Romanians notoriously are marked by delusions of eminence and persecution, and Madame Gisèle does not encourage them among her clientele. She never can tell when they are trying to acquire information, or present some grievance that were better taken to a doctor or the police. Like all expatriates in Paris, they are concerned with the reactions of total strangers. She is expected to find in the cards the functionary who sneered, the flunky who behaved like a jailer, the man who, for no reason, stared too long at the plates of the car. Madame Gisèle prefers her settled clients — the married women who sit down to say, “When is my husband going to die?” and “What about the man who smiles at me every morning on the bus?” She can find him easily: There he is — the jack of hearts. One of the queens is not far away, along with the seven of diamonds turned upside down. Forget about him. He is supporting his mother and has already deserted a wife.
Amalia Moraru has been visiting Madame Gisèle for two years now. She has been so often, and her curiosity is so flickering and imprecise, that Madame Gisèle charges her for time, like a garage. Amalia asks questions about her friend Marie.
“Marie used to be so pretty,” Amalia begins, taking no notice of Madame Gisèle’s greeting, which is “You again!” “Thirty years ago we used to say she looked French. That was a compliment in Bucharest. You know, we are a Latin race in that part of the country.…”
Madame Gisèle, who is also Romanian but from one of the peripheral provinces, replies, “Who cares?” She and Amalia both speak their language badly. Amalia was educated in French, which was the fashion for Bucharest girls of her background thirty years ago, while the fortune-teller is at home in a Slavic-sounding dialect.
“Marie must be very ill now,” Amalia says cautiously, “to have stopped looking so French. Last night in the Place du Marché St.-Honoré, people were staring at her. She smiles at anyone. My husband thinks she has lost her mind. Her legs are swollen. What do you see? Heart trouble? Circulation?”
“Overwork. What makes you think you look French?”
A long glance in the magic hand mirror, lying face upward on the table, assures Amalia that if she does not seem French it is entirely to her credit. Her collar is pressed, her hair is coiled and railed in by pins. She tries something else: “I have Marie’s new X rays — the ones she’s had taken for the Americans.”
“I’ve already told you, I am not a doctor.”
“You could look at them. You can tell so much from just a snapshot sometimes.”
“I can in a normal consultation. You brought me a picture once. You said, ‘This is my old friend in Bucharest. Do you see a journey for her?’ ‘Everyone travels,’ I told you. But I did look, and I did see a journey.…”
“You even saw the broken lightbulbs in the train, and the unswept floors,” says Amalia, encouraging her.
“I know what Romanian trains have been like since the war. Your friend came to Paris. What more did you want?”
“Why hasn’t she said anything about the money certain people owe her? What does Marie think about certain people when she is alone?”
Madame Gisèle will not look in the hand mirror, or the ball, she will not burn candles to collect the wax, because Amalia pays a low rate for her time. She does keep one hand on the cards, in case a question should be asked she feels she can answer. The seven of hearts would indicate the trend of Marie’s most secret thoughts, but Madame Gisèle cannot find it. When she does, nothing around it makes sense.
“Succès légers en amour,” announces Madame Gisèle, who is accustomed to making such statements in French.
“Jesus Maria. We are talking about an old woman. Try again.”
“Cadeau agréable.”
“She buys presents, but I’ve already told you that. What is she thinking this minute?”
“Cut the cards yourself. Left hand … Naissance,” says Madame Gisèle, examining the result. “Monday is a bad day. Go home and come back on a Friday.”
Amalia supposes that on this April day Marie is collecting more information about herself for the Americans. Marie hopes to emigrate before long. From time to time she receives a letter requesting a new piece of evidence for her file. She is enjoying April, or pretends to. She waddles to the flower market when she can, and has already brought Amalia the first yellow daffodils of the year. “Make a wish,” says Marie. Her teeth are like leaves in winter now. Does she really think the Americans will let her into the country with that ruined smile? “The first daffodils — wish on them, Amalia. Wish for something.” Marie is always wishing. Amalia could understand it in a young person, but at Marie’s age what is it all about?
This is not a pleasant April. Some mornings the air is so white and still you might expect a fall of snow, and at night the sky expands, as it does in December.
“Marie is lucky,” Amalia remarks to Madame Gisèle. “She came here when there was plenty of work, and nobody thinks of saying ‘refugee’ anymore. She has her own passport. Dino and I have never had one. She doesn’t know how things were for us fifteen, sixteen years ago. We gave a pearl ring for one CARE parcel, but it had been sold three times and there was nothing in it except rancid butter and oatmeal.”
Madame Gisèle is trying again for the seven of hearts. Amalia feels a draft and tugs the collar of her coat around her neck. All over Paris the heating has been turned off too soon. Marie must suffer with the cold. She is a corsetière, and kneels to fat women all day. Her legs, her knees, her wrists, her fingers are bloated — she looks like a carving in stone.
“Rendez-vous la nuit,” says Madame Gisèle. “Look, I am sick of your friend Marie. Either she knows and is laughing at us or it is you bringing low-class spirits in the room.”
“Not laughing — wishing.”
On an April evening Marie, in slow march time, approaches her house and sixth-floor room in the Place du Marché St.-Honoré. Her legs are thick as boots. Crossing the street she suddenly stands still and begins to watch the sky. You would think her mind was drifting if you could see her, choosing to block traffic at the worst moment of the day, staring at the new moon and the planet Venus. She is making a wish. Amalia, who lives on the same square, has seen her doing it. Marie stares as if the sky were a reflecting sheet; perhaps what Marie sees against blue Venus is the streaky movement of cars behind her, and the shadow of her own head.
Peering into Madame Gisèle’s magic hand mirror again to see what she can see, Amalia does not recognize her own face. Two years ago, when she knew that Marie would be coming to Paris, Amalia dyed her graying hair. Later, she saw her reflection in the glass covering an old photograph of Marie (the photograph taken to Madame Gisèle for mystical guesswork) and she saw two faces and believed them to be both her own. What am I now, she wondered. I am the one I left and the other one I became. Marie is still herself.… Now Amalia knows she was mistaken; Marie is also two. When Marie did arrive in Paris, when she got down from the train that terrifying morning and lumbered toward them, out of the past, holding out her arms, Dino and Amalia would never have known her if Marie had not cried out their names. They had been waiting all night for the past, and they were embraced by a ridiculous stranger who had no one to love but them. Dino pushed out his lips in the Eastern grimace of triumph and contempt, but close to his frightened heart, with his work permit and residence permit and proof of existence and assurance of identity and evidence of domicile, he carried — still carries — a folded piece of paper covered with figures in red ink. It is a statement of account for Marie, if ever she should ask for it. It will show how little Dino received for the rings and gold pieces she gave Amalia when Dino and Amalia left Bucharest sixteen years ago. “Send for me later,” Marie had said, and they kissed on the promise. Dino has a round face, blond hair, small uptilted blue eyes, and a nose like a cork on a bottle, but of course he is pure Romanian — a Latin, that is. There is not a drop of foreign blood in any of them: no Greek, no Turkish, no Magyar, no Slav, no Teuton, no Serb. He is represented in the cards by the king of clubs, a dark card, but Amalia prefers it to diamonds. Diamonds mean “stranger.”