Morning Letters
It was quiet in the winding walkways. They strung their way through the outskirts of the city, empty of the yellow limestone that marked more trafficked roads. Like the rest of Paris, the Clignancourt district was still sleeping. The flea market – the marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen, as the natives called it – was not known for this silence. On weekend afternoons the tight alleys rang with the sounds of shoes scuffling on pavement, the low hiss of speedily spoken French, and oftentimes, the heavier tones of foreign tongues. Children called for their mothers, oohing and aahing over worn baseball cards. Metal vases clattered as the crowds of passersby elbowed them to the ground. Dealers in tight suits murmured into their phones as they examined the upholstering of armchairs and nodded yes, yes the woodworking is pristine. White-haired men and women whispered softly and grasped each other’s wrinkled hands.
This morning, however, was different. It was only barely morning, and the shopkeepers were still asleep in their beds. Some might have been wrapped around their lovers. The more ambitious ones could have been pulling on their socks to venture out for a café, but even that would have been unusual at this hour. But then, there was Sylvia, weaving her way through the corners of the market.
She loved it best in the moments before morning, when the leaves of the small, scattered trees blossomed into inky blurs in the near-darkness. The dull glow of the new day made the paths she had memorized seem fresh, foreign somehow. Then, after these moments of unknowing passed, the pink of the sunrise fell on piles of fat, burnished rings and painted the white wicker chairs an unlikely shade of peach, and Sylvia knew exactly where she had found herself. When she did, she was always alone, and she felt a fresh wave of guilt for watching another day unfold. She had been alone for quite some time, and for a brief minute each morning, those first, warm tendrils of sunlight left her feeling painfully cold.
The sky had already turned a soft blue by the time Sylvia reached her shop on this particular September day. She was a few minutes late, as was expected; this time, she had paused to soak in the gleam of the nearby silver shop, which overflowed with tea trays, trinkets, jeweled necklaces, snuff boxes. Lockets covered an entire wooden door left out on the curbside; some engraved with initials, some heart-shaped, all waiting to be claimed. Everywhere, everything, shining. Sylvia liked to imagine the young men of Paris presenting them to the women they loved, perhaps in blue velvet boxes or else straight from their back pockets. She imagined herself lifting her hair as steady hands fastened a chain about her neck, and she could feel the hollow space on her chest where the locket would have rested.
“What was it this time?” called a voice from the back of the shop. It was flat, nearly unaccented English; Alice had been studying the language for over a decade now, since grade school, and it had been a year since Sylvia had felt the need to correct her pronunciation. That was why Sylvia had hired her to begin with: the girl could wrap her tongue around the flat twang of English better than any other applicant had before her, and when Sylvia had left behind America for a life in Paris five years ago she had brought barely anything with her, least of all a knowledge of French. There was the occasional blurring of the “th” every now and again on Alice’s part, of course, and the girl was prone to spells of sullenness that didn’t appeal to the customers, but Sylvia saw her softer side.
“I stopped by Emmanuelle’s silver shop,” Sylvia breathed, tying her coarse hair tightly into a knot and fussing over a display of lace gloves. “I don’t know how I turned up late again,” she continued, concerned.
“It always manages to surprise you,” answered Alice from behind a magazine.
“It’s a beautiful morning, you know,” Sylvia said wistfully, gazing around the cluttered shop.
“Do you really think so?” asked Alice knowingly, lifting her black lace-ups onto the paper-strewn desk and flipping a page in her magazine, giving Sylvia a pointed look.
Hunching over the display case in her shapeless floral dress and reading glasses, Sylvia looked older than she felt. It was because of the dim lighting that she had to stoop; the pink and gold art deco lamps did little in the way of illumination, but they gave the room a soft, warm glow that dulled Sylvia’s awareness of the empty spaces. She was, in fact, a worn – but wide-eyed – woman of forty. As she puttered around the shop, straightening yellowed postcards and arranging her latest shipment of handkerchiefs, she felt like she had in her youth: eager and restless, hopeful.
The streets started to fill and Alice paused in her reading to help Sylvia hang a tarnished picture frame. The shop began to attract attention. Sylvia chattered in stilted French with the people of Paris, explaining excitedly how the hands of a 19th-century clock worked when you tapped its top and how she had come across such extraordinary embroidered shawls. They were always surprised by her enthusiasm, and sometimes quite taken with it – many of them came back and bought from her simply because of her storytelling, they told her – but mostly they didn’t understand, or nodded and, after a polite pause, moved on to the next shop. They weren’t really searching. Then again, most people didn’t search the way that Sylvia searched: as if for something she had lost.
Sometimes, however, something in the store caught the attention of a passerby – a particularly bright brooch or a thick, brown riding crop – and together the odd purchase and the reliable regulars kept the shop afloat. In these moments, Sylvia often saw the older man in the chandelier shop across the way tipping his hat at her. He was Italian, she had heard, and didn’t speak a word of English. That she knew for a fact; he had come into her shop once years ago with his hat in his hands and begun to speak. It was clear he hadn’t known any French, either – another fresh starter, like her – and so he had left, and spoken to her only by way of the tilt of his cap. Years had passed since then, and Sylvia supposed it might have been possible that he had picked up a word or two during his time in Clignancourt. On rainy days she caught herself wondering what it might be like to ask, but she felt the guilt creep up on her again and always returned to her work.
It was just after one of these moments when the gentle Italian man inclined his head – she had sold a pair of pre-war era cuff links to an eager-looking young man, and soon after she was blushing under the gaze of the Italian – that Sylvia noticed the impressive leather trunk sitting in the corner of the shop.
“Alice,” she called, leaning over to inspect the brass studs and faded gold filigree. “Alice, where did this come from?” she asked.
Alice, who had been filing a nail, slowly stood up to join Sylvia. “That came in last night,” she said flatly. “It was sent with that order of handkerchiefs, the ones you laid out this morning.” She looked sideways at Sylvia and smiled reluctantly. “Let me guess,” she began, “you find it beautiful.”
Sylvia smiled tightly back, shrugging her shoulders. “I like to believe that anything can be beautiful,” she replied.
The trunk really was grand, or at least, it had been; its leather was rubbed raw in some places and it creaked quietly when Sylvia started to open it, but she continued anyway, releasing the clasp and prying apart the ends. Inside was something that Sylvia, who had wandered every pathway of the market and opened a hundred trunks before, did not expect: a pile of letters, aging but otherwise pristine, tied together by a loop of brown yarn. Lifting the stack closer, Sylvia peered through her glasses and saw that the topmost envelope was addressed to a Mlle. Renée Faure from a Lt. Armand Morin, dated February 7, 1945.
Sylvia felt a tingle building in her fingers. Armand, a lieutenant in the French army. Imagine. He had to have been fighting in the war, if he were enlisted at that time. A man who had fought for his country, defending his neighbors, his father, the women. It was something that Jonathan might have done, if he’d had the chance. She envisioned Jonathan’s smooth face as he looked out through her Chevrolet’s window at the Detroit cityscape, his eyes distant. He would have been brave, a soldier. Sylvia squinted to read the cramped French script.
Chère Renée, it read. I hope to never disappoint you, but this will be the last of my letters for some time. It is shorter than the others, and for that I am sorry. I haven’t the time to explain what you mean to me or to share the memories of you that I carry with me. Someday, we will have the time. For now the men and I are moving further in from the border – I can’t say where exactly – and will soon reach the enemy. It is not like home here. It is loud and dark, but I think of you every moment. I keep your letters in my front pocket so that I can never lose them – you’ll see. These are the things that I will not lose, though I know out there, you are not convinced. I lose everything, you will say. Yes, I do – everything but these. They will be in my pocket still when I return, and I know that will be soon. I promise it will be soon, if I have to win the war myself! No German, no war, no one, could keep me from you. You are my heart. Armand.
Loud and dark. You are my heart. Sylvia read the letter again, her lips curving soundlessly over the words as she went. I can never lose them. Amidst all of the treasures of her shop, the subdued warble of Edith Piaf on the record-player, the tipping hat of the Italian man, and the maze that was the market, a mere pocket in the city of Paris, Sylvia lost herself in a letter.
Sylvia resolved to save the rest of her reading for a private place. It felt wrong, displaying a vulnerable man like this in so open a space. Customers were milling about the shop and Alice was there with her questions and her sharp eyes, and the letters felt exposed, unprotected. Sylvia wanted to be alone with them. She slipped the topmost note back into its envelope and laid the stack carefully inside the breast pocket of her tattered black coat.
The day passed slowly. Sylvia ushered her customers around as she always did, pointing out detailing on brooches and on the Victorian writing desk she had chanced upon earlier that month, but her eyes wandered away from the engravings. Instead, they settled on the trunk. She imagined how its trim must have gleamed all of those years ago. She wondered where it had come from, what countries it had seen, and who had carried it. Had Armand ever lifted it for Renée, perhaps to place in the overhead compartment of a train or to carry up a precarious flight of stairs? Was Armand the kind of man who held the door open for a woman, who tipped his hat? Sylvia thought that he must have been, and she felt her body tense with anticipation for the letters. Messages waiting to be read, words left unsaid.
The yellow light of the afternoon stretched on outside of the shop front, and for once, Sylvia couldn’t wait to escape.
Outside of the flea market and its walkways, there were larger roads – not quite avenues, nothing like you’d find in the 16th or the 6th, of course – that often smelled of their putrid cheese shops and were lined with greasy kebab vendors; empty cafés bathed in humming, blinking fluorescent light; open-front stores selling jean jackets and faux leather gloves, half-price; and a single, crowded McDonald’s. The grooves of the sidewalks were grimy and, in the absence of people at dinnertime, ruled by flocks of thinning pigeons. It was above these roads that Sylvia lived in a tiny apartment. She shared it with an orange-striped cat she called Cannelle, a dusty photo album, and a thick green throw blanket that she had crocheted herself before moving away from the emptiness of Detroit.
Clignancourt and its blackened chewing gum were not what Sylvia had envisioned when she’d gathered up her funds to start her new life; the Paris she had read about in her books was wide and airy, crisp and always filtered with the low lull of jazz music. It was the city of light and a city of love, of that she had been sure. It was beautiful, she had imagined, and so it was – provided you had the funds to afford it. She had sold the car for scraps and pulled together what she could in insurance, but there hadn’t been enough for anything except to go. So she’d gone.
Clignancourt was home to the flea market, however, and Sylvia found early on that she felt safer enveloped in the stories and the shine of the wares. It was close enough to the city center that, on evenings when she was feeling especially lonesome, she could watch the students with their hands entwined on the banks of the Seine, pretending that she was a part of it all. With the letters safe in the pocket by her heart, Sylvia didn’t feel lonely. She made her way up the creaking wooden stairs to her apartment with only a passing thought for the Seine, the strolls, and the phantom caresses that she might miss.
It was here, tucked into her quiet corner of the city, that Sylvia felt that she could spend time with the letters and the lovers. Their secret was hers now, and she would keep it safe, this one thing. After loosening her hair and pulling on a tired pink robe, she settled in and spent the night reading.
There were 22 letters in all. Each letter was from Armand; there were no letters from Renée, but Sylvia knew that Renée hadn’t stayed silent. She could tell by Armand’s unwavering adoration that he was being encouraged, and sometimes his messages seemed to be in response to some provincial worry of Renée’s. No, Renée, he wrote from August 1944. Do not let Mme. Dubois frighten you. She only wants you to fetch the milk, but she knows you won’t stay on much longer. I am sure that you can see it in her eyes: she’s afraid of losing you.
Sylvia remembered Jonathan telling her on that windy afternoon in Belle Isle Park that together, they would do big things.
“Bigger than all this,” he had said, gesturing to the Detroit skyline. He’d positioned the sight of the skyscrapers between his thumb and forefinger in the air and had pinched. He let her drive home.
It isn’t true what Madeleine has told you, Armand wrote from the darkness of November 1944. The regiment is safe, and I am safe. I am coming home to you. Madeleine should not spread such rumors. It isn’t good for morale and I cannot imagine what a state you must have been in when she told you those lies. Armand was there, and he wasn’t. He loved from afar, but he loved.
I am coming home to you. I am coming home to you. Sylvia repeated Armand’s words to herself in the darkness, long after she had tied up the letters, filled Cannelle’s bowl with water, and tucked herself into bed. I am coming home to you. With her eyes closed, she could imagine that his voice was in that very room.
It went on like this for weeks. Sylvia continued to take her early morning tours of the market, but she never left her letters behind. They rested in that same breast pocket throughout the day, wandering with her to examine walls of tribal masks and rolls of damask silk. These forays began to feel less like adventures to Sylvia. She found that the daybreak weighed on her more heavily than usual; the silver wouldn’t shine bright enough to really catch her eye. The sunrises enthralled her, however, because for the first time, when the pinkish light slid into the corners of the market, Sylvia found that she was not alone. Armand and his words were close enough to touch. In these moments Sylvia would reach into her pocket and press her hands against the smooth, crisp paper. Her lips would shape themselves around the promises that she was beginning to learn by heart.
“Where have you been?” Alice would ask her, tapping her fingertips on the edge of the desk. “Is it the letters again?” she would guess after Sylvia’s noncommittal answers, her indifferent expression breaking into something like pity and worry.
“You have to let it go, Sylvia,” she would say gently, hesitating before finally turning back to her magazines.
The shop wasn’t attracting as much attention as it once had. Without Sylvia there in the mornings, nothing was filed properly; it was unclear how much they were selling, and even if they had caught a customer, it was impossible to know where to find the receipt. Alice had never mastered the art of balancing the books. They had enough funds to withstand the lull; they hadn’t made sales often before, but the prices were high enough on the antique goods that they never hit the red. Now, however, Sylvia’s shop was coming dangerously close to disrepair. The glass display cases were coated with a thin blanket of dust. The lace gloves lay in disarray, half-hidden beneath an old cigar box. Dealers rarely even entered anymore, and the lovers never did. It wasn’t the sort of place that glittered, like a silver shop, and, buried as it was under a sheet of dusty neglect, the magic and charm of the past that drew Parisians here in the first place could hardly shine through.
“Where have you been?” asked Alice again impatiently, weeks later still, as the streets of Clignancourt were rounding their way into November.
Sylvia, who was hanging her coat in the back of the shop, reached for the left pocket and felt her love letters waiting. She patted them surreptitiously.
Alice, who had been leaning against the doorway awaiting Sylvia’s arrival, stared. She looked Sylvia up and down, swallowed, and walked over to the back of the shop.
“Don’t think I don’t know why,” said Alice softly. “I’ve seen you reading those love letters in the corner for months now. Don’t you understand?” she asked searchingly. She then squared her shoulders and leveled her gaze on Sylvia. “Do you know how long I’ve been working in this shop?”
Sylvia thought in silence.
“I’ve been working in this shop for three years. Three years!” answered Alice. “When you met me I could barely carry on a conversation in English, and here we are,” she gestured between them, her black fingernails flying through the air. “You did that. It’s not me who makes the shop run, it’s you. You love it. The people love you. They aren’t here to see me, or to see any of these old things,” she insisted, looking around the cluttered shop. “They’re here to see you, because you love these old things better than anyone, and you can tell their stories. You make them beautiful because you believe they are, always.”
Sylvia gazed around the shop, taking in its disorder and the grayish film that covered everything.
“But you aren’t doing that,” Alice went on, “not since you found those letters. It isn’t real, Sylvia. But this, this is real!” As she spoke, Sylvia took in the sight of the chest of drawers that predated the Titanic, the candelabra that still had yellowed wax dried to its side, the stack of vintage playing cards. All tangible things, things she had hunted for and, once found, treated as her treasures.
“If you’re looking for something to love, you already have it in the market,” concluded Alice, her dark eyes searching Sylvia’s face.
Her face softened. “You have to let it go, Sylvia. You see?”
Sylvia did not want to see. She passed the day in silence, maneuvering her way around the shop so that she and Alice were always occupying opposite corners. It wasn’t easy. It took most of her concentration to maintain her distance, and for increasingly long stretches of time, the letters was forced from her mind. When they did appear, they weighed on her. She told herself that nothing had changed, but as she worked her way around the shelves of the store, she found herself wondering at how unfamiliar it felt to be dodging her way through her treasures.
That night, and the many nights that followed, Sylvia curled up on her threadbare couch with her letters, wishing Jonathan was beside her. During the day she examined the lost and forgotten objects in her shop, hoping something would strike a chord, fill up the spaces like they had before. It wasn’t graceful; they healed her like bandages, temporary stopgaps on the bleeding. But she bled less and less by the day.
Weeks passed before she relinquished the letters. She stopped reading them towards the end; she just held onto them, fingering the rough corners of the paper and memorizing the feel of the cracked stamps.
It was a morning when the sunrise was especially bright and warm behind the snowfall that Sylvia placed the letters gently back into their trunk, closed the lid, and fastened the burnished clasp. She bought an antique lock, looped it through the handles of the trunk, and hid its key amongst the thousands of others that littered the shelves of the shops of the market. Some young woman would buy it one day and hang it on a necklace, wear it close to her heart. Sylvia left the trunk outside of the shop one blue-black evening as she headed home to sleep, and she knew by morning some other shopkeeper would have taken it to sell as his own. In the maze that was the market, Sylvia could search and search and never find the letters. But she wouldn’t search; they were lost. She would wander the labyrinth of looking glasses and battered typewriters in the mornings, while Paris was sleeping, and try to feel less alone when the sun shone bright. She explored new corners, came closer to the thresholds of the shops and peered in through the windows. Close enough to touch.
On a cold, clear day in December, Sylvia made her way to the shop. It was nearing the end of Christmas shopping season, and Sylvia breathed in the crispness of the empty street. In an hour, after the sun had risen, the street would be full and ripe with people, but for the moment, it was all hers.
She rounded the last corner and saw, across the way, lights flowing out from the chandelier shop onto the pavement. The Italian man had never opened his shop this early; Sylvia would know, after all of her wanderings. Or had he begun a new routine while she was in bed with her letters?
Because she was always looking – for something lost, for a reason to be late, for a treasure, for something that shone – Sylvia considered the distance between the two shops and, for once, crossed it, wanting to feel full.
Sylvia pushed open the blue door and found herself surrounded by chandeliers. Their bright lights shone in every corner of the room, stealing into the shadows and bringing into focus the flowers in the wallpaper and the gold of the mirror frames. In the mirrors, crystals fell like rain, dripping from the ceiling and throwing off pinks, violets, blues, and reds. Nothing was hidden; everything was alive.
Sylvia stood there, wrapped up in the lights, for minutes, maybe, and when she opened her eyes she found she was not alone; the Italian man had come in from the storeroom in the back. He watched her as she glowed, tipped his hat, and smiled.