Dream Paris (31 page)

“We won’t be on this for long. The Pierrots will slow down. They don’t like this end of the street. The
Banca di Primavera
has very little purchase here.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Revolution owns this end…”

He pressed down a pedal and the coffee van leapt forwards. As we drove, details seemed to fill in around us, like the slow fade up of scenery at the beginning of a movie. To the sides I made out shop windows filled with regulation clothing,
boulangeries
selling regulation bread, bookshops selling regulation books, all of them closed for the night.

“How long is this street, Mr Monagan?”

“No one knows, Miss Anna. The shops become more expensive the further you travel down it. How high can prices go?”

As we travelled down the street the shop fronts began to change. The windows became wider, the produce they displayed more colourful. Again I found my eye being drawn to the point of infinity were the two sides of the street converged. I forced myself to look to the side.

“This is starting to look quite expensive,” I said.

“Oh yes. We’re already at 55% cocoa solids,” said Mr Monagan, seriously. “We’ll want to get off this road before it hits 95%.”

“What are you talking about?”

“In Dream Paris the level of cocoa solids in chocolate is an indicator of the declining influence of the Revolution. It’s a measure of the disposable wealth of the area. People will refuse to eat chocolate with an insufficient level of cocoa commensurate with their social standing.”

“It’s a bit like that in London, to be honest,” I said.

The road grew wider. Now the shopfronts were brightly lit, white light spilling into the dark night. Shop assistants stood by increasingly sparse displays. Hundreds of empty square feet, and in the middle of it all, a single suit hung on a dummy, or a single bag, or a single piece of chocolate.

“That said 91% cocoa,” said Francis.

“Good. The turning won’t be long…”

“That shop sells nothing but combs,” said Francis.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Mr Monagan. “There’s a place further down the road that has nothing in it but a single grain of rice. The shop floor is almost a mile wide.”

“They’re taking the piss,” said Francis.

“Oh, no, Mr Francis!” Mr Monagan seemed truly shocked. “Not down here! They would never
take
anything. The whole point about coming here is to pay through the nose in order to amplify class differences. You clearly know nothing about high-end shopping. Now, here we go…” He pulled the wheel to the left and sent us spinning down a side alley. The contrast between the bright light of the street and the sudden darkness left me blinking, great wobbly ghosts of shapes filling my vision.

“Can you see, Mr Monagan?”

“No. Please be quiet, Anna. There are no lights here and I’m navigating by echo.”

“He’s what?” said Francis.

“He’s using the horns on the front of the car,” I said. “It might help if you just shut your eyes.” I glanced to the side. “Mr Monagan certainly seems to think so.”

THE CHILDREN OF THE RÉVOLUTION

“W
E’VE LOST THEM,
” said Mr Monagan.

We were driving down a dimly-lit back street. The swaddled pillar of yet another Eiffel Tower sloped up at 45 degrees ahead of us, an angled bridge hanging in the air between the walls of two buildings. We passed slowly beneath it.

“For the moment, at least,” I murmured. I looked at Francis. He wasn’t complaining, but I could tell that he was having trouble hanging on. Ghostly wire still played out behind him and it seemed for a moment as if his life was ebbing with it.

“Is it much further?” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need a rest.”

“Not much further,” said Mr Monagan. “We’re heading for the
Quartier Latin
. The Pierrots can’t go there.”

“Why not?” asked Francis.

“Because the
Banca di Primavera
has no assets there. Right from the beginning, the
Révolution
has refused to deal with the any of the
Bancas
.”

Mr Monagan drove his little coffee van through increasingly narrow streets made narrower still by the cars crammed at the edges of the pavements. The streets were dark and olive; the walls, however, were alive with colour: graffiti and advertising posters filled the available space. The tall, narrow trees were hung with glowing fruit.

“Why the burning fruit?” asked Francis.

“A reminder, Mr Francis.” He turned a corner. “Here we are. The Latin Quarter. There used to be a big school here. They burned it down.”

“A big school?” I said. “You mean the Sorbonne?”

“I think that was the name.”

“Who burned it down?”

“The Committee for Public Safety. The students and teachers manned the barricades to defend it, but to no effect. They were all killed, as has happened so many times before in Paris.”

“But why did they destroy a school?”

“Because education is a dangerous thing,” said Mr Monagan. “Especially in a place like Dream Paris. The mathematicians would not stop investigating. They threatened to tear the world apart!”

“But it was a school!”

“I know. One of the priorities of the revolutionaries is education. They will rebuild the schools and the university.”

“I thought you said the revolutionaries burned it down?”

“No, the Committee for Public Safety burned it down. The Committee for Public Safety aren’t revolutionaries any longer. They’ve been in power too long, they’ve become what they fought against! The true revolutionaries are fighting for freedom.”

And for education,
I thought. I liked the sound of them already.

The narrow street opened up into a large and handsomely proportioned square. Save for the road we’d driven down, there were no other exits.

“Should be a great place to defend,” I said.

“Or to be trapped in,” said Francis.

There was a railed garden at the centre of the square, a little children’s playground at one corner. Plane trees grew from round beds just outside the garden, their trunks barely seen through the scooters jammed around them. Shadows filled the narrow doorways, the windows of the buildings were shuttered for the night.

There was a florist, a
boulangerie
… and on the corner of the square, a wonderfully French garage. One of those little garages they manage to squeeze into the smallest spaces, just room to park a car inside diagonally. Through the glass doors I could see a little yellow Lemoen, bonnet and boot touching the walls. There was a bookshop. Over the door were painted the words:
Au Charlotte: Meilleur Librairie
.

“Look,” said Francis, pointing. I’d already seen it: a little café, painted in blue. The street lights picked up its name, lettered in gold.

Café de la Révolution.

I shivered as I heard music playing inside, the golden thread of a trumpet solo, winding through the night, the silver sheets of chords pumped out by an accordion. We passed a man pissing against a wall, yellow steam rising into the night.

“What’s the date today?” I asked.

“Nivôse 21st,” said Mr Monagan. “Hold on. It’s after midnight…”

I knew it. Like it said on the fortune.

Nivôse 22nd. You are sitting in the
Café de la Révolution.

Mr Monagan spotted a gap in the crowd of parked cars and he steered the coffee van into it, gave the steering wheel an affectionate rub as he cut the engine.

Francis climbed down from the van with some difficulty. He couldn’t move his hands properly.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Here we are! My flat is above Mme Joubert’s shop!” Mr Monagan sounded so proud.

He turned a key in the lock of an anonymous grey door to one side of a bow window, through which rows of striped lollipops and bonbons seemed to glow with their own internal light. The colours of the sweets lit up the shop’s interior with slowly moving fluorescent stripes like a tigers’ disco. Mr Monagan ushered us through the door and up the narrow stairs beyond.

“Are you sure the Pierrots can’t follow us here?” I said to Mr Monagan.

“Positive. They cannot pass the
Rue des Moulins
. Now here we are!” You could hear the pride in his voice. “Welcome to my flat!”

“It’s very nice,” said Francis.

“Very nice,” I agreed.

The flat was tiny. A miniscule kitchen/lounge with two doors leading from it. A little sink, a hotplate, shelves filled with packets of coffee, a counter laid out with neat lines of glasses filled with pale brown liquid. There were pictures of Dream London on the walls, there were little tourist ornaments of Tower Bridge and Big Ben.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Sleep,” said Francis. “We need sleep.”

“Oh, Mr Francis! I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking! Of course! You must sleep!”

He hurried over to a little chest, brought out blankets, laid them on the floor.

“We can talk in the morning.”

I wasn’t listening.

Today was Nivôse 22nd. I was going to a meeting in the
Café de la Révolution
. And tomorrow, I was going to meet my mother.

I
AWOKE TO
the smell of coffee, but only just.

Mr Monagan was kneeling before me, a little white cup and saucer in his hand.

“Here you are, Miss Anna!”

I sat up, took the coffee, sipped it. He smiled hopefully.

“Very… subtle.”

He beamed with delight.

“It is, isn’t it? Thank you! I knew you would appreciate what I was trying to do, Miss Anna! And what do you think, Mr Francis?”

“Delicious, Mr Monagan.”

Francis was already up. He’d changed his trousers but not his jacket. I realised why.

“You slept in your backpack.”

“I don’t seem to be able to take it off.”

We looked at each other, not knowing what to say.

He was standing by the window. I joined him and looked out into the morning.

“What can you see?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just an alley and the building opposite.”

“Is that good?”

“I don’t know. They know where
we
are. I’d be happier if I knew where
they
were.”

“Madame Joubert should be here shortly,” said Mr Monagan.

“Madame Joubert?”

“The leader of the
Résistance
.”

“Resistance to what?” muttered Francis. “Tell me, Mister Monagan, how did you find us again?”

“I told you, I followed the wire.”

“But how did you know about us?”

“Everyone knows about you, Mister Francis. Everyone knows you are here to help Miss Anna find her mother.”

M
R
M
ONAGAN HAD
clothes for us to change into. Of course he did. The meal ticket was still working. A plain grey dress for me, Francis had already pulled on the trousers provided. I changed with difficulty in the tiny bathroom, and returned to the main room just as someone knocked on the door.

“Madame Joubert!” declared Mr Monagan.

“
Bonjour
, Anna.
Bonjour
, Francis.”

Madame Joubert was a woman completely in control, a woman of iron self-discipline. Her long grey hair was pinned up in an elaborate chignon, her slim figure suggested so many meals half-eaten, so many courses where she had taken one mouthful and pushed away her plate. This was a woman with an air of command, a woman with no doubts, a woman who I’d seen last night push a knife into the forehead of a veal calf without any qualms. I turned to Mr Monagan.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

“We had to see if you were serious,” said Madame Joubert. “We had to see if you were one of us. Now, shall we have breakfast?

O
UTSIDE, THE
P
LACE
de la Révolution
had woken up and was ready for business. A market had set up in the centre of the square: stalls selling trousers just like the ones Francis wore, fruit and vegetables, baby clothes, shoes and cheap jewellery. There were flowers set out in pots on the floor, flowers in bunches on tables, flowers in big vases. There were chickens – raw and stationary, cooked and rotating – and big pans of potatoes frying. People milled around selecting bunches of green and yellow beans; workers’ clothes, party clothes, refugee clothes and kids’ clothes; cheeses whole, sliced and inflated;
pains speciaux
and
normales
; eggs; insects live, stunned and pre-cooked; knives, forks, spoons and crustacean dissectors; pork and mosasaur charcuterie; bolts (of cloth, of lightning, and just plain nuts and bolts); white stacks of brains arranged in order of size from ant through cauliflower up to elephant; fresh fish, pickled fish, dried fish, herbed fish and inside-out fish; yellow, white, brown, spotted and floating mushrooms and soap.

Around the edge of the square the shops had come to life. The florist had opened wide the wooden doors at the front of her shop and was arranging a display of flowers in jars. A woman I could only suppose, given the sign above her shop, was Charlotte was setting out books on a table. The garage was open, and a man in blue overalls was climbing beneath the little yellow car inside. The shutters of the
Café de la Révolution
had been thrown open. Blue tables had been set up outside, a few of them occupied by men in blue and grey clothes, drinking their
petit noirs
and smoking.