Fata Morgana (18 page)

Picard turned toward the Prefecture, as Duval’s voice called after him: “There’s another ball tonight at Madame Valanne’s, Inspector! Will we meet there?”

“I’ve had enough of grand balls.”

“Nonsense, Inspector. Eat, drink, and be merry...”

The murmuring river completed the ancient phrase, whispering with the voice of his enemy—
Because tomorrow you die
—and again Picard felt himself on the edge of piercing the mirror’s secret. He wanted to shatter the jewel of morning, push through to nature’s crystalline depths, but he was mortally bound, was woven into the fabric of the sunrise in such a way that he could not escape. And yet he felt that his life depended on penetrating this veil, that he had to gain objectivity—on another star, on some distant point in space, somewhere—in order to outwit the magician who was out to kill him.

He crossed the Pont St. Michel, going toward the Prefecture, where facts prevailed, where the veils of thieves and swindlers were torn aside daily; the good solid walls gave him back his sense of solidarity. Here is my realm, here where I can touch, question, navigate with certainty and bring matters to their logical conclusion. I cannot hope to get behind the secret of the morning, cannot enter the mirror of a glistening river. Such things are for charlatans like Lazare, who use them to mystify others. Whoever enters the mirror is a fool, for he will surely lose his way there. A bit of incense, a turbaned Hindoo, and the doorway to folly is complete. But I am not taken in. This—he knocked on the door of the official records room—this is the only reality.

A sleepy-eyed night clerk admitted him. The records room was musty and stale with the smell of slowly decaying pages, shelf after shelf of them, bound in large leather cases. He scanned the rows, and selected the volume he wanted.

The cases were old, solved, unsolved, having one thing in common—all the participants, criminals and inspectors alike, were now dead. The traitor Chevalier de Rohan, the murderess Madame de Brinvilliers, the elderly musketeer de Creil, who uttered hunting cries in order to disrupt theatrical performances he disliked. Control of the lottery, inspection of the drains, a certain Venetian ambassador and a young actor he admired, their meetings, their quarrel, a cardinal observed entering a brothel where his stay is scrupulously timed; record of search made by Commissioner Chenon, August 23, 1785, by order of the King:

“At seven o’clock in the morning, accompanied by Police Inspector de Brugniéres, we went to the rue St. Claude de Marais, to a house called the Hôtel St. Claude, where, having mounted to the first floor and entered an apartment, we found the said Cagliostro in the bedchamber with his wife, Séraphine Feliciani, age twenty-eight.”

Cagliostro confined for stealing “the most beautiful diamond necklace in the world,” and eventually released, the case against him collapsing and his property returned— large diamond rings, two canes adorned with diamonds, a diamond garter, a ruby cane, diamond pendants and buckles, pearls, garnets, gold boxes, a Chinese inkwell ornamented with gold, gold teaspoons and scissors, and “divers papers.” An implicated young woman is branded by the outraged Crown—a fleur-de-lys burned in each of her shoulders.

Picard closed the file and walked down the long echoing hallway. Lazare has copied Cagliostro’s style. What worked before can work again. Except that tonight, Lazare, you are out of work for good.

* * *

He breakfasted near the Prefecture, eating slowly, reading the newspaper account of Count Cherubini’s ball. It was inaccurate, but the young reporter was undoubtedly dazzled by mirrors. As were we all.

Picard checked his pocket watch; the library would soon be opening. He left the café and walked slowly across the Pont des Arts, toward the Quarter. The smells from the bakery shops filled the streets. He passed his ramshackle house and walked on toward St. Germain, thinking of Lazare—a puny fellow, nothing to him at all. Crush his head in my bare hands.

At the rue Bonaparte he turned left, heading for St. Sulpice, which was now bathed in sunlight. The fountain at the center of the square was filled with leaves and rain water, and the sparkling water winked at him, its countless little mirrors promising secrets, if he would look more deeply, look more deeply, dear Inspector, and we will tell you all.

He hesitated at the edge of the fountain, tempted by the dazzling surface, but afraid of its allurement, for already he felt a strange tug inside him, as if there were a fisherman in the depths of the fountain, a fisherman whose mysterious hook had caught his life-force and was pulling on it. His body quivered, fighting the hook.
You’re undergoing Grand Bewitchment,
said his opponent’s wife softly. He wrenched away from the fountain’s edge and walked quietly across the square, toward the library, entered, inquired of the librarian for any material “on a man named Cagliostro.”

She returned with a single volume of letters and diary excerpts compiled by a Dutchman named Van Wamelen, who’d fallen under Cagliostro’s spell. The slim little book had been privately printed, done on fine paper and handsomely bound, a token of Van Wamelen’s devotion, “to the great master.”

Picard carried the book to a table by the window and began reading about the fabulous Grand Cophat of the Masonic Order, Lord of the Egyptian Rite, a sinister and clever imposter who, a hundred years ago, had lied and bluffed his way into the richest salons in Europe. Sorcerer, soothsayer, magician, prophet, gold maker, his rooms at the Hôtel St. Claude had attracted such notable Parisians as General de Labarthe; the General’s letters were filled with loyal sentiments toward Cagliostro: “No one’s hands are cleaner... Mademoiselle Augeard received an elixir from him which caused all her ills to disappear.”

Picard went slowly through the praises sung by the noble citizens who had adored Count Cagliostro. They’d all received the elixir of immortality, but were, nonetheless, now among the ranks of the glorious dead, Cagliostro included. Of course, there had sprung up a nitwitted story at the time of his death, that his body had never been seen by anyone but the Pope, who’d had him strangled. “And,” wrote Madame Hunziker, “his grave has in fact never been found.”

As for Madame Cagliostro, the Duke of Mantinot’s diary described her as “more beautiful than any woman I have ever seen. All of Paris draws its breath when she passes on the street...”

Picard turned the page and fell into a crevice, into a crack in reality’s glass, into the eyes and smile of Madame Cagliostro, whose face was reproduced upon the page. She was the living image of Renée Lazare.

With
the morning sun still on him, he sat in the Luxembourg Gardens, looking down toward the pony carts. The children were taking their rides around the park, dressed in their wool hats and mittens. Directly in front of him three other children were inventing an endless game with a wall, a piece of rope, and a sandpile below. The girl seemed to be the prize in a struggle between the two boys, but when she asserted herself too much she was shoved off the wall into the sand. Her tears did not last long; she enjoyed the game too much to remain hurt.

His own childhood had been spent in this park, and he understood its enchantments, knew that this low wall before him up which the children scrambled was the wall of a castle, or the Great Wall of China. One of the young boys now strode along the top, in high boots and a fleece-lined jacket. He was King, had conquered the sandpile, the girl, and the other boy, who was heavier and slower.

The girl begged to be hauled up to him by his rope, but he ignored her, staring out over the sprawling garden, his vast domain.

He is like Lazare; fast and arrogant. And I am like this other young lad, slow-moving and bear-like. The heavy boy is gentle with the girl, considerate of her needs. Ah, he loves her, of course.

Picard closed his eyes; Renée Lazare and Madame Cagliostro swam before him, two images that kept becoming one beautiful and incredible female.

Am I to believe that Lazare’s elixir of immortality works?

The cries of the young girl brought his eyes open. She’d been tied to a tree. The two boys danced around her, and she hung over the rope, moaning and begging for mercy, which only the heavy boy seemed willing to extend her. His companion in the high boots marched majestically around the captive, scorning her with his eyes.

Picard stood, not wishing to watch any more of the sacrifice, for it had too much the quality of memory, as if he were watching a scene from his own childhood. Though no photograph existed, no little etching of his youthful countenance preserved, he imagined it to be much like this heavyset melancholy boy before him, indeed the child seemed to be himself, forty years ago. I left a piece of my spirit in these gardens, and this lad has taken it, the slow tenderness of my heart.

The boy looked up at Picard, their eyes meeting, and Picard dismissed the exquisite sense that he was seeing himself, that he’d traveled back through time to watch himself. I’m tired, and the weary mind is close to the dreaming mind.

Nonetheless, he gave the fat boy a salute, which the boy answered with quick affection and a shy smile whose gentle radiance reinforced the feeling of time turned inside out, of
déjà vu,
that you and I are one, little bandit, that past, present, and future meet in the morning garden, for purposes known only to the genie.

He felt the boy’s eyes still on him as he turned and went along the path. I could tell him that his gentle heart will lead him into one beguilement after another, but he wouldn’t understand. His friend, the arrogant one in high boots, he understands. His heart is selfishly his own and will be all his life, and he’ll succeed, with politics, women, whatever he turns to.

But what does the genie mean to tell me? Has my heart fallen into some dangerous attraction once again? Is arrogant Lazare bound to succeed against me?

He left the park. He needed sleep. The bread girls were carrying their baskets toward the restaurants and cafés of St. Germain. He shuffled along; a bread girl walked ahead of him, not beautiful, but one of those women who, no matter what they wear, seem to be wearing bedclothes. He suppressed a desire to follow her the length of St. Germain, instead made his way through the streets surrounding the Collège de France, and turned onto St. Jean de Latran, stopping at a large house which smelled of every imaginable filth.

The steps of the wretched cloister were twisted in narrow loops, each landing illuminated by a small broken window. He climbed slowly up the stairs, past the doors of the raucous men and women who lived there—street performers mostly, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers. Their doors were open, their voices filling the halls. The door he sought, however, was tightly closed. He laid his knuckles on it lightly.

He waited, hearing nothing from within, but presently the door opened silently, and an intersection of blackness prevailed at the doorjamb. At belt level a smooth knife blade glistened and then folded itself backward soundlessly.

“Come in, Paul.” Albert, the gentle lean-boned thief, smiled and opened the door all the way.

Picard entered the thief’s nest, a single room in which there were only two objects—a pile of straw and a nightingale.

“I have to kill someone, before he kills me.”

Albert nodded slowly and sat down on the straw, rubbing his face, brushing off sleep. “Who is it?”

“Ric Lazare, the society fortune-teller.”

“Why is he after you?”

“I shadowed him and found too much.” Picard walked to the window, looked down toward the street. “Maybe he’s bluffing.”

“The last fellow who called Lazare’s bluff had an ice pick driven through his head.”

“Has he hired someone to kill you?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t afford to wait around and find out.”

“Is tonight convenient?”

“Yes. He doesn’t retire until very late.”

“That’s fine. I’ve got a little job to do first. Can we meet at your place? Around midnight?”

“I’ll be there.”

Albert got up from the straw mat and padded to the bird cage in his bare feet. “What’s his address?”

“Eighty-seven, rue de Richelieu.”

“I’ll have a look at it this afternoon.” Albert opened the nightingale’s cage, took the bird out on his finger, and murmured to it lovingly.

Picard turned and went to the door; the hallway received him with its bad smells and rubbish heaps. He was nearly asleep on his feet, and the crisp winter air of the street did nothing to revive him. He headed back toward his own neighborhood, vaguely hoping to meet the bread girl again.

He rose from a sleep that seemed to have lasted only a moment. Yet it was already dark, the gas lamps lit on the street below, and he was rested, and ferociously hungry; he thought of the Restaurant Widermann, for a meal of grand proportions.

He washed in cold water, dug out his last clean shirt, and transferred his pistol to the hopsack jacket. The Baron’s cane called to him as he was tying up his black cravat, and he believed in listening to his weapons when they spoke, for they too had a fate to fulfill, and who knows, slender friend, perhaps you will be the instrument of Lazare’s demise. One thing is certain, it happens tonight.