Afterward I was surprised at how much I’d talked. I’m not supposed to talk about that, or any of the places we were before. But with Zozie it’s different. With her, it feels safe.
“So with Madame Poussin gone, who’s going to help your mother now? ” said Zozie, scooping froth from her glass with a little spoon.
“We’ll manage,” I said.
“Does Rosette go to school? ”
“Not yet.” For some reason I didn’t want to tell her about Rosette. “She’s very bright, though. She can draw really well. She signs, and she even follows the words in her storybooks with her finger.”
“She doesn’t look much like you.”
I shrugged.
Zozie looked at me with that gleam in her eye, as if she was going to say something else, but didn’t. She finished her latte and said: “It must be tough, not having a father.”
I shrugged. Of course I have a father—we just don’t know who he is— but I wasn’t going to say that to Zozie.
“Your mother and you must be very close.”
“Nn-hm.” I nodded.
“You look alike—” She stopped and smile-frowned a little, as if trying to figure out something that puzzled her. “And there’s something about you, isn’t there, Annie, something I can’t quite put my finger on—”
I didn’t say anything to that, of course. Silence is safer, Maman says, so that what you say can’t be used against you.
“Well, you’re not a clone, that’s for sure. I bet you know a few tricks—”
“Tricks? ” I thought of the waitress and the spilled lemon tea. I looked away, feeling suddenly awkward again, wishing someone would come with the bill so that I could say good-bye and run back home.
But our waitress was avoiding us, chatting with the man behind the coffee bar, laughing now and flicking her hair, the way Suze does sometimes when Jean-Loup Rimbault (that’s a boy she likes) is standing nearby. Besides, I’ve noticed that about waiters and waitresses: even when they serve you on time, they never want to bring you the bill.
But then Zozie made a little forked sign with her fingers, so very small I might have missed it. A little forked sign, like flicking a switch, and the waitress who looked like Jeanne Moreau turned round, as if someone had prodded her, and brought us the bill at once on a tray.
Zozie smiled and took out her purse. Jeanne Moreau waited, looking bored and sulky, and I half-expected Zozie to say something—after all, someone who can say arse in an English tea shop surely isn’t shy about speaking their mind.
But she didn’t. “Here’s fifty. You can keep the change.” And she handed the waitress a five-euro note.
Well, even I could see it was a five. I saw it quite clearly as Zozie put it on the tray and smiled. But somehow the waitress didn’t see.
Instead she said: “Merci, bonne journée,” and Zozie made that sign with her hand and put away her purse as if nothing had happened—
And then she turned and winked at me.
For a second I wasn’t sure I’d seen it right. It might just have been a normal kind of accident—after all, the place was crowded, the waitress was busy, and people sometimes make mistakes.
But after what had happened with the tea—
She smiled at me, just like a cat that could scratch you even as it sits purring on your knee. Tricks, she’d said. Accident, I thought. I suddenly wished I hadn’t come, wished I hadn’t called to her that day in front of the chocolaterie. It’s only a game—it’s not even real—and yet it feels so dangerous, like a sleeping thing that you can only poke so many times before it opens its eyes for good.
I looked at my watch. “I have to go.”
“Annie. Relax. It’s half past four—”
“Maman worries if I’m late.”
“Five minutes won’t hurt—”
“I have to go.”
I think I expected her to stop me, somehow; to make me turn back, as the waitress had. But Zozie just smiled, and I felt stupid at having panicked like that. Some people are just suggestible. The waitress was probably one of them. Or maybe they both made a mistake—or maybe I did.
But I knew I hadn’t. And she knew I’d seen. It was in her colors. And in the way she looked at me—half-smiling, as if we’d shared something more than just cake— I know it’s not safe. But I like her. I really do. I wanted to say something to make her understand— On impulse I turned and found her still smiling.
“Hey, Zozie,” I said. “Is that your real name? ”
“Hey, Annie,” she mocked. “Is that yours? ”
“Well, I—” I was so stunned that for a second I nearly told her. “My real friends call me Nanou.”
“And do you have many? ” she said, smiling.
I laughed and held up a single finger.
Tuesday, 6 November
What an interesting child. younger than her contemporaries in some ways, but so much older in others, she has no difficulty in speaking with adults, but with other children she seems awkward, as if trying to assess their level of competence. With me she was expansive, funny, talkative, wistful, willful but with an instinctive caution as soon as I touched—ever so lightly—on the subject of her strangeness.
Of course, no child wants to be seen as different. But Annie’s reserve goes further than this. It’s as if she’s hiding something from the world, some alien quality that might be dangerous if it were discovered.
Other people may not see it. But I’m not other people, and I find myself drawn to her in a way I find impossible to resist. I wonder if she knows what she is, if she understands—if she has any inkling of the potential in that sullen little head.
I met her again today, on her way home from school. She was—not cool, precisely, but certainly less confiding than yesterday, as if aware of a mark overstepped. As I said, an interesting child, and all the more so for the challenge she presents. I sense that she is not impervious to seduction; but she is careful, very careful, and I will have to work slowly if I am not to frighten her away.
And so we simply talked for a while—I made no mention of her otherness, or the place she calls Lansquenet, or the chocolate shop—and then we went our separate ways, but not before I had told her where I lived, and where I’m working nowadays.
Working? Everyone needs a job. It gives me an excuse to play, to be with people, to observe them and to learn their little secrets. I’m not in need of the money, of course, which is why I can afford to take the first convenient job on offer. The one job any girl can find without difficulty in a place like Montmartre.
No, not that. Waitressing, of course.
It’s been a long, long time since I worked in a café. These days I don’t have to—the pay’s lousy and the hours are worse—but I feel that being a waitress somehow suits Zozie de l’Alba, and besides, it gives me a good vantage point from which to observe comings and goings in the neighborhood. Le P’tit Pinson, tucked into the corner of the Rue des Faux-Monnayeurs, is an old-style café from the dingy days of Montmartre, dark and smoky and paneled in layers of grease and nicotine. Its owner is Laurent Pinson, a sixty-five-year-old native Parisian with an aggressive mustache and poor personal hygiene. Like Laurent himself, the café’s appeal is generally limited to the older generation—who appreciate its modest pricing and its plat du jour—and the whimsical like myself, who enjoy its owner’s spectacular rudeness and the extreme politics of its elderly patrons. Tourists choose the Place du Tertre, with its pretty little cafés and gingham-topped tables along the cobbled lanes. Or the art deco pâtisserie on the lower Butte, with its jeweled array of tarts and confits. Or the English tea shop on Rue Ramey. But I’m not interested in tourists. I’m interested in that chocolaterie, which I can see quite clearly from across the square. From here I can see who comes and goes, I can count the customers, monitor deliveries, and generally acquaint myself with the rhythms of its little life. The letters I stole on that first day have proved less than useful in practical terms. A stamped invoice dated
20 October, marked paid in cash, from Sogar Fils, a confectionery supplier. But who pays in cash nowadays? An impractical, senseless means of payment—doesn’t this woman have an account?—which leaves me as ignorant as I was before.
The second envelope was a sympathy card for Madame Poussin, signed Thierry, with a kiss. Postmarked London, with a see you soon, and please don’t worry casually appended.
File that away for later use.
The third, on a faded postcard of the Rhône, was even less informative.
Heading north. I’ll drop by if I can.
Signed R, the card was addressed only to “Y and A,” though the writing was so careless that the Y looked more like a V.
The fourth, junk mail peddling financial services.
Still, I tell myself. There’s time.
Hey! It’s you! ” The artist again. I know him now; his name is Jean-Louis, and his friend with the beret is Paupaul. I see them often at Le P’tit Pinson, drinking beer and chatting up the ladies. Fifty euros pays for a pencil sketch—call it ten for the sketch, and forty for the flattery—and they have their spiel down to a fine art. Jean-Louis is a charmer—plain women are particularly susceptible—and it is his persistence, rather than his talent, that holds the secret of his success. “I won’t buy it, so don’t waste your time,” I told him as he opened his pad. “Then I’ll sell it to Laurent,” he said, with a wink. “Or maybe I’ll just keep it myself.” Paupaul pretends indifference. He’s older than his friend, and his style is less exuberant. In fact he rarely speaks at all but stands at his easel in the corner of the square, scowling furiously at the paper and occasionally scratching at it with frightening intensity. He has an intimidating mustache and makes his patrons sit at length, while he scowls and scratches and mutters violently to himself before producing a work of such bizarre proportions that his customers are awed into paying up. Jean-Louis was still sketching me as I made my way among the tables. “I’m warning you. I charge,” I said.
“Consider the lilies,” said Jean-Louis airily. “They do not toil, neither do they demand a sitter’s fee.” “Lilies don’t have bills to pay.”
This morning I called in at the bank. I’ve been doing it every day this week. To withdraw twenty-five thousand euros in cash would certainly bring me the wrong kind of attention, but several withdrawals of modest size—a thousand here, two hundred there—are barely remembered from one day to the next. Still, it never pays to be complacent. And so I went in, not as Zozie, but as the colleague in whose name I opened the account—Barbara Beauchamp, a secretary with a hitherto unblemished record of trust. I made myself drab for the occasion; although true invisibility is impossible (besides being far too conspicuous), drabness is open to anyone, and a nondescript woman in a woolly hat and gloves can pass almost unseen anywhere. Which is why I sensed it immediately. An odd sensation of scrutiny as I stood at the counter; an unprecedented alertness in their colors; a request to wait as they processed my cash; the scent and sound of something not quite right. I did not wait for confirmation. I left the bank as soon as the cashier was out of sight, then slipped the checkbook and card into an envelope and posted it in the nearest letter box. The address was fictitious; the incriminating items will spend three months passing from one post office to the next until they end up in the dead-letter depot, never to be found. If I ever need to dispose of a body, I’ll do the same, sending parceled hands and feet and bits of torso to blurry addresses across Europe and back, while police search in vain for the shallow grave. Not that murder was ever my taste. Still, you should never completely dismiss any possibility. I found a convenient clothes store in which to change back from Madame Beauchamp to Zozie de l’Alba and, with an eye for anything out of the ordinary, returned by a roundabout route to my bed-and-breakfast in lower Montmartre and contemplated the future.
Damn.
Twenty-two thousand euros remained in Madame Beauchamp’s fake account—money that had cost me six months’ planning, research, performance, and honing of my new identity. No chance of retrieving it now; although it was unlikely that I would be recognized from the bank’s blurry camera footage, it was more than likely that the account had been frozen, pending police investigation. Face it, the money was lost forever, leaving me with little more than an extra charm on my bracelet—a mouse, as it happens, quite appropriate for poor Françoise.
The sad truth is, I tell myself, there’s no future in craftsmanship any more. Six wasted months, and I’m back where I started. No money, no life.
Well, that can change. All I need is a little inspiration. We’ll start with the chocolate shop, shall we ? With Vianne Rocher, from Lansquenet, who for reasons unknown has recast herself as Yanne Charbonneau, mother of two, respectable widow of the Butte.
Do I sense a kindred spirit? No. But I do recognize a challenge. Though there’s little enough to be had from the chocolaterie at present, Yanne’s life is not entirely without appeal. And, of course, she has that child. That very interesting child.
I’m staying in a place just off the Boulevard de Clichy, ten minutes’ walk from Place des Faux-Monnayeurs. Two rooms the size of a postage stamp at the top of four flights of narrow stairs, but cheap enough to suit my needs and discreet enough to preserve my anonymity. From there I can observe the streets; plot comings and goings; become a part of the scenery.
It’s not the Butte, which is out of my league. In fact, it’s rather a big step down from Françoise’s nice little place in the eleventh. But Zozie de l’Alba doesn’t belong; and it suits her to live below the salt. All kinds of people live here: students, shopkeepers, immigrants, masseuses both registered and unregistered. There are half a dozen churches in this small area alone (debauch and religion, those Siamese twins); the street yields more litter than fallen leaves; there’s a perpetual smell of drains and dog shit. On this side of the Butte the pretty little cafés have given way to cheap takeaways and general stores, around which the tramps congregate at night, drinking red wine from plastic-topped bottles before bedding down in the steel-shuttered doorways.
I’ll probably tire of it soon enough; but I do need a place to lie low for a while, until the heat on Madame Beauchamp—and Françoise Lavery— dies down. It never hurts to be cautious, I know—and besides, as my mother used to say, you should always take time to pick the cherries.
Thursday, 8 November
Whilst waiting for my cherries to ripen, i have managed to collect a certain amount oflocal knowledge on the inhabitants of Place des Faux-Monnayeurs. Madame Pinot, the little partridge of a woman who runs the newsagent-souvenir-bric-a-brac shop, has a busy mouth for gossip and has acquainted me with the neighborhood through her eyes.
Through her I know that Laurent Pinson frequents the singles bars, that the fat young man from the Italian restaurant weighs over three hundred pounds but still goes into the chocolaterie at least twice a week, and that the woman with the dog who passes every Thursday at ten o’clock is Madame Luzeron, whose husband had a stroke last year and whose son died when he was thirteen. Every Thursday she goes to the cemetery, says Madame Pinot, with that silly little dog in tow. Never misses. Poor old thing.
“What about the chocolaterie? ” I asked, selecting Paris-Match (I hate Paris-Match) from a small shelf of magazines. Above and below the magazines there are colorful displays of religious tat: plaster Virgins, cheap ceramics; snow globes of the Sacré-Coeur; medallions; crucifixes; rosaries; incense for all occasions. I suspect Madame may be a prude; she looked at the cover of my magazine (which shows Princess Stephanie of Monaco, bikinied and cavorting blurrily on some beach somewhere), and pulled a face like the back end of a turkey.
“Not much to say, really,” she said. “Husband died down south somewhere. But she’s fallen on her feet all right.” The busy mouth puckered again. “I reckon there’ll be a wedding before long.”
“Really? ”
She nodded. “Thierry le Tresset. He owns the place. Let it out cheap to Madame Poussin because she was some kind
of friend of the family. That’s where he met Madame Charbonneau. And if ever I saw a man head over heels—” She rang up the magazine on the till. “Still, I wonder if he knows what he’s taking on. She must be twenty years younger than he is—and he’s always away on business, and her with two kids, one of them special—”
“Special? ” I said.
“Oh, haven’t you heard? Poor little thing. That’s got to be a burden for anyone—and if that wasn’t bad enough,” she said, “you’re not telling me the shop makes much of a profit, what with the overheads, and the heating, and the rent—”
I let her talk for a little while. Gossip is currency to people like Madame, and I sense that I have already given her much to think about. With my pink-streaked hair and scarlet shoes I too must be a promising source of tittle-tattle. I left the shop with a cheery good-bye and the sense that I’d made a good start, and returned to my place of employment.
It’s the best vantage point I could have hoped for. From here I can see all Yanne’s customers, monitor comings and goings, keep track of deliveries, and keep my eye on the children.
The little one is a handful; not noisy, but mischievous, and despite her small size, rather older than I originally guessed. Madame Pinot tells me she’s nearly four years old and has yet to speak her first word, although she seems to know some sign language. A special child, Madame tells me, with that tiny sneer she reserves for blacks, Jews, travelers, and the politically correct.
A special child? Undoubtedly. Exactly how special remains to be seen.
And, of course, there’s Annie too. I see her from Le P’tit Pinson—every morning just before eight and every afternoon after half past four—and she speaks to me cheerily enough: of her school, and her friends, her teachers, the people she sees on the bus. It’s a start, at least; but I sense she’s holding back. In a way, it pleases me. I could put that strength to use—with the right education I’m sure she’d go far—and besides, you know, the greater part of any seduction lies in the chase.