory, to follow his evidently successful initiative with ever more audacious ploys? If an artful dealer at the horse fair sells you an old nag as a racehorse, is only the dealer to blame? Quite possibly, if you have never seen a horse before. But we all know that M. Chasles is a scholar of eminent repute. I will not be so bold as to suggest that M. Chasles’ academic instincts had been so blunted by his thirst for success as to perhaps make him complicit in M. Vrain-Lucas’ crime. Nobody can exonerate the defendant from his guilt, and yet to accuse a man of cunning deceit calls at least for an unsuspecting victim. M. Chasles is the member of an auspicious academy, and he has a passion for old manuscripts. Indeed, he is considered to be an authority in this field…”

Here and there a grin could be observed on the jury bench. As Antoine continued, Vrain-Lucas’ offense was gradually transformed into an amusing prank, which, though it deserved punishment, had essentially been harmless, and the malicious, scheming counterfeiter in the dock slowly emerged as an ordinary little con man offering a vain, self-important scholar to make a fool of the entire academic community.

Jozon, counsel to the plaintiff, had not cast a single glance at Antoine all this time. He confined himself to taking notes and observing the jury’s reactions. He seemed almost to pity this docile young lawyer who was leaving the field wide open to him. He had no bone to pick with Antoine, who was challenging him here for the first time. The young man had only been admitted to the bar six months ago and was still a largely unknown quantity. Now if this had been that hothead Lachaud, whose outbreaks of rage had recently led to a wooden barrier being placed before the jurors’ bench, because Lachaud occasionally seemed about to pounce on them; or Léon Duval, that chattering joker who had deprived him last year of sending down a fraudulent bankrupt for ten years of certain hard labor in the quarries. He had a score to settle with both those men and would have enjoyed the skirmish. Instead of that, they had handed him this young dunce who committed the cardinal error of lecturing to the jury on a point they had long since spotted for themselves.

Jozon would tell them something they did not know, for that was the only way to scare them badly enough to grant the judgment he wanted. He knew precisely which cogs to set whirring in the heads of the good citizens there on the bench to make sure that faker of fine documents spent five years behind lock and key. Sadly, no more than five years, but he intended to tap that maximum to the full.

“Your Honor, gentlemen of the jury,” he began. “Is it for us here to mock the afflicted? A simple citizen such as you or I has made a fool of a learned scholar in the eyes of all the world. It is only natural that we derive from this a secret sense of satisfaction. For do we not, all of us, sometimes feel the urge to play a little trick on some great mind — a professor, perhaps, or a politician? But I invite you to ponder for a moment on whether M. Vrain-Lucas is just a simple swindler or whether, perhaps, in doing what he did, he has attacked the very foundations on which our age is built, the very principles on which our common prosperity thrives.”

He strode gravely across the room and scattered a few penetrating looks into the audience. Then he raised his hand, lowered his voice a little, lodged himself before the jurors, and fixed the eyes of one after the other as he continued: “Gentlemen, I assume that no small number of you, by subscribing to the shares, supported the magnificent effort by the Suez Company to carve a waterway across the isthmus?”

A deathly hush fell upon the room. Antoine was too taken aback to object to this strange departure in his colleague’s argument, and before he had quite understood what seed was being sown, Jozon began to water the plant.

“Assume I were to fake a secret diplomatic dispatch suggesting that England was about to deploy troops in Egypt, bent upon sabotaging the canal venture by threatening war. The dispatch is leaked to the press, who eagerly publish. That same day your shares plunge in value…”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Antoine finally cried. “My client is being accused of nothing of the kind; the comparison is nefarious.”

“Upheld,” said Brunet, with a severe glance at Jozon. “Ladies and gentlemen, you will erase that comparison from your minds.”

Antoine did not need to look twice at the faces of the citizens in the gallery to appreciate the impact of Jozon’s little hint. Every one of them owned shares in Suez. The shareholding fever held Paris in its grip, and not even the most spectacular of insolvencies could dissuade people from investing their last sous in perilous undertakings. At the most recent issue of shares in the Suez Canal Company, there had even been fistfights at the bank counters. The jurors had suddenly turned rigid.

“I concede that M. Vrain-Lucas did not specialize in forging diplomatic letters, but in the fraudulent invention of historical sources. And yet, gentlemen, what do we find there? Quite apart from the financial damage that I have just described to you…Must I mention that unholy tome which currently fills any decent Christian with disgust and contempt, that abhorrent ‘Life of Jesus’ that is nothing other than a malevolent assault on all our beliefs?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” shouted Antoine angrily. “We are not here to try the book by M. Renan. Maître Jozon…”

“…or, indeed, the one by Charles Darwin, who claims that we humans are descended from apes…”

“Objection, Your Honor!”

“…and men such as the defendant even provide these charlatans with false evidence for their heresies…”

“Objection!” Antoine had found his voice now.

“Jozon!” thundered Brunet. “If you cannot stick to the point, the court will be obliged to terminate your plea. Gentlemen, the remarks you have just heard shall find no place in your deliberations. Jozon, one more such deviation and I shall cut you off.”

Jozon, however, had achieved what he wanted. There was a buzz among the spectators. Darwin. Renan. The two names alone were enough to evoke the devil himself. Renan, who had exposed the contradictions in the Bible, and that fiend Darwin, with his absurd theory of evolution. And if the crimes of this defendant could be linked to an impending fall in share prices, it was high time he be removed to a place he could do no more harm.

“I do apologize,” said Jozon, raising his arms innocently, “but as counsel for the prosecution, my cardinal duty is to protect the state and the general public from any threat to their well-being. M. Bertaut has offered you a caricature of felony, and you were quite right to laugh. But so must I be permitted to whip the mask off the felon. I have shown you the true face of this alleged prankster. It is up to you to decide how far we wish to repel such criminal agents from our midst. But let no man later claim that I did not warn you, and do not come running to me with your tears and tremblings!”

Antoine sat there motionless and listened as Jozon polished his weaponry. He was clever enough not to risk another infringement, and content merely to let his fuse burn on unhindered. Antoine watched helplessly. Money and religion, he cursed. The best tongs to tweak bourgeois anxiety. Jozon had led him to the slaughter like a silly young student.

Antoine’s own plea was a disaster. As he closed, two jurors were yawning and one had dozed off. Brunet announced a three-hour break for lunch.

The verdict was to be announced at four o’clock. When Antoine returned to hear that the jury had finished deliberating after twenty minutes, his spirits sank even lower. Vrain-Lucas sat in misery, listening incredulously to the judgment. As expected, the jury had found him guilty. The only consolation for Antoine and his client was that Brunet did not impose the sentence Jozon demanded. Brunet reproached the plaintiff Chasles for gross negligence and reprimanded Jozon once more for his plea. Be that as it may, Vrain-Lucas was given a sentence of three years and led away. The spectacle was over, and the seats emptied quickly. Jozon left the court without a word. Antoine watched him go, contrite. Then he packed his papers.

Suddenly, somebody was addressing him.

“All in all, a just decision, don’t you think, Maître Bertaut?”

He knew without looking up who it was. The court reporter Marivol, known as “The Quill,” was the best-known item of furniture at the Palais de Justice. He specialized in two fields: crime and society gossip, which he gleaned from maids and valets and distilled into satirical miniatures that sold like hotcakes. His reports from the courtroom were snapped up by Parisians with the same relish they devoted to penny dreadfuls. The reason was that there was very little difference. Marivol could paint the most mundane crimes in such chilling hues that the public adored him. Nobody took him very seriously, and yet they all respected and sometimes even feared his pen. When Antoine had come to watch trials in his student days, he would sometimes observe Marivol at work. In those days, the journalist would sit either at the recorder’s table with the clerks, although that tended to be the exception, or among the ladies of the audience, whose gender was invariably overrepresented. Since the renovation, a press gallery had been installed next to the jury, and the reporter was able to follow the proceedings from there, unless some female form in the audience caught his attention. Marivol was always immaculately dressed, and his whole being radiated an elegance that for Antoine was blatantly at odds with his profession. He had learned his trade in the Crimea, working as a war correspondent. For that, he might have earned a man’s respect. But this mercenary hack churned out nothing but disgusting trash, and it filled Antoine with repugnance. Quill? Revolting Liar would be a better epithet.

“Judicious, perhaps,” quipped Antoine. “And a just reward for my own efforts.”

“Don’t take it to heart. Jozon is an old coward. He only rides into battle when the enemy is weak.”

“Very kind.”

“No, you misunderstand…”

“It has been a long day, Monsieur Marivol. We can all read in tomorrow’s newspapers what happened here today.”

Antoine turned abruptly to go. This was all he needed now, lessons from a hack.

“And don’t forget to urge your readers to sell off their shares in the Suez Company before it’s too late. Now, if you would excuse me.”

Marivol watched in consternation as he left.

3.

In the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, the police intensified their investigations. Toward midnight, they searched the dwelling of the dead child’s mother, a timber shack in a cluster of huts known as the “Sandhill,” near the lime kilns of Belleville. The room where the drama had begun its course was nine feet by twelve at most. The walls were of simple planks nailed to round posts. The roof was a bizarre construction of assorted sticks that had been tied together and covered by waxed cloth. Upon closer inspection, some of the sticks turned out to be bones, probably from the knacker’s yard. The waterproof cover was from a canal barge.

There were no windows. The mud floor was damp and uneven; the door ended a hand’s width above the ground, but this at least sloped down, so that no water could come in at the door. The door offered no defense, on the other hand, against insects or small mammals. But after so many weeks of rain, there were few pests to worry about.

The shelter was sparsely furnished. It consisted of a bed, a stove, a wooden crate, and a stool. Along the walls, torn cloth sought to absorb some of the sting from the wind that whistled through the cracks. There was a wooden plate on the stool, and from its scratched surface grew the stump of a candle, molded from leftover lumps of wax. The wooden crate beside it was not closed, but on inspection only revealed cooking implements and the broken handle of an umbrella made from rhino horn. A line had been strung across the room, and the few items hanging from it to dry included some thoroughly worn but clean rags that presumably served as diapers. By the stove were a horn sieve and two tin pans. At the time of the search, the occupant of the hut had been absent and unaccounted for.

One strange thing that the police had found in a ramshackle cupboard on the rear wall was listed in the record as a sack containing seven dead rats. At the time of the search, neither the suspect nor her husband, presumed missing, nor her elder son were present. All that could be learned about the elder son, who went by the name of Johann, was that according to the woman next door, he usually hung around in the stone quarries and rarely came here to the Sandhill. This neighbor also stated that she had seen Marie Lazès with her baby on Sunday. The baby had been ailing and had cried most of the day and much of the evening.

The crying had not stopped until well into the night.

Chapter II

She was sitting at a map table and did not look up once all morning, which just goes to show how closely I had been watching her for the last two hours.

The Paris History Library was housed in a hôtel, one of those elegant private homes once built for the local aristocrats. Two glass doors with a smoking area between led to the reception area, with the catalog next to the porter’s lodge. On the left, a large wing overlooking the garden accommodated the Reading Room. The other wing was devoted to maps. If you left the entrance hall to the right, you immediately came to the larger tables for spreading maps. There was another room behind equipped with a camera, where visitors could copy old charts, drawings, and illustrations.

I had been in town since October, but I kept putting off my first trip to this particular library. My dissertation, after all, was supposed to be about a piece of architectural history, not the history of Paris. But my professor kept nagging me to learn at least the basics about the Second Empire. I would never manage to correctly interpret the buildings for the World Fair in 1867, he would scold, if I did not understand the historical context. So this is how I met her in March of 1992.

There did not seem to be much demand for drawings and maps. Apart from my table, only one of the other six was occupied: the second along the window looking out on the courtyard. A little notice indicated that somebody had reserved this seat long-term. There was a stack of four enormous folios, entire annual editions of a newspaper, and lined up before them a row of ten or twelve books displaying those self-adhesive yellow stickers. In front of the books was a paper scroll, presumably a map. I unpacked my papers and spent the next three-quarters of an hour rummaging through the picture catalog and filling in order slips.

It was when I came back that I first saw her. One of the folios was open and she was copying out a passage from it. She must have arrived right after me, because she had already filled three sheets of paper with close lines of writing. Her legs were crossed and she bent forward over her work, completely engrossed, with her left arm across the folio, the index finger marking the words that her right hand was tracing out in an even script. She was using a fountain pen. Sunlight was streaming through the window, pleasantly filling the room. As I passed, I caught sight of her hands and the pale cuticle of her index finger, drained of blood from pressing the pen. I could not make out much of her face, apart from her forehead and a portion of her cheek. Her hair was dark. She wore it pinned up.

A harmless bonjour perched on my tongue in case she looked up, but she didn’t. And so I returned to my seat. But I failed to produce any decent work all morning. My gaze was drawn in her direction over and over again. Occasionally someone went into the camera room. As soon as I heard footsteps, I would lift my head, but I always looked at her first, and only then at the person passing between us. From my seat, I could see the back of her neck, her arms, the silver barrette that held up her hair. Sometimes a section of her face in profile, the finely cut eyes with the long lashes or a fleeting glance of delicately molded lips. I caught a glance of her narrow waist and indiscreetly explored her breasts as she leaned back and stretched. But her concentration was rarely broken. She went on writing, her attention flicking between the yellowing newsprint and the white paper before her. Once a strand of hair fell into her eyes. She brushed it aside with her left hand without putting down her pen.

I forced myself to examine the photographs they brought me from the archives, nearly a hundred original shots of the World Fair site of 1867 at different stages of construction. It was easy to see what primitive resources had been used to lay the foundations. I saw simple horse-drawn carts shifting earth. Workers hauled posts from a wagon with man-sized wheels that had gotten stuck in the mud. The horses were strong and stocky. One early photograph taken from the Trocadéro showed why so many contemporaries had jeeringly nicknamed this building the “gasometer.” The outer ring of steel around the giant oval, soon to become the Gallery of Machines, stood out like the tangled struts of a roller coaster.

My professor’s comments still rang in my ears. “Buildings are not mere technical structures,” Heinrich Landau had harangued me. “They are semiotic systems.”

He had come to Paris in February for a few days and invited me to dinner along with an architect he knew. We met in a restaurant quaintly named La pluie et plus rien, which translates as something like “Rain and Nothing Else.” I still haven’t figured out why. The place was in a side street off Champs-Elysées and had only eight tables, which, I discovered, were always booked weeks in advance. There were no prices on the menu, so I was not confronted with the usual embarrassing dilemma of politely choosing a modest option, and I let myself be guided by the music of the words. Their imaginative names were worth a visit in themselves. Heinrich impishly recommended an appetizer called Les danseuses du pré. I consented and waited eagerly to see what delights these would have to offer. The meadow dancers turned out to be frog’s legs, and Cyril, which my professor called his friend, was heartily amused to see the face I made. It was a most agreeable evening. The Frenchman called me by my first name immediately and told me to do the same.

Two hours later, when we had gotten to the cognac and cigars, Heinrich Landau leaned back contentedly in his chair and said, “Bruno, if you ever meet a nice girl in Paris, promise me you’ll bring her here.”

I promised.

But of course, there was more on his agenda than a relaxed dinner. The next day, walking through the gardens of the Tuileries, Heinrich made it quite clear in his friendly but unambiguous manner that the chapters I had sent him so far weren’t bad as far as they went, but were missing the essentials. Where was the political dimension? I couldn’t quite see what he was driving at.

“How many sites were in the running for the World Fair?” he asked me.

“Twenty-two,” I replied.

“So why did they pick the Champ de Mars?”

“There was nothing there, it was close to town, and the site was all in one piece. The local residents were used to festivities and big events being held there. And the Seine was a handy waterway for transporting materials and visitors.”

“Who owned the land?” he persisted.

“The War Ministry. That was another point in its favor. The Ecole Militaire could have stepped in quickly in a disaster.”

He nodded, but he was still frowning.

“Sure, but the city couldn’t buy the land, right?”

I didn’t know what to say. He waited a while before continuing.

“After the exhibition, the land had to be handed back in its original state. What does that mean?”

“That everything had to be pulled down again.”

“Exactly.”

He looked at me, but I couldn’t for the life of me work out what he thought was so important.

“Bruno,” he said. “Have you actually done any reading on the Second Empire?”

“Of course I have,” I answered, somewhat taken back.

“So what did the World Fair mean to Napoleon?”

“He wanted to demonstrate the wonders of the world to a universal audience, to assemble all knowledge and skills in one place…”

“Yes, sure, but what state was France in at the time? What was the mood in the country, the spirit of the age? Some decisions are down to technical factors. Was concrete invented yet? How expensive was steel? You’ve done a lot of good work on those points. But come on: 1867! What’s the first thing that comes to mind?”

I started to feel uncomfortable about the course this conversation was taking. Truthfully, very little occurred to me at all about 1867. Or about the answer he was about to provide.

“1866, of course. Königgrätz. Prussia has defeated Austria. In today’s terms: the Soviet Union has just invaded Afghanistan. Or China has built the atom bomb. I know comparisons are odious. History never repeats itself, not even as farce, like Marx claimed. That’s an article you ought to read, by the way.”

“Which article?” I glumly enquired.

“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx. A brilliant specimen of political journalism. And don’t sulk.”

He placed a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Napoleon III was a dictator, a usurper. But also a visionary. He saw himself as the reincarnation of his uncle, the lord of all Europe. His whole regime was designed to flaunt power. Endless parties, grandiose buildings. He had half of Paris pulled down and rebuilt. He wanted to be revered as the great arbiter. First in the Crimean War. Then after the Italian campaign. But how were things back home in France in 1867? Prussia’s lightning victory over Austria came as a great shock to the French. Everyone was talking about the needle gun. The needle gun! It sounds funny to our ears, doesn’t it? But do you know what it meant to people back then? It was a red cape, like Pershing cruise missiles and the SS 20 were here in Europe a few years back. I mean, take a look at foreign policy! Napoleon appoints Maximilian of Habsburg Emperor of Mexico. But Mexico is heading for disaster. This is his Vietnam. Another odious comparison, but it gives you a taste of the problem. The Mexican adventure sucks up vast amounts of money and it’s turning into a fiasco. On the domestic front, he is losing his grip. He gives way to left-wing forces and lifts the ban on strikes. But here is an opportunity to show the world what France is capable of: the World Fair. It was the event of a lifetime. Almost every head of state in the world would be coming to Paris, and of course millions of visitors, to witness the hub of the world and of human knowledge. And where would they be received? In a functional shoebox! In an exhibition hall. Why didn’t they build an Acropolis? A Pantheon? Why this makeshift solution?”

“The Crystal Palace got knocked down, too,” I pointed out.

“And was later rebuilt in a London suburb, where it went on being used for exhibitions until 1936. If it hadn’t been gutted by fire, it would probably still be there now. I only offer you this as food for thought. To what extent was the World Fair building an allegory of Napoleon’s Second Empire? And if not, why not? I’d be grateful for a chapter on that.”

Our conversation depressed me. I suspected that he just needed material for a paper of his own. Postgraduate students are water bearers to their professors. But he was right about one thing. I didn’t really have a clue about the Second Empire. The whole confusion of emperors and kings, cabinet wars, and coalitions reminded me how boring history had been at school. The Double Alliance. The Triple Alliance. Bismarck and the Ems Dispatch. Why the heck should I care about needle guns when every evening smart bombs screeched over Baghdad on every café TV screen?

I heard her turn the page of her newspaper. Her finger sought the place where the column continued, and she carried on writing. I guessed she must be in her early thirties. She was wearing a pale gray two-piece outfit, black stockings, and narrow pointed shoes with a medium heel. Her jacket hung from the corner of the chair. Her arms were bare. Across her shoulder, I caught sight of a thin black lacy strap. Either she had been in sunnier climes recently or she was from the south. Whatever the reason, her skin had a healthy brown glow. Perhaps she was Italian or Spanish. I remembered something a fellow student had once said: “I can never think straight in the library. Too many pretty girls.”

When I looked up again, she was gone. I looked toward the entrance hall, then turned and checked the camera room, but there was no sign of her. Rain was gushing into the courtyard in a sudden downpour. With my left arm supporting my head, my face had taken aim at the photographs, but my gaze wandered across the objects on her table. One of those yellow stickers marked the place where she had finished reading the newspaper. Alongside the densely written sheets in front of it was a little wooden box with index cards. A dark-red leather briefcase was sticking out under the left flap of the open folio, resting on the two volumes below. From the box, I deduced that she was probably writing an academic work of some kind. That was apparently borne out by the fact that she had reserved the table for a lengthy period. Recherche spéciale, said the notice I had seen earlier. Did she work for the library? That was also a possibility, but surely there were offices for that kind of thing. And anyway, she was not wearing a badge with her name on it like the rest of the staff.

I walked over to the maps catalog to get a better view of her seat but I could not recognize much from this distance. The rain was pouring down. Boldly, I strode over to her desk and looked out of the window. The water was streaming in torrents down the steps to the yard. I put my hands in my pockets and adopted a casual pose, just in case, then bent my head so close to the pane that anyone watching from a distance must have assumed I was looking down at the patio, not at the desk beside me. With a little effort, I managed to glean a few details. Gazette des Tribunaux, I read. From this angle, I could not actually make out the columns, but I did decipher some headings. The yellow sticker was attached below a title: Le cas d’un infanticide. Assises de la Seine. Session du 12 février 1867. The spines of the stacked books revealed a few names. Charles Nouguier: La Cour d’Assises. Traité Pratique. Ambroise Tardieu: Étude médico-légale sur l’infanticide. Maxime du Camp: Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions…Nassau W. Senior: Conversations…André Paul Guillaume Gide: Souvenirs de la Cour d’Assises.

Apparently she was a lawyer. The Court of Assises: A practical guide. Or a historian. Or both. Infanticide? What a topic! And yet I confess that I would willingly have read the article in the court journal. And there were her notes, closely written pages of white A4 paper, and the fountain pen, long and slender, burnished silver matte. Another sticker said: Table d’Efisio Marini, Musée d’Histoire de la Médecine. With three exclamation marks. The photocopy of a newspaper cutting was taped to another sheet. I read the first paragraph: “More vestiges of dead bodies were discovered in the Seine yesterday. As our regular readers have already been informed, these are the mortal remains of those unfortunate souls who fell prey to the thin ice on the river. The police request citizens to report any further findings of this kind without delay…” She had noted the source below. La Presse. 17 March 1867. Her writing was rounded, but not very even. There were lots of crossings out, and dots to indicate missing text. Her n could not be distinguished from her u. The s had a little belly the same size as the b. The letters tended to slope back the way they had come, but only slightly. She left almost no margin, not even at the top and bottom.

“Vous permettez, monsieur?”

As I turned to look up at her, I could already feel myself blushing. I could not have been clumsier if I had tried. Who on earth would stand by a library desk for minutes on end? She was so close that I could smell her perfume. I was too embarrassed to remember a word of French. I seemed to be rooted to the spot. She looked at me quizzically. Her face was melancholy, almost indifferent. There was a bitter downward curl to her mouth, but no trace of annoyance in those dark eyes. They were warm and brown, long and narrow, with broad eyelids. The little kink in her left eyebrow added a touch that was very seductive.