The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel (5 page)

Elise had lived in the building for over forty years. Her small apartment was on the ground floor, or
rez-de-chausée
, off the flower-filled courtyard. Elise had told Anna once about how she had come to Paris from Portugal and thought that the city was especially beautiful from the Seine.

“My husband, Ferdinand,
et moi
, we lived in this very building,” Anna recalled her saying. “It was the
appartement noble
. We had a balcony. We went into partnership with a financier and, with one little decrepit boat, we wished to start a business running tourist boats on the Seine. Ferdinand thought it would be a very good business.
Eh bien
, on the first day out, going only in circles, the boat broke down.
Et voilà
. We were out of business, just like that. Today, the
Bateaux Mouches
line is a successful tourist attraction, but unfortunately, we have no connection to it.”

Elise had told Anna that she never intended to manage the apartment building, but when her husband died in the war, she needed a place to live rent-free.

Anna had been inside her apartment only once, but she remembered it well. The interior was high-ceilinged and uniquely decorated with antiques that, Anna recalled, gave off a musty scent that she had liked.

C-C’s apartment was on the
troisième étage
, overlooking the street. She and C-C would hang over the balcony in the evenings and peer down into that of his neighbor below. An elderly Russian lady with bad legs and a character to match, she would sit out there and drink her glass or two of vodka, dumping the last drops every so often on passersby in the street, usually pretty young women, and mumble an expletive in her native language. It was rumored in the building that
Madame
Russe, as everyone called her, hardly paid any rent. Anna noted from the street that the apartment appeared to be vacant now. She caught her breath as she looked to the floor above, to the apartment that C-C had occupied. New lace curtains hung in the window, and a child of about six watched her from behind them.

“
Qui est-ce? J’arrive
.” Anna recognized the voice of Elise coming from across the courtyard. She still had a Portuguese accent after all these years in France. She was on her knees by a stone birdbath, pruning some hydrangeas.

“
Entrez
.”

“
Bonjour, Elise
,” Anna called affectionately.

“Anna.
Oh là
.” The petite woman rose from her knees with great difficulty. Slowly, painfully, she wiped her dirty hands on her apron.

The two women embraced, air kissing,
les bis
style, first the left cheek, then the right.

“
Comment allez-vous
, Elise?”

The older lady gestured and shrugged her shoulders. “
Comme ci, comme ça
. Some days, they are better for me than others.”

“I’m back in Paris to do research for a book, Elise. I am an author now.”

“
Félicitations
.” The old lady nodded.

“I thought I would visit you today.” Anna hesitated and drew in a breath. “I wanted to find out if something happened to Charles-Christian Gérard. I haven’t, no didn’t, hear from him…” Damn. She was stammering. She cleared her throat. “Let me start again…” Elise stared strangely at her. “When I left to go back to California, Charles-Christian and I were a couple…in love. Do you remember?”

“
Beh
,
oui
. Let’s sit for a bit.” Elise took Anna’s arm and led her over to a bench under a chestnut tree. She sat down, straightened her apron, and smoothed back stray strands of her salt-and-pepper hair from her forehead with both hands. “I do remember you two coming and going arm in arm. Such a nice young man. He was so… so
prévenant
.”

“Yes, thoughtful.” Anna looked up into the tree, feeling a growing lump in her throat. “C-C, as I was fond of calling him, and I used to sit under the cool shade of this tree. We studied here together during many hot summer afternoons. How long did he live here after I left?”

“Oh, a very short time. He paid his rent until the end of the month, but he moved out in a few days. I kept all his mail, thinking that he would come back, but he never did. The only forwarding address he gave me was his parents’, whom you know I already knew because of my dear husband’s brother. So one day, I bundled up all the letters he had received and sent them to Rouen…to his father, Jacques.”

“I wrote him several letters. Not one response. Did you ever see anyone visit Charles-Christian after I left? We did have some student friends that he might have invited occasionally.”

Elise shrugged her shoulders and looked up at the window of C-C’s apartment, as if to try to remember something. “
Non…non
,
enfin
, I don’t remember. It was some time ago.
Un moment. Oh là
.” They sat in silence, listening to the birds chirping in the tree above and the slight buzz of bees in the roses along the wall. Then Elise appeared to have thought of something. She put her bony finger on her chin. “
Attends.
There was a young lady who came to see him several times. I think the last time was about when he moved out. She was not French. She spoke English. I think she could have been British or American.”

“Do you know who she was? Did you get her name?”

“
Non, non. Enfin
, I don’t remember.”

“Describe her to me.”

“Reddish hair, green eyes, tall,
eh bien
, taller than I am, which is meaningless.
Tout le monde
is taller than I am.” She smiled as she waved the back of her hand. “She had a rather well-developed
poitrine
.” She wrinkled her nose as she outlined the image of a large set of breasts with cupped hands.

Anna’s eyes grew wide. “Reggie? Might he have called her Reggie?”

Reggie was a classmate of Anna’s and Monique’s. Her boyfriend was C-C’s best friend, Bertrand. She had introduced Anna to C-C. Her nationality was British, but she held a South African passport as well, her parentage being split between England and Africa, and her home also shifted between the two countries. She was in Paris to study French but skipped most of her classes to play around with French men. Monique and Anna disliked her intensely. She was a nonstop flirt and bragged incessantly about how she had stolen boys’ hearts away from the other girls. C-C’s friend Bertrand had been the latest “
victime
,” as Monique had put it. Anna had always had a suspicion that C-C was targeted as her next conquest.

“
Oui
,” Elise said, hesitating. She looked as if she had divulged a secret.

“Nothing has changed,” Anna told Monique later as they entered the Tea Caddy at No. 14 rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. During their student days, Monique and Anna had met often after classes in the cozy
salon de thé
with its linen-covered tables, oak beams, and elegant dark wood paneling.

“
Bonjour, Mam’selle, ‘Dame. Vous désirez?”
A waiter in black bow tie and starched white apron stood over them. “
Un caf
é?
Du thé?”

Anna ordered first.
“Un exprès
,
s’il vous plaît, Monsieur, et le gâteau au chocolat.”

“
Pour moi, un thé et la tarte du jour
,” Monique clicked her tongue as she turned back to Anna.

“What hasn’t changed,
chérie
?”

“Well, this
salon
for starters.” Anna looked around the room and listened for a moment to the sweet sound of clicking spoons and whispered conversation. “The atmosphere is still wonderful, and it always smells so good…like fresh-baked pastries and tea and chocolate and coffee. But what I meant was C-C’s apartment building, really—the concierge, Elise, and her Portuguese accent, even the bench under the chestnut in the courtyard.” Anna leaned forward conspiratorially. “Oh, and
Madame
Russe died. Elise gave me the scoop on everyone who had lived in her apartment building. Bertrand, C-C’s friend, remember him? Well, he is stationed in the military somewhere in Africa or Asia. I forget which. And…do you remember Reggie?”

Monique nodded and squinted her brown eyes.

“
Eh bien
,” Anna went on, “she came to see C-C after I left for California. She must have made a move on him. She showed up several times, and then he moved out.” Anna leaned back as the waiter placed pastries on English Blue Willow plates in front of them. She took out her pen and pretended to concentrate on a map of Paris that she had pasted in her journal.

“You are first time in Paris,
oui
?” the waiter asked, nodding in the direction of the journal. “Can I ‘elp you find some place?”

“I am looking for a hospital.
Bon
, well, several hospitals.” Anna glanced over at Monique.

The waiter gave Anna a look of grave concern.
“Mais, mais, vous n’allez pas bien, Mam’selle?”

“
Oh, si, si, Monsieur
,
je vais bien.
I am fine. I am looking for someone in Paris. That is all.”

Monique shifted in her chair. One eyebrow lifted. It was obvious that she was becoming very impatient with the conversation.

“And he is at a hospital?” the waiter persisted.

“
Oui, un docteur.”

“Ah oui. C’est normale.
But of course.” He set down Monique’s hot water for her tea and hesitated, standing by the table until they looked at him inquisitively. “It is often said that a snail’s shell has seven turns. Do you know that expression,
Mam’selle
?” he asked Anna as he served her cup of espresso. His intense black eyes fixed on hers.

Anna noted that he was short and rather stocky. She decided that he was probably in his twenties, maybe a university student, or an artist perhaps.

“
Pardon, Monsieur?”

“With your permission,
Mam’selle
?” He nodded at her pen and open journal. She hesitated and then handed them over to him.

“May I turn the page?”

She nodded.

He carefully laid the journal on the table and turned to a fresh page. On it, he drew a quick, circular drawing.

“
C’est quoi ça
?” Monique asked with impatience.

“
Beh, l’escargot, n’est-ce pas?
The snail?”

“Oui.”
Anna nodded. There was a slight resemblance to a snail’s shell.

Monique squirmed in her chair.

Next the waiter drew a downward-curved horizontal line resembling a frown through the center.
“Voilà la Seine,”
he paused to check to see if they were with him. “It runs through the center of the city,
hein?
And it curves around—
comme ça.”
He extended the line upward and to the left, then completed the circle. Again, he checked on their understanding. “
L’escargot, oui?”

Anna smiled, nodded, and enjoying herself, she took a sip of her espresso. It looked indeed just like the venerable
escargot
, the snail that the French find a culinary delicacy.

“Now, I show you the good part,
Mam’selle
. You will remember this way all the arrondissements of Paris.”

She watched as he put in numbers, starting with numbers one through four, above the line in the very center, and continuing clockwise below the line with numbers five through seven. “Now we are crossing the river again. We are on the Right Bank.” He put in the numbers eight through twelve above the line. “We are now dropping to the Left Bank at
La Nation.”
Numbers thirteen through fifteen on the Left Bank completed the next turn of the shell. After adding arrondissements sixteen through twenty on the Right Bank, he made a circular motion around the whole with a flourish, holding the pen in his hand as would a maestro conducting an orchestra with his baton. “The
périphérique
, the auto route, goes around the twenty arrondissement
s
.” He pointed to the outer curve. “Bois de Boulogne, west, Clichy, Saint-Ouen, Saint-Denis, north, Montrouge, Ivry-sur-Seine, to the south. The outskirts.”

“
Parfait. Bravo!”
Anna applauded, and the young man gave a little bow.

“À
votre service, Mam’selle.”

A customer entered the café and sat down at a table nearby. The waiter handed Anna’s pen back to her and hustled off to wait on his new arrival.

Anna looked at the map he had drawn. She tried to count the turns.

“Interesting concept, but I don’t see seven turns,” she said to Monique.

Monique’s neck stiffened, and her head cocked to one side. “Where on earth did he get that strange idea? The seven turns of the snail’s shell. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Anyway,
chérie
, before we were so rudely interrupted, were you implying that C-C moved in with Reggie? I can’t believe that. They were friends—but lovers?
Ah
,
non
, I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t know, Monique. You remember how Reggie was—what sort of girl she was, I mean.” Anna’s thick eyebrows met in a frown.