The Missing Italian Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

to the rank of “madame le professeur,” but she hadn’t always been. She was the daughter of a blacksmith, the niece of hardworking cooks, a former waitress. A girl with her past, he seemed to be saying, should find comfort in a place like this. He was telling her to relax, not to worry about what she had become.
    Within minutes, the red-haired Colette appeared and thumped two beers on the table. Clarie watched as the foam floated precariously back and forth, dripping white cascades along the sides of the glasses. Without a word, the waitress grabbed the end of her already wet and spotted apron, and wiped the table before turning her back. This time it was Clarie who raised her eyebrows in amusement. Then she took the stein by its handle and lifted it up. “To your new career,” she said. “To the Labor Exchange,” he responded with clink. The stalwart Colette arrived again and plunked two sandwiches on their table. A long sausage peeked out invitingly from each end of their half baguettes. Clarie was starving. As she was about to take her first bite, she spotted a man in a flat bowler and jacket waving at them. When he caught Bernard’s attention, he walked over to greet her husband.
    “Maître Martin,” he said, extending his hand toward Bernard.
    “Joseph, good to see you here,” said Bernard as he got up and introduced Joseph Tilyer, head of the carpenter’s union, to Clarie.
    When she extended her hand, the short, squat sandy-haired man reached down to kiss rather than shake it, tickling her ever so slightly with his bushy mustache and scratchy unshaved chin. “Ah yes,” he said, when he straightened up, “the professor.”
    Clarie blushed as his eyes roved over her. He was sizing her up.
    “Bourgeois girls, high school, no? What of teaching workers’ children?” he muttered, his mouth so close she could smell his cigarettes and see his yellowing teeth.
    “Monsieur Tilyer, it would be my greatest wish that all children, workers or not, boys or girls, could go to high school.” Clarie could have bitten her tongue. She sounded so prim.
    “Well said.” Tilyer’s smile was much too sardonic for her taste. “But for now,” he said, speaking louder, “I’m sending my kids to classes at the Bourse, so that they can learn a thing or two about unions and workers’ rights.” Before Clarie could muster a response, he turned to Bernard and clapped him on the arm. “And you’re going to help teach them. Our professor,” he paused, “for certain things that the workers can’t teach themselves, of course. Like bourgeois law.” He said this last phrase as if he had just bitten into a sour lemon.
    A baby began to scream at the next table and, with all the shouts and shushing, Clarie could not discern how Bernard was responding, or if he had even heard what the rude union boss had said to her. She watched as he nodded at something the carpenter was telling him and offered his hand before the man took his leave. While she was still feeling the sting of Tilyer’s disapproval, Bernard seemed quite pleased. Sipping her beer, she determined not to worry about whether her husband fit in to his new position. He had obviously just entered another man’s world as far removed from her as the courthouse had been. It was childish, but, perhaps because of what she had become, a respectable bourgeois mother and teacher, she felt left out. And, more, unfairly judged by a stranger. She had worked very hard, believed in what she did. Clarie felt angry, and at the same time a little sad, because she could not help wondering if, in becoming who she thought she wanted to be, she had not left something important behind.
    Suddenly the pianist struck a loud chord and ran a glissando. When the café quieted down, he got up and, with a sweep of his hand, presented Marie Rossignol. A petite middle-aged woman made a dramatic entrance on the center of the little stage. Her raven black hair was cut into a sharply angled bob and