Fiend, page 4
part #3 of Voice of Blood Series
Je veux aller à Paris.
The gaunt faces in mountains and snowpacks, mocking and disapproving. The hateful sneers of refusal of my attempts at well-bred beggary. The jostle of mail carriages and sheep carts shuddering through the night. The chlorine taste of a stranger’s semen exploding into my mouth, the following burn of bile in my throat as I spit it out against his trouser leg, and the tricolor explosion of pain as his fist struck the side of my head. Incomprehensible French obscenities. The moon reduced to a pale smudge beneath a smothering shroud. I knew no one. I had nothing to sell except myself. I accepted this fact as my private penitence.
Je veux aller à Paris. S’il vous plait. Monsieur. Je veux aller à Paris. Je n’ai pas d’argent, mais je veux aller à Paris. I have no money, but I will do what it takes, if you can take me closer. I will ride, I will stow away, I will trade the favor of my mouth and my hands and my bottom, if you, Monsieur, can get me to Paris.
By Chalon, I hardly ever thought of home; my heart had preceded me to Paris and left my breast empty. The next man whose member found its way into my mouth was stripped of his six francs and knocked unconscious with an iron horseshoe. I could still taste him in my mouth as I swung onto the back of a farmer’s cart, laden with pumpkins, on its way up the river to Monteceaules-Mines, and I laughed until the farmer surely, and not inaccurately, assumed me mad.
I had tasted the ineffable flavor of violence. I was a harlot, a sodomite, and a thief. And I was good at it. I would survive, and get to Paris, with only my wits and determination. Father, the crafty captain and brash businessman, would have been proud of me.
But the nightmares did not stop. Every night I lay with Mamma in her grave, sometimes filled in and smothering, sometimes open to the air and the rain; but I could never move. And yet in my dreams of the grave, I had not the privilege of being dead. Brigands tore my lifeless body from my mother’s side and tossed me into the grass, where I lay as helpless as a rag doll, listening to their foul, porcine noises of plunder. At first the pirates wanted her jewelry, her crystal rosary, the thin hoop of Egyptian gold on her ring finger. Then, tiring of these meaningless baubles, they plundered her lifeless body: her eyes, her organs, her sex.
Thankfully, Lorenzo had not stolen my rosary beads, for I performed a decade of prayer each day. I went to Mass twice a week when I could. I prayed for the nightmares to leave me, to forget Lorenzo, to forget my family, and to get to Paris and become a different person entirely.
God does indeed grant the prayers of the truly devoted. I did not ever doubt that I would get to that city eventually, even when I lost ground, and made mistakes because I was afraid to sleep. The Lord was my shield, even as I stole, deceived, and took a perverse pleasure in my degradation. And autumn gave way to winter along the banks of the Loire.
Paris, the city of light, stretched out before me like an ocean of dirty ink, beached with mud, excrement, raw and bitter stone. The snows had not yet come, but the sky threatened, and the wind was damp and cool. Despite my stolen coat, I could not stop shaking with the cold that soaked into my bones, whispering to me that my time to die had come at last.
With my last ounce of strength, I found an open café and dragged myself out of the cold, into what felt, in comparison, like an inferno. Inside it, I caught only a glimpse of firelight and red-glowing, bearded faces turning toward me, before the room rippled like a curtain and then collapsed into a tiny blank point at the very center of my consciousness. I found it all very interesting, the shouting, the cooking and alcohol smells, watching myself fall into a heap, like a sack of corn, onto the sawdust floor.
I had caught lung fever, somewhere on the plain between Nemours and Paris, and spent the next several days out of my mind. The younger brother of the café proprietor was a physician of sorts—a barber, dentist, bonesetter, and horse doctor. I was bled, and given horrible tinctures of strong laudanum and herbs to drink, and at night when all else was quiet, watched the same crack in the plaster of the ceiling flow like a river and writhe like a snake. The thunder and crash of the noisy café outside tore at my senses. I laughed and sobbed and lay insensible and shivering, wondering when death would come. I was ready for it; I welcomed death. I was finished. I had made it to Paris.
Perversely, my young life was spared for the time being; the fever broke, and I recovered my health within twenty days. Dazed and weakened, but unable to shed my well-bred manners, I vowed in my clumsy French to repay my benefactors. When I discovered exactly how much they desired in repayment, I wished I had died instead. One hundred gold louis! From a beggar like me!
God protects, only to challenge anew.
The café owner’s eldest brother, a blind man with a face as pocked as a honeycomb, had a solution for me. “I overheard you talking while in your fever,” he said, speaking slowly so that I could understand. “You are obviously an educated young man, for you spoke Latin like a priest. You may find a position as a secretary or a translator; there is some demand for such knowledge, especially at a low wage.”
“I will do so gladly,” I replied, “for the chance to remain in Paris. Many thanks, monsieur.”
His clouded eyes seemed to sharpen at the desperate note in my voice. “I know of a position available now, in fact. A household where my sister-in-law works as a cook has need of a secretary; I have heard mention of some documents, written in Greek, that urgently require translation.”
“A thousand thanks, monsieur! A thousand thanks!”
“Be aware that this is no ordinary position. You must make an impression. You must be bold and yet discreet; and, young man, you will have to improve your French,” he pointed out with a grin.
I squared my shoulders and held up my head. “I shall learn by doing,” I said proudly.
“And by doing, you shall learn.”
Inside
I arrived at half past six, as instructed.
The house on the corner of Rue du F— did not appear opulent from outside, aside from its size and single entrance, in a city already crammed with narrow, vertical buildings. The brief front garden stood enclosed by a pale-brick wall and tall iron gates capped with pointed spikes. In the afternoon dusk, ancient cobwebs and fragments of dead leaves fluttered in the spaces between the bars of the gates and damply latticed the grass. This was a house where the world existed only within the walls.
Shivering in the clammy wind that blew from the surface of the Seine, I pulled the heavy lead pendulum weighting the bellpull but heard no answering tone from inside. At once the door opened and I beheld a slim young housemaid, in black dress, white apron, and wooden clogs, with her hair hidden completely under a conical lace bonnet of the sort worn by country shepherdesses. She did not look at me or speak; she merely stood aside, allowing me to enter, closed the door, and walked with silent footfalls ahead of me into the foyer.
I wondered idly at this, but my mind was elsewhere, tangled in its web of questions and self-consciousness. What would be my secretarial duties in this place, large enough to house ten families? Would I be merely a translator, or was there anything else I could offer? How much would I be paid? My employers were undoubtedly aristocratic, as evidenced by the splendid narrow carpet in the hall and the skillfully painted oil landscapes upon the walls, and I had been assured by Claude-Pierre, the blind brother, that they were wealthy. Where would I live? In this building, on an uppermost floor? Richly or poorly? Did I look presentable? I had shaved that morning, even though there was really no need; my beard, at the age of nineteen, remained only a downy whisper on my upper lip and cheeks, and a great deal of examining before the glass.
Yet as I followed the white-aproned maid along the long, dark hall that stretched before us, I perceived a subtle change in the air—or perhaps not the air, but properly, the atmosphere. The air remained the same, but the feel of it against my face, the press and rustle of my clothes against my body, and the tread of my feet along the heavy carpet had changed. I felt more (and yet was aware of less). My sense of touch had come alive with an acuity that was almost uncomfortable. The seams of my borrowed clothes scraped against me until it burned like fire.
Ahead of me, the maid opened the sixth door on the left and slipped inside, propping the door open with her thin, muslin-clad wrist. I paused once more on the threshold, tugging at my high stiff collar, before I entered. Beautiful or not, those hateful collars were a torture device.
“Madame,” I heard the housemaid murmur, “Monsieur Ricari.”
And then she was gone, and the door shut sharply behind me.
The room was dark but for the light of two candles at the far end of the room, some dozen meters away, and even their light was half swallowed by the heavy draperies of black velvet curtains. I perceived no one, no movement. The crackling vibration of the atmosphere heightened to an unbearable degree and I let out my breath with an involuntarily curt sigh. “Good evening?” I called out.
And, as mundanely miraculous as a sunrise, I saw myself. Allow me to clarify. It was as if I stood several meters away from myself, watching myself creep and fidget and rub my cheek with the shoulder of my coat. It was a clearer view than anything seen in a mirror; instead of a reversed reflection, I saw myself quite truly, an emaciated youth in dire need of a haircut, dressed in an ill-fitting green coat and baggy trousers, and huge eyes that flitted anxiously along the walls. And yet I was not distasteful to myself in this view; I felt a great warmth and charm, a sense of wonder that my face, despite my obvious privation, was so keenly drawn and handsomely proportioned. I had never seen myself in this way before, and I found myself beautiful.
This is why I did not stop to consider the fact that, perhaps, something was amiss.
Ego is a powerful anesthetic.
At once, a woman appeared out of the shadows, coalescing from the glow of the candles and casting her own subtle incandescence, as though she were composed of moonlight. In her cupped hands, she held a speckled dove that sat and cooed as calmly as if it were in its nest. I gathered all of the woman in a single astonished glance—wavy masses of beaten-gold hair gathered around a heart-shaped face, round blue eyes with thick chestnut eyelashes, a suggestion of maturity on the corners of the eyelids and mouth, but skin as unmarked and silken as a petal, a broad proud bosom rising from a curved neckline of sea-blue satin, diminishing to a firm corseted waist, and flaring again into generous hips and ripples of glistening blue-and-white fabric. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life; even the crystalline waters of Lake Geneva seemed, in comparison, a muddy gutter on a dull day. In my memory, she evokes nothing so much as the cunning spherical cakes, rolled in powdered sugar and served stacked in pyramids, made by the pastry chefs at Dumarchand’s restaurant, which lay still some years in my future. She was dainty and modest, yet succulent and worldly.
“Madame,” I said, astonished, falling to my knee before her. She obliged by languidly holding out one gloved hand at arm’s length, while she held the dove, still calm and sleepy, on the palm of the other hand. I was seized with the desire to kiss the toes of her dark leather shoes, peeking out from under her hem. “I am your servant!”
“Yes,” she replied calmly, her voice a low sonorous music like oboes and cellos. She lifted her hand, and the dove obligingly fluttered away. “Yes, you are.”
She pulled off one glove, then the other, and laid one bare hand upon my bent head. I felt a surge of joy and—and forgiveness; there is no other way to describe it. She forgave all my shortcomings, past and future, with a single touch of her hand on my rumpled hair. And, as one might expect, I burst into tears of relief. I had been suppressing my feelings of guilt and terror and shame for so long that, when those feelings were drawn out of me, they overwhelmed my heart, even as they were washed away. It was a sick but glorious relief, like the lancing of an abscess.
“I am Maria,” she said, and that only made me cry harder, even as I supplicated myself.
Sancta Maria! Blessed art thou among women! How I have longed for your touch! My mother—
She is in Heaven now.
My tutor—
He can never harm you again, my young one. It is so. You are under my protection now.
How glorious, how glorious. Forgive me, Heavenly Father. The flesh is weak, but the spirit, battered by circumstance, is often weaker still. Her voice in my head soothed me like opium smoke.
She let me sob for a minute but then began to shush me, and drew me to my feet by a gentle pressure of her fingertips on my wrist. “Are you now recovered, young man?”
“Yes—yes, I’m fine,” I said. I dried my face upon my handkerchief, and it was as though nothing had ever happened; we stood, two reasonable adults, in a huge drawing room lit only by two candles, at dinnertime.
I looked round me for another soul but saw no one. “Where is your husband?” I asked. “I am here to— assume the position of . . . of secretary . . .”
Maria rolled back her head and chuckled faintly. “I have no husband,” she replied, as if deeply amused by the question. “You work for me.”
“Oh,” I said. “I work for you.” Yes, foolish me. Of course I did. “Are you truly Maria?” I asked, suddenly unsure. My pleasure, my answered prayers, had been too acute, and I had become an enlightened skeptic. “And you called for me?”
“Quite so” was the response. She turned away from me, her skirts faintly ruffling against the floor. She began to glide toward the candles, and I followed her, not daring to take my eyes away for fear that this lovely apparition would diffuse into the candlelight that it perfectly complemented. “You require employment to repay a debt to the ones who saved your life by caring for you when you were ill. They have been paid in full this very evening.” She reached the candles and turned to me with the blue center of the flame burning steadily in her gaze. “That they would ask you to repay them with so much money is very typical, I am afraid. But you need not worry about them anymore. They have been dealt with.”
“Thank you,” I replied breathlessly. The staggeringly large compensation requested by the café owner and his brothers, the doctor and the old blind informer, had been more money than that with which I had started out my journey from Fattorio di Ricari. But as they might as well have thrown me out into the street to my inevitable death, but chose not to, I felt inclined to “square it up,” as Father Christopher would say. “And what do I do?” I left unspoken: Here, in your house, with you, after the skies have already gone dark, and you with no husband.
She laughed, and her fierce, calm eyes sparkled. “You will perform all things I ask of you. I bought your life from those men, and now it belongs to me. Do you understand?”
I nodded, shrugging at the obviousness of what she’d said. Would I disobey the Queen of the Sky? What was my life worth in louis? I had already spent it, whatever the amount. “Yes, madame,” I said, then added, with an attempt at evoking Lorenzo’s appealingly prurient wit, “but do I have to do only those things asked of me?”
She lowered her eyes to the floor, though not out of shame; her expression was thoughtful. “We shall see,” she replied. “We shall see.” Then she smiled up at me. “You are a spirited young man for a fellow so recently snatched from the claws of Death.”
“I was not in danger,” I said with a hint of boastfulness.
“Not from the fever, no.” She seated herself at a little table, spread with a white cloth and bathed in candlelight. She was, at once, as eerily immobile, and as yet ravishingly lifelike, as a wax carving. I began to pace, attempting to shake off the shifting waves of uneasiness and desire, and the candle flames reflected in her eyes followed me.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I made out the threadbare but gorgeous tapestries hung along the wall that ran parallel to the long hallway. A dragon with golden scales stood rampant against a trio of knights armed with lances; on another, a line of pilgrims faced a pale, winding road that led to a rainbow-crowned oasis. The weaving was fine, the fibers glossy at the centers of the tapestries where they had not been worn. “These are very beautiful. They look ancient,” I said.
I felt an sudden urge to sit down, as if I had been gently pushed, and I took the chair opposite her. Immediately, I felt fervent relief, and I almost said “thank you.” Being nearer to her calmed my anxiety.
“Do have some cognac.” She poured liquor from a porcelain bottle. “They are indeed ancient. They were woven in Bayonne in the thirteenth century. They are some of my most prized possessions.”
“Only some? They must have been worth millions of francs to the Emperor!”
“The Emperor,” she repeated, smiling at the floor again. “You shouldn’t say things like that in Paris right now.”
“I would not know. I am not from here,” I said. I glanced at the glassful of cognac, which I thought I had drained, but it glistened invitingly, seemingly untouched. I raised it to my lips and swallowed in one mouthful, opening my mouth to catch the burningvelvet breath of the liquor. I felt I was being smothered in hot sunshine, in Eden’s vineyard of ambrosial grapes.
“Yes, I know. But I am from here, and honoring the titles of conquered kings has never been a prudent thing.”
My glass was full to brimming, and neither of us had moved. In fact, I had not even seen her set glasses on the table to begin with. How lovely she was! “Drink,” she said, and I obeyed.
“Come with me now,” Maria said, rising and taking up one of the candles, “and I shall display to you the duties for which your debts were paid.” Her voice contained a tang of sarcasm, and I felt the unease returning, briefly, a mere tingle along my spine. As soon as I tried to stand, that sensation was swamped under a woozy, giddy dizziness. I nearly fell over onto the table. But my drunkenness did not garner a reaction from Maria, passing soundlessly across the floor back to the door through which I had, an eternity past, entered. How had I lived without her, before? What was my life like? I could no longer imagine. Clumsily, a besotted puppy, I took the other candle and followed.
