I nodded. It would have been difficult answering her questions if we were at home, but it was especially so in a public place. Despite my discomfort she pursued the topic.
Leaning forward, she asked, sotto voce, “Did he ever pleasure you?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No. I said no. Not ever.”
“How long did he take when he made love?”
“Do you we need to discuss this here?”
“I find that sometimes lovely surroundings, wonderful food, and amazing wine make it easier to deal with the unpleasantries.”
“But the more you ask, the more I have to picture him, to remember him, his stench of cigars and whiskey . . .” I was feeling Benjamin’s large, strong hands squeezing my breasts and his fleshy mouth slobbering over me as he shoved himself in between my legs.
“How long did he take?”
“Two or three minutes.”
“Always? From the very beginning, mon ange?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “He told me there was something wrong with me on our honeymoon, and he seemed never to forgive me for it.”
“What do you mean something wrong with you?”
“With how I couldn’t respond,” I whispered.
“Did he tell you that you were frigid?”
The word shocked me. Especially said out loud in a fine restaurant. “Yes.” I drained my wineglass. Felt the warmth flood me. The worst part of it had been said. There was some relief in that.
“I knew it was not a love match, but I never suspected that it was so unsatisfying and hurtful. Based on your description of his performance, you can’t assume there’s anything at all wrong with you.”
“But I am sure. I know it. I can feel it.”
“No, lovemaking with a callous brute is never pleasurable.” She looked at me and smiled sweetly. “Until you’ve taken a gentle lover, you can’t know how responsive you are. No woman is incapable of pleasure, but some must be taught. Now, eat a bit more. You’re too thin to be healthy.” She put another pat of butter on my bread plate. “I promise, there’s nothing wrong with you. The women in our family aren’t made frigid.”
I knew she was mistaken. I’d bought illicit books and tried to do things to myself, and I’d failed to coax my body out of its frozen state. But rather than argue I took a forkful of the delicious food and put it in my mouth.
We ate in silence for a few moments more, and I allowed the sounds of the restaurant to lull me into thinking that this was an ordinary night, with a grandmother and granddaughter having a delightful dinner in one of Paris’s most famous restaurants.
“You have only told me a sketch of what happened in New York. Are you certain of what you heard between your husband and father?”
“That Benjamin gave Papa no choice? That it was shame either way?”
She nodded.
“Certain that I heard the conversation, yes.”
I again described walking into my father’s study and seeing him pointing the gun at Benjamin and then hearing what was said. I was calm in recounting the events of the night and how the next morning I had sent the valet to my father’s room, and the poor man returned to tell us why my father was not yet at the breakfast table. But when it came to describing the scene of her son’s death for my grandmother, I could not continue.
Our dinners had grown cold. The waiter removed the plates, and my grandmother ordered us cognacs and coffees without asking me if I wanted one.
“For money,” she said in a sad faraway voice. “All for money.” Her eyes filled with tears, but only for a moment. I had seen her eyes fill like this before, and I marveled at how she could blink away her grief so efficiently.
“Did you know Benjamin was gambling?” she asked.
“Papa had only just told me.”
“Your father was such a good judge of character. I wonder why he never saw through Benjamin?”
I shrugged.
“I think . . . ,” Grand-mère said as the idea occurred to her, “that he didn’t want to believe he could have been so wrong about someone and doomed you to such a life all because of—” She broke off.
One waiter approached with the crystal balloons of brandy and the fine china cups for coffee. Another approached with a plate of pastel-colored petit fours and chocolate bonbons.
“Because of what?” I asked.
While I waited for her to resume explaining, I put one of the chocolates in my mouth. It was darkly suggestive, slightly bitter and lushly sweet all at the same time.
“Because I warned your father so often and so vociferously that love is dangerous for Verlaine women. It leads to heartbreak and tragedy. We are too passionate, and it is a poison for us. I told him to marry you off to someone who would take care of you and be good to you, but someone whom you wouldn’t fall in love with. Philippe made fun of my superstitions, but in the end he listened to me, didn’t he? Or at least he tried to.”
I remembered the letter she’d written to my parents after the tragedy with Leon that terrible spring. She’d used almost the same words.
“A family curse? That’s preposterous.”
She trained her fiery opal eyes on me; her gaze was intense. “No, no, it’s not,” my grandmother said.
I bit down on the bonbon so hard that my teeth pierced the inside of my cheek, and the taste of blood ruined the chocolate.
“Sandrine, quick.” Suddenly my grandmother was standing, shouting at me. “Turn this way, come with me, run.” As I stood, she grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the table just as I heard an ear-shattering crash.
Cold air poured in.
I looked back. We were a dozen feet away from our table, which was now covered in fragments of glass glittering in the candlelight. It was all over our plates. Our seats. We would have been showered by the sharp splinters if Grand-mère hadn’t pulled me away.
“Don’t stop,” she shouted.
A man—either a diner or a waiter—screamed: “It’s the anarchists!”
“It’s a bomb!” another man yelled.
My grandmother kept moving us farther away from the gaping, wounded window. In the pandemonium around us, people pushed over chairs and tables, breaking china and glass as they rushed to get out of the path of what they expected to come.
“It is all right, Messieurs, Mesdames,” the restaurant manager was shouting over the din. “All is fine. It was only a rock. Not a bomb. Not a bomb. Please, everyone. No reason to panic. Brandy for everyone. Take your seats. Please, everyone, please, there’s no reason to panic.”
The guests were becoming aware of what he was saying.
“Not a bomb.”
“A rock? Someone threw a rock?”
“Why?”
People gathered around the manager, peppering him with questions.
“Not a bomb. Just a rock with a note wrapped around it.” He held it up.
Beside me, my grandmother, who was holding my arm, leaned very close and whispered in my ear: “I was warning you just when it happened, wasn’t I? Telling you that we’re cursed. Just at that moment. You see? Just as I was about to tell you that love is what she wants and what you can never give her.”
But I wasn’t thinking about the curse. Wasn’t wondering who she was. My grandmother had grabbed me and told me to get up moments before the window smashed. How had she known what was about to happen?
Chapter 8
I didn’t dream of angry mobs or bombings or men destroying beautiful things. For the second night in a row, ever since I’d discovered the hidden studio in the bell tower at Maison de la Lune, I dreamed that I was a painter. I saw my canvases: dark and mysterious visions of winged creatures and women with bloodred lips and fiery auburn hair. And while I slept, I was happy—happier than I could ever remember being.