by Deb Elkink
Lou glanced sideways from her bed at the girl, who wore a faint smile now under the influence of some new reverie. “Hush, little baby,” Lou whispered again as she clicked off the lamp. “Enjoy your sweet dreams while you still have them.”
Eighteen
Aglaia awoke Thursday morning with bones aching and mouth fuzzy, recalling vague nightmares and a fleeting, bizarre impression of Lou singing to her. The disquietude clung to her as they rushed to catch the Métro to Île de la Cité for a hurried tour of Marie Antoinette’s cell and the torture chamber in the Conciergerie.
Having given Aglaia explicit instructions on when and where to meet up again, Lou took her leave for the Sorbonne library. “You’ll be fine on your own while I get my research done,” she said, as though Aglaia were reliant on her, incapable of enjoying an afternoon unchaperoned in Paris. And she did enjoy the rest of her day, resisting her impulse to head over to the Louvre on her own in sheer rebellion against Lou’s directive. She stuck close to the river so as not to lose her way and followed narrow streets of gabled buildings, passing shops and galleries, throwing herself into the frenzied colors and aromas of a flower market. Peckish, she bought a croque-monsieur at an outdoor stand, the gruyère melting into the ham, and she ate it as she sat in a leafy alcove of a park watching children at play.
Thus nourished, she spent several hours strolling along the quay bordering the Seine, counting the bridges that laced together the Right and Left Banks like the ribbon on a corset—Pont Neuf, Pont Saint-Michel, Pont Saint-Louis. The foundations of Paris itself rose up from the river, its ancient limestone footings exposed at the waterline beneath an arch or at the base of a pier. She had a sense of wandering back in time, of the insignificance of one young woman whose forebears had not even broken sod on the North American plains when most of these blocks were set in place.
Sometime during her pensive expedition into the heart of Paris, she thought about phoning Naomi again. Their last call had ended oddly with Naomi about to make a statement that Aglaia suspected involved François in some way. She looked for a tabac to buy another phone card but was instead waylaid by a newsstand. The article on her costume delivery was to be printed today, she recalled. She found the short piece buried in a back section, accompanied by a grainy photo of her standing beside the acquisitions committee. The journalist had quoted her in French but she bought another six papers anyway for the clippings, forgetting all about the call to Naomi.
Late in the afternoon, Aglaia stood in front of a must-see she’d starred in her guidebook back when she plotted her trip—it seemed years rather than weeks ago. She paid her fee and entered the main floor of Saint-Chapelle, following behind a couple of nuns in dark habits who crossed themselves repeatedly. It was a low-ceilinged, Gothic space, devoid of notable ornamentation, that cast no prediction of the celestial splendor she’d find upon climbing the dank stairwell. But upstairs, multi-colored sunlight fractured the air above her head, the stained-glass kaleidoscope surrounding her like a halo of rubies and sapphires and emeralds. She rotated in a slow circle, head tipped upwards. Fifty-foot windows soared around her within a framework of marble arches extending into the vaulted ceiling like the ribs of an overturned ship, a thousand glass pictures she couldn’t at first interpret for their sheer profusion.
A uniformed man with thinning hair was delivering by rote a monologue in wooden English, likely intoned with the same accent a hundred times before, to a group clustered near Aglaia within the larger crowd. She lowered her lids and listened to give her eyes and neck a rest.
“Sainte-Chapelle was constructed by Louis IX and consecrated in 1248 to showcase the relics purchased from the emperor of Constantinople. The devout in the Middle Ages called it the ‘gateway to heaven’ since the windows tell the story of the Bible in pictures.” He jabbed his thumb towards the entrance. “Begin with the Creation in Genesis portrayed on the left-hand lower panel and follow clockwise through to the Crucifixion and then, behind you, to the apocalypse crafted in the eighty-six panels of the Rose Window.”
The lesson faded out. It couldn’t compete with the exquisite blaze of color singing to her—azure and gold and crimson—the whole radiant work a visual orchestra with each pane trilling in its own voice within the grand cantata. She swore she could hear it: Oh, tell of His might; oh, sing of His grace; whose robe is the light, whose canopy space. Aglaia shook her head to jar free the lyrics and music that had invaded unasked.
As she focused on the individual scenes, the diorama became clearer piece by piece. The sun—that flaming rock—was throwing itself through the windows, separating the blur of bright pigment into meaning, forming order out of the chaos. The colored glass, itself just processed sand, became a mediator illuminating the story, a conduit between heaven and earth. Light was shining through the darkness, the translucent delivering the transcendent in a depiction of Incarnation.
She first made out the Garden of Eden where God, having scooped man from the red soil, brought forth life. From years past, she again heard the swelling harmony of her church choir, Joel’s tenor behind her blending with her alto: Breathe on me, breath of God, fill me with life anew.
In the next scene Isaac was on the altar, about to be slaughtered by Father Abraham, whose blind faith was counted as righteousness: Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Her memory surged in song, pictures bringing forth hymns unbidden. Moses stood before the burning bush, here leading his people through forty years in the desert—He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock, that shadows a dry, thirsty land—and then, grizzled, descending from the mountaintop with his face glowing from the presence of the Lord as he carried the Commandments written by the very finger of Jehovah: Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.
The noise was so bright! Aglaia longed to extinguish it by diving back down the stairs to the cool dimness below, as Jonah, running from God, was hurled through the deep to the roots of the mountains and swallowed up by the fish that regurgitated him at the gates of the great, walled Nineveh. The crescendo swelled as image upon image burned into her consciousness: Mary borne by a donkey, her belly swollen with her own cargo, bearing God Himself. The babe in the manger. The boy in the temple. The man in the crowded streets healing the paralytic and the leper and the blind, calling into the grave, “Lazarus, come out!” while the grieving sisters wept. His own empty tomb, His resurrection, His ascension, and the River of Life flowing through the Eternal City, clear as crystal from the throne of God: Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace.
Aglaia’s interior choir wouldn’t be hushed: Crown Him with many crowns, the lamb upon His throne… Praise Him! Praise Him! Jesus, our blessed redeemer. She knew no one around her could hear it. She covered her ears with her hands and wasn’t noticed in the crowd, but still the words came at her—now holy words from the Bible itself calling out beyond even the hymns that were tormenting her and the mythology that had been twisting her: Come! Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life… Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest… Come to me and drink. Aglaia was penetrated and permeated with sight and song and spirit.
She couldn’t take anymore! She scuttled out of the cathedral to arrive at the brasserie around the corner an hour ahead of time, and ordered water—in French, after all her criticism of Lou. What had come over her in Sainte-Chapelle? The Sunday school lessons of her childhood had replayed in fast forward and hijacked her senses, the visual stimulation of the biblical overview portrayed by the windows sending her into some kind of auditory hallucination. She’d never before undergone such an unwitting cantata, and she was still quivering when she saw Lou arrive in the doorway.
Lou’s mouth watered as she entered the restaurant. Re-energized by her research at the library and an invigorating conversation with an established French professor whose work she admired, she thought again about how good she was at her job and how badly she needed tenure.
Aglaia was slumped over a menu, disheveled, and Lou took charge. She ordered an epicurean platter of charcuterie to share: tongue rolled with truffles, Leberwurst, veal and foie gras. Aglaia only sampled the regional specialties and took just a few sips of her wine before pushing the glass away. She was ready to call it a day but Lou wasn’t so inclined.
“This is the life,” Lou said, and sat back with her coffee. “The dining, the shopping—it’s what I work so hard to afford. Isn’t it what we all want—the perks that come with career advancement?”
“I guess so,” Aglaia said. “I mean, I suppose I never thought of that as my main motivation to do a good job.”
“And what would your motivation be, if not money?” Lou presented her credit card to the waiter and waved away Aglaia’s attempt to pay for her half. “Recognition, I suppose.”
Aglaia frowned in thought. “It’s true,” she admitted. “It’s not that I want to be famous or anything, I’d just like my abilities to be acknowledged.”
“And rid yourself of the hayseed persona, is that it?”
Aglaia felt another blush creeping up and tried to change the topic, saying, “My main motivation right now is to meet François and hand off the Bible.” But Lou ignored the dodge.
“Employment at PRU would give you status and job security, Aglaia. I’ve ensured you’ll receive a tidy benefits package as soon as you sign on.” She was stretching the truth, but it was time to apply pressure. She couldn’t wait much longer to wrest a commitment from Aglaia.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead yet, Lou.”
“Then you’d better begin. The theater department is getting anxious to fill the position.” The girl’s hesitation spurred Lou to push harder. “I’ve heard that several contenders are lining up for the job,” she lied outright. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Aglaia. It could signal the zenith of your career and is nothing to sniff at.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I know it’s an amazing break for me and I’m really grateful to you. But,” Aglaia bit her lip, “I don’t want to leave my boss in the lurch.”
“You’ve got to start thinking about your own career goals. At the university you’d be recognized as a real artist.” Aglaia nodded at that, so Lou carried on in the same vein. “I’m told you’ll have great artistic liberty and a research budget of your own. Who knows, you might even expect more artsy trips like this one—maybe for London’s theater season.” The dishonesty took less effort with every sentence and the girl was swallowing it whole. “And imagine your name coming up on the screen as the assistant costume designer at the end of the movie.”
“What movie?” Aglaia straightened her back.
Lou cursed herself for the slip. She didn’t want Aglaia twigging yet to the connection between the wardrobe consultant job offer by the theater department and PRU’s involvement in submitting a bid for Buffalo Bill. Any inkling that Lou was actively recruiting her away from Incognito as bait for RoundUp Studios might spook Aglaia, with her well-developed sense of morality.
“I’m talking about the next PRU theatrical project, of course, whatever it is they’re putting together—stage play, film study. Come on,” she said, changing the subject, “we should be getting back to the hotel.”
The next morning Aglaia lived through centuries in a matter of hours as she and Lou toured the Louvre museum. Upon their arrival, Lou plunged her beneath the modern glass pyramid entrance and swept her through the halls of time, past an Egyptian mummy and busts of Roman orators and seventeenth-century Dutch paintings—ignoring Aglaia’s appeal to follow the plan she’d mapped out online at home. Instead, they climbed a staircase to this pavilion and doubled back to that wing, and all the while Lou carried on a didactic commentary that Aglaia, chasing along behind, strained to hear within the throng of tourists. She labored beneath the weight of history and the burden of art.
The tour book photographs punched into 3-D around her with dizzying speed while Lou fulfilled her self-assigned duty as guide, pointing to examples of Greek deities in every salon as though she’d at last caught on to Aglaia’s intoxication with the mythology and were rubbing her nose in it. Lou stopped in front of a picture of Pygmalion and recounted his tale: The Greek sculptor fell in love with his own ivory creation of a faultless woman and married her after an empathetic goddess filled her lungs with divine breath. Then Lou pontificated on a painting of Eve as Pandora, inflicting misery upon all humanity forever with her witless act of opening the jar of evils held in one hand or biting into the flesh of the forbidden fruit held in the other—the artist left the viewers to decide which. Before a bronze statuette of a young man in traveling boots, Lou related how the death of his mother during pregnancy caused the would-be father, the god Zeus, to tear the fetus from her still-warm body and stitch it into his own thigh from which, upon gestational completion, the child was born again.
At that, Lou’s eyes glinted with silent laughter. She was ridiculing Aglaia’s faith background, but Aglaia didn’t share Lou’s humor or appreciate her rendition of the myths that had such an impact when Aglaia first heard them from François or discovered them on a library shelf or sanctified them in her daydreams. Lou’s accounts were dispassionate, told to make some philosophical or sacrilegious point rather than stir a feeling. The lessons diminished the romance for Aglaia, ruining her pleasure in them through Lou’s bleak reduction.
“Slow down,” she complained.
“François will be waiting for you in front of the Three Graces at two o’clock,” Lou reminded her, but Aglaia wasn’t stalling. She just wanted to look fresh when they met. An hour now separated her from him, a sliver of time and a few steps instead of what used to be an eternity and an ocean. She couldn’t wait! She hardly believed François chose the Graces as their meeting place, and she wanted to ask Lou if she’d planted the idea in his head. But there was no chance to quiz her about it as they ricocheted through the crowded museum. They stopped one last time in front of a statue of an armless woman.
“Venus de Milo, one of the Louvre’s most prized possessions,” Lou said, although of course the carving was familiar to Aglaia and she knew its Grecian name: Aphrodite, goddess of love. Lou went on, “Experts say her posture indicates that, in her completeness before she was damaged, she would have been studying an item in her upraised left hand—an apple perhaps.”
Lou gasped as soon as she’d said the words.
“What is it?” Aglaia asked
“Oh, never mind. I just solved a riddle that’s been bothering me for a day or two.” Lou smiled at her own secret. “Let me fill you in on some of Aphrodite’s exploits.”
Aglaia had a moderate store of knowledge regarding Aphrodite, but most of it related to the goddess’s entourage of the Three Graces, her royal handmaidens with the high calling of serving her every demand. Anything to do with the Graces drew Aglaia. But she hadn’t made an organized study of the complex body of Greek mythology in which one story intersected another in a baffling maze of versions. So she made no claim to know Aphrodite’s every role.
“You’ve heard about the Trojan War?” Lou asked. She wouldn’t be dissuaded from her narration, and Aglaia steeled herself to submit to the tutorial.
“The one where soldiers hid inside a giant wooden horse as a ploy to get inside the city walls, you mean.”
“Yes, that was what the imaginative Homer wrote,” Lou agreed. “But Troy was an existent city, its ruins excavated by a nineteenth-century German archaeologist. The authenticity of the fall of Troy is wreathed in myths, none so intriguing as the part played by this very Aphrodite before whom we stand.”
Aglaia was mistrustful about Lou’s emphasis on mythology, especially the stress she was placing on the tales during this museum tour of hers ostensibly for Aglaia’s welfare. She chafed under the professor’s long-windedness, glancing yet again at her left wrist. It was ten minutes to the hour. Was Lou trying to make her late for the rendezvous?
“The story tells of a wedding feast to wh
ich our Aphrodite was invited along with several other major goddesses who, true to form, were very jealous of one another.”
Aglaia tried to listen politely but couldn’t concentrate when so many people were standing near them or walking by. What if François were passing them in the same hall, making his way to the Three Graces right now?
“Dissent erupted among them under the direction of the goddess of strife,” Lou said, “who wrote the word Kallistei on the surface of—”
“Can you finish this later? We’re going to be late.” Aglaia’s interruption was beyond rude and she heard the peevishness of her own voice, but she couldn’t stand to wait a minute longer. So Lou finally led her at last to the French sculptures in the Sully wing with a promise she’d be in the terrace coffee shop when the meeting was over.
Aglaia dug through her small bag between ticket and passport for a compact to check her makeup. She gave the people around her a quick once-over as well. A couple dressed in matching khakis brushed by her, and several art students slouched against the wall or crouched on the floor as they sketched—but she saw no lone Frenchman in his thirties with, say, with a magazine folded in the crook of his arm and ardor, or kindness, or even simple recognition lighting up his charcoal eyes.
She walked towards the statue grouping Lou had pointed out, transferring from her left to her right hand the Bible she’d carried around the museum since the women traded their baggage for numbered tokens upon entry. The officious guard there had flipped through its pages, questioning Aglaia’s feeble reasons for taking it into the palace.
Would François be as incredulous as the guard when she tried to explain the Bible to him? Would he even remember he’d left it behind, or care that her mother had rediscovered it in the moldering trunk? He couldn’t guess the effect of his long-forgotten notes on her these past few days, or that she was suddenly reluctant to let the book go. He himself had been so eager to leave it behind—to leave her behind—never once in fifteen years phoning or writing. Aglaia should have left well enough alone and never reacted to her mother’s suggestion, should have disregarded her own compulsion to find him. Yet here she was in this predicament, hoping François might buy her excuse to look him up, hoping the reunion might ignite something in him. Would he even recall the significance of the Three Graces?
