On Place d’Arezzo, Tom and Nathan headed for the Bidermanns’ town house. There seemed to be a flurry of activity there: limousines dropping off visitors, others picking up those who were leaving, the whole thing coordinated by diligent chauffeurs in black suits and a regal-looking employee at the top of the steps. The two men gazed at the solemn façade blending brickwork and stone with pompous regularity, the ostentatiously ornate wrought-iron balconies, the gutters embellished with animal gargoyles; from the sidewalk, they caught a glimpse, through the tall windows, of chandeliers, woodwork, gilding, even the top parts of the frames of monumental paintings, and were astonished to realize that ceilings in themselves could testify to the wealth inside. A poor person’s ceiling, in comparison, was white and bare, with a lightbulb hanging at the end of a twisted wire . . .
Feeling suddenly intimidated, they hesitated. Nathan leaned toward Tom. “I’m not going there. They’ll think we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Tom looked at Nathan’s outfit: plum-colored pants, pointed shoes, a fuchsia-colored imitation lizardskin jacket. “No, I don’t think they will.”
Nathan turned his back on the building and murmured very quickly, “Here or anywhere else, can you imagine ringing someone’s bell and asking if they’ve received an anonymous letter?” In his hands, he had the yellow sheets of papers that had been sent to them.
“They may be pleased to find out they weren’t the only ones,” Tom replied.
“Pleased? You think so? When everybody interpreted the message in their own way, when everybody changed their lives after getting that letter?”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
“I’m not, Tom. Just look at us: we haven’t been apart since, first because each of us thought the note came from the other one, and then because, once we realized our mistake, we decided to discover who it was from.”
“If it’s enriched our lives, there’s nothing to regret.”
“But who’s to say it’s been the same for our neighbors? A message like that could lead to a disaster.”
“A love letter? I don’t see how—”
“A love letter can be intolerable when you don’t want it.”
“Everybody wants love.”
“Bullshit! Lots of people shy away from love. They live more easily without it. Most of the time, although they might agree to receive it, they don’t particularly want to give it. Love can be destabilizing, a breach in the wall of selfishness, the fall of a citadel, the death of a regime: there’s another being who’s more important than you! What a disaster! That breach could let in altruism and change the inner balance.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Do you want proof that love is intolerable?”
“Go on.”
“Well, there’s the story of a nice young man, unmarried, who gives up his job as a carpenter in order to travel around and tell people that God loves them and that they should love one another. And this guy practices what he preaches: he heals lepers, he gives their sight back to the blind, he brings his pal Lazarus back to life, he stops a wretched woman from being stoned to death because she slept with another bearded guy who wasn’t her husband, and a lot more besides. Miracles, parables, all kinds of good acts, they’re all on Jesus’s program. And what does he get for it? He’s only thirty-three when they arrest him because they can’t stand any more of him, they give him a bogus trial, then nail him to a plank of wood. Quite a reward! Not surprising there aren’t many people who want to follow in his footsteps. You’d have to be a saint to play at being Jesus after that.”
“What are you trying to prove, Brother Nathan?”
“That love is like dynamite, it’s revolutionary. That people who talk about love seem like terrorists in a society ruled by the Internet and governed by fear. That the anonymous letter couldn’t have brought only happiness. We aren’t living in a fairy tale!”
Tom put calming hands on Nathan’s shoulders. “You’re talking crazy because you’re scared to ring Zachary Bidermann’s doorbell.”
“You ring.”
“I’m scared too.”
“There you are!” Nathan clicked his fingers, as if Tom’s admission of defeat meant his own victory.
The door opened and a woman came out, wearing a severe-looking off-white pantsuit. Tom’s face lit up. “We’re saved!” He rushed to greet the newcomer at the bottom of the steps. “Madame Singer, what a surprise!”
She looked at Tom and smiled. “Monsieur Berger! I’d forgotten you live on Place d’Arezzo.”
“The most amazing place in the world, if you ask me. Madame Singer, this is perfect timing, because I’m conducting an investigation. Only, I wouldn’t like to bother Monsieur Bidermann. Perhaps you could help me?”
She frowned, ready to defend her boss. “Yes?”
“All right. Several people who live here have received anonymous letters. We need to determine who they were sent to, so that we can investigate further and find out who wrote them.” He held out the two yellow letters. “Have Monsieur Bidermann or Madame Bidermann received anything like this?”
Madame Singer reluctantly took the papers and glanced at them skeptically. A grimace of disapproval crossed her face. “I don’t deal with Madame’s mail,” she said, returning the letters. “I think Monsieur Bidermann did receive a similar envelope. I didn’t read what was in it, but I noticed the ludicrous color. He didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“Thank you, Madame Singer. You’ve been really helpful.”
She nodded, sorry that she had divulged an element of her professional life. “Even so, I think that message is harmless enough.”
A couple of yards behind Tom, Nathan, who had been listening to the conversation, couldn’t help saying, “That’s what everyone thinks at first!”
Surprised to see him suddenly pop up, Madame Singer looked at his outfit, sighed, and walked off resolutely. “Have a good day, gentlemen.”
Amused, Nathan walked up to Tom. “The sergeant major’s a dyke, isn’t she? If she isn’t a dyke, then I’m Saint Bernadette. How do you know her?”
“I taught three of her children at high school. Go back to your cave, Bernadette.”
“Let’s not get sidetracked. We have confirmation of another anonymous letter. Let’s go ask Marcelle.”
“Marcelle?”
“The concierge at Number 18.”
Tom was surprised by this sudden spurt of energy. “You didn’t dare ring Zachary Bidermann’s bell, and now you’re going to bother a concierge? That’s social contempt.”
Nathan shrugged as they walked toward the building. “First, it’s a concierge’s job to be bothered. Second, the Arezzo dragon doesn’t talk, she barks, and bites before thinking. If you had a clearer idea of the aggressive mastiff concealed under those unbelievable print dresses, you’d realize that right now I’m demonstrating remarkable courage in order to advance our investigation. Now, Tom, shut up and put on your crash helmet: I’m going to introduce you to Marcelle.”
They walked into the lobby and knocked on the glass door, which was hidden by a pleated curtain.
“Hello, Marcelle, it’s Nathan.”
The door creaked and Marcelle appeared, looking haggard. Her eyelids were swollen, and she was holding a damp handkerchief. She glanced at Nathan, recognized him, came out of her lodge, and burst into tears.
“He’s gone.”
“Who’s gone, Marcelle?”
“My Afghan.”
As she sobbed on Nathan’s jacket, he explained silently to Tom, with gestures and grimaces, that the Afghan wasn’t a dog but a hairy individual who slept with the concierge. Tom found it very hard to stop himself from laughing at Nathan’s obscene miming.
After a few sobs, Marcelle pulled away and looked at the two friends as if they had always been her confidants. “We were so happy, me and my Afghan. It’s true he did damn all. He wanted us to stay together, and so did I—I just needed to sort out the question of my night table. It’s been hunky-dory recently. He proposed marriage, I was about to say yes, when all of a sudden, he disappears.”
“Without an explanation?”
“An explanation? He left me a note. ‘Thank you,’ he’ll remember me as an ‘angel’ and one of the ‘kindest’ people he’s ever met.” She pointed an accusing finger, challenging them. “‘Kind’—do you think that’s the right word when you’re leaving your . . . girlfriend?”
“No, ‘kind’ . . . isn’t very kind. Nor is ‘angel,’ for that matter.”
“Ah, Monsieur Nathan, you understand me. You just don’t say to a woman you’ve been . . . well, you know what I mean, even if it’s not your kind of thing . . . you don’t say to your lover . . . ”
Her eyes glistened at “lover.” This time, she’d found the right word.
“ . . . You don’t say to your lover, ‘Thank you, you’ve been very kind.’ No, not to your lover.”
Nathan recoiled with a shudder. “Marcelle,” he butted in, “you’ve got it wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t forget that your . . . your . . . what was his name again?”
“Ghuncha Gul,” she whispered, wiping away a tear.
“Your Ghuncha Gul didn’t speak French very well. So what he wrote to you probably got lost in translation. I’m sure that in Afghan you don’t—”
“There’s no such language as Afghan, he spoke Pashtun,” Marcelle corrected him, which proved to Tom that she knew a lot more than she seemed to.
“In Pashtun,” Nathan continued authoritatively, “these words don’t have the same connotations, Marcelle. ‘Thank you’ and ‘kind’ might be delightful in Pashtun. They might be the most beautiful words in the language. As for ‘angel,’ that speaks for itself.”
Marcelle stopped and thought this over, tempted by the idea. She was suffering less now. There was a gleam in her eyes. “Come in and have a drink,” she commanded.
Tom was about to protest, but Nathan interrupted him. “We’d be delighted.”
They walked into the lodge, which was cluttered with knickknacks.
“Sit wherever you like,” she cried, indicating the only couch, a two-seater. She took a sticky bottle from a cupboard. “Would you like some Guignolet? That’s all I have, anyway. It’s cherry liqueur.” Without waiting for an answer, she filled some glasses and sat down opposite them on a stool she had miraculously pulled out from under the table.
“Cheers, then!”
“Cheers!”
“What shall we drink to?”
“Let’s drink to the old saying, Marcelle.”
“What old saying?”
“There are plenty more fish in the sea.”
It seemed to Tom that Nathan had gone too far this time, but to his surprise, far from taking offense, Marcelle burst into a big, fat laugh.
“You exaggerate, Monsieur Nathan. Plenty more Afghans in my bed! He’s so funny!”
She closed her eyes, doubled up with laughter on her three-legged stool, sipping her fortified wine.
Nathan took advantage of this to nudge Tom with his elbow: he indicated, with a movement of his eyes, a yellow envelope on the shelf where Marcelle kept her infrequent mail.
A few glasses later, they left the lodge, exhausted.
Nathan suggested they continue their investigation upstairs, especially since he knew several people by sight, among them a charming, quite funny old girl, Mademoiselle something . . . what was it again?
At that moment, three men approached and knocked brusquely on the concierge’s door. “Which floor is Mademoiselle Beauvert on?”
“Third,” Marcelle replied.
“Is she in?”
“Yes.”
Marcelle closed her door and the men went up the stairs.
As they disappeared, Nathan whispered in Tom’s ear, “This doesn’t look good.”
“What do you mean?”
“I recognized the leader of those three goons: he’s a bailiff my firm used to collect a debt. I don’t know what poor Mademoiselle Beauvert has done.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. A bailiff could simply be delivering a court document.”
“Not when there are several of them. That’s more likely to be an eviction or an inventory.”
Prudently, they left, as if it was dangerous to remain in a building where a tragedy was about to unfold.
Having crossed the street, they decided to remain under the trees for a while. The conversation between Nathan and Marcelle had exhausted Tom: the way they jumped from pathos to bawdiness was quite disconcerting. He needed a dose of silence.
Instead, they had to suffer the racket being made by the parrots. What was going on in the branches? The macaws and cockatoos weren’t talking but screaming. A tempest of sounds tore through the branches, sharp, piercing, strident, a tumultuous din that assaulted their ears.
And yet, paradoxically, this confusion gave them a sense of well-being, because it was so healthy, so alive, so joyous, so shambolic. The cacophony created harmony. Just as seeing a bird that’s more colorful than a rainbow gives you a feeling of joy, the bright, sharp sounds of these birds conveyed a sense of glee.
When they had calmed down, Tom summed up the situation. “So that’s you, me, Victor, the florist, the aristocrat, Zachary Bidermann, and the concierge. Seven people received this note. What do they all have in common? They live on Place d’Arezzo. First clue: somewhere in this area, there’s someone who wishes his or her neighbors well. Second clue: this person is good, kind, and generous, which rather narrows down the field of investigation.”
“It wipes out the field completely. People like that don’t exist.”
“Who was it who mentioned Jesus Christ and the saints earlier?”
Nathan looked at him. “All right, let’s say it was a dove, a Cupid who wrote to us. How do we find him?”
Just then, a man who looked about twenty-five came strolling easily and nimbly along the path, singing joyfully to himself. Tom and Nathan interrupted their conversation until he had gone.
“Tempting,” Nathan said. “Where did he spring from?”
“Cheerful, too,” Tom agreed.
They breathed. Nathan turned to his lover. “Tell me, Tom Berger, you look as hot as a French fry stall. Am I to deduce that when I start living with you, you’ll cheat on me?”
“Or maybe you’ll cheat on me, Nathan Sinclair, because, if you noticed, I wasn’t the one who was struck dumb when that cutie appeared.”
“OK. Only, I’ll set a condition: do whatever you like but be discreet and never tell me about it.”
“I promise.”
“I promise too.”
Silence.
Tom gently took Nathan’s hand. “You know, Nathan, I’d rather not cheat on you.”
Nathan looked at him, moved. “That’s a lovely declaration. I like it.” Misty-eyed, he smiled at the parrots. “It’s what we should say at a wedding. Instead of making promises we can’t keep, we should just say, ‘I’d rather not cheat on you.’” He raised Tom’s hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Why do people cheat on each other so much, Tom?”
“The real question is: why are people obliged to make promises they can’t keep? Why go against human nature? Why do men and women imagine they’re something they’re not?”
“It’s about a sense of the ideal. We aren’t animals. At least I’m not.”
“You’re confusing a sense of the ideal with the negation of biology. Just like the parrots and parakeets over our heads, we’re driven by impulses that are stronger than us, and more numerous than we’d like, into directions they—not we—choose. Infidelity is natural, whereas we stop being natural the moment we take a vow of frustration.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’d rather not cheat on you.”
“Neither would I, Nathan.”
They sighed with relief.
Three people emerged from Avenue Molière onto the square. Tom squeezed Nathan’s hand. “Do you see what I see?”
The gardeners, Hippolyte and Germain, followed by Isis, were bringing their equipment onto the square. Nathan thought that Tom was pointing out Hippolyte. “Please, give me a break! You whisper words of love, and a second later you get excited by the first stud that comes along.”
“I don’t mean him, you idiot!”
“What? You’re not eyeing up the handsomest guy in Brussels?”
“No, I’m talking about our investigation.”
Nathan made a sign to indicate that he couldn’t quite follow.
“Would you agree that those gardeners often come to this square, and that they’re part of the area?”
Nathan turned to look at the two men, who were lining up their tools on the lawn while Isis sat on a bench, engrossed in her book. It was a scene he had witnessed dozens of times over the past few years, so he nodded.
“And do you remember what Dany Davon said when we were at Faustina’s? That writers of anonymous letters are individuals who are alienated from society because they’re different, sometimes deformed.”
“The dwarf?”
“Exactly.”
They looked at Germain in a new light. He was smiling as he raked the gravel.
“How shall we go about it?” Tom said.
“Elementary, my dear Watson: the sandbox method.”
“Meaning?”
“The child. A female friend assured me that’s how you come on to attractive fathers in parks. You make sure your kids are playing together, then you casually start a conversation.”
“Brilliant. Have you brought any children with you?”
Nathan got to his feet. “You forget I’m still very much a child.”
Nathan walked up to Isis and perfectly naturally began talking to her. Since he had read and loved Kipling’s Just So Stories, which she was finishing, they started a discussion of the book.
Hippolyte and Germain, having noticed the scene, waved to Nathan and carried on working.
Tom was seething with impatience. Why hadn’t he followed Nathan? At this point, it would be difficult for him to join in, especially since he could sometimes feel the gardener’s puzzled eyes on the back of his neck. The gardener probably hadn’t liked the way he’d flirted with him the other day.
As for Nathan, he was laughing with Isis about the “Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake.”
Suddenly, Isis interrupted him. “Why is your friend over there? Did you have an argument?”
“No.”
“Tell Tom to join us.”
Nathan was startled. “You know his name?”
“Of course. And yours too, Nathan.”
“What? That’s incredible.”
“My name’s Isis.”
Nathan gave a military salute. “Delighted to meet you, Mademoiselle Isis. How do you know all this?”
“Oh, it’s Germain,” she replied. “He doesn’t talk to anyone, but he knows everybody.”
Nathan sank deeper into the bench. His suspicions were confirmed. “Does Germain like coming to Place d’Arezzo?”
“He says it’s the most magical place in the world.”
“Really?”
“I think so too. What about you?”
“I share your enthusiasm, Mademoiselle Isis.” Nathan scratched his head. It seemed to him that a whole lot of clues were emerging. “Could Germain name all the people who live here?”
“I’m sure he could.”
Nathan was close to his goal. Risking everything, he took the yellow letters out of his pocket. “Tell me, have you ever seen Germain with a letter or a paper like this?”
The little girl frowned and grew pale. This obviously brought back memories for her.
Nathan gently insisted. “They’re wonderful letters, you know. Magical letters that make lots of people happy. Have you ever seen Germain with one of them?”
The child raised her head and looked at Nathan. “Daddy got one.”
“Your daddy’s the handsome gentleman over there, right?”
She nodded. “He got one, and so did his girlfriend. They didn’t speak to each other and it’s because of the letters that they met. So I guess my daddy’s very happy now.”
Nathan nearly cried out for joy. After the clues, he had just discovered the motive: the man had used this trick to make his best friend happy! Germain the dwarf was the Cupid!