The Story Sisters

“Did you know the deuxième Monsieur Cohen before?” Claire asked her grandmother one night when Natalia came home from her dinner engagement. Claire’s ama was untying the red scarf, humming to herself.

“Who?” Natalia teased.

“Ama! Your boyfriend, or whatever he is at his age. Everyone knows. Even me!”

“Yes, but who said he’s the deuxième?”

“Well, Madame Cohen calls him that.”

“That’s because she met his brother first and married him. He’s the premier Monsieur Cohen to me.” Natalia had laughed then. “I knew him but I never saw him. He was like the news paper stand. You walk by every day, but you never look at who’s sitting there, collecting the change.”

“My grandmother’s in love,” Claire told Madame Cohen when she next brought in her collection of jewelry. They were amulets designed in the shape of scarabs carved from semiprecious stones, citrine and turquoise and amethyst. They were snapped up as soon as they were delivered to the shop, as all her charms were. Madame Cohen noticed that Claire was beginning to outsell her teacher.

“Your grandmother’s falling, all right.” Madame Cohen laughed. “Her knees aren’t too good anymore. What about your knees?” she asked.

“They’re perfect,” Claire assured her. “I could run ten kilometers and not feel a thing.”

IT WAS THE rainy season in Paris and the weather had turned cold. On the night the thief broke in to the workshop he left icy footprints on the kitchen floor. It was difficult to tell whether he entered through the front door and made his escape through the window and down the fire escape, or vice versa. Either way, he left all the windows wide open. The chilly night air that poured inside killed all the caged birds. Their feathers billowed on the floor and stuck fast to the wet linoleum. Any object of worth had been taken. Gems, bars of gold, envelopes of ancient coins. Everything had been ruined. Even the couch had its pillows ripped open, with more feathers floating about. The alarm system of pots and pans had been left in a heap.

“I thought it was the rainstorm,” one of the downstairs neighbors declared when later questioned. “There was so much noise. I was certain someone was dancing,” another reported when the officials finally arrived. “He has a woman up there sometimes.”

Claire was the one who found Monsieur Cohen. She knew something was wrong as she walked up the stairs. Usually it was possible to hear the canaries singing as soon as she reached the second-floor landing, but on this day there was only silence. When Claire pushed open the door and went inside, there were no pots and pans hanging overhead. The canaries lay at the bottom of their cages, mute, stiff, like little gold statues. Claire surveyed the disaster surrounding her. The cabinets open, the worktable in shambles, the drawers pulled out, the couch cushions slit with a butcher’s knife as the thief looked for more, more, more. A few scattered onions rolled across the kitchen floor. Claire had bought them earlier in the week. They’d been meant for a recipe called Love Is Blind Stew. One of the tenants in the building had given Claire the recipe only a few days earlier. They had stood in the hall and the old woman had whispered all of the ingredients for Claire to hastily scrawl into her notebook. A fresh chicken, a handful of apricots, red wine, oregano, a sliced pear. Claire must remember not to add garlic. She must braise, but never boil, cook until tender without overcooking. But Natalia hadn’t been feeling well, and Claire hadn’t cooked the stew. Monsieur Cohen planned to dine alone, and so he was satisfied with bread and cheese, perhaps a cup of soup.

Claire noticed that the bedroom door was open. She felt her heart drop. She could not remember if she had closed and locked the front door the evening before. She had been preoccupied, thinking about her charms. She was about to make a series of lion amulets, for protection and bravery. She switched the light on to illuminate the bedroom. The deuxième Monsieur Cohen was sprawled on the floor. He had a cane in his hand, one he planned to use as a weapon, but he’d had a stroke before he could confront the intruder. Claire sat down on the floor beside him. He had thought to put on his slippers. She moved to close his eyes. She sat there for a long time, on the cold floor beside him. He was her teacher and had taught her everything he’d known.

When the police arrived, Claire went into the kitchen to answer their questions. The neighbors had already been interviewed and the flat had been dusted for fingerprints, although the authorities had admitted that small-time thieves were difficult to track down. Claire found that she kept looking at the onions on the floor. She was plagued with trying to remember whether or not she’d locked the door. She went over her actions, but all she could remember was Monsieur Cohen calling out a good-bye. She picked up an onion, then held it close and began to cry. Onions did that to a person; you could fight it all you wanted, but in the end the onion was more powerful than human will. It forced you to tears.

Madame Cohen’s grandsons came to take charge. They summoned an ambulance and made arrangements at the funeral home and the chapel. They were so tall and the attic eaves so sloping that there didn’t seem to be any breathing room in the flat. One of them coaxed the crow into a cage. The others were all on their cell phones, calling relatives, making funeral plans. The policemen spoke so quickly among themselves that Claire couldn’t understand a word. French wasn’t her first language, after all, or even her second. She had a sudden fleeting thought in Arnish: Nom brava gig. Reuna malin.