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“All boys like sweets, don’t they?” Her voice was casual. I agreed that most boys did. “And his friends come here too, I suppose?”
I told her I wasn’t sure who his friends were, but that most of the children came and went regularly.
“I might come here again,” decided Armande. “I like your chocolate, even if your chairs are terrible. I might even become a regular customer.”
“You’d be welcome,” I said.
Another pause. I understood that Armande Voizin does things in her own way, in her own time, refusing to be hurried or advised. I let her think it through.
“Here. Take this.”
The decision was made. Briskly she slapped a hundred-franc note down on the counter.
“But-”
“If you see him, buy him a box of whatever he likes. Don’t tell him they’re from me.”
I took the note.
“And don’t let his mother get to you. She’s at it already, more than likely, spreading her gossip and her condescension. My only child, and she had to turn into one of Reynaud’s Salvation Sisters.” Her eyes narrowed mischievously, working webby dimples into her round cheeks. “There are rumours already about you,” she said. “You know the kind. Getting involved with me will only make things worse…”
I laughed.
“I think I can manage.”
“I think you can.” She looked at me, suddenly intent, the teasing note gone from her voice. “There’s something about you,” she said in a soft voice. “Something familiar. I don’t suppose we’ve met before that time in Les Marauds, have we?”
Lisbon, Paris, Florence, Rome. So many people. So many lives intersected, fleetingly criss-crossed, brushed by the mad weft-warp of our itinerary. But I didn’t think so.
“And there’s a smell. Something like burning, the smell of a summer lightning-strike ten seconds after. A scent of midsummer storms and cornfields in the rain.” Her face was rapt, her eyes searching out mine. “It’s true, isn’t it? What I said? What you are?”
That word again.
She laughed delightedly and took my hand. Her skin was cool; foliage, not flesh. She turned my hand over to see the palm.
“I knew it!” Her finger traced lifeline, heartline. “I knew it the minute I saw you!” To herself, head bent, voice so low it was no more than a breath against my hand, “I knew it. I knew it. But I never thought to see you here; in this town.” A sharp, suspicious glance upwards. “Does Reynaud know?”
“I’m not sure.”
It was true; I had no idea what she was talking about. But I could smell it too; the scent of the changing winds, that air of revelation. A distant scent of fire and ozone. A squeal of gears left long unused, the infernal machine of synchronicity. Or maybe Josephine was right and Armande was crazy. After all, she could see Pantoufle.
“Don’t let Reynaud know,” she told me, her mad, earnest eyes gleaming. “You know who he is, don’t you?”
I stared at her. I must have imagined what she said then. Or maybe our dreams touched briefly once, on one of our nights on the run.
“He’s the Black Man. “
Reynaud. Like a bad card. Again and again. Laughter in the wings.
Long after I had put Anouk to bed I read my mother’s cards for the first time since her death. I keep them in a sandalwood box and they are mellow, perfumed with memories of her. For a moment I almost put them away unread, bewildered by the flood of associations that scent brings with it. New York, hotdog stands billowing steam. The Cafe de la Paix, with its immaculate waiters. A nun eating an ice-cream outside Notre-Dame cathedral. Onenight hotel rooms, surly doormen, suspicious gendarmes, curious tourists. And over it all the shadow of It, the nameless implacable thing we fled:
I am not my mother. I am not a fugitive. And yet the need to see, to know; is so great that I find myself taking them from their box and spreading them, much as she did, by the side of the bed. A glance backwards to ensure Anouk is still, asleep. I do not want her to sense my unease. Then I shuffle, cut, shuffle, cut until I have four cards.
Ten of Swords, death. Three of Swords, death. Two of Swords, death. The Chariot. Death.
The Hermit. The Tower. The Chariot. Death.
The cards are my mother’s. This has nothing to do with me, I tell myself, though the Hermit is easy enough to identify. But the Tower? The Chariot? Death?
The Death card, says my mother’s voice within me, may not always portend the physical death of the self but the death of a way of life. A change. A turning of the winds. Could this be what it means?
I don’t believe in divination. Not in the way she did, as a way of mapping out the random patterns of our trajectory. Not as an excuse for inaction, a crutch when things turn from bad to worse, a rationalization of the chaos within. I hear her voice now and it sounds the same to me as it did on the ship, her strength transformed to sheer stubbornness, her humour into a fey despair.
What about Disneyland? What do you think? The Florida Keys? The Everglades? There’s so much to see in the New World, so much we haven’t even begun to dream about. Is that it, do you think? Is that what the cards are saying?
By then Death was on every card, Death and the Black Man, who had begun to mean the same thing. We fled him, and he followed, packed in sandalwood.
As an antidote I read Jung and Herman Hesse, and learned about the collective unconscious. Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know. What we fear. There are no demons but a collection of archetypes every civilization has in common. The fear of loss – Death. The fear of displacement – the Tower. The fear of transience – the Chariot.
And yet Mother died.
I put the cards away tenderly into their scented box. Goodbye, Mother. This is where our journey stops. This is where we stay to face whatever the wind brings us. I shall not read the cards again.
13
Sunday, February 23
Bless me, father, for i have sinned. I know you can hear me, mon pere, and there is no-one else to whom I would care to confess. Certainly not the bishop, secure in his distant diocese of Bordeaux. And the church seems so empty. I feel foolish at the foot of the altar, looking up at Our Lord in his gilt and agony – the gilding has tarnished with the smoke from the candles and the dark staining gives Him a sly and secretive look – and prayer, which came as such a blessing, such a source of joy in the early days, is a burden, a cry on the side of a bleak mountain which might at any time unleash the avalanche upon me.
Is this doubt, mon pere? This silence within myself, this inability to pray, to be cleansed, humbled… is it my fault? I look about the church which is my life and I try to feel love for it. Love, as you loved, for the statues – St Jerome with the chipped nose, the smiling Virgin, Jeanne D’Arc with her banner, St Francis with his painted pigeons. I myself dislike birds. I feel this may be a sin against my namesake but I cannot help it. Their squawking, their filth – even at the doors of the church, the whitewashed walls streaked with the greenish daub of their leavings – their noise during sermons. I poison the rats which infest the sacristy and gnaw at the vestments there. Should I not also poison the pigeons which disrupt my service? I have tried, mon pere, but to no avail. Perhaps St Francis protects them.
If only I could be more worthy. My unworthiness dismays me, my intelligence – which is far in excess of that of my flock – serving only to heighten the weakness, the cheapness of the vessel God has chosen to serve. Is this my destiny? I dreamed of greater things, of sacrifices, of martyrdoms. Instead I fritter away time in anxieties which are unworthy of me, unworthy of you.
My sin is that of pettiness, mon pere.