by Frank Yerby
He walked over to the wine-seller.
“A carafe!” he laughed; “and keep it full!”
Pierre grinned at him.
“See you later, my old one,” he said; “I’m going to earn that coup de skillet!”
Jean watched him moving off into the crowd. He took a step towards Pierre to call him back, for the last thing on earth he wanted now, tonight, was to be alone; but already it was too late, the crowd of revellers had swallowed Pierre up as though he had never been.
Jean downed his wine in one long steady draught and put out his carafe again, feeling the wine curling hotly, evilly in his belly, the fumes of it rising black and sulphurous into his brain. He was not a good drinker, and he knew it; he didn’t even enjoy drinking; he hated intoxication as he hated all things that lessened his command of himself. But he had the need for it now. Any escape—even this cheap and tawdry one—suited his mood. He was buried beneath the ruins of his private disasters: Thérèse dead in horror; four years stolen out of his life; his youth, his manly good looks irreparably smashed; Lucienne’s betrayal; Nicole lost—dead, too, perhaps, and if dead, by what terrible means of dying? He had to get out from beneath the mountain of his sorrows; he had to see starlight, breathe air, laugh with good laughter, cleansed of mockery, of bitterness. . . .
Two hours later he was wandering along the Champs Elysées without knowing precisely how he got there. It wasn’t very late, but the lanterns in the trees danced wildly before his eyes, and the dancers had become for him dervishes, whirling at incredible speed, indistinguishable as people, mere swirls of light and colour. He stared at them with vast benevolence, loving them all—all of them his brothers, his children, all the people of Paris, monsters and saints alike, nuns and prostitutes, all wonderfully beautiful and gay and happy, and he standing there like that, swaying a little on his feet, loving them, when he felt the air-light touch of her hand upon his shoulder.
“Jeannot,” she whispered huskily, her face close to his, so that her wine-perfumed breath stirred against his cheeks, “I’ve found you. But it took me ever so long. . . .” Then peering closer, the laughter getting into her hazel eyes: “You’re drunk! How funny—I’ve never seen you like this before—it becomes you, I think; a man should be drunken once in a while.”
He peered at her with owlish gravity. When he spoke his voice was thick.
“Lucienne——” he croaked.
“I was going to ask you to dance the Carmagnole with me,” she laughed, “but you can’t. Mon Dieu! You can scarcely stand! Don’t let it bother you, though, my Jeannot; neither can I, for that matter. . . . Come along with me now. . . .”
“Where?” Jean got out.
“Never mind where. I must take care of you. You’ll only be knocked down and robbed if you wander around like this. Come—where we can be alone, and talk, and—”
“And what?” Jean whispered thickly.
“You’ll see,” Lucienne said.
She took him by the arm and they turned away from the Champs and wound through the Place de Louis Quinze across the bridge into the crooked little streets of the Left Bank. Jean never knew how many times they turned, the different streets were all of a pattern to him, a succession of bobbing lights and utter darkness, rough-cobbled under his feet, the lights dancing, the shadows night-deep, unfathomable; until she stopped at last and drew from her bag a great key, turning it in a lock, and the two of them going upward, upward, treading spectrally up long flights of curving stairs, and Lucienne stopping once more, again turning a key, pushing open a door.
“Here we are,” she said.
The room, he could see by the candle she had left lighted, was richly furnished, silk-hung, the bed ornate, canopied, the furniture gilded, carved, the fire-screen hand-painted, the rugs ankle-deep, the whole of it having a smell of subtle perfume, a slow, penetrating scent that got to him through all the wine fog, making his breath come a little quicker, the whole of it exquisitely beautiful, even to the twenty-four-hour clock on the mantel which told not only the hours, but the days and months as well, with two fat, naked cupids perched atop it with brazen hammers in their hands, poised to strike the hour.
“Come,” she said, “let me help you off with your boots. You must be tired. . . .”
“Tired?” Jean said, his voice coming from somewhere a thousand leagues outside of his body, “not tired, dead. I died in prison—of starvation, of torture at the hands of la Moyte’s minions. I am a ghost, living on after all need or wish for living has left me. . . . You know that, Lucienne? It’s strange to be dead—it takes such a long time to die. . . . I started dying the night you betrayed me; I only finished it when—” But he couldn’t say it. He could not bring himself to mention Nicole’s name here under such circumstances. “I’m only a ghost,” he said.
“A most substantial ghost,” she whispered, and he felt her hands, inside his shirt now, running soft and warm over his chest.
“Don’t do that,” he said; “I don’t want . . .”
But her mouth was against his, soft and sweet, and tasting of wine, stopping his words, moving upon his with devilish expertness. She kept it there, holding him prisoner with an aching, anguished, age-long kiss, while her hands moved again, doing this, and again this, and he felt the coolness of the night upon his skin, lying back against the chair, staring stupidly at his nakedness, while she swirled away from him in a ballet turn, sweeping her white arms up, so that the gossamer chiffon she was wearing floated upward like a cloud about her head, and drifted away and down to the floor. He stared at her.
“My God, but you’re lovely!” he groaned.
“You think so?” she whispered. Then she caught at his arms and drew him upright, and went up on tiptoe and found his mouth, spinning the ceiling about his head in slow, concentric circles, until they weren’t standing any more, but lying suddenly, miraculously, beneath the silken canopy upon the great bed.
“Dear God!” Jean Paul murmured. “Dear, kind, merciful God. . . .”
Awakening to him was like resurrection, like being born again out of death. He struggled upward through layers of darkness, blinking his eyes against the light. His head was a ball, bigger than the earth, inhabited by a legion of tiny fiends with picks and hammers. His tongue was fur-coated, made from the pelt of the vilest animal upon earth; and his eyes. . . .
It took him a long time to get them focused; but when he did, he saw her lying there, her face soft with sleep, her eyes blue-circled, her tawny hair a mesh, wild-tangled, pillowing her head. Even by daylight she was lovely, even by the harsh glare of a noonday sun. One of her arms was flung out across him, her face was cradled in the hollow of his neck.
And he, lying there, remembering, hated himself suddenly with a hatred and contempt that were absolutely bottomless, himself, undeceived, knowing her for what she was, remembering Fleurette sick with colds and fever, waiting in fear and neglect in her eternal darkness for the sound of his step upon the stair.
He tried to move out and away from her without awakening her. But her eyes came open at once, utterly clear, filled with mockery and laughter, and something else too, something he could not quite define, but which terrified him.
“And where do you think you’re going?” she laughed.
“Home,” he snapped.
“But, Jeannot, darling—this is home now. Don’t be a fool—It’s ever so much more comfortable than that dreary rat-hole you live in. . . .” She came up on one elbow, and stared at him.
“You are strong,” she whispered; “now I understand the pitiful letters of the poor Nicole. . . .”
“Don’t mention her name!” he roared at her.
“I won’t,” she yawned; “the subject bores me. All subjects bore me—except you, my love. . . .”
He thrust himself up into a sitting position; but she came up beside him in a wild rush, encircling him with her soft arms, seeking his mouth.
“You,” she whispered, “aren’t going anywhere—at all. . .
.”
Then her mouth was upon his, and he knew that he wasn’t. Lost, he groaned inside his mind, while he could still think, which wasn’t long.
For in a very few minutes he stopped thinking altogether.
10
THE house of the Citizen Riquetti, ci-devant Comte de Mirabeau, at number Forty-two, Chausséc d’Antin, was as luxurious as Jean Paul expected it to be. Even the ante-room in which they waited was hung with heavy silk, and the panelling was intricately carved. Jean looked briefly at the room, then back at Lucienne. As always, she looked enchanting.
She wore a gown of white cotton with vertical green stripes, because by the summer of 1790 silk was considered aristocratic, and hence unpatriotic, involving some danger to the wearer. But on Lucienne it was lovely. She could wear discarded sacking, Jean thought, and look beautiful. . . . The gown was topped with a short jacket of the same material, over a tight bodice of the cotton cloth, so made that the stripes ran horizontally instead of vertically. A bow held her gauze fichu in place, the stiff gauze billowing out like a cloud, covering her slender throat almost to her chin. On her head there was a tiny bonnet of ribbon and ostrich plumes, perched at the jauntiest angle imaginable, above her dark tawny hair, done in a Cadogan, with dozens of little ringlets on each side, and a single great lock in the back, drawn down and looped up again, bag-fashion, its ends done into an intricate series of curls pinned high on the back of her head.
She clung to Jean’s arm and smiled at him. But he stood there, frowning morosely, hearing Mirabeau’s great voice roaring from the salon:
“Utter nonsense! Half Europe has been trying to find out who this Citizen Riquetti they talk about is. Took my manservant aside, after the beggar had ventured to address me as ‘Citizen’, and told him: Comte de Mirabeau to you, you bastard, and don’t you ever dare forget it!”
A burst of laughter greeted this last remark. Lucienne turned to Jean.
“He’s quite something, our Comte de Mirabeau, isn’t he?” she said.
“Yes, quite,” Jean agreed; but at this point the manservant appeared, his face bright scarlet, leaving no doubt at all in their minds that he had been the subject of the discussion.
“M’sieur, Madame?” he murmured.
“M’sieur Marin, Mademoiselle Talbot,” Jean told him.
Before the servant had got the announcement half out of his mouth, Mirabeau surged out into the ante-room, shaking his shaggy, lion-like mane.
“M. Marin!” he beamed, “and the fair enchantress, Mlle Talbot! My house is too honoured. Come, join the others.”
Jean gazed at his host. How much more striking, he thought again, is this vigorous ugliness than good looks. Mirabeau’s face, seamed, lined, bearing the marks of smallpox and ancient dissipations, had yet an undeniable grandeur about it. The face of a man who has suffered, Jean mused, and largely because he has always broken he rules. . . . But the rules, I think, were not made for such a man. This has been always, this dilemma—that all beasts who run in packs must have laws set down for governing those who lack both force and wit; but when one has both, when one is truly a man, the rules, laws, call them what you will, become like a net or a snare, forever entrapping us. . . .
Mirabeau had already taken Lucienne’s arm. Jean could not help noticing the perfect ease with which he conducted her into the salon. One might think him the handsomest man alive, Jean smiled, because he acts with the perfect certainty that he is, and after a little time one finds oneself believing it, too.
“Gentlemen, Ladies,” Mirabeau called; “Mile Talbot—whose face should decorate the emblems of France, for she is the fairest of the fair!”
A burst of bravos and vives greeted his remark. Half a dozen gallants rose at once, and surrounded Lucienne. Jean frowned. What could you expect? he told himself; but a moment later his ironical sense of humour reasserted itself, and he smiled.
Chatter away, you perfumed monkeys! he thought gaily; old de Launay sitting above his powder-keg with his lighted torch was not in greater danger than any man who pursues too closely that beautiful witch. I call her mine, and perhaps she is—for the moment, until someone else catches her roving eye. She belongs to no one, because she is very complete, and very clear. No, mes braves, the danger is quite the reverse—that, once burned by her, ‘tis you who will learn the meaning of slavery.
I like not being enslaved, and yet, I am. By her witchery—by mine own body’s betrayal of my mind, my soul. I stand here, looking at her, and I am drunken; I take her, and in the end I know only exhaustion—never completion, fulfilment. Dear God, how this appetite grows upon excess of what it feeds upon! Will I never have done with wanting her? Yes, one day, perhaps—when she has destroyed me—entirely. . . .
“You shouldn’t think such thoughts, young man,” a woman’s voice said.
Jean turned. As soon as he saw her face, he knew who she was. Madame le Jay, Mirabeau’s current mistress—working with him under a pretext that fooled nobody, his business agent, he said, “my fair bookseller. . . .” Jean bowed over her hand, taking a long time about it, the better to give himself time to study this fascinating woman. It did him no good. In the end, she eluded his mind’s grasp. For instance, how old was she? Thirty, he guessed, thirty-five. . . . But then she could equally have been twenty-eight—or even forty. And, oddly enough, she wasn’t beautiful, or even pretty. What she was—was, his mind groped for the word, striking.
“Are you, perhaps, clairvoyant, Madame?” he said.
“Oh yes,” Madame le Jay smiled; “but then all women are. Some more than others, of course; but the talent can be improved by practice. Besides, it really isn’t much of a trick—you men are so pitifully transparent.”
“And I?” Jean laughed; “am I also transparent?”
“Less than most men, I think. But in this one thing, more. It surprises me, I confess; it doesn’t go with the rest of you.”
“I,” Jean said, “am not even clear, much less clairvoyant. Your meaning eludes me, Madame le Jay.”
“Ah! So you know my name. There you have the advantage. . . .”
“Marin,” Jean said; “Jean Paul Marin, late of Provence.”
“The young orator. But, of course! Gabriel told me about your face—forgive me, M. Marin; I do babble, sometimes—like all women.”
“I am used to my face, Madame,” Jean smiled. “’Tis the rest of the world that it troubles. But we digress, don’t we? You were reading my thoughts. . . .”
“Yes. And she isn’t worth it!” Madame le Jay snapped. “That’s what surprises me: you don’t look like a fool.”
“Yet, I’m afraid I am—about Lucienne, at least.”
“Then don’t be. From what I’ve heard of you, and what I see now, you don’t have many weaknesses. And this one you cannot afford at the moment. France can’t afford it.”
“France?” Jean said in wonder.
“Yes. Gabriel has made a list of the men with whose help he could save France. De Lafayette heads the list. You are on it. And if you let that little minx destroy you . . .“
“I’m honoured,” Jean said.
“Don’t be,” Madame le Jay said; “there is no time now. There is only time for work, and a little time for tears, and all the time in the world for dying—if one can manage it usefully. Not heroically, M. Marin! The day has passed for your stupid male heroics! Now one must manage the act of dying so that it benefits France—not one’s vanity. . . .”
“Ah, Marin!” Mirabeau roared from the other side of the room; “I see you’re being captured! Don’t listen to her; she’ll spoil you quite—she’s much too intelligent; such women are dangerous!”
“All women are dangerous,” Jean called back, “without notable exception!”
All the young gallants burst into laughter.
“You should know!” one of them said. “Come, join us, M. Marin, and describe the dangerous attributes of Mile Talbot. . . .”
Jean walked over to the group.
L
ucienne turned towards him, and her eyes glowed with light and mockery and laughter.
“Am I dangerous, mon Jeannot?” she murmured. “You don’t really believe such a thing, do you?”
“Believe it?” Jean smiled; “I know it. You are an enchantress. You are Circe, making swine of men; the Sirens, singing unheard melodies. And with the same result, my dear—men die, or go mad.”
Lucienne puckered her forehead into an arch frown.
“You wrong me, I think,” she said; “I have never made a pig of any man. Since when, my Jean, has that been necessary?”
“Touché!” the young blades chorused; and the room rocked with laughter. The manservant came, bearing goblets of wine. Everyone took his glass, and the party grew merrier.
Jean held his and sipped it, but did not really drink. It isn’t, he thought, that one grows brighter as the evening wears on, but only that one thinks one does. ‘Tis a delusion born of wine. Each man here thinks that his wit is brilliant, his quips terribly amusing; yet half the things they’ve laughed at in the last half-hour make scarcely any sense at all. But Mirabeau carries his Wine well, I think; to look at him, you’d never guess he had touched a glass.
At long last, now, some of the guests were beginning to leave. Jean glanced questioningly at Lucienne; but she was much too occupied with a trio of young elegants to notice his glance. But Mirabeau saw it, and shook his lion-like head.
“No, M. Marin,” he whispered, “you and I have work, after the festivities are done. Amuse yourself for yet a while; afterwards we must think, and plan. . . .”
Jean nodded, and crossed the room towards Madame le Jay. But before he reached her, he stopped still, held there by pure surprise. For a tall, lean man had entered the room; a man, whose long, kindly face Jean had seen every day for weeks; who had done everything in his power to—
