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  “That one, Poems from the Liturgy. Where the bookmark is.”

  Jérôme watches his wife’s expression. She opens the book, finds the page. “Day of Wrath, that day . . .” A passage underlined in pencil. “Whatsoever is hidden shall be manifest, and naught shall remain unavenged.”

  Pretend you don’t see through the game he’s playing, little man propped up on his pile of feather pillows. “Whatsoever is hidden shall be manifest.” Speak for yourself. What’s hidden inside of you. Inside of you. Deep in your heart, uncovered, turned inside out like an old, worn-out glove. So, you never believed I was innocent after all. You really never did. Afraid of me, weren’t you? Always frightened to death. And now, to let me know it now, after eighteen years . . . To call down everlasting vengeance on my head, and hide behind the words of the Holy Book . . . He’s watching out of the corner of his eye. He wants to see if his little barbs hit their mark . . . I’m your wife! Your devoted wife! For eighteen years . . . I’m innocent! Innocent! . . . Suspicious? You? Always so good, so kind? . . . No, my head is reeling. But I won’t give myself away. Mustn’t let you know. You have no hold on me, no hold at all. Give nothing of yourself, take nothing in return. Strangers, that’s what husbands and wives should be. Strangers to one another. Now and forevermore. Amen.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “No reason. Maybe my nerves. I must be tired. Monsieur Rolland, your wife is tired. It’s three in the morning. Really now, you don’t expect the poor thing to stay up till dawn just because you can’t sleep?

  “I asked you to go get Florida. Then you can sleep to your heart’s content.”

  Sugar. You need sugar, Monsieur Rolland. It’s time to take your drops. Mustn’t forget to take them right on time. Not a minute later. It’s a serious matter, that flurry of pain that rattles your chest. Better stop it before it starts. Or else you’re done for, Monsieur Rolland. Disaster is ready, waiting. Just one breath late, the slightest bit late, and your heart will gasp its last. Go thrashing about like a fish out of water. No blood will get to your heart. No blood at all. Thrashing about for air. For life. You’re choking, choking, Monsieur Rolland. Sugar, sugar, sugar! Your drops!

  “I’ll get the sugar.”

  That calm, unruffled voice. Monsieur Rolland tugs at his collar, rips it open. Beads of sweat are streaming down his face. Madame Rolland is bending over him now, her tight-drawn bodice full of her buxom breasts. She wipes his face. Unwavering, her voice assures him:

  “It’s nothing. Don’t be afraid. I’ll run and get the sugar.”

  What good to call for Florida now? Just one word more and that cage around your heart will use up all the little air it has. That clump of underbrush inside your chest, that mass of branches, giddy little tree where the air has to struggle now to get around. Don’t try to pump more air from that dried-up bush. Or to call for Florida. Nothing to do but beg, plead with your eyes. The drops, the drops, the drops . . .

  Elisabeth already has gone running out of the room.

  The doctor’s orders must be followed to the letter: five drops on a lump of sugar, every four hours. Exactly fourteen minutes from now, and it will be time.

  Madame Rolland tucks up her skirt and petticoats. Hurries down the stairs. She has to act quickly to keep another tragedy from descending on her house.

  There are moments that burst with such a flash of light that truth comes rushing on full tilt. Reveals its deepest, innermost sense, its sharpest anguish. Quick! Quick! Ward off the danger. Must stop at nothing to keep the order of the world from being shaken again. Fail for a second and anything might happen. Madness will rise again, reborn from its ashes. And once again I’ll be its victim, bound hand and foot, like so much kindling for the eternal flames.

  Madame Rolland runs down the steps as fast as her legs and her skirts will let her. The sugar! The sugar! Must find the sugar! The carpet-rods on the steps flash by, bright yellow copper. Fill her heart with a kind of extravagant joy. Like finding, one by one, the reassuring signs that her house is still in order.

  No sugar in the pantry. Where on earth did Florida put it? Madame Rolland looks everywhere. No use. Rummages behind the empty sugar bowl, the saltcellars, the mustard pot. Still nothing. But the sugar has to be there, it’s supposed to be there, somewhere. An endless supply, replenished there in the darkness by hands whose duty is to keep providing sugar. That’s how it works. It always has. Since the day she became the wife of Jérôme Rolland. And it’s that way, too, with all the other things: the salt, the flour, the oil, the eggs . . . All provided without fail, one after the other, according to the time of year, like the phases of the moon. Perfect order. But who on earth could have moved the sugar? Or even worse, let it run out? Go wake Florida. Five drops on a lump of sugar, every four hours. I’m partly to blame. I must be. How could I let the sugar disappear like that? . . . My God, the children! Why didn’t I think of that before? It must have been the children . . . Maybe Anne-Marie. Or little Eugène. He’s always filling his pockets with sugar . . . Of course, the children! Suddenly Madame Rolland has the urge to wake them up, then and there, to call them all down from that sleepy top-floor room of theirs that looks so much like a dormitory. She would like to gather her children around her, hug them close to her skirts. Ask them to help her, to save her. Stand with them there, defiant, in a single, solid, indestructible mass. Even go off, perhaps, and find the eldest two, at Oxford. High silk hats, blond whiskers and all. Handsome young strangers now, seeds that another husband planted one day, brutishly, in her womb.

  Yes, go wake the children. Let them be a bulwark. Let them run through the house. Station them at the windows, post them behind the door. Let them go clambering up the stairs, all of them, all at once, kicking and singing, shouting and knocking one another about. All those fine little dears with their plump, beribboned nannies. All those sweet little dears to be nursed, and weaned, and stuffed full of food again. Pissing and slobbering in cashmere and lace. Gorged and bathed, swathed and starched, shown off all shining and well behaved. Rosaries, dominoes, jump ropes, scarlet fever, First Communion, whooping cough, earaches, roast beef, plum cakes, sweet corn, fancy puddings, rabbit-fur coats, fur-lined mittens. Lacrosse and toboggans. Convent school, then classes with the priests. “No more to the woods we go, Tra-la-la-la-la-la.” Clementi sonatinas. Sweet, sweet childhood, growing up and stretching tall on tiptoes. Eight little imps, eight boys and girls to take the stand in behalf of Elisabeth d’Aulnières. Seven sacraments, plus one. Seven capital sins, plus one. Seven holy terrors, plus one. All suddenly waking up, shouting their war cry. Seven little lambs, plus one. And that one in a sailor’s blouse, singing so sweetly with downcast eyes: “Someday in Heav’n, the Virgin fair I’ll see.” Just let them loose and hear what a fuss they’ll raise! The call of the blood in their spontaneous cries. Just watch the angel choir sprout horns if anyone points a finger at their mother. Have we ever run out of sugar before, children? Or jam? Come, come, children. Have we? Answer me, all of you. All of you. Even the one and only child of my love, dark and slender. My little Nicolas. And the eldest two, my two young lords who went to have their minds improved in haughty England. And you, Eugène and Sophie. And you, Anne-Marie, so prim and proper, forever fussing the way you do with the frills on your elegant pantalets, peeping from under your crinoline skirt. And you, Jean-Baptiste, stammering a little and dreaming that you’ll preach retreat in the Basilica, with a mouth full of pebbles. And you, baby Eléonore, with your little embroidered bib, still in the nursery. All of you. Who could contradict your testimony? You can speak your piece and go right back to bed. Monsieur Rolland, your father, never loves you quite so much as when you’re lying fast asleep, way up there, under the eaves. With hand-picked nannies watching over you. Safe from your parents. Sheltered against parental crimes by the coarse caresses of peasant women in their fluted bonnets.

  The sugar! Ring for Florida! Give her a proper talking-to for being so careless. The peal of the bell rips thro
ugh the silence of the night, echoes into every corner of the sleeping house. Madame Rolland stands startled by the noise. Still holding the cord. Vibrations rippling through her hand in little waves, diminishing. Let go of the cord before it’s too late, before a deafening clamor rings out and wakes the town. A ghostly carillon, pulling at all the strident, clangorous chimes, drawing them in. This time it happens by itself. All through her arm, an explosion, bursting through her arm. Fingers to shoulder, like an electric shock. Silence for a moment, then a timid reply, ever so slight. The front doorbell. Struck once. One single peal, left hanging. Incomplete.

  Madame Rolland jumps. There, hidden behind the breadbasket: the sugar. She tucks up her skirts with one hand, throws a few lumps into the hollow. Picks up the lamp, still burning. Goes scurrying up the stairs, out of breath. Stands before her husband. Heaven be praised, he’s still alive. He smiles at her, dimly.

  It’s only the pain . . .

  Madame Rolland begins to count the drops. Her hand is trembling. He must trust her, reassure her, do anything to stop that trembling in her hand. He has no choice, he must make peace with this woman who stands there trembling. His life depends on it. Again Jérôme forces a feeble smile. He feels his dry lips tighten against his teeth.

  “Please, Elisabeth, control yourself.”

  Madame Rolland draws close to her husband’s side. She measures out the drops before his eyes.

  “Count them with me, will you . . .”

  Have her husband count the drops, share in his distrust. Let him watch her to be sure. Accept an insult, an indignity like that. Allow his loathsome supervision, after a lifetime as a model wife. Anything, anything is better than to be a party to another death.

  Monsieur and Madame Rolland are safe again, joined to each other like the fingers on a hand. Wholly united in one being, reduced to their simplest terms. One single mind, frenetically intent. One single, concentrated life. One single fear, one single wish, one single prayer: to measure out the drops. Above all, to stop trembling. To let them fall, flawless, spaced out one by one, round as tears.

  The husband, thankful, crunches his sugar, swallows it down. He closes his eyes in gratitude and fatigue. To go on living. Living. Such an unusual woman, this wife of his. But why is Elisabeth still so shaken, so disturbed? Won’t she ever collect herself? Won’t she ever let me rest? Oh, to sleep. To force my wife to come away with me, off into a deep, eternal slumber. No thoughts of the past, no fears for the future. Only a present. A peaceful, slumbering present. My wife by my side. To sleep. “Whatsoever is hidden shall be manifest.” To sleep together. In pace.

  Elisabeth is still trembling.

  “Jérôme, did you hear the bell?”

  Monsieur Rolland opens a doleful eye.

  “The bell? When you rang for Florida?”

  “No, no. I mean the doorbell.”

  “The doorbell? At this hour of the morning? Are you out of your mind?”

  Yes, no doubt I am. That’s what it means to be out of your mind. To let yourself be carried away by a dream. To give it room, let it grow wild and thick, until it overruns you. To invent a ghastly fear about some wagon wandering through the town. To imagine the driver ringing your doorbell in the middle of the night. To go on dreaming at the risk of life and limb, as if you were acting out your own death. Just to see if you can. Well, don’t delude yourself. Someday reality and its imagined double are going to be one and the same. No difference at all between them. Every premonition, true. Every alibi, gone flat. Every escape, blocked off. Doom will lie clinging to my bones. They’ll find me guilty, guilty before the world. It’s time to break free, break out of this stagnation, now. To stifle the dream before it’s too late. Quick, into the sunshine. Shake it off. Throw off the specters. Only one hope: to step out into the daylight. Not to miss the chance. To keep from being crushed by the dream. To strike that regal pose again, all haughtiness and injured innocence. Like all those days before, those days of endless questioning: “But how can anyone suspect me of such an awful thing?” To state your name. To be forever named Elisabeth d’Aulnières. To live to the fullest in your flesh, intact, like blood coursing happy and free.

  Madame Rolland goes over to the window. With a sweep of her arm she opens the shutter, throws it back against the wall. May as well clear things up right now. We’ll see if there really is a blasted wagon . . .

  There in the street, in front of their door, an old horse, head hung low, seems to be sleeping. Hitched up behind him, a cart spread over with a canvas. Small and frail, the driver, perched on his scanty load — vegetables more than likely — sits curled up in the rain, elbows on knees and head in hands. He looks like a stubborn little child, locked tight in his sodden wretchedness.

  Madame Rolland holds back a scream. Runs to her husband’s side. Kneels by his bed.

  “Jérôme . . . In the street . . . A wagon, in front of our door!”

  Just then the wagon begins to move. Goes slowly off, into the distance.

  Monsieur and Madame Rolland keep still. Not a word between them. For a long time they follow the sound of the rig as it disappears into the night. The cool, damp air comes wafting into the room. Madame Rolland can’t seem to budge. Monsieur Rolland begins to shiver.

  “Please, Elisabeth, Close the window.”

  “I’m afraid . . . I’m so afraid . . .”

  She buries her head in the blanket, nestles her cheek against her husband’s hand.

  This man can only protect me just so far. When the fright becomes too real, when it fills the night with the noise of a rattling old wagon, Jérôme is caught up in it just like me. Caught in the trap, the two of us. That’s what marriage is. One fear shared by two, one need to be consoled, one empty caress in the darkness.

  “Close the window, Elisabeth, I’m cold.”

  Elisabeth closes the shutter and the window. She’s almost tempted to draw the curtains too. To barricade herself inside, to stave off any attack. It’s beginning to get light already. Dawn, that ominous time. That dim, uncertain moment between day and night, when body and mind suddenly give way and hand us over to our nerves and their mysterious powers. Awake all night. This sleeplessness has worn us down.

  No, Monsieur Rolland, it isn’t death quite yet. Still, you can feel yourself going under, about to drown. Weariness washes over you, in one long wave, heavy and dense. Rolls over you in its broad, heavy sweep. Throws you onto the sand, weak, exhausted, tasting the salt and slime, a body fairly ringing out with pain. And getting worse all over. There, the pain, easy to recognize. You can hear its echo under the fingernail, just beneath the skin. And at your bed-side, your wife, far off in her solitude again.

  Better hurry, call her back. Make her return to this slender brink of life, Monsieur Rolland, here where you’re spinning out the last few threads of your sickly days. You mustn’t be left alone like this. Unthinkable. This agony, this narrow little plank. Just enough space to force one living creature up here with you, someone to keep you company a little while along the way. Quick. Better call her back.

  “Elisabeth!”

  Madame Rolland is miles and miles away, lost in contemplation of her right sleeve, fringed with lace. Absorbed, engrossed, assiduous. Scrutinizing and obsessed.

  Oh, to be well enough to rape that woman. To force her back with us onto the marriage bed. Lay her out on our deathbed, here beside us. Force her to think about us, to suffer with us, to share our agony, to die with us.

  What a riddle she is, this wife of ours. This guilty woman who went unpunished, our wife, our tainted beauty. Oh, to convict her of her sin, to catch her mind red-handed in its wanderings. To break the pact of silence. To rattle the past under her pretty little nose, as casual as can be.

  “Elisabeth! That girl . . . What was her name?”

  “What girl? What are you talking about?”

  Her voice is flat, vacant. She seems to be staring in rapt attention at the lace frills on her left sleeve now, no different at all from t
he right. She looks at both sleeves under the lamp, compares them carefully.

  “You know, the one who used to smoke a pipe? . . . Aurélie Caron . . . Wasn’t that her name? . . . Yes, I remember now . . .”

  Jérôme Rolland has pronounced each syllable carefully, distinctly. Now he lies in fear of what Elisabeth might do. As if, for revenge, she might stone him to death.

  Elisabeth grows pale. A shudder shakes her from head to toe.

  “Why bring that up? . . . What’s come over you? . . .”

  Silence. Then a kind of scar forming fresh over the silence. Jérôme Rolland’s insidious little question slithers its way in. Silence, wound closed. Silence, sewn up again with great needlefuls.

  Madame Rolland picks up the pitcher. Try to change the subject, pretend you’ve forgotten the question, put on your compassionate Sister of Charity face. She pours out a glass of water. Walks over to her husband.

  “Would you like some water?”

  Monsieur Rolland shuts his yes. Nothing to drink, certainly not. He’s waiting for Florida. Time doesn’t matter anymore. Why spare Elisabeth’s feelings now? Why not come right out with it, show her how much we distrust her? Show her we’ve never been duped by her innocence.

  “No, nothing to drink. I’d rather wait for Florida.”

  Madame Rolland puts down the glass and pitcher.

  The shameless arrogance of the dying. Jérôme Rolland has nothing to lose anymore. How he must despise me, my young fiancé of days gone by, beside himself with gratitude: “Elisabeth . . . Marrying me! . . . How could I ever dare to hope for a gift like that!”

  Elisabeth is sitting now, far from the bed. She rests her head against the back of the chair. Strands of hair fall loose from her chignon. Her eyes are ringed deep with circles and her full lips throb with blood. Me too, awake the livelong night. I’m mad, but my mind is clear. Oh, if you only knew, Jérôme, if you only knew, dear husband, how I share your feverish sleepless nights . . . Both of us, together in the same delirium, yoked up together for the selfsame chore. Dragging the waters, together. Our huge nets scraping the ocean floor for its meager treasures. Infallible, a madman’s memory drags up details like mussel shells. The first time you came to my bed, Jérôme, so round and plump, so small in that enormous dressing gown of yours, with its checks and its fancy buttons. I wanted to laugh out loud. I couldn’t stop humming to myself: “Papa has found a man for me, Good God, he’s small as small can be!” You caught my glance. That look of wistful disbelief in your colorless eye, that mute reproach. The failure of our wedding night . . . My God, can it be that nothing inside of us ever gets washed away? We go on living as if nothing at all had happened, then suddenly the poison deep in our hearts comes rising up to the surface. It’s clear, he never forgave me, not really . . . Aurélie Caron . . . That name he dredges up from the stagnant water, like a rusty weapon to kill me with.