by Kelly Link
Descartes gathers up some books which fell to the floor during the fight. Gaston comes back in. “Master, please forgive me. A messenger came and told me you wanted me at your brother’s house.”
“Even if the world is not a conspiracy to deceive us, discerning the truth is very difficult. I am very glad you came back when you did.”
Gaston hesitates for a moment. “Master—what you said to that fellow just now—is it true? Are you really one of them?”
Descartes laughs out loud. “No, Gaston. In fact, tonight the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross disbands for ever. Now go up to the attic and fetch my campaign chest, then lay out some clothing. Something that won’t show blood.”
Interior: the Deux Frères tavern, night. Descartes comes in, wrapped up in a big black cloak lined with scarlet. He takes his usual seat by the fireplace and signals the serving-girl, Jeanne. “My dear! Bring me red wine of Touraine—and a glass for everyone in the place! I am celebrating a transformation!”
She brings out an armload of bottles and begins pouring for the dozen or so customers in the place, who raise their cups to Descartes. Clovis Marin pushes through the knot of people around him to sit down across from Descartes. “What are you celebrating, Monsieur?”
“I have found the secret of the Rosy Cross, Marin! The secret is VITRIOL.”
“Oil of vitriol?”
Descartes shakes his head. “No. It’s an acrostic. Basil Valentine devised it: ‘Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem.’” He writes on the tabletop with his finger, spelling out the word as he speaks. In the background we hear the Rosicrucian violin theme again. “’Visit the interior of the earth and purifying reveals the hidden stone.’”
“Where did you hear of this?”
“From the lips of a man who has been initiated himself,” says Descartes. “I have no doubt that it will lead me to the truth.”
He beckons to Jeanne. “Here, my dear.” He presses a gold piece into her hand and whispers to her, then gets up and waves his hat. “Goodbye, gentlemen! I cannot stay!”
Descartes plunges through the crowd to the door. Marin tries to follow, but is snagged by Jeanne’s hand on his collar. “Monsieur,” she says politely. “There is the matter of settling your account.”
Exterior: the street. Descartes stops just a few doors down from the Deux Frères. Gaston hands him a bundle of weapons. Descartes buckles on his sword and shoves two pistols into his doublet. He nods to his servant and hurries off into the darkness.
At the city gate he hands a small bag of coins to a guard, and is allowed to pass through, into the suburb of Montrouge. He ignores the taverns clustered around the gate, where customers come to take advantage of the lower tax on wine, and hurries along one of the roads leading into the darkness.
A few hundred yards along he finds what he’s looking for: the entrance to the old stone quarries underground. The gate is rusty but unlocked, and the stairs leading down the long vertical shaft are very rickety. He lights a candle and descends. The wooden steps are damp and slippery, and once a rotten board gives way when he puts his weight on it. At the bottom a pair of galleries stretch off into blackness on either side. Descartes sets down his candle on the bottom step and lights a second one before taking the passage to the right. The gallery widens out into a real room after a hundred paces.
Descartes looks at the floor: it’s surprisingly clean for an abandoned quarry, and he can see the stumps of five candles forming the points of a star. His boots are coated with white dust from the passage. On one wall there’s a big rose and cross design, freshly painted in red.
He lights more candles and puts one in each corner, then stands in front of the bloody cross, waiting.
In the distance we hear the squeak of the rusty gate. The Rosicrucian theme sounds, now uptempo and menacing, full orchestra. Footsteps on the stairs. Then, shadowy against the candle light, a dark shape comes along the gallery. It looks just like the mysterious pursuer who followed René home the night before. The footsteps sound the same, too.
Descartes tosses aside his own cloak. Instead of his usual green doublet he’s wearing red. The intruder pauses at the entrance of the room, then steps inside. We still can only see a cloaked figure with his hat pulled down.
“Welcome to the Invisible College, Monsieur Marin,” says Descartes.
Marin takes off his hat and looked around the room, then back at Descartes. “Are they here? Truly?”
“They do not exist, Marin. They never existed.”
“No! You lie! I heard you earlier this evening—the VITRIOL acrostic! I must speak with them—I wish only to learn.”
“You never learn. Pfau told you the same thing, didn’t he? There was a copy of the proclamation in his room, freshly printed and crisp, not torn from a wall.”
“Yes! I noticed it also! He was a member, or their agent, and yet—” Marin stops, his eager expression turning to dismay.
“And yet he refused to tell you how to find the brethren of the Rosy Cross. When you insisted, I expect he told you they are nothing but a fantasy, a fraud designed to snare the gullible.”
“He lied! They are real!” Marin fumbles at his cloak.
Descartes draws his sword. “Don’t—” he begins, but the other man’s hand is on his own sword hilt. Descartes lunges, stabbing Marin in the flesh of his right forearm.
Marin draws his sword, clutching it in a clumsy fist as the yellow silk of his sleeve begins to turn red.
“I expect you said the same to Pfau, and he laughed in your face. Told you not to be a fool. You grew enraged, just as you are now.” Descartes hangs back, sword at the ready. Marin is bleeding, and he is content to let the man weaken. “Give up, and let me get you to a surgeon.”
“They are real! They must be!” Marin charges forward, slashing at Descartes without any subtlety or technique. René deflects his first thrust, but the big man’s strength is overwhelming.
René backs up again and his heel touches the wall behind him. Marin wades in, ignoring René’s stop thrust to his face as he swings wildly, like a peasant scything wheat. His blade gashes Descartes’s thigh, and René barely blocks a cut at his belly.
Marin’s face and arm are streaming blood now, but he doesn’t slow down and doesn’t seem to be weakening. René sidesteps to the left, wincing at the pain in his own thigh, and cuts down hard on Marin’s outstretched sword arm.
The other man drops his sword, but it doesn’t make him any less furious. His left hand clutches René by the throat. Descartes tries to bring up his sword, but it’s tangled in Marin’s cloak. They’re body-to-body now, and Descartes can only punch the side of Marin’s head with his free hand. Marin has him pinned to the wall and his grip on René’s throat is like iron.
Slightly out of focus image as Descartes grows dizzy. He hits Marin hard on his injured right arm, then knees him in the stomach. This weakens the madman’s grip enough for Descartes to pry his hand loose. He shoves Marin away and takes a great breath of fresh air. The image snaps back into clarity.
Marin charges him again, pinning his arms and slamming René against the wall. Descartes braces his back against the wall and kicks out with both feet. The two men tumble to the floor on opposite sides of the little chamber.
Marin screams and charges again, but this time Descartes gets one hand inside his doublet first. They roll on the floor, wrestling and biting, and then there’s an ear-splitting blast and a bright flash as Descartes fires his pistol.
Marin’s expression changes from rage to desperation as he tries to breathe but only makes a horrible gurgling, sucking noise. Descartes scrambles away as Marin clutches at his bleeding neck. Close-up on René’s red-spattered face as we hear Marin choking on his own blood, and finally silence.
Interior: Descartes’s house, morning. René is changing the bandage on his gashed leg and washing the wound wi
th a basin of hot water. His servant Gaston enters, breathless.
“You delivered it?”
“I did, Monsieur. It took me a while, but I placed it in his own hands.”
“Excellent. Now help me get dressed. I expect we will have visitors very soon.”
Close-up of a red-gloved hand knocking on the front door. Gaston opens it. Pull back to reveal four men in matching scarlet and gold livery waiting with a sedan chair in front of the house. Descartes, in his usual green plume, limps out and climbs into the chair.
Montage: aerial shot of the chair making its way through the crowded streets, the chair being carried across the bridge, and finally the sedan chair arriving in front of a grand house in the Place Royale. The Descartes theme plays in a minor key.
Interior: A lavish room in the house. Four or five kittens play among the papers piled on two large desks by the window. A couple more are scavenging from a plate of fish. In the center of the room Richelieu stands on a stool while three tailors hover about him fitting a set of glorious crimson Cardinal’s robes on his thin frame.
Descartes enters and bows.
“It seems rather odd to accuse me of committing a crime when you killed another man for it just last night,” says Richelieu without preface.
“I did not say you committed the crime, I said you were responsible for it.”
Richelieu turns his palms toward Descartes. “These arms did not strike down Pfau.”
“No.” Descartes sighs. “But it was you who built the machinery. Your scheme to entrap the Duc de la Vieuville in a false Rosicrucian Order was like a great water-mill. Marin and Pfau were caught in the gears and destroyed. I assume the lovely Mademoiselle Sophie was one of your mill-wrights.”
“Not entrap. Expose. I suspected that Vieuville might be taking bribes, but I needed to know for certain. From what he told the actors I hired to portray the Invisible College, I have enough evidence to make a formal accusation. He will be gone by Christmas.”
“Pfau and Marin are gone already.”
“Pfau was a useful man and I am sorry to lose him. But this Marin suffered from a kind of mania or fascination with conspiracies and secret orders. This was true long before I hired Pfau to create the Invisible College. Surely it would have destroyed him in time.”
“Do you feel no regret at all?”
“I do not.” Richelieu steps down from the stool and approaches Descartes. “You understand, I hope, that all of this must remain secret. Explaining why Marin killed Pfau would expose my part in the affair, and conditions are not right for me to permit that. Mademoiselle de Montsegur would also be in jeopardy if the Duke were to suspect she is one of my agents.”
“Is it not better to let all the world know that justice has been done?”
“You and I are probably the only ones who care. So long as we are satisfied, the matter can rest there.”
Descartes can’t think of a reply, so he bows again—a little less deeply, perhaps—and turns to leave.
“I am not done,” says Richelieu quietly, and Descartes stops short. “You have served justice in your own way, Monsieur Descartes. I will not reward you with gold; you once said you live within your means. Instead I will give you some advice. Leave Paris. Leave France. You think too much. It makes you dangerous. I would not wish to see your ears cut off, or your tongue branded for stating unwelcome truths, or your head on a pike somewhere. Nor would I wish to give the orders myself. Go someplace like Holland or England, where men care more about money than ideas, so you can think what you like as long as it doesn’t interfere with business.”
“I will do as you say, Your Grace—or should it be Your Eminence?”
“Goodbye, Monsieur Descartes.” Richelieu indicates the door with a glance. Descartes limps out. Camera stays on his face as he does.
Behind him Richelieu watches him for a moment, then turns away, steps back on the stool and snaps his fingers for the tailors. “Make me look like . . . an archangel!” he says.
The door shuts behind Descartes and for a moment he looks directly into the camera, then gives us a polite nod before moving out of frame. We hear him whistling his theme song as he goes downstairs. Fade to white, roll credits.
Comfort Food
Nicole Kimberling
Sometimes everyone needs comfort. Maybe it’s just rained on your actual parade. Or maybe a great wave of sadness has just crashed over you, leaving your face streaked with smudgy blue eyeliner. At these times, you don’t want any witnesses. That’s when to seek out a big round loaf of bread.
I say seek out because, let’s face it—baking a loaf of bread takes way too long to be provide the kind of emergency rescue that’s needed in the wake of a catastrophe. Baking bread (good bread, anyway) requires planning, foresight and more than one day.
You need comfort now.
Step One: Turn the oven to 400 degrees then go find a bakery. Or a grocery store. You’ll want a loaf that’s at least 12 inches around. Avoid baguettes. They’re too skinny. Too brittle. They’re likely to snap before you do. And that’s the last thing you need when you just can’t take it anymore.
And don’t buy anything sliced. That will only remind you of how you feel like everything is coming apart—as if some vast exterior force seeks to reduce everything and everyone to a uniform pieces ready to be consumed thoughtlessly by people who never, ever think about the cost of their own banal convenience.
Return home and proceed to the next step.
Step Two: Lock all the doors and windows. Draw the curtains lower the shades and turn off your phone. No one should interrupt this moment. It’s all about you.
Step Three: Put the bread into the oven and set a timer for 10 minutes.
Step Four: Locate a clean towel, washable throw or blanket (a baby blanket is more or less the perfect size if you happen to have one around).
Step Five: When the timer goes off, remove the hot bread from the oven, wrap it in the blanket and hug it straight to your stomach. Feel how warm it is—how the scent of it permeates your clothes. Stay like this for as long as necessary—or until the bread gets cold.
Step Six: Remove the bread from your stomach and ponder what to do with the loaf now. You can, if you choose, eat it. You can do this in whatever way pleases you—by ecstatically ripping hunks off it or by carefully slicing it or by hollowing it out and cramming the cavity with every indulgence you can think of before descending on it in a hedonistic frenzy that leaves your hands smeared with chocolate and raspberry jam.
Alternately you could not eat it at all, opting instead to chuck it at a passing car that offends you. Or you might bury in a shallow grave in the back yard where it will lay decaying and never be spoken of again.
Step Seven: Open the curtains and reestablish contact with the outside world. Stronger. Nourished. And probably no longer so very hungry.
Bears at Parties
Emily B. Cataneo
WRITTEN FOR THE BERLINER TAGEBLATT MAY 5, 1924 SOCIETY COLUMN (UNPUBLISHED)
It’s Saturday night at the Hotel Adlon and the party’s just getting started. The hotel, a green-roofed behemoth, hulks at the corner of Pariser Platz, broadcasting songs and shouts from its liquid-light windows. Berlin’s swell and famous—its White Russian princesses, its auto magnates, its pouty actresses—strut or swan towards the flung-wide door, ready to Charleston the night away, and among them slouches yours truly: Mareike Moser, humble party correspondent.
You may be wondering, where’s the usual rotation of Annas and Gertruds writing up my society news? Who is this Mareike character? Yes, my readers, I’m usually just a coffee slinger and copygirl at the Tageblatt. But this week all the Annas and Gertruds were preoccupied—what poor timing, for a week when there’s a party at the Adlon!—and so my big-shot boss Franz Jacobs swiveled around the newsroom and jabbed a finger at me. You do it, sweetheart. Just change your clothes first.
Well, I never change my clothes, and so I slunk into the Adlon wearing my usual costume: high-buttoned blouse and ankle-hiding skirt. I climbed the thick marble stairs to the second-floor ballroom where the party was starting to swing. The ballroom: a gleaming parquet floor, already glammed up by a few overeager couples Charleston-ing and Lindy-hopping. Red-and-gold Oriental screens lining the windows. A five-piece brass band howling in the corner. Bejeweled barbed laughter. I clutched my notepad, navigated through this mess, and posted up at a table in the room’s hinterlands. From there, I could keep an eye out for new arrivals.
I must admit I had an ulterior motive when I agreed to cover the party at the Hotel Adlon. When Jacobs shoved the guest list onto my desk, I scanned the oh-so-important names, and one pair jumped out at me: Karl and Liselotte Acker, the financier and his wife. That financier’s wife is Lise Teppen to me, and she’s back in Berlin, after five years in New York City. When I saw that name, I knew that I would go to the party, despite another fact, my readers, that I must admit, which is that I absolutely hate parties.
I’ve always hated them. Why, Lise and I first became friends because of a shared scorn for parties. You see, growing up in our village on the plains sweeping east into Russia, Lise had a certain reputation. When she was a girl, she and her brother got into a quarrel, a normal childish squabble, really, but she jabbed him in the forearm with her fountain pen, harder than she meant to. The pen broke; her brother burned his way through an infection and lost the arm above the elbow. Did I mention the Teppens are blacksmiths? After that, hounded by her bitter mother, Lise spent most of her time avoiding the rooms above the silent forge. Whenever I saw her roaming the streets, provoking whispers (that strange lost angry Teppen girl), I always thought she looked as though she were possessed by every evil curse that ever flew through those windswept lands. I told my best friend Ida Werner that I hated Lise Teppen. But even Mareike Moser at seventeen was canny enough to know that I was terribly jealous of her.
