Sometimes there would be other customers in the pharmacy before her, and Juliette would have to wait. She noticed that he was quite different with other customers. He might chat with them as he took their prescriptions, or even crack a joke. He’d be relaxed, and even smile; he never smiled at her. Not even when he handed over the little bottle of drops or the box of tablets; he’d give her any information with a serious face, glum even, and his eyes would burn into hers (that was, of course, just her imagination – in reality they’d just be normal; it was her eyes that weren’t normal): twice daily, after meals, on an empty stomach, with water. Occasionally, the customer before her would ask detailed questions and Nathan Levi-Blum would discuss the case with him or her, and Juliette would listen to his voice and that would be in itself so deeply satisfying: such a rich, resonant, slow voice! She herself hardly spoke a word beyond a thank-you; she dared not, for fear she might stutter, fall over the words.
Juliette, to all who knew her a confident and knowledgeable and impressive young woman who could hold her own in any conversation, reduced to a blushing, stammering mass of shyness by this one man. How had it happened? She didn’t understand it herself. She just knew that in his presence, something happened to her and she wasn’t herself, and now she’d been away too long. She longed for his presence and that state of jelly-bellied discombobulation as much as she dreaded it. It was bad enough, that visual contact over the counter when her eyes would meet his and she’d try to force herself to look away but couldn’t – always, they’d linger too long, as if trapped by his gaze, and she’d try to push away, but fail, that sense of being almost hypnotised – no, that wasn’t the right word. Too clinical. Spellbound. Dazed. Mesmerised – those were the words that sprang to mind but again, they were dangerously explicit, and explicitness was a thing she couldn’t handle. Bad enough, those eyes. She could never handle speech. Push it all away, she thought, just push it away. He doesn’t even see you, except as a loyal customer.
Today she had no prescription for Grandma. But there was always a need for aspirin, wasn’t there, and any excuse would do. The closer she came, the more her feet seemed to hurry of their own accord and her heart seemed to beat faster, audibly so, and again that mental agitation, that hovering desire to see that face again, those marching thoughts, a prayer, almost: let him be there. Let him be there. No, don’t. I can’t bear it.
She turned into rue Berthe Molly: and her feet came to an abrupt stop.
Four
Across the shop window, partly blocking the neatly arranged display of beautiful stoneware jars large and small, an ornate antique apothecary scale and decorative bottles containing seeds and dried leaves and berries, was pasted a huge paper strip displaying, in bold, black letters, the word FERMÉ. She stared at it for a moment and then drew nearer and tried the handle of the door next to it. It did not budge.
Closed? The shop had closed? But why? The pharmacie Blum was an institution in Colmar – Grandma said that even when she was a little girl, there it had stood. Juliette had a dire suspicion, a suspicion so ominous all coyness, all her customary nervousness, melted in a second. There was no help for it. This was not the time for bashful wariness and tongue-tied reserve. She knew that the Levi-Blums lived in the apartment above the shop, and that the heavy wooden door on the other side of the shop window was the entrance to that apartment. She placed her thumb firmly on the well-polished brass doorbell set into the wall beside the door and pressed. Through the open window in the half-timbered wall above her she could hear the chime; she looked up, and just a second later a head emerged through that window.
It was him.
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed with palpable shock, and then, more calmly, ‘Attend… je viens.’
Through the door, descending footsteps thudded on wooden stairs, and then the creak of a key and a cautious opening and there he stood, in the doorway. It was all she could do to stop from flinging herself at him; but the moment of greeting was short and brisk.
‘Juliette!’ he said, a sharp cry of astonishment; but in the next instant, almost simultaneously, he had grasped her upper arm, pulled her into the darkness of the stairwell and shut the door behind her. They stood staring at each other in the dimness of the hall at the bottom of the stairs, and only now she realised how foolish a move this had been.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said, and she felt all the more foolish. She didn’t even know him, not really. What on earth had she done? And how did he even know her name?
‘I-I saw the sign. On the shop. I wanted to know – what has happened? When will you open again?’
‘You should not have come.’ He spoke more calmly now. ‘It is dangerous for you – though actually, I was… But now you are here, come upstairs.’
He led the way up the narrow steps, their wood shiny and worn away in their centres through the weight of footsteps over a century or two. All her shyness had returned by now; she felt ridiculous.
At the top of the stairs he ushered her through a door and then turned to her, his eyes searching, kind, haunted. ‘I’m sorry I addressed you in a familiar way, Mademoiselle Dolch. I was just so astonished to see you. What is it? Does your grandmother need some urgent medicine? I’m afraid the shop is closed, as you can see, but I could—’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t need anything…’ She remembered the aspirin she’d have asked for and abandoned that excuse. ‘I came because, well, I have been away and I thought, well, I thought… and then I saw the sign and I was worried. Very worried. And please call me Juliette.’
They were in a parlour at the front of the building, with several narrow casement windows opening to the street. He gestured towards an oval table of polished oak.
‘Do take a seat… Juliette. What can I bring you? I’m afraid we haven’t much, no coffee, but I can make you some tea?’
‘No, thank you, nothing. I—’ She was interrupted by the opening of a door at the back of the room. A woman, middle-aged, her face gaunt and bearing an expression of deep concern, entered the room.
‘Nathan? I heard the bell and— oh!’
Seeing Juliette, the woman started and stared; but only for a moment. Her face broke into a welcoming smile.
‘It’s Juliette, isn’t it! Juliette Dolch! I would recognise you anywhere: you are the spitting image of your mother, Colette. Colette Roussel. She and I were in the same class, long ago, before we were married – we were such good friends! Your mother – she was such a wonderful friend. I was devastated when… when I heard. Welcome to our home, Juliette.’
Juliette smiled and placed a hand on her sternum, fingered through the cotton of her blouse the little pear-shaped sapphire pendant she always wore. It had been her mother’s, a family heirloom; touching it always made her feel safe, protected by the mother she’d never known.
Madame Levi-Blum continued: ‘I didn’t know you were friends with Nathan. Why didn’t you come to visit before, if so? Why wait until such terrible times?’
She sighed at those last words, pulled out a chair at the table next to Juliette and repeated, this time in a whisper: ‘Terrible times. Terrible, terrible.’