Hours later, she woke up, her face wet, still in her sooty plumber’s uniform. Her thirties Bakelite bedside clock showed green fizzy numbers. She rubbed her eyes.
3:04 A.M.
She remembered. Everything had gone up in smoke.
And she realized she’d been crying in her sleep, something she hadn’t done in years. Her pillow was damp with tears.
Fragments of an old dream came back to her … running, trying to hand her mother something. Playing catch-up as always. But her mother was so far ahead … so distant. Aimée could only see her sleeve flapping in the wind. And then she was gone.
Why had her mother left them?
But she knew the answer. Deep down she knew she’d been a burden. She remembered her mother’s irritated glances. How she had stuck her paintbrush in the jam jar of cloudy turpentine, annoyed by the annual teacher conference. “Amy, such institutional parrots, they don’t teach you creative expression!”
Aimée had felt confused. Did that mean she was boring and slow or that her teacher was? Or both? She only knew she didn’t measure up to what her mother wanted. Just the way Christian felt.
Her strict teacher was fair despite her funny little chignon and severe curvature of the spine. “Scoliosis,” her father had called it, her mother adding, “Never stare at others’ deformities. Focus on the eyes.”
The pain seared her as always. No differently than when she was eight years old. She undid the pants and shirt, kicked them onto the floor, and curled up in one of her father’s old shirts. Soft and worn.
She stared up at the milky chandelier, many of its icicle drops missing, that hung from the plasterwork oval-inlaid ceiling. An occasional glint of light from the passing night barges was reflected in the crystals. Beside her, Miles Davis stirred in his sleep and nuzzled her. A cool breeze scented of the Seine drifted in through her open window.
No way could she fall asleep. Only one remedy for that.
She sat up in bed, pulled her laptop over, and went online. She searched deeper than she had the other night, finding more sites about the Haader-Rofmein gang. They’d existed until 1992, when some of the first-generation members had given themselves up. There was even a punk rock band named after Haader-Rofmein, noted for its song “Grandpa Was a Nazi, Papa Was a Commie, Oh My!”
Since Germany had undergone denazification and the integration of a communist state in less than two generations, the Haader-Rofmein background and identity had complex implications.
She realized the terrorists symbolized another era in which youths rebelled against postwar conformity, abhorring their government, which was filled with former Nazis, and the industrialists and financiers who had been members of the Wehrmacht. They took violent political action. They wanted to overthrow what the Allies had created: a Germany divided between communism and strident capitalism.
She found the old Interpol WANTED posters. So many fugitives had been on the run across Europe.
Haader-Rofmein had kidnapped a wealthy French industrialist, Paul Laborde, near the German border. He’d died from injuries suffered during a shoot-out. After that, the gang members escaped or were imprisoned.
She scrutinized the photos: radicals caught in a bank heist by the security camera, bombed-out houses, BMWs riddled with bullet holes spun out on the Autobahn, figures in dark glasses with their hands up being frisked by police, the blood-smeared cells of Kernheim prison where emaciated RAD leaders lay dead on the concrete, eyes open.
No one resembled her mother. She was flooded with relief.
She found Action-Réaction, which proclaimed itself the French counterpart of the German struggle.
Apart from slogans inciting members to Eat the state and Join class warfare, Action-Réaction boasted its revolutionary ideas were in line with the 1789 French Revolution, blended with strains of Maoism and anarchism.
She searched for its headquarters or an address. Aside from an article on sweatshop worker rights in the Sentier and the listing of an address for an information office at 7, rue Beauregard, there was nothing. She finally fell asleep.
TUESDAY
Tuesday Morning
BE RESPONSIBLE, SHE TOLD herself when she woke up. She had to act more responsibly. Not let this obsession take control.
She called Action-Réaction, got an answering machine, and left a message, using the name Marie, saying she’d like an appointment as soon as possible.
After walking Miles Davis on the quai, she dropped him at the groomer’s for a much-needed trim, then stopped at the charcuterie for his favorite steak tartare. By eleven, she’d finished tests on the Media 9 security fire wall and e-mailed them to René.
Time for her to visit the person who’d know more about Romain Figeac’s work than his own son—Alain Vigot, his editor.
Below her apartment’s marble staircase, she wheeled René’s battered Vespa over the old losange-patterned tiles. He’d loaned it to her since her moped had been stolen last year. Riding across deserted Pont Marie, a low glare reflecting from the Seine in the absence of pollution haze, she realized most Parisians had begun their annual vacations.
Over on the Left Bank, Aimée shoved the Vespa in the rack outside Tallimard Presse. Once a cloister, this medieval stone building with baroque and Empire additions still projected a meditative aura.
“Alain Vigot, please,” Aimée said to the middle-aged receptionist. “He’s in conference,” she replied after consulting an appointment book.
A yellow light spiraled from the turreted windows, softening the framed photos of Tallimard’s authors and illuminating the arched recesses in the thick wall. The small reception lobby teemed with couriers delivering packages and an exodus of secretaries going out for lunch.
“I’ll wait.”
The receptionist tilted her tortoiseshell-framed glasses down her nose. “Better make an appointment.”
“D’accord,” Aimée agreed. “This afternoon?”
“Nothing until … let’s see, after Milan …” She looked up. “Laure, this goes to Monsieur Vigot.”
A young woman wearing a gray miniskirt and tunic top thrust a file onto the receptionist’s desk and picked up a large envelope with “Alain Vigot, éditeur de fiction” written on it.
“Laure, when does Monsieur Vigot return from Milan?”
“Late September,” Laure said, turning toward the door, obviously in a hurry.
“Any way you could squeeze me in today?” Aimée handed Laure a business card.
“Monsieur Vigot’s in a lunch meeting.”
“Christian Figeac suggested I speak with him.”
“I’ll give him your card,” Laure said, her mouth pursed in a tight line.
“Merci, it’s important.”
“Like I said, I’ll pass it along.”
Not much of a guarantee, Aimée thought.
She left, then waited outside the Tallimard entrance until Laure emerged. Aimée followed her, at a distance, two blocks to Brasserie Lipp on Saint Germain des Près. Laure nodded to several publishing types, smoking and drinking at the sidewalk tables. The fashionable crowd, wanting to see and be seen, preened under the awning.
She was surprised when Laure continued several blocks down Saint Germain to a small covered passage, Cours du Commerce St. Andre, then turned left. Didn’t Alain Vigot lunch with the trendy world of French publishing?
Laure entered a small café in the middle of the glass-roofed passage next door to a crêperie stall. Aimée’s mouth watered at the smell of Nutella crêpes. Her favorite. She’d only had a brioche with her coffee this morning.