Paris by Starlight, page 42
He trembled. Somewhere, some of the protestors were sparking fires inside tin trash cans – for what purpose he did not know. But at least the flickering warmth was something.
‘Drive the People Out!’ The chanting had coalesced around this one simple phrase. ‘Drive the People Out!’ It crashed in waves around him.
Perhaps the only love that really sustained itself was the love you had for a child. Why else, Hector thought, would he be here, in air that ruptured with such violence? Why else listen to the chanting, the braying, the ridiculous voices that rose in the horde? Why else deny that his son was really and truly one of them, if not for love?
‘Étienne!’ a voice called out. ‘Come see …’
Étienne. That, at least, was a name that Hector knew. He sought out the voice in the crowd, and saw one man reaching out for another. The man named Étienne turned, and Hector saw his face for the first time. It was so very ordinary. He was tall and rangy, his hair a black fuzz, with eyes that, had he looked away for a second, Hector might not have picked out again.
By the time Hector reached him, he was making his way to the head of the assembly. Hector snagged him by the arm.
‘I’m looking for Alexandre.’
Étienne shook him off, continued on his way to the front of the throng. Here, beyond banks of parked cars and coaches, the walls of the apartment block towered. When Hector looked up, he could pick out the cascade of glowing green, amber and blue that poured from its edges. The seven-pointed star seemed to hang directly above.
A rising wind was snatching away his breath. ‘Please …’
‘Who’s asking?’
Perhaps it was not right to say it. Perhaps Alexandre had denied he had a father had all. There was always a chance he’d filled their heads with stories, terrors, madnesses of his life at home – anything to make it seem as if he, Alexandre, belonged among this bruised and hateful people. But when Hector looked around, none of them seemed very different from him.
‘I’m his father.’
Étienne’s eyes widened. ‘Then you’re here for his finest hour! And better late than never, if you don’t mind me saying …’ Hector tried not to wince when Étienne put an arm around his shoulder and, in that way, shepherded him to the line of cars, as close to the apartment walls as the protestors could reach. ‘Alex isn’t here. He’s gone on ahead. Look up, old man.’ Hector did. All that he saw was the mountaintop, blazing with lights. ‘Your son’s been fighting the good fight. He’s quiet, that one. Intense. But he’s always thinking. That’s why I’m not jealous, see. I don’t think I’d be here without your Alex at all. Oh, we helped each other along the way, that’s a fact, but the truth is, it was your Alex and that brain of his that helped us into the proper Resistance, back when it was just me and him kicking around, doing what we could. I might have had the contacts, but your boy had the brains. And he’s being rewarded for it tonight. He’s on a mission, you see. It’s your Alex who found out all about that book of theirs, the very first. He’s up there right now, snatching it from under their noses, with three of our best. Any minute now, they’ll be bringing it back down here – and then? Well, then it’s time to watch their world go up in smoke.’
*
Levon reached the top of the stairs.
He had to venture a few strides into the forest of lights, still hidden behind fronds of glittering ferns, before he saw them. The night garden was wilder, deeper than he remembered – and, for the most fleeting of moments, it reminded him of what the majesty of Paris-by-Starlight could really be like.
Then he saw the People hunched together on the far side of his bebia’s lake. He saw the three men looming over them and the fourth parading the lake’s near side, a baseball bat in his hands.
The winterlights that had been growing on the lakeside were obliterated, all except for one. As Levon watched, the fourth man – thick and round, his head like a hardboiled egg – brought the bat back and cut into the winterlight’s side. The light in it flared, the thick petals convulsed – and, a second later, its seedpods erupted into the air. So that, thought Levon, was why they were exploding before the stars had properly aligned. He watched, with horror, as the bat swung further, carrying the man with it, and – by sheer chance – caught one of the seedpods mid-flight. There, the fuzzy grey orb cracked open – and its lightjar, already defeathered and deformed, died in a sickening crunch.
Levon felt Isabelle at his side. He set Arina on the ground between them, then pleaded for her to stay where she was. Gilly the water dog snaked protectively around her legs.
‘We’re not the people you think we are,’ the man with the bat was saying as he studied the viscera on his bat. ‘We’re not going to hurt a soul among you.’
‘That’s if you People have souls,’ said one of the other men. Levon inched into the glowing greenery and saw him, gangly and blond and smiling sweetly as he stood guard over the People. The man at his side was bigger, broader of chest and with the Teutonic features of some comic book hero. The fourth he could barely see. He stood at the precipice itself, looking down into the freight yard beneath.
There were People here that Levon did not know. The refugees, he supposed, that Hayk had dragged back. All of them aged. All of them afraid. And then … Aunt Mariam, with Aram on her lap. All the children who took their schooling up here, huddled in the crooks of her arms. Master Atesh was on the edge of the huddle, his head bowed and trembling like all of the rest.
‘We’re just not the sort of people who’d do that to another,’ the first man said as he carefully wiped his bat clean. ‘Not the sort of People, say, who’d march into a city, enchant everyone with their parlour tricks … then stab them in the back. But that’s OK. Nobody needs to get hurt. Not any more. The People’s time in Paris is over. We all know that. Paris-by-Starlight never really existed. This city of yours is a figment of your imagination. It doesn’t belong to you at all. It’s mine, and it’s my children’s and …’ He stopped, the bat dangling in his hand. ‘I didn’t come here to hurt you. Live or die, it’s all the same to me. Just live or die in someone else’s parish.’ He stopped. ‘We came for your book. Your Nocturne. And one of you’s going to give it to me now.’
Isabelle folded her hand firmly over Levon’s. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered, and clung on to Arina as Levon strode forward, out of the glittering ferns.
‘Put it down,’ Levon said, ‘and we’ll talk.’
All of the faces in the night garden turned to him. The man with the bat. The cowering People. The rangy blond boy and heavy-set hulk who hung over them. The younger man, with his military fuzz, who’d been peering over the precipice, divorced from the rest …
Before any of them could reply, Levon heard the ferns behind him scissoring apart – and Isabelle’s voice sounding out as she stepped through: ‘Alexandre?’
The boy who’d been at the grotto’s edge was barely familiar to Levon at all, but he thought he saw it now. How long had it been? Nearly a year? His hair was cut short, and he’d grown into his body, and he looked with disbelief across the glistening glade at his sister.
‘Alexandre, what’s going on? Why are you—’
‘Who is this, A?’ asked the man with the bat.
Alexandre’s head dropped, as if he could bear to look at her no longer. ‘She’s my sister, Maxime.’
The man named Maxime’s eyes were all over her. ‘The bitch who betrayed her own people?’
To this Alexandre did not reply. ‘They call her the Rose of the Evening.’
Isabelle hurried forward, faltering halfway between Levon and the man named Maxime. If she heard Arina begging her not to, she did not show it. Levon had caught hold of her, somewhere behind.
‘Alexandre, what are you doing here?’
‘What am I doing here?’ he said, voice suddenly rising in pitch. ‘Isabelle, what are you doing in Paris? You ran away …’ He stopped. ‘They just want the book. We,’ he said, catching himself too late, ‘just want the book. If they give us the book, it’s all going to be OK.’
She tried to take a step closer, but Maxime had lifted the bat again, and this rooted her to the spot. ‘Alexandre,’ she breathed, ‘how?’
His shoulder lifted, his face opened up, and she thought she saw in him the same person who’d sat in the salon with her, late at night, and listened to the story of her life. Perhaps he was thinking of the same thing too, for when his eyes settled on her they seemed to beg for understanding. He said, ‘I found my people, Isabelle. You, of all people, would understand that.’ If there was a moment where he might have sloughed off whatever skin he was wearing, it was now. Isabelle thought she could see into his eyes. She thought he was scared. But then he said, ‘They’re good people, Is. There are good people everywhere. That lot down there’ – and he beckoned Isabelle over to look at the rally in the freight yard below – ‘they’re good people too. You don’t know them like I do. All they want is … things back the way they were. Back when they were good. Back before all the fighting and the anger and the … arguments, night after night after night …’
Isabelle tore her eyes from the rally. They’d started building pyres down there, fires spilling out of old trash cans. Their placards still flying, their chorus still strong – but, when she heard Alexandre, it might have been that he wasn’t speaking about the city at all; it might have been he was still shut up in his bedroom in Créteil, listening to Hector and Adaline and all the ordinary, everyday venom of a family at war.
‘Back when things were good?’
Levon’s voice: loud and stark. Isabelle turned back to him. She hadn’t realised, until now, how far across the garden she’d come.
‘Back when things were good, and my People were starving? Back when life was good, and they were dying of dysentery? When we were in cattle trucks, pushed from one camp to the next? When they told us there was no home? That home was gone, that we had to …’ Breathless, he looked from one man to the next. There were scales in the world, he thought. Things had to be balanced. One man’s Golden Age was another man’s Hell on earth. The only thing that separated the two was the imagination of men, building border fences or raising Starlight Proclamations, scrabbling for what was left of their worlds.
He was still.
What else was left, but to tear it all down?
‘Give them the book,’ he breathed, and turned to Arina, who huddled with Gilly somewhere behind.
He went to her, sank down on his knees. ‘It’s OK, Arina. I’m here. Just give me … let me give them the book.’
‘Levon, no!’
He recognised the voice of Master Atesh, somewhere among the cowering People, but he did not look back. He was gently touching Arina’s face, running a finger along the line of her jaw, promising her it was going to be OK.
‘It’s just a book,’ he said, with words meant for everyone in the garden. ‘So let them have it. Let them burn it, if that’s what they want. What does it matter to us? To you and me, little sister?’ He knelt down, pressing his brow against hers. ‘Those stories, they’re in our hearts. We know them, inside and out. I know about Tariel and Ketevan. I know about Davit the Daydreamer and all the Star Sailors there ever were. I don’t need it written down. I’ve got a star in the sky. The Nocturne isn’t paper. It’s … hearts and souls.’ He stood and looked around, at the People imprisoned. ‘It’s the memory of being together, even when we’re apart.’ At this, his eyes strayed to Isabelle. ‘And it isn’t even finished. Our history’s still being written. So let them burn the book. What do we care? As long as our lives can go on.’
He was done. He turned back, to take the book from Arina’s waiting hands.
He’d almost done it by the time the glittering ferns parted. His fingers were on its cover, tracing the embroidered star, when the shadow fell.
‘Stay where you are, Levon,’ came his father’s voice.
Isabelle watched as the man named Maxime wheeled around, baseball bat in hand. A moment later, the two men standing over the People had rushed forward as well. Of the Paris New Resistance, only Alexandre did not move. Isabelle tried to take him by the arm, stop him from joining them on the edge of the lake. By some strange mercy, he let her.
Neither was Hayk alone. Though he was the first through the ferns, the stairway behind him was swollen with shadows. One after another, it disgorged Samvel, Narek, Arman. His Faithful Three.
‘Give them your bebia’s Nocturne?’ Hayk breathed, stepping aside and allowing his followers through. ‘I’ve taken you for a coward, my son, but never for a fool. Give them the Nocturne, and what do they want next? You still don’t see this for what it is. One person cannot make a peace. If only one chooses peace, it is still war.’ He shook his head. ‘You abandoned your People once before, Levon. Took off, when you could have made a stand. Well, here we are, on the landlocked sea again. All that’s happened in the world since then, all the magic that’s been revealed, and you haven’t changed.’
‘No,’ said Levon, ‘and I never wanted to. I didn’t abandon my People back then. They lived, father.’ He stopped. ‘And they’ll live again tonight.’ Softly, he said, ‘The book, Arina.’
Hayk moved imperiously forward, brushing Levon and his sister aside. Across the glowing expanse, he faced Maxime.
‘Who are you, you dog?’
Both men spat out the same words.
‘I’m the Ulduzkhan,’ Hayk declared, ‘and you’re here, in my mother’s grove, at the sufferance of my People. So I’m laying it out now, as clear as I can. I’m giving you ten seconds to …’ His words petered into silence. Perhaps it was only that he was struggling to formulate the sentence; the French was so ill suited to his tongue. But then he nodded, as if reaching some silent arrangement with himself. He needed no language any longer. When he spoke again, it was in the spiralling language of the People. ‘Ten seconds? Why, these dogs gave our People no warning at all on the wharfs.’
Maxime was too slow. The baseball bat had already been wrenched out of his hands, lost in the untold depths of the rooftop lake, by the time he realised what was going on. The fist that found his face was not enough to fell him, not straight away. The second turned the world to a haze, and somewhere between the third and the fourth he found himself on the earth, with the man they named Ulduzkhan above him.
In the same moment, the Faithful Three surged past Levon and into the heart of the garden. There, Samvel fell upon the blond boy, pummelled him into the earth. Narek was smaller than the third man, with his jet-black hair and comic book jaw, but what he lacked in girth he somehow made up in spirit. The Frenchman might have killed water dogs in the streets, but he didn’t know how to take a blow. In a second, he too was on the earth, the air being choked out of him until he begged, with flailing hands, for it to stop.
The third of Hayk’s men had further to go. While the fists flew behind him, he cast himself forward, making for the boy at Isabelle’s side.
Isabelle threw herself between them.
‘Stop,’ she said – and, when she put up her hands, something in it seemed to quell the man. ‘He’s my brother,’ she stammered. ‘My brother, you understand? Whatever they’ve done to him, whatever they’ve said, he’s a good boy. He is. I know it.’
She danced left, danced right, certain somehow that this man would not touch her.
‘A good boy?’
It was Maxime’s mangled voice. Underneath Hayk, he lay bloodied, one eye swollen shut, the other clenched tight against the lights.
‘I should say he’s a good boy! This brother of yours, he’s a hero. Tell them, A. Tell them how it is.’ When Alexandre did not speak, Maxime choked out the blood that had pooled in his throat and went on, ‘Alex, well, we didn’t think much of him. Not at first. Just some mother’s son. We’d barely even heard his name. But that snivelling friend of his, Étienne, always turning up, always wanting in. Didn’t know where he wasn’t wanted – just like the lot of you People … Until, one day, he comes up to me and he says: I know how you can do it. I know how you can make your mark. My friend Alex, he says there’s a garden, a forest on top of a rooftop. That’s where it started. That’s where the magic comes from. Get up there and desecrate it, he says. Well, as ideas go, it wasn’t bad, was it, A? But it wasn’t what I wanted. So I told that shit, Étienne: find me something better. Do that, and then we’ll talk about you signing up. And he comes back, not two days later, with the right stuff. Leave the rooftop to me, he said. I got you something better. See, there’s a bar A knows, a place where the People go to play. There’s going to be a wedding. And it’s all going to happen at this little cellar, Le Tangiers…’
If stillness could be a magic, in that moment it cast its spell over the night garden.
‘Our proudest moment, and all because of little A here. You know, when I finally laid eyes on him, I thought: he may not look like much, but at least he’s got the brains we need. Yeah, you don’t know our Alex. He’s a bona fide …’
Hayk’s bloodied fist met Maxime’s face for a final time. After that, there were no more words. The Ulduzkhan hoisted himself from the prostrate body and looked across the garden at where Alexandre stood.
‘My wedding day?’
He uncurled his fists, closed them again.
‘My daughter?’
Alexandre was already looking at Arina. The girl had started to cry. The tears were pooling in her sightless eyes – and, in that moment, Alexandre understood.
