Stone's Throe, page 2
"I am not afraid of you, monstre." Every part of my body cried out that the words were a lie: my quavering voice, my cold hands, my weakened knees, and the twisting sickness in my stomach. But I would not, could not, allow myself to falter before this shadow-clinging monster, even when his grip on my dress's bodice changed. He ripped it open, not salaciously, but so that he could press a small, cold suction cup above my wildly beating heart. The cup was attached to a thin tube that wound toward one of his coat pockets. For a moment my astonishment defeated all other emotion within me. Then, as amazement faded, I realized that my fear, too, was draining away. I thought I saw liquid swirl through the tube between us, and, before the suction cup could prove to have a needle buried within, I ripped it away from my body and cried, "I am not afraid of you!" with greater certainty than before. I was no longer afraid; I felt no depth of emotion at all, and wondered if that was courage.
Le Monstre seized my face again, drawing it closer to his own, and from so near that he might have kissed me, he whispered, "You will be." His hand covered my face and drove my head back to connect brutally with the wall behind me. Light erupted in my vision, edged with red pain, and though I braced my knees, I could not remain on my feet. I slid down the battered wall, hardly feeling the scrape of stone against my spine. When next I became fully aware, my fingers lay against my collarbone, not quite touching my abused throat but lying near it, offering comfort without increasing my distress. Each breath I took was ragged and tasted faintly of iron, as if blood vessels had been bruised or broken inside. My hand drifted a few inches lower, testing the space where the suction cup had attached to me. It felt a little rough and raw, but had none of the sensitivity that suggested I had been pierced with a needle or otherwise violated. I lowered my shaking hands and sat pressed against the wall a while longer, hardly able to think beyond the gratifying fact that I was alive.
The bells tolled midnight and I realized through my discomfort that my parents would be worried. Stiff with uncertainty, I rose and tested my skull for visible injury. My hands came away clean: no blood had been shed, and my throat would not yet show bruising. It was enough that I would have to admit to having met the Benefactor at the Opera House; I did not also have to tell my parents that I had met le Monstre in the Montmartre streets.
Maman took me into her arms with a glad cry when finally I arrived home, mumbling apologies about having fallen asleep in the church. And then, with her forgiveness in hand, I could not help myself, and asked, "What did the Benefactor want to talk about, Maman?"
Hope came into Maman's dark eyes. "He has found somewhere for me to sing, Amelia. Not at the opera house, not yet, but a studio to make records in. To preserve my voice, he said. To share it with the world. If it is well received, ma chérie, I will sing...everywhere, he says. Maybe even travel to America!"
Astonished, I looked to Papa, whose face held wary stillness. "Europe is more friendly, Estelle. Even the most sophisticated cities in America..."
Maman dismissed his concerns with a graceful wave, though I saw hurt flash in her eyes. She did not wish to imagine what Papa said to be true, that her Ethiopian heritage would deny her an honored place in America's entertainment. I shared her wish, but I also read the newspapers and listened to the radio, and feared Papa's judgment was all too correct. But Maman would not let that tamp her excitement, not tonight. "It doesn't matter now. It might never. But I will sing for the studio, Amelia! I will be heard everywhere!"
Her joy was infectious. I captured her in an embrace, then pulled Papa into it as well, and for a moment it seemed all was right with our world.
CHAPTER THREE
The Benefactor did not ask to see me again, and I did not dare search for him in the city. It was enough—more than enough!—that he had acted. Maman sang for the studio, and they, captivated by her voice, recorded her and began to find outlets in Paris where she could perform. I believed the Benefactor acted as her agent, but I knew that to me he was a hero, a man who had taken up the mantle expected of him and become a true benefactor to those who needed him. Maman's spirits lifted weekly, until it seemed she might fly away with joy, and then at the end of the summer, a little more than a year after the war started, Papa found work, improving our lot even more. I believed that, too, was the Benefactor's doing, but I could not ask, only hold the hope to myself in secret and relieved joy.
My parents flourished, and I, my secrets intact, began to find reasons to steal away for hours at a time. I had faced le Monstre once, and his threat lingered: I believed I would face him again, and that he would try to instill fear in my heart. But I would not be so unprepared the next time. Montmartre was the hub of many questionable activities, and even a girl of fifteen could find an instructor in the art of Savate, if she was determined enough.
I was determined. I learned to hit with open palms, closed fists, with canes and sticks, and most of all I learned to kick: high and fast and deadly, for my teacher cared nothing for the niceties of formalized fighting. The only rule he respected was survival; the only one I cared for was serving justice. Never again would I be caught unarmed by the likes of le Monstre. Between my parents' happiness and my training, the winter rushed by. Yet each week, when the Benefactor visited, I was banished to the kitchen to watch an adult life unfold through cracks in the wall, tantalizingly near and still untouchable.
He seemed less old to me as my parents blossomed: they seemed less old, as though the years fell away through the gift of song, for Maman sang more joyfully now than ever before. The Benefactor glowed with pleasure to hear her voice while Papa, more reserved, sat with steepled fingers, behind which I could not discern his expression. But it was not Papa whom I watched, mostly; it was the Benefactor, whose vivid gaze and sharp features seemed larger and more handsome than life to me. My baking attempts grew worse, but even above the scent of burning bread I could smell his cologne, subtle and rich. When he left I would slip to the coat stand and breathe in the lingering bouquet as I pretended to tidy after his visits.
Each time Maman would watch me at my invented chores, standing as she had sung, alone in the middle of the room with a brightly colored scarf wrapped tight around her slender shoulders. Each time she would take me into her arms and kiss my forehead and murmur her thanks, always spoken in her native tongue, for me being a good girl. Each time I would think guiltily of my Savate lessons, and of the heart-hammering lightheadedness I felt when I saw the Benefactor, and return her embrace without meeting her eyes.
Each time the importance of staying out of sight seemed increasingly absurd, until one winter night just after my seventeenth birthday, I slipped out of our small Parisian apartment and followed the Benefactor into the city.
I do not know if he always stopped on le Pont des Arts, perhaps to admire its nine iron arches bending gracefully over la Seine, or to stand in the heart of Bohemian Paris, with la Louvre upon one bank and Notre Dame visible in the distance, or if somehow he knew that I crept after him through snow-damp streets, not quite clinging to the edges of electric light shadows. I only know that he stood waiting that night, gloved fingertips making indentations in the slowly building snow on the bridge's rail, and that he did not look around, not even when I came to stand beside him. The snow did not melt on the leather of his gloves, though it turned to water in an instant on my own fingers, pressed much more deeply into the rising flakes of whiteness. Snow settled on my eyelashes and cheeks, too: I had not been wise enough to wear a scarf or hat when I had escaped our house, and so in no time at all I was a thin shivering thing beside him.
Finally he chuckled instead of speaking, and swept his cloak off to wrap around my shoulders. It had a velvet collar, high and soft, that brushed my cheeks as warmly as his laugh did, and the intoxicating scent of his cologne was strong. I felt a hot sharp pain of excitement in my bones and struggled not to tremble.
"You are Estelle's daughter through and through," he said then. "She also believes that the African sun of her childhood could not have abandoned her, and that she can walk through wintery Parisian streets to no ill effect. It is Amélie, is it not?"
"Amelia," I whispered, for my father had chosen the name and my mother had accepted his American way of saying it.
"Amelia," the Benefactor said thoughtfully. "I have not seen you properly for years. Not since you so passionately petitioned me on your parents' behalf. I had thought we might see each other again after that."
He turned me toward him as he spoke and tipped my chin up with a finger. Laughter lines crinkled around his eyes, reminding me that he was ancient, as old as my parents at least, but age enhanced, rather than diminished, his beauty. I drank in his smile and the greenness of his eyes like a woman denied water across a desert march, and forgot completely to speak. I could not have, even if I had thought to: the breath in my lungs was squeezed away, not even a trace of steam to linger on the cold air.
"Why did you follow me, Amelia?"
"Amelia," he repeated when I did not, could not, speak, "why did you follow me? Your parents wouldn't approve."
"My parents think I am still a child!" The answer burst out childishly, and mortification burned my cheeks.
"All parents see their children as children, long past the day they should know them as adults." The Benefactor—Monsieur Laval; I struggled to think of him that way and failed—the Benefactor offered me his arm, clad now only in his beautifully made suit, though he showed no sign of chill in the cold night. We began to walk, although I had no confidence that my feet even touched the ground. On his arm I thought I might be flying, and was loathe to look down and discover I was not. "I am sure your parents have many names for me, Amelia, but you may call me Paul-Gabriel."
I whispered, "Gabriel," though to a Frenchman, to use only part of a name was an oddity. But my father was American and, as Maman said, besotted with nicknames. "Gabriel is the angel who whispered to Joan of Arc. The angel of voices."
"As I hope I have been to Estelle," he said with gentle self-deprecation. "Does it please you, then, this name? Gabriel?"
I nodded, mute with the power of my heartbeat, and the Benefactor stopped at the bridge's corner to lift a gloved finger to my lips. "Then it shall be my secret name between us," he murmured. "You shall be my Amélie, and I, your Gabriel. Do not let your mother see that you wear my cloak, Amélie. She would fear for you, when you and I both know that is hardly necessary."
Then he was gone, taken by the quiet night, and though I spun and searched, I saw no footprint to follow in the snow.
CHAPTER FOUR
Maman did not see the cloak, but neither did she long think I was without a beau. I could not contain my delight, nor keep stars from shining in my eyes. She and Papa teased me, and asked when they would meet my young monsieur, and laughed when I blushed. I was not so dark of skin as Maman, and at times even she blushed so that the eye could see. I had no hope of hiding the condemning changes of color.
I was careful to go out in the day to meet this imaginary youth, though in truth there were few enough young men to be found in Parisian streets in the long years of the Great War. Maman and Papa speculated to no end. Was he an artiste, too fragile to fight? Was he returned from the war, injured or emotionally scarred? Perhaps I had taken up nursing, though that gentle art was more suited to Maman's temperament—or even to Papa's!—than mine. I had grown up amongst revolutionaries: it was the dream of the battle that caught my breath, even then.
And that, perhaps, was why my Gabriel was such a dear and exciting secret to me. Maman and Papa could not approve, and so he was in his very self a fight, a stand, a way of etching my own mark in the earth. He was as circumspect as I—more so!—and we met only after he came to visit Maman and Papa, and asked Maman to sing for him.
But he came more and more often.
I saw but could not, with the callowness of youth and the flush of first love, understand that his visits took their toll on my parents. They were happy: Maman sang, Papa had employment, and all of it could be laid at the Benefactor's feet. I could not understand why his visits did not inspire them with joy, when I could only barely keep from flinging myself into his arms when he arrived, or deny myself the chance to shower him in kisses that he gently and agonizingly spurned. He seemed more beautiful to me each time I saw him, more vibrant, more knowledgeable, more fascinating. My bread baking efforts grew worse still, until Maman forbade me from even trying and instead sent me to sit and practice our silent piano, the long sheet of butcher paper upon which she had drawn a keyboard with a grease pencil.
Had I practiced the silent piano with one tenth the passion with which I pressed my eye to the crack in the wall, I should have been a virtuoso, and my life a very different tale indeed. And yet it was those fractured efforts which changed my life after all, for as Gabriel and I walked through Paris one evening he led me into a music shop that ought not have been open, and asked if I could play.
Cold-fingered and with racing heart, I gave the shop's owner an apologetic look, and played. Well enough for a girl who rarely practiced, but, desperate to impress, I raised my voice as well. To my own ear, I lacked Maman's gift of song, but I had spent my life in the arms of her music, and I could sing. I chose a saucy piece at first, hoping to make my beloved laugh, but the rising passion in his eyes led me to sing another, a simple hymn with depth and power.
He did not move at all as I sang to him, my beautiful green-eyed man. He barely seemed to breathe, and I could only think that I dreamed it when I saw tears glimmer in his thick dark lashes. As the final notes came to a close, he sighed and almost bowed, a curve to his spine and shoulders that I had only ever seen offered to my mother at the end of a song. Beyond him, I saw the shop owner, a white-faced man with hunched shoulders and wringing fingers, whose gaze never seemed to leave my Gabriel's back. But then Gabriel straightened and offered me his hands, and when I took them, he drew me to standing and for the first time touched his lips to mine.
All thought was lost beyond that moment. In the tangled aftermath of tumultuous lovemaking, I could not even recall how we had left the music shop for more appropriate quarters, but neither did I care. I did not return home that night, nor for many months after. Our love was no longer a secret; my Gabriel took me everywhere with him, showing me, showing us, off to the world. I had visited la Louvre, of course, but doors that had been closed to my family and me were opened when I was on his arm. Art, music, theatre, beauty, love: everything that the Bohemians I had grown up with most desired was laid before my feet, and all he asked in return was that I sing for him. In his presence, I was allowed to forget that a war raged around us; that there were those who went without; that crime carried on even as my world became breathless and magical.
He even ceased to visit my parents, and in so doing, let me forget that I had been swept away from troubles and hardship. I chose not to visit my parents, knowing they could not approve. That was unbecoming of one who had believed herself ready for battle, but those pangs of guilt were easily buried beneath the unebbing ache of desire and the thrill of being an adult on my own. And I was an adult, or felt I was; at Gabriel's side, I was as cosmopolitan as any Parisian could hope to be. No one had known love like this, not in all humanity's history; no one could ever have felt such excitement, such joy, such wonder, in the arms of a lover, else the world itself could not know hatred and anger and war.
The new leaves of spring deepened to the same green as my lover's eyes, summer green, before I returned to my Montmartre home to once more visit my parents. The narrow streets seemed shoddier, more worn and less careworn; the leaning brick buildings grayer and shabbier than they had been. The men and women who crowded the streets there were less familiar and more distressing to my eyes. I feared that my shoes, as polished as Gabriel's, would stain with the offal on the streets, and could only be grateful that hemlines had risen so that my silk chiffon dress would not be damaged. That was as far as my thoughts went: only to myself, and how far I had flown above the ugliness from which I had come.
I went up the long and narrow stairway, hearing as I never had before the creak of old wood, seeing as I never had before its dull, unstained color, and wondered how Gabriel had even brought himself to visit, despite the richness of Maman's voice. My dress, frothy green; my lips, strawberry red; they were the only colors of note as I entered the flat in which I had grown up. I came as a peacock, preening, ready to be admired. But there was no admiration to be found, and my surprise at that was so great that at first I could not even see what was wrong.
My eyes expected Maman and Papa, one at the piano, the other at the table doing sums. My heart waited on the strength of her song, and beneath it the faint scratch of Papa's pen against thin-scraped paper. I breathed in, ready to laugh at the scent of burnt bread, though it was I who burnt it time and again, not Maman. Each detail was etched in my expectations, so sharp that they might have been real.
But my dress was not the only color of note: it was the only color at all in a ransacked home. Maman's brilliant scarves and shawls lay dull on the floor; Papa's pens were broken, the ink soaked into dry floorboards. The piano lay in shambles, as if an ax had been taken to it, and the windows that let watery sunlight shine through were broken and unshuttered.
