Nevers

by Sara Cassidy

  Perhaps her mother is right. Perhaps her notice will get a response in this town. But if it’s from the yellow-haired man…He doesn’t look friendly at all.

  Odette is distracted from her worries when Niçois leads her through a small door cut into the large cathedral door. A door through a door! Hinges within hinges! She steps back out and in again, marveling.

  Inside, the cathedral is cool and dark and musty—a little like the smell of a fresh grave, Odette thinks. Figures in rags doze in the pews. One grips an unlit candle in his dirty hands. Another holds a hat to his heart. Monks scrub the low stone steps leading up to the altar. The hems of their cloaks are dark from dragging in the water.

  Pigeons sigh in the ceiling beams. One flaps across the wide transept, making a sound like cards being shuffled.

  “I come here often in the summer,” Niçois whispers as he and Odette sink into a pew. “To cool down. And sometimes Mother makes me attend Mass with her. Luckily, there’s always a baby arriving in Nevers, so she can rarely go. In any case, she says our hearts are churches, and we can worship wherever we are.”

  “My mother doesn’t like Mass,” Odette says. She glances nervously at Niçois. “She doesn’t, in fact, like the church.”

  Niçois clamps his hands onto his head and ducks, as if Odette’s sacrilege might cause the ceiling to fall. Odette giggles. She makes the sign of the cross, as if this could save her from the tumbling stones. Niçois’s eyebrows fly up, and he claps a hand over his mouth. The smack echoes in the church like cannon shot, which only makes the two laugh harder. Odette loves the feeling of her bones loose in her joints.

  The monks stand to look for the disruptive heathens. Dark, wet circles on their cloaks mark the location of their knees. Niçois and Odette duck low and hide, barely breathing, until they hear the monks’ brushes scrubbing the stairs again.

  Niçois shows Odette the chapels that line the walls of the cathedral. Each one has a small altar. One displays a rib bone propped on red velvet, protected in a glass jar. A small sign claims that the bone belonged to a saint, Martin of Tours, who once used his sword to cut his cloak in two to keep a beggar warm. Odette suspects the bone is actually a goat’s.

  Another chapel holds the graves of a Nevers duke and a duchess. What was it like to be a duchess, Odette wonders, with a bed stuffed with goose feathers, and servants to make breakfast and lay the fire and pump the bathwater and haggle for the cheapest cut at the butcher? Wait! There would be no more cheap cuts. No more haggling. To have coins always at the bottom of your pouch, as if it were spring fed. The idea dizzies her.

  Though Odette knows it would be wrong to wish to be a countess, richer than others (the revolutionaries put an end to that kind of inequality), surely to imagine the impossible wasn’t a crime!

  Something rustles in the chapel. Odette puts a finger to her lips and kneels low, expecting to find a mouse. Niçois listens. “Water,” he says. “An underground stream. We had a very wet winter—so wet the butcher sold pigs’ bladders for people to put their pocket watches in, to protect them from rusting. Unfortunately, one man was attacked by a hungry marten who sniffed out the bladder, which had not been perfectly cleaned.”

  “No!”

  A monk shuffles out a small door at the back of the cathedral, letting in a blast of sunlight. Odette and Niçois, having had enough of the damp, dark air, hurry after him.

  They leap across the threshold into the bright spring day.

  Eleven

  A few streets from the cathedral, in a triangular patch of grass under a leafy chestnut tree, stands an extraordinarily handsome donkey.

  “He looks”—Odette takes a breath—“sad. And tired.”

  The donkey flinches. Flies buzz at its eyes. Niçois brushes them away. Only one remains, stuck fast in the thick syrup of a lonely tear. Niçois takes the fly between his finger and thumb, extracts it and places it in the grass. He rubs the donkey’s legs. “There now, you’re all right.” He looks up at Odette. “I think his legs get sore. All the standing.”

  “Why doesn’t he lie down?”

  “I think he doesn’t like to get dirty. He moaned a lot during all the rain last winter, when things got very muddy.”

  The donkey lays its big head on Niçois’s bony shoulder and sighs elegantly.

  “The strange thing is that he only brays at night,” Niçois says. “And no one seems to own him. He just arrived in Nevers one day.”

  “I think he doesn’t want to be a donkey,” Odette says, remembering the Latin words.

  Niçois laughs. “That’s a funny idea.”

  Odette feels herself blush.

  “There’s nothing wrong with funny ideas,” Niçois adds quickly.

  “Have you ever imagined not being a person?” Odette asks, emboldened.

  Niçois frowns. “That’s a hard question. It hurts my brain—in a good way.”

  Odette knows what he means. When Félix asked her difficult questions—which was often—she felt like her head would pop off. Sometimes, when the question was too tough, she’d cry. Then Félix would break it into smaller questions. She tries this now with Niçois. “Can you imagine being something other than what you are?”

  Niçois glances up. “I can somewhat imagine being this chestnut tree,” he says, “lapping us with shadows. Or even one of those clouds, embroidering the sky. And maybe that fountain”—he points —“gurgling beneficently.” He looks at Odette. “But no matter who or what I was, I feel that I would always be me.”

  Odette contemplates the donkey. She has a theory about what its problem is. The beast’s desire to not be a donkey could be the result of a blow to the head.

  Some years earlier, when they lived in Macon, Odette’s mother had heard from a neighbor that Rose Bertin—Marie Antoinette’s dressmaker—was passing through town. Anneline hurried out of the house, fevered to catch a glimpse of the renowned seamstress. At that same moment her fifth husband was returning to their cottage, after a long day of counting numbers at the bank. Not seeing him, Anneline threw open the gate and knocked him into the street. A cart promptly rolled over him, the horse stepping directly on his head.

  After that he was very changed. He no longer recognized Anneline or Odette. He thought the night sky was a heavily salted bowl of mushroom soup and would try to reach it with a spoon. He had strange, obsessive desires that would make him weep. He wanted to iron an angel’s gown, for example, or twirl the cottage they lived in on his finger like a spinning top. One evening he sobbed inconsolably because he could not see his bones—what he called his “inside basket.”

  He finally died from eating a roof slate. No one knew why he had done it, but once in a while Anneline still turns to Odette out of the blue and suggests a possible reason. “Perhaps he thought it was a Eucharist, and he wanted to take communion.” Or: “Perhaps he thought he was a pigeon and needed stones for his gizzard, to grind up his food.”

  The donkey rubs his nose against Odette’s shoulder. He seems to be drawn to her.

  “You can stroke him,” Niçois offers.

  Odette is not inclined. She’s too nervous. Instead, she looks into the donkey’s eyes. “You made a lot of noise last night,” she scolds. “Please be quieter tonight. Remember that people are sleeping, and we need to work hard tomorrow.” She sizes up the donkey. “Why don’t you work?”

  Niçois gulps. “My father and a neighbor tried,” he says quietly. “It was hopeless. If you put so much as a thatch of hay on this donkey’s back, he collapses to the ground, wailing. All donkeys resist the pull of the rope, but this one doesn’t just resist—he dances in protest. In fact, the dance teacher was called to watch, and then things got strange. The teacher cried out, He knows the passepied and the sarabande!”

  Odette rolls her eyes. What is with this town? Of course the donkey doesn’t know the passepied—let alone the sarabande. Those are complicated dances. But if this donkey actually was calling out in Latin…

  Odette thinks of the go
ats and cows and horses she has known. Those animals all calmed when you spoke in smooth tones, and they cowered or bolted if you spoke suddenly or roughly. This animal, though, looks right at Niçois and Odette when they speak, its eyes moving from face to face. Its eyes are quicker than any horse’s. It’s as if there’s a mind—a nous—at work.

  As Niçois gathers grass from a nearby ditch to feed to Anne, Odette leans toward the donkey and whispers in his furry ear, “Salve.” Anne shows no sign of understanding. His ear doesn’t twitch. He doesn’t turn to look at Odette. Ungulam pulsa, Odette says. “Hello. Stamp your hoof.” Anne does not move. He remains calmly regal in the dappled shadow of the chestnut tree. Odette feels entirely foolish.

  “Well, he’s a fine-looking beast,” she finally says to Niçois. “Complainy. But a very fine beast underneath.”

  She really did say that.

  Twelve

  “May God sour your wine!”

  “Oh, did I step on you? You are so small, I didn’t see you.”

  “May your bread harden.”

  On their way home Niçois and Odette witness a fight at the city’s largest fountain, between two water bearers—men who earn their sous delivering water door to door in casks. One had cut in line in front of the other and stepped on the other’s toe while doing so.

  “Why, you’re smaller than Marie Antoinette’s dog. Same squashed-in face too.”

  “May rats devour your brie.”

  “That dog got the bayonet, I believe. Immediately after its owner’s head rolled.”

  “May your strongest hen lay stones.”

  A man in a large overcoat steps between them. Odette is startled to see it’s the hand smeller. “His name is M. Mains,” Niçois whispers to her.

  “Brothers, you are fighting over, what, a few seconds, lost by one, gained by the other?”

  “He stepped on my foot!”

  “Then thank him. Pain reminds you you’re alive.”

  “How could I see him? He’s the size of a lap dog.”

  “Sir,” M. Mains says. “Shout into your barrel.”

  The man who cut in line gamely puts his face to the opening of his water cask. “Coco!” he shouts. The crowd roars with laughter—Coco was the name of Marie Antoinette’s dog.

  “It is still empty, as you can hear,” M. Mains says. “Cutting in line did not help you. Listen. Life is but a streak of light. If you hurry, you only meet darkness more quickly. Did Chaumette fall for nothing? Robespierre? All men are brothers. Embrace, unless you be not men.”

  The water bearers hang their heads, then clap their arms around each other’s shoulders, apologize for their insults and withdraw their curses. When all is settled, M. Mains asks to smell their water-wrinkled hands.

  “He was once a great professor in Paris,” Niçois explains to Odette.

  “So he told me. At the Sorbonne,” Odette says.

  “Yes. He studied hand smells and regional identity, whatever that is, but the university dismissed him.”

  “Why?”

  “One afternoon, without permission, M. Mains leaped onto a stage and smelled the hands of a visiting guest. Not just any guest. The Pope.”

  “Oh no!”

  “The Holy Father’s hands smell of prayer! M. Mains yelled to the audience. Which would have been all right. But then he continued, And Gorgonzola cheese.”

  Odette bursts out laughing.

  “The audience laughed too,” Niçois says. “But the Pope did not, and neither did the Sorbonne deans. M. Mains was fined for ‘vulgar familiarity.’ The Vatican believed his mention of Gorgonzola cheese, which is streaked with blue, was a blasphemous joke—”

  “About the Pope’s face! They say it’s shattered with blue veins.”

  “The church claims the veins are from age, but everyone knows they come from the Pope’s fondness for hazelnut liqueur. So M. Mains was hounded out of Paris. He came here to Nevers. He still attends Mass, though I don’t think the Pope would be happy to hear that. He presses his nose to the church pew in front of him to smell the hands of all who have prayed there.”

  The water bearers wave their hands under M. Main’s nostrils. He inhales deeply and smiles. The crowd leans in for his pronouncement. “Hickory. From the barrels you roll sloshing through the streets. I told you: you are brothers. Now get back in line.”

  The men do as they’re told, each this time begging the other to go first.

  Thirteen

  When Odette gets back to their small home, she finds Anneline pale and shivering in bed. “I don’t even have the strength to read Aline et Valcourt,” her mother moans.

  “You shouldn’t have gone out. I told you,” Odette says.

  Anneline chokes out a wet cough.

  “The man in the ridiculous blouse at the castle fundraiser had that cough!” Odette remembers suddenly. “The one who made the long speech. You didn’t kiss him, did you?”

  “Of course not. You know the law. Commit adultery, and it’s the convent for life. Can you see me in a convent again?”

  Odette can’t. Her mother hates nuns—with good reason. And she knows nothing about gardening or folding laundry or dipping candles or sitting in silence, which is what nuns mostly do. And, of course, Anneline loves men. Helplessly. There are no men in convents.

  Odette tucks her mother’s cloak around her. Anneline murmurs something.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said, Thank you.”

  Odette doesn’t know how to respond. Her mother has never thanked her before for anything.

  Anneline rubs her head. “It hurts so much. There’s a terrible bump.”

  Odette thinks of the husband who ate the roof slate after being crushed by the cart. Could Anneline’s fall at the marketplace have something to do with her alarming gratitude?

  “At least I have a foot warmer,” Anneline says. She nods toward her feet, where the piglet and chick lie enfolded.

  Tick-tick, Odette hears. The chicks must be hatching in the armoire.

  Anneline widens her eyes. “Is that your stomach, daughter? Sometimes it makes such strange sounds.”

  No. For once Odette isn’t hungry, even after running around all day with Niçois. She feels too warm and light. “That’s the chicks coming out of their shells.”

  “Not already. I don’t know what to do with babies.”

  “You do,” Odette lies. She adds a handful of corn to the small pile in the armoire and tops up the water.

  Anneline calls after her. “No, Odette. I don’t know what to do with babies. You forget. I did not grow up in a normal family. I never had a mother.”

  Odette sits on the edge of the bed. Anneline smooths a strand of hair behind Odette’s ear. Odette stiffens. Yes, she thinks, it must have been the fall that has brought on this tenderness. “I keep hearing the rock wall crashing down,” Anneline says. “Even while I read Aline et Valcour, it rumbles through my mind. I even smell the dust and hear the cries of the people.”

  Odette feels her mother’s forehead. “Your fever is not as bad as yesterday,” she says. “How did things go with the notice?”

  “People got excited—but about me more than the notice. I haven’t completely lost my looks, I suppose.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I will have some of that broth now.”

  Odette serves the broth in the faïence cups. Taking care that her mother doesn’t see Félix’s knife, she cuts up an apple from last year’s crop that she found still clinging to a tree, withered but edible. She fans out the slices on the faïence plate. Anneline slurps and chews and swallows. She points at the bare plate. “Who’s that? She looks familiar.”

  But before Odette can answer, Anneline sighs and falls back on the bed. Soon she is lightly snoring.

  Odette tidies the dishes and raises a fire, then lies down beside her mother and watches the sky darkening through the window.

  A cart rumbles up the street, and the chatter of happy women fills the evening air. The cart sto
ps just outside. Odette overhears farewells and friendly teasing. Niçois’s mother, she surmises, being dropped off at the end of Hell day.

  The road beneath the little house quiets. The apartment grows dark.

  Odette falls asleep to the sound of chick after chick announcing itself. Peep-peep, peep-peep, like tiny carriage wheels needing oil.

  Fourteen

  Once again, in the thick dark of the Nevers night, Odette’s sleep is disrupted by hoarse cries. Odette hurries to the window. She pulls hard on her braid, digs her fingernails into her arms and slaps her cheeks. She wants to be sure she is awake.

  She turns her ear toward the hoary brays, listening for the flow of meaning within them. Debeo homines eloqui. Yes. The donkey is speaking Latin. Again, he goes on and on. Odette translates to herself. “I must speak. A donkey’s loneliness is unbearable, but times are changing. For the first time in this donkey life, I do not feel alone.”

  The night swallows Anne’s honks, and silence returns. But then, as if unable to restrain himself, the donkey speaks again. Illa puella, he brays. “That girl.”

  Odette flushes. She stares for a long time into the dark, threading Anne’s words through her mind. Could he mean her? She considers calling out to him. But what would she say? Adsum? I am here? She doesn’t want to further disrupt the sleepers of Nevers. Besides, what would the townspeople think of a girl who talks to a donkey?

  She decides she will visit Anne the next day, on her own. Then she lies down again, claiming a part of Anneline’s cloak for warmth. But she doesn’t sleep long. Just before dawn the quiet is shattered again.

  “Do thieves live in my house as worms invade an apple?” M. Gustave’s feathered hulk fills the doorway. He is puffing from the climb up the stairs.

  “It’s Lisane’s house,” Odette corrects wearily.

  M. Gustave shuffles his feet. “Then do thieves live in Lisane’s house, as weevils in a block of cheese?”