Part 11 (1/2)

He and Alfred had dressed like the das.h.i.+ng Byron for a time. After Gustave dispensed with the cape and scarf, he retained the stance of the man, who was as notorious for his scandals, debt, and s.e.xual appet.i.te as for his verse.

”Later I came to reject the writers who held an optimistic view of humanity. How,” he asked her, ”could Rousseau think the common man n.o.ble? How could anyone? For the common man is uncouth. Boring. He is married to tradition, distrustful of new ideas, of art itself!” He could feel the blood of his convictions coursing through his neck and head. Even in the twilit room, his face must be red as a boil. ”Only Rabelais and Byron wrote in a spirit of malice, only they dared laugh at the human race.”

”It is true,” she said, unperturbed. ”The common man is dirty. He cannot read and therefore barely thinks. But how can he rise above his station without education and the right to determine his destiny? That is why I felt so much sympathy with the Italian reformers,” she added. ”I knew some of them in France and Switzerland, the great social and political thinkers in exile there.”

Amazing! While he was laboring all night until dawn in his study on Saint Anthony, she had been discussing the fate of the Italian states with visionaries. Perhaps he was the naive one. Of course, he had been in Paris for the revolution of 1848, though not by design. He had ventured out once from Max's flat to observe from the ramparts but had never partic.i.p.ated. The truth was that without the guidance of his friends, he had few opinions about politics. Mostly, he had to admit, he was simply against things. He aspired to misanthropy, though he had trouble pulling it off face-to-face. There was always the danger, too, that he would end his days as a sullen windbag. He had to take the measure of himself. He had to succeed. The failure of Saint Anthony had nearly broken him.

How much time had pa.s.sed-half an hour? An hour? The light inside the temple seemed brighter than before, the silence denser, more liturgical.

”Luckily, you have had advantages,” she said. ”You are not a common man and never could be. And most important, you have a calling, which your first failure has not altered.”

”Yes,” he muttered. ”But it has made me cynical.”

”Then that is another thing we share,” she announced, looking almost excited. ”I have grown cynical myself.”

”About what, Rossignol? The music?”

”No, not that. I've grown cynical about people, my own cla.s.s of people. They are so smug, so comfortable sitting in judgment.”

”The bourgeois herd.”

”Two years ago at church, I . . . well . . . sort of lost my temper and made my opinions known.”

He p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. ”Oh?”

”The vicar had the gall to say it was extraordinary that Jesus arose from the working cla.s.ses, as if only the rich had a brain or sentiment.”

”And not at all in the spirit of the man Himself.” He loved the thought of her dressing down a cleric.

”I wanted to shout, We are all Pontius Pilate here, but instead, as I went through the receiving line, I told him it would have been more extraordinary if Jesus had arisen from this cla.s.s of people. Whereupon he pinched my elbow and steered me outside and asked why I hated my own kind.” She shook her head with resignation.

”Perhaps your vicar has never actually read the Bible?” he joked.

She did not respond at first, staring grimly at the floor. ”I was so angry, but then I thought, 'Look at me. I have been educated primarily to enjoy my life, to play the pianoforte, to speak French, to attend lectures and recitals. Who am I to judge him? I am no better-”

”You are, you are much, much better!” He touched her cheek.

”But all my luxuries and leisure depend upon the drudgery of people who are barely acknowledged as human beings.” Sighing, she looked into his eyes.

”No, you are better. You are nothing like those people.”

”Perhaps you are right. At least I notice the inequity.” She smiled a little. ”At least I do not say what the wealthy always say of the poor: 'Let them suffer here below becau-”

”'Because Heaven will be their recompense. They are not like us.' Blah-blah-blah-blah.”

”Exactly!”

They looked at each other beyond the few seconds allowed in the presence of other people, who were always monitoring the length and propriety of a glance. He was aware of the soft skin of her cradling hand. But instead of an awakening in his groin, he felt his bottom itching. In her presence, he couldn't just reach around and scratch his a.s.s. Pity. Had he ever felt that free in front of Caroline? He couldn't recall.

”You have laid bare your heart,” she whispered. ”Will you keep a secret of mine that only one other human being knows?”

”Mais oui. On my life!” He thought back to the day he and Alfred had commingled their blood with finger p.r.i.c.ks as boys. Secrets thrilled him.

She yawned and hiccuped, her manners apparently suspended during extreme spiritual distress. Might she next burp or pa.s.s wind in his presence? The thought excited him, like the voyeur's fantasy that the woman he has been secretly watching continues to undress, knowing she is being watched.

”Promise you will not laugh or think me crazy if I tell you.” Her voice was firm and serious.

Could he promise that? He thought he must, whatever he might actually believe. ”Again, on my life.”

She scooped up sand from the floor and let it sift through her fingers, gathering her thoughts. ”I, too, have a calling.”

At last, he thought, the mysterious source of her despondency and of her fierce commitment would be revealed.

”My calling is from G.o.d.” She closed her eyes, rapturous, then opened them, looking stunned. ”I mean to say that when I was seventeen, G.o.d spoke to me.”

”I see,” Gustave whispered respectfully. He added a weight to the scale in his mind on the side of her craziness. In France, many people conversed with G.o.d, most of them wretched peasants desperate to distinguish themselves from the flock, to leave off being sheep. He was crestfallen to think that brilliant Rossignol was similarly deluded: Joan of Arc redux. He cleared his throat. ”Are there many mystics in England?” He might have been asking about the weather.

”Mystics?” It was clear from the tone of her voice that she had never applied the word to herself. ”No, I've never heard of any. Is that what I am, then, a mystic?” Her voice was shaky, tinged with fear. Or was it anger?

”I don't know,” Gustave floundered. ”That is what we call them in France, the people who speak to G.o.d.”

”But I didn't speak to G.o.d!” She lurched forward, her back ramrod straight. ”He spoke to me. He called me to His service. I had no say in it. I was merely the vessel-”

”I'm so sorry. I hope I haven't offended you-”

”Offended me? No, but clearly you think me mad.”

Anger, then. She made to move away from him, but he held on to her arm. A rivulet of sweat streaked between his shoulder blades. The room had disappeared from awareness for a time. Now it was stifling again.

”I don't think you are mad,” he lied. ”I am sometimes rude or tactless without meaning to be.” A pressure was building behind his eyes, a headache coming on. Or was he about to have a seizure? He'd never been able to identify the warning signs before he vanished into the black maze of nonexistence. To prevent or at least antic.i.p.ate future episodes, he tried to remember afterward what he had been doing or feeling. But only afterward, when it felt like he'd died and revived, after a chunk of his life had been severed with an ax. ”But please, tell me how and when it happened to you, Rossignol.” If he did have a seizure, would she know what to do?

”Gustave? Are you quite all right?” Her head was inclined toward him, an expression of care on her face so intense it seemed that her whole life force were focused on him in a single beam of attention.

”I am fine.” The pain was receding. He breathed more easily. ”I have been thinking that we should swear to have no secrets today, no shame between us.” Did he dare divulge the secret of his illness? He wanted to, but not quite yet. ”I myself have done things I would be ashamed to tell you-”

”But I am not ashamed!” She pulled her arm free and scooted away on the floor, horrified, though she did not leave. A wave of grat.i.tude washed over him-grat.i.tude to Philae and its ancient architects. Where but in such a sacred and exotic quarter could this chimerical conversation continue?

”You must forgive . . . my inept.i.tude.” His words issued from his throat like thread catching on a spool. ”I was only saying I have secrets, I have things I am ashamed of.” The words kept coming, colored this way, then that, like the endless silk scarf of a magician. ”Ashamed of my behavior on occasion with women. I have, in short, sinned. But you! You are blessed. You are blessed that G.o.d chose you.” He felt utterly lost. How had one remark altered her mood so sharply? His words lay at his feet, a tangle of knots, a hatful of failed tricks.

”You understand nothing of this event,” she said sharply. ”I am not blessed. He called me to His service, but that was twelve years ago and I still do not know what I am to do.” She kicked at the floor, raising a flurry of dust motes that settled erratically, like bits of gold leaf.

It took every drop of his self-control not to laugh: a woman considering suicide because her G.o.d was fickle or had a poor memory? He took several deep breaths to vanquish the hoot that hovered in his throat like a sneeze in the nose. He could feel a smile forming in his face, a disembodied grin in the sepulchral gloom. He bit his lip until his eyes teared.

She began to keen, to sob. She covered her face with her hands, as if to block the anguish from issuing forth. He had never seen such a display, not of grief, but of grief denied, of grief beat back with a hammer, of great blockades erected and then broached. He was unable to look away, like an onlooker at a fire. He had paid to watch women m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, but that was not nearly as intimate as watching this young Englishwoman try to subdue the beast of her raw feeling.

She looked up, her nose dripping. ”It is not a blessing, but a curse.” Her voice was thin as a wire.

He crawled across the s.p.a.ce between them and rested his head against her shoulder. Philae held them in its silted-up silence. Barely touching her for fear she'd collapse under the weight of an embrace or move away again, he encircled her with his arms. ”I am waiting for the muse to visit me,” he managed to whisper, ”just as you are waiting for G.o.d to speak to you again.” Were they not both self-made pariahs? He felt himself in complete sympathy with her, as if they had mingled their blood in the purity and innocence of childhood.

She wiped her face on her sleeve and, still within the crook of his arm, raised her head and in a small voice asked, ”What sins have you committed with women?”