Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [136]
“My God. Why doesn’t anyone help them?” I say.
A man passing by stops. “Help them?” he snarls. “They’re Jacobins! They’re finally getting what they deserve. Why help them? Unless you’re one of them.” He eyes me closely. “Perhaps you are and should join them.”
I back away from him. Away from the wagon. Away from the people, all staring at me. I walk at first, clutching my guitar to my chest, but when one of them moves toward me, I run, suddenly afraid. Down one street, and then another and then into an alleyway. After a few minutes, I stop to catch my breath.
I can still hear shouting but it’s not the people who were staring at me, it’s newsboys. They’re yelling about trials and executions. Bread prices. A riot. And fireworks. They’re yelling about the Green Man. The guard almost caught him, they shout. They injured him. He’s a wounded fox now, gone down a hidey-hole, but General Bonaparte will soon pull him out.
I start running again, hurrying away from their voices, my heart beating hard with fear. As if it wasn’t Alex they were yelling about. But me. As if I was the one they want.
71
I smell coffee, sausages, fish, strawberries, and cheese. Onions in butter. Bacon. Lemons. Peppercorns. Briny oysters. Spinach. Apricots. The smells drift from houses. They waft out of cafés. They taunt me from carts and stalls and peddlers’ baskets.
I’m heading back to the Palais-Royal now because I don’t know where else to go. I have big problems. The biggest. I’m in the eighteenth century. It’s cold and rainy and dark. I’ve walked all over Paris looking for a way out of this and I’m exhausted. My clothes are soaked. I’m shivering. But all I can think about is food. Because I am hungry like I’ve never been in my life. I haven’t eaten for twenty-four hours. A handful of Qwells and a few bites of mystery bird with Amadé don’t count.
I tried to buy a nasty-looking loaf of bread earlier. I gave a baker’s girl two euros. She shook her head and handed them back. I begged her to take them. She called the baker. He looked me up and down, then told me he’d kick my English ass if I didn’t get out of his shop with my English money. I tried again at the market stalls I passed—with no luck.
I slept earlier, too. I curled up under a tree in the Bois de Boulogne. I’d decided that this was all a hallucination brought on by the mega-amounts of antidepressants I’ve been taking and that when it finally wore off, I’d be in my bed at G’s house. That didn’t happen. Then I told myself that it was a vision quest kind of thing cobbled together by my subconscious out of bits and pieces of things I’d seen recently—the catacombs, Malherbeau’s portrait, pictures of old Paris, the diary. I pinched myself. Slapped my face. But nothing changed. I’m still cold. Still wet. Still lost. Still hungry.
I thought I was hungry the day I went busking at Notre Dame. That was nothing compared to this. This is a killing hunger. A few more days of no food, a few nights of sleeping outside, and I’ll be dead. Tears spill down my cheeks as I walk. I’d be embarrassed but no one takes any notice of me. They’ve likely seen worse these past few years.
I get to the Palais-Royal and sit down on a bench outside the entrance. Someone else is already sitting there. An old man. His clothes are weird. They don’t look like the somber outfits I’ve seen in the streets. They’re gaudy and dirty. They look like he got them out of Louis XIV’s garbage can. His shoes are styling, though. They’re made of red leather.
He tells me his name is Jacques Chaussures. I tell him mine. He asks me what’s wrong. I laugh and ask him where he’d like me to start.
“With the worst thing,” he says.
“I’m hungry,” I say. “Really hungry.”
He reaches inside his coat and pulls out a crust of bread. He snaps it in two and gives me half. It’s dry and dirty but I don’t care. I wolf it down. And only remember to thank him after I’ve swallowed the last bite.
He points at my guitar. “Can you play it?”
I nod.
“Then do so. A good musician is never completely poor.”
“Um … where?”
He looks at me as