Dame. Five minutes could not pass without him thinking of her. First, the white Mercedes. Then something simple and wonderful, reading to her before bed or putting on her pyjamas or walking down some ugly wide Canadian sidewalk with her, holding her hand. Anything to hold her hand. Pushing her stroller through Queen’s Park in a thunderstorm. Sitting with her on a hill, overlooking a moat of phantoms, as she traces his scars. Run across the road when your instinct is to run across the road. Ignore Evelyn. Snatch Lily up and run. Go get her. Just go get her and none of this happens.
Old music played inside the cathedral. The violin and harpsichord of Handel, who believed, echoed out the open door and into the courtyard of tourists with cameras. He had read about believers who held photographs of lost children or lost lovers and looked at them as they jumped off bridges and skyscrapers, the Eiffel Tower. He would jump off the nearest bridge, Petit Pont, with gravel in his pockets. He watched everyone now, every Parisian and every tourist, and studied men in suits. Aristocrats. Noses. He would surrender to it, soon become another of the wandering loons unrescued by faith. The sky darkened, a cool wind howled across the Seine, and it began to rain again, to lash his face. He opened his umbrella and then closed it.
SIX
Rue Santeuil, Paris
KRUSE WAITED ON RUE FALGUIèRE FROM 5:00 TO 5:18, WHEN ANNETTE walked out the glass doors and came as close to jogging as any woman in Paris. In Toronto, New York, Montreal, and Boston he had followed bankers and lawyers, convicts, politicians, adulterous husbands and wives, mistresses, total mysteries. He had only been caught once, in the winter of 1986, by a clever woman who lured him through spooky Bryant Park and into the New York Public Library. He walked past the security man at the door and there she was, standing before him in the great hall with tears in her eyes. Kruse allowed her to slap him with the back of her left hand. The woman was rich, the wife of a less rich but suspicious man, and her elaborate diamond ring tore into his cheek.
Annette Lafferrière arrived at an
école maternelle
, near Luxembourg Gardens. She looked at her watch as she entered the courtyard. There was a small playground in the middle and around it some colourful wooden tricycles and bicycles and cruisers, soccer balls, potted palm trees. A sign on the courtyard’s tall metal door advertised the presenceof scarlet fever with a round drawing of a sad face. Annette emerged holding the hand of a little girl in a blue winter coat and scarf, with the same black ringlets and slightly darker skin. When Evelyn had been in the midst of sewing Lily’s fairy costume for Halloween, drinking wine and eating hard chèvre from a bowl next to the sewing machine she had borrowed from Pascale, she discovered her own French métier and the source of their pretend fortune: she would design children’s clothing, jackets like the one this little girl wore, clothes that belonged in the forties and fifties instead of the vulgar nineties. He could hear Tzvi’s voice: not a kitten, but close enough.
Mother and daughter walked through the wet leaves of Luxembourg Gardens in the early dark. Halfway through the park the rain stopped. The little girl wiped the rain from a swing and asked Annette for a push. There were times back home, agonizing to remember, when Lily had asked for a push and he said no: he was sitting, he was thinking, he was reading, he was eating a banana. Kruse had been here in Luxembourg Gardens on a hot day with the profane son of the pharmacy magnate, when the generous pool in the centre of the park was alive with little rented boats and children running along the side with sticks to find and push them and scream. Today it was too cold and too windy and too dark for a rented boat; the shack was closed up. The little girl ran all the way around the pool, shimmering with yellow light from the palace, and
Old music played inside the cathedral. The violin and harpsichord of Handel, who believed, echoed out the open door and into the courtyard of tourists with cameras. He had read about believers who held photographs of lost children or lost lovers and looked at them as they jumped off bridges and skyscrapers, the Eiffel Tower. He would jump off the nearest bridge, Petit Pont, with gravel in his pockets. He watched everyone now, every Parisian and every tourist, and studied men in suits. Aristocrats. Noses. He would surrender to it, soon become another of the wandering loons unrescued by faith. The sky darkened, a cool wind howled across the Seine, and it began to rain again, to lash his face. He opened his umbrella and then closed it.
SIX
Rue Santeuil, Paris
KRUSE WAITED ON RUE FALGUIèRE FROM 5:00 TO 5:18, WHEN ANNETTE walked out the glass doors and came as close to jogging as any woman in Paris. In Toronto, New York, Montreal, and Boston he had followed bankers and lawyers, convicts, politicians, adulterous husbands and wives, mistresses, total mysteries. He had only been caught once, in the winter of 1986, by a clever woman who lured him through spooky Bryant Park and into the New York Public Library. He walked past the security man at the door and there she was, standing before him in the great hall with tears in her eyes. Kruse allowed her to slap him with the back of her left hand. The woman was rich, the wife of a less rich but suspicious man, and her elaborate diamond ring tore into his cheek.
Annette Lafferrière arrived at an
école maternelle
, near Luxembourg Gardens. She looked at her watch as she entered the courtyard. There was a small playground in the middle and around it some colourful wooden tricycles and bicycles and cruisers, soccer balls, potted palm trees. A sign on the courtyard’s tall metal door advertised the presenceof scarlet fever with a round drawing of a sad face. Annette emerged holding the hand of a little girl in a blue winter coat and scarf, with the same black ringlets and slightly darker skin. When Evelyn had been in the midst of sewing Lily’s fairy costume for Halloween, drinking wine and eating hard chèvre from a bowl next to the sewing machine she had borrowed from Pascale, she discovered her own French métier and the source of their pretend fortune: she would design children’s clothing, jackets like the one this little girl wore, clothes that belonged in the forties and fifties instead of the vulgar nineties. He could hear Tzvi’s voice: not a kitten, but close enough.
Mother and daughter walked through the wet leaves of Luxembourg Gardens in the early dark. Halfway through the park the rain stopped. The little girl wiped the rain from a swing and asked Annette for a push. There were times back home, agonizing to remember, when Lily had asked for a push and he said no: he was sitting, he was thinking, he was reading, he was eating a banana. Kruse had been here in Luxembourg Gardens on a hot day with the profane son of the pharmacy magnate, when the generous pool in the centre of the park was alive with little rented boats and children running along the side with sticks to find and push them and scream. Today it was too cold and too windy and too dark for a rented boat; the shack was closed up. The little girl ran all the way around the pool, shimmering with yellow light from the palace, and
Similar Books
