Every morning the pavement in front of our shop in the Palais Royal is washed clean by the tears of the mothers of dead soldiers, widowed wives, and heartsick lovers. Look to the right and left. There is grit and grime in front of Giselles Glove Emporium and the family Thibaut's umbrella store, but at La Fantaisie Russe, the walkway is sparkling like newly polished stones. Here inside the mythic Palais Royal arcade, the stores are not as busy as they were before the war, except for ours. In fact, it's the war that's responsible for our steady stream of clients. There is nothing to identify what we offer in advertisements. Visitez le Palais Royal, invites the dark-haired seductress in the prewar poster painted by a friend of my mother's, who signs his work simply PAL. The posters, first printed more than a dozen years ago, have been reprinted often, and you can see them, a bit worn and faded, plastered onto kiosks on rue de Rivoli. Unlike the women who come to see me, the lady in the poster is untouched by war. Swathed in pearls around her neck and wrists and crowned with an elaborate bejeweled headdress, she smiles at potential shoppers. Her low-cut, jewel-studded teal gown shows off her creamy skin and ample breasts.
Her delicate fingers, decorated with the loveliest diamond rings, beckon and point to the arcade, showing clients the way.
Walk in through the main entrance, a stone archway stained with centuries of soot, down the pathway, past the fountain, through the Palais's gardens, halfway to the end . . . but wait . . . Before you turn right toward the shops, stop and admire the magic of the garden first planted over two hundred years ago.
Some of the most glorious roses in all of Paris grow here, and even now, in the midst of all our strife and sadness, the air is fragrant with their perfume. The flowers don't care that their blood-red petals and razor-sharp thorns remind mothers and wives of loved ones' lives cut short, stolen by the war. The bees don't either. On some afternoons, their buzzing is the loudest noise you hear. On others, just an accompaniment to the drone of the air-raid sirens that frighten us all and send us running for shelter.
In PAL's advertisement, in the bottom left corner, is a list of the shops in this oasis hidden away from the bustle of Paris.
Under Maisons Notables & Recommandées, jewelers are the first category: Our store is listed at the top. After all, Pavel Orloff trained with the famous Fabergé, who is a legend even here in the land of Cartier, Fouquet, Boucheron, and Van Cleef and Arpels.
La Fantaisie Russe is tucked in at number 130. There are a total of six jewelry stores in the arcades beneath what were once royal apartments built in the mid-1600s by Cardinal Richelieu so he could be close to the king. In the late 1700s, Philippe Égalité's theater was built and elite stores moved into the arcades facing the glorious inner courtyard.
Royalty no longer resides here. Rather, the bourgeoisie inhabit the apartments, including the well-to-do shopkeepers who live above their stores, famous writers and poets, established actors, dancers, directors, and choreographers. The theater in the east wing of the complex draws the creative here despite the darkness inhabiting this ancient square. For the Palais is not without its tragedy.