Visions of Isabelle (16 page)

"The music was real."

"Oh, yes, Mademoiselle. But a ghost is real, too."

Khadidja bows her head, and Isabelle understands. The gesture is an acknowledgment that there are things in the world that cannot be explained, things which happen, nevertheless, and to which people must submit.

S
he spends the morning pacing about her house. When her phantom lover does not return, she goes to the city, hires a horse and gallops out to the ruins of Carthage, followed by Dédale.

She watches the sun begin to set from the Baths of Antoninus, stumbles across the huge capital of a fallen Corinthian column, then looks out to the sea. Sweaty, dirty, smelling of her horse, she tosses aside her robe, and runs, followed by the yelping dog, into the spumy waves.

That night she sits for a long while among the rose bushes in her garden. Then she calls for Khadidja to join her outside.

"He is a man, Khadidja–that I know for sure. And a man cannot disappear. Come–we must find out how he leaves."

Grasping onto torches they explore the ruins. Finally they come to the wall where, they agree, he has disappeared three times. There are bushes behind it, and behind one of these is a niche. Inside they find the white burnoose, and wrapped in it the flute.

The next morning Khadidja comes running into the tower.

"Mademoiselle," she cries, shaking Isabelle awake. "A boy has come from the flutist and has brought you this."

She hands over a package which Isabelle frantically unties. Inside she finds a pair of Spahi riding boots, made of shiny red Moroccan leather, finely waxed.

"Was there a message? Did the boy say anything at all?"

"Just that his master is leaving Tunis, and will not be back again."

D
ays pass, and the young man sends no further word. His flute and burnoose remain untouched in the niche. Isabelle waits and waits, and the next time the moon is full, she watches the garden the whole night hoping he'll return. But he does not, and after that she takes him at his word.

Through the rest of 1898 she writes little, though she comes to know Tunis well. She becomes adept at assuming a male disguise, and begins to use a man's name: "Si Mahmoud."

Often she leaves the old Turkish house to ride in the countryside for days. Then she sleeps out in the open, in meadows or on the beach, listening to herself, her thoughts, trying to work out the meaning of her life.

Sometimes she does not leave her tower for a week, smoking, drinking, dreaming of herself in situations, her destiny, the real meaning of her disguise. Then she goes out to Bab El Gorjani, finds a lover, takes him to her tower, gratifies herself and dismisses him at dawn.

Sometimes, when she is prowling in the medina, she thinks she sees the donor of the red boots. But always, when she looks closely, the person turns out to be someone else.

In early 1899, she begins to receive disturbing news. Vava is ill, and Augustin (out of the legion, married to Madeleine, "in business" in Marseilles) writes her that the old man does not have long to live. She knows she must return to Geneva, but puts off the trip as long as she can.

Finally, when she receives an urgent cable, she calls at the bank to tell Pierre she will no longer be able to keep the house. She learns that he has not come in to work for several days.

She finally finds his home, a charming villa poised on a hill overlooking the sea. She walks through the garden and finds her friend running about his terrace in a rage. The two Dalmatians are barking ferociously as the Frenchman, forehead covered with sweat, scurries about throwing potted plants off his balcony into the sea.

"They're transferring me to Lyons," he shouts, as rose bushes, potted yuccas, rare bamboos and dahlias are heaved. "My life is over. I shall never survive in that hideous, heartless town. Seems some rumors of my inversion have filtered back. God damnit," he cries, as he holds a huge earthenware pot of violet hydrangeas above his head. "The brutes! The dirty swine!"

He thrusts the pot over the railing, and Isabelle watches as the petals break loose and glide, sprinkling a thousand shards of smashed pottery scattered on the rocks.

Later that night, the two of them drunk on wine, the Dalmatians snoring loudly at his feet, Pierre asks if she ever met up again with the mysterious boy who sent her the boots.

"No," she says. "The story was left unresolved."

"Still you should try and write it up."

"I've tried many times," she says, "but the words never come."

"Ah," Pierre shrugs. "Perhaps it was not such a great experience after all."

"He was the best lover I ever had."

"And the boots...?"

"What about them?"

"You must use them, little sparrow. To march. March and explore."

M
ay I, 1899. There was no one to meet her at 5:00 PM when she arrived at the Gare de Cornavin. She was wearing her red boots and a hooded cloak of pure white wool. Crowds thronged the station, the smoke of the locomotives was blue, and the papers that had come on the same train from Paris were full of speculation about whether Captain Dreyfus would be retried. The
Affaire
had been the talk of Tunis, and for that matter Bône when, a day before Old Nathalie's death, Mathieu Dreyfus had denounced Esterhazy as the true author of the
bordereau
. But to Isabelle the Dreyfus case was confusing to the point of boredom; she swept by the newspaper kiosks and out to the street to find a carriage for Meyrin.

Moving down the Rue Voltaire she found it difficult to imagine she'd once lived among the Alps. No camels plowed these neat Swiss farms; no African sun beat upon these verdant fields. Long past the outskirts of Geneva it struck her that she'd reentered a museum–of European culture and of memories from her past. As the wheels of her carriage creaked, she recalled exchanges with disillusioned Europeans who'd complained of living in the Maghreb so far from opera, theater, concerts, museums.
They miss the whole point of North Africa
, she thought,
a place to escape the embalmed culture of Europe, to learn to live on a sensual plane.

Traveling the road that day to Meyrin was to reverse her escape of 1897. The closer she drew to the pleasant little town, the more she felt stifled by its charm. Each chalet, each wall, each tree was familiar–she had often walked this way returning from the freedom of Geneva to the prison of Villa Neuve. Her body tensed; what vileness now lay beyond the moat?

She dismounted, waited for her carriage to go on, then stood alone on the silent road and stared through the gate. The magnificent garden was in ruins. The lawns and paths were confused, the flower beds had gone to seed, and the lattices of bougainvillea were twisted now and overgrown. No one had cleared away the undergrowth or broken up the earth–that ritual of her childhood's springs. The gate had not been painted, and when she entered she heard its hinges grinding rust. Even the little wooden bridge across the moat of darting trout was rotten with decay.
Faisand
é, she thought, as she wandered toward the house–the garden in its unattended state reminded her of half-putrescent rabbits hanging in Tunisian souks.

The villa was just as she'd remembered–its proportions perfect and grand. It had a look of deadness, though–all but a few shutters on the upper floor were closed. She sat on the front steps and waited for Augustin. It was here they'd embraced that mad night he'd fled three and a half years before.

He appeared a while later with baskets of groceries. She searched his face, found little left of his youth and fire. Their reunion was casual, almost embarrassed. She'd expected they'd run to each other's arms, but some new diffidence held them back. After a few exchanges of news, including the fact that Vava had been upstairs all this time and was actually on the verge of death, Augustin burst into a long harangue about shortages of cash, astronomical loans, difficulties settling Old Nathalie's estate and problems that would confuse the sale of Villa Neuve which they must commence, he told her brusquely, the moment Vava died. She felt as though she were talking to a small-time
commerçant
, not sitting with a dear lost brother amidst the ruins of their youth. During all his talk of money, litigations, wills, she asked herself why she felt no wish to smear kisses about his face.

"...thank God," he was saying, "for Monsieur Samuel of Vernier. Without him Vava would have starved long ago. I talked to him this morning and he has agreed to loan us whatever we need to get by, even to handle our affairs here, and show the house. It seems Vava's been dependent on his loans for more than a year."

He stopped suddenly, saw the disappointment in her eyes.

"You know," he said, chuckling, "it's a good thing I didn't come to meet your train–I'd never have recognized you."

She smiled a little; he was beginning to sound like himself.

"Strange to have a reunion here," he said. "With the old man dying, and the garden in a ruin, and Mama and Vladimir and Nicolas gone. It depresses me enormously. I can't wait to leave this place for good."

Suddenly he took her hand, held it tight, brought it to his lips.

"I don't know what's the matter with me. I feel strange here. The night I left I thought I'd never come back. And I feel strange with you, too–as if I've disappointed you terribly. I realize, of course, that I'm sounding like an ass."

"No," she said, "you're just being Augustin. And that will always be fine with me."

At last an embrace. "I didn't come to meet you–well, it was on purpose. I was afraid."

"Why?"

"Of you, your being so grown up. And you are, you know. You're even bigger now. Your shoulders are–magnificent. I could tell by your letters that you'd grown. In each one I could sense it, a step, a leap almost–that your life was changing fast, that you were gaining so much experience, becoming a woman. I knew it would happen once you got away–that you'd be bigger than me–that you'd look at me and find me petty and ridiculous...."

He turned to her, beaming through his tears. She smiled back as if he were an errant son.

They talked awhile longer, and when it was dark and time to go inside, she knew he was not the same brother she'd always adored. He'd changed, and, it seemed to her, for the worse.

Even as they mounted the stairs, she could hear Vava's wheezing cough. From the doorway of his room she saw a shrunken old man lost in a huge bed. His eyes were still ferocious, though hair and beard had lost their gloss. But of all the changes the one that frightened her most was the weakness of his voice. He had cancer of the throat and could no longer bellow. Gone forever was that deep bass growl that was so essential to his vigor. Now he spoke in a grizzly whisper that, when she heard it, made her shrink with chill.

"I don't give a goddamn for anything anymore," he croaked. "I've wasted my life on stupid things. You children–learn a lesson from a ruined old man: it's better to die young than to live to an old age supported by a grand obsession."

"Vava, don't talk like that! You're looking for pity and that's contemptible."

She was surprised at her own harshness, but realized at once that she'd been right. His eyes glowed, first with fury, then with pride.

"Isabelle, Isabelle–as usual it's you who understand. You're right, child. Now go away, both of you–I want to sleep."

H
e held on for two weeks more, but the pain was terrible and he could only find relief with increasing dosages of chloral hydrate. Sometimes, in order not to shriek, which he refused to do out of pride and also because the effort even further inflamed the torment in his throat, he'd distract himself by muttering the old obscenities against the Church, or whispering searing epithets against his numerous enemies, evil corrupt people who'd tried to thwart him at every turn. But his greatest rage was reserved for Young Nathalie, whom he accused of breaking Old Nathalie's heart, and for Nicolas, who, he was convinced, had martyred Vladimir, and whom he held responsible for the torture that had made that sad, beloved boy lose his mind.

Isabelle and Augustin stood on either side of the bed and listened as he railed on; it seemed only just that this strange, vicious, maniacal man who had formed their youths should have an audience as he slipped away. It occurred to Isabelle as she stared down at his tortured face, all creased by years of drunkenness and rancor, that if it weren't for him she'd have been brought up to wear dresses and petticoats, to make dainty small talk and serve elegant tea.
Thank God
, she thought,
for the devil that possessed him; without it I'd now be everything I despise.

Even if most of what he'd done in his long and grievous life had been informed by hate, the real motive was probably some twisted kind of love. Even the wretched incident with the Christmas tree–he had probably meant less to hurt her mother than to cry out with terror at having to live with a loss of faith. And for all his pounding on the table, all the flasks of vodka he'd flung against the walls, his vile epithets against religion, she'd emerged with a deep and unshakable faith that God was great and had willed her future and that to what had been written she would happily submit.
I was destined
, she thought,
to find Islam, even after he tried for twenty years to beat out of me any longing for belief
. She forgave him then, at the very moment that in his phantom wheezing voice he began again to cough out oaths.