Instead of taking a little nap, which he sometimes did around dusk, Kurt gazed out the aperture until the canine moped away. Then he went through the wall into one of the uninhabited chambers and chewed meditatively on some linen drapes. He knew that Conrad was down in the storeroom, waiting to see what Étienne would leave for them. And it didn’t matter to either of them that the horse might get some of what was rightfully theirs. There were plenty of provisions to go around, and always had been.
MADAME DE MORNAY HAD expected her outing to take a lot out of her, and it did. When she woke from her nap, she was still exhausted. She rang her little bell, the one that called Étienne to her. He came at once, because it was very important to him that his great-grandmama stay in her room, at least until some idea of where to put the horse came to him—the grand salon and the cuisine were both places where Madame de Mornay spent a good deal of time. The library was a possibility, but it had hard, slippery floors, and windows onto the Champ de Mars. And whether Paras could or would be able to negotiate stairs was a question he had to answer. But the Feast of the Immaculate Conception had done Madame de Mornay in. She sat up in bed, drank a mélange of milk and honey with dried chamomile, and fell asleep for the night over her book, which was the last volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, a book she had been reading for eighty-three years and never quite finished. She kept at it, though, because her mother had met Monsieur Proust once at a party.
For himself and Paras, Étienne put together a pleasant degustation of shredded cabbage, withered apples (Paras smacked her lips, they were so tart and sweet at the same time), chopped beets, and more sweet potatoes. He offered her some pieces of cheese, his own favorite, but she wrinkled her upper lip and turned it down, as she also turned down the dark chocolate. Kurt, who was standing just inside the entrance to the rat palace, fluttered his whiskers at the odor of the dark chocolate. He would have liked a taste, but it was something Étienne never dropped and never left on the counter. After her meal, Paras took another long drink of water from the sink, and then went outside. Étienne huddled into his jacket and went outside with her. While they were gone, Kurt gathered up the remains of their meal, and also a single dried anchovy that he and Conrad must have missed from some earlier time. It was a mere fragment, but delicious all the same.
NINE
That night, Frida trotted back across the Pont d’Iéna exactly as if she knew what she was doing, and, in a way, she did. She hadn’t been to the Place du Trocadéro since the leaves were fluttering off the trees; it existed in her memory as a place of comfort and richness—her little hiding place in the cemetery, her enjoyment of not only the provisions but also the well-dressed passersby, the tiny dogs in their purses who would growl at her (for a long time, she’d thought that was what purses were for), the cigarette smokers lounging beside the walls (Jacques was a smoker when he could afford the cigarettes and occasionally he’d splurged on a bottle of champagne—he’d even given her some in her water bowl). Jacques had taken much pleasure in the lights and the busy social scene, had even thought himself, in a way, a part of it, since he had grown up on the Avenue de Messine, and liked walking past his old building when he could. One of Frida’s favorite things had been to sit, erect and proud, on the top step of one of the two buildings at the Palais de Chaillot (she had heard humans talking about it—a museum about buildings in a large building). Jacques hadn’t felt it worth his while to spend the money to go inside, though there were other museums he had entered, leaving Frida to guard his guitar on the street. She had also spent some time, while Jacques was asleep, exploring the cemetery that overlooked the square—he liked it because it was quiet there, enclosed, a good place for a long sleep.
As she trotted over the bridge, she was well aware of the enormous lit Tour over her shoulder, but she didn’t turn to glance at it. She felt that she was somehow escaping its chilly aura. Once, she had asked Paras what she thought of the huge thing, and Paras had said, with bona-fide curiosity, “What difference does it make to me?,” and Frida hadn’t been able to answer that question. Raoul and other birds seemed to view it as a sort of tree/building hybrid, and he had told Frida that various flocks over the years had attempted to colonize it, not pausing to wonder, as he said, “why no flocks had dared come before them—but every bird thinks of himself as an adventurer.” Of course, he also remarked, the humans were not going to allow any flocks of Aves a free hand with that tower, not even Corvus corax in all of their many noble variations.
Once across the bridge, which was clear of snow but icy, Frida took a chance and did a thing she could not have done with Paras in tow, which was to go straight up the hill, beside the pool and then between the two buildings, as if someone were calling her and she had a right to be there.
And, indeed, the cafés around the square were ablaze with light, open for customers even if the night was chilly and slippery. Much of the snow had melted off during the day, or been swept to one side. The streets were shiny, and a few cars and taxis were making their cautious way here and there. Frida went over and sat beside the door of the Pâtisserie Carette, arranging herself so that she was facing outward toward the square, but also half looking in the window. She took a deep breath or two and waited.
With the wind blowing in her face, Frida suddenly felt cold for the first time—all day long, she had been on the move, up the Avenue de Suffren, then back and forth across the Champ de Mars, then pacing in front of the house that her new horse friend had disappeared into. She had been distracted from the chill, first by the boy and then by events. At any rate, Frida was such a big, strong, muscular dog that she didn’t feel the cold the way some dogs did. Her coat was short but dense, well suited for racing into rivers and lakes after ducks or into fields after pheasants, partridges, and other birds. No body of water that she had ever seen had intimidated her, including the Seine itself, which was plenty warm, even in the winter—at least, Frida thought so. But now, in the semidarkness, with the brilliant lights of the pâtisserie shining in her eyes, and the sight of the waiters relaxing, smoking, chatting among themselves as they wondered whether any customers would come in, she began to shiver. Was it fear or dread or cold? Frida herself didn’t know. And the sky above was so dark that Frida could see nothing except the wavering lights of the giant tower across the river.
A voice said, “What in the world are you talking about?”