Jacob's Folly

by Rebecca Miller

  With my earnings, I quickly saved enough money to rent a small flat on the rue de Grenelle. I even employed a flunky to make my bed and clean my house. I had no need of a cook, as I ate all my meals at my local inn or in the houses of friends. Apart from my meals and a few hours’ sleep a night, I lived in the theater.

  I began to enjoy a bit of a reputation. By practice and force of will I had eradicated my accent and sounded purely French. I became an expert at improvised cascades of righteous indignation. I used rage as fuel. I found it plentiful in myself; once I hit the first vein, there was enough to stoke my engine for an hour. I could also assume an air of wounded pathos. I could be funny. I had audiences howling. Gradually I became a second lead, the antagonist.

  At last the lazy hunchback, Taconet, managed to write down an entire play on paper all by himself: a wretched melodrama called Tears on Sunday. For the first time, I was cast as the lead, a fragile young noble at the brink of suicide whose despair is interrupted when he falls in love with his coachman’s daughter, but then the daughter marries someone of her own class and our noble shoots himself after all. The play was a huge hit with an audience ready to ditch the worship of reason for that of sentiment. Wishing to be in touch with the people’s newly maudlin tastes, Louis XV commanded a private viewing of the play. Statuettes and engravings of me in swooning poses were sold on the street. Whenever I left the theater, fans engulfed me.

  One evening, several well-known actors from the Comédie-Française came to see the play, and asked me to join the company. I had scaled the heights, albeit on the back of a donkey. And now I would be speaking the words of Molière! I walked straight over to the leonine Nicolet, my head high.

  “Monsieur Nicolet!” I exclaimed. “I am happy to say I have been approached by the Comédie-Française to be a part of their illustrous company. As I am sure you understand, this is a chance I cannot forgo.”

  The impresario looked down at me with his predator’s eyes, Turco perched on his shoulder eating a handful of nuts. He said nothing for a long moment. His silence made me uneasy. Eventually he turned and walked away.

  The Comédie-Française was the most important theater in France. The actors owned the company, as well as being subsidized by the king. With my first pay, I employed a cook I could barely afford. I became short-tempered with those I felt were wasting my time, but not as short as the leading men were. It took me several more years to become a real bastard. I felt this was the behavior expected of me as a serious artist. At first it was an act, but gradually it became my personality.

  About a year after my arrival at the Comédie-Française, a valet knocked at my door with an invitation. The Marquise de Maillé de Brézé requested my company at an “at-home” that evening. My landau was stuck for twenty minutes behind a line of other carriages as I waited for the other guests to disembark before the Hôtel de Maillé de Brézé, a spectacular residence blazing in candlelight. At last a footman opened my door, and I alighted.

  Rose-Béatrice de Maillé de Brézé was more than twenty years my senior, a tall woman with long white arms and a teasing wit. She adored the theater, had many of the finest actors in her salon regularly. To be folded into her world was a coup. That evening I was entranced by the velvety soup, the plump quail, the melting meringues, the torrents of whipped cream, and the rivers of champagne that raged down the table. I simply opened my mouth and let it all stream in. By the time the marquise showed me her private theater, a gem equipped with every modern convenience, I felt as serenely pliant as an overfed lapdog. I could barely rise to the challenge of her carressing goodbye, and fell asleep in my coach on the way home. The next morning, I was invited to witness the marquise’s toilette, to see her primp her wig, powder her face, tie her stays. I arrived late, having overslept and taken time to dress with care: my suit was white silk, with fine horizontal stripes of rabbit fur sewn onto the vest. I wore ivory hose, and the light, summer lace of my cravat was from Brussels. A maid showed me into the marquise’s dressing room, where my splendid hostess was already seated, a cup of coffee in her hands, fine curls framing her face, her dressing gown a mountain range of violet brocade expanding around her in luxurious folds. I took a seat beside her, and dared to rest my elbow on her makeup cabinet, an ingenious little table with a built-in mirror and many drawers. It reminded me of the box I used to wear around my neck.

  The Marquise de Maillé de Brézé was approaching fifty, yet her skin was very smooth, lined only around the mouth and eyes due to her tendency to smile. Her front teeth protruded slightly, giving her an involuntary little pout when she closed her lips, which I found quite charming. The principal signs of age on her face were along the jawline, which sagged slightly. But the near-constant animation of her features, so filled with intelligence and mercy, and her warm, steady brown eyes distracted from this flaw. The marquise was enchanting. I watched her play the little porcelain boxes of rouge, powder, and scent with nimble, expert fingers as she quizzed me on my impressions of the evening before.

  “And the Comte de Brésaille? What did you think of him?” she asked me, winding her fluffy hair into a bun.

  “I had the misfortune of being sat downwind of him,” I answered.

  She swiveled her head to look at me, delighted. “He has a terrible digestion, it’s true.”

  “The worst, I’d say, in Paris.”

  She laughed joyfully, putting a hand on my arm as if to steady herself. “So you are as cruel in life as you are on the stage?”

  “I am gentle. The plays are cruel.”

  “Le Naïf,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “What is your Christian name?”

  “Johann.”

  “I had an Austrian mother.”

  “Yes?”

  “But the past is so boring,” she exclaimed, waving her hand before her face and raising her frank, searching gaze to mine. “Isn’t it, when there is so much to enjoy right now?” She didn’t care where I was from. I was an artist; for her, I transcended class—and even, perhaps, religion. This fact was still miraculous to me. In the days when I had worn my peddler’s box or borne a tray of pastries, this great lady would not have acknowledged my presence. Now, not only did I exist, but she was very slightly in awe of me. Not that I was her equal. She wished from me only a little cruelty—understandable in a woman who got everything she wanted—and much affection. I played the game until she tired of it.

  Thus began an affair marked by a complete lack of drama or posessiveness. Rose-Béatrice was incapable of jealousy. She simply wanted to enjoy her life, and to help others enjoy theirs. I was glad to assist her in her vocation, eating off the fat of her plentiful income, stretching out in her creamy bed. Mad about plays, the marquise often assembled little companies to play in her private theater. Though it was against my contract, I often did so, on my night off. Private performances were lucrative. Rose’s husband, the old marquis, had his own mistress—an actress from my company, in fact—so it was all quite cozy. Even after our story had ended, the marquise had me star in her private productions, and allowed me to slip in and out of her shimmering world at will. In my new guise, I saw quite a few of the nobles I once served at the Hôtel de Villars when I was working for the count. None of them recognized me. My one worry was that I would run into the count himself at one of Rose-Béatrice’s gatherings, and he would try to shoot me again. But I did not see him. I was not to find out why for some time.

  When I was not scaling the social heights of Parisian society, I was busy nosing its depths; when the curtain at the Comédie-Française descended, I often took my carriage to the Tuileries. My wheels inching along the avenue, I peered out my window and watched the little whores, male and female, bravely walking through the shadows, waiting to be snatched up and squeezed like lemons. This might have been me, I often thought. I would have the coachman stop my carriage and chat with a young boy or girl. Sometimes I picked up several, and we made a merry party at my house. I was often robbed on these occasions. When in a hurry
, I made do with the bushes. If I was flush, I would simply drive to one of various houses where my tastes were catered to. I didn’t ask much: several girls and the use of a sitting room for an hour or two. In this blissful span I would create little erotic parties. Being the only male at these affairs, and surrounded by prostitutes, I was guaranteed a great amount of attention. Standing at a window, I could have a casual conversation with one lovely, a hand spanning her bosom, while another girl knelt at my feet, my battering ram down her throat. I could set up little stories between the girls. I could join in. I had an endless appetite for pleasure and work in those days. Each morning I woke feeling I could eat the world.

  As an actor, I rose to the very top, playing Alceste in Le Misanthrope, which put me in a lousy mood. It was at this point that I ran into Blond Nathan. He had been to see the play, doubtless in order to steal from the patrons. I saw him first, skulking by the open stage door, his hands in his pockets, the edges of his protective fringes peeking out from under his vest. I considered turning tail, going out the front entrance to avoid him, but my desire to lord it over him was too great. I emerged.

  “Jacob?”

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  “Le Naïf. I knew it was you. I stood there for an hour watching the thing, thinking, It’s him! It’s not him. It’s him! It’s not him.” Nathan had changed little since we were teenagers. He was heavier, his hair was thinner, but he still had the two-tone teeth and the overbite, the big, innocent blue eyes. He kept looking at me, shaking his head, until he made himself laugh. He laughed and laughed until tears came to his eyes. I just stood there. “They all think you’re back in prison, or dead. How in the world did you become an actor?” I looked at the friendly ne’er-do-well with contempt, wondering what he had lifted during tonight’s performance and where he had stowed it.

  “You sold me a stolen weapon, for starters,” I said, smiling coldly.

  “Sorry about that,” said Nathan. “But how did that lead to this?”

  “Come,” I said, looking around us. I didn’t want to be seen talking to him.

  Back in my house, the disgruntled cook, woken to tend to my surprise guest, whipped us up a couple of omelets as Nathan admired my cozy rooms: freshly upholstered furniture, a large tapestry of a hunting scene, Oriental rugs, all purchased secondhand, gave off a feeling of quiet luxury. My many books spilled from the library into a glass case in the sitting room. A marble bust of Aphrodite, given to me by Rose-Béatrice, glowed on the mantelpiece. Nathan walked from one corner of the room to the other, examining everything while my flunky stoked the fire.

  After we had eaten in the dining room in relative silence, we returned to the sitting room. Nathan drew his pipe from an inner pocket of his black jacket. I told him my story, omitting the baptism. He listened, shaking his head, staring into space, the smoke rising from his mouth in lazy wisps.

  “You have a son,” he said dreamily. At first I didn’t understand him.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “How so?” he asked.

  “No, I mean, I am surprised.”

  If the child was mine, he had been conceived when Hodel was unclean. Atheist that I was, I was not free from all the old superstitions. If anything, my years in the theater, a superstitious place if there ever was one, had strengthened them in me. The child Hodel bore was cursed, unclean, the product of sin. Of all the Torah’s precepts I had been taught to observe in my early life, I now honored only one: a bloody quim filled me with repugnance bordering on horror.

  “Hodel,” said Nathan, “is dead. She went very strange after the child was born. Violent. She jumped into the Seine.” My Hodel had returned to the river. Perhaps the river demon had never been expunged. What kind of child did she give birth to? “The child,” continued Nathan, “is a fine, healthy boy, about ten years old now. He lives with the Mendels, of course. Madame Mendel is raising him as her own. She has called him Ethiop.”

  “Ethiop!” I exclaimed.

  “An ugly name to guard against the evil eye,” Nathan explained. I was quiet for a moment, imagining my son walking through the world with that name around his neck like a lodestone. What luck could find him now?

  “Nathan,” I said. “Will you do something for me? If you do, I will completely forgive you for what you did to me. The slate will be wiped clean.”

  “I can’t see how I did anything so terrible, given the outcome,” he said. “But tell me anyway.”

  “Tell my mother you had news of me, that I am well, living in Italy. That she should not worry anymore. Will you do that?”

  “Yes, I will do that, Jacob,” he said in an insolent singsong, a strained smile on his lips. “Tell me, within all of this, you still live as a Jew?”

  “I live as a man,” I said with a cool shrug. A long silence ensued. At last, Nathan stood up. Without saying goodbye, he left. I sat motionless until the sun came up. I had a son. I tried to imagine his face. I could not go back. It would have to be enough to know that when I died, I would not be extinguished.

  39

  Leslie woke up and checked the clock. Three a.m. He brushed his teeth in the downstairs bathroom, splashed water on his face. As he dried off with the towel, he looked at himself. What an exhausted-looking man, he thought. He went to the dryer, grabbed a few of his own T-shirts, shoving them into a plastic bag, then opened the front door as silently as he could, crept out to his truck, and felt for the fire gear he kept in the backseat. It was there. Deirdre’s cigarette and lighter were in his glove compartment. He started the engine and pulled out, glancing at the clock on the dashboard: three-fifteen.

  He got to Masha’s minutes later, parked by the side of the building. The door to the basement was still taped open, as he had left it that morning. Once inside, he peeled the tape off the door strike, ran up the basement stairs, shut the door leading to the rest of the house. That would give him a few extra minutes before the fire spread. He walked across the basement, reached behind the dryer, and loosened the fitting with his wrench, jiggling the line until he could just hear the hiss of gas. It had to fill the room slowly if it was going to catch. Swiftly, he took the laundry from its plastic bag. He placed the clothes in one of the wicker baskets, kicked the basket over to the dryer, took the cigarette from his pocket, lit it with a trembling hand. The smoke made his throat clench. He dropped the lit butt into the laundry basket, knelt down on the floor, and blew till a little tongue of flame flared.

  As he stoked the fire, his breath caught the plastic bag he’d brought the clothes in; moved it, ghostlike, a few inches across the floor.

  I exulted. How good was my good man now? All righteousness is a mask, I thought. The only truth is the black mirth bubbling like pitch from the center of the earth. Beauty is Truth, I thought with a chuckle, having gleaned the phrase from a skin-care advertisement in one of Deirdre’s magazines.

  Having rigged the dryer, Leslie ran to his truck, drove the five miles to the end of his fire district, and picked a house. He figured he had a good twenty minutes before Masha was in any kind of trouble. Plenty of time. The phone booth receiver felt heavy in his gloved hand. He dialled 911. His hands were shaking. A woman’s voice picked up immediately.

  “There’s smoke comin’ out of the first-floor window in 48 Division Street,” he said. It was a Cape house. He’d seen so many fires in this type of house.

  “What is your name, please?”

  “Bobik,” he answered, hanging up and hurrying back into the truck. As he sped toward Masha’s house, he heard his pager go off. “Calling all units. A called-in fire, 48 Division Street.” The whole department would report to a called-in fire.

  Turning onto Masha’s street, Leslie saw smoke coming out of the first-floor window of her building. He stepped on the gas, passed the house, and made a quick U-turn so his truck would be facing the right way when he parked, as if he were on the way from his place. He called the fire dispatcher on his radio.

  “It’s Leslie. I got a stru
ctural fire on 155 Marine. By the boat club. I was on the way to the other one, on Division. Be advised, I’m going in to investigate. I’m gonna be off the air for a few minutes.” He had about ten minutes before the department caught up with him. He needed to get her out himself.

  He reached behind him and grabbed the heavy jacket, the helmet. He stepped into the boots, pulled on the bunker pants. The smoke coming out the window was black. This fire was moving faster than it should.

  He banged open the front door with his shoulder. Worried for my own safety (who knew how much smoke a little fly could take?), I decided to zip outside and witness the rescue in absentia: I nestled in the crook of a tree and inhabited Leslie, seeing what he saw—the first floor was clotted with black smoke. He could just make out the staircase. He had no air tank with him; if he didn’t get up there fast, he’d be overcome. As he reached the first step, he looked down and saw that a wide square of the first floor was missing. The workers were putting in a new floor! He hadn’t known. The fire in the basement would flash through the house now. He ran up the stairs. The hallway was gray. Masha’s door was open. He could barely make out her bed. He radioed in: “I have located a victim on the second floor, three-four corner.”