Okay, she was curious. She was still a curious filly, although she was now a mare. It was perfectly understandable that a curious mare would be curious about her old friends, would enjoy seeing a horse that was not cold and inert at the top of a tower, would enjoy hearing some of the gossip—who was winning, who was in from the countryside, what they thought of her disappearance. Surely, they would enjoy hearing her adventures, too—horses liked to gossip.
They walked in the direction of the noise, and then came the sound of the crowd, rising and falling, the sound of a human voice pouring out into the air, naming names. There was a tall barrier—she could see through it, but it was above her head—and then they found a break in the barrier. Paras stepped through, and the others followed her. Now Raoul appeared, landed on her haunches. He said, “Ah! A contest!” The course ran away from them, vast and green, mowed, trimmed, leveled, springy, but no jumps. It did not look like the course where Paras had won her purse, the course she had cantered away from so blithely.
She heard the runners before she could see them, dark and chaotic in the distance, thundering toward her. She told herself they were flat runners, not her business. But still she kept shivering and soon she was stamping her feet. They came on, strung out, not bunched. It was early in the race—no one was trying hard, but they were stretching, nostrils flared. Paras snorted, lifted her head. Her tail went up. She remembered that the boy was there just as Frida said, “What is wrong with you?” She calmed herself, but they got closer, eating up the turf. No, she didn’t recognize anyone, not really, but she recognized herself in them—not only in the bays, but also in the chestnuts, the two grays.
She snorted again, and Frida stood on her hind legs and pulled the boy off. He fell in a heap, and Paras leapt the railing—it was as low as could be—and as the field passed her, she joined it. Yes, the jockeys stared at her, but the horses just said, “Welcome!,” and on she galloped, pacing herself by keeping up with one of the chestnuts—rangy, four white feet, decent stride. They were neck and neck. He was friendly. His jockey said, “Oh my God!,” and then Paras pulled ahead. She had never run in the pack before, since she was a front-runner. After a moment, she was almost in the clear—only two horses ahead of her, and only the one pulling away. She ran neck and neck with the other one, a nice-looking brown, no markings. They sped up, lengthened their stride. The horse eyeballed her, trying to intimidate her, but she wasn’t tired, since she wasn’t carrying any weight at all. The other horse, a bay, pulled ahead by another length, and they were deep among the screaming humans, and then they crossed the finish line, and everyone except Paras slowed down right away. Paras kept going until she heard Kurt squeaking like mad. She had forgotten he was still in place. His paws were digging into her, and through her own panting she could hear his. Then he said, “I am going to die.”
Paras said, “No, you aren’t,” and she turned around and trotted back to where everyone else was standing. She did so willingly; she didn’t realize until she got there that the human saying, “God in heaven, God in heaven! It’s her!,” was Delphine. She was holding the bridle of the winner, and that horse’s jockey was jumping to the ground, and then Delphine collapsed and Rania appeared and, what do you know, she came over and put her arms around Paras’s neck and leaned against her and started crying. The giant human voice in the air said, “Something very strange seems to have happened as the horses were running! Ariane, can you provide us with any sort of an explanation?” And then there were humans everywhere, and some man was approaching Paras with a halter, and so she backed away, and trotted, then galloped to where Frida, Raoul, and the boy were still standing.
They could have gotten out, they should have gotten out, but no one, least of all Paras, remembered where the break in the tall barrier fence was, and so they were trapped, and so they were caught, and so, Paras thought, her fate was decided.
JÉRÔME WAS WRAPPING a half-dozen prunes in a sheet of newspaper, making small talk with his customer, and keeping his eye on the street for a particular old man who had walked past, who sometimes helped himself to the fruit. A few days before, he’d taken a handful of excellent strawberries—Jérôme had seen him eating them one by one as he ambled down the street. If the man were to simply ask, Jérôme would give him things—Paris was full of homeless people, and everyone knew someone who’d had a bad season or two, and there you were. But this fellow…
Jérôme’s eye caught the face of the boy, looking up at him. He flipped the package of prunes over, and there was the face of a horse, too. The picture in the newspaper was of the boy and a horse, cheek to cheek. Jérôme unwrapped the fruit, wrapped them in a sheet of ads for Monoprix, took the money, made the change. When the shop was momentarily empty, he read the article. There was the dog, too, offering her paw to the horse trainer who had found them, or whom they had found. The horse had jumped over the outer railing, into a race, run with the other horses, then fled back to where the boy and the dog were standing, way at the far end of Longchamp, where no one but the mowers ever went. It had been a great sensation when it happened—not only had the horse joined the race, she had nearly won it; not only had the horse appeared, but she was the very horse that the winning trainer had lost in the late fall, when the horse slipped out of her stall and disappeared. Into the Bois de Boulogne? Could she possibly have survived in the Bois all winter? The boy seemed terrified by the whole experience. However, the boy and the horse and the dog all seemed well fed and healthy. Yes, said Jérôme to himself, as well they might be, since he had fed them, and he stocked only the best. A customer came in, bought a substantial bunch of commodities, paid, and left. Jérôme went and knocked on the window of the meat market. Alise raised her hand, came out a minute later. Jérôme showed her the article. They both began laughing. For the rest of the afternoon, Jérôme looked at the picture every so often. Nothing about the old lady—well, that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that the old lady had lived to make her way to the market as long as she had.
Toward late afternoon, here, at last, came the gendarme. Jean, his name was. Jérôme had never even spoken to him, but they had touched their caps to one another, smiled, nodded, acknowledged each other’s business in the neighborhood. Jérôme waved him over, and he came, with dignified steps. Had he seen the paper? Jérôme pointed to the pictures of the dog, the horse, and the boy, and the gendarme pushed his cap back and gave a satisfied sigh. Then he said, “So that’s where they went. The old lady died, you know. In her bed. Just the sort of death I wouldn’t mind.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Jérôme. In a way, the horse wasn’t a surprise, either, when he reflected upon how many carrots, apples, and beets the boy had purchased over the last few months. He said, “Where did they live?”
“On Marinoni, just beside the Champ de Mars.”
After closing the shop, Jérôme walked down the Rue Marinoni and looked at the place. It was all closed up now. He tried peeking through the fence, but the vegetation was too thick—that should have been a giveaway right there. He stood with his hands in his pockets in the deepening dusk and wondered why he had never thought to do this—follow the boy and the old lady and the dog home, just to see. Would it have been better if he had?
He was standing there quietly when Pierre approached him. Jérôme knew why. All he had to say was “Have you seen the newspaper?”
Pierre shook his head.
Jérôme took the folded article out of his pocket—the boy, the horse, the dog. Right before their eyes the whole time. When Pierre got to Anaïs’s café, she was there. She had the paper, too. She’d found it on one of the tables when she came in to begin the evening’s baking.