The Teleportation Accident

substitute, so he just shrugged.

‘I’m looking for a girl called Adele Hitler. Do you know her?’

Scramsfield tried to remember if he’d ever heard the name. Nothing came to him. ‘Sure, I know Adele. She usually drinks at the Flore. I can take you there if you like.’

‘I don’t want to trouble you.’

‘I was going anyway. Maybe you can buy me a drink when we get there.’

‘I’d be pleased to. My name is Egon Loeser.’

‘Herbert Wolf Scramsfield.’ They shook hands.

Adele Hitler wasn’t at the Flore but, as he had with the Norbs, Scramsfield said they ought to wait, so they each had a brandy. Lucienne Boyer sang from a gramophone. The bar was still packed with the early crowd — so different from the late crowd — still so full of optimism, exuberance and youthful good looks — still so unburdened by nostalgia for their distant and irrecoverable salad days of four hours earlier.

‘Did you really come all the way to Paris just to find this girl?’

‘Yes,’ said Loeser.

‘She must be a knock-out.’

‘Yes.’ He’d hoped to arrive several months earlier, he elaborated, but he’d had difficulty extracting from a family trust some money without which he couldn’t afford to travel.

‘What do you do in Berlin?’ said Scramsfield.

‘I’m a set designer for the theatre.’

‘Terrific. A man devoted to his muse. I’ll drink to that.’ Scramsfield told Loeser about apogee and The Sorrowful Noble Ones. Loeser didn’t look very interested, so he changed the subject to local restaurants, but Loeser didn’t look very interested in that either, so he asked Loeser what was in the brown-paper parcel that he carried under his arm. The German unwrapped the parcel to show him. Inside was a very old edition of Dante’s Inferno, bound in dark red leather, so saggy and crinkled that it looked almost viscous, like cured strawberry jam.

Scramsfield allowed his attention to wander during the explanation that followed, since any story that began with a dead man’s book collection was unlikely to end with a dirty punchline, but the basics were as follows. Because Loeser didn’t think he had much chance of bumping into Adele Hitler before the bars filled up at night, he’d been spending his afternoons finding out what he could about a hero of his called Adriano Lavicini who’d once lived in Paris. And by good luck he’d discovered that there was a rare-book dealer in the Marais who had acquired in an auction several books that had once belonged to this fellow. By now, though, only one of those books was left in the shop, and it was the least desirable of the whole lot, not just because at some stage in its long life it had spent several months drinking from a leaky roof but also because there was no reason to think that Lavicini had ever even parted the covers: it had originally belonged to a friend of Lavicini’s called Nicolas Sauvage, and when Sauvage died, he left Lavicini some of his books, but then Lavicini himself died only a few months after this inheritance. Loeser bought it anyway, and when he examined it over dinner at Le Maison d’Or, he was thrilled that he had. Evidently neither Lavicini nor, centuries later, the book dealer had noticed that about halfway through the Eighth Circle, Sauvage had stashed a letter that Lavicini had sent him in January 1679.

‘What’s in the letter?’ said Scramsfield.

Loeser took a blank envelope from his pocket and slid out the old folded letter. ‘ “Dear Nicolas” ,’ he read, going slowly so that he could translate as he went, ‘ “I could not sleep at all the night after we parted because I was so concerned that you had not taken my warnings with … due seriousness. I do not know what good it will do to repeat them but I cannot think of any other recourse. So allow me once again to be plain: if you proceed with your plans, you ought to fear for your life, and the lives of your family. You know what happened to Villayer when he tried to match himself against forces he could not help but underestimate: he met his death in the Cours des Miracles” — Court of Miracles. “I do not pretend I am a wiser man than Villayer. But the choices I have made have brought me closer to the heart of this malevolence than any man should ever have to come. Therefore, I know its power, and its reach. I hesitate to say any more in a letter, but please, Nicolas, my dear friend, mark this: if you persist in your intention to conquer those … dark lower depths, then you will soon find yourself entombed in them. I know it is your proud belief that man should be free to make these” — I haven’t been able to work out quite what this next phrase means — “unprecedented travels”? Anyway: “to make these unprecedented travels, just as Villayer believed that he should be free to make his unprecedented communications,” or whatever that is, “but until our own strength can match that of those who oppose us — and until the current order of things is utterly upset, we both know it never will — it is a … doomed and desolate aim. Blaise is sensible enough to comprehend this — why can you not?” I think that must be Blaise Pascal — he and Lavicini knew each other. “For the hundredth time, I beg you to desist. Pray write back as soon as you receive this letter. Adieu.” Then a postscript at the bottom: “I neglected to enquire at dinner: de Gorge is looking for a good barber for his dog — do you know of one?” ’

They ordered some more brandy. ‘Who was Sauvage?’ said Scramsfield.

‘He was a carpenter. But a very good one. He helped Lavicini with some of his mechanical stage designs. Villayer was a politician. And you know Pascal, of course.’

Scramsfield nodded. He didn’t. ‘What was the Court of Miracles?’

‘Gringoire the playwright goes there in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.’ The broad, unpaved cul-de-sac next to the Filles-Dieu convent, Loeser explained, had become a sort of criminal sovereign state, a Vatican City of misrule, full of burglars, pickpockets, highwaymen, and prostitutes, who had their own laws, their own king, and even their dialect. The Court of Miracles got its name partly because as soon as the beggars went home there at the night, the crippled would ‘miraculously’ walk again, the blind would ‘miraculously’ see, the pustulent would ‘miraculously’ wash off their sores, and so on; but also partly because it was supposed to be full of fortune-tellers and witches and devil worshippers. ‘There was one cult that would eat parts of an animal while the animal was still alive in order to become like that animal.’ Scramsfield thought of Voronoff. ‘Later on Louis XIV got the police to clear it out and then ran a boulevard straight through it.’

‘So what do you think the letter means?’

‘I don’t have a clue. Apparently I would not have gone far in grand-siecle Paris because when I write a letter I actually like to specify whatever it is that I’m talking about. Regardless, what’s strange is that Lavicini, Villayer, Sauvage … they all died these odd accidental deaths in 1678 or 1679. At the time, lots of people thought that Lavicini had got involved in … well, it’s almost too ridiculous to say. And I wasn’t aware that anyone suspected the same of Villayer or Sauvage. But here’s Villayer meeting his death in the Court of Miracles, where the fish cults were, apparently. And here’s Sauvage trying to make “unprecedented travels” in “dark lower depths”. I’ve no idea what to make of it all. Tomorrow I want to go and see where the old Theatre des Encornets was, where Lavicini died. And I want to find out more about Villayer and Sauvage.’ Loeser replaced the letter in its protective envelope and wrapped up the book. ‘Well, there’s no sign of her here. Don’t you think we should go somewhere else?’

So they went to the Strix and then to Zelli’s. But they still didn’t find Adele. By now it was after midnight. ‘Isn’t there someone we could ask?’ said Loeser. ‘You must know someone who knows.’

‘That’s a fine idea.’ They got up and made a tour of the bar. These days, Scramsfield’s pals didn’t greet him with quite the warmth that they once had, but he knew there was less money than ever coming from America now, and even bonhomie did have overheads.

After they’d made five or six enquiries Loeser said, ‘So far we’ve only been talking to Americans.’

‘So?’

‘I still don’t know exactly what made Adele decide to come to Paris. But I have a theory, because I remember the last thing she did before she left: she had a dalliance with some strabismic philosophy student from Paris. I think she must have enjoyed it so much that she came straight here in search of more French kisses.’

‘I don’t see your meaning.’

‘What I mean is, she’ll probably be hanging around the French, not the Americans. I don’t want to be gratuitously difficult about this, Scramsfield, but do you actually know any Gauls?’

‘Of course I do.’ But Scramsfield had hesitated just for a moment, and he could see that Loeser had intercepted the hesitation.

‘How long have you been here?’ said Loeser, now giving him a harder look.

‘Five years.’

‘And you don’t have a single French friend?’