The Secrets of a Fire King Read online

  I fainted then. They carried me out into the small garden behind the church. I woke up to the splash of water on my face, a cold slap back into the brilliant world. It was a sunny morning in early April and the crocuses were blooming in the priests’ garden. Father Jean was kneeling over me, holding my hand. My husband was next to him, gazing at me with a puzzled wonder.

  “What was it you meant?” he asked me when my eyes fluttered open.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. My skirts were up around my knees and I blushed to think of myself lying there, exposed, beneath the priest’s eyes. I sat up too quickly, reaching to push my skirts down.

  “Here,” the priest said, tipping a glass of water for me to sip. “What happened, Madame Bonvin? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, yes, I’m perfectly fine,” I assured them, but they were still looking at me, puzzled, as if trying to decipher a mystery. “What is it?” I asked, turning to Thierry, who gazed at me gravely, with concern and a new, uneasy respect.

  “Before you fainted,” he said, “you spoke.” He paused, and glanced at the priest, who nodded. “You shouted, Marie. You said, Behold the light of this world.”

  I shook my head, embarrassed. “I don’t remember,” I said. When I tried to rise I could feel it still, the way the lines blurred between myself and every living thing, but I could not imagine telling this to my husband or the priest. “I’m sorry. I was listening to the sermon, and then I got dizzy, and the next thing I knew there was water splashing on my face. That’s all. I’m very sorry.”

  While I was in bed recuperating from this spell, something dreadful happened. The weather changed for the worse, grew cold and so rainy that the days seemed like a chilly jungle, one long and foggy dusk. Madame was away, and one morning Monsieur, walking with his head down in the rain, was knocked over by a horse and killed, his skull crushed beneath a wagon wheel, his extraordinary mind splattered on the cobblestones. His death shocked the city. All France grieved, and within a month the Sorbonne offered Madame his post. To the surprise of many, she accepted, the first woman ever to teach at the Sorbonne. On her first day she wore her usual black dress, it was said, and she did not eulogize her predecessor, as was the custom. She simply started talking where he had left off, speaking in her clear, soft voice, running her thumb across her fingers. There was no grief manifest in her words or gestures, and in the offices, the hallways, later, they spoke of this. There were many who said it meant that she loved only science at the expense of human feeling.

  It was not true. I can tell you that her grief was almost beyond enduring. I heard the story of how she faltered in the laboratory, overcome, when she tried to resume their shared work. And once, months later, I glimpsed her entering their old building full of windows, which was again abandoned. It was a summer evening, and she was alone. I went to the glass door and stood in the shadows and watched her. A shameful thing, but I could not help myself. She sat at the old wooden table where so many experiments had been done, and stared into the air. Her shoulders shook; her tears fell swiftly. She wept, I tell you, as deeply grieved as any woman I have seen. The blackboard had been left untouched, with his final thoughts, his last inspirations, noted in white on slate, and by then the soft city dust had grown thick upon it. Her lips moved in the dusky light as she gazed upon his writing. It gave me the chills to watch her, for although she had no use for religion and would not believe in spirits, I knew if she were speaking, it was to him.

  I DID NOT see her again for many years. She was riding the rough wave of her fame by then, traveling across the country and the world, while I kept cleaning the same familiar rooms. My life went on, my children grew and later scattered in the war. My son was killed, my daughter fled with the Resistance. I grieved for them both, but I felt a deep pride in their lives, and thought sometimes that Madame would have approved of their spirit and their independence. I heard of her now and then during these many years, her speaking tour of America where she was given another gram of radium, and of course the news of her love affair with her colleague Monsieur Langevin, who was married and a father. All the fruit sellers were buzzing with this scandal. I stood among them with my lips pressed tight, but I remembered how they had laughed at her years before, for her coldness, for her shuttered heart. All right, I wanted to say. So you see she is human, after all, what of it? For myself, I remembered her grief and the way she had talked so easily with her husband, as if they were two sides of a single mind, and I hoped that she had found another happiness at last.

  Then one day, after we were both grandmothers and I had become a widow too, I saw her walking toward me down a path. She was dying, though I did not know it at the time. From a distance she looked just the same. I saw her, and thought that her familiar paleness, her frailty, meant that she was still as strong as iron underneath. There were many people with her, standing in a circle around her on the lawn, and though I wanted very much to speak with her, I dared not approach. I stood beneath a tree instead, thinking of all the questions I would like to ask.

  They moved together onto the path and came in my direction. I thought for a moment I would run away, pretending that I had not seen her, denying the opportunity to meet her one last time. But then, as she drew closer, I saw how her blond hair had faded white, how her skin was lusterless and stretched tight across her bones. She was ill. And so I stepped onto the path as they drew near. I spoke, loudly enough to be heard over the voices of the men.

  “Madame,” I said. “Madame, do you remember me from the glass building where you drew light from the earth?”

  She stopped and looked straight at me, and when she recognized me—it took a moment, for by then her eyesight was not good—she smiled, and stepped through the ring of important men, and came to me.

  “Yes,” she said. “Marie. I remember you, of course.”

  She took my hands in hers. My fingers were not then as ugly as they are now. The color was still natural—there were only the lumps. These she felt, however, even though her own fingers were rough with scabs where her skin had broken open. She looked down and gazed at my misshapen flesh, my hands so much older than the rest of me. I did not know, then, anything of what would follow, but I remember that I thought of all the nights I had stood with my hands around her sacred jars, and I was overcome with guilt. I thought she must suspect my treason too, for a shadow fell across her features.

  “You have worked too hard,” she murmured. “Marie, look at your hands! Your life has been too hard.”

  She released me then, sadly, and turned back to the waiting men.

  They walked with her across the snow, and one by one they disappeared into the building. It was the last I ever saw of her. Months later I heard that she had been taken to the country. It was said, at first, that she would recover from her illness, but time passed, and word came that she had died. It was her work, they said, that killed her finally, though even at the end she would not admit that her radium could cause such devastating harm. This news I heard in a hallway, one afternoon while I was sweeping, and I hurried to the broom closet where I put my face into my ruined hands and wept.

  THE NURSES COME in with their bright chatter, snapping up the shades, preparing the soothing medicine for my hands. Despite the horror of the second bomb, dropped two days ago on a place called Nagasaki, they laugh now, and toss their hair. They have pushed the terrible flare, the dreadful knowledge, completely from their minds. They are full of the armistice, talking of brothers and lovers coming back from war. There will be a parade, I hear, down the main streets of this great city. These young girls talk about their dresses, their hair styles, the jewelry they will wear. Dreamily, they unwind the layers of cloth around my fingers. They do not understand that the world has stilled, for an instant, has paused in the persistent turning of the ages. The wind has stopped, and the leaves do not flutter, and there is no motion in the air. They say they will wear pink to the parade, or sky blue or a green as clear as emeralds. They will cluster at the tr
ain station, handkerchiefs fluttering from their fingertips, watching the men stream off until their husbands, their boyfriends, their beloved brothers are rushing into their arms.

  They say they cannot wait.

  They do not see that they are already waiting, as I have waited all these many years for them to bathe my tortured fingers, one by one, to lay their cool hands upon my forehead. Since the day I took the glowing vessels in my hands, I have been moving toward this moment. The present grows from the past, and contains it, and the cities that disappeared are connected to the mystery within those jars. These young women do not see that the world has paused, that even now they are tuned to its hesitation.

  I do not tell them.

  They leave me at last, their chatter, their bright laughter, drifting through the hall, falling into silence. In this empty room even the pipes have gone quiet, and the breeze has died within the curtains. I keep my eyes closed in the sudden stillness, remembering Madame running her thumb across her fingers again, and yet again. Three times our hands touched, in compassion, first, then in wonder, and finally in sorrow. What does it mean, I would ask her, that my flesh is so misshapen, that her fingers went numb by degrees? Why did she seek to tame this mystery, which in the hands of others turned a multitude to ashes? Her work exploded with the violence of a thousand suns, but I must tell her that it was not her fault, the way they twisted her creation, tampered with her dreams.

  I will tell her.

  They said she was inhuman, heartless, but it is not so. She is here now. Weeping, she awaits me. She is carrying balm for our hands.

  Balance

  THEY HAD COME ON THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE TRAIN, BUT NOW there was a mix-up. Their things had been sent astray and would not arrive until nearly noon. When they first heard this news, passed on to them by Marc, the juggler, everyone groaned and swore, rubbed the backs of their necks, and wandered in constrained circles around the station. The performance was scheduled for three o’clock so there was time enough, but it was their custom to set up early, fixing the trapeze frame on the brightest, sunniest corner they could find, choosing the shops where they’d change and store the props. These arrangements always drew a crowd in themselves. By the time of the performance word of the troupe would have spread, and the crowds would ripple from the main square and spill into the side streets.

  That was their custom, because it left the day free. They went off alone or in groups of two or three, wandering around whatever place they were, seeing the sights and eating ice cream cones, watching the people around them with a certain detached curiosity that comes when you travel from place to place and never plan to stay. There was a certain superiority in it too. No matter how many stares they drew as oddly dressed strangers, they knew that soon they’d hold an audience of these same people breathless, spellbound. They knew that the waitress who tossed their food carelessly in front of them, that the shopkeepers who followed them suspiciously through narrow store aisles, would later realize their errors. Yes, they’d say to their friends, yes, they were right there. The man with the swords was sitting in that booth right there, I served him a root-beer float. And the woman? The lady trapeze artist? I sold her that hat she wore on the bicycle. That’s right, it came from my shop, right here.

  But now the baggage was late, and all these small pleasures were lost.

  It was Françoise who pulled them together again. Standing on the platform she clapped her hands together and sang their names out, as if she were a mother, or a teacher with a group of schoolchildren. Marc, she called. Frank, Jack, Peter. Her voice was clear and loud, and other people paused to look at her too. They saw a small woman, her body lean and compact. It was a young body, wide at the shoulders, narrow at the hips, almost the body of a young boy. Only the face told otherwise. It was delicate, feminine, with deepening lines at the corners of the mouth and across the forehead. Her hair was very short, and she wore her makeup already: two bright pink circles on her cheeks, black lines making sad, exaggerated eyes.

  “Now listen,” she said, when the four were gathered around her. “There’s nothing to be done about it, nothing at all. But it’s certainly not the end of the world, either. The station people will see that the things are sent to the square, I’ve made arrangements for all that. So, we’ll do what we want this morning, and meet at the square at noon to set up. How’s that? All right then, there’s no use mooning around.”

  She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked briskly to the stairs. Marc started to follow her but she smiled back at him.

  “Errands, darling,” she said, and he knew she wanted the morning alone.

  He fell back and watched her, the quick sure gait down the stairs, the circle of space she seemed, always, to carry with her. She’d been a dancer when he met her, and she still walked as if every movement of every muscle had been choreographed: graceful, sure, deliberate.

  Peter clapped him on the shoulder from behind.

  “Want to have a drink, old man?” he asked.

  Marc shook his head. Peter had just turned twenty-three. He could drink beer all morning and perform flawlessly in the afternoon. In fact, it seemed the more he drank the better he was at urn-balancing. With every drink he grew looser and more flexible, some tense veneer he ordinarily wore dissolved away.

  “Come on,” Peter insisted, pushing Marc on the shoulder. “Françoise won’t mind.”

  “She’d mind if I dropped her,” Marc said. “Go on,” he added. “You know me. I’ll drink with you later.”

  They had emerged from the station now, and were standing in a small park. There was a diagonal pathway, and at the end of it Marc could see the square where they’d perform. He’d never been to this town before, but nevertheless he was sure of the place. He watched Peter walk off, hurrying to catch up with Frank, who was walking slowly toward the square, hands deep in his pockets. Frank had been small and tense and wiry all his life, and now Marc was surprised to notice that he was getting fat. A loose roll moved around his waist with every step until he and Peter disappeared into the crowd.

  Marc sat down on a bench and took out a cigarette. He leaned back, enjoying the sun, and wondered where Françoise had gone. She was unhappy, that much was clear, and she had been unhappy for several months. Yet whenever Marc tried to talk with her about it, she gave him a quick, evasive smile and changed the subject. And he couldn’t guess, had never been able to guess, the precise sources of her sadness. The things he expected to distress her never did, and the things that did upset her she kept hidden deep away.

  It had always been so. He remembered it in the first night he had spent with her, over twenty years ago, the night she’d told him that for years, growing up, she’d dreamed of becoming a ballerina.

  “Why didn’t you?” he wanted to know. That morning he’d seen her at the competitions, doing an acrobatic routine so precise and graceful that he knew before the announcement that she’d win. “Why ever didn’t you?” he asked.

  She lifted one leg slowly. They were lying on a mattress on the floor of his apartment, and next to her were French doors that opened onto a balcony. They were flooded white with the street light, and it was against this background that he watched her leg rise, slowly, perfectly controlled, until it was silhouetted against the glass. Her toe pointed straight to the ceiling. Her leg stayed perfectly still, delicate, yet strong and finely sculpted.

  “I didn’t have the legs for it,” she said. She rotated her leg, examining it as if it belonged to someone else.

  “I can’t believe that,” he said.

  “Oh, they’re the right shape,” she said. “They’re the perfect shape, in fact. But look at the length. No, I’m afraid they won’t do. I’m long in the torso, short in the legs. That’s bad, for ballerinas. You don’t see ballerinas with short legs.”

  She’d pulled her knee in then, so that the silhouette of her leg looked briefly like a wing. Then she swung it down, and across his waist, until with one smooth movement she was straddled
across him.

  “I used to go to the auditions,” she said. “I practiced harder than anyone, I danced all the time. And I was good. All the judges agreed. But once I turned fifteen or so, once my body changed, I was never chosen. They all made sure to tell me I could dance, though. They let me know it wasn’t lack of talent. Even when I knew it was hopeless, I kept dancing. I used to go to the studio alone. I was fifteen, and I danced by myself every Saturday afternoon.”

  He could imagine her, lithe and nimble, spinning through a room where sunlight fell in patches on the floor, where even the soft rustling of her shoes had a faint echo. He felt terribly saddened by her story. He had liked her from the moment they’d met on the bus. Now, from somewhere in the sadness his affection grew deeper.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to her. She looked down at him.

  “No,” she said. “Don’t be. I’m not, anymore.”

  He reached up and stroked his fingers across her forehead, where she was frowning.

  “What are you thinking about then,” he said.

  Her mood changed, and she smiled.

  “You’ll laugh,” she said.

  “Good. Tell me.”

  “All right.” She clasped her hands behind her head and arched back, so that her breasts lifted and rose. He dropped his hands and ran them along the bony fan of her ribcage. “I was wondering,” she said, her eyes half closed. “I wonder if it’s possible for two people to make love while standing on their heads. You see,” she added when he burst out in laughter. “What did I say?”