“Eh bien, you must be hungry, eh?” he said, tousling the boy’s thick black hair. “Alors. Give me your knapsack. Let’s go eat some supper.” He picked up the boy’s battered valise and they headed for the exit. “Get ready. Cold as a witch’s tit, out there.”
Outside, slogging through heavy snowfall back to the taxi rank, Emile was glad of his leather jacket and worried about Luca’s worn woolen one. With a nod toward his friend Marcel, who’d been guarding his old Renault taxicab, he motioned to his son. “Allons! Vite! Quickly! You’ll freeze!”
“Good boy, Pozzo,” Luca said, opening the door and seeing the dog up front.
The dog, a scruffy old mutt with one eye, but a good watchdog, growled his assent and the boy slid into the front seat beside him. It was filthy in his father’s taxi and smelled of sweat and black French tobacco, yes, but it was warm, and even Luca, who considered himself a true Stoic, was glad of it after trudging through the deep snow. With a single sweep of his short powerful arm, Emile cleared the fresh accumulation of glistening powder from the windshield, and climbed behind the wheel. The ancient engine turned over reluctantly and they were off.
“Maurice is holding a table for me at Le Pin Sec,” Emile said, taking a left out of the car park and maneuvering the old Renault into the rutted snow of the Quai d’Austerlitz. “I know you like it.”
“Papa, no, no. Lilas. I insist.”
“Are you crazy?”
“It’s expensive. Yes. But I will treat you. I have made some money. Doing some jobs.”
“Jobs, eh? What kind of jobs?” Emile looked at his kid with a side-long glance. The bookworm had finally started working?
“I write articles for the papers,” the boy said, his face turned to the frosted window. “Political articles. They don’t pay much but I’ve saved it.”
“Political, eh? More love poems to Lenin and Trotsky? You and your Brigade Rouge. I hoped you would have outgrown this romantic infatuation with Communism by now.”
“There is a deep schism in the Corse, Papa,” Luca said. “The old, which is you. And the new, which is me. The Brigade Rouge.”
“A schism? Is that what you said? Schism?”
Luca just smiled and stared out at the passing images of his favorite city.
“No comment, eh?” his father said. He coughed something up, rolled down his window, and spat it out. He said, “Eh bien. No politics. I’m right and you’re left. I love you anyway. We’ll go to the Lilas. Give you and your fucking Red Menace the night off, eh, boy? Ha-ha!”
Somehow, the old man managed to open a bottle of the Pietra with one hand, and he swigged it while he drove.
“Merci bien,” he said, toasting his son with the bottle as they slid around a corner. “You want some?”
“Merci bien à tu, Mon Cher Papa,” the boy said, taking the bottle and tossing back a swig, his dark almond eyes shining in the glow of the dashlight. Emile laughed. His youngest son had the glossy dark hair, long thick eyelashes, and sallow complexion of a true Corsican. Yes, here was a boy weaned on olive oil; you could almost catch the fragrant scent of the pine forests of the maquis in his hair. As his father drove and drank from his bottle, Luca squirmed uncomfortably.
“What—there is something here—” There was a hard object on the seat, poking Luca’s hip. He raised himself up and grabbed it. A small black automatic pistol, he saw, holding it up to the light. It was flat and deadly looking. And, loaded, too, Luca could tell by the weight.
“Give me that,” Emile said. He flipped the empty bottle over his shoulder into the back and stretched out his hand.
The boy did as he was told and said, “A job, Papa?”
“Phut, it’s nothing,” he said, slipping the weapon inside the side pocket of his leather jacket. “Some foreign crazies making too much noise is all. One of the New York families, I think. You know the types. Wiseguys. Foreign bullies. Busybodies. Think they can waltz onto our turf and intimidate me.”
“Right,” the boy said, looking at Emile carefully. His father did dangerous things for dangerous people. He was an enforcer in the oldest and most feared crime family in all of France, the Union Corse. His father had been shot and stabbed many times in his long career. When they swam in the sea, you could see that his body had been—
“Well. How was the ferry over to Nice?” Emile asked. “A nice boat?”
“Ça va,” Luca replied matter-of-factly. And then, in English, he said, “I prefer horses to boats.”
So, Emile thought, casting a sideways glance at his son. The boy’s mother had been working on his English, eh? The child had a gift for languages. Hell, he had a gift for everything. Philosophy. Literature. A genius, some people even claimed. He’d always been the most curious boy. Always with his nose in a book. History. Art. Science. When Luca was seven, and just falling in love with his maps, a teacher had asked which he preferred, history or geography.
“They are the same,” the boy replied matter-of-factly, “geography dictates history.”
Hah! That was a good one. But, when he told it later that night, standing with his mates at the bar, they’d just stared at him blankly. Idiots. All his comrades were idiots. Campesinos.
And now, politics. The boy had drifted dangerously to the left for his father’s tastes. Writing fucking Communist manifestos. No way to make a living, pamphlets, that much was for certain. If Luca envisioned a career in politics, which he had confided to his mother that he did, he’d better start steering a middle course. That way, like any good politician, he could go whichever way the wind blew.
“So, you’ve been riding?” Emile said, not wishing to spoil the reunion mood. He slowed down and turned right into the rue George Balanchine. “That’s good. A man who cannot sit a horse well is not to be trusted. How is your dear mother, eh?”
“She hates you.”
“Ah,” Emile said, and made a sound like a wet finger touching a hot iron. “Love is like that.”
M. Bonaparte managed to find parking in the snowy street. A few minutes later, father and son were sitting at a small window table at the bistro Lilas. It had a narrow red facade on the street and the rear door opened onto the catacombs, a convenient exit when you needed it. Emile ordered for both of them, sliced Lyonnais sausages and roast Bresse chicken with cornichons.
The stained vanilla-colored walls and the big zinc bar gave the place a prewar feel that older Parisian cabbies like Emile enjoyed when they were feeling flush. He saw familiar faces, but tonight he kept to himself, delighted just to bask in the rays from his brilliant and newly prosperous son.
After they’d eaten, Emile ordered another demi of the delicious Châteauneuf-du-Pape to celebrate his son’s arrival. He refilled their glasses, hung a Gauloise from his lips, and said, “It’s good, eh, Lilas? The food? The wine? Like you remember it? Molto buono?” Emile, like many Corsicans, often switched seamlessly between Italian and French.
Emile was enjoying the expensive food and drink and seeing his handsome son all grown up, employed, picking up the tab. He’d even taken tonight off, called in sick. In addition to his taxi, Emile worked five nights as a security guard at the Hôtel des Invalides, the massive old soldiers’ home that stood along the Seine. With the two incomes, he could afford to have a pretty good life here in Paris and still send enough to Corsica each month to help Flavia care for Luca.
“Alors. You’re all grown up now, eh? Fifteen.”
“Sixteen. Papa—who is that man?” Luca said. “Do you know him?”
“What man?” Emile replied, looking around inside the crowded, smoky bistro. There were few women in the place, many men. Which one—
“No. Outside. At the window. Staring at me.”