The Oracle Glass Part 5

CHAPTER FIVE

In the first weeks of September, Father fell ill with a mysterious stomach malady. The doctor p.r.o.nounced it to be an overbalancing of the bilious humor, but after a series of strong purges, his condition worsened. Mother became most solicitous, cooking for him herself and even was.h.i.+ng out his s.h.i.+rts and linen. To cheer him up and speed his recovery, I read to him aloud for hours every day. But with all Mother's care, Father still seemed to grow weaker. Sometimes I didn't think he was even listening, but then he'd turn his head and say, "Daughter, your presence is a stay and consolation to me. Begin again in the Tenth Book; tell me, how does Aristotle define true happiness?"

"Father, he tells us that true happiness is found in contemplation, whereas the common idea of happiness as pleasant amus.e.m.e.nts is fostered by the courts of tyrants."

"Daughter, you are quick to learn; read on." And so I continued to read from the Nichomachean Ethics concerning the foundation of happiness in virtuous activities, as he nodded in agreement whenever I reached a pa.s.sage he especially liked, and smiled his ironic smile when I read that slaves could enjoy bodily pleasures, but were not accounted happy. I never quite understood what he meant in those days, though now that I have grown older I understand all too well how clearly he saw the world.

"So, ma pet.i.te, what's going on out there? My son ought to be recovering by now." Grandmother seemed to have shrunk visibly over the last few weeks, like an apple that is gradually drying out. The autumn rain battered at the window of her room, and the closed curtains smelled dank, even though the fire had been built up to keep the chill out. She put down her Bible on the bed, the pages open to Revelations.

"Grandmother, he's not better at all, even though Mother has taken over nursing him. Even the Romans don't cheer him up the way they used to."

"Herself? The Wh.o.r.e of Babylon, nursing my son? 'Can the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin?' Tell me of what this nursing consists."

"She does everything, Grandmother. She is quite changed."

"Everything?" The old lady looked suddenly sly. "Tell me, does she cook for him? Does she wash his s.h.i.+rts herself?"

"Why, yes, of course, Grandmother-and his sheets and bandages as well."

"Bandages? They never told me he needed bandages; they told me he was getting better."

"Oh, no. His sores would break your heart, Grandmother." Grandmother's white, wrinkled face turned even whiter, then her little black eyes blazed from beneath her cap. "It is in the soap," she muttered. "I have read of this." Struggling, she sat up in bed.

"Get me my stick, Genevieve, and my best black dress, there, in the armoire. Then a.s.sist me to dress. I am getting up." I couldn't have been more astounded if she had announced that the Seine had turned to wine. I brought her her stick and pulled her up until she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She gasped as she rose, then set her mouth tightly. Grandmother dressed in the old style of Louis XIII, without corsets, in heavy black widow's weeds, all embroidered in black thread and jet beads. Her feet were very tiny-the last vestige of her once-famed beauty, and she smiled as I pulled the little black slippers over her black woolen hose. When she was dressed, leaning heavily on my arm, she tottered to her ancient armchair and sat down, puffing.

"Now," she said, "I want you to get me pen and ink. I must write something. You must go, and without telling a soul, get a hired carriage. Remember, tell no one, and return as quickly as possible." I moved her little writing table to the armchair and set out pen, ink, paper, and sand before her.

As I opened the door of Grandmother's room, I thought I heard the rustling of clothing and swift, soft steps. I started, every nerve taut. Grandmother seemed so alien, all shrunken and frail, propped up in her chair, but with something strange blazing inside her as she wrote intently, her pen rapidly traversing the paper. I sent a boy to the carriage stand, then rushed back to Grandmother.

She was seated in her chair, her head thrown back, her body in convulsions. The little desk had toppled to the floor and the ink bottle rolled, unstoppered, spilling its contents in a semicircle of black on the sand-spattered carpet. Frantically, I called for help. Her parrot, screeching, fluttered to the curtain rod. Servants clattered into the room. Mother, holding a handkerchief, exclaimed in horror. Marie-Angelique stood behind her, white with shock. As the servants lifted the dying woman to her bed, the bird fluttered to the canopy, screeching "Drink, drink, old monster! Awk! Fire and brimstone!"

"For G.o.d's sake, strangle that dreadful thing!" cried Mother, and the servants added to the cacophony by pursuing it about the room as it flapped wildly above them and Marie-Angelique wailed, "Oh, don't! The dear, sweet bird! It doesn't know any better!" as she wrung her hands.

"Grandmother, Grandmother, don't die! Oh, please, you can't, can't die!" Even as I held Grandmother's clenched fist in my own two hands, I could feel her body grow icy and limp. I never even heard Uncle's soft, slippered step behind me.

"Well, here's a touching scene," he said, in a voice as cold as ice.

"Call the priest." Mother turned to me, her eyes flat and dead with hate. "It is you who have done this, Mademoiselle. It is all your fault. You have killed her by getting her up." As she swept from the room on her brother's arm, I was left alone with Grandmother's corpse, all dressed in the finery of olden days.

For what seemed like hours, I stared at Grandmother's stony face while the rain rattled against the windows. How could she have died so suddenly-she, who could have defied death for decades more? I heard a soft "urk, urk" from above the bed canopy and looked up. The parrot, triumphantly uncaptured, was clawing his way across the canopy, making noises in its stomach, as that sort of bird does. I looked down at Grandmother's hand where it lay in mine and realized that folded into it was a crumpled sc.r.a.p of paper. I took it up and smoothed it out. The letter she had been writing. It had been torn off, leaving a bit in her hand. I turned the fragment over. A name was written on it-a stranger's name. "M. de La Reynie," the paper said. Just that. Nothing more. But where had the rest of the letter gone? I hunted about her chair, where it might have fallen. Her empty cordial gla.s.s rolled by one gilded claw-foot, but there was no letter. I put the gla.s.s back on the nightstand, beside the little cut-gla.s.s bottle. If only I hadn't helped her up, I grieved. It was all my fault.

But Mother was at the door, with the priest and the men to lay out the body.

"Still here, are you?" Mother spoke in a cold voice, but her mouth was twisted in an eerie, triumphant little smile. "You should be ashamed." I bolted from the room, weeping.

As I left Grandmother's room, I saw that my brother had been summoned from the College. Short and square, he already showed signs of growing the righteous jowls and cold, fishy eye of a magistrate. He stood there, stiff and pompous, the soon-to-be heir of the house of Pasquier, condemning me with his eyes. An avocat in the making. Perhaps, if enough came to him in Grandmother's will, the purchaser of a minor office-the first step on the ladder. A quiet little wife with a big dowry. The Hotel Pasquier refurnished in a more respectable style. I could see it all in his eyes. He would not be a fool, a speculator, a loser like Father.

"Genevieve, I know it wasn't really your fault." Marie-Angelique embraced me. "I don't care what Mother says." She steered me into a private corner of Mother's gilded reception room, near one of the tall, brocade-draped windows. "Now, you mustn't cry so. It will make Grandmother sad in heaven." She took out her handkerchief from her sleeve and dried my face. She looked worried. "Besides," she added, "you must think of Father. You must be cheerful for him, so he'll recover. You can talk with him about all those things he reads. It will make him better."

"Better? But-but suppose, Marie-Angelique, that he doesn't get better?"

"Oh, that can't be. It just can't." Marie-Angelique looked pale and agitated. There were circles under her eyes. "Without Father, I haven't a prospect in the world. There's nothing left, nothing for any of us. They'll seize the furniture, the house-What will become of us? Uncle has nothing, and Father's family is dead. etienne isn't finished with school yet. But Father can still save us, Genevieve, once he's better. Make him cheerful, Genevieve; make him well." Her voice faded to that conspiratorial whisper that everyone uses when talking about sick people. "We've all decided we won't tell him about Grandmother until he's better, and can bear it."

I couldn't tell Marie-Angelique that I had seen the ghastly gray color creeping into Father's face, the color that signaled the inevitable end. That was the disadvantage of having studied the sick people in the Hotel Dieu, rather than the clothing of the fas.h.i.+onable visitors. A question for my notebooks that evening:

Is truth always good? Devise a method to balance the temporary pleasure given by well-meant falsehood against the shock of bad news poorly prepared for.

"Oh, I do wish black weren't so unbecoming to me," said Marie-Angelique, inspecting her face in her dressing-table mirror. In the required weeks of mourning following Grandmother's funeral, Marie-Angelique had undertaken to lighten the heaviness that filled the house by having me read Celinte to her while she tried out new hairstyles and altered her dresses by the addition of braid and little rows of tucked ribbon. And although I was ashamed to say it, I found the smell of illness and the clouds of dark sorrow and regret in Father's sickroom more than I could bear. Her mindless romances were a welcome distraction.

"My, what a lovely sentiment Mademoiselle de Scudery expresses in that pa.s.sage. How wonderful to be so in love," said Marie-Angelique with a sigh.

"I'm not surprised you like it-you liked it just as well when she used the selfsame pa.s.sage in Clelie, if I'm not mistaken. It seems she saves herself the trouble of writing anew in this place."

"Oh, Sister, surely you are mistaken. Why, the characters are entirely different."

"Well enough," I answered and continued reading the long conversation in Cleonime's palatial mansion, in which the company determines that the vice of secretly opening the letters of others is sure to lead to cheating at cards and end in the final depravity of desiring to know the future, and so of becoming enmeshed with astrologers.

"Mademoiselle de Scudery is very opinionated." Marie-Angelique looked annoyed. "After all, it is only natural to want to know the future. And I never cheat at cards." She had finished her hair and now took up her sewing. "Oh, do pull back the curtains, Sister-I just can't stand all this gloom...Oh, you are so indiscreet-Who is it that you're looking at down there?"

"Lamotte is back, Sister, and he's brought a friend to give him courage."

Having marked my place in the book, I had looked right out the middle of the window. The sky, heavy and dark with coming rain, seemed to touch the tall, narrow house fronts across the street. There, wrapped in a long cloak against the cold wind, stood Andre Lamotte, alias Petronius, pretending to be deep in conversation with Florent d'Urbec, the censorious Cato.

"A friend? Does he look like someone of substance?"

"No, he's a philosopher-"

"And you know such people? Sister, you are impractical."

D'Urbec, dressed in a vast and shapeless Brandenburger overcoat and his wide, flat black hat, nodded in response to Petronius's flamboyant gestures, looking up at the window every so often. The Brandenburger had large pockets. Big enough for a book, I imagined. I caught his eye and waved. He pulled Petronius by the sleeve and pointed to the window. Then he pulled the book from his pocket, and the two of them pointed to it as he brandished it aloft. I gestured back, silence, and then pointed in the direction of the courtyard gate.

"Surely, Sister, you are not going to speak with them." Marie-Angelique put down her sewing and looked at me disapprovingly.

"Of course I am. They've brought a book. For...ah...Father." I found the two of them looking most pleased with themselves outside the narrow portal by the great, barred carriage doors.

"We have it here," Lamotte announced grandly. "Acquired at untold cost and suffering, rarer than even the golden apples of the Hesperides."

"As Hippomenes tempted Atalanta, I throw it at your feet," announced d'Urbec. I blushed as I saw his knowing little half smile. I had a terrible urge to grab the book away and run.

"Ah, no, greedy sister of the divine Marie-Angelique. First, a letter," announced Lamotte, pulling a folded, sealed sheet from his bosom and thrusting it into my hands.

"You do presume, Monsieur Lamotte."

"But surely your gracious favor...Oh, pardon. Have I been too unseemly in your hour of grief? I see you are in mourning. My ardent flame has blinded me to the social decencies. I hope your father did not suffer too much."