The Other Eden

by Sarah Bryant

  I took one from the bunch and began to tuck it behind my ear, then stopped. “Will you pin it on?” I asked Alexander.

  “Of course,” he said, smiling. “I even have a pin.” He bent over me, squinting to see, and wove the pin carefully through the delicate fabric of the dress. Then he flinched and drew his hand away, but it was too late: he had pierced his finger, leaving a spot of blood on the fabric beneath it. “I’m sorry—” he began.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “The spot will come out. But we should go now, or we’ll be late.”

  The drive to Joyous Garde was quiet. There were few other cars on the narrow road that wound around the lake and hill. When we reached the house, though, we found it ablaze with light. Elegant cars lined the sides of the drive, and hordes of people moved about the downstairs rooms, the sounds of their laughter and conversation pouring with contrasting strains of music through the open front door.

  I had never visited Joyous Garde, and I had expected it to be more or less like the other plantation houses I’d seen, but it was as different from a typical plantation manor as the house on the hill. The gardens had been bludgeoned into submission, with low, orderly evergreen hedges describing the margins of equally methodical flower beds. White-pebbled paths ran among them, up to the main entrance.

  The house itself was made of the pale stucco particular to French country houses; it had weathered to a dingy shade of grey over the years, and the torrential rains and humidity had left spreading stains of a dark greenish brown. It was also built in the style of the grand châteaux, with elaborate decoration over the windows and doorways, lacy wrought-iron balconies, and curving swags of steps. These ornaments had the effect of lavish jewelry on an old woman’s corpse.

  “I thought this was supposed to be an exclusive party,” Alexander said.

  Mary shrugged. “Perhaps they define these things differently here.”

  Alexander took my hand as I stepped out of the car, and squeezed it once. I looked at him to see what he was feeling, what might have prompted the gesture, but his smile was as serene and impermeable as Mary’s.

  “Shall we?” he asked. Rather than antipathy, I sensed anticipation in his demeanor. Knowing what he thought of Dorian, this made me uneasy. I nodded, and then he unsettled me further: he leaned down and kissed me long and deeply. I stood blinking at him in surprise, but he had already turned back to the house, his look of expectancy too clear now to ignore.

  Dorian stood just inside the door, greeting guests as they entered. His blue eyes glinted with humor and perhaps with the contents of the champagne glass he held in his hand. I couldn’t help but pay grudging respect to the splendor of his appearance. He was dressed in the ivory linen he seemed to favor, the shirt open on a kerchief the color of his eyes. This, coupled with the gold-rimmed spectacles, gave him the consciously casual air of a gentleman explorer.

  He was talking to a dark-haired woman in green silk, who held a glass in her slender, violet-gloved hand. When we entered she turned her lazy green gaze on us, looking us up and down unabashedly. I wished then that I had thought better of the cosmetics and jewelry.

  “I don’t think I know these guests,” she said to Dorian in a drawl as slow and audacious as her look.

  “Dominique Fauré,” he said, “may I introduce you to the newest tenants of Eden’s Meadow: Eleanor Rose, Mary Bishop, and Alexander Trevozhov.” She looked with pointed interest at Alexander, clearly noticing our hands as we disentangled them to shake hers.

  “Welcome to Acadia,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “We’ve all heard so much about you; we’ve been wondering why you haven’t joined us sooner.”

  “We’ve had a lot to see to with the house,” Mary said graciously, but there was a haughtiness in her eyes and tone that both amused and pleased me.

  “On reprendra plus tard, Dorian,” Miss Fauré said with the perfect Parisian accent I had always envied in my better-traveled peers at school, and slipped away into the crowd.

  Dorian turned his radiant smile on us. “Don’t mind her,” he said, “or, for that matter, the likes of her, whom you will no doubt meet this evening. They’re only envious.” He glanced down. “Perhaps with good reason,” he said pointedly, his smile losing a little of its brilliance, and I knew that the clasped hands had not been lost on him, either. “Make yourselves at home. There is plenty to eat and drink; this ridiculous Prohibition does not reach its fingers to Joyous Garde.”

  He threaded Mary’s arm through his own. “Be gregarious,” he said. “Everyone is dying of curiosity about you. Oh, and don’t be surprised if they call on you to play later on.” He winked at us, then wove his way into the crowd with Mary, despite her blushes and protests.

  Alexander still seemed intent on something; more than that, he was beginning to radiate the captivating presence a crowd seemed to draw from him, the same that had dazzled the concert audience the past winter. I followed him into the room, half-dazzled myself. He took two champagne flutes from a laden table, handed one to me, and touched its rim to that of mine. They rang together with a sound like a child’s laughter.

  “To life,” he said. His eyes were lustrous, his cheeks flushed as though he was already drunk. He looked like a figure out of a Renaissance panel painting, bright and beautiful and larger than life. He leaned down and kissed me again, softly and quickly. Those closest to us took in the gesture carefully, and I had the feeling that he had been as studied in making it. Again he had my hand in his, and for the moment I stopped trying to understand his behavior, as he led me through rooms each more splendid than the last.

  I had grown up with money, yet even the best of Boston houses could not compare with this relic of a golden age founded on decadence, or Boston society with this crowd, which was even now under the spell of the past. My grandfather’s Saturday night soi rées had been nothing to the carnival of sounds and colors before me. I was awed by the opulence as a child is awed by the majestic grandeur of a cathedral.

  Unlike Eden’s watercolor palette, Joyous Garde was all rich colors and fabrics, elaborately designed, heavily gilded. One room was covered with frescoes of mythological scenes, similar to the ballroom ceiling of the house on the hill. Another seemed to be made of gold and mirrors, in obvious reference to Versailles. Dorian’s guests danced, strolled, or stood about in groups, all sparkling, shining, dripping with color and light like their surroundings, so that they seemed part of some rich medieval tapestry.

  Dorian had been correct in his prediction: his guests were intrigued by us. We could not walk a few feet without being snared by somebody or other. I was soon separated from Alexander, but the liquor had given me courage, and I was grateful enough for it that I didn’t consider how it might betray me. It was no longer champagne that I was drinking, but a pale, opaque liquid with a distinctive herbal taste I could not place. I didn’t know what it was, but I no longer cared. I let the crowd pass me from one group to the next. I spoke of everything from music to war, paintings to poison—conversations that seemed richer and truer than any I had had before—until the words were a blur and, as if Alexander had indeed cast a spell with his toast, I was drowning in the sheer exuberance of life.

  Finally it was too much. Following a trill of fresh of air through one of the close-packed rooms, I made my way onto the back gallery. The corner where I stood overlooked a garden pool where fish glanced silver in the light of the declining moon. I was relieved to find this garden as unkempt as Eden’s. I leaned against the railing, looking down at the swirling fish, sipping the dregs of my glass as I tried to regain my equilibrium.

  I had been there some time when, above the murmur still undulating outward, I became aware of a conversation in the room beyond. My spinning head made the speakers seem first quite close and then miles away, but I knew at once who they were.

  “The truth, now,” Alexander demanded. “Why are you here?”

  “I might as well ask the same of you,” Dorian answered.

  It was the su
pplication in his tone rather than his words that snared my curiosity, rooting me in silence when I knew that I ought to reveal myself to them at once. I edged closer to the door, completely careless of the indiscretion I was committing.

  “Come now,” said Dorian, “I mean you no harm.”

  “No, indeed,” Alexander said grimly. “But you wouldn’t hesitate to use her.”

  Dorian’s laugh was mellow as a piano’s middle tones. “You misunderstand me. I involve myself with no one who does not desire it.”

  Though I knew that the words I was hearing were significant, I could not fully comprehend them. It seemed as though a haze beyond that of the alcohol had enveloped my senses. A stone chimera, one of a pair framing the doorway, loomed out of the shadows beside me. Its downcast eyes seemed sympathetic; I put one hand on its back for balance, and leaned closer to the doorway.

  “You speak as though you don’t know the power of your charms,” said Alexander.

  “On the contrary—I know that no charms of mine have any real power at all. You would do well to consider that yourself. We are all players in a plot whose outcome no one may imagine, not even you or I. But that isn’t what concerns you now. Your concern is entirely altruistic. Or is it?”

  I pressed still closer to the carved portal. The night was dissolving into darkness, like a photograph left too long in the developer. It was difficult to hold on to that strain of conversation, even to a strain of my own thought. I touched the empty glass to my forehead, willing its cool tangibility to disentangle my thoughts.

  “She is not your affair.” Alexander’s voice was resonant and determined, yet not quite definite. A moment later Dorian echoed my thought.

  “You do not trust your own words, mon cher.” I felt the golden tone seducing me, despite the fact that his words were not meant for me. “You brace at that endearment,” Dorian persisted, “yet once you did love me. You can’t have forgotten.”

  I started from my hypnotic lethargy, thinking only that it could not be. As in waking from a feverish sleep, it was impossible to tell whether I had heard the words or imagined them.

  “You betrayed me,” Alexander answered, and the terrible sadness in his voice confounded me still further.

  Dorian’s laughter continued to roll and gather, imperturbable as beads of mercury, though now there was as much sadness in it as there had been in Alexander’s words. He said, “You may place your righteousness again between your love and the inevitable, but I assure you that you will not escape a second time intact; nor will your sacrifice save her.”

  In the ensuing silence I lost myself again in waves of something like a dream. I thought vaguely that they had gone away, but Dorian spoke again, this time without a hint of humor, and with a curious shortness to his words:

  “Despite what you may imagine, I work as much in her interest as you do.”

  There was another short silence, and then Alexander replied in an acrid voice: “You lie. You always have lied.”

  “Ah,” said Dorian, the expression like a protracted sigh, with more than a hint of wistfulness in it, “there you are wrong. I tell the truth—the sad fact is that few want to hear it. Perhaps that is the root of your misunderstanding of me.”

  “I understand you perfectly. I hate you.”

  Dorian began to laugh again, and the sound was so hollow, so awful that I shrank back against the wall. I found myself looking into the face of the stone incubus opposite me, grinning and nodding in a twisted semblance of life. I shrieked and raised my hands to cover my eyes, remembering too late the empty glass I held. It fell to the ground languidly, almost mockingly, and shattered on the flagstones. I looked for what seemed many minutes at the jagged shards glinting in the moonlight. Then came the sound of quick footsteps, and Alexander’s solicitous face appeared before me, blue-white in the irresolute moonlight.

  “Eleanor, what are you doing here?” There was no remnant of the tone he had used with Dorian, only concern.

  “I . . . I came for air . . . I’m afraid I’ve drunk a bit much—” I took a step toward him and stumbled. He caught me, and I looked up into his face. All of the earlier bravado was gone, leaving him looking pinched and anxious. “What were you talking about?”

  “Talking about?” he repeated absently.

  “With Dorian, just now. I heard you talking.”

  Without answering, he bent down for one of the shards of glass, touched the liquid that clung to it, then tasted it. “Who gave this to you?” he demanded. Without waiting for me to answer, he said, “Damn him! He must have known you were listening.”

  He rubbed his eyes, suddenly seeming very tired. After a moment, he turned his attention on me again. “I ought to have explained it to you before this, and I wish that I could explain to you now . . . but I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, or don’t think that I ought to, but simply because I am no longer certain myself of what I know.”

  He sat down on a stone bench by the railing and drew me down beside him. He took a deep breath, then said, “What I can and must tell you is that I have not been honest with you. I let you believe that I did not know Dorian Ducoeur before we met him in your house. In fact, I have been acquainted with him before, under vastly different circumstances. I know him to be a designing man of the most dangerous kind, for he has great sway over people’s sensibilities. And I fear that he may harm you, because you have connected yourself with me.”

  “But those things you said . . . the way he spoke to you . . . it didn’t seem to me that he hated you. . . .”

  “Things often are not what they seem, Eleanor,” he said softly. “Forget what you heard; it will only trouble and deceive you further. Believe what you see.”

  I looked at him, and the concern in his face could be nothing but honest. I reached up and kissed him, and met the reserve that until that night I had considered characteristic. But only a few hours before, I had felt something different. I knew that he was capable of passion, and I would not accept his denial of it. His kisses deepened under my persistence, and gradually his body relaxed. His lips traveled to my neck, soft as butterflies’ wings over my throat. The milky whiteness of the alcohol I had drunk rose in the darkness behind my lowered eyelids, drifting lazily, a glow that moved under the surface of my skin—then he pulled away, breathing hard.

  “Not here, Eleanor,” he whispered. “Not now.”

  His eyes were conflicted. Bits of the overheard conversation drifted back. “Alexander—” I began.

  “Don’t be deceived, Eleanor,” he interrupted. “I have loved others, but you are something entirely different.”

  His eyes never wavered from mine, and I knew that whether I wished it or not, my heart was laid bare before him as his never would be before me.

  “You are my only love,” he said, “and I will not take you for granted. Come,” he said, standing up and raising me gently, tucking my arm through the crook of his own. “Let’s go home.”

  But we were not to escape so easily. The crowd closed in around us when we returned, demanding music. Alexander looked at me helplessly, and I shook my head—I could not possibly play. Sighing, he turned back to the crowd and then forced a smile.

  “Miss Rose declines,” he said, “but I would be honored to play for you.”

  We were pushed toward the conservatory in a soft, hot press of bodies. The first of the crowd flocked to the chairs; the rest gathered in the corners and spilled out into the corridor. As Alexander took the bench, the shifting and whispering abated. I tried to retreat to a corner of my own, but he stopped me, indicating a chair near him. Gingerly I sat down, aware of so many eyes on us, for they watched me with as much curiosity as they did Alexander. I caught sight of Mary standing in a group by a door at the far side of the room. Dorian stood at her side. His eyes met mine, and he smiled a tight, ironic smile. I looked away quickly, just as the first chords of a Rachmaninov prelude split the silence.

  It was the Opus 32 in B minor, a piece I knew well, but lis
tening to Alexander play it was like hearing it for the first time. As on that winter night at the symphony, he ignored the composer’s dynamic markings, playing the first chords loudly, then subsiding into a far quieter interpretation of the piece than I had ever heard. It worked: every set of eyes in the room was arrested, each listener an instant prisoner of Alexander’s intensity.

  I have heard that, like so much of Rachmaninov’s music, that prelude was inspired by the sound of Russian church bells, which haunted him throughout his life. That night, though, I heard something more in it than the horror of civil war and oppression. It went beyond sadness, beyond longing or even the solace of tears; it was a wail for an ultimate and absolute meaninglessness. In that music, the stirrings of madness twined with the understanding of a terrible, universal truth.

  To be able to draw that out of someone else’s music, to find a livable insanity buried in those mute marks on paper, Alexander must himself have lived it, must have been living it still. As I listened, I began to realize the magnitude of the blight on his soul, which his bitter, despairing litany on the observatory roof had intimated. I realized that I understood him even less than I had thought. Of one thing, though, I was certain: whatever constituted his prison was surely something greater than his lost and divided homeland.

  The last notes of the piece withered in a stunned and perfect silence. Before it could be broken, he began to spin more music, this time soft as snowflakes, ephemeral as frost patterns on glass. Suddenly I was five years old again, looking down from my nursery window through ivy tendrils and a soft curtain of falling snow at the wings of the stone angel. The piece could only be one of Alexander’s own.

  He played softly enough to mandate the silence of his audience, almost too softly to be believed. The control required for such exquisite tone was as maddening to consider as the imprisoned impetus of the Rachmaninov. I thought that he intended the piece for Tasha, but then he turned his eyes from the piano to smile at me.