Another Faust (27 page)

“Just reading,” said Bicé. She was surrounded by a pile of scribbled pages full of indecipherable letters. “Trying to figure out this text.”

He peeked over her shoulder and sank into a chair. “Don’t you ever get bored with all that reading?”

“Don’t you ever get bored writing?”

“Yeah, but at least that has a purpose. What are you doing exactly? I mean, listen, sis, you should find something to work toward. You’re way smarter than Victoria.”

“Thanks.”

“Seriously. Why not?”

Bicé wanted to tell him all that she felt, how much she hated this place, how she had nowhere else to go except in her own mind. That being adopted isn’t so great if you wind up all alone in the end. Maybe he’d understand that she just needed someplace to go. But he would never understand. He was having fun. He didn’t know what it was like to be a twin and then suddenly not to be. But she didn’t tell him any of these things. She just smiled and said “thanks” again.

“Why not go do something with Belle and her friends? She knows practically everyone now,” Valentin persisted.

Bicé shrugged. “No, she doesn’t want me around.”

Valentin, seeing the pained look on Bicé’s face, tried a bit harder. “OK, so I understand if Belle’s too busy and you don’t want to hang with Vic, but it can’t be good to be alone
all
the time.”

“OK, maybe later,” Bicé said, and went back to her reading.

For a few moments, Val just chewed and stared at Bicé. “Notice anything about Vileroy lately?” said Valentin.

“Hmm?”

“She’s just so . . . mysterious . . . so hard to figure out.” He sighed loudly.

“Seems the same to me.”

He watched her as she continued to read. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. Then his face fell and he started poking at his peach. “Bicé, do you want to hear a really good story?”

Bicé looked up.

He leaned close.

“I have a story that’s much better than anything in that book,” Valentin whispered.

She looked at him but kept silent. Something inside her felt as though she had been waiting for this story all day. Or maybe she had heard it before. Maybe she had heard it over and over again in a hundred different ways, in some parallel reality that was never allowed to remain in her memory. Maybe this, too, would be only a momentary answer to all her questions.

“Do you want to hear it?” he asked, his eyes sad. “Should I tell it to you?”

She nodded.

“Once upon a time,” he began, with all the usual Valentin drama, “there was a beautiful mother with five children . . .”

Bicé giggled a little. Valentin went on.

“. . . five sad, unloved, unhappy kids.”

Bicé stopped laughing. Valentin wasn’t trying to be entertaining anymore. She had never seen him look so sad. She squirmed in her seat.

“There was a favorite, of course. One that she had promised to love. . . .
He
was the most unloved of all of them.”

“Valentin . . .” Bicé reached for his hand. She didn’t care much about the story anymore. “Don’t say these things.”

“Ever notice that she doesn’t treat me the same . . . as before?”

As far as Bicé could remember, Vileroy had always treated Valentin the same way — with a mildly encouraging, inappropriately flirtatious disdain.

Valentin toyed with the idea of telling her all about the Vileroy he used to know. The Vileroy that had come to his home in France. The beautiful woman who had met him secretly and had promised to take the place of his own disloyal mother. He could tell Bicé all these things and then just turn back the clock. But he was too tired now. He wanted to have a conversation that someone would remember. He wanted to say something that wouldn’t be lost inside some fold in time. Something inside him wanted Bicé to hold whatever he said next with her, at least for a few days.

“She doesn’t love me anymore.”

Bicé just patted Valentin’s hand. “I doubt that’s true,” she said, lying without skill but with enough conviction to make Valentin smile.

A few days earlier, Madame Vileroy had given a gift to Valentin — a new room, just as she had given to the others. At first Valentin thought she would make a deal for it, as she always did. But she hadn’t. This room was a gift — a simple gift with no strings attached. Valentin thought this was strange, but he didn’t like to think about Madame Vileroy’s motivations. It was too difficult. She told him that the room would let him take his powers to the next level but that he would have to be careful. It could also wind up disassembling his organs from the inside out. Or it could leave him stranded in the ocean. She had told him all this with an unusual level of dramatic flair, her eyes glowing as she put her arm around his shoulder and whispered about the seriousness of this gift.

Using the room would feel surreal sometimes — even unreal, like a dream. But regardless of all this, he must press on because the room was a gift for the most talented of the children. And he must never ever question what it could do for him. Until now, Valentin had been scared to use it.

The room had blank white walls like snow-drowned fields. Valentin walked into it, the intensely nothing room — so true and untrue. The only thing in it was a window directly in the center of the back wall — a perfect white wooden-framed window, segmented into four with the same white boards crossing at its center. The window, quartered like that, the only source of light in a vast expanse of nothingness, reminded him of Vileroy’s branded eye. But different. More soothing. It looked like the window to the perfect pastoral home, and if you squinted hard enough, through the fog would appear a patch of sunflowers and a picket fence behind them. The house would have been a wonderful place to grow up, a wonderful place to explore.

Valentin stood staring out the window — no place to rest an elbow — at the wholesome trees, the tire-swing dangling from a branch, a rolling hill. You could almost hear the rocks singing. Valentin knew a lie when he saw one. This wasn’t that. At least he didn’t think so, even though his head hurt when he stood in the room. It wasn’t a lie, he said to himself. But it certainly wasn’t the street outside their house in New York.

Valentin put his finger on the window. The fog began to stir and seep through the glass. Behind the fog, Valentin could see walls made of mud bricks. He could see the scene outside changing. As he looked around, the room he was in had become wooded; the floor beneath his feet had turned to grass. Now he was on the outside of the window, looking into a hut, someplace very different. A moment ago he had stood inside a white room in New York. A moment from now, he could be standing in front of any window in the world, because
this
was the window to the world, every window that had ever been, now or in years past. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists. When he opened them again, the room was white again, exactly as it had been. He was back on the inside of the window of their New York apartment, looking out onto the illusory sunflowers and picket fence.

Valentin turned and walked out, fully believing with his whole heart and soul that this room could help him bend time and space in ways that his old gift never could. The minute his feet left the room, Valentin felt as if he’d been hit in the face with a load of bricks. It was as if he had been asleep and was now jolted awake or as if he had walked out of a fog. Somehow, things felt different outside of that room. He shook off the strange feeling and kept going. The test had worked. Going into the test, Valentin had been a little afraid — even though Madame Vileroy had told him exactly how the room worked. She had told him what to do, what to bring, what to expect. But it never hurt to be suspicious. Now, to do anything for real, he knew he’d need believable clothes.

Valentin almost ran through the center space, where Victoria was reading. He rushed into his bedroom, reached under his bed, and took out a pair of male ballet tights he’d stolen from the Marlowe dance room. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. He squeezed into the tights, then grabbed a white dress shirt from the closet. He pulled off the buttons, wrapped it around his body over the tights, and tied a beige pashmina scarf he had taken out of Belle’s room around his waist. He took a quick look in the mirror. He looked ridiculous. He’d just have to pretend he was a vagabond or the village idiot. On the way back to the room with the window, he was so distracted with the constant shifting of the scarf that he didn’t notice Victoria lurking in the hallway.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “And what are you wearing?”

“I don’t have time to talk, Vic. I have things to do.”

Victoria turned and followed him, picking up her pace when he started to walk faster.

Valentin kept looking behind. He could feel her cheating as he tried to get away.

“You’re going back,” she said. Then she was silent for a few seconds more. Valentin tried to shut off his thoughts, but she was too quick. “The room she gave you — that’s what it does, doesn’t it? How do you know it’ll work? When are you coming back? Does she know that you’re doing this?”

He reached the door with Victoria on his tail.

“Take me with you!” she cried. “I want to go too, Valentin. Take me too.”

“What?” Valentin whipped around.

“I know what you’re doing, Valentin. That ridiculous costume is supposed to be from the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, right? First of all, there are about ten things wrong with it. Second of all, you can’t fool me. There’s only one person I can imagine you’d want to visit during that time.”

“Actually, there are about a million.”

“You think you can meet Shakespeare. And I bet you were stupid enough to pick a time when he’s already famous.”

“I had to. I’m dying to know if it’s true — if he actually got credit for Marlowe’s work.”

“Why’s that matter?”

“It matters to me, OK? Just go away.”

“No, I want to go too.”

“Why?”

“We’re not the only ones who’ve had a governess, you know. Lots of people have — famous people.”

“How do you know?”

“I know lots of things you don’t.”

“Name five.”

“The Grand Unification Theory, tax law, binary, the capital of Azerbaijan, and how tractors work.”

“All right, fine, who else had a governess like ours?”

“The queen had one.”

“Really?”

Victoria nodded excitedly.

“Even if she did, how would you meet her? She’s the queen.”

“I don’t want to meet her, stupid. I want to meet the governess.”

“Why would she tell you anything?”

“Because I’ll have something on her. I know her future.”

“Wouldn’t she know her own future?”

“No one can travel to the future, Valentin.”

Valentin laughed. “Too bad,” he said, “because now I know something you don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re not coming with me.”

Victoria continued to talk, but Valentin ignored her. He closed his eyes again. Her voice suddenly cut out. When he opened his eyes, he was alone in front of the door. Victoria was still in the center room, reading. He’d gone back to just before he had run out there and caught her attention. For a second, Valentin allowed himself to reflect on the fact that when he used his original gift of lying to go back, it felt very different than when he used the room — and it wasn’t just a matter of scale. It was a different experience altogether. Valentin suppressed that thought, turned around, and walked into the room. Valentin never considered the possibility that the room might be a trick, a way for Vileroy to corrupt his mind — a dream or a hallucination. A foggy feeling came back over him the second he stepped inside, and a little part of him fell back asleep again.

He went to the window and felt the watch in his shirt pocket. The white room became the forest again. The other side of the window became the inside of a hut. Valentin reached out and gracefully unlatched the window. The room filled with fresh air and smells from a different era. Roast boar. Dried anise and orange peel. A wet leather cloak drying from the rain. Valentin put his foot on the sill and lifted himself through. When he was inside, he turned around and looked through the window. He could see outside. It was a perfectly natural wood — a squirrel danced from a branch; a leaf glided gently down.

Valentin walked through the house. A black pot hung above the fireplace, filled with some kind of stew. A wooden chair sat next to a small desk, on which Valentin saw some unfinished letters. At the top of one, he read, “June 15, 1599.” He reached into his pocket and lifted out his rusted watch. “Time to commune with some genius.” Valentin walked out of the house, down the brick path along the tulips, toward the inn at Stratford-upon-Avon.

For a moment, Valentin felt a strange awareness of Victoria. Back in New York, she was sitting in the center room, wondering what Valentin had been up to all day. He knew this. He could see it, the way a person in a dream can see others outside an immediate scene. He questioned this strange omniscience — he had never experienced it before. But he ignored it, assuming it was a part of the room’s power. This gift was too wonderful. And it
had
to be real. Valentin knew it, because Valentin knew about lies, and Madame Vileroy had told him that a good liar never falls for a lie.