by Laura Resau
“Any other fountains or water sources here?” I ask. “Maybe some springs?”
“No. This is it,” she says. Her gaze falls on Wendell’s sketch pad. “You draw beautifully.” She turns to Bormanus. “Look, isn’t it lovely?”
And as the three of them talk about Wendell’s art classes, I stand up and wander around the courtyard, scanning the stone walls for hints of water. I peek behind bushes and trees, through flowered vines, cracked clay pots, rusting garden shovels. Nothing unusual.
“So have you two lived here for a while?” Wendell asks. His French flows naturally now, getting better every time I see him.
Damona nods. “With Sirona and Grannos. We’re always traveling, though. A couple months here, then we leave to play somewhere else. We have houses in a few different towns around Europe.”
I wonder how they can afford a few different houses on a salary that consists of people’s spare change.
“How long have you all been playing together?” Wendell asks.
“Oh, ages!” she says, smiling at Bormanus, taking his hand.
Once Wendell finishes the sketch, they lead us back to the entrance and out to the street.
Damona lingers, looking like she wants us to stay, but Bormanus waves and says, “Au revoir.”
Damona adds, “Bon courage.”
“Merci,” we call out, walking away. “Au revoir.”
“Au revoir.” Arm in arm, they wave, finally closing the door.
Wendell and I walk around the bend, and when we’re out of earshot, I burst out, “Wendell! I can’t believe Salluvii lives there! This is too much to be a coincidence.”
“Something’s going on,” he agrees.
“We have to get inside those other courtyards!”
He gives me a half-smile. “Snoop?” he asks.
I smile back, thinking of our detective work in Ecuador. “Snoop,” I say. “How about tomorrow at three?”
“Sure. I wouldn’t miss a chance to snoop with you, Z.”
Our eyes meet for a stretched-out moment, and then we both start laughing, and it feels hyper super cool.
The next afternoon, Wendell and I knock on the doors under the gagging-man face and the devil face until our knuckles are bruised. No one answers. And no one comes into or out of the building either. Yet it’s clear the buildings aren’t deserted, because some windows are open. Not to mention that someone has to water those geraniums.
“Can we go to Madame Chevalier’s?” Wendell asks, rubbing his knuckles.
“Sure.” I stopped by her apartment earlier today and was relieved to see her back to her usual self. She assured me she’d just caught a little cold and was already feeling better.
“She won’t mind?” he asks. “I mean, since she’s famous and everything?”
I laugh. “Wendell, she can’t wait to meet you. And don’t worry about a thing. She already adores you.”
“Really?” he asks, surprised. “Why?”
“Oh, um …” I hesitate, wishing I could cram my words back into my mouth. “Just—I guess because you’ve agreed to help.” I flush. “And your art connection,” I add.
An hour later, Wendell and I are in Madame Chevalier’s tiny kitchen, cutting up a melon and rinsing cherries and arranging them on a china plate. Wendell and Madame Chevalier have hit it off right away, as expected. He raved about her self-portraits, taking a half hour to walk through her hallway. Unlike me, he immediately recognized that they were all pictures of the same person.
“It’s amazing,” he says, drying his hands on a towel. “In each painting, you can see the essence of Madame Chevalier, whether she’s sixteen or sixty.”
Vincent is sitting beside Madame Chevalier in the blue velvet chair by the window. They’re pointing out the goings-on in the square to each other, chatting and laughing, and sinking into the little space they create together, a sunlit cocoon of jasmine perfume and butter cookies and milky tea and iridescent feathers and pigeon warbles. Their conversation meanders to Maude, cozy in Madame Chevalier’s lap, to the soap opera in the square, to shared childhood memories, and back again to Maude.
“I can’t figure them out,” I say to Wendell in a low voice. Madame Chevalier’s English is great, and she has sharp hearing.
“What do you mean?” he whispers, putting the remaining cherries on the plate with the melon.
“How happy they are together, but they won’t admit it. They act like Maude’s the reason they’re even friends. And even with only a few weeks or months left, they still won’t admit it.”
Wendell picks up the plate of fruit. “It’s not easy to see the truth about yourself.” He looks right into my eyes as he says this. “They’ve been stuck in this pattern for fifty years. Maybe they’re scared what would happen if they changed it.”
“Mes enfants!” Vincent’s voice comes from the living room. “Where are you? We have lots to talk about!”
Wendell grins and glances at them, there by the window. Even having barely met these old people, he feels real fondness for them. It’s obvious. I can’t imagine Jean-Claude looking at them this way, much less taking the time to indulge them in their sacred waters mission.
As soon as Wendell brings them the plate of fruit, Madame Chevalier pats his knee and says, “Wendell, dear, would you make me some tea, please?”
“Oui.” As Wendell goes into the kitchen, she leans in to me and whispers, “You know, the waters could help you, as well.”
“I don’t want eternal life. And I’m healthy enough.”
“No! I mean healing you two. Your relationship.”
Vincent murmurs, “Legend says the waters can give you clarity, understanding of yourself, of others.”
Madame Chevalier nods emphatically. “They can even heal old wounds in your heart.”
Before I can respond, Wendell comes back into the room with a tray of cups and saucers. “The water’s heating up now,” he says.
“Such a nice boy,” Madame Chevalier says, tousling his hair as he sits down beside her.
“Let’s figure out our next move,” I suggest, trying to get us back on track. We’ve already told her and Vincent about the dry fountain at Damona’s, and the spirals in the sidewalks, and how no one was home at the other two houses. “I still think we should just ask Sirona about the waters,” I say. “She obviously has some connection to them. And she’s a good person. We could just explain why we need them.”
“Mais non!” Vincent bellows. “Non non non non non!”
Madame Chevalier is shaking her head and frowning deeply. “Oh, ma petite, how do you think they’ve been able to keep their secret for millennia?”
“By not telling a soul!” Vincent says. “Keeping it to themselves.”
“With a secret so huge,” Madame Chevalier adds, “you must see that they would do anything to protect it.”
“Anything,” Vincent agrees.
Madame Chevalier raises an authoritative, ring-adorned finger. “You must promise us you will not tell Sirona or any of them that you know about the waters. It could be very dangerous, life-threatening, even.”
They’re taking this conspiracy theory stuff a little too far. “Listen,” I say. “Sirona’s my mom’s friend. She’d never hurt me. Or anyone, for that matter.”
Vincent shakes his head. “Celtic priestesses could be ruthless at times. In battle camps, they’d ceremoniously slice the necks of the war prisoners and collect their blood in a bucket. They used the blood for prophecy.”
Madame Chevalier nods. “My dear, you do not want to be a war prisoner of Salluvii, no matter how friendly they appear.”
I barely suppress a laugh, imagining sweet Sirona wielding a bloody sword. I glance at Wendell out of the corner of my eye.
There’s not a trace of laughter on his face. His eyebrows are furrowed together in concern. Then I remember his vision of danger. The man with the beard, threatening me. Even though I’m certain Sirona would never hurt me, I suppose it’s possible someone
else might. Of course, ceremoniously slicing necks for prophecy seems utterly ridiculous. It’s only Wendell’s grave expression that makes my laughter inside fade, and a kernel of fear replace it.
I keep glancing at Sirona, next to me on the sofa, trying to imagine her as a ruthless, two-thousand-year-old Celtic priestess, slitting throats and saving the blood. I stifle a laugh. Completely absurd. Sirona and Layla and I have just finished a dinner of leftover ratatouille, and now we’re looking at pictures from Ecuador, which Sirona finds enchanting. “Oh, I like this one!” she says, pointing to a photo of me at the market, arm in arm with Gaby in front of her alpaca scarves. Gaby’s kissing my cheek and I’m leaning into her.
Layla agrees. “You and Gaby simply exude happiness in this one,” she declares.
Most of our pictures are from the album Wendell made for me in Ecuador, which has photos of all our friends: the Quichua girls running through a horde of chickens, Mamita Luz kneading bread, Silvio in his candlelit curing room. And then there are pages of photos of me—in a cornfield, on a mountaintop, in a garden.
“Wendell’s a great photographer,” Sirona says. “When do I get to meet him?”
I shrug.
Layla nudges me gently with her elbow. “So you two have been spending lots of time together lately. Anything happening?”
I give another shrug. “We’re friends again, I think.” I swallow hard. “But he spends a lot of time with this girl, Amandine. I wish I hadn’t—I want to be—close to him again. And now he’s moved on. There’s nothing I can do.”
Sirona pats my shoulder sympathetically and then stands up, stretching. “I’ll make more tea.”
I keep flipping through the album. It’s painful to look at these pictures, but I do it anyway. I love the way I looked at him through his camera lens. My eyes were naked and happy. I knew he saw me, really saw me. Knew he loved what he saw. If only I hadn’t broken up with him, screwed it all up. If only I hadn’t been so scared and stupid.
While Sirona’s in the kitchen, Layla smooths my hair, gets on her Rumi-quoting face, and whispers,
“Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.”
I roll my eyes. “Layla. First of all, prisoners don’t have axes. Only flimsy fingernails. Second, the walls of the Castle of If are at least two meters thick. Impervious to the sharpest axes. Prisoners, by definition, are helpless. No chance of escape. You can go tell Rumi his advice is unrealistic.”
Layla closes her eyes for a moment, then says, “There are easier ways.” And she recites,
“Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.”
I should have learned by now. You can’t win when you’re up against thirteenth-century mystics. They always have the last word.
“Just look for the door, love,” Layla says. “The wide-open door.”
“If it were that easy,” I snap, “then we’d all be happy, Layla.”
“But it can be that easy!” she insists.
I slam the photo album shut. “I wish you’d given this pep talk to J.C. on the beach that night. Because it sure isn’t easy for him to find the door.”
She sighs. If she quotes Rumi again, I’ll scream. Thankfully, she only says, “But you’re different, Z. You’re a seeker. Always have been. You, of all people, can find it.”
Wendell and I have changed our strategy. No more fruitless knocking on the doors beneath the impish devil and the gagging man. Now we’re spying, which consists of loitering down the street, just around the corner, and waiting for someone to come in or out. When they do, we’ll leap into action. I’ve refused to wear the red dress this time, since it’s a pain to hand wash. Today, I’m wearing jeans and a tank top, with my hair in a sensible ponytail. Wendell’s leaning against a stone wall on Rue Littera, sketching something, while I keep an eye on the door below the gagging man’s face.
“Still nothing,” I say, peeking at Wendell’s sketch. It’s of a window with a skirt drying over the edge. Suddenly, I realize that he hasn’t drawn me all summer. Or photographed me. He used to do it all the time in Ecuador. He must have thousands of pictures of me. But he hasn’t taken a single one of me in France. I’m not aware I’m staring at him until he looks up. His expression is unguarded, and softens in response to my gaze.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
A breeze sweeps through the canyon street, whipping through my hair. I smooth it and say, “Do you think I’m a terrible person?”
Wendell looks at the sky. “I think you’re made of light and shadow, like everyone.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you were all light, you’d be flat. Boring. If everything always went happily, as planned, our lives wouldn’t have textures or curves or hollows.”
He’s sort of evaded my question. “I really hurt you, didn’t I, Wendell?”
He starts sketching again. “If I were happy all the time, I’d be flat too. It’s the shadows that make you notice the light. Remember what Maurice said about finding treasures in prison.”
I open my notebook and take out my pen. This is the first time I’ve asked Wendell a question for the ruby notebook. “If you took a hundred pictures of yourself, what essential thing would be the same in each one?”
He smiles. “You could answer that better than me.”
“Really?”
“Z, you know more about me than anyone else. Last summer I showed you pieces of myself I’d never shown anyone. So you tell me. What am I at my core?”
“A crystal cave,” I say softly. “At the center of a mountain.”
Our eyes meet for a moment, then I look down at my notebook. We sit, and he sketches, and I write, peeking around the corner every minute or so. From time to time I ask him more questions, mundane questions now, like what he used to eat for lunch in elementary school. After I’ve filled up five pages of pure Wendell, I notice a man stopping in front of the spiral door, taking a key from his pocket. He’s bulky and big, and carrying two shopping bags.
I slam my notebook shut and stuff it in my bag. “Come on, Wendell!”
We run down the street just in time to reach out our hands and catch the door before it locks shut.
“Bonjour!” I say, slipping inside the doorframe, into the dim hallway.
The man’s thick eyebrows rise in astonishment, then press together in suspicion. A huge, coarse beard hides half of his face. His cheeks and nose are ruddy and slightly bulbous. His eyes are nearly lost in all the flesh. “Bonjour,” he grunts.
After I give him the story about Wendell’s art project, he shakes his head and says in a gruff voice, “Our fountain is dry.” He’s blocking the corridor with his massive body.
Wendell hangs back, reaching for the door. “Zeeta. Let’s forget it. Come on.”
I hesitate. We’ve waited so long, and finally the man is here, and true, he doesn’t seem too friendly, but I don’t want to miss this opportunity. I plant a big smile on my face. “Doesn’t matter if it’s dry. He gets credit for that, too.”
“I don’t have time for this now.” The words come out in a growl. He’s more or less how I’d imagine an ogre to be.
“Oh, you can just leave us here by ourselves,” I say breezily. “We’ll make sure to lock the door on our way out.” As I talk, I notice in the corner of my eye that Wendell looks scared. I meet his gaze. He shakes his head, slowly, almost imperceptibly at me. Something’s wrong. I take one last stab. “So, do you mind if we look at your fountain?”
The man holds a fleshy hand out to Wendell. “Let me see your book.”
Without a word, Wendell passes him the sketchbook.
The man flips through it. Our cover story must satisfy him, because he shoots both of us a stern look and says, “
Ten minutes.”
“Sure,” Wendell creaks. “I’m fast.”
As the man leads us down the dark hall toward the courtyard, Wendell grabs my arm and says through his teeth, “It’s the man from my vision.”
My heart starts thudding, but it’s too late to turn around. We’re in the courtyard now. Wendell crouches by the fountain, sketching quickly. Meanwhile, the man stands by the entrance and folds his muscled arms, leaning back and glaring. To cover my nervousness, I decide to continue my friendly act.
“Nice courtyard,” I say, even though it’s neglected, overrun with weeds and wildflowers and untrimmed bushes. In its center is a fountain starring a fat cherub, his chubby cheeks puffed out, and a spout emerging from his mouth. Dirt and dried leaves and dead insects coat the bottom of the basin.
The man grunts in response, still leaning against the stone wall like a bouncer at a rough bar.
“So, what do you do?” I ask casually.
He grunts again. In fact, he grunts in response to every question or comment I make. After five minutes of onesided conversation, I still don’t know whether he’s from Aix, has a wife or kids, or works. He apparently cannot be cajoled into small talk.
Wendell finishes the sketch in record time and shows it to the man. Grunting, he walks us to the door. Once we’re outside in the street, I reach out my hand and say, “Thank you, monsieur.” Reluctantly, he offers his giant hand, covered in hair, and that’s when I see his ring, silver, with a triple spiral.
I push it. “To thank you, we could come back later. Wendell could do your portrait for free.”
Wendell yanks on my arm, pulling me out into the street as the man slams the door behind us. Abruptly, Wendell drops my arm. “Um, Z. Need I remind you about these people’s propensity for slicing enemy’s throats? And the fact that this giant man was threatening you in my vision?”
I smile. He’s called me Z again. And he’s touched me. Sure, it was out of exasperation, but that doesn’t change the fact that he did. It’s reassuring, just having him here with me.