Spectacle(11)
Perhaps she should tell Maman everything. What the victim looked like in the display room, the murder scene in the fever dream or vision or whatever name it warranted. Her conversation with M. Gagnon and her impulsive words to Agnès and the possibility of a second victim.
“Not at all. What I saw was…” She wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. Could she tell Maman? “Much worse.”
“I don’t like it,” Maman said, shaking her head. “Your exposure to this every day. I’m not sure this column is a good idea. Writing for the newspaper, yes. Writing the morgue report, no.” She closed her eyes, then opened them. “Monsieur Patenaude is a prince for giving you this job, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful or worse, demanding, but…”
“You’d like him to assign me another column.”
“Frankly, yes.”
That settled it. She couldn’t tell Maman what happened. Her original instinct had been right, but somehow that wasn’t very comforting.
Her mother’s world was one of simplicity; she only required sewing and domestic life and all that it entailed. She didn’t have a strong desire to experience the world—or even all of Paris, for that matter. Except when it came to fashion. And, Nathalie supposed, her mother would much rather she write about ball gowns than bodies.
She couldn’t expect Maman to understand the appeal. “I know you don’t like it, Maman, but I find it … enthralling. I don’t want him to reassign me. I want to do what it takes to be a good journalist. Although I hope someday I can do it without wearing this,” she said, presenting her new attire. “I’d rather walk in wearing your dress.”
Maman stood up, smoothing out the bustle in her dress, a beautiful multicolored silk brocade she’d made from scraps at the tailor shop. She was often overdressed for errands, and she knew it, but it was a source of pride. “While I appreciate that,” she said, trying to hide a smile, “I’m going to worry anyway. You know that.”
“I do. Otherwise you wouldn’t be Maman,” Nathalie teased, picking up the article and folding it. “Don’t worry. Such things don’t scare me.”
Is that true, even after today? The question inserted itself into her mind as if wedged by force.
Maman straightened out a velvet pillow on the sofa. “Too brave for your own good sometimes.”
“Says who?” Nathalie kissed Maman on the cheek as she put the article into her bag. “Time for Monsieur Patenaude to put his glasses at the end of his nose and nod in approval.”
* * *
Nathalie took the two-level omnibus, full of sweating people and drawn by sweating horses. She preferred the steam tram, which was modern, smoother, and quicker. However, the omnibus was cheaper and, since it was slower, allowed for better people watching. More often than not, it depended on what was closest and available, because Nathalie wasn’t keen on waiting at a depot. Or waiting in general.
She stepped off the omnibus. The building Le Petit Journal called home was a grand structure, a fitting presence for all the stories it held and shared.
Although she’d only been there two weeks, Nathalie had already gotten used to the hurried pace of the newsroom. The printing press roared almost constantly, men shuffled papers and bounced from desk to desk, and the smell of paper and ink filled every room. She found the hum of frenzied activity intoxicating. As much as she wanted to be a journalist, she’d initially resented having to give up her summer in northern France with Agnès in order to take this position. The plan had been to try to get a job at Le Petit Journal next summer and then again after she finished school in two years. Maman’s accident changed that, and despite wishing she was with Agnès right now, Nathalie adored being a reporter. Her next two years at school were optional, and given that the purpose of school at this stage was to teach girls how to be a good and proper wife (instead of teaching them Latin and Greek, like the boys), she contemplated not going back. It would depend on her experience at the newspaper, the heartbeat of communication that pulsed through Paris.
M. Patenaude’s office was on the top floor. She nodded a curt hello to anyone who passed by, relieved that most people didn’t seem to notice her and that the clothing ploy worked. After all, everyone was too busy to pay attention to a newsboy who ran errands for the editor-in-chief.
She knocked on M. Patenaude’s glass door, her knuckles striking the R in Rédacteur en Chef. “It’s … your errand boy.”
“Come in.”
She opened the door to see M. Patenaude reading at his desk with a pen in his hand. A half-finished cigarette lay on an ashtray next to his inkwell. Nathalie hated smoking, but the rest of Paris seemed to love it, right down to the stub pickers who strolled the boulevards spearing discarded cigarettes. With all the paper around M. Patenaude’s office, Nathalie didn’t know how the place didn’t go up in flames.
M. Patenaude beckoned her without looking up and continued reading. He was a fidgety man whose glasses gave the illusion of being thicker on some days than others, depending where on his nose they rested. He also talked more rapidly than anyone she’d ever met, as if the words were in a foot race to get out of his mouth.
She waited as he made a few notes, letting her eyes wander around the office. His degree from the University of France was on the wall, along with Le Petit Journal clippings about the start of the Franco-Prussian War, something about the Henard experiments, the death of Victor Hugo, and the capture of the murderer Pranzini.