Perestroika in Paris

TWELVE

New Year’s passed pleasantly—Étienne managed to make some crêpes for Madame, sprinkled with demerara sugar (and for Paras, and for Kurt, and even for Conrad, who was lurking in his tunnel near the stove). Madame’s birthday came and went; she thought of it all day, but didn’t say a word about it to Étienne. She knew he knew she was old, but she didn’t want him to put a number to it. That was her main concern, vanity, until she lay down in her bed at the end of the day and her real concern hit her—yes, she wasn’t going to live forever, and what in the world would happen to Étienne? If she lived to be a hundred, he would be twelve when she passed, and although he might see himself as independent, no one else would, nor should they. She knew she had funds that had been accumulating for all of her life, but, legally, he might have no access to those funds (how might she find out about this?). The funds themselves would lead the authorities to hand him over to a trustee or (God forbid, remembering her youth) an institution. What had she been thinking? She imagined this room, her room, in this sturdy building. Well, she had been thinking of how her home had protected her for her whole life, and as a result, she had failed, even when she could see, to look out the window at the large world. She tossed and turned all night, ruminating on these things, and in the morning, when he brought her cup of tea and croissant, she patted the bed, put her hand on his arm, got him to sit down. She couldn’t see him, but she sensed his mood—lively, expectant, happy. She didn’t want to wreck that, and so she made up her mind that she would come up with something soon, and said, for now, only, “Ah, my dear, you are very kind.” He jumped up and hurried out of the room.

After giving his great-grandmama her tea and her croissant, wondering for a moment why she looked so worried, and then hurrying to the grand salon, Étienne went straight to Paras, who was lying on the carpet. As big as she was, she was careful in the grand salon, and graceful. She walked about, took naps, went to the cuisine, nudged the handle of the faucet for a drink of water if she was thirsty (and then nudged it until the water stopped running). Yes, having a horse was a lot of work. Even though the horse was pretty good about saving her deposits for outside (Étienne quickly learned that if she tapped the door he had to act at once), she ate far more than either he or his great-grandmama did—she was making her way through many stored root vegetables, dried legumes, fruits, and fresh vegetables. She would be expensive once the provisions in the cellar gave out. However, that would be sometime in the future, and Étienne knew that his future must include some very bad things—such as school, such as his great-grandmama’s passing on. Indeed, his future was a yawning chasm of loss and mystery that he didn’t dare look into.

This present—attending to the horse, petting her—was so enjoyable that he decided once again not to think about those things. Étienne often read while leaning his back against her as she rested. He liked to rub her with a cloth and brush her with an old hairbrush he’d found in one of the rooms upstairs. Lately, he had been sitting astride Paras as she curled upright on the carpet, her back hooves tucked neatly against her belly. She didn’t mind—she yawned, then she looked at him. He could imagine riding—the horse’s neck and ears in front of you, your hands entwined in her mane—but it was scary. Right now, his toes touched the carpet; everything was quiet; there was nothing scary about it. After a while, he “dismounted” (a word he had read in the riding manuals), and she stretched out on her side. He perched himself across her ribs then sat quietly on her hip. But even as he did so, he knew that he really wanted to ride.

WHEN ÉTIENNE WAS asleep or in the library or taking care of the old lady, Kurt sat on Paras, too. In fact, he ran all over her, snaking under her mane, trotting across her shoulder, scrambling up her leg from her hoof to her elbow. She liked it—it gave her a good scratching, and meant that she didn’t have to roll to take care of an itch. When Kurt asked her if she had ever had a rat as a friend before, Paras said, “Assassin wouldn’t allow it.”

“Who is Assassin?”

“A Jack Russell terrier.”

Kurt thought she said, “Jack Russell terror.” And, indeed, when she described the pleasure the dog always took in chasing rats, grabbing them, snapping their necks, he felt terror. Paras said, “He didn’t eat them,” as if that was a good thing. Why would he kill them, then?

“For sport. He enjoyed it.”

He sounded to Kurt like a cat, but, then, you didn’t get that feeling with a cat, that the cat was killing something because she enjoyed it—it was a duty for a cat, the essence of catness, to kill things.

Paras said, “Some of the horses were afraid of rats—not so much the sight of them as the sound of them. Horses don’t like mysterious sounds. But rats were fine with the rest of us. However, it wasn’t our business.”

While they were having this conversation, Paras was in the cuisine, eating her chopped beets from a bowl Étienne had placed in the seat of a chair, and Kurt was sitting on the back of the chair. When Paras was finished, Kurt scurried down into the bowl and disposed of the scraps. Paras said, “You know where I need a little scratch?”

Kurt looked at her, his mouth full.

“Under my mane, just behind my ears.” She stretched her head toward him and closed her eyes. He stepped lightly onto her maxilla and eased upward. When he got to her ears, he went a step farther, turned around, then entangled his back feet in the thick brush of her mane. She raised her head. It was disorienting, but Kurt held on. Paras said, “Ah, that feels good. I miss grooming. At the time, I thought there was too much of it, especially the everlasting baths, the water spraying in your face, but I liked the brushing.”

She turned to look left and then right. Kurt felt as if he was being spun around, but he held on.

She said, “You’re not that heavy. About the same as a bridle. But try to stay in the middle. It’s easier to balance you.”

She walked into the grand salon, went to look out the window. Kurt thought he might be sick, what with the beets and all. Down. Up again. A noise from the staircase—Paras’s head swung to look.

Étienne’s footsteps on the stairs. Paras knew that Kurt was afraid of Étienne, and since she generally took things as they came, she didn’t try to dissuade him. But now she did a kind thing—she carried him over to the entrance to his tunnel and put her head down. He let go and dropped, sliding part of the way down her forelock. He went into the tunnel, which was dark and cool—relaxing, really. As he headed up the tunnel to his bedroom, he decided never to do that again, sit on her head. But he knew that he would, that sitting on her head was, perhaps, his best bet for getting out into the world and finding his doe, his desired mate.

RAOUL HAD a winter project, too—making his most superior nest ever, the roomiest, the coziest, and the most aesthetically avant-garde (he had woven in several strands of silvery Christmas decorative materials so that they glinted in the moonlight in a pleasing pattern that reproduced the random effect of stars). He was now sixteen. Of course, that was in human years. An avian “year” had nothing to do with the sun or the earth, it was called a “segment,” and had to do with vegetation and migration. He had lived for fifty segments, ten of them in Paris. Every male Corvus, upon reaching the age of fourteen segments, was required to challenge those around him in three ways—flights, speeches, and combat. Outside of Paris, these challenges were ritualized and traditional. For example, the topic of most speeches was either insect varieties or grains. Flights were sometimes for distance, sometimes for speed. Combat was ritualized, too—the old fellow who might lose the battle simply moved his family to a nest in a less prestigious tree—say, from a walnut to a beech. Relations in Paris were more chaotic and less friendly, and Raoul had been hard put to fend the youngsters off. Sometime soon, he would have to move his nest away from the statues of Benjamin Franklin, accept his banishment. And, yes, he was lonely. It didn’t help that Paras and Frida seemed perfectly happy and not much in need of his advice over there at that creepy empty house with that poor child, that ancient humanlike creature, and that rat.

He might have done what he used to do—observe humans and Aves and develop his theories—but no one wanted to hear his theories. Tonight, his dissatisfactions were nagging at him, so he groomed himself until the roots of his feathers ached, and still could not settle in. The Place du Trocadéro was dead—all the cafés were closed; the two buildings of the architectural museum were like blocks of ice. Even the lights in the great Tour across the river looked rather forlorn. Raoul hopped to a higher branch, then spread his wings and flew, first upward, over the metal man on the metal horse; then he glided down the esplanade. The moon was a small pale crescent. He floated over the river, banked left. No one at all in the Champ de Mars except Mademoiselle Paras, trotting briskly across the damp wintry turf, her forelock bobbing, her tail up, and her nostrils flared. She was making plenty of noise, but the windows of every house were dark. Raoul circled her once, then landed on her rump. She snorted and said, “You can fly. You don’t need to hitch a ride.”

“I can’t fly and talk to you at the same time.”

“Other birds do.”

“That is a misapprehension on your part. They are proclaiming, they aren’t conversing. If we want to communicate, we park. I am parking on your hind end. You might halt.”

“I’m hungry, and I don’t want to be late.” Nevertheless, she slowed to a walk.

“Where are you going?”

Paras explained about Anaïs, the baker: “She has access to grain. All different types of grain, in fact. You can’t eat kale at every meal and expect to maintain your strength.”

“I keep telling you Mammalia that insects are a wonderful source of energy and piquancy.”

“How many flies would I have to eat per day? I weigh four hundred and fifty kilos.”

Raoul admitted, though only to himself, that this might present a problem. He said, “A bird eats seven times its weight each day.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“Over a kilo. Maybe a kilo and a quarter.”

“Ignoring the fact that I could not possibly process three thousand kilos of food every day, I also do not believe that you process seven or eight kilos of worms, flies, and frites every day.”

Raoul didn’t say anything. He flew off her rump, and she rose to a light trot. She had come to pavement, so her hooves made a crisp sound, but since she had lost her shoes a month ago, she no longer clanged. She turned left. Raoul followed her to the shop, where there was, indeed, a youngish human female working at a large table on the other side of the lighted window. Just as Raoul saw her, she glanced in their direction, smiled, and came to the door, which she opened. She exclaimed, “Good evening, dear girl!” Paras, who had dropped to a walk, and then halted, rested her chin gently on the woman’s shoulder and snuffled a polite greeting in her hair. The woman patted her cheek and moved her forelock out of her eyes. Raoul found a perch on an empty vegetable display case in front of the shop next door. With mammals, it was an everlasting round of love, hate, sadness, gladness, fear, and anger. All Aves knew that mammals said of themselves that they were “higher” than other animals. And all Aves dismissed this idea with a laugh.

Anaïs had become more comfortable with Paras. She had been sure that the horse would have been caught by now, but as far as she could tell, the horse was not even discovered. Certainly, where the horse lived was a mystery to Anaïs herself. On the day she heard that phantom whinny—before Christmas, it was—she had wandered around the Champ de Mars and seen no sign of a horse. Anaïs had then decided that Paras was a spiritual embodiment of some sort—one result of her very religious upbringing was that, although she rejected doctrine, she didn’t mind visitations. And she knew from all the stories she had heard as a child that if a god or a spirit asked something of you, your job was to provide it in good faith and with a happy heart. And so she did. The horse came three or four times a week. Her provisions added maybe 1 percent to the wholesale expenditures of the bakery and the café, so Anaïs raised the prices of some of the luxury items that her customers should not be eating anyway, like chocolate croissants and lemon tarts, to cover it. And though Paras only trotted away when she was finished with her grain, and was not, at least for now, flying Pegasus-like into the empyrean, Anaïs had a remote hope that something amazing would happen someday—say, on the vernal equinox.

Anaïs loved her job, but since she was up all night, hers was a rather lonely life. She was isolated from her family because of the religious disagreements, and all of her friendships were based on business, not a sense of connection. She was now in her thirties, unmarried, hadn’t had a boyfriend in four years, so it was a great pleasure to pet the horse, to feel the warmth of her coat underneath her mane, to sense her kindness and her enjoyment of the food Anaïs put together for her (tonight, a combination of wheat berries and flaxseed, with grated carrots mixed in). She rested her shoulder on the horse’s neck, closed her eyes.

Then a raven flew up and landed on Paras’s back. Anaïs was startled, but the horse only twitched, kept eating. The raven sidestepped forward along her spine, his eye on Anaïs—he kept turning his head, first one way and then the other. He was a little creepy—so utterly black in the dark. But every supernatural being had a companion, and at least he wasn’t a bat. Anaïs held tight to the bowl, and thought that if the raven tried to peck her eyes out, she could put the bowl over her head.

But the raven simply started to caw—caw-caw-cawcaw-caw—not loudly, but, or so it seemed to her, conversationally, somehow. And then the horse tossed her head, and the raven flew back to what Anaïs now saw was his perch on Monsieur Curzon’s potato bin. Anaïs set the bowl on the pavement; the raven sailed down to it and pecked up a few tiny bits. Anaïs laughed. Meanwhile, Paras quietly inspected the pockets of her benefactress’s apron. Anaïs cupped a lump of brown sugar—the one most preferred by customers—in the palm of her hand, and Paras took it, let it sit in her mouth, melting for a bit, then crunched it down. The raven looked up at Anaïs. Anaïs squatted down and offered him a lump of sugar. He took it in his beak, dropped it, pecked it, then picked it up and flew off with it. For a woman who had never had a pet because of her mother’s allergies, this experience of living in a world of horses, birds, and other animals was a pleasure to be cherished, even if they should turn out not to be embodied celestial beings.

A FEW DAYS LATER, when the weather was fresh and almost warm, Frida was lying in her spot with her bag nearby (a nice cloth bag that retained the fragrances of any vegetables or bones that had been carried in it). She waited, as a bird dog knew to do, and, sure enough, Madame de Mornay and Étienne shuffled out of the house, then opened the gate. Frida followed them. Etienne knew she was there, as he knew she stayed with Paras in the garden, but she was so shy that he hesitated to acknowledge her, and was waiting to see if she would acknowledge him. Madame used her cane with one hand and laid the other on Étienne’s shoulder. Étienne pulled the little two-wheeled shopping trolley along and kept his eyes forward. Frida assumed her place two paces behind them.

The surface of the shopping trolley, which was made of fabric, fluttered, catching Frida’s attention. The three of them crossed slowly at the traffic light. Autos did not honk, though Frida sensed their bursting impatience. Madame was steady, impervious. They passed the sporting-goods store, and Frida glanced through its glass door, but the fellow who had sold her the ball was not visible. The surface of the trolley fluttered again. Frida sped up, and she could smell the bad smell now, over and above the vegetable fragrance of her own bag. It was a grimy, sour odor. The odor of rat. Frida’s nose twitched.

But there were other things to attend to. There was that man running behind her, almost on top of her. Frida shifted her weight to the rear and the side. The man, who said, “Mon Dieu!,” was deflected off the curb, and Madame remained safe. The man slowed to a walk—much more appropriate, Frida thought.

Étienne and Madame stopped, unusually for them, in front of the chocolate shop. Étienne said something, then Madame said something, then they stepped inside, leaving the trolley on the threshold. The fabric of the trolley fluttered again. Frida stepped up to it, dropped her own bag, put her paw on it, nosed open the flap. Yes. He was inside the trolley—a small, dark, glossy rat. He had been scratching around, but now he went quiet and stared up at her, his eyes large and frightened. Frida bared her teeth.

Kurt said, “I’m sorry. We haven’t met, but I’ve seen you through the window. You are friends with Perestroika.” He added, “My friend.”

Frida understood that she had overreacted. She cleared her throat and said, “Yes, I’ve heard about you. I understand you are not game.” Even so, her whiskers twitched.

Kurt said, “Where are we?”

“Rue de Grenelle, outside the chocolate shop.”

“What is a chocolate shop?”

Frida, who saw Étienne and Madame approaching with a box, said, “Curl up in the corner and find out. But keep your paws to yourself.” She stepped back. Étienne, still attending to Madame, put the little box into the trolley without looking. He closed the flap, and they walked on. Madame was saying, “Nothing wrong with an occasional treat. I bought a box of candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate. Some other nice things in the box, too. Take good care of it, my darling.”

Étienne patted his great-grandmama on the back of her hand.

They walked on.

Frida took a few deep breaths, and at the fruit-and-vegetable market, where Jérôme was absent for some reason, replaced by a young woman, she waited until Étienne and Madame began inspecting vegetables (always a long process), then nosed open the flap. The little box was untouched. She said, “Why did you come along?”

“I didn’t mean to. I was sleeping in here, and suddenly we were out the door. I always wanted to get out the door, but now I’m not so sure. Do you see any rats around—females, perhaps?”

“Not a one,” said Frida.

“Oh dear.” Kurt sighed.

“It’s too busy for rats. There are humans and automobiles everywhere. I can’t say that I smell a rat in the neighborhood right now, but I’ve gotten a whiff from time to time.”

“My father tells me that cats did away with everyone. We are the last living rats.”

“He’s exaggerating,” said Frida.

Kurt curled into a ball, his paws over his face. Frida let the flap drop and sat down in her attentive and statuesque position beside the trolley. She was a predator, but even so, she did not want the rat to be squashed by groceries. It was a conundrum—if Étienne merely dropped the bag of vegetables into the trolley, that might endanger the rat (but also the chocolates); if he reached in to take out the box of chocolates, he would see the rat, and then there might be chaos. There was a reason why Paris was home to so many fat cats—the rat’s father was wrong about numbers, but not about culture. Étienne and Madame went deeper into the shop. Frida bumped the trolley, knocking it over so that it fell on the fabric side, then put her nose down as if sniffing it, and said, “Ease yourself out under the flap. I’ll lie down close to the wall of the building, and you can hide between me and the building.” She arranged herself. Kurt slipped out. He looked rather striking to Frida, but the Parisians had their chins in the air, and if they saw him, they did not react. He pushed in behind her. He whispered, “The boy petted me once,” but after that said nothing. She barked one gentle bark, and Étienne appeared a few seconds later. He stood the trolley back up, said, “Bon chien!,” and pulled the trolley into the shop. Frida had no idea what to do next. She lay quietly, ears forward. Humans saw her and smiled, but did not, apparently, look closely—there were no screams or gasps. The feel of the rat’s fur against her leg was warm and soft. The stink was not overpowering, not unlike the stink of every mammal, including Madame de Mornay. Every so often, the rat gave out a little squeak, but it was so soft and high-pitched that humans could not have heard it.

Étienne and Madame came out of the vegetable shop, went into the meat market. Frida remained still, arranging herself to look as proud and supercilious as she had ever done before, even in her days of solitude in the Place du Trocadéro. As a result, the woman in the meat market didn’t chase her away.

Now Étienne and Madame came shuffling out, dragging the trolley. Humans stepped aside to give them space. Étienne was pulling the trolley, and it was full. The flap, partially open, revealed the box of chocolates nestled into the moist greenery of a bunch of carrots. Frida rose to her feet. She said nothing, but Kurt did what she would have advised him to do: he walked along underneath her, exactly within her midday shadow. He made no sounds. Fortunately, Madame was tired, and she and Étienne proceeded deliberately, rather close to the wall of shops, out of the way of passersby. Frida was a little nervous, but what would anyone do even if they did see them? The rat was inside Frida’s territory. Even a human would deduce from that that the rat belonged to her.

But of all the humans, only the gendarme saw the rat scurrying down the street, within the stride of the German shorthair. It looked like an optical illusion, especially when the dog paused with the boy and the old woman for the streetlight, and the rat paused, too, and then skittered off the curb and across the intersection in the dog’s shadow, perfectly in time with the dog’s step. Did the dog know the rat was there? The gendarme couldn’t tell. After the four of them disappeared around a corner, he stood scratching his head and wondering what he had really seen. He checked his watch. Lunchtime. He went into the nearest bar and ordered a shot of brandy; then he wondered if perhaps he might be transferred to Montmartre, where strange things happened all the time and weren’t so disconcerting.

That evening, Kurt could not sleep at all: he was still too amazed at his first foray into the great world. He thought that it was no use telling Conrad about it—Conrad would not believe that their kingdom here, so huge to them, was relatively so small and dark, or that the number of humans in the world so defied all of Kurt’s powers of perception that his sensory mechanism had broken down completely. He might believe that the sunlight was so bright that a rat could not open his eyes for more than a second, and that the noise of humans and their doings was overpowering, but he would not believe that a dog had saved Kurt’s life, that cats were relatively few and far between, or that Kurt could not wait to go out there and look again for his doe.

THIRTEEN

Pierre thought that perhaps they were due for an early spring—the Champ de Mars had gotten plenty of rain since the December blizzard, but was now drying out quickly. It was Pierre’s job to make a meadow in the midst of a city, to give it beautiful flower beds and swaths of color. And no one in Paris was willing to step in a puddle. It did not matter if a man or a woman purchased his or her shoes at Hermès or at Monoprix, those shoes were not to know muddy water. Pierre had been to the U.K. and seen “wellies,” but never on a bona-fide Parisian. And so he had to take care of the allées and the grass (which was wet and tender this time of year, reaching for the sunshine) and the fences, which got rusted and bent over the winter, by whom and how Pierre was not quite certain. It was a hectic time, which was fine with Pierre, since he had no one at home but his four cats, and because there were four of them, they viewed him even more superciliously than the citizens of Paris did—the mere fact that they outnumbered him rendered him incidental in their eyes. He knew from that piercing whinny before Christmas that the horse was somewhere nearby, but he hadn’t seen her or any of her products recently. It gave him a pleasantly eerie feeling when he happened to think of it, but he hardly ever happened to think of it, he was so busy.

When Pierre was growing up on a farm west of Saint-Céré, five hundred kilometers due south of the very spot where he was standing, and infinite worlds away, he had cared nothing about the apple orchard, the plum trees, the sunflower fields, the cows, or the sheep. He’d wanted only to get to Paris. When he got here, he tried various forms of employment, and at the first one, a travel agency, he’d met his wife. And they had traveled a bit—to Greece, Italy, Morocco, Scotland, England. But the tightness of the office made him restless, so he tried driving a taxi. The streets of Paris were both confusing and frustrating—once he had been stopped for an hour in a traffic jam over by Montreuil in which the cars were so crammed together that even a police vehicle blowing its siren had been unable to get through. Then he’d found this job, and his restlessness faded away, or, rather, dissolved into the very sort of work he had left behind down south. Here he was, active, orderly, as solitary as his father had been. Almost fifty. His father had died at fifty, pulmonary embolism.

Then, as he was sorting rakes in the gardening shed and inspecting the upper hinge on the shed door (screws coming loose—the door needed replacing), he saw a stray dog trot past. The dog was a German shorthair, sleek and elegant, with a confident air. A striking dog, which was why Pierre recognized her—she was the dog that belonged to that busker. Pierre had seen the two of them several times in various places around the arrondissement, particularly across the Pont d’Iéna, over by the carousel and the architectural museum. Everyone knew the fellow was quite a musician, had a guitar worth as much as an automobile, made a lot of money, could have found a place to live if he had wanted to, but you could tell by his look that he was a bit of a renegade, the kind of old fellow, maybe sixty, who had always been a renegade. Pierre had given him a euro or two. What was that song he’d played—“Malagueña”? Something classy. Pierre stepped out of the shed enclosure and watched the dog trot away, then looked around. The busker was nowhere to be seen. The dog was trotting north, carrying a shopping bag. Pierre laughed, pleased with the distraction. He thought, well, once you have decided that a stray horse is none of your business, then a dog with a shopping bag is truly none of your business.

AFTER EATING her meal, slowly, as she always did, as she always had—even oatmeal had interesting flavors if you ate it slowly enough—Madame de Mornay made her way into the grand salon, feeling the warmth of the sun as she went. She paused at the second window and touched the glass. It was almost hot. She turned the crank that opened a lower pane and felt the breeze. Her ninety-eighth spring! Had every single one been so full and rich? She did not regret any one of them. She took a deep breath and then made her way to her chair, where she sat quietly for a while, sensing the flow of the air around her. Then she put her hand out, found her knitting, and commenced. Her project was a useless one, a coverlet to be pieced from the squares she knitted, using up a lifetime of leftovers, most of them merino wool, her favorite. She had made many a sweater and sock in her day; no doubt her bin of remnants was a riot of colors that did not match. But she knew her stitches by heart, by feel. She didn’t have to see what she was doing to know whether to knit or purl or pass the slip stitch over. She could do a simple lace if she kept proper count. It was rather like saying her rosary or playing the piano, orderly and reassuring.

Perhaps the onset of spring was why those feelings of dread for Étienne that she had had around her birthday had receded in favor of hope, or even confidence. She still understood the stakes, but the boy was taller all of a sudden—she had to lift her hand fairly high to put it on his shoulder—and somehow this calmed her. Yes, she had been selfish to keep him here; however, she herself had never gone to school, had had a governess who was quite well educated, who had taught her to read, write, and do mathematical equations, had introduced her to Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Rousseau, Poincaré, Colette, and George Sand. A music tutor had taught her to play the piano. She was allowed free run of a library that included many eyebrow-raising texts, and she had read them and discussed them with her tutor and her mother numerous times. Étienne might have started school at five, but Madame had decided that the school nearby was a sterile, unpleasant place, not right for her darling.

But once she felt better, then she felt worse—truly, she had been selfish. She had wanted Étienne all to herself, and had also wanted to prevent anyone, everyone, from access to the life they led here on the Rue Marinoni. Her experience of Paris was that if you went about your business with dignity and cleanliness, no one dared to investigate. Yes, she had plenty of money in the bank—her bills were paid—but she didn’t remember the name of the bank—the old one had been taken over more than once, and no doubt the bills were no longer even paid by a human, but by a computer program. As she remembered, she had crept to the bank some years ago—four? five?—and the man she met there, very well dressed, had reassured her that the bank had only her best interests at heart. Did she believe him? How might she decide? If someone were to investigate, she and Étienne would be separated, and both of them would be put in separate places to be “taken care of.” Her extreme age was against her, her failing sight was against her, her deafness was against her. It would be easy for “an authority” to assume that she could no longer live independently, would it not? Easy and profitable for a hospital, a facility, a “guardian.” She remembered the orphanages and institutions of her youth, cages for children where beatings abounded, food was scarce, and the adults embezzled the funds. Whether these things were true about real orphanages, or whether she’d read them in books, she could not now remember, but the images were as clear to her at ninety-seven as they had been at six, when, walking down the Avenue de la Bourdonnais, she asked her nurse why children were alone on the street, why they were so dirty and thin, why they came up to her and grabbed her elbow. Her nurse, a kind woman, had handed out what change she had, shaking her head, saying, “The war! The war! Our Father who art in heaven, have pity!” Madame could reassure herself that Étienne was better off than those children, at least. Every day, she ran her hands over the boy’s clothing to discover if he was dressed properly, and, every day, he was, and she detected no bony protuberances or emaciated upper arms—he was no wild child, like that boy she had seen in some film, when was that? A friend had taken her, then introduced her to the director, a handsome man whose name always made her think of truffles. Étienne was clean, fed, responsible, an avid reader. She shook her head, came back to the present, thought of the future: “What next?”

THE HORSE WAS about to stand up; Étienne wrapped his legs around her sides and twined his fingers into her mane. Underneath him, she tilted back, then heaved forward, and then he was up toward the ceiling (not too near the ceiling, since the ceiling in the grand salon was five meters high). She stood quite still. He could see through the window from a different angle, too, and what he saw was the top of the fence outside, the buds on the shrubbery that enveloped it, the house across the street, and a bit of brightening bluish sky—it was just past dawn, and his great-grandmama would awaken soon. He had stood on the back of the sofas once or twice, and looked out the windows of the library upstairs, and he ran up and down the staircase every day (he had been known to slide down the banister, until that became rather boring), but this was different. He felt Paras’s warmth. Perhaps he even felt her heart beating and the blood coursing in her veins. He felt her skin tremble and her tail switch easily to the left and easily to the right. She was still, but she was alive. It was frightening and it was exhilarating. She took a step forward. He felt her right hip shift slightly; then her right shoulder moved, then her left hip, then her left shoulder. Her head lifted and dropped. She paused, and then she took another step, and another. Her mane was thick enough so that his hands were full—it was rough and warm, and underneath it, her coat was silky. Her ears flicked toward the window; then she paused, alert, as if she was listening to something. Her ears, though deep reddish brown, were edged in black. He hadn’t noticed that before. He bent down, put his arms around her neck, took in her smell. There were so many wonderful things about being on her back that the riding books never mentioned.

He had set up the furniture in the living room so that, though his great-grandmama’s favorite chair and table were just where they’d always been, everything else was bunched together in the middle, to give Paras a place to sleep and some room to get around. From on top of her, this looked a bit like a racecourse, and so it was—she now walked the circuit in a leisurely fashion, and as he went around on her back, past the fireplace, the window, another window, short wall, long wall, doorway, short wall, window, window, fireplace, her steps were muffled by the carpet but his feelings kept rolling out. The first circuit was a vertiginous thrill, but he didn’t fall off, and then he felt himself get used to the movement and the rhythm, which was much more pleasurable. He sat quietly, let his back sway in time to her steps. By the third circuit, he was feeling a gentle rapture. None of the riding-school books in the library had ever talked about this, either. Time passed, step by step, and then the door opened to his great-grandmama’s chamber, and there she was, neatly clothed in her usual black outfit, her hand on her cane. She called out, “Étienne! Where are you, my boy?”

Paras halted. Her ears flicked. Luckily, she was right beside one of the sofas, and so, still gripping the horse’s mane, Étienne slid down until his foot touched the upward curve of its back; then he dismounted as best he could. Though he knew she couldn’t hear him, he said, “Right here, Grandmama!” Paras stood stock still. Étienne skipped over to the old lady and guided her into the cuisine. On the way past the front door, he opened it wide. The air was fragrant. That it seemed like spring surprised Étienne. With the horse in the house, time passed more quickly than it ever had before, perhaps because there was so much to do, so many books to peruse, and even memorize, about the nature of horses.

When he came back after giving his great-grandmama her breakfast, the horse had gone outside. In his exhilaration over his ride, Étienne had forgotten to feed her, and now he didn’t know quite what to do—Grandmama would certainly sense something if he were to let Paras back in and give her her usual basin of steel-cut oats and legumes. He ran upstairs and looked out the window. She was snuffling among the shrubbery along the fence. The dog was lying in the sun nearby, and the raven was perched on the head of the sitting lion that still adorned the left column. There was grass, at least some. She seemed fine enough for now. And then he gazed around the courtyard, imagining himself sitting on her back, striding here and there. He could not wait.

Out in the courtyard, Paras was not terribly hungry. Anaïs had given her an especially rich mixture of wheat berries, bran, flaxseed, and grated beets the night before, and, anyway, the grass in the Champ de Mars was coming back—rich and full of flavor. Grass in the courtyard was sparse, but what humans called “weeds” were plentiful, young and delicious. She ambled here and there, nosing for this bit of clover, that bit of dock. All the horses at the stables in Maisons-Laffitte had enjoyed the bits of herbs that got into the early hay, giving it more flavor and variety. Really, she thought, she might be a little thin, but, between Étienne and Anaïs, she now had a more varied and interesting diet than she had ever had in her life.

WHEN RAOUL PRESENTED himself at Nancy’s nest, the edge of the water wasn’t far from where Nancy was sitting dutifully upon the eggs, muttering to herself. Raoul thought but did not say that he had advised Sid to situate the nest on higher ground. Sid had insisted that higher ground was too exposed—was Raoul really and truly unaware of the hawks and the owls that flew about, focusing their gaze from above every moment on nests of duck eggs? Duck eggs were far and away the most delicious eggs, far surpassing geese and, what was it they were called—“Chickens?” offered Raoul—that humans ate by the hundreds. Sid was far more hysterical than most Aves, even mallards, that Raoul had ever encountered. How he flew into the empyrean with his mallard friends Raoul could not imagine, but, on the other hand, he had seen flocks of mallards squawking constantly, as if shouting to humans, “Shoot me! I can’t stand myself any longer!”

Nancy said, “What will happen will happen. I say that every year, and I truly believe it, but I would like a rest every so often. At least the dog is gone.”

“She isn’t far gone,” said Raoul.

“Oh dear,” said Nancy. “You never know with a dog.”

“I’ve never seen a dog as nice as Frida,” said Raoul.

“Yes, but with any dog, something snaps, and there you are, she’s wringing your neck for you, tossing you aside without even eating you.”

“Has this ever happened to you?” said Raoul.

“It happened to a third cousin, out in Chatou. It was the talk of the family for years. The dog appeared to live with the flock in comity and peace, sniffed the ducklings, herded them a bit, and then, who knows, my cousin said the wrong thing, the wind blew from the wrong direction, the dog got up in a mood. Jumped on Pearl and did her in, in seconds. Left seven ducklings. Some humans baked Pearl for supper that night. Served her with oranges from their greenhouse. No, it doesn’t matter what a dog says. A mallard has to keep her wits about her. Better for the dog to be gone.”

“Life,” said Raoul, “is always a chancy business.”

“You are telling a mallard this? A mallard, for whom a moment’s peace is a rare and precious thing?” She tucked her head under her wing and went back to muttering.

NOW THAT SHE was living with Frida, Paras was a little surprised by her canine habits (it was Raoul who’d taught her that they were “canine”): She slept off and on all day; you could tell her something, but she didn’t believe it unless she checked it out with her nose (not her ears—equines relied upon their hearing); she could not control her tail—everything she thought was expressed before she knew it by the movements of her tail. She had a strange attachment to objects, which she stashed here and there and kept watch over (one time she had lost the “ball,” and then, when she found it, she rolled it with her paw, took it between her jaws, and tossed it in the air, trembling with pleasure). But the strangest thing was that, even though she still would not go into the house, she treated the boy as her very own human—she wagged that tail when he came out and when he looked out the window. He seemed to notice her—he smiled, and sometimes he even petted her when they went to the market.

Raoul, who was perched in the crook of a tree limb that arched over the top of the fence, said, “My dear girl, I have never seen a Canis familiaris who was truly independent. Those who don’t have humans run around in packs with one another. When I first saw our friend Frida after her human was carted away, she didn’t leave the neighborhood over there. Ah well. And, you may not know, not all Canidae are familiaris.” He lifted his wings. Frida continued to sleep. “You ask me, the best type of Canids are Vulpes. They have a poor reputation among the other canids, but they think for themselves.”

“I’ve seen foxes,” said Paras. “I’ve seen them in the Champ de Mars.”

“Of course you have,” said Raoul. “They were certainly more surprised to see you than you were to see them.”

Paras said, “I need to make a wider circuit. I would enjoy a good gallop.”

Raoul fluffed up his feathers, sidestepped, plucked an insect from the base of a leaf. He said, “Mmm. Not bad.”

Frida stretched out, groaned, and then woofed, very softly, in her sleep.

The fact was that Raoul was thinking of abandoning Benjamin Franklin entirely. Those youngsters over there! The whole lot of them were from Dijon, pushy and populous in the Dijonnais tradition. He skipped upward from branch to branch in the tree. Certain forks or crooks in its branches had been utilized by earlier generations of Aves, but there was nothing at the moment, though in the adjacent tree there was a stick nest belonging to a pair of Columba palumbus. They were talkative and rather messy Aves, but they minded their own business. He hopped upward again. The branches of the tree got smaller and bouncier, the air got fresher. It wasn’t a bad tree, a plane tree, a common tree. But he didn’t have to think of it that way if he didn’t want to. When you got old, your priorities changed, did they not? He cawed a few times to Paras (though she didn’t look up at him) and stretched his wings.

DELPHINE HADN’T SPOKEN to Madeleine since Christmas. What was there to say? Delphine had exhausted herself looking for Paras, and had gotten to the point where she could only imagine bad outcomes—stolen by Louis Paul, with him gloating. He might have even sent her to the slaughterhouse, because her skills were a threat to his own chances for a win…. She smacked herself on the side of her head to rid herself of this thought. Madeleine had not sued her for negligence—she was too kind to do that. Nor had Paras been insured. But the whole experience had driven Madeleine out of the horse-racing business. She had retired her silks, put her other two horses out to pasture, and contributed fifty thousand euros to a horse-rescue organization. Delphine’s barn was full—she had had to borrow three stalls from her neighbor, and what she would do if he wanted them back she did not know. Sometimes, when she was out training, she would see a horse go by that reminded her of Paras—same refined head, mobile ears—but it was never Paras, never had that parallelogram-shaped star right over the cowlick between her eyes, never had that avid, curious gaze.

As for racing, Delphine was doing well enough—already this season, she had won two flat races, at Cagnes-sur-Mer and Hyères, had a series of four seconds in a row in Lyon. She liked her horses, and she was looking forward to the season, both on the flat and over fences, but she could not keep herself from gazing at races that Paras might have done well in, imagining driving Paras to the course, imagining telling the jockey to let the filly do it her way, reliving the pleasure she had felt when the filly came home first, and then first again.

When her mobile rang and it was Madeleine’s voice on the other end of the line, her heart fluttered, as if, as if Madeleine had some news. And she did, but it wasn’t about Paras. She had a new project, devoting herself to rebuilding a small abandoned convent in her village as a museum. Delphine thought it was a good idea—that village was at a crossroads where Gauls, Romans, Franks, and countless other peoples had paused, looked around, and decided to settle. The earth there was a swamp of artifacts. Madeleine sounded as if she was trying to be enthusiastic, as if she had made herself call Delphine in order to be friendly. She went on about potsherds and coins—there was one with a figure of a horse on it—Gaulish. Looking at it had made Madeleine rather sad. At the end of the call, just as they were hanging up and Delphine was watching Rania head out toward the gallops with the American horse Jesse James (fast, but still not comfortable, Delphine thought), Madeleine said, “I did look at a horse.”

Delphine said, “A racehorse? What’s his name?”

“Alphabezique.”

Delphine remembered seeing the horse run; he was very good on the flat, big, and big-boned, a nice mover. She remarked that he had been a good horse—run fifth in the Arc, made a fair amount of money—but then said, “I thought he was retired.”

Madeleine started to cry, and said that, yes, the horse was retired, she wanted to buy him as a breeding stallion; she loved him. And even as Delphine was counseling against this, saying that the horse wasn’t good enough for that, that only a fool went into breeding, best leave that to those with endless money, she started crying, too, so much so that she could not see Rania and Jesse James for the tears. Delphine could not say that Madeleine was persuasive. She did not end the conversation any more in favor of this crazy idea than when she began, but she did agree, the next time she headed south, to stop and look at Alphabezique. It seemed the least she could do.

After the morning training was over, and the horses were quietly eating from their hay nets and Rania was listening to a tune on her iPhone, and Delphine should have been heading to her office to make out bills, she got into her car and drove into Paris. It was not that she thought Paras was in Paris. But she did think that getting away from Maisons-Laffitte might somehow give her a new idea about what to do—either how to find her or how to give up on finding her.

It took about an hour, and there she was on the Périphérique, on the west side, and she could not help herself, she got off at Neuilly. She often got off at Neuilly, but she always turned south and headed down the Avenue de Malakoff. Now she went east, toward the Arc and the Champs-Élysées, something she hadn’t done in years. She disappeared, as she felt, into the maelstrom. Part of the problem was motorcycles zooming everywhere, the machines and the riders the same color, carrying the same brilliant shine, curving around her inside a cloud of noise. As she circled the Arc, the other cars seemed to swarm like bees attacking. She felt lucky that there were no bumps, that she was spit out at the turn into the Champs-Élysées without mishap in some mysterious way. Delphine had ridden in horse races, some of them with fifteen or twenty entries who bunched and spread out at fifty to sixty kilometers per hour. But, maybe for that very reason, she didn’t trust cars. Cars had no sense of a herd, no perception along their bodies of where the other cars were. Cars relied on their drivers much more than horses relied on their jockeys. She was panting as she passed Cartier, Swarovski, the Hôtel George V. These expensive places were routine for Madeleine, so why should the woman not do whatever she wanted with her money? Beautifully pruned horse chestnuts rose above the traffic like cliffs above a canyon, and all the pedestrians seemed to be staring at her, watching her drown. There was of course nowhere to pull over, so she kept her hands on the wheel and her foot on the gas, but she did not know why she had made this trip, or what it meant. All she knew was that her horse had disappeared, just a horse, not a great horse, not a horse even as good as Alphabezique, a pretty horse, an interesting horse, but horses came and went all the time. Why could she not get over this one? But, of course, it was the mystery of the whole thing, the possibility that Paras had died in some cruel way.

Then there was some greenery, then there was the Place de la Concorde, then there was some more greenery—oh, yes, Les Tuileries. Sometime late in the afternoon—nowhere near dark, but the shadows were lengthening—she came to. She was on the Avenue de Suffren. It was hard to say where she had been—the Parc Monceau came to mind, but so did Montparnasse. How could she have ranged so widely without realizing it? There was a parking place down the street from the soccer field. She whipped into it, turned off the car, and sat there for a long moment. Up since 4:30 a.m., she was worn out. She emerged from the car and walked around it. No new dents, no new scrapes. She must have stayed out of trouble. The thing to do was to call Rania and have her take the train into town and pick her up. She would think of something to say between now and then.

But when she checked her phone, she saw that it was dead. So, if she wanted to come to her senses, it would have to be coffee, then. She walked into a café and bakery.

After her second cup, she was back to normal. What it was like, she had to admit, was the day she rode her first race as an amateur jockey. She didn’t ride races anymore, but at that time, ten years ago now, she’d had a wonderful old gelding, a horse with dozens of races under his belt at eight years old, still sound, still ready to run. She had forced herself to do it—to ride, to get in shape, to work the old fellow every day—and then she had entered him in a race right there in Maisons-Laffitte. But from the moment she woke up on the morning of the race, she might as well have been on Mars—she couldn’t breathe the air, she didn’t feel as though she was sticking to the Earth when she walked, and all through the race everything seemed to move slowly and at light-speed at the same time. They had come in fifth, she had won a thousand euros, the sense of being lost in the universe had lasted for the rest of the afternoon, and then, all of a sudden, she was awake, she knew that they had both survived, and for some reason that escaped all logic, she was committed to racing again, to having a few more horses, to embarking on this career. But for years after that, when people asked her about her first race, she’d said, “I don’t remember a thing.” She took a bite of her roll. It was an odd version, maybe something from down south, buttery but not a croissant, sprinkled with fennel seed. She took another bite. She might have liked a second one, but she had to keep her weight down if she was going to do her share of the training and stay in the horse business.

Anaïs saw her. Anaïs came in once a week to help in the afternoon and to sort out the books before they went to the accountant. A woman, not old but all dried and brown, sat quietly at a table by the window, in tight pants, dirty boots, horseback-riding clothes. No one had dared wear such apparel in this bakery for years, if ever, and the other servers and the patrons looked offended, but Anaïs was fascinated. The woman seemed to be enjoying Anaïs’s own modest fennel-seed creation, so she picked up a little tray and walked over to her. Yes, the woman gave off a countryside fragrance, you might say, but it wasn’t unpleasant to someone who had laid her forehead against the neck of a horse about twelve hours before. She said, “Good day, madame. May I offer you something else? Another small roll, perhaps?”

The woman looked up at her. She looked exhausted. She said, “No, but thank you very much. This one is quite delicious.”

“Thank you, madame. It’s my own creation. I like to make new things to amuse myself. Our customers do seem to particularly appreciate this one.” Now was the time, Anaïs thought, to ask about horses, to ask if a real horse could possibly wander the streets of Paris at night, accompanied by a raven, who sometimes perched between the horse’s ears in order to receive a grape, a horse who disappeared at the break of dawn, whose gaze seemed uncanny, almost flickering with light, who, she sometimes thought, had just the ghost of a halo hovering above her. She said, “Excuse me, madame—”

AND THE WOMAN SAID, “No thanks!,” sounding as if she meant “No, thank you, do not address me, I need nothing from you,” and so Anaïs decided once again that it was better to keep her nighttime escapades to herself.

FOURTEEN

Although Étienne was somewhat uneasy about how much his great-grandmama was sleeping lately, she was still eating her usual amount, still making her trips to the shops, and seemed to be happy, so he made use of the fact that she took a nap after her breakfast to go outside and ride Paras around the courtyard. It was easy now. There were ten steps from the courtyard to the portico. He climbed to the sixth step, and she sidled up to him. It was easy to grasp her thick, tangly mane and slide his leg over her back. She always waited quietly until he felt evenly balanced, and then, before he said, “Go!,” she ambled away, here and there over the grass. He was high enough to look in the windows, but not over the tops of the shrubbery, so he could hear people walking, talking, or running (he could tell by the quickness of their stride), humming, and he could hear a dog bark every so often, but he couldn’t see anyone, and, he was confident, no one could see him. Sometimes the two of them walked here and there for hours, and as they did, he let his mind wander. Because he had lived such an isolated life, there was no place for his mind to wander except around the worlds of the books he had read, but that was enough for now. He could imagine twenty thousand leagues under the sea, cold and black; he could imagine Emperor Hadrian; he could imagine the plague; he could imagine Gargantua and Pantagruel, though possibly no one in the world would recognize what he was imagining. Étienne was willing to read anything, even if he only understood one word out of ten. He could even imagine London, since one of the books he liked to read was a French translation of David Copperfield, an edition that had been lovingly perused by someone—there were all sorts of spidery notes in the margins. He had looked for another Dickens, but not found one.

All the time he was imagining, Paras’s legs were moving, her ribs were shifting from side to side, her ears were flicking this way and that, she was pausing to gaze at something, pausing to eat a bite, pausing to scratch an itch. She breathed in, she blew out the air, she snorted, she tossed her head, she yawned, she nosed the sweet dog as if to investigate where she had been.

Frida was in and out under the shrubbery. The entrance she’d dug for herself was quite a tunnel now, smooth and rather large. Frida and Étienne, Étienne felt, were friends, even though he couldn’t lure her into the house. Frida came to him, her head down, her stump of a tail wagging fast, and he stroked her silky ears or tickled her chest. She brought him her ball, but as yet she had not given it to him, and he had not taken it—they both knew it was hers. She had, indeed, shown him where the purse was, and he had seen the money and counted it. He had no way of knowing how much had originally been in there, but now there were a thousand euros. He had looked, in good conscience, for some sort of identification, but there was only a tag that said, in English, “Lucky Brand,” which might be a name, but he guessed it wasn’t. Since the bag had a magnetic flap, not a zipper, like his great-grandmama’s bag, all sorts of things might have fallen out. And it was a terrible muddy mess. Money, he saw, was quite durable even when wet. But it was Frida’s money. He left it in the bag.

How comfortable he was, astride his horse! At first, she had seemed slippery and wiggly, always moving out from under him. It had made him tense, and he had nearly fallen off three times, but then, one day, when he was tired from a long night listening to that rat in the walls (and it did sound as if there was more than one), he got on her anyway, and that was the first time he stopped paying attention and sort of thought about other things (the rat, for one), and as he did so, his body seemed to relax and settle like a bag of flour, and he came to the realization that if he didn’t tense up, but just moved with her as a jelly might jiggle on a table, she would not leave him behind. When he tensed, he got taller, more like a stick. When he relaxed, he felt her all up his spine, deciding where she was going to go before she even turned her head.

Of course, they had not trotted, much less tried a little gallop—the courtyard was not big enough for that. Knowing this drew his imagination into the Champ de Mars. He still opened the gate before he went to bed. He still knew, partly from looking out his window in the night, that she left and came back, but he didn’t think about it much, except at those times when he pictured himself going along for the ride. He planned, this very night, to follow her, for at least a little way, just to see what she did. As he thought this, she stopped, pricked her ears, snorted, then shook her head, as if, perhaps, to say, “No, this is my business, stay home.” But then she walked on. All the books (well, both of the books—one called Cours d’équitation, which was much older than his great-grandmama, and another called Le Cheval, by a man whose name started with an “X”) prescribed saddles and bridles and martingales and all sorts of things that Étienne did not have, and so he skipped those pages. Actually, he skipped most of the pages and looked at whatever drawings there were, and sometimes let a sentence about how a horse should be obedient and limber sink in. As far as he could tell, Paras was both obedient and limber. After a while, Paras went to the steps and eased her shoulder and hip toward them, and waited. Étienne knew how to take a hint—he slid off onto the sixth step. She walked away. Through the window, Étienne could see that his great-grandmama was out of her bed—out of her room, perhaps, though he couldn’t see much through the leaded panes. It was such a warm day, he thought. Time to start leaving some windows open.

KURT WAS in the old lady’s room, lying on his back in a spot of sunlight, waiting for something to happen. He had been waiting for something to happen for a very long time, but nothing had happened—or, rather, since he had gone out into the world, everything that had happened subsequently seemed like nothing at all, because that thing that he wanted to happen, meeting his doe, hadn’t happened. Two times he had waited near the door for Paras to go out, so that he might follow her, but he wasn’t fast enough on his own to get his whole body plus tail through the closing door, especially since he didn’t want the boy to see him. When he had proposed to Paras that she take him with her, she had refused—she had a ways to travel, she wanted to gallop, it wasn’t safe, what would she say to Conrad?

“You don’t know Conrad.”

“I’ve seen Conrad.”

“You’ve never spoken to him.”

“I don’t want my first words to him to be about how I carried you outside and you were taken off by an owl.”

“What is an owl?”

“For your purposes, a flying cat.”

“Get Frida to take me.”

“When Frida talks about the last time, she trembles all over.”

“I can ride you. The boy rides you.” She’d had no answer for this, so he still hoped that she might eventually be persuaded. “Just let me sit on your head again.” She’d let him sit on her head again. Then she lay out full on the carpet, and he ran along her side and up and down her belly. She liked that a great deal.

Now Madame de Mornay was making her way through the grand salon. Kurt rolled over, yawned, and followed her. She called out for Étienne twice, but not very loudly. He must be upstairs in the library, forwarding his schooling. There was sunshine everywhere—she could feel it. Every time Madame paused to enjoy the warmth, Kurt paused to enjoy the warmth. Every time she pushed open a window, he took a whiff. He wasn’t terribly hungry—provisions around here didn’t allow for that. He knew he would be better off if his and Conrad’s estate were a little leaner and more populated—but that part he wanted to fix, he really did. In the cuisine, he sat quietly under the table while Madame groped her way about, making a pot of tea. He was just grooming his whiskers when the back door opened unexpectedly and there was the boy, who looked first at the old lady and then at Kurt. Then again at Kurt. Kurt’s whiskers twitched involuntarily. Although the boy had scratched his belly that time, it had been in the bedroom. They both had been able to pretend that Kurt’s full figure was not due to a lifetime’s expropriation of Mornay family wealth. Now, right here, they found themselves at the scene of the crime. Conrad said, over and over, that the last place a human wanted to find a rat was in the cuisine.

The boy went to the old lady and took her hand. She smiled, said, “Hello, my dear.” He kissed her on the cheek, and moved the tea kettle to the burner that was actually flaming, then opened three different cans of tea and held them under her nose one by one. She chose the second one. As a rat, Kurt could count to six. Conrad maintained that cats could only count to five.

Madame pulled out a chair, felt her way around the table, sat down. Kurt moved toward her. Really, there was no smell at all now, so she was closer than ever to nonexistence—he and Conrad sometimes marveled at her ability to hold on. He was not touching her, but he was near enough so that any attempt by the boy to swat him would result in her being swatted, too. He eyed the entrance to the network of tunnels, but the boy was standing in front of it, and, anyway, he sensed no rage from the boy, not even any dominance. He remained still, semi-crouched on his hind legs, one forepaw on the floor and one lifted, ready to run. The old lady said a few things, and the boy said a few things, something was put on the table above him, and then something else. He waited. He didn’t mind. He enjoyed feeling brave. There was, he saw, a dead cockroach in the shadow of the pantry. How had he missed it? It was dry and flat, no odor. He and Conrad were failing at their job.

Madame shifted her feet, and her toe touched him, but lightly. He moved over one step. More chitchat from above. Madame always spoke softly; Kurt found it soothing. Now another chair moved, and, moments later, the boy sat down. Kurt was surrounded by feet. The boy had taken off his boots at the door—Kurt could see them and smell them from where he was; they were the most exciting things in the room, fragrant with dirt and flowers and horse dung and a dozen other things that Kurt should be able to recognize but could not, because of his housebound lifestyle. The socks were fragrant, too, and a little grimy. Kurt crept over and peeked into the cuff of the boy’s trousers. There was the bud of a flower there, tiny. Kurt extracted it with a flick of his paw and tasted it. Bitter. He spat it out. Above him, more chitchat. He got bolder. He went back to Madame. There was fluff on the toe of her slipper—nothing to eat, but he flicked it away, then scratched at her slipper to see if it might give off an odor. It did not. He was getting very bold! Now the chairs pushed back, the humans stood up, and Kurt could see by the arrangement of their feet that the boy was helping the old lady out of the cuisine. He waited, then skittered to the doorway. She was going to her chair in the grand salon. She sat down, still talking, and picked up her knitting. It was the only thing Kurt ever saw her do in the house besides eat and sleep.

She kept talking, but the boy turned and came back toward the cuisine. Step by step down the corridor. Kurt didn’t move. The boy got closer. His gaze was on Kurt, right on him, and Kurt did not look away, but he did start to tremble, he did start to feel the tunnel entrance drawing him, he did start to wonder where Conrad was, and to long for that safe darkness. He squeaked, and then squeaked again. The boy squatted down in front of him and stretched out his hands, palms upward. Even a rat knew what palms upward meant—it meant “give me something.”

All was quiet, except for the comforting mumble of Madame counting her stitches. Kurt swallowed.

The boy smiled.

Rats do not smile, but they do open their eyes wide and make a little “o” with their mouths when they mean to be friendly.

The hands were still extended. Kurt crept forward. It was possible, Kurt thought, that the boy was the one who was essential to all of his hopes and dreams. He was right at the hands now. He touched one of them with his nose, and then flicked his whiskers across it. He put his paw on the hand. And then he went up into the hands, which were slightly cupped but did not curve around him, did not grasp him. After a moment, he coiled himself, and then the boy stood.

That time before, when the boy had tickled his belly and then his back, Kurt hadn’t been brave enough to look the boy in the eye. He had looked at the ceiling of the bedroom, where the light coming through the window seemed to be a part of that piercing noise that he now knew was a whinny that came and went and came and went and then was gone. The boy had been polite, Kurt had been polite, but then he had left, and that, it seemed, had been that. Now he uncurled himself, and sat up, looked at the boy, eye to eye, a difficult thing for a rat. His whiskers fluttered. He stopped them. He tried to be dignified but friendly-looking. The boy said, “I forgot how silky your fur is. Indeed, you are handsome.”

Kurt smoothed his whiskers with his paw. No one had ever called him handsome before. Perhaps that boded well for his reproductive aspirations.

Kurt didn’t know what he wanted from Étienne. Certainly not food. Perhaps this was enough—acceptance. When your own father went on and on about the injustice of rats’ being outcasts all over the world, about how every rat had a story of escaping the trap, or the broom, or the dropping shoe, a story of being greeted by screaming, by barking, by hissing, by a fog of ill-smelling and sickening gas, then acceptance was the oddest thing of all. He no longer had to look at the horse and ask himself, “Why do humans like horses, but not rats?” When he told Conrad about the dog saving him, Conrad had snorted in disbelief, said, “Must not have been hungry, then.” Here was something he would not do—tell Conrad about sitting in the boy’s hands. The boy bent down and set Kurt on the floor, then tickled his back for a few moments. Kurt walked in a leisurely manner, but, he felt, with a certain grace, to the entrance of his tunnel. It was broad day now, time for a nap. But he would return.

JÉRÔME CONSIDERED himself taciturn. He loved vegetables, he loved his neighborhood, he kept his eyes open, he knew it was not his job to gossip about his customers. Now that the dog always accompanied the boy and the old old lady to the shop, he felt that his original instinct, that the dog had been ferrying provisions to that household all along, was proved correct (as were most of his instincts). In this neighborhood, he had seen plenty over the years, and a man walking down the street on Monday with his arm around the waist of a pretty blonde and then walking down the street on Tuesday, laughing convivially with an elegant brunette, was the least of it. A shopkeeper in the Seventh Arrondissement was wise to keep his opinions to himself, and Jérôme always did so. But, nevertheless, there he had been, on a Saturday morning, talking about the boy and the dog and the old lady to Hélène, from the meat market next door, his hands under his apron, Hélène having a smoke, out on the street as if they lived in some village in the country, and, yes, Jérôme had been aware of someone in the shop behind him, but he’d thought she was squeezing oranges or selecting potatoes.

On Monday, late in the afternoon, this woman came to him with someone else, a man. It turned out that they were from the elementary school up the street. They came into the shop and more or less pinned Jérôme to the wall behind the cash register. It was true that Jérôme himself had not had a happy school experience—he had been a little wild, had hated studying, and excelled only in cultivating the school vegetable garden, which had been fine with his father, who had owned this shop before Jérôme did. They were polite enough, but that air of strictness that all teachers had would come out. Who was this boy? Jérôme had called him “Étienne” and had said that he appeared to be eight or nine. There was no boy at the school named “Étienne” other than a boy in the first grade. Jérôme had been talking about a boy he saw in the neighborhood with some frequency. Did he live in the neighborhood? How long had he been coming to the shop? What was this about a very old lady, maybe a hundred years old?

Jérôme said he knew nothing about the boy or where he lived or went to school. Strictly speaking, this was true, he knew nothing if you did not count the boy’s gustatorial preferences. Jérôme put the officials off. Let them look for the boy, let them spy on his shop and follow the boy home—that was their business, not Jérôme’s. But he did wonder how to warn that boy that something was in the wind.

Which was the reason that, the next time Étienne came home from Jérôme’s shop, he found, folded up among the dried figs he had bought as a treat (for himself and for Kurt and Paras), a note letting him know that some people from the school were nosing around for information about him. Jérôme’s handwriting was neat; even so, Étienne read the note three times before he comprehended what it meant. It meant that he had to come up with a plan before those people found him, before they found his great-grandmama. Before they found the horse. He made himself put the vegetables away, but he saw that his hands were trembling as he did so.

The school may have not noticed Étienne until now, but Étienne had noticed the school, and it looked to him, as it looked to his great-grandmama, like a noisy trap. The riot of the children (he thought of them as “the children” rather than “the other children”) was bad enough, but the noise of the adults was worse—stiff, raised voices, clapping hands, commands. Étienne had never in his life received a command. Even when his great-grandmama told him to do something, she phrased it affectionately, as something that would be done to please her if he cared to do it. And, therefore, he always did it. Nor had he ever issued a command. Whom would he command? The horse? The dog? They seemed to read his mind—or not. He could go to the sixth step in the courtyard and stand there. He could know that Paras knew he wanted a ride, but that she wasn’t ready at the moment to give him one. If he commanded her to do so, was she likely to agree? Not at all. She was likely to move away. As for the dog, the dog watched his every move and was ready at every minute to follow him, to go ahead of him, to present herself to his great-grandmama for support, to carry something, to wait for him. She would not give him that silly ball; a command would not cause her to do so. It was her ball.

There were plenty of books about school in the library. No one in any of those books had ever liked school; every author remembered school with horror. Beatings and deprivations were the least of it. According to every single author, the attempt to have a thought of one’s own was the gravest sin. Étienne’s whole life was made up of having thoughts of his own, exploring them, enjoying them, comparing them to the thoughts he found in books or overheard on the street.

And then there was the question of, if he went to school—which looked like an all-day affair, except for Wednesday, when the school was quiet—who would watch over his great-grandmama? And even if there was someone, would that person try to command the old lady? Try to order her and organize her? This did not seem to Étienne like a project that could turn out well. As for the dog and the horse and now the rat and maybe the raven, well, he didn’t want to think about that. He stared at the note, then wadded it up and tossed it into the bin. Perhaps, he thought, he could write notes himself, to Jérôme, detailing what he and his great-grandmama needed to buy. The dog could do the delivery. Just the day before, he’d taught her to put her head through the handle of the trolley and push it. She’d only pushed it a meter, if that, but maybe it was possible that she could push it to Jérôme’s shop. Étienne finished putting away their purchases, peeked at Madame, who was now knitting a purple square; the evening before, the square had been green. Then he went upstairs and looked out each window for a rather long time. He made note of every human he could see that seemed to pause or look up at the house, especially the gendarme. He had seen the gendarme plenty of times—you couldn’t do anything about a gendarme—a gendarme walked the streets and made your business his business—but he had never felt that he or his great-grandmama had attracted the attention of the gendarme in any special way. Now, as he watched, he did not sense that the gendarme was curious about them, at least for now. But if the school authorities happened to consult the gendarme, perhaps the gendarme would have a thought or two. After watching for a while, he went downstairs and found the old lady dozing, her knitting in her lap. He touched it with his fingertip. It was a lace pattern. It reminded him of pictures of snowflakes.

PARAS FINALLY FELT comfortable visiting Nancy and the ducklings when the ground was dry and the turf was thickening up. There was no moon, and the Champ de Mars was especially dark—always good for a ramble. It was so late that none of the buildings had even a lighted window. Of course the great Tour was lit, and beyond that, the bridge across the river. The river itself shimmered and gave off a warm vapor. It could not be true that Paras smelled or sensed the two racecourses so far out in that direction. It could not be true that Paras felt a little pull in that direction. This life was a well-fed pleasure—what more could she want? She came to the fence around the pond, trotted a little bit back and forth to test the footing, then popped over it at an easy canter. That was also a pleasure, and one that she had forgotten. Jumping. She had been particular about hurdles, in training and on the course, never touched a one. She wasn’t a careless type who came back to the barn complaining about this knock and that blow—she pulled her knees right up to her cheeks and kicked out behind. If you had been a nimble filly, the sort who could curl up in a ball to sleep, it was as easy as could be, and more fun than galloping—perhaps a bit like flying.

Nancy started quacking as soon as she saw Paras—the ducklings were in grave danger every single day, and should they survive, it would be a miracle solely attributable to Nancy’s alertness. Paras, having seen hawks and owls and a fox and two large cats as she trotted around the Champ, didn’t doubt her. The ducklings, so far, were Male No. 1, Female No. 1, etc., down to Male No. 3 and Female No. 3. They all looked like Nancy, and even though they were quite young, they were already swimming vigorously, according to Nancy; at the moment, their sleeping heads were arranged around her in the nest. That they all looked like Nancy was a triumph in itself, because Nancy had been sure that one of those shoveler ducks you see all over the place had introduced an egg into her nest, and it was all very well for certain ravens to say what’s the difference, but the difference was evident—that hideous beak. Nancy stopped quacking, sighed, rearranged herself among the ducklings. All was quiet. Everything was quite lush here, in the shadow of the parapet. Paras nosed out a few herbs and chomped some grass. She said, “Where’s Sid?”

“He’ll get back anytime now,” said Nancy. “Depends on air traffic, which can be a little vicious. He isn’t the kind who goes scouting about for stray hens. He’s faithful and knows his job.”

“What’s his job?” asked Paras.

“Look around,” said Nancy. “Six ducklings is a lot of work. Do horses produce offspring?”

“Yes,” said Paras, “but usually only one at a time.”

Nancy started quacking softly to herself. Paras didn’t say anything more, pulled a few weeds out of the water, just to taste them, and looked out there again, toward the big bridge and up the hillside to the grand buildings on the crest. They drew her; she jumped the fence beside the pond without even testing the footing (but of course it was fine—without shoes, all footings were manageable). She made her way along the edge of the lighted area, always cautious, and stood among the buildings not far from the bridge. A few cars passed, but there were long moments of darkness and silence. She saw that if she was going to get there it would be at this time of night. But what would she do when she got there? She was overfed now because of the rich grass, and no longer fit because of the intermittent exercise. The other horses would pass her with ease, kicking dust in her face, and then pretending concern when the race was over. She was a four-year-old, a mare, no longer a filly. And she looked like a mare, she was sure, one of those graceless beings that you respected but didn’t care much about, who did, indeed, as she had told Nancy, produce one offspring at a time. She lifted her head and flared her nostrils, recalled that long trot she had taken into the city the first evening. She had been in the forest, and she had followed her nose, and then she had crossed something that brought her to a small fenced area of grass, and she had jumped in there, and then she had jumped out, and then she had trotted down the street, her shoes clanging on the pavement, and then she had found that other patch of grass, and Frida. It was hazy, had always been hazy. But it wasn’t so hazy that she couldn’t find her way back, she thought. She flicked her ears. Was now the time?

And then she was startled into rearing up by a huge rumbling van that flew by, a van that would have hit her and killed her had she made the move she’d been thinking of. She stood quietly, her head down, her breathing fast, sweat breaking out on her flanks. Sometime later, when she had calmed down a bit, she turned, went past the fence and the pond and the bridge, and over to the allée, and cantered home. The gate was open, Frida was sleeping. The windows were dark. The courtyard was peaceful. Paras stood quietly by the shrubbery until the sun came up and Étienne called her in for breakfast.

PIERRE, unable to sleep, had come to work at dawn. If he got there early enough, he could watch the baby squirrels, doves, owls, ducks, coots. Of course, there were the pigeons and the rats. Part of his job was to control them, because tourists hated them, but he was of two minds about that: every city was an ecosystem, and Paris was more complex than most. The horse manure, fresh, still greenish, two piles of smallish clumps, surprised him—he hadn’t seen it in weeks. One pile was west of the Tour, a few meters from the Quai Branly. That one he pulped with his shovel and mixed with some of the soil he had in his cart. He piled the mixture around the trunks of a few trees. The other, smaller pile was where the Allée Adrienne Lecouvreur crossed the boulevard. He was looking at it when a voice behind him said, “What is that?”

He turned around in surprise. Maybe he had never met anyone in the park this time of the morning. He thought he recognized her—she was wearing a light jacket and a red cap—but he couldn’t place her. He said, “I’m guessing it’s horse dung.” He tried to make himself sound impersonal, indifferent, but, really, he was happy—well, thrilled—that the horse was still alive. He hadn’t realized how convinced he had become that the horse had gone to the slaughter. The girl—well, she was so slight, she seemed girlish, but her face was the face of someone who knew what she was about—said, “How can there be horse dung in the Champ de Mars?”

Pierre said, “Historical precedent, perhaps,” and the woman smiled, not what Pierre had expected. He said, “Horse dung isn’t unhealthy, and, at any rate, we clean it up.”

Now the woman smiled, and said, “It doesn’t bother me. In fact, I’m happy to discover proof that there is really a horse. I thought it was something much spookier.”

Pierre said, “What are you talking about?”

And Anaïs, who had decided to cross the Champ de Mars in the pleasant weather and take the RER train home from work, avoiding the two transfers she normally had to make, told him about her horse, her mysterious nighttime visitor.

Pierre knew Anaïs’s pastries perfectly well—he’d bought galettes and coffee there several times. He said, “You work in that café? Or the bakery? I’ve never seen you there.”

“I’m a baker.”

Pierre couldn’t quite contain his relief that the horse was still alive. He knew he was grinning. He said, “When was the last time you saw the horse?”

“The day before yesterday, during the night, and she ate a bowl of oatmeal with flaxseed, corn flour, and grated carrots.”

And then they looked at each other, not saying anything, both smiling. Anaïs was thinking that something around here was crazy, but at least she knew now that it wasn’t her, and, by the way, this gardener had a nice demeanor, comfortable and kind. Pierre was thinking that Anaïs must be a good-hearted woman, and those galettes, and the rolls, too, that he had gotten from that pâtisserie were chewy and delicious. The sun lifted itself into the heavens, just a little bit, and shone brightly on the pile of manure.

FIFTEEN

As a result of spying through the windows of houses and apartments around Paris for many segments and watching the humans lined up at the foot of the Tour, Raoul had noticed that it took humans forever to do the least thing. There they stood, looking around, waiting waiting waiting, shuffling forward, hardly speaking to one another. Ten flocks of Aves might rise into the heavens, sort themselves out, and billow off into the west or the east in the time that it took one human to creep onto the elevator, look out over the landscape, return to the earth, and toddle away. Or you could watch humans eat in their cafés, a spectacle affording no drama whatsoever. The food was dead before they even saw it, and yet they sat there, poking the dead things with their tools, their mouths working and working. And so, though Delphine planned to renew her search for Paras, though Pierre planned to keep his eyes open, though Anaïs planned to follow Chouchou the next time she came for a feed, though the authorities at the school planned to ask around the neighborhood and at police headquarters about a stray boy, the days went by, the same as always, pleasant and fragrant, occasionally rainy, occasionally cool. The herd of runners in the Champ de Mars swelled, but they noticed nothing, partly because, though Pierre didn’t look for the horse, he did clean up after her, trusting that she would appear. Anaïs always found herself up to the elbows in dough, in no position to take a long walk—merely feeding the horse used up plenty of time. And she knew that if she found the horse, if the authorities (including that kindly fellow—Pierre, his name was) got involved, the visits and her pleasure would be over: the horse would be claimed by a real owner. Only Jérôme actually planned to do nothing, say nothing, simply to supply the vegetables and the bread and the bones, to pat Frida on the head when she came to the shop with the boy.

In the meantime, Madame de Mornay knitted, made her bed, napped, ate a bit of this and a bit of that. She chatted with Étienne, she held her hat in her hand and stroked the feather, she thought of her husband, that dapper heartthrob, her mother and her brother, her son, and her grandson and his wife, Étienne’s parents, and she hoped some idea would come to her. No one had ever suggested that death was voluntary, unless you counted heading off to war a voluntary act, which it sometimes is and sometimes is not. Her father had died a commandant, which meant that, if he had not embraced that war, he had embraced his duty therein. Her husband had sent Madame and their son to Domme during the second war, then fought with the Resistance, died in a bombing raid upon Lyon, killed, ironically, by his own allies. And then her son had gone to Oran as a representative of de Gaulle. He had intended to stay eight days and had been killed by a ricocheting bullet on the second day; her grandson was a year old at the time. Her grandson had used his portion of the family money to live in Alaska, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Australia, Kuala Lumpur—anywhere that was not like Paris. Perhaps he had married, perhaps not. He returned home with a lovely girl from Dublin, twenty-five years old to his forty-four. The three of them had lived well enough in the house—Madame kept to herself on the ground floor; André and Irene ranged through the upper stories. André made big plans to renovate the whole place, to return it to its former undusty glory. His friends showed up, of all types, speaking all sorts of languages, but Madame was already fairly deaf by that time, and could make out very little. Irene’s French was good. Though her accent puzzled Madame, she’d liked the girl, the girl who was driving the night they were killed, the girl who got confused and entered the Périphérique going the wrong direction. Étienne was two and a half. Madame did not know if he remembered his parents—and if she were to ask now, she would not be able to hear his reply. She did not remember her own father. It was their fate as a family, perhaps, or merely luck, merely a part of being French in the twentieth century, when wars came and went like terrifying, unstoppable tempests. She had been spry enough when Étienne was two and a half, when he was five, to care for him, and then their roles had switched. Truly, she had done ill by the boy. And then she stopped thinking about it and returned to her knitting basket. The wool was running low—she could feel only three small balls in there. She had stitched each section to the others, and the afghan spread out over her bed and draped to the floor on every side. It was almost complete.

ÉTIENNE AND KURT THOUGHT only about riding. When Étienne was not caring for his great-grandmama or hastily dusting here and wiping there, he was staring at Paras or sitting on her or stroking her with a soft rag. At least he ate. Kurt no longer knew himself. All he wanted to do, inside the house and outside, was entangle his four little feet in that thick mane and go about from place to place. His former greatest pleasure, eating, now looked to him like a waste of time, and as a result, nothing was left on his bones except muscle and fur. Frida lay in her corner in the courtyard and muttered and grumbled about rats’ knowing their place, and their place, if they were smart, was indoors. Even Conrad occasionally looked out the window on the second floor in dismay, but Kurt could not be stopped. He was delirious with pleasure and desire.

As for Paras, after her near-death experience, she was willing to do anything. Otherwise, she might have discouraged Kurt from running over her and sitting on her constantly, but his feet, light and tickly, reminded her that she was alive. Any reluctance she’d had about presenting herself at the sixth step to Étienne was completely gone—he fed her and gave her a place to live, he cleaned up after her (and the shrubbery and the raspberry patch had never looked more richly green), he talked to her about horses in the books he read. She owed him, if not her life, then her living. Paras thought she might like to chat with Raoul about her conflicting feelings—he would certainly have something to say, and even if it wasn’t relevant or helpful, the sound of his cawing would be soothing. But it was spring; he wasn’t making much progress on his new nest in the nearby plane tree—he was off doing ravenish things, whatever they were. Paras was happy, but her happiness felt like a scarf of morning mist floating above her, ready to blow away any minute.

Raoul had been seized by a desire for one last circuit. He had enjoyed visiting with his cousin Liam Corax Corvus, who lived in the Jardin des Plantes, so he flew there again, but though Liam was welcoming, the garden was as tame as could be. He longed for something more, one last adventure. Out to Vincennes was the obvious alternative, but just when he was almost there, just when he recognized his youthful haunts, he veered around and headed west. He flew and flew and flew—a long way for an old bird whose idea of a voyage was from the Place du Trocadéro to Montmartre, but he rather gloried in his power, the way he once had, at least until the very end, when he came to a screeching, plummeting, aching halt, and landed, pretty wobbly, in the middle of the training track at Maisons-Laffitte, gasping for air and stumbling across the sand, even as a large black horse galloped toward him. He closed his eyes, didn’t move—and the horse galloped on. He heard the rider exclaim, “Mon Dieu!,” and, with the last of his strength, he hopped up to the limb of a slender little tree and sat there, his wings trembling, wishing only for a drink, maybe his ultimate drink, of water. Some ravens, ones he didn’t recognize, gathered across the horse track, on a wire between two poles, but he could hardly lift his head, and so they chose to ignore him.

When Delphine got back to the barn, she told Rania what had happened—a raven had fallen out of the sky right in front of them, had not moved. Whiskey Shot, the English-bred three-year-old she was riding, galloped right over the bird without even flicking his ears, didn’t touch him, maybe didn’t notice him. Then they chatted about how you might think that birds would be falling out of the sky on a regular basis, but no one ever saw such a thing—it was peculiar. Whiskey was a bold horse, their great hope—entered in the Poule d’Essai des Poulains at Longchamp, the first horse Delphine had ever entered in a Group One race. And he was young, had turned three in April. He had plenty of growing to do.

Raoul sat for a long time in that small tree—long enough for the other ravens to finish one squabble and begin another. He found a puddle underneath a spigot on the edge of the course. He drank some (sandy) and paddled his feet around in it, refreshing himself a little bit. He was not quite sure where he was, but the ravens would tell him (while commenting on his ignorance) once he was revived enough to approach them. That was for later. For now, he flew back into the small tree, settled himself in the fork of one of the branches, and took the opportunity to survey the landscape. There were plenty of trees, and so there were many more Aves and of greater variety than he was familiar with in Paris. And they were all fat, especially the sparrows, the bee-eaters, the finches, the swallows swooping here and there. Wood pigeons, magpies, lapwings, even a furtive pheasant or two—never saw those in the Champ de Mars. He could see the outline of the head of a baby owl in a nearby tree, and then another one appeared beside it, peeping out. The mother would be nearby. Otherwise, there were horses everywhere. Several shot past him, but others came along more slowly, their riders curled on their necks. The horses progressed along several routes, not only the dirt track where he had landed. Some stood quietly with their riders, here and there, watching. He saw plenty of dogs, too, though attached to humans, not running free like Frida. And there were cats in the shadows. The world was full of cats—every Avis knew that. He could see a pair of them from this tree, gray and white, sliding around in the ragged grass. He adjusted his wings. He was beginning to feel stronger, and also rather proud of himself for making the trip.

He must have dozed off. When he woke up, he was thirsty again, so he flew down to the spigot, took another drink, investigated for and found an ant colony. And there was the carcass of a rabbit, a fair amount of dried meat on the bones, plus the tang of maggots and a most delicious carrion beetle. He was just pecking around for a few bits when shadows gathered above him, and a flock of something big landed in a pond on the other side of a small hill. Oh, mallards. He flew to the crest of the hill and looked down. It was a small group of drakes, well colored, fit, and sleek, homeward-bound, Raoul suspected. It was that time of year.

Just as Raoul was eavesdropping on their conversation about how far they had flown altogether—it was farther than last year, and, yes, that landscape off to the northwest there was an interesting one, an exceptional gathering place if you wanted to meet Aves from all over the world, but was it really worth going there, over so much ocean, and with the storms—if you went northeast, though, there were plenty of Aves from odd places—one of them said, “A little closer to home is better for me. I don’t like to stay away longer than I have to,” and all of the others squawked in mild skepticism, and then the mallard turned his head and stared at Raoul. Moments later, he stepped out of the water and strode up the hill, meep-meeping quietly: How are you, good heavens, what are you doing here, that can’t be you. Raoul was hard put to maintain his superior demeanor—embarrassingly, it was Sid who had recognized him, not the other way around. But this drake was not the Sid Raoul thought he knew, the screaming, panicked fellow who preened until half of his feathers were plucked. This Sid was easygoing and good-humored, a comfortable member of his cohort.

Sid seemed to be happy to see him. How are they? How many are there? I didn’t want to stop here, I just wanted to get home, is she okay, have any been taken, I hope not.

Raoul arranged himself as best he could, and said, “Sid, your offspring are too numerous to count, perfectly healthy as far as I can see, and awaiting your return.” Sid glanced back at the other mallards and sighed, then settled down beside Raoul. He said, “I think it will be a wonderful summer. I’ve gotten a lot of counseling this trip. I feel more in control and better prepared for the chaos. I am up to the challenge.”

“I’m sure Nancy will be overjoyed to see you.”

“Every summer is a new beginning, that’s what I’ve learned. I don’t have to carry the past with me. My approach to the dangers of reproduction is my choice. I am in charge of who I am and how I view things. I own my fears.”

“That’s a wise—”

“I’ve had my eyes opened. We had many group discussions as we were migrating, and I was given to realize that certain experiences I had as a duckling have had a strong impact on my worldview, especially the death of Male No. 3, who was just above me in the nest, taken by a hawk right out of the middle of the group, and then the hawk, instead of flying away, swooped around us the whole time my mother was hurrying us to shelter. I mean, this is not an unusual experience for mallards, but I think that I must be especially sensitive, which is nothing to be ashamed of. This autumn alone, humans shot two of our flock right out of the sky as we were flying over Marmande. Did we stop? Did we panic? No, we bade them adieu and flew onward. But I’ve come to understand the effect of duckling experiences much more thoroughly now, and also to understand fate. Fate is simply fate—you are here or you are not. You have to yield to the nature of the cosmos.”

“Very true,” said Raoul.

“I’m glad we’ve had this talk,” said Sid.

“Yes,” said Raoul.

“By the way,” said Sid, “you should explore this area. If I thought I could get Nancy away from that pond by the tower, I would bring her here. It’s very lively.”

“I hardly know how I got here,” said Raoul. “I usually go east.”

“As the raven flies,” said Sid, “it’s forty-five degrees southeast, about an hour’s flight if you aren’t in a rush.”

“I’m not in a rush,” said Raoul, stretching his wings.

“You can go with me. We are taking off in a bit. I leave the group at Nanterre. They are all from around Le Chesnay. They live in the country. Very sane compared with us Parisians.”

Raoul wondered what those ravens he had seen would think of a Corvus of his stature flying off with a pack of lowly mallards, but then he said, “Yes, I think I will go along with you.”

Sid said, “Happy to have you, believe me. I’ll explain who you are. Everyone’s eager to get home. You might want to keep your opinions to yourself, however. Just a suggestion.”

Raoul cawed softly, then said, “I understand.”

All of the mallards were young, healthy, and well traveled. They were, of course, Anas platyrhynchos, so their conversation (to which Raoul did not contribute) was about feats of strength or endurance—what regions they had visited, where they planned to visit in the future. They all had mates, but everyone except Sid chatted easily about other females they had gotten to know, offspring they suspected they had in various far-flung districts. Raoul felt that it was not his task to judge. Every Avis knew that mallards had their place in the avian world, and in many ways, their place was as game. Sure enough, Sid knew exactly where Nanterre was. He was flying with the group, and then, without even looking around, or down, he lifted his right wing and tilted away from the others. Raoul followed him. When they were floating smoothly above the Paris suburbs, he said, “How do you do that?”

“Just pay attention to the signs, is all.”

“The signs?”

“You know, the magnetic grid. There’s a little interference around here, but not much. My first time coming home, a few years ago, I ended up in Orléans for the night, but haven’t made a mistake since. You get more sensitive with practice. You ravens…?” After a moment, Raoul said, “Corvus are more locally oriented, I guess you would say.”

Sid made his little meep-meep noise, and they flew on. They were at the Tour by late afternoon. Raoul landed on one of its rungs and watched Sid hit the water, swim in a circle, and then head toward the nest. One by one, the ducklings popped up; then they formed a group, and Nancy, her wings lifted and her neck arched, herded them toward their sire. She was quacking like mad—Here he is, don’t be shy, close up on the right there, go on, move on, quack-quack-quack. Sid did not come out of the water, but swam quietly in circles, and one by one, the little brown birdlets came to the edge and launched themselves toward him. Pretty soon, the whole family was swimming around that end of the pond, and the humans below Raoul were exclaiming and cooing at the sight. If Raoul had ever seen a human who didn’t turn to mush at the sight of a baby animal, he couldn’t remember when that was. Nancy’s loud quacking subsided, and everyone swam in peace.

How long had Raoul been away? Since sunrise, maybe. Not much of a circuit. (He had to admit that, in spite of himself, he was impressed by the grandness of the mallards’ journey—to a place where barren mountains stretched from sea to sea, and steam rose right out of the ground, where daylight gave way to almost no darkness, and they met Aves that had traveled from places ravens did not know existed.) Yes, the mallards had met the legendary Sterna paradisaea, white Aves with black heads, who cared for nowhere on Earth except the farthest north and the farthest south. Most Corvus pooh-poohed their existence. Could it be possible, thought Raoul, that Corvi did not know what they were talking about? Raoul sighed, lifted off the tower, and headed toward the Rue Marinoni.

MADAME DE MORNAY HAD MISSED May Day. Her mother had loved May Day, every year had made for Madame (in those days, Mademoiselle Éveline, of course), with her own hands, a little sachet of flowers. At any rate, when she was a child, she and her mother and brother had celebrated by eating only what they most enjoyed, whatever it was—it could be foie gras and meringues or it could be champagne and morels sautéed in butter, it could be lime sorbet and a wedge of goat cheese. Whatever appealed to them on that very day was what they ate their fill of. And so, one morning, though she could not say what day it was, when she opened her window, even she could smell that her lilacs were in bloom, that the scent was like a mist, entering and filling up the room. Invigorating. And so she found the trolley, and when she came upon Étienne, who was sweeping the corridor between the grand salon and the cuisine, she put her arm around him and suggested they go to the market. Since his great-grandmama had not seemed well or happy in weeks, Étienne at once put away his broom, took hold of the trolley, and guided Madame out the door, leaving it open so that Paras could go outside when she had finished her breakfast. He hoped very much that the raven, who was sitting on the horse’s haunches in the cuisine, and Kurt, who was sitting on a shelf above the basin, would exit with her. He liked them, but they were becoming unmanageable.

Usually, Étienne walked slowly, sometimes very slowly, and Madame de Mornay tottered along behind him, Frida on the alert. Étienne didn’t know whether Madame was curious about Frida—she never alluded to her or asked about her, but when her hand went out, flailing a bit, and Frida stepped up and pressed against her leg to steady her, Madame understood what was happening, and accepted the assistance. Today, though, Étienne had to exert himself to stay ahead of his great-grandmama, she was walking so fast. When they got to the vegetable market, the first thing she did was take Jérôme’s hand and give it a good squeeze. But she was difficult to please—Jérôme showed her the best new peas, the best baby artichokes, the best bouquets of basil, new potatoes, watercress. She touched it, she smelled it, she shook her head. Perhaps a little frustrated, she went to the flowers, and chose two pots of sweet William, already in bloom. Étienne recognized them—they’d been in the garden, but not for a couple of years. She came back to the vegetables. She stood in the middle of the shop, her hands lifted and her eyes closed. Jérôme and two other customers gazed at her in a kindly manner, but Étienne was a little worried—he had never seen her do this before. Finally, she stepped forward and let her hands drop, and there was the asparagus, a mound of slender stalks. She smiled, took two handfuls. She gave Jérôme the money and refused the change. Jérôme laughed and slipped it to Étienne. Now the meat market. Suzanne, the meat seller, was not as good-natured as Jérôme, but today she was patient, only staring at Frida for a moment, and stepping back as Madame entered the shop. Madame, of course, couldn’t touch anything, but she walked along the length of the counter, whispering to Étienne—chicken, filet mignon, sausage, veal, pork chops, lamb. She could not decide. Alise waited, tapping her pack of cigarettes with her fingertips. Étienne hoped that his great-grandmama would not choose something so exotic that he couldn’t manage to prepare it. Finally, she said, “Some confit! Ah, that would be very good.”

Alise handed her one of her own concoctions—a cassoulet in a jar. She even opened the jar for Madame and let her smell it. Madame said, “Ah, yes! Perfect!” She closed the jar with her trembling hand, placed it carefully in the trolley, and handed Suzanne the money. On the way home, they bought a strawberry tart. Étienne could tell she was excited. At home, she still seemed restless—no afternoon nap, insistence upon being taken for a walk around the front courtyard (where Étienne planted the sweet William and Paras stayed out of the way). While Étienne prepared the asparagus, Madame sat in her chair with her giant afghan on her lap, fingering the patterns she had created and the seams between the sections. She insisted that they eat in the dining room rather than the cuisine. She sat quietly in her old chair while Étienne set the table, carried in the asparagus, warmed up the cassoulet. When they were full and could eat no more, he brought in the tart and set it before her. She took a spoon and ate the strawberries one by one off the surface of the tart, then a few bites of the custard. All of this as if it were the greatest indulgence she had ever known. She said, “Ah, you are a good good good boy.” Then she drank her nightly cup of mint tea (the mint in the garden was doing as well this year as everything else—sharp-flavored and richly green). She said, “May Day is a day of marvelous pleasure.” And then she sighed, because she still had not solved the puzzle of what to do about Étienne. She went into her room and fell asleep before the sun dipped below the courtyard fence.

SIXTEEN

Of course Paras does not “talk” to Étienne—none of the animals talks to Étienne—but Paras does make her wishes known, and one morning a few days after Madame’s feast, Étienne wakes up very early, when the world is still absolutely dark, and he cannot go back to sleep. When he looks out his window at the horse, she is standing, staring upward at him. He puts on his clothes and goes to her silently. When he gets there, he sees that Frida is asleep, and the raven, too, is quiet in his nest. There is a bright, silent moon—that is all. Paras sidles up to the sixth step. Étienne slides his leg over her back, wraps his hands in her thick mane, and settles himself. He is as wide awake as he has ever been. Paras walks out the gate.

Toward the Avenue de la Bourdonnais, there are a few wan lights, but no cars, no activity. Toward the Champ de Mars, there is nothing. The trees, which seem short and orderly during the day, now seem to muffle everything—light, sound, activity. Étienne can feel Paras’s walk speed up—longer strides, quicker rhythm. His hips shift back and forth. She turns right, down the dark allée between the row of trees and the row of fences that hide the houses. Her walk speeds up again, and then they are doing it, the very thing that he has read about so many times: they are cantering. He tightens his grip on her mane, tightens his legs around her sides, but her movement is light and smooth, rocking gently forward, gently backward. The sharpest thing about it is the cool air in his face, his hair blowing upward. Paras makes a noise with each smooth leap, a ruffling sound out of her nostrils, one-one-one-one. It is comforting and dreamy, as if she is counting. They come to the end of the allée and loop around the Tour and the ponds and the fences, passing the dark, still vans belonging to the vendors, passing the lights of the Tour beaming onto the empty dirt, rounding the trees. They then proceed (it now feels almost like a ritual movement, this graceful rocking) up the allée that parallels the Avenue de Suffren, a street Étienne has never explored—too far for his great-grandmama to walk. Halfway up that allée, Paras slows, first to a jerky gait that dislodges him, then to her regular walk. Étienne takes a deep breath, shakes his head. He unclenches his fists, strokes her on the neck underneath her mane. Paras, too, takes a deep breath, and tosses her head, obviously pleased with herself. They walk along. Behind the great building at the far end of the Champ, just the thinnest string of brightness appears. Étienne does not want to get caught, but he leaves everything to Paras. She wends her way back to the house. As she enters the gate, Étienne sees the headlights of a car on the Avenue de la Bourdonnais. Once he dismounts, he is careful to close the gate, so that they are back inside their leafy sanctuary, quiet. Étienne discovers that he is so tired from his exciting adventure that he falls asleep in the grand salon, stretched out under one of his great-grandmama’s ancient coverlets. He doesn’t even wake up when Kurt runs across his body two times. Kurt gives up, goes into the cuisine, helps himself to grated carrots and a few croutons that have fallen on the floor. Kurt is wide awake, but, indeed, he seems to be the only one. The windows brighten.

IT WAS CONRAD who discovered that the old lady had vanished. Oh, yes, her husk was still present in the bedroom, neatly covered so that only her nose was visible. Conrad hadn’t intended to discover this—he had never skittered over the old lady, or any human, before. But the bed was so flat, and the room so empty of energy, that he thought she was in the grand salon, and so he planned to check her night table, where there was often a crust of something. When he saw the nose, Conrad squeaked in surprise, but the nose emphatically did not twitch. He crept up to it. It gave off no vapors. He touched the tip of it with his own nose. It was cold and hard. Conrad sat back on his haunches and curled his little fists against his belly. He stared at her and was silent, which seemed appropriate.

Nevertheless, Kurt had to be told, and so Conrad finished his foraging, then entered the tunnel. Although the tunnel was his home, it seemed a little darker than the old lady’s room, darker than he was used to its being, darker, colder, a bit narrow. He could feel the top of the tunnel, and the sides pressed against him as he ran, almost squeezing him. He did not know how old the old lady was, or how old a human could get to be. Every rat in his family had known the old lady more or less intimately. She predated every story he’d ever been told. Some rats said that humans were immortal, but other rats said that this was impossible—all you had to do was receive their broadcast and sense how they varied in order to understand that immortality was unlikely. Conrad stopped, flicked his whiskers. He heard Kurt’s characteristic squeak, ran again, and popped out in that room where the books were. Kurt was sitting on the windowsill, looking out at the horse. Conrad joined him without saying anything. The horse and the dog were still sleeping, even though it was full day. The raven was perched on the greenery that flowed all around the courtyard, picking at something with his beak. Finally, Conrad said, “Remember that talk we had about broadcasts?”

“Which one?” said Kurt. “You talk about that all the time.”

“Do I?” said Conrad. “I don’t mean to repeat myself.”

“If we got out a little more, I think we might have more to talk about,” said Kurt.

After a long moment, Conrad said, “Son, you are right. You are exactly right. And the fact is, everything is different now.” Kurt’s head spun toward him, and he nodded. Then he said, “Every rat has a different theory about human power and mortality, but we all agree on one thing, and that is that when a human vanishes a rat’s world turns upside down.”

In the meantime, Étienne slept on, and the house grew so quiet that when the gendarme passed it on his morning round, he looked at it twice, so still and cold did it seem, right here, today, in the brilliant warmth of the green spring.

IT WAS FRIDA who woke Étienne up, barking like mad in the courtyard. Paras lifted her head and said, “Why are you making that awful noise?”

Frida paused and said, “I don’t know,” and resumed barking.

Paras hoisted herself to her feet, walked over to Frida, and stood over her. She pinned her ears, narrowed her eyes, and switched her tail in a threatening manner, but it was evident that Frida didn’t know horse body language, because she just kept barking. At last, and with some misgivings, Paras bumped Frida with her knees and knocked her over. There was silence.

Paras said, “What is going on?”

“Everyone needs to know.”

“To know what?”

“I don’t know. Something. Something important. Whatever it is, it is making my skin tingle and my hair curl.”

“Your hair isn’t curling.”

“That’s what it feels like.” She rolled energetically in the grass, twisting her body this way and that; then she rolled onto her stomach and put her paws over her ears. At last, she said, “I felt this before, but I didn’t know what it was. Now maybe I do. It was when my human vanished.”

Paras looked up at the window. There was Étienne, staring at her. She said, “The boy is fine.”

Frida blew out a long breath.

Thanks to the barking, Étienne was wide awake, but a little disoriented. Why was he sleeping in the grand salon? What time was it? Where was his great-grandmama? What was for breakfast? He staggered a little as he went toward the cuisine, thinking that the answers might be there, and the staggering reminded him of his nighttime adventure, cantering around the Champ de Mars in a dream. This had the effect of making him feel more rather than less disoriented. It wasn’t until he had scarfed down a piece of bread, some cheese, and a large glass of water that he felt like himself. At that point, he yawned and cleaned up the cuisine as best he could—just the day before, his great-grandmama had run her hand along the top of the table and made a sad face. Not a scowl—she was not angry—but it was clear that, distracted as he was by the horse, he was doing a poor job of maintaining the house. Kurt could have told him that his own distraction had resulted in his complementary failure in waste management, but Étienne had never known how great a contribution to his efforts Kurt had made.

Only after wiping the table, rinsing the sink, sweeping the floor, and closing all of the drawers and cabinet doors did Étienne bring his attention fully to the old lady. He thought that she had to be somewhere—perhaps, given her energy when they went to the shops again just the day before, she had gotten dressed and left the house! And so he hurried out of the cuisine, through the grand salon, across the hallway. He knocked, even though she would not be able to hear him, and then put his hand on the door to her chamber, eased it open. The room was quiet. Like Conrad, he at first didn’t see her—she had gone out! But no—her hat with the feather was in its customary spot. Then he did see her. Her covers, including the great coverlet she’d been knitting, were drawn up over her chin, with her pillow hiding her forehead. He stared at her for a long time, and then he crept toward the bed. After a moment, he slipped his own hand under the covers and found hers. He squeezed it. It was small and cool and stiff. The day had come, Étienne thought, the day when he no longer knew what to do, down to the least little thing.

Jérôme, at the market, also felt uneasy for some reason. He found himself stepping out into the street without meaning to, looking left, looking right, making himself go back into the shop, only to step out into the street moments later.

Anaïs, in her apartment, was brewing herself a cup of tea. She poured the boiling water right onto her hand, cried out, put her hand under the cold tap, and started to weep. Anaïs hadn’t wept in years, she thought; as for burning herself, she did that all the time, but this time was different, somehow.

Pierre, who still had his earplugs in from his morning operating the leaf blower, stepped out of the equipment shed and saw dark clouds to the north—unexpected, because the forecast had been for days of sunshine. He went back into the shed, felt a chilling breeze, found a jacket. When he’d finished hanging up his tools and making the signs he had to redo every year to remind his crew where to put things, he went back outside. Brilliant sunshine. Unaccountable, really.

The gendarme made up his mind to consult his superior officer about that house. There was something funny about the place, and the gendarmerie needed to look into it. He knocked on the office door, then knocked again. Another officer went by, told him that the boss was in Nanterre for the afternoon. Whatever it was would have to wait until tomorrow, but tomorrow was his day off. Okay, he could wait two days.

Frida was not barking anymore. She was lying quietly in her dip, silent, not even mumbling, almost invisible under the vegetation.

Paras continued to sample the grass and weeds. She knew that Frida thought she was insensitive or indifferent. She wasn’t. She was preparing herself.

Raoul knew exactly what was going on. He stood on the sill of the old lady’s window, tapping. He could see that she had passed, and he knew that it was the animals who had to save the boy.

Delphine felt nothing special, apart from the anxiety she always experienced before a big race. Since she trained horses for both jump races and flat races, her worries were different for each. When she put a horse in a race over the hurdles or the jumps, she imagined the horse falling more than anything else. Now she stood, leaning on Whiskey Shot’s stall door, watching him gobble down his hay. He was a flat racer, less likely to fall, especially since the ground was dry and firm. But was he too fat? Was he too tall for his age? Would the jockey be able to control him? He liked to come from behind, always a hazardous strategy. If they bunched in front of him, would he try to barrel through the pack, putting himself and everyone else at risk? Delphine wiped the sweat off her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt.

BECAUSE ÉTIENNE DIDN’T KNOW what to do, he did what he knew he should have done before this, which was to clean, clean, clean, first the cuisine, then the grand salon, then the library. He put away, he threw away, he wiped down, he swept, he straightened. In his great-grandmama’s chamber, it soothed him to walk around her, picking up this and that, placing her cherished possessions exactly as she would wish them to be if she were, indeed, a ghost (she had never said anything about ghosts, but there were ghosts in books, just as there were horses in books—a horse had shown up, so perhaps a ghost would also show up). Several times, he went to her and kissed her on the forehead. He made very little noise, because he did not have a vacuum cleaner, and so the gendarme, who altered his route in order to peek through the fence with all of its vegetation and to listen for telltale noises, could make out nothing. Yes, a raven was tapping on a windowpane, up on the first floor—that was unusual, but it was not against the law, or even a matter for Animal Control. He had other things to do until his shift ended, but he thought he might come back, even though tomorrow was his day off. He could explore a little more aggressively—not in his uniform, but as an interested private citizen.

As Étienne made order in his great-grandmama’s chamber, he got more comfortable with what most books would have called the cadavre or the restes humains. He did not know what he should call it, but both of these terms seemed too final. He glanced out the window. Paras, Frida, and the raven were standing together, as if they were conversing.

Étienne couldn’t hear them, but Frida said, “Where can we possibly take him? We’ll be captured!”

Raoul said, “My relative Liam Corvus Cor—” But then he tossed his head and shut up.

Paras said, “I have an idea.”

PERHAPS, Étienne thought, he should go to the church and find the curé, but Étienne knew that as soon as he let the curé, and whoever else, into the house, they would take him and his great-grandmama out of it. He needed one last night with her, one last night in his own room, in his own library, in his own cuisine. Having made up his mind, he went down into the cellar and began sorting through the vegetables and other things stored there. At suppertime, he came back up with a bowl of some very nice beets and carrots, some oats, and the last of the apples, now wrinkled, but fragrant and firm. For himself, he put some cheese and dried fruits on the table, and in honor of his great-grandmama, he set a bowl of walnuts and a peeled orange in front of her chair. His great-grandmama had always been very fond of walnuts. He ate properly, as if she were with him, thinking of how good she had been, but also how interesting she had been. Then he went to the front door and opened it. The animals were still standing together.

The sun had gone down, and the only lamp Étienne turned on was a single wan bulb in the grand salon. Because of his great-grandmama’s poor eyesight, he was in the habit of turning on only the lights he needed for reading or thinking or helping her go about the place (not that, after so many years, she needed much help). But now, sitting beside the table, holding his book on his lap, and looking around, he began to cry for the first time. That was when he knew that she was dead, that, underneath all of the silence, there was no longer the even “sshh” of her breaths. From where he was sitting, he could see the shadowy emptiness of her yarn basket, like a hole in the ground, a drain to nowhere. Now fear began to infuse his sadness. He wondered whether elsewhere in Paris there were eight-year-olds sitting quietly by themselves, with no one anywhere nearby. Yes, her corpus was in her room—and what would he do with that?—but, truly, she was gone, alive only in his memory of her care and her good humor. He could hear himself sniffling, feel the tears running. He put his face in his hands.

First to appear, but not from outside, was Kurt, his nose twitching in the rush of evening air. He emerged from his hole (Étienne could hear him better than he could see him), zipped across the carpet, and crouched beside Étienne’s right foot. Étienne took his hands away from his face and looked down. He leaned forward, cupped his hands. Kurt stepped into them. Étienne straightened up, placed the rat on his knee. The next to appear was the raven, who came in the usual door, cawing. His cawing sounded very specific, but only Kurt knew that he was saying, “Well, at last! In circumstances like these, and believe me, Aves understand the ins and outs and ups and downs of death perhaps better than any other class of Chordata…” He fell silent. And here came Paras, not through her usual door, but through the big door, the door that required her to mount ten steps to the great portico. She whinnied a few things to Raoul, and then came to where Étienne was sitting, snuffled his hair, and put her chin gently on his shoulder. Her warmth spread out around him. He put his hand in the silky spot under her mane.

And now, at last, after so many months, here came Frida in through the small door, her tail down, her ears down, half slinking, a sad but determined look on her face. She looked exactly the way Étienne felt. She came all the way to him, and stood, trembling slightly, as Étienne petted her on her silky head. She mumbled a few things, the raven cawed, the rat squeaked, and Paras nickered gently. Étienne knew that they were talking to him, though not in his language, and he felt comforted. One by one, they settled in—the raven in his great-grandmama’s empty yarn basket, Kurt in the corner of the sofa, Paras in her usual spot in front of the windows, and Frida right there, right at his feet, her lovely head resting on her paws. Very soon, there was quite a bit of snoring, which Étienne found so soothing that he, too, put his head back and fell asleep.

Sometime later, Paras woke up, levered herself to her feet, and went into the cuisine, where she turned on the spigot and had a drink of water, then finished the last of the supper. It was that time of night, the deepest deepest dark, when she customarily went out into the Champ de Mars. The doors were open, and she could come and go as she pleased, but when she came back into the grand salon, she went over to the boy and poked him with her nose. He woke up at once. Frida woke up. Raoul flew up and perched on Paras’s croup, and Kurt scrambled to the back of the sofa. Étienne understood that they had a plan.

Étienne now remembered his outing of the night before, the pleasure of it. If the horse wanted to do that one last time, Étienne was all for it, and, indeed, he suddenly felt that he had to get out of this house. Paras placed herself next to the sofa and put her head down. The rat pulled himself up her mane and settled just behind her ears. Étienne followed them out the smaller door. Frida was at his heels. Paras waited while he opened the gate, and then they walked around to the staircase, and he climbed to the sixth step. She positioned herself. He put his leg over her back and hopped on, entwining his hands in her mane. The rat hadn’t gone with them the previous night, but he looked eager. Frida was mumbling. The raven continued to sit on Paras’s haunches until they were out of the gate, and then he rose gently on the breeze and stayed a few meters in front of them, only lifting and lowering his wings a little bit, swaying from side to side.

The horse walked down the allée, loosening up, relaxing, and then she eased into that canter again, and there they were, swaying and leaping, almost airborne, the trees passing them on the left, ping-ping-ping. At the pond, Paras slowed to a walk. The farther they went, the more Étienne wanted to keep going, the more it felt like escape rather than pleasure. Now they were in front of the Tour, just outside its circle of light. Paras’s walk was energetic. Frida trotted beside her. The rat made little squeaking noises, but he was sitting up straight, his tiny ears pricked, as if he was as interested in where they were going as Étienne was.

Paras paused. The raven landed on the fence. They waited. A large truck went by, and then it was so quiet that Étienne could hear the river bubbling and lapping against the embankment, and after that they were walking across the Pont d’Iéna. They passed the carousel, turned left, and headed up the dark path beside the great building, and every single step was into somewhere that Étienne, native Parisian, had never been before.

PARAS WAS NOT normally of a philosophical turn of mind, but she was surprised at how natural this was, how easy, really. This was nothing compared to a workout around the dirt track at Maisons-Laffitte. So far, this was a sprint, hardly enough to cause a stayer like Paras to breathe hard. Why had she waited so long? That was the price of indecision, wasn’t it? And yet it was also the price of freedom. Although she now felt herself responsible for Étienne, as well as drawn back to Delphine and that former life of fitness and purpose, she understood that her days of doing what she pleased when she was pleased to do it were behind her. As she climbed the path, she drew in many deep breaths, not because she was winded, but because she loved the air, the smell of spring, of grass, of plants and flowers and dirt, so different from the smell of oncoming winter and dead leaves from the last time she was here. She could feel the boy swaying as she walked, his legs relaxed, his body never moving out of plumb. He was, as Delphine would have said, a natural. And he was her responsibility now. Well, she didn’t mind that. She was four years old, a mare—mares took responsibility for almost everything groups of horses might do.

Ahead of her, Raoul flew from tree to tree. He seemed to have nothing to say. Just for a moment, Paras regretted not having paused to say goodbye to Sid and Nancy. They would have been sleeping, but saying some last word was the friendly thing to do. She continued to climb, the dark bulk of the huge building warm and protective. And now there was the gate, the gate Frida had opened all those months ago. She halted. Frida stepped forward, got up on her hind legs, and opened the gate again. They went through. It was still darkest dark, and the Place du Trocadéro was empty. All the shops were lightless, the huge buildings were solid black, and that strange horse still stood up there in the sky, unmoving. Paras looked around. She could smell the forest, but how to get there was a bit confusing.

Raoul did not mean to be preoccupied with his own petty concerns—he had re-entered his former territory, and there was cawing, some of it on the order of “Oh, heavens, I thought you were dead!,” some of it on the order of “You need to watch your step!” He did not think there would be a mobbing, but you never knew. At least, it was less likely in the dark like this, in the spring, with nestlings everywhere. Even so, he perched not far from the horse, not far from Frida.

For her part, Frida also felt the gravity of returning to the Place du Trocadéro. She hadn’t seen the Pâtisserie Carette since her last sad meal. She could feel a train rumbling beneath her feet, which reminded her of those terrifying times in the Métro and where her hiding spot had been, behind the café, small and gritty. And up the avenue there, the one that ran not far from the river, was where Jacques had sat down one morning, played his instrument for a while, and then lain back, never to get up again.

Only Kurt was living in the present moment, and in the present moment Kurt saw cats, crouching here, sitting there, hiding everywhere. He squeaked and squeaked again. A cat crossed the street; a cat went behind a bush in the green area. Kurt dug all of his claws in even deeper, and just then, Paras ruffled her nostrils and Raoul and Frida shook off their blues and headed north of the cemetery, down a lovely avenue lined with dead cars, fluttering trees, and many buildings enclosing many sleeping humans, just the sort of outing Paras enjoyed. Her hooves clopped neatly on the pavement, tock-tock-tock-tock, big walking strides. Here and there birds flew up around them and a fox peeked out at them, but Paras moved along, Étienne’s fingers in her mane, his heels tapping her rhythmically. With every step, she could smell the turf and the leaves, hectares of greenery.

Étienne had not intended to get so far from his great-grandmama. He felt his thoughts about her getting no less sad, but thinning out among his other thoughts, his pleasure in this adventure, his curiosity about where they were headed, his sense of being surrounded by these friends. He, too, smelled a difference in the air, sensed a difference in himself, in his attachment to the horse. He knew every move she was about to make as she made it—his own back and legs connected with her back and legs. It was hypnotic. He was watching the scenery go by, noting lights in windows here and there, but all of that seemed unimportant compared with this tock-tock-tock-tock.

All Kurt cared about, since he was so strong now, was that they seemed to have left the cats behind.

And now they were into the woods. The turf beneath Paras’s hooves was springy and green. Frida took off at a run, disappeared, must have looped around, returned with Raoul not far behind. Her ears were up. Raoul was talking about some nearby statue, of his very own ancestor Raoul Corvus Corax, the thirteenth of that name, cawing, cawing, and then he shouted to Frida, “I can’t believe you never saw a rabbit before!” Frida barked, “It’s a hare!,” then put her nose to the earth and trailed the scent into the trees, as if in ecstasy. Paras followed after her, newly relaxed. They went deeper into the greenery.

SEVENTEEN

The gendarme had a nice breakfast, as he always did on his day off—a mushroom omelette, two pieces of nine-grain toast, a dish of strawberries, two cups of coffee, then a medicinal slug of aged Cognac. After that he performed a few other Saturday rituals—filing his nails, scraping his tongue, trimming his nose hairs. At last, he went to his closet and chose his outfit for the day, something uniform-like, but not a uniform. He spent five minutes choosing his shoes: he had a new pair that were very elegant, but a little stiff. He went back and forth, eventually opted for comfort over vanity.

Delphine, too, was getting dressed. All of the important decisions were over—the jockey, the training regimen, whether to enter Whiskey Shot in a race with so many other well-bred horses, whether to scratch him just out of sheer anxiety—all done. All she had to do now was choose a sweater—she had two worthy ones, a green Hermès and a blue Alexander McQueen. The question was not which one looked more flattering, but which one was luckier. She stared at them as the sunlight brightened through the window.

It was a beautiful morning in the Champ de Mars—perhaps, in terms of the plantings and the fixtures, the peak day of the year. Pierre and his workmen had all of the grass trimmed, all of the flowers weeded, all of the allées raked, all of the fountains spraying sparkling streams in the air. They might as well have polished the Tour itself, because it rose brilliantly into the sky, as gleaming as the day when construction was completed and it stood as the gate to the 1889 World’s Fair. Even the ducks and ducklings in the ponds looked as though they had been personally groomed by duck-grooming specialists. The tourists and runners and strollers and dog walkers parading along were well turned out, too. Pierre still had some work to do—sorting autumn bulbs—but he chose to stroll around and enjoy the fruits of his labors. When he first noticed the emergency vehicle on the Rue Marinoni, he didn’t think much of it, but after he turned around and headed back toward his shed area, he got more curious; the emergency vehicle was still there, more people had arrived, and a police car as well. He went around that corner where the shrubbery was so thick, and saw that the gate was ajar, and so he peeked in.

A door opened, and two men, supervised by a third, emerged, carrying a stretcher. They didn’t seem to be in a rush, and so Pierre deduced that the person in the stretcher was dead. He stepped backward, deeper into the courtyard, and of course he recognized the smell, the rich, sweet aroma of horse manure. He looked around. There was plenty of it, deposited in three spots, though a good deal had been distributed, as Pierre would have done, beneath the flourishing raspberry patch (Pierre plucked a few berries for himself—they were juicy and flavorful), along the roots of the shrubbery, and at the base of a row of ash trees, which were also vibrating with health. So this was where she lived, the whinnier. He walked around the larger courtyard, noticing the evidence—not only a mound of fresh manure, but well-cropped grass and weeds, a shallow depression where she must have been in the habit of rolling. As he was looking at this, he saw the tunnel underneath the fence, big enough for a large dog—the dog had lived here, too. He put his hands in his pockets, then went up the staircase to the grand entrance. The doors were wide open. He called out, “Hello?”

From deep within came an answering “Yes? Who are you?” And he recognized the fellow who popped out, not in uniform but, indeed, the gendarme who patrolled the local area. He said, “Good day, I am Pierre Duman. I am the caretaker in the Champ de Mars. What is going on here?”

“Ah well, the old lady seems to have died a while ago—one day at least. Most certainly died of old age, no sign of anything suspicious. How long she’s lived here? Difficult to say.” Then, “You may enter, but please don’t touch anything. We have to treat it as a crime scene for the moment. You know these people, perhaps?”

Pierre said, “No, I don’t know them,” but he did step inside, and he did walk around, keeping his hands in his pockets. The place was like one of those museums in a small town, where the prominent families and the bureaucrats simply hoarded everything that could possibly be of interest, from an old coin found in a garden to the stuffed head of a gazelle that someone carried home from Africa a hundred years ago. There were paintings on the walls, but they were fogged with dust—impossible to say whether anything was of value. Books were piled on every table; the furniture that was uncovered was upholstered in frayed but ornate brocade. The place did not have the air of death or abandonment. When he looked down at the inlaid flooring, he saw the faintest print of a hoof. He bent down and touched it with his finger. It was still damp. He looked around, and saw another one, which he had missed, right beside the big door. Well, he thought, Paris beat all for strange goings-on, and who was he to deny that?

When he was walking back to his shed at last, turning these thoughts over in his mind, he nearly bumped into that young woman, that not-so-young woman, who did the baking at the café. What was her name? He looked into her blue eyes, and thought, “Anaïs,” and smiled. She said, “Ah, hello, how are you this morning?” She seemed so pleasant and friendly that he turned and walked along with her, and told her about the house on the Rue Marinoni, the old lady and the antiquated interior, yes, but primarily the manure in the courtyard, the evidence of the horse, and Anaïs said, “I always wondered where she lived,” and they started to compare recollections, all the way back to the late fall, when Pierre first noticed the horse’s presence, and then about the feedings, and the raven, and the mysterious whinnies now and then, and Anaïs reminded him that she had hoped that perhaps the filly was the incarnation of some magical being, especially after seeing the raven walk along her spine, and Pierre said, “Too much manure,” and Anaïs said, “She did have an appetite! She is an eating machine.” And so they laughed, and each recognized that the other was both appealing and often in the neighborhood. But Pierre had to get back to work. He said, “You’d think she’d be easy to find, but she isn’t.”

They both shook their heads.

RANIA PUT Whiskey Shot into his stall. He was behaving himself, but Rania knew that Whiskey knew that it was a big day. His ears were pricked, and he looked fervently at every passing horse, passing jockey, passing groom. This was his fourth race, first at Longchamp. He had two wins and a place. “He wouldn’t know bad luck if he saw it,” thought Rania, “and may Allah provide that things stay that way.” Here came Delphine with the owners, a pleasant couple who bred a foal or two every year, but had bought Whiskey Shot at a sale in England upon Delphine’s advice. They were very happy so far, as well they should be. The odds on him were 5–1, just where Rania was hoping they would stay. Rania was a smart bettor and had a nice wad of euros in her bag, which she was going to put right down on Whiskey’s nose at the last minute. It was about an hour until post time.

In the woodland, Paras was the first to wake up. Étienne was leaning against her, as he had so often in the grand salon, and Frida was stretched out under a nearby tree, snoring. Kurt was under Paras’s long, thick mane—she could feel the weight there. As soon as she woke up, he woke up. They had walked around for most of the early morning, exploring the woods. There were roads and plenty of buildings, but you could stay in the grassy parts, among the trees, away from the dead cars on one side and the speeding, lit-up vehicles on the other. At one point, they had followed a low fence, then entered a gate to get away from the road. After a while, they had been overtaken by the fatigue of their long night, and found a secluded spot among some weeds and trees. Now Paras snuffled her nose in the grass and ate a bite. It was rich and moist. She felt the boy come to life. He sat up, then stood up. He yawned. Frida continued to sleep.

Paras’s ears were long, delicate, and sensitive. As she lay there, they flicked to the front, to the back, to the left, to the right. She could hear both high sounds and low sounds. The woodland was full of small scuttling animals, blowing leaves, creaking branches, calling birds; the city was nearby, and so she could also hear cars and trucks and the shouts of people. An airplane howled overhead. Humans walked past without noticing the wildlife, chatting with one another, rustling paper. They came and went, came and went. Underneath these sounds were some very low sounds that surged rather suddenly as a kind of pounding, half aural, half visceral. Paras knew what they were—they were the sounds of a field of horses racing around a track, many sounds melded into one sound, approaching, then receding. She felt her whiskers move, the hair on the edges of her ears prickle, her heavy mane and her tail lift slightly. She could not help herself. But she lay there and she waited for Étienne, and pretty soon he put his leg across her back. She stood up. At once, Frida was on her feet, her ears pricked, her nose in the air. Paras said, “Did you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The race. Galloping horses.”

Frida looked at her and cocked her head. No, she hadn’t heard it.

Now Kurt emerged from under her mane and went to his usual spot between her ears. He squeaked a little.

She walked along. The race had nothing to do with her. All she thought was that she had not realized the track was so close. In her mind, her trek from Auteuil had taken forever, all night, sunset to sunrise, had covered miles and miles. She had felt as though she were pressing herself through a dense fog that pressed back, slowing her progress, draining her strength. She had stopped in the one green area, eaten some grass, gone on to the other green area, where Frida had found her. She had seemed to herself to have left one world and entered another. Since her journey always remained in her mind in this way, she was now a little disoriented by the nearness of that thumping sound. Still, the boy’s heels tapped against her side, and his hands gripped her mane with trust and pleasure. Frida said, “Where are we going?,” and then, “I wonder where Raoul is?” She lifted her nose. Paras would not answer the first question, and she could not answer the second one. She walked along.

Okay, she was curious. She was still a curious filly, although she was now a mare. It was perfectly understandable that a curious mare would be curious about her old friends, would enjoy seeing a horse that was not cold and inert at the top of a tower, would enjoy hearing some of the gossip—who was winning, who was in from the countryside, what they thought of her disappearance. Surely, they would enjoy hearing her adventures, too—horses liked to gossip.

They walked in the direction of the noise, and then came the sound of the crowd, rising and falling, the sound of a human voice pouring out into the air, naming names. There was a tall barrier—she could see through it, but it was above her head—and then they found a break in the barrier. Paras stepped through, and the others followed her. Now Raoul appeared, landed on her haunches. He said, “Ah! A contest!” The course ran away from them, vast and green, mowed, trimmed, leveled, springy, but no jumps. It did not look like the course where Paras had won her purse, the course she had cantered away from so blithely.

She heard the runners before she could see them, dark and chaotic in the distance, thundering toward her. She told herself they were flat runners, not her business. But still she kept shivering and soon she was stamping her feet. They came on, strung out, not bunched. It was early in the race—no one was trying hard, but they were stretching, nostrils flared. Paras snorted, lifted her head. Her tail went up. She remembered that the boy was there just as Frida said, “What is wrong with you?” She calmed herself, but they got closer, eating up the turf. No, she didn’t recognize anyone, not really, but she recognized herself in them—not only in the bays, but also in the chestnuts, the two grays.

She snorted again, and Frida stood on her hind legs and pulled the boy off. He fell in a heap, and Paras leapt the railing—it was as low as could be—and as the field passed her, she joined it. Yes, the jockeys stared at her, but the horses just said, “Welcome!,” and on she galloped, pacing herself by keeping up with one of the chestnuts—rangy, four white feet, decent stride. They were neck and neck. He was friendly. His jockey said, “Oh my God!,” and then Paras pulled ahead. She had never run in the pack before, since she was a front-runner. After a moment, she was almost in the clear—only two horses ahead of her, and only the one pulling away. She ran neck and neck with the other one, a nice-looking brown, no markings. They sped up, lengthened their stride. The horse eyeballed her, trying to intimidate her, but she wasn’t tired, since she wasn’t carrying any weight at all. The other horse, a bay, pulled ahead by another length, and they were deep among the screaming humans, and then they crossed the finish line, and everyone except Paras slowed down right away. Paras kept going until she heard Kurt squeaking like mad. She had forgotten he was still in place. His paws were digging into her, and through her own panting she could hear his. Then he said, “I am going to die.”

Paras said, “No, you aren’t,” and she turned around and trotted back to where everyone else was standing. She did so willingly; she didn’t realize until she got there that the human saying, “God in heaven, God in heaven! It’s her!,” was Delphine. She was holding the bridle of the winner, and that horse’s jockey was jumping to the ground, and then Delphine collapsed and Rania appeared and, what do you know, she came over and put her arms around Paras’s neck and leaned against her and started crying. The giant human voice in the air said, “Something very strange seems to have happened as the horses were running! Ariane, can you provide us with any sort of an explanation?” And then there were humans everywhere, and some man was approaching Paras with a halter, and so she backed away, and trotted, then galloped to where Frida, Raoul, and the boy were still standing.

They could have gotten out, they should have gotten out, but no one, least of all Paras, remembered where the break in the tall barrier fence was, and so they were trapped, and so they were caught, and so, Paras thought, her fate was decided.

JÉRÔME WAS WRAPPING a half-dozen prunes in a sheet of newspaper, making small talk with his customer, and keeping his eye on the street for a particular old man who had walked past, who sometimes helped himself to the fruit. A few days before, he’d taken a handful of excellent strawberries—Jérôme had seen him eating them one by one as he ambled down the street. If the man were to simply ask, Jérôme would give him things—Paris was full of homeless people, and everyone knew someone who’d had a bad season or two, and there you were. But this fellow…

Jérôme’s eye caught the face of the boy, looking up at him. He flipped the package of prunes over, and there was the face of a horse, too. The picture in the newspaper was of the boy and a horse, cheek to cheek. Jérôme unwrapped the fruit, wrapped them in a sheet of ads for Monoprix, took the money, made the change. When the shop was momentarily empty, he read the article. There was the dog, too, offering her paw to the horse trainer who had found them, or whom they had found. The horse had jumped over the outer railing, into a race, run with the other horses, then fled back to where the boy and the dog were standing, way at the far end of Longchamp, where no one but the mowers ever went. It had been a great sensation when it happened—not only had the horse joined the race, she had nearly won it; not only had the horse appeared, but she was the very horse that the winning trainer had lost in the late fall, when the horse slipped out of her stall and disappeared. Into the Bois de Boulogne? Could she possibly have survived in the Bois all winter? The boy seemed terrified by the whole experience. However, the boy and the horse and the dog all seemed well fed and healthy. Yes, said Jérôme to himself, as well they might be, since he had fed them, and he stocked only the best. A customer came in, bought a substantial bunch of commodities, paid, and left. Jérôme went and knocked on the window of the meat market. Alise raised her hand, came out a minute later. Jérôme showed her the article. They both began laughing. For the rest of the afternoon, Jérôme looked at the picture every so often. Nothing about the old lady—well, that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that the old lady had lived to make her way to the market as long as she had.

Toward late afternoon, here, at last, came the gendarme. Jean, his name was. Jérôme had never even spoken to him, but they had touched their caps to one another, smiled, nodded, acknowledged each other’s business in the neighborhood. Jérôme waved him over, and he came, with dignified steps. Had he seen the paper? Jérôme pointed to the pictures of the dog, the horse, and the boy, and the gendarme pushed his cap back and gave a satisfied sigh. Then he said, “So that’s where they went. The old lady died, you know. In her bed. Just the sort of death I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Jérôme. In a way, the horse wasn’t a surprise, either, when he reflected upon how many carrots, apples, and beets the boy had purchased over the last few months. He said, “Where did they live?”

“On Marinoni, just beside the Champ de Mars.”

After closing the shop, Jérôme walked down the Rue Marinoni and looked at the place. It was all closed up now. He tried peeking through the fence, but the vegetation was too thick—that should have been a giveaway right there. He stood with his hands in his pockets in the deepening dusk and wondered why he had never thought to do this—follow the boy and the old lady and the dog home, just to see. Would it have been better if he had?

He was standing there quietly when Pierre approached him. Jérôme knew why. All he had to say was “Have you seen the newspaper?”

Pierre shook his head.

Jérôme took the folded article out of his pocket—the boy, the horse, the dog. Right before their eyes the whole time. When Pierre got to Anaïs’s café, she was there. She had the paper, too. She’d found it on one of the tables when she came in to begin the evening’s baking.

It was an odd thing, to meet this person and that, to compare notes, to solve a mystery that you didn’t even know existed, to answer questions that you had not thought to ask: Who was this boy? (The last in a long line of unlucky ones.) Who was this dog? (Don’t you remember that busker? Unkempt, but a musical genius, a fellow who had walked away from a promising career. Jacques Seul, he had called himself—no one knew his given name, but that had been his stage name—he had cut two records in the 1970s.) Who was this horse? Perestroika, by Moscow Ballet out of Mapleton, by Big Spruce, four-year-old, two starts, two wins, bay mare, white star, no other markings—what else did you need to know?