The Story Sisters

Monsieur Cohen lived on the fringes of the Marais on a street where all his neighbors had three locks on their doors. He had constructed an elaborate alarm system for himself, made of ropes and pulleys that deployed pots and pans that could knock any potential robber unconscious. The whole place rattled when Claire knocked on the door. Monsieur Cohen had a very suspicious nature. But of course, it made sense for him to be paranoid. He had rooms full of gems.

He hadn’t wanted an assistant, but Madame Cohen had convinced him he needed one. Claire would do the marketing, make his dinner before she left, sweep the floor. On the first day of her new employment Claire had to show her identification before he let her inside. After that when she knocked three times she would hear the locks being undone and the pots and pans snapping back into place. At last the door would open. The apartment was crowded with very old and beautiful furniture, mohair and velvet couches, gilded tables. The rooms were large and dark and smelled of burning metal. The deuxième Monsieur Cohen kept birds that chattered constantly. There was a veneer of feathers over everything, gold canary fluff. Each canary had a name. Each answered to a special whistle, meant for it alone. A crow with a broken wing had landed on the window ledge one rainy morning and Monsieur Cohen had invited it in and fed it bread and milk. It lived atop a cabinet in the kitchen and hopped in and out the window at will now that its wing had mended.

“Hello, hello.” Monsieur Cohen pulled Claire inside. He liked Claire even though he was antisocial by nature. He had never been close to anyone. He’d been too busy with his work. Everything in his working life was a mystery, and that mystery had spilled into his everyday life. He never spoke of his methods. He used jewelers’ tools in the old way, preferring a small ancient soldering iron that overheated and spat out smoke. He had secrets, as most goldsmiths do.

Claire did the marketing, but she was a terrible cook and she wasn’t much better at tidying up. When she swept the floors, all she did was raise dust. Before long Monsieur Cohen allowed her to sit at his worktable exactly as Madame Cohen had presumed he would. In this way Claire became trained in his methods. If there was a difficult piece, she served as his assistant, handing over gold links, citrines, diamonds, clasps. When working with the soldering iron, she wore a pair of battered goggles held together with tape. Through the bubble of the goggles the gold looked green. Once she saw the shape of a lion in the torchlight; another time it was a butterfly.

At last Claire found herself interested in something. She came to work early, picking up some bread and cheese for their lunch on the way. One day the deuxième Monsieur Cohen stunned her by allowing her to make her own piece of jewelry. A little canary had died and he was too depressed to work. “Surprise me,” he said. “Show me something that makes life worth living.”

It was a tall order for anyone, especially someone new to the craft. Claire spent hours working on a brooch of white gold that resembled the skull of a bird. It was a bit rough around the edges; still, she felt some pride. She recalled the robin’s bones Elv had worn, but they had turned to dust, broken apart. Gold would last. It wouldn’t scatter in the red leaves or the rain.

She nervously presented her piece to the deuxième Monsieur Cohen, who lay almost prone in an armchair. When he saw the brooch, he clapped Claire on the shoulder, pleased. “You have it,” he said solemnly, as though diagnosing her with measles or mumps, but referring, in fact, to talent.

As Claire walked home she saw the birds in the gray evening sky. She took note of the budding trees. She felt alive. By chance she stopped at the antiquities shop, where she riffled around in the tangle of junk. There were shells and beads galore. Monsieur Abetan rooted in a drawer, bringing forth an old amulet. A five-pointed star imprinted on thin silver. He handed it to Claire. “Take this.”

“Really, I’m not looking for anything,” Claire demurred.

“It’s this piece that does the looking. It lets you see what’s there.”

Claire laughed. She took the coin to be polite. She had it in her pocket the next time she went to work. Halfway through the day, she remembered the amulet, and took it out to show Monsieur Cohen. He studied it, then handed it back. “Look what I have at the end of my life,” he announced, as if blinders had just been taken from his eyes. “Nothing.” His pale blue eyes were watery, swimming with tears.

He was looking hard at what surrounded him. The rooms were dark and the birds were quiet; only one or two chirped as the last of the evening light faded. No children, no wife, not even any photographs. After such a long life, what did he have of any value? Claire was unnerved. She tucked the amulet away. Then she remembered why she had begun to notice things on her way home, why she felt alive. She brought him the soldering iron, the gold, a packet of opals. Monsieur Cohen did indeed have something of value. It was something he’d never expected or wanted, but it was what he had. A student. As for his student, she had even more. She could now see the leaves on the trees, the cobblestone streets, the sky above them, and on some days, when she looked carefully out the window in her grandmother’s apartment, she noticed that the light was orange.

WHEN NATALIA AWOKE from her afternoon naps, she often went to her desk to take out the box filled with the photographs Elv had sent her over the years. She loved to look at them, even though they marked how quickly the time was passing and how much she was missing of the child’s life. By the age of three Mimi seemed very grown-up. Natalia talked to her on the telephone on a regular basis. “You’re my great-grandma,” Mimi had said matter-of-factly. “So you’re great.”