“This is quite incredible,” he said, turning back to her.
“I think so, too. There were so many other possibilities.”
Corsier thought about it for a while, absorbing it. Then he sighed heavily. “I went to Rome,” he said. “Ariana had given quite a lot of money to Santa Maria del Priorato, near her home on the Aventine. The priory allowed an urn with her ashes to be placed in those lovely gardens there. It seems it was her request.”
He drummed his fingers on the table.
“She had drawn up legal papers to have her house converted to a residence for young Greek women who come to Rome to study art. She had set aside a large endowment for it, to be administered by a private university in Athens.”
He drummed his fingers on the table.
“I went to Santa Maria. The urn, of course, is beautiful.”
For the second time he turned to look out at the Seine and the Palais de Justice. The afternoon was quickly slipping away.
“My God, Mara, look at that light.”
They watched as the softening light stained the stone architecture and the slate roofs with tea rose and pale coralline. The shadows were turning dusty blue, poised for the deeper hues of dusk.
He turned to her.
“I am back in Geneva,” he said. “Back with my niece in the gallery.” He smiled. “It’s heaven.”
“Good, Claude. That’s good.”
“Come to see us, Mara. Let us hear from you. We must never lose touch. It would be a sad mistake.”
“I promise.”
“What will you be doing?”
“Staying on here for a while.”
“In Paris?”
She nodded, but offered no clarification. Corsier studied her a few moments.
“You know,” he said, choosing his words carefully, thoughtfully, “they say that a wise man will befriend the shadows that move into his life. They say that if he will embrace them and make them his companions, they will teach him how to live with his regrets.”
Mara said nothing. Then, suddenly, inexplicably, she felt her eyes moisten. She concentrated; she didn’t blink; she managed to stop it.
Corsier reached across the table and gently put his heavy, bearish hand on hers.
“Come to see us in Geneva.”
• • •
Mara was now alone in the empty café. It was finally over, and it had ended the way such things end, with a quiet conversation, a mundane and almost feckless dismissal of the extraordinary.
She stood and made her way out of the café just as the first few dinner-hour clientele began to trickle in and evening was settling over the Seine. She crossed the Quai des Grands-Augustins and walked slowly along the quayside toward the Pont St.-Michel. The lights of Paris were aglitter in the lilac air, and in the Seine the large bateaux mouches plied the approaching darkness, their swags of tiny lights sparkling doubly bright against the water.
She walked past the Pont St.-Michel and went on to the Petit Pont where she turned and started across the Seine. She was nearly to the other side when she saw him. He was waiting at the edge of the trees, leaning on his cane against the stone ramparts. He was watching her.
The Color of Night Page 39