Marlena de Blasi

by Amandine (v5)

  “You feel small?”

  He puts his spent pipe in his pocket, raises his chin toward the heavens. “Small in a good way, small against the greatness of all of this.”

  “I like to bend backward so that I can see more of the sky. I bend farther and farther back until my head spins and I feel as though I am surrounded by the sky, like I’m inside it. Is that how it feels when you die?”

  “It might be.”

  “Not sure, though?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Why do you come here every evening?”

  “I like to stay here and consider the day. I think about my children, and I guess I talk to them, ask them how they fare. Then I ask myself if I think to have done a good job with the day.”

  “Did you today?”

  “Do a good job with it? Fairly.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You know how it feels when you’ve been very cold and then you come indoors to sit by the fire? If I have that feeling, then …”

  “What if you don’t have that feeling? What if all you feel is the cold? Only cold. What if you can’t find the house with the fire?”

  “I think of what I can do the next day so I might have the feeling then.”

  “I’ve tried that, but sometimes I can’t think of what there is to do. What might make things feel less cold.”

  Catulle relights his pipe, takes a while to get it going. He lowers his left arm from the ledge of the bridge then lets it hang loose by his side, his palm turned up. Noticing what he’s done, Amandine looks up at him, looks down at his hand; all the while Catulle keeps his eyes forward, the pipe stump between his teeth, the smoke swirling about him. When she puts her hand inside his, he curls his fingers around it, stays still. Smokes, looks ahead. After a while, Catulle can feel her hand unfold from a fist, feel her tiny fingers insisting between his. They talk awhile and then they walk back across the bridge, down the road past the café and the baker and the restaurants with the empty guinguettes stretched out over the water, past the shops and the other houses. They walk all the way home.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  “SHE’S WAVING TO YOU, MADAME ISOLDE. DON’T YOU SEE? SHE’S just there by the baker.”

  “Who?”

  She knows very well who it is but, once again, Isolde will turn a blind eye to her rival. Or she would have if Madame Joubin hadn’t come up just then and detained her with news of a winter coat. Red wool with a green velvet collar, which will be quite lovely for Mademoiselle Amandine. There’s a hat, too, a small Scottish cap in green velvet with a feather.

  Upswept, faded blond hair, pale skin taut across the wide bones of her face, darkish eyes that might be blue in sunlight, a small mouth with an upper lip that seems to slant—like a triangle—from a single point to join the full, pouting lower one, Kostancja de Bazin is more sinuous than plump. Black silk dress, faille pumps with high slender heels. Not a single pearl about her, pear-shaped diamonds drop from Kostancja de Bazin’s ears and another one, hung from an almost invisible chain, sinks into the hollow of her throat. A newspaper cone of purple tulips in her hand, she stands quietly behind Isolde, smiling at Amandine and waiting for Madame Joubin to finish her story.

  “Ah, madame, you are well enough I see, but who is this dear little creature?”

  “Madame de Bazin, may I present Amandine Noiret de Crécy.”

  “I would have thought as much. Beautiful and aristocratic.”

  Amandine curtsies as she has been taught to do. Says, “Enchanté, madame.”

  Also as she has been taught to do, she looks directly into the eyes of Madame de Bazin, answers her questions.

  “How old are you, Mademoiselle Amandine?”

  “I am ten, madame.”

  “And do you, by chance, play a musical instrument?”

  “In the convent, I studied the pianoforte.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful, and your preferred composers?”

  “I don’t know very many of them, madame, except Beethoven and Brahms. Just before I left the convent I’d begun to practice my first Chopin Étude. Opus ten, number two. My right hand is weaker than my left and my maestro said this this would strengthen it, but I—”

  At the mention of Chopin, Isolde rolls her eyes, folds her lower lip in upon itself, and shifts from foot to foot. “Amandine, we must be going, still some commissions and—”

  “Chopin. Frédéric Chopin is my compatriot, you know, and he, too, lived much of his life in France but, as we Poles do not matter where we live, he remained true to his blood.”

  She bends down toward Amandine’s upturned face, speaks more softly. “I shall play the Nocturnes for you someday soon, my dear. All of them.”

  “Madame de Bazin, we must wish you a good day and be on our way. Amandine?”

  “Au revoir, mademoiselle, au revoir, madame. À bientôt.’

  “Not if I can help it. À bientôt. Why did you have to say ‘Chopin’? Now she’ll never let you be.”

  “What’s wrong with Chopin?”

  “Absolutely nothing, according to her. Obsessed. Obsessed with him. She speaks of him as though he’s her darling older brother. She organizes music appreciation classes for the villagers and musicales in which people are invited to play piano or violin or cello, but the truth is, it’s she who plays the whole program, Chopin, Chopin, Chopin, and only when the audience is exhausted does she call up the others to perform.”

  “I would like to hear her play. Actually, I would like to play again. If there was time, I mean. When I’ve finished helping you in the afternoons, might I go to her so that I could practice? It’s been a year since—”

  “I’m sorry, Amandine. I wasn’t thinking of you but of myself. Of course you may go to Madame de Bazin to practice. I’m certain she would be quite thrilled to instruct you. We must talk to Monsieur, of course, but …”

  Kostancja de Bazin, born and raised in Poland, married an older Frenchman, a rather celebrated violinist of his time who died when Kostancja was not yet twenty. A series of love affairs—most often with her piano teachers—kept her in Paris until, after visiting the village one Sunday afternoon soon after the Great War had ended, she met and weeks later married the local squire. Alas, he, too, passed on before their first anniversary. This history of the swift and violent demises of her husbands earned for Madame de Bazin the title l’Empoisonneuse. Some thought she did it with mushrooms, most believed the men died willingly in her boudoir. Thus, having inherited—from this second valiant—the grandest house in the village, a château, really, its furnishings worth a ransom, its lands vast by local standards, Kostancja de Bazin settled into country life with her maids and her peasants and her pianoforte. While still in her widow’s weeds, she’d set her darkish eyes on Catulle la Fontaine. After a slow simmer of a seduction that had endured nearly twenty years, Madame de Bazin—war or no war—would now seize upon this child, this Amandine, perhaps not unlike Isolde had done, as a means to unite herself to him. Amandine, wise as she was, understood this.

  “What’s this that Madame Isolde tells me about your meeting Madame de Bazin? Do you wish to study the pianoforte? You might have told me. Surely there’s an instrument to be had somewhere …”

  “No, no, Monsieur Catulle. It was only for a moment, I mean, I’ve been thinking and I’d rather … You see, I was being polite to Madame de Bazin and, really, I don’t miss practicing at all, in fact, I was rather tired of it and—”

  “Well, until I can see about finding a pianoforte, I can arrange with Madame de Bazin for you to practice there for a few hours each week. I will ask what would be convenient for her and—”

  “No, please, no. I’ve changed my mind. I would like it best if—”

  “All right then. We’ll leave it for the time being.”

  “Yes, monsieur. We’ll leave it …”

  But Madame de Bazin leaves nothing for the time being. When the invitations to her “afternoons” are returned “with regrets” over the signatur
e of Madame Isolde on Amandine’s behalf, she finds motive to visit Monsieur Catulle, to bring a large egg-glossed Polish cheese bread one Sunday morning when she knows that he will be at home.

  “My Teckla made two of these, and since I couldn’t possibly … I do hope you’ll enjoy it, Monsieur Catulle.”

  She turns abruptly from her exit and stops very close to where Catulle stands by the open door, tilts her head, the darkish eyes laughing through her short black veil, says, “Oh, and while I’m here, please do tell me of Mademoiselle Amandine, such a well-bred child. She is well, I trust, has adjusted to our little school, though after her instruction in the convent I can hardly think it suits her.”

  There are more cheese breads and, once, a whole head of cabbage stuffed between its leaves with bread and eggs and cheese and tied with string and poached in the broth of a hen. It was her maid who stopped by with a zvarlotka filled with apples and, on another Sunday, an oval porcelain tureen of uszka, tiny buttery, wild-mushroom-stuffed pastries, which Catulle and Amandine—Isolde having claimed disinterest in the delicate little things—devoured with a pot of strong tea. It might have been the zvarlotka, or perhaps the uszka, but, in time, Catulle was duly softened and so asked Amandine, “Are you certain you have no interest in studying with Madame de Bazin? She does seem sincere in her desire to know you better.”

  “No. Well, I wouldn’t mind if you would accompany me to one of her musicales. You and Madame Isolde together. I would like that.”

  “I doubt that Madame Isolde would agree, but I shall ask her. I shall tell her that when the next invitation is received, she should accept for three.”

  Despite that she is so close to being beautiful this Sunday afternoon and that Catulle gives her his arm as they walk the kilometer or so along the main road to the de Bazin château, despite even that Catulle tells her she is superb in her camphor-smelling yellow wool dress and coat, and that her creamy white satin cloche makes her eyes look like ripe hazelnuts in the sun, despite all of that, Isolde chews her anise seeds and bats her lashes and repeatedly asks no one in particular why she had been fool enough to agree to the outing. Amandine, pretending it was to be helpful to Madame de Bazin that she had gone on ahead of them, hopes that some scintilla of romance might strike them along the way.

  “Alors, mes amis, reversing the history of his father, who had fled France for Poland during the Terror, Frédéric Chopin left Russian-dominated Poland, barely a man, in 1831 so that he might study and perform in Paris.”

  Madame de Bazin, the pear-shaped diamonds swinging from her passion-reddened ears, stands by the pianoforte in her salon and speaks of Chopin to her audience of children and adolescents and their Sunday-primped, war-worn mothers. On and on over the foot shuffling and the throat clearing and the murmurings of the house, she tells them that Chopin, with his fellow exiles in Paris, lived life in a B-flat minor lament, embittered by Russian dominion over their beloved land. They suffered as only Poles can, she says, by tapping their feet, clapping their hands, and grieving in the heartbreaking robato of the mazurkas. This was Chopin’s genius, Kostancja de Bazin tells them, to recast the melody of a folk song. To gift his compatriots their past.

  By this time the house is benumbed to Madame. Insensible to Chopin. Even to the sweets that sit on silver trays an arm’s length away, piles of chaste pink and green chimeras. Children sleep against the shoulders of their mothers, the few old men who’d come for the sweets sleep, too. At some early point Catulle had risen, walked quietly away to smoke his pipe in the garden. When Madame begs pardon and leaves the salon for a moment, one woman asks another, “If she loves Poland so much, why is she here? Why doesn’t she go home?”

  One of the old men, fresh from sleep, leans forward to look down the row of chairs to where the woman sits. He says, “Because there is no home. No Poland. All carved up by the Russians and the Austrians and the boche in the Great War and then, when the Poles had only just begun to put things back together again, Hitler—”

  “Well, she lives in France now and rather well, I might say, and I think all this talk about Poland is … well, why should we care?”

  Amandine, sitting in the row in front of the woman, turns to glare at her. Amandine wishes to tell the woman why she might care about Madame de Bazin, about Poland, about Chopin, and searches for a particular word but can’t recall it and so, in lieu, puts her finger to her lips to ask for silence. When Madame resumes her place, Amandine turns to her, rests her chin on her fist, and listens.

  On the way home, Amandine asks Isolde, “What is the word that means you can feel what someone else is feeling?”

  Isolde looks at her, thinks a moment. “Do you mean empathie?”

  “Yes. Empathie.”

  So charmed was Amandine by Kostancja de Bazin on that Sunday that she would spend the following Tuesday afternoon and all the foreseeable Tuesday afternoons hence at the château with her. With Chopin and the pianoforte and Madame Teckla’s cheese bread.

  Each week Amandine practices for an hour or so under Madame’s gentle observation and eventually refines, perhaps minimally enhances, lost technique. Madame supplies her with exercise books and sheet music and great verbal stimulation and, after a month or so of these Tuesdays together, Madame also supplies her with a pianoforte.

  A spinet, painted white, low and triangular in shape, its tone more like a clavichord than a true pianoforte, it is delivered one evening to Catulle’s home on a horse-driven cart, pushed along the walkway to the house by three of Madame’s farmers, and put into place in the salon under Catulle’s direction while Isolde stands by, arms folded across her chest, and Amandine tries to contain her glee.

  On one Tuesday, Kostancja de Bazin announces, “Today I shall dance for you. I shall show you the dance I learned as a child. I haven’t thought about such things in years and years, but today, today …”

  At the word dance, at the sight of Madame fussing with a gramophone, Amandine thinks of Solange and Dominique and hears the German lady singing the soldiers’ song. She wants to ask Madame if they might wait for another day, but Madame has already struck her pose, the music begun. As Madame moves, sways tenderly, Amandine’s pangs dissolve, or could it be that they change form? Amandine hums softly to the music. A few moments pass and, from the chair where she sits, Amandine begins to move her feet, her arms. She rises, begins to dance. As though she knew the dance, as though she remembered it. Could it be? How can it be? Surely it cannot. And yet she dances. What does she hear in the music? Can she sense that it’s hers? this music? this dance? Eyes half closed now, Amandine dances—hands, palms up at her waist—reckless and nimble, as her mother danced on the night she fell in love with Janusz. If one who had seen Andzelika dance then could see Amandine dance now, one would know. Like mother, like daughter. One would know.

  The glass shivers into a pattern, discernible, to Kostancja de Bazin as she watches Amandine in wonder. Each on her own part of the dark marble floor, they dance.

  When the music ends, Amandine opens her eyes, walks to where Madame stands, smiles at her, curtsies, thanks her. Madame brushes the nearly dried tears from Amandine’s cheeks, curtsies back to her.

  “Dobrze zroblony, piekna dziewczyna. Well done, beautiful girl.”

  “Is that your own language? Polish, I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like the way it sounds. I like all the z’s. You look different when you speak in Polish. I’ve heard you speaking to Madame Teckla. You look even more pretty. Also I like the way you speak normally. You know, in French. I like the sounds you make. Does the music make you cry, too?”

  “Yes, it must be the music.”

  From a heavy crystal bottle, Kostancja de Bazin pours a transparent liquid into a silver cup. Sits on the sofa, pats the place near her, beckons Amandine. “You’ve never told me about yourself. About your family.”

  Amandine looks down at her hands, folds them, opens them. “I don’t know about my family. Solange Jouffroi was my guardi
an, and she was—”

  “Yes, I, Monsieur Catulle has told me about that. I’ve never mentioned it to you because I’d thought it more genteel—”

  “Yes, someday I think I shall be able to talk of Solange. I would like to talk to Madame Isolde and to Monsieur Catulle about her, and to you, perhaps. But for now …”

  “And your parents?”

  “Unknown. To me and to everyone who has ever been near me. Monsieur Catulle says that my mother must find me because I have no way of finding her. When he told me that, I felt better somehow. Ever since I was little I’d been wondering how I would begin to look for her and never thought that it might be she who—”

  “Your name? Surely your name …”

  “My name was given to me by my bishop. When we were at the convent. Solange named me Amandine, and later Bishop Fabrice gave me his mother’s name, Gilberte. And his own name, Noiret de Crécy. I’ve never tried to tell anyone about what I remember, from the beginning I mean. You know, memories. Solange was always there, and since she knew everything that I did and since I never knew anyone else very well, I’m not used to talking about things.”

  “I understand.”

  “Monsieur Catulle and Madame Isolde are my first friends. Well, the first ones that haven’t died yet. Dominique was, too, but I only knew her for a few days. Oh, and you, too, madame. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you more about me, but I don’t know—”

  “It is in unfamiliar places where we find ourselves, Amandine.”

  Kostancja de Bazin, still sitting on the sofa, still sipping slivovitz from the silver cup, thinks, If she is not in some way Polish, then I am not. The shape of her hands, the delicacy of her touch on the keyboard, the way she holds a book, arranges flowers, how she holds her fork. Even in her wretched clothes, she has some bond with elegance. Yes, yes, of course her convent school, her finishing school… still, there is something more at work in that child. How she moved to that music. The tenor of her still babyish voice. Not so rare this phenomenon of race memory, though. Tolstoy told us it was that when Natasha danced. Instinct, birthright. The cut of one’s eyes. Why cannot it be true for Amandine? All that comes to mind now is zal. Even if I desired to, how could I explain zal to her? The condition of a Polish soul. Regret, mourning, grief, melancholy. Those threads of guilt. All there in her. She wonders if it’s her doing that this Solange was killed. She struggles with that. She likely thinks it was somehow she, herself, who caused her parents to leave her. God knows what other weight she carries. Zal. And yet she compresses it, holds her head erect, works and studies and smiles. And if she is Polish? What would my knowing or her knowing, what would that change? Another orphan, highborn and abandoned. Not uncommon. Someone’s shame. Such an exquisite thing she is. Before long I shall have convinced myself it’s I who was meant to raise her, meant to take care of her. Did her dance today, did it brush against my own zal? God help us, I think it’s true. As she grows older, Catulle cannot possibly continue to… When, if Dominique comes back, she would help, but… And that foolish Isolde could never give her what I can. The answer is that Catulle and I should marry. He dotes on her. He is alone and I am alone. She is alone.