Thomas, A Secret Life

by A. J. B. Johnston

  “So?” Thomas asks at length, brow wrinkled.

  “So what?”

  “So … what you were saying earlier.” Thomas’s voice becomes suddenly sharp. “That it’s my opinion and mine alone as to the rightness of what I do.”

  Gallatin cocks his head at an angle. He says nothing.

  “Whether it’s good or bad, right or wrong,” Thomas continues, getting insistent. “Our morality, in other words. It’s not up to the Church or the King or for that matter the Marquis and his police. No one decides morality but us. It’s peculiar to each one. Is that not it? Do I have you right?”

  Thomas puts down his cup of wine. He wants Gallatin to say something back. The bookseller has a distant, unfocused expression. In his own way, though not for the same purpose, the bookseller’s unreadable face reminds Thomas of Collier’s mask.

  “No,” says Gallatin at last, as though he’s made a difficult decision, “no, I didn’t say that. I was referring only to your apparent betrayal of us, your supposed friends. We thought we were your companions, equal at table. And that the confidences we shared were for our ears alone. But we were mistaken. You were playing us for dupes. When I said ‘only you know that’ I meant only you know what and how much you have passed on about us.”

  Thomas opens his mouth to explain that he’s never told Collier much at all, yet he doesn’t get a chance. Gallatin’s hand goes up, commanding the air above the table.

  “But what you just said, Thomas, it’s interesting. It is. About each of us being responsible for ourselves. For our own morality. Not the business of the Church or of the king’s officials. It’s a thought worth discussing.” Gallatin looks pensive, then continues. “But some behaviour, some urges of men, they cannot be allowed. They must be condemned.”

  Thomas exhales and nods that it’s true. Paris has many dark corners and they have witnessed some terrible things.

  “But tell me now,” says Gallatin, with a light in his eyes, “just what have you already told the Marquis about me and my friends? Is someone on his way to lock me up in the Bastille?” Gallatin makes a caricature of a smile.

  “Oh, you’re safe,” says Thomas, and wonders if that’s true.

  “You look troubled, my friend. Guilty about doing me in, or scheming to find some fresh way to do just that?” Gallatin laughs, but it’s a nervous laugh. “Well, here, I have a cure for your ailment.” He makes a swirling motion with his hands, like a magician about to show the audience his reveal. He pulls from the inside pocket of his coat a small silver flask. “Calva,” he says, smile on his face.

  “Wonderful,” Thomas says. He forces a smile.

  The feeling in Thomas’s chest, however, is anything but wonderful. It’s a strap that is tightening fast. The need to betray friends and acquaintances is no easy game.

  Gallatin unstoppers the flask and tips it twice, dribbles of gold into two tumblers of clear glass. He hands one to Thomas and takes the other for himself. “Tell me what you think.”

  Thomas has only sipped calvados once before. He was only a boy. His father was out of the house one evening and he dared himself to steal a nip. It burned his tongue and throat. Thomas clasps the glass with both hands and sniffs above the rim of the glass.

  “It’s an orchard, it really is.” Thomas’s smile is broad. The scent of the apple liqueur pushes away the thought of passing on secrets to Collier. “Who said we are never as happy or unhappy as we imagine? Because I’m imagining I’m pretty happy right now.”

  “La Rochefoucauld,” says Gallatin. He pours himself a little top-up, having quickly downed the first. “That’s who said that. Or wrote it rather. It’s much easier to be clever with a quill than with our mouths.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” says Thomas. “If only we could talk like we write. Well, like we sometimes write.”

  Gallatin takes a long sip. He closes his eyes in appreciation. “This comes from Marie’s father. He put it down the year she was born, or so the story goes.”

  “And how long ago was that?”

  “Dying to know my woman’s age, aren’t you, Thomas?”

  “No, not at all. Just wondered about the age of the calvados is all.”

  “It’s all right, but you’re not fooling anyone. Marie is thirty-eight.”

  Thomas gulps and the calva burns. Gallatin’s widow really is nearly twice his age. Thomas stares at the bookseller like he’s never seen him before. The ears are a little large, the complexion a bit ruddy, the eyebrows close together, and the hair a tad straw-like, but what a remarkable man and fine host he is. This is a man whom Thomas is supposed tell tales about, in Collier’s ear, with who knows what consequences. Yet, here he is, earnest and good, serving Thomas whatever it is he has to offer. Like this golden, delicious liqueur.

  “Thank you, Jean. Seriously, I want to give thanks.”

  “Give thanks. You make it sound like a prayer.”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry. Just thanks is all I meant.”

  The two men make eye contact in a way they until now have not. Both know that Thomas is thanking Gallatin for much more than the calvados and before that for the wine. He is also thanking the man for not casting him out when he learned that Thomas works for the police as a fly.

  “Ever consider turning it the other way?” Gallatin puts his head at a quizzical angle.

  “Pardon me?”

  “The police. Your contact man. What's his name?”

  “Collier.”

  “How appropriate is that? He’s a collar you wear. No, what I mean is, do you ever think of playing him instead of him playing you?”

  “I’m not following.” Thomas holds the calvados away from his nose so he can concentrate.

  Gallatin takes a sip from his tumbler. “I’m referring to your friendship with the police, your role as their fly.”

  “Yes, I know. What about it?”

  “Well, I’m suggesting you keep on with it as you have, only you start feeding them instead of them feeding off you.” Thomas’s face remains blank, though his eyes eventually blink. Gallatin continues: “Fill their heads with nonsense, Thomas. Make things up to lead them astray.”

  Thomas leans back in his chair. He lifts the tumbler to his nose, sniffs, lowers it to his lip and tips in a swirl. As the liquid heats its way down his throat he looks at Gallatin with yet another fresh regard.

  “You mean all the time, not just now and then? That the truth be no obstruction?”

  Gallatin nods. That’s exactly what he means.

  “To what end?”

  “To the end of having a bit of fun. To confuse and waste their time. To continue to get your coins. That’s three good reasons, is it not?”

  Thomas sips and sends a golden charge round his teeth and onto his tongue. He recalls liking honey this way, but this is even better. Yes, fiction could be his friend. How much better that sounds than lying.

  “Yes,” Thomas says out loud. And to himself: I like this man, this Jean Gallatin. He is a friend to me.

  “All right then, more of our Normandy nectar?” Jean holds up the little flask.

  “Good old Normandy. We have orchards near Vire, you know. Oh my god,” Thomas shouts. Gallatin’s head snaps back. “I … I … I’m supposed to go.”

  Thomas has recalled that he was to meet Jean-Chrys that very night. He stands up and puts both hands to his head. He searches his memory for what they’d said as they left the Pont Neuf. There was a street and a building Jean-Chrys yelled out. Something about the crippled or the deaf. The name just doesn’t come. It will not come. Thomas regains his seat. “I was to meet someone,” he says in a defeated voice. “An old friend. From Vire he was. Well, he still is I suppose. The one who once loaned me Ovid.”

  “Tomorrow perhaps?”

  “I don’t know. The name of t
he street that he gave me will surely come. Once I’m sober and out for a walk.”

  “There you have it.” Gallatin holds the silver flask high in the air. “You’ll see to your other friend tomorrow. Why don’t you stay and we’ll finish this? It’s a pretty cure for things gone wrong.”

  Thomas tilts his head to one side to acknowledge that yes maybe he would like another drink. The sweet-tasting calva is starting to make his hair lift. It’s a sensation that he likes. The complications with his parents and with Jean-Chrys can wait, can they not? Why, yes. The pleasures of the present moment always trump any unknown.

  —

  Thomas will spend the night at Jean Gallatin’s. He will sleep in the room where he and the bookseller are drinking too much. After another hour of talk and more raised glasses and cups, Thomas near passes out. It seems some pleasures, after all, can be too much. Gallatin steadies his friend as he pisses in the pot then goes to wake up the widow Marie to help him drag over to that room a not too badly stained pailleasse. That’s where Jean insists Thomas will sleep. Thomas mumbles his thanks to them both, and that they’re probably right: it is too late. He’s in no shape to go out safely into the night. Just before he closes his eyes, Thomas has a muddled vision of Marie as she brings a basin with water into the room and then bends to place a blanket on his curled-up frame. The bookseller’s widow is not too bad looking for her age. He goes to sleep hoping he didn’t say that aloud.

  —

  Thomas wakes as the sky starts to lighten. His mouth is filled with parched wood. His scalp is in the grip of a giant like Le Grand Thomas. He pulls out the little watch from the pocket of his breeches. He’s supposed to be at Pontécoulant’s office in less than an hour.

  He has to get up on all fours. That’s the only way there is off the straw mattress. I’m an invalid, he thinks. But he rights himself and gets to his feet. That’s when it comes to him, what he tried to remember the night before. Jean-Chrys said he was staying on the rue des Aveugles. Across from some church. A room on the third floor. Thomas is pleased with himself. He’ll go there in the evening, right after work. It’s the least he can do for an old friend.

  He does his necessaries in the chamber pot. He covers what he’s done with the lid then takes a corner of a small linen cloth and wets it in the basin. He dabs his face then rubs at his hands. What’s that Gallatin said? He should wash everything. He’ll have to think about that. That would require a bathtub and there’s nothing like that here. In the meantime, he uses the linen cloth to dabs around his eyes, which he sees in the mirror are bloodshot, and then his throat and behind his neck and ears. He puts on the rest of his clothes.

  When he leaves Thomas closes the door as quietly as he can. He slips down the stairs like a cat. As awful as he felt up in Gallatin’s room, he gets a small burst of life coming out the ground floor door onto the street. It’s not what anyone would call warm, but it’s not as cold as it’s been. It’s a good sign. As is the mist he spies rising off the Seine. Yes, things will work out. They always do. He’ll start handing Collier a new kind of tale. Instead of being the bait on the hook, Thomas will try to cast the line. Gallatin is right. Thomas will have to make sure that his future tales to Collier don’t do the bookseller any more harm.

  The building where Thomas toils in Pontécoulant’s office comes into sight. The thought of the great lawyer and the other aspiring lawyers prancing in the suite of rooms on the second floor brings a shift in his mood. No matter how good a clerk he is, he’ll never be able to join their club. Thomas glances up at the grey sky overhead, churning with dark clouds. There descends a thought, like he once received verses from the muse. It concerns the matter Jean-Chrys spoke about, the ongoing dispute his parents have with La Motte. Yes, the clouds are right. He knows what he can do. When he sees Jean-Chrys later in the day – he will not forget, to the clouds he makes a vow – Thomas will tell his old friend that to Rouen he will go. He’ll help out his parents, yes he will. And he’ll go as the lawyer they need, just like they expect. No harm done, some good in fact. It’s the career his parents have heard he has. It’ll be a bit of a bluff but not all that much. He’s kept his eyes and ears open in the office. He reads and in fact copies nearly everything. He’s learned enough to pass muster in Rouen. It’s not like it’s Paris. He’ll tell Jean-Chrys this evening, but he’ll make him swear not to reveal the truth. It’ll be their shared secret, one that helps his poor parents out. Filial assistance in name and deed.

  Thomas enters the building considering the trip to Rouen and the reunion with his parents almost as good as done. He trusts it will make amends for that early-morning departure he was forced to make those years ago.

  March 1720

  Thomas has to walk. He has to clear his head. The coach ride back from Rouen was long and slow, the other passengers a mostly tiring lot. There were those who slept and those who talked a bit and those who simply would not shut up. The worst were those who had never been outside their little Norman villages before, so excited were they to be coming to Paris. Thomas recognized that he and Hélène were once a bit like that, but not so irritating, he’s sure. There were stretches when Thomas thought the trip would never end. Now that he’s back in the city and dropped his small trunk in his rooms, he wants to stretch his legs. Over to the Saint-Médard parish area near the mount Sainte-Geneviève and the counterscarp. It’s usually a lively spot and it’s been a while since he was that way. Gallatin tells him that the Roman roots run especially deep in that part of the city. And nowhere more so than on the narrow street Thomas likes to wander up and down. Winding rue Mouffetard with all its market stalls and shouting voices will sooth his disappointed mood. Then a ride upon a whore in a stall, though in truth he doesn’t really feel like that.

  Rouen was not the reunion with his parents he’d imagined it would be. Thomas was not the prodigal son. His parents did not trumpet his return nor tell him how proud they were. Nor how they understood he’d made a difficult but correct choice. They begrudged his assistance though they’d requested it through Jean-Chrys and though they benefitted in Rouen from his pretend lawyer’s advice. They wanted more. They wanted their money back. And they did not believe him when he told them about the theft. Or if they finally did accept it as the truth, the expression on Father’s face was as clear as it could be: serves you right. Jean-Chrys tried to help out, but there was little he could do. Thomas got on the coach back to Paris without having seen much of Rouen. Except to note how the Seine twists in that city, the giant clock and the square where the authorities allowed the burning of Jeanne d’Arc. Yet another object lesson to keep your life and your views to yourself.

  A file of three women market-goers, their baskets filled with their purchases from the stalls along the street, come toward Thomas as he reaches the top of rue Mouffetard. He flattens against the stone wall and lets them past. They are talking about an ascetic priest who lives somewhere nearby. A churchman whose sacrificing example they admire. Their chatter tweaks Thomas’s ears. He decides to turn and follow behind the women and listen in.

  The women spread out side by side as they walk through the square. Thomas gets as close as he can without giving himself away.

  The priest in question seems to have the last name Paris. Thomas shrugs. It could be, some people do. He comes from a wealthy family, the women say, and gives away his family pension to the poor. He is a follower of the Jansenists, that bunch. Wears a hair shirt and walks on the cobbles in his bare feet, says another, and pays the price. He flagellates himself with a whip, the lashes tipped with iron, adds the third woman. Probably for things he’s done. Serves him right, comes off the lips of one.

  “He’s a hermit. Lives not far away,” says the first woman. She’s nearly as wide as she is tall.

  “I know, I know,” says the woman in the middle, the tallest of the three. Thomas is close enough now to see she has a couple of cabbages and a whole fi
sh wrapped in paper in her basket.

  “Hey,” says the tall woman in the middle, turning round. She puts a hand on her hip and challenges Thomas with her stern face. “Get away from here. Go follow someone else.”

  “I was only…” Thomas begins but doesn’t bother to finish. He waves a hand at the women and turns around. He goes back the way he has just come. He was only curious about any priest who lives the way the women say. He’d like to see the fellow and judge for himself if self-punishment really does make one more worthy and holier than everybody else.

  Back on rue Mouffetard Thomas buys two golden apples from a stand. They are reinettes from Normandy. Their dry tart taste he has loved since he was a boy. He’ll savour the first one bite by bite as he wanders around and save the other for later on. He stuffs it in a pocket of his justaucorps.

  With a few minutes of rambling this way and that, the first apple is consumed and its core tossed to the street. Not long after Thomas wonders if that’s not a familiar figure coming across a tree-shaded churchyard. He’s headed for the church. Yes, it’s Collier, of that Thomas has no doubt. But he does not have his cloak upon his head the way he always does when they meet at night. He’s just gone into the church. It’s little Saint-Julien le Pauvre. Is he going in to worship or is this a rendezvous with someone special? A tell-tale like himself? It’s a temptation he cannot resist. This is an opportunity he never imagined he’d have. If he’s careful and soft afoot he’ll be able to spy on Collier while he’s meeting with another fly. Odd that it’s daytime, but maybe Collier makes exceptions for certain bits of news. That makes sense. Not everything can wait for night.

  Thomas is more than eager to see how the pale-faced one works with someone else. And who that tell-tale might be. He waits barely a count of five then crosses to the church. He knows that meetings can sometimes be short so he is quick to step inside. He’ll have to be careful from here on in. Yet no sooner is he in the gloom of the entryway than he hears Collier’s voice. The voice is loud and getting louder. It’s coming Thomas’s way. The police agent is not whispering, not whispering at all. He’s starting to say goodbye. He’s speaking to the curé. The conversation is about money, how Collier as a parishioner promises soon to make his annual contribution to the maintenance of the church.