Tatiana Rosnay: Sarah’s Key

I went to stand by one of the windows and looked down at the quiet, green courtyard. I was glad Mamé left before she ever got to see her empty apartment. It would have upset her. It upset me.

“Still smells of Mamé,” said Zoë. “Shalimar.”

“And of that awful Minette,” I said, turning up my nose. Minette had been Mamé’s last pet. An incontinent Siamese.

Antoine glanced at me, surprised.

“The cat,” I explained. I said it in English this time. Or course I knew that la chatte was the feminine for “cat,” but it could also mean “pussy.” The last thing I wanted was having Antoine guffaw at some dubious double entendre.

Antoine appraised the place with a professional eye.

“The electrical system is ancient,” he remarked, pointing at the old-fashioned, white porcelain fuses. “And the heating as well.”

The oversized radiators were black with dirt, as scaly as a reptile.

“Wait till you see the kitchen and the bathrooms,” I said.

“The bathtub has claws,” said Zoë. “I’m going to miss those.”

Antoine examined the walls, knocking on them.

“I suppose you and Bertrand want to redo it completely?” he asked, looking at me.

I shrugged.

“I don’t know what he wants to do exactly. It was his idea, taking on this place. I wasn’t so hot about coming here. I wanted something more… practical. Something new.”

Antoine grinned.

“But it will be brand-new once we finish it.”

“Maybe. But to me, it will always be Mamé’s apartment.”

The apartment still bore Mamé’s imprint, even if she had moved to a nursing home nine months ago. My husband’s grandmother had lived here for years. I remembered our first encounter, sixteen years back. I had been impressed by the old master paintings, the marble fireplace boasting family photos framed in ornate silver, the deceptively simple, elegant furniture, the numerous books lining the library shelves, the grand piano draped with lush red velvet. The sunny living room gave onto a peaceful inner courtyard with a thick thatch of ivy spreading out on the opposite wall. It was right here that I had met her for the first time, that I had held out my hand to her, awkwardly, not yet at ease with what my sister Charla dubbed “that kissy French thing.”

You didn’t shake a Parisian woman’s hand, even if you were meeting her for the first time. You kissed her once on each cheek.

But I hadn’t known that, yet.

THE MAN WITH THE beige raincoat looked at his list again.

“Wait,” he said, “there’s a child missing. A boy.”

He pronounced the boy’s name.

The girl’s heart skipped a beat. The mother glanced toward her daughter. The girl put a swift finger to her lips. A movement the men did not catch.

“Where is the boy?” demanded the man.

The girl stepped forward, wringing her hands.

“My brother is not here, Monsieur,” she said with her perfect French, the French of a native. “He left at the beginning of the month with some friends. To the country.”

The man in the raincoat looked at her thoughtfully. Then he made a quick gesture with his chin to the policeman.

“Search the place. Fast. Maybe the father is hiding, too.”

The policeman lumbered through the rooms, clumsily opening doors, looking under beds, into cupboards.

While he made his noisy way through the apartment, the other man paced the room. When he had his back to them, the girl quickly showed her mother the key. Papa will come up and get him, Papa will come later, she mouthed. Her mother nodded. All right, she seemed to say, I understand where the boy is. But her mother started to frown, to make a key gesture with her hand as if to ask, where will you leave the key for Papa, how will he know where it is? The man turned around swiftly and watched them. The mother froze. The girl trembled with fear.

He stared at them for a while. Then he abruptly closed the window.

“Please,” the mother said, “it’s so hot in here.”

The man smiled. The girl thought she had never seen an uglier smile.

“We keep it closed, Madame,” he said. “Earlier this morning, a lady threw her child out of the window, then jumped. We wouldn’t want that to happen again.”

The mother said nothing, numb with horror. The girl glared at the man, hating him, hating every inch of him. She loathed his florid face, his glistening mouth. The cold, dead look in his eyes. The way he stood there, his legs spread, his felt hat tilted forward, his fat hands locked behind his back.

She hated him with all her might, like she had never hated anyone in her life, more than she hated that awful boy at school, Daniel, who had whispered horrible things to her under his breath, horrible things about her mother’s accent, her father’s accent.

She listened to the policeman continuing his clumsy search. He would not find the boy. The cupboard was too cleverly hidden. The boy would be safe. They would never find him. Never.

The policeman came back. He shrugged, shook his head.

“There is no one here,” he said.

The man in the raincoat pushed the mother toward the door. He asked for the keys to the apartment. She handed them over, silently. They filed down the stairs, their progress slowed by the bags and bundles the mother carried. The girl was thinking fast, how could she get the key to her father? Where could she leave it? With the concierge? Would she be awake at this hour?

Strangely, the concierge was already awake and waiting behind her door. The girl noticed she had an odd, gloating expression on her face. Why did she look like that, the girl wondered, why did she not glance at her mother, or at her, but only at the men, as if she did not want to see her or her mother, as if she had never seen them. And yet her mother had always been kind to this woman. She had looked after the concierge’s baby from time to time, little Suzanne, who often fretted because of stomach pains, and her mother had been so patient, had sung to Suzanne in her native tongue, endlessly, and the baby had loved it, had fallen asleep peacefully.

“Do you know where the father and the son are?” asked the policeman. He gave her the keys to the apartment.

The concierge shrugged. She still did not look at the girl, at her mother. She pocketed the keys with a swift, hungry movement the girl didn’t like.

“No,” she said to the policeman. “I haven’t seen much of the husband lately. Maybe he’s gone into hiding with the boy. You could look through the cellars or the service rooms on the top floor. I can show you.”

The baby in the small loge began to whimper. The concierge looked back over her shoulder.

“We don’t have time,” said the man wearing the raincoat. “We need to move on. We’ll come back later if we have to.”

The concierge went to get the wailing baby and held it to her chest. She said she knew there were other families in the building next door. She pronounced their names with an expression of distaste, thought the girl, as if she was saying a swearword, one of those dirty words you were never supposed to utter.

BERTRAND POCKETED HIS PHONE at last and turned his attention to me. He gave me one of his irresistible grins. Why did I have such an impossibly attractive husband? I wondered for the umpteenth time. When I first met him all those years ago, skiing at Courchevel in the French Alps, he had been the slim, boyish type. Now, at forty-seven, heavier, stronger, he exuded manliness, “Frenchiness,” and class. He was like good wine, maturing with grace and power, whereas I felt certain I had lost my youth somewhere between the Charles River and the Seine and was certainly not blossoming in middle age. If silver hair and wrinkles seemed to highlight Bertrand’s beauty, I felt sure they diminished mine.