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The next morning, after the tenor had left, I asked Lucy to have the phaeton rigged up, then thought better of it and asked for just my horse.
I wore the general’s coat, my jewels bound in plain pouches hidden at my waist and ankle. My face hid even the slightest hint of a good-bye. Until later, I said.
Pardon me, but if I may say something, Lucy said.
By all means, I said.
Take a driver, she said. Or perhaps your horse won’t be there when you return. If you take ours, he may still sell it while you’re away, but if you tip him, he may fight for the horse and wait for you.
I hired a driver to take me to the Place Vend?me instead; and near there, at a chapel I didn’t recognize, I asked the driver to stop.
I haven’t had confession, I said, and stepped out of the carriage, though I didn’t need to explain to him.
In case I was being followed, I entered the church, slipped a few sous from my purse into the slot by the door, and took a candle, following the line of women ahead of me, kneeling and lighting it, crossing myself as the sisters had taught me. I looked up. A figure I didn’t recognize presided above a thick field of candles—so many had come to ask for favors, the flames had the warmth of a hearth fire, so I lingered until the women behind me glared and then I left to find Aristafeo.
There were no men in the line as I passed out of the church; the men of age to fight were at war. We were a city of women, children, and old men. The streets had filled with garbage that was no longer collected. The stench overpowered any fear I had of being caught.
At the address Aristafeo had given me in the Marais, I found an elegant town house within a courtyard, which impressed me. I rang the plain bell knocker and heard the sounds of dogs running and barking inside, vicious. I drew back from the entrance and was close to leaving when he pushed his face out, straining with the exertion of holding back two large black dogs. One moment! he said. And then his face vanished as the door closed again. I could hear the yelping and begging of the dogs and his voice, weary as he spoke to them in stern, swift Spanish until they were quiet.
He unlatched the door again, smiling. Forgive them, he said. They are loyal protectors but also quite hungry. I had not expected you, and so they were outside.
I stepped cautiously through the wooden gate, pausing at the sight of the dogs before entering completely. What are their names? I asked.
Gaston and Frédéric. Or, as I call them, the Lords of the Lower Garden.
I took in the courtyard. The dogs, both large black hounds nearly the size of ponies, sat grinning at me, anxious to approach but clearly having just been disciplined.
Come this way.
He walked so that he stood between the dogs and me. Once inside, he closed the door, and they began to whimper. He shouted to them again through the door and then turned to me, and said, I have nothing to feed them, of course. I am worried that soon they will turn on me.
I unfastened the ribbon on my hat and then undid my hair.
Take me upstairs, and then we will speak of food. And everything else.
He stepped close to me, studying my face, curious, amused again. His eyes betrayed nothing of the bitter appraisal I’d seen the day before—if he had not forgiven me for the insult of the day previous in rehearsal, he had upon my arrival. In the carriage over, I had been full of fears, each of them turning over to reveal another one underneath until, by the time I stepped through his door, I had a single mission I could be sure of: I was here to see him this one last time and to ask if he would leave with me. Here in his house I could admit what I hadn’t previously, that I did not know him—I only desired him. Was it only lust, the lust I might feel for any beautiful thing, for he was beautiful, how had I not remembered? Had I somehow reduced his beauty in memory or had it grown? Why did I love him? Did he love me? And what if he would not leave with me? I might not have the strength to leave him behind and go on alone—and I would need to, to live; and yet I could not bear it if he was to die, even if it should be that he did not love me; and thus went my mind even as he reached for me and unlaced my dress at the back with a nimble, practiced hand.
How stupid you are, I told myself, and yet how wise to finally be here.
As he kissed me, I entered again the world that existed only with him. I fought the old habit I still had of retreating from the sensations of my own body as I delivered myself over to the pleasures of others. To be here felt like pulling myself out of my own grave. This impulse to stay hidden in this life that was death, the fear that it was the only safety, this was what I hoped to smash now in myself. To break the lock on the cage I had made of myself.
His hands pulled open my corset and his face pushed into my hair, stopping when his chin touched my neck.
He paused. What is it? I asked, as he brushed his fingers across my back, finishing the unlacing.
You don’t know how long I’ve dreamt of this, he said, touching his brow to my own.
Dream no more, I said, to him as much as to myself, and drew back, leading him along behind me as my dress fell off me in waves.
I stepped from the traveling costume and lay across his bed on my back, making a display of myself before him as he smiled down at me, my smooth belly and breasts, my nipples pinking in the cold.
I enjoyed this no matter the man—the power it gave me over him to simply appear naked before him. But now it was my turn to be in silent wonder. Aristafeo stood over me, and as I watched, he stripped off his waistcoat, his shirt, his pants until his long slim body rose up, a dream of him in the afternoon light, as soft as smoke. He was like a faun, in that way I suppose most men are—it is right to paint them as half beast, I think, especially from the waist down; and his was a trim waist, too, and a long one. In the garden that first night he’d been only a silver violent desire, the night’s hot center, but here in his bedchamber, I could see all of him. He smiled as he came near, reaching out to trace a line from my hip bone to just under my breast so that I cried out softly, surprised by pleasure. I could feel the warmth of him just before he touched me, and as he completed his descent, our skin touched in the cold air of the room and then he burned across me.
I went into my own hunger for him and stayed there under him until it was gone.
He took me three times that afternoon—the first like a race, hard and fast, as if it were just to be done with to make room for the others; the second slower, gentler, tender, if excruciatingly so, the pleasure drawn out until it was almost agony; the third a true descent into another place altogether, where I felt afterward as if we were finally revealed to each other, who we had each been all along and perhaps had never known until then. Each of the first two times, he would rise up, smiling, and I would say, Again. After the third time, I said nothing. For at least an instant, there was nothing of who I’d been before, nothing seemed to remain. I lay quiet instead, wanting to hold only this oblivion, and as it receded, there came the slow rise and fall of his chest as he slept against me in the gathering dark.
I smiled in satisfaction and then fell away until I slept as well.
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