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It is springtime and he's on the Pont au Change. He is twenty-eight years old and the air is good. A good flat air that won't move bullets. Birds flap wings against it like fins underwater. Like sheets that the women hang out over alleys. Bawling and laughing, but not in French. The little curls of their hair escaping. The sheets moving, and the shirts. A snap like the flag waving over the ramparts. The slap of the waves at the foot of the bridge. Seagulls swerving. He smells the water.
The girl Natalia says, "Monsieur."
She is wearing a blue pea coat and her face is very serious. A girl like an orphan. Freckles on her cheekbones.
She spoke.
They were speaking.
Her schoolgirl French is very good.
She curls her fingers into his coat cuff. Outpaces him a little, tugs him on. The bright strands of her hair are like copper, copper wiring. Sometimes you have to strip and cut— when the Germans— just like Lawrence in the old Deserta! Cracking work! They called them tulip bombs.
Granada: the city, the fruit, the grenade.
His hand around her little hand. "It's all right," she says. "I know where we are going."
And she knows. Her glossy patent leather loafers scrape the tops of the paving stones.
A newsstand's selling papers. What date is it? They walk past so quick. He can't see. The girl Natalia hums under her breath. He thinks he knows, he thinks, Во поле березка, but that's not— she wouldn't— and she's singing, singing in French, like any girl with a blue beret perched over her brushed hair. Il pleut, il pleut bergère, presse tes blancs moutons... and the flowers in the windows are pink and cream carnations, not, what do you call the flowers that grow in snow-places? He held one once with the snow still on it. He could hold it in his hand, and his hand had no heat, so the snow stayed snow for a very long time.
They said now that the earth was getting warmer. But he doesn't remember why. They said places where the ice was would soon be melted. Maybe. A man on a TV said.
A banging door, a smell of bread and cheap coffee, which they used to boil. In. With a little sugar but they never had much. His mouth waters for it. Do children drink coffee?
Natalia wrinkles her nose when he asks. "No!" she says. An edge of a laugh.
No. When they need the children not to sleep, they give them other things.
"But you should have..." he says. "A treat. You're helping me. Right?"
"No," says Natalia. "You're helping me."
Her laugh is like. He can't think what it's like.
"For your daughter, monsieur?" A man hands him a flower. Waits for the money. A handful of francs.
"Thank you." It occurs to him: he's speaking French also.
Natalia's not his daughter.
The flower, a red flower. He threads it through Natalia's buttonhole. There is a sadness. Someone he knew once? White flowers for Easter. Poinsettias for Christmas. Red flowers for going away.
Natalia's careful fingertip touching the flower.
They both know where they're going. They walk away. Right, and then left, to a narrow alley. A white wall. A wooden gate. This is a beautiful part of the city. He'd know Paris anywhere but he doesn't know how. He knocks on the door. Someone lets them in. This has all been arranged.
Right, and then left. A painting on a wood wall. Chiaroscuro is the word for when it's dark and then it's not. A museum in winter. A hand flying in gesture. The white flare of an angel's wing. One time they stepped into a bombed-out chapel. It was enough to make someone weep. You could taste the paint in the dust and ash. Damp, like rain and stone and wood.
Natalia pushes a heavy door open.
"What? What are you— you can't just—"
Gunshots. But silenced. Her little revolver. She crosses the tile floor calmly, already unscrewing the slender suppressor. She puts her hands against the man's throat. His larynx writhing, working. So: still alive.
"You should have aimed for the head."
"It's messy. The bone."
"The clock's running."
She brings the heel of her palm down, a clean quick gesture. The larynx: no longer working. She's stripping the man with business-like hands. They'll burn the clothes. Again she starts humming. Under her breath, the same children's song. Allons sous ma chaumière, bergère vite allons...
"Do you need help?"
"No! I can do it myself!" Wounded pride. A childish glare.
Sunlight through the palladian windows, reflecting off the blood.
They'll burn the clothes out in the garden. But human flesh has a certain scent. Takes a long time to burn all the way to bone. The mouth draws up above the teeth, like the body wants to snarl at death. Wolves snarl that way, but humans: never.
She drags the body down to the basement, arms stiff and determined. Breath huffing. He trails behind it. Moving through the halls of this house in—
Paris.
A lily on a table. A candlestick.
A half-open newspaper. A cup full of coffee. A headline: Industrialist Howard Stark has announced. Steam still rising out of the cup.
The breath of the sewer: the base of the stairs. "I knew we'd have access," Natalia says. "I studied the floor plans of the house. I made sure this location would be espedient."
"Expedient," he corrects.
"Expedient," she says. She pulls the grate up from the stones. It takes her three pushes to heave the body in. He hears from afar the shallow splash.
Bodies in the water.
She cleans the blood up with water and soap and a terrycloth rag. Careful to keep her stockings unblemished. She sweats a little. Wisps of her red hair curl up, damp.
Bodies in the water. Ice in the still places. At the edges of the river, where the rush was less fast. A radio. Sad news today from our correspondent in. Industrialist Howard Stark has. Wings like fins moving underwater. A shark he saw in an aquarium once. A jellyfish which is also called медyза. Medusa, who you can't look at. He pressed his hand on the pane of the tank. A wall he couldn't push past.
"Done!" Natalia announces.
It's 11:35 AM.
She says, "I knew I could do it! And I was fast, wasn't I? Wasn't I fast?"
"You were very good. You completed your mission."
They burn the clothes. There are birds in the garden. They leave through the door where they came in.
At Gare du Nord he sits at a cafe table. Neither of them will get on a train. They don't take trains like other people. Natalia places headphones on her head. She has a bulky tape recorder. "I'm listening to Swan Lake," she says. "It's my favorite. Even better than Coppélia. Because it's sadder."
She swings her legs. Her feet don't touch the ground.
"Do you want to be a ballerina," he says.
"I don't understand the question."
He doesn't know why he asked it. He frowns.
She says, "I want to be the very very best."
"I'll have to watch out for you, then. When you get older."
"Silly, you won't remember me!" she says. The corners of her eyes crinkle. Laughter. She pushes her headphones towards him. "This is my favorite part. Listen. It's the Russian Dance."
He lets her fit the headphones over his ears. He hears the violin. Just a violin. A dark tone. There was someone who owned a record player. No. A phonograph. Was it...? He would fit the record to the table. Carrying it like a bone china plate. One on which something was carefully balanced. A jewel or an eggshell. Maybe a pearl. Pulled from all the way down in the water. They trained children to do it. Holding their breaths till they reached the sea bottom. He read it in a— or someone— or. Or a plate made of amber.
Once upon a time there was an amber room. It's gone, he thinks. How could they lose it?
He hands the headphones back. "Good," he says.
"I knew you'd like it. You'll tell them, won't you? That I did good?"
"You did good. You should have aimed for the head."
"I'll do better."
"You will."
She touches the red flower. Still threaded like a button. Red flowers for going away. "Do you think I can keep it?"
"Hard to keep flowers."
"If I kept it in a book."
Another red flower. A buttonhole. Fair hair. A white-and-gold firework's falling spray. The big guns blowing light across the trenches. You could feel them in your hands. In the backs of your teeth. He tastes, his tongue flickering to a molar. He can feel something there, a distant ache.
A train exhales a gust of smoke.
A ghost.
"I guess," Natalia says, "it wouldn't really be the same."
"But you'll—" he says. "You'll remember."
She blinks. He thinks, She doesn't understand. Do children remember?
"I'll remember the flower."
"That's," he says. "Good."
Somewhere in the stream of announcements, the noise of the tannoy, she picks out a name. Her small face perks up. "That's us! We're going!"
He feels it, though he doesn't know the name. The right noise, like a key clicked into its lock. He stands and takes her hand, to lead her away. Her hand in his cold and leather-gloved hand.
The man they meet puts his arm on her shoulder. She calls him her uncle. They get into a car. She puts her palm against the window. A little-girl wave. Headphones still around her collar. He wants to smile but he turns to go.
So many people in the station. There should be stars overhead. He can imagine where they'd go. Animal shapes. All of the constellations, mapped. Maybe at night you can see through the windows. Are there stars in Paris? He once saw so many stars that they seemed like a band, a solid shape made out of single pin-punches, holes in the dark where the light amassed, and it sucked the breath right out of his lungs, and he had to whisper, because you had to whisper when you saw something like that. And someone laughed who was there with him under that star-shape. Breathing out gusts of clean white air. It was cold and the ice cracked under their boot heels; a cloud crossed the moon like some kind of coy hand, like the whole sky was a face that'd been hidden till now, shy of its own beauty, but they still saw, God, God, how beautiful, and—
It's winter and he's standing in the airport in Warsaw. He is twenty-eight years old and he is carrying a bag. In the right-hand pocket is a disassembled rifle. Across the concourse, a crowd of travelers move like school-fish. He pays them half-attention. A newspaper's in his hand. An advertisement with polar bears in it. A headline: Industrialist Tony Stark plans... He folds the paper.
A family pushes their luggage cart. A father, mother, baby, daughter. The girl has red hair. A dark blue pea coat. He glances at her, looks to her collar. There should be— there was—
He threaded a flower. For someone, once. The trail of a firework. He held her hand. The light and then the dark. A song like a pearl. Down in the water, a pin-punch of light. He holds his breath without knowing why.
The cart's wheels rattle.
Red flowers, for going away.