Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,40
to take another’s place.”
That sounded weak.
“Join us, s’il vous plaît.”
Reluctant, Aimée smiled. The guide was no doubt a red-diaper baby from one of the few surviving red suburbs. Once, Paris had been enclosed by the “red belt” hotbed of unions and Communists.
“The new socialist Russia,” she said in a reverential tone, “and the movement that changed the world, were born here.”
A hush descended.
So out of touch, this young comrade. And passé. But the possibility of hearing more about Lenin—the man who’d bounced Piotr on his knee—held Aimée’s interest.
“Comrade Krupskaya wrote in her journals of their life in these two rooms. They held meetings and discussions right here, forging the doctrine.”
The guide gestured to notebooks piled along the burnished orange walls under portraits of Marx and Lenin’s mother. Her voice droned on. Aimée stared at the French translation above Krupskaya’s journal.
To get the gas connected I had to go up to town three times before I received the necessary written order. The amount of red tape in France is unbelievable. To get books from the lending library you must have a householder to stand surety for you, and our landlord, seeing our miserable furniture, hesitated to do so.
AIMÉE IDENTIFIED WITH Krupskaya’s frustration at French bureaucracy—some things never changed. She scanned more of the translations. Krupskaya wrote about Lenin’s daily routine of bicycling to the Archives to do research. How on the weekends they joined other émigrés at Parc Montsouris—”a little Russia,” she wrote, her tone wistful. How she and Lenin kept their bicycles in the cellar, her struggles with the steep cellar steps and the keys.
An article published in 1960 detailed Khrushchev’s visit to Lenin’s museum, or “shrine.” A local seventy-three-year-old resident interviewed for the piece spoke of his childhood:
Lenin? Mais oui, I knew him. His cleaner, Louise, was my neighbor. I saw him cut his hand two or three times on his bike lock, he always seemed preoccupied. The police watched him and his friends, les émigrés, constantly. On Sundays when I rode my bicyclette I’d see him on his. Ah, but in those days I was young.
And it hit her. The cellar the comrade kept her bike in—the old-fashioned key Natasha mentioned—could it be the key to a cellar storage space? The cellar Madame Figuer lent her wheelbarrow to Yuri to empty out? Aimée needed to get down there.
She passed the visitor log with the signatures of Khrushchev and Brezhnev and tiptoed out before the tour guide noticed.
At the concierge’s loge she didn’t have long to wait. A young man wearing jeans set down a Darty shopping bag.
“You’re early,” he said. “My mother’s showing the apartment in twenty minutes.”
“No problem,” she said, improvising. “I want to rent space for my bike. Can you show me?”
“The cellar space goes with the apartment. Desolé.”
She sighed. “I’m tired of having bikes stolen. The third one in two months. I need it for work. Really, it doesn’t take much room. I’d share.”
“Talk to my mother.”
She was desperate to get down there. “But I heard an old man’s storage got emptied. My friend helped clean it out, a real mess he said.”
The young man took out his door key. “That’s the truth. Like a dump. Left for years.”
Her ears perked up.
“Gave my mother a real headache, trying to get his son, the old man, to empty it.”
“But I don’t care. Can’t I just see it? You’d really help me out.”
“She’s in charge, desolé, not up to me.” He opened the door.
She couldn’t let him go.
“Could I measure it? We’d go for the apartment if I knew I could fit the bikes and an old chest down there.” She smiled. “I love this street. Had my eye on the building. I know I could convince my boyfriend, but …”
“The soccer match on the télé starts in three minutes.” He picked up his bag.
Poor mec, she hated to push but couldn’t lose this opportunity. “Would you mind giving me the cellar key?” She gave another smile. “Won’t take me but ten minutes. Then I’ll tour the apartment with your mother.”
A sigh, then he reached for something inside the closet. Handed her an old-fashioned, rusted key. “Number C-twenty-four. Watch out for rat droppings. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He wanted to get rid of her and watch the game. Fine by her.
Her penlight beam wavered over the dirt floor in the cellar tunnel. A row of water-stained coved doors with numbers stretched along the cellar tunnel. Only a single naked bulb illuminated the space.