Montparnasse. Thierry Sagnier
all painters, poets, playwrights, novelists, writers, sculptors, musicians, actors, dancers, and singers should be forced to bathe and get jobs, preferably menial ones. Johnson knew he was spared this contempt only because he was an American with means of his own. He was fortunate; Americans were popular. They had the reputation of being deferential and polite, were considered slow to anger and were expected to tip well. They had no need to explain their foibles to anyone, including M. Lefebvre.
The mailman, who had come an hour earlier for his English lesson, put down his coffee cup and smacked his lips. “Excellent, Monsieur Johnson! Like always, yes?”
Johnson corrected him, “As always, Monsieur Lefevbre. As.”
The mailman made a face, shouldered his big leather bag, “As always. As always.”
He left with a smile and a wave, and Johnson glanced at the correspondence, which consisted of bills, a letter from his father in the States, and an envelope from La Défense; undoubtedly something about Daniel, his missing brother. He opened it. It had been several weeks since the last note from La Défense on its efforts to determine his brother’s whereabouts, or those of his remains. Johnson knew that if the French government’s attempts seemed halfhearted at best, there was at stake the reputation of the Lafayette Escadrille, with which Daniel had worked as a mechanic before he’d fancied himself a pilot and stolen a plane, presumably to prove that he could fly.
Their father, James Johnson Senior, could not accept that Daniel might be dead, and had for more than a year been engaged in a correspondence with Edgar Cayce, the spiritualist, who had persuaded him that Daniel had flown the airplane to Greece and was alive and well on one of the smaller islands—never mind that the Nieuport 11 could not carry enough fuel to attempt such a trip. Johnson Senior had asked his surviving son to contact the Greek Consul and secure that government’s help.
Three of the Escadrille flyers with whom Johnson had corresponded believed Daniel had crashed his plane somewhere in the Massif Central. None of them seemed to bear him a grudge. Rather, they were bemused and somewhat impressed with his bravado. “It’s not every day,” said one flyer, “that a mechanic steals an airplane.”
In the street, two children were kicking a red rubber ball. Johnson closed his eyes, recalled early memories—Daniel sitting on his chest, suffocating him with his weight, hitting him with a rock dead in the center of the forehead, where he still bore a faint scar, telling lies to their father, lies that were always believed. Plumbing the depths of his personal history, Johnson could not find a single example of Daniel’s actions ever benefiting him.
I hope Daniel is alive, Johnson thought; I truly do, and I would be delighted to have him appear at my front door. I also hope I never see him again. I came to France partly to get away from my evil sibling.
God has a sense of humor.
Chapter 8
Henri Landru had lived in worse places—under bridges, in ditches, abandoned basements, unheated barracks, and village jails. The privations had forged him, had made him a giant of strength in a small vessel. Two weeks in the St. Lazare prison and they already respected him. He had a cell of his own—he was that important—and they fed him acceptable meals that filled his stomach and made him sleepy. He enjoyed sleeping, being in that daze just short of wakefulness when he could recall in details the women, the muscles in their legs, the colors of their nipples, the size of their breasts, how far the hair rose up their stomachs. He could bring back the smell of their fears, when their armpits exuded the warm and acrid aroma of barely baked bread. He never remembered voices, the colors of eyes, or their touch on him. He did not like being touched, but endured it and the actor in him could bench his dislike for contact because that was part of the work, part of what he did.
The Parisian prison was not a bad place. It was clean, and high above his head there was a lucarne, a tiny rectangular window. The sun shone almost directly into his cell 45 minutes every day. Because he called all the guards Monsieur, they gave him the mustache wax he preferred, and an occasional piece of hard candy. He knew the guards watched him covertly, wondered how this flea of a man had wielded such power over women.
He had a few minutes in the corridor every day and there he did knee bends, toe touches, pushups. He did them until he was breathless, then did some more. When the laundry cart came, he stripped his own bed, which he was not required to do, and that earned him the approval of the stout woman who manned the cart. He smiled at her and caught a softening on her lips. When he showered by himself in the cavernous washrooms, a guard he did not know brandished a long black club and watched him with disinterest. Once he unexpectedly got an erection and the guard laughed.
The days were monotonous. He could not trim his beard, and that irritated him. He had offered to pay for a barber but been told this was not possible. He did get three-day-old newspapers, and he read and memorized the stories about his exploits. He did not tear the articles out. As he steadfastly maintained his innocence, keeping souvenirs would certainly be misinterpreted.
He waited for Act 3 to begin.
Chapter 9
Kiki’s real name was Alice Ernestine Prin. James Johnson found it rather prosaic for someone who caused such turbulence in others’ lives. She was 18 years old, from a poor background in Burgundy. Her accent—guttural, clipped, and rural—gave her away and bespoke minimal schooling. She’d arrived in Paris at age 12, attended the lycée briefly, and like many girls of her age and lack of credentials, had started working a year after that, repairing soldiers’ boots in a shoe factory. Then she worked in a boulangerie, but being covered with flour and tending ovens did not suit her disposition, so she ran away. Penniless, she modeled for a sculptor. That ended when her mother, who had apprenticed her at the bakery, forced her way into the artist’s studio and threatened the man with a lawsuit for assaut contre la moralité d’un mineur. Johnson thought the immorality lay in a mother’s willingness to sell her child’s labor, an accepted principle of the French working class.
A week earlier, as Johnson sat at his usual table at the Rotonde, Kiki had arrived with several friends and, after minimal encouragement, had proceeded to act out scenes of her childhood, taking on by turn the role of her mother, the sculptor, and Kiki-the-child. The sculptor she portrayed as old, bent over and toothless, her mother as raging, herself as a winsome innocent. She was a good comédienne, and her audience had roared with laughter, then bought her several rounds of drinks and dinner, which she gulped down.
That same night, Johnson also got to witness Kiki furious. One of her inebriated friends, a tall gangly woman whom he’d never seen at the Rotonde before, shouted to the entourage: “I’ll bet you didn’t know that Kiki’s got no poils sur son zizi.” It took him a moment to translate what may have been one of Kiki’s deepest secrets: she had no pubic hair.
A thunderous silence followed this announcement. Kiki rose from her chair, eyes flashing green fire. She slowly approached the drunken woman, looking very menacing indeed, and might have struck her had a young man not interceded. He grabbed Kiki by the elbow, whispered something in her ear which brought a smile, a laugh, and a passing of the storm.
The young man’s name was Maurice Mendjizky. He was Polish, and a painter, and Kiki’s lover. It galled Johnson that the man who took pleasure in her favors spoke a French even more abominable than his own.
The next evening, once again at the Rotonde, Johnson had ordered the assiette de charcuterie, a plate of cold meats with bread. Kiki had swept by his table, picked up the breadbasket without a word, and marched out the door with it. A few minutes later, she returned the empty basket, placed it before him with a charming smile, lifted his wineglass and took a healthy sip from it, patted him on the shoulder, kissed his cheek and said, “Merci.”
Johnson immediately forgave her the Polish lover.
Chapter 10
The postman’s latest tirade was against the Bretons.
James Johnson had been in France long enough to know that every decade or so, one or another region fomented a resurgence of local identity. This month, it was the Bretons, inhabitants of the French teapot’s spout, a hardy lot