Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  DURING THAT NIGHT, or, more precisely, from about 2:00 A.M. until after six, Jean-Pierre II had managed, despite his palsied hands and his weak legs and the difficulties he must have confronted, wandering in the starless dark, in an unfamiliar corner of the estate, to slash the throats not only of Sam and his lieutenants, and the dozen or so men who most vehemently supported him, but some eight other people, seven men and one woman. (It was generally thought, afterward, that he had slashed the woman’s throat in error, having mistaken her—she was hefty, a light down grew on her face—for a man.)

  In a faint feeble voice that trailed off Jean-Pierre said only that the workers were evil . . . they weren’t penitent . . . they had to be dealt with immediately . . . they had to be prevented from further insulting their betters.

  He had surrendered the hog-butchering knife at once to grandfather Noel, amiably. It was a wicked long instrument with a slight curve, and it seemed to have been recently sharpened. But it was, of course, badly stained and scarified, from all the use to which the old gentleman had put it. Noel took it soberly, a handkerchief protecting his hand.

  “We must, I suppose,” he said, licking his lips, “wake Ewan.”

  So one of them—it was Jasper, barefoot, bare-chested, wearing only white summer trousers—ran upstairs to Ewan’s apartment. And rapped loudly on the door. (For, since Ewan did not arrive at his office in the Falls until 10:00 A.M., he generally slept until eight, and did not like his sleep disturbed.)

  When Jasper told Ewan what had happened, and that they had calculated, from the old man’s incoherent murmurings, that anywhere from five or six to twenty or more people had been murdered, Ewan’s great shaggy head shot forward from his shoulders, and his sleep groggy eyes, threaded with blood, opened and narrowed and opened again in a matter of seconds.

  He asked Jasper to repeat what he’d said. How many . . . ?

  Then he said, his chest heaving with a sigh, “I thought that’s what you said, my boy.”

  It was as Nightshade had said: Jean-Pierre II had made his move.

  BOOK FIVE

  Revenge

  The Clavichord

  Contrary to rumor, and to her husband’s embittered and reiterated conviction, it was not the Hayes Whittier episode that plunged Violet Bellefleur into a dreamy melancholy that ended with her taking her own life (for so the expression went: one “took” one’s own life, as if one were “taking” another person’s fur muff or an undeserved extra slice of fruitcake) one chilly September night; it was not even the neurasthenia brought on, or exacerbated, by her numerous pregnancies and miscarriages. Nor was it the unfortunate woman’s perversity. (“Perversity” being her husband’s term. Raphael came to employ it more and more frequently as the years passed, for it helped to explain, and to condemn, his sister Fredericka’s passion for an imbecilic Protestant sect; his brother Arthur’s inexplicable willingness to die—as indeed he did, at Charlestown, while attempting to kidnap John Brown’s corpse so that it might be spirited away to the North where partisans planned on reviving it with a galvanic battery; the behavior of his sons Samuel and Rodman; the political climate of the era; and the oscillations of the world market for hops, which, when it favored him, was “healthy,” and when it failed to favor him was “perverse.”)

  Nor was it love. Not love in any commonplace sense. For love between a man and a woman not related by blood would necessarily have to be erotic; and there was no provision, in Violet’s world, for erotic love outside marriage. And she was of course married. She was extremely married. She would not have thought, as a young girl in her parents’ home in Warwick, that one could be so extremely married.

  Tamás too was married—or had been. Though he looked so young, and had so naïve, so uninstructed a manner. They said his wife had run away from him after their ship from Liverpool landed in New York (they had come to Liverpool from London, to London from Paris, to Paris from Budapest, where they had both been born); then again they said his wife had refused to sail with him, and had stayed behind. In one version overheard by Violet (who never, really never, eavesdropped on anyone, let alone her domestic help) the young woman had betrayed him with other men because she was ashamed of his “stammer.” In another version, no less plausible, his “stammer” had been caused by her betrayal. Violet noted, without caring to interpret the fact, that in her presence Tamás’s difficulties with speech were such that he appeared to be on the verge of strangulation, and went an alarming beet-red; so it was no wonder that he soon ceased to speak at all, and, if it was necessary to communicate with her about the clavichord he had been hired to build, he left notes, or inquiries with the servants. He never had the opportunity to speak with Raphael, nor did he see him more than two or three times, always at a distance, for of course Raphael had not directly hired him. It is probable to assume that the shy young man with his prominent Adam’s apple and his tight-fitting clothes and, of course, the embarrassing stammer (though Violet’s personal physician, Dr. Sheeler, believed it was a speech impediment) would have been terrified of the master of Bellefleur Manor. That he, Tamás, presumed to entertain certain feelings—certain unmistakable feelings—for the master’s young wife: that he dared simply to think of her as he worked lovingly on the clavichord: all this would have been as outrageous to Tamás as to Raphael Bellefleur himself.

  It was by way of Truman Geddes, the Republican congressman, and the man who shot, in Raphael’s company and on Raphael’s land, the last moose in the Chautauquas (in 1860—though of course no one knew at the time that was to be the last moose, or even one of the last), that Tamás came to Bellefleur Manor to build the clavichord for Violet. She had expressed, half-seriously, a desire for a musical instrument that might be “easy” to play. So Truman turned to Raphael and said that his wife and girls were enjoying themselves immensely pounding away at a curious tinkling instrument that was hardly more than a keyboard and strings, called, he thought, a clavichord. It was a pretty little thing, a work of art, built for them by a Hungarian boy who was in the hire of a Nautauga Falls cabinetmaker. Truman said he wouldn’t dare sit down at the instrument, himself, because it was too delicate: it was a woman’s thing. And, for all its beauty, it hadn’t cost overmuch.

  So Tamás was brought to Bellefleur Manor, to build a clavichord for Violet, and to add drawers, shelves, and cabinets here and there in the castle, in rooms Raphael considered still incomplete. When he first saw Violet Bellefleur he thought she was one of the household staff—if not a maid, perhaps a governess—for the young woman wore a plain gray shirtwaist with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a long skirt, and a pocketwatch on a chain about her neck, and her manner seemed shy, even childlike. She was slight; her face was almost too narrow, especially about the chin, to be considered pretty; her eyes were intense, and frequently showed a thin crescent of white above the iris. That she was indefinably, perhaps hopelessly, ill seemed somehow obvious, though in Tamás’s presence (indeed, in the presence of any of the servants) she carried herself with a beautiful precision, and her voice, though low, never shook. It was rare to see her with her children, though they were grown and could not have taxed her strength. After Tamás learned that the mistress of Bellefleur Manor was a deeply spiritual person he believed he could see, in her face, perhaps even radiating about her hair (which was a quite ordinary brown, though fine and lustrous, worn in a fashionable French twist in which pearls, amber beads, and occasionally even lilies of the valley were twined) an aura of grace, of otherworldliness, quite unlike anything he had ever seen before, except in paintings by Botticelli or certain anonymous German artists of the medieval period.

  “The mistress is always sickly,” the housekeeper told him, with a droll smile, “and we know what that means.”

  “What—what does it mean?” Tamás asked.

  “Oh, well, we know.”

  “Yes, but what?”

  “Ladies who are always complaining of headaches and breathlessness—who wish to be allowed their private beds—
”

  Tamás turned abruptly away. And said, after a moment, in a voice so strengthened by anger that his stutter had virtually disappeared, “I refuse to listen to backstairs gossip.”

  And the housekeeper, of course, had been properly silenced.

  IT WAS NOT to be a very defined love story, perhaps not a love story at all.

  For love was not an issue. Between Violet and the young Hungarian love was not an issue since it was not a thought; it wasn’t a thought since it had not been expressed as a word.

  Violet must surely have sensed, in the young man’s presence (she often visited his workshop at the rear of the coachman’s lodge) that something—something was amiss. Something was unbalanced, and highly exciting. That he rarely spoke to her made the situation all the more peculiar. Of course he was polite, as courteous as anyone of her own social class, though he avoided her eye, and in showing her the plans he had drawn up for the instrument he stood well away from her, some four or five feet. It was as if something might suddenly happen: a strong breeze was about to fling a glass door inward, and smash it; a spider or a roach (for, unfortunately, even magnificent Bellefleur Manor had roaches) was about to declare itself, scuttling across an antique tapestry. Violet must surely have sensed Tamás’s agitation but she gave no sign, visiting him in her plain shirtwaist dresses, bringing with her a scent of lily of the valley. She enjoyed watching his skillful hands (which were not slender, as she had imagined—had she been dreaming of them?—but strong, a peasant’s hands, with square-tipped fingers and short blunt nails); she observed the instrument’s slow construction with a strange subdued pleasure. Of course there were other musical instruments in the castle, many others, including a handsome grand piano, at which she might play the half-dozen salon pieces she knew; but the clavichord was to be hers. Tamás had asked her to choose the kinds of wood she wanted (cherrywood primarily, and birch for the inside; and the graceful curved legs of the instrument and its matching bench were to be covered in strips of veneered oak) and he had expressed, in his difficult way, great pleasure at her preference for a keyboard made of walnut rather than ivory. It would be most unusual, most unique. And would she like ivory, gold, and jet ornamentation . . . ? It seemed to please him immensely, and to excite him, when she told him he must do as he wished—that she knew very little, and wanted only what he wanted.

  She came to his workshop, silhouetted in the sun-filled doorway, her slender figure outlined, her hair shining. Because Tamás was so silent, Violet, despite her customary reserve, felt inclined to chatter. She spoke to him about her love for small, meticulously crafted things made by artists like himself—European-born—with a respect for beauty—and knowledge of the sanctity of beauty. She spoke to him, not minding that he answered her only in inarticulate grunts, of her girlhood in the country—her father’s modest estate—the music lessons she and her sisters had been given, despite the expense—her amateur’s enthusiasm for Scarlatti, Bach, Couperin, Mozart, the nocturnes of John Field, and the “easier” pieces of Chopin. It was a pity, she said, that he had never taken music lessons himself, for obviously he had such a love, such a feeling, for the instrument he was building. . . . How fragile it appeared, how delicate, and yet she knew it would be extraordinarily strong for its size. A beautiful thing. A miracle, really, that anyone could create it with his hands: mere human hands!

  Stooped over his workbench the young Hungarian paused, not quite looking at Violet, and murmured something that sounded like an assent. His thin lips stretched in a shy, unsmiling grimace, but he was obviously deeply moved.

  So the days passed, and the weeks. And one day Violet suggested that the clavichord—which was now nearly completed—be moved to her drawing room, and that Tamás continue his work there, so that he could best judge the instrument’s tone and strength in the place in which it would be played. She was so very eager, she said, to see it there. . . .

  Tamás straightened, as if in alarm. Though his narrow, lately rather pale face showed nothing. He nodded, after a moment; of course he would oblige; this request too must have pleased him, for a slow deep blush spread from his face down to his neck. A tiny screwdriver slipped from his hands and fell in the pile of wood shavings at his feet.

  NOW THE CLAVICHORD was nearly finished, placed in the shallow bay window overlooking the walled garden where, illumined by sunlight passing through antique glass with its subtle distortions and near-microscopic bubbles, it took on an unearthly, almost a ferocious beauty. How the cherrywood gleamed! And the walnut keys! And the gold and jet! Tamás accepted the many compliments uttered in his presence with a wordless, chastely polite bow of his head; if it was sometimes suggested, by the insensitive housekeeper, or one or another of the domestic staff, that he was certainly taking a long time with that dainty little thing, he turned away, and made no reply. Indeed, he had all but given up speech in recent weeks. And despite the skill of his hands, and his ability to work tirelessly for long hours (for as many, at times, as twelve, without a break), he was obviously not altogether well. His skin had grown translucent, and appeared to glow, as if with heat; he had lost a shocking amount of weight, so that his clothes hung loose on his tall, stooped frame; when he was not actually working on the clavichord his hands were observed to tremble. The kitchen staff joked that he hadn’t any appetite and they thought they knew exactly why.

  He arose at dawn, and went immediately to the drawing room, where, in the light that flooded from the southeast, the clavichord gleamed with its extraordinary beauty. It stood no more than three and a half feet high, and the bench would necessarily be a low one, and as delicately beautiful as he could make it, set upon graceful curved legs that were to give the impression of being covered, but very subtly, in grapevines, all of veneered oak. A prodigious amount of work. . . . And it had struck him the other day, covertly noting his mistress’s small hands, and estimating that she probably had a reach of no more than a seventh, that the entire keyboard would have to be done over: each key would have to be reduced in size, and beveled, so that she might have (he grew suddenly ambitious, even bold) a reach of a tenth. Weeks of meticulous toil, yet necessary.

  When he conveyed this message to Violet, by way of a carefully-composed letter, she surprised him by glancing up, at him, in alarm. And saying, very nearly in a stammer of her own: “But—but—but I thought, Tamás, that my clavichord was nearly finished—I had thought it might be completed this very week—”

  He shook his head impatiently, blushing.

  She stared at him. For a moment she could not think what to say: the young Hungarian, who was always so docile, so amiable, stooped over his work with such concentration that one realized it was an unearthly, a sacred task, now looked defiantly angry. His Adam’s apple jerked, he swallowed and licked his dry lips, his high pale forehead gleamed with perspiration. He shook his head. No, no, no. No. No.

  “But I—I’m only an amateur musician—I play for my own pleasure,” Violet said, clasping her hands before her as if imploring him, “and of course I haven’t any genuine talent—only a love for—for the sound—for the activity—for the purity of—of— If I can’t reach a note I simply skip it or jump to it, you know, and it really doesn’t make any difference—really it doesn’t— Why, I hardly intend to play for anyone other than myself. Not even close friends, or—”

  Tamás began to speak, but his words were strangled, and his eyes protruded alarmingly out of their dark shadowed sockets; so he merely shook his head again, stern as a schoolmaster whose pupils have disobeyed.

  “But Tamás, the clavichord is so beautiful—I’m so eager to play it—And how will I explain to my husband, who thinks it’s nearly—”

  Tamás withdrew the letter from her trembling fingers, and wrote in a stiff, unusually large hand: MUST BE PERFECT. NO COMPROMISE. OTHERWISE—SMASHED WITH THE AX!!!

  So Violet acquiesced, and did not tell Raphael. And the labor of creating the new keyboard was begun.

  THE WEEKS PASSED. The new,
small keyboard appeared, and was as beautiful, perhaps more beautiful, than the other; and after each of the keys was set into place, and strung, Tamás asked Violet to sit at the instrument and play it, so that he could determine precisely where the metal wedges must go. Violet had thought that a professional tuner would be employed, and murmured her surprise, her pleased surprise, that Tamás could tune the instrument himself. He had, evidently, perfect pitch.

  She ran her fingers over the keys, self-consciously. Of course this wasn’t a piano keyboard and, unless she pressed down emphatically, no note would sound, or it would arise muffled and indistinct. So she played a scale or two, with girlish enthusiasm, and uneven speed, while Tamás fussed with the metal wedges. “It’s lovely,” Violet said, “isn’t it lovely! I can’t thank you enough—” But Tamás took no heed of her chatter. He was adjusting the strings with such concentration that a bead of sweat ran to the very tip of his thin, waxen-pale nose, and hovered there for a long moment before dropping off.

  He listened to her rather hesitant playing from various corners of the elegant room, and even from the doorway, and the corridor. He was grave, intense, perhaps somewhat feverish. (Because he ate so rarely, and had lost so much weight, his breath had, unfortunately, turned sour; but Violet tried to take no notice.) Sometimes he hurried to her, to strike a note himself. He pressed his long blunt finger down, and held it on the key, with such pressure that all the blood ran out of the finger’s tip, and a rosy half-moon appeared beneath the nail. At such moments Violet shivered in the heat of his intensity: she could feel it, she could feel it radiating from him, frightening her, exciting her as she could not recall having been excited before. She did not know if she felt disappointment, or relief, when Tamás muttered, hardly opening his mouth, “Not right. Not right.”