A Twist of Orchids

by Michelle Wan

  The priest was reaching the end of the rite of committal when the metal gate of the cemetery clanged. A man and a woman, shielded by a large golf umbrella, came hurrying up. The umbrella, green and white, was the only spot of color in an otherwise somber scene. Their approach was greeted by soft exclamations of surprise.

  “Ils sont venus!”

  “Que c’est gentil.”

  “Joseph sera touché …”

  They came! How kind. Joseph will be touched …

  The O’Connors had come. All the way from Florida, Monsieur and Madame O’Connor had made the journey to say their last goodbyes, while that heartless daughter … There was a flurry of nods, whispered greetings, a quick touching of hands. Mara did not know the couple well, but she was French Canadian, from Montreal, so they exchanged rapid embraces as fellow North Americans. From Daisy she received air kisses and a quick impression of boniness and sugary perfume; from Donny, the silky feel of expensive Ultrasuede, no doubt weatherproofed, and a waft of his own brand of aftershave. Daisy wore a navy blue Aquascutum raincoat and a clear plastic rain scarf decorated with white polka dots over her ash-blond hair. The O’Connors had been coming to the region for years. They had a house not far away in the village of Grives.

  With a display of self-deprecating body language, offers to share the umbrella, Donny and Daisy slipped in between Mara and stout Suzanne Portier, whose walnut orchard adjoined the Gaillards’ land.

  “Terrible weather,” Daisy mouthed at Mara in English with an excessive shaping of red lips. A stick figure of a woman with staring blue eyes, she reminded Mara of a middle-aged Barbie doll. “The flight over was awful. How’s Joseph holding up?”

  “Not well,” Mara answered truthfully. He was standing tremulously near the head of the grave, still supported by Francine Boyer and Maïtre Joffre, and had not noticed the Americans. It was Francine who took the single red rose from Joseph’s hand and dropped it for him into the open grave. Others said their last goodbyes by throwing down small handfuls of damp earth that thudded on the coffin.

  “It’s so sad,” Daisy murmured. “Honestly, they were like family to me. I had to come. For Joseph’s sake. Amélie would have wanted it.”

  A moment later the Barbie doll left the shelter of the umbrella to insert herself in Francine Boyer’s place, where she gathered the widower in her arms. Briefly, Mara glimpsed Joseph’s face, bobbing dazedly over the Aquascutum shoulder, and felt a tug of the heart. She herself had held back from going to him during the service and the burial, observing the proprieties, deferring to family members and older friends. She felt a sense of minor outrage that the Barbie doll had so simply jumped the queue.

  Then it was over, condolences were expressed, the rain fell harder. The mourners hurried as quickly as decorum allowed back to the covered porch of the church and the little square where their cars were parked. For the moment, Mara walked alone. She was a small, slim woman, forty-something, with an oval face ending in a pointed, determined chin. The rain rolled off the black beret she wore pulled down over her dark, short-cropped hair. It dripped off her bangs and clung to her lashes. She blinked and realized that with the rain she was blinking away tears. She dug in her pocket for a tissue and blew her nose.

  Jacqueline Godet caught her up. The short, fat nurse’s words came out in breathless bursts as she waddled along.

  “It’s cruel … her being the first to go.”

  “Yes.” Mara had assumed—they all had—that Amélie would outlast Joseph. Eighteen steps had made the difference. “Will he be able to manage on his own?”

  “Oh, he’ll do. He can get … extended home care. Until then … I’ll arrange for daily nursing visits. We’ll take it as it comes.”

  “But”—Mara’s dark eyes filled with concern—“he’s starting to freeze up. You saw how he was earlier. What if he falls?”

  “He’s better than he looks,” the nurse reassured her. “He’s just having a bad day. You can imagine.”

  Donny O’Connor came alongside. “You talking about Joseph?” Gallantly, he held the golf umbrella over them. He was a big man in his fifties, bareheaded, his iron-gray hair styled in a boyish brush cut. “Daisy thinks he’s in pretty bad shape. She’s also worried about his heart. Parkinson’s may be neurological, but it affects the muscles, and the heart’s a muscle. Plus, we’ve just heard he’s starting to hallucinate. Sees things in the room with him, bugs in his food.”

  “Side effect of the drugs,” said Jacqueline. “Nothing serious. They get used to it.”

  Mara glanced back. Joseph was at the rear of the straggling line, between Maïtre Joffre and Daisy, who teetered precariously on high heels that dug into the soft ground. She seemed to clutch Joseph’s right arm as much for balance as to help the old man along. The notary, trying to make his umbrella do for three, struggled to support both of them.

  The nurse shook her head. “It’s the day-to-day stuff … I’m more concerned about. Amélie … used to take care of everything. He was very dependent on her. He’ll have to learn … to do for himself now. Main thing is … his pills. It’s important he remembers to take them on time.”

  Donny’s permanently suntanned face—he golfed year-round, Mara knew, had even toured professionally—expressed concern. “Well, if you ask me, he looks worse than when we saw him last fall.” The American had a bit of difficulty with his vowels, with the throaty R, but his French was serviceable.

  Jacqueline shrugged. “Parkinson’s is progressive. So his tremors … his movement … are always going to be ‘worse.’ He’s had it ten years now. But he’s a tough old boy. He’ll last … a good while yet. I’ve known Parkinsonians … to go fifteen, twenty years on their own.”

  They reached the square. Everyone huddled in awkward little groups under the dripping church porch. By now, Donny’s brush cut was heavily beaded with moisture. At last Joseph appeared, led by the notary, with Daisy miming assistance on the side. Daisy detached herself and came to join her husband, Mara, and Jacqueline.

  “He’s in terrible shape,” she almost accused the nurse. Unlike her husband, her Rs were beautifully formed and her French fluent. “He’ll never make it without Amélie.”

  “It’s a bad time for him,” said Jacqueline, stiffening. “We’ll get him through it.”

  Daisy shook her head emphatically. Her plastic rain scarf made a faint scratching sound against the collar of her coat while giving off little sprays of water. “It’s not a matter of getting him through. I was saying to Donny on the way here, he was fine while Amélie was alive. That woman was a saint. But now he needs round-the-clock, professional care. He needs to be in a proper nursing home.”

  “We’re pretty concerned,” said Donny.

  Jacqueline’s face went stony. “He doesn’t want a nursing home. He wants to live out his life in his own house, on his own land. It’s his choice …” She broke off, laboring for breath.

  “Damned right,” muttered Mara, and was rewarded by a cool, porcelain stare from Daisy.

  “And he’ll get good care, if that’s what you’re worried about,” said Jacqueline drily.

  “Oh, I didn’t meant that,” said Daisy.

  “Not at all,” seconded Donny, anxious to conciliate. “Anyway, Daze, I’m sure the nurse knows best.” He knew Jacqueline but always called her “the nurse,” as if she had no identity outside of her function.

  Mara left the Americans to make their peace with Jacqueline and went to Joseph who, with Maïtre Joffre, was making his way slowly to the notary’s car.

  “She’s gone,” Joseph said as Mara came alongside him and took his free arm. It was what he had said to everyone at the service and graveside, as if repetition would somehow help him to grasp the reality. His gnarled face, made wooden by his affliction, was unable to shape to his emotion, but his eyes shone with the anguish of unshed tears. The sagging lower lids were red and dry. They made Mara think of something desiccated and at the same time newly flayed. A bubble of saliva winked at t
he corner of his mouth, burst, and began to snail down his chin. She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue, found only the one she had blown her nose on, and used it to wipe away the trail of spit.

  “Yes, she’s gone,” she tried to comfort him, “and we’ll all miss her. But you won’t be alone, Joseph. You’re surrounded by people who care for you, who’ll stand by you.” Neighbors who themselves were aging, but who would support him out of solidarity. And herself. She was the incomer, the youngest resident of Ecoute-la-Pluie. She would repay every kindness Amélie and Joseph had ever shown her. She turned to the notary.

  “Are you coming back with us?” A simple funeral reception was to be held at the Boyers’.

  “Oui,” Maïtre Joffre sighed. He opened the car door. “It’s a sad day.”

  Together they backed Joseph onto the passenger’s seat. He had been a big man, still was, although today his body felt to Mara like a gathering of bones. His eyes followed the notary as he walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side. Urgently, Joseph tugged at her sleeve.

  “You’ve got to find out.” His lower jaw trembled, and his voice was barely audible. Mara had to bend forward to catch his words. “They won’t tell me. But they might tell you.”

  “Won’t tell you what, Joseph?” she asked gently.

  “Why?” Joseph looked at her pleadingly. “Why was she up there?”

  • 4 •

  “Does it exist or not?” demanded the fellow orchid enthusiast, thumping a page of the open book they held between them.

  “As I said, it’s an uncertain sighting. Not mine, unfortunately,” said Julian Wood.

  The enthusiast was no fellow but a towering female whose salient bosom nearly struck him in the face as she leaned over to make her point. Above that part of her anatomy he was aware of shrewd blue eyes in a round face and a full head of unnaturally red hair. For the moment he felt dwarfed and a little desperate. Of course, he was sitting and she was standing, which gave her an unfair advantage. A long, lean, middle-aged Englishman with melancholy features obscured by an untidy mustache and beard, he found the little table at which he crouched very uncomfortable. It was positioned just inside the doorway of the Librairie Mazeau, the newest bookstore in the town of Bergerac. The idea was that customers coming and going would stop to purchase an autographed copy of his most recent work, Les orchidées sauvages de la Dordogne/Wild Orchids of the Dordogne, a stack of which stood on the floor beside him. With spring around the corner, it was theoretically a good time to promote a book about flowers. But winter still had the land in its grip; people were exhausted and grumpy from months of nasty weather and far from believing in spring. So far, all he had attracted was this woman and cold air every time the door opened.

  “Ach! Then why include it?” Her English was stiff but correct. German, he thought. Or, he modified, picking up a singsong intonation, Swiss.

  “Because I think it almost certainly grew in these parts once and hopefully still does.” Julian spoke guardedly of an unidentified Lady’s Slipper orchid of which he had only artifactual traces. His book, a lovingly annotated bilingual photo-guide of every species of terrestrial orchid known to the region, included a blurry photo and an artist’s sketch of a flower he had provisionally named Cypripedium incognitum, not known at all. The orchid was a thing of mystery and almost sinister beauty. Its bright pink middle petal, the labellum, was shaped into the characteristic pouch-like slipper that gave the genus its name. Two astoundingly long, twisted, dark purple petals sprang dramatically from the sides of the flower.

  Perhaps because it was unknown, Cypripedium incognitum drew Julian like a siren’s song. Find me, the flower seemed to whisper. And from the moment it had thrust itself into his life a couple of years ago, he had been obsessed with doing just that, combing hills, meadows, and woodlands in his search. Ardently he believed that one day this flower, seductive as a phantom bride, would reward his quest by showing him its face. Somewhere it waited, just for him, on a sun-dappled ridge or around the next turning of the path.

  The woman, still skeptical, said, “You know, of course, Western Europe has but one indigenous Slipper orchid, Cypripedium calceolus. If this”—she thumped the page again—“proves to be a native, it will be two. It will make a sensation for the orchid world.”

  Good God, she didn’t have to tell him! The monumental possibility had long teetered in his mind like a boulder on a slender finger of stone.

  “However,” she went on, “I think it is more likely an import that has managed somehow to establish itself in the wild.”

  “Even so, it makes for a remarkable story,” Julian countered. The chances of a transplant surviving were slim, which made his Cypripedium not only alluring but vulnerable and valiant.

  “Hmm. And you are sure about the lateral sepals?” She referred to two blackish purple petal-like structures flanking the labellum; a third of similar hue arched over top, like a canopy. “This, too, I question. As you know, except for the Ram’s Head and Cypripedium plectrochilum, all other Slipper orchids typically have the lateral sepals fused as one. In your book you show them clearly separated.”

  “It’s what makes this orchid so remarkable.”

  “But what is your evidence? Ach! A picture taken in situ, not very good, and this drawing of some kind of embroidery.” The photograph she referred to had been shot in May 1984 by Mara’s twin sister, Bedie; the drawing was an artist’s sketch, based on an antique embroidered representation of Cypripedium incognitum dating from 1869. Bedie, unfortunately, could not be asked about the orchid; she had taken all knowledge of it with her to the grave. The embroidery, however, told a tale. It was a remarkable piece of needlework done by someone with an eye for detail and was the most complete depiction of the flower Julian had. The photo, blurry and stained, was unreliable and by itself could have shown merely a one-off mutant. However, the embroidery was botanically precise and gave the flower a second, much earlier reference point. The two, taken together, were sufficient to convince Julian that the orchid, native or transplant, was no isolated event.

  “Moreover,” went on the Swiss, “you give no information on how you came across the photograph or where you found the embroidery.”

  “No,” said Julian firmly. “I don’t.” That would be to reveal the areas of his ongoing search. The world was full of orchid hunters, most of them, as far as he was concerned, totally unscrupulous.

  “Hmm,” she said, perhaps divining his motives. “Such an orchid I have never seen, and I would very much like to do so. I am particularly interested in Slipper orchids. This one”—she cocked a shrewd, bright eye at him—“I don’t mind telling you, I particularly wish to have.” She paused, the eye sizing him up. “I am prepared to pay you extremely well to find it for me.”

  “You—what?” He gaped, unable to believe what he was hearing. She was proposing to engage him in the same way collectors of past centuries had hired plant hunters to go to the ends of the earth to bring back exotic species. He understood what drove collectors, being prey to some of the same mad forces himself, but really, this Alpine Valkyrie had a nerve. The orchid, if it belonged to anyone, belonged to him. He had no intention of delivering up what could prove to be the greatest orchidological find of the twenty-first century to anyone but the botanical world at large, a world he intended one day to stand on its ear. He struggled to maintain a civil front.

  “Well—er—it’s been nice talking to you.”

  “Perhaps I do not make myself clear. I want this orchid.”

  She had, and he wanted her to leave. She was blocking the entrance and, more importantly, potential buyers. The door opened, admitting another blast of frigid air, and a man squeezed past.

  Julian backpedaled. “As I said, it’s an uncertain sighting. One can’t really be sure of it.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “So you are now saying you don’t know if there really is such a thing?”

  “No. Well, yes. I suppose when you get right down to it, that i
s what I’m saying.”

  “Ha!” Her wide red mouth opened in a predatory laugh, and she punched him playfully on the shoulder. The blow rocked him backwards. “You are dodging.” She pronounced it dotching. “You are afraid I will steal your darling. All right. Simply prove to me Cypripedium incognitum exists. I will pay.”

  Julian heaved himself up. He was taller than she, but not by much. He said briskly, “Well, that’s my point, isn’t it? In order to prove anything, I first have to find it. So you see, it’s sort of a chicken-and-egg thing. And if I find it—when I find it—I won’t need to be paid.” He gave her a ghastly grin. Let her chew on that.

  The woman waved chickens and eggs aside. “Monsieur Wood, I am not just an ordinary collector. I am also a botanist and a breeder. I specialize in Slipper orchids. I have a greenhouse full of rare species that people from all over the world beg to see. I am Adelheid Besser. You have heard of me?”

  “Ah.” He had, and he acknowledged the name with a sinking feeling. She also had a reputation for ferocious acquisitiveness and was exactly the kind of person he needed to shield his orchid from.

  She went on grandly: “However, my interest in orchids is more extensive than collecting and breeding. I do also research into the food and medicinal uses of orchids. For example, do you know the European Lady’s Slipper has a very interesting phyto-chemical makeup? It contains cypripedin, an allergenic quinone that gives some people a bad rash.”

  You give me a bad rash, he thought.

  “The plant makes this substance to protect itself from fungal attacks. Now, have you ever thought that perhaps cypripedin has antifungal properties that can be commercially exploited?”

  My God. Julian’s mind flew protectively to his orchid, and his stomach lurched. She’ll grind it up. Or boil it. To make a cure for athlete’s foot. He stared at her in horror, much as he would have stared at a cannibal about to eat him.

  “So,” she pursued, impervious to his state of mind, “to get back to Cypripedium incognitum. If you can prove to me this orchid exists, as I said, I will pay you well. Call me when you have considered my proposition.” She gave him her card.