The Confusion

“Oh.”

 

 

“It is trite, I know. To defeat Death, or to phant’sy that one has defeated it, by having a child. But I could not manage it before. For the same pox that slew my brothers left me unable to get a woman pregnant. I’ll not speak of the motives that led to the taking of the boy from the orphanage where you kept him at Versailles. They were, as you have collected, quite beastly motives. I did not intend to love the boy. I did not even intend to keep him in my house. But as things came out, I did both—first kept him, then loved him—and as time went on, my mind turned to Alchemy, and to the lost Gold of Solomon, less and less frequently. I’d not thought of it for half a year until you reminded me of it just now.”

 

“Then whatever other differences you and I may have, we are united in seeing it as foolishness.”

 

“Oh, I don’t think it is the least bit foolish,” said Lothar, raising the pocked ridges where eyebrows had once sprouted, “all I said was that I no longer think of it. I’m ready to die. And whether I die rich or poor is of little account to me. But you are gravely mistaken if you believe that you can take Johann away from me. For that truly would be kidnapping; it would break his heart, and that would break yours.”

 

“As to that, I am not mistaken. I know this, and have known it, ever since I learned, from the Doctor, that he was being raised as your son.” Eliza looked up to solicit a confirmation from Leibniz. But it seemed that the Doctor had some minutes ago quietly taken Caroline aside, and led her off to some other corner of the courtyard so that Eliza and Lothar could talk privily.

 

“Son and sole heir,” Lothar corrected her, “though, thanks to your intrigues, I have nothing to will to him save debts.”

 

“That could be changed.”

 

“Then why do you not change it? What is it you want? Why are you here?”

 

“To see him. To hold him.”

 

“Granted! Truly and happily granted. You may move in with me here, for all I care; you’re welcome to do so. But you can’t take him.”

 

“You are in no position to dictate terms.”

 

“Foolish girl! They’re not my terms, and I am not dictating them! They are the terms of the world. You cannot admit to this world that you bore a child out of wedlock. You cannot even admit it to the boy—until he is older, perhaps, and able to fathom such things. You can take him back and give him to the Jesuits, who will raise him up to be a priest, who will fault his mother for having sinned. Or you can leave him in my care, and visit him whenever you will. In a year or two he’ll be old enough to travel—he can visit you incognito in France, if that shall please you. He shall be a Baron and a banker, a gentleman, a Protestant, the cleverest scholar in Leipzig; but he shall never be yours.”

 

“I know. I know all of these things—have known them for years.”

 

Lothar’s ravaged face was a difficult one to read, but he seemed exasperated now, or bewildered. “After all this,” he said, “I did not expect you to be such a confused person.”

 

“You did not? How unreasonable of you. You belabor me for being confused—yet you took the boy, not for love of him, but for hate of me, and out of lust for Alchemical gold—only to change your mind!”

 

Lothar shrugged. “Perhaps that is the real Alchemy.”

 

“Would that such Alchemy could work its spell on me, and make me as content as you seem.”

 

“I shall grant you this much,” said Lothar. “The taking of the gold at Bonanza put me into a vengeful rage that kept me awake at night, and filled all of my days, for a long time, and drove me to hurt you as badly as I supposed you had hurt me. I wanted you to fathom my anger. You then went on to destroy me, cleverly and systematically, over a span of years. You used my own greed as a weapon against me. And if I seem content to you, why, in part it is because I have a son. But in part it is because of you, Eliza, your Barock fury, sustained for so long and expressed so Barockly. You showed, you expressed, what I once felt; and from that, I knew that I had struck home, that a spark had passed between us.”

 

“Very well. Enough of this. Do you have, Lothar, a spare banca at which I could sit down for some minutes, and write a letter?”

 

Lothar spread his hands out, palms up, as if handing the place over to her. “Take your pick, madame.”

 

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