A Prince Without a Kingdom

  “Your attire in the corridors, perhaps, sir?”

  “What about my attire?”

  “Your . . .”

  Avignon pointed vaguely at his boss’s nether regions.

  “Your . . . your underpants.”

  “What about them? Does the commissioner want to choose the color himself?”

  The embarrassed envoy was shuffling from foot to foot.

  “Right,” Boulard continued. “I’m off to see my candidates. Avignon, you can handle this sartorial matter.”

  Superintendent Boulard arrived in the blue room in a cloud of dust.

  For two years, he had been interviewing candidates to replace his secretary, Mademoiselle Darmon, who had retired to spend more time in her garden in Bagnolet. But he had suffered so badly during the Darmon years that he didn’t dare pick a replacement. And so Boulard would interview four young candidates every Thursday, always in the hope that he wouldn’t have to choose any of them.

  On this particular Thursday there were five young ladies.They were sitting on chairs, legs crossed, in the middle of the small waiting room.

  “I’m warning you right away: I’m impossible to get along with,” Boulard declared as he strode in.

  He pulled out a chair for himself and sat down in front of them. He asked the first girl, a brunette in full evening dress and glasses, what she was reading at the moment.

  She stammered, disappeared inside her handbag, and finally got out a big navy-blue book, which she offered up with trembling hands: the Police Code.

  “You’re reading that?”

  She bit her lip.

  “Is it any good?” he inquired, leafing through with a degree of curiosity.

  He asked the second candidate how many fingers she typed with. He got the third one to do a mental arithmetic exercise and then recite the fable of “The Wolf and the Lamb.” The fourth girl didn’t feel well and had turned a shade of purple. She had to leave before it came to her turn.

  So Boulard turned to the youngest candidate, sitting on his right. She was wearing a rather severe chignon, but it wasn’t enough to make her look any older.

  “Don’t you have school on Thursdays?”

  “No.”

  Her response was trenchant and insolent.

  “Is your mother waiting for you downstairs?” inquired Boulard patronizingly.

  “And what about your mother?” the young woman replied in the same tone of voice. “Where is she?”

  Boulard rubbed his ear gently. The other candidates looked down at the floor.

  “You do realize, young lady, that you are on police premises, and there is no guarantee you will leave here this evening.”

  “I won’t be the only one staying late.”

  She was staring at him, but Boulard didn’t react.

  “How old are you?”

  “Younger than you,” answered the Cat.

  “How did you get through the selection process?”

  “Via the window.”

  This time, the superintendent stood up brusquely.

  He didn’t call out.

  Boulard would have felt ridiculous calling for reinforcements against a girl who weighed a fraction of what he did. He stood up and paced around her, trying to think of a more professional question that would calm the atmosphere.

  “How do you envisage your role here?”

  “Delivering the mail.”

  “And then?”

  “That’s all,” said the Cat. “After that, I’d go back home. I’ve got other business to attend to.”

  There were two knocks at the door. Avignon entered and whispered something in Boulard’s ear.

  “Ladies,” said the superintendent, “you may go now. We’ll be writing to you.”

  He turned toward the Cat.

  “Not you, young lady. Wait for me here.”

  The other three filed past the superintendent, who duly left with Avignon. The Cat was staring at the patch of sky through the window. Once outside the interview room, Boulard turned the key twice in the lock.

  “Who was that?” asked Avignon.

  “A candidate I’m interested in.”

  “Are you worried that she’s going to fly away?”

  “Quite so. What did you want to talk to me about? Hurry up.”

  Avignon glanced around before lowering his voice.

  “I’ve just been thinking about what you told me.”

  “Is that a reason to interrupt me?”

  “Hear me out. I’m the only person here — apart from you — to have seen Padre Zefiro, on the day when he came to identify Viktor.”

  “And?”

  “I could set out to find him. I’m ready to leave right away.”

  “Now? Are you in need of a vacation, Avignon?”

  “I’m trying to be useful. If you tell me the whereabouts of his refuge . . .”

  Boulard pinched his ear. This was a state secret, and he had already jeopardized it one time too many.

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  But he could tell that it was an interesting idea. With the Russian snapping at his heels, it was best to be careful. Avignon would do just as good a job of exploring Arkudah. And the superintendent wouldn’t mind keeping the visit to beautiful Ethel, over at Everland, for himself.

  “Come with me,” he said. “I’m going to introduce you to someone rather odd.”

  He turned the key and pushed open the door. The blue room was empty.

  “She told me! She told me!” complained Boulard, running over to the window.

  “Told you what?”

  “That she came in and out via the windows.”

  Both of them leaned out over the courtyard.

  “It doesn’t seem possible,” said Avignon, staring at the void below them.

  “But it’s just the kind of thing she would do. What a she-devil! Who is she?”

  The superintendent walked over to the only chair that hadn’t been stacked against the wall. There was an envelope on its blue upholstery. Boulard opened it.

  “Well?” inquired Avignon.

  “It’s personal.”

  Boulard put it in his pocket. He didn’t have the strength to continue reading for now. It was a letter from his mother. It began with her recipe for chestnut soup.

  Up on the roof, the Cat took off her high heels. She undid her chignon and strolled calmly on high until she reached the Palais de Justice, looking out onto Place Dauphine. There, she finally made her way back down to ground level. She walked along by the river. The waters were high after five days of rain. In some places, the river was overflowing onto the dockside. The Cat went to sit at the tip of the Vert-Galant, the island that divided the Seine.

  Would the day ever come when she would be her own messenger? The Cat spent her life brushing against other people’s destinies: slipping between them and imperceptibly changing their course. Vango, Ethel, Andrei, Boulard . . . She saved lives. She floated above the world. A guardian angel looking down from above.

  But if she thought about herself, what did she have left? She’d had a friend, Vango, but she hadn’t seen him for three years. She’d been in love with Andrei, but he didn’t even know she existed. And as for her own family: it was falling apart at the seams. In the evening, before going out for dinner, her mother would only touch her when wearing long silk gloves that stretched all the way to her shoulders. Her father was crumbling before her eyes. Nobody really cared about her. Nobody stood by her.

  She made a very good guardian angel, but this wasn’t her chosen vocation. She wanted her life to be down at ground level.

  The Cat wasn’t counting the day and night she had spent in Scotland, two months earlier. That was an extraordinary memory.

  She had stroked a horse for the first time. She had sat down with Ethel by the fireplace at four o’clock in the afternoon and listened to music. She had thrown stones into the lake and felt her boots weighed down with earth as she walked in the grass. She had worn a hat
belonging to Ethel’s older brother, who wasn’t there. She had chased sheep. She had cried with laughter as she dressed Madame Boulard for dinner in the evening. She had almost choked with amusement on witnessing the stiff upper lip of John, the head butler, when one of the princess’s fake diamonds had fallen into the soup. She had paid a secret visit to Ethel in the aircraft hangar at night, and had dreamed about it until the morning. She had run in the first light of dawn to climb the copper beeches. At breakfast, listening to the others interrogating her, she had been surprised by their curiosity. She had even spoken a little bit about herself.

  “I’m often alone. It suits me that way.”

  Mary had given her plenty of shortbread to take back home, insisting she could always share it. “You must have someone, a younger brother, I don’t know, perhaps even a lover, somebody. Yes, why not, a lover . . .”

  And Mary had gone down on bended knee, begging the Cat to tell her whether she had one.

  For the Cat, it was astonishing that anyone should imagine this for her.

  “Just look at this young lady!” Mary kept saying. “With hair like hers, she’ll have more than one after her.”

  And she had popped three more slices of shortbread into the guest’s bag, just in case.

  As the Cat was leaving, Madame Boulard, hidden behind the door, had entrusted her with an envelope for her son.

  “You’re going back to Paris. If you could give this to him in person . . .”

  She had kissed the Cat on the forehead.

  Ethel was waiting at the steering wheel of her car.

  When they were alone, on the road that led to the boat, Ethel asked the Cat to open the letter carefully and read it.

  “Why?”

  “I’d prefer to err on the side of caution. I don’t want her to have made the journey for nothing.”

  Not a single word could risk revealing Madame Boulard’s whereabouts. The Cat read the letter at the top of her voice, over the sound of the engine. Both women were reassured and moved. The message was full of handy tips. It was rather like a letter from a mother to a son who had gone off to summer camp. Her advice was that he should eat well and not take any notice of anyone else.

  The Cat stared at the Seine with its brown current. What was she going to do now? Vlad the Vulture had vanished into thin air since the end of the summer. He was in hiding. From the safety of his fortress, Boulard must have given out the Russian’s particulars.

  Andrei had disappeared even longer ago. The Cat didn’t have the energy to stand up again. What was left for her?

  Cats can survive on very little. They can be solitary, independent, and largely silent. But they do need something to keep them alive.

  Meanwhile, in Moscow

  Mademoiselle walked into the garage, accompanied by three children: a little girl had joined Kostia and Zoya.

  “I wish to speak with Ivan Ivanovitch Oulanov.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m looking after his children.”

  “He’s at the back, soldering. But don’t take the little ones in there.”

  The tioten’ka made them sit down on a bench, and Zoya held Setanka’s hand.

  “Wait for me here.”

  Next to them, Kostia was playing with a stick.

  Mademoiselle strode through several workshops where cars were stacked like loaves of bread. The mechanics watched her as she passed by. In the last room, she saw Andrei’s father, covered in soot, working under an engine that was running. She called out to him.

  He didn’t hear her right away. Two men were soldering metal a little farther off. He stood up and wiped his hands.

  “Ivan Ivanovitch,” she said, “I’ve got a problem.”

  “Where are the children?”

  “They’re here. It’s because of Setanka, their little friend from Sokolniki Park. This morning, as we were setting off for school, she was waiting for us outside in the street, on the sidewalk opposite. I don’t think she’s told anybody she was planning to run away, and she doesn’t want to say where she lives.”

  He switched off the engine.

  “Is she here?”

  Mademoiselle nodded, and they headed toward the front of the garage.

  “Do you know her last name?”

  “No. We only ever meet her with her governess, and always in the park. I’ve been to take a look, but the governess isn’t there.”

  They were in front of the children now.

  “What’s going on?”

  “She wants to live with us,” Zoya told her father.

  The mechanic sat down between the two little girls and sighed. Konstantin was still playing with his stick. Mademoiselle sat to one side, under a clock.

  “What’s your name?

  “Svetlana.”

  “But we always call her Setanka,” said Zoya.

  “Setanka,” Ivan repeated, putting his hands on his knees.

  He was forty-five, but his hands looked as if they belonged to someone much older.

  “Things not good at home?”

  “No.”

  “We sometimes have trouble at home too.”

  He was staring at three men who had walked into an office with windows that looked out onto the garage. They were talking with the boss.

  Ivan had cautiously taken hold of Setanka’s hand.

  “You’re going to tell the tioten’ka where you live. She’ll take you back home. You can come and play at our house another day.”

  Setanka glanced hesitantly at Mademoiselle, while Zoya gazed steadily at her friend.

  Ivan Ivanovitch noticed the garage boss pointing at him. The three men all turned around at the same time. Ivan stood up.

  Mademoiselle watched as one of the men stepped outside the office to summon him.

  “Wait for me here,” Ivan told the children.

  He walked past a gray car, and then they saw him being ushered inside the office. The garage boss discreetly distanced himself.

  Mademoiselle had moved closer to the children.

  The office smelled of tobacco and gasoline. They made Ivan sit down. One of the men stayed back, near to the door, as if waiting for a bus.

  “Ivan Ivanovitch, do you have any news of your son?” asked the shortest of the three men, pushing away some tools and leaning on the table.

  “No.”

  “We don’t either.”

  Ivan stared straight ahead.

  His interrogator took a worn-looking white handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose loudly. Through the glass, he was keeping an eye on the workshop.

  “Have you always been a mechanic?” he asked, wiping his mouth.

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t your son, Andrei Ivanovitch, want to follow in your footsteps?”

  “He’s a musician.”

  “I know. But there are plenty of workmen who are musicians by night. Is he lazy?”

  “He’s a great musician. He had to choose.”

  “Why?”

  Ivan didn’t answer.

  The short man with the cold sniffed.

  “I asked you why!” he barked.

  “Because it was necessary to choose,” said Ivan, putting his hands on the table. His blackened fingers were covered in scars; his index finger was wonky. This was his answer. Who can play the violin with hands like that?

  A second interrogator took over.

  “Andrei has been on the run for sixteen weeks.”

  “I’m not allowed to communicate with him,” said Ivan, standing up. “I don’t know anything.”

  “We don’t trust him, Ivan Ivanovitch.”

  “He was in Paris for his music. All his papers were in order —”

  “I’m not talking about papers. I provided him with those papers, you fool. He had another assignment.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” said Ivan.

  The short man with a cold signaled to his colleague and whispered in his ear. He wanted to be alone with Andrei’s father. The tw
o others left the office. He began to play with a brass bolt he had found on the desk.

  “Ivan Ivanovitch Oulanov . . .”

  “Yes.”

  The interrogator was still fiddling with the bolt.

  “Your son knew what would happen to you if he disappeared. That’s what I find so surprising. And you know what will happen too.”

  Yes, he knew. For two years now, the great terror instigated by Joseph Stalin had led millions of Russians — men, women, and whole families — to the camps. At this time of year, in the mines of Vorkuta, it was fifty degrees below freezing.

  “Andrei will turn up again,” said Ivan. “He’ll be able to explain where he’s been.”

  “That’s not what the person who deals with him in Paris thinks. Four months . . . that’s a long time. So there are two possibilities. The first is that he doesn’t care about what will happen to you. He’s saving his own skin, end of story. He’s prepared to sacrifice his family.”

  Ivan Ivanovitch was looking down. The man turned back to face the workshop again.

  “That’s what my comrades think. And it is, of course, the most obvious explanation. But — I don’t know why — I have another idea. . . .”

  He wiped his nose again and glanced at one of his comrades, who was maneuvering the car into the garage, next to a pump. The other man looked like he was playing with the little blond boy.

  “The second explanation,” he went on, still observing the scene in the forecourt, “is that Andrei Ivanovitch is saving his skin because he thinks you’re saving yours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The man smiled.

  “He knows you’ve got a plan for your family.”

  “A plan?”

  “A trip abroad. Or some dirty con-trick.”

  “We’re being spied on day and night.”

  “Which is why I’m anticipating a more refined plan from you: blackmail, some kind of conspiracy.”

  His piercing eyes were fixed on Ivan.

  “I won’t let you go.”

  Outside, the two others had parked their car in order to fill up the tank. A garage worker was serving them. The two men had approached the children to suggest they clamber into the car, just for fun. Mademoiselle declined the offer, but she couldn’t restrain the children. Kostia was already in the backseat, and the girls followed. They were laughing. Setanka sat at the steering wheel, her troubles forgotten.