Angelology (20 page)

A look of pain flickered in Celestine’s expression.

“Mrs. Rockefeller was our last great hope in New York. I have no doubt she took her role seriously. Indeed, she was so adept that her secret has remained hidden to this day. The creatures would kill every last one of us in order to discover it.”

Evangeline touched the lyre pendant, the gold warm against her fingertips. At last she understood the significance of her grandmother’s gift.

Celestine smiled. “I see you understand me. The pendant marks you as one of us. Your grandmother was right to give it to you.”

“You know my grandmother?” Evangeline asked, astonished and confused that Celestine should know the precise provenance of her necklace.

“I knew Gabriella many years ago,” Celestine said, the faintest hint of sadness in her voice. “And even then I did not truly know her. Gabriella was my friend, she was a brilliant scholar and a dedicated fighter for our cause, but to me she has always been a mystery. Gabriella’s heart was one thing nobody, not even her closest friend, could discern.”

It had been ages since Evangeline had last spoken with her grandmother. As the years had passed, she began to believe that Gabriella had died. “Then she is alive?” Evangeline asked.

“Very much alive,” Celestine said. “She would be proud to see you now.”

“Where is she?” Evangeline asked. “France? New York?”

“That I cannot tell you,” Celestine said. “But if your grandmother were here, I know that she would explain everything to you. As she is not, I can only try, in my own way, to help you to understand.”

Pulling herself up in her bed, Celestine gestured for Evangeline to go to the opposite side of the room, where an antique trunk sat in a corner, its leather trim scuffed. A brass-plated catch gleamed in the light, a padlock hanging from it like a piece of fruit. Evangeline walked to it and held the cool lock in her hand. A tiny key protruded from the keyhole.

Checking to be sure that Celestine approved, Evangeline twisted the key. The lock popped open. She unhooked it, set it lightly upon the wooden floorboard, and pushed open the trunk’s heavy wooden top the brass hinges, without oil for many decades, creaked with a sharp feline whine and gave way to the earthy smell of stale sweat and dust mixed with the more refined, musky smell of perfume that has begun to soften with age. Inside, she found a layer of yellowed tissue paper placed neatly over the surface, so light it seemed to hover above the edges of the trunk. Evangeline lifted the paper, careful not to crease it, and found pressed stacks of clothing beneath. Taking them from the trunk, she examined them one by one: a black cotton pinafore, brown jodhpurs stained black at the knees, a pair of women’s lace-up leather boots with the wooden soles worn down. Evangeline unfolded a pair of wide-legged wool trousers that seemed better suited to a young man than to Celestine. Running her hand over the trousers, her nails catching upon the rough fabric, Evangeline could smell the dust trapped in the material.

Digging deeper, Evangeline’s fingers brushed against something velvety soft at the bottom of the trunk. A mass of satin lay crumpled in a corner. When Evangeline unfurled it with a flick of the wrist, it opened into a fluid sheet of glossy scarlet fabric. She draped the dress over her arm, examining it closely. She had never touched material quite so soft; it fell across her skin like water. The style of the dress was like something in a black-and-white film—bias cut, with a plunging neckline, a tapered waist, and a narrow skirt that fell to the floor. A series of tiny satin-covered buttons climbed up the left side of the gown. Evangeline found a tag sewn into a seam. It read CHANEL. A series of numbers were stamped below it. Holding the dress close, she tried to imagine the woman who wore such a dress. What would it be like, she wondered, to wear this beautiful gown?

Evangeline was returning the dress to the trunk when, nestled in a fold of old clothing, she found a bundle of envelopes. Green, red, and white—the envelopes were the colors of Christmas. They had been fastened together by a thick black satin band, which Evangeline slid her finger over, the slick track soft and smooth.

“Bring them to me,” Celestine said softly, the extent of her weariness beginning to weigh upon her.

Leaving the trunk open, Evangeline carried the envelopes to Celestine. With trembling fingers Celestine untied the ribbon and returned the envelopes to Evangeline. Flipping through them, Evangeline found that the cancellation dates corresponded with the Christmas season of each year, beginning in 1988, the year she became a ward of St. Rose Convent, and ending with Christmas 1998. To her amazement the name on the return address read “Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko.” The letters had been sent to Celestine by Evangeline’s grandmother.

“She sent them for you,” Celestine said, her voice tremulous. “I have been collecting and saving them for many years—eleven, to be precise. The time has come for you to have them. I wish I could explain more, but I am afraid that I have already pushed myself beyond my strength this evening. Speaking of the past has been more difficult for me than you can imagine. Explaining the complicated history between Gabriella and me would be even more so. Take the letters. I believe that they will answer many of your questions. When you have read them, come to me again. There is much we must discuss.”

With great care Evangeline tied the letters together with the black satin ribbon, securing the knot in a tight bow. Celestine’s appearance had changed dramatically over the course of their discussion—her skin had become ashen and pale, and she could hardly keep her eyes open. For a moment Evangeline wondered if she should call for assistance, but it was clear that Celestine needed nothing more than to rest. Evangeline straightened the crocheted blanket, tucking the edges over Celestine’s frail arms and shoulders, making sure she was warm and comfortable. With the pack of letters in hand, she left Celestine to sleep.

C
elestine folded her hands across her chest beneath the crocheted blanket, straining to see beyond the bright colors of her bedspread. The room was little more than a haze of shadow. Although she had looked upon the contours of her bedroom each day for over fifty years and knew the placement of each object in her possession, the room had a formless unfamiliarity that confused her. Her senses had dimmed. The clanking of the steam radiators was distant and muted. Try as she might, she could not make out the trunk at the far end of the room. She knew it was there, holding her past like a time capsule. She had recognized the clothing Sister Evangeline had lifted from its hold: the scuffed boots Celestine had kept from the expedition, the uncomfortable pinafore that had so tortured her as a schoolgirl, and the marvelous red dress that had made her—for one precious evening—beautiful. Celestine could even detect the scent of perfume mingling with the mustiness, proof that the cut-crystal bottle she’d brought with her from Pans—one of the few treasures she allowed herself in the frantic minutes before her flight from France—was still there, buried in dust but potent. If she had the strength, she would have gone to the trunk, taken the cold bottle in her hand. She would have eased the crystal stopper from the glass and allowed herself to inhale the scent of her past, a sensation so delicious and forbidden that she could hardly bring herself to think of it. For the first time in many years, her heart ached for the time of her girlhood.

Sister Evangeline’s resemblance to Gabriella had been so pronounced that there were moments when Celestine’s mind—weakened from exhaustion and illness—had fallen into confusion. The years dropped away, and, to her dismay, she could not discern time or place or the reason for her confinement. As she drifted asleep, images of the past lifted through the evanescent layers of her mind, emerging and fading like colors upon a screen, each one dissolving into the next. The expedition, the war, the school, the days of lessons and study—these events of her youth seemed to Celestine as clear and vibrant as those of the present. Gabriella Lévi-Franche, her friend and rival, the girl whose friendship had so changed the course of her life, appeared before her. As Celestine drifted in and out of sleep, the barriers of time fell away, allowing her to see the past once again.

—Psalm 150

Autumn 1939

 

I
t was less than a week after the invasion of Poland, an afternoon in my second year as a student of angelology, when Dr. Seraphina Valko sent me to locate my errant classmate, Gabriella, and bring her to the Athenaeum. Gabriella was late for our tutorial, a habit she’d developed over the summer months and had continued, to our professor’s dismay, into the cooler days of September. She was nowhere to be found in the school—not in the courtyard where she often went to be alone during breaks, nor in any of the classrooms where she often studied—and so I guessed her to be in her bed, sleeping. My bedroom being next to hers, I knew that she had not come in until well after three o’clock that morning, when she put a record on the phonograph and listened to a recording of
Manon Lescaut,
her favorite opera, until dawn.

I walked through the narrow streets off the cemetery, passing a café filled with men listening to news of the war on a radio, and cut through an alleyway to our shared apartment on the rue Gassendi. We lived on the third floor, our windows opening over the tops of the chestnut trees, a height that removed us from the noise of the street and filled the rooms with light. I climbed the wide staircase, unlocked the door, and stepped into a quiet, sunny apartment. We had an abundance of space—two large bedrooms, a narrow dining room, a servant’s chamber with an entrance to the kitchen, and a grand bathroom with a porcelain bathtub. The apartment was far too luxurious for schoolgirls, this I knew from the moment I set foot upon its polished parquet. Gabriella’s family connections had assured her the best of everything our school could offer. How I had been assigned to live with Gabriella in such quarters was a mystery to me.

Our Montparnasse apartment was a great change in my circumstances. In the months after I had moved in, I basked in its luxury, taking care to keep everything in perfect order. Before I’d come to Paris, I had never seen such an apartment, while Gabriella had lived well all her life. We were opposites in many ways, and even our appearance seemed to confirm our differences. I was tall and pale, with big hazel eyes, thin lips, and the foreshortened chin I had always considered the hallmark of my northern heritage. Gabriella, by contrast, was dark and classically beautiful. She had a way about her that caused others to take her seriously, despite her weakness for fashion and the Claudine novels. Whereas I came to Paris on scholarship, my fees and board paid entirely through donations, Gabriella came from one of the oldest and most prestigious of the Parisian angelological families. Whereas I felt lucky to be allowed to study with the best minds of our field, Gabriella had grown up in their presence, absorbing their brilliance as if it were sunlight. Whereas I plodded through texts, memorizing and categorizing in the meticulous manner of an ox plowing a field, Gabriella had an elegant, dazzling, effortless intellect. I systemized each piece of minutia into notebooks, making charts and graphs to better retain information, while to my knowledge Gabriella never took notes. And yet she could answer a theological question or elaborate upon a mythological or historical point with an ease that escaped me. Together we were at the top of our class, and yet I always felt that I had stolen my way into the elite circles that were Gabriella’s birthright.

Walking through our apartment, I found it much as I had left it that morning. A thick, leather-bound book written by St. Augustine lay open upon the dining table alongside a plate with the remains of my breakfast, a crust of bread and strawberry preserves. I cleared the table, bringing my book to my room and placing it amid the mess of loose papers on my desk. There were books waiting to be read, jars of ink, and any number of my half-filled notebooks. A yellowed photograph of my parents—two sturdy, weatherworn farmers surrounded by the rising hills of our vineyard—sat next to a faded photograph of my grandmother, Baba Slavka, her hair tied in a head scarf in the way of her foreign village. My studies had occupied me so completely that I’d not been home in over a year.

I was the daughter of winemakers, a sheltered, shy girl from the countryside, with academic talent and strong, unwavering religious beliefs. My mother came from a line of
vignerons
whose ancestors had quietly survived through hard work and tenacity, harvesting auxerrois blanc and pinot gris all the while bricking the family savings in the walls of the farmhouse, preparing for the days when war would return. My father was a foreigner. He had immigrated to France from eastern Europe after the First World War, married my mother, and took her family name before assuming responsibility of managing the vineyard.