The Missing Italian Girl (16 page)

She murmured her thanks and hurried down the hall and out of the school. Once the big wooden doors had closed behind her, Clarie examined the address. If Francesca truly lived just beyond the new Lariboisière Hospital, her apartment wasn’t far away. Yet it was over a line that Clarie hardly ever crossed, on the other side of the so-called outer boulevards. So-called, Clarie thought ruefully, because they weren’t outer at all. Not since the expansion of the city in the 1860s. Yet, even though the linked, wide commercial streets coursed through outdated boundaries, they had not lost their capacity to divide one Paris from another. On one side, Clarie’s side, commerce and relative comfort reigned; on the other, factories, poverty and slums. She stood, hesitating as late afternoon shoppers hurried past her.
They’ll need the money now
, she told herself. And
she
needed to know which girl had been killed, and why.

The surest, though perhaps not the shortest, way to reach Francesca’s neighborhood was to retrace some of her steps and then follow the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière to its northern end. This led Clarie to a jumble of broad streets rattling with carriages, carts, omnibuses and cabs going to and from the nearby railroad station. It was a perilous crossing, and a relief to arrive at the relative quiet of the boulevard in front of the massive Lariboisière Hospital. Clarie followed its thick gray walls, hoping to encounter a winged-hat nursing sister who might guide her to the rue Goutte-d’Or. She did not want to ask any of the men in worn overalls and smocks, who eyed her every time she paused to look around. Finally she approached a woman carrying a laundry basket on her head.

“You can go back to that corner to the rue Caplat,” the woman pointed, gracefully balancing her basket with her one strong bare arm, “or maybe they live near the laundry all the way back to Islettes or,” she turned the other way, in the direction that Clarie had been walking, thought for a moment, and shook her head, “too confusing for the likes of you, I fear.”

Clarie had an idea that by “the likes of her” the laundress meant a bourgeois lady out of place and nervous. She was about to thank her and take her leave, when the woman asked, “You ain’t here about those Laurenzano girls, are you?”

“Yes, yes, I am,” Clarie answered, surprised yet relieved that she had found someone who might help her find their apartment.

“I had a feeling.” The woman sighed and put her basket on the sidewalk. “One of ’em was supposed to be working for me this morning, but took off to the morgue. Found Angela there, naked as the day she was born just about.”

“Angela,” Clarie whispered.

“Yeah, the pretty blond one. When Francesca heard, she went a little crazy, so someone came to get me at the washhouse. We live in the same building, see. I’m goin’ there soon as I get these delivered. I already got the priest for tomorrow to do a mass. And then off to the cemetery.” The woman twisted her mouth down and shook her head again.

“Can they bury her so quickly?”

“Gotta, in this heat. That’s what the police said when they brought the body up. Hope she lasts the night.”

The image of Angela’s decaying body sent tremors through Clarie’s chest. She was tempted to give the laundress the money and scurry back to her own neighborhood. She did not feel ready to confront the terrible human realities of Angela’s murder.

“Me and Francesca are the only real church-goers in the whole place. So I gotta help.”

Clarie perceived kindness in that hard, reddened face. She glanced at the laundress’s swollen hands, her torn cotton dress darkened by perspiration. Even as her own resolutions were fading, Clarie realized that nothing or no one could be more real or human than this big-boned gray-haired woman, who spent her days scrubbing and ironing to survive and still found the time, and the will, to help her neighbor.

“Perhaps I can do something—”

“A few sous would be good,” the woman said, a little too sharply, then added, “and I’m sure Francesca would be honored to see you.”

Given her hesitations about coming, Clarie did not feel she deserved any honor. It was humbling to acknowledge that the laundress had so easily jumped to the conclusion that Clarie was capable of nothing more than sympathy and a little charity. That she could not understand or be of any real use in their hard, poverty-stricken lives. Even knowing she was unlikely to prove them wrong, Clarie resolved to go on.

After thanking the woman for her help, Clarie retraced her steps to the rue Caplat, which led to the Goutte-d’Or, where among the low one- and two-story buildings she would find the five-story tenement where the Laurenzanos lived. Once she got there, the laundress said, she’d find someone to tell her how to get through the courtyard and up the stairs to the right room.

A courtyard and stairs like my own building, Clarie thought, reassuring herself as she walked quickly through the unfamiliar streets. But of course the tenement on the rue Goutte-d’Or was nothing like the apartment house on the rue Rodier. The pavement that led to it was cracked and uneven, spattered with garbage, and lined with stores and shops so dank and dark that without their signs, Clarie would have had no idea of their functions. Fortunately, there was no mistaking the tenement hovering over low wooden and brick buildings.

The large courtyard was unguarded and open; still Clarie hesitated to enter, for it wasn’t as deserted as hers would be the hour before the men of the rue Rodier began to arrive from their shops and offices. Half-naked children were all about, yelling and running, dodging a few scrawny, scratching hens and a large indolent dog that lay in the middle of the yard, as if drugged by the waning sun. Clarie heard the hissing and pounding of tools and machinery and realized that the entire first floor was occupied by small workshops. The windows above her fluttered with hung clothes and sheets. She took a few wary steps in and caught the fetid smell, worse even than in the street. She lifted her skirt ever so slightly over the uneven cobblestones searching for the odor’s source. She soon found it, for some of the children made a game of jumping over the drain that led from the middle of the apartments to the street. She began breathing through her mouth, as she looked for the concierge’s lodge. A tugging on her skirt almost made her jump. Her assailant was a dear little towheaded boy or girl. “Hello, lady,” it said, then ran away giggling. Suddenly everything seemed to stop as the other children noticed her.

“Lady, lady,” one of them yelled, “come to give us something?” “Me first,” said another, taller boy as he ran up to Clarie.

“You stop that, stop that right now, you ragamuffins. Let her alone.”

Clarie gave out a sigh of relief. Only a concierge would yell with such authority. She turned to find a small, wrinkled woman in a loose, dark striped dress and slippers.

“You here about those Laurenzano girls?” she asked before Clarie could explain herself. “You a reporter or something?”

“No, a teacher. In the school where Francesca works.”

“Humpf. Well, they already got the pauper’s coffin upstairs. Don’t know why they bothered. They’re going to have to carry it down before it gets all smelly. What a lot.”

When Clarie could find no response for her harsh judgments, the woman went on, “Eh, the washerwoman will help ’em. She’s strong as an ox.”

“Where—”

“Five floors up that staircase,” the concierge said as she gestured toward one of the doorless openings at the back of the courtyard. “And watch your step.”

Clarie was relieved to enter the obscure passageway out of sight of the children, the concierge and whoever else might have been watching through the windows. In the hall, the smell was no better, but at least it mingled with the odors of cooking. She climbed the uneven, unlighted stairs at a crawl, clinging to the wobbly banister. Once she almost slipped on what might have been a potato peel. After a dozen more careful steps, she panicked, fearing that she would not be able to keep track of the floors. Then she remembered that the fifth floor would be at the top where the staircase ended. A few inhabitants of the building kept their doors opened as they worked. Clarie was grateful for every bit of light they threw in her path, even as she tried to pass unnoticed. Finally she came to the fifth floor, and a door opened to a room dominated by a simple, wooden coffin.

She heard weeping, approached and knocked on the doorframe. Someone told her to come in.

Maura sat on the bed, holding on to her mother, whose sobs had reached out into the hallway. The coffin lay between them and the single table in the room.

“Maman, look who’s here,” Maura said shaking her mother. “It’s that teacher.”

“Oh, oh,” Francesca stuttered as she wiped her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Please, don’t trouble yourself,” Clarie said, taking another step into the room. “I’ve only come to express my deepest sympathies.”

But of course Francesca, whose life had been one long trail of humbling experiences, did trouble herself for this unexpected guest. She rose from her bed and came over to Clarie.

“Do you want to see my baby?” she asked in voice hoarse with tears. “Someone stabbed her.”

My baby. Someone stabbed her.
There was no way to respond to the sadness and horror of those words, so Clarie merely nodded and moved around to look into the coffin. Someone had combed Angela’s hair so it framed her face with soft curls. They had placed a cross around her neck and posed her hands together as if in prayer. As angelic and obedient as the girl Clarie had seen sitting in the first row of her classroom. It was tragic, and a little grotesque. The perfectly posed girl had been murdered. It took all of Clarie’s strength not to gasp or cry out.

“They did that in the morgue,” Maura said. “And they refrigerated her.”

Clarie had already learned that Francesca’s younger daughter was not given to piety. And that the girl did not like her. Still Clarie was shocked by her bluntness. Or was it strength? When Clarie looked up at Maura, she saw that her face, too, was red and swollen. Maura quickly lowered her eyes, as if to deny Clarie any window into her emotions.

“Professoressa, why? Why kill my little girl?” Francesca cried.

“I don’t know,” Clarie murmured. “I don’t know.” When she saw the poor woman’s shoulders begin to shudder again, Clarie reached over and put her arms around her. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as the weeping began again. When it subsided, Clarie reached in her pocket and pulled out the franc notes. “Here,” she said, urging the bills into Francesca’s hand. “Something for the funeral.”

“Oh no, professoressa, that’s too much. We already have money collected from the people at the morgue. We can bury her at Batignolles, in a real grave.”

Maura had gotten up to see what “too much” was, and when a slight glimmer of approval showed in her eyes, Clarie imagined that ten francs was probably more than a week’s wages for the kind of work that Maura and her mother did.

“No, take it, please; it’s from all of us,” she lied, knowing that Francesca was too caught in the web of grief to remember that very few people were at the lycée. “And I will come again, next week, to see that you are all right,” Clarie said, striving to find a graceful way to flee this unbearably mournful place.

“Yes, of course, your baby, you must go,” Francesca mumbled, as if remembering that Clarie was a personage who had a busy, important life somewhere, and that this important person, too, was a mother. “Maura,” she said, “take a candle, show Madame Martin down the stairs and to the hospital.”

Clarie bowed her head and grimaced. In spite of her grieving, Francesca had calculated how far Clarie would need an escort to feel comfortable walking in her neighborhood. She was about to demur, when she saw that Maura had gone to the cupboard and taken out a candle. The girl seemed eager to leave.

The two made a silent descent down the rickety staircase. When they reached the bottom, Maura snuffed out the candle with her finger and shoved it in the pocket of her apron. The children in the courtyard did not harass them; they didn’t dare. They just stood and stared as a striding Maura led Clarie out of the courtyard. Because she was so conscious of the unevenness of the dirty sidewalk, Clarie had trouble keeping up with Maura as she marched through the streets to the edge of the huge hospital. When they got to the corner, Maura swirled around to face Clarie. Although Clarie longed to reach out to try to comfort the girl, she didn’t dare. Not only because she knew that Maura was suspicious of her and her motives, but because something in the girl reminded Clarie of her younger self, and of the days right after her own mother’s death when she resisted all efforts to touch or console her. So Clarie stood and waited for Maura to say what was on her mind.

“I’m glad you brought the money for my mother. She will need it. Also, you should come and see her, as you promised. After the funeral, I’m leaving,” Maura said, her voice a matter-of-fact monotone which didn’t allow for any response. “I’m not going to let him kill me too.”

“Who?” Clarie cried out. “Tell me—”

But Maura had already turned away and was striding away from her. “I don’t know yet,” she yelled.

“You mustn’t leave your mother alone,” Clarie called. This time Maura refused to respond, leaving Clarie to stare at her proud, upright figure as she disappeared around the corner.

With a sigh of exasperation, Clarie began to walk as fast as she could along the long gray wall that enclosed the hospital. As soon as she reached the busy intersection where the La Chapelle boulevard became Rochechouart, she knew her way, a blessedly short way, back to her apartment. Because it was late, she hurried past the gaudy commerce that had made Montmartre and its foothills the destination of pleasure-seekers from all over Paris. She never paid any attention to the risqué posters advertising the dancehalls and café-concerts because this was not her world. Nor did she want it to be. Yet she felt more at home here than only a few blocks away, among the tenements that housed the Laurenzanos and the laundress.

Not for the first time did she wonder where the daughter of an immigrant blacksmith had gone, the one who grew up surrounded by the blood-like smell of hot iron and the grunts of burly, blackened, laboring men. Or, and perhaps this was more troublesome, where had Bernard’s “brave girl” gone? The girl who had, without question, kept his darkest, most dangerous secret. The nineteen-year-old who, in the early days of their love, when she hadn’t felt sufficiently trusted and respected, got up from a park bench and walked away from her young judge, forever! Despite her sad perplexity at what she seemed to have become, Clarie caught herself smiling as she imagined Bernard watching
her
on that sunny afternoon over a decade ago. Undoubtedly she had been every bit as exasperating as Maura Laurenzano.