Poe shadow (10 page)

I ARRIVED AT
my first appointment in Paris by way of kidnapping.

In our American cities the stranger is left modestly to himself, with great cruelty and politeness; but in Paris a stranger has a constant sense of being shoved and directed by the citizens and officials; if you are lost, the Frenchman will run half a mile at great speed to point at your destination, and will accept no thanks. Perhaps kidnapping is the inevitable culmination of their aggressive kindness.

I made my voyage to Paris approximately a year and a half after I pulled that book out of the fire. My first shock upon arrival came at the railroad terminus, where screams of
commissionnaires
lure visitors to one or another hotel. I tried to avoid their outstretched hands.

I stopped where I met a man barking for the Hôtel Corneille, named after the great French playwright. I had read of the hotel in a novel of Balzac’s (for I had brought some books of his and the novelist George Sand’s for entertainment and study on my voyage) and it was reputed to be an establishment welcoming to those who indulge in the various branches of the humanities. I considered my own purposes as having a degree of literary character.

“You are for the Corneille, monsieur?”

At my assent he released a hoarse sigh, as if to thank heaven he could rest from shouting. “This way, if you please!” He brought me to his carriage, where he labored to secure my bags above, occasionally pausing to examine me with an air of exuberant happiness at having a New World visitor as a passenger.

“You have come on business, monsieur?”

I contemplated an answer. “I suppose not exactly. I am a lawyer back home, monsieur. But I have left my situation as of late. I am attending to a rather different type of affair—to say sooth, as I feel already I can hold your confidence, I am here to procure the help of someone who will attend to it.”

“Ah!” he replied, not listening to a word. “You are friendly with Cooper, then?”

“What?”

“Cooper!”

After we repeated the exchange, it became clear he meant the author James Fenimore Cooper. I’d discover that the French thought America quite too intimate for any two people of the country not to know each other, even were one a backwoodsman and the other a Wall Street speculator. The adventure novels of Cooper were inexplicably popular in even the finest circles of Paris (bring an American copy and you shall be deemed a regular hero!), and we were all presumed to live among those stories’ wild and noble Indians. I said I had not met Cooper.

“Well, the Corneille will fulfill every one of your needs, upon my honor! There are no wigwams there! Watch the step up, monsieur, and I’ll retrieve the rest of your bags from the porter.”

I had not misjudged my first choice of transportation in this city. The carriage was wider than the American kind and the interior fittings indeed very comfortable. It was the most enjoyable luxury I could imagine at that moment, to sink against the cushions of a carriage as we neared a well-appointed private chamber of my own. This ride, remember, had followed two weeks at sea, starting from the Baltimore harbor, stopping in Dover for a night before sailing again, and finally arriving in France, where I then began six hours on the train into Paris. Just the idea of sleeping in a
bed
enthralled me! I could not know I was about to be removed from my newfound comfort, and at the threat of a sword.

My tranquillity was jolted when the coach abruptly tilted at a sharp angle before coming to a jagged and rough stop. The
commissionnaire
cursed and stepped down from his box.

“Just a ditch!” he called to me with relief. “I thought a wheel had come loose! Then we’d be—”

From my window I could see the features of his face suddenly flatten as he fell into an overrespectful silence. This expression mingled with one of fear before he skulked away.

“Now see here, driver!” I shouted. “Monsieur, where are you going?” Leaning out the window, I observed a squat man, buttoned to the collar in a flowing great-coat of bright blue. He had a large mustache and an exquisitely sharpened beard. I thought to step down and ask the stranger if he had seen the path taken by the runaway
commissionnaire.
Instead, this man opened my door and climbed in with great suavity.

He was saying something in French, but I was too flustered to employ my improving knowledge of the language. My first thought was to slide myself out the other side; I shifted my position only to find, upon opening that door, the way blocked by another man in the same kind of single-breasted coat. He was pulling his coat back to reveal a saber falling perpendicularly from his shiny black belt. I felt mesmerized by the sight of the weapon glinting with sunlight. His hand casually found its hilt and tapped at it as he nodded to me.
“Allons donc!”

“Police!” I exclaimed, feeling half relieved and half frightened. “You men are from the police, monsieur?”

“Yes,” the one inside said, his hand reaching out. “Your passport now, if you please, monsieur?”

I complied and waited in confusion as he read it. “But who are you looking for, Officer?”

A brief smile. “You, monsieur.”

It was explained to me at a later time that the watchful eye of the Parisian police fell on any American entering their city alone who was a young man—and especially an unmarried young man—as potential “radicals” who had arrived with intent to overthrow the government. Considering that the government had been overthrown quite recently, when King Louis-Philippe was replaced three years earlier by a popular republican government, this imminent fear of radicalism seemed mysterious to one not well versed in the politics of France. Did they worry that the mobs, having gotten their legislature and duly elected president, and now bored of republicanism, would be instigated to riot to have their kings back again?

The police officers who had intercepted my coach merely explained that the prefect of the police proposed for me to call on him before beginning my stay in the city. Mesmerized and strangely captivated by the sabers and elegant uniforms, I followed willingly. A different carriage, with a faster span of horses, brought us directly to the Rue de Jerusalem, where the prefecture was located.

The prefect, a jovial and distracted man named Delacourt, sat beside me in his chamber as had his functionary in the carriage and performed the same ritual of reading my passport. It had been properly made up by the French emissary in Washington City, Monsieur Montor, who had also provided a letter attesting to my respectable character. But the prefect seemed to have little interest in any written proof of my harmless intentions.

Was I here on “business,” “touring,” or “educational”? I responded in the negative on all counts.

“If not these, then how have you come to be in Paris this summer?”

“You see, Monsieur Prefect, I am to meet a citizen of your city regarding an important affair back in the United States.”

“And,” he replied, hiding his interest with a casual smile, “who is that?”

When I told him, he became quite still, then exchanged a glance with the officer sitting across the prefect’s chambers.
“Who?”
the prefect then said, as though entirely moonstruck, after some moments had passed.

“Auguste Duponte,” I repeated. “You do know him then, Monsieur Prefect? I have communicated with him by mail over the last months—”

“Duponte? Duponte has written
you
?” the other police officer, a small and fat old man, interrupted gruffly.

“No, of course not, Officer Gunner,” said the prefect.

“No,” I agreed, though irritated by the queer presumption of the prefect. “I have written Duponte, but he has not written in return. That is why I have come. I am here to explain myself in his private ear before it is too late.”

“You shall have a hard time of
that,
” mumbled Gunner.

“He is not…he is alive?” I inquired.

I think the prefect replied, “Almost,” but he swallowed his word up whole and returned abruptly to his more jovial and freewheeling personality. (I had not noticed the reduction in his joviality, you see, until it was just then restored.) “Never mind this,” he said of my passport, handing it to his colleague to be stamped with an apparently meaningful series of hieroglyphics. “A tool of the next Inquisition, no?”

He abruptly dropped the subject of Duponte, welcomed me to Paris, and assured me that I could call upon him if I should ever need assistance during my stay. On my way out, several
sergents de ville
regarded me with hard glares of suspicion or dislike, which provoked my great sense of relief upon reaching the anonymity of the busy street.

That same afternoon, I paid Madame Fouché, proprietress of the Hôtel Corneille, for a full week’s stay, though in fact I anticipated a quicker end to my business.

I suppose there were signs, though, that I should have noted. For instance, the attitude of the concierge at the grand Paris mansion where I had addressed my letters to Duponte. This was my first stop the morning after arriving. When I inquired at the door, the concierge narrowed his eyes at me, shook his head, and spoke: “Duponte? Why would you want to see him?”

It did not seem inconceivable to me that the concierge for a person of this stature would dissuade casual callers. “I require his skills in a matter of moment,” I replied, at which a strange hissing sound emanated from the man and revealed itself as laughter as he informed me that Duponte no longer lived here, had left no further information, and that Columbus probably couldn’t find him now.

As I took my leave, I thought about the “Dupin” I had known well. I mean from Poe’s tales—that liaison who had opened the portal into Poe by convincing me the inexplicable must yet be understood. “My French hero” was Poe’s reference to the character in one of the letters he wrote to me. If only I had happened to inquire to Poe about the identity of the real Dupin; if only I had exhibited more curiosity—it would have saved me the last year and more that had been required to trace this singular man to Paris!

In his tales, Poe never physically described the character of Dupin. I realized this only after freshly reviewing this trio of particular tales of detection with that question in mind. Previously, if asked of this, I might have answered, as if talking to a perfect ass, “Of course Poe describes one of his most important characters, the character that
embodies
perfectly his writing, and in great detail, too!” But on the contrary, Dupin’s form, you see, is strikingly imparted—but only to the careful and estimable reader who enters the tale with his full heart.

I mention here as illustration a rather frothy short tale by Poe called “The Man That Was Used Up.” It features a celebrated army general whose sturdy physical appearance is widely admired. But the general has an unfortunate secret: each night he falls apart physically from his old war wounds and must have his body parts stitched back together by his Negro manservant before breakfast. I believe this was Poe’s shove at those lesser writers, mere blots in the deep shadows of his genius, who thought physical description of features the key to enlivening their characters. Likewise, it was from the untellable soul of C. Auguste Dupin’s character, not his choice of waistcoat, that he had long ago stepped into my consciousness.