No Relation (26 page)

“Excuse me, but do you speak English, by chance?”

By his accent, I assumed he was from somewhere in North America.

“Not just by chance, by birth. It’s our native tongue, and I like to think we speak it well,” I replied.

Marie had her back to him and hadn’t seen his approach. She turned and smiled at him but then noticed the melancholy in his face.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You look, um, upset.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind terribly if I sat down with you for just a moment? It really has to be this table. I hoped it might be free. Would you mind?”

While I would have preferred to have just spent more one-on-one time with Marie, she made the call without consulting me. She stood up and touched the man’s elbow.

“You’re welcome to. We have two empty places here. Please, join us. You look as if you could use a rest.”

“I know there are other tables open, but it has to be this one,” he said. “Thank you very much. It’s so nice to be able to speak English.”

He sat down next to me on the bench seat against the wall with Marie facing us on a chair. She waved to a waiter, who came over, took the man’s hot chocolate order, and slipped away again. Our tablemate was looking over Marie’s shoulder at the
magot
statue up on the pillar.

“It’s so high. I don’t know how I’ll ever get up there. This is never going to work,” he sighed before burying his head in his hands.

Marie and I exchanged perplexed looks.

“Um, is everything all right? Can we help you with something?” I asked.

Marie leaned in with a very concerned and sympathetic expression. The man paused, looking at the satchel he held in his lap. He nodded once and lifted his eyes to us.

“I’m Hugh Rowland. I’m Canadian, from Vancouver.”

“Nice to meet you. This is Marie, and you can call me, um, Hem. We’re from New York.”

He looked at Marie.

“New York? You sound like you’re from the south,” he said.

Marie nodded.

“I grew up in Louisiana, but I live in New York now.”

Hugh still looked uncertain about us. But as I’d experienced the day before, Marie has the kind of open and welcoming face that makes you feel like you’ve known her for years and can trust her with your life. My face probably says “Move along, pal,” but Hugh was getting a very different message by looking directly at Marie.

“I’m on a mission, but I don’t think I can do it all on my own,” Hugh said, looking up at the magot again.

“Can we be of assistance? You look like you could use some help.” Marie turned to me. “We could help, right?”

“We’re not robbing a bank are we, Hugh?” I joked. Marie shot me a look. “I mean, sure. Um, yes, ah, of course we can help,” I replied, deciding not to say out loud that I hoped it wouldn’t take too long because I was on a mission myself.

Hugh paused again.

“That’s very kind. Okay, here we go, I guess. It’s hard to know where to start, or how to start. But you see, my life partner, Robert, died twenty-nine days ago. We were together for forty-three of my sixty-seven years.”

Hugh had to stop for a moment to gather himself. Marie patted his wrist and nodded.

“Robert idolized Ernest Hemingway for most of his life, which is funny in a way, because Robert was nothing like Hemingway. Not at all. My Robert is … Robert was a small man, not very confident, hated guns and hunting, didn’t drink, certainly didn’t womanize, though that would have been a sight to behold, and was surely one of the least manly men I’ve ever met. The last three years of his illness showed me he was brave. He faced it with great courage and stoicism. Even so, he was definitely not manly. But I loved him, and he loved me. And he loved Hemingway.

“For the last thirty years, we’ve come to Paris every second year, without fail. Even in these last years, when he was deteriorating, we still came. We would spend hours just sitting here at this very spot, at Hemingway’s table. He would hold my hand underneath the table and read me his favourite passages from Hemingway’s novels. He knew most of them by heart. We were here six months ago, and he was too weak to read for very long. So he marked his books for me, and I read the passages to him. It happened right here. But no longer, I guess.”

He looked away again and I thought he was going to lose it. I thought Marie was going to lose it. I thought I might lose it. Marie kept her hand on his wrist. That seemed to help. With his other hand, Hugh reached into his leather bag and pulled out a small white cardboard box and placed it on the table.

“What have you got there?” I asked.

“Robert,” Hugh replied.

“It belonged to Robert?”

“No, it is Robert,” Hugh said. “He was cremated. These are his ashes.”

I recoiled, slightly. I don’t think it was noticeable, although my elbow knocked my fork off the table onto the bench beside me. Even so, Hugh’s focus was elsewhere. He didn’t seem to notice.

“So what’s the mission, Hugh? How can we help?” said Marie. Hugh looked up at the magot.

“You know that both statues are wearing hats. You can’t see the guy on the far side of the pillar from here, but he has a kind of a droopy hat that just won’t serve our purposes. But you can see that this guy, on our side, has a hat that’s shaped kind of like a cereal bowl. That one will work.”

Marie and I looked up at the statue in unison.

“Don’t both look at once, they’ll know something’s up,” Hugh whispered.

I jerked my head around and made a big show of looking out the window.

“I’m not following you, Hugh,” I said. “What do the statues’ hats have to do with it?”

Hugh seemed fragile. He looked around the café as if uncertain how to proceed.

“Okay, here goes. I’ve told no one else this. You see, Robert’s dying wish, which I promised him I would fulfill, is to have at least some of his ashes scattered here at Les Deux Magots. He wanted to be high up. The last time we were here, we agreed that somehow I’d put them in that magot’s cereal bowl hat. He was insistent. So I agreed. What else could I do?”

I looked up at the statue cantilevered from the pillar about fifteen feet off the ground.

“This could be interesting, Hugh,” I said. “It’s really quite high. How tall are you?”

“I’m about five-ten, but I’m skinny and light. I think you’ll have to boost me, I mean if you would. I hate to ask, but I really must complete this, somehow.”

“I’d be happy to boost you, but I don’t think the management here will be too thrilled if we start scaling their statue like it’s a
YMCA
climbing wall,” I countered.

“We need a distraction,” Marie said.

That doesn’t sound good, I thought to myself before saying, “That doesn’t sound good.”

“Come on, Hem, we don’t need long. A little distraction and then you can boost Hugh up and he can do the deed and be back on the ground in no time,” Marie urged.

“But even if I boost him, I’m not sure I can get him high enough to reach the hat.”

“Ah, but I can help with that,” Hugh said as he pulled something else from his bag. It was one of those telescoping devices they use in the hardware store when they need to reach a box of wood screws high up on the top shelf. It had a little squeeze handle at one end, and a claw at the other that opened and closed.

“I can reach another four feet or so with this thing when it’s fully extended.”

“There, problem solved,” concluded Marie. “But we still need a distraction.”

“I’ve already got the distraction ready to go,” said Hugh. “Are you prepared to execute this plan?”

Marie looked at me square on. This seemed like a test. I wondered if she’d laid all this on. No, that’s crazy. But it sure felt like a test.

“Okay, Hem. You’re ready, right?” Marie asked.

“Well, to the extent that one is ever ready to lift a stranger onto his shoulders so he can scatter a loved one’s ashes into the cereal bowl hat of a statue fifteen feet off the ground in a famous Paris café, then yes, I guess I’m ready,” I replied. “But what’s the distraction?”

Hugh suddenly gripped Marie’s hand and mine in what felt like some kind of Three Musketeers’ gesture of solidarity.

“I’ll be forever in your debt if we can pull this off. Wait here and be ready when I come back, if you please,” Hugh said before darting out the front door of the café.

“I’m worried that the only thing to be ‘pulled off’ will be the statue from the pillar,” I said.

Hugh was back a moment later. He took a penknife from his pocket and cut a clean hole in the corner of the box. I could see the greyish ash inside. Hugh kept looking back toward the entrance. He then put the box in the claws of the hand-held telescoping thingy and secured it with some duct tape he pulled from his satchel.

“You’re very good to do this. I don’t think I could do it solo,” he said, looking very serious. “It won’t be long now, but when it’s time, we’ll need to move quickly.”

Keeping the extendable claw shielded from view as best as he could, Hugh handed it to Marie beneath the table.

“I’ll try to get up there first with your strong friend’s help, then you hand me the ExtendaReach.”

“That’s what it’s called? The ExtendaReach?”

“Brilliant name, don’t you think? It actually says what it does,” Hugh replied.

I could smell something, something burning. Black smoke was issuing from the concrete cylindrical garbage can on the corner just in front of the main entrance.

“I guess they haven’t yet elected a new Pope,” I quipped.

I thought a bit of humour might lighten the mood, though from their reaction, neither Marie nor Hugh seemed to consider it humour.

“Just a second or two more,” said Hugh.

By this time, orange flames were leaping at least a foot or so out of the top of the garbage can. A few customers shouted and stood. Then all eight waiters on the floor rushed for the door, followed by several customers. The people enjoying their café and pastries in the seating area outside had all risen and moved out of range of the billowing smoke.

“Now!” Hugh snapped.

We all stood and took two steps so that we were up against the pillar. I interlocked my fingers and Hugh slipped his foot in while holding both of my shoulders. I lifted and up he went. As promised, Hugh was very thin and light. For a time on his way up, his crotch was pressed against my face. I tried not to think about it and kept lifting. First his knees, and then his feet were on my shoulders as if we’d practised this dozens of times. He had plenty of handholds on the pillar and the base of the statue to help hoist him up.

I had a belated moment of reflection as Hugh stood up on my shoulders.
How the hell had this happened? What the hell was I doing?
But then the moment passed.

Marie was standing behind the pillar, nearly out of sight. The fire was doing its job, and most of the customers were now blocking the main entrance so they could get a better view of the miniature, self-contained inferno. Had we been on the shore of a lake in Upstate New York, we’d have been breaking out the sharpened sticks and marshmallows.

At Hugh’s signal, Marie handed him the, yes, you know, the
ExtendaReach, and he set about fulfilling Robert’s last wish. While this was happening, I was actually leaning nonchalantly against the pillar to brace myself with my arms crossed over my chest, just as I might were I casually waiting for a table, but without another human being standing on my shoulders. I even closed my eyes briefly. When I opened them I was staring into the face of our waiter. It was hard to identify the look on his face. Surprise? Anger? Outrage? Perhaps a mélange of all three. Before I could say a word, Marie leapt into action. She engaged the waiter in an animated discussion,
en français
, pointing first to the fire and then up at Hugh, who was still, you know, scattering Robert’s ashes in the cereal bowl hat of the magot, fifteen feet off the ground.

The waiter was now gesticulating wildly, but Marie was keeping up. In among the French I thought I caught the word “Harvard.” Then I decided it must have been “havarti.” Eventually, the waiter was nodding, and then even smiling. Then, as I felt Hugh start his descent, the waiter actually reached up to steady him. A small cloud of ash preceded Hugh’s return to terra firma, which caught the waiter somewhat off guard. I knew what “Mon
dieu
” meant. The waiter looked at me.

“It’s dusty up there,” I offered sheepishly.

Marie took the ExtendaReach from Hugh. Then for a brief moment, though not brief enough, Hugh was sitting directly on my head. He had a remarkably bony butt. I instantly wondered how he’d survived the flight across the Atlantic in those hard airplane seats. As soon as Hugh was back on the ground,
Marie leaned in ostensibly to brush, um, Robert, from his shoulders, and to brief him as discreetly as she could. The fire seemed to be under control by then. The waiter was standing there looking expectantly at Hugh.

“So, Professor, were you able to determine whether it is indeed a Yamamoto?” Marie asked him, in English.

Hugh seemed to be weeping but tried to compose himself. Through his tears, there was just the slightest suggestion of a smile. I could tell the waiter was puzzled by Hugh’s streaming eyes.

“It’s dusty up there,” I repeated. It was all I could come up with in the drama of the moment.

“Alas, no, it is not a Yamamoto, but a very, very convincing imitation,” Hugh replied.

“I’m so sorry, Professor,” she replied before turning to the waiter, who clearly was not fluent in English.

She babbled on to the waiter for a few minutes, brushing the ashes from his shoulders, and shaking her head slowly with the kind of sombre expression normally reserved for a funeral visitation. But I suppose that was appropriate under the circumstances. The waiter sighed and nodded. All I caught of the exchange was when the waiter said, “C’est dommage” and “Merci.” He shook Hugh’s hand and turned back to his duties.

We actually sat back down at our table as if nothing had happened, but we didn’t dawdle. Hugh collapsed the ExtendaReach, taped over the hole in the box, and repacked his bag. He was trembling and held a handkerchief to his eyes for a moment before rising.