The Emperor of Paris Read Online Free PDF

He steps from the curb and crosses the roundabout.
    The July sun beats against the steps of a nearby church where a man sits in a crumpled heap, his tearsdripping on a bible spread open on his knees. The baker knows it would be right to stop and offer assistance. He continues on though, trusting that a priest will be along shortly to help the man.
    At the entrance to the Métro a young man in an ill-fitting suit and flopping pocket square bounds up the stairwell, knocking the baker against a light post. The man carries an armful of flowers. He mumbles a hasty apology, checks his watch and ponders the street signs pointing in every direction. Finally he makes a decision, shoots his cuffs and sets off, his strides nervous, his trouser legs revealing knobby ankles with every stride.

 
    A fter departing Beauvais, a December wind gathered itself and twisted into the fourth district of Paris. A boy stood shivering in a narrow passageway, his grandfather hunched beside him.
    Concentrate, the old man said.
    Henri Fournier was a month from his tenth birthday. His spectacles kept sliding down his nose as he stood on the open pages of a book.
    Spread your arms, Henri.
    The book had been bound in an animal skin dyed the colour of blood oranges, its edges long since darkened bythe sweat of many hands. The case was embossed: a diamond shape, the four corners punched with pinholes. In the centre of the diamond, a pair of exotic slippers, toes curling upward, had been tooled into the leather. The design was faded, worn shallow with age, but could still be seen if one turned it at an angle to the light. Opened flat, the book was wide enough to carry Henri’s feet, each to a page.
    His grandfather believed the book magical, set in a font the old man had not seen in seventy years along the quays. Henri’s father, proprietor of the family bookstall, wished the thing would be eaten by worms; for too long it had taken up space without returning a centime. Monsieur Fournier was quick to remind his son that no one trusted the invisible these days, and the less magic the better. Upon which Henri trusted his grandfather all the more.
    Wider, Henri, palms up. Open your fingers.
    The Fournier bookstall held too much poetry, mixed its philosophies with its mechanics and its travelogues among its fictions. It offered a selection of tattered orchestral scores, back issues of illustrated newspapers and postcards intended for the tourists: ten mademoiselles to a set. The stall was painted a peculiar shade of green, known to every bookseller on both banks of theriver. They claimed the paint was a mysterious Fournier concoction, no doubt flammable, and depending on the season and time of day, it would glow. As though the stall were capable of producing its own light: lime green in the early morning, emerald at midday, mossy grey as the day faded.
    If one stood on one’s toes, one might snatch a glimpse over the stall and a view of the Pont des Arts.
    Perfectly still now, my boy. Close your eyes.
    Henri’s face puckered; spots of light swam behind his eyelids. The old man whispered in his ear.
    Do you feel anything?
    I don’t think so, Grandfather.
    Your feet, Henri. Are they precise?
    The boy squeezed his eyes behind his glasses. I can’t see them.
    Be certain, Henri. Without precision we are—?
    Vague and lost, Grandfather.
    Precisely. Quiet now. No scrunched faces.
    The grandfather bent double, examining the position of Henri’s feet. Left on the verso right on the recto, he muttered, and tapped at the toe of the boy’s right boot. Henri crept his foot so as to not leave a scuff on the thick pages.
    Careful, boy. And now?
    Henri opened one eye. Nothing, Grandfather.
    The old man moaned as he straightened up. Henri lowered his arms and released a cloud of breath. His mother, watching from the family apartment three floors up, called down to Henri.
    Enough, young man. There are plenty of Fourniers in that godforsaken book trade already. No more