“Madame?”
“Attends, need my hearing aid.” She stuck a small beige plug in her ear as she stepped from behind the counter to face him. Took his measure. “No auditions here.” Before he could open his mouth, she shrugged. “They’re held under the big tent up from Place de Clichy.”
As if all dwarves wanted to audition for the circus? Typical.
“That’s not why I came,” he said.
“Have it your way, mon petit,” she said. “So the music, you came for the music, eh?”
Not at all, he was about to retort. But it was a place to start. “Bien s?r,” he said with a smile, hoping to finesse it. “My nana loved this music,” he said.
It was true. The speakers were playing “La Mer” now and the sound of Django’s haunting guitar strains had brought back memories of his grandmother. Nana used to play Django records on her phonograph. He remembered how she set the needle on the vinyl, the scratchy sound, the burst of guitar. She would grin and hug him, and they would dance with a dish towel to Hot Jazz. He had only been four when she died, but he remembered sitting with her as she lay in a big feather bed with iron railings. Nana’s thick grey bun had been tied with ribbon, her drawn face fully made up.
“She danced to Django’s songs even in the kitchen,” said René.
The woman set the wobbling demitasse of steaming espresso on the counter. Pushed the sugar at him.
“Who didn’t?” she said, wiping her hands. “Everyone has Django stories. Ah, the stories. The old men drag them out at night; people like to remember.” She winked. “Duke Ellington sat here and played with him.”
René sat up on the stool. “Duke Ellington, here?”
“Everyone came to play with Django.” Her eyes danced. “Not bad for a self-taught guitarist who never learned to read or write, eh?” She turned away as if stopping herself. Afraid of letting her guard down. Typical Gypsy, he thought. Closemouthed to outsiders.
“C’est vrai? I thought I knew a lot about Django, but I didn’t know he couldn’t read or write.” He hoped he hadn’t laid it on too thick. “You mean he couldn’t read music?”
“Django couldn’t even take the Métro because he couldn’t follow the signs.” The woman was warming up again. “He took taxis, or walked if he’d gambled away his money.”
“Must have been quite a character,” said René.
A shrug. “Volatile, temperamental. An artist. Lived in his caravan or camped in hotel rooms.”
René’s foot tapped to the beat. It was infectious. For a moment he wondered if his nana had swung on this tiny dance floor in her youth.
He snapped out of it. This was a long enough trip down memory lane. He needed to find out about Djanka Constantin.
“Since you know so much, maybe you can help me,” he said, hoping the change of subject didn’t come off as abrupt. “Twenty years ago, in 1978, a young manouche woman named Djanka Constantin was murdered. Her killer was never caught. A drink receipt from La Bouteille was found in her pocket. Were you around then?”
“Me? Non.”
“Don’t you remember hearing about it?”
She grabbed a towel. “That’s a long time ago.”
“Do you remember her family?”
A quick shake of the head. “Three francs fifty.”
The Gypsy wall had descended, shutting him out. C’était typique, ?a. Overcharged him, too. Alors, what else did he expect?
All this way only to find a deaf old woman, a shrine to Django and memories of his nana. But he sensed the woman knew more than she was letting on.
The dog growled. He heard a smack on the window, hoots of laughter. He turned around to see egg yolk dripping down the outside of the café’s window. Two teenagers in rain slickers gave off snickers and taunts.
By the time the woman had grabbed the dog’s leash and gotten to the door, they’d run away.
From the stool he could see the yellow smears on the window, watched her rub the stains off with a towel. Spit over her shoulder into the gutter.
Not the first time, René figured.
“Have you complained to the flics?” René said when she got back.
She shrugged. “We say it’s better to turn sideways in the wind.”
A Gypsy aphorism that seemed to cover a lot of bases. But he could use this to open her up.
“Me, I’m an outsider, too,” René said, looking up from his cup. “Picked on, excluded in the village where I grew up. I took up martial arts and earned a black belt to compensate.” He rarely shared these details. “My life’s not so different from yours, Madame.”
If the woman heard him, she didn’t let on. His attempt at solidarity fell as flat as the eggshells she’d swept into the gutter.
“Et en plus you saw me, a dwarf, and assumed I had come for a circus audition,” he said. He hated playing the sympathy card, it went against his grain. But he needed to reach out and get her to relate. “It’s not like I can disguise my appearance.”
She reached for a clean dish towel. “When the road bends, it’s hard to walk straight, mon petit,” she said.
A crack in the wall. Good. He’d push.
“Can you help? Isn’t there anyone who might remember Djanka?” said René. “A long-time client who would have been here in the seventies, or the old owner?”
“What’s it to you?” she said.
“I’m helping a friend.”
“What do you care about something that happened twenty years ago?”
“Djanka’s murder was filed away, forgotten. The flics didn’t care, she was just a Gypsy,” he said. “But it matters now to Drina, her dying sister, who’s been abducted from the hospital. Drina’s life is in danger, and I believe the secret of her location is linked to Djanka’s unsolved murder.”
He’d made the last part up and hoped it worked. Sitting up on the stool, he rubbed his cold hands. Had he convinced her?
“Come back later and talk to les vieux,” she said.