Visions of Isabelle

by William Bayer

  "Oh, my God! Vava! Vava!" She starts toward him, but his next words stop her cold.

  "If she's dead then let's hurry and get her in the earth. Old corpses stink, and this spectacle must cease."

  "But..."

  Just the grayness of his pallor, the iron set of his jaws, brings back memories of the coldness, the hardness with which he stained her youth. Smitten by the reality that Old Nathalie, the single source of warmth and tenderness in her life, is gone, she flings back her arms and shrieks. Staring about, wondering what to do, she rushes to the table, kneels beside it, and begins to knock her head against the wood.

  "Life without her–impossible! Please, God, take me! Let me die, too!"

  Vava steps into the sunlight, squints at Isabelle writhing near the ground.

  "Here," he says. "Use this."

  She turns to him, through her rain of tears sees his offering hand and the polished Colt revolver in his palm.

  "Go ahead," he says. "Take it! It will provide you with the quickest and least painful death."

  "Oh, my God!"

  She screams, runs from him, scales the steps to the main level of the house. The rooftop audience has ceased to mourn, is now enraptured with the drama being played.

  "What's the matter?" he taunts her. "Lost your nerve?"

  She stares down at him, the shrouded body, the men, the servant, then up at the Arabs all around.

  "Beast!"

  "You really want to die?" he demands.

  "Yes! Yes!"

  "Good!" He runs past her, grazes her body, then mounts the stairs to the roof.

  "Wonderful view from here," he shouts. "Come on up! A terrific place to jump!"

  Looking up at him, poised against the sun, one arm extended to show her where to leap, the other dangling the Colt by its trigger guard, she finds herself suddenly relieved.

  "Where on earth did you get that gun?" she asks him with a grin.

  "I always carry a revolver," he replies. "I never know when I'm going to meet a suicidal girl."

  Old Nathalie is buried in an Arab cemetery overlooking the port of Bône. Trophimovsky weeps during the entombment, but Isabelle remains calm, her face a gentle mask. Later the two of them return to the little house on Rue Bugeaud, drink vodka together and talk of this wondrous soothing woman far into the night.

  "She never said a bad word to me in all the years," Vava says, "but her eyes–they reproached me for my sins ten thousand times."

  "She was a pure flame, a pure spirit in a demon's nest." Isabelle lies upon a sofa, feet bare and hanging over the arm, smoking kif from a brier pipe.

  "In all our years together I never gave her anything–not even a bottle of French perfume." Vava's eyes are moist. Isabelle glances at him, decides, sorrowfully, that he does not have long to live.

  He stays with her for two weeks, trying to lure her back to Villa Neuve. But she refuses him every time, insisting she must stay in North Africa and find out who she is.

  "I want to be a writer," she tells him. "And now I must try my hand."

  In the end, when he sees she cannot be budged, he hands her a wad of money and wishes her good luck. She will always have a home in Meyrin, he says, and the villa will be left to her and Vladimir and Augustin when he dies.

  On the morning he sails for Genoa she awaits a precious phrase. She wants him to acknowledge his paternity, but though he gives her a lengthy, loving gaze, the words never come.

  On December 14, 1897, she leaves for Tunis to begin life on her own. On that same day, in Geneva, Vladimir De Moerder goes humbly forward to face his ordeal.

  CACTOPHILE

  Since the first days of October 1895, he had hardly stepped out of the villa grounds. He was twenty-nine years old and had spent nearly two decades working in the garden. He had not taken a violin lesson since 1887, but in the ten years since he had continued to play, devising a special technique by which he could render the tremulous screech he favored most. After 1894 he devoted himself exclusively to the E-string, and for the past year had not played a single note below high A.

  He found himself bizarre, but not so bizarre as the world outside. There, it seemed, people ran about speaking nonsense and defying nature. It was strange, he knew, to fondle the earth and speak to plants in a loving whisper. He knew it was mad to take the nettles of cactus and, hidden away behind some trees, use them to puncture bare flesh, imprint stigmata upon his palms. But was this any stranger than the pursuit of money, the desire to change a political regime, or belief in romantic illusions which one knew in advance would break one's heart? At least in his life there was order, a genius to direct him, a father to love and respect, and the glories of nature which he could nurture with his hands. A germinating seed was more exciting than a slippery kiss. Better to make things grow, make beautiful things flower, to alter and embellish the very shape and texture of the land, than to waste one's life in cosmopolitan pursuits.

  The walls and moats of Villa Neuve did not make the place a prison. Rather they were its guardians, the guarantors of his security. The house was a fortress to him–from it he could defend himself against the enemies he knew were plotting outside.

  Vava had pointed them out, and they were everywhere. The baker, the postman, the local women who washed people's clothes. They spied upon the house, tried to obtain information by appearing friendly, smiling, starting trivial conversations. But sooner or later the questions would begin, clouded at first in innocent curiosity, but becoming increasingly direct. "Where is your sister?" "Why does she go about like a man?" "Where are your brothers?" "Is it true they are wanted by the police?" "Your older sister who left years ago--where is she now?" "Where does the money come from?" "How do you live?" "Didn't your brother run off with a girl from town?" "Was your father really a priest?" "Is he really your father?" On and on, probing, demanding, trying to accumulate sufficient facts so that someone, somewhere, could put the pieces together and complete the dossier.

  At first he agreed with Vava, that they were after information about the perfumes. But then he realized that Vava was not working on perfumes at all. Of course the old man would never say anything to contradict this well-known fact, but it was clear to him that all this effort, these years of work and this enormous expense was not on behalf of the sweetness of womankind. Vava was a genius and a genius does not waste his life on trivial things. No, Vava was working on something infinitely more important behind the smoke screen of perfume, and when Vladimir discovered by deduction what that was, all the odd things that had happened about the house over the years fitted together into a grand design.

  Why, for instance, he had begun to ask himself some years before, did Vava carry a revolver, even when he went to his laboratory, even when he retired to his room to sleep? None of the others had seen it, but he had spotted it by accident some time before, and then by cleverly stumbling against the old man at various times and feeling it beneath his clothes, had learned it never left his side.

  The revolver was but the first in a chain of seemingly random elements which when added together revealed a pattern that convinced him his deduction was correct. There was Vava's tension, the violent mood he created about himself, which could not be explained by the mere pursuit of a scent. He was always at a crisis of nerves because he was working on something dangerous, and that, too, was why he enforced seclusion upon the house. No one was allowed in, the gates were permanently barred–he had not wanted Young Nathalie to marry because he could not abide the presence of a stranger he could not trust.

  Nicolas and Augustin–they might have sensed it, too, known that there was more to Vava's difficult behavior than mere hysteria and rage. Perhaps Nicolas had pulled a triple cross–pretended to the Russian students he was an anarchist, pretended to Augustin that he was a patriot, while all the time, having somehow discovered the true nature of Vava's work, it was that and not the names of the members of the Russian group that he had inscribed in code and sold. But was Augustin really innocent? It w
as strange the way he'd disappeared so fast, then turned up in the Foreign Legion. He had never shown any military inclinations. Why this sudden interest in soldiering and arms? Perhaps he, too, had information of value to a Ministry of War. And why had Vava sent Isabelle and Mama away? Clearly because things were getting too dangerous, the work on the botanically based explosives too close to completion, and their enemies, the agents of the nations that wanted the formula, were closing in.

  That was the only explanation–an incredible scientific breakthrough–a way of creating explosions by means of naturally found and easily acquired substances. Even a child could see the potential–an army that could sweep into a country like Russia virtually without supplies, make its own gun powder out of plants and barks and leaves, lard the fortifications of enemy towns with materials that could reduce its walls to dust.

  But having deduced the true nature of Vava's work, it was important that he never speak of it aloud. Of course Vava knew that he knew–how else explain those smiles and winks, those comforting pats on the back when they worked together in the garden? How else explain those strange half-uttered phrases, those lines filled with innuendo and double-entendre: "our perfumes shall knock down walls"; "our scents shall pierce through armored plate"; "capitalism shall yield before our odorous power"; "let the pope beware–the world will never be the same!"?

  Before he left two years before, Nicolas had warned him to stay within the villa walls. Some lingering particle of fraternal affection had evidently entered into his elder brother's triple-crossing mind. He'd obviously been torn between selling out Vava's work and selling out his closest relatives at the same time. Nicolas did not want familial blood on his hands, even if he was prepared to destroy all the fruits of Vava's life. So Nicolas could be trusted to a point, and for that reason the note he'd sent became a matter of grave concern. It had landed suddenly at the greenhouse door–a heavy, cream-colored envelope tossed one day over the garden wall, tied by a black ribbon to a medium-sized stone.

  He was down on his hands and knees packing black earth around some hibiscus cuttings he'd nurtured from a successful graft. Frost was on the garden, but over the years he and Vava had constructed a series of glassed-in sheds heated by piped steam. This way it was possible to work with plants even though the harsh Swiss winter. He had not been in the greenhouse fifteen minutes when he heard Vava's bellow from someplace in the house. And then, just as he stepped out to heed this call, he noticed the envelope lying on the ground. It had certainly not been there when he'd brought the cuttings in. He picked it up, disengaged it from the stone, began to perspire when he read his name. Vava hollered again. He hid the envelope in a nest of pots and hurried to the house.

  Vava wanted him to replace an emptied canister of gas that fueled the burners at the forward end of the distillery. Vladimir towed a new canister from the other end of the cellar, helped Vava attach the tubes and, after finishing the job, fled back to the greenhouse to read his mail.

  "Urgent we meet to discuss important matters. Friends will contact you outside Bureau of Alien Registration, December 14, 10:00 A.M. Nicolas."

  It could not be a forgery. The handwriting was familiar, a script he'd known as far back as Moscow when Vava had tutored them together. And the meeting place had special significance, too. As Russian nationals they'd gone each year to the little bureau, housed in the census office on Rue Soleil Levant.

  But should the rendezvous be kept? What "important matters," he wondered, were suddenly so "urgent"? He pondered the question through the night, and finally decided he must appear.

  December 14, 1897, was a day of brilliant sunlight. The lake, not yet frozen, was as smooth as a glazed blue plate. The trees, bare of leaves, looked like hieroglyphs etched out against the Alps. The cold air burned the nostrils. The swans, all panoplied in winter feathers, glided among the toy sailboats of boys.

  Walking across the Pont des Bergues, past the Monument Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Vladimir felt no menace in the air. On the contrary, he felt elated to be away from the villa–he loved its enclosing walls, but realized he had shut himself in too long. Perhaps, if he were careful, he might come out now once every other month–walk on the quais with people, sit in a café, perhaps even try to skate again when the lake froze up. He was struck by the gay look of the girls, and one in a salmon-colored sweater caught his eye and twitched his lust. He felt happy as he crossed Place de la Fusterie; positively exhilarated as he approached Cour St. Pierre. But then as he made his way around the great cathedral, a cloud out of nowhere crossed the sun, and as the census office came into sight he felt an intimation of danger and turned his head. Two men in belted overcoats and fur hats were bearing down on him from opposite sides of the street. He backed against a wrought-iron railing; the sun reappeared. He raised one hand to shield his eyes; suddenly he felt them take his arms.

  "De Moerder?" The voice was urgent.

  He nodded.

  "De Moerder sent us–you know who we mean?"

  He nodded again and they began to walk, Vladimir in the middle like a convict between two guards. He was tall and they were both short, heavy, strong, bearing down with their arms locked into his so that if he'd wanted to make a run he could never have gotten loose. Nobody noticed as they moved so closely linked, turned the corner right and then left again, emerged onto Rue des Granges at the Café Diabolique. Hurrying faster–there were fewer pedestrians here–they slid past a synagogue and the magic store on the corner of Boulangerie, and finally turned right into narrow Cheval Blanc. A vendor selling funeral wreaths gave them a knowing squint. They paused outside a horsemeat store; his companions looked about. Then they entered–there were no customers, no one but a fat woman in bloody apron cleaving intractable bones. They filed around the counter, then through damp sawdust to a room in the back. Here amidst the odor of fresh-killed meat, his guardians relaxed, lit up black Russian cigarettes and leaned against the doors with folded arms to seal off escape.

  What was there to say? These thugs seemed to be avoiding his eyes, and in any case he'd resolved to deal only with Nicolas. He knew what to expect–an irresistible deal that he would most certainly resist, a bargain by which he might be offered the directorship of the Jardin Exotique in St. Petersburg in return for the contents of Vava's safe, perhaps even for Vava himself. After all, he thought, what good were the formulae without a genius to explain their use? But whatever the offered deal, and no matter how high the promised reward, he would take great pleasure in turning it down. He would prove to Nicolas once and for all that there were men on earth who could not be bought. This confrontation between them was long overdue, and if Vladimir remained sufficiently meek, it might perhaps result in Nicolas finally acknowledging his error.

  The back room by then had filled with smoke, dark acrid fumes which pained his eyes. Then–the sound of footsteps on some hidden stairs, and a knock on the door away from the shop. Vladimir's stomach tightened. His guards became tense. One of them opened the door a crack, he heard a whisper, and then footsteps retreating back above.

  "All right," said the one who'd spoken before, "time to see the count."

  They guided him through a door, up some stairs and down a hall painted black. He could hear sounds from the rear of the building, a girl singing as she mopped the court, a child crying somewhere in a flat across the way. A sickening stench filled the air. When he passed a greasy window he knew what it was–they were burning old hooves and horse heads in the yard below.

  He was pushed into a room, then into a chipped leather chair. His guards again stood smoking with folded arms, one before the door, the other before the narrow window that looked out on Cheval Blanc. A few moments later he heard brisk footsteps in the hall, the door opened, a heavyset man with full black beard and burning eyes appeared.

  "Allow me to present myself–Count Igor Prozov, consular of His Imperial Majesty's Government, specialist in political sedition and crimes against the Imperial Russian State."

  S
o this was Prozov! Vladimir feasted his eyes on the man. There was a sinister cast to the flabby face, something cruel, something dangerous.

  "You, I presume, are Vladimir De Moerder, brother of the wretched Nicolas."

  He neither nodded nor spoke. He would say nothing until Nicolas appeared.

  "Your brother was very kind to prepare our summons. A touch of the knout can make even the strongest men beg to help us."

  His throat began to throb.

  "Nicolas?" he asked. "Is he coming here?"

  "I doubt it. Still in Moscow I suspect–old Peter's prison to be exact."

  "Then this...?"

  "An ambush, yes. But you have nothing to fear, poor boy. I am a reasonable man. I can guarantee your safety if you will help. I'm interested in information. There are a few lacunae in your brother's story. But later we can get to that. Suppose we start at the beginning–your role in the affair. You–am I right?–were the key figure, the one who introduced your brothers to that disreputable gang..."

  On and on he went, bearing down with precise formulations, entrapping sentences, assumptions of Vladimir's guilt. The questions flew at him like a thousand knives. It was not long before he began to scream. Then they manacled his legs to the feet of the chair and wrapped damp wool around his mouth.

  The more incisive Prozov's questions, the more incoherent Vladimir's responses. To each specific query about certain events in 1895, he shouted back the name of a botanical phylum, muffled to a groan by his woolen gag. He became terrified, lost his mind. After an hour of tears and wails, all resistance crumbled; he began to speak. Prozov listened, fascinated, then pulled off the wool. Vladimir became excited, could not hold himself back. The more profoundly he understood he must keep silent, the more he felt forced by his inquisitor to tell. I must confess, must confess, he kept saying to himself, and in the end he told everything–all his suspicions, how he'd come to the conclusion they were not making perfume, the whole tortuous chain of logic, his deductions, step by step, then the revelation of the true nature of the work, his estimate of the value of botanical explosives to foreign powers, his belief that Vava was but days from final success–it all came out in a mad jumble, a frantic disgorging of all he'd stowed away those long silent years. When he was finally finished, awash in tears of shame for having broken down before those relentless drilling eyes, and smiling, too, on account of his relief at finally being unburdened of so many secrets, Prozov threw up his hands and sighed.