The Fifth House of the Heart

by Ben Tripp

  The driver, Rollo, was one of Jean-Marc’s men. The back of his short neck was riddled with blackheads and deeply creased. He wore his hat jammed down low on his ears. Behind the touring car were three removal vans, ex-military box trucks repainted gloss black and picked out with thin green stripe. Déménagements Toulouse was lettered on the sides in crimson. At the rendezvous point where they’d met that morning, a motorist’s café and fueling depot a few kilometers south of Paris, Sax had heard Jean-Marc reminding his men not to touch the paint, as it wasn’t thoroughly dry. No half measures with him. There were ten men in the trucks, most of them old mates of Jean-Marc’s.

  Sax was frightened out of his wits.

  He hid it as best he could, but his mouth was ashy and his heart fluttered inside his rib cage like a little yellow bird. His spine was wet with sweat. It was all very well, these great big thugs going about stealing things—and it was stealing, no question, even if the rightful owner had been dead a century and a half—but Sax was an up-and-coming, reputable dealer in sound articles. A stretch in a French prison was nothing to these other men, who might as well wear fraternal rings, being so obviously graduates of the penal system. But for Sax, prison would not be a place to make professional contacts. It would be hell on earth. Real homosexuals placed behind bars were doomed. It was the straight arrows who survived, gritting their teeth against the forced submission, the humiliation, their manhood stripped away, again and again brought to their knees for the brutal—

  Sax realized he was getting an erection.

  “Alain Delon,” Jean-Marc said.

  “Where?” Sax said.

  “The actor you look like. Alain Delon.”

  “Mmph,” Sax said. He could imagine what short work an alpha male like Jean-Marc would make of him in a prison setting.

  And yet, despite his fear, Sax could not possibly turn back. This adventure could be the making of him. He had competition with just as much taste, flair, and beauty as he commanded. Some of them had titles as well, or large family fortunes. Sax’s father was a wealthy patrician, a naval officer during the war; his mother was French and En­­glish. There was money in the family, but Sax had been disowned at the age of nineteen.

  What he needed was a big score, a haul of extraordinary objects that would form the foundation of his career. He was already successful, yes. But it depended entirely on what he could find one week and sell the next. When he was away on his buying expeditions, the stock in New York and London waned perilously low. When he returned there would suddenly be an enormous surfeit of things he had to sell cheap, just to make room. A mother lode of quality pieces would erase the cyclical aspect of his business, give him depth of range—and yield him a fortune, practically for free. Unless, of course, he paid for this escapade with ten years of his life.

  They drove through long stretches of rolling hills with fallow mustard fields and quilts of winter spinach, Swiss chard, onions, and wheat, bordered by hedges and copses of trees. Villages with roofs of gray slate and red clay tile were nestled in valleys and clustered around hilltop churches. Sax recognized Orléans and Blois, large towns, but the convoy bypassed them, taking smaller roads to avoid the urban centers. The trip covered some 250 kilometers and required nearly seven hours.

  In a fast car, they could have made the distance in less than half the time, but the trucks were strong, not swift, and lunch required two hours of the afternoon. Jean-Marc’s crew sat on the bistro patio for the meal, ate bread and sausage, and drank twenty bottles of cheap red wine, trading stories and filthy jokes in the rough argot of men whose entire lives had been marked by crime, conflict, and the main chance. Sax pretended his French was poor, but he understood well enough. He caught a few references to his sexual preferences, Oncle Bénard, Monsieur Môme, and so forth, but nothing any worse than the obscenities with which they abused each other. Following a collective piss on the wall that could have cleared the Augean Stables, they piled back into the vehicles and rumbled on.

  Their destination was not far from the Château de Chenonceau, in the part of the Loire marked by grand fortified houses at every turn in the river. There were more than three hundred châteaux in the Loire Valley, and at least as many manor houses only slightly less imposing. Hundreds more had been destroyed during various wartimes and the French Revolution. The valley was the cradle of the modern French language, high culture, and the French Renaissance. Its beauty never failed to lift Sax’s spirits, and in the spring it was so gorgeous it made the heart ache. Such luscious green everywhere, ancient trees and bountiful fields, all punctuated by fairy-tale castles and senescent, rambling towns. The scent of new flowers and ripening leaves filled the air. The late-afternoon sunshine teased and dappled the road before them. Even now, obsessed as he was with the prospect of incarceration, Sax could enjoy his surroundings.

  The château, gilded by the setting sun, was a handsome Renaissance structure with a much older conglomeration of walls and turrets at the west end, the remains of an eleventh-century fortification with a massive stone tower. From the east end projected a handsome late-baroque addition with tall, airy windows. The asymmetrical massing on each extreme of the firmly symmetrical main building gave the place a lively silhouette. The river Loire flung bright golden glints through the trees that flanked the château; the garden and lawns had been laid out on the side facing away from the river, because that was the formal approach.

  Sax sat on a fallen tree beside Jean-Marc, their backs to the glorious sunset. They traded a pair of ex-military binoculars back and forth, discussing the disposition of the château. They were at the top of a hill that rose above the forest a couple of kilometers from the house, with a narrow view all the way to the river’s edge. The wall that surrounded the property was at the foot of the hill in front of them. It had once been inset at intervals with wooden doors bound in iron, placed for the convenience of hunting parties; these doors had mostly rotted away, so the wall was no obstacle to foot traffic. One such opening was near their lookout.

  The château grounds were overgrown now, lawns turned to meadows, trees that might once have been neat hedges crowding the façades. Despite its size, the building was well camouflaged by ivy up to the roofs. Scattered around the grounds were carriage houses, barns, and outbuildings, a village’s worth; most of these appeared to be falling to ruin. There was a steep Gothic chapel by the edge of the woods with a small burial ground, its tombstones ranged in the shaggy grass like a flock of gaunt gray sheep. There was no sign of current human activity. Not at the château itself, not even in the far distance. There were no roads nearby, no villages, no farms.

  If ever a very large property were to escape notice for a century or two, this was the one.

  Jean-Marc pointed out that there was a wall directly at the river’s edge, which would discourage idlers in boats from clambering around the place. The only effective approach to the property was the direct route, straight up the front carriageway to the grand entrance. If there was going to be a confrontation with whatever scoundrels were keeping the place to themselves, it would be then and there.

  “I don’t expect there will be any blood spilled,” Jean-Marc said matter-of-factly.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Sax replied nonchalantly, but about two octaves higher than his usual speaking voice. His anxiety was at a fever pitch. The château was, after all, a castle. They were going to storm the damn thing. There could be land mines or savage hounds. Dungeons full of hapless furniture dealers lured to their dooms. Sax imagined himself in some lightless pit beneath the foundations, shackled to the wall, surviving on bread and water. Or worse, American breakfast cereal. His captors would discover he despised the stuff and he would subsist on Wackies banana-flavored cereal until his demise.

  Sax was gibbering inside his head, he realized. He needed to pull himself together. He focused his mind on the problem before them.

  “You spoke of this Magnat-l’�
�trange woman as if you’d met her,” Sax said. There were several aspects of the adventure nagging at him. Chief amongst them was the possibility that there was indeed a rightful heir to the property. “You’re absolutely certain she’s an impostor?”

  “I haven’t met her,” Jean-Marc said. The sunset was in its decrescence now, reddening, the light becoming vague as it lost its grip on the earth. The river no longer shone gold.

  “You said she was a formidable woman,” Sax prompted.

  “So I’ve heard. There are anecdotal encounters, you know. Locals have run into her. She keeps them from . . . snooping, if that’s the correct word. They assume her to be the lady of the place; I’ve spoken to a couple of farmers and some fishermen I met during my scouting expeditions, and they confirm there is such a person on the property, very pale and sickly in appearance—they almost sound like ghost stories, to hear them tell it. Avoid the place at night and that sort of thing. In any case, she has never introduced herself, you understand. Not by name. There is an assumption being made that she is the great-great-great-granddaughter of the last Madame Magnat-l’Étrange to leave behind a piece of documentation. I am absolutely certain that assumption is false. You will see I am correct.”

  They made their way down the back of the hill. The color was fading from the sky. The planets winked through the atmosphere. Soon the stars would come out. The shadows in the forest gathered strength with startling speed, the riotous green canopy becoming dim and gray. The men stumbled over bracken and molehills, hurrying back to where the touring car and the three trucks were parked by the side of the road. By the time they reached the vehicles, it was dark.

  The party spent the night at a secluded farmhouse; Jean-Marc had rented the place for a week, no questions asked, for seventy new francs, the equivalent of fourteen dollars in American money. Gander fell in with the workmen and played cards all night, although he spoke almost no French; Sax spent the hours in silent worry. Once the contents of the château were offloaded into the farmyard, it was Sax’s problem to shift the spoils to wherever he wished to store them. By that time, Jean-Marc would be back in Paris, preparing legal documentation to take possession of the house and grounds.

  Jean-Marc’s scheme hinged on the place’s being demonstrably uninhabited when at last he brought it to the attention of the authorities. His 20 percent of Sax’s future profits on the furnishings was a token. He didn’t care about this revenue particularly and assumed Sax would cheat him anyway. What mattered was the real estate, which, transformed into a luxury resort for the nouveaux riches, could net him millions. So the place had to be empty. The reason Jean-Marc needed a dealer of Sax’s exceptional cunning was to ensure the furnishings were introduced into the market in a manner discreet enough to avoid attracting the attention of Interpol or the French authorities.

  The entire scheme sounded excellent to Sax, except for the insistence that he be directly involved in the removal process. But it made sense: If Sax didn’t participate in the risk, he might not take it seriously. Or worse, he might rook his partners. This way they all went down together, if something went wrong. It inspired diligence. And terror.

  III

  They rolled out of the farmyard at nine in the morning. Preparations had been completed, equipment checked and rechecked, and all the men had been briefed as to their roles in the proceedings. Very few of them saw anything unusual in the project. It was a job moving furniture out of an old house, he reminded them: valuable bits and pieces, treat it with care. Don’t let anything fall into your pockets. Might be a little extra by way of a pourboire, or tip, if everything made it out in top condition. Lift with your knees, boys, some of this old stuff is heavy.

  It was explained by Jean-Marc that Sax and Gander would be going around the place after the fashion of an advance party with a couple of the lads doing an inventory; then they’d pack everything up tidy and cart it into the trucks. Every last candlestick and spoon. They’d do it in relays, heaping the loot at the farmhouse, until the château was empty.

  While the men were piling into the vehicles, Sax found the opportunity to speak to Jean-Marc alone for a few moments. He lit his third cigarette of the day with a trembling match flame.

  “You seem to have a fair idea what’s in the place,” Sax said. “I thought you’d never been inside.” Jean-Marc leaned in and lit his own smoke with Sax’s match. Sax found this incongruously erotic. The sex drive never rests.

  “I haven’t,” Jean-Marc said. “I’ve spent months climbing every damn tree for leagues around, squinting through those binoculars, studying every room I could see into.”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  Jean-Marc’s brows went up. Sax threw his half-smoked cigarette on the ground. He hadn’t slept for a single minute that night, and the previous evening he’d played the role of the Knights Templar to that Arab youth’s reenactment of the fall of the Krak des Chevaliers, so he was irritable. He wanted to lash out.

  “The shutters, man,” Sax said. “The house has shutters on the windows. You can’t have seen in.”

  Jean-Marc allowed himself his bullfrog chain-smoker’s laugh. Sax hadn’t accused him of lying before now; it didn’t seem to offend him.

  “Perhaps I once entered the house, then. But only to use the telephone. No one was at home.”

  “They haven’t got a telephone. You knew that.” Now Sax was being self-righteous. He couldn’t help it. He wanted one last moment of being right before he spent the rest of the day investing heavily in being wrong. Jean-Marc laughed again, this time with genuine amusement.

  “They haven’t a lavatory, either, so I urinated in the fireplace.”

  It was inevitable. Greed won over cowardice and Sax climbed into the touring car next to Jean-Marc. He felt he would choke in the stiff, musty coveralls. The vile hat was crushing his brain. He was probably having a seizure, and there being no telephone, he would die twisting in the straw in front of the château.

  Inexorably, they drew closer to their destination. Sax considered hurling himself out of the moving vehicle. Or he could pretend to go blind. Surely there was some way to extract himself from this rendezvous with larceny. He watched Gander fall asleep, his head lolling with the rocking of the car. Impossible. Sax was positive he must be pretending. How could a man doze off at a time like this? Sax dozed off.

  When he awoke, the château loomed above him. They were braking to a halt directly in front of the stone steps that swept out from the formal entrance, the tires grumbling on the toothy gravel of the drive. Sax was disoriented. He felt this must be a dream.

  Things began to happen at great speed.

  The drivers angled the trucks until the tailgates hung over the steps to the house. The vehicles’ rear doors burst open and planks clattered out across the gap to form wooden bridges. The men spilled out of the trucks, marching over the sprung wooden boards, each carrying his gear like it was the Normandy landing: ropes slung across chests, arms laden with boxes and crates, blankets and tools. Two men bore a ladder. Not Normandy, Sax decided. A siege. Medieval sort of operation. Gander yawned and scratched and joined the activity, towing a pair of dollies after him out of one of the trucks.

  The first wave assembled at the château’s front doors, immense oaken things with crystal panes set into them, intended to be seen flung wide for highborn guests. There was a moment of quiet as Jean-Marc strode amongst them, a ring of lock-picks twirling on his finger.

  This was it, then. Sax was certain he would faint. Jean-Marc stood back to survey the doors, coughed economically into his fist, then stepped forward. He examined the keyhole. Then he grasped the handle of the door and pushed.

  “Elle n’est pas verrouillé,” he said. It isn’t locked. They stepped inside the château.

  Sax caught his breath. Now was the time to run. Now was the time to get away from this whole rotten scheme. Jean-Marc couldn’t cut him out now; Sax could be fiv
e miles away in a café drinking himself stiff and it wouldn’t make any difference. But if the local gendarmes showed up at the château when they were in the midst of the operation avec leurs mains dans le sac, it was all over.

  He could smell the musty air from within the château, now, a cool, dry scent of old dust, stone, and the exhalation of ancient wood.

  It was an odor Sax loved. It was the smell of ancient beauty, of things that needed bringing back to life. Gentle cleaning, damp sponges, white vinegar, beeswax and oil, new air, new eyes to gaze upon them: time itself leaves a skin on things, the way the air leaves sulfur on silver, turning it black. When that obscuring film is removed, the light in the heart of things radiates. The beauty, like some princess in a story by Perrault, awakens after a long sleep. An apt analogy, Sax thought. Sleeping Beauty. After all, the French title was La belle au bois dormant—The Beauty Asleep in the Wood. He’d kiss the wood awake. And the marble, stone, ivory, gold, silver, wool, linen, silk, glass, porcelain, plaster, and paint, too. Shine and rise.

  To his great horror, Sax found he had not run away but entered the château. It was too late. Like a cartoon dog beguiled by the phantom aroma wafting from a freshly baked pie, borne along on his nostrils with beckoning fingers of steam, Sax had crossed the threshold.

  As his eyes adjusted, the other men crowding with their raw-onion sweat stink and cigarette breath around him, Sax saw he had crossed another threshold as well. He was standing in the eighteenth century.