The Boiling Season (33 page)

“Yes,” I said. “It always has been. It was—
is
—Madame's as well.”

Mlle Trouvé smiled quickly. “I see. Well”—and she placed her foot on the bottom stair—“good-bye.”

“Do you have one?” I asked.

She paused to look over her shoulder.

“A favorite place in the estate?”

Shuffling her small feet on the narrow stone, she turned around to face me. Her tiny mouth twisted nervously. “I couldn't say.” With a nod she started back up the steps.

“Perhaps I could show you.” I recalled the tours Madame had given to her rich and glamorous guests when the hotel first opened, full of shimmer and sparkle. Why should Mlle Trouvé not be afforded the same opportunity? For someone like her would it not be all the more rewarding? Who could better appreciate the beauty of what we had made than someone who had spent her life in a place such as Cité Verd? As had been the case with my mother, raising a family in our squalid neighborhood. As had been the case with me. We were drawn to the things we did not have, things that seemed out of reach, that we knew would make our lives better than they were.

In my tour for Mlle Trouvé, there would be no room for discotheques and ballrooms; this would be a tour of the places that went unmentioned in the travel brochures—the quiet, peaceful spaces where one could escape from the world and find true tranquillity. Where one could be immersed in a pure sort of beauty utterly untouched by the clamor and desolation all around us.

“Another time,” she offered from the top of the steps.

“Of course.” I took them two at a time after her. “When?”

By the time I made it to the top, she was far across the lawn.

T
hat night at dinner I found an empty chair at a table with the smiling young man and his skinny friend. Their crude companions from previous meals were thankfully nowhere in sight.

The smiley one pointed at my bowl and gave me a thumbs-up. “How have you been?”

“Fine,” I said. “Okay.” There was something about him I found oddly appealing. Perhaps it was simply his ability, rare among this group, to be friendly without forgetting our differences.

The skinny one was silent and sullen, and I wondered if things had not been going well with his laundress.

“My name is Marc.” The smiling man pointed to his skinny friend. “This is Louis.”

Louis nodded wanly.

“Don't mind him,” Marc said. “He is heartsick.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

Marc smiled. “It's the sort of pain that gives a man pleasure.”

“Is it the woman?” I said. “Lulu?”

Marc slapped his knee in delight. “You remember her name! Yes, Lulu is not making it easy for him. I've tried to tell him the difficulties he experiences now will make it all the much sweeter when it does happen.”

“Does she not like him?”

“Oh, you know women. They are moved by winds we never feel. She loves him—she just doesn't know it yet.”

“He looks unwell,” I said. Louis had folded his arms into a pillow, upon which his head now lay. He seemed to be moaning. “Maybe we shouldn't talk about her anymore.”

“Oh, no no no,” Marc said. “The worst punishment of all would be if he could no longer hear her name.”

Across the dining room I saw the old woman with the cart making her way toward us. I was uncertain whether she had seen me come in, but somehow she always seemed to know who had been served and who had not. It occurred to me that Mona would like her. The two could have been sisters, dour and humorless.

When she arrived at the table, the woman showed no sign of remembering me, filling my bowl with the same mechanical gesture she used with everyone else.

“Thank you very much,” I said.

She glanced at me suspiciously, as if I might have just picked her pocket.

Marc elbowed me gently, wearing a devilish grin. “I keep telling Dragon Guy we should take her out of the kitchen and put her on the front line. President Duphay would surrender just at the sight of her.”

“Do you know Dragon Guy?”

Marc shrugged guiltily, as if I had caught him in a lie. “I was only joking. In any case, I shouldn't say such things about Claire. She's a widow, you know. Her husband was killed in the fighting.”

“That's terrible.”

“That's the way it is. We're all missing something. We seem to attract misfortune.”

“You too?” I said, surprised by how easily he had drawn me in.

“I have a wife and daughter. My little Evelyn is six years old. They live in the States now, but I'll be joining them soon, God willing.”

“Have they been gone long?”

“Two years. Almost three. I prefer not to count.” He was still smiling, but for the first time I noticed the lines on his face. “It already feels long enough without knowing the number.”

“It must be difficult, living apart.”

“It is difficult. It would be one thing if we were living apart on the island. But instead she's living in a completely different place. What's it like there? I have no idea. I can't picture it. I see their faces, but what are they doing? Where do they live? All I can imagine is our house in Cité Verd, but I know it's nothing like that.”

I thought of the magazines in my office and for a brief moment I almost told him about them. “I have the same problem,” I said.

“Is your wife there too?”

I did not intend to lie. My tongue was pressed against my teeth, ready to say the word. But the word never came, and instead I felt my head nodding, and once it started it felt somehow as if it were true.

“How long has it been?”

I did not need to stop to count. I knew exactly how long it had been since Madame had been here last. “Five years and seven months.”

“I shouldn't have asked. I don't want to think about five years. Five years is impossible. It's simply out of the question.”

That quickly, his smile was gone. I wanted to take it all back now, say it was a mistake, a misunderstanding. But it was too late for that.

“I don't know how you manage,” he said, shaking his head.

“I think about how wonderful it will be when she comes back.”

“
Back
?” He sounded surprised. “The way things are, who would ever want to come back?”

I had to remind myself that he knew nothing about Madame—nothing about me. I doubted he could even fathom what our lives had been like before, despite the fact that he now lived here himself.

“It will get better,” I said. “Everything will be like it was.”

He gave his head a shake. “I hope it gets better than that. Otherwise what's the point of all this?”

I lowered my eyes and gave the bowl a stir. “The hardest part is the wait between letters.”

Suddenly I felt his hand on my arm, squeezing tightly. “You too?” he said, nearly crushing me. “Have you not been getting letters?”

“It's been a long time.”

“How long?”

I tried pulling my arm away. “A year. Maybe more.”

His fingers started to loosen. “Is that all?”

Finally I was able to free myself. “I'm not sure.” I could still see the impressions of his fingers on my skin. “How long has it been for you?”

Elbows on the table, Marc brought his hands together and set his chin on top. He gave me a weak smile. “I'm still waiting for the first.”

“It's a wonder anything gets through,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster. “What's not lost, the censors destroy.”

“Just one,” Marc said, “so I would know they made it.”

There was nothing I could think to say.

“You hear stories about the crossing,” he said. “Terrible stories. Boats that sink. People drown. Sometimes you hear about people getting dropped off on deserted islands and starving to death. I don't believe it,” he said, “anything that awful. How could you believe it? Still, though, it makes you worry.”

“I'm certain everything is fine.”

For a long moment he regarded me carefully, searching my eyes for assurance that I meant what I said.

I felt myself crumbling under his gaze. “I should go.”

Concern spread across Marc's face, and he gestured toward my bowl. “You haven't finished yet.” He gave me one of his gummy smiles, as if to show me he felt no sadness about the turn the conversation had taken.

I tried to smile too.

“There's a young lady I recently met,” I said, looking from Marc to Louis, who raised his eyes at the mention of the girl. “I wonder if you know her. Perhaps she is a friend of your Lulu. Her name is Mlle Trouvé.”

“Ah, yes,” Marc said, grinning happily. “Garcelle. Yes, she is a sweet girl. But I don't know that she'd be right for you.”

“Oh no,” I said. “I wasn't thinking of that.”

“She is very proper. Some say she is haughty. Claire is her aunt.”

“Claire?”

He nodded over my shoulder, and when I turned I saw the lady with the cart.

Marc winked at me. “Perhaps it would be best not to mention this to Claire.”

“I was just curious,” I said. “She seemed like a very nice young lady.”

Marc gave me a sad little smile. “I know how it is. You don't have to explain. There comes a time when a man has to go on living. Am I right, Louis?” he said, turning to his friend. “We must find comfort wherever we can.”

* * *

The next morning I awoke later than usual to the jarring snap of something large and sturdy breaking down below. Then came the shriek of splintering wood.

Only partially dressed, I staggered onto the balcony. Across the drive, scattered on the grass, lay the entire contents of the guesthouse: the long oak table surrounded by overstuffed chairs, an ottoman atop the sideboard, the grand piano and its stool separated from one another by an armoire and a pile of leather-bound books.

At the edge of the drive a man stood with his foot planted in the middle of an overturned buffet table. With four lazy blows of a hammer he knocked off each of the legs.

By the time I reached the drive, another man was climbing into the open piano with a pair of wire cutters.

“What do you think you're doing?” I yelled.

The man pulled his head out of the piano, regarding me with curiosity. “Who are you?”

Nearly out of breath, I reached past him and grabbed hold of the prop supporting the piano lid. “You have to stop.”

He watched with bemusement as I closed the lid.

“This doesn't belong to you,” I said. “It belongs to Madame Freeman. I demand that you put everything back.”

The man with the wire cutters shrugged. “Never heard of her.” But warmly, as if we were old friends, he came over and put his hand on my shoulder. “You know how it is. We've got a lot to do.”

“You don't understand.”

He had his arm thrown over me now, and I smelled the rum on his breath. “We're brothers, you and me.”

“No,” I said, “we're nothing of the kind.”

His smile took a menacing turn, and he freed his arm from around my shoulders.

Reaching down, he gripped the edge of the piano lid and threw it back. Despite the weight of the wood, the lid seemed to sail, stopping only when the hinge could go no further. With a snap and a groan, the metal separated from the wood. The upright lid wobbled for a moment, uncertain which way it should go. Finally it began its long retreat, landing with a crash that caused the strings inside to thrum.

I must have been a peculiar sight, running down the path half dressed. Had I paused to think about what I was doing, I might have stopped and turned back. Did I really expect Dragon Guy to do something to stop the destruction? But it had been years since I had run like this, and momentum kept me going.

As I neared Madame's villa, I heard voices. There was a loud splash of water, then laughter. They must have heard me as well, for they were waiting when I rushed around the corner to enter the courtyard.

Two men with machine guns hanging from straps around their necks stood side by side. One of them threw out his arms to stop me.

The last thing I saw was the other man raising the butt of his gun to my head.

I
awoke in my room as dusk was working its way through the louvers.

“How are you, monsieur?” Hector said, sitting in a chair with his back to the window.

Gingerly I touched my head, feeling the dry clumps of blood. It was almost the same spot as the last time. “More or less as you would imagine.”

“That's a pretty nasty lump you have.”

“Are you here to tell me I had an accident?”

“An accident, monsieur? No, no. A misunderstanding. My brother asked me to come and apologize.”

I tried to sit up, but my head was throbbing.

“Does he expect me to accept his apology?”

“We have to be careful, monsieur. These are dangerous times. You should be careful, too.”

“I'm aware that a great deal has changed around here,” I said. “But it has not changed so much that I find myself in need of advice from a sixteen-year-old boy.”

“I'm just trying to help.”

“If you want to help,” I said, “you could stop your brother from destroying everything in sight.”

“No one wants to destroy anything,” Hector said. “But there are some things more important than your precious estate.”

It was painful to look into his eyes and see the cold indifference there. “You don't have to pretend,” I said. “You don't have to do what your brother says. I know you love it here.”

Hector got up from the chair, and with the light at his back I could no longer see his face.

“What other choice do I have?” His voice was gruff, and yet he could not stop himself from sighing. “We're at war. We're fighting for our freedom.” As he came forward I saw that he felt sorry for me—for my pitiful inability to understand.