The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel (12 page)

Anna stood and walked over to the mantel to have a closer look at the collection of family photos. She studied a large, black-and-white photo of a young couple in wedding clothes posed in front of a town hall. Anna guessed that the thin, dark-haired young bridegroom was Guy de Noailles, though, with the exception of a pair of distinctly close-knit eyebrows, the resemblance to the man they had just met was barely visible. There were other photos of the same couple, a year or two later with a little girl between them. The rest of the framed photos appeared to be of the little girl, apparently their daughter, as she grew to adulthood. Then there was a photo of her in a wedding gown. And another of her holding a baby. The last photo on the mantel was in color. It was of an older Guy de Noailles, probably in his fifties, graying and thicker through the middle, holding the hand of a small boy in front of the Strasbourg Cathedral. The photographer had apparently tried to get in the whole cathedral, so the faces of the two were barely visible.
Life’s itinerary
, Anna thought.

She moved over to the table. Here, the photos were different, much older, all black-and-white.

Mark was standing over them. “I am fascinated by old war photos,” he said. “Look at the uniforms and the faces. Is your grandfather in any of them?”

Anna studied the photos closely. There was one of a large group, not so much posing but standing around in a wooded area waiting for something. They all were looking up. She pointed to a light-haired young man in the back row.

“That man looks a good deal like him. There is a similarity to my grandfather’s earlier photos, anyway, but it’s too blurry to make out. Wish I had a magnifying glass.”

Another photo caught her attention. The inhabitants of this one were male, all certainly French. They appeared to be congregating in a wooden, barn-like structure. A thin, dark haired man of about thirty-five with closely knit eyebrows was seated prominently on a wine barrel. He wore a World War II—era, wide pin-striped suit and a dark aviator’s scarf around his neck. His gaze was deadly serious, his eyes black and piercing. He held a torch in one hand. The other hand was on his knee. Anna pointed to the image.

“This has to be
Monsieur
de Noailles. Look at those eyebrows, Mark.”

The group varied in age, some not yet twenty, others much older. None of them were smiling. They were scattered about the room and appeared to be assembled for a meeting of some sort. Most wore similar wide pin-striped suits with or without white shirts and neckties and heavy overcoats. The exception in dress was one man who wore a heavy jacket and pants. His boots were splattered with mud. A dark beret was perched low over his forehead. Another man, barely visible in the back of the group by the door, also wore similar dress and a beret.

As they were studying the photo, Guy de Noailles returned with the tea tray and set it on a table.

“Ah, I see you have found the Résistance a fascination. That’s quite a group, don’t you think? Can you pick me out? It was a long time ago.”

Anna looked at his piercing black eyes and the thick, white, knitted eyebrows. “He wants to know if we can pick him out, Mark.” They pointed in unison to the figure seated on the wine barrel.

The old man smiled. He nodded in Mark’s direction.

“I was about the age of your friend here when that photo was taken. We were scared that night. The Gestapo was very near. It was toward the end of the war, and we were waiting for the Americans. It was the last time that we were all together. Only a few of us are still alive.” He heaved a huge sigh.

“Where were you born,
Monsieur
?” Anna asked. “You don’t have an Alsatian accent. You sound like you might be from Normandy.”

“
Très bien
,
Mademoiselle
. I am Norman, actually.” He poured the tea from the antique teapot into matching china cups, set the cups on their saucers, and handed them to Anna and Mark. Despite his age, his hands were as steady as theirs.

“When I was a young man,” he said, “I left the farm in Normandy where I had grown up. I eagerly went off to the war, but I was wounded in the leg and ended up in a hospital in Italy. My leg was so badly mangled that I was no longer any use as a soldier, so I was sent home to France. The war was at its worse for us then. I married my dear wife, and we settled here in Alsace. I joined the Résistance. It was very dangerous, but it was a way that I could still fight the Boche.”

Anna took a sip of the tea. It tasted of orange and cinnamon.

“It tastes good.
Merci
.” She took another sip and pointed to the bride in the wedding photo on the mantel. “Is that your wife, Nathalie?”

The old man looked up, confused. “Nathalie?” Then he nodded his head.

“Oh, oh…understood. That is my wedding photo,
oui
, but my wife’s name was Marguerite. She died very young. Our daughter’s name was Nathalie.”

“So that explains the card. You signed it from you and your daughter.”

“
Oui
,
Mademoiselle
. I raised her alone. There were just the two of us after my wife died.”

“Where is your daughter now?”

The hurt eyes met hers. Anna was immediately sorry she had asked such an intimate question. She knew the French to be very private people, and she had stepped over the line.

“Oh,
Monsieur
, forgive me for prying. I don’t know you very well. I didn’t mean to…”

“
Non, non
,
Mademoiselle
,” he interrupted. “No need to apologize. It’s, it’s just that my daughter Nathalie died two years ago.” He broke off and rubbed the tip of his nose with a gnarled index finger.

CHAPTER 21

A
door opened at the back of the house, and voices could be heard. A fluffy, ginger-colored little dog scurried into the room and jumped into the old man’s lap.

“This is Puccini,” Guy de Noailles explained to Anna and Mark. “He is my housekeeper’s poodle. Ah, Jean-Paul.
Viens
.” He beckoned for a short, stocky man, nearly as old as he, to come into the room. “This is Jean-Paul, my chauffeur. He and his wife, Maria, have been with me for a very long time. They are my family. They helped me raise Nathalie.”

The chauffeur, dressed entirely in black, took off his cap and shyly shook their hands. From the kitchen came a horrified scream and a crash.

“
Mamma mia! Merda! Santa Patata vergine
!”

“That is Maria. Not to worry. She’s just discovered that I was in her kitchen making tea.” The old man’s eyes twinkled. “Maria, come meet our guests.”

Mark leaned over with mischief in his eyes and whispered to Anna, “If I’m not mistaken, I think she just said ‘Holy virgin potato’ in Italian.” They both laughed.

Into the room came a round little woman in a fury, with wisps of wiry, graying hair spewing from under a heavy, woolen hat. She still had her coat on. Seeing Anna and Mark, she stopped in the doorway and put her hands on her ample hips.

“Maria, my apologies. I made my guests tea this afternoon. This is Anna…and her friend Mark. They are Americans. I knew Anna’s grandfather in the war.”

Maria studied Mark. He was almost a third again as tall as she. Puccini ran back and forth and around them all, wagging his tail. He stopped in front of Mark and sat down.

“Mark and dogs have an
affaire de coeur
, a love affair,” explained Anna, laughing. She directed the next remark to Puccini. “He is Italian, also.”

With that, Maria’s eyes widened.

“Italiano?
Américain
?”

Mark understood that one. “American,
sì, signora
, but my name is Zennelli.”

“Ah,
sì
! I know that name Zennelli.” She spoke in English with a heavy Italian lilt. “I learn some English from American films. I
love
American films! That name Zennelli famous. You actor?”

“No, but my family is active in film. I am a lawyer.”

This time Anna was translating into French.

Maria was in a total state of happiness. She took off her hat and coat and threw them onto a chair, all the time muttering something about being so honored to meet someone from a famous American film family. Then she went over and shook Mark’s hand, giving it several pumps, and kissed Anna on both cheeks like they were old friends.

“
Allora
, you must stay for
cena
. I make a special
pollo alla cacciatora
for Marco here.” She had christened Mark with the Italian version of his name. Then she caught herself and turned to her employer. “
Monsieur
?”

Guy de Noailles understood her request. He simply needed to make the formal invitation.

“It would be our pleasure if you would be our guests for dinner. Maria is a very good cook. If she is making an Italian specialty, we are all in for a treat.”

Anna and Mark smiled and nodded at each other. Of course, they would stay, she said.

Jean-Paul placed a log on the fire. It sputtered and crackled. “The Beaujolais Nouveau has just arrived,” he told Guy de Noailles. “We bought a case of it today.”

“
Magnifique.
We’ll have it with our dinner. I hope it’s good this year,” Guy said.

With that, the chauffeur and the housekeeper left the room. Pots and pans clanged; dishes and silverware rattled. Maria would sing arias in Italian to the chopping of vegetables all the rest of the afternoon. In an hour, the entire house would be filled with the delicious aroma of chicken and mushrooms and tomatoes stewing in herbs.

Anna excused herself and found
le cabinet
. The small space was painted a deep emerald green, and it had a black-and-white checkerboard tiled floor. A dozen gold-framed engravings of scenes of rural France filled the wall. Anna looked at herself in the beveled, heart-shaped, black-framed mirror. She couldn’t help feeling that her grandfather had led her to Guy de Noailles, that maybe he was with her now.

When she returned to the study, Puccini was snuggled in Mark’s lap, asleep. Mark stroked the little dog’s ear.

“This dog,” he said, “even looks like an Italian composer. Look at that shaggy hair.” It was true. The dog had not been given the typical coif of the Parisian poodle.

Soft snores came from the chair by the fire. Guy de Noailles too had fallen asleep.

Anna went over to look at the photos on the round table. There was something about the picture of the members of the Résistance movement in the barn-like structure that intrigued her.

The old man coughed in his sleep and awakened.

“Were they all French?” she asked him, pointing to the photo.

He shifted drowsily in his chair and sat up, clearing his throat.

“Technically, yes. Two of them were Corsican.”

“Two? Which two?” She studied the photo carefully.

“The two with the berets. The one in front, and the other toward the back. You can’t see him very well.”

Something told Anna not to let this go. After all, Stu Ellis had also known a Corsican during the war. Maybe Guy de Noailles could provide the clue she so desperately needed.

“Do you have any other photos of the Corsicans?”

Mark was watching her.

“Just one,” Guy said. “It’s toward the back of the table. The small one in color over there to the right, with the dark frame.”

Anna picked it up. There were two men in the photo. They were posed on a hilltop overlooking the sea. The scenery was very beautiful. The older man in a beret appeared to be the same one who was in the group photo. Both of the men were suntanned. They had white shirts open at the collar and scarves tied around their necks. The older man had put his arm over the shoulder of the younger, who had a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth. Neither smiled, but they didn’t look unhappy.

“Is this the same man as in the other photo?”

“Yes. But it’s several years later. He was with his son in Corsica.”

Anna looked at it closely. The son’s face was unmistakable. She grabbed her purse and took out a photo. “Look at this, Mark. Do you think this is the same person?” She sat down beside him and held the photo side by side with the framed photo from the table.

“I found this in one of my grandparents’ albums.” She pointed to the girl in the photo. “That’s my mother when she was about seventeen. There were no names written in the album and nothing on the back of the photo. I just have a feeling that the young man in this photo was my father.”

Guy de Noailles looked at them curiously, not understanding.

Mark studied both photos carefully. After a few minutes, he said, “I believe they are the same person, Anna. In fact, I’m sure they are. There are too many similarities: the black curly hair, the mole under his eye, the cleft in the chin, the way he holds his head.”

She held her breath. “
Monsieur
,” she said to Guy de Noailles. “What are the names of the father and son in this photo? Do you remember?”

“But of course, my dear. Diamanté is my good friend. Loupré-Tigre is his last name. His son was his namesake. Why would that be important to you?”