Well, that did it. I knew it would. That delightful combination of vanity, suspicion, and supreme self-confidence—I hardly needed glamours at all, he did it all so well himself.
Yes, I’m almost getting to like Thierry. So comfortable, so predictable, with no sharp edges on which to be cut. Best of all, he’s so easily charmed— a smile, a word, and he’s all mine. Unlike Roux, with his sullen mouth and look of permanent suspicion.
Damn him, I thought. What’s wrong with me? I look like Vianne, I talk like Vianne—he should have been a pushover. But some people are just tougher than others, and my timing so far has been all wrong. Still, I can wait—for a few days, at least. And if glamours won’t work, then chemicals will.
Today I waited for closing time impatiently, with an eye to the clock. It seemed to me like a very long day, but I spent it pleasantly enough while outside the rain turned slowly to mist and the people went by like folk in a dream, occasionally stopping to stare blurrily at the half-finished window display that shines out now from Le Rocher de Montmartre like a magic-lantern show. Never underestimate the power of a window display. The eyes are the windows of the soul, they say, and a display window should be the eyes of the shop, gleaming with promise and delight. The old display was pretty enough, with my red shoes filled with chocolates, but I’m aware that with Christmas approaching in giant strides, we must think of something more enchanting than mere footwear if we are to bring the customers in. And so our window has become an Advent calendar, draped with scrap silk and lit with a single yellow lantern. The calendar itself is made out of an antique dollhouse that I found in the marché aux puces. Too old to attract a child, too decrepit to be of any interest to a collector—its roof badly glued together, its front cracked and mended with masking tape—it was precisely what I had been looking for.
It is large—large enough to fill the window—with a sloping, beveled roof and a painted facade with four lift-out panels to spy inside. For the present, all the panels are shut, and I have placed blinds in the windows, under which we can just glimpse the comforting golden light from inside.
“Wow,” said Vianne when she saw me at work. “What is it, a Nativity? ”
I grinned. “Not quite. It’s a surprise.”
So today I worked as fast as I could, shielding the window from prying eyes with the help of a large piece of red-and-gold sari silk behind which the transformation was to occur.
I started with the scenery. Around the house, I constructed a miniature garden: a lake made from a swatch of blue silk with chocolate ducks floating across it; a river; a path made from colored sugar crystals, lined with trees and bushes made from tissue paper and pipe cleaners; everything dusted with icing-sugar snow, and with multicolored sugar mice running out of the Advent house like something out of a fairy tale. . . .
It took me the best part of the morning to put all the scenery in place. Just before twelve Nico came in with Alice—they seem to be inseparable now—and stayed to admire the window. He bought another box of his macaroons while Alice watched wide-eyed as I piped the repairs and improvements to the house’s facade with a thin-nozzled icing-sugar bag.
“It’s gorgeous,” said Alice. “It’s better than the Galeries Lafayette.”
I have to admit it’s a splendid confection. Part house, part cake, with sugar fluting around the windows, sugar gargoyles on the roof, sugar pillars around the doors, and a neat little cap of snow on each window ledge and on the beveled chimney tops.
At lunchtime, I called Vianne in to look.
“D’you like it? ” I said. “It’s not finished yet, but—what do you think? ”
For a while, she said nothing at all. But her colors had already told me everything I needed to know, flaring so bright they almost filled the room. And were there tears in her eyes? Yes. I thought perhaps there were.
“Fabulous,” she said at last. “Just—fabulous.”
I feigned modesty. “Oh, you know . . .”
“I mean it, Zozie. You’ve helped me so much.” I thought she looked troubled. As well she might; the sign of Ehecatl is a powerful one—speaking of journeys, change, the wind—and she must sense it working around her, maybe even in her now (my mendiants are special in so many ways), its chemistries mingling with her own, changing, becoming volatile—
“And I don’t even pay you a decent wage,” she said.
“Pay me in kind,” I suggested, grinning. “All the chocolates I can eat.”
Vianne shook her head, frowning, seeming to listen for something outside; but the fog had swallowed any sound. “I owe you so much,” she went on at last. “And I’ve never done a thing for you—”
She stopped, as if she’d heard a noise, or had an idea so arresting that it temporarily robbed her of speech. That’ll be the mendiants again; her favorites; reminding her of happier times. . . .
“I know,” she said, her face brightening. “You could move in here. Move in with us. There’s Madame Poussin’s old rooms. No one’s using them just now. It isn’t much, but it’s better than a bed-and-breakfast. You could stay with us, eat with us—the kids would love it—we don’t need the space— and at Christmas, when we move out . . .”
Her face fell, but just a little.
“I’d be in the way,” I said, shaking my head.
“You wouldn’t. I promise. We’d work all hours. You’d be doing us a favor.”
“What about Thierry? ” I said.
“What about him? ” said Vianne with a touch of defiance. “We’re doing what he wants, aren’t we? Moving into Rue de la Croix? Why shouldn’t you stay with us till then? And when we move out, you can look after the shop. Make sure everything’s all right. He practically suggested it anyway—he said I’d need a manager.”
I seemed to consider it awhile. Is Thierry getting impatient? I thought. Has he shown her his wilder side ? I have to say I’d suspected as much— and now that Roux has turned up again, she needs to keep them both at arm’s length, at least until she makes up her mind. . . .
A chaperone. That’s what she needs. And what better choice than her friend Zozie ?
“But you’ve only just met me,” I told her at last. “I could be anyone.” She laughed. “No, you couldn’t.” Shows what you know. “All right,” I said. “We’ve got a deal.” Once more, I was in.
Tuesday, 4 December
So there it is. she’s moving in. HOW COOL IS THAT?—as jean-loup would say. She brought her stuff round yesterday—what there was of it, anyway. I’ve never seen anyone travel so light, except maybe for me and Ma-man, in the days when we were on the road. Two suitcases—one of shoes, the other filled with everything else. Ten minutes to unpack, and already it feels like she’s been here forever.
Her room is still full of Madame Poussin’s old furniture: old-lady furniture, with a skinny armoire that smells of mothballs and the chest of drawers full of big scratchy blankets. The curtains are brown and cream, with a pattern of roses, and there’s a saggy bed with a horsehair bolster, and a speckled mirror that makes everyone look like they have the plague. An old lady’s room; but trust Zozie to make it cool again in no time at all.
I helped her unpack her things last night and gave her one of the sandalwood sachets from my wardrobe to help get rid of the old-lady smell.
“That’s all right,” she said, smiling as she hung up her clothes in the old armoire. “I’ve brought some things to cheer the place up.”
“What things? ”
“You’ll see.”
And we did. While Maman prepared dinner and I took Rosette to see the Nativity again, Zozie worked on the room upstairs. It didn’t take her more than an hour; but when I went up later to see, you wouldn’t have recognized the place. The old-lady brown-patterned curtains were gone, replaced by a couple of big loose squares of sari material, one red, one blue.
She’d used another one (this one was purple, with silver thread) to cover the fluffy old-lady bedspread, and there was a double string of little colored
lights over the mantelpiece, where she’d lined up her shoes pair by pair, like ornaments above the fire.
There was a rag rug too, and a lamp where she’d hung all her earrings like danglers from the bottom of the shade, and one of her hats was pinned to the wall where a picture used to be; and there was a Chinese silk dressing gown hanging behind the door, and a row of jeweled butterflies, like the ones she sometimes wears in her hair, clipped all around the edges of the plaguey mirror.
“Wow,” I said. “I love this room.”
And there was a scent too, something very sweet and churchy that reminded me somehow of lansquenet.
“That’s frankincense, Nanou,” she said. “I always burn it in my rooms.”
It was proper incense too, the kind you burn over hot coals. We used to burn it, Maman and I, though nowadays we never do. Too messy, perhaps; but it smells so good, and besides, Zozie’s kind of disorder seems to make more sense than anyone else’s idea of tidiness.
Then Zozie brought out a bottle of grenadine from somewhere at the bottom of her suitcase, and we all had a kind of party downstairs, with chocolate cake and ice cream for Rosette, and by the time I was ready for bed, it was nearly midnight, and Rosette was asleep on a beanbag, and Ma-man was clearing the dishes away. And as I looked at Zozie then, Zozie with her long hair and her bracelet with all the little charms, and her eyes lit up like fairy lights, it was just like seeing Maman again, but the way she was in Lansquenet, in the days when she was still Vianne Rocher.
“So what do you think of my Advent house ? ”
That’s the new display, you know, to make up for losing the lollipop shoes. It’s a house, and at first I thought it was going to be a crèche, like in the Place du Tertre, with the Jesus baby and the kings and all his family and friends. But actually it’s better than that. It’s a magical house in a fairy wood, just like in the storybooks. And every day there’s going to be a different scene opening up behind one of the doors. Today it’s the Pied Piper, and the story’s mostly outside the house, with sugar mice instead of rats in pink and white and green and blue, and the Piper made from a wooden clothes peg, with painted red hair and a matchstick in his hand for a flute, piping all the sugar mice into a river made of silk. . . .
And inside the house, there’s the mayor of Hamelin, the one who wouldn’t pay the Piper, looking out of a bedroom window. He’s a peg-doll too, of course, with a nightgown made from a handkerchief and a paper nightcap on his head, and his face drawn on in felt-tip pen, with his mouth wide open in surprise.
And I don’t know why, but somehow the Pied Piper reminds me of Roux, with his red hair and shabby clothes, and the greedy old mayor makes me think of Thierry, and I couldn’t help thinking that, like the Nativity in Place du Tertre, it wasn’t just a window display, that it had to mean something more—
“I love it,” I said.
“I hoped you would.”
On the beanbag, Rosette made a sleepy little snuffling noise and reached for her blanket, which had fallen on the floor. Zozie found it and put it over her. She stopped for a moment to touch Rosette’s hair.
And then I had a weird thought. More than that—an inspiration. I guess it was the Advent house, but I was thinking about the Nativity, and the way everyone comes to the stable at once—the animals and the Magi and the shepherds and angels and the star—without anyone having to invite them or anything, as if they’d been summoned there by magic—
I almost told Zozie right then. But I needed time to sort myself out, to make sure I wasn’t about to do anything stupid. You see, I’d remembered something too. Something that happened a long time ago, back in the days when we were still different. Something to do with Rosette, perhaps. Poor Rosette, who cried like a cat and who never seemed to feed at all, and sometimes stopped breathing without any reason, for seconds, even minutes at a time. . . .
The baby. The crib. The animals— The angels and the Magi—
What is a Magus, anyway? And why do I think I’ve met one before ?
Tuesday, 4 December
Meanwhile, i still had to deal with roux. my plans for him do not involve contact with Vianne, but I do need him to stay close, and so, as planned, at half past five, I went down to Rue de la Croix and waited for him to come out.
It was closer to six when he left the house. Thierry’s taxi had already arrived—he’s staying in a nice hotel while work on the flat is under way—but Thierry had not yet left the flat, and I was able to watch from a discreet little vantage point on the corner as Roux waited with his hands in his pockets and his collar turned up against the rain.
Now Thierry has always rather prided himself on being a man of no pretensions, a real man who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, and who would never make another man feel inferior for lack of money or social status. This is quite untrue, of course. Thierry’s a snob of the worst kind—he just doesn’t know it, that’s all. But it’s in his manner all the same: in the way he always calls Laurent mon pote; and I could see it now in the careless way he took his time locking up the flat, checking, setting the security alarm, then turning to Roux with a look of surprise—as if to say, ah yes, I forgot—
“How much did we call it? A hundred? ” he asked.
A hundred euros a day, I thought. Not an especially generous sum. But Roux just gave that shrug of his—the shrug that so infuriates Thierry and makes him want to force a reaction. Roux, in contrast, is very cool, a gas jet turned to its lowest flame. But I noticed that he kept his eyes slightly lowered throughout, as if afraid of what he might reveal.
“Check all right? ” Thierry said.
Nice touch, I thought. Of course he must know that Roux has no bank account, that Roux pays no taxes, that Roux may not even be his name.
“Or would you rather have cash? ” he said.
Roux shrugged again. “Whatever,” he said. Willing to forfeit a whole day’s wages rather than concede a point.
Thierry gave his broadest smile. “All right, I’ll give you a check,” he said. “I’m a bit tight on cash today. Sure you don’t mind? ”
Roux’s colors flared, but he kept stubbornly silent.
“Who shall I make it to? ”
“Leave it blank.”
Still smiling, Thierry took his time writing the check, then gave it to Roux with a cheery wink. “See you same time tomorrow, then. Unless you’ve had enough, that is.”
Roux shook his head.
“All right, then. Eight-thirty. Don’t be late.”
And then he was off in his taxicab, leaving Roux with his useless check, apparently too lost in his thoughts to notice me as I approached.
“Roux,” I said.
“Vianne? ” He turned and shot me that Christmas-tree smile. “Oh, it’s you.” His face fell.
“The name’s Zozie.” I gave him a look. “And you could work on your charm a bit.”
“Sorry? ”
“I mean you could at least pretend to be pleased to see me.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He looked abashed.
“So how’s the job? ”
“Not bad,” he said.
I smiled at that. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s find somewhere dry to talk. Where are you staying? ”
He named a backstreet dive off Rue de Clichy—just the kind of place I’d expect.
“Let’s go there. I don’t have long.”
I knew the place—it was cheap and grubby-looking, but it did take cash, which matters a lot to someone like Roux. There was no key to the front door, but an electronic keypad with a code. I watched him enter it— 825436—his profile lit sharply in the crude orange of the streetlight. File that away for later use. Codes of all kinds are useful, I thought.
We went inside. I saw his room. A dark interior; a carpet that felt slightly sticky beneath my feet; a square cell the color of old chewing gum with a single bed and not much else; no window; no chair; just a sink, a radiator and a bad print on the wall.
“Well? ” said Roux.
“Try these,” I said. I took out a small gift-wrapped box from my coat and handed it to him. “I made them myself. On the house.”
“Thanks,” he said sourly and dropped the box onto the bed without giving it a second glance.
Once more I felt a sting of annoyance.
One truffle, I thought, is that too much to ask? The symbols on the box were powerful (I’d used the red circle of lady Blood Moon, the seductress, the Eater of Hearts), but just one taste of what was inside would make him so much easier to persuade—
“So when can I call? ” said Roux impatiently.
I sat down on the end of the bed. “It’s complicated,” I began. “You took her by surprise, you know. Turning up the way you did—out of the blue, especially when she’s with someone else.”
He laughed at that, a bitter sound. “Ah, yes. Le Tresset. Mr. Big.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll cash the check for you.”
He looked at me. “You know about that? ”
“I know Thierry. He’s the kind of man who can’t even shake another man’s hand without seeing how many bones he can break. And he’s jealous of you.”
“Jealous? ”
“Of course.”
He grinned, looking genuinely amused for a second. “Because I’ve got everything, haven’t I? The money, the looks, the place in the country—”
“You’ve got more than that,” I told him.
“What? ” “She loves you, Roux.”
For a second he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at me, but I could see the tension in his body and the accompanying flare of his colors—from gas-jet blue to neon red—and I knew that I had shaken him.
“She told you that? ” he said at last.
“No, not quite. But I know it’s true.”
There was a Pyrex glass beside the sink. He filled it with water and drank it in one gulp, then took a deep breath and filled it again. “So if that’s the way she feels,” he said, “then why’s she marrying Le Tresset? ”