JEAN-PAUL MAILLARD STANDS in the hallway of the apartment, pulling on his coat and saying his embarrassed good-byes. It is the interviewee who should confess secrets, not the journalist.
There is a crystal vase standing on a table near the front door, full of perfect red roses. Josephine Baker grabs the flowers and thrusts them into his hands.
“Here,” she says. “Take these.”
He shakes his head. “Really, there’s no—”
“I don’t need them. Some man sent them to me. I don’t even know who. Wait.” She disappears down the corridor and returns a moment later with an old newspaper. She wraps the dripping stems in it and hands them back to him. “There.” She pats his hand and opens the door.
No further words or instructions are needed. Jean-Paul knows what he is to do with them. “Thank you,” he says.
Josephine Baker smiles at him. “We’ll see each other at Le Chat Blanc tonight?”
He nods. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“Alors, à ce soir.”
Jean-Paul limps down the staircase. A moment later he steps out onto the street. The grim-faced concierge of the building opposite is sweeping the sidewalk with a stiff broom. A cloud of dust dances around her thick ankles. Jean-Paul raises the bouquet of red roses to his nose and inhales deeply. They smell of sunlight and hope. His leg is aflame, mortification salting the old wound. At the entrance to Parc Monceau, he turns in through the ornate iron gates. He is agitated by his encounter with Josephine Baker, and is not yet ready for the claustrophobic embrace of the Métro. He needs fresh air and some time to think. As he makes his way down the winding gravel paths and past the overflowing flower beds, his pace slows. Finally he stops in front of a marble bust of Guy de Maupassant, who looks sternly off into the middle distance.
Josephine Baker was so young, so pretty, so kind. When she looked at him with those big, dark eyes and asked what kept him in Paris, the words had poured out of him. She sat quite still as he told his story. Behind her famous face, Jean-Paul saw the little girl who scrabbled around beneath tables for bruised fruit at the market. She knew the fragility of happiness, and for this reason he trusted her.
Now, though, he feels nothing but dreadful embarrassment. How unprofessional he has been! He looks up at the statue of Maupassant—now there, he thinks ruefully, is a proper writer—and shakes his head. He is so appalled by his indiscretion that he contemplates ignoring her invitation to Le Chat Blanc this evening, but decides against it. He cannot slink away from his mistakes. Tonight is an opportunity to make things right, to show her that he is a professional, after all.
There is a sweet kiss of honeysuckle on the morning breeze. The damp stems of the roses have soaked through the newspaper, and a few drops of water have fallen onto his shoes. Jean-Paul glances at his watch. With a nod to Maupassant, he turns and makes his way back toward the park’s entrance and disappears down the steps of the Métro station.
As he waits for his train, Jean-Paul holds the roses out in front of him, so as not to drip any more water on himself. When the train pulls in, he becomes aware that some people are casting furtive glances in his direction. He looks straight ahead. At Place de Clichy a small group of women board the train. They nudge each other and point at him. One or two stare at him with indulgent looks on their faces. They are remembering a time when men traveled across the city to bring them flowers.
The women would not be looking at him like this if he were carrying lilies, reflects Jean-Paul. Flowers have their own silent vocabulary. There are blooms for love, for friendship, for sorrow, and for joy. He inspects the roses he is carrying. Long-stemmed and elegant, they have been grown, selected, arranged, and purchased for a single, unambiguous purpose: to seduce. Jean-Paul considers unwrapping the newspaper and handing a single flower to each woman who is jumping to such wrong conclusions about him. He thinks about Josephine Baker’s devoted admirer who has pinned so much hope on these twelve roses. They are so identical, so perfect, they must have cost a fortune. She does not even remember his name.
Pigalle, Stalingrad, Belleville. Jean-Paul looks at his reflection in the carriage window as the darkness rumbles by. Finally, his destination. He steps off the train and makes his way toward the exit, his uneven footsteps echoing along the tile-wrapped tunnels. He emerges blinking into the sun and sets off down the street.
Clutching the flowers, Jean-Paul walks through the gates of the cemetery and into the labyrinth of tombs. His pace slows as he nears his destination. He does not want to read the terrible, granite-inscribed truth that awaits him there.
As he walks along the familiar paths, he notices that someone has left a spray of fresh camellias on the tomb of Marcel Proust.