Visions of Isabelle (13 page)

Before he left two years before, Nicolas had warned him to stay within the villa walls. Some lingering particle of fraternal affection had evidently entered into his elder brother's triple-crossing mind. He'd obviously been torn between selling out Vava's work and selling out his closest relatives at the same time. Nicolas did not want familial blood on his hands, even if he was prepared to destroy all the fruits of Vava's life. So Nicolas could be trusted to a point, and for that reason the note he'd sent became a matter of grave concern. It had landed suddenly at the greenhouse door–a heavy, cream-colored envelope tossed one day over the garden wall, tied by a black ribbon to a medium-sized stone.

He was down on his hands and knees packing black earth around some hibiscus cuttings he'd nurtured from a successful graft. Frost was on the garden, but over the years he and Vava had constructed a series of glassed-in sheds heated by piped steam. This way it was possible to work with plants even though the harsh Swiss winter. He had not been in the greenhouse fifteen minutes when he heard Vava's bellow from someplace in the house. And then, just as he stepped out to heed this call, he noticed the envelope lying on the ground. It had certainly not been there when he'd brought the cuttings in. He picked it up, disengaged it from the stone, began to perspire when he read his name. Vava hollered again. He hid the envelope in a nest of pots and hurried to the house.

Vava wanted him to replace an emptied canister of gas that fueled the burners at the forward end of the distillery. Vladimir towed a new canister from the other end of the cellar, helped Vava attach the tubes and, after finishing the job, fled back to the greenhouse to read his mail.

"Urgent we meet to discuss important matters. Friends will contact you outside Bureau of Alien Registration, December 14, 10:00 A.M. Nicolas."

It could not be a forgery. The handwriting was familiar, a script he'd known as far back as Moscow when Vava had tutored them together. And the meeting place had special significance, too. As Russian nationals they'd gone each year to the little bureau, housed in the census office on Rue Soleil Levant.

But should the rendezvous be kept? What "important matters," he wondered, were suddenly so "urgent"? He pondered the question through the night, and finally decided he must appear.

December 14, 1897, was a day of brilliant sunlight. The lake, not yet frozen, was as smooth as a glazed blue plate. The trees, bare of leaves, looked like hieroglyphs etched out against the Alps. The cold air burned the nostrils. The swans, all panoplied in winter feathers, glided among the toy sailboats of boys.

Walking across the Pont des Bergues, past the Monument Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Vladimir felt no menace in the air. On the contrary, he felt elated to be away from the villa–he loved its enclosing walls, but realized he had shut himself in too long. Perhaps, if he were careful, he might come out now once every other month–walk on the quais with people, sit in a café, perhaps even try to skate again when the lake froze up. He was struck by the gay look of the girls, and one in a salmon-colored sweater caught his eye and twitched his lust. He felt happy as he crossed Place de la Fusterie; positively exhilarated as he approached Cour St. Pierre. But then as he made his way around the great cathedral, a cloud out of nowhere crossed the sun, and as the census office came into sight he felt an intimation of danger and turned his head. Two men in belted overcoats and fur hats were bearing down on him from opposite sides of the street. He backed against a wrought-iron railing; the sun reappeared. He raised one hand to shield his eyes; suddenly he felt them take his arms.

"De Moerder?" The voice was urgent.

He nodded.

"De Moerder sent us–you know who we mean?"

He nodded again and they began to walk, Vladimir in the middle like a convict between two guards. He was tall and they were both short, heavy, strong, bearing down with their arms locked into his so that if he'd wanted to make a run he could never have gotten loose. Nobody noticed as they moved so closely linked, turned the corner right and then left again, emerged onto Rue des Granges at the Café Diabolique. Hurrying faster–there were fewer pedestrians here–they slid past a synagogue and the magic store on the corner of Boulangerie, and finally turned right into narrow Cheval Blanc. A vendor selling funeral wreaths gave them a knowing squint. They paused outside a horsemeat store; his companions looked about. Then they entered–there were no customers, no one but a fat woman in bloody apron cleaving intractable bones. They filed around the counter, then through damp sawdust to a room in the back. Here amidst the odor of fresh-killed meat, his guardians relaxed, lit up black Russian cigarettes and leaned against the doors with folded arms to seal off escape.

What was there to say? These thugs seemed to be avoiding his eyes, and in any case he'd resolved to deal only with Nicolas. He knew what to expect–an irresistible deal that he would most certainly resist, a bargain by which he might be offered the directorship of the Jardin Exotique in St. Petersburg in return for the contents of Vava's safe, perhaps even for Vava himself. After all, he thought, what good were the formulae without a genius to explain their use? But whatever the offered deal, and no matter how high the promised reward, he would take great pleasure in turning it down. He would prove to Nicolas once and for all that there were men on earth who could not be bought. This confrontation between them was long overdue, and if Vladimir remained sufficiently meek, it might perhaps result in Nicolas finally acknowledging his error.

The back room by then had filled with smoke, dark acrid fumes which pained his eyes. Then–the sound of footsteps on some hidden stairs, and a knock on the door away from the shop. Vladimir's stomach tightened. His guards became tense. One of them opened the door a crack, he heard a whisper, and then footsteps retreating back above.

"All right," said the one who'd spoken before, "time to see the count."

They guided him through a door, up some stairs and down a hall painted black. He could hear sounds from the rear of the building, a girl singing as she mopped the court, a child crying somewhere in a flat across the way. A sickening stench filled the air. When he passed a greasy window he knew what it was–they were burning old hooves and horse heads in the yard below.

He was pushed into a room, then into a chipped leather chair. His guards again stood smoking with folded arms, one before the door, the other before the narrow window that looked out on Cheval Blanc. A few moments later he heard brisk footsteps in the hall, the door opened, a heavyset man with full black beard and burning eyes appeared.

"Allow me to present myself–Count Igor Prozov, consular of His Imperial Majesty's Government, specialist in political sedition and crimes against the Imperial Russian State."

So this was Prozov! Vladimir feasted his eyes on the man. There was a sinister cast to the flabby face, something cruel, something dangerous.

"You, I presume, are Vladimir De Moerder, brother of the wretched Nicolas."

He neither nodded nor spoke. He would say nothing until Nicolas appeared.

"Your brother was very kind to prepare our summons. A touch of the knout can make even the strongest men beg to help us."

His throat began to throb.

"Nicolas?" he asked. "Is he coming here?"

"I doubt it. Still in Moscow I suspect–old Peter's prison to be exact."

"Then this...?"

"An ambush, yes. But you have nothing to fear, poor boy. I am a reasonable man. I can guarantee your safety if you will help. I'm interested in information. There are a few lacunae in your brother's story. But later we can get to that. Suppose we start at the beginning–your role in the affair. You–am I right?–were the key figure, the one who introduced your brothers to that disreputable gang..."

On and on he went, bearing down with precise formulations, entrapping sentences, assumptions of Vladimir's guilt. The questions flew at him like a thousand knives. It was not long before he began to scream. Then they manacled his legs to the feet of the chair and wrapped damp wool around his mouth.

The more incisive Prozov's questions, the more incoherent Vladimir's responses. To each specific query about certain events in 1895, he shouted back the name of a botanical phylum, muffled to a groan by his woolen gag. He became terrified, lost his mind. After an hour of tears and wails, all resistance crumbled; he began to speak. Prozov listened, fascinated, then pulled off the wool. Vladimir became excited, could not hold himself back. The more profoundly he understood he must keep silent, the more he felt forced by his inquisitor to tell.
I must confess, must confess,
he kept saying to himself, and in the end he told everything–all his suspicions, how he'd come to the conclusion they were not making perfume, the whole tortuous chain of logic, his deductions, step by step, then the revelation of the true nature of the work, his estimate of the value of botanical explosives to foreign powers, his belief that Vava was but days from final success–it all came out in a mad jumble, a frantic disgorging of all he'd stowed away those long silent years. When he was finally finished, awash in tears of shame for having broken down before those relentless drilling eyes, and smiling, too, on account of his relief at finally being unburdened of so many secrets, Prozov threw up his hands and sighed.

"The boy's mad," he said quietly, "a harmless, poor mad boy. Beat him up a little so he knows he must not talk, then throw him out and never return here again." He burned his pages of notes, crumpled the ash beneath his heels.

They beat him for ten minutes, methodically pounded his ears until blood ran out. Then they slapped his face, in shifts, until the sides of his jaw went raw. When they were done, they brought him tea and offered him a cigarette which he took with gratitude and smoked. They warned him sternly that he'd do well not to say a word, or they'd come after him at night and set his bed on fire. He blubbered his thanks for their good advice, stumbled down the stairs, through the horsemeat shop, out into the blinding, sun-filled street.

T
he next four months were worse for him than any moment of physical torture he'd endured. He could not forgive his cowardice, his betrayal of the man he loved. Everything conspired to punish this treachery. The plants themselves with their grasping vines seemed to seek to strangle away his breath. All leaves seemed poisonous, and the needles of the cactuses were daggers stretching to puncture his heart. Insects and worms were conspiring to burrow into his body while he slept, and his nights were always frantic, filled with the fear that suddenly he'd be doused with oil, then lit and turned into a torch.

He took to his room, spent hours sobbing, and when Vava came to comfort him, to pat his head and whisper encouragements in his ear, he'd turn to the uncomprehending old man and beg forgiveness for his betrayal. Life became hopeless, and in his few lucid moments Vladimir knew it must end with his punishing himself.

Early in the morning of April 13, 1898, he turned on the gas valves in his room, locked the doors, played his violin for a while, then lay down to sleep. When Vava found him at 11:00A.M., still warm, still damp, all breathing done, he moaned the eulogy he'd long rehearsed:

"Ah," he said, "ah, my cactophile is gone."

U
pon arrival in Tunis, Isabelle presents herself at the tiny office of the Russian consul, where a balding young man with a walrus moustache suggests she leave at once.

"Unless you have business here," he says, "it is utterly pointless to stay. These people are fanatics, and have no morals at all."

Walking the huge medina Isabelle sees strange things: pickpockets led away by crowds of angry citizens to horrible punishments meted out in dark corners of the maze; packs of howling dogs rushing down the narrow streets at night before disappearing into fields of ruined stone to corner some poor rodent and tear apart its flesh. She hears strange stories of banditry, kidnapping, and the selling of whites as slaves. Terrible things take place in the dark labyrinth–unspeakable acts are perpetrated against the innocent bodies and virginal orifices of foreigners who wander where they do not belong. But Isabelle is undaunted. She has come to be a writer, and so sets out to find herself a place to live.

O
ne day, soon after her arrival, wandering an old Arab cemetery on a hill near the Menara gate, she's attracted by the subtle colors of wild flowers and herbs beyond. Walking among them she comes upon a region of ruins: smashed lintels, free-standing chimneys, courtyards choked with decaying vegetation, archways split by unattended trees. She is struck by a sense of desolation and is about to turn away when she notices, across a garden of roses, an old domed Turkish house–grand, sullen, looming in the sun.

She approaches, knocks and after an interminable wait, sees a dark, wizened old face appear at a tiny window in the door.

"Yes! Yes!"

"I'm looking for a house."

"Yes!"

"I thought this one might be for rent."

"Yes!"

"Can I come in?"

After a few moments the door swings open, and she's confronted by an old black lady and a large black dog. The dog squints at her, pants then turns back inside.

"What's your name?" she asks.