Visions of Isabelle (10 page)

Finally Augustin breaks away, wipes his tears and places his moist handkerchief in her hand. She watches as he walks away, disappears into the blackness of the garden, and then, long after he is gone, she returns to his room and spends the night between his deserted sheets.

December 8, 1895

Beloved Sister,

Augustin De Moerder, soldier in the First Foreign Regiment, 18th Company, Serial No. 19686, at SidiBel-Abbes, near Oran, Algeria.

There, my dear, is the whole unhappy truth. Still I dream of you and Mama.

Yours forever, Augustin

Villa Neuve,Christmas Eve, 1895.

Beloved Augustin,

The sky is sad and gray, and a blanket of snow covers the garden. It is Christmas Eve and I send you greetings from my unhappy heart. Who knows if we shall ever see one another again? Who knows if the kisses exchanged on the doorstep at 10:00 pm, Saturday, October 12, will have been our last? Where are all our dreams? Oh, Augustin–those papers we signed on September 21, 1894, in which we asked ourselves where we'd be the following year....

A few days ago I received a letter from Vivicorsi in which, in reply to one of mine signed N. Podilinsky, sailor (I didn't know any other way to gain his confidence) he informed me that you'd joined the Legion. Then, yesterday, your confirmation. Have you really been such a fool?

No one knows anything yet. Impossible for me to mention these letters. And really, even without this latest fiasco of yours, I'm being absolutely destroyed by all the madness around the house. Two brothers gone, and Vava in a bewildered rage. I am contemplating suicide, but have no fear–I shall resist.

I vaguely understand some insane scheme that has germinated in your over-heated brain: to become a naturalized Frenchman, thanks to the Legion, and then to join the Navy later. Let me know if that is really your plan. (Your notes from Marseilles were incoherent. What were you doing in Toulon? What was all of that about going to South America?)

Augustin, darling, do you remember the day we sat alone in the shade of white maples in the mountains above Collonges? To be together like that again–beneath that great silent shadow, that magnificent eclipse. That is my dream.

Yours, devotedly, near or far,

Isabelle

N
icolas De Moerder was not heard from again–it seemed to Isabelle that Mother Russia had swallowed him up. Vava stormed about cursing him and Augustin for their unforgivable stupidities, and then became even more enraged when Augustin wrote he could not bear the rigors and discipline of the legion and was scheming to cut short his enlistment on grounds of failing health.

"He's a weakling and a coward," Vava ranted. And then, to Old Nathalie: "It seems his yellow De Moerder blood has finally won the game!"

But Vava was pleased with Vladimir who stayed within the villa walls, head down near the ground, preoccupied with plants. For his devotion to the garden Vava lovingly named him "Cactophile," and said many times that Vladimir was the only one of the De Moerder children who showed signs of purpose and strength of will.

Through 1896 the atmosphere at Villa Neuve grew oppressive–with only a single brother still at home (and one she believed was slowly going insane before her eyes), Isabelle alone bore the brunt of Vava's rages, and of her mother's inconsolable tears. She spent hours on her correspondence with Eugène Letord, begging him for help, still dreaming of escape.

He'd convinced her now, and so had Augustin, that North Africa should become her home. She'd decided to become a writer and to begin her career there. But her problems seemed insurmountable. She was certain that Vava would never willingly let her go, and that, if she ran, Old Nathalie, without her presence as a defense, would crumble with the strain.

In February i897, Isabelle finally decided to make her move. A friend of Augustin had a house for rent in the Algerian coastal town of Bône. She showed the letter to Old Nathalie, then proposed that they leave Switzerland together, if only to free themselves awhile from Vava's diabolic moods.

After some days of discussion Old Nathalie agreed, then together they planned their attack. They chose the breakfast hour to announce their plans, since Vava was always irascible at the end of the day, if not completely incoherent and drunk.

He glowered at Old Nathalie the whole time Isabelle spoke, grinding his breakfast rolls in his hands.

"And it won't be as if we were really leaving home," she lied. "Just a long vacation–a chance for all of us to calm our nerves. If we're away too long, you can always make a visit, and of course we'll come back here often to see you and Vladimir."

Silence, then, as Vava sprouted a crafty smile–a prelude, she was sure, to a horrible scene.

"So you're to live among the barbarians!" he said, finally, still looking at Old Nathalie though addressing Isabelle. "I'm sure you both do need the sun–your pallors have turned a sickly gray, doubtless the result of lack of commitment to productive work! And then you'll have your wretched brother close at hand, and this 'Eugène' you speak about, who's surely after what he thinks is virginal flesh and the illusive 'Russian Fortune' that all Frenchmen think we possess."

His lower lip was trembling. She felt his sarcasm was about to give way to rage. But he kept his temper, and for a moment Isabelle thought she saw the gleam of moisture in his eyes. If there were tears, Vava drew them back. A moment later he turned serene.

"Ah," he said, as warmly as he could, "just as our little family has reduced itself to three–the three, I might add, whom I've always loved the best–you two decide you have to leave. I won't stop you. I'd even join you if I could. But please forgive me if I stay on here. The Cactophile and I are very close now to the formula for the ultimate perfume. After all these terrible years I feel the breakthrough is just months from my grasp."

And then, as if he sensed their talk of a "vacation" was a pretext for a more permanent escape:

"Ha! You'll always be welcome back, of course, even if you come back only when you've heard I've gotten rich!"

With that he gulped his coffee, stood up, threw the crumbs of his rolls onto the table, bent down, kissed them both, then marched out to the garden shouting orders at Vladimir, while Isabelle and Old Nathalie stared after him in disbelief.

S
he is ravished by the sun. Her skin glows with its warmth. It gazes down upon the white city out of a sky of the clearest blue, radiating energy, illuminating life.

She buys herself a man's woolen robe, then strides through the narrow streets of Bône
 
like a tribal prince. It is Ramadan, the Moslem holy month, and the fasting has made the Arabs irritable. But she doesn't care–she revels in their surliness, for it requites her expectation of a disturbing barbaric land.

The light glitters off white walls. Minarets, like affirmative fingers, point the way to heaven and sky. The sea is clear. The muezzin whine. The juices of the oranges run like blood.

She barters in the souks, then stands back to exalt in the clamor all around. The east wind blows with a faint and maddening howl, and everywhere there are smells, hundreds of them: incense, sewage, coriander, lemons, mint, donkeys, sea and death.

She discovers kif within the month. Of all the odors of Bône the pungent smell of the drug caresses her most forcefully, snags her off the boulevards of the European quarter into narrow rooms on twisting streets. With kif, the notes of flutes become the harmonies of stars, the thud of drums becomes a cosmic pulse.

She walks through the streets of woodworkers, ironmongers, copper-beaters, button-makers, men who work gold and make daggers, women who mold pots and weave cloth and rugs. Then, exhausted, she flings herself down upon the mats of a cafe, lies back against velvet cushions, nibbles at honey-soaked confections and sips mint tea.

She loves the way the tea burns her lips, and the sound of Arabic, so guttural, so much like grunting, so filled with "ach" and hiss, that wafts from the circles of men shrouded in hoods of dark brown wool.

She spends hours in cafés reclining with her pipe, inhaling pungent, acrid, beckoning smoke that penetrates her nostrils then crawls deep within to balloon her head. She stares out into streets striped by sunlight burning down through overarching slats, and after blurred hours, she makes her way through the dark medina labyrinth, guided by oil lamps that glow like pinwheels. From there she wanders to the ramparts of the port where the sea, phosphorescent and still, seems to quiver at the pressure of her breath.

She trembles with anticipation as she prepares to meet Eugène. What will he be like? Will all the confidences they've exchanged make them awkward, shy?

Their rendezvous is set for the Café de France, central meeting point for travelers by the docks where the boats from Europe come in. Though they've long since exchanged photographs, they set up elaborate signals of identification which they then most scrupulously observe. He's to arrive in his uniform a half hour early, take a table, immerse himself in a novel by Dostoyevsky. When a tall young woman in a cape of rust-colored wool sits near, he's to offer her a cigarette.

He looks as she's always imagined he would–tall, straight, blond hair cut into short curved locks. His face is sensitive yet firm–the face of a man who lives a double life, spends his days feigning excitement over maneuvers, his nights writing verse, humming Brahms, reading Aeschylus in Greek.

As they appraise one another (to him she's always been a cipher, someone he's met by the sheerest luck, whose friendship he prizes but whom he dares not tell himself he's ever really understood), they fall into an excited intimate way of speaking that reminds her of a brother and a sister in reunion after a term away at school.

"Good–you're happy," he says. "I can tell by your eyes."

"Oh, yes, Eugène, yes! Now I feel that everything begins."

"And you like it here?"

"I adore it! I think that I really am an Arab at heart–born by mistake in a wrong country, you see, struggling all these years to find my real home. Now I can't imagine being anyplace else. The streets; the light; this African sun–look!" She reaches down, touches the pavement beneath the table. "These stones, even these stones! I feel as if I've known them always, have dreamed of them. As if they're a part of me, and have always been."

He stares at her, amazed.

"Really," she says. "You've given me the best gift of my life." She makes a great circle with her arm. "This," she says. "All this!"

"You
are
extraordinary. I can't get over it. I don't know exactly what I expected. Someone very difficult, I suppose–someone moody, tormented, dark. But you are just like your letters. So full of life."

Tears come into her eyes. She searches his face for some clue to the love that comes upon her so suddenly in this ordinary café.

"People are looking at us," he whispers.

"I can sense it. Yes!"

"Listen. The tone of the café has changed. People are touched. They are watching us and inventing stories in their minds."

"Yes! Yes!"

And to her it does feel as if the whole café terrace, the quai, the port, the coast are coated in dark shadow, while shimmering sunlight dances only upon them.

"All right," he says. "Now you've escaped. You're free. But what about the future? What will you do now?"

"I don't know. I'm still struggling with that. I want to be a writer–to shock people. And–a great
personage
, like a character in a novel. My life should be full of struggles and passions. Great moments. Ecstasy. Fame."

"Good. I like that. It's right for you, too. You will be a great heroine. Yes!"

She is moved and remembers: he's always been so delicate with her in his letters, so careful not to intrude when she's written him turbulent accounts of the maddening tensions at Villa Neuve. Gently he's led her to this strange land, where she feels now she's found a place to grow and live.

"I want to walk with you, Eugène. I want you to put your arm around my waist and guide me, show me everything. Tell me stories. Tell me about Arabs and Berbers, the blue men–the Tuaregs–and the oases of the south."

They walk, then, for hours. She listens as he explains. And when he begins to speak of himself, his own life, his loneliness, she is touched by something vulnerable in his soul.

"The nights are miserable," he tells her. "There are no women, of course, and I dream of these veiled creatures and feel deprived. In the Sahara sometimes the women shroud themselves completely–you see nothing but a single eyeball peering out from the hooded wool. It is torture for me there, and yet I love the desert, the emptiness, the cleanness of everything, and only wish I did not always feel so sad."