The Saffron Gate

by Holeman, Linda

  For some reason, seeing this book left behind — abandoned — filled me with overwhelming grief, and I sank to my knees, staring at it. I picked it up, running my hand over its cover. A small edge of paper, a bookmark, I assumed, emerged from the top, only a few pages in. I opened the book at the folded piece of paper, so thin that I could see writing through it.

  Still on my knees, I pushed the book from my lap on to the floor and unfolded the paper; it was etched with creases, as if it had been crumpled and then flattened again.

  The spidery writing, from a fine nib, was in French, and the delicacy of the script indicated a woman’s hand.

  My eyes darted to the signature — the single name — at the bottom.

  I held the paper in both hands. As on the stairs, blood pounded in my ears. Staring at the letter, I was aware of my breathing, shallow, as if coming from my throat only. There was dampness under my arms and down my back, the wool of my dress sticking to my flesh in spite of the coolness of the room.

  3 November,1929

  Marrakesh

  My dearest Etienne,

  I write to you yet again. Although you haven’t replied to my former letters, I once more, with even more desperation, beseech you to not abandon us. I have never given up the hope that after all this time — it is now more than seven years since you have been home — you would find it in your heart — oh, your kind and loving heart — to forgive me.

  I shall not give up, my dear brother. Please, Etienne.

  Come home, to me, and to Marrakesh.

  Manon

  The onion-skin paper in my hand trembled violently.

  Manon.

  Come home, she had said, to Marrakesh.

  I looked down at the letter again. My dear brother, she had written. It is now more than seven years. Manon was his sister … but when I’d asked about his family, he had said there was only Guillaume, hadn’t he? There is nothing and no one, he’d said, in Marrakesh.

  Too many secrets. There was too much I didn’t understand. Was this what he’d meant when he’d told the hospital, he was going home because of family circumstances? Had he left me without a word — abandoned me, like the book — because of his sister?

  ‘Did you find the case?’ a voice asked, and I turned my head to see a pair of sturdy laced shoes. I looked up.

  The woman in the brown dress was staring down at me.

  Clutching the letter, I managed to get to my feet. ‘No,’ I said, and pushed past her.

  As I limped heavily down the stairs, holding the railing to steady myself, she called after me, ‘Who did you say you were?’

  I didn’t answer, leaving the front door open behind me.

  I don’t understand, even now, my desperation to reach home. I fled as if hounds were at my heels. I only knew I wanted to be within the safety of my own walls, where I would take out the letter, and read it, over and over, trying to make some sense of it all.

  The letter was the only link I had to Etienne.

  Etienne. More and more, I felt as though I had never truly known him.

  FIFTEEN

  Losing someone is never what one expects.

  When my mother died I had mourned, a quiet, sad sorrow that was steady but understandable. While I missed her presence, I knew I would carry on as before, tending to the house and looking after my father. It was an inevitable death, and I knew, instinctively, that the sadness would lessen over time, would stretch and fade.

  When my father died I had felt something else, a frenzy of guilt and despair, of endlessly reliving the moments when I argued that I would drive, when I looked away from the road for that instant too long, when I turned the wheel a few inches too many. It was the grief of regret, of not having a chance to hear his forgiveness, to say goodbye. It was followed by sheer loneliness because of the tragic unexpectedness of his absence.

  But now … what I felt when I returned to Juniper Road late that afternoon was shockingly raw in its power. It came over me in waves, a rolling weight that made me weak. My legs wouldn’t support me, and I had had to hire a taxi to bring me home.

  I was filled with a roaring confusion. I lay on my bed, staring at the lengthening shadows.

  I knew Etienne loved me. He wanted to be with me, and with our child. I played and replayed so many of our moments together, trying to see something, something I may have missed. I clearly could see, in my mind, the way he looked at me, the way he spoke to me, how he had laughed at something I’d said. How he had touched me. I thought of the last time I’d seen him, and the way he had put his hand on my waist and had spoken of me singing to our child.

  No. I sat up in the near darkness. He would never treat me so poorly. He would never leave me in such a way. Something had happened to him, something out of his control. It had to do with a secret, or maybe more than one.

  Nothing he had done, or hadn’t done, was unforgivable. I would forgive him anything. He needed to know that.

  When I rose the next morning I was stiff and cold, and my head was heavy, as though I couldn’t quite awaken from a disturbing nightmare.

  I was anxious, restless, as I had been when my father died. All day I wandered through my small rooms, possessing a strange and twitching energy, knowing I had to do something, but unable to figure out exactly what path to take.

  My studio was damp and chilled, with an unused air about it. I hadn’t painted in the last month; I had been too caught up in my new life and the thoughts of my future with Etienne.

  There was a stealthy movement behind me, and Cinnabar forced her way through my ankles, and then jumped on to the table holding my supplies. She lowered herself, tucking her front paws under her chest and staring at me with wide topaz eyes. I saw how old she had become, her haunches withering and her small spine a line of bumpy vertebrae. She had lost the rich copper hue of her fur; now she was a dull brown.

  The last paintings I had done were pinned up on the walls. They were careful and polite, executed with — as Etienne had once pointed out — a precise, unwavering hand, each small stroke thoughtful and certain.

  Suddenly I was impatient with the work, impatient with myself for being that woman, a woman who simply allowed life to happen to her. Who thought that such a tiny piece of land, less than a mere pinpoint on the earth’s surface, was enough to sustain her for a lifetime.

  Cinnabar was falling asleep, her eyes half closed, her chin on her paws.

  And so here I am, I thought, watching the old cat. I was neither formally educated nor worldly. Although Etienne had called me beautiful, I had no misconceptions about my appearance. My face and body were lean, my eyes wide and curious under thick arched brows. My hair was curly and difficult to hold in place; impossible to attain the cultured, sophisticated look I saw on other women. Stubbornly, I had refused to bob it in the latest style.

  At thirty, I was no longer young. In fact, in some societies I would be considered old. In all probability those who knew me in Albany already viewed me as a spinster.

  I left my paintings and went into the bathroom, studying myself in the spotted mirror over the sink. My normally dark complexion had an ashy sheen, and my lips were an odd mauve hue, matching the half-moons under my eyes. There were a few strands of paler hair along my temples. Not as dramatic as grey or white, but it was as if the normally rich black gloss of my hair had faded. Had this been there before, or had I simply been unable to see it? As to what I saw in my own eyes: nothing. Their colour had faded to something wholly unremarkable. Mysterious, Etienne had once called them. Your eyes are mysterious, Sidonie, he had said. Mysterious, and, like you, elusive as the early fog.

  Did I only imagine that he had once spoken to me so?

  ‘And now what?’ I said, aloud, and behind me there was a sound. I turned; Cinnabar had followed me, and was standing in the doorway. She looked at me as if to ask, Will you not sit still? Will you not settle in one place so that I can rest?

  I went to the living-room window. There was only darkness beyond t
he pane, and the quiet, persistent tapping of the linden branch. Tonight the tapping was nothing like dancing, as I had once thought; tonight it was the ticking of time, a bony finger on the shoulder. I was sick of my own predictability, and of my own small compass.

  Again I saw my reflection, this time in the glass of the window, shadowy and vague, as if I were a ghost of myself.

  I picked up my handbag from the sofa, where I’d dropped it the day before, and carried it into the kitchen. I took out everything I’d brought home from Etienne’s rooms: his eyeglasses, the pill bottle, and the letter. I spread them out in front of me on the table and sat down, staring at them. I read the letter three more times; there, was no reason to read it again, as by then I knew the words by heart.

  Now I looked at the pill bottle, then rose and went to the bookcase in the living room, pulling out a thick medical journal from beside the dictionary and atlas. I took it back to the kitchen and turned to the index. There it was, this oxazolidinedione.

  It was a medication for neurological pathologies, I read, prescribed to help deter both epileptic conditions and palsy.

  But surely Etienne was not epileptic. He had never experienced a seizure in the times I was with him. And he didn’t have any signs of palsy. He was occasionally slightly clumsy, stumbling against a piece of furniture or tripping on the edge of a rug. I remembered watching him carving a chicken I had cooked for our dinner, and how suddenly the knife appeared to jerk to one side. Etienne had dropped it, staring at it as if it were an unknown object, then turned from me, going to the sink and washing his hands, over and over. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now I also remembered how these seemingly inconsequential acts upset him, and how he reacted with uncharacteristic anger, muttering under his breath and tersely brushing off my enquiries or concerns.

  I didn’t know what to make of the prescription. If Etienne had an illness, I would have known. Wouldn’t I? I picked up the eyeglasses and again ran my fingers over and over them. I put them down and picked up the letter again.

  This woman, his sister Manon, was related to the secret: the secret Etienne felt he was unable to tell me. This was why he had left. But he didn’t realise that I could accept anything he told me. He had to know that. He had to know that I loved him enough to not care what his past held. That it was our future that would cleanse him of what plagued him.

  But to find him … the only clues I had were the Christian name of his sister — a woman he had never mentioned — and the city where she lived. Where Etienne had grown up. I would go there. I would find him, in Marrakesh, and tell him this.

  Would this be a spontaneous and foolish act? Yes. Had I ever before acted on such an impulse? Yes, when I had allowed Etienne into my home, and my bed. Into my life.

  I had been a woman who previously had reacted with her head, with caution. My own past felt strangely distant, as if I were a character in a novel, a book I had put aside, half read, because that character held little interest for me.

  But perhaps it was more important to think about the woman I thought I was now: a woman who acted on an urge, listening to her heart. I thought of my heart, seeing it, formerly, as a lumpy, liver-coloured affair, beating dully. But then Etienne had come, and in a short while it had changed into a rich bowl of scarlet blossoms, pumping with bright heat.

  I feared that without some understanding of what had happened to Etienne, my heart was in danger of returning to what it had been, of withering back to that organ, as calm and undemanding as the subjects in my watercolours.

  And, more importantly, now there was another beating heart — so tiny — to consider.

  ‘I’m going abroad, Mrs Barlow,’ I told her, standing in her kitchen. ‘I’m going to …’ I stopped. I didn’t want to say look for Dr Duverger, or try to find him. It would be too difficult to explain to her that I knew with certainty he wanted to be with me. It was up to me to tell him it was all right. I would love him, no matter what. ‘I’m going abroad,’ I repeated, rather lamely.

  ‘Abroad?’ Mrs Barlow said, her eyebrows lifting. ‘How will you do that?’

  I swallowed. It had been over a week since I had made my decision, and in that time I had been planning and acting. I had already done what was necessary to obtain a passport. I had taken the stack of money from the sale of the Silver Ghost to the bank, changing most of it into francs. I had also withdrawn almost everything but a few dollars from my bank account, and had gone into the travel offices on Drake Street and purchased a ticket for a ship leaving from New York to Marseilles in two weeks. By that time I would have my passport. I had bought two suitcases. ‘It’s all organised,’ I said now.

  ‘And when will you return?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I told her. ‘But could you and Mr Barlow watch the house while I’m gone? And Cinnabar. Could you keep Cinnabar for me?’

  Mrs Barlow’s mouth closed in on itself. ‘Now, Sidonie. You’re not the type to go off and spend all your money on a hare-brained holiday. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the sense this is something to do with that missing doctor of yours.’

  I didn’t answer. I studied the painting of three snipes on the wall behind her head. I had given it to her and Mr Barlow last year.

  ‘Because if you’re off to try and convince that man to come back … well, you can’t make a man do what he doesn’t want to do, Sidonie. If he doesn’t want to be here with you, then going to the other side of the world to persuade him to come back won’t make it right.’ Her voice was unfamiliar: disapproving, and a tone louder than usual. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just let it be, and go on with your life? There’s really no arguing with a man once he’s got his mind set. I know.’

  ‘But something’s happened to him, Mrs Barlow. I need to tell him … I need …’ I stopped, unsure of how to go on. ‘I just need to go and speak to him, Mrs Barlow.’

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  I smoothed my hair back. ‘There’s been an emergency, of sorts. With his family.’

  ‘But … why didn’t you just speak to him while he was still here? Or can you not phone him? They have telephones wherever he is, don’t they? I don’t understand, Sidonie.’

  Of course she didn’t understand. I couldn’t imagine Mrs Barlow ever feeling about Mr Barlow the way I felt about Etienne. Or if she once had, she wouldn’t remember it after all these years.

  ‘Mrs Barlow, please. I just have to go.’

  ‘Is it France you’re off to, then?’

  I nodded. It wasn’t entirely a lie; I was first going to Marseilles. And I felt an overwhelming need to not talk about it too much. If I said I was travelling on to Morocco, she’d question why I was going there. Then I’d have to tell her about the letter from the woman named Manon.

  Suddenly my lips and chin trembled. I put my hand over my mouth and turned aside.

  ‘Besides. There’s your … state to consider.’

  I looked back at her.

  She nodded, her eyes dropping to my middle.

  I took my hand from my mouth. ‘How do you know?’

  She cocked her head to one side. ‘A woman can see the signs, if she’s looking. And I imagine that it won’t be too long until you’re showing. So how will you travel about, a woman alone, with no ring on her finger and her belly a flag for all to see? For all to know what kind of woman she is?’

  Mrs Barlow had never before spoken to me like this. I cleared my throat.‘I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. You know that. I’ve never cared.’

  Her eyelids lowered, just the slightest. ‘Perhaps it would have been a better thing if you had cared, Sidonie. Perhaps then you wouldn’t find yourself in the condition you do. Why, if your mother could see you, bringing a man into the house, carrying on—’

  ‘Berating me now will do no good, Mrs Barlow,’ I said, my tone as hard and loud as hers. ‘My mother is long dead. And it’s not your business.’

  Mrs Barlow drew back as if I’d slapped her face, and I
knew I’d hurt her. But I was angry with her because what she said was true.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Barlow,’ I said quickly. ‘You’ve always been so good to us. To me.’ I didn’t want to think about the fact that I hadn’t paid Mr Barlow any rent for months, as he’d told me after my father died. I didn’t know whether Mrs Barlow knew this fact. ‘It’s just that I … I love him, Mrs Barlow. And he loves me too. I know he does.’

  At that Mrs Barlow put her arms around me. ‘They always act like they care when they want something, Sidonie.’ She sighed, and I leaned against her. ‘You know so little about the world, my girl,’ she said. ‘And about men,’ she added. ‘I saw this trouble coming from the first. I saw it, Sidonie, but you were still sorrowing over your dad, and I thought, now, Nora, let the girl have a little pleasure.’

  She pulled away from me. ‘But there’s no pleasure without pain, Sidonie. No pleasure without pain,’ she repeated. ‘And you can count on that, as surely as you can count on the first frost each year.’

  The day before I left my home, I went to the shed. The old Model T was still there, covered with a thick tarpaulin. I pulled it off and ran my hands over the car’s hood, but didn’t get inside. I thought about my father, sitting in it and smoking his pipe. I thought about my mother, sitting at the kitchen table in front of the sewing machine. I thought about the way Etienne had said our child.

  I recovered the car.

  I walked all the way down to the pond for one last look. It was the first week of March, and a warm day, the sound of water dripping everywhere in a steady syncopation. The ice in the middle of the pond was softening, and had opened around its edges. A small wind ruffled the water into pretty little ridges that slid, like thin tongues, up on to the hard edges of earth. The late afternoon light flashed on the water, and the smell was spring, fresh, with the promise of new beginnings.