The Other Eden

by Sarah Bryant

  “That’s for him,” he says, raising his hand again. “This is for you.”

  For a moment the light picks out her terrified eyes, then his hand falls.

  ONE

  I have wondered whether Alexander would ever have spoken again of the peculiarities surrounding us if I had kept my silence. I suppose it is useless to speculate: as much as I wanted to forget the morbid allure of the dreams and the house and the mystery of the twins, I couldn’t.

  One evening several weeks after Dorian’s party, Alexander and I took a walk through the topiary garden. When we reached the water, I could not help looking up at the house on the hill; and then I couldn’t look away. Its dark angles stood out like stencils on the fiery sky.

  “What is it?” Alexander asked, kissing my cheek, my neck.

  I felt like crying. The past few weeks had been so peaceful, and it seemed wrong to destroy that peace. But I had known all along that it wasn’t real, and if there was any hope for a future with Alexander, I had to know the truth. So I said:

  “We can’t pretend forever that there’s nothing wrong.”

  “I don’t know what else we can do,” he said. “There don’t seem to be any more records of anything concerning your aunt and mother.”

  “I’m talking about Dorian,” I said. “I want you to tell me how you know him, and what it means that he’s here now.”

  He seemed to be studying me, but his eyes were distant. Finally he said, “Why trouble yourself with this, Eleanor? It can only hurt you.”

  The tone of his warning sounded too much like condescension. “A secret is always worse than the truth,” I said shortly.

  The sun had set, leaving the sky slate blue, the cypress trunks fluted shadows. The house on the hill was hidden again.

  Sighing, Alexander turned away from the water. “Come, then,” he said, and started toward his house.

  Tasha was at Eden with Mary, so the cottage was quiet. Alexander turned on the lamps in his music room and poured two glasses of wine, handing one to me. He took a sip from his glass before he began to speak.

  “I first met Dorian Ducoeur nearly fifteen years ago, in St. Petersburg. I had been playing in concert a good deal, and as goes along with that sort of thing, I had spent much time celebrating.” He smiled wryly.

  “One day, I became aware of him. That sounds strange, I know, but I can’t explain it in any other way. Nobody introduced us. He did not appear in conjunction with any particular event that I recall. But walking the streets at night, coming late out of a party, stepping into a coffeehouse, I would catch glimpses of him. He was always alone, always meticulously and expensively dressed, and he always made sure to catch my eye before he disappeared.”

  Alexander paused, then drew a deep breath before he continued: “I suppose it is only fair to add that there was a woman, a well-known ballet dancer, who was my lover at that time.”

  “If that was your only objection to telling me this story—” I began, but he silenced me with a look.

  “Anna cultivated mystery as some women do roses. It kept me infatuated far longer than I ought to have been. In that, Dorian was like her. He seemed to appear and disappear out of nowhere. He seemed to know me, though I knew nothing of him. He began to haunt me: not in the way that Eve haunts you, but only in the ordinary manner in which one is plagued by the beautiful.” He paused to refill my glass; he had barely touched his own.

  “Several times I tried to approach him, but he always managed to disappear before I could reach him. It was so deliberate, it began to madden me. He would smile as though in recognition, making certain that I saw and acknowledged him before he vanished.” Alexander shook his head.

  “I asked around, but none of my friends had noticed him. Some thought that I was deluded, but not Anna. She laughed and pretended to be jealous, but I could see that this mention of a handsome stranger intrigued her.

  “It went on like this for months. Then one night, walking along the river in a heavy snow, I looked up to find him walking beside me just as naturally as if we had known each other forever. As soon as I had thought it, he said: ‘It feels as though we have, doesn’t it?’

  “He had addressed me in excellent Russian, but with an obvious French accent. ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘My name is Antoine Fontainebleau, and I am a great admirer of your playing.’ ”

  “Antoine Fontainebleau?” I could not help repeating.

  “That is the least of it,” Alexander answered, “but his intentions seemed innocent enough that night. He has that way about him. He is beguiling. He beguiled me.” These last words were bitter, but when he spoke again, his voice was low and calm.

  “He told me that he was a drawing master from Paris, come for a few months to study the old buildings of St. Petersburg. We talked that night straight through, walking the city, moving from restaurants to coffeehouses. When the last of those was closed, we went back to my family’s house and sat in the parlor talking until the sun rose. You’ll wonder what we spoke of, and I wonder, too.” He smiled humorlessly. “Most of our conversations were like that: deeply engaging while they lasted, yet an hour later I could not have told you what we discussed.

  “Our subsequent meetings were of a similar nature. He would seek me out, and then we would talk and talk. I would have said that we were great friends, but I could not have told you on what it was based. I never even knew where he lived. It never occurred to me to wonder. So much about him was like that. His charm made me forget to ask the right questions . . . to ask any questions.” He shook his head.

  “As you can imagine, Anna was greatly angered at this sudden intimacy. So when she demanded to meet Fontainebleau I didn’t dare refuse, and this was a great mistake. For as you have no doubt guessed, she fell in love with him. Completely and effortlessly. As for Antoine, well, she was a diversion.”

  “So is Anna the ‘she’ Dorian was talking about that night?”

  “No,” he said slowly. He paused again, then continued, “Anna changed under his influence. She had always been gay and energetic, wanting nothing more than to be the centre of attention. Once she met Antoine, she seemed only to want his.

  “She kept up a pretence of her relationship with me, I don’t know why; perhaps to convince herself that she didn’t really need Antoine. And I didn’t know how to extricate myself. It was bizarre, and miserable . . . and it was about to become much more so.”

  He sighed. “One night, Antoine and I were drinking absinthe.”

  “I thought it wasn’t made anymore,” I interrupted.

  “It is, in places, but it would have been better for us all if it weren’t. It’s dangerous; not for the reasons you might think, but because it transcends the senses and moves straight into the deepest sensibilities. I half believe the old legend that a green fairy inhabits that drink. One can almost feel him uncurl and stretch into one’s limbs, cause one to see with his eyes . . .”

  “You almost make me want to try it!”

  Alexander gave me a troubled look. “You have tried it. It was absinthe you drank that night at Dorian’s party, and I suspect it is to thank for your nightmare.”

  I was too surprised to answer. Finally Alexander resumed his story:

  “So, we were drinking a bottle Antoine claimed to have brought from France. Now, Russians are well acquainted with strong liquor, but whatever was in that bottle was something beyond my experience. Let that be my qualifier for what came next.”

  He didn’t look at me now, but at the portrait of the twins. “It has often struck me as odd, since I was so very drunk at the time, that this is the only one of my conversations with Antoine that I remember with any clarity. He was speaking of Anna. I was barely listening until he told me that she was pregnant by him.

  “At that I was indignant. Not for my own pride: where Anna was concerned, that was long gone. But I was infuriated that he had taken her when he cared nothing for her. Of course it is not an uncommon situation, but when it was A
nna—well, I had never loved her, but I had cared for her, and I was worried. She lived only for Antoine by then; his rejection would crush her.

  “So I told him that he must do what was right and marry her. He laughed at me and told me to let go of my outdated moralisms. Perhaps that green fairy really was awakening in me, because as Antoine continued to smile and offer his platitudes, I swung at him.

  “I suppose I had expected him to hit me back, or at least to walk out. But instead, before I understood what was happening, he had his arms around me and had kissed me.”

  He looked at me with penetrating eyes. I knew that he expected me to be shocked, and probably horrified, but somehow I did not find the revelation unexpected. It also explained the affectionate inflection of Dorian’s words in the conversation I had overheard, and the coldness of Alexander’s.

  “Well?” I said, when it seemed Alexander would not continue unprompted.

  He shook his head. “His words turned mad. He said that it was me he loved, that it had been so since the first time he heard me play, that it had been his reason for following me. He spoke of his family’s wealth, of all that he wanted to see and do, and how he wanted me as his companion in all of it. He asked me to leave Russia with him. And what frightens me still . . .” He paused, then repeated, “What frightens me still, is that I was nearly seduced by those words.

  “It is difficult to explain, even now. I certainly did not love him—not in the way that he meant, nor any other. I knew that it was a devil’s deal he offered, that it couldn’t come without strings, but he was intoxicating. And so that you retain no delusions about me, Eleanor, I admit that I might very well have been enticed, had it not been for what happened next.”

  He seemed to expect me to answer him, but I could think of nothing to say. After some minutes he spoke again.

  “As we stood there in the parlor of my parents’ home, there was a sudden loud rapping on the door. It was one of my old friends, looking very pale and shaken. He told us that Anna’s body had just been discovered; she had taken rat’s bane. No explanation had been found, but she was several months pregnant.

  “Of course they blamed me, and of course I forced Antoine to accept the blame. He did not stay long in St. Petersburg after that. He tried to speak to me several times before he left, but I would not let him near me. The next time I saw him was the day he walked through your music room door.”

  Alexander set his empty glass on the table. “It was you,” he said, “not Anna, of whom we spoke that night—but I trust that you see the parallel. Perhaps now you understand better why I fear for your safety here.”

  I shook my head. “Even if he could sway my feelings for you, do you honestly think that he could drive me to suicide?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought it of Anna.”

  “Well, I assure you, he couldn’t.”

  “Perhaps not. But the fact remains that he is dangerous, and he has chosen you.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know—and this is what worries me the most.”

  “You seemed to know that night at the party.”

  Alexander looked puzzled. “What made you think so?”

  “You spoke as if . . . as if you knew something about me that I didn’t.”

  He scrutinized me for a moment, then said, “Remember that you had drunk a great deal of absinthe. It confuses the senses, and the memory.”

  “The memory?” I repeated softly.

  Alexander shrugged. “I have found it so and heard others say the same.”

  “If you don’t know, then, why do you think Dorian is here?”

  He sighed. “I could believe that he followed me, or, equally, that his claim to Joyous Garde is legitimate and the rest eventuality. But I suppose that deep down, I believe there is something else that he wants, and that he came here to find it.

  “I do know two things for certain. First, Dorian is nothing he claims to be, and second, he is somehow linked to those two.” He indicated the painting of the twins.

  Alexander’s look softened as he turned back to me. He took my glass and set it down, then twined his fingers with mine. “That’s enough of this. Come to bed now, love—if you’ll still have me.”

  “Of course I will,” I said, kissing his cheek.

  He smiled briefly, then said, “I meant to tell you earlier, Eleanor: I must go to Baton Rouge tomorrow. I’m meeting with an agent about some engagements for the autumn. But I’ll be back by evening. Will you be all right? Do you want to come with me?”

  I shook my head. “I should use the time with no distractions. I’ve been letting my work slide terribly these last weeks.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh? And what might be the cause of that, Miss Rose?”

  “I blush to say it, Mr. Trevozhov,” I answered with a laugh.

  “Well, do come upstairs and explain it to me, Miss Rose,” he said, kissing me.

  “Only if you promise . . .” I looked at him, suddenly anxious. “Come back safely, Alexander.”

  His eyebrows drew together for a moment before he smiled. “Don’t worry, Elenka. What could possibly happen in a few hours?”

  TWO

  ALEXANDER left under an ominous sky. “Colette says that it’ll storm tonight,” I told him as he got into the car I had lent him for the day. “Promise me you’ll stay in town if it looks bad.”

  Alexander laughed at my worry. “You’re beginning to sound like Mary.”

  “I’ll take care of him, mademoiselle,” Jean-Pierre said to me.

  “Thank you,” I told him, then kissed Alexander good-bye.

  I spent the morning at the piano. The first drops of rain spattered the windows as Tasha, Mary, and I sat around the lunch table. We all ran to the window to watch the storm descend, still in awe of the violence of Louisiana weather.

  It was not long before we needed lamps to see through the storm’s murky twilight. We sat in the music room most of that long afternoon, Mary reading, I practicing, Tasha playing quietly on the floor with her dolls. Gloomy afternoon faded listlessly into evening, with barely a sentence passed between the three of us.

  Mary had just stood up to turn on more lights when Tasha started, and looked toward the front windows. A moment later Mary and I heard the rumble of the car motor, the crunch of its wheels on the drive.

  “It’s early for Alexander to be back,” Mary commented, looking at her watch.

  However, the sodden figure at the door was not Alexander but Dorian. He lifted his dripping hat from his head, pushed the wet hair away from his face, and smiled brilliantly.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said, “but the road is washed out just past Eden. I can walk it as soon as the rain lets up.”

  “Nonsense!” Mary cried, helping him off with his coat. “It’s wild out there, and almost dark. You’ll stay here until the road is passable again.”

  Tasha slipped a cold little hand into mine. “Do you think that Dyadya’s all right?” she whispered to me, her eyes swarming with anxiety.

  “He’s fine, sweetheart,” I told her with more confidence than I felt.

  “Is something amiss with Mr. Trevozhov?” Dorian asked.

  I was wary of letting Dorian know that we were alone, but before I could concoct a lie, Mary was saying, “He’s gone to Baton Rouge.”

  “Well, then,” Dorian said, “he won’t be back tonight.”

  His words chilled me, but I tried not to let him see it.

  “It will be an adventure,” Mary said. I stared at her incredulously. “Like snowstorms in Boston. We’ll make a fire, and popcorn.”

  “I’m afraid,” Tasha said, her eyebrows drawing together and her lips pushing outward, as a child’s do when she is close to tears. “I want my Dyadya.”

  “He’ll be fine,” I soothed, hugging her. “He’s safer there than here just now.” As soon as I spoke the words, I wondered why I had chosen them; they had an ominous sound, though I’d meant them innocently enough.


  Dorian fixed me with quizzical eyes, then said, “Mary’s right—as long as we’re stranded here, why not make the most of it?”

  “Indeed!” Mary said, obviously pleased. “Colette will be putting supper together; would you care for a brandy first?”

  “Not now, thank you,” he said. “Perhaps afterward.”

  “Of course. And perhaps you can play for us.”

  “Oh, I have no particular talent for the piano,” he said offhandedly. “I had rather hoped I might hear Miss Rose play.”

  Looking at him, I could only think of the hardened inertia of his face in the nightmare, and the way it had seemed to crack and pile like river ice into sheets of menace when he spoke of Eve’s unnamed “sin.” I shuddered inwardly but refused to lose my composure.

  “Perhaps,” I said. “Now, do please join us for supper.”

  “Thank you,” he said and followed us into the dining room.

  We sat down to the stew and rice Colette had set out for us. Usually I loved her cooking, but that night I could barely swallow the food; my throat seemed blocked with trepidation. Tasha also seemed to have lost her appetite. She sat watching Dorian with wide, unblinking eyes.

  “Eat your dinner, love,” Mary said to her absently. “You know you need the strength.”

  Tasha obediently picked up her fork, dipped it into the rice, and then appeared to forget about it again. Her eyes traveled back to Dorian’s face and stopped there, her forehead creased as if in puzzlement. His own attention, however, was focused on me.

  “Did Mary tell you about our idea of throwing a party in the house on the hill? Many of the Baton Rouge faction are beginning to wonder when you’ll make another appearance.”

  “I hadn’t thought they’d notice,” I replied.

  He laughed. “Indeed? You all made quite an impression the other night, with Alexander’s tremendous performance and your hasty retreat. The mystery about you and Eden has only grown.”