The House of Special Purpose (44 page)

‘It’s difficult for everyone,’ I said quietly. ‘But you could have always come to us if you needed help, you know that, don’t you?’ It was wrong of me to say this. The truth was that if Leo or Sophie had asked Zoya or me for assistance, we would not have been in a position to offer any. Suggesting otherwise was an arrogance that was unworthy of me. Zoya knew as much and glanced in my direction, frowning a little, and I bowed my head, embarrassed by my bravado.

‘It’s kind of you to say that, Georgy,’ said Sophie, who most likely knew very well that our financial position mirrored their own almost exactly. ‘But we hadn’t quite got to the point where we needed to rely on the charity of our friends.’

‘Leo,’ said Zoya softly, reaching across and placing her hand flat on Sophie’s own hand, which had begun to tremble slightly even as we sat there. ‘Tell us about Leo.’

‘There were more people at Sacré-Coeur than he might have
expected,’ she continued. ‘Quite a few of the artists had set up their easels and everyone was trying to persuade a tourist into sitting for them. There was an old lady sitting on the grass, feeding the birds—’

‘In this weather?’ I asked, surprised. ‘She would freeze to death.’

‘You know how resilient these old crones are,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘They sit there, summer and winter, rain or shine. They don’t care about the weather.’

It was true. I had observed on more than one occasion the number of elderly Parisians who spent their mornings and afternoons sitting along the grassy banks in front of the Basilica, scattering stale bread for the birds to eat. It was as if they believed that without their help, the avian world would face extinction. On one occasion not three weeks before, I had watched a man of perhaps eighty years of age, a wizened old creature whose face was a patchwork of lines and wrinkles and creases, sitting with his arms outstretched while a group of birds settled upon him. I sat there, staring at him for almost an hour, and during all that time he remained utterly motionless; had his arms not been extended as they were, I would have taken him for a corpse.

‘Another artist,’ continued Sophie, ‘somebody new to Paris, someone Leo had never met before, arrived and decided that he wanted to position himself exactly where this old woman was seated. He asked her to move; she said no. He told her he wanted to paint there; she told him to go and soak his head. There were harsh words, I think, and then this man reached down and attempted to lift the woman from her rightful place, dragging her to her feet, ignoring her cries of protest.’

‘Where was he from?’ asked Zoya, and I looked at her, surprised by the question. I suspect she was hoping that he did not hail from our own country.

‘Spain, Leo thinks,’ she replied. ‘Or Portugal, perhaps. Anyway, he saw this sacrilege taking place and you know what Leo is like, he cannot bear to witness such a lack of courtesy.’

It was true. Leo was notorious for tipping his cap at elderly women on the street, charming them with his wide smile and friendly airs. He held out seats for them at cafés and assisted them with their bags when they were walking in the same direction as he was. He saw himself as a representative of the ancient order of chivalry, one of the last men in 1920s Paris who subscribed to that antique society.

’He went over and grabbed the Spaniard, twisting him around and remonstrating with him for his treatment of the woman. A fight broke out, of course. There was pushing and shoving and name-calling – who knows what level of childishness. And they were very loud. Leo was shouting at the top of his voice, calling his opponent every name that he could think of, and from what I am told, the Spaniard gave as good as he got. Things were about to turn even nastier when they were interrupted by a gendarme, who separated them, an action which caused Leo to grow even angrier.

He accused the young policeman of siding with a foreigner against one of his own countrymen and a dispute broke out over that remark. And you know what he’s like when he’s confronted by authority. I daresay he lashed out, started spouting his opinions about
les gardiens de la paix
, and before anyone could take control of the situation, Leo had punched both the Spaniard in the nose and the gendarme in the face, one after the other.’

‘Good God,’ I said, trying to imagine his clenched fist smashing into the snout of one man and then pulling back, preparing to strike the other. Leo was a strong fellow; I would not have wanted to be the recipient of either of those blows.

‘Of course, after he did that,’ said Sophie, ‘the gendarme had no choice but to arrest him, but Leo tried to get away from him, perhaps to make a run for it, by pushing him to one side. Unfortunately, the young policeman slipped as he was pushed and lost his footing on the steps. A moment later he had tumbled down fifteen, twenty steps to the next break in the staircase, and
he landed heavily, cracking his skull against the stone. By the time Leo ran down to assist him, his eyes were already focussed on the heavens. He was dead.’

We sat in silence and I looked across at Zoya, whose face was pale, her jaw set tightly as if she was afraid of how she might react to this if she allowed her emotions to be displayed. Any thought of violence, of death, of the moment when a life came to its end was enough to disturb her emotions and unsettle her, to drag the terrible memories back to the forefront of her mind. Neither of us spoke. Instead we waited for Sophie, who appeared more calm now that she was laying out the story for us, to continue.

‘He tried to run away,’ she said finally. ‘And of course that only made things worse. He got quite far, too, I think. He ran along the Rue de la Bonne and across into St Vincent, then turned back on himself, heading towards the St Pierre de Montmartre—’

I drew a breath at this; my first home in Paris had been there, and the flat that Zoya and I had shared since our wedding was on the Rue Cortot, not far from the St Pierre; I wondered whether Leo had been hoping to find a safe haven with us.

‘—but by then there were six, perhaps seven gendarmes in pursuit of him, whistles blowing on every street, and they tackled him down, knocking him off his feet and sending him to the ground. Oh, Zoya,’ she cried, reaching out to her friend. ‘They beat him badly, too. One of his eyes is sealed shut and his cheek is almost purple with bruising. You would hardly recognize him if you saw him. They say it was necessary to restrain him, but it can’t have been.’

‘It was a terrible accident,’ said Zoya firmly. ‘Surely they can recognize that? And over something so trivial, too. The Spaniard, he was as much to blame.’

‘They don’t see it like that,’ Sophie said, shaking her head as the tears began again, a great depth of sobbing emerging from her very heart, her previously stilled emotions vanquished at last by the realization of what had taken place. ‘They see it as murder. He is to stand trial for it. He could be jailed for years – for his entire
life, perhaps. Certainly his youth will be gone if he is ever released. And I cannot live without him, do you see that?’ she added, raising her voice hysterically. ‘I will not live without him.’

I could see the café owner looking at us suspiciously, hoping that we would leave soon. He cleared his throat audibly and I nodded at him, threw a few francs on the table and stood up.

Zoya and I took Sophie back to our flat, where we gave her two large draughts of brandy and sent her to our bedroom to rest. She went without protest and fell asleep quickly, although we could hear her tossing restlessly in the bed.

‘He can’t go to jail,’ said Zoya, when there were just the two of us together again. We were sitting at our small kitchen table, trying to think of a way to help them both. ‘It’s unthinkable. Surely there must be some way to save him?’

I nodded, but said nothing. I was concerned for Leo, of course I was, but it was not the prospect of his being sent to jail that worried me. It was something worse than that. He was responsible for the death of an officer of the French police force, after all. Accident or not, such matters were not taken lightly. The punishment could be more severe than either my wife or Leo’s were currently willing to consider.

The trial of Leo Raymer began three weeks later, in the second week of December, and lasted a mere thirty-six hours. It began on a Tuesday morning and by Wednesday lunchtime the jury had returned their verdict.

Sophie had stayed in our apartment for a few days after the incident took place, but she went home after that, saying that it was pointless to sleep on our couch and be under our feet every evening when she had a perfectly good, if lonely, bed not four streets away. We allowed her to leave with minimal protest, but spent every evening with her nevertheless, either in her flat or ours, or, if we could afford it, in one of the cafés that were dotted around the nearby streets.

Initially, she appeared to be close to hysteria about the sequence of events which had taken place; then she grew stronger and more optimistic, determined to do everything she could to secure Leo’s release. Soon after that, she grew depressed, and then angry at her boyfriend for causing all of this trouble in the first place. By the time the trial began, she was exhausted by her emotions, and had grown dark-eyed from lack of sleep. I became concerned as to how she would react if the trial did not have a happy resolution.

I begged Monsieur Ferré for a day off on the Tuesday that the trial began and was unfortunate in that I appeared to have caught him at a bad moment, for he threw his pen down on the table, a splash of ink bouncing in my direction that caused me to jump back, and stared at me, breathing heavily through his nose.

‘A day off during the week, Jachmenev?’ he asked me. ‘
Another
day off? I thought that we had reached an understanding, you and I.’

‘We have, sir,’ I replied, not expecting him to react so violently to my simple request. I had been a model employee since my reprimand and thought that he would happily allow me to be absent from work for a single day. ‘I’m sorry to ask for it, only—’

’Your wife must realize that the world does not—’

‘This is not about my wife, Monsieur Ferré,’ I said quickly, growing angry that he would have the audacity to criticize Zoya. ‘This has nothing to do with what happened all those months ago. I think I told you about my friend? Monsieur Raymer?’

‘Ah, the murderer,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘Yes, I remember. And of course I’ve read about the case in the papers.’

‘Leo is no murderer,’ I replied. ‘It was a terrible accident.’

‘In which a man died.’

‘Just so.’

‘And not just a man, but a man whose responsibility it was to protect the citizenry. Your friend will find it difficult to secure his release, I imagine. Popular opinion is against it.’

I nodded and tried to control my emotions; he was only repeating what I already knew. ‘May I take the day off or not?’ I asked, looking up and fixing my gaze to his, holding it there for as long as I dared, until finally he broke away and threw his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender.

‘Fine, fine,’ he said. ‘You may take one day off. Unpaid, of course. And if there are reporters at the courthouse, as there will no doubt be, do not tell them that you work in this establishment. I don’t want my bookshop associated with such a sordid business.’

I agreed to his terms, and on the morning that the trial began accompanied Zoya and Sophie to the courthouse, where we took our seats in the gallery, aware that every eye was turned in our direction. I could tell that it made Zoya uncomfortable and I took her hand in mine, squeezing it twice for luck.

‘I don’t like all this attention,’ she said quietly. ‘A reporter asked me on the way in to identify myself.’

‘You’re not obliged to tell them anything,’ I replied. ‘Neither of us is. And remember, they’re really not interested in us at all. It’s Sophie they want.’

I felt callous making such a remark, but it was the truth, and I wanted to reassure my wife that we were safe. Perhaps if she believed it, then I would believe it too.

The courtroom was full of interested spectators and it was not long before there was an audible intake of breath around the pews, as a door opened and Leo was led in, surrounded by several gendarmes. He scanned the room quickly in search of us, and when he found us, he offered a brave smile which I was certain masked the anxiety he felt inside. He looked more pale and thin than the last time I had seen him – the night before the incident, when we had sat in a bar together, just the two of us, drinking too much red wine; the night he had told me that he planned to ask Sophie to marry him on Christmas Day, a fact that she was still unaware of – but he held himself bravely, looking straight ahead
when the charge was read and answering in a clear voice when he asserted his plea of ‘not guilty’.

The morning was filled with a series of tedious legal discussions between the judge, the prosecutor and the court-appointed lawyer who was representing our friend. In the late afternoon, however, it grew more interesting as several witnesses were called to the stand, including the elderly woman whom the Spaniard had tried to remove from her place. She sang the praises of Leo, of course, and blamed the gendarme for the accident – as well as the Spaniard himself, who was unnecessarily harsh in his condemnation of Leo, perhaps on account of his wounded ego. A few others made an appearance, men and women who had been on the steps of Sacré-Coeur at the time of the incident and had given their names to the investigators. A lady who had been only inches from the dead man when he fell. The doctor who had first examined him. The coroner.

‘It went well, don’t you think?’ Sophie asked me that night and I nodded my head, believing there was nothing to be lost with this supportive lie.

‘Some of the testimony was helpful,’ I admitted, stopping short of adding that most of it portrayed Leo as being impetuous and bullying in the way that he had behaved, his impulsive conduct leading to the death of an honest and innocent young man.

‘It will all go well tomorrow,’ said Zoya, hugging her as we parted that night. ‘I am sure of it.’

We fought later, the first time that Zoya and I had ever raised our voices to each other. Although I had every intention of going to the courthouse, I made the mistake of mentioning that Monsieur Ferré would likely be very angry with me for taking a second day away from the bookshop, and she misinterpreted my concern for our future as selfishness and a lack of consideration for our friends, a charge that upset and wounded me.