Perestroika in Paris Read online

  “Is it? How do you know?”

  “Have you looked inside?”

  “Is there something inside?”

  Frida didn’t say anything, and Paras returned to cropping the grass.

  After a moment, Frida went over and lay down right beside the mound of dirt where the flowers had been in the summer and the spring. She didn’t curl up tight, the way she did to go to sleep. She assumed her thinking position, her head up, her forelegs out in front, and her hind legs tucked under her, a position in which she could keep her eye on things, but also relax a little. It was certainly true that a dog did not live all her life on the streets of Paris without learning how to recognize a sucker when she saw one. The horse seemed to like the purse, and Frida did not have to steal the purse in order to steal all or most of the money. She could nose it out of the purse and scoop it into her mouth and take it to her spot in the cemetery and secrete it there. She had a big mouth, and she was adept with it. If, for example, you grabbed a pigeon for your morning meal, you had to do something about the feathers, and Frida had done that sort of thing a few times. How to take the money was not the point.

  Could a dog with lots of bills leave Paris altogether and go back where she came from—back to the place Frida did remember, but not well, where there were plenty of trees and huge fields to run in, where there were pheasants and geese and partridge and deer, animals that were beautiful and inspiring and difficult to stalk? She hadn’t stalked any of them, because she was only a puppy, but her mother, and then the other dogs she knew as she got older, had talked all the time about ways to approach, how to go undetected, avoiding anything that would make a noise, like a fallen leaf or a twig. And then Jacques had taken her away (had he bought her or stolen her? She never knew) and brought her to Paris. With lots of bills, could she pay her way on the train and get back to a place like that, as Jacques had? A year ago, she and Jacques had taken the train to a city called Lyon, where Jacques had left her in a room alone almost all day and had also put his guitar away. Yes, they had had a bed to sleep in, but in the end, sleeping in a bed didn’t make up for those tight four walls that made both of them nervous. They had taken the train back, and even though the leaves were off the trees and the puddles were hard and cold, they had been quite happy when they returned. And they had made a lot of money, too—Jacques had had her sit in front of the dish without her wool coat on, and the shivering had upset the ladies passing by in their fur coats, and soon they’d have a pile of coins in the dish. It might be nice to go to a place where she didn’t have to pretend all day and all night that she had a right to be there when most of the humans she saw all around her did not think that she did have that right. But she had to admit to herself that she didn’t know how she would do that, even with lots of money.

  * * *

  PARAS UNDERSTOOD perfectly well that Frida was a dog. Dogs had their uses. Delphine had a dog in the stable yard—a small, bright, spotted dog named Assassin, a Jack Russell terrier, who spent all night and most of the day hunting rats, although she was willing to chase a ball and give the rats a rest around suppertime. Assassin and Paras had discussed the rats from time to time. Paras didn’t mind rats, and neither did most of the other horses. You always knew when a rat was around—they made a lot of noise and had a distinct odor, and if they ate a few morsels of grain or bits of hay, well, it wasn’t much, in the end. Assassin did not personally hate rats, either. But, as she explained to Paras, there was something about the way they moved—low and quick along the floor and then into a hole!—that just drew her like a magnet. She was good at rat killing, and the pleasure of the game had only increased of late, because, as she killed off more and more rats, the ones she hadn’t killed got to be the smart, fast ones. Whereas she had formerly gotten a rat every couple of days, now she was down to a rat a week, and more avid than ever. Assassin had a busier life than Paras did around the barn, and sometimes Paras envied her: she was not bored, ever. Paras gazed at the dog for a moment, then said, “Do you kill rats?”

  “I hate rats.”

  “Why?” Must be a dog thing, Paras thought.

  “They taste very bitter.” In fact, she had only eaten one—already dead, in the street—just to try it.

  “Why would you eat one?”

  “Why else would you kill one?”

  “Our dog at Maisons-Laffitte kills them all the time. She snaps their necks and drops them and walks away.”

  Frida sniffed, then said, “Do they give her dog food, then?”

  For some reason, Paras was embarrassed to say that they did. She said, “She doesn’t like it much.”

  “Some dogs will eat anything,” said Frida.

  After a moment, Paras said, “So—is that what dogs talk about all the time? Food?”

  Frida put her nose to the ground, smelled a few fading plants and the damp soil, then said, “Yes. What do horses talk about?”

  “Who won the last race. Who’s going to win the next race. A few spend all their time making excuses, but I don’t like to talk about that. Everybody talks about their relatives. Some horses won’t talk to you if you aren’t related to Northern Dancer, but other families aren’t as snobbish.” She thought for a moment, then said, “To tell the truth, the last day has been rather nice, no blah-blah-blah about Dad’s family and Mom’s family and brothers and sisters.” She thought for a moment. “We talk about the jockeys, too.”

  “What are those?”

  “When we run in races, the jockeys go along. Some stay with you better than others.”

  “They run, too?”

  “No, they ride us.”

  The dog looked startled, then said, “That must slow you down.”

  “It does, but, between you and me, not every horse knows the way, so they have their uses. A lot of horses won’t admit it, though. There’s a lot of complaining.”

  “What are you chasing?”

  Paras pondered this question, then said, “I don’t know.”

  That seemed to end the conversation.

  Paras went back to cropping the grass, but the morning was passing, and Frida knew that eventually the cafés would open and humans would show up, stalking their lunches. And they would certainly notice a horse and a dog by themselves in the Place du Trocadéro. How to solve this problem for Paras, Frida had no idea. It was one thing for a dog to position herself in an alert and friendly way here and there about the cafés and shops, but a horse was considerably bigger than a dog and expected to be attached to a carriage. At the same time, humans stalking their lunches in Paris sometimes didn’t notice what was going on around them. And there were a lot of statues all over the city—for example, way up there on a pedestal above them was a black horse that never moved, with a tail that appeared to be waving even when the wind wasn’t blowing. Frida had never seen anyone look at that.

  The purse would catch the eyes of certain humans, though, and Frida did not want any human looking into the purse, so she went over to Paras and sat down in front of her, waited patiently for Paras to sniff a few more bits of grass and take another bite, then said, “You can stay here, if you’re quiet, but you”—she didn’t say “we”—“should hide the purse. It has…money in it.” Then she said, “Humans love money, and someone might take your money.”

  “Does it taste good?”

  “No.” Frida had actually tasted money from time to time, just out of curiosity. Then she said, “But if you are going to live in Paris, you need plenty of it.”

  “What do you do with it?”

  “You give some, a little, to humans and they give things back to you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…carrots and apples.”

  Paras looked at her and pricked her ears. Then she said, “What is ‘Paris’?”

  “It’s where we are. This city. Don’t you know anything?”

  Para
s said, “I told you. I’m only a filly. I won’t be a mare until January first. Then I’ll know lots more things. How old are you?”

  Frida didn’t answer. She didn’t know.

  For a moment, Frida thought that, in spite of the money and the purse, the horse wasn’t her concern. She could go back to her little cubbyhole up in the cemetery and pretend that she hadn’t seen Paras and that her life was the same as always. But then she thought that, if her life was the same as always, she didn’t quite know what she was going to do. Just talking to Paras had been a change for her—even the dogs who didn’t bark at her, when they looked at her face, then looked for her collar and leash, and saw that she had neither, simply looked away. Frida sighed. Sometimes the thing that you wanted to do did make you sigh, just because it was a hard thing to do.

  It was not a pleasant day now. It had started out sunny, but the clouds were scudding in and the wind was picking up. Frida did not smell rain in the wind, but the leaves that hadn’t been cleaned from the streets were lifting around them. Paras noticed, too. Frida said, “Are you tired?”

  “I am,” said Paras. “I had a hard race yesterday, and I was exploring most of the night.”

  “Do you lie down when you are tired?”

  “Of course I do,” said Paras.

  “Well, I think you should take a nap. I’ll show you a spot.” And she led Paras around the little grassy park to the spot where there was a hedge and some other bushes. She said, “Maybe if you curl up next to the hedge and make yourself as small as you can, no one will see you.”

  “What will happen if they see me?”

  “They will take you to jail.” Jacques had always told her that if she wandered away from him, looking like a dirty stray, she would be put in dog jail, and it would be even more confining than that room in Lyon.

  Paras could tell from the way Frida scowled and shivered when she talked about it that jail was a bad place, so she followed her over to where some bushes were cut into strange shapes and she nestled down as tightly as she could in a more or less hidden spot. She tucked her back legs underneath her and folded her front legs, and curled her neck around and tucked her nose in beside her hooves. She was a limber, slender horse, and a nimble bucker, so this was the way she liked to sleep. Frida brought along the purse, and pushed it under the hedge with her nose. She made sure that the magnetic lock was closed and the purse itself was well hidden. She said, “After lunch, I will come up with a plan.”

  “Lunch?”

  “It’s when humans come here to eat. But the cafés are all shut up today, so they are going to eat inside. That’s good for us.”

  Paras was sleepy, indeed. She blew the air out of her nostrils and let her eyelids drift closed. Pretty soon, she was making a ruffling noise with her lips. Frida sat nearby and watched her, as she had so often watched Jacques before he disappeared.

  TWO

  It may be that the humans around the Place du Trocadéro did not notice Paras—maybe they were busy, or cold and looking down at their feet as they trotted from building to building. It may be that the leaves were blowing around and the clouds came and went, and the sun and shadows flickering together blinded the humans to the sight of a bay filly, nicely grown, sleeping by the hedge below the statue of the other horse that stood in front of the giant building. But there was someone who was watching, who had seen the whole thing from the beginning, who knew perfectly well that Frida lived in the neighborhood and that she was a free dog, and this someone was Raoul. Raoul was a raven, and he had a nest in a tree just down the Rue Benjamin-Franklin. He lived there alone most of the time. He was different from the other ravens he knew in that he liked Paris. The others, especially the females and the chicks, preferred the woodland to the west, which the humans called the “Bois de Boulogne,” or the countryside. Raoul had seen plenty of that, but for a bird his age, which was old old old, there was more to do and more to see in the city, and not so many arguments. Ravens were an argumentative lot, and Raoul had had his fill of it. Perhaps the other ravens didn’t know that he had a mate, Imelda, who was almost as old as he was. The two of them had plenty of offspring, so many that they had parted amicably when she had indicated to him that she was tired of reproducing, and also of listening to what she called his never-ending observations.

  He watched Paras sleep for a while, then watched Frida get up and walk over to the only café where the tables sat in the open, and nose out a piece of bread that had slipped under a chair and been missed by the cleaners. After she did that, she sat near a medium-sized child and stared into the child’s face, and, sure enough, the child handed her something else, maybe a piece of cheese. Then the child’s parent scowled and shook her finger, and Frida walked away. A few times, Raoul had tried to persuade humans to give him things he wanted, but they had just laughed at him. However, it didn’t matter. Raoul would eat anything—he especially liked ants, which were tiny but crisp and salty—and he was, he would admit, a little fat.

  Raoul flew back to his nest and curled up in there. It was in a good spot—protected on one side, but with a view of the neighborhood. The neighborhood was full of birds, ones that Raoul considered frivolous, like sparrows, buntings, warblers, swallows, and tits. Not to mention woodpeckers in the trees, and thrushes on the ground, and pigeons, pigeons everywhere. Paris was a city of birds, and if the starlings were kings, then the ravens were knights. The avian city was a raucous place—most of the time Raoul couldn’t even hear what the non-bird population was saying, the Aves were so loud.

  For the rest of the day, Raoul thought of Paras as simply an oddity—something that would pass as all oddities did, and Paris was full of oddities, always had been. Out in the country, the days were monotonous, the sun came up, the rain fell or it didn’t, the wind blew first from one direction and then another, the grass grew, the females and the chicks squabbled about every little thing.

  * * *

  PARAS SLEPT for a long time, and woke up nervous. She was not in her stall, either at Maisons-Laffitte or at the racecourse, and she did not recognize the bizarre cubical plant that ran along her back and made it itch. She was lying in dirt. She snorted and nearly jumped up, but then she saw Frida, sitting with her front feet neatly together and her haunches square. Frida said, “You slept for a long time. It’s dusk.”

  And certainly it was; the sky was darkening more rapidly than the earth. The buildings all around, though, retained a pale glow, and that was what told Paras that she had made a terrible mistake when she pressed open the door of her stall at the racecourse and gamboled out into the world.

  Frida said, “Of course, the days are pretty short now.” She shivered. Paras shivered, too. Paras extended her foreleg and lifted herself, then shook. Leaves fell off her back. She grunted. Frida stuck her nose under the cubical, inedible plant (Paras had tried a bite), and pulled out the purse. Paras had forgotten about the purse. Right then, a raven flew in front of Paras’s nose and landed on the grass between her and Frida. Paras was wondering how to get back to the racecourse—really, she had been very confused, but getting back to the racecourse was the best idea—and Frida was wondering if her new friend, and, okay, her new source of funds, was going to disappear. It was because she was wondering this, and therefore distracted, that Frida didn’t go for the raven at once. She had never killed a raven, but a bird was a bird was a bird, and she was a bird dog. However, the raven cocked his head and looked her right in the eye, and she dropped that idea. Paras, the curious filly, leaned forward and stretched out her nose and sniffed the bird. He allowed this. He said, “I speak seven languages.”

  Neither of the other two said anything, so Raoul preened himself a bit, then said, “French, English, German, Spanish, Romany, Basque, and Chinese. You may not know this, but all birds speak Chinese; however, there are so many dialects that sometimes we have a hard time understanding each other.” He cleared his throat and marched
around in a little circle, slowly lifting his wings and lowering them, then spreading his tail. He said, “Tell me your names, please.”

  Paras said, “Perestroika, by Moscow Ballet, out of M-M-M—”

  “Thank you, that is sufficient. And you?” He lifted his wing at Frida. She said, “Frida.”

  “That’s all?”

  Frida nodded.

  “I am Sir Raoul Corvus Corax, the twenty-third of that name. My establishment is just over there, on the Rue Benjamin-Franklin, but the family estate is out in Châteaufort—that’s straight to Versailles, then right.” The horse and the dog looked at Raoul blankly, as horses and dogs so often did. He cleared his throat again. “Let me say that, from my aerie in that tree”—he lifted his right wing this time—“I noted that you two damsels seemed to be in distress.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Paras.

  “Ah,” said Raoul. “Please correct me if I am wrong, but as an Equus caballus, you dine on rough grasses, small plants, grains, seeds, root vegetables, and apples when you can get them.”

  Paras nodded.

  “A nutritious diet high in fiber, but let me say, as an Avis, low in variety and piquancy. No doubt when you come to, say, a fly or a cricket in your hay, you spit it out?”

  “I do.”

  “And yet,” said Raoul, “the entire insect kingdom is both flavorful and nutritious in the extreme—concentrated doses of trace minerals, and many naturally occurring remedies for whatever ails you. Ahem.” He looked at Frida, who said, “I’ve tried those things.”

  “I’m very hungry,” said Paras.

  “I believe that I can come to your assistance, and enable you to realize your destiny here in the wonderful city of Paris. I am told by my far-flung correspondents, mostly albatrosses, that this is the finest spot in the world, and I know it well. And let me say this, you are fortunate in one or two respects, even in addition to your serendipitous encounter with myself. It may look from here as though verdant and well-watered fields are absent from our vicinity. But an aerial view, could you somehow attain such a thing, would persuade you differently.” The dusk had now advanced. They waited until there were no cars anywhere. Paras hoisted herself to her feet, and then Raoul said, “Follow me.”