13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [40]
It is funny how nothing startles this woman. She merely said: “Une autre trouvaille?”23
“Un objet fascinant, vous ne trouvez pas?”24
“Vous avez remarqué les bouts pointus? Vous savez pourquoi ils sont comme ça?”25
I was about to ask why she was asking such a thing when I noticed that we were answering each other’s questions with questions, and I felt disarmed. I relented. “Non, pour-quoi?”26
“Ils signifient que les balles sont supersoniques. Ça veut dire que la balle est dans la chair avant que la cible entende la détonation.”27
“You begin to die before you know you’ve been shot?” I said in English, forgetting myself.
“Yes,” she answered.
“You speak English! How do you know that, about the bullets?”
She shrugged. “I was with a physicist once.”
I laughed then, and said, “Do you make this a habit? I mean, are you collecting scholars of various disciplines?”
“Ça vous intéresse, Trevor, les collections de ce genre?”28
Like a foolish boy, I felt myself blushing to the roots of my hair. Here I had attempted to startle her, and the confounded woman had completely routed me. I said nothing and went away feeling her smile at my back, still surprised at the slight and melodious accent in her easy English. In the safe confinement of my office, I loosened my tie, took a deep breath, and decided that it would be better for me never to try to speak to that woman again.
But oh, the bullet, Sir…
Sometimes I feel as if I’ve been shot with it, clear into the heart—so fast, so very fast that I do not even have a chance to guess what has burned its heated metal way through my body before I am lost.
And now, findings:
a quickly dashed note from Camille to Louise, dated 2 November 1915.
a custom-made pin displaying a portrait of Louise’s father.
a license to drive a motorcycle, belonging to Henri Brunet.
a pair of photographs featuring a motorcycle and its sidecar.
My warmest greetings to you, Sir.
Sincerely,
Trevor Stratton
[NB: Why is my hand so attracted to those rare letters addressed in scrawling pencil? Always I am drawn to hurried days in the life of Camille Victor—days of military happenings in which he does not have time for carefully inked curlicues. Why am I always drawn to the possibility of something dreadful happening?]
[NB: Slowly my fingers part the torn envelope and slip out this missive…]
At the Army, on 3-11-15
My Dear Louisette—
I write you these few words in haste because I don’t have much time since we are preparing for a maneuver near Dunkerque—for a few days, apart from that my health is good and I think improved because of you—the Pastilles are good for me—thank you—29
[NB: In this state of vapor, I drift. From the Great War to the Greater War, I drift. I settle on this brooch made of mere base metal—but base metal was hard enough to come by when this brooch was made during the occupation.
*
You might recognize this face, this face duplicated from a photograph dated 26 Janvier 1943. It is Louise’s father—he makes a gift of his likeness for his daughter to wear shortly before he dies, engraved onto a dangling coin-shaped brooch by his friend Pierre Cleper. The father’s vision failing and the life draining from him make it so that he must know that he doesn’t have long. Strange ideas resurface. He offers his etched face to his daughter to wear on her palpitating breast.
Louise says thank you when she receives this present, and tentatively kisses her father on the cheek. The gift unsettles her a little—it reminds her of an impulse that roars deep within the flesh, hidden far within and brought to light only once, on a terrible day in December 1918. She prefers not to think of it; she prefers not to think ill of a man who is so necessary to her.
She is touched by his gesture. She loves her father so much. Yet she will never wear this brooch. She will keep it packed in a little round plastic box, a piece of cotton protecting its face. She will keep this object until her death, contained like an amulet