From Buttes Chaumont I trudged mindlessly up to Belleville, along rue des Pyrénées and then cut through tiny streets and stairways down to Ménilmontant. A few fat drops of rain fell on my head. I changed my route a little and ducked into a bar where I used to drink with Tomomi Ishikawa. I half expected to see her sitting alone, scribbling words for which she would offer no explanation into a notebook. She wasn’t there, of course. I sat at a table in the open window with a beer and the rain picked up. I watched the pavement and let my lungs fill with the intoxicating smell of warm summer night and water that somehow crumbles the sound of voices and glasses into a comfortable drone. But despite these favourite things, I felt sorry for myself. I got out my notebook and did my own scribbling.
The last time I sat in this chair there was a bottle of wine in front of me, two glasses and an ashtray. Tomomi Ishikawa was sitting opposite, leaning forwards with her elbows on the table, looking serious. A long time has passed since then. Maybe a year.
‘Can I tell you something cool?’ she asked.
‘Yep,’ I said.
‘At the Pantheon—’
‘The Pantheon in Paris?’
‘Yeah. There’s a clock. It’s an old clock and for a long time it didn’t work.’
‘You like clocks that don’t work.’
Tomomi Ishikawa looked at her watch—it said twenty past three. ‘I do,’ she said; ‘so if anything, this should be a sad tale for me, but it’s not, it’s cool, as you will find out, my dear Ben Constable.’
‘OK.’
‘OK. There was this group of intellectuals who hung out together like a secret society.’
‘Is this a joke?’
‘No. Listen. Their headquarters were underground in the catacombs where they would meet and watch films d’auteur, drink exceptionally fine wines and talk about art, cultural heritage, science and philosophy and how France was going to the dogs. They probably had concerts down there featuring prominent French musicians playing great French composers and that kind of thing.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Shhh, I’m making some of it up, but not all. It’s a true story. They’re some elite group of know-it-alls with roots going back to the Age of Reason and they get access to the catacombs through a secret stairway in one of the schools on the Left Bank, let’s say the Sorbonne, but it’s secret so I don’t know exactly.’
‘What’s this got to do with the Pantheon?’
‘I’m getting to that.’
‘OK.’
‘So, one day they’re moaning about modern architectural wonders such as Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and they drift onto the subject of the sad disrepair of national treasures, and somebody mentions the clock at the Pantheon that doesn’t work and they sip a 1976 Château Lafite Rothschild and tut in disapproval. Then they have this bright idea that they should restore the clock themselves—illegally. They don’t care about the law because they’re a secret elite group and already meet clandestinely in their secret chamber deep under the city, so this kind of thing seems perfectly normal to them.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So they get lots of tools and go to the Pantheon at the end of the day and hide in a secret corner that only they know about, and wait until it’s all locked up, then they go up to the clock and set up a base where, for months on end, maybe a year, they go at night and work painstakingly to restore the clock to its original splendour.’
‘What, really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cool.’
‘Anyway, when it’s done they decide to write a letter to the director of the Pantheon, telling him that the clock is now working and giving him instructions on how to maintain it, wind it up et cetera, but instead of being pleased, the people in charge of the Pantheon are really upset that a band of militant clock restorers could break into the place, set up a base there for a year and commit an act of such wanton vandalism without anyone noticing, and so they decide that in order to avoid a scandal they should break the clock so that nobody will ever find out. But the guerrilla clock restorers go and wind it up themselves and the next day it chimes for the first time in years and everybody looks up and notices. And the director is fired.’
‘Oh,’ I said, and felt sorry for the director. ‘Did this happen in the sixties or something?’
‘No it happened now, like last week or something. I read it in the paper.’
‘What, even the bit about the 1976 Rothschild?’
‘No, I added that bit for effect. But that ought to be proof enough that it happened after the sixties.’
‘So what’s the point?’
‘The point is that they are cool and we should be members of a secret society like that. We should go underground and find out where they meet.’
‘They wouldn’t want us. We’re not intellectuals.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘OK, I’m not an intellectual.’
‘Maybe we could bring something to the group that they haven’t got already?’
‘Like what?’
‘Fun?’
‘I don’t think they’d be interested in fun, and besides I’m not feeling fun today.’
‘Oh, Ben Constable, but that’s perfect. They don’t want fun and you are no fun. I just know they’ll let us join.’
The man known affectionately to Tomomi Ishikawa as Our Waiter came over to my table. His hair had grown since I’d last been here so I couldn’t completely recognise him until he spoke to me in English (which he seemed to want to practice).
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ I replied, and smiled.
‘A lady before the bar ask me to give you this.’ He placed a glass of red wine and a folded piece of notepaper on the table.
I looked up at the bar. There were various people standing in front of it, none of whom I recognised (but that meant nothing).
‘What woman?’
‘The Américaine. You come here sometimes with her.’
‘Where is she?’
‘It was long time ago. I couldn’t find the shit, but she offered a drink of wine for you and she ask me to give the shit to you when you arrive here.’
‘The shit?’
‘This shit. This. I found it now.’ He pointed to the folded notepaper on the table.
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘the sheet of paper. Eeeee. Sheet.’
‘Shi-it of paper.’
‘You can just say piece of paper.’
‘OK.’
‘How long ago?’
‘A long time ago. In winter. I haven’t seen her afterwards.’
‘OK. Thank you. Merci.’
‘Il n’y a pas de quoi,’ he said, and went to clear a table of empty glasses.
I have something for you, BC. Go to our late-night smoking place. B. XOX
I sipped the wine and stared out of the window with my brain in a strange place somewhere between miserable, excited and cross. Maybe I should stop following Butterfly’s clues. I didn’t have to passively accept something that didn’t make me feel good. All I had to do was stop if that’s what I wanted, I snarled to myself in irritation. I knocked the wine back in one gulp, went to the bar to pay, shook hands with Our Waiter as he passed and thanked him, then left.
I trudged up rue Ménilmontant and as it got steep I felt my legs stiffen. Somebody was walking behind me so I carried on quickly, pretending I couldn’t feel the burn. I turned into the little cobbled street of Cité de l’Ermitage and the footsteps followed. I turned to the left and sat on one of the concrete bollards. A man arrived, realised that it was a cul-de-sac and turned to go. He jumped when he saw me sitting there and moved quickly away. After a moment I looked back down the street to make sure he’d gone and then lit a cigarette. I wished the rain would start again, but it didn’t. It was nighttime, but not late. Not twenty past three. This was the place I sometimes came with Butterfly to smoke because she loved this street. She wanted to buy a house here with a garden. I leaned back and stared at the cobblestones and the weeds in the dim light.
‘What do you think, Cat?’ Cat appeared and looked around and then sat down a couple of metres in front of me. Where would you hide something here? I stood up and looked around. There were no stones or doormats to leave something under nor any earth to dig in. I ran my hand round the back of the concrete bollards that Tomomi Ishikawa and I had used as seats, and behind the smaller of the two I felt a familiar texture. Sure enough, there was a layer of carefully placed duct tape. I tried to peel it off but it had been glued (I guess the tape wouldn’t stick). I looked for something in my bag to scrape it off with, but all I could find was Butterfly’s blue on/offable pen. I poked through the tape and ripped out a sealable plastic bag with a brown envelope in it. On the front of the envelope was my name.
I was annoyed. This was a rubbish place to leave a clue. Anyone sitting here could have found it and it was only by chance that I went in the bar and even more by chance that Our Waiter found the ‘shit’ to give me.
Cat looked up at me and raised an eyebrow, but I don’t think it meant anything. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘If we’re quick, we’ll make the last metro.’
If you are Benjamin Constable and you are reading these words, then you truly are a skilled treasure hunter. I take my chapeau off to you, sir.
The next treasure is made of gold. My Paris and yours have overlapped at times; perhaps we came to places from different directions and with different stories. This is a drop of history, the facts of which we have disagreed upon. Do you know what I’m talking about?
The treasures in this part of the trail are sequential, and if you choose to follow, it will carry you far away, to another of my worlds for us to explore together and me to delight in your treasure-hunting joy. I want to imagine you scrambling and rummaging around for clues leading to the manyfold prize. Some of the prize is more about me than you, but hopefully in all of this, BC, there will be things you find beautiful and that will give you pleasure. And if there is no pleasure (which I quite understand that there may not be), then maybe at the very least something may inspire you to write, notes or even a whole book. (Not that I think you need inspiration—it’s just that I miss you and I want to leave some of my spirit here on paper with you. Do you forgive me, Ben Constable? I don’t expect you to, but I hope there are things here that will make you smile.)
LOVE, Butterfly. XOX
Cat got up and went to sit on the other side of the room to move away from me and I scowled at him. I got out my notebook and a black pen.
Dear Tomomi Ishikawa,
There is no joy in this. You have disappeared without explanation, leaving vague and improbable clues to bloody and disturbing stories. Am I supposed to be entertained? Am I supposed to laugh in shocked excitement at your destructive adventures? Why didn’t you leave something happy? Why didn’t you think that this might be confusing and upsetting? Why do you have so little idea of how this might make me feel? I guess you were ill and dying and weren’t thinking clearly. If I could have chosen your death, I wouldn’t have done it like this. I think I would have tried to make the end of your time happy and comfortable. I think I would have liked to have been there when you died, I think I would have been good at that. And when you were dead, I would have liked to be able to let you go, and for you to become a memory. Maybe I would have kept one thing, something of yours as a souvenir, but that’s all; a tiny keepsake which I could guard preciously. I don’t want to be the inheritor of all your junk writing that you’re too vain to throw away. And it feels too precious for me to get rid of. Damn.
I’m pissed off with you, Tomomi Ishikawa. You seem to have constructed a grand scheme to waste my time and get me into dangerous and difficult situations. I don’t want to follow your treasure trail and I don’t want your spirit with me. Yeah, and another thing, why the hell am I in your ‘My Dead’ folder? Were you planning to kill me as well? Thanks. I think you should go now.
Ben
So, I’ve entered into correspondence with a dead person and I’m being supervised by an imaginary cat. I’m not sure that this is how I would have planned my own mental health, but hey, I still feel fairly sane and if it wasn’t for all this, I think I’d be quite happy with my little life. I don’t need great adventures. I like watching the clouds and hearing the noises from the street. I like drinking with friends, talking to strangers in bars. I like living in Paris and being foreign. I don’t need anything else.
My mood had changed. Writing back to Butterfly had done something to me. I still felt bruised and embarrassed by my cowardice, but I wasn’t angry anymore. I wanted to understand. I wanted to solve the puzzle and find the treasure.
I looked at Tomomi Ishikawa’s letter again. Something stood out. ‘The next treasure is made of gold . . . . This is a drop of history, the facts of which we have disagreed upon. Do you know what I’m talking about?’ Yes, I knew what she was talking about. I turned on the computer and looked in her ‘My Paris’ folder, scanning through the file names for something familiar, and I found it. There was a file called ‘La Goutte d’Or’. I didn’t read it. I didn’t need to. It’s the name of a neighbourhood in Paris. I know it better than Tomomi Ishikawa ever did because I used to live there. She and I did not agree on the origin of its name—her version of a golden-coloured wine produced there hundreds of years ago was more likely historically accurate. My version was probably just urban myth. I tore the reply I’d written to Butterfly from my notebook, folded it with her letter and put them in the envelope, which I placed on top of the ever-growing pile of things to do with her. Then I went to bed.