The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel (22 page)

“Actually,
oui
. Lucie’s mother, as I understand it, was with the Résistance. She was a member of the same organization with Léo, Father Truette, and my father. There were others, too. Some of them we heard about in the stories during dinner. They are mostly gone now. Lucie was just a little girl during the war, but she grew up hanging around the restaurant, and my father taught her everything. She is quite a natural.”

“Certainly seems to be. The food was excellent.”

“You can’t find any better in Rouen, my father always says.” They crossed the street. Directly in front of them was the ancient clock which had been there since 1389 and for which the street had been named.

“C-C, what was all that hush-hush business about?”

“Hush-hush? I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Secretive. They kept asking you questions about something, and you kept trying to divert the conversation. You were deliberately keeping something guarded. I could tell.”

He smiled. “It’s a game I always play with them. Since I was a little kid. I don’t want them to know everything about me.” He kicked a stone into the street. “Did you notice, Anna? I haven’t smoked all day.”

“You just changed the subject.”

He grinned and put his gloved hand on top of hers still hooked in the crook of his arm.

“Did we accomplish anything today?”

“What did you expect us to accomplish?”

“I thought we would resolve the differences with your father. We didn’t do that.”

“We opened the door. I talked to him.”

“Will you go see him?”

C-C looked at his watch. “We should be getting back to Paris.”

CHAPTER 36

A
nna shivered as C-C opened the door to his apartment and held it for her. Neither had talked much on the trip back to Paris. He had driven directly to his apartment, and she had not objected. Their day together had been easier than she had anticipated. It was as if they had rediscovered an old bond by driving to Rouen.

The apartment was sparsely decorated. It had oak beams and a narrow, wooden spiral staircase that linked the first floor to a room above. There was an outsized sofa in the space by the window, a writing desk next to a bookshelf along an ancient, exposed stone wall with a fireplace, a small empty table with two chairs, and a modern-looking stainless steel kitchenette at the back. A miniature abstract painting hung over the bookshelf, and a CD player sat on top of it. Much to Anna’s surprise, the apartment smelled of French soap rather than smoke.

C-C took off his coat and lit the gas fireplace. “This will get you warmed up.”

“What’s up there?” She nodded toward the top of the spiral staircase.

“The bedroom. A bed and a TV is all there is room for. It’s really very small.”

He put on a CD. Anna caught her breath as the captivating strains of Strauss’ “Blue Danube” waltz filled the room.

“Do you remember our weekend in Vienna?”

“How could I forget it?”

She took off her coat and walked over to look out the French windows to the double balcony where
Madame
Russe had sat a decade earlier. “This apartment is definitely larger than your old one.”

“
Oui
, do you remember how we had trouble waltzing in that one?” He laughed as he rearranged a coffee table from the center of a Persian rug in the middle of the floor. When he had moved it aside, he stood in its place and held out his arms to her in invitation. “Dance with me, Anna?”

She smiled and took his hand. She had definitely missed dancing with him.

It had all started with a Viennese waltz. Anna had thought it rather clichéd at the time. Waltzing to Strauss in Vienna had seemed so trite to her that she had laughed aloud. But the memory had permeated their love life when they returned to Paris. They had made romantic modifications, allowing their bodies to move in slow motion together to the music. It had seemed, as the tempo quickened, that they heard only the beat of each other’s heart. She closed her eyes now as she remembered the intense lovemaking that always ensued.

C-C put his arm around her back and moved his cheek close to hers. As before, they began to waltz in slow motion, pressing closer and closer together, each aware that they had not been intimate for a decade. His groin touched hers; he was hard with wanting her. He brushed his lips against hers, and then his tongue played with her ear. She let him undo her chignon, and as he did, her hair fell to her shoulders. He slowly maneuvered her to the sofa by the window. She lay back against the pillows. He started to undress her, kissing her cheeks softly. His tongue sought her mouth, and then his hands traveled down her abdomen. He pulled her in close, feeling inside her thighs, and touching her most intimate erotic spots. Her spine tingled. She took his head in her hands, pulling him up to her, kissing him hard on the lips.

“I have missed you so,” he whispered as he smothered his face in her hair. “It was never like this…I mean…I never felt the same with anyone else.”

She pulled his sweater over his head and kissed his chest.

A car’s security system suddenly blared loudly in the street. It didn’t stop.

“
Merde
,” he said. Still holding her in his arms, he reached over and pulled the curtain aside so he could see into the street below. “It’s the Renault. I’d better investigate.”

“Do you have to?”

“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.” He looked worried as he pulled on his sweater and put on his coat.

“Be careful,” Anna told him as he closed the apartment door. She shivered and pulled a throw around her bare shoulders.

C-C saw the dark figure immediately. Someone was tampering with his car. There was very little light, and the street was wet. He maneuvered next to the wall in order to get a better view. Suddenly, everything went black, and then he dropped to the ground.

CHAPTER 37

D
ownstairs in the concierge’s loge, Elise was awakened by the unsettling sound of a car siren in the street. She peeked through her lace-curtained window, which gave her a view of the courtyard, just in time to see the shadow of one of her tenants slipping through the heavy wooden door.

A raspy, heavily accented male voice came from behind her. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.
Oh là
! Someone just left the building. It may have been Charlie.”

“Did it look like him?”

“Same size.”

“Then I’d better have a look.”

He was already putting on his jacket.

“Be careful,
Lobo
.” Elise watched as he opened the door and moved quietly and stealthily through the courtyard. The Portuguese pet name she had given him suited him well. He was an old man now, but he reminded her of her late husband in so many ways. The way he didn’t make a sound when he moved. They both had learned that during the war.

He was too late to save the blow from coming, but he saw it happen in the shadows of the dampened, dark street. The only sound interrupting the calm was the incessant shrieking of the car’s siren.

A large, bulky man had hit Charles-Christian on the head with a heavy object, felling him immediately.

For a Corsican, he should have been taught to watch out for himself better
, Diamanté thought. Without making a sound, he crept up behind the person tampering with the car, simultaneously kicking the back of the man’s knees to bring him down to the ground and taking the man’s tool away from him.

“
Salaud
! Get the hell out of here! Or I kill you.” He slammed the tool into the thief’s head. He couldn’t make out a face in the dark.

Reeling from the blow, the perpetrator tried to get up, then staggered down the street after his accomplice. The car alarm suddenly quit blaring.

Meanwhile, unaware of Diamanté’s presence and unable to see anything through the blur of blood pouring down his forehead and into his eyes, Charles-Christian braced himself against a wall, pulled himself to his feet, staggered, then turned and ran back into the apartment building.

Diamanté silently followed him through the heavy door, crossed the secluded courtyard, and reentered Elise’s apartment.

“It was him. He was hit on the head, but he will be all right,” he told her. “He can still move.”

Elise was alarmed. “But who?”

“I think just car thieves. Look at this.” He showed her the bloody tool. It was an ordinary set of pliers. “But it could be something else. We should keep our watch at the window for a bit longer, just in case they come back.”

The old couple watched in the darkness, like worried, protective parents waiting on the end of a child’s first date.

Bloodied and holding his head, C-C entered his apartment.

“What happened?” Anna raised her hand to her mouth in horror as she saw the blood spurting from the cut above his eye.

“It’s only a minor cut. Not serious. The head just bleeds a lot. We have to get out of here. Get your coat.” C-C turned off the CD and grabbed his medical bag, which was sitting by the door. Then he did an odd thing. He opened the tin box that his mother had left him, took out Anna’s letters, stuffed them in the bag, and handed the box to Anna. “Keep this for me. We may not be seeing each other for a while.” He turned off the lights in the apartment and peered cautiously through the window as he held a towel to his bleeding head.

“But what is going on? I want to know, C-C.” Anna was terrified. “Charles-Christian Gérard, what are you mixed up in?”

He turned around to her. “It is not illegal, if that’s what you are thinking. I was involved with something having to do with my profession…that I can’t talk about. Maybe someday I will be able to tell you. In any case, here’s the plan. We will use the back exit to the street, then find a hotel where we can call a taxi. If we’re not followed, we’ll take you to rue Beaujon. If we are, we’ll go to the hospital. You can take a taxi from there.”

“But who would be following us?”

“That’s just it…I don’t know exactly.”

It wasn’t long before Elise and Diamanté, watching from the concierge’s apartment window, saw C-C, holding a towel to his head, guide a young woman through the lower courtyard. The two exited via the heavy back door that Elise always used as her entrance to the building.

“I’d better follow them,” Diamanté said.

Elise nodded in approval. “Is there anything I should do?”

“No. Try to go back to sleep,” he said, tenderly placing his hand on her shoulder. Then he added as he put on his black beret, “Jacques should have trained his son better.”

The street was deserted as C-C led Anna toward a small hotel on rue Saint-Jacques. They caught a rare taxi sitting idle outside the hotel; once inside, they were able to speak.

“Will you do something for me…tomorrow?” C-C asked her.

Anna nodded.

“I don’t want Elise to worry. Go back to the apartment building and see her. Tell her I have left for Africa again. Give this to her.” He handed Anna a wad of hundred-franc notes. “It will cover my rent for a while.”

Anna watched the blur of the buildings racing by through the taxi’s window. Her head was spinning. This all seemed surreal. She looked at C-C. His skin was pale, his eyes slightly glazed.

“But where will you go?”

He sat in silence. He was cold, light-headed. His pulse rate was too fast. His hands and feet were clammy. He was diagnosing his own initial symptoms of shock. The towel was soaked with blood. He knew he needed to get to the hospital.

They arrived at rue Beaujon. C-C pulled Anna close, assuring her as he kissed her hand, “This is not
adieu
. We are destined to see each other again. I will get word to you.”

“Take care of yourself, C-C,” Anna said as she got out and stood by the taxi. She held her hand to the taxi window. From the inside, C-C pressed his hand to the glass against hers. The taxi pulled away, and he was gone. Tears streamed down Anna’s face as she stood alone in the deserted street.

CHAPTER 38

“O
ù allez-vous
,
Monsieur
?
À quelle direction
?” The taxi driver hesitated before entering the mostly deserted place Charles de Gaulle.

In the rear seat, C-C checked his watch. It was just two o’clock in the morning. The first train of the day, he knew, wouldn’t depart for Nice until almost eight o’clock. He checked to make sure no one was following them from behind. How many times had he done that tonight, every night? Would he even know if there was anyone there? And what could he do about it, anyway? Run away, like he was doing now? He needed to think clearly. He had to stop by the hospital and get the duffel bag he had kept there in case of just such a situation. He would leave instructions for his patients, too. He knew that he couldn’t depart abruptly like he had on August 31. He was severely reprimanded for that when he returned. He had to give the hospital a good reason this time. Maybe he could take the vacation he didn’t have in August? But he needed to be careful. What if they were waiting for him there?