Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [54]
Going from bar to bar, from store to store, we began a speedy little investigation, questioning neighbors like the cops do when they’re out to piss everybody off. No one around had heard anything about an accident. No old folks run over by a bus, not by the number 29 or the 96. No firemen or EMS personnel had been called anywhere. Nothing special had occurred.
It was as if Zatopek had suddenly left for the Olympic Games to defend the honor of the 4th arrondissement before the whole world. Our patient concern lasted a good week. No news at all about our anonymous champion. I waited every day with my glass of water in hand.
A strange panic came over all those who truly loved the Place des Vosges. It was something of a catastrophe. The appeal of the place had suddenly lost one of its vital components. An appeal we had created, protected, and sheltered inside us. In spite of the droves of tourists, guides, and the dismal parade of rich people from the 16th arrondissement who come bursting onto the square every weekend, from rue des Francs-Bourgeois—where else—with gullible faces and teeth sharp enough to cut through the asphalt in search of a duplex to buy. In spite of the avalanche of new galleries under the arcades, filled with ghastly art geared to the lobotomized, showing nothing but pathetic naïve art, lascivious nudes in soft bronze, and hyperrealist paintings of Bordeaux bottles. In spite of all the children tearing at each other in the park’s sandboxes; in spite of the homeless who camp out right beside Miyake’s.
We missed Zatopek.
As if in a small village in the Creuse, the mailman was no longer coming by.
My job as waiter at Ma Bourgogne provides me with free afternoons. After the lunchtime rush, my replacement arrives. Then I leave to join my colleagues in the neighborhood bars. The International League of Barkeepers. Very pleasant to be served. For once. But hey, we don’t bug the waiter all the time. And we leave a tip.
We had gradually formed a group held together by super-glue. For professional reasons, of course; as a group it was easier for us to stay up to date on vacant positions, replacements, and little extras to earn on the side. But we were also attached to our little community for reasons of survival: There were about ten of us who were sick of hearing about soccer games and having to silently put up with the vaguely racist conversations of customers barely awake in the morning or half-sloshed in the evening.
I presented the problem to them and I must have talked like Victor Hugo in exile, for they got on board very quickly. We decided to reach out to everyone we knew to try and find out a little more about Zatopek. Where did he come from? Where did he live? Where did he go? All the questions that had never really occurred to us over the last three years. Our mascot was so reliable. Every day, at more or less the same time. Like the mail. Like a radio broadcast.
If we, seasonal sidewalk waiters, had spotted Zatopek, other people must have seen him too. Janitors, street sweepers, storekeepers, we were going to approach everyone. Strangely enough, we really missed this weirdo who came shaking his little legs on our turf every day. Some uneasiness about using the past tense when speaking of him. It just goes to show how concerned we were about what might have happened to him.
There was a sense of drama in our activity, not sure why, it was pure intuition. But something didn’t feel right. The whole neighborhood was being hacked away, the old residents dropping off one after another, replaced by young heirs with slicked-back hair; the former notion stores and wrought- iron workshops were turning into clothing stalls which then turned into restaurants where you paid