“I’m sorry, but I don’t even like ice cream that much. I like cookies,” Jules said, as if justifying himself.
“I like cookies, too, but everyone loves ice cream, even monkeys. I can give you a chocolate bombe on a stick – it has raspberry and cherry inside – ordinarily two-and-a-half Euros, for one.”
“That’s the other thing. I don’t have any money.”
“Don’t you have a credit card?”
“No.”
“What about your watch?”
“I don’t have a watch, and if I did I wouldn’t trade it for an ice cream.”
“Your socks?”
“You want to trade an ice cream for my socks? Say that again?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m not giving you my socks.”
“You don’t really need them to run. Lots of people run without socks, I see them all the time.”
“Not me.”
“Okay. Then will you be here tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll be dead.”
“Yeah, sure. If you pay me tomorrow, I’ll let you have the ice cream today.”
“I won’t be here. I told you.”
“All right. I’ll just give it to you.” He opened the thick top and reached down. Mist arose from dry ice. The top slammed closed, making the idiosyncratic sound of freezer doors big or small, whether on a bicycle or set in a wall. “Here, take it.” He pedaled away, crunching over the gravel, and as he did Jules heard him say, “Fucker.”
On the morning of his death, Jules was holding in his hand a raspberry-cherry chocolate bombe. He took time out to eat it. It was extremely good, and for a moment he thought of nothing else.
éLODI AWOKE IN THE arms of her young man, happy as she had never been, the whole world in front of her and hardly a hint of what was to come as she made her way. In the remnants of summer they were going to Portugal – knapsacks, student fares, second class, staying in hostels, taking most of their meals on benches or sitting at the edge of fountains or on rocks by the side of the sea. But now, in the morning with the sun flooding in from the east, someone was downstairs and the intercom was buzzing. As she left the bed she took the top sheet, which had been cast aside because of the heat, and wrapped it around her.
“Yes?” she said to the box set in the wall. She had never ceased to think it strange that people talked to walls.
“Hedley’s, Madame.”
“Mademoiselle.”
“Mademoiselle,” the box repeated, corrected.
“What’s Hedley’s?”
“Specialized couriers. We have a delivery for you.”
“I’ve never heard of Hedley’s. How do I know …?”
“If your windows face the street ….”
“My window does.”
“You might look out.”
“Okay. Just a minute.” She looked magnificent as she crossed the floor, her hair disheveled, buoyant, and golden, the sheet draped about her more beautifully than the rarest gown. Clutching it to the top of her chest, not that anyone was looking, she peeked over the sill. On the street was a most impressive, highly polished truck, with a man in a pressed uniform standing attentively on the sidewalk beside it. She returned to the intercom. “You have a delivery for me?”
“élodi de Challant?”
“That’s right.” She pressed the button to unlock the street door, then raced to put on some clothes.
Soon enough, standing in front of her door were two uniformed men, one carrying a cello case, the other, two bankers’ boxes. When she saw this, she thought, he’s gone or he’s dead. After she signed and they left, she opened the cello case. The instrument was old and worn, but, as she knew, it had had an extraordinary sound. On a note placed beneath the strings Jules had written, “This is left to you for the beauty of its sound and for the advancement of your career. You’ll see in documents that will follow in a few weeks that you must never sell it, only give it. But as you’ll soon discover, you won’t need to sell it.”
élodi opened the bankers’ boxes. They were full of music. On the top of one pile was the symphony Jules had written only recently. It opened unconventionally with a cello solo that laid down the theme. She put this part on the music stand, took the cello out of its case, and tuned it. Then she played from sight. It was a simple theme – and to her it was as beautiful as the Sei Lob itself, as beautiful as anything she had ever heard.
IN SAINT-GERMAINEN-LAYE even though it was still rather early it was very hot in the direct sun. Jules glistened with sweat, and had fused with nature as if he were comfortably a part of it. He had never wanted to die in bed, but, rather, like an animal, on the ground, in the sun, after struggle. Without fear, animals take death as it comes. They feel the earth, see the sky, and know they have fought.
But Jules was not quite ready either to run or for the last few seconds in which one may or, he suspected, may not see and feel the justice, love, and satisfaction for which one has struggled all one’s life. In the increasing heat, he was content to forge his past and his present, his desires and his regrets, into a molten alloy that might if he were lucky be something bright and new right before the end.
Perhaps because of history, his own circumstances, or his particular nature, he had, like so many others, spent his life unhappy to live. It had been a disservice to Jacqueline, to Cathérine, and to everyone he had known, and yet another reason to regret that he hadn’t been murdered in his infancy. But, now, in his last hour, he was finally happy to live and unafraid to die.
To the east, Paris was obscured in a mist of heat and whitening light. The sun was directly over the city, making it almost impossible to see. But he knew that as the sun rose its rays would flare against every building entry, every window, every gilded fleur de lys, sculpting them in three dimensions, adding depth by shadow, painting in color and detail. Although no jets were weaving contrails in the blue, Jules heard the drone of a propeller, as in his youth when it carried no suggestion of the antique and set just the right tone for a summer morning or afternoon.
He longed for his mother, his father, Jacqueline, Cathérine, Luc, élodi, and Amina, even Amina, the last woman he would love. And he did love her. He had tried and failed to do right by each and every one. As he aged, everything was eroded away but love and conscience, which were left sparkling and untouched in the stream. Paris was beginning to come clear as the sun began to cross west. He decided that as soon as he felt the breeze, he would start his run.
ARNAUD AND DUVALIER thought they had set out early enough from the Passy commissariat to catch Jules at home. They had assumed that between shifts it would be quiet, but because it was a Friday in August the shifts had been rearranged and the commissariat was busy, the street in front of it clogged with uniformed police striding this way and that. Then, as Arnaud and Duvalier drove west, heavy traffic brought them to stop in a tunnel echoing with horns and cloudy with exhaust.