The Body In the Vestibule Read Free

calf’s eyeballs.
    Veaux’s wife, Delphine, sat at the cash register all day. She was less round than her husband and wore her dark black hair in a neat Dutch bob, the thick fringe of her bangs reaching the top of the frames of her glasses. The whole effect was of une femme sérieuse —until she smiled. She asked Faith endless questions. What did they eat for dinner? Was it true they sold ice cream for dogs in the United States? It was tempting to answer nettles and peanut butter to the first query—Delphine would not have blinked. It would also have been nice to say, “No, of course not!” to the second. But she stuck to the truth.
    After finishing at the Veaux’s, Faith walked quickly to the small square in front of her venerable building and went into the dark, cool, sometimes pungent vestibule. The huge dumpsters, poubelles , for the building were at the rear of the narrow hallway.
    The apartment had been a surprise. It belonged to a
relative of the Leblancs, both of whom were from old Lyonnais families, and the cousin—a generic term for all kin outside the immediate family—was willing to let the Fairchilds use it because he did not dare to rent it. Since the Napoleonic Code, a sitting tenant has had such inalienable rights that it often took years to get rid of one, no matter what the lease said. Paul’s cousin planned to move to this apartment in another year; until then, it was virtually empty. There were a bed, two tables, a few lamps, and some chairs. There was also a phone, since to disconnect service could mean never getting it restored. The Leblancs had produced a child’s cot for Ben, some plates, cutlery, and kitchen equipment, and it would suffice for a month.
    When Faith and Tom had struggled with Ben and their suitcases up the five flights of dizzying circular stone stairs to open the heavy oak door, using three separate keys, they had walked into an immense apartment with high ceilings adorned with intricate plaster bas reliefs and moldings, the walls beautifully painted and papered, ornate fireplaces with carved marble mantels in most rooms, and small balconies outside the almost floor-to-ceiling windows. The windows were tied shut now after Ben had exuberantly flung one open and managed to take a heart-stopping step outside onto the balcony.
    Tom had walked about slowly, then let out a whoop. “Pinch me, Faith—it’s like camping out in some corner of Fontainebleau!” he’d exclaimed.
    The room with the bed in it faced the immense fifteenth-century church of St. Nizier directly across the square, and the clock face on one of the steeples seemed close enough to touch, especially at night when it loomed through the windows they were loath to cover with the inside shutters. The statuary on the façade seemed to come alive when illuminated at dusk, the babe in the Madonna’s arms wriggling slightly, high above the street.
    After their first enthusiastic impressions, the Fairchilds
began to take note of the antique plumbing—the toilet in a closet so tiny that one’s knees grazed the shut door once enthroned, and with a chain pull so high that Faith, not a small woman, had to stretch to reach it, producing a cascade of water that threatened never to stop. The bathtub—at the far end of the apartment from the w.c.—had lion’s-paw feet and was large enough for all three of them. Faith found it handy for laundry.
    The kitchen had a stone slab of a sink and a doll-sized refrigerator and stove. To get hot water, there were two Victorian contraptions, one in the kitchen, one in the bath, that required a great many pressings of buttons, lightings of matches, and prayers.
    Faith loved the apartment more than any place she had ever lived.
    They’d immediately gone to Mammouth, a sort of combination supermarket, department store, and hardware store in a building the size of an airplane hangar, and bought a tricycle for Ben