Page 48 of The Strawberry Thief
Rats
1
Tuesday, March 28
I went to Les Marauds this morning to find Roux’s boat gone from its mooring: and the rest of the travellers – Blanche, Zézette, Saphir, Mahmed – getting ready to move downstream, packing up their belongings; putting away pots and pans; picking up litter; buying supplies; kicking ashes over fires. What has prompted this exodus? I think I can guess the answer. The Pied Piper starts with the rats before moving onto the children. How many of them have come to her, in secret, behind that purple door? How many of them heard her call?
Feel me. Find me. Follow me.
Reynaud has been making an effort to help. His sermons are almost fiery. This morning, by all accounts, he spoke of corruption in our midst, but stopped short of actually naming Morgane. I need to speak to him again: the effect of our last conversation has not been as long-lasting as I would have hoped. And Reynaud is preoccupied: his thoughts are coloured with sadness and smoke. I’ve never found him easy to read, he’s too closed for that, but nowadays he seems volatile, like paper close to combustion. Narcisse’s death has shaken him in ways I do not understand. They were never friends, and yet the old man was part of his childhood. Isthatwhy I see the smoke? Or is it hiding something else?
Rosette has been distant, too; reluctant to help out in thechocolaterie, but seemingly indifferent to the flight of the river-folk. Her excitement over Narcisse’s legacy, her friendship with Yannick Montour, mean that she has been unlike herself in recent days, jumping at unexpected sounds, or sometimes even no sound at all, like a cat on a windy day. And there is something else in her: something almost like anger. I do not know where it comes from. My winter child was always so sweet, so predictably erratic. But now she is stormy, impetuous; slamming doors and running upstairs, with Bam, a grinning gargoyle, pulling faces in her wake. Last night she came home with tears in her eyes and soil under her fingernails, which makes me think that she may have been planting flowers by Narcisse’s grave. A harmless pastime, I tell myself, which keeps her away from the tattoo shop across the square.
As for Morgane, she remains elusive, at least as far as I am concerned. I have not seen her leave the shop once, though other people have told me she has: Guillaume has seen her twice by the church, and Joséphine saw her on market day, carrying a basket of aubergines and an armful of night-scented stocks.
‘I knew her from your description,’ she said, calling in this morning for a cup of mocha and an order for Easter chocolates for Pilou and his friends. ‘Is it true she has no feet?’
I told her that yes, as far as I knew, Morgane wore prosthetics. Joséphine looked doubtful, but said that Morgane had been wearing boots. ‘I suppose they could have been,’ she said. ‘I didn’t talk to her for long.’
She sipped her mocha, but I could see the colour rising in her face. Joséphine didn’t want me to know just how long she had talked to Morgane. And there was something in her thoughts – a seam of colour; a thread of smoke – that was almost like duplicity—
‘Thinking of getting a tattoo?’ I said, with a humorous lilt to my voice to suggest how ridiculous it was. At the same time, I reached for her with my thoughts, and saw a ribbon of brightness; a dapple of light on foliage. An oak twig, with an acorn attached, and a couple of strong green leaves—
I felt the strength run from my legs.
‘You’ve already got one,’ I whispered.
Joséphine looked startled, and then gave an awkward kind of laugh, and coloured even further.
‘Don’t tell Pilou,’ she said, and for a moment she looked like the woman I’d known years ago, stealing chocolates from my shop and hiding them from her husband. ‘He’ll never see it,’ she went on. ‘It’s here.’ She cupped her belly. ‘Oak leaves, for strength and endurance. And an acorn, for Pilou, so I’ll always carry him close.’ She gave another of those awkward laughs. ‘It’s crazy, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I never thought I’d do something like that, but the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. And then one day I just went in. She was there. I didn’t know what to ask for. But once we started talking, I felt …’
‘You felt as if she’d read your mind.’
Joséphine laughed. ‘That’s right!’ she said. ‘And I thoughtyouwere the only one.’
2
Tuesday, March 28
When she left I closed the shop and stood outside for a moment. The almond blossom from the tree has gone, to be replaced by new green shoots. It smells of spring, and mown grass, and tilled earth from the fields beyond. Now is the month ofGerminalin the Republican calendar: the month of hyacinth, and bees, and violet, and primrose. It is also the windy month; the month of new beginnings, and I have never felt it so strongly as I feel it now: that sense of possibility; that irresistible lightness. A music seems to play in the air; the thinnest filament of sound, no more substantial than the brush of a spider’s web over the tip of a dead butterfly’s wing.
Find me. Feel me. Follow me.
Two can play at that game, Morgane. I send out a shimmy in the air, the scent of the Criollo bean, the scents of vanilla, burnt sugar and blood.
Try me. Taste me. Test me.
For a moment I almost thought the music halted mid-phrase. The colours in the air seem to shift, an eyebrow raised in amusement.A challenge?It is all the welcome I need. I walk towards the purple door. The door is ajar, as if she were somehow expecting me to call, and the blinds are closed.
What did I want? I hardly knew: perhaps to confront the woman at last, or to see for myself what glamours she has. I found myself at the purple door: I entered without knocking. I knew what to expect – and yet, the impact of it was no less than the first time I set foot inside: the mirrors; the lights;The Strawberry Thiefreflected in every surface. And myself, an interloper, watching from between the leaves.
A blur of movement, reflected in the mirrors all around me. A candyfloss tangle of curly hair, dyed an extravagant purple. I turned. There was no-one else in the room. And yet, in the mirrors, I saw her again, almost close enough to touch—
‘Anouk?’
There was no mistaking her. Purple hair, wide smile, eyes like the planet seen from space. It was Anouk behind the glass, looking so young and yet so adult. Children are always changing, dancing away through the passing years. Anouk at nine; Anouk at twelve; Anouk at twenty, and beyond—
I flicked the sign against malchance. But there was nothing to banish. I was the only one in the room. Anouk had gone. And yet I knew that Morgane had sent her to challenge me. She already knows my weakness, I thought: the weapons to use against me. I looked at myself in the mirrors: I thought my face looked pale under the lights. And all around me, there were birds, and those impossible blue leaves, and stylized, scentless flowers.
