He’d eventually managed to escape over the border to Lemberg, and went on from there to Gorlice, and, after wearing through the soles of his boots on the long walk across the remains of the Austro-Hungarian empire, had succeeded in reaching Vienna more or less in one piece. Thankfully, a train had taken him the rest of the way to Paris.

  For all his enquiries, he never heard one word about the trader Ryabinkin or the beautiful young Frenchwoman, Clementine Babin.

  ‘We’ve never heard what happened to my uncle either,’ Alyosha told him. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s dead.’

  Unfortunately, Prince Yakov and his womenfolk hadn’t managed to bring any of the family’s wealth out of Russia, and no doubt by now all their possessions had been nationalised for the benefit of the Soviet state.

  28.

  It was a dry, cloudless night, and clear blue moonlight streamed into Aloysha’s shabby room. From the street below, he could hear the spluttering of a motor-car engine unwilling to fire. It went on so long that he started grinding his teeth with frustration. Then, there seemed to be some attempt to rock it to and fro, but the drunken voices swearing and laughing suggested that this wasn’t working either. He lay on his bed, too lethargic to undress, trying to still his mind, but the men around the motor car were making too much of a racket.

  A second passed. Then another, and another and another, tick-tocking in his ear. He started to count them. He shifted onto his side and stared at the wall.

  Later, much, much later, the motor car engine snorted into life, to the accompaniment of shouts and whoops. Alyosha rolled onto his back again, shut his eyes and tried to sleep, but Mademoiselle Babin filled his thoughts, coupled with a longing for those carefree days of his childhood. He remembered an afternoon in Yalta, long ago, when he lay in an old hammock under the palm trees, drowsy with heat, the world heavy and still under a blazing sun. Then Ivan, his father’s chauffeur, coming over with a bottle of cold beer in his hand, taking a long swig, and offering to show him how a motor-car engine worked. He could see the golden fuzz of hair on his arm glistening in the sunlight. Then, in another life, Ivan the Commissar at an open grave in a dark orchard.

  He preferred to remember Mademoiselle Babin, her breasts jiggling under her blouse. He imagined her naked, beckoning him… Ivan used to try and flirt with her in his clumsy way, and she’d humour him a little, in order to have him at her beck and call. She’d enjoy being able to send him here, there and everywhere on various little errands, but she secretly loathed the man, Alyosha was sure of it. Ivan, with that unique way of talking, as if he was hiding the poison he felt towards mankind just under the surface of the words – he must have made her skin crawl. Alyosha had despised him too, but he did regret not taking up the chauffeur’s offer of learning how a motor-car engine worked.

  29.

  Alyosha walked out of the Renault factory gates at the end of his shift, surrounded by the clattering of the wooden clogs of his co-workers. It was a bitterly cold January evening, and he pulled his beaver-skin cap – a welcome Christmas present from Prince Yakov – down over his ears, and quickened his step through the throng, eager to be home. As he turned the corner at the bottom of the street, he nearly collided with a man in an overcoat, woollen scarf and soft hat. Before he could apologise, he was being bundled into the back of a motor car, which drove off smartly once the door had banged shut.

  ‘And there I was, thinking I’d lost you forever.’ Superintendent Chenot turned around from the front seat, and proffered his silver cigarette case. ‘How are you, stranger?’

  He lit both their cigarettes. ‘Perhaps Paris feels like a big city to someone like you, but it’s a very small village to someone like me.’ It began to sleet and the driver put the wipers to work. ‘I thought you and I had come to an understanding.’ Superintendent Chenot rapped Alyosha’s arm with his finger as he stared at him through his black-rimmed spectacles. ‘What’s the problem? Why have you been avoiding me?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to grass on my own people.’

  ‘But one of your own people has been more than happy to grass on you. How else do you think I found out where to find you?’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Somebody close to you.’ Superintendent Chenot replied as he loosened his collar and rubbed the nape of his neck. ‘Now then, if you don’t keep to your side of the bargain, I’ll have very little choice but to throw you out of France.’

  Alyosha was caught in a snare, and the wire was tightening around his neck. That night, he went to see Prince Yakov and poured out his troubles.

  ‘Don’t go near that factory ever again. It’s far too risky.’

  ‘But what will I live on?’

  ‘Don’t look so worried, we’ll find you something.’

  The Prince promised to do his best for him, and he kept to his word.

  Alyosha found himself working at the Louvre.

  30.

  It was early April, and the group he was leading through the galleries was comprised mainly of Germans, though there were a few Swedes, a Danish couple, and a Frenchman. He’d turned exclusively to German until the Frenchman took offence and complained.

  His first sight of the girl sent an electric shock through him. It was her hair he noticed first: remarkable hair, bright and yellow, like gorse flowers. Then, her blue eyes and slender body, with its narrow waist and long limbs. She had drifted into their orbit, but wasn’t a part of the group, so he didn’t have a chance to say anything to her. He hurriedly finished his patter with the usual guff about how art deepened people’s understanding of their existence, and transcended the impermanence of life, and then wished them a good day and an enjoyable stay in Paris, hoping to run after her. But some idiot lingered, determined to have his money’s worth, asking him lots of tedious questions about this painting and that, then for some restaurant recommendations for that evening, even though he was clutching a Baedeker. By the time Alyosha went to look for her, a new group of tourists had already been disgorged by the omnibus and was waiting for him.

  He let them wait. He was terrified that he would lose her; that she would disappear across the squares of Paris, and that he would never see her again. But there she stood, and when he approached her, she calmly asked him when the museum closed. He told her, and she informed him that she’d be waiting for him outside.

  ‘I’ll be here,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be here, too,’ she replied.

  Before she left, he asked her name.

  ‘Ludwika.’

  Ludwika.

  He glanced at the clock.

  Ludwika.

  He had no idea how he managed to get through the next two hours.

  Ludwika.

  He could hear his own voice making sentences, one after the other, but it might well have been nonsense for all he knew, and every second mocked him for his impatience.

  Ludwika.

  His mind was like treacle, but his spirits soared.

  Ludwika.

  In every painting, he saw her face, and when his hand happened to brush against a sculpted marble thigh, his whole body burned with a sudden rush of heat. He had too much energy, and felt an almost overwhelming urge to skip. He remembered the shape of her head, the exposed nape of her neck, that yellow-gold hair. He thought even the hardest face must melt into a smile if it clapped eyes on that lovely girl.

  When Alyosha finally came face to face with her again, he found himself utterly unable to put two words together: his mouth was dry, his mind had unravelled. He wanted to drink her in, scoop her up, touch her, kiss her… he wanted everything at once…

  ‘You’re not French?’ she asked him.

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I didn’t think so, no.’

  ‘No,’ Ludwika said, with a sudden little thrill of pride.

  Alyosha could see the fine little golden wisps of hair at the nape of her neck. He still couldn’t conjure up enough words to form a sentence – so he smiled.

  Smiling back, she asked, ‘Are you a Berliner?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘But you speak German with a Berlin accent.’

  ‘Living in Berlin for a while gave me that.’

  ‘Hmm… then you’re… Russian?’

  ‘For my sins.’

  ‘You Russians aren’t all bad.’

  ‘Any more than you… Poles?’

  She beamed her assent.

  They wandered over to the Tuileries Gardens, and sat on a bench to talk, lingering there as the dusk fell around them, though they hardly noticed. Then they strolled down to the river, and leant against the wall, which still held some of the warmth of the day, to watch two fishermen sitting below them on little stools, still as the statues of the Louvre.

  Alyosha was paid on the last Friday of the month so he thought he could just about manage to take Ludwika for supper. He took her to the small restaurant on Rue de la Cité, where Prince Yakov reinvented himself as a waiter every evening after his shift painting cars at the Renault factory came to an end. Alyosha’s wages from the Louvre were pitiful and he depended heavily on any tips the tourists gave him, so he was very grateful that his friend managed to leave a few items off the bill at the end of the meal that evening. Thanking his good fortune it was his day off, he arranged to meet Ludwika the very next day.

  31.

  The church bells woke him early. After the long winter, the city seemed to have been shaken gently awake by fresh spring breezes. The trees were in bud, and the parks and gardens were already colourful with spring blooms. Arriving far too early for their rendezvous, Alyosha went to sit on one of the stone benches to wait for her, among the green leaves and snowdrops in front of Notre Dame, feeling reborn.

  He was watching the black-headed gulls bullying the smaller birds, as the crowds started to gather in front of the Cathedral, when suddenly, with a shock of recognition, he saw her coming towards him. He’d half expected her to look different, as though he’d only imagined her, but she was just the same, only her hair was loose, falling around her shoulders. She wore a light-blue blouse with red polka-dots, a skirt and cardigan, and high-heeled brown shoes. There was nothing ostentatious about her, nothing affected. He stood up to meet her, and there were a few seconds of shyness, but then it melted away in their smiles.

  ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘What would you like to do?’

  ‘Don’t mind – you say.’

  They had to stop to catch their breath at the top of the Cathedral tower after climbing up the dark stairs, and Alyosha, greatly daring, took the opportunity to put his arm around her waist and pull her to him. They gazed out over the city, showing each other where they lived. Then they pretended to be tourists, like the excitable Americans around them, and he solemnly pointed out the Eiffel tower to him, and she, giggling, the Sacré Coeur to him.

  He kissed her and it was as if he had woken from a long winter’s hibernation, when the feet of the dead had trampled all over his restless sleep, into the most beautiful spring day of his life.

  They left the church and followed their noses. Ludwika obviously knew the city well. She took him to the Café de la Paix, her favourite, and they sat outside, sharing secrets and laughing at the people around them – laughing at each other, laughing over nothing, laughing because they were happy. And they held hands, and kissed, their tongues curious, their spirits free. They kissed and they kissed again, and by that evening, Alyosha was head over heels in love.

  32.

  One evening, Alyosha met Yury in their usual haunt. This was the Café du Musée-de-Cluny on the corner of Boulevard St. Germain, where they would elbow themselves a space between the regulars at the zinc counter and order a drink from Bobo, surely the surliest bartender in Paris. Alyosha hadn’t seen his old friend for a while, because he found it so hard to drag himself away from Ludwika. The sky had just emptied a shower of soft rain onto the street, and when a wet Yury stepped into the bar, Alyosha could see at once there was something wrong. His friend looked broken. He was even thinner than usual, his clothes hanging off his bony frame, and he walked very slowly as though just moving one foot in front of the other required enormous effort.

  With no greeting or preamble, Yury took an engagement ring out of his waistcoat pocket and then rummaged in his trouser pocket and produced a wedding ring, before putting them both down on the zinc. ‘I want you to be my best man,’ he said.

  Alyosha wondered if he had misheard him. Who was he thinking of marrying? He had never had the slightest hint that there might be a woman in his life.

  ‘You’re my only friend in the world,’ Yury said sadly, ‘You’re the only one I can trust,’ he whispered, his voice fading to nothing.

  A mongrel had appeared at his knee, come in from the street to look for scraps; he shook his wet fur as he licked Yury’s hand. Alyosha noticed two ticks, swollen with blood on the dog’s ear, about to fall off.

  ‘So who’s the lucky woman?’ asked Alyosha.

  ‘Don’t say a word to anyone.’ A smile wreathed his face, ‘Do you promise me?’

  ‘I promise.’

  Yury’s eyes darted here and there as he whispered conspiratorially, ‘She doesn’t know yet.’

  Alyosha, feeling increasingly uneasy, suggested that it might be a good idea to see if she wanted to accept his proposal before planning the wedding, in order to prevent any disappointment and bitterness. But Yury told him she wasn’t going to refuse; he was pretty confident on that count. One of her many virtues was that she knew who she was, unlike the majority of women who spent their lives deceiving themselves. For all the chaos that filled the rest of his life, he was convinced that she was going to make a loyal and faithful wife to the end.

  ‘The most faithful any man could ask for…’ he reiterated. He spoke of her with a touching tenderness; she was no Tamara Bobrikova, ready to deceive him at any moment with a filthy Jew. This one would never treat him shabbily; she wasn’t about to run away with some pig and break his heart in two. Then Yury said he wanted Alyosha to come with him to hear him ask her for her hand.

  ‘Don’t you think it would be better for you to do it on your own?’

  ‘She’ll be thrilled to see you.’

  Alyosha felt this to be unlikely.

  ‘Come along. There’s no need for you to worry, she knows all about you already. I’ve told her everything that’s happened to you, the good and the bad.’

  ‘I’m really not sure if this is a good idea, Yury Safronovich.’

  ‘This is the best idea of my life, Alexei Fyodorovich.’

  They splashed their way through the puddles of rain until they reached the church in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Alyosha would have passed on by, but his friend marched in through the doors. Once inside, Yury insisted that Alyosha kneel at the altar next to him, under the stained-glass windows. Then, he took the engagement ring out of his pocket and placed it on the flagstone in front of him. He put his hands together under his chin in prayer, and asked the Virgin Mary humbly if she would give him her hand in marriage.

  33.

  The lovers wandered the sunny parks which rang with birdsong. May smelled of clumps of dry horse manure and roses, and the light freshness of spring showers. By the time it had given way to June, Ludwika had transformed Paris for Alyosha into a second Eden. But he resented all the hours he had to spend away from her at his work, and for so little money. He often talked of finding something better.

  ‘What would you do instead?’ Ludwika – or Wisia as he now called her – asked him. ‘Go back to working in a factory?’

  ‘I can’t do that. There’s nothing worse.’

  He didn’t say a word to her about Superintendent Chenot.

  Ludwika came of aristocratic stock, and her family owned a large estate not far from Lvov. She described where she had been brought up to him lovingly, painting a picture of the children from the village playing under the branches of the ancient walnut tree in the middle of the square, where the man from Zagreb used to bring his dancing bear every year to entertain them all. At the end of the show, the villagers would show their appreciation by throwing their coins into a hat, and the bear and his master would bow their thanks before ambling away together down the road to the next village. She taught him some of the songs of her childhood. There was one about the Wilia river giving birth to the other rivers – a symbol of Poland’s rebirth after living under the Russian yoke, she told him with mock severity, though another time she had tears in her eyes as she described how her grandfather had been sent to Siberia in chains, after the unsuccessful uprising of 1863. Alyosha liked the pretty folksong ‘Little Star’ – O gwiazdeczko – the best, but Kujawiak – Wisia’s favourite, a song of longing for home – was too sad for him.

  She was very proud of Poland’s new-found liberation since the war, and she was highly critical of Russia and Austria-Hungary for keeping the country in thrall for so many years. She told him that Franz Joseph’s Austria-Hungary was a gypsy camp of an empire – one which had forced all manner of nations into its imperial pen, all huddled together with no space to turn, desperate to escape.

  With her, Alyosha learned that at the heart of every real conversation lay empathy. Late one afternoon, he took her to the small church by the Santé Velpeau hospital. It was empty apart from an old woman in black who was kneeling at the rail, and the smell of incense lingered in the air, mingled with the centuries-old damp which penetrated the walls. By the altar, next to Jesus and the Virgin Mary, stood a statue of Joan of Arc, clad in pale bronze, and it was there that he told her about his friend Yury, who was being held in a locked ward at the Maison Blanche hospital.