City of Darkness and Light (13 page)

“I wish I were home,” I whispered to myself, but then I remembered. I had no home. The tears came then and I cried silently into my pillow.

Thirteen

I awoke to the loud cooing of pigeons, right outside my window. Bright stripes of sunlight were coming through the shutters onto my wall. As I opened the shutters pigeons flew off the balcony railing with the loud sound of flapping paper. I blinked in the strong sunlight, then put on my robe, went through to the living room, and opened the French doors onto the balcony. I saw that this was an attic of sorts with those French doors cut into the steep gray tile roof. Down below me the street was coming to life—a store owner unwinding the awning over his shop, a café proprietor putting out chairs on the narrow sidewalk, a boy going past on a bicycle carrying long sticks of bread, the greengrocer putting out a display of cabbages, small boys going off with schoolbags on their backs. The sounds echoed up from the narrow street—horses’ hoofs on cobbles as a dray made a delivery of wine barrels, a woman shouting in a harsh voice, the pigeons flapping again as they sought another place to land.

Then I leaned out and saw the view that Sid had been so proud of. In one direction the city sprawled out below us, its butter-yellow stone glowing in early morning sunlight, a morning mist hovering over the Seine River. I could see a large dome and maybe those twin towers were Notre-Dame? And when I looked up between the rooftops I could make out a large white building taking shape on the top of the hill. This was the new church Sid had written about. I must go and have a look for myself, I decided. The view would be spectacular.

I was already feeling better, sure that all would be explained and made right today. Sid and Gus would arrive, panting and laughing. “You’ll never guess Molly, Gus got a crazy idea to rent a motor and drive to Le Havre to surprise you only it was an awful old banger and it ran off the road in the middle of nowhere and we had to spend the night in a ditch.” Yes. That would be it. A perfectly reasonable explanation.

When I went back into my bedroom Liam was awake and playing happily with his own feet. He beamed when he saw me and tried to turn over and pull himself up, encumbered by his night-robes. I picked him up and took him to the window. The pigeons had resettled on the balcony and he clapped his hands in delight, causing them to flutter off again. I dressed us both then carried him cautiously down all those flights of stairs.

Madame Hetreau stepped out of her cubby immediately when she heard my footsteps. I wondered if she lurked there all day, waiting like a giant spider for her prey.

“They do not return, I think,” she said. Did I detect the hint of a gloat?

“No, they haven’t returned yet.” I gave her my most confident air. “I expect we’ll learn today what happened to them.”

“Perhaps they have found a wealthy benefactor and gone to live with him,” she said. “Many girls do in this city. It is hard to survive alone.”

“My friends have plenty of money and no interest in rich benefactors,” I said. “Now perhaps you can tell me where I can buy milk. I see a baker’s shop across the street but presumably the milk is delivered daily.”

“The American misses have a liter delivered,” she said. “You will find it in the wooden box beside the front door.”

“Thank you,” I said, thinking that she had probably been planning to use it herself if I hadn’t asked.

“And if I need to go out, it is difficult to take my baby with me. Do you know of a reliable woman who might watch my child from time to time?”

“Perhaps I could…” she began, her brain thinking how much she might charge me, now that she knew my friends were not without funds.

“Preferably a woman with a young child of her own,” I added quickly. I was certainly not going to confine Liam to a dark cubby with her.

“The baker’s wife has just had a child,’ she said. “Perhaps she might oblige.” She shrugged.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll speak to her when I go to buy bread. And you promised me a key. Five francs deposit, I believe you said.”

She disappeared into her dark cubby then returned holding up two keys. “The larger one for the front door, the other for the apartment,” she said as I paid her. I knew I had left the apartment unlocked but I certainly wasn’t going up all those stairs again.

I pushed open the heavy front door and stepped out into the street. Down here the world was still in deep shadow and it was chilly. I wrapped Liam’s blanket more tightly around him, then crossed to the shops on the other side. For now I’d just buy bread. Later I’d need to bring in supplies for lunch and dinner. The small bakery smelled heavenly and the baker made a big fuss over Liam. “My wife has just presented me with a fine son like yours. She is my second wife—a good girl from the country, like me, with no nonsense about her. My first wife died, alas, in childbirth and the child died with her. Such is the way of life, no?”

I took the baguette and a croissant which he wrapped in paper. “Your wife,” I said carefully. “I wonder if she might consider watching my child if I have to go out? I have just arrived in Paris and the friends I expected to see are not yet here. So I know nobody. I would pay her, naturally.”

“I don’t see why not,” he said. “I’ll ask her.”

“Thank you, I’m most grateful,” I said.

“You can’t be too careful around here,” he said. “There are plenty of girls with babies, but they are artists’ models or work in another profession at night. Not what you would want for your son, eh? My wife is a good girl. Pure. Simple. And a good cook too. With her you need have no worry.”

I went back across the street and had a good breakfast of fresh bread, creamy butter, and apricot jam while Liam chewed on a crust, clearly anxious to get back to his regime of solid food again. I played with him then put him down for a morning nap. I decided that I would send Daniel a cable simply saying,
Arrived safely in Paris. Love Molly and Liam.
That way he wouldn’t worry and I wouldn’t have to write to him until I knew what had happened to Gus and Sid.

The morning passed with no communication from my friends. I realized I’d have to go out to buy food and decided this would be a good time to make the acquaintanceship of the baker’s wife and see if I felt comfortable leaving Liam with her. Then, if there was still no word from Sid and Gus, I should go and find Reynold Bryce and see if he knew anything or could tell me where I’d find Willie Walcott.

I struggled down the stairs again with Liam and went across to the bakery. It was now shut but I banged on the narrow door beside the shop window and it was answered by a buxom young girl.

As soon as I explained who I was her face lit up. “My husband tells me that you need help,” she said. “I am Madeleine. Come upstairs, please.”

She led me up to a neat little room. A bassinet stood in the corner. The baby in it had a mass of dark hair and a little old man’s face. “He’s beautiful, is he not?” she said. I agreed that he was.

She poured me coffee. We chatted although I found it hard to keep up with her rapid French. “I would be happy to watch your child for you,” she said. “And if he gets hungry, do you give him the bottle?”

“No, I’m feeding him myself.”

“No problem. I have plenty of milk to spare.” And she emphasized this by hoisting two impressive breasts.

This was overly generous, I thought. I hadn’t anticipated hiring a wet nurse for him. “I will be back in time for when he needs to eat,” I said, “but thank you for the offer.”

We agreed on a very reasonable price. I kissed Liam and told him I’d be back very soon. I heard him crying as I went. I lingered at the bottom of the stairs, not sure about leaving him, but the crying soon stopped and I went about my errands. I asked where to send a cable and was directed to the telegraph office just beyond Pigalle. Then I returned to the Rue des Martyrs and bought vegetables, eggs, and some ham, returning with my string bag full to find Liam sleeping happily on the baker’s bed with pillows around him.

“He is so content. You can leave him longer if you wish,” Madeleine said.

“I should return to the apartment now to see if there is any news from my friends,” I said. I wouldn’t put it past the hostile concierge to turn away a telegram messenger if I wasn’t there. So I carried a now grouchy Liam up all the stairs again and made us a boiled egg for lunch. The afternoon dragged on. I tried not to worry but worry consumed me. There had to be something very wrong. Sid would not have gone away without her cigarette holder. If they had been going away for any length of time they would have cleared up the remains of a meal first. And my overriding reason for concern—they knew I was coming. They were expecting me.

I took Liam back to Madeleine across the street. She was cooking, making dumplings to add to a delicious-smelling stewed chicken, but she wiped her hands on her apron and beamed at us. “Look what I have found,
mon petit,
” she said to him, going over to a box on the table. “See?” And she held up a Noah’s ark with carved wooden animals. “It was mine when I was a child. My grandfather carved it for me.” I left Liam happily playing with this and crept quietly away. I had no idea how I was going to locate Reynold Bryce but Paris was a city of artists and he was supposed to be the mentor of American artists here. Someone would know where to find him.

I walked down the street, back to Place Pigalle. There was a café at the intersection of two of the streets leading off Pigalle—a narrow building with glass windows and the sign
Café de la Nouvelle Athènes
painted above the door. There were tables outside but the day was fresh and they were unoccupied. However inside I could see a group of young men clustered around a table. I moved closer to the window. Their attire, ranging from workers’ overalls to shabby jackets to well-cut dark suits, and the way they gesticulated with their hands in animated discussion, indicated that they might well be artists of some kind. Then I spotted a sketchbook that one of them had open and charcoal in his hand. I was about to go in when I also noticed that there were no women among them. I couldn’t think that women were barred from a café, as they were from taverns in New York. The men were only drinking coffee, by the look of it. A perfectly respectable establishment. So I took a deep breath and went in.

Conversation stopped at the table. The man behind the marble counter looked up from the glass he was drying. “Are you looking for someone, mademoiselle?” he asked.

“Luckily he is not here, or there would be hell to pay, no doubt,” one of the young men said.

“I need help,” I began but the young men laughed. “Then you are in the wrong place. None of us has a sou,
chérie
. That is why we come here. Bernarde is tolerant of us. He lets us sit here all day for the price of a cup of coffee.”

“No, forgive me,” I said. “Perhaps you can tell me how to locate some American painters.”

“There are no American painters in Paris,” one of the men said quickly, then noting my surprise added, “only copiers and dabblers.” At the murmur from his companions he turned to the man beside him. “What? You disagree? I confess that some of them have facility with the brushstroke. La Cassatt is not at all bad.”

“That’s decent of you, Pablo.” The man beside him dug him in the ribs. “She sells her paintings for more money than you, you must confess.”

“But when has an American ever created a new movement, a new school of art?” He waved his hands in dramatic gesture. He was small and dark with black hair flopping boyishly across his forehead and he spoke with a strong accent that clearly wasn’t French. “I hear they still think Impressionism is avant-garde in America.”

And the others grinned and chuckled.

“So you believe that the role of the painter is to constantly come up with something new, do you, Pablo?” one of them asked. “Not to paint with honesty the world as one sees it?”

“Are the two not one and the same?” Pablo demanded.

Before this turned into a philosophical discussion I interrupted. “Messieurs. A minute please. I have to find these American painters. So there are no American artists in your circle here?”

“Americans have money,” one of them said. “They would not choose to live and work in Le Bateau-Lavoir as we do.”

Bateau?
That was a boat, surely, and
Lavoir
had something to do with laundry? “A laundry boat?” I asked. “But we are far from the river, are we not?”

This set them laughing. “We live and work on the slope of Montmartre, above us here,” a portly young man, rather better dressed than the rest, said to me. “We call our building Le Bateau-Lavoir because it reminds us of the flimsy way the laundry boats on the Seine are built with gaps between the floor boards. But to answer your question, there are no Americans among us, I regret.”

“Americans keep to themselves,” the small dark one called Pablo said. “They never seem to learn the language properly.”

The one in the well-cut suit roared with laughter at this. “That’s a good one coming from you,
mon vieux
.” He dug the small dark one in the side. “Your French is still atrocious.”

“I think I have learned it rather well,” the other replied haughtily, but they all laughed.

“You speak it with a lisp, like a girlish Spaniard,” a man across the table said.

The small one called Pablo rose to his feet. “You insult me and my nation. I will challenge you to a duel.”

“Sit down, Pablo, do,” the man nearest him dragged him down again. “You are alarming the young woman and there are few enough of us already without killing us off one by one.”

The dark man turned to me. “I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” he said. “I’m afraid I have the hot temper of my race. You wished to know something?”

“I wondered if you might have met two young American women? One of them wears her hair cut short, like a man, and the other is a painter?”

“There are plenty such in Paris,” one of them said. “Go down to Montparnasse and see.”

“I remember meeting two such Americans,” Pablo said.

“When? Where?” I asked.