The Dream Lover (5 page)

My mother told me Bible stories, or stories about herself and her sister, my aunt Lucie, playing dress-up in clothes given to them by the old woman who lived next door, or stories about her father taming his little birds before he sold them, teaching them to sit on
his finger, then making smacking noises so that the birds would kiss him. He showed his daughters how to do this; they laughed at the odd feeling of the birds' beaks pulling gently at their lips and at the sight of the tiny purplish tongues.

There were many nights when my mother fell into bed and wept quietly with longing for her husband fighting in Napoleon's Peninsular War. After he was transferred from cold and rainy Prussia to Spain, he was promoted to major and stationed at the palace of the deposed prince of Asturias in Madrid, to serve under Joachim Murat, marshal of the empire and imperial lieutenant to Spain.

There, the weather was fine and the women beautiful. And Sophie's husband was beautiful, especially in uniform, with his gold epaulets and shiny sword, the sabretache that featured an eagle embroidered out of seed pearls. He had a white woolen cape with gold buttons and braiding and a matching pelisse with black fur, which he wore tossed over the shoulder. His trousers were purple with a gold lace overlay. He had red Moroccan leather boots with the seams done just so, and he wore an eighteen-inch yellow plume on his velvet-trimmed shako. He wrote to my mother of his own magnificence in uniform, though it was done in such a charming way one would never accuse him of immodesty: he gave the credit to the clothes and not the person.

So, yes, he was handsome and well-mannered and witty and cultured and easily seduced, as she well knew. Never mind that he wrote to her words meant to be reassuring and romantic: “I've had only one ambition since I met you, namely to make up to you for the injustices of society and destiny, to assure you of an honorable life, and to shelter you from unhappiness. Nothing is worth more to me than the modest chamber of my dear wife. Nothing is equal in my eyes to her lovely dark hair, her beautiful eyes, her white teeth, her graceful figure, her little prunella shoes.” Beautiful words, to be sure. But she was here in Paris, in a drafty garret apartment with me, and he was there, with other women with lovely dark hair.

Finally there came a day when she stood leaning against the
window jamb, looking out, then turned and announced quite suddenly that we were going to join him—she knew of another army wife who was going that day to be with her husband, and there was room in the coach, which was soon departing. My mother was almost eight months pregnant with my brother then, and the two-week journey would be arduous if not dangerous for her; but when she was determined, she could part the seas.

Hastily, she packed a bag and then held out a hand to me.

“But, Maman.”

“What is it?” she asked, impatient as always, one foot quite literally out the door. I pointed to the table, where she had put out carrots to slice for pot-au-feu, and where she had poured herself a glass of red wine.

She shrugged. “Never mind that. Come quickly! Now!”

“First I must find my doll,” I said, for even then my maternal instincts ran high. But she grabbed my arm and pulled me out the door.

I wept most bitterly as we made our way down the stairs—what would become of my Véronique, when I was not there to care for her? How could I go to sleep without my doll beside me? My mother was unmoved. She kept saying, “There is no room!” But I believe she meant there was no time.

W
E TRAVELED IN GREAT
discomfort to Spain, crammed together in a carriage that bumped and strained along the roads. When we descended into the valley of Asturias, the temperature was exceedingly hot; my mother fanned herself and me uselessly. Everywhere there were signs of wartime desperation: a severe shortage of food, ruts in the road, the gaunt and despairing faces of the people we passed, a burnt smell in the air. At the inns where we stayed, we were sometimes served roasted pigeons for dinner, and that was considered a luxury. When I could, I slept on a table my mother padded with cushions from the coach.

Finally, we arrived at the palace in Madrid where my father was stationed. His quarters were above those of his commander. There was not the usual staff to care for the large and beautiful rooms in which we stayed; they were nearly as dirty as the coach in which we had ridden. But people who love each other and are together make a home, and so although we were not in our apartment in Paris, we were nonetheless content.

Despite the lack of cleanliness, we were surrounded by luxury: silver cutlery, gilt and brocade furniture, high ceilings, mirrored doors, and heavy draperies. Huge oil paintings hung on the walls, the subjects seeming to take haughty note of our presence; and the Oriental carpets that lay on the floors were easily the size of our entire apartment in Paris.

One afternoon not long after we arrived, I was told to go out onto the balcony to play, and the French doors were locked behind me. I amused myself for some time with the magnificent dolls belonging to the infanta that had been left behind. Then I sat daydreaming, and I'm sure that on my face was the look of slack-mouthed “stupidity” my mother and others accused me of when I took my flights of fancy. Eventually, though, I wanted in. It was hot; I was bored; I was in need of a drink of water. I knocked at the glass many times, then called out. Finally, the door was opened to me.

When I came in and my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw my mother lying on a chaise in the corner of the room. She was pale and still, her eyes closed. At first I thought she was dead, and I began to cry. But then she opened her eyes and signaled for me to come to her. In her arms was a bundle, and I walked over slowly to inspect it. My mother turned back the edge of a blanket to reveal a baby, his eyes and his fists squeezed tightly shut. I touched the whorl of hair at the top of his head, then moved my fingers to the place where you could see his heart beating.

“Gentle!”
my mother said, her eyes flashing.

She loosened the blanket to reveal more of my baby brother. “Pretend you are a feather when you touch him,” she told me.

My brother took in a shuddering breath, and it made for a peculiar stirring in me. I gently stroked his hand, traced the curling cartilage of his ear, peered at the sucking blister he had already developed at the middle of his upper lip.

“His name is Louis,” my mother said.

The baby opened his eyes and turned toward me. There was something wrong. His irises were a very pale blue, and the pupils seemed made of glass. He appeared unable to see. I looked up at my mother.

“Soon we are going home,” she said.

Very well then, I thought. Louis would be fixed, and I could now attend to getting a drink of water and to settling myself in my father's lap, my back against his buttons, my small hand tucked within his. We would have dinner and he would do his napkin puppet tricks for me; and soon we would be home.

As it happened, my mother was right. In July, we learned that my father's commander was being transferred to Naples. My father would be given several weeks of leave and would then join him there.

M
Y MOTHER AND
I were once again put into a carriage, this time with a two-week-old baby. My father rode at the head of the departing entourage astride his Andalusian horse, aptly named Leopardo the Untamable. That animal was forever tossing his head, pulling left, then right at the reins, high-stepping and shying at movements at the side of the road. It was a point of pride for my father to be in the saddle and in command of Leopardo. He even managed to control the beast when they came across a snake that lay across the entire width of a narrow mountain road. My father dismounted, cut the snake in half, remounted, and we went on.

The journey home was far more difficult than the journey to Madrid had been. It was blisteringly hot. The only things to eat were raw onions and lemons and sunflower seeds. We saw scorched
earth and gutted-out buildings, and smelled the decomposing bodies of the victims of war on the roadsides. There were clouds of flies around the dead, vultures circling overhead. On one occasion, the carriage lurched dramatically, side to side and up and down, and there was an odd crunching sound as we rolled over the obstacle. My stomach knew what it was, but my child's brain, seeking reassurance, made me ask my mother, “What was that?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“What did we just roll over?”

“Tree branches,” she said, but the tears that shone in her eyes told me what I suspected: it was a body we had run over, someone who had once been alive and now was being broken further by people escaping what he could not.

My father journeyed to the back of the line to check on us when he could, and despite the appalling conditions around us, he was in high spirits. We were going to Nohant. He had written his mother to tell her we were coming; he was certain she would receive us now. However hard her heart had been toward us in the past, surely she would not turn away from his wife with a newborn, nor from me, her four-year-old granddaughter, who had grown so thin and whose eyes were now enormous in her face. Surely she would welcome me even though my hair crawled with lice and I had numerous scabs from the scabies I'd contracted. And of course my father knew his mother would not be able to turn him away; she had missed him with an ache she had described to him in a letter as “a dagger in my heart which turns constantly, reminding me of its presence and your absence.” It had been too long: she would embrace him and his family; she would welcome them all with tears of joy, he knew it.

When we got to the Basque foothills, the weather was cooler and the land green again. We lodged at inns and slept on beds with sheets; we ate decent food again, even little cakes. I was bathed and treated with sulfur powder—covered with a paste of it and made to
ingest it as well. It had a disgusting smell, against which I was given a bouquet of roses into which to dip my nose for relief.

Early into our journey we had lost our carriage in service to the wounded and had been riding in a farm wagon stuffed with baggage and soldiers who had gotten ill, just as we had: we were all feverish and dehydrated and miserable. My mother begged my father to obtain a boat to take us up the coast to Bordeaux, thinking that the sea air would be good for us. He was able to rent a sloop, and he found a carriage as well, which he tied up on board. We sailed without incident until we reached the estuary of the Gironde, where, just off the shore, the boat hit a rock and began to take on water. While my mother carried on hysterically, my father used a shawl to fashion a sling, into which he intended to put his children. “Don't worry,” he said. “I'll secure them to my back, and I'll hold you under one arm and swim with the other.” He swung his sword to cut loose our carriage—we could not lose our only means of land transportation. As it happened, he had no need to use the sling or to swim; we were at the last minute rescued just offshore. My father went back into the water for our carriage and all our belongings, much against my mother's wishes, who did not feel it was worth the risk. As for me, I saved my bouquet: withered, drooping, but still roses.

Our terrible journey ended on July 21. We rode through the village of Nohant, with its little stone church and tall elms, then on through the gates of my grandmother's estate, where she waited for us.

January 1831

PARIS

T
he sixty-two-year-old novelist with whom I was to speak about my novel was named Auguste-Hilarion Kératry. He was from the Berry region, and our meeting had been arranged by a mutual friend who was also from there. The meeting took place on a very cold morning. I had elected to wear my best dress, which was not nearly warm enough. I stood shivering on his doorstep until I was let in by his maid and then escorted to, of all places, his bedchamber!

It was clear that Kératry had just arisen and hastily dressed himself. On his bed, a woman who looked to be my age reclined under a silky pink comforter—his wife, I gathered; I had heard that his wife was very young. I nodded awkwardly to her; she nodded back; and then Kératry and I took our places opposite each other at a desk at the side of the room.

After we'd exchanged a few pleasantries, Kératry said, “Well, then, shall we?”

Nervously, I pulled my manuscript out. I had not known how many pages to bring, and so I had brought them all. My hope was that he would listen to me read several pages out loud, comment positively, then ask to keep the rest to read himself. After a few days, perhaps he would let me know what publisher he had given my work to. And after that, I hoped, I would be called into the publisher's office to be given my advance.

I began reading in a soft voice, and Kératry boomed out, “Louder, I can't hear a single word!”

I read louder, aware of the fact that not only he but his wife was listening. I could not bear to look up at either of them.

I had just started the fourth page when I heard Kératry clear his
throat in a way that was not necessity but statement. And then I did look up.

His expression was pained. He put the tips of his fingers together, stared off into space for a moment, then turned to me to say, “Well. This, my dear, is my advice to you: Make babies, not books.”

I nearly gasped. I was so overwhelmed with humiliation I didn't know what to do. But then I recalled how this author whom I was asking to judge my work had written a book I had found ridiculous. It was about a priest who violates a woman he believes to be dead.

I put my pages back into the bag with great care. Then I stood and said, “I thank you most sincerely for your time. As for your advice, if you think it is so good, I suggest you follow it yourself.”

I walked out, my head high.

At the first café I came to, though, I sat dejected at a table near a window, my chin in my hands, and watched the people passing by. I thought about the life I had begun to build here: the friends with whom I had pooled resources so that we could rent a warm room in which to read, the modest dinners we shared in one another's apartments. I loved the theaters and museums, the literary and political events we went to. I enjoyed, as well, the ambience provided by things we could not directly participate in: ballrooms with glittering chandeliers, fine restaurants whose posted menus set our mouths to watering, two opera houses. Most of all, I loved my routine of taking my coffee every day in a café across the street, where I was able to indulge in that greatest pleasure and necessity for one who wants to write: observation.