by D B Nielsen
He shook his head bemused.
‘You’ve been doing your homework,’ was all he said.
I couldn’t help but smile in response; feeling suddenly elated as if he’d agreed to become a co-conspirator, a fellow adventurer in my crusade. He returned my smile, white teeth flashing in his exquisite face and, even now, I was struck anew at his beauty. A beauty so unearthly, I could barely believe he was real.
‘I agree to help you on one condition,’ he said, leaning forward to face me – so close that I could see the golden flecks in his eyes.
‘All right, what is it?’ I asked.
‘That if you don’t find whatever it is you think you’re going to find, you’ll give this quest of yours up.’
I found myself nodding in agreement.
‘Well then, you’re going to get more than you bargained for. I’m gonna be your goddamn partner, Mademoiselle Woods.’
St. John then gave me a brilliant smile which was uncannily similar to that of his great great-grandfather’s expression in the photo I’d viewed on the Internet.
And I wondered, fleetingly, if I’d bitten off just a bit more than I could chew.
PARIS
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Arriving at Gare du Nord, St. John had arranged for a hired car and chauffeur to drive us to the hotel. I was staying on the Rue de Rivoli, adjacent to the Jardin des Tuileries that bordered the Seine, at Le Meurice. It was a grand old hotel that veiled its elegance in eighteenth century finery. In the dull Paris sunlight its mellow stone colonnades hailed a warm welcome and beneath its cool marble beauty, amongst potted plants and Louis XVI styled period furniture, I checked into my room on the third floor.
St. John was not staying at the same hotel as he was returning home to his family. I’d tried to question him about them and his childhood growing up in Paris but he was rather vague about the details. All I knew for certain was that he lived somewhere on the Île de la Cité within walking distance of the cathedral. But as always with St. John, I didn’t know whether he was deliberately stonewalling me for some reason of his own or whether there was a perfectly reasonable explanation why he was equivocating. For someone who claimed we were past all evasions, there seemed to be plenty about him and his history he didn’t want me to know about.
It was still early, around midday, and from what I’d gathered listening unintentionally to St. John’s phone calls, translating his native tongue laboriously in my head, he was engaged later that afternoon to give a lecture at the Sorbonne on the Babylonian mathematical system and astronomy.
I considered asking St. John whether I could watch him deliver his lecture but thought better of it. If I didn’t ask him then he couldn’t refuse me.
We agreed to meet later that evening in the foyer of Le Meurice to go out for a light dinner. Until then, I was to be left to my own devices, on the proviso that I would avoid getting myself into trouble of any sort. I felt that there was no need to inform St. John that I was planning on attending his lecture as he probably would have felt that I was asking for trouble in spades.
As soon as he left me I returned to my room on the third floor which overlooked the courtyard, to place an outbound call to the Sorbonne. The room’s golden tones, from the drapes to the bedspread, suited both my mood and my quest – I was exhilarated, even though I was about to do something that the golden god himself would clearly disapprove of.
I knew I’d heard St. John mention the word “Sorbonne” in his phone conversation in the café at Ebbsfleet International but this still meant that I’d need to find the right university. The University of Paris was divided into thirteen interdisciplinary universities; three of which carried the name “Sorbonne” as true heirs to the original institution.
Stumbling over tenses and gendered nouns in rusty French, I managed to make myself understood. The operator had no knowledge of any lecture to be given by a Dr Rivers but she suggested that I try the Paris-Sorbonne IV which was still housed within the historical building in the Latin Quarter. If I remembered correctly, Dad had taught at Paris-Sorbonne IV – but the History Department of Paris-Sorbonne IV was situated at two different locations; the University Centre of Clignancourt and at the historic site of the Sorbonne.
The operator said that she would transfer me and asked for me to hold the line.
‘Bonjour, L’université Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV. Comment puis-je vous aider?’ A voice crackled down the line.
Once again I explained my dilemma in stilted French but the woman at the end of the line was most helpful. I jotted down the details provided to me by the registrar of the university who was kind enough to persist with my ineptitude. Thanking her gratefully with a triple utterance of ‘Merci, merci, merci’, I hung up the phone.
The lecture began at three, to be held at the historic building of the Sorbonne, so I had more than enough time to shower and change my outfit before walking there from the hotel. It was merely a matter of walking along the Tuileries and crossing over from the Right Bank of the Seine to the Left Bank where the Sorbonne was situated in the Latin Quarter. I would enjoy the opportunity to stroll around Paris again but this time without the need for a guardian.
Paris, even in winter, was magical. The air was crisp outside but I had changed into a lemon coloured woollen sweater with a Peter Pan collar and, to keep out the cold, wore my black overcoat, opting to keep on my jaunty little hat which made me look stylish amongst the fashionable Parisians. Though the trees of the Jardin des Tuileries stood bare, spindly branches reaching out in supplication to the winter sun, and there were no kiosks selling ice creams as in the summertime, children still ran amongst the fountains and statues playing games of tip and hide-and-seek.
I found a stand selling refreshments at one of the garden’s entrances and bought a hotdog, munching happily away as I walked towards the Louvre, avoiding its seductive pull on my imagination, and crossed the bridge to the Left Bank where I continued till I saw the Paris-Sorbonne, its domed bell-tower rising majestically above the Place de la Sorbonne.
The lecture was held in an older auditorium, its ornate plaster cast ceilings decoratively painted in gilded gold, while a massive Renaissance painting depicting a pastoral setting of nymphs and satyrs dominated the dais, dwarfing the projection screen beneath it. I shuffled in along with the others who had come to hear St. John’s lecture – a mixture of undergraduate and postgraduate students and professors – finding a seat somewhere in the middle of the hall and well to the side. The wooden benches were hard and uncomfortable but I wasn’t complaining. I was tense and anxious with the thought that St. John might notice me amongst the crowd or that someone would realise I wasn’t meant to be there and denounce me.
But no such thing happened.
St. John entered along with some colleagues; all of them distinguished gentlemen in academic silks. He’d also changed into a dark suit, cut superbly to fit his frame, his shirt and matching tie a subdued silver-grey. He walked right past the row where I was seated, engrossed in discussion with a white-haired professor.
I wasn’t the only female in the room to swoon at the sight of him as he stepped up to the dais, gracing their humble platform with his nobility. And there were a few guys in the room who mirrored our response, such was his beauty. The emotions that rioted inside were new to me – a mixture of pride and jealousy.
The professor, addressing his audience in his native tongue, introduced St. John in a verbose speech citing his credentials and some of his publications. Then St. John stood up and shook the man’s outstretched hand before replacing him at the podium.
The lights dimmed in the auditorium as an image was projected onto the screen and the lecture began, accompanied by a power point presentation.
St. John too spoke in French, perfectly fluent. His voice, deep and strong, arresting, held me transfixed as it rose and fell with a lyrical quality that was seductive to my ears. His face was lit with the soft golden glow of the lectern’s reading light, creating an a
ura of soft burnished brass locks which, worn overly long, curled above his collar.
But even without his good looks he would have been captivating. He was a tremendous lecturer.
Even though my French wasn’t quite up to this standard I understood his meaning perfectly. He held us all spellbound.
And the topic itself was vastly interesting.
He began by taking us back in time to 1800BC, relating the problems for the Babylonians of establishing an accurate calendar, so the emphasis was on recording and calculating the motions of the planets, the sun and the moon, solar and lunar eclipses, and the rising and setting of stars. While observation played an important role, this gave way to analysing records of the past, more ancient observations. In turn, this led to a mathematical prediction of astronomical events.
The Babylonians were superlative record takers and these records enabled them to recognise particular features and occurrences – such as the precession of the equinoxes and the regularity of eclipses. They also divided the sky into zones, with the most important being the path followed by the sun, moon and planets.
I even learned that the Latin names of the zodiac were translations of Babylonian constellations. I sat rapt as St. John continued his speech, explaining the religious reasoning of the Babylonians’ observations.
‘Such occurrences,’ he stated, ‘were believed to have astrological significance as the Babylonians thought that they foretold human fate. In fact, around 600BC in the Seleucid era – so-called as Seleucus, successor to Alexander the Great was mentioned in the Babylonian Diadochi Chronicle – Babylonian astronomy could predict planetary motions with surprising accuracy. This was due to their records but also to their powerful mathematical tool in the sexagesimals numeric system – a place-value system based on sixty, which is still in use today.’
At this he paused and scanned the audience, possibly for effect, leaving us to view the power point. The images on the screen depicted some of the four hundred clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s inscribed with cuneiform script and covering topics from fractions and algebra, quadratic and cubic equations through to the Pythagorean Theorem.
As his eyes swept over the rows they halted and I shrank into my seat in sudden fear, remembering his uncanny ability to see in the dark. I couldn’t believe that he could spot me in such a crowd but his mouth tightened imperceptibly as his eyes bore me back into the wooden bench, until I felt that my spine would be indented into its hardness. Then they released me, moving on, and what felt like minutes were, in all reality, only seconds – nothing that would alarm his captivated audience, bar one.
‘Unlike the Egyptians and Romans,’ he was saying, while I tried to recollect my scattered wits, ‘the Babylonians had a true place-value system – they were pioneers in this respect. After Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire which Babylon became a part of, Babylon’s science and culture significantly influenced the Greeks. It has become apparent that Greek and Hellenistic mathematicians and astronomers, in particular, Hipparchus, borrowed much from the Chaldeans – Chaldea being, in the Hellenistic context, historical Babylonia, the eleventh dynasty or sixth century BC.’
St. John flashed another clay tablet onto the screen simply classified as YBC 7289, the annotations of the diagonal image inscribed onto the tablet displaying an approximation of the square root of two, accurate to five decimal places.
It was truly mind-blowing that such a civilisation had existed and given the world so much. He concluded his speech on this note, highlighting the brilliance of the Babylonian mind and the legacy of Babylonian discoveries and ideas.
As he did so, I excused myself, making my way along the row carefully, trying not to disturb the other spectators, till I reached the side aisle. Crouching low, I continued to climb the auditorium steps in the dark as the thunderous applause began. As soon as I’d reached the top row I stood up, covered from St. John’s view by the standing ovation he was receiving from his admirers. I clapped too as I stood behind the crowd next to the auditorium’s main entrance. As I watched St. John being swamped by the first few rows hoping to claim his attention, I ducked out the door, breathing a sigh of relief. Hopefully he would be convinced that what he thought he saw was merely a trick of his mind.
I practically flew back to the hotel, adrenaline giving my legs wings. I only felt that I might have gotten out of the woods when I was leaning back against the locked door of my hotel room, chest heaving, blood pounding in my ears a rhythm sounding like Safe, Safe, Safe.
Feeling hot and flustered, I took off my overcoat, tossed my jaunty cap onto the coffee table and threw myself face down on the bed, burying my face into the coolness of the bedspread. My scar throbbed slightly and I knew I should go find my painkillers and take two to ease the pain but I just didn’t feel like moving. Instead, I thought about what I’d just learned and how much I still didn’t know about Babylonian society. With such an advanced civilisation, it was no wonder that they were able to create the artefact with its map of the cosmos.
My eyelids fluttered down of their own accord and, as I became aware of my own shallow breathing, another vision hit me.
I am walking delicately through the royal park, the King’s forest. It is dusk, pale and pink, and cold. Frail, fragrant climbers of musky rose mourn my loss; their soft incense hangs upon the boughs, caressing my senses. The moths beat their wings against the embalmed darkness, their frantic motion a tempest, a tornado. I taste the ripeness of the flesh of fruit, its honeyed pulp bursting on my ruby lips, but already it brings a saccharine stench of decay, the rotten sweetness of corruption. My beloved and I lie satiated in a copse of wild fruit trees with their aromatic sweetness cloying to my smooth skin, my breasts, the long tendrils of my hair. Why, then, do I feel naked and shamed? I turn to this golden god in my sleep, desiring his warmth, the heavy weight of his limbs pressing upon me, but it is the weight of all passion and despair that I feel instead. I know the first sensations of bitter cold, the bleak expanse of hours, the pang of childbirth, the sharpness of death. A serpent slithers through the fruit tree’s boughs, twining itself around its heart. Side by side, my love and I sleep and dream the real and the imagined world.
I woke hours later, disoriented, to find myself in the same position, feet hanging off the bed, perspiration clinging to my skin and hair. The room was in semi-darkness, save for the streetlights shining through the window from the courtyard below.
The vision was familiar yet different. It was almost the same as the first vision I’d experienced but with a subtle change in perspective – this time I was no longer male but, instead, a woman. And it was through a woman’s eyes I had experienced the world around me; the sensations of life and death far stronger.
But I had no time now to analyse the vision as I looked up at the clock by my bedside and realised that I was to meet St. John in less than twenty minutes for dinner.
Uttering an expletive, I jumped up from the bed and immediately sat back down again. I felt light-headed and faint, seeing spots appear before my eyes. I took a moment to sit quietly before attempting to rise again.
This time I was able to stand without feeling the blood rushing to my head, so I quickly turned on the shower in the bathroom and threw myself in as soon as I was naked. The hot water was invigorating, reviving me just enough to feel that I could face St. John after sneaking into his lecture without betraying myself.
I dressed without care being too much in a hurry. Towel drying my hair because there wasn’t time to blow dry it straight, I wore my jeans and boots again and pulled on the bright red soft knitted top I wore when St. John had first come to dinner. At this rate, I would be exhausting my limited wardrobe before my time in Paris had ended. Applying some lip gloss and a squirt of my favourite perfume as a last defensive gesture, I picked up my overcoat, slipping my wallet into the pocket. I decided not to bring my tote or wear my stylish cap as my hair was still slightly damp. The last thing I did before I left was to take two painkill
ers, chasing them down with a couple of gulps of the bottled water provided complimentary by the hotel.
As the elevator doors slid open revealing the grand marbled foyer, I immediately spotted St. John standing with his back to me, hands thrust into his trousers, as still as any statue in a museum. He was still wearing his suit from earlier and my breath caught in my throat even as I gazed upon the back of him – his wide shoulders filled out his jacket admirably and his blond hair curled loosely over his collar. I realised that I was always looking at his face and had never clearly paid attention to what a dashing figure he cut; he must have an extraordinary physique beneath his clothes. I blushed at where my thoughts were taking me.
As if by sixth sense he turned at my approach and, flustered, I dropped the electronic keycard to my hotel room onto the marble floor and had to bend to retrieve it, giving me time to compose myself and my wayward thoughts in his presence.
‘I was about to call your room,’ St. John said, stooping to pick up the keycard that I’d been unable to grasp with my nerveless fingers.
‘Sorry, I’m late,’ I began, straightening up to take the keycard from him and slip it into my pocket, ‘I had a headache and decided to take a nap and the next thing I knew it was twenty to seven.’
I felt it was better to stick to the truth as far as possible.
He gently lifted my chin with his forefinger, so that he could peruse my face. ‘You still look a little pale. Are you sure you’re up for tonight?’
I gave him a wan smile. ‘Yeah, I have to eat, don’t I? Besides, I’ve taken a couple of painkillers so I should be okay.’
‘Right,’ he agreed, tucking my hand into the curve of his arm, ‘We’ll keep it local then. Hotel or shall we find a restaurant close by?’
I protested, ‘I would normally say definitely a restaurant locally but I’ve heard that the chef here has three Michelin stars. Only I don’t think I’m dressed for the occasion.’
