The Missing Italian Girl (24 page)

She walked with such purpose that she did not feel the fear or self-consciousness that had stalked her first sojourn to the Goutte-d’Or. The vulgar shops, the hawkers, the gentlemen tipping their hats all passed in a blur. She only paused for breath at the huge, busy intersections. When she got to the hospital, her steps slowed. The memory of her last encounter with Maura came back with powerful clarity. She saw again that wild-haired, wild-eyed girl and felt her sullen anger. Clarie heard her voice, too, shouting that she was not going to let herself be killed. Maura Laurenzano, so irritating and self-centered. So much like Clarie had been at her age, when she blamed the world for her mother’s death. Was Maura really in danger? Clarie picked up the pace. Entering the tenement courtyard, she paid no attention to the shouting children or loitering workmen. She passed through quickly to the dark staircase. Clinging to the railing and ignoring the pervasive odor of garbage and urine, she climbed to the top.

The door was half-open. Clarie heard drone-like humming. She knocked.

“Come in.”

Recognizing Francesca’s voice, Clarie stepped inside. The charwoman was sitting on a chair by the table under the meager light coming from the window. When she saw Clarie, she dropped her sewing on the table and stood up.

“Madame Martin!”

“Are you all right?” Clarie peered into Francesca’s face as she approached.

“Yes, yes,” Francesca answered in the same monotonous tone as her song. The fact that she needed her hand to steady herself as she sank back into the wooden chair belied her words. She did not look well at all. Her features seemed blurred. Because Clarie had lost her own child, she recognized the dull resignation that offered temporary respite between waves of agonizing grief. Clarie sat down and reached for the charwoman’s hand.

“Are you sure you are all right?” Clarie asked, still peering into Francesca’s face.

“Yes, I think so.” Francesca pulled away to take up her sewing and, Clarie sensed, to lower her head and move her worn face out of sight.

“I’m sorry. I must be intruding,” Clarie said.

“Of course not.”

Of course not,
Clarie thought bitterly
. I am her “better,” how could a humble charwoman dare imply that I am intruding.
Clarie hated this unfairness, this wall between them. At least Maura, as irritating as she was, knew not to put Clarie on a pedestal. To show that she did not intend to stay and bother Francesca with unwelcome expressions of sympathy, Clarie got up. “I only came to see how you were, and to see if Maura has returned. We both want your girl to be safe.”

“Maura, yes, Maura,” Francesca said, as if saying the name through a dark, echoing tunnel. Then, emerging, she brightened up. “I’m sure she is safe. We don’t have to worry.”

“We don’t?” The doubt slipped out before Clarie could stop herself. In her mind’s eye, she saw images of the Russian girls in the Saint-Lazare Prison and Angela’s bloodless, dead body. “That’s good,” she quickly recovered. “You know where she is then?” Clarie paused, hoping for an answer. When none came, she added, “You don’t have to tell me, I just wanted to make sure that she’s all right.”

“Oh, she is, I can show you.” Francesca searched for a piece of paper under the jumble of socks and yarn on the table. “Mme Guyot read this to me. She is safe, I know she is.”

Clarie hesitated to take the paper.

“Please, can you read it to me? I’d like hearing it again. You’ll see, she’s all right.”

Clarie could not refuse the eager urgency in Francesca’s voice. “Thank you,” she said, offering a weak smile as she glanced at the note, written in bold penciled strokes. She swallowed hard and began:

Dearest Maman,

I must leave you for a while. I don’t want you to worry. And I don’t want you to believe all the bad things the police are saying about me and Angela and Pieter.

I am not afraid! But I do think the man who killed our Angela might come to look for me. So I am going away to find a job somewhere else. I’ll come back when the police find Angela’s killer.

Most important, don’t worry! You always said I was the strong one and knew how to take care of myself. And I will. And when I come back, I will take care of you too.

Love, Maura

P.S. If the police don’t find Angela’s killer, I will! I promise you!

Clarie barely managed to get through the postscript, which could only be a piece of desperate bravado. There was no way that Maura could find her sister’s killer. And if she tried, she would be in more danger than ever.

“You see?” prodded Francesca.

“Yes.” Now it was Clarie emerging from some dark place.

“She’ll be all right, my Maura. She’s the strong one.” Suddenly Francesca’s voice cracked. “And she’ll come back, she promised. She won’t leave me alone.” She grimaced as her head bowed even lower over her sewing, revealing bald streaks amid the gray in her hair.

“Is there anything you need?” Clarie asked as she looked around the room, trying to find something, some way, to help. She glanced at the paltry collection of pots and dishes on the shelf, the clothes hanging from hooks, and at the sewing materials on the table.

“What happened to the scissors?” There was only one blade.

Francesca shrugged. “I found them that way after Maura left.”

Clarie stared at the single blade. Suddenly alert, she scrutinized the room with more care. She’d never have noticed if her suspicions hadn’t been aroused. A lock of hair, dark like her own, dark like Maura’s, on the floor. What was that girl up to? Clarie imagined Maura hacking off her curls. She must have also unscrewed the scissors. Did she actually believe that a scissors blade would shield her from all the dangers facing a young woman in Paris? Or was she planning some craziness, some crime of her own?

Determined to hide her concern, Clarie said casually, “Work must be very slow at the school in the summer. So if you—”

“Yes, we only do one day a week,” Francesca interrupted, “but I am helping Fanny—Mme Guyot—at the laundry too. I’ll manage until, until … my girl comes back.” She looked away again, refusing to meet Clarie’s eyes.

Convinced she was only intruding, Clarie said, “I must go. But, please, Francesca, if you need anything or hear any news about Maura, you can leave a message at the school. Promise me you’ll do that.”

“Yes, thank you.” The words were those required by politeness. But Francesca did not rise as her guest took her leave. Clarie knew, she remembered, the crushing burden of grief and anxiety that left one immobile, wanting only to be left alone. She went out quietly, leaving the door ajar as she had found it. Sadness weighed her down as she descended the staircase and started the walk home. But her frustration pushed her forward in equal measure. Francesca, Maura, the Russian girls. They were all so alone. They could not depend upon the authorities. Indeed, they perceived the police as their enemies. And despite everything Bernard had argued, the Laurenzanos might be right. There must be something else someone could do.

That someone appeared, as if by magic, only hours later. Clarie and Rose were each holding Jean-Luc’s hand as they walked through the Square d’Anvers. The joy of watching her boy push his chubby legs as fast as they could go toward the ice cream cart drove Clarie’s worries away. Rose, too, was laughing. It was the hottest time of day, but a lovely time of day. The park was filled with nannies or mothers with their charges hoping to catch a breeze. It was a peaceful world of women and children, suspended in leisure until the men came home, a world that Clarie, who had put on her new straw boater, could only enjoy during summer vacation.

“Come, Rose, have something,” she urged as they approached the head of the line. Ice cream was Rose’s weakness, and it always gave Clarie pleasure to see the woman who had become almost a grandmother to Jean-Luc allowing herself a treat.

Rose was deciding between strawberry and chocolate when Clarie heard the hawker. “Just out,
L’Echo de Paris
, Séverine defends the anarchists! Says they are innocent.” Clarie had vowed just that morning to block out all the Paris “noise,” but she turned sharply at the words “anarchist” and “innocent.”

“Can you hold on to Jean-Luc for a moment?” she asked Rose, “and here, for the ice cream.” She placed a coin in Rose’s free hand. If she was going to catch the hawker before he moved, she didn’t have time for explanations or secrets. Grabbing the side of her skirt, Clarie maneuvered through the little crowd to get to the newsboy.

He was bigger and older than some, and ruder. As she paid for her paper, he shouted, “The lady wants the latest news. What about you?”

Embarrassed by the attention, Clarie lowered her head, so that the brim of her straw hat hid her eyes, and hastened back to find Rose and Jean-Luc. She led them to a shady spot on the side of the square. She sat there, talking to Jean-Luc, using her handkerchief to wipe the chocolate dribbles from his mouth, smiling with Rose, and
waiting
, ever conscious of the folded newspaper on the bench beside her. She would read it after they returned to the apartment and Jean-Luc was safely settled, playing at her feet. Clarie refused to hurry this moment, of peace and of summer, even as part of her mind kept retreating to a darker place. Finally, Rose declared that she had to start dinner, and they headed home.

While Rose was busy in the kitchen, Clarie took out Jean-Luc’s blocks and played with him for a few minutes, until he began to concentrate on his building projects. Only then did Clarie open the newspaper. She had the vaguest notion that Séverine was a well-known writer. The article quickly revealed her political sentiments.

The Russians, Séverine contended, Pyotr Balenov as well as the girls in prison, were unlikely perpetrators of the crimes of which they were accused. It was much more likely that the bomb had been set off by an agent provocateur acting for the police. As for the “Angel of the Goutte-d’Or,” what could she, a poor young seamstress, know of assassinations and bombs? Wasn’t there ample proof that her boss had exploited her? Yet instead of protecting the poor and the weak, the press and the police were carrying on a war against them and foreigners, and “woe be unto anyone living in France who was
both
poor and foreign!”

Clarie clutched the paper, thinking,
yes, yes, yes,
until she got to Séverine’s last paragraph, which asserted that
even if
the Russians and Angela were guilty of plotting violent crimes, “they had a right to fight the hell of exploitation with a fire of their own making.” She concluded, “I will always, no matter what, stand on the side of the poor.”

Always. No matter what.
Coming from a woman. Clarie was shocked. “Papa!” Jean-Luc heard the familiar sound of his father’s key in the door.

Clarie placed the newspaper on the fireplace, picked up her son, and went to the door. Bernard greeted them with the usual kisses. When he set his bowler on the little table in the foyer, he noticed a letter. “From Singer,” he said, examining the envelope.

“Oh, I forgot.” And, indeed, with all that had been going on, she had forgotten that Bernard’s former colleague had just written him. “What do you think it’s about?”

“We’ll know very soon, after I ask Luca here what he’s been doing today.”

Bernard took Jean-Luc from her and nestled his face for a moment in the boy’s neck.Jean-Luc still pointed more than he talked. He was eager to show Bernard his block house and little soldiers, but not ready to relinquish his father’s arms. Bernard followed the boy’s gestures into the parlor and sat down with his son in his lap. “Let’s read the letter together,” he said, letting Jean-Luc help to tear the envelope.

Clarie settled into the other chair beside the reading lamp. She relished any news from the Singers. Noémie had been so kind after the death of Henri-Joseph and such a wonderful guide during the early weeks after Jean-Luc’s birth.

“Any more children?” she asked.

Bernard, who had been skimming the letter, laughed. “No, I think they are going to stop at four, and they’re growing fast.” He furrowed his brow as he continued to read, nodded, murmured “Oh yes,” and handed the letter to Clarie.

“As you’ll see, everyone is fine. But he brings up something I’ve been meaning to talk about with you.”

“Yes?” Despite the squirming of Jean-Luc, who was reaching for Bernard’s beard, her husband had that serious, judicial look on his face.

“There’s a mounting campaign to reopen the Dreyfus case. Do you remember it?”

“Of course.” The Jewish officer had been found guilty of treason while they were in Nancy. There had been a terrible upsurge of anti-Israelite sentiment and violence, even a small riot on their street a few weeks after Henri-Joseph died. “And,” Clarie quickly moved away from that past, “I remember, during our last faculty meeting, a teacher mentioned that one of the students had brought up a book about his case.”

“Probably Bernard-Lazare.”

“You know it?” Clarie should have guessed. Since the Nancy murders and his close friendship with Singer, Bernard had taken a particular interest in the Israelites.

“Here, son.” Bernard gave Jean-Luc another kiss before setting him on his feet, where he swayed between his father’s legs, humming to himself. Over what Clarie considered the loveliest music in the world, Bernard continued. “I’ve been following the new developments in all the papers. On my own, really. The men at the Labor Exchange consider this a rather bourgeois affair. Upper-class officer, the army. But for me—and, of course, for Singer—it is a matter of justice. The man who is languishing on Devil’s Island might well be innocent.”

Clarie’s mind immediately conjured up an image of the isolated, imprisoned Russian girls.

“I didn’t want to put an extra burden on you, but I’ve been thinking of attending some meetings this week. And now with Singer’s urging,” Bernard said, gesturing toward the letter Clarie held in her hand, “I’ve even more reason. He wants a full report of what’s going on in Paris. This means I’ll miss a few of our dinners together.”

A matter of justice.
Clarie mused over these words before responding. “Of course, you must go. But there is something I need to show you, too.” She walked over the fireplace and picked up
L’Echo de Paris.
“Do you know anything about a woman reporter named Séverine?”