The Other Eden

by Sarah Bryant

  “There’s nothing mysterious about us!” Mary laughed.

  “Why Eden?” I asked carefully.

  He seemed surprised by the question. “Why, because no one has been invited to this house since your grandmother died! It was one thing when it was closed up, but you’ve lived here half a year now. Why shouldn’t they be suspicious?”

  “Suspicious? Of what?”

  There was a slight falter before Dorian smiled. “Sorry. I meant to say ‘curious’.”

  “But why would I invite people I don’t know?” I cried, annoyed by his indirect reprimand.

  Dorian shrugged. “Most young people like to vary their company.”

  I was opening my mouth to retort when Mary interrupted me. “I think he’s right, Eleanor. You yourself were talking about entertaining only a month ago.”

  I bit back my anger, and answered, “Things have changed since then.”

  Dorian smiled deliberately, leaning back in his chair. “That is quite clear.” I glared at him. “But devotion to one does not necessarily exclude the company of others. Well, it shouldn’t.”

  I looked into his eyes, like two round scraps of sky. I knew that I was cornered. “All right,” I said. “We’ll have a party, if it’s so very important. But doesn’t it defeat the purpose if we don’t have it here?”

  “There’s time for that,” he said, with authority I considered dubious.

  “Well then, I’ll leave it to you and Mary to work out the details.”

  “We’ll have a costume ball!” Mary cried. “Just like the ones your grandmother had.”

  My heart sank at the prospect, but before I could say anything, Dorian had answered:

  “A brilliant idea! Everyone will love it!”

  “Will she come?” Tasha asked abruptly. Her eyes were wide and troubled.

  “Who?” Dorian asked, before I could.

  “The lady,” Tasha answered, looking intently at me. “The lady painted twice in the picture.”

  Dorian looked at Mary and me with perfect incredulity.

  “Do you mean the painting over the piano?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she repeated, with weary patience. “The lady painted twice, who looks like you.”

  Dorian was looking at me intently. “She’s talking about a portrait of the Fairfax twins,” I told Dorian, whose look betrayed nothing. I turned to Tasha. “I suppose no one’s ever explained it to you. That painting isn’t of one lady, but of two who look alike. They’re sisters, and when sisters or brothers are born together, looking alike, they’re called twins. One of them was my mother. But I’m afraid they won’t be at the party, because they both died a long time ago.”

  “Yes,” Tasha said, sighing softly. It sounded more like agreement with something she already knew, than acceptance of a new fact.

  “I didn’t know that you had a painting of the twins,” Dorian said.

  “Oh, yes,” Mary answered. “It’s what started Eleanor’s intrigue with them. We didn’t know there were twins before we found the painting.”

  “Your mother never told you?” Dorian asked me.

  “I barely remember my mother,” I answered coldly, “never mind what she said to me.”

  I could see that Mary was irritated, but I never guessed that she would betray me as she did when she spoke next. “It’s all been quite a shock to Eleanor. Really, it’s no wonder she has nightmares.”

  “Indeed not,” Dorian said after a barely perceptible hesitation. His face remained impassive, his eyes fixed on the wineglass hanging like a jewel in the loose setting of his fingers.

  I was furious beyond words but as it turned out I didn’t need them, because Tasha said in her quiet, unassuming way, “I dream of her, too.”

  I looked at the child’s earnest blue eyes and could not think how to answer her. By that time, though, Mary had realized her transgression, and she grasped at the first change of subject she thought of:

  “Come, Tasha,” she said, “let’s get you ready for bed. The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you will see Alexander.”

  “But I’ll miss Eleanor’s playing!” she implored.

  “If I play,” I answered, “I promise to open the door so that you can listen.”

  Placated by this assurance, she slipped off her chair and out of the room, with Mary at her heels. I heard her staccato footfalls moving up the stairs, and then, more faintly, over our heads.

  I attempted a bright smile and stood up. “Now, Mr. Ducoeur, when Mary returns, I think that you should play for us.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve told you, I would much rather hear you.”

  The arched windows were open to the breeze the rain brought with it. I thought of what Alexander’s fingers could do with that hush. Under his hands, the mute whisper of the rain would catch and spin the voices of the ghosts trapped out on this miserable night, weaving them into the cry of the growing things that took the rainwater and converted it to wild lifeblood. I was struck with a pang of missing him, craved the solace of his presence. This was what the poets suffer over, I thought. In that light, the ballade I had always scorned began to make sense.

  “He will come back to you,” Dorian said softly, “and there is no disloyalty to him in playing for me.”

  I was surprised to see pain on his face, real and recent. “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  He shrugged, covering his distress with one of his unimpeachable smiles. “It is not difficult to read the stamp of love, particularly when it is written on a face so expressive as yours.”

  I was unable to think of a response that would be quite caustic enough, and I wasn’t certain that I wanted to.

  “Come on, then,” I said. I didn’t turn to see whether he followed.

  The air in the music room was hot and sluggish; nobody had opened the windows. Now I opened them all, and when I came to the last, I saw that the screen had a jagged tear down the centre. Peering into the dim patch of light on the lawn beneath, I saw that a branch had fallen from a nearby tree, tearing the screen as it fell.

  “This is a savage land still,” Dorian said at my shoulder. I whirled around to find him behind me, looking, as I had looked, out into the inky blackness.

  “Do you choose to emphasize your entrances by frightening people half to death,” I demanded, “or can’t you help it?”

  “You were absorbed in whatever you were looking at,” he suggested, “and you didn’t hear me for the rain.”

  He touched my arm lightly. His fingers were warm, and my skin tingled at the contact. I drew away, both from the familiarity and from the realization that something significant had passed between us with that touch. I moved back into the light, toward the piano, just as Mary came back into the room. Dorian immediately turned his attention to her.

  I picked the first volume of music that came under my hand: Bach’s partitas for keyboard. I couldn’t have chosen better if I had tried. I opened the book to the fourth piece and began to play, concentrating on the precise mathematical intricacies of the first movement. I told myself that I could not stop until I had made it through the entire suite, that I would be calmer then. As much as I tried to ignore it, though, I felt Dorian’s presence, just as I felt the threads of rain angling down around us, sewing the house to the soft earth.

  But when the last notes of the minuet died in the close atmosphere of the room, I found I had lost the desire to play any more. Dorian’s eyes rested on me; his chin rested on one hand, his fingers covering his lips.

  “Seldom does one hear Bach executed with such feeling,” he finally said.

  I shrugged listlessly, sad for no reason but the ultimate fragility of that perfect music, the way it seemed to come to nothing in this place. Rather than calming me, the music had drained me, leaving my worries stark as shipwrecks.

  “Bach always seemed to me to go with rain,” I said, then turned to choose another book.

  Eve’s presence seemed very near me then; perhaps it was she who inspired my next c
hoice, Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess.” I only half-listened to the music, my mind more on the soft rush of rain beyond the window.

  When I had finished, Dorian said, “Such sad music you choose tonight. Is it only for want of your love?”

  “It seems to suit tonight,” I answered curtly.

  “Well,” Mary said appeasingly, “I thought they were both lovely, but now I must excuse myself. I have a bit of a headache.” Her face was pale. I promised myself once again that I would find her a doctor.

  “Eleanor, will you show Dorian to one of the guest rooms when he’s ready?”

  “Of course,” I answered, though I wanted nothing less.

  Colette stood up with Mary. “It was lovely, mademoiselle, thank you,” she said to me, and then, to Dorian, “monsieur,” with a decided coldness in her look. It made me all the more uneasy to be left alone with him.

  The silence that followed in the wake of the women’s leaving was augmented by the sound of the rain.

  “If you like, I’ll show you upstairs now,” I said to Dorian, standing with my fingertips still on the piano keys, carefully avoiding his eyes.

  “Actually,” he said, his voice warm and enveloping, “I’d be obliged for the chance to speak with you alone. It seems to me that our relationship suffers from a lack of understanding, which might perhaps be mended, given time to talk unimpeded by others.”

  I looked up at him. “I wasn’t aware that we had a relationship.”

  “I get the distinct impression that you don’t care for me,” he said, “though I can’t think what I’ve done to cause this.”

  “Can’t you?” I slid the cover over the piano keys more forcefully than I’d meant to; dissonant harmonics wavered from its innards.

  “No . . . unless someone has been speaking ill of me to you.”

  His expression was ingenuous, but I was tired and out of patience. “You knew that I was listening to your conversation with Alexander that night at the party, didn’t you.”

  “So that’s the cause of your antipathy,” he said, settling back into his chair. “You heard me speaking to Alexander, and he must have told you some story about the nature of our acquaintance.”

  “He told me the truth about you!” I said, anger finally overriding caution. “I know that you’re not who you say you are, Dorian Ducoeur. Or is it Antoine Fontainebleau? I might as well turn you out of my house, storm or not, for what I know about you!”

  “And what, exactly, do you know about me?” he asked in an untroubled voice.

  “This is my house. I am under no obligation to explain myself to you.”

  He sighed. “Lend me half an hour to explain, then.”

  “You have five minutes.”

  Resignation flashed across his countenance before he spoke again. It was only for a moment, but it was enough to show me that he could not be as young as I had originally thought. Without the supercilious grin, the skin around his eyes and forehead collapsed into a web of fine lines.

  “All right then,” he said. “Five minutes, and if you don’t want to hear the rest of the story, I’ll go without complaint.” He paused. “You’ll appreciate that this is difficult. Perhaps we could have a drink?”

  The truth was, I felt more than a passing need of a drink myself. So I poured two glasses of port from the decanter in the corner and handed him one of them. He sipped from his glass; I took a deep swallow.

  “Five minutes,” I reiterated.

  He sighed. “Then you leave me no choice but to say this brutally. Your Alexander has lied to you about everything he is, beginning with his name. He is indeed the son of a Russian nobleman, but he was disinherited long ago for his Communist sympathies, and not long afterward his family were shot as imperialists. One wonders how they were discovered.”

  I stared at him, shocked beyond words.

  “This is not the first time Alexander has left Russia,” he continued, “though his previous travels were government errands whose nature I wouldn’t like to consider.”

  “This is unspeakable!” I cried when I recovered my voice. “Leave my house this instant!”

  “I’ll leave if you like, Eleanor,” Dorian said calmly, “but you know that if I do, you’ll wonder about the rest. You won’t sleep tonight for wondering, and by morning it will begin to drive you mad.” He smiled and leaned toward me confidentially. “You know there is a piece of Alexander that he has kept hidden from you—perhaps quite a substantial piece. In your secret heart you have always suspected that one day you might hear something like this.”

  It was true that I hated him; yet something in me wavered despite it, and for that I hated myself.

  “Why would you tell me these things?” I asked softly.

  He shrugged. “I merely mean to clear my name, since Alexander has obviously been slandering it.”

  “And why do you care what I think of you?”

  He paused. “Let’s change the subject for a moment. I’ve been wondering what the child meant tonight when she asked if the woman in the painting would come to the ball.”

  His voice seemed oddly distant, and I was beginning to feel dizzy. “I’m sure that Tasha meant exactly what she said,” I answered without thinking, not wanting him to see my discomfiture.

  “It seemed to interest you.”

  “It was a peculiar thing to say.”

  “It was indeed peculiar. Particularly her confession that she dreams about the twins . . . just like you do. It made me wonder whether someone could have been talking to her. Or to you, for that matter.”

  “Talking to her? What do you mean?”

  He reached into his pocket for a cigarette, lit it, and dropped the spent match into his empty glass.

  “Surely you must know about your grandmother’s dreams.”

  I didn’t answer. My vision was beginning to blur.

  “You do know of her illness, though?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “She was a deeply spiritual woman—not religious, but something deeper, more personal. After your mother ran away, your grandmother was said to have been consumed by particularly vivid dreams of her lost daughter.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I demanded, trying desperately to control the tremor in my voice. “I thought you were here only as a child.”

  “Oh, I had letters over the years, and you can imagine the effect of a scandal such as your mother’s disappearance on a community as small as this—particularly coupled with her own mother’s illness.” He paused, waiting for a response, but I kept silent. “Apparently Claudine came to connect her missing daughter with the story of the Garden of Eden, and it was all played out in her dreams.”

  Dorian looked closely at me. When I still didn’t answer, he reached forward and touched the diamond at my throat. “Pretty,” he said. “Was it your mother’s?”

  “Enough!” I cried, leaping up. It was only then that I became aware of the extent to which the alcohol had affected me. I put my hands to my swimming head. “Whatever you think I’m hiding from you, it doesn’t exist! I don’t care about you. I didn’t even know you existed until you wrote me that letter!”

  He regarded me calmly. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Eleanor. Nor—despite what you may think—do I have any wish to end what has begun between you and Alexander.”

  “How generous of you,” I wavered.

  “In fact, from what I know of him he is a fine man, if a bit . . . vehement . . . in some of his beliefs. After Anna’s death, he took care of their child devotedly—”

  It was too much. I didn’t consider the reasons he might have to lie about this; I couldn’t bear to be in the room with him a moment longer. I stumbled in what I thought was the direction of the door, but found myself instead by the window with the torn screen. I clutched the sill, dizzy and sobbing and impotent.

  I don’t know how long I stood like that; it seemed at most a few seconds. When I turned around, though, Dorian was gone.

  The next mo
ment, something crashed against the screen behind me. I cried out, doubling back and covering my face with my arms, and then I stumbled to my knees. Finally I righted myself, and plunged blindly toward the door—straight into Alexander’s arms. He looked down at me anxiously through tendrils of sodden hair.

  “Eleanor, what is it?” he asked.

  Still unable to answer him, I turned back to the room, gesturing toward the coffee table where we had left our wineglasses; but they were gone. Looking around, I saw all six glasses neatly tipped upside down by the port decanter, and no sign that Dorian Ducoeur had ever been there.

  THREE

  ALEXANDER led me to the sofa where Dorian had sat, and handed me a handkerchief. My mind was still foggy with alcohol; I couldn’t catch my breath or control my shaking limbs. The room felt too hot.

  “Was it another nightmare?” he asked.

  I looked at him in confusion.

  “That frightened you,” he explained. “That made you run into the hallway.”

  Slowly I shook my head. “It was Dorian. And . . . and something else.”

  Alexander’s face tightened. “He was here?”

  “He said that the road was washed out beyond Eden, and he couldn’t get the car through to Joyous Garde.”

  Alexander was looking at the window with the torn screen. “How long ago did he leave?”

  “I—I don’t know. Not more than a few minutes ago.”

  Alexander looked at me closely, as though expecting to find more information in my face. Finally he said, “There’s no other door out of this room. You would think I would have run into him.”

  “There are windows.”

  “And there was no car in the drive when we arrived. We certainly didn’t pass one on the road.”

  “Don’t you believe me?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer immediately, and this was a blow as painful as Dorian’s accusations had been.

  “Eleanor,” he said soothingly after that slight pause, putting an arm around me, “of course I believe you.”

  Of course. I would have been happier without those words. We fell into silence, both lost in our own troubled thoughts. I knew that I couldn’t keep mine to myself much longer, yet I didn’t know how to begin. In the end Alexander solved the dilemma for me.