MARGARET SPENT THE DAY at the library. Even the sunlight stepped carefully here on its slow, heavy journey down from the dusty windows high above, whispering to itself, Do not disturb, do not disturb.
Margaret did not disturb. No one disturbed, which also meant no one disturbed Margaret. Margaret lived in constant fear of casual conversation, in which invariably someone would ask her about something she had written, and she would not know what they were talking about. Margaret was an authority on many things, with this one qualification—she had forgotten those many things as thoroughly as if she swilled daily from the river Lethe, morning, noon, and night, gulping, gargling, brushing her teeth with the waters of oblivion. Margaret suffered short-lived but all-consuming intellectual passions to which she gave herself over completely, becoming expert enough to be thoughtful. After she wrote about whatever it was that preoccupied her for that moment, she forgot, forgot everything, forgot it altogether, retaining only a pleasant feeling of accomplishment and completion.
While working on her dissertation, which became her first book, The Anatomy of Madame de Montigny, Margaret had discovered an intriguing eighteenth-century manuscript. She could find no evidence that it had ever been published, and how it had arrived at Midtown Medical Library, she could not yet say.
It was in the form of a dialogue. Gradually, she came to realize that whole passages of works by Helyétius, Diderot, Kant, Condorcet—everyone who was anyone in the eighteenth century—as well as considerable portions of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, had been lifted, unacknowledged, and scattered through the book. This was not in itself unusual. There were no copyrights, and pirated editions of philosophical works, anthologies of unattributed excerpts, often considerably altered, were common.
But was this a philosophical work? she wondered. For, in addition to the philosophical content, the story, like much of the literature of that libertine time, was one of seduction.
Was it then a libertine novel? And if not—if not a philosophical tract and not a libertine novel—what was it? What manner of beast? Margaret was translating it from the French. Her new book, on underground Enlightenment literature, was centered on this bawdy, didactic dialogue. She turned to it each day with increasing pleasure and curiosity. A hybrid creature, feathered, furred, and pink-complexioned, it lay before her, open, waiting, a mysterious coquette, waiting for her, for Margaret. It was called Rameau's Niece.
RAMEAU'S NIECE
by Anonymous
Translated by Margaret Nathan
It is my custom to whistle while I work. I adopted this habit at a tender age and have found it to be a pleasant accompaniment to the exertions of my occupation, an occupation already so delightful that this further adornment sometimes lifts my spirit to such an unaccustomed height that I thoroughly forget what, in fact, my delightful occupation is.
On one such occasion, as I whistled merrily, the sounds flew from my pursed lips to join, somewhat humbly, the magnificent song of a lark perched in a tree beneath which I strolled. I turned my eyes toward that delicate creature of heaven and so, my attention averted momentarily from my earthly path, I stumbled.
My foot had rubbed against a thick, protruding root, causing me to lose my balance, and I thus was flung against a passerby, hitherto unnoticed by me, engaged as I was in my habitual whistling and the aforementioned glance at the feathered messenger of Venus; for the lark's song was indeed a song of love that day, an idea by which I was struck even as I was struck by the beauty of the passerby whom I inadvertently, but rather forcefully, struck.
SHE: You have lost your footing.
MYSELF: I have indeed lost my footing. But let us hope that I have not lost my head, for surely, just this moment, I have lost my heart! What a lovely apparition to appear before me, here where I expected only solitude.
She was indeed lovely. Lovely? She was exquisite, a girl whose many qualities, each one remarkable on its own, created together a sense of harmony, of consistency, of perfect unity—in short, of beauty! I felt all of this immediately, before even I realized I was experiencing anything at all, for her grace was of such subtle power that the effect seemed to be obtained without any effort. And so too, effortlessly, was it apprehended, and welcomed, by me.
MYSELF: Will you forgive me?
SHE: I cannot forgive you for an act instigated not by you but by chance; nor would I forgive you for an act that gives me the pleasure of meeting again, after all these years, the friend of my uncle and a philosopher of such brilliance. For let me confess, sir, I have often desired to see you again. Your Treatise on Sense and Sociability has been my most intimate companion this past year.