The Missing Italian Girl (12 page)

All very sweet. She kissed him on the cheek before striding over to her desk, where, instead of reading her students’ essays, she stared into space. She was angry. At Francesca, at Maura and Angela, even, not quite fairly, at Bernard. She tapped her pencil, thinking about how Emilie would often talk about her and her teacher husband “having words.” At least, Clarie thought sardonically, Emilie wasn’t married to an ex-judge who knew so much more than she about the world.
Words
. Angela’s pleas, Maura’s lies, her dear husband’s solicitous warnings. Clarie had words going through her mind all right: used, lied to, and patronized.

11

T
HE NEXT MORNING
C
LARIE RESOLVED
to forget about Francesca and her daughters. She had her own girls and her position to think about. Six of her students, among those whom Mme Roubinovitch liked to refer to as the sharp ones or “the needles,” had signed up to take the preliminary written examination that was the first step to becoming a teacher. As the professor of the most advanced history classes, Clarie had prepared them for the humanities-and-classics section and was to monitor the three-hour test. If they passed, they would go on to take their orals before a panel of lycée and University professors. If they were successful at that stage, they would either receive an elementary school certificate or be invited to apply to the teachers’ college at Sèvres.

At exactly 8:45 that Wednesday, Clarie stood holding the exam questions close to her chest as her students, in their black pinafores and starched white collars, fluttered in, twittering and nervous. Her pulse quickened as she watched them. Since this was a city-wide examination, to be graded by men at the University, the results would be as much an evaluation of the female faculty at the Lycée Lamartine—of their training, their intelligence, their
seriousness
—as of their students’ knowledge. Her girls had to do well, for everyone’s sake.

“Please sit far apart,” Clarie ordered. She smiled as they settled in. She moved from girl to girl distributing the test booklets. When she returned to the front, she clapped her hands for attention. “You have three hours,” she told them. “And, if you feel you can’t answer the first question, go on to the second. If you can’t answer the second, try the third. Or,” she demonstrated in the most exaggerated way, “just take a deep breath.” This produced the relaxing giggles she had hoped for. She looked at her watch. “Time,” she said. In unison, their heads, all uniformly pinned up in topknots, bent over the papers.

These were her
Alphonsines
, as all the lycée’s students proudly called themselves in honor of the school’s namesake, the poet Alphonse Lamartine. Or rather, those laboring before her represented a particular portion of Alphonsines, among the smartest, but also among the least well off. At Lamartine, only the daughters of shopkeepers or teachers had to find a dignified path toward making their own way. The others, even the other “needles,” were not here. Many of her seniors had been withdrawn from afternoon classes in order to stay home with their mothers, to learn to pour tea, have visitors and make social calls. All with the goal of guaranteeing that they would enter an appropriate marriage. Clarie sighed. No matter where they ended up, she would miss all of them.

She opened her book, Mme de La Fayette’s
The Princess of Cleves
, a classic she had been intending to reread for a long time, but she could not concentrate. Her heart was with her girls, scribbling away, or staring into space, or even doing two things absolutely disallowed during the school year—chewing on their nails or pencils. She certainly had no intention of censuring them now, when they were under so much pressure.

She’d never forget all the anxieties and uncertainties she had suffered through. In her day there had been no lycées. Instead she had been educated by the nuns in Arles and, after leaving school, had had to study on her own for a long time to qualify. She smiled as she thought of her father, traveling with her to Nîmes to take the written examinations. When she finally passed, after two tries, he even took her on the long train ride north, to Paris, where she had stood alone before five men charged with enforcing the stiff standards of the new women’s education. It had been quite an adventure, and she had been so nervous that she held her hands behind her back to keep them from shaking. If it hadn’t been for the most indulgent of all fathers, she would never have made it.

At least, she thought, as she observed their bowed heads, it was easier for her Alphonsines. They were, in a sense, at home, part of a proud corps. The black-and-white uniforms, which set them apart from everyone else in the neighborhood, guaranteed that once inside the walls of the school, social differences did not matter. They were all part of the little meritocratic republic governed by the redoubtable Marie Roubinovitch. Clarie fingered the fringe on her bookmark. Even with these advantages, she feared for her test takers. There were so few teaching posts for women. Most of them would probably end up in shops or as clerks in offices or at one of the big department stores. All she could do for them now was to nod encouragement, which she did, each time a head popped up and gave her an anxious glance.

When the sun crept in, heating up the room, Clarie got up to fling open the windows and let in some air. Unfortunately, fat, lazy flies accompanied the breeze, buzzing and pestering her girls through the rest of the morning. Every fifteen minutes, Clarie wrote the time in big block letters on the blackboard, letting the test-takers know how long they had. At noon, the last two stragglers, wilted and exhausted but still offering a smile to a favorite teacher, laid their booklets on her desk. Clarie’s own starched collar was damp with sweat. She was more than ready to go home, to lunch and to her son.

The door creaked open as she was stacking her papers. She turned to face someone she had managed with great effort to put out of her mind, Francesca Laurenzano.

“Francesca,” she said warily. “I didn’t expect you at this time.”

“Professoressa, I came to apologize.” The charwoman limped toward the front of the room.

“Oh.” Feeling again the sting of last night’s contretemps with Bernard, Clarie was careful not to be too welcoming.

“I made Maura write a note.” The woman held out a folded piece of paper.

Clarie walked over to get it, before retreating behind her desk.

“I would have made her come, to apologize, but she’s afraid,” Francesca explained, her head bowed, not meeting Clarie’s eyes. “She and Angela hid when the police came last night asking about Monsieur Barbereau. Please forgive me and my daughters. I would’ve never allowed them to say something so bad about the dead.”

Speaking ill of the dead is hardly the issue
, Clarie thought as she unfolded the paper. It read, in round, legible script:
I am sorry that I said Barbereau might have killed Pieter. I did not know that he was dead.
Clarie refolded the paper, her cheeks blotched with anger. This was hardly an apology, certainly not very polite, and quite possibly a lie. “There was no reason for you to have troubled yourself. Perhaps you, too, could have just sent a note.”

“Maura was so good in school,” Francesca said.

A comment so seemingly irrelevant that it left Clarie stunned into silence until the Italian woman added, with touching eagerness, “See how well she can write,” and Clarie realized that, of course, Francesca could not.

Clarie sat down and buried her head in her hands. Even if the daughters had lied, there was no evidence that Francesca had tried to deceive her. She must try to be kind.

By the time she looked up again, Francesca had sunk into a wooden chair in the front row, her hands folded in her lap, staring down. The only true way to help was to be honest and realistic. “Francesca,” she said gently, “do you think that your daughters could have been involved in Marcel Barbereau’s death?”

The charwoman’s mouth fell open slightly, and she began to shake her head, back and forth, slowly and mechanically. Clarie understood almost immediately that Francesca was not attempting to deny the implied accusation. Not at all. Rather she was making one last effort to vanquish the fear that must have been haunting her since the police started asking questions, the fear Clarie had made more real by speaking it aloud. Francesca’s face shriveled into a mask of pain, the pain of resignation, the pain of coming to grips with her worse nightmares, the pain of knowing her daughters could be in terrible trouble, and the ultimate and worst pain of all, which she cried out: “I can’t lose my babies.”

For Clarie, who had lost a child, this was a cry she could not ignore. “We don’t know yet if they were involved,” she said more gently. “Perhaps they’re just afraid of the police after what happened to their friend.”

Francesca shook her head, ignoring Clarie’s offer of hope. “It’s my fault. When their father left me, I made them work. They wanted to stay in school. I couldn’t do anything else, don’t you see?” she said, looking at Clarie, pleading.

“Of course not,” Clarie soothed. “It’s terrible that things are so difficult for so many.”
How vapid, what mush,
she thought as she got up and approached the charwoman. Clarie sat down and placed her hand over Francesca’s. She breathed in the scent of hard work and anxieties, the sharp, musty smell reminiscent of the forge, of her own Italian father and the other men who worked there. “Your girls may not be involved,” she repeated. “And if they are accused, there is help. My husband assured me that you can go to the Palais de Justice and ask for a lawyer.” Of course, Clarie thought, as she struggled to keep her demeanor calm, this is not at all what Bernard had said. He had told her, in no uncertain terms, not to get involved. And she wouldn’t. Not after today. Not after she gave the only help a woman in her position was capable of, words of sympathy and advice.

“Come now.” Clarie placed her arm around Francesca’s shoulder. “You told me your girls were good, hard-working. I’m sure they’ll be all right.”

Francesca nodded, although she didn’t look at all convinced.

After a moment, Clarie got up. “I’m so sorry these terrible things are happening. But,” Clarie swallowed hard, knowing that once again she had so little to offer, “I have some work to do.” She tried to lighten the mood by adding, “We’re all getting ready for the fuss and commotion of graduation.”

It took some effort for Francesca to stand up. She pushed against the desk with both arms, slowly unbending her back, as if she carried the weight of Atlas on her shoulders. She sniffled and reached into her apron pocket to pull out a handkerchief. Clarie had seen it all before, a week ago. It pained her to realize how hard Francesca’s life must have been and would forever be. She went back to her desk and thumped her papers against it, straightening their edges. She could not bear to watch Francesca leave.

12

H
OW CAN SHE KEEP ON
doing it? Maura thought, as she watched her mother hobble through the courtyard on her way to the lycée. How can she bear to get down on her hands and knees to clean up for their damned graduation? Maura turned from the window of their fifth-floor room and stared at the crucifix over her mother’s bed. She claimed that Jesus and the Virgin Mary helped her. Helped her to be a slave, Maura silently countered. And if she didn’t watch out, she’d become one too.

Quickly, now that she was sure her mother was gone, Maura squatted down and removed a loosened floorboard.

“What are you doing?” Angela glanced up from the table where she was darning stockings.

“Getting the money.”

“You have more?” Angela got up to get a better look. “You must give it to Maman. There’s not much work at the school during the summer. You know how worried she gets.”

“No,” Maura said as she pulled up Vera’s torn and dirty blue satin sack. “I’m only moving the money because I’ve read in the papers that the police look under the floor for stolen goods.”

“Do you think they’ll really come back?” Angela whispered, clutching the stockings in her hand.

Maura shrugged, then went over to the wall, grabbed her best dress, and looped it over her arm. She didn’t want to talk about the police coming again, although she worried about it all the time and had come up with a story that would save her and Angela. She’d tell them that Pyotr killed Barbereau, that they tried to stop him, that they were so afraid of the Russian boy they ran away, that he was the one who took the money so he could use it to— Maura bit down hard on her lip to keep the shameful words from slipping out. She stood for a moment and stared at the sack of coins in her right hand. To blame it all on Pyotr. To become a Judas. But, she rationalized, as she dropped her arm, if she lied, just a little, they’d survive, she and Angela. After all, hadn’t Pyotr struck the fatal blows to save Angela? He’d want her to survive. He would! Relieved to have worked it all out, Maura settled into one of the room’s two rickety chairs and began to tear at the threads that hemmed her cotton floral dress.

“Maura, you must give the money to Maman,” Angela said, grabbing at Maura’s arm. Maura shook her off and picked up the scissors to hasten her work.

“Maura!”

“What if we need to escape? What if we need it later?” She looked up at Angela. “Besides, Maman will ask where we got it. Are you going to tell her, like you almost told that schoolteacher? Are you?” Tears blurred her eyes, making it impossible for her to see what she was doing. Maura thrust the dress down on the rough wooden table, almost toppling the kerosene lamp. This was crazy. Every time she and Angela argued, they both began to cry. They were so scared.

When she stopped her sniffling, she swiped her sleeve across her eyes and nose, and placed the dress on her lap again. Angela sank into the chair across from her.

“We can’t tell anyone,” Maura continued quietly. “I am, after all, doing my part, promising to work for that witch Mme Guyot.”

“She’s not a witch.”

Maura sighed and picked up the needle. Leave it to Angela to defend the mean, pious laundress. Of course, Maura thought as she stabbed the needle into the hem of her dress, since Angela never snuck away into the local wineshop at night, she didn’t get to hear how hard Fanny Guyot worked her “girls.” So hard that they had to console themselves with drink. Everybody’s favorite, Angela, didn’t have to contemplate slaving under the hissing steam machine in the boiling heat of summer. She didn’t have to worry about skinning her hands on the scrub board, straining her arms to beat the clothes, getting burned by splattered bleach, exhausting herself wringing out sheets, listening to Mme Guyot giving orders all day long. Not Angela. It was bad enough when Maura had helped her mother wash their things. Now to be at the district laundry all day, every day, sweating like a pig. Maura knew how hard it was going to be.