Perfidia | Page 5

useless and ugly objects, their glazed eyes not even registering the few customers who hurried past.
At the bend where Row 9 curved east and emptied into the market's caf??, a man in his 60s sat with his eyes closed, listening to a scratchy LP on a portable phonograph much like the one I'd had in high school. He had long graying hair, aviator-style glasses, a checked flannel shirt, and an ascot. The booth matched the description the eBay seller had given me, down to the worn carpet and the Mickey Mouse memorabilia. There was some electronic gear as well: a cheap reel-to-reel deck from the early 60s, walkie-talkies, an analog oscilloscope, a pocket transistor radio.
"Bonjour, Philippe," Madame B sang again. He gave no indication that he'd heard. "This is my friend Fran?��ois," she said in French, "and he wants to know about something you might have sold."
"To a woman from the United States," I said, laying the photos out on his nearly empty desk.
Philippe seemed to live at a completely different pace from Madame B. He slowly picked up each photo and stared at it, as if searching for something in it that might cheer him up.
"It's a recording device," I said, hoping to hurry him. "It records on a spool of wire." I didn't know the French name for it.
"I must get back to my shop," Madame B said. "Good luck with your quest."
I kissed her on both cheeks, and as she rushed out she seemed to take the last of the room's energy with her. Philippe eventually sighed, set the last photo down, and gave an elaborate shrug.
"So," I said, struggling for patience, "this was perhaps yours?"
"Perhaps." His voice was barely audible over the music.
"I'm not with the authorities," I said, thinking of the man in the black raincoat. "I don't care whether you pay your taxes or how you do your accounts. I just want to know where this came from. I'm a dealer, like you, and it would help me very much to have the provenance. Is that the right word? Provenance?"
He nodded slowly. "Many things come and go from here. It is difficult to keep track of all of them."
"But this is very unusual, non? I think you have not had many like it."
He shrugged again. It felt like we'd come to a stalemate, and I looked around his stall for a couple of minutes, trying on a pair of sunglasses, paging through the postcards, trying to think of a way to reach him.
"You like Jacques Brel, yes?" I pointed to the record player.
"Of course. You know of him?"
"A little. I like that he quit performing when he got tired of it. And that he didn't want to play in the US because of Vietnam."
"You are American, or English?"
The implied compliment was that I hadn't immediately given myself away. "American," I said, "but not proud of it these days."
He nodded. "You have another Vietnam now, I think." He pointed to the record player. "You know this record?"
I'd recognized the voice, but nothing more, and risked the truth. "No," I said.
"You wouldn't. It was his first, only out in France."
"Do you have the radio broadcasts from 1953?"
"I have them. They are interesting, but they are on CD. The CDs are too cold, I think."
I myself didn't understand why having pops and hiss made a recording more desirable, but I also understood that plenty of others disagreed. "They are also on LP, a--what's the word?--'bootleg' in English."
"We say 'bootleg' too. You have this record? I have never heard of it."
"I have a friend who does. If you give me your address, it would be my pleasure to send it to you."
"Why?" The question wasn't hostile, but the skepticism surprised me. "Is it because of this information you want?"
"Because it would mean more to you than it does to the person who has it. And this person owes me a favor. It is a small thing."
He was quiet for a moment and then he pointed to the record player and said, "Listen." On the record Brel was suddenly angry, spitting words in a theatrical fury. It didn't touch me, particularly, but I could see Philippe was moved.
When the song was over, he said, "I have been listening to this record for more than 35 years now. It is still incredible to me to hear a man be so...plain and direct with his emotions."
"Yes," I said. "I know exactly what you mean."
He took a yellow wooden pencil from a can on his desk, looked it over, then used a thumb-sized sharpener to put an exact point on it. On a blank index card from a wooden box, he wrote his name and address in an ornate longhand, then tapped the card on its edge as if to get rid