The Oracle Glass Part 41

I shivered as I sat huddled alone in one of the light carriages from the remise of the Hotel Bouillon. He had left me in the rue du Sablon, a street away from the entrance of the Hotel Dieu. It wasn't that cold outside, though it was not warm. The autumn winds had blown away the dank gray clouds to show patches of blue mingled with the rosy pink of the dying day above the pointed slate roofs. The sort of day Marie-Angelique had liked. She always said weather that made your cheeks look pink could not be spoken ill of. Ahead of us on the rue du Sablon, the horses of the hired hea.r.s.e waited listlessly, while the driver dozed, his reins knotted to the box.

"Don't fret indoors in weather like this, Sister! Winter will be here soon enough." I could hear her voice in my ears as if she sat next to me. "Why, we'll go take the air at the Palais-Royal gardens, and you'll shake off that bad mood. Besides, we might very well see someone interesting..." Marie-Angelique, we'll take the air one last time, and I'll see you home.

Around the corner, the figure in black had emerged from the hospital. Even though his head was bowed, he had not forgotten the stolid walk of the bourgeois. He walked slowly, so slowly past the carriage where I waited to the waiting hea.r.s.e. I could see him talking at length with the driver, who gesticulated wildly. He pressed money into the man's hand. Then the driver cracked the whip and the hea.r.s.e departed down the rue du Sablon.

"What has happened? Why didn't he go in by the carriage gate?"

Lamotte seated himself wordlessly in the seat opposite me and didn't answer my question. "Don't ask," he said at last. His face was like iron.

"But you did pay the attendant, didn't you? What's gone wrong? Why couldn't you get her right away?" Lamotte gave orders to the coachman. He closed his eyes and remained silent for a long time before he spoke again.

"Someone sent word to your brother," he said, and the words came out like heavy stones. "Luckily, my wits were about me, and I said I was a cousin on your mother's side."

"But...what?"

"Your brother told them they had made a mistake. He had once had a sister of that name, but she had died years ago."

"No less than I expected." Who had gone to him? The police. It must have been. Only they could be that swift. But Lamotte had put his hands over his face and begun to sob. I grabbed his arm and tried to shake him.

"You must tell me what happened," I whispered fiercely.

"The body of a criminal..." I heard him say. I shook him again. "Don't ask me. Don't ask me to say," he mumbled.

"But I must know-I can't go on without knowing," I cried. He picked his head up and looked at me with his eyes all red.

"The anatomy theatre at the College Saint-Come. They found the idea of a septic abortion...interesting. My G.o.d. Interesting. And I still see her looking down from the window-her beautiful blue eyes. Laughing. Do you understand now? There's nothing left of her-nothing. Cut up, dispersed, for the advancement of the study of the science of anatomy. I grabbed the ward surgeon by the throat. 'She's not a machine! She had a soul! You can't do this!' 'I'm sorry, Monsieur, what's done is done,' he said, and pulled himself away as if I were a madman. I'm afraid I made a fool of myself. I had...I had conceived a fantasy of kissing her once in farewell-just once. The only time. To bid my youth adieu, you see. Was that too much to ask? Only once, not much. But this is the modern era. There is no place anymore for gestures-romantic gestures-foolish, hopeless gestures. The men with the knives, the scientists, they got there first." My beautiful sister, butchered like a pig. No tomb, no place for me to weep. I felt as if my bones had cracked open and the marrow run out.

Lamotte was still incoherent when they opened the great carriage gates of the Hotel Bouillon. Hearing the shouting and rattling, he pulled himself together, wiped his face, and smoothed his once-jaunty mustachios with his fingers. "And tonight I dine with the swine, face in the trough, no better than the rest." His voice was quiet, his eyes bitter.

"Are you all right, Monsieur de la Motte?"

"Not now, not ever," he said, as the carriage left us at the foot of the broad staircase that rose from the cour d'honneur. He looked up to the carved bal.u.s.trades and gilded doors above as if surveying the gate to Gehenna. "Come with me a moment, Mademoiselle Pasquier. Talk to me about her. I...I feel as if I cannot breathe." His face was so devastated, I could not refuse. He led me through the long corridors and open state apartments to his own tiny set of rooms in the back of the great house. Entering by the main way and winding through to the back as we did, it became clear how many retainers, pet writers and artists, orphans, distant cousins, and hangers-on were housed in the vast mansion. A mini-society, with its own levels, its own court, a tiny imitation of the great one at Versailles. A life of flattery, back stabbing, and climbing, and they counted themselves fortunate. Better to be a society sorceress, I thought. One enters and leaves by the front door as one chooses.

Pa.s.sing through his reception room, he took me into a low, gilt-paneled room, lined with books. A writing desk and two comfortable armchairs were crowded amid the clutter of ma.n.u.scripts and theatrical souvenirs. His dressing gown, abandoned so hastily, was flung untidily across a narrow, cluttered, brocade-hung bed stuffed into an alcove.

"My hiding place," he said, with a gesture about the stuffy little chamber. "Even she must leave her beast his den." He rummaged in a little cupboard and brought out a decanter and two gla.s.ses.

"I have not a soul but you to tell about her," I said, taking the gla.s.s. "Who else could understand her goodness, her sweetness? Her beauty was her curse." The brandy was strong and made me cough. He refilled my gla.s.s, and his own as well.

"Not her beauty, no. Her family. Your brother, if you will pardon me, Mademoiselle, is an unnatural monster with a stone for a heart." He looked into his gla.s.s, as if he could see images in the bottom of it. "There are many such, nowadays. If I had the pen of Moliere, I could make him comic. That is the role of art, is it not? To make monsters comic, so we can bear them, and our own cheap griefs into grand tragedy, so that others will weep with us." He swirled the remaining liquid in the gla.s.s and then, as he took up the decanter, again, stared long into my face. Then he looked away at the tiny window, as if he were seeing into another time, and his voice was low. "Two sisters, like white roses, blooming in a dark, unnatural place. I can still see your faces peeping from the window, pulling the curtain back, just so. I always imagined her high in the tower, reading romances, waiting for her prince." He sipped again from his gla.s.s and poured more for me, too. "Mademoiselle Pasquier," he said in a low voice, "I dreamed of being that prince, even though I was only the son of an upholsterer."

The strong brandy made my broken bones melt into his soft armchair. At last, I could feel the tears running down my face. He handed me his handkerchief and poured himself another drink.

"I wrote her...my dreams. Poetry. I schemed, I plotted, I wrote all night by the light of my only candle, to make myself great enough to be received in her home...your home..." Lamotte had poured himself several more drinks. He sat on the bed, amidst the rubble of discarded shirts, open books, and rumpled nightclothes, bent almost double, his head buried in his hands, speaking between sobs. "I was different then. I could have been anything for her, anything. And now...she hasn't even a tomb." He looked up at me, his face tear-stained. "Tell me, did she read my letters?"

What could I say? Andre, my sister was trained from birth to want more than you could offer? It was I who saved your notes from the fire? I would have given everything I had if one line of that poetry had been written for me. Which of us, Andre, was the greater fool? But crushed by his grief, and mine, I lied.

"She always kept them in her bosom, so she could read them over often."

"I knew it. The cynic was wrong. 'The heart of a lover has eyes to see the truth,' I told him, and he laughed. He told me I was a fool for not seeing reason, and I hated him for it. 'If I were choosing,' he said, 'I'd take the younger sister. She has the better mind and the faithful heart.' But he was wrong, and now I can forgive him utterly. He poisons his world with reason and has suffered terribly for it. I cannot resent him anymore."

The cynic. He could only mean d'Urbec. Why did the thought of him bring with it a pang of guilty sadness, even here, when my heart was drunk with loss, with brandy, with the intimacy of hearing Lamotte's secrets? And yet even deeper in me was the long-suppressed voice of desire. Like a demon emerging from a subterranean cavern, it was battering its way out from some hidden place within, shaming me even as it made my mind crafty. I want him, it said. Not now, not at a time like this, I said to it. Betray her, it said. She's dead anyway. Get away from me, you disgusting thing, I answered it. I got up to pour myself more from the decanter on the little table. I could barely stand.

"Console me, Genevieve. I am as cold as if I were already in the tomb with her." Lamotte shivered violently as he reached up and grabbed my free hand, causing me to lose my balance and sending the gla.s.s crashing to the floor. He caught me as I fell toward him on the bed and set me on his lap, his arms around me. I put my head on his shoulder. I could feel him stroking my hair, as if consoling a child. His tears were damp on the back of my neck.

"Console me," he said. "Console me." His hand had moved down the front of my neck to my bosom. It felt warm, human.

"Not that way," I said in a faint voice, still battling the demon. Now his face was at my bosom; his rough cheek against the tender skin made me weak. The beautiful cavalier of the window. Mine. At the most terrible price in the world. I shivered.

"Feel my tears," he said, as the warm damp spread across my bosom. Some tiny something in the tone of his voice seemed to hint of the professional persuader. He's using you, I thought. But the demon said, have him. When else will you have a man like this?

"I...I can't do this. For G.o.d's sake, stop. I can't bear getting pregnant. Not when I've seen-"

"So smooth, so white. Like cream." His hand had worked its way beneath my skirt. "Warm. Human. Alive."

"No," I said, but my leaping heart battered at my ribs. The demon, triumphant, flew free. My body shuddered with pa.s.sion as his hand reached its goal.

"Beautiful," he mumbled as he laid me backward, and I felt his weight on me. "Don't fear anything...in all this time...since I lost her...I've learned a thousand tricks...to please the ladies. They run no risks with me. You needn't fear...anything..." The pins of my bodice had been scattered to the floor. My skirts and petticoats lay crumpled about me like a bank of multicolored flowers. The fear dissolved in the heat of new joy. But even though his hands and lips roved everywhere, his eyes remained closed. And I knew, even as he entered the last stronghold, that he was trying to rea.s.semble Marie-Angelique with his hands, his mind, his pa.s.sion. His face, damp with tears and sunken with grief, was still beautiful.

"Andre," I whispered as the frenzy overtook us both.

"Angelique!" he cried, as he withdrew and the wasted seed stained the bedclothes. He had been as good as his word. He would not leave me pregnant. But it was my sister that he had possessed, not me. Even so, as I looked at his face, all relaxed and full of grat.i.tude as he began to sink into sleep, I felt no regret at all, not a bit. The afterglow of warmth still coursed up and down my body. Uncle, I thought, you were wrong. The most beautiful man that ever haunted my dreams has wept with me, has begged for me, has fulfilled me, and is grateful to me. I was happy at that moment, terribly happy. Burn in h.e.l.l, Uncle, my mind whispered softly. At this moment, Andre Lamotte is mine. No other moment matters. I don't care.

"Andre, Andre," I whispered. "Don't sleep. Your entertainment. The d.u.c.h.esse. You must be up." I shook him by the shoulder. His eyes flickered open.

"Oh, it's you. Genevieve." A long look pa.s.sed between us. Both of us knew everything. "I am grateful. What can I do for you now? What can I give you, poor as I am, to repay you for saving what is left of me?"

"You can help me brush off this dress and put it on and summon a chair to take me home. Then you must be a monument of wit at your supper party tonight."

"Oh, my G.o.d, the entertainment! The d.u.c.h.esse!" he cried, as if the whole situation had suddenly sunk into his mind at last. I smoothed out Sylvie's bright Sunday petticoats.

"Surely, even she doesn't begrudge you a tumble with the servants on your day off. I'll go out by the back way, and no one will suspect that anything more than that has happened." He looked horrified.

"You...you think of everything. So self-possessed...it's unnatural. It reminds me of the way that blasted d'Urbec calculates. Always rational." Again, d'Urbec. Why did my insides twist so?

"Andre, I know it was Marie-Angelique you wanted. I lay no claims on you; I'll not embarra.s.s you. Just remain my friend. That's all I ask." He looked at me, stricken. In that moment, his face looked old. There were circles under his eyes. The gay mustachios were limp. He sagged with the weight of good living that had enc.u.mbered him. The ponderous middle age of the idle was not far off.

"You have the honor and heart of a man," he said. "In a world of false, envious, malicious women and treacherous, smiling courtiers, I will treasure your friendship. D'Urbec was a wiser man than I. I go to dance attendance on a selfish rich woman...and you, I hope you find a man worthy of your heart, Genevieve."

Only a poet would wish such a silly thing, I thought as the bearers set me down before my own front door. Still, the moment of sentiment pleased me. And I had kept his handkerchief.

A morbid sadness clung about me like mist all that long autumn. Wherever I turned, I saw Marie-Angelique's face. I fled from the shops and fairs; the spending of money lost its pleasure. I'd see a display of lace, a silver brooch, a sumptuous length of brocade, and I'd think, before I could stop myself: My, wouldn't Marie-Angelique like that-I must tell her about it. Her ghost seemed to haunt the galerie of the Palais, the walkways of the gardens. I could see us again, two girls in springtime, pretending to admire the roses but admiring the elegant strollers more. "Look, Sister, do see that lovely bonnet; when I'm rich, I'll have one just like it. Oh! Do you suppose that dashing young officer with the crimson cloak is staring at me?" "When I'm rich, I'll have one just like him," I'd conclude her sentence in my sour little voice. "Oh, Genevieve," she'd say with a laugh, "you are so droll! Let's have one each!" And I could hear the echo of her laughter as I stumped along the rain-washed paths, searching among the dead leaves and empty pavilions as if I could find her hiding somewhere there.

I took to sleeping past noon; my servants turned away clients whispering that Madame was very ill. In the afternoons, I wandered aimlessly in the gardens of the Tuileries or the Palais-Royal. When I'd tired of walking, I took the carriage and drove mindlessly about the city or took the road to Versailles, only to return without accomplishing any business. Even the bird, my one consolation, moped on his perch on the tall stand that stood by the table in my upper room, his feathers puffed up, saying nothing and refusing bread crusts from my hand. Once, heavily veiled, I hired porters to carry me through my old neighborhood. We went the length of the rue des Marmousets, but I made them stop at so many places that they thought me mad, and I had to double their tip. Our house still looked the same, tall and dark, the little gargoyles crouched on either side of the ancient Gothic portals. I saw my brother at a distance, walking from the house toward the Palais de Justice with a portfolio under his arm. The porters set down the chair at the very place where Lamotte and his two friends had stood, and I looked up half expecting to see the heavy curtains part and our two white faces peep from the corner of the dark window.

"Go by the Three Funnels, then double back past the Pomme de Pin," I said, "but don't stop there; I just want to see the open door." The door where I had first seen them, the three friends, young, full of hope, and laughing. One of the porters gestured toward his temple with a forefinger before picking up the shafts.