“Just a little longer, Annick,” she says quietly. “If only you could have waited just a little longer.”
“Josette, open this door. Do you hear me, Josette?”
In a joyful falsetto, Josette asks, “Is it you, Annick? Darling Annick? Just a little longer. Nearly finished.”
“Who is Annick? What is she saying? Use your key, Mater, I don’t understand this.”
“I don’t carry the keys to this wing. In my desk, top right-hand drawer.”
Marie-Albert is already racing away as Paul screams after her, “Get Baptiste.”
Paul rattles the knob, flails her body against the door, pounds it with the heels of her hands, all the while shouting, “Josette, Josette, Josette.”
But Josette, if she hears Paul, does not respond. Yellow-streaked, white hair falling in thin unctuous points about her shoulders, the stench of her diffused now about the bedroom; she is a crone inflamed with her last act of devotion to little Annick. A small pillow, white linen embroidered with dark green leaves and their tendrils, she holds over Amandine’s face, pressing it with all her might. The job finally done, she lifts the child in her arms, turns toward the door as Marie-Albert bashes it wide against the wall.
Josette holds Amandine out to Paul. A trophy. It is Marie-Albert, though, who pushes in front of Paul, takes Amandine in her arms, carries her to the bed. Paul pushes Josette to the floor, kicks her about the face and chest while Josette repeats and repeats Paul’s own words.
I wish her dead and gone and never having been.
“For me? You’ve murdered her for me?”
Paul kicks Josette again, goes to stand at the foot of the bed, shaking the bedpost as though to wake the child.
Marie-Albert lifts Amandine’s head, a ripe fig lolling on its stalk, gently lays it down again, places her open hands over the tiny, cadaverous yellow face, like wax even to the touch. Her keen the plucked string of harp, Marie-Albert caresses Amandine’s lips with her thumb. Lays her ear to the child’s heart. So accustomed to asking permission, she looks up at Paul, then quickly bends to force her own breath into the small dried rose that is Amandine’s mouth. She thrusts breath after breath into the child until the narrow, sunken chest of her begins to heave and, from the small dried rose, shallow gasps come. Amandine opens her eyes, rimmed and crusted and wet with grief.
“Marie-Albert, are you dead, too? Are we all dead? Where is Philippe and his grandmother? Blue hair. Maman, Maman, where are you? Are you dead, Maman?”
CHAPTER XXVIII
PRESSURE SIXTY OVER THIRTY, PULSE RATE ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN BUT steady, temperature nearing forty. Potential complications due to heart disease. I need an intravenous solution of potassium chloride, sodium, glucose. I don’t know yet, I don’t know if I’ll send her in. Just get the solution and the setup here.
Having alerted Les Secours from the telephone in Paul’s office, Jean-Baptiste races back to Philippe’s rooms, where he’s left Marie-Albert to bathe Amandine with alcohol, to feed her sugared water with an eyedropper.
“What is it? What’s happened to her, Baptiste? The fever? Is it the fever? What did Josette …?”
“She’s been starved, Marie, starved and drugged. She’s dying of thirst and the effects of suffocation.”
He is unwrapping the bandage, massaging the blackened flesh of Amandine’s leg. He listens to her heart. Listens to it again.
“Call Fabrice. Ask him to come. Sacraments.”
Marie-Albert sends two village women who have been working in the kitchens to assist Jean-Baptiste while she goes to alert the bishop. Jean-Baptiste shows the village women how to care for Amandine. “Feed her like a newborn bird. Cool water, a few drops at a time. Bathe her with alcohol, bathe her again, open the windows a few centimeters. I’m going out to the portico to wait for Les Secours. Remember, like a newborn bird. And for the love of God, air the parlor.”
Amandine awakes and sees the women who work quietly about her. Since they are not familiar to her, she thinks she must have arrived in heaven. She sees the needle in her arm, and her eyes follow the tubing upward to the bottle of clear liquid mounted on something that looks like a metal tree.
“What is this in my arm?”
“It’s medicine, child.”
“No, I don’t want any more medicine, please, please …” She touches the needle as though to dislodge it, but one of the women stays her hand while the other caresses her forehead. Both whisper to her. Tell her all is well.
“It’s the medicine that Monsieur le Docteur has ordered for you, child.”
“That’s what she said. Josette said hers was medicine that Baptiste had ordered.”
Her mind, misted, spinning—am I dead? am I alive?—Amandine recalls another moment, when her foes the convent girls suddenly turned, became her friends. As she did then, she wonders now, How can one tell friends from foes? And what if one can’t?
Later, when the village women have gone and the first dose of the intravenous solution is finished, Baptiste removes the needle, lifts Amandine into his arms, arranges himself in Philippe’s high-back chair, and rocks her gently, two of his fingers always on her stick-doll wrist. She opens her eyes to him.
“Baptiste. Also you? All of us dead?”
“We’re none of us dead. We’re here with you now.”
“I’m not dead? I thought I was and that I could hear all of you talking but I couldn’t tell if you were dead, too, or still, you know, still … I wanted to tell you that I was fine, that I wasn’t afraid or anything, but I couldn’t make the words come, my mouth so dry and my head spinning, spinning. And there was this terrible smell, a scary smell that I thought was death. And then I couldn’t breathe anymore … no breath at all.”
“You’re not dead, and neither am I. I’m here with you and I promise you that—”
“I know. That she won’t hurt me anymore. Isn’t that what you promise?”
“That’s what I promise.”
“And that medicine in my arm, what was it for?”
“It was to bathe your innards, to make your pipes plump and pink again, drench you like rain does a pot of pansies left too long in the sun. You shall have more of it later.”
“Like rain on a pot of pansies …”
“Exactly like that. And soon you’ll be—”
“I’m grown up now, Baptiste. Even more than I was before. I don’t know yet if I like it, but I think it’s true. I think it’s true that I know things, understand things that I didn’t when I was, you know, before this. I think that’s why I feel so cold.”
“That sensation will pass, Amandine. All of this will—”
“I shall not forget what happened. I don’t want to. Only children forget, Baptiste. Or pretend to.”
CHAPTER XXIX
BAPTISTE ARRANGES THINGS FOR JOSETTE ACCORDING TO THE WISHES of His Eminence. Though visibly pained, shocked by the affair, Fabrice wishes to keep its horror within the family.
No criminal charges, no announcements to the press. What would the scandal of it serve, save justice perhaps, since there is no kith, no kin to clamor for it? Better to remove the seventy-nine-year-old from society, let her live out her days, at the expense of the curia, in a private institute. In humane confinement. Better to save the curia embarrassment. Better to save the school its reputation, its income.
In a few hours it is done. Restrained as well as medicated, dressed in a clean gray shift, one of Philippe’s old sweaters, and new black oxfords—Paul’s own—a gift of farewell, of adieu that Paul brought to her room just after sunrise, Josette is guided by two orderlies through the convent halls, out the garden door, and into a waiting institute automobile. Leaning her stout black form against an ivied column, Paul stands on the front portico waiting for the automobile to move down the drive. She is a silent send-off party of one. No wimple, no cross about her neck, no beads about her waist, this morning she is less the abbess of the convent of St.-Hilaire than she is little Annick, grown old and come to s
ee the single champion of her life ride away from her forever. For the first time since she was less than a year old, Annick/Paul will proceed without this champion, without her being across the room or down the hall or on her way through the elm woods to bring her a posy or an apronful of wild berries or half a cake stolen from the baker’s boy. The first time.
Paul watches the small square auto plow the greenish light that the leaves make of the plane tree avenue. She stands there long after it has gone from sight.
Just after three o’clock on that same afternoon, Marie-Albert goes to the infirmary to tell Solange that Baptiste wishes her settled back into her own rooms. Beyond contagion, she has been three days on penicillin therapy, her symptoms mitigated. Baptiste had implored Marie-Albert to say nothing to Solange of the events, to wait for him to do so. His duty, he’d said.
I shall join you in Solange’s rooms just after vespers. I must tell her everything, tell her the truth but tell it carefully. I know that you understand.
As she rushes down the corridor to the infirmary, Marie-Albert has difficulty staying her tears. How can she face Solange, Solange, who believes that Amandine has been, these last four days, in the well-meaning hands of Josette? Out of harm’s way.
At first there will be blank disbelief, Marie thinks, the mind revolting at what it hears as mine did at the plain sight of Amandine held out in Josette’s arms. Baptiste is right, we must tell her all we know, but still she will be spared what we saw.
“Marie-Albert, how wonderful to see you. Should you be here, though? Am I past the risk of sharing this plague?”
“Baptiste says you are. And I must say you’re looking well, nearly well. I have other news. Baptiste says you must leave this grand hotel and content yourself with your own rooms. How do you like that?”
“When? I’m ready this moment. Will Amandine be coming home as well? I’ve had no news of her today, but surely, if she’s not symptomatic, she will be—”
“Baptiste will be by to visit you after vespers, and we can ask him then. I’m to be your lady-in-waiting, by the way. Lovely duty, don’t you think?”
“What’s the matter, Marie?” Solange stops midway while trying to find her slippers under the bed, looks hard at Marie-Albert.
“What do you mean, what’s the matter? Nothing at all. I, I.…”
Solange sits back down on the side of the bed, her head reeling from even such slight exertion.
“Marie, tell me.”
“I can’t right now. When Baptiste comes …”
“Is it Amandine? If something is wrong, I must know. You can’t—”
“Amandine is well. She’s fine. Let’s pack up your things now and get you home.”
In the same quiet, steady voice that had reassured her for nine years, Baptiste speaks to Solange. Perched on the edge of the bed where Solange lies, Marie-Albert holds her hand, keeps her eyes fixed on Baptiste, who spares nothing of what he knows but much of what he suspects. The particulars of Josette’s conduct. As he speaks, he hears the thinness of the story, the hollow parts, the inanity. How could it have happened? All of us so close while… He hears himself trying to find an ending, a summing-up.
“There is no further manifest damage to her heart, though we’ll do another cardiogram in a day or so. Her vital signs are stable and have been since six hours after we found her, after we began therapy. The principal damage is emotional. Spiritual the better word in her case.”
Solange has not spoken, neither whimpered nor wept. At some point in Baptiste’s delivery, she’d begun to look toward the window and then about the room, her gaze resting here and there as though she’s trying to recall having once seen that chair, that bookcase, that painting, those red rubber boots.
Baptiste rises from his chair, walks to the bed and, for the first time since he has known her, wraps Solange in his arms, holds her. She looks down at him as at an impertinent stranger. She says nothing. She is thinking of Janka and the lady with the eyes like a deer and that afternoon on the farm. And for some reason, she sees the garden, she sees Marie-Albert stepping carefully among the peas, the onions, coming toward her conspiratorily, laughing then, holding her arms out to take the deep oval basket from her, the basket with the length of soft blue wool in it where Amandine slept. Her mind wants to know: How did we get from that morning in the garden to this day?
Baptiste goes away, leaves Marie-Albert with Solange. Perhaps an hour has passed when, still not having said a word, Solange rises from the bed and walks quickly to the armoire. As she had done once before, when Amandine suffered the treacheries of the convent girls, she throws the contents upon the beds, the chairs, the rugs. Marie-Albert tries to stop her, tries to lead her back to the bed.
“Whatever you want to do, let me do it for you,” she says. “You’re weak and still very ill. What is it you’re doing with all of this?”
“Preparing to leave.”
“Yes, of course. To leave. When Baptiste returns, surely you can speak to him—”
“No need. He’s already said that she’s well. Physically well. Only a train ride away. Two days’ journey. We’ll be home. I should have gone long ago.”
“To your family, is that where you’ll take her?”
Solange nods her head, sits on the red and yellow Turkey rug among their things, touching one or another of them without looking at it.
“I’m going to bathe now, to dress and to find Baptiste. Will you help me?”
“Of course I’ll help you, but there’s no need for you to … I shall go to find him. Stay in bed and I’ll be right back.”
Baptiste tells Solange it is imprudent for Amandine to travel, to risk fatigue. To risk worse. He shouts, he implores. He is quiet then, goes to sit on the edge of the bed. The heels of his hands gouging his eyes, he tells her, “I think you are mad. Mad with grief and shame. Just as I am. As, I believe, is Paul. All three of us holed up in our souls, sick with guilt for what, what name can I give it? For our ingenuousness. Yes, that’s a clean-enough word. Ingenuousness. Each of us knew something of Josette, you more than I, but, no one ever consulted you, and so it was I, Paul and I, who decided she was the right one. The best one. But sweet Jesus, Amandine survived. Now are you resolved to try her again? Have you considered the war?”
Solange laughs quietly. “The war out there. The one in here. Yes, madness. There is no place left to hide from it.”
“You must arrange for someone to meet you in Reims. That’s the nearest station, isn’t it? And then she should resume her recuperation. Not complete bed rest but very mild activity, frequent repose. That sort of thing. I’ll arrange things with a colleague who sees patients in Reims once a month. He’ll examine her. Keep watch over her. I’ll write to him tomorrow. You’ll take along her records. You must be prepared for delays in the train schedules. Discomfort. Despite your lofty dismissal of it, please understand that the news from the north is grim, Solange.
“And your news of today, was it not grim?”
“War is different.”
“Is it?”
“You must know that it is. Invasion, occupation, requisition, deportation, work camps, extreme privation—”
“Extreme privation? Hunger, is that what you mean? And grotesque cruelties, too, I imagine. It all sounds familiar enough, Baptiste. Perhaps only the aggressors’ costumes will change from the ones worn here. And now I wish to see Paul. Will you ask her to come here to me, or shall I go to her?”
Baptiste notes Solange’s use of the name rather than the title.
“You must know that she is devastated. I have little will to protect her, yet I assure you that she did not, in any way—shall we say—assist Josette. Fabrice tells me that you know the story of Josette and Paul, the story of when they were children. As I admitted before, had I known more of it, I might have—”
“I blame no one. I have no heart for anything but to take my little girl away from here, quickly and forever away. It’s neither in fear nor disgust that I’m leav
ing. Amandine and I will go away because this part of our lives is finished, and so to stay would be wrong. It might have been finished a while ago, longer ago than that, but I didn’t understand until now. I didn’t recognize the ending. I want to see Paul not to punish her but to say good-bye.”
“Wait, Solange. Wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll bring Amandine here. We’ll bring her home and—”
“This is not our home. I don’t know when it ceased to be our home, but it is no longer that.”
“And your home in the north, when was the last time you heard from anyone there? Hadn’t you better write, if not a letter, a telegram? Some communication seems indicated. What if they’ve gone? The boche taken over the house? It’s possible there is no home up there for you. Have you thought of that?”
“They’ll be there. I know my mother. My grandmother. There may be a few boche boarders, but my mother will be there.”
Baptiste and Solange continue to look at one another but neither speaks, she seeing his white flag, he her mettle.
“And His Eminence?” Baptiste wants to know.
“I was just going to ask you if—”
“He’s here. He’s been here since, since earlier today.”
“Why the train, my dear? My driver will take you door to door. There’s the difficulty about petrol, but we still have it hoarded here and there as far as I know and, of course, the roads will not be unencumbered with either vehicles or refugees, but surely an auto ride is preferable to…”
As he speaks, Fabrice takes a chair from its place at the dining table, carries it across the room to Solange’s bedside.
“Thank you, sir. I can’t thank you enough, but Amandine has always adored the idea of a journey on a train. This is the right moment for it. This is what I want to do.”
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