I decided that it was both.
I stood and went to the wall where I knew the secret room to be and hesitantly reached out my hand to the new soft blue paper and for a moment felt fear as if, were I to touch it, I might feel his heart beating there.
I had come to see for myself, in much the same way I’d gone to see Euphrosyne, the tenor, and the Comtesse. I wanted, if not a confrontation with his ghost, then to see the house and my things at the least. More important, Aristafeo had never shown me the opera he’d been writing for me. I never knew whether it even existed. If it did exist, I now suspected Simonet of discovering it. This seemed a more likely answer than a ghost in that hidden room, still writing it, handing off pages to Simonet, a last act before oblivion called him from this plane.
The puzzle for me was how to ask after it, given I was supposed to be innocent of the house and its past. As my hand lingered on the paper, it was all I could do not to peel it back from the walls.
There was not even a sign of the mechanism, however, and then I heard Simonet’s footsteps on the stairs and returned to my chair so that I was sitting as he came back into the room with my old circus trunk in his hands.
I’m so amazed to think you’ve finally read it, he said, smiling and nervous.
Yesterday, I said, and smoothed out my skirt. I did nothing else.
He patted at his hair, still wild. I could see that he had dressed hurriedly from his half-tucked shirt front, which he then tucked as he noted my notice.
I was not expecting company, he said. I was up until quite late last night, forgive me.
Forgive me for surprising you, I said. I was near and thought to call. This is, to be sure, a whim. But I was very moved, and after finishing the novel, I wanted to see her things.
In truth, I had hoped to surprise him. Perhaps even to catch him and the composer at work.
In his hands, the object he held looked so small I wondered that I had ever carried it.
He set the trunk down on the table between us, undid the latch, and pulled the ruby rose out first. Do you see? he asked. It’s incredible.
Yes, I said. It is.
I took it from him, turning it in the light; it was as whole as it had been the day I received it.
Am I to understand you are with us, then, truly with us? Simonet sat back in his chair.
I am nearly with you, I said. I’ve still to see the music. But this is truly inspiring. I remain interested.
I set the rose down and then picked up the diary, as my new friend had called it. In a circus they called it a route book, and in it I’d kept the entries of my passage during my time as the Settler’s Daughter. It was one of the few things I had taken with me when I’d left, as I’d thought I might someday want to find them again. I had not.
Instead, I had turned it into something of a composition book, a practice book, where I wrote lists of the words I did not know alongside lists of the ones I’d learned. I only occasionally wrote my own entries.
There were no entries from the time I’d spent in Compiègne, to my memory, and yet . . . how had he guessed this? It was more than a guess, it had to be.
We were concerned, he said, in a tone I found strange.
We looked at each other for a moment, uncertain. There’s a rumor, he said finally. That you are turning down roles . . .
It seems to me I have always turned down roles, I said. Even as I have accepted others.
And then it came to me—Where is the chapel you spoke of? I asked. Where you found these objects? May I see it?
I was sure it would be the unveiling of his deception when I asked. I was sure it didn’t exist. But instead he raised his eyebrows in surprise. Of course, he said. Follow me. I will stage it for you.
The courtyard had, of course, belonged to the dogs. I’d spent almost no time there, passing through quickly into the house or to the street. Yet in this one corner a chapel hid, apparently. I felt rebuked for my suspicions as I passed through the door.
It’s in terrible disrepair, he said. It was filthy with the bones of the feasts of the cats I imagine . . . as well you know. He pushed the old doors open, making a fast sign of the cross as he did.
I did the same as a precaution.
The chapel glowed blue. The light came from a stained-glass warrior angel behind the altar, sternly beautiful, his sapphire wings lit by the late morning sun.
Simonet crossed himself again.
In Italy it’s said there’s an angel who watches over all who love.
I think differently of this now. I no longer believe he has my best interests in mind.
I had never discussed religion with Aristafeo. This was yet another secret of his, a place he’d kept, apparently, for himself.