Seen and Not Heard (9 page)

He stood in the middle of the almost empty sidewalk, staring down at the headlines, and his tense shoulders relaxed. More bombings, he read. More terrorists infiltrating the city. Animals, he thought contemptuously, folding the paper. And then he grew very still, as his reluctant eyes caught the weather forecast up by the masthead. Clear and cold tonight, it read. Chance of rain by Friday.

And once more the darkness closed in.

He liked watching the children. Even more, he liked having them watch him. He’d been doing it more often recently, putting on whiteface and his baggy clothes, leaving the tiny hotel room and showing up in some of the small parks that dotted Paris, the parks where the children played. He liked them much better than the parks where old people congregated. The old ones never paid him proper attention.

The children were different. They would flock around him like pigeons around a bag of peanuts, and he would string them along, play them, tease and entice them. Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, he could lead them down a narrow path to the sea, and they would go willingly, happily.

But not yet. He had other things to do first, a covenant to keep. Later he would turn to the children.

Claire wasn’t sure why she’d come back to the old people’s park. She’d picked a lousy day for it—after six days
of sunshine the sky was dark and overcast, threatening rain. She should have come back several days ago, after she’d gone to the U.S. embassy. But then, several days ago she hadn’t been so lonely, she’d been riding a high of complete relief. Several days ago she hadn’t had such a frustrating, confusing conversation with Marc on the telephone with the best long-distance connection she’d heard since she moved to France.

She almost wished there’d been more static on the line. He’d been brief, almost monosyllabic, and for the first time she realized how little he usually spoke. He communicated more with his mobile face and expressive body than with words, and over the telephone it left something to be desired. His long silences left Claire feeling uneasy, oddly guilty, and inane attempts to fill that silence with breathless chatter only increased her disquiet.

He’d had nothing to say about the current tour, ignoring her when she’d asked where he was. He had no desire to speak with Nicole, who clearly had no desire to speak to him, and he had nothing to say to her. It was an odd, meaningless conversation, made even worse by his final words.

“Don’t worry, darling,” he murmured with some of his usual sweetness. “When you least expect it I’ll be back.”

She’d had nightmares that night, with Marc looming over her, a dark, silent shadow, tracking her every movement, never saying a word. Nicole was there, equally silent, making no noise but to scream whenever Marc grew too close. They were running, running through a dark forest, with fire all around them, and the fire turned into a score of funeral pyres, and at the center of each conflagration was an old woman, her mouth open in a silent scream.

Someone was standing at the edge of the forest. As Claire ran she dragged Nicole behind her, all the time knowing that Marc’s shadow was following her, looming over her like a bird of prey. The man ahead of her was Marc, the other Marc, gentle, loving, protecting her from the hideous mistakes of her past. She reached him, and it was the American
she’d met in the park, smiling at her, a coffee ice cream cone in one hand. In the other, he held a gleaming knife to plunge into her heart, and once more he was Marc, and he was going to kill her.

Claire sat bolt upright in bed. The room was dark, the curtained windows letting in only a sliver of moonlight. Her body was covered with sweat, her hands were trembling, and panic still beat against her eyelids. She reached for the phone, then drew her hand back. Whom could she call?

It had been almost dawn before she slept again, and when she finally awakened, Nicole was dressed and gone. Another layer of guilt, Claire thought as she made herself a pot of coffee. Nine years old was too young to arrange your own life. She’d make it up to her. She’d go to the confectioner’s shop and buy some of the apricot creams Nicole loved so much, even if she had to use sign language to get her meaning across.

She pulled on blue jeans and a heavy cotton sweater and slipped her narrow feet into the pair of Reeboks she’d found in a little store on the Champs Élysée, of all places.

She’d done better than expected. There was a new girl working at the confectioner’s shop, one who spoke English, and Claire was able to get Nicole everything from a packet of Gummi Bears to a chocolate Easter bunny. Trying to buy the love of a sour, unloving child, she chided herself. There was no better bet than chocolates for someone of Nicole’s insatiable sweet tooth. She’d tucked the package in her purse and headed on, feeling absurdly confident and optimistic.

The park benches were nearly empty when Claire reached the entrance. White posters were affixed to several trees, and she remembered Marc had told her they were going to post warnings. It certainly had an insalubrious effect on the elderly inhabitants of the park. Even on a warm, slightly overcast day the park was sparsely inhabited. The ice cream vendor stood by his cart, staring disconsolately at the pigeons.

Claire’s happy mood began to flag, and it took all her
determination to pull it back. She was going to get herself an ice cream cone and enjoy the day, she told herself, come hell or high water.

Maybe the ice cream vendor would respond to charades, Claire thought, walking down the winding pathway, her sneakered feet crunching agreeably on the gravel. He’d been friendly enough to the American—maybe he’d be patient enough with her, too. She’d been good at games as a child. Maybe, when Marc returned, she could have him teach her how to be a mime. She could go around Paris in whiteface and no one would ever know she couldn’t speak or understand a word of French.

She laughed aloud at the absurd idea. There was someone sitting on the park bench, engrossed in a newspaper, but the sound of her voice must have startled him, for he dropped the paper and looked up, directly into her eyes.

And then Claire knew why she’d walked blocks out of her way to get to a park that held no interest for her. She looked down into Thomas Jefferson Parkhurt’s eyes, smiling in pleasure and relief. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said, suddenly knowing it was true.

A range of emotions crossed his face. For a moment Claire thought she saw anger, disappointment, and regret. And then he grinned back, and the skin around his blue eyes crinkled, and he got to his feet, all shambling grace. “And I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, his voice that slow, pleasant drawl that she found so attractive. “For a while there I wasn’t sure if you were ever coming back.”

She shrugged. “I’m here,” she said simply.

“I know why, too.”

Claire ignored the shaft of guilt that spiked through her. “Why?”

“Coffee ice cream.”

She felt her shoulders relax. “There’s that,” she agreed.

“I’ll do the honors,” Tom said. “And then we can sit down over there on that bench and you can tell me what you’ve been doing since Sunday.”

She eyed him warily. “All right. Anything for coffee ice cream.”

“And you can tell me who that man was. Your husband?” Beneath the banter there was a thread of emotion, and Claire knew she hadn’t imagined the anger.

“Not my husband,” she said. “And if you want the story of my life you’ll have to get me two scoops.”

He looked down at her for a long, silent moment. He was very tall, Claire thought. She wasn’t usually attracted to tall men. No, cancel that thought, she ordered herself on a note of panic. She wasn’t attracted to Tom, either. He was just a compatriot, a stranger she could talk to, nothing more. She had no room for anyone but Marc. Marc made sure of that.

“Two scoops,” he agreed, and she knew suddenly that he wanted to kiss her. She should run. He didn’t want to offer her friendship. He wanted to give her something more, something she couldn’t accept. She watched him go, watched his broad shoulders, long back, the way his scruffy brown hair brushed the collar of his rough fisherman’s sweater. With a sigh she moved over to the park bench, sat down, and waited.

At four o’clock Yvon Alpert looked out the sixth-floor window of the ministry. The sky was a roiling, blackish gray, the sun had disappeared entirely, and wind was whipping through the bare trees. He looked down at his hands, square, strong hands that were now curved into fists.

Looking up again, he saw that the first fat drops had splattered against the windows, and the black hole in his heart expanded and grew until it devoured everything inside him.

He reached forward and picked up the phone, dialing from memory. “Jeanne,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically husky. “I have to cancel tonight. Something’s come up.” He listened mindlessly to her whining chatter for a moment. “No, it’s something I have to do,” he said. “I have to go see my grandmother.” He replaced the receiver very quietly, pushed back from his desk, and headed for the door.

No one said a word, no one tried to stop him. Yvon Alpert had worked there for seven years; he was a good,
conscientious, unimaginative man. The perfect bureaucrat. If he was walking out of the office in the middle of the day he must certainly have the best of all reasons.

Jeanne stared at the phone for a long, uneasy moment. Yvon hadn’t sounded like himself. He’d had moments like this recently, moments that unnerved her and made her wonder if she was right to plan a life with a man who’d seemed so dependable but was now becoming prey to moods. There was something wrong. He’d sounded different, as if he were lying to her, and Yvon never lied.

Then she realized what was wrong. Yvon had no grandmother. He’d grown up in an orphanage, and then with foster parents who’d been more businesslike than affectionate. His mother’s mother had died not long after placing Yvon in the Marie-le-Croix orphanage.

She called him back immediately, but Yvon had already left, though no one knew where he’d gone or how long he’d be away. Slamming down the phone, she did her best to squash down the sense of foreboding that washed over her. Jeanne’s grandmother had been a Gypsy, and she had the sight, or so she told people. And all her senses were warning her of very grave trouble.

She too walked out of her office without excuses. She reached the street and ran through the heavy rain to her car, holding her breath as her heart hammered inside her. She would drive straight to Yvon’s apartment and wait for him. Sooner or later he’d come back and explain to her what was going on.

But she knew, deep in her heart of hearts, that it was going to be later. Too late. Driving through the rain, she thought of the little house in the suburbs, the wedding dress her mother was making for her. She knew she would never wear it, that no one would ever wear it. It would turn yellow in a trunk in her mother’s attic, and when Jeanne did marry she’d wear a white suit, ignoring the existence of the lace-trimmed dress. And as she drove through the downpour, she cried.

It was getting darker. Claire scarcely noticed the deepening shadows as she sat with Tom on the narrow park bench. The ice cream vendor had packed up and left long ago; the few old people who had lingered despite the warnings had long since disappeared. They were alone in a cozy little world, the two of them caught up in discoveries and shared memories of separate lives, only dimly aware of the growing storm. Claire looked up, suddenly uneasy. The cloudy sky had darkened to an ominous black, the bare tree limbs trembled and shook like angry spiders’ legs, and last winter’s dead leaves scuttled up the pebbled pathways. A first, fat drop of rain splatted down on Claire’s upturned face, and she shivered.

Tom shifted, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “Just my luck,” he muttered gloomily. “You finally show up and it starts to rain. We’ve had almost six days of perfect weather and I’ve spent those six days on a park bench hoping you’d show up. Now when you do, it rains.”

“You’ve been here every day?” Claire didn’t know whether to be flattered or worried.

Tom shrugged, smiling ruefully. “What can I say? It’s Paris in the spring, and I’m an incurable romantic.”

“And I’m engaged.” The rain was coming down in
earnest now. Claire pulled her sweater up around her ears and stood up. “I should be getting back.”

He rose, towering over her, and his large hand caught her arm. “Don’t go yet. Let me buy you a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, anything. Take pity on a poor lonely fellow American.”

She looked up at him. She knew she shouldn’t. If she wanted to keep safe in her own little cocoon, shut away from pain and hurting, she would turn right around and head back to the apartment, shut and lock the doors, and count the days until Marc returned.

Even two days ago she would have done exactly that. But the sun had been out too long, Marc had been gone too long, and Claire was finally sick of cowering. “Okay,” she said softly, inevitably. And putting her chilled hand in his large, capable one, she raced through the steady downpour, out of the small, sad park.

His hands were sweating. His palms were damp, and as he tried to dry them on his trousers they left wet streaks. It didn’t matter, though—he was already soaked with rain. The marks of nervous sweat would scarcely be noticeable.

Yvon wondered what time it was. He didn’t bother to check the elegant gold watch Jeanne had given him, even though its presence on his wrist was like a second skin. He stood there in the doorway, huddled out of the rain, waiting.

He’d known exactly where he was going when he’d left work. As the rain started to fall a compulsion had come over him, a blind, mindless need that had sent him out into the rain-drenched streets, walking aimlessly until he’d ended up in this small, residential neighborhood in Beaubourg, not far from the Pompidou Centre.

On good days he would walk to work, and his path would take him by this old town house. He’d seen the woman before, watched her slow, stately grace as she walked her tiny little dog around the corner. On the sunny days it would amuse him to watch her patrician calm as she monitored her dog’s basic biological functions.