“Nicu’s death go for nothing? Non, René, my father wanted me to make it right.”
The sidewalk horse chestnut trees bloomed in white and pink as she headed away from Saint-Germain. With almost no warning, the sky opened, as it often did at this time of year—a giboulée, a sudden brief downpour followed by sun, characteristic of March. But March was over—where was spring? She ran for cover, ducking into a doorway.
“Won’t you help me, René?” she asked when she could hear herself again over the rush of the rain.
His answer was lost as she dropped her phone in the streaming gutter.
Wednesday Morning
FROM THE CLANGING splash and then buzz on the end of the line, René feared Aimée’d ruined another phone.
He shook his misgivings aside. Rubbed his brow and took a Doliprane for the ache in his hip. Aimée needed him.
Again.
After a second expensive conversation with the femme at La Bouteille, he had finally found a Romany translator and made an appointment. Armed with her introduction and an address, he said a prayer to the parking gods—à la Aimée—and plunged into the traffic on the Rive Gauche.
René tried a shortcut. He shifted into first on a rain-slicked street in the warren behind the Musée d’Orsay. Big mistake. Outside Serge Gainsbourg’s former house, grafittied with tributes to the dead icon, a delivery truck blocked the street. Fuming, René honked and rolled down his window.
He saw a man in front of the shrine, adding to the graffiti. He looked like the ghost of Gainsbourg himself: tousled hair, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, a day’s worth of stubble cultivated on his chin, crisp white shirt, vintage jacket, suede brogues. Harmless, but a man who clearly, René thought, seemed a few slices short of a baguette.
By the time the truck had moved, he had to hurry.
Ten minutes later, the downpour lifted and shoppers filled the boutiques on rue de Sèvres. This was where the fusty 7th bordered the lively 6th, and the streets teemed with life—the damp pavement was thronged, the outdoor cafés bustling. René loved the energy, the crisp morning light sparkling like crystal and dancing as it hit the wet zinc rooftops.
His prayer had worked; the parking gods were smiling, for once. Two minutes later, across Le Bon Marché, he walked into square Boucicaut, which had been built on the site of an ancient cemetery, or was it a medieval leper colony? He could never remember. Light scudded through the plane tree leaves, striking the swollen raindrops clinging to the grass. He passed the statue of Madame Boucicaut, the Bon Marché founder’s wife, immortalized in marble beckoning the poor children—offering bread crumbs while she kept the loaf, as the clochards used to say. The April breeze blew flurries of twigs and leaves over the gravel. Benches dotted this oasis of calm; the blaring of traffic horns seemed suddenly far away. A few children climbed on the play structure, their parents chatting and keeping an eye on them.
Where was his translator? He punched in the number he’d been given.
“Désolée, Monsieur, I can’t leave for another hour. Can it wait?”
“There’s no time to spare,” said René. “I’ll come to you.”
Annoyed, he made his way around puddles, exited the square and turned left. Past the inviting terrasse tables at the café on rue de Babylone. He battled an urge for something warm.
On rue du Bac, he joined the pilgrims entering the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal with its shrine of Saint Catherine Labouré. He followed the cobbled entry past a wall of marble plaques and a religious gift shop selling medals depicting the Virgin’s visit to the young Saint Catherine.
He hated crowds, everyone taller than him and no way to see ahead. Nuns shepherded a group of young blue-robed novices, who were speaking to one another in Spanish. A woman paused before the statue of Saint Vincent de Paul, touched his open hand and crossed herself.
Jammed among the worshippers, caught and claustrophobic, he felt like a gnat about to be crushed. Trying not to trip, he moved in the press of people to the whitewashed chapel with its soaring arches, blue murals of the Virgin framing the altar and balconies full of praying supplicants. Ahead he saw a crowd gathered to the right of the main altar. At a door beyond that stood a short nun. She matched the description Madame Bercou at La Bouteille had given him. His translator.
René made his way past the glass case displaying the coffin and incorruptible body of Saint Catherine Labouré, which had been exhumed years after her death in the nineteenth century, still in pristine condition. Shivers ran down his arms when he looked at her wax face framed by a white-peaked wimple, her black rosary trailing over her nun’s habit. The body heat of the fervent and the smoke from the melting candles made him light-headed.
Keep going, he had to keep going.
“Monsieur Friant?” asked the nun, only a head taller than he. Petite, she had deep dark eyes and an olive complexion. A simple blue veil was pinned to her dark hair. “You need help translating Romany? I’m Sister Dorothée. Please come this way.”
He followed her through a door to a narrow courtyard next to the chapel, then over wet pavers and through another door to another courtyard. From such an oppressive atmosphere, he found himself enveloped in a silent stillness, protected from the wind. The courtyard smelled of damp mowed grass. Sunlight sparkled on the wet chains of a sunken stone well.
“It’s much more peaceful here, we can hear ourselves think,” said Sister Dorothée as they sat on a bench under the cloister’s cold stone arches.
René handed her a hundred-franc note along with the notepad. “My donation,” he said.
Sister Dorothée’s smile faded. “In the donation box, please.”
He’d offended her already. He winced.