Six
The landlord waited several days, giving him time to grieve—but Nemo knew the squint-eyed man would soon come to insist on payment.
All morning long Nemo ransacked the two rooms his father had rented, gathering scrimshaw combs and snuffboxes, colorful seashells, and exotic trinkets Jacques Nemo had collected as a sailor. Unfortunately, with the death of his wife and the raising of his son, Jacques had already sold the most valuable items, keeping only sentimental ones.
Dry-eyed but sick at heart, Nemo stared at the worn deck of playing cards he and his father had used on long candlelit evenings. On a shelf sat a wooden ship model the two of them had made together. Building the model had taught him the basic structure of the vessels tied to the docks of Ile Feydeau. But the model was worthless, other than the memories it held.
On the day after the Cynthia disaster, Nemo had awakened at dawn to find a small basket wedged against his doorstep, a package that contained hard bread, cheese, boiled eggs, and flowers. Even without smelling the faint trace of her perfume, he knew that Caroline Aronnax had stolen these items from her family’s kitchen and sent her maidservant Marie out through the midnight streets to deliver it, unseen.
“I will talk to my father, André,” she had written in a note tucked into the basket. “Perhaps I can help.”
Nemo felt a lump in his throat. She had kept secret her friendship with the streetwise young man, much as she had hidden her own musical compositions. Nemo could not ask Monsieur Aronnax for work in his shipping offices, or even at one of the local docks, unloading and inventorying cargoes arrived from far-off lands. He had to find some other way to pay his living expenses.
Breathing hard with resentment, he used a rock and a long chisel to smash away the padlock that secured his father’s sea trunk. He didn’t know where the key might be, since he hadn’t seen his father open the chest in years.
Nemo rummaged through the documents and keepsakes, found an old engraving of his mysterious, dusky-skinned mother. The chest also contained dried flowers, a book written in a language he couldn’t read, a set of cups, a dusty bottle of wine that Jacques must have kept for some anticipated celebration he would now never witness. Perhaps his son’s marriage? Nemo couldn’t venture a guess. And hidden behind the false back of one divider in the trunk, he discovered a handful of coins.
The next day, by selling some of the trinkets to a vendor of eccentric items, Nemo scraped together enough money to have a funeral Mass read for his father at the Church of St. Martin, along with those of the others who had lost their lives aboard the Cynthia. Hearing the priest speak Jacques’s name aloud, though, Nemo felt no particular honor, no special consolation.
Neither he nor his father were devout Catholics, but sometimes, when a teary-eyed Jacques had had too much wine or just seemed sad with life, he would recall the promise he’d made to Nemo’s mother on her deathbed, that he would give her boy a proper upbringing.…
Alone in the empty room, Nemo slept on a straw-stuffed tick that served as a mattress. He continued, one day at a time, not looking beyond the following morning … until he realized he had to plan for his future. Nemo always had plans, but they were too many and too unrealistic. Now he didn’t know what he would do.
Four days after the disaster, the squint-eyed landlord and a pair of burly companions burst through the door without knocking. Nemo sat at the rickety table on which he ate and where he had learned his letters and arithmetic. The two hirelings stood together, a barricade of muscle and flesh.
The landlord stepped forward, a small-statured man with one eye larger than the other. His seamed face displayed a heartfelt sorrow, belied by his stern voice. “You’ll have to move out, boy. Got no choice. Sorry.” The landlord frowned at the two toughs, as if dismayed by the necessity of bringing them along. “And I’ll take any possessions as part of the payment for which your father was in arrears.”
Nemo, though, would not be bluffed. “How could my father be in arrears? You’re lying.” He stood up from the table, arms loose at his sides, ready to throw himself on the thugs if they harassed him. “He had a job. He paid you every month.”
“No, he promised to pay me every month. He was two months behind.” The landlord’s drooping eye squinted, and he shook his head sadly. “I gave him credit because I knew he’d get a bonus when the Cynthia was christened.”
“And dead men don’t get paid,” one of the hirelings said.
The landlord nodded. “Even as his son, you have no claim on his back wages. Sorry, boy.”
“I’ll find some way to pay you.” Nemo gripped the side of the chair with a white-knuckled hand. He felt hot, angry at this second wild joke Fate had played upon him. “Let me stay here until I can come up with a job, a plan.”
“A job?” One of the henchmen laughed.
Nemo bristled. “Never underestimate me.” His voice carried such a low threat that the thug flinched.
The landlord tugged at his waistcoat to straighten it, uncomfortable. “Be realistic, boy. Are you going to work fifteen hours a day in one of the garment factories? That’ll only bring you thirty sous a week. You’ll never have enough to pay me what your father owed. I’ve already done the arithmetic.”
Nemo took deep, heavy breaths, trying to calm the rising anger in his gut. “Then I’ll sell some of my father’s artifacts.” This brought another round of laughter from the henchmen.
“He’ll rob the citizens of Nantes, more like,” one of the big men said.
“I’ll not have a thief in my house,” the landlord said with increasing sternness. His smaller eye twitched with a nervous tic.
“I am not a thief.” Nemo’s dark eyes flashed, and he stepped forward. Though he was much younger than the other man, his look of furious determination drove the landlord back a pace. The two muscular men closed in, ready to pound him—but Nemo looked as if he just might best both of them, then go after the landlord. He would be in jail before the day was done.
“It’s only a matter of time, boy. You’ve no prospects, and there are good families in need of a dwelling like this,” the landlord said from behind the broad shoulders of his two companions. “If you’re not gone tomorrow, I’ll have my friends carry you into the streets.”
“They can try,” Nemo said in low fury.
The landlord squinted once more. The men looked as if they wanted to break something, but the landlord marched them out. In an unexpected show of courtesy, the small-statured man closed the door behind himself.
Some time later, Nemo went to the doorway. He looked between buildings down toward the river and the shipyards where the masts stood tall. He could hear the sounds of workers on the docks as vessels prepared to set sail with the outgoing tide. He recalled the tales his father had told of his days at sea.