Paris by the Book(48)

“Seriously? Bemelmans was ‘American’?” Ellie looked at me. I had once made the grave error of shelving Bemelmans’s adult nonfiction with his fellow Manhattanites in U.S.A./New York. Ellie preferred his entire oeuvre to be shelved with the Parisians.

“He did live in America?” I said, adding the question mark only when Ellie’s stare demanded one.

“Was he Belgian?” Declan tried. He wasn’t trying to ingratiate himself, or he was. He seemed truly curious. “The name—”

“Belgian!” Ellie snorted. “He was Austrian—not Australian, Daphne”—Daphne snuck Bemelmans onto our Down Under shelves once to tweak Ellie, and it still rankled—“born and raised. For a time, anyway. Then Germany.” We all turned to look at her. “Then. . . . America,” Ellie said.

We’d reached the Pont Neuf, the bridge where, in the series’s second book, Madeline falls into the Seine, only to be rescued by a dog Madeline’s classmates adopt and name Geneviève. Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris. Geneviève, whose name was Fleabag, Ellie now explained, until Bemelmans’s editor made him change it. Annabelle perked up. “Fleabag!”

“I don’t remember that from the book,” said Peter.

“Not that book,” said Daphne. “Ellie reads the grown-up books.”

Our guide took no notice, made no mention of the dog, the saint, fleas, anything of value whatsoever.

Ellie couldn’t take it anymore. “Excusez-moi!” she shouted. The guide stopped. The group looked at Ellie. She took a deep breath and asked about the plunge, the dog, the debate—it was a debate for her and Daphne—as to precisely which bridge Madeline fell from, because when Bemelmans drew the very first drawings for Madeline, he was on the Quai Voltaire by the Pont du Carrousel—mais . . .

The guide shook his head, furious that we might presume to know Paris better than he did. But we did, we knew this Paris, Bemelmans’s Paris—Robert’s—very well.

The remaining tourists—we’d lost a few each block, it appeared, as the tour grew increasingly desultory—turned to Ellie.

“This bridge—” Ellie began.

“This bridge!” the tour guide shouted and began yelling at Ellie, in French, that this bridge was a very important bridge, yes, but not for anything having to do with her stupid book—this bridge was where, in 1968, brave anarchists came close to killing the American ambassador, and wouldn’t it have been wonderful if they had, because one thing would have led to another and the world would not now be ruled by ignorant, shit-eating Americans. Bemelmans was German, he said, and what horrors Americans haven’t inflicted on the world, Germans had and would again.

His scarlet candor (and lying, at least about the supposed assassination attempt) suggested that he did not think Ellie—nor Daphne—nor any of us—could speak French fluently. And indeed, no one else on the tour seemed to understand a word he said. But Daphne understood enough to begin crying, and Ellie to begin shouting. This made Peter huff and Annabelle shriek. The guide answered all this with crude slang that was new to me.

It wasn’t new to Declan, though, who took to French to tell him to shut up, and furthermore, to be ashamed for taking these people’s money and then providing them with a sham of a tour, and for making kids cry . . .

The guide shook his head, and then backed up a step, then another, and then melted away into the crowd.

Peter and Annabelle went to Declan’s side—either to console him or because they knew he’d been sticking up for them.

Je suis désolé, Declan said. “I am sorry” is all it means, though it always makes me think, “I am desolate,” and so I was, or close to. Daphne shook her head. Peter looked stricken, Annabelle like she really wanted that stick now.

But our tour? I turned to our little group and thought about what to say. Come by the store—we are less than a kilometer away—buy the actual book, or just browse. My apologies on behalf of Paris. I don’t know that guide, but I do live here, and—

“More than one building or school in Paris claims to be the model for Madeline’s school, the famous ‘old house in Paris that was covered with vines.’ The truth is that Bemelmans modeled it on his own school in Austria—a school for boys.”

This was Ellie. Everyone was staring at her.

And why wouldn’t they? She was speaking with authority. Head held high. Feet planted. Atop the bridge railing, two hands lightly anchoring her to a lamppost as she swung.

“He spoke German. And many other languages.”

I looked at Declan. He nodded to two policemen moving toward us from across the bridge, just beginning to break into a slow jog.

The fathers in the crowd, meanwhile, beamed at this wise and spirited child. So did Annabelle. The mothers looked toward me—I was going to stop this, right? Soon?

Yes. But how to do so without being the cause of her fall? I stared at her. Ellie stared back. That meant that she didn’t quite see Declan moving toward her from another angle.

“Now, Miss Clavel, we all know her?” Ellie called out. “The woman in the book who’s like the teacher or leader or something. Also not German. But anyway, she was based on his daughter’s teacher. Bemelmans’s daughter was not named Madeline. Barbara. His wife, though, he met her after she’d quit living as a nun in a convent kind of like the girls’ school to work as an artist’s model in Manhattan. But this is the important part: Bemelmans’s wife was named Mimi, which was a nickname for Mad—”