13

I wanted them gone from Paris. I wanted the playbills down, the doors shut; I wanted silence and darkness in the little rattrap theater where I had known the greatest and most sustained happiness of my mortal life.

Not a dozen innocent victims a night could make me stop thinking about them, could make this ache in me dissolve. Every street in Paris led to their door.

And an ugly shame came over me when I thought of my frightening them. How could I have done that to them? Why did I need to prove to myself with such violence that I could never be part of them again?

No. I'd bought Renaud's. I'd turned it into the showcase of the boulevard. Now I would close it down.

It was not that they suspected anything, however. They believed the simple stupid excuses Roget gave them, that I was just back from the heat of the tropical colonies, that the good Paris wine had gone right to my head. Plenty of money again to repair the damage.

God only knows what they really thought. The fact was, they went back to regular performances the following evening, and the jaded crowds of the boulevard du Temple undoubtedly put upon the mayhem a dozen sensible explanations. There was a queue under the chestnut trees.

Only Nicki was having none of it. He had taken to heavy drinking and refused to return to the theater or study his music anymore. He insulted Roget when he came to call. To the worse cafes and taverns he went, and wandered alone through the dangerous nighttime streets.

Well, we have that in common, I thought.

All this Roget told me as I paced the floor a good distance from the candle on his table, my face a mask of my true thoughts.

"Money doesn't mean very much to the young man, Monsieur," he said. "The young man has had plenty of money in his life, he reminds me. He says things that disturb me, Monsieur. I don't like the sound of them."

Roget looked like a nursery rhyme figure in his flannel cap and gown, legs and feet naked because I had roused him again in the middle of the night and given him no time to put on his slippers even or to comb his hair.

"What does he say?" I demanded.

"He talks about sorcery, Monsieur. He says that you possess unusual powers. He speaks of La Voisin and the Chambre Ardente, an old case of sorcery under the Sun King, the witch who made charms and poisons for members of the Court."

"Who would believe that trash now?" I affected absolute bewilderment. The truth was, the hair was standing up on the back of my neck.

"Monsieur, he says bitter things," he went on. "That your kind, as he puts it, has always had access to great secrets. He keeps speaking of some place in your town, called the witches' place."

"My kind!"

"That you are an aristocrat, Monsieur," Roget said. He was a little embarrassed. "When a man is angry as Monsieur de Lenfent is angry, these things come to be important. But he doesn't whisper his suspicions to the others. He tells only me. He says that you will understand why he despises you. You have refused to share with him your discoveries! Yes, Monsieur, your discoveries. He goes on about La Voisin, about things between heaven and earth for which there are no rational explanations. He says he knows now why you cried at the witches' place."

I couldn't look at Roget for a moment. It was such a lovely perversion of everything! And yet it hit right at the truth. How gorgeous, and how perfectly irrelevant. In his own way, Nicki was right.

"Monsieur, you are the kindest man -- " Roget said.

"Spare me, please.. ."

"But Monsieur de Lenfent says fantastical things, things he should not say even in this day and age, that he saw a bullet pass through your body that should have killed you."

"The bullet missed me," I said. "Roget, don't go on with it. Get them out of Paris, all of them."

"Get them out?" he asked. "But you've put so much money into this little enterprise. . ."

"So what? Who gives a damn?" I said. "Send them to London, to Drury Lane. Offer Renaud enough for his own London theater. From there they might go to America -- Saint-Domingue, New Orleans, New York. Do it, Monsieur. I don't care what it takes. Close up my theater and get them gone!"

And then the ache will be gone, won't it? I'll stop seeing them gathered around me in the wings, stop thinking about Lelio, the boy from the provinces who emptied their slop buckets and loved it.

Roget looked so profoundly timid. What is it like, working for a well-dressed lunatic who pays you triple what anyone else would pay you to forget your better judgment?

I'll never know. I'll never know what it is like to be human in any way, shape, or form again.

"As for Nicolas," I said. "You're going to persuade him to go to Italy and I'll tell you how."

"Monsieur, even persuading him to change his clothes would take some doing."

"This will be easier. You know how ill my mother is. Well, get him to take her to Italy. It's the perfect thing. He can very well study music at the conservatories in Naples, and that is exactly where my mother should go."

"He does write to her... is very fond of her."

"Precisely. Convince him she'll never make the journey without him. Make all the arrangements for him. Monsieur, you must accomplish this. He must leave Paris. I give you till the end of the week, and then I'll be back for the news that he's gone."

It was asking a lot of Roget, of course. But I could think of no other way. Nobody would believe Nicki's ideas about sorcery, that was no worry. But I knew now that if Nicki didn't leave Paris, he would be driven slowly out of his mind.

As the nights passed, I fought with myself every waking hour not to seek him out, not to risk one last exchange.

I just waited, knowing full well that I was losing him forever and that he would never know the reasons for anything that had come to pass. I, who had once railed against the meaninglessness of our existence, was driving him off without explanation, an injustice that might torment him to the end of his days.

Better that than the truth, Nicki. Maybe I understand all illusions a little better now. And if you can only get my mother to go to Italy, if there is only time for my mother still . . .

Meantime I could see for myself that Renaud's House of Thesbians was closed down. In the nearby cafe, I heard talk of the troupe's departure for England. So that much of the plan had been accomplished.

It was near dawn on the eighth night when I finally wandered up to Roget's door and pulled the bell.

He answered sooner than I expected, looking befuddled and anxious in the usual white flannel nightshirt.

"I'm getting to like that garb of yours, Monsieur," I said wearily. "I don't think I'd trust you half as much if you wore a shirt and breeches and a coat.. ."

"Monsieur," he interrupted me. "Something quite unexpected -- "

"Answer me first. Renaud and the others went happily to England?"

"Yes, Monsieur. They're in London by now, but -- "

"And Nicki? Gone to my mother in the Auvergne. Tell me I'm right. It's done."

"But Monsieur!" he said. And then he stopped. And quite unexpectedly, I saw the image of my mother in his mind.

Had I been thinking, I would have known what it meant. This man had never to my knowledge laid eyes upon my mother, so how could he picture her in his thoughts? But I wasn't using my reason. In fact my reason had flown.

"She hasn't ... you're not telling me that it's too late," I said.

"Monsieur, let me get my coat..." he said inexplicably. He reached for the bell.

And there it was, her image again, her face, drawn and white, and all too vivid for me to stand it.

I took Roget by the shoulders.

"You've seen her! She's here."

"Yes, Monsieur. She's in Paris. I'll take you to her now. Young de Lenfent told me she was coming. But I couldn't reach you, Monsieur! I never know where to reach you. And yesterday she arrived."

I was too stunned to answer. I sank down into the chair, and my own images of her blazed hot enough to eclipse everything that was emanating from him. She was alive and she was in Paris. And Nicki was still here and he was with her.

Roget came close to me, reached out as if he wanted to touch me:

"Monsieur, you go ahead while I dress. She is in the Ile St. Louis, three doors to the right of Monsieur Nicolas. You must go at once."

I looked up at him stupidly. I couldn't even really see him. I was seeing her. There was less than an hour before sunrise. And it would take me three-quarters of that time to reach the tower.

"Tomorrow ... tomorrow night," I think I stammered. That line came back to me from Shakespeare's Macbeth.. . "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..."

"Monsieur, you don't understand! There will be no trips to Italy for your mother. She has made her last journey in coming here to see you."

When I didn't answer he grabbed hold of me and tried to shake me. I'd never seen him like this before. I was a boy to him and he was the man who had to bring me to my senses.

"I've gotten lodgings for her," he said. "Nurses, doctors, all that you could wish. But they aren't keeping her alive. You are keeping her alive, Monsieur. She must see you before she closes her eyes. Now forget the hour and go to her. Even a will as strong as hers can't work miracles."

I couldn't answer. I couldn't form a coherent thought.

I stood up and went to the door, pulling him along with me. "Go to her now," I said, "and tell her I'll be there tomorrow night."

He shook his head. He was angry and disgusted. And he tried to turn his back on me.

I wouldn't let him.

"You go there at once, Roget," I said. "Sit with her all day, do you understand, and see that she waits -- that she waits for me to come! Watch her if she sleeps. Wake her and talk to her if she starts to go. But don't let her die before I get there!"