wishing she'd worn something lighter. It was hot and humid, crazy weather for late October. She loved the city, but today the air seemed thick with pollution, gas fumes from the traffic and cigarette smoke from the cafe terraces. She thought about heading for the river to take a ride on a Bateau Mouche. She considered paying a visit to Shakespeare & Co., the legendary bookstore on the Left Bank, almost a shrine for Americans visiting Paris. But she couldn't get the energy. Truth was, she wanted to do the tourist stuff, but without having to mix with any tourists.
Plenty of the places she might have visited were closed, so falling back on Debussy, Meredith decided to return to his childhood home in the former rue de Berlin in 1890. Tying her jacket round her hips, no longer needing the map to find her way through the network of streets, she set off. She walked fast, efficiently, taking a different route this time. After five minutes she stopped and, shielding her eyes with her hand, glanced up to get a proper look at the enamel street sign.
She raised her eyebrows. Without intending it, she'd ended up in the rue de la Chaussée d'Antin. She looked up and down the street. In Debussy's day, the notorious Cabaret Grande-Pinte had stood at the top of the street, near the Place de la Trinité. A little further down was the famous seventeenth-century Hôtel-Dieu. And at the bottom of the street, pretty much where she was standing in fact, was Edmond Bailly's notorious esoteric bookstore. There, in the glory days of the turn of the century, poets and occultists and composers had met to talk through new ideas, of mysticism and alternative worlds. In Bailly's bookshop, the prickly young Debussy would never have had to explain himself. Meredith checked the street numbers.
Straight off, her enthusiasm collapsed in on itself. She was standing right where she needed to be - except there was nothing to see. It was the same problem she'd run up against all weekend. New buildings had replaced old, new streets had expanded, old addresses eaten up by the remorseless march of time.
No. 2 rue de la Chaussée d'Antin was now a featureless modern concrete building. There was no bookstore. There wasn't even a plaque on the wall.
Then Meredith noticed a narrow door set right back in the masonry, hardly visible from the street at all. On it was a colourful hand-painted sign.
SORTILÈGE. TAROT READINGS.
Beneath, in smaller letters: 'French and English spoken'. Her hand flew to the pocket of her denim jacket. She could feel the folded square of paper, the flyer the girl had given her yesterday, right where she'd put it then forgotten all about it. She pulled it out and stared at the picture. It was blurred and badly photocopied, but there was no denying the resemblance. She looks like me.
Meredith glanced back to the sign. Now the door stood open. As if someone had slipped out when she wasn't looking and undone the latch. She took a step closer and peered inside. There was a small lobby with purple walls, decorated with silver stars and moons and astrological symbols. Mobiles of crystals or glass, she wasn't certain which, were spiralling down from the ceiling, catching the light.
Meredith pulled herself up. Astrology, crystals, fortune-telling, she didn't buy any of it. She didn't even check her stars in the paper, although Mary did religiously every morning, drinking her first cup of coffee of the day. It was like a ritual.
Meredith didn't get it. The idea that the future was somehow already there, all written out, seemed plain crazy. It was too fatalistic, too much like handing over responsibility for your own life.
She stepped back from the door, impatient with herself. Why was she still standing here? She should move on. Put the flyer out of her mind. It's stupid. Superstition.
Yet at the same time, something was keeping her from walking away. She was interested, sure, but it was an academic rather than an emotional interest. The
Plenty of the places she might have visited were closed, so falling back on Debussy, Meredith decided to return to his childhood home in the former rue de Berlin in 1890. Tying her jacket round her hips, no longer needing the map to find her way through the network of streets, she set off. She walked fast, efficiently, taking a different route this time. After five minutes she stopped and, shielding her eyes with her hand, glanced up to get a proper look at the enamel street sign.
She raised her eyebrows. Without intending it, she'd ended up in the rue de la Chaussée d'Antin. She looked up and down the street. In Debussy's day, the notorious Cabaret Grande-Pinte had stood at the top of the street, near the Place de la Trinité. A little further down was the famous seventeenth-century Hôtel-Dieu. And at the bottom of the street, pretty much where she was standing in fact, was Edmond Bailly's notorious esoteric bookstore. There, in the glory days of the turn of the century, poets and occultists and composers had met to talk through new ideas, of mysticism and alternative worlds. In Bailly's bookshop, the prickly young Debussy would never have had to explain himself. Meredith checked the street numbers.
Straight off, her enthusiasm collapsed in on itself. She was standing right where she needed to be - except there was nothing to see. It was the same problem she'd run up against all weekend. New buildings had replaced old, new streets had expanded, old addresses eaten up by the remorseless march of time.
No. 2 rue de la Chaussée d'Antin was now a featureless modern concrete building. There was no bookstore. There wasn't even a plaque on the wall.
Then Meredith noticed a narrow door set right back in the masonry, hardly visible from the street at all. On it was a colourful hand-painted sign.
SORTILÈGE. TAROT READINGS.
Beneath, in smaller letters: 'French and English spoken'. Her hand flew to the pocket of her denim jacket. She could feel the folded square of paper, the flyer the girl had given her yesterday, right where she'd put it then forgotten all about it. She pulled it out and stared at the picture. It was blurred and badly photocopied, but there was no denying the resemblance. She looks like me.
Meredith glanced back to the sign. Now the door stood open. As if someone had slipped out when she wasn't looking and undone the latch. She took a step closer and peered inside. There was a small lobby with purple walls, decorated with silver stars and moons and astrological symbols. Mobiles of crystals or glass, she wasn't certain which, were spiralling down from the ceiling, catching the light.
Meredith pulled herself up. Astrology, crystals, fortune-telling, she didn't buy any of it. She didn't even check her stars in the paper, although Mary did religiously every morning, drinking her first cup of coffee of the day. It was like a ritual.
Meredith didn't get it. The idea that the future was somehow already there, all written out, seemed plain crazy. It was too fatalistic, too much like handing over responsibility for your own life.
She stepped back from the door, impatient with herself. Why was she still standing here? She should move on. Put the flyer out of her mind. It's stupid. Superstition.
Yet at the same time, something was keeping her from walking away. She was interested, sure, but it was an academic rather than an emotional interest. The
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