That isn’t really true, of course. But all the same it looks true, as if things could really change tonight, and everything be put right, instead of just covered over like icing on a cheap cake.
The last door in the Advent house opened up today. Behind it, there’s a Nativity scene: mother, father, and baby in the crib—well, not quite a baby anymore, but sitting up with a smile on her face and a yellow monkey by her side. Rosette loves it—and so do I—but I can’t help feeling a little sorry for my peg-doll, left outside in the party room while the three of them celebrate alone.
That’s stupid, I know. I shouldn’t feel bad. You choose your family, Ma-man says, and it doesn’t matter that Roux isn’t my real father, or that Rosette is only my half sister, or perhaps not even a sister at all. . . .
Today I’ve been working on my fancy dress. I’m coming as Little Red Riding Hood, because all I need for my outfit is a red cape—with a hood, of course. Zozie helped me finish it, with a piece of cloth from a charity shop and Madame Poussin’s old sewing machine. It looks pretty good for homemade, with my basket with the red ribbons, and Rosette’s coming as a monkey in her brown jumpsuit with a tail sewn on.
“What are you coming as, Zozie ? ” I asked her for the hundredth time.
She smiled. “Wait and see, or you’ll spoil the surprise.”
Monday, 24 December
Christmas Eve 3:00 P.M.
The lull before the hurricane. that’s how it feels now, with Rosette upstairs having her nap and the snow outside claiming everything with its quiet gluttony. Snow comes so relentlessly; it swallows sound, kills scent, steals light right out of the sky.
It’s settling now along the Butte. Of course there’s no traffic to challenge its progress. People pass by with hats and scarves all barnacled with the driving snow, and the bells from St.-Pierre-de-Montmartre come mutedly and from afar, like something under an evil charm.
I’ve hardly seen Zozie all day. Deep in my plans for the party tonight, between kitchen, costumes, and customers, I have had very little time to observe my opponent, who keeps to her room, giving nothing away. I wonder when she’ll make her move.
My mother’s voice, the storyteller, says it will be at dinner tonight, like in the tale of the widow’s daughter; but it unnerves me that so far I have not seen her make any preparations, or bake even a single cake. Could it be that I have it wrong? Is Zozie somehow bluffing me, trying to force me to show a hand she knows will injure my standing here ? Could it be that she means to do nothing at all while I bring down the Kindly Ones all unsuspecting on my own head?
Since Friday night there has been no apparent conflict between us— though now I can see the mocking looks and the sly winks she gives me that no one else sees. Still cheery as ever, still beautiful, still strutting in her extravagant shoes—but to me she now seems a parody of herself; too knowing beneath that conspicuous charm, enjoying the game in a jaded way, like an elderly whore dressed up as a nun. It is perhaps that enjoyment that offends me most—the way she plays to a balcony of one. There’s nothing at stake for her, of course. But I am playing for my life.
One last time, I draw the cards.
The Fool; the Lovers; the Magus, Change.
The Hanged Man; the Tower—
The Tower is falling. Stones tumble from its crown as it topples into darkness. From the parapet, tiny figures hurl themselves, gesticulating, into the void. One is wearing a red dress—or is it a cloak, with a little hood?
I do not look at the final card. I’ve seen it too many times before. My mother, ever the optimist, interpreted it in many ways—but to me that card means only one thing.
Death grins out from the woodcut design; jealous, joyless, hollow-eyed, hungry—Death the insatiable; Death the implacable; Death the debt we owe to the gods. Outside, the snow has settled thickly, and although the light has begun to fade, the ground is weirdly luminous, as if street and sky had exchanged places. It’s a far cry from the pretty picture-book snow of the Advent house, although Anouk loves it and keeps finding excuses to check the street. She’s out there now; from my window I can see her bright figure against that baleful white. She looks very small from where I’m standing, a little girl lost in the woods. Of course, that’s absurd; there are no woods here. That’s one of the reasons I chose this place. But everything changes under snow, and magic comes into its own again. And the winter wolves come slinking down the alleys and streets of the Butte de Montmartre. . . .
Monday, 24 December
Christmas Eve 4:30 P.M.
Jean-loup came round this afternoon. he phoned this morning to say he was bringing some of the photographs he took the other day. He develops them himself, you know—at least, in black-and-white he does—and he’s got hundreds of prints at home, sorted and labeled in all kinds of files, and he sounded excited and out of breath, like there was something special that he wanted to show me.
I thought maybe he’d been in the cemetery, that he’d finally managed to take a picture of those ghost-lights he’s always talking about.
But it wasn’t his cemetery pictures he’d brought. Nor was it his prints from the Butte, the Nativity house and the Christmas lights, and the cigar-chewing Santa. These were all photos of Zozie—the digital snaps he’d taken in the chocolaterie, plus some new ones in black-and-white, some of them taken from outside the shop, and some with Zozie in a crowd as she walked across the square to the funicular, or stood in a queue outside the bakery on the Rue des Trois Frères.
“What’s this? ” I said. “You know she doesn’t like—”
“Look at them, Annie,” he said.
I didn’t want to look at them. The only time we ever fell out was over those stupid pictures of his. I didn’t want that to happen again. But why had he taken them at all? There must have been some reason, I thought— “Please,” said Jean-Loup. “Just look at them. Then if you think there’s nothing weird about them, I promise you I’ll throw them away.”
Well, looking at them—there were thirty or so—made me feel quite uncomfortable. The thought that Jean-Loup had been spying on Zozie— stalking her—was bad enough, but there was something about those photographs; something that made it even worse.
You could see they were all of Zozie, all right. You could see her skirt with the bells on the hem, and her funky boots with the three-inch soles. Her hair was the same, and her jewelry, and the raffia bag she uses to carry her shopping.
But her face—
“You’ve done something to these prints,” I said, pushing them back toward Jean-Loup.
“Cross my heart, I haven’t, Annie. And everything else on the film was OK. It’s her. She’s doing it, somehow. How else can you explain this? ”
I wasn’t sure how to explain it myself. Some people take a good photograph. The word for this is photogenic, and Zozie definitely wasn’t that. Some people take an OK photograph, and I don’t know if there’s a word for it, but Zozie wasn’t that, either. All of those pictures were terrible, with her mouth an odd kind of shape somehow, and a look in her eyes, and a sort of smudge around her head, like a halo gone wrong—
“So she isn’t photogenic. So what? Not everyone is.”
“There’s more,” said Jean-Loup. “Just look at this.” And he pulled out a folded piece of newspaper, a clipping from one of the Paris newspapers with a blurry picture of a woman’s face. Her name, it said, was Françoise Lavery. But the picture was just like those prints of Zozie, tiny eyes and twisted mouth, even down to that weird smudge. . . .
“What’s it supposed to prove ? ” I said. It was just a picture, kind of blown up and grainy like most pictures you see in the paper. A woman who might have been any age, with hair in a kind of plain bob and little glasses under her long fringe. Nothing like Zozie at all. Apart from that smudge and the shape of her mouth—
I shrugged. “It could be anyone.”
“It’s her,” said Jean-Loup. “I know it can’t be, but it is.”
Well, that was j
ust ridiculous. And the clipping didn’t make much sense either. It was all about a teacher in Paris who disappeared some time last year. I mean, Zozie was never a teacher, was she? Or is he suggesting she’s a ghost?
Even Jean-Loup wasn’t sure. “You read about these things,” he said, carefully replacing the clipping inside the envelope. “Walk-ins, I think they call them.”
“Whatever.”
“You can laugh, but there’s something wrong. I can feel it when she’s around. I’m going to bring my camera tonight. I want some close-ups— some kind of proof—”
“You and your ghosts.” I was feeling annoyed. He’s only a year older than me—who the hell does he think he is? If he knew half of what I know now—about Ehecatl and One Jaguar or the Hurakan—he’d probably have a seizure, or something. And if he knew about Pantoufle, or about me and Rosette invoking the Changing Wind, or about what happened in Les Laveuses—he’d probably lose his mind.