The Book of Pearl

by Timothee de Fombelle

  This time it was Oliå’s turn to move her hand towards Iliån’s, but he had disappeared. In the distance, on the other side of the lake, she saw a shadow climb up one of the stilts and stop in front of the summer palace’s main lantern.

  Iliån, just out of the water, turned back in her direction, but all he could see was the dark smudge of the trees. Sadness and anger overwhelmed him. Shivering in the cold, he felt as if the recent months had been nothing but a betrayal. How could she have let him believe in happiness when she had been responsible for destroying his life?

  If he had been left with hatred alone, Iliån could have recovered. He would have cursed the girl-spirit who had deceived him and the trust he had placed in her. But the worst was that, through the pain, he could feel his love intact. He was ashamed of it. There wasn’t even the smallest dent in this mad love of his. He adored Oliå just as he had the first day. But now he had left, and he’d never be able to return.

  Fåra appeared behind him on the pontoon.

  “My prince?”

  Iliån turned to see the servant prostrated before his feet.

  He held out a hand to help the old man up.

  “What is it, Fåra?”

  The prince didn’t have the strength for yet another ordeal.

  “They came for you,” said the old servant.

  “Who?”

  “Your brother, Iån, and his men.”

  “My brother…”

  Iliån dashed inside the palace and crossed the room towards his father’s bed, where he found the king with his head swathed in a white bandage. Kneeling at his side, the young prince clasped his father’s lukewarm hand.

  “He’s still alive. Go. I will watch over him,” said Fåra, who had followed him in.

  “What did they do to him?”

  “He hurled himself at the guards who were trying to search the queen’s former bedchamber. Two others rebuffed him and he hit his head on the bed. They’re looking for you.”

  The king had opened his blue eyes, which darted across the tattered canopy above, then closed again.

  “My prince,” Fåra begged, “leave us. I will take care of everything. They will come back. You still have a chance to escape.”

  Iliån felt tears pricking at his eyes.

  “You can run away. In the old days there was a ferryman at the edge of the salt marshes. Grab your chance: they don’t know who you are.”

  Fåra continued in hushed tones, “They’re looking for a girl. Your brother thinks he has a sister. He told me so.”

  “A sister?” Iliån repeated.

  The old man sifted through his memory.

  “Everyone was expecting a princess. Thinking back, I remember the doctors announcing it before your birth.”

  The servant’s face brightened.

  “That is why they won’t find you.”

  Iliån had never heard this story before. In her dying moments, was it possible that even his mother had been unaware she’d given birth to a son?

  “Go towards the sea,” Fåra said. “Seek out the ferryman beyond the salt marshes. Iån and his men went the other way.”

  The prince looked at his father, then back at Fåra. For the first time, he was genuinely considering leaving. Perhaps this was what his mother would have urged him to do. Her death must not be in vain.

  He thought of Oliå.

  There was nothing more to bind Iliån to this land.

  “Iån wants you dead. He came here to kill you.”

  “When did they arrive?”

  “As night was falling.”

  Iliån stood up. He had never been as far as the sea, but Fåra had spoken to him before of the ferryman and of the marshes that ended in sand and shells.

  “Right now,” Fåra continued, “they ought to be at the source. You must leave.”

  He carried on, almost with a smile, refusing to acknowledge Iliån’s distraught face.

  “They’ll be looking for a girl up there, by which time you’ll be far—”

  “Fåra, what did you just say?” the young prince murmured.

  “You’ll have several hours’ head start on them.”

  “My brother spoke of the source?”

  “Yes…”

  “A girl … by the source of the lake?”

  Fåra turned deathly pale: what had he said that was so terrible?

  Iliån fled the palace and dived into the dark water. He swam to the sandy shore, which was still churned up from the men’s boots. He ran into the woods, crashing straight through the mesh of brambles, lianas and hawthorns without once altering his course, leaving behind a trail of blood and clothing.

  The night sky had brightened, and he made no attempt to hide as he drew near the source. He cried out her name, throwing himself into the pool where the water reached his chest.

  “Oliå! Oliå!”

  He stopped.

  A little way off, the puma seemed to be sleeping on the bank, a paw rocking in the flow of the water.

  “Oliå!”

  Iliån felt his hope restored, and bounded down the little waterfall that was glowing white beneath the moon. Perhaps Oliå was even further downstream, where any sound of voices would be drowned out by the rapids.

  But when he stroked the animal’s fur with his hand, he felt the criss-cross of two arrows between his fingers. The puma must have been killed as it reared up in the air, since the arrow tips had struck him on his back, near the neck. He had leapt to defend his mistress, only to be pierced mid-flight by two archers positioned below.

  Iliån waded back upstream. The irises were still there, just as they had been the first time, but Oliå’s glistening hands were no longer laying stones. There was nobody.

  As the secret prince returned to the place where the source sprang from the hillside, he thought he heard a distant roar. Then he collapsed onto the moss.

  19

  UNDER THE ALMOND TREES

  JOSHUA ILIÅN PEARL DIDN’T RETURN TO PARIS straight away.

  He spent his first six months in a village in Provence, in the free zone of southern France, avoiding the occupied territories to the north of the country: he was afraid that the German secret police would be waiting for him outside Maison Pearl, so he needed to lie low following his escape.

  Joshua arrived at the home of Thérèse Pilon on the first Sunday in March. As he walked up the wide path that led to the house, he felt as if the almond trees were bursting into blossom before his very eyes. The weather was glorious, and the trunks seemed to be twisting in every direction, straining to reach the sun.

  He had only been here once before: between two overnight train journeys, during his first winter in this world.

  The Pilon farm had been Maison Pearl’s sole supplier of almonds going as far back as the 1890s. The marshmallows with almond flakes had been all the rage in Paris for decades: it was said that the cook of a famous politician bought a kilo at the beginning of each month, and Madame Pearl swore she’d seen the legendary actor Jean Gabin come in for a whole batch, disguised as a chauffeur so as not to be recognized.

  From that day on, Monsieur Pearl liked to tease his wife about all the customers who crossed their threshold, joking that they were the ghost of Queen Victoria masquerading as a cobbler or a kitchen maid. But that only made Esther Pearl all the more adamant about the time she’d seen Gabin larger than life on the silver screen.

  “I watched him at the Louxor-Pathé. You’re just jealous! You should have more faith in us ladies when it comes to remembering the face of a handsome gentleman…”

  So it was that one winter’s day, Jacques Pearl had sent Joshua south to fetch an extra crate of almonds, just in case they fell short ahead of the Christmas rush.

  It had been Joshua’s first trip out of Paris. Racing through the countryside, he had discovered the magic of travelling by train and the beauty of the almond trees on the snow-covered hillsides.

  Now, two years later in February 1942, on crossing the border back into
France after his time in captivity, the farm had immediately sprung to mind as a place of refuge.

  Through her window, Thérèse Pilon recognized the visitor striding up through the cloud of blossom. She put the kettle on the stove and went to stand in the sunshine by the door.

  “If you’ve come for almonds, you’ll have to wait a while yet.”

  The young man was twenty metres from her, by the well. She spoke loudly, gesturing towards the fields of almond trees: it was early March, and the flowers would not be bearing their fruit until summer.

  But Madame Pilon could tell instantly that the boy hadn’t come for almonds. She motioned at him to sit on the stone step; then she disappeared, returning with two cups of chicory coffee.

  He still hadn’t said a word when she sat down next to him.

  “They’re late finishing the vines down there – would you like to help with the pruning over the next few days? Then, in a month, there’ll be all the work you could wish for: they might call this the ‘free zone’, but it’s war down here just like up there.”

  “Are you alone?” he asked, looking around him.

  Thérèse leant towards him and fluttered her eyelids as if he’d just asked for her hand in marriage.

  “What about you?” she enquired tenderly.

  Joshua smiled in embarrassment as she started giggling like an eight-year-old girl.

  Thérèse Pilon had lost her husband a quarter of a century earlier in the Great War, when she was several months pregnant and still a very young woman.

  When the mayor’s wife, dressed in black, came to give her the news, Thérèse had sent her packing, calling her a liar. She had prayed day and night for her husband to return: heaven would not betray her faith. She could feel the baby she was expecting inside her, more alive than ever.

  So she did what an old aunt had taught her to do when she was little, and she drew three figures under an almond tree on a square of paper, then took it to the church and slid it beneath the statue of Saint Joseph. Ask and you shall receive.

  She believed this act would be her salvation. Three. That was the image she’d had of her little family, ever since falling pregnant. Two parents and a healthy child. It also meant three pairs of hands for working the land, which should be just enough for the struggle with nature.

  But the following day, they brought her husband’s body in a coffin, and a flag and a drummer accompanied the pregnant young widow to the cemetery.

  Railing at God and his saints, Thérèse Pilon turned her back on the drawing under the statue. Yet when spring came, she gave birth to twins: two sons, both with eyes the colour of almonds. So in the end, she did have her family of three, just as it was represented in the little sketch yellowing in the chapel.

  “Where are they?” asked Joshua, looking at Thérèse.

  “They’re out walking. Trying to get away from all the girls, who are constantly after them. I liked it better before.”

  She smiled, burying her nose in her cup.

  And so, for a while, Joshua became the fourth figure under the almond tree. He and the boys, who were a little older than him, were inseparable. The three of them worked hard during the day, and then the twins would down tools and head out for the evening.

  Joshua would stay in with Thérèse Pilon and talk through his plans. He still hadn’t written to the Pearls, fearing that any correspondence would be intercepted; but he worried about them, despite Thérèse’s attempts to console him.

  Initially, the three boys worked for the neighbours down in the valley, after which everyone came to help them gather the first almonds. This June harvest produced flat almonds with a sappy taste.

  It was then that Thérèse Pilon received an order from Maison Pearl. She showed it to Joshua as though it were a keenly awaited postcard, even though the only words written on the blue paper were:

  Two kilos of unshelled almonds still in their green hulls, please, Madame Pilon.

  Regards.

  Pearl

  Joshua recognized the order, which was typical for the month of June, since they needed this first crop of slightly bitter almonds in order to prepare a special type of marshmallow, that would be sold until the end of summer.

  This sign of life put his mind at rest. Incredible though it seemed, Maison Pearl was standing firm in the great winds of war, surviving from season to season despite all manner of persecution. Thérèse Pilon had reassured him that the Pearls weren’t under any threat: marshmallows were neither Jews nor collaborators nor communists. Their only allegiance was to sugar.

  For Joshua Pearl, that summer was almost carefree. He learnt how to use a bicycle and rode along the country roads, stopping beneath the plane trees or exploring the local villages in the sultry afternoons when everything shut down. The free zone that spanned half of southern France was under the authority of a government that took its orders from Germany, but the shadow of occupation loomed large. The Pilon family had introduced Joshua as a cousin from the north, and Thérèse told her sons to call him Jo so that his full name remained hidden. The French police were on the lookout for Jews living in the free zone, and Cousin Joshua, with that unplaceable accent of his, wouldn’t escape their notice.

  The main almond harvest took place in September, and half the village turned out to help the Pilon family. The men shook the branches with batons several metres long and the women gathered the fruit as it fell to the ground, placing it in sacks. They would form a line and spin round the tree like the hand of a clock, teasing the lazy women who bagged the spot nearest the trunk, because they’d only have to take three steps each turn.

  When the work was done, they spent joyous evenings in the house, drinking sweet wine as they removed the green hulls. People of all ages squeezed onto benches in the main room, the boys making discreet decisions about which girl to work alongside, while some of the women sang.

  An old man told stories that tugged at Jo Pearl’s heartstrings. Each of the tales was familiar to him, and even the voice of the storyteller reminded him of his father’s. The man spoke of a blue beard, of a woodcutter, of a little girl and some matches, and of a fairy godmother who could make carriages spring from pumpkins.

  Pearl looked into the gleaming eyes of everybody there and sensed that all was not lost. A wicked spell had banished him to this world in order to erase his past, and yet he was finding that past everywhere: in the voice of an old man and the gaze of a child. His memory of the Kingdoms always seemed to be awoken on resonant occasions: a happy or solemn moment, a small gathering next to a fire or a profound conversation as night was falling, was all it took for the window to open ever so slightly. Pearl simply needed to find a way of stepping through it.

  In the days that followed the harvest, he spent hours in the room where the fruit was laid out to dry. The entire space was filled thirty centimetres high with the almonds in their shells. They rose up to Joshua’s knees as he ploughed them with his feet, walking slowly back and forth to turn them over, all the while feeling as though he were wading through a stream. The scent of marzipan made his head spin.

  He had kept the second little note from Maison Pearl that had been sent at the start of July, confirming safe receipt of the delivery. On the back of the sheet, Jacques Pearl had already outlined the details of the next order for autumn.

  Joshua adored the intricate handwriting beneath the pearl-studded crown of the shop’s emblem. He missed Madame Pearl’s voice, too, and he vowed that he would return to spend the winter in Paris and in that shop. It was the only place on earth that felt like home to him.

  At the end of October, well ahead of schedule, they sent off the order, with a few little cakes and dried figs thrown in as a present. It filled three very heavy crates, and Joshua Pearl felt a pang of desire to stash himself inside and travel with the cargo.

  Barely a week later, on the first day of the olive harvest, Thérèse Pilon came back from the village to find all three crates in front of the well, with two words painted over
the crossed-out names of Jacques and Esther Pearl.

  PERSONS UNKNOWN

  The delivery had been returned to the Pilon farm.

  Thérèse started running, leaving the dusty path to cut between the green oaks. She could hear the sound of voices and laughter in the distance. She clambered over a stone wall into a field of olive trees, where Joshua was working with some other pickers. He was the first to see her coming.

  She walked up to him and spoke into his ear.

  He dropped his bucket, and the olives spilled out onto the grass.

  20

  THE BLUE SLIPPER

  It took him several days to reach Paris. He made the train journey in short stages, only choosing cargo wagons. As stealthy as if he were back in the world of his childhood, he reached the occupied zone via forest tracks. Then he borrowed a bicycle to continue his journey north, sleeping in the hay lofts of farms or the tool sheds of cemeteries.

  Finally, he reached Paris on the rainy evening of 10 November 1942.

  Standing in front of Maison Pearl, he was confronted with the lowered iron shutter. He tried to take some reassurance from the other closed shops around him: the street was deserted, blotted out by the rain. The lowered shutter didn’t mean anything at all. Perhaps the shopkeepers had closed up a little earlier than usual? After all, 11 November was still Armistice Day, even if the occupying army had forbidden the locals to celebrate the anniversary of the German defeat in 1918.

  As he stepped out of the rain, Joshua noticed a vertical inscription on the window’s wooden frame.

  He tilted his head to read it:

  Pearls to swine!

  Another hand had clearly used some wire wool in an attempt to erase this malicious message.