Rooftoppers

At Paris’s Gare du Nord train station, Charles further calms Sophie by telling her that another passenger has recommended a nice hotel on the River Seine. Riding through Paris, Sophie is charmed by the city’s serenity and grace: its greenery and winding cobblestone streets and the dresses and “gliding” gait of its female pedestrians. As they arrive at the Hotel Bost, a hidden pair of eyes “thirty feet in the air” watches their every move (72). Squatting on the pavement in front of the hotel, Sophie takes out her cello and plucks a “thrumming tune” to make herself feel more at home. The unseen eyes flicker, as if impressed.

The Hotel Bost turns out to be a dingy place, with sparse, well-worn furniture and an outdoor bathroom, but its lived-in shabbiness makes Sophie feel at home. Her attic bedroom has a skylight, a tiny bed, and four close walls covered with strange ink sketches that Charles says look like “music.” The skylight has rusted shut, but Charles says that he’ll get some oil for it. Straining to see the Paris sky through the dirty glass, Sophie has a sensation of her heart being “too large” for her body.

The music shop on Rue Charlemagne—a cluttered, dusty place—is without customers. The owner, roused from a nap by Charles’s persistent shouts, looks at the bronze plaque from the cello case and identifies it as his own work. In a thick French accent, he explains that he covered the plaque with baize so that it wouldn’t scratch the cello. That particular cello, he says, is of a smaller-than-usual size (29 inches), and he only made three of them. Though it was 15 years ago, he remembers the customer as a tall, beautiful woman with short, light-colored hair. He notes that she bore a marked resemblance to Sophie. Unable to recall more details, he summons his shop assistant, who was also present at the purchase. Mr. Lille, a hard-eyed man with a “sneering” mouth, provides a name: Vivienne Vert. He adds that he disapproved of everything about her: her shabby clothes, her loose appearance, her “lawless-looking mouth,” and especially the way she played the cello. Claiming, to Sophie’s outrage, that women have a “limited” talent for music, Mr. Lille says that Vivienne played Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem in an undignified manner—in double time, which he says is “indecent” for solemn music. To Sophie, Vivienne sounds like a kindred spirit.

The shop owner marvels at the memory of this woman, who he says was “extraordinary,” especially in the speed of her playing. To demonstrate, he takes down a cello and launches into the Requiem at “rollicking” double time, which Sophie thinks is a vast improvement. Leaving the shop in a daze, she preserves that remarkable music in her mind.

Now armed with a name—Vivienne Vert—Charles makes an appointment at the police headquarters to find out if Sophie’s mother is living or dead. Since they are technically outlaws, he will only let Sophie accompany him if she makes herself less “memorable” by covering her hair with a lady’s hat. Early the next day, they arrive at the vast building, where Charles mortifies her by talking flirtatiously in French with a young receptionist, which Sophie thinks might draw attention. Eventually, a clerk stiffly leads Charles and Sophie into the “interview room” after trying to make Sophie wait outside. The clerk has decided to help them as little as possible. Calling Charles’s missing-person request “absurd” because it involves a person for whom he has no birthdate, birthplace, or profession, the clerk refuses to show him the passenger records for the Queen Mary. In any case, he says, Vivienne is not listed as a passenger on that ship. The only woman by that name in the police files is a petty criminal who vanished 13 years ago. Her crimes involved “trespassing, loitering, associating with tramps and vagabonds” (95). There is no record of a child.

Steely in his determination to see the records for the Queen Mary, Charles asks Sophie to please leave the room. He resorts to blackmail, threatening the clerk with compromising information that he learned from the receptionist in his friendly chat with her. Pale and shaken, the clerk agrees to make an appointment for him for the day after tomorrow with the chief commissioner, who may be able to help him access the ship’s records and other data involving Vivienne.

That night, Sophie is awake with anxieties over her future and her missing mother. Paris nights are quieter than London nights. Her eyes are drawn to the skylight, for which Charles forgot to buy oil; she suddenly runs downstairs to get olive oil from the hotel’s dining room. Lubricating the skylight’s rusty hinges, she manages to force it open and climb out onto the roof. Ignoring her knee, which was cut on the skylight and bleeds “vigorously,” she relishes the glorious tapestry of nighttime Paris sprawled below her. Never before has she been up so high, so close to the moon and stars, and in a daze of happiness, she dances a rapturous “war dance” around the brick chimneys. Eventually, feeling cold, she lowers herself back inside, but not before glimpsing a shadowy figure flitting over an adjacent rooftop.

Soon, Sophie is jolted awake by a crashing sound and a thump. She cries out, only to hear a voice in her room telling her not to “wail.” Her dressing table has been knocked over and a mug broken, and a strange boy stands at the foot of her bed. The boy calls her by her name, which astounds her. He is “long-legged,” wary looking, and around her age. He says that he needs to talk to her, adding that he knows her name because he was spying on the hotel when she and Charles first arrived. His name is Matteo. He made his way onto her roof and through her skylight by jumping from an adjacent rooftop. There are “hundreds” of ways, he adds, to get onto any roof.

He has come to warn her to keep off the rooftops: “All the rooftops between the river and the train station are mine” (110). Ignoring her protests that the roofs are ownerless and a “no-man’s-land,” he says that they’re his because he knows them better than anyone else. Declaring that the rooftops are his home, he threatens to hurt her if she doesn’t keep away. As he says this, Sophie notices that his right forefinger is missing its tip. Not ready to surrender her rooftop to him without a fight, Sophie counters that she “needs” the rooftops since they stir memories in her and might be a “clue.” Matteo scoffs at this, accusing her of being “soft.” He says that she would be seen or heard up there and give him away. Desperate not to abandon this “clue” to her past, Sophie begs to go along with him. He finally softens, challenging her to prove herself by keeping up with him. In a flash, Matteo swings up through the skylight like a master gymnast. By the time Sophie climbs after him, he is already four rooftops away, flickering among the shadows. Sophie follows at a cautious pace, nervously braving the leap from her rooftop to the next. Soon, the bells of Paris chime four o’clock, warning of sunrise. Meanwhile, Matteo has vanished.