They were half an hour tracking him down. “He is not a tall man-”
“Hard to find, then.”
“But he wears a red fez with a brave golden tassel-”
“He’s a Turk?”
“Of course! I told you he sold coffee, didn’t I?”
“A Turk named-Christopher?”
“Don’t play the clown, Jacques-remember that I know you.”
“But-?”
St.-George rolled his eyes, and snapped, “All of the Turks who sell coffee in the streets are actually Armenians dressed up as Turks!”
“I’m sorry, St.-George, I didn’t know.”
“I should not be so harsh,” St.-George admitted. “When you left Paris, coffee was not fashionable yet-not until the Turks fled from Vienna, and left mountains of it behind.”
“It’s been fashionable in England since I was a boy.”
“If it is in England, it is not fashionable, but a curiosity, ” St.-George said through clenched teeth.
Onwards they searched, St.-George wending like a ferret through the crowd, passing round, e.g., furniture-sellers carrying fantastic complexes of stools and chairs all roped together on their backs, milk-men with pots on their heads, d’oublies carrying unlit lanterns, and bent under enormous dripping barrels of shit; knife-grinders trundling their wheels. Jack had to put the crutch to much rude use, and considered taking out the sword. Eliza had been right-Paris was retail-funny she’d known this without ever having set foot in the city, while Jack, who’d lived here, on and off, for years…
Best to keep his mind on St.-George. Only the rat-pole prevented Jack from losing him. Though it helped that people were always running out of shops, or shouting from windows, trying to engage his services. The only people who could afford to keep fixed shops were members of a few princely trades, viz. makers of dresses, hats, and wigs. But St.-George treated all men alike, asking them a series of penetrating questions and then firmly sending them home. “Even noblemen and savants are as peasants in their understanding of rats,” St.-George said incredulously. “How can I be of service to them when their thinking is so pre-theoretical?”
“Well, as a start, you could get rid of their rats…”
“One does not get rid of rats! You are no better than these people!”
“Sorry, St.-George. I-”
“Does anyone ever get rid of Vagabonds?”
“Individual ones, certainly. But-”
“Individual to you -but to a Gentleman, all the same, like rats, n’est-ce pas? One must live with rats.”
“Except for the ones dangling from your pole-?”
“It is like the exemplary hanging. The heads on the spikes before the city-gates.”
“To scare les autres?”
“Just so, Jacques. These were, to rats, as you, my friend, are to Vagabonds.”
“You are too kind-really, you flatter me, St.-George.”
“These were the cleverest-the ones who would find the smallest of holes, who would explore the drain-pipes, who would say to the common rats: ‘gnaw through this grate, mes amis -it will shorten your teeth to be sure-but once through, such things you will feast on!’ These were the savants, the Magellans-”
“And they’re dead.”
“They displeased me too many times, these did. Many others, I allow to live-to breed, even!”
“No!”
“In certain cellars-unbeknownst to the apothecaries and parfumiers who live above-I have rat seraglios where my favorites are allowed to procreate. Some lines I have bred for a hundred generations. As a breeder of canines creates dogs fierce against strangers, but obedient to the master-”
“You create rats that obey St.-George.”
“Pourquoi non?”
“But how can you be so certain that the rats are not breeding you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your father was mort-aux-rats, no?”
“And his father before him. Killed in plagues, may God have mercy on their souls.”
“So you believe. But perhaps the rats killed them.”
“You anger me. But your theory is not without promise-”
“Perhaps you, St.-George, are the result of a breeding program-you have been allowed to live, and flourish, and have children of your own, because you have a theory that is congenial to the rats.”
“Still, I kill very many.”
“But those are the stupid ones-without introspection.”
“I understand, Jacques. For you, I would serve as mort-aux-rats and would do it for free. But these-” he made a flicking gesture at a man in an excellent wig who was trying to call him over to a shop. The man looked crestfallen-temporarily. But then St.-George softened, and moved in the direction of a narrow doorway-more hatch than door-set into the wall of this wig-maker’s shop, next to his open shop-window. This suddenly burst open, and a round-bodied five-foot-tall man with a vigorous moustache and curly-toed slippers emerged from a stairway no wider than he was, preceded by a smoking and steaming apparatus of hammered copper that was strapped to his body.
When Christopher (for it was none other) stood in the sun, which he always tried to do, the golden light gleamed off the copper and hung in the steam and glittered off his golden fez-tassel and shone in his embroidered slippers and brass buttons and made him very magnificent, a walking mosque. He switched among French, Spanish, and English in mid-sentence, and he claimed to know all about Jack Shaftoe (whom he addressed as l’Emmerdeur), and tried to give him coffee for free. He had just refilled his tanks upstairs, he explained, and was heavy burdened. St.-George had warned that Christopher would make this offer “because he will want to calculate how much money you are carrying,” and together they had rehearsed a few scenarios of how the coffee-price negotiation might play out. The plan was that Jack would run their side of the dealings, and that St.-George would hover and, at just the right moment, divulge that Jack was looking for a place to stay. Jack had never said as much to St.-George, but then it was not necessary; this was why one approached St.-George upon one’s arrival in the Marais. His work took him into every building-especially to the parts of buildings where people like Jack were apt to stay.
To accept coffee for free was to demean oneself; to overpay was to publicly shame Christopher, by implying that he was the sort of man who cared about something as low and dirty as money; to merely agree on a fair price was to proclaim oneself a simpleton, and accuse Christopher of the same. Arduous haggling, however, laid bare the soul and made the participants blood-brothers. In any event the matter was settled-to the relief of the wig-maker, who stood wringing his hands as this one-legged Vagabond, fat pseudo-Turk, and rat-catcher shouted at each other directly in front of his shop, scaring away business. Meanwhile St.-George was striking a deal of his own with the wig-maker. Jack was too busy to eavesdrop, but he gathered that St.-George was using his influence to get Jack a room, or at least a corner, upstairs.
Just so: after a ceremonial cup of coffee in the street, Jack bid adieu to St.-George (who had immediate responsibilities in the cellar) and to Christopher (who had coffee to vend), stepped through the tiny door, and began to ascend stairs-past the wig-maker’s shop on the ground level, and then, on the first story, his dwelling-the fine parts of it anyway, such as parlour and dining-room. Then a story for the family bedchambers. Then a story where his servants had their quarters. Then one he had rented out to a tradesman of lesser rank. As the storys mounted, the quality plunged. In the bottom levels the walls and steps alike were solid stone, but this gave way to wooden steps and plaster walls. As Jack continued to climb, the plaster developed cracks, then began to bulge and flake off the lath. At the same time, the stair-steps became creaky, and began to flex beneath his weight. In the top story there was no plaster on the walls at all, just birds’ nests of straw and wattle spanning gaps among timbers. Here, in one large room interrupted by a few struts to shore up the roof, lived Christopher’s family: countless Armenians sleeping and sitting on squarish bales of coffee-beans. A ladder in the corner gave access to the roof, whereupon a sort of lean-to shack, called by the grand name of entresol, had been improvised. A sailor-hammock hung corner-to-corner. Several bricks were shoved together to form a pad where a fire could be lit. On the tile roof downhill of the entresol, a tissue of brown streakage gave a hint as to where previous occupants had done their shitting and pissing.