Thomas, A Secret Life

by A. J. B. Johnston

  “Take that worried look off your face, will you, Thomas. It doesn’t suit you. No one’s hurt in this. All you’re doing is listening and telling me what you hear. That’s all. Now, if you will excuse me.” Collier turns to go. He adjusts the hood of his cape to get it ready. He wants to cover his head the moment he leaves the church.

  “But—” Thomas hates to hold out his hand. He is no mendicant. Yet it seems he has no other choice. He turns the palm of his right hand upward though he keeps it low, down by his hip. Collier glances down.

  “Oh, that’s right. Almost forgot.” Collier leans in close once more to Thomas’s ear.

  “We don’t want to wait until the next time you meet up with your whole crowd as a group. Drop by the man’s bookshop. We need a little more on just him and his views.”

  “All right.”

  “That’s the attitude.” Collier reaches into the pocket of his veston and retrieves the coins he has there for Thomas. How many he passes on depends on what information the tell-tale gives to him. Collier extends a hand. He places not the usual three or four but six coins onto the waiting palm. Thomas closes his hand over what he’s been given. Without looking at exactly how much it adds up to, he knows that his little tale of Gallatin has been rewarded.

  “Take some time, if you must,” says Collier just before the double doors that are the entrance and the exit from the church. “We don’t want to scare the poor man with our haste, we just want the truth. But no later than early January, right after the Feast of the Kings. Understood?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The cloak goes up and with his head covered Collier is out the door. Thomas does as he’s supposed to do. He counts to thirty before he takes his own turn and steps out into the night. He opens his hand and in the dim light of the nearest hanging lamp he looks at what is warming in his hand. It is indeed the most yet that Collier has passed on. Thomas has done something right. Gallatin’s loss is someone else’s gain.

  January 1720

  The Feast of the Kings passes throughout France as it always does, with many special cakes baked containing hidden beans. As a child, Thomas twice was the one to get the special slice with the lucky bean. For children and older loved ones it is also, sometimes, a time to give small gifts on the twelfth day of the Christmas season.

  Thomas tells himself that he does not miss receiving his own piece of special cake because that would mean he was still back in Vire. When Rooster asks him if he misses his childhood town, Thomas insists that he does not. He says he is relieved to be in Paris and on his own. He does not mention how and why he left and that he cannot go back until he is able to prove he did the right thing, leaving how he did. It’ll all work out in the end, he likes to think. The problem is, he’s gradually realizing that the end is no closer now than it was five years ago. As for the gifts associated with the Feast of the Kings, a custom inspired by the three wise men who made their way to Bethlehem, Thomas knows that that part of his life is long gone. He’ll soon be twenty. Childhood is far behind. He supposes it doesn’t matter, seeing as how there is no one in Paris who holds him dear enough to bake him a cake or send him a gift. A little sad, perhaps, but he would not have it any other way. The price of doing business, his father used to say. Well, that’s sort of how it is with Thomas in his own way. He honours the Feast of the Kings by heading to the stews and stalls. It’s in a sweat-smelling room in the Saint-Germain that he gives and receives a different kind of gift.

  As for the assignment Collier gave him, he has put it off time and then time again. He’s not sure how to proceed or, once having obtained something from the bookseller, if it’s as incriminating as Thomas believes, what to tell Collier he has found out. The tell-tale business is more difficult than he was once wont to believe. Nonetheless, until Thomas has a higher position in the world, Collier must be served. So the day after the Feast of the Kings, as soon as he’s finished at Pontécoulant’s law office for the day, Thomas sets off.

  He’s been past Jean Gallatin’s bookstore several times in the past two weeks. He’s just not found the nerve to go in. The shop is located near the Sorbonne, a half-hour walk from the law office. It closes two hours later than his own office so he knows he has the time to get there and at last obtain the information Collier wants. The problem is not getting there but how to put the questions once he opens his mouth.

  Believing he needs a cover for a visit, Thomas has settled on inquiring about Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It’s a book title that always springs to his mind, though more for the erotic woodcut images that stirred his boyish loins than for the verses. Metamorphoses is to serve as a cover, an excuse. Gallatin need not know the details, how Thomas once possessed the book, that it belonged to Jean-Chrys and that Thomas took it away in his flight. It should be enough to tell the bookseller that it was a gift of sorts from a boyhood friend back in Vire. Thomas will explain to Gallatin that he would like another copy for his collection. That should establish why he’s dropping by. After that, Thomas has no idea how the conversation will go, though he expects it will be tricky. Gallatin is no fool nor is he prone to confidences as far as Thomas has ever seen.

  It’s rare for the two of them to sit side by side at the weekly gatherings of the would-be writers. Even when they do, there often seems to be some kind of barrier between them. Oil and water, or something like that. Unlike Thomas, so Thomas thinks, Jean Gallatin is a doubter and a skeptic. And it’s not just the Church and clerics he’s against. He distrusts nearly everything. Thomas can’t remember a time when Serious Jean, as Caylus calls him, took the time to joke or to laugh. He always has some gripe or weighty matter to discuss. And the bookseller’s face, long and thin as a face can be, is not an easy face to relax around. Some people have faces that make you smile and feel at ease. It’s the opposite with Gallatin. The knitted brow and narrowed eyes: they always put Thomas on guard. It’s like the bookseller has seen it all and is irritated by more than half. His expression gives off a warning that you better not come too close. In other words, Thomas is not looking forward to obtaining the information Collier has instructed him to collect. But tomorrow night is his next rendezvous with Collier, and Thomas has only one last chance to get what Collier wants.

  —

  The walk across the Pont Neuf in the dying hours of the day casts a fleeting spell on Thomas, as it always does. It slows his hurried pace. He goes close enough to the parapet wall to tap it lightly as he goes along. A few of the sellers are already starting to pack up, though Thomas can see that the main show is still going strong. A namesake, so to speak, Le Grand Thomas, continues to hold court. Dressed as always in his scarlet coat with a tricorn hat decked out in peacock feathers, and a string of human teeth around his neck, the giant is holding spellbound what must be the last dozen or so of his daylong crowd. Stopping to listen for a moment, Thomas hears the giant boast, as usual, that he is both the “honour of the universe” and the “terror of the jaw.” No one would ever dispute the latter claim. More than a few times Thomas has seen the show. It never disappoints. Le Grand Thomas has all the tools and what’s more the stature of a seven-foot giant to pull teeth out of afflicted mouths right there on the spot. If necessary, he lifts the poor souls right off the ground. Till the tooth gives way and the patient tumbles down. It’s like an execution, except in reverse. The blood gushes out to help the person and not to end his life. It’s a remarkable scene. First, the cries of the patient then the bright red spout from the mouth. Meanwhile Le Grand Thomas’s booming voice echoes along the river. Between extractions the giant sells his famous elixir. It’s a stinking concoction he calls a “solar balm.” It’s always fun for Thomas to see the suckers getting duped to buy one or another of big Thomas’s services. Poor and rich, titled and unknown, all of Paris comes to the Pont Neuf to catch the giant’s show.

  To the left and right of Le Grand Thomas, spreading across the bridge, Thomas sees what�
�s left of the other daytime attractions. Charlatans and quacks are the most common. Their positions change from day to day, depending on who gets there first and claims the spaces closest to the terror of the jaw. This evening there is still one of the poet-singers. He smiles at his admirers as he recites the nasty rhymes. He draws hoots from the shocked yet appreciative crowd, rhyming as he does about the court at Versailles. True or false, it hardly matters. It’s the mockery of the people high above that makes for the fun. Sure enough, there are a number of people of high rank and position in the crowd. They are the ones laughing the hardest, likely because they know that the scandalous verses are half true.

  Off to the left there are a couple of fortune tellers with their final customers of the day. They slowly turn their tarot cards or read their clients’ palms. Baffling people with prognostications is how they earn their daily bread.

  Today it looks to Thomas like there are an unusual number of sellers of tinctures and ointments, unguents and elixirs on the bridge. It must be the time of year. It’s cold and damp, and people want to believe that their chills and shivers can be relieved by some drink or balm. Thomas walks past portable shelves of bottles and flasks that their sellers guarantee will settle the stomach, thin the blood, disperse the vapours, roll back the wrinkles and lengthen what every man wants lengthened. Thomas cannot help but wonder if that last one really works. Of course it doesn’t. Yet what if it did? Meanwhile, the carters are starting to pack it in, and those selling something to eat are making their last rounds with their wicker trays. One has oranges from Portugal while others have pies and breads they claim are still hot, though everyone knows that it’s all long gone cold.

  Thomas comes to a halt to watch two tumbling midgets. They are attired in stripes like clowns. Suddenly, as part of their act, a third midget springs from the inside of a wooden trunk, its lid having popped off. The new midget begins to juggle three wooden pins. That lasts a minute and then down he tosses the pins and gets up on stilts. The midget hops and caroms here and there, nearly losing his balance, or is that part of the show? He’s dressed like Harlequin. The act attracts a small but delighted crowd.

  Thomas moves along the stone railing of the bridge, his hands caressing the grooves and fissures of the stone. He hears something going on down below, either in the water or on the sand spits. He can’t see a thing. So he crosses to the other side to have a better look. He knows that in summer boys swim in the river, using one or the other of the two sandy beaches as their base. On this January day, however, there can be none of that. So he’s curious what the commotion is about. At last he spies half a dozen boys down on the beach called the Sands. They are putting something in the cracks of the rocks. Whatever it is, they don’t announce. Yet the boys prance around in anticipation. Bursts of smoke issue from the rocks followed by the sound of the pops of the explosions that produced them. The onlookers applaud. The boys are setting off firecrackers. Another round of pops goes off, much louder than before. But something’s gone wrong. One of the boys is holding his face. There is blood on his hands.

  “Blown off his nose,” Thomas hears a boy shout from down below. “Help! Help!”

  Thomas shakes his head and pushes off the stone parapet to the middle of the bridge. There’s nothing he can do to help anyone down there.

  He’s jostled a few steps farther on, and he swings round with his elbows out. He is ready to defend his purse from any pickpocket. It turns out it’s only a couple of ladies. Well, maybe ladies they are not. They are old as he remembers his mother. Their faces are over painted and the necklines of their blouses are low, exposing over half of their sagging chests.

  “Ever had it, dearie?” says one.

  “Care to give it a lift?” adds the other. “Two for one. Just for you.”

  Thomas’s elbows and hands come down. He smiles at the prostitutes, hoping he’s never been with either one. Yet he really doesn’t know. It’s possible in some of the dark spots he’s been. Maybe he should reconsider his preference for taking them from behind. That way he might remember the faces better than he does. Thomas finds a faint smile for these particular prostitutes and adds a gentleman’s uncoiling of the hand.

  “In a bit of a hurry, Mesdames.”

  “We’ll do all the work, dearie,” says one with a wink.

  “I do not doubt it a bit, but you see—”

  “Hey,” shouts a man’s voice behind Thomas’s back. Thomas doesn’t think the yell is for him. He doesn’t even glance around.

  “Hey,” comes the voice again. Then a forceful hand grabs Thomas on the left shoulder. “Hey, stop, Thomas!”

  Thomas swings round. The hands go up, ready to defend himself. He finds a young man his own age facing him. The fellow has bright eyes and an eager, smiling face. It takes Thomas an instant to realize that he’s staring at a face from his past, from his boyhood days in Vire.

  “Jean-Chrys?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Jean-Chrysostome claps his former friend with two hands, one on the upper arm and the other on the shoulder. Both hands stay where they are put, clasping Thomas so as not to let him get away. For a long moment the two check each other out. Each wants to see how the other is dressed and how he has changed, filled out, grown taller and thicker. Smiles, shy boy smiles, creep onto each face.

  “You don’t look too bad … for a Parisian.” Jean-Chrys’s hands finally unclasp Thomas’s clothes.

  “Nor you, for a bumpkin.”

  Thomas reaches out as if he is going to pat Jean-Chrys on the cheek. Instead, he flicks Jean-Chrys’s tricorn right off his head. His friend catches it and laughs.

  “Good to see you again, Thomas, I can’t begin to tell you.”

  “The same. The very same. So good to see you here. On the Pont Neuf no less.”

  “Even if…” the smile fades from Jean-Chrys’s face.

  The contented look on Thomas’s face disappears. The reminder casts a blanket over the two young men, taking away the mirth of their reunion.

  “No choice, I had.” Thomas’s whole body has gone as taut as the rigid line across his lips. “I couldn’t, Jean-Chrys, I couldn’t stay. I had to get away.”

  “I suppose.” Jean-Chrys’s eyes show his friend that he wants to understand, even if he can’t. “Your parents, well, they’re still trying to understand. Even after all these years. I see them from time to time.”

  “He’s all right then? My father? He fell that morning as the diligence left. Or so I heard.”

  “You heard?” Jean-Chrys is bewildered by the word choice. Thomas makes it sound like he wasn’t there. Jean-Chrys lets it go without any further comment. “Yes, he’s all right. He just lost his … his breath.”

  They both glance away, down to the ground then up to the sky.

  “And mother? And Anne?”

  “Both well. Your mother, she misses you of course and regularly asks me if I’ve heard. A letter from you. But no, as you know. You don’t write. And Anne, why, she’s married now.”

  “Not serious.”

  “Yes.” Jean-Chrys’s smile is back. “A small merchant in Condé-sur-Noireau.”

  “Small in stature or small in rank?”

  “Both, I suppose.” Jean-Chrys laughs at the question. Thomas never did have much good to say about Anne. The good mood of their reunion is briefly back. “But I meant his height. He’s not even as tall as she is.”

  Thomas beams at the news. “Serves her right,” he says, though he doesn’t know why he is feeling so mean. He has hardly thought of his father’s precious Anne since he left Vire years ago. Why should he? He’s the one in Paris, while she’s in sleepy Condé, with a man smaller than herself.

  For a moment there is no further conversation. The two young men stand easy, relaxed. It is the way it used to be, except that it’s not.

  “List
en.” Jean-Chrys raises both hands in front of him. He appears to want to wring something from the air. “It was wrong to take their money, Thomas, it was. It was nearly everything they had.”

  “Is that it then?” Thomas turns away and shakes his head. “This, this chance meeting is not chance at all? You’re on a mission to take me back?”

  Jean-Chys reaches out to his boyhood friend, to grab his shoulder. Thomas shrugs it away.

  “You go back to Vire. You tell them you couldn’t find me. Do you hear?”

  Thomas turns and walks away. Jean-Chrys follows after, calling his name, asking him to stop. They are soon completely off the Pont Neuf, with Thomas striding away quickly along the left bank. The teasing smell of roasting chestnuts, coming from a stand not ten feet away, causes Thomas to slow down. Then he stops.

  “So they sent you here, my parents, to get me home?”

  “They’re in trouble, Thomas. Deep trouble. You won’t be surprised; it’s La Motte again.”

  “What this time?” Thomas’s chin is jutting out.

  “An appeal. A process in Rouen. They’re sure they can win this time, but they want … they need your help.” Jean-Chrys’s voice starts to trail off as he continues. “They’ve heard you’re a lawyer. It’s why I’m here. Looking for you. Been in Paris a week already. I’ve roved this damned bridge every day looking for you.”

  With the slightest of nods, Thomas takes it in, word by word. He says nothing in return. But the chin does come down and the face is no longer fierce. Should he explain that he’s no lawyer, merely a copyist? No, Jean-Chrys doesn’t need to know that. If the word back in Vire is that he’s a lawyer, there’s some good in that.

  So Thomas begins to talk. He explains how the money that went with him from his parents is all gone. Taken from him soon after he left Vire. He never got to use it at all for … for its intended purpose to get him into a medical school. As for right now, Thomas has only what he requires. Requires to live in Paris. He sees doubt then deep disappointment spread across Jean-Chrys’s face.