I thought of the magazines in my office and for a brief moment I almost told him about them. “I have the same problem,” I said.
“Is your wife there too?”
I did not intend to lie. My tongue was pressed against my teeth, ready to say the word. But the word never came, and instead I felt my head nodding, and once it started it felt somehow as if it were true.
“How long has it been?”
I did not need to stop to count. I knew exactly how long it had been since Madame had been here last. “Five years and seven months.”
“I shouldn’t have asked. I don’t want to think about five years. Five years is impossible. It’s simply out of the question.”
That quickly, his smile was gone. I wanted to take it all back now, say it was a mistake, a misunderstanding. But it was too late for that.
“I don’t know how you manage,” he said, shaking his head.
“I think about how wonderful it will be when she comes back.”
“Back?” He sounded surprised. “The way things are, who would ever want to come back?”
I had to remind myself that he knew nothing about Madame—nothing about me. I doubted he could even fathom what our lives had been like before, despite the fact that he now lived here himself.
“It will get better,” I said. “Everything will be like it was.”
He gave his head a shake. “I hope it gets better than that. Otherwise what’s the point of all this?”
I lowered my eyes and gave the bowl a stir. “The hardest part is the wait between letters.”
Suddenly I felt his hand on my arm, squeezing tightly. “You too?” he said, nearly crushing me. “Have you not been getting letters?”
“It’s been a long time.”
“How long?”
I tried pulling my arm away. “A year. Maybe more.”
His fingers started to loosen. “Is that all?”
Finally I was able to free myself. “I’m not sure.” I could still see the impressions of his fingers on my skin. “How long has it been for you?”
Elbows on the table, Marc brought his hands together and set his chin on top. He gave me a weak smile. “I’m still waiting for the first.”
“It’s a wonder anything gets through,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster. “What’s not lost, the censors destroy.”
“Just one,” Marc said, “so I would know they made it.”
There was nothing I could think to say.
“You hear stories about the crossing,” he said. “Terrible stories. Boats that sink. People drown. Sometimes you hear about people getting dropped off on deserted islands and starving to death. I don’t believe it,” he said, “anything that awful. How could you believe it? Still, though, it makes you worry.”
“I’m certain everything is fine.”
For a long moment he regarded me carefully, searching my eyes for assurance that I meant what I said.
I felt myself crumbling under his gaze. “I should go.”
Concern spread across Marc’s face, and he gestured toward my bowl. “You haven’t finished yet.” He gave me one of his gummy smiles, as if to show me he felt no sadness about the turn the conversation had taken.
I tried to smile too.
“There’s a young lady I recently met,” I said, looking from Marc to Louis, who raised his eyes at the mention of the girl. “I wonder if you know her. Perhaps she is a friend of your Lulu. Her name is Mlle Trouvé.”
“Ah, yes,” Marc said, grinning happily. “Garcelle. Yes, she is a sweet girl. But I don’t know that she’d be right for you.”
“Oh no,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“She is very proper. Some say she is haughty. Claire is her aunt.”
“Claire?”
He nodded over my shoulder, and when I turned I saw the lady with the cart.
Marc winked at me. “Perhaps it would be best not to mention this to Claire.”
“I was just curious,” I said. “She seemed like a very nice young lady.”
Marc gave me a sad little smile. “I know how it is. You don’t have to explain. There comes a time when a man has to go on living. Am I right, Louis?” he said, turning to his friend. “We must find comfort wherever we can.”
* * *
The next morning I awoke later than usual to the jarring snap of something large and sturdy breaking down below. Then came the shriek of splintering wood.
Only partially dressed, I staggered onto the balcony. Across the drive, scattered on the grass, lay the entire contents of the guesthouse: the long oak table surrounded by overstuffed chairs, an ottoman atop the sideboard, the grand piano and its stool separated from one another by an armoire and a pile of leather-bound books.
At the edge of the drive a man stood with his foot planted in the middle of an overturned buffet table. With four lazy blows of a hammer he knocked off each of the legs.
By the time I reached the drive, another man was climbing into the open piano with a pair of wire cutters.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I yelled.
The man pulled his head out of the piano, regarding me with curiosity. “Who are you?”
Nearly out of breath, I reached past him and grabbed hold of the prop supporting the piano lid. “You have to stop.”
He watched with bemusement as I closed the lid.
“This doesn’t belong to you,” I said. “It belongs to Madame Freeman. I demand that you put everything back.”
The man with the wire cutters shrugged. “Never heard of her.” But warmly, as if we were old friends, he came over and put his hand on my shoulder. “You know how it is. We’ve got a lot to do.”
“You don’t understand.”
He had his arm thrown over me now, and I smelled the rum on his breath. “We’re brothers, you and me.”
“No,” I said, “we’re nothing of the kind.”
His smile took a menacing turn, and he freed his arm from around my shoulders.
Reaching down, he gripped the edge of the piano lid and threw it back. Despite the weight of the wood, the lid seemed to sail, stopping only when the hinge could go no further. With a snap and a groan, the metal separated from the wood. The upright lid wobbled for a moment, uncertain which way it should go. Finally it began its long retreat, landing with a crash that caused the strings inside to thrum.
I must have been a peculiar sight, running down the path half dressed. Had I paused to think about what I was doing, I might have stopped and turned back. Did I really expect Dragon Guy to do something to stop the destruction? But it had been years since I had run like this, and momentum kept me going.
As I neared Madame’s villa, I heard voices. There was a loud splash of water, then laughter. They must have heard me as well, for they were waiting when I rushed around the corner to enter the courtyard.
Two men with machine guns hanging from straps around their necks stood side by side. One of them threw out his arms to stop me.
The last thing I saw was the other man raising the butt of his gun to my head.
I awoke in my room as dusk was working its way through the louvers.
“How are you, monsieur?” Hector said, sitting in a chair with his back to the window.
Gingerly I touched my head, feeling the dry clumps of blood. It was almost the same spot as the last time. “More or less as you would imagine.”
“That’s a pretty nasty lump you have.”
“Are you here to tell me I had an accident?”
“An accident, monsieur? No, no. A misunderstanding. My brother asked me to come and apologize.”
I tried to sit up, but my head was throbbing.
“Does he expect me to accept his apology?”
“We have to be careful, monsieur. These are dangerous times. You should be careful, too.”
“I’m aware that a great deal has changed around here,” I said. “But it has not changed so much that I find myself in need of advice from a
sixteen-year-old boy.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“If you want to help,” I said, “you could stop your brother from destroying everything in sight.”
“No one wants to destroy anything,” Hector said. “But there are some things more important than your precious estate.”
It was painful to look into his eyes and see the cold indifference there. “You don’t have to pretend,” I said. “You don’t have to do what your brother says. I know you love it here.”
Hector got up from the chair, and with the light at his back I could no longer see his face.
“What other choice do I have?” His voice was gruff, and yet he could not stop himself from sighing. “We’re at war. We’re fighting for our freedom.” As he came forward I saw that he felt sorry for me—for my pitiful inability to understand.
“War?” I said. “What is this war you keep talking about? Wars have strategies and purposes and aims. Wars have battles and campaigns. This is not a war. This is just shooting. This is nothing but mindless, brutal violence. This is a power struggle, nothing more. Your brother wants to topple President Duphay. Fine. But what does he propose to put in his place? How is all of this going to make anything better? Nothing is going to change. There’s just going to be more death. Don’t fool yourself,” I said. “You’re too smart for this. You’re just going to get all these people killed.”
My head suddenly felt like a bucket of stones. I had to close my eyes. I could no longer sit up straight.
“You might be right, monsieur.”
I felt my head lift and a pillow slide underneath.
“But it’s still something,” Hector continued. “And it’s more than you or any politician has ever done. What did you ever do to make things better?”
“I built this place,” I whispered through the crushing pain.
“What good did that ever do any of us?”
“If I had not built it,” I said, “you and your brother and everyone else would already be dead.”
“Goodnight, monsieur,” Hector said. “My brother is expecting me.”
Hector had been gone just a few minutes when there was a knock on the door.
Claire limped over to my bedside table, setting down a supper tray.
“Thank you,” I said.
Closing the door behind her, she said, “I put a little extra in the bowl.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
What was most surprising was how quickly life came to seem routine. Each day the children went to school at the casino. The older boys and the newest recruits drilled on the tennis courts. I kept up my walks along the grounds and took my meals in the dining room with the other men, never forgetting my bowl. Though I often saw Marc and Louis, I found other places to sit.
One evening after sunset I saw the skinny young man sitting with a young woman on a bench in the pavilion. Partially hidden behind a lattice woven with vine, he leaned in and kissed her. Was she Lulu the laundress? I wished I could hear their voices, whispering in each other’s ears. I wondered what sorts of promises they were making. What could love feel like at a time like this? Perhaps they were imagining their future together. But what could that future possibly look like? Had they picked out the villa in which they would raise their family and tend their garden? Did they think this would last forever? They were so young—how could they understand these brief lives they were living were not their own?
There was only one person who I thought understood. Alone she sat each afternoon on the steps of the casino, tending to the children, as removed as it was possible to be from Dragon Guy’s kingdom. It could not have been more clear that she did not belong with these people. And it occurred to me that no one, perhaps not even Mlle Trouvé herself, was aware that something else was possible, that there existed a world where she could be happy. Or at least it had existed, and could exist again. And only I could show it to her. Not Dragon Guy, not Black Max. No one but me.
Alone I often saw Mlle Trouvé walking the villa paths, always with a book in her hands. The only time she was not alone was during mass. I wondered how Dragon Guy had ever gotten her to come here. No words, no matter how grandiose, could have persuaded her to join such a futile cause. There could be no allure for her in such brutish men. I could imagine her, the beloved teacher, standing in a clean, pressed skirt at the front of a classroom, holding up a picture for her students, a forest of raised, eager hands. Had they kidnapped her—Dragon Guy and Black Max kicking in the schoolhouse door? No; she would have had plenty of opportunity to escape. The only reason could have been that she came for the children, knowing only she could protect them.
As she prayed each Sunday in the grass outside the pavilion, I thought I felt Mlle Trouvé asking for forgiveness—not for herself but for everyone else, for all of those too blind to realize what the future held. I could see, all around me, signs of that future approaching. In the corridor outside my rooms, the rugs were wearing low. All night long there was shouting in the room next door. Sometimes I was able to catch a few words, but rarely enough of them to derive any meaning.
Despite living in such close proximity, I had little idea who my neighbors were, aside from their ranks. I had seen some of their faces when we happened to pass one another on the way to or from the stairs, but I seldom saw them anywhere else. They did not dine with the other men. They did not socialize. Some of them went to the Sunday mass at the pavilion, but not all. Some of them I was quite sure I had never seen, although I occasionally heard their voices.
There was one in particular, sharper than the rest, who even through the wall conveyed more than a hint of menace. Whenever he spoke, everyone else instantly fell silent, no matter how animated the discussion had been just moments before. I eventually learned he was a colonel, and I did not need to be present in their private meetings to understand he was the one the others most feared. Perhaps even more than Dragon Guy.
I recall one night, not long after they had moved into the manor house, when the fighting was especially intense. A messenger came running to the colonel’s office. Outside my door he paused, and I could hear him breathing heavily as he tried to collect himself. However well he succeeded, the moment the colonel’s door opened, the boy lost his composure. “I told him, Colonel,” he blurted, still standing in the hall, where I could not help but overhear. “I gave him your orders, but he won’t listen. He refused—” and there was a strangled sound as the boy was yanked inside.
The door closed like a thunderclap. The colonel’s voice was calm but stern. There were others in the room with him. I heard them arguing, but each time anyone dared open his mouth, the colonel’s voice returned them to silence. They seemed to know better than to contradict him.
With so little possibility of debate, the discussion did not last long. The door reopened, and the boy stepped out again into the hall. And then, for the first time, I heard the colonel’s voice clearly, without a wall between us.
“Tell him,” he said softly, carefully, as if searching for just the right words. “If he disobeys me again, I will have his head.”
The boy tried to say something to indicate he understood, but the words got stuck and came out as little more than a gurgle. In his eagerness to get away, he stumbled. I heard his feet trip on the rug. No matter how clumsy he was, I wished just then that I could follow him, wherever he was going. I did not need to know whom they were discussing to share the boy’s terror.
I often wondered if these men ever thought about me, troubled about the secrets I might overhear. At first I was careful to sit in the part of the room farthest from their voices; should they take it upon themselves to kick open the door, I wanted them to see my innocence. I kept my water glass full, lest they think I had been pressing it to the wall.
But soon it became all too clear that they considered my presence to be of no consequence. In me they saw not the slightest danger.
Late one afternoon, a few days after my encounter with Dragon Guy’s guards,
I was sitting on the balcony when I saw Hector down below, crossing the drive to the guesthouse. For the last several days I had not been able to stop thinking about our conversation. Since all of this had started, it had become easy to forget how young he was—that he was still just a boy. As hard as it was for everyone else to resist Dragon Guy, I could not imagine how difficult it would be for his own brother. But I knew Hector’s better nature, and I knew I had to keep trying.
If Hector heard me calling out to him, he showed no sign. After a few more steps he disappeared inside the guesthouse. I waited for him, bent over the railing, but when a few minutes had passed and he still had not come back outside, I got up and went downstairs.
From the front steps, the guesthouse was quiet. The entire estate had been quiet all day. I knocked at the front door, but no one answered. What would I have said if they had?
The smell hit me the moment I turned the knob. Faint yet fetid, it seemed to seep from the wood. The open door released the rest, a queasying stench of decay that poked its wretched fingers up my nostrils. From down the hall came a rumble of coughing. A murmur of voices snaked from corner to corner. As I approached the drawing room, the coughing continued, growing louder and hoarser. I detected other sounds too—jumbled and indistinct, like the hum of a crowd heard from a distance. The corridor was lined with refuse: piles of filthy rags and empty baskets. Beside a broom made of palm fronds lay a mound of broken glass.
I saw the first man just as I was reaching the doorway to the drawing room. He was lying on a low table, his head wrapped in a rust-colored bandage. His eyes were closed. I came forward softly, trying not to wake him. Next to him lay another man. At first I could see him only from the neck up, dirty and unshaven but not visibly injured. As I turned the corner he rolled his head toward me, parting his bloodshot eyes.
The drawing room was the largest in the guesthouse, occupying a full quarter of the first floor. The northern wall was mostly glass, a series of broad, tall, arching windows, one after the next. The shades had been lowered, projecting a foggy yellow pallor across the otherwise darkened room, making it look like an old photograph. There were three rows of men, one each along the east and west walls, and one in between, cutting the room in half. All of the men were laid out on makeshift beds of varying lengths and heights, many constructed of a familiar glossy, black-lacquered wood. It was all here: Madame’s piano and priceless antiques stripped into cots and gurneys.
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