We were still laughing when Madame Luzeron came in with her little fluffy peach-colored dog. Madame Luzeron dresses well, in gray twinsets that hide her expanding waist, and well-cut coats in shades of charcoal and black. She lives in one of the big stucco-fronted houses behind the park; goes to mass every day, to the hairdresser’s every other day—except on Thursdays, when she goes to the cemetery by way of our shop. She might be as young as sixty, but her hands are wrung with arthritis, and her thin face is chalky with concealer.
“Three rum truffles, in a box.”
Madame Luzeron never says “please.” That would be too bourgeois, perhaps. Instead she peered at Fat Nico, Alice, the empty cups, and the monkeys. An overplucked eyebrow went up.
“I see you’ve—redecorated.” The slightest of pauses before that last word throws doubt on the wisdom of such a move.
“Fabulous, isn’t it? ” That was Zozie. She isn’t used to Madame’s ways, and Madame gave her a piercing look, taking in the overlong skirt, the hair pinned up with a plastic rose, the jangling bracelets on her arms, and the cherry-print wedges on her feet—worn today with a pair of striped stockings in pink and black.
“We fixed up the chairs ourselves,” she said, reaching into the display box to select the chocolates. “We thought it would be nice to cheer the place up a bit.”
Madame gave the kind of smile you see on the face of ballet dancers whose shoes are hurting them.
Zozie kept talking, oblivious. “Right now. Rum truffles. There you are. What color ribbon? Pink looks nice. Or maybe red. What do you think? ”
Madame said nothing, although Zozie seemed not to require an answer. She wrapped the chocolates in their little box, added a ribbon and a paper flower, and placed the confection on the counter between them.
“These truffles look different,” said Madame, looking at them suspiciously through the cellophane.
“They are,” said Zozie. “Yanne makes them herself.”
“Pity,” said Madame. “I liked the others.”
“You’ll like these better,” said Zozie. “Try one. It’s on the house.”
I could have told her she was wasting her time. City people are often suspicious of a free gift. Some refuse automatically, as if unwilling to be beholden to anyone, even to the tune of a single chocolate. Madame gave a little sniff—a well-bred version of Laurent’s mweh. She put down the coins on the countertop—
And it was then that I thought I saw it. An almost invisible flick of the fingers as her hand brushed against Zozie’s. A brief gleam of something in the gray November air. It might have been the flicker of a neon sign across the square—except that Le P’tit Pinson is shut, and it would be hours before the streetlights went on. Besides, I ought to know that gleam. That spark, like electricity, that leaps from one person to the next—
“Go on,” said Zozie. “It’s been so long since you indulged.”
Madame had felt it just as I had. In a moment I saw her expression change. Beneath the refinement of powder and paste, a confusion; a longing; a loneliness; loss—feelings that shifted like clouds across her pinched pale features—
Hastily, I averted my eyes. I don’t want to know your secrets, I thought. I don’t want to know your thoughts. Take your silly little dog and your chocolates and go home before it’s—
Too late. I’d seen.
The cemetery; a broad gravestone of pale gray marble, shaped like the curve of an ocean wave. I saw the picture set into the stone: a boy of thirteen or so, grinning brashly and toothily at the camera. A school photograph, perhaps, the last one taken before his death, shot in black-and-white but tinted in pastel shades for the occasion. And underneath it there are the chocolates; rows of little boxes, wasted by the rain. One for every Thursday, lying untouched; beribboned in yellow and pink and green. . . .
I look up. She is staring—but not at me. Her frightened, exhausted pale blue eyes are wide and strangely hopeful.
“I’ll be late,” she says in a small voice.
“You’ve got time,” says Zozie gently. “Sit down awhile. Rest your feet. Nico and Alice were just leaving. Come on,” she insists as Madame seems about to protest. “Sit down and have some chocolate. It’s raining, and your boy can wait.”
And to my amazement, Madame obeys.
“Thank you,” she says and sits down in her chair, looking ludicrously out of place against the bright pink leopard print, and eats her chocolate, eyes closed, head resting against the fluffy fake fur.
And she looks so peaceful—and yes, so happy.
And outside, the wind rattles the newly painted sign, and the rain sizzles down on the cobbled streets, and December is only a heartbeat away, and it feels so safe and so solid that I can almost forget that our walls are made of paper; our lives of glass; that a gust of wind could shatter us; that a winter storm could blow us away.
Friday, 23 November
I should have known she’d helped them along. it’s what I might have done myself, once, in the days of lansquenet. First, Alice and Nico, so oddly alike; and I happen to know that he’s noticed her before, calls in at the florist’s once a week to buy daffodils (his favorite) but has never yet found the courage to speak to her or to ask her out.
Now suddenly, over chocolate—
Coincidence, I tell myself.
And now Madame Luzeron, once so brittle and self-contained, releasing her secrets like scent from a bottle that everyone thought had dried up long ago.
And that sunny glow around the door—even when it’s raining—leads me to fear that someone may have been easing things along; that the stream of customers we’ve had over the past few days is not due entirely to our confectionery.
I know what my mother would say.
Where’s the harm? No one gets hurt. Don’t they deserve it, Vianne?
Don’t we?
I tried to warn Zozie yesterday. To explain why she mustn’t interfere. But I couldn’t. The box of secrets, once opened, may never again be closed. And she finds me unreasonable, I sense that. As mean as she is generous, like the miserly baker in the old tale who charged for the smell of the baking bread.
What harm is there? I know she’d say. What do we lose from helping them?
Oh, I came so close to telling her. But every time, I stopped myself. Besides, it might be coincidence.
But something else happened today. Something that confirmed my doubts. The unlikely catalyst—Laurent Pinson. I’ve noticed him in Le Rocher de Montmartre several times already this week. That’s hardly news; and unless I’m much mistaken, it is not our chocolate that brings him here.
But he was here again this morning; peering at the chocolates in their glass cases; sniffing at the price tags; taking in every detail of our improvements with a sour face and an occasional grunt of barely concealed disapproval.
“Mweh.”
It was one of those sunny November days, all the more precious for being so few. Still as midsummer, with that high clear sky, and the vapor trails like scratches against the blue.
“Nice day,” I said.
“Mweh,” said Laurent.
“Just browsing, or shall I get you a drink? ”
“At those prices? ”
“On the house.”
Some people are incapable of turning down a free drink. Grudgingly Laurent sat down, accepted a cup of coffee and a praline, and began his usual litany.
“To close me down, at this time of year—it’s bloody victimization, that’s what it is. Someone’s out to ruin me.”
“What happened? ” I said.
He poured out his woes. Someone had complained about him microwaving leftovers; some idiot had fallen ill; they had sent him an environmental health inspector who could barely speak proper French, and although Laurent had been perfectly civil to the fellow, he’d taken offense at something he’d said and—
“Bang! Closed! Just like that! I mean, what is the country coming to, when a perfectly decent café—a café that’s been here
decades—can be shut down by some bloody pied-noir. . . .”
I pretended to listen while itemizing in my mind the chocolates that had sold best, and the ones where stock was running low. I pretended too not to notice when Laurent helped himself to another of my pralines without being asked. I could afford it. And he needed to talk.
After a while, Zozie came out of the kitchen, where she’d been helping me with the chocolate logs. Abruptly Laurent ceased his tirade and flushed to the creases in his earlobes.
“Zozie, good day,” he said, with exaggerated dignity.
She grinned. It’s no secret that he admires her—who wouldn’t?—and today she was looking beautiful, in a velvet dress down to the floor and ankle boots in the same shade of cornflower blue.
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Zozie’s an attractive woman, and Laurent is at that age when a man’s head is most easily turned. But it struck me that we’d have him underfoot every day between now and Christmas, cadging free drinks, annoying the customers, stealing the sugar, and complaining about the neighborhood going to the dogs and—
I almost missed it as I turned away and she forked the sign behind her back. My mother’s sign, to banish malchance.
Tsk-tsk, begone!
I saw Laurent slap at his neck, as if an insect had bitten him there. I drew a breath—too late. It was done. So naturally—as I myself would have done in Lansquenet, if the past four years had never happened.
“Laurent? ” I said.
“Must go,” said Laurent. “Things to do, you know—no time to waste.” And, still rubbing the back of his neck, he hauled himself out of the armchair he had been occupying for the best part of half an hour and almost scuttled out of the shop.
Zozie grinned. “At last,” she said.
I sat down heavily on the chair.
“Are you all right? ”
I looked at her. This is the way it always begins: with the little things; the things that don’t count. But one little thing leads to another, and another, and before you know it, it has started again, and the wind is turning, and the Kindly Ones have picked up the scent and—
And for a second, I blamed Zozie. After all, it was she who had transformed my ordinary chocolaterie into this pirates’ cave. Before she came, I was quite content to be Yanne Charbonneau—to run a shop like other shops, to wear Thierry’s ring, to allow the world to run its course without the slightest interference.
But things have changed. With nothing much more than a flick of the fingers, four whole years are overturned, and a woman who should long since have been dead opens her eyes and seems to breathe. . . .
“Vianne,” she said softly.
“That’s not my name.”
“But it was, wasn’t it? Vianne Rocher.”
I nodded. “In a past life.”
“It doesn’t have to be the past.”
Doesn’t it? It’s a dangerously attractive thought. To be Vianne again; to trade in marvels; to show people the magic within themselves . . .
I had to tell her. This has to stop. It isn’t her fault; but I cannot allow it to go on. The Kindly Ones are still on our trail, blind as yet but horribly persistent. I can feel them coming through the mists; combing the air with their long fingers, alert to the smallest gleam and glamour.
“I know you’re trying to help,” I said. “But we can manage on our own. . . .”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You know what I mean.” I couldn’t quite say it. Instead I touched a chocolate box, traced a mystic spiral on the lid.
“Oh, I see. That kind of help.” She looked at me curiously. “Why? What’s wrong? ”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Why not? ” she said. “We’re the same, you and I.”
“We are not the same! ” My voice was too loud, and I was shaking. “I don’t do those things anymore. I’m normal. I’m boring. Ask anyone.”
“Whatever.” It’s Anouk’s favorite word at present—punctuated by that whole-body shrug that teenage girls use to signify disapproval. It was deliberately comic—but I didn’t feel like laughing.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you mean well. But children—they pick these things up. It starts as a game, then it gets out of hand.”
“Is that what happened? Did it get out of hand? ”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Zozie.”
She sat down beside me. “Come on, Vianne. It can’t be so bad. You can tell me.”
And now I could see the Kindly Ones; their faces; their grasping hands. I could see them behind Zozie’s face, hear their voices, coaxing, reasonable and so very kind—
“I’ll manage,” I said. “I always do.”
Oh, you liar. Roux’s voice again, so clear that I almost looked for him. There are too many ghosts in this place, I thought. Too many rumors of other-when, other-where, and worst of all, what-else-might-have-been.
Go away, I told him silently. I’m someone else now. Leave me be.
“I’ll manage,” I repeated, with the ghost of a smile.
“Well, if ever you need me . . .”
I nodded. “I’ll ask.”
Monday, 26 November
Suzanne wasn’t in school again today. she’s supposed to have flu, but Chantal says it’s because of her hair. Not that Chantal talks to me much, but since I made friends with Jean-Loup, she’s been nastier than ever, if that’s at all possible.
She talks about me all the time. My hair, my clothes, my habits. Today I wore my new shoes (plain, quite nice, but not Zozie), and she went on about them all day, asking me where I’d bought them, and how much they’d cost, and sniggering (hers are from someplace along the Champs-Elysées, and I don’t believe even her mother would have paid that much), and asking where I had my hair cut, and how much that cost, and sniggering again—
I mean, what’s the point? I asked Jean-Loup, and he said she must be very insecure. Well, perhaps that’s true. But it’s been nothing but trouble since last week. Books going missing from out of my desk; my schoolbag knocked over and my things “accidentally” kicked all over the floor. People I’ve always rather liked suddenly don’t want to sit next to me anymore. And yesterday I saw Sophie and Lucie playing a stupid game with my chair, pretending there were bugs on it, trying to sit as far away from where I’d been sitting as possible, as if there was something disgusting there.
And then we had basketball, and I hung all my clothes in the locker room as usual, and when I got there afterward, someone had taken my new shoes, and I looked for them all over the place until at last Faridah pointed them out, all scuffed and dusty behind the radiator, and although I couldn’t prove it was Chantal, I knew.
I just knew.
Then she started on the chocolate shop.
“I hear it’s very nice,” she said. That snigger of hers, as if nice were some kind of secret code word that only she and her friends could understand. “What’s it called? ”
I didn’t want to say, but I did.
“Ooooo—nice,” said Chantal, and they sniggered again, that little group of friends she has: Lucie and Danielle and the other hangers-on, like Sandrine, who used to be really nice to me but who only talks to me now when Chantal isn’t around.
All of them look a bit like her now; as if being Chantal could be something catching, like a glamorous kind of measles. All of them have the same ironed hair, cut into layers with a little flick at the very ends. All of them wear the same scent (this week it’s Angel), and the same shade of pearly pink lipstick. I’ll die if they turn up at the shop. I know I will. I’ll actually die. To have them staring and giggling at me, at Rosette, at Maman with her arms gloved in chocolate to the elbow and that hopeful look—are these your friends?
Yesterday, I told Zozie.
“Well, you know what to do. It’s the only way, Nanou; you have to confront them. You have to fight back.”
I knew she’d say that. Zozie’s a fighter. But there are some things you can’t d
o just with attitude. Of course, I know I look a lot better since we talked. Most of it’s about standing up straight and practicing that killer smile; but I wear what I like now, rather than what Maman thinks I ought to wear, and although I stand out from the others more, I feel so much better, so much more me.
“Well, that’s OK as far as it goes. But sometimes, Nanou, it’s not enough. I learned that in school. You have to show them once and for all. If they use dirty tricks, then—you’ll just have to do the same.”
If only I could. “Hide her shoes, you mean? ”
Zozie gave me one of her looks. “No, I do not mean hide her shoes! ”
“Then what? ”
“You know, Annie. You’ve done it before.”
I thought of that time at the bus queue, and Suze and her hair, and what I’d said—
That wasn’t me. I didn’t do that.
But then I remembered Lansquenet, and all the games we used to play; and Rosette’s Accidents; and Pantoufle; and what Zozie did in the English tea shop; and the colors; and that little village by the Loire, with the little school, and the war memorial, and the sandbanks on the river, and the fishermen, and the café with the nice old couple, and—what was its name ?
Les Laveuses, whispered the shadow-voice in my mind.
“Les Laveuses,” I said.
“Nanou, what’s wrong? ”
I felt suddenly dizzy, all at once. I sat down on a chair—printed all over with Rosette’s little hands and Nico’s big ones.
Zozie looked at me closely, her blue eyes narrowed and very bright.
“There’s no such thing as magic,” I said.
“But there is, Nanou.”
I shook my head.
“You know there is.”
And—just for a minute—I knew there was. It was exciting but somehow terrifying as well, like walking along a very narrow windy ledge along a cliff face, with the ocean milling and churning below and nothing but empty space between us.
I looked at her. “I can’t,” I said.
“Why not? ”
I yelled: “It was an accident!” My eyes felt gritty; my heart was racing; and all the time that wind, that wind—