The Kaisho by Eric Van Lustbader

Author:Eric Van Lustbader
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Paris / Old Westbury

ENTERING PARIS WAS LIKE EMERGING into clear water from the incantatory flux of a whirlpool. The charisma of Venice's Byzantine brocade was broken by the effulgent flood of lights streaming into the cloud-clotted sky.

The Parisian night was a bouquet of vibrant facades, broad boulevards, massive fountains guarded by lions, cherubs and gods, glittering whitely, bathed in light.

Fingers of light illuminated the Arc de Triomphe, rising from the fulcrum of the Place de 1'Etoile, nexus of a dozen major avenues, radiating like the veins on the back of a hand. Geysers of light spilled over the Place de la Concorde, where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Danton and Robespierre, felt the terminal kiss of the Revolution's Razor; the Place Vendôme, where monuments to Napoleon rose and fell and rose once again. Arcs of light burst against the strong artery of the city which crossed from Right Bank to Left, with the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais on one end and the great gilded dome of Les Invalides on the other, while between them, lit by clusters of lamps, rose the magnificent bridge across the Seine named after Alexander III of Russia.

Through this urban landscape, white as snow beneath a full moon, Nicholas and Celeste were driven from Charles de Gaulle airport. Entering the city of light, they felt like pilgrims who had been cast into the wilderness for transgressions unknown and unforgivable, and who now were re-entering Western civilization.

They crossed the Seine from Right Bank to Left, entering a world still somewhat bohemian, certainly younger than that across the river, filled with art galleries, trendy clothing boutiques and food kiosks of all description.

They found lodging a block and a half from the Boulevard St Germain at a hotel with a white and black facade of sand-blasted stone and wrought iron. The rooms themselves were small, post-modern, neat, comfortable, with views of Paris's justly famous rooftops, aglow with an astonishing aura, the pyramid of energy surrounding the Eiffel Tower.

Inside their room, a small, neat space, a VCR attached to the TV was already displaying the black-and-white images of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, in a scene from Raymond Chandler's febrile The Big Sleep. Electronic shadows on the wall, iridescent flickers like the blinking of an eyelid, the beating of a heart.

Sleep...

Avalon Ltd is a company with an interesting history, Fornovo had told them. Originally a house that manufactured costumes for traveling theatrical troupes, it gradually metamorphosed as the renown of its mask-makers grew. At one point - who knows when, perhaps around the time of the French Revolution - the mask-makers themselves wrested control of the company from their overlords, who - the story goes - were, because of their notoriety, forthwith guillotined in the Place Vendome. The name was changed to Avalon et fits because the artisans had come to think of the company as their home.

And so it remained virtually unchanged by the passing years until perhaps five years ago when, after falling on hard times, it was bought by a foreign firm and the name was changed again, to Avalon Ltd.

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