Chapter Seventeen: Neither Fish Nor Fowl
Saint Geneviève holds a special place in the heart of the French. She was born a peasant, it is true, but she is widely believed to have been more beautiful than any of the loveliest ladies of the court, and what is more, she is also believed to be the patron saint of winemakers, did you know that? I have a lot of friends back home who would adore her for that little bit of beatitude alone!
Unfortunately, the Parisians probably adore her a little less as the Saint of Vintners, and a little more for the incredible tale of how she saved Paris from the clutches of Attila the Hun.
Oh, don’t look so surprised, I can assure you it is quite true. To be clear, she didn’t ride out with sword in hand like the equally charming Jeanne d' Arc, but when Attila’s band of begrimed barbarians were barrelling down on Paris, she fell to her knees, cast her impossibly lovely eyes upward to the heavens ... and then? Then she started to pray. She prayed for the city of Paris, and she prayed for the people of Paris. She prayed for the poor, the cunning, the rich. She prayed for the impossibly well dressed and, even the unfashionable. She prayed for the slow, and she prayed for the dim, she prayed for them all.
Her prayer for salvation, it is said, was so strong, so perfect, so divine, that all the city’s nuns gathered around this peasant girl, and they too fell to their knees and joined in her prayer. It was such a desperate, unselfish thing that they asked, that the Holy Ghost himself bent his ear, and listened to this lithe and beauteous peasant girl. He was so impressed with what He heard, that He caused Attila to suddenly, and inexplicably have a most, nay, THE most disagreeable case of the heartburn ever to strike down a mortal being (no doubt a result of the French cuisine he was forced to gnaw upon) and so, Attila turned his horde round and headed back home, home and some undoubtedly delectable, tummy soothing kebaps. Paris was saved!
Yes indeed, she was quite the lady, have I mentioned how lovely she was? Let us say she may even outshine a certain Queen I know ...
Saint Geneviève crossed her legs at the knees as she sank deeper into the ancient, cracked armchair at 25 Rue de la Fontaine, and rolled her eyes. She shifted her tiny bottom sideways, hanging both legs out over a battered armrest, and plucked another cheroot from between her bottomless bosom. She lit it with a deft scrape of a matchstick along the crooked hardwood floor, and blew a thick, violet cloud into the air over the parchment she held in her hand.
Smiling to herself as her olive eyes flicked over the last sentence a second time, but, not wanting to appear happy, she pretended to pout out-loud. ‘Really, cher Antonio,’ she said, shaking the piece of paper at him. ‘Leo goes too far!’ Antonio looked up with a crooked smile, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, pretending to blow his nose, while, all the while, his real motive was to hide his increasingly reddening cheeks. ‘Heheehee.’ Rudolpho, who was busying himself with some sword play, knew that Antonio held a small infatuation for the Parisienne saint. He chuckled at his brother’s bashfulness. ‘He is blush like a leeetle girl, heeheee ... h-oof!’ He exhaled suddenly as Antonio strategically elbowed him in the stomach. ‘Basta Rudi, I am doing no such thing.’ He quickly stuffed the handkerchief back into his breast pocket, and made a grab for the letter Saint Geneviève was holding, but she adroitly snatched it away from his fleshy fingers, folded it thrice, and skilfully dropped it down the front of her blouse. ‘Tsk,’ she said, as he stood open-mouthed, ‘and you are to have me believe that poor Francesca actually benefits from these letters of your brother’s?’ Rudolpho was now laughing so hysterically he almost blew his moustaches from his upper lip ... and Antonio? He ‘harrumphed’ sulkily, turned away from them both, and suddenly became very interested in a baroque clock that was sitting in pieces on the long table next to him.
Saint Geneviève flicked at the end of her cheroot, careful not to dirty her favourite turquoise gown, and watched the ash float down onto the Ottoman court rug. ‘Do you think,’ she said to neither of them in particular. ‘Do you think you might, ‘ow do you say? ‘Hurry up? I didn’t come to your apartment to watch you two ...’ she paused, screwing up her nose as she thought of the word, ‘play. I came here for the second cat.’ She pressed her perfectly painted lips together, and puffed out three tiny smoke rings. ‘I came here for the Principessa.’
Rudolpho nodded, quickly dropped to his hands and knees, and scamperred across the floor, sticking his head behind a stack of oil paintings. ‘Heeere little Principessa,’ he mewled in his best cat-tones. ‘Heeeere Peeeachy, Peeachy, Peach!’ Distracted by this ridiculous display, Antonio stopped his fiddling, and glanced down at Rudi’s bottom peeking out from the paintings. Antonio grinned a great wolfish grin, a little boy grin, an ice-cream grin. He found a sudden spriteliness he hadn’t known still existed within him, and ... did he giggle? He skipped, and he hopped and he happily, gleefully, joyfully kicked Rudolpho right, square in his backside.
WALLOP!
‘Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho!’ Antonio watched Rudolpho fall forward, his head crashing through a particularly pretty British landscape. ‘Haaa! Hooo! Oh my!’ He pulled his spectacles off, wiping tears from his eyes.
‘Antonio!’ Saint Geneviève snapped at him. ‘Antonio, s'il vous plaît! Startled, he turned toward her, but the spectacle of Rudolpho was too much to bear. ‘Snnnkzzzhaheee!’ A snort, chuckle, and tee-hee exploded out the side of Antonio’s mouth all at once. ‘Oh my,’ he finally wheezed, his face red with glee.
‘Really Antonio, basta!’ Saint Geneviève popped another cheroot between her lips, and frowned at him. ‘Enough!’ She fired off a steely look at Rudolpho for good measure. ‘Both of you, behave! We need to find the petite chatte, and the sooner we do, the sooner we can get going, n’est-ce pas? Come you two, Bohemia awaits us! You did say we needed to find the solution to this riddle in Prague, did you not? You did say we needed to go to the astronomical clock in person? You did say Francesca was the one who pointed you in the correct direction? Well then, let us not waste her effort.’ Antonio actually looked a little abashed, and Rudolpho, his head still stuck into the middle of a painted, blue and violet British sky erased the glare he had directed at his brother, smiled at Saint Geneviève, coughed and mewled again. ‘Principessssa ...’
***
Antonio was never very comfortable with things outside his realm of understanding. Oh, he knew very well how to knock together bits and bobs to fire himself, and others off from here to there, and so, he was a little uncomfortable in trusting his body’s minisculae pieces to that orange, bulgy-eyed, precocious, pink-nosed monster.
He loathed traveling by cat! They were unpredictable, unreliable, and, more often than not, they’d just up and disappear, leaving you stranded God know’s where.
Saint Geneviève was standing by the open window, cradling Principessa Pesca in her arms. Princess Peach was lolling, she was an expert loller. Laying on her back, her hind legs stretched, and her toes splayed in bliss as Saint Geneviève scritched and scratched at her snow-white belly. Peach reached out with her tiny, right paw, and affectionately poked at Saint Geneviève’s nose. ‘Oooh, is not she a daarling chatte?!’
Antonio, sitting on a rickety, mint-green Louis XV chair rolled his eyes, leant over to Rudolpho, and whispered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘I think our Saint is purring more than the cat.’ Rudolpho, who was busy picking at his teeth started to laugh, but stopped short when he noticed Principessa turn her amber eyes on him. He did not want to anger the cat. ‘Why we have to do this, eh?’ He whispered back to Antonio. ‘Why you not make something better than cat?’ Antonio frowned, and his shoulders slumped a little. ‘Why indeed’ he thought. He wasn’t about to try and explain the complexities, never mind the differences between technology, and nature ... not now. ‘Hush,’ he said. ‘There isn’t enough time for your foolish questions.’ Rudolpho turned away, visibly irritated. ‘I no like you.’ He said. ‘Fine. I no like you either.’ Antonio countered, imitating his brother.
Rudolpho was looking especially sulky now, and this made Antonio feel a little, just a little, guilty. ‘Look,’ Antonio finally said, crossing his arms and resting them on his belly. ‘The thing is ... cats are special.’ He took off his spectacles, polishing them on his shirt cuff. ‘Have you ever noticed how a cat sees what you don’t see? Or jumps for no reason at all? Or how a cat is seen in Roma one day and London the next?’ Rudolpho hadn’t noticed, but nodded knowingly, and rubbed his nose in a knowing way. ‘Well, the accepted theory is that they are one of the few animals that live neither here nor there ... the pygmy rhinoceros being the other obvious candidate,’ he harrumphed importantly.
He looked over at his brother, but Rudolpho’s eyes were beginning to glaze over, so he quickly continued. ‘Well, let us just say that if you’re particularly friendly with a feline, and that said feline is particularly enamoured with you, that is to say innamorato, capisci?’ Rudolpho nodded, he knew lots about being in love! ‘Well, that cat, if so inclined, because nothing is ever certain with a cat, that cat may just take you along for the ride, so to speak. Cats can whisk us away from one city to another, as easily as we can walk, only they can do it in as much time as it takes them to swish their tail. But that cat will only do this favour for you if there is need.’ He stressed “need” and, noticing that Saint Geneviève had started listening, he puffed himself up (no small feat in a man that was already pretty permanently puffed) and pushed his spectacles up his nose in what he thought was an important looking way. Rudolpho, who was busily nibbling at a hangnail looked up. ‘And we have a need!’ He said importantly. ‘And we have a need.’ Repeated Saint Geneviève quietly. ‘Don’t we Principessa?’ The little cat turned her head, her gold-flecked eyes meeting Geneviève’s, she blinked, stretched and yawned an enormous yawn at her, revealing her tiny, sharp teeth.
‘I think,’ said Rudolpho. ‘That she is not knowing what “need” means.’ Saint Geneviève smiled, and tickled Principessa under her snowy chin. ‘Nonsense, you understand perfectly, don’t you petite? She is just getting her strength up, after all, Oliver only had to take Gaspard, and we are three of us together, non?’
Antonio snorted. ‘And why did Gaspard get to go after Francesca? Don’t you think Rudi and I ought to be the ones to go after her? She is our blood after all!’ Rudolpho got up and walked over to the window next to Geneviève. He remembered how she loved to look out of it and daydream about Paris, she had such an imagination ... ‘It is true,’ he said quietly. ‘She is our famiglia.’ Saint Geneviève turned her head, following his gaze out over the Parisian rooftops, how my city has grown, she thought, and how complicated it has become. She sighed. ‘She is our famiglia, my dears.’ Principessa Pesca meowed, rolled over in her arms, and climbed up to her shoulders to see what she was looking at.
‘Antonio, you know why Gaspard has gone after her, and you know why I need you here ... both of you,’ she added hurriedly, smiling at Rudolpho. ‘Now, have you got everything you can find on Mikuláš of Kadaň, Jan Šindel and Hanuš?’ Antonio, got up and walked over to Leo’s desk, where he found a large, leather-bound book almost full to bursting with ancient sheaves, documents and faded illuminations. ‘I have,’ he said a little irritatedly. ‘Had everything ready for the better part of the ... day.’ He finished, looking out at the orange glow of dusk reflecting beneath the pale clouds of the eternally grey city.
‘All right then,’ she said. ‘I think our little one is ready, n’est-ce pas Peashes?’ Rudolpho started at this bit of news, and delicately stepped away from the cat sitting upon her shoulder. ‘No Rudolpho,’ Geneviève said, wrapping his arm in hers. You stay right where you are.’ She suddenly grinned, she had never been to Prague! She winked at Antonio. ‘Antonio, viens ici.’
He scowled back at her. Antonio didn’t dare admit it to Rudolpho, but he liked traveling by cat even less than he did. Noticing his hesitation, she batted her eyelashes at him.‘Oh, come now Antonio, you are a strong man, after all, are you not?’ Rudolpho laughed at this, but she silenced him with a click of her tongue, and turned her attention back to Antonio. ‘S'il vous plaît?’ She asked again, her eyes now especially big. Antonio blinked, blushed, and huffily grabbed the book. ‘All right, all right, but I am doing this for Francesca.’ ‘And la France?’ She smiled at him. He glowered, and stomped across the cluttered apartment, his cluttered apartment. ‘Most certainly not for la France!’ He scowled back at her smile. ‘Bene,’ she said, glaring back at him. ‘Principessa, if you please? For Francesca?’
Principessa Pesca looked at each of them in turn, the grumpy Antonio, the worried Rudolpho, and the very, very French Saint Geneviève ... and their eyes met. The little orange cat knew what to do, she knew all along what to do. Principessa whispered in a honeyed voice with the most delicate of Italian accents. ‘Forrr Frrancesca,’ she said to an enchanted Geneviève. ‘Forrr Frrancesca,’ she said to an alarmed Rudolpho. ‘Forrr Frrancesca,’ she said to a horrified Antonio.
***
Neither brother ever admitted to what they may have heard, and neither brother admitted to fainting either, certainly not to feeling sick to the stomach, and most definitely not to screaming like little girls. Which was all very well and good, because when the world stopped spinning beneath their feet, and they found themselves outside the astronomical clock in Prague, Saint Geneviève kissed Principessa Pesca on her perfectly pink nose, and positively pretended everything was as normal as bees in Springtime.