by Anne Rice
“Look, I…I wasn’t prepared for this,” he said gently, “Michael, I didn’t expect you to come. I thought you’d write, yes, but…you’ve got to give me a little time to talk to you calmly, not now, later…when we can sit down…I’ve done nothing to spite you, I left without telling you, that was bad.”
“You’ve tried over and over to spite me, Christophe,” the man said calmly. “But when you ruin yourself to spite me, when you give up your life in Paris, when you leave your future there…you have found the perfect way.” And then looking up with an entreaty to reason, he said, “You can’t stay in this place.” He shrugged. “It’s out of the question, you can’t remain here.”
“No,” Juliet said suddenly. She lowered her heavy market basket to the floor and moved quickly toward her son. “Who is this man?” she said.
“Not now, Maman, not now,” Christophe shook her off.
“Do you know what they are doing in the rotunda of my hotel?” the Englishman asked softly.
“I know, I know,” Christophe nodded wearily, shutting his eyes.
The Englishman sighed. He shook his head. “They’re auctioning slaves, Christophe. Do you know when we last saw that? It was in the hellholes of Egypt where all that remains of civilization lies in ruin, and this is America, Christophe, America!”
“Christophe,” Juliet whispered, “who is this man!”
“That has nothing to do with it,” Christophe said. “It’s got nothing to do with my being here or not being here, because it was the same before I was born and it will be the same after I’m dead…that’s not…”
“That you would come here, to live in this place,” said the Englishman softly, “to spite me—that has everything to do with it, Chris. I’m going back to the hotel now, a hotel where it is illegal for you to be lodged. And I am going to take my dinner in a room where it is illegal for you to share my table. And I am going to wait for you to come to me. Up the backstairs, no doubt, the human chattels who staff the place will show you the way. And then you can explain to me what this exile is all about. Now, do I have your word you will come!” His green eyes gleamed with a sense of power.
And Christophe nodded, running that hand through his hair again. “Yes…later…tonight.”
The Englishman started towards the door. But then he stopped. He drew something out of his coat, a packet of papers. “Oh, yes, your publishers want to talk to you, about adapting Nuits de Charlotte for the stage…”
Christophe grimaced with disgust.
“…Frederich LerMarque wants to play Randolphe. Frederich LerMarque! And he’s willing to help you to adapt it, there’s a guarantee naturally, do you know what this means?”
“Nothing,” Christophe shook his head, “I cannot do it.”
The Englishman’s face showed a momentary flicker of rage. He glanced at Marcel coldly and Marcel at once looked away. Juliet was studying the man as if he were not a human creature at all.
“This is an author’s dream, Christophe,” the Englishman said with renewed patience. “LerMarque could pack the Porte-Saint-Martin, he could pack the Théâtre Français. Thousands would see your work, thousands who’ve never read a book in their lives…”
Christophe did not move. Then he turned to face the Englishman, and with an effort he made his face very calm and said gently, “No.”
“The flat in Paris is as you left it” the Englishman said, “the rooms are as you left them…your desk, your pens, it’s all still there. And I have infinite patience, Christophe, though at times I lose my temper. I am here to wait this out.” Leaving the packet on the table, he left.
A heavy silence lay over them.
Marcel was miserable. He found himself studying the small silver knife on his chain and realized he had deliberately cut the tip of his finger with it, and it was bleeding. He felt listless staring at it as though all the enthusiasm had been drained from him, drained from the room. Christophe’s eyes were leaden as he slumped into the chair.
“Egypt?” Juliet whispered. “You were with that man in Egypt?” Her brows knit like those of a child. Gently she placed her hands on Christophe’s neck and commenced to massage the muscles. “Christophe, you were in Egypt with that man?” She reached suddenly for the packet of papers. But Christophe jerked around and caught her wrist with careless violence.
“No, Maman, stop it, don’t be crazy for once!” He got the packet back and threw it down.
She stared at him. “Answer me, Christophe,” she said. Her voice was low and guttural, “Who is that man?”
“No, Maman, not now.”
“Who?”
“Maman, it doesn’t matter who is he. I’m not going back to Paris, I’m not going back!,” he looked up at her, removing her hand from his neck. “Now, get me something to eat, get Marcel something…leave it alone.”
She was not satisfied. Her eyes followed Christophe as he turned to Marcel, and began to murmur now, almost incoherently about the work at hand. Marcel was thinking dully of all the old stories he’d heard of the “tall Englishman” who lived with Christophe in Paris, the “the white Englishman” who carried him home from those glamorous rive gauche cafés. They should just clear this table, Christophe was saying, get this place in order, he had to have some twenty sets of texts by Monday morning and was sure to have to go back to the store at least twice. Juliet, her head cocked to one side, watched him and then, her lips moving silently with some angry speech, she lifted her skirts prettily and went out of the room.
Christophe was staring forward.
“Let me put these together by subject,” Marcel said, turning to the volumes on the shelf. “Then we can examine them, Monsieur, I mean…Christophe.”
Christophe looked up. He smiled. “Yes, Christophe, right,” he said. “Yes…alphabetical order for now, it doesn’t matter…” Some of the old vitality was struggling to return. There were trunks upstairs to be brought down, he said, and maps to be unrolled, pictures yet to be hung, it was so fortunate that Marcel was willing to help him, that Marcel had come by.
And it seemed by dusk that they had almost restored it, the excitement that Christophe had exuded when they had first entered this room. They drank coffee as the sun set, the windows open and that great twining Queen’s Wreath, much cut back, but still luxurious, framed the windows, and the fresh boards of a new cistern rose abruptly to the far left as if to the very sky.
Inside the room was clean. Books filled all the shelves, and in the hall, out of sight, lay the empty trunks. In a newly upholstered wing chair, Christophe sat beside the grate, looking about with a pleasant and relaxed air. He beamed at Marcel. And Marcel, having never done such work…the lugging of crates downstairs, the back-straining unpacking and sorting…was exhilarated and exhausted at the same time. They had had a fun time with the trunks, coming across random discoveries that sometimes made them laugh: a woman’s slipper, scarves, a fan Christophe had bought in Spain, playing cards, mantillas, and ladies’ buttons fixed to a card which in their tiny intricate carvings told a story of love won and love lost. Juliet had been delighted with these unexpected finds, having thought she had cleaned these trunks long ago of all their real treasures, and indifferent to the ancient names of Horace, Pliny, Homer that they dug from the depths, had held the mantilla to the window, smiling, to see the sun through black lace.
Marcel, at the window with his coffee, savored the aroma, let the steam sting his eyes for no good reason, except perhaps that he was ashamed of watching Juliet in the open kitchen across the yard as she stirred the pot in the dim light of the fire; and pretending not to watch her, his eyes moved now and then to the fluttering hens that scampered across the purple flags. It was cool now. Getting darker, and the evening star shone in the deepening blue of the sky.
“What are you thinking, Marcel?” Christophe asked.
“Ah…that I like this time of day.” Marcel laughed. He’d been thinking that if he must live in torment this near to Juliet, he must watch his step.
Now there was a whaleboned waist to clasp, as enticing as the flesh he knew to be inside of it. She drew down a black iron pan from the ghastly flickers at the kitchen ceiling, her back to him, her silhouette quite flat and utterly fetching.
“But what are you thinking, Christophe?” he asked.
“That you are my friend,” Christophe said. “And that your shirt is torn, and your coat is soiled and your mother will be angry with you.”
Marcel laughed, “My mother doesn’t tend to those things, Monsieur,” he said forgetting the old admonition. “She won’t know. And if she did, she’d be relieved to hear I wasn’t brawling in the streets, she’s been at her wits’ ends with me lately, though all of that is changed now.”
“You’ve grown up,” Christophe teased. There was a gleam in his eye. He tapped the ash from his cheroot into the grate. His shirt was open at the throat, and he sat with legs comfortably apart, one foot on the fender.
“I have, Monsieur.”
“You must like calling me Monsieur more than you like me,” Christophe said.
“I’m sorry. I forgot.”
He could hear that pan sizzling on the fire, smell the peppers, the onions, all mingled with the delicious aroma of the frying bacon. He filled his cup again and brought the pot to Christophe.
Christophe sat back, sipping his coffee, the room so dusky now that Marcel could not clearly make out his face. But he saw the gleam of his pocket watch as Christophe flicked it open.
“I have to go out for a while,” he said.
“And I should be getting home,” Marcel said.
“I want you to come back for supper, do you think your mother will let you do that?” Christophe rose. He stretched, groaning with the obvious fatigue of his muscles. He reminded Marcel of Jean Jacques. In fact the atmosphere of Jean Jacques’ shop had been very much with Marcel this afternoon, coming and going, distant, sometimes violently clear. He had thought of all those times that he had sat on that stool watching Jean Jacques as if he were a mannequin on a shelf. He had worked today, actually worked, the way that Jean Jacques worked, and he had loved it.
“I’ll ask her, Monsieur,” he said excitedly.
“Good. In an hour then?” Christophe said. “Do try to come back.”
Juliet was moving across the flags toward the back door. She came in as Christophe was adjusting his tie. And throwing up his hands, he turned it over to her, standing patiently as she quickly made it right.
“But where are you going?” she demanded.
“An errand, that’s all,” he said vaguely.
“Ah, but do this for me, now,” she said holding him. Something gleamed in the palm of her hand. To Marcel at the window it looked like a jewel. And Christophe, guiding her toward Marcel and the light, quickly tilted her head to one side and drove the small hook which held the jewel through the soft lobe of her ear. Marcel winced. It caught him unexpectedly and he felt such a surge of brutal excitement that he backed off flustered, put the coffee cup down, and murmured his farewell.
“But where are you going?” she was demanding of Christophe as he moved away. “Tell me, where!”
An hour later to the minute, Marcel found her alone as he entered, candles on the mantel, the round table set with silver, and she with folded arms and bowed head crouched by the empty grate in all this warm air as if she were cold. The new clock on the wall had stopped, and drawing out his watch, Marcel opened the glass case and adjusted the hands. He gave the pendulum a gentle touch. Blood thudded in his ears. He knew he was alone with her, and kept thinking to himself that soon this pain would pass. He would grow accustomed to her. When Christophe had said, “you are my friend,” he had known a rare and perfect happiness which he would not jeopardize for all the passion in the world.
He turned slowly, forming some conventional thing to say to her, when she shot him a glance with those strange feline eyes and said, “He’s with that man.”
“Do you think so, Madame?” he meant to treat it lightly.
“I know so,” she said. “He thinks I don’t know anything. He thinks I have no mind.”
She was looking directly at him and when she said those last words, he had the strangest sensation. He himself had thought she had no mind.
It was a disturbing thought, for what did she have in her head if she didn’t have a mind? What was it that was so terrifying about her? Her eyes appeared nearly malevolent in the candlelight. He would have liked a good oil lamp in this room right now, perhaps even two.
“Why don’t you come here to me,” she said, “and kiss me?”
“Because, Madame, if I do that…I won’t be a gentleman with you for very long,” he said.
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” she said contemptuously. It was not her usual voice, it was a voice with some quickness and social awareness that he hadn’t heard from her before.
He was aware of his face being knotted, that he wasn’t hiding his distress. He wanted her to know how much he wanted her. If he had to refuse her, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Don’t you want me?” she asked softly.
“Yes.” he sighed. He shut his eyes. “Christophe is very likely to come in…”
“Well, then let’s do it, if it will make him come in,” she said.
She dropped back in the chair, defeated, eyes staring off.
“You’re very clever, cher,” she said in another vein, but he was so uncomfortably excited he hardly understood her words. “You know that man who was here?”
“I never saw him before this afternoon.”
“But was he…was he an Englishman?” she looked up.
When he said yes, her face became cold, as hard as Christophe’s face could be. “Aaahh,” she said. She rose without the aid of her hands, and clutching the backs of her arms she moved slowly yet feverishly about the room. “And he comes to this house, he comes to this house.” She turned to Marcel. “How old do you think he was, cher?”
“I don’t know, Madame. Thirty-five, perhaps older.”
“They think I have no mind,” she whispered, her eyes narrowing. “They think I have no mind!” Her voice was trembling. “That he should dare to come into this house,” she whispered, “That he should dare to come here. What am I, mad?”
“I don’t understand,” he shook his head.
“No, you don’t understand. Well, let me tell you then. Years ago, ten years ago I sent my son to Paris…” her voice was breaking. She stopped and put her hands to her head. She appeared to be pressing hard against the sides of her head. “Oh, Christophe…” she moaned suddenly. “Not the same man.”
“But what is it?” he asked.
The house was silent around them. She stood in the shadows, far from the candles, still pressing her hands to the sides of her head. It was as if she were trying to blot out some pain, her eyes closing, her teeth bared, for an instant white between her lips. “Christophe,” she whispered again. It had the desperation of some terrible need. Then she dropped her hands at her sides. “He disappeared from the hotel where he was, I don’t know, some family there, they were his guardians, I couldn’t read his letters and then there were no letters. He would have been fourteen then, maybe older. He was young as you are, cher,” she said. “And he disappeared.”
The old tale was fresh in Marcel’s mind…“And then he ran away, they said, he went wandering, all through Turkey, Egypt, Greece…”
“What happened, Madame?” he came forward.
“One day I was coming home…” she said…“I was coming home and there were letters here again. It was years after. Those men at the bank, they read them to me, he was alive, he was all right. He was alive,” she sighed. “It was years after,” she said. “But he was alive!”
“Sit down,” he said gently. And obediently, she settled in the chair. He was looking down at the nape of her neck, the soft curls there, and the thin chain that held the diamond that was over her breast. Her breasts heaved and she leaned, as if fad
ing, to one side. “It couldn’t be that same man, he would not dare to come here!” she said. She shook her head. “Not in my house, not that same man…”
A vague dreary feeling had descended upon Marcel. It was dark as this room was dark, and all the warmth here, the sheen of the leather books in the candlelight, silver gleaming on the table, was all gone. “What do you mean, Madame?” he asked her. He was seeing the Englishman, that violent intensity with which he had confronted Christophe and Christophe so weakened by it as he had begged the man to go. “What is it, Madame, about this man?”
“They said it was an Englishman,” she whispered. “They said it was a strange Englishman who had been lodging there in that hotel with the family that kept him, at that hotel.”
It was as if a winter wind had chilled the room. Marcel his brows knit was staring at the empty hearth. It was as if his hand were on a door and something that he did not know lay beyond that door, something he had no experience of, no knowledge of, though he had always known such things were there. He shuddered. “That’s impossible,” he whispered. She was crying, and when she heard him speak she stopped.
“What did you say?” she whispered.
Antoine Lermontant might as well have been beside him in this dark place saying with a cunning smile, “I told you there were things you did not know about this man.”
“No.” he whispered. “I don’t believe it.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. He looked down at her. He had forgotten that she was there. He wanted to speak to her and yet his lips couldn’t form words. But you’re not really considering it, sending Richard to that school!
“It was an Englishman,” she whispered, mistaking his meaning. “They said it was. And that was a year after we received the word. My son was gone!” She was looking up to him, appealing to him. “It could be that man? That man? Come here, under this roof, into my house?” Her voice grew in strength with her outrage. “After he stole my son from me? After he disappeared?”
“No,” he shook his head, forcing his lips into a smile. “It must not be the same man.”