Free The Emperor of Paris by C. S. Richardson Page B

I suppose now is as good a time as any for you to learn.
    I like games, Octavio said.
    Monsieur explained the rules. First we need a picture, he said. Any one will do. We each pick out a detail, something small and unimportant, and describe what we see. But—and this is the secret—we must use as few words as possible. We take turns, back and forth, a word here, two or three there. Before you know it we have a story.
    Who goes first, Papa?
    You do.
    Monsieur unveiled the front page of the newspaper, his fingers discreetly hiding a murderer. Octavio examined the illustration.
    Red spots, he said.
    Tomato soup, said his father.
    Drips.
    A small spoon.
    On a big belly.
    A big laughing belly.
    Laughing so hard.
    The soldier falls over.
    While his pretty wife.
    Tries to catch him.
    He is too heavy. All those tomatoes.
    She is too skinny. Not enough soup.
    The crowd shouts hurrah.
    What a show.
    Lieutenant Sloppy—
    and Madame Hungry.
    Driving in their automobile.
    An automobile race.
    The fastest on four wheels.
    Off to find more soup.
    And a bigger spoon.
    The following day Monsieur Notre-Dame told his son to open the doors for business. The morning’s first customers had already formed an unruly line outside the bakery. The small crowd pushed past Octavio, the gossips among them shouting over each other.
    Have you seen them!
    Murdered!
    In broad daylight!
    The Austrians won’t stand for it!
    The Serbs will catch it now!
    Russia will jump in!
    Watch out for the Germans then!
    At precisely 9:16, Monsieur Grenelle squeezed into the bakery. A bachelor who lived two floors below the Notre-Dames, Grenelle spent his days tinkering with watches and clocks. He chose his usual order—two brioche—by peering through his thick spectacles and sliding a callused finger down the glass case. Octaviotook up his position: following the finger, removing the chosen buns, lifting the order to his mother waiting behind the till. The boy looked through the case at the sagging knees in the fellow’s trousers. Grenelle’s head appeared from above, his eyes magnified through his spectacles like blinking balloons. Everyone called him Blind Grenelle.
    Quickly, young fellow, he said. Bag them before the Kaiser shows up.
    Grenelle smiled.
    Meanwhile talk in the shop continued in hushed tones. It was scandalous what a newspaper would print these days and the archduke and his wife well it certainly was a tragedy no matter what you think of their country and if it comes to war well then the eighth will be ready even if the politicians are not and those damned Boche can send us their worst and by God they will meet our best and be all the sorrier for it.
    Monsieur’s pictures had always been of worlds out of his reach, comings and goings and people and places that had little to do with his own life. Troubles, even when they happened in the city, seemed to be far away. Listening to the chatter in the bakery only reminded him that he had worries of his own. His son was becoming more like him with each passing day.Even more so with the boy out of school. And try as she might to pull herself from her moods, his wife had become a woman he barely recognized. They both needed him and now this soup-splattered soldier had arrived on his doorstep. Monsieur knew his customers were right: every man in the eighth would be expected to do his duty. He looked at his wife and son. But my duty is here, he mumbled.
    Our very best, someone shouted. Even our brave thin baker.
    Monsieur Notre-Dame swallowed hard.
    If the Lady France calls, he said.
    Notre-Dame is it? Like the cathedral?
    Monsieur took the recruiting clerk’s pen and scratched
N-D
, as though he were marking a country loaf for the ovens.
    Having left his wife to mind the bakery, he hurried back to the cake-slice. But instead of striding through the blue doors, a fearless poilu now, he crept unnoticed into the building from a rear laneway.
    Grenelle looked up from a stubborn hairspring, unsure whether he had