The Virgin Blue

by Tracy Chevalier

  When the phone rang Jan got up to answer it, glancing around the table, his eyes coming to rest on me. He held the phone out. ‘It is for you, Ella,’ he said.

  ‘Me? But –’ I hadn't given anyone the number here. I got up and took it, everyone's eyes on me.

  ‘Hello?’ I said uncertainly.

  ‘Ella? What the hell are you doing there?’

  ‘Rick?’ I turned my back on the table, trying to create a little privacy.

  ‘You sound surprised to hear from me.’ I'd never heard him sound so bitter.

  ‘No, it's just – I didn't leave the phone number.’

  ‘No, you didn't. But it's not that hard to get the number of Jacob Tournier of Moutier. There were two listed; when I called the other one first he told me you were here.’

  ‘He knew I was here? Another Jacob Tournier?’ I repeated stupidly, surprised that Rick had actually remembered my cousin's name.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, it's a small town.’ I glanced around. Everyone was eating, trying to look like they weren't listening to me, but listening all the same, except for Susanne, who got up abruptly and went over to the sink, where she took a deep breath by the open window.

  They all know my business, I thought. Even a Tournier across town knows my business.

  ‘Ella, why did you go away? What's the matter?’

  ‘Rick, I – Look, can we talk another time? Now's not a good time.’

  ‘I take it you left your wedding ring on the bedroom floor as some kind of statement.’

  I spread out my left hand and stared at it, shocked that I hadn't even noticed it was gone. It must have fallen out of my yellow dress when I was changing.

  ‘Are you mad at me? Did I do something?’

  ‘Nothing, you just – Oh, Rick, I – you haven't done anything, I just wanted to meet my family here, that's all.’

  ‘Then why rush off like that? You didn't even leave me a note. You always leave me a note. Do you realize how worried I was? And how humiliating it was to find out from my secretary?’

  I was silent.

  ‘Who answered the phone just now?’

  ‘What? My cousin's boyfriend. He's Dutch,’ I added usefully.

  ‘Is that – guy with you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jean-Pierre.’

  ‘No, he's not here. What made you think that?’

  ‘You slept with him, didn't you? I can tell from your voice.’

  That I hadn't expected from him. I took a deep breath.

  ‘Look, I really can't talk right now. There are – people in the room. I'm sorry, Rick, I just – don't know what I want anymore. But I can't talk right now. I just can't.’

  ‘Ella –’ Rick sounded slightly strangled.

  ‘Just give me a few days, OK? Then I'll come back and – and we'll talk. All right? Sorry.’ I hung up and turned around to face them. Lucien was staring at his plate; the neighbours were chatting deliberately to Jan. Jacob and Susanne looked at me steadily with brown eyes the same colour as mine.

  ‘So,’ I said brightly. ‘What were we just saying about me getting married?’

  I got up in the middle of the night, feeling dehydrated from the wine, the fondue sitting like lead in my stomach, and went down to the kitchen to get some mineral water. I left the lights off and sat at the table with the glass, but the room still smelled of cheese and I decided to move to the living room. As I reached the door I heard the faint stringy sound of the harpsichord. I opened the door quietly and saw Susanne sitting at the instrument in the dark, a distant streetlight picking out her profile. She played a few bars, stopped and just sat. When I whispered her name she looked up, then let her shoulders slump. I went over and put my hand on her shoulder. She was wearing a dark silk kimono smooth to the touch.

  ‘You should be in bed,’ I said softly. ‘You must be tired. You need lots of sleep now.’

  Susanne pressed her face into my side and began to cry. I stood still and stroked her frizzy hair, then knelt next to her.

  ‘Does Jan know yet?’

  ‘No,’ she replied, wiping her eyes and cheeks. ‘Ella, I'm not ready for this. I want to do other things. I've worked so hard and am just beginning to get more concerts.’ She placed her hand on the keyboard and played a chord. ‘A baby now would ruin my opportunities.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘And you want to have children?’

  She shrugged. ‘Someday. Not yet. Not now.’

  ‘And Jan?’

  ‘Oh, he would love to have children. But you know, men don't think in the same way. It wouldn't make any difference to his music, to his career. When he talks about having children it's so abstract that I know I would be the one to look after them.’

  That was a familiar refrain.

  ‘Does anyone else know yet?’

  ‘No.’

  I hesitated, unaccustomed to talking to women about abortion as an option: in my profession, by the time women consulted me they'd decided to have the baby. Besides, I didn't even know the French for ‘abortion’ or ‘option’.

  ‘What are the things you could do?’ I finally asked lamely, taking care at least over the verb tense.

  She stared at the keys. Then she shrugged. ‘Un avortement,’ she said in a flat voice.

  ‘What do you think about – abortion?’ I could have kicked myself for the clumsiness of my question. Susanne didn't seem to notice.

  ‘Oh, I would prefer to do it, even if I don't like the idea. I'm not religious, it would not be offensive like that. But Jan —’

  I waited.

  ‘Well, he's Catholic. He doesn't go to church now and he thinks of himself as liberal, but – it's different when it's a real choice. I don't know what he will think. He may be very upset.’

  ‘You know, you have to tell him, it's his right, but you don't have to decide with him. It's for you to decide what to do. Of course it's better if you agree, but if you don't agree, it has to be your decision because you carry the baby.’ I tried to say this as firmly as possible.

  Susanne glanced at me sideways. ‘Have you – have you yourself –’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want to have children?’

  ‘Yes, but –’ I didn't know what to explain first. Unaccountably I began to giggle. Susanne stared at me, the whites of her eyes gleaming in the streetlight. ‘Sorry. I have to sit down,’ I said. ‘Then I'll tell you.’

  I sat in one of the armchairs while Susanne switched on a small lamp on the piano. She curled up in a corner of the sofa, legs tucked under her, green silk pulled tight over her knees, and looked at me expectantly. I think she was relieved the spotlight was no longer on her.

  ‘My husband and I talked about having children,’ I began. ‘We thought now would be a good time. Well, actually, I suggested it and Rick agreed. So we started to try. But I was – disturbed. By a nightmare. And now, now I think – well, we're having problems now.

  ‘There was also – there is also something else. Someone else.’ I felt humiliated putting it like that, but it was also a relief to tell someone.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A librarian in the town where I live. We've been – flirting for awhile. And then we –’ I waved my hands in the air. ‘Afterwards I felt bad and had to get away. So I came here.’

  ‘Is he handsome?’

  ‘He – oh, yes. I think so. He is kind of – severe.’

  ‘And you like him.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was strange talking about him; I actually found it hard to picture him. From this distance, in this room with Susanne curled up in front of me, what had happened with Jean-Paul seemed far away and not as earth-shattering as I'd thought. It was a funny thing: once you tell your story to others it becomes more like fiction and less like truth. A layer of performance is added to it, removing you further from the real thing.

  ‘How long have you and Rick been married?’

  ‘Two years.’ />
  ‘And the man, what is his name?’

  ‘Jean-Paul.’ There was something so definite about his name that saying it made me smile. ‘He's helped me look into my family history,’ I continued. ‘He argues with me a lot, but it's because he is interested in me, in what I do – no, in what I am, really. He listens to me. He sees me, not the idea of me. You know?’

  Susanne nodded.

  ‘And I can talk to him. I even told him about the nightmare and he was very good, he made me describe it. That helped.’

  ‘What is it about, this nightmare?’

  ‘Oh, I don't know. It doesn't have a story. Just a feeling, like a – like I have no – respiration.’ I patted my chest. Frank Sinatra, I thought. Ole blue eyes.

  ‘And a blue, a certain colour blue,’ I added. ‘Like in Renaissance paintings. The colour they painted the Virgin's robe. There is this painter – tell me, have you heard of Nicolas Tournier?’

  Susanne sat up straight and gripped the arm of the sofa. ‘Tell me more about this blue.’

  At last, a connection with the painter. ‘It has two parts: there's a clear blue, the top layer, full of light and–’ I struggled for words. ‘It moves with the light, the colour. But there's also a darkness underneath the light, very sombre. The two shades fight against each other. That's what makes the colour so alive and memorable. It's a beautiful colour, you see, but sad too, maybe to remind us that the Virgin is always mourning the death of her son, even when he's born. Like she knows already what will happen. But then when he's dead the blue is still beautiful, still hopeful. It makes you think that nothing is completely one thing or the other; it can be light and happy but there is always that darkness underneath.’

  I stopped. We were both quiet.

  Then she said, ‘I have had the dream too.’

  ‘I had it only once, about six weeks ago, back in Amsterdam. I woke up terrified and I was crying. I thought I was being smothered in blue, the blue you describe. It was strange because I felt happy and sad at the same time. Jan said I'd been saying something, like reciting something from the Bible. I couldn't sleep afterwards. I had to get up and play, like tonight.’

  ‘Do you have any whisky?’ I asked.

  She went to the bookcase and opened the cupboard at the bottom, taking out a half-empty bottle and two small glasses. She sat back in the corner of the sofa and poured us each a shot. I considered saying something about her drinking in her condition, but didn't have to: after handing me my glass she took one sniff of hers and grimaced, then uncorked the bottle and poured the whisky back.

  I gulped mine. It cut through everything: the fondue, the wine, my misery about Rick and Jean-Paul. It gave me what I needed to ask awkward questions.

  ‘How long have you been pregnant?’

  ‘I'm not sure.’ She put a hand up each sleeve of the kimono and rubbed her arms.

  ‘When did you miss your, your –’ I gestured at her.

  ‘Four weeks ago.’

  ‘How did you get pregnant? You weren't using anything? I'm sorry, but it's important.’

  She looked down. ‘I forgot to take the pill one day. Usually I take it before I go to bed, but I forgot. I didn't think it would matter.’

  I began to say something but Susanne interrupted me. ‘You know, I'm not stupid or irresponsible. It's just that –’ She pressed her hand against her mouth. ‘Sometimes it's difficult to believe there is a connection between a little pill and becoming pregnant. It's like magic, two things that are completely unrelated, that they should have anything to do with each other, it's crazy. Intellectually I can understand it but not truly in my heart.’

  I nodded. ‘Pregnant women often don't make the connection between their babies and sex. Neither do men. The two are so different, it is like magic.’

  We were quiet for a minute.

  ‘When did you miss that pill?’ I asked.

  ‘I don't remember.’

  I leaned forward. ‘Try. Was it around the time of the dream?’

  ‘I don't think so. No, wait a minute, now I remember. Jan was in Brussels at a concert the night I forgot the pill. He came back the next day and that night I had the dream. That's it.’

  ‘And you and Jan – did you – make love that night?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked embarrassed.

  I apologized. ‘It's just that I only had the dream after Rick and I had sex,’ I explained. ‘The same as you. But the dream stopped when I began using contraceptives, and for you it stopped once you were pregnant.’

  We looked at each other.

  ‘That is very strange,’ Susanne said quietly.

  ‘Yes, it is strange.’

  Susanne smoothed her kimono over her stomach and sighed.

  ‘You must tell Jan,’ I said. ‘That is the first thing to do.’

  ‘Yes, I know. And you must tell Rick.’

  ‘It seems he already knows.’

  The next day I looked at records in the town hall. Though Jacob's grandfather had done a thorough job on the family tree, I felt the urge to hold the source material in my own hands. I had acquired a taste for it. I sat all afternoon at a table in a meeting room, looking through carefully recorded lists of births and deaths and marriages from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I hadn't realized how established a family the Tourniers were in Moutier: there had been hundreds and hundreds of them.

  These brief records told me a lot: the size of families, the age they married – usually in their early twenties – the men's occupations – farmer, teacher, innkeeper, watch engraver. A lot of babies died. I found a Susanne Tournier who between 1751 and 1765 had eight children, and five of them died within a month of birth. She died giving birth to the last. I'd never had a baby or a mother die on me. I'd been lucky.

  There were other eye-openers. A lot of illegitimacy and incest were openly recorded. So much for Calvinist principles, I thought, but underneath my cynicism I was shocked that when Judith Tournier gave birth to her father Jean's son in 1796, it was recorded in the official records. Other records baldly stated that children were illegitimate.

  It was strange seeing all the first names in use back then, to know that they were still being used. But among all the names – many of them Old Testament names favoured by Huguenots like Daniel, Abraham and even a Noah – I noticed there were plenty of Hannahs and Susannes, and later Ruth and Anne and Judith, but not one Isabelle, not one Marie.

  When I asked about records earlier than the mid-eighteenth century, the woman in charge told me I would have to look at parish records held at Berne and Porrentruy, advising me to call them first. I wrote down the names and phone numbers and thanked her, smiling to myself: she would have been horrified by my spontaneous trip to the Cévennes and my success despite myself. This was a country where luck wasn't involved; results came from conscientious work and careful planning.

  I went to a nearby café to consider my next move. The coffee arrived, presented on a doily, with the spoon, sugar cubes and a square of chocolate arranged on the saucer. I studied the composition: it reminded me of the records I'd just looked at, precisely recorded facts in clear handwriting. Though they were easier to decipher they lacked the charm and haphazardness of the French records. It was like the French themselves: irritating because they weren't accommodating to strangers, but also more interesting as a result. You had to work harder with them, so you got more out of it.

  Jacob was at the piano when I got back, playing something slow and sad. I lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes. The music consisted of clear notes, simple lines of melody, like the sound was being picked out with a needle. It reminded me of Jean-Paul.

  I was just dozing off when he finished. I opened my eyes and met his gaze across the piano.

  ‘Schubert,’ he said.

  ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘Not really. Jacob, could you make some phone calls for me?’

  ‘Bien sûr, ma cousine. And I'
ve been thinking about what you might want to see. Family things. There's a place where there was a mill that Tourniers owned. There's a restaurant, a pizzeria now, run by Italians, that used to be an inn run by a Tournier in the nineteenth century. And there's a farm about a kilometre outside of Moutier, toward Grand Val. We're not sure it really is a Tournier farm, but family tradition says it is. It's an interesting place anyway because it has an old chimney. Apparently it was one of the first houses in the valley to have one.’