The Ruby Notebook (25 page)

We’ve just finished another round of espressos and crêpes to regain some energy. We’ve been keeping an eye on the docks, waiting for Maurice.

Squinting, I let my gaze follow Wendell’s finger. Toward the end of the pier is a small blue motorboat, and a man tying it to the dock.

Wendell shields his eyes and says, “Think that’s Maurice?”

I stuff the last bite of crêpe into my mouth and down the final drops of espresso. “Let’s go!”

We leave some money on the silver tip tray and dart across the street, half running up the docks, keeping our eyes glued to the sailor by his blue dinghy.

Up close, Maurice is a middle-aged man whose face is sunburned to the crisp reddish brown of bacon.

“
Bonjour, monsieur,
” I say, breathless and excited.

He eyes us curiously. “
Bonjour.
”

“
Monsieur
, we’re looking for someone. And we heard you’re the man to ask.”

He grins, revealing a few gaps where teeth are missing. “
Oui
, that’s true. And who is it you’re looking for?”

I start telling him what we know about J.C. When I mention Greece, he stops me. “Greece, you say? Matter of fact, there was a fellow who worked here for a while. Years ago. His skin was pretty dark—but who knows how much of that was from being in the sun all day.”

“What was his name?”

“Zhee-mee.”

It takes me a moment to understand what he’s saying. “Jimmy?”

He nods.

“He was American? British?”

“Oh, no. But he did speak some English, I remember. He could talk to the tourists, but it wasn’t perfect. People called him Jimmy because he loved Zhee-mee Endreex.”

“Jimi Hendrix?” Wendell interprets.

“
Oui!
You know, that guitar player. Jimmy wore a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt all the time! And he was as good as Jimi Hendrix too. The best guitarist I’ve ever met.”

Wendell and I exchange glances.

“Where was he from?” I ask, excitement shooting through me.

“
Ouf
, who knows. He spoke a few different languages. Spanish, English, French. Probably some other ones too.”

“Was he sensitive?”

Maurice laughs. “
Bien sûr
. You know how musicians are.” He’s quiet for a moment, searching his memory. “Ah yes, I remember now. He took a long trip to Greece one year. He couldn’t get over some girl he met there. Kept writing songs about her.”

I’m shaking. I look at Wendell to make sure he’s understanding all this. He must, judging by how wide his eyes are.

Maurice scratches his head. “Had a little dinghy, this Jimmy, smaller than mine, and older. Not a very safe boat, but the tourists liked it. It was painted turquoise, the paint chipping off, their idea of what a Mediterranean boat should look like. For a while, he had the same job as me—taking tourists to the islands. Mostly to the Château d’If.”

“The Castle of If?” I translate, in case Wendell didn’t catch the strange name.

Maurice gestures to the widening expanse of water just outside the port. “The island right over there.” Adjusting his hat thoughtfully, he says, “You know, Jimmy even worked there for a time. Maybe they have job records. Maybe they can figure out a last name.”

My heart is thudding. “How do we get there?”

“Hop in. Fifteen euros there, fifteen back.”

Wendell and I look at each other. “
On y va,
” he says.

I start climbing into the boat. My legs are so wobbly with anticipation that I lose my balance. I’m just starting to fall, when Wendell’s hand reaches out to the small of my back to steady me. And then, the moment I’ve regained my balance, his hand is gone.

It’s too loud to talk over the engine and wind, but halfway there, Maurice pulls over to a little cove and cuts the motor. “The Castle of If,” he says with a dramatic flourish. “In the fifteen hundreds, it was a fort to defend the city. Later, it became a prison. It’s famous for the story of
The Count of Monte Cristo
, written by Alexandre Dumas in the nineteenth century.”

“Can you tell us the story?” I ask.

“
Oui!
” he says, looking pleased. “A few hundred years ago, a young man named Dantes is falsely accused of spying and thrown into a cell in the Castle of If.” Maurice speaks slowly, savoring the story that he’s probably repeated to hundreds of tourists. “But it is in prison that he learns of a buried
treasure.” He rubs his whiskers thoughtfully and adds, “You know, it’s not until one finds oneself inside the darkness of prison that one learns of hidden treasures.”

I’m not sure he’s speaking metaphorically. Maurice does look as though he could have gone to prison at some point. There’s a toughness to him, an edge.

I translate for Wendell, but he seems to understand enough to follow on his own. “What happens next?” he asks.

Maurice smiles triumphantly. “He escapes and finds the treasure. Then he disguises himself as a wealthy count and sets out to seek revenge on those who framed him.”

I jot down all this in my notebook, as sea spray speckles the pages. Maurice rambles on about Dantes’s adventures—which sound like a fifteen-hundred-page soap opera. When Maurice is about to turn on the motor again, I ask, “What else do you remember about Jimmy?”

“
Ouf
, he didn’t say much personal stuff. Nothing about his family or where he came from or his past or his plans for the future. But he was a great storyteller.”

“Do you remember any stories he told?” I ask.

“
Oh la la la la
. It was a long time ago, but here’s one I never forgot. It was late at night, Jimmy said, and he was walking on the docks. Did I mention he always had a guitar with him? Between customers he’d play. Beautiful music. Straight from the angels.” Maurice looks dramatically to the heavens. “So Jimmy was getting ready to go home in the dark. The docks were mostly deserted. Then a gang of thieves surrounded
him. They demanded his money, but he had only a few coins. They got angry, said they were going to kill him. So he said, ‘Let me play one last song.’ ”

“I know a version of this folktale,” I say, wondering if J.C. was the one who first told it to Layla.

“Oh, but this is not a folktale. It’s a true story,” Maurice says. “It really happened to Jimmy.”

I look doubtfully at Wendell.

Maurice continues. “And the thieves said, ‘All right.’ So Jimmy played the most beautiful melody. He sang and he played and he brought them to tears. When it was over, they said, ‘Another one, another!’ And he played another. All night, he played to them, there on the docks. One by one those criminals drifted to sleep, and by dawn they were all sleeping like babies. And off Jimmy went, knowing that when things seemed bleakest, his song would burst forth and save him.”

Maurice gives us a knowing look. “See what I mean about treasures?”

“Treasures?” I ask, confused.

“At the darkest times—in prison or trapped by ruthless thieves—that’s when you find your treasure.”

At that, Maurice starts the engine and takes off into the blinding blue, toward the Château d’If.

B
eads of salty spray coat my skin and the hum of the motor fills my ears. Wendell and I sit side by side on the small boat bench, wrapped in damp, musty life jackets. The sea wind whips through our hair as we squint ahead at the Castle of If, growing closer and bigger. It fills most of the island, which is otherwise desolate, just a few sparse trees, sand-colored rocks and crags. The castle itself is a mammoth, imposing fortress—a heavy rectangle in the middle and two thick towers visible on either side. Stone walls surround the island.

When Maurice docks, we step off the boat. The water is brilliant, mesmerizing—translucent shades of green and blue, light and dark, swirling together. Close to the rocks, the water grows wild, churning, white foam slapping the
stone violently. If you were an escaped prisoner, not the kind of water you’d want to jump into.

Maurice ties the boat to the dock and says, “I’ll show you around.”

“
Merci,
” I say, wiping trickles of sweat and seawater from my cheeks.

Inside the fortress walls, he leads us up the stone stairs. At the ticket booth—a small room just inside the walls—we discover that no one has worked there long enough to know Jimmy. Apparently, he worked there before they’d computerized all their payroll records. There’s no record of him.

“Too bad he got fired,” Maurice says, shaking his head. “Or he might still be working here.”

“Fired?” I don’t like the idea of my father getting fired. “Why?”

“I’ll show you,” says Maurice, leading us across a desolate stretch of weeds and parched dirt toward the castle. His short, thick legs don’t seem well adapted to land. Under normal circumstances, I’d be asking this man questions about his take on life for my notebook. Sailors always have interesting perspectives. But now, all I want to hear about is my father. I want to squeeze out every last drop of memory of him.

Up close, I can tell from the tiny window slits that the château’s walls are many feet thick. We walk through the giant doors, through a museum and gift shop, and emerge into a stone courtyard with a well at its center, surrounded by cells.

“There haven’t been prisoners inside here for centuries,”
Maurice assures us, as if we’re scared one might jump out at us.

The cells are refreshingly cool and dark inside. Scratched into the stone walls are words, symbols, names. Some etchings look ancient, some new. It’s hard to tell where the genuine prisoner graffiti ends and the tourist graffiti begins. I run my hands over the walls, lingering on the words that look oldest, deepest, most worn.

“Names, mostly,” Maurice comments.

“Makes sense,” Wendell says. “You’re stuck in here for years, you write your name to remember who you are.”

“Or who you were,” I add.

He nods. “Or who you might be if you ever get out.”

“Come upstairs,” Maurice says, and leads us up spiral stairs to the second story. We walk into a large, circular room inside one of the towers. A few slits in the massive walls form narrow windows—rectangular tunnels with patches of blue sky and sea at the end. Slivers of immense beauty.

Maurice peeks his head into the entrance of the tunnel-windows. “They say that homing pigeons delivered messages from the outside world. Those were the highlights of the prisoners’ days, those little notes from the pigeons.”

I study the window, just wide enough for a pigeon to fit through. Back in Aix, Madame Chevalier is probably sitting at her window, waiting for Maude’s next message. Does Madame Chevalier feel she’s in a prison? What’s stopping her from leaving her post by the window?

Maurice comes over, standing beside me. “This was Jimmy’s favorite cell. After closing time, he’d stay in here until he had to leave.” Maurice drops his voice. “Then he started sneaking in and staying here overnight.”

“Why?” This bothers me. It’s creepy.

Maurice shrugs, surveying the wall. “It’s around here somewhere,” he mutters.

“What’s around here?”

“The final straw! The reason why they finally fired him. He’d been missing work and coming late for a while, and then he did this thing. Imagine, a museum guard defacing a
monument historique!
” Maurice points to a spot on the wall, announcing, “
Et voilà!
”

Wendell flicks on his flashlight, the tiny LED beam casting a circle of white light on the stone. He moves the beam toward Maurice’s fingertip. Now I can make out words scratched into the stone. They’re hard to decipher but look relatively recent.

It’s a list of some kind.