Coliseum all during the war. She looked at my wife and said that the baby would die if he went with her and she didn't know anyone else to ask. She said she knew we'd had a baby, couldn't my wife nurse hers, too? I told her our baby had died.'
Rambuteau closed his eyes. 'She begged me, got on her hands and knees in the doorway. She said she knew he'd be safe with us because we had connections. Bands of Resistance vigilantes roamed Paris, out for revenge. I tell you, it was more dangerous to be on the streets after the Germans left than before, if they thought you'd collaborated.'
He took a few deep breaths, then kept talking determinedly. 'All of a sudden, my wife took the crying baby in her arms. She opened her blouse and instinctively the infant sucked greedily. Nathalie still had milk and her face filled with happiness. I knew then we'd keep the baby. So you see, Nathalie is his real mother. She gave him milk and life, I've always told her that. I never saw Sarah again. She brought us the baby because we were rightists and no one would ever suspect.'
Incredulous, Aimee asked, 'How could you accept the baby with the way you feel about Jews?'
'I've always regarded him as Aryan, because half of him is.'
'Half-Aryan?' Aimee sat up.
'The product of a union between a Jew and a German soldier. Evidently, my wife had made some foolish promise to reveal the past to Thierry. Sometimes her drinking got her into trouble.' Wearily, he raised his hand and brushed his thinning gray hair behind his ears. The man had no tears left. Aimee recalled the cobbler Javel mentioning a blue-eyed Jewess with a baby.
'Did this Sarah have bright blue eyes?' she said.
Monsieur Rambuteau looked surprised, then wrinkled his brow. 'Yes, like Thierry.' He shrugged. 'He's as much my son as if he came from my loins. And he's all I have left.'
'Tell him the truth. Be honest,' she said.
Monsieur Rambuteau looked horror-stricken. 'I don't know if I could. You see, he would have such a reaction.'
'You mean a violent reaction?' She thought he seemed afraid of his own son.
He shook his head sadly. 'His real parentage is against everything I've raised him to believe. And now it's come back to haunt my life. I never meant to be so anti-Semitic when he was growing up. I just felt the races should live separately. And I spoiled him, I could never say no to him. He's very strong-minded, I just don't know what to do.'
Aimee was struck by this irony in Monsieur Rambuteau. But his obvious love for his son, even though he was half-Jewish, touched her.
After a minute of quiet, his labored breathing had eased and he smiled faintly. 'I'm sorry. I'm a sick old man. And I'm desperate. The truth would destroy him.' He sighed. 'My son is not the easiest person to deal with. If he asks you lots of questions, tell him that all records of births were destroyed by the Nazis when they abandoned Drancy prison. That's the truth.'
'You love him,' she said. 'But I can't help you.'
'The records were destroyed, there's nothing left,' he said.
Aimee pulled out a Polaroid of the black swastika painted on her office wall. 'This is your son's handiwork.'
He shook his head. 'Wrong, Detective.'
'How do you know, Monsieur Rambuteau?' She searched his face.
'Because that's how Nazis painted them in my day.'
Taken aback, she paused and studied it again.
'He could have copied the style,' she said.
But even though Aimee pressed him, he just shook his head. 'As far as I'm concerned, young lady, we never had this conversation. I'll deny it. Take my advice, no one wants the past dug up.'
THIERRY RAMBUTEAU, LEADER OF Les Blancs Nationaux, paced impatiently in front of a sagging stone mausoleum. Where was his father? They'd arranged to meet before his mother's funeral.
This was ridiculous. He wasn't waiting any longer. Striding between the narrow lanes of crooked headstones in Pere Lachaise cemetery, he realized he was lost. Every turn he took seemed to take him further away from where he wanted to go. A trio of seniors involved in a heated discussion stood on the gravel path, their breath puffy clouds in the crisp air.
'
The old man looked up and nodded knowingly. 'A new burial, eh? You're in the east corridor, young man, made a wrong turn a few turns back.'
The old man pulled his heavy work gloves off, reached into his vest pocket, and pulled out a fluorescent orange map. On it were the faces of celebrities buried in Pere Lachaise. Like a Hollywood map to stars' homes Thierry had seen sold in Beverly Hills. Only these stars were in homes of the dead. Just then, a group of tourists wandered past them, rattling away in Dutch and consulting their own maps.
'What is this, a tourist stop?' Thierry asked in disgust.
The old man had lit a Gauloise. 'The dead don't mind it.' He shrugged and pointed at his map. 'Anyway, go left at Oscar Wilde—it's very obvious with the angel; he's a big draw, you know—and then straight until the marble crypt. If you hit Baudelaire you've gone too far. Then go just to the right past Colette and you should be there.'
The old man put the map in Thierry's hands. 'Someone in your family?' he asked.
'My mother,' Thierry said. He'd been amazed that her love affair with the bottle hadn't killed her. Cancer had done that.
'Ah, well, my condolences. You must have an old family vault; no new space here anymore. But you'll enjoy visiting her. Never a dull moment here, especially over by that rock star Jim Morrison's grave, lots of all-night parties there.'
Thierry started on his way and paused at the angel, as the old man had pointed out to him on the map. The name Oscar Wilde and the dates 1854–1900 were carved into the marble with the inscription
A single red rose lay at the angel's foot. Bleakly, Thierry concurred. He knew how it felt to be an outcast.
WHEN THIERRY reached the burial site chosen for his mother, he waited for a long time. His father finally shuffled towards him. Monsieur Rambuteau was red in the face and out of breath.
'Even with a map, this place was hard to find,' he puffed. 'But at least your mother is in good company.' He pointed to the graffitied tombstone of Jacques Brel a few plots over.
'Why don't they charge admission like the Eiffel Tower?' Thierry said angrily.
Fifteen people attended the ceremony. Nathalie Rambuteau, an agnostic, had requested a simple graveside service with her family and some friends. Several old hands from her theatrical and film days appeared.
As Thierry and his father walked away from the grave, Monsieur Barrault, the attorney, reminded them that he would be in his office later to read Madame Rambuteau's will.
As they passed the sagging gravestone of Stendhal, blackened and weedy with neglect, Thierry shook his head. 'How could they let Jews in here?'
His father's grip on his arm had tightened until it hurt and he leaned heavily on Thierry for support. Surprised, Thierry looked at his father's face and saw his pained expression.
'Papa.' Thierry hadn't called him that for a long time. 'You look ill. Why don't you go home and rest?'
Monsieur Rambuteau didn't answer.
