The Hanged Man (17 page)

Gilles smiled. “Don't worry, my friend. I'm flush this week. I can spare him a coin or two.”

A tapping cane announced a raggedly dressed man with long, greasy hair, a scraggly beard, dark glasses, and a sign round his neck:
Blind from Birth
. He rattled a tin cup while pleading, “Charity for a poor blind man?”

Gilles reached into his pocket, took out two ten-centime pieces, and dropped them into the cup.

The blind man lifted his battered hat and smiled, showing a rash-covered bald crown and the brown remains of a few front teeth. “Bless you, my friend,” he said, before continuing his circumambulation of the room.

Gabriel watched the man as he made his way toward a table occupied by a small group of anarchists and old Communards. He turned back to his companions. “You better watch your words around these ostensibly
blind
fellows,” he said
sotto voce
. “I've heard some of them spy for the police.” Then he added with a sly grin, “But our friend Gilles works for the police, so perhaps we ought to be careful what we say around him?”

Gilles finished his drink and laughed. “You've nothing to worry about, my friends. I work for Inspector Lefebvre. He's different.”

“Don't be so simple, Gilles,” Gabriel muttered. “They're all alike. Lefebvre or Rousseau, what difference does it make? They're lackeys who do their master's bidding.”

Gilles frowned and his face reddened. “I'll remind you that M. Lefebvre is my good and trusted friend.”

Gabriel did not want to pick a fight with Gilles; he moderated his tone accordingly. “Pardon me, Gilles. It's the drink doing the talking.”

Gilles relaxed and smiled reassuringly. He clapped Gabriel's shoulder. “You're too cynical. Achille's a good, honest bourgeois. The bourgeoisie aren't all so bad. As a professional with my own business, I'd say I'm now one of them. Speaking of drink, I'm thirsty. How about another round?”

The way up the Rue des Martyrs was precipitous. On a clear evening, with the aid of moonlight and a ladder-like procession of streetlamps, one could gaze upward and make out the inchoate Sacré-Cœur looming above the treetops at the summit of the Butte.

According to legend, the Romans beheaded Saint Denis, apostle to the Gauls, first bishop of Paris, and patron Saint of France, on the site where the new basilica rose. The martyrdom occurred in the third century under the anti-Christian emperor Trajanus Decius, and most would assume that the street and the hill had been named in honor of the headless saint. However, the Romans venerated the summit as a place sacred to Mars, hence the pagan Mons Martis. There was even speculation that before the Romans and Christians, it had been a center of druidic worship. Today, the residents on both Left and Right had their martyrs of 1871. Thus, the name and place had connotations that varied, according to one's perspective.

A legion of ghosts, from different centuries and millennia, affirming disparate beliefs, haunted the hill. However, if any among the crowd pushing through the arched doorways at Number 75 had perceived a wandering spirit or two descending the street with a head tucked under an arm or ectoplasm ventilated with bullet holes, he or she would have reasonably put it down to overindulgence in absinthe and moved on. Amusement was their objective, the names and images on lithographed posters plastered over kiosks and walls their guiding lights.

The Divan Japonais capitalized on the modish trend for the
Japonaiserie
that had influenced artists like Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent van Gogh. Silk and bamboo furnishings, with red and black lacquered tables and chairs, appealed mainly to the slumming bourgeoisie who mixed with the rowdy working class. The neighborhood proletarians were largely indifferent to fashion and the decorative arts. They came to see and hear one of their own, Delphine Lacroix, the
chiffonier
's daughter. They knew her from the Moulin Rouge, the Folies Bergère, the
boîtes
, the cabarets, and the streets.

She performed to the accompaniment of a small pit orchestra, on a gas-lit platform at the bottom of the basement. Ascending rows of customers, as many as two hundred on a good night, crammed like sardines into the badly ventilated little room. They were boisterous, sometimes belligerent, and filled the air with shouts, laughter, and curses, the pungent odor of sweat and perfume, and the eye-stinging, throat-choking smoke of dozens of cigars, cigarettes, and pipes. Disappoint them and they booed, hissed, stamped, shouted, and hurled objects at the stage; if you pleased them, they could make you a star.

Toulouse-Lautrec sat near the orchestra, sketchbook and charcoal in hand. As the crowd filed in, his eyes darted around the room, scanning the scene for intriguing subjects. A quartet seated near the end of his row caught his eye: two men spruced up like toffs, escorting a pair of young girls wearing the scarlet silk gowns, feather boas, and enormous plumed hats of their profession.

Lautrec recognized the older man and the girls; he had sketched them before in various dance halls, cabarets, and clubs. His brain, eyes, and hand coordinated with machine-like precision rendering their charcoal gray forms on paper. They developed magically, like the latent images emerging from a photographic plate, but they were merely background to the focal point of his composition.

The younger man's elegant detachment intrigued the artist. He was dressed
comme il faut
, but no better than his elder. Still, his middle-aged companion seemed vulgar in comparison; his baggy eyes, well-fed paunch, waxed moustache, and imperial, rouged lips and cheeks displayed a
louche
sensuality. These physical and cosmetic attributes, coupled with his insinuating gestures (a hand on the young whore's knee, an obscenity whispered in her ear), made him appear like the dirty old man in a stage farce, a perfect subject for Lautrec's caricature.

The young man remained aloof. His female companion clung to his arm, made faces, laughed loudly, told dirty jokes, all of which he acknowledged with insouciant minimalism—a nod, a smirk, a subdued snigger. When her hand strayed toward his crotch, he slapped it—hard.

From Lautrec's perspective, the youth treated the whore as though she were a pet monkey. His clear blue eyes remained fixed on an empty stage; his kid-gloved hands rested on a silver-handled cane. The artist emphasized the boy's androgyny, his smooth cheeks, fair curly hair, and delicate features. Nevertheless, Lautrec's sharp eyes and acute intellect detected a singularly arrogant cruelty in his subject's behavior toward his companion and barely concealed contempt for the crowd. He glanced down at the finished sketch.
The old fellow's a scoundrel, but the boy is a sadist.

The orchestra warmed up their instruments in a flurry of scales, intervals, long tones, and rumbling beats on the kettledrum. For a while, the musical cacophony clashed violently with the audience's nattering din. Presently, their leader appeared and brought them to order by rapping his baton on the music stand. He called upon the oboe to give the musicians a tuning “A.” The houselights dimmed. Delphine emerged from the wings and stepped boldly into the footlights' glare. The audience greeted her with whistles and applause.

She posed like a streetwalker under a lamppost, dressed in the shabby costume of the lowliest in her profession. Delphine was an admired exponent of
Chanson réaliste
—her songs told stories about the life she had lived in the Zone and on the streets of Pigalle and Montmartre. Her voice was a throaty mezzo-soprano tainted with cigarettes and absinthe. However, she projected her songs with the power of experience that breathed life into the words, and she had an instinctive sense of rhythm and pitch. The leader and orchestra members praised her natural musicianship. The greatest compliment to her acting was that it never seemed like an act.

When Delphine opened her mouth, the room vibrated with the defiant battle cry of a badly abused but undefeated spirit. The effect was electrifying. The rowdy crowd fell silent. She had once again subdued the beast, like a legendary hero braving the dragon in its lair.

Lautrec sketched Delphine, as he had many times before. But as he worked, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye: the self-important youth sat transfixed, as if mesmerized.

A wry smile crossed the artist's lips.
Try her on for size, you little shit. I wager you'll get more than you bargained for.

7

DE CAPE ET D'ÉPÉE

A
t the brink of dawn, the Eiffel Tower's ten thousand blazing gas lamps cast their beams into the purple sky, highlighting the dome of the Institut de France on the Quai de Conti.
Does technology illuminate reason, or is it the other way around?
This thought occurred to Achille as he viewed the two structures from his perspective on the left embankment near the Pont Neuf.

His eyes wandered from the brilliant display to the shadows beneath an arch where a small gathering of clochards slept in a heap. Did this incongruity require investigation? Could scientific and artistic glory peacefully co-exist with such human misery in a just society?
What Then Must We Do?
He had read Tolstoy; he sympathized. As he watched the sleeping clochards, he recalled a particular passage: “However we may try to justify to ourselves our treason against mankind, all our justification falls to pieces before evidence: around us, people are dying from overwork and want; and we destroy the food, clothes, and labor of men merely to amuse ourselves.”

How would Chief Féraud have answered Tolstoy's question if his subordinate had put it to him? Perhaps:
This is France, not Tsarist Russia. You're a detective, Achille, an important public servant. Do your job, and leave the rest to the Republic and God.
Simplicity itself.

This morning, his job involved a rendezvous with one of his spies, a man known to him only as Blind from Birth. Achille had arranged their meeting for five, but the spy was already ten minutes late.

Achille wanted a smoke, but he feared the glowing tip of his cigarette might draw unwanted attention. Waiting made him edgy; he kept glancing up and down the embankment from his cover beneath a large chestnut tree. He wore his workingman's outfit to make him less conspicuous but here, near headquarters in central Paris, he carried his badge concealed under his blouse, next to his Chamelot-Delvigne. At last, he was relieved to see a dark figure approaching and hear the telltale tapping of a cane against the embankment wall.
His eyes are better than mine, but he does well to stay in character.

The man came up to Achille, smiled, and tipped his battered hat. “Good morning, Monsieur.”

“You're late,” Achille replied testily.

“Pardon me, Monsieur. For reasons that must be obvious, I don't carry a watch. I make do with public clocks, bells, and the signs of nature.”

Achille's eyes darted from his spy to the clochards. “Do you think it's all right if we speak here?”

The man turned his head toward the shadowy archway. “You're worried about
them
? You needn't be. Eyes open or shut, they're dead to this world and could not care less about what we have to say to each other. For now, this is as safe a spot as any for us to meet. But we oughtn't hang around here too long.”

“Very well. You have something for me?”

“Indeed I have, Monsieur. I spent last night and much of this early morning in Montmartre. I shadowed two known anarchists from the Lapin Agile: friends of Viktor Boguslavsky. Here are their names, addresses, and descriptions.” The spy reached into a jacket pocket and handed a piece of paper to Achille. “You should have files on both of them. They're Leon Wroblewski, a Polish exile, and Laurent Moreau, a common seaman between voyages. They both live in a fleabag on the Rue Ravignan, but they didn't return there last night. Instead, I tailed them to a house on the Rue Ronsard—”

“Ronsard, did you say?” Achille immediately remembered the poem code.

The man raised his eyebrows. “Does that address have some significance?”

“It might. Please continue.”

“My brother, Blind by Accident, is still on the watch up there—we work in shifts. We'll have more for you tomorrow morning, Monsieur.”

Tomorrow was Sunday. Achille had planned to take Adele for a row, but he figured he could make the five
A.M.
rendezvous and still have most of the day off. “Very well, but please try to be on time. Will there be a problem with Rousseau and his men? I imagine they'll be tailing these individuals, too.”

The man raised his hand to his lips to stifle a laugh. “Pardon me, Monsieur, but this is amusing. Rousseau hasn't said anything to his men about the state of our … business arrangements. We're in ongoing negotiations of a confidential nature. So his men think we're still working with them.”

“That's a dangerous game. What if Rousseau finds out you're working for me?”