The Missing Italian Girl (27 page)

Haltingly at first, and then in a rush, as though relieved to be able to confess her involvement and her fears for Maura, Clarie talked while Séverine took notes. Just as she was describing her last visit to the Goutte-d’Or, the kitchen door opened, and a tall, older woman in a striped cotton dress and apron entered with a silver tray. She placed it on the crowded coffee table in front of the sofa.

“Oh, dear Augustine, thank you,” Séverine said, and she reached up to clasp the woman’s hand. “This is my housekeeper, Augustine, who has been with me for many, many years,” she said to Clarie, and to her housekeeper, “And this is Madame Martin, who has come to see me about a very interesting case.”

“So I hear.” The voice was a little gruff. She gave Clarie a nod before leaving the room with the declaration that she’d “better get back to the pooches.”

That brief exchange warmed Clarie to Séverine, for she recognized that the two women were as close as she and Rose. If not closer. She could not imagine Rose ever daring to be gruff with her. Despite her initial bewilderment, Clarie found herself enjoying Séverine’s and Augustine’s verdant little realm. With their “beasts,” they were like a family, an unusual one, but a family nevertheless.

“Madame Martin,” Séverine asked as she poured the chocolate, “do you think the Laurenzano girls were telling you the truth about the Russian anarchist and what the three of them had done?”

Clarie picked up a thin flowered cup and took a sip. Bernard had asked the same question, in a very different way, with the presumption that they probably had been deceiving her. “I think Angela was truthful in what she said, but that she didn’t tell everything she could have,” Clarie responded, remembering how Maura had cut her sister off as soon as the name Barbereau came up. She frowned. “I think the other one lied about what happened to their boss. But to protect herself and to protect her sister.” Clarie took another sip, giving herself a moment to think while Séverine divided a biscuit between herself and the dog.

“This may sound odd, but although Maura lied, in a way I felt she was more truly honest than her sister or her mother, because she sees the world as it is and is willing to confront its unfairness. A liar who sees through to the truth and acts on it.”

“Not odd at all,” Séverine said, as she flicked some crumbs off her robe; “it sounds like the girl is poor, young and defiant. A struggler and a survivor. We must find her.”

We?
“I was hoping,” Clarie ventured, “that you might be able to use your contacts among the lower classes, the press and the police to help find Maura. I’m sure you know better than I where to look for a runaway girl.”

“But you know what she looks like.”

Clarie placed her cup back on the tray. “Really, I can’t. I have a child and a husband and—”

“Oh, husbands!” Séverine threw up her hands.

Clarie was shocked. She had never heard anyone use the word so dismissively. “My husband is a good man,” she said, feeling her face redden as she shrunk back into the chair. “He is working for the Labor Exchange, and he goes to meetings to get justice for Dreyfus.”
Things that Séverine certainly should appreciate and honor.

“My dear, it is not men I object to.” Séverine’s eyebrows arched expectantly, as if she was certain that Clarie, like all of Paris, knew that she had taken on many lovers. “It’s when they become
husbands
with all the laws and customs on their side. That’s when one has to learn how to deal with them and their presumption of authority.”

Clarie wrinkled her brow. “I don’t see how I can get involved any more than I have been.” I can’t search for a fugitive runaway, she thought, and I cannot join forces with a woman of such scandalous reputation. Yet at the same time, here she was enjoying that woman’s hospitality and asking her to save Maura Laurenzano.

“Really?” Séverine picked up her cup and took a drink, never taking her eyes off Clarie. They were no longer twinkling and friendly; they seemed to be piercing through Clarie’s mind, reading its confusion. “What I like about your husband already is you, that you are the kind of woman we are counting on to show what women can do. Teachers have always led the way. How can we forget that Louise Michel was a teacher before she became a revolutionary?”

“Red Louise,” famed, exiled Communard, the beloved heroine of socialists and anarchists alike. Clarie shook her head. “I’m not like that.”

“Perhaps because no one has suggested it to you,” Séverine said, placing her cup in its saucer.

“The violence. I could never sanction it.”

“Oh, my dear, you must know that most of the men and women who call themselves anarchists these days have rejected violence. And besides, I’m not saying we should foment revolution, I’m only suggesting that together we might find this lost girl.”

“Yes, I know,” Clarie whispered. This time instead of blushing for Bernard, she blushed for herself.
What terrible thing could happen?
The risk of hurting her reputation seemed a small thing compared to having seen Angela, a beautiful young woman, transformed into a pallidly green corpse. Or the fear that the same thing could happen to Maura. But Clarie didn’t like dealing with violence and murder. Or arguing with Bernard. She had to think. She got up from the chair. “I must go. I’m sorry. My son….”

“Of course.” Séverine also rose from her seat.

Clarie held out her hand, to say good-bye and thank her hostess. “Will you please let me know if you find out anything,” she asked, even as she feared that her cowardly reluctance to help forfeited her right to make any demands.

“Yes,” Séverine said, softening her demeanor. “As long as you promise me you’ll think about what I said. You’ve got some fight in you, I know it. Just like that girl, Maura.”

Like Maura?
Clarie had more than once had the same thought. But she was not about to reveal it. Not now. Not when opening her heart more could lead her to do something foolish.

Tail wagging, the little mutt followed Séverine and Clarie to the foyer, and the parrot, freed from human restraint, began to squawk. When the door closed behind her, Clarie sighed with relief. She’d done it. She’d gotten someone else involved and willing to help.

12

I
F
C
LARIE HAD ANY WORRIES
about how she was going to keep her visit to Séverine secret, they vanished as soon as Bernard walked in the door, for he was eager to convey his own news. After kissing Clarie and Jean-Luc, he asked them to guess who was coming to town.

“Your mother?” Clarie could not suppress a slight grimace. It was too early; she wasn’t prepared for the outings and the shopping.

“Noooo.”

“No?”

“David. David Singer. He sent a telegram to the Exchange asking us to join him for dinner Sunday evening at the Hôtel de l’Europe.”

“Tomorrow! How lovely.” Clarie was genuinely pleased, for Bernard, who had not developed any close friendships since his arrival in Paris, and for herself. “I don’t suppose Noémie and the children will be with him.”

“Unfortunately no. He’s coming for an important meeting about the Dreyfus case on Monday night. He wants me to go with him. But, of course, he also wants to see you and Luca.”

“Of course.” She jiggled Jean-Luc on her hip. “Uncle David. Won’t that be nice?” And nice it was to have a special occasion to take her mind off the Laurenzanos and the things she wasn’t telling her husband.

On Sunday afternoon, Clarie and Bernard, after consultations with Rose and Jean-Luc, decided that the evening dinner with David Singer offered the perfect occasion to put their Luca in short pants for the first time. “You’ll be a big boy, and Uncle David will be so proud of you,” Clarie said as she knelt down and gave her son a hug.

“Maman!” Jean-Luc objected.

She was pressing too hard, because it was so hard to let go. The next thing you knew, they would be cutting his curls, and he really would be a boy. No longer a baby. She looked up at Bernard, who smiled down at them from his chair. He reached over and clasped Clarie’s shoulder. “Your eyes are so beautiful when they have tears in them, but there’s no need to be sad.”

“Yes, it’s silly,” she said as she got to her feet.
And foolish.
At moments like these, she felt there was no reason in the world to care about anything except her little family. She gave Bernard’s hand a tug before going to get Luca’s short pants. Tonight after dinner, after putting Luca to bed, she resolved to tell Bernard that she had met the notorious Séverine and assure him that nothing more would come of it.

As it turned out, their dinner with David Singer inspired a very different kind of resolve. It began splendidly. As always, David was impeccably dressed, so much so that Clarie half-expected that some day he would walk in swinging a silver-knobbed cane to complete the image of almost dandified fashionableness. His frock coat, vest, trousers and top hat were all of a matching luxurious ash-gray. His silk ebony cravat drooped slightly down over his immaculately white shirt, while his equally black, waxed mustache curved up, forming two sharp points on his clean-shaven face. Yet despite the elegance of his appearance and of the restaurant he had chosen, his first reaction was to grab Jean-Luc from Bernard’s arms and swing him in the air.

“Such a handsome lad you are,” he kept saying.

Watching, Clarie almost laughed with pleasure. It was David’s heartfelt joy in children and absolute devotion to family that gave her such deep affection for a man who could easily seem excessively formal. And, of course, there was his loyalty to her and Bernard.

Once he relinquished Jean-Luc to his father, David kissed Clarie on both cheeks, tickling her with his stiff mustache, before telling her how beautiful and elegant she looked. Then he led them to a reserved table in an alcove of the vast restaurant and announced that he had ordered dinner. “I hope you don’t mind, but I know you have to get the little one home, and we have so much to catch up on,” he said as he pulled out a chair for Clarie. Of course she didn’t mind. He had arranged for Clarie to sit beside Jean-Luc, while he and Bernard sat across from them on the other side of the square table. “I want to drink both of you in with my eyes all evening,” he explained to her.

Clarie blushed, knowing that her worn crimson silk dress was far from elegant. She knew, too, that David’s flattery came from a reflex she always found a bit discomfiting, his need to demonstrate, even in the most intimate circles, that he was a well brought-up man of means. She presumed, or at least Bernard had explained, that part of this need derived from being an Israelite, always having to prove himself to others. The meal was yet another aspect of this. As she worked her way through the fish, the beef and the cheeses served by over-solicitous tuxedoed waiters, Clarie found herself wishing that David hadn’t gone to such expense and could be more relaxed. This is why she was at first relieved when the wine, ordered particularly to go with each course, began to have an effect on him.

While the men were drinking their brandy and Clarie was trying to get Jean-Luc to eat his chocolate ice cream without smearing his new outfit, she heard David declare, in a voice that rose ever so slightly above the polite murmur of the restaurant, “I tell you, this is going to be the cause of our time.”

For an instant, the chiming of crystal and the sound of silver on plates stopped at the tables near them. David closed his eyes, bit down on his lower lip, and waited. When the murmurs resumed again, he added, “Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” Bernard said mildly, “but I don’t know how you are going to get the working man involved. For him, it’s a battle among two factions of the bourgeoisie.”

“That’s short-sighted. Justice for one is justice for all.”

Clarie reached for a napkin. If the chocolate got on Jean-Luc’s little blue shirt, she and Rose would have a devil of a time getting it out.

“Yes, but they have their priorities. Shorter hours. Decent wages.”

Jean-Luc’s legs began to wave petulantly: “More, more.”

“Just a little more. We don’t want to get a tummy-ache. Let me give it to you,” Clarie said as she picked up the spoon.

“Can’t you educate them, as a man of law?” This was David. The two of them were going on and on as if they were at some grand hostess’s formal dinner and had just removed themselves to the library with all the other men to drink brandy and smoke cigars.

“
They
are educating
me
.”

How often had she heard Bernard tell her this. The workers educating him, him educating the workers. Well, she thought, as she carefully measured out an unspillable bit of ice cream, at least neither of them smokes cigars.

“Ah, Maître Martin, still much too modest,” exclaimed David, as he reached over to slap Bernard on the back.

Just then, Jean-Luc bubbled some of the ice cream out of his lips.

Oh, husbands!
As soon as Clarie thought those words, she felt better. She even felt like laughing as she wiped Jean-Luc’s mouth and put him on her lap. What would Emilie think when she told her about her encounter with Séverine? Oh, husbands, indeed. Fortunately, the discussion was reaching its grand conclusion. She whispered in Jean-Luc’s ear that they would be going soon.

“Yes,” by now David was speaking almost in a hissing whisper, “but the defense of one man, a man of a despised race, gets to the heart of what the Republic should be. Do we want it to be only the bulwark of the Army and the Church, or does it stand for every man?”

And women
, Clarie thought as she bounced Jean-Luc on her knee.
Does the Republic stand for women?

Bernard lifted his glass and clinked against the one that David was holding aloft. “Let’s agree. Both struggles are important. I’ll do what I can.”

“And women?” The words slipped out.

“Do you mean,” said David, turning his attention to Clarie, “are any women involved in fighting for Dreyfus? Certainly his wife has written letters pleading for his release,” David said in a matter-of-fact way, as if this matter of fact was exactly as it should be.

“To men, she wrote letters pleading to men, like a good wife,” Clarie blurted out before she realized that the wine had also had its effect on her. She hadn’t really been thinking about Dreyfus at all. She had been thinking of exploited women, beaten women, lost girls,
that cause.