by M. J. Rose
I hated being down there alone, too deep in the earth. I worried about the building on top of us. If a bomb hit, would the Palais collapse and trap us here—or, worse, cave in?
To keep myself busy, I started to make tea but abandoned the effort halfway through. I didn’t really want the strong Russian tea the Orloffs favored. I didn’t want to be down in that room. I wanted the war to be over. I wanted to stop making mourning jewelry and create jewels celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, accessories that would give delight and joy, that would dazzle rather than depress.
I hated the eerie silence in the bunker. Not a calm quiet, but a nerve-racking one. Had the raid ended? Sometimes they were over in less than an hour, but often, if the bombs hit, not for several hours. I’d stashed a stack of books under the tea things and riffled through it. The last time I’d been in the shelter, I’d started reading Gaston Leroux’s popular gothic The Phantom of the Opera. I picked it up again and found I didn’t remember anything from when I’d read it the last time.
I’d only managed a few pages when I sensed someone outside. I waited in vain for the door to open and, when it didn’t, wondered why anyone would linger in the hallway. Should I check to see who it was? Only Monsieur Orloff’s paranoia about German spies using the underground, a fear fueled by the press, stopped me.
As I sat waiting, listening, trying to ascertain if anyone was there or not, I grew more nervous. No one came in, but I still thought someone was there. And then, I became aware of warmth against my thigh, directly beneath the pocket of my jeweler’s apron, which in my haste I’d forgotten to remove. When my skin started to burn, I reached into the pocket and found Madame Alouette’s crystal orb. Had I slipped it into my pocket when the siren started?
And why was it so hot? Yes, I’d been polishing it and that heated up the metal, but only while the process continued. The warmth could not have lasted this long.
I turned the piece over in my hand. The crystal was almost all clear, with a single star-shaped inclusion in the center of the lower right segment, like a piece of the night sky captured in glass. Like the orb that I’d chosen in Anna’s reading room.
I had hoped I’d never hear it again, but there was that howling, sad wind. And the mixture of voices and screams, water rushing, stones breaking. I tried to block it all out. To shut it down before it began. But I didn’t know how and the voice broke through.
I think I’m lost.
I wasn’t sure I heard the words as much as sensed them. I didn’t know what to do. Where to go.
Can you help me?
I recognized the dark voice. The voice I’d prayed was my imagination.
“Are you . . .” I hesitated. I still couldn’t bring myself to name him. If it were true . . . If I’d conjured him, then it meant that like my mother, I was . . . Except I had to know. I took a deep breath and whispered my question.
“Are you Jean Luc Forêt?”
Yes.
Even though I’d assumed he was, I was stunned.
How do you know my name?
“From your mother.”
Can you help me? I don’t know where I am.
“I’m not sure.”
Was his soul trapped between this world and the next? I’d read about the Bardo in Anna’s books. A Buddhist concept describing the place a soul waits between the end of life and being reborn. She’d thought some of my soldiers might be speaking from that astral plane, but I didn’t know what I believed.
Before, it seemed as if the dying soldiers had somehow left behind messages for their loved ones as they moved on, and all I’d done was sift through the detritus of everyone’s thoughts to find the right ones.
With Jean Luc I still had to sift through the clamor and racket of the universe, but his voice pulsed with urgency and desperation as he communicated directly with me.
Am I with you? Where you are?
“I’m not sure. I’m in a shelter underneath a shop.”
A shop?
“In Paris.”
This was bizarre. Impossible. Beyond reason. Irrational.
I’m not actually there, though. Am I?
“I don’t know.” I looked around the shelter in its shadows. I waved my hands in front of me and to the side. I felt nothing.
“I don’t see you. What can you see? Can you see me?”
I’m staring into darkness, but up ahead I can see light where your voice comes from.
“Light?”
Lovely light. It’s the light that you’re made of, I think. It’s almost the shape of a woman.
“But you can’t see anything else? Nothing around you?”
Nothing around me. Just your form made of light. Golden light streaming from your outline.
“Golden light?”
Yes. It’s beautiful. As if you were made of gold.
“I’m a jeweler.”
He sighed. As if the color of the gold made sense to him now.
How did you find me?
“I think you found me. Through the jewelry I was working on. I make mourning jewelry. Sometimes I get messages from dead soldiers to give to their families. I was making a talisman for your mother.”
There are a dozen soldiers dead because of me and . . .
His next words faded out, and I leaned forward into the gloomy shelter as if that might help me hear him more clearly. Jean Luc’s voice sounded anguished.
It was all my fault.
“You couldn’t have known a bomb was going to hit. You can’t blame yourself.”
All my men.
“How can I help you?”
Can’t. No one can. It’s too late.
“You must need something.”
Why do you think so?
“Because I can hear you. Why else would I be able to hear you if it wasn’t so I could help you?”
I’d never had a conversation with one of the soldiers before, and even as I was having this one, I knew the impossibility of it. My imagination finally had taken over. The war and the endless reports of more soldiers dying and the sadness that multiplied with every passing day and the ever-present threat from the bombs that kept coming . . . it was all too much. I’d snapped like the soldiers who came back, I thought. My fate was mirroring theirs. Surely I was a victim of the same war fatigue as so many others in Paris, in France, all over the world. Too much death, too much grief, too much fear. And now I’d manufactured my own soldier so I could help someone and feel I was pulling my weight.
No, not your imagination.
I heard his frustration. He wanted to prove to me that he was real. Or as real as a dead man might be.
Suddenly I felt a bit of warm wind in the shelter, almost as if someone had opened the door, but it remained shut. Then a lock of hair blew off my forehead. I quickly reached my hand out, as hopeful as I was terrified I might feel his fingers.
You felt that, didn’t you?
My shoulders started to shake. Inside of my chest I felt the wings of the trapped bird fluttering to be let out. My fear. I didn’t want to feel it. I closed my eyes. The wind brushed against my cheek.
I’m here. At least right now, I’m here. You believe me, don’t you?
The very last thing I wanted to say was that I did. For surely it would be proof of only one thing: my madness.
Do you believe me? Haven’t I proved I’m here?
“Are you here all the time?” My voice sounded like a child’s.
No.
“And you don’t know where you are the rest of the time?”
No. I don’t know.
I shivered; his voice was heartbreaking. The wind slowed to a breeze and then the breeze was gone. All was still. I shivered again. The room temperature had dropped, and I knew Jean Luc was gone.
If he really had been there at all.
T
he door opened, and Grigori stepped inside the shelter.
“I heard you talking . . .” He looked around. “But it appears you are alone.”
I gestured to the room and tried to act as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. “You can see for yourself. No one’s here.”
“Yes, but I thought I heard you talking.”
“Only to myself.” I smiled, trying to make light of his question. I didn’t want to start a conversation with Grigori about my talents. Just like his stepmother’s gypsy readings, my ability to relay messages from the departed disturbed him. Russia, he’d told me, possessed a long history of mystics who attempted to control people with their powers. Like Rasputin, he said with disdain, as he blamed the self-proclaimed holy man for much of Russia’s misfortune.
“You’re too young to be talking to yourself.”
“It’s an occupational hazard of working so many hours alone,” I said.
“Spending too much time by yourself is unwise. It can lead to troubling, even frightening thoughts, especially in a place like this dungeon.” He shook his head as if trying to dislodge a thought. Or memory. “I saw what the trenches could do to a soldier. Confinement is a harsh punisher.”
Noticing my abandoned effort at making tea, he took up where I’d left off. “And why are you down here alone? Where are my father and Anna?”
“Both out. I thought you’d be down sooner, though. What kept you?”
“Seeing a customer.”
I smelled kerosene.
“I insisted we take shelter, but he was adamant to get back home. I went with him as far as the gate where his car waited. Stupid of me, but he couldn’t carry his purchases himself.”
“Couldn’t he return for them?”
“It was his wife’s birthday and he wanted to take them home.”
“What did he buy?” I asked, happy to move the conversation away from myself. I didn’t want to think about the voice, but the charm was still warm in my hand.
“Two small end tables inlaid with porcelain.”
I nodded, picturing the delicate tables in Grigori’s store. His eye for antiques was as fine as his father’s for jewels.
“I’m sorry to see them go, but he didn’t even haggle on the price,” he said, as he poured the water. While he waited for the tea to steep, he looked over at me. His dark brown eyes were unreadable but penetrating. Although he seemed to be able to see through me, I couldn’t even guess what he was thinking.
After Grigori had been wounded and was on his way back home from the front, Anna warned me her stepson was prone to moodiness and quite enigmatic, and she feared his injury would exacerbate both traits. I found his mysteriousness attractive and his sulkiness poetic, but lately his inscrutability had been frustrating.
“This is such a godforsaken hole, isn’t it?” he said. “Let’s imagine we’re in Ladurée, enjoying afternoon tea with delightful pastries.” Unlike his eyes, his smile was uncomplicated, his dimples appealing.
“Yes, let’s.”
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and put it over his forearm, impersonating a waiter. “Would you like some tea, Mademoiselle?” he asked in an exaggerated accent.
“I’d love some.” I laughed with relief that his mood had lightened. And that I could, at least for a while, pretend that mine had too.
He poured the tea with a flourish, placed it on the tray, and then came toward me with a pronounced limp. He’d almost reached me when his knee gave out and he went sprawling and teacups fell and the liquid soaked the rugs.
Too stunned to talk, I immediately went to his aid, but he brushed me off and struggled to get up and then clean up the mess. I knew better than to try and make light of the situation. His infirmity embarrassed him enough. I believed if there were not an air raid going on, he would have bolted.
I let him pick up the cups and the tray and remained silent. I’d let him choose when to talk and what to say. Instead of making more tea, he pulled out a silver flask engraved with ornate initials and poured vodka into one of the cups. He downed it in one gulp, turned to me, and offered me the flask.
I nodded, and he splashed some in one of the cups and handed it to me. After he poured more for himself, he sat beside me as if nothing unusual had happened.
The crystal egg still in my hand grew warmer. I looked down, surprised.
“What are you holding?” he asked.
I didn’t want to show it to Grigori. Didn’t want to share it. I realized I didn’t even want to give it to Madame Alouette. I wanted to keep this one for myself.
Yes, please, hide it.
Even with Grigori there, I’d heard the voice. Or thought I had. Quickly I looked at him. Had he heard it? Or had I imagined it?
“Are you all right? I asked what you’re holding.”
I’d forgotten to answer his previous question.
“Opaline?” He looked at me strangely. Because he’d heard the voice too? I needed to find out and at the same time distract him from wanting to see the talisman.
“Did you just hear something?” I asked.
“Only the silence following my question. Why won’t you tell me what you are holding?”
So he couldn’t hear Jean Luc. I was glad for the confirmation. Now for an explanation of why I wouldn’t show him what I hid in my hand.
“It’s just one of the talismans I’ve been working on, but I’ve messed up the soldering and I’m embarrassed.” I closed my hand even tighter over the crystal. No, I wouldn’t give it to Madame Alouette. It might be wrong of me, but I didn’t want to give it up. I’d make another for her and keep this one for myself. But what about Jean Luc’s hair? Could I get a lock from someone with the same coloring? She’d never know. But what of my transgression? Would I somehow be punished? I almost laughed. By who? I’d never kept one of the talismans before, but I needed to keep this one.
“Let me see,” Grigori insisted, half teasing and half annoyed. “My father says you are one of the finest young jewelers he’s worked with and I haven’t seen one of your famous talismans.”
Grigori didn’t spend much time in the jewelry shop—he was too busy with his furniture and art—and I never displayed the charms. They seemed sacrosanct. A private icon meant only for the one in mourning.
“All the more reason then not to show you this one.” I slipped it into my pocket.
“I promise not to criticize you. Besides, I doubt it is anything but perfect.” He put his hand on my forearm.
He was so close I was afraid he’d feel the heat emanating off the charm and I inched back. Grigori looked askance. Our physical relationship should have allowed for such a simple touch.
“Don’t pressure me,” I said. “I’ll show it to you when I’m finished with it and happy with the workmanship. I don’t want the first one you see to be damaged.”
Yes, damaged is fitting. I don’t deserve to be called any less.
Jean Luc’s sad voice brought tears to my eyes. What had broken him? Why was he still suffering when death was supposed to be a relief for those hurt and destroyed by war?
Grigori was still close enough to me that I could smell his peppery patchouli cologne. Other days, other nights, I’d found its spicy darkness seductive. I tried to remember that and focus on him and his scent and not on the voice in my head. Here was an actual man, not a— What was the other? Surely just a manifestation of my imagination. I was reading too many of my great-grandmother’s books and believing the fiction. My ability was curious to be sure, but I was no different than a telephone or telegraph operator receiving messages over wires. Mine were just invisible. Either I was mind reading the mourners’ wishes, or reaching out into the ether and picking up the last lingering thoughts of dying soldiers. The one thing I wasn’t doing was actually speaking with the dead.
“Thank you for the drink,” I said, and too
k another sip.
“So you are refusing to show me your jewel?”
“Yes.”
“I’m quite bereft,” he teased, his dark mood lifting, thanks to the vodka.
“Oh yes, I can see that.” I forced a smile. “Tell me about your client’s purchase. How much did you discount the tables?”
“Not a franc,” Grigori said, and began to regale me with the nuances of his transaction.
Anna once told me Grigori left his best self on the battlefield and the man who’d come back was an exaggeration of all of his worst traits. She tried to help him, offering all manner of talismans and brews, some to make his physical pain lessen, others to help heal his broken soul. Jealous and angry because one of her sons with his father became a hero and died on the battlefield and the other was on his way to becoming a hero, he dismissed her and her efforts.
“But how did you convince him to buy both tables?” I asked.
“I showed him how the lovers’ tale that begins on the first continues on the second. They were clearly created to be a pair, one on either side of a settee, together for almost two hundred years. To separate an artist’s work like that would be a travesty . . .”
This was the time I enjoyed him the most, when he forgot about his mangled leg, when he could smile and talk about beauty and art.
“And that convinced him?”
“Not quite. It wasn’t until I threw in the pièce de résistance, telling him about a centuries-old legend that it was bad luck to break them up. Russians are so susceptible to superstition.”
“Is that true?”
“Would I lie?” he asked slyly.
“You might. Was it true?”
“I made a lovely profit on them and feel like celebrating something going right in this forsaken mess of a world. Would you join me if we can find a café that isn’t closed because of the raid? Champagne might help us forget we’ve spent the afternoon in a bomb shelter. We can pretend . . .” He left the thought unfinished as he reached out and touched my cheek with one finger, moving a curl behind my ear. I tried not to notice that the talisman remained warm against my skin.
“What? What would you like to pretend?” I asked.
