The conversation turned to Paris at the turn of the century, when most of the people at the table had met each other and the absent guest, Erik Satie. Several times, Sebastian caught my eye when the stories were familiar, because our mother had told us about the very same incidents. That she had known most of these people made an uncomfortable night a bit more bearable. But Mathieu’s presence was impossible to ignore. It was painful, like a splinter, no matter how I moved or whom I spoke to or how interesting the conversation.
A few times, when his head was bent in conversation with Veronique or Madame, I sneaked a glance at him. He had changed. Of course he had. It had been almost five years since I’d seen him. He’d been twenty-five then, fresh home from the front. There were more lines on his forehead that I could just glimpse under the golden curls and also around his mouth.
Like every young man his age, he had gone to fight for France in the most horrific and devastating war anyone had ever seen. Over one million Frenchmen had died. More had been wounded. Mathieu had been one of those. After three years in battle under the worst of circumstances, he had been shipped home. The doctors thought he would never regain any use of his right arm, but he had confounded them all. He spent a year in a rehabilitation center and recovered almost full use of the limb. A miracle, he had said, and one that you never forgot for long because of the slightly awkward way he had of reaching for something or putting on a jacket. Yes, there were wounds on his arm and his back. Marks—some deep and menacing, some thin and barely visible. But it was the damage to his psyche that affected him more than anything else.
So many men suffered the ravages of war. I’d always been thankful that Sebastian had been too young to go. The toll it took was incalculable. Many never recovered. Some returned home only to enter institutions and never leave. Some saw ghosts. Or heard bombs for the rest of their lives. Many couldn’t cope, no matter how much help they got, and killed themselves.
During the time I’d spent in Paris in love with Mathieu, I’d seen how he endured nightmares and memory loss. At first, he thought it was his duty to suffer, but in time, I persuaded him to try and let me help. It was how I knew he finally trusted me. When I truly understood that he loved me. He took the drafts I made and slept better and longer, and as time passed, he needed less and less of the tisane I’d concocted from my grimoire.
I wondered how he was sleeping now and if the nightmares had returned. How was he coping with the guilt of knowing his brother had died saving his life? I remembered the awful night I put on my blindfold and drew the past.
“We were engaged to be married,” Jules Bois was saying, to my right. And the words were oddly resonant, considering that Mathieu had proposed marriage to me. I touched the ring on my finger. The ring Mathieu had touched only an hour earlier.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Emma was too curious about life to settle down with one person. And I was too jealous of her need to experience everything. She has an open mind. So do I but not about her. I wanted her to myself. I could share her with the audience but not with other men.” He smiled. “But as it’s turned out, we’ve wound up married to each other in our own way. Devoted companions. Caring friends. Ready lovers. I would die for her if I had to. That kind of love never alters, never fades. Does it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
“Really? I sensed you’d know about that sort of thing.”
“Why?”
“I’m not quite sure. But isn’t that what makes for the most exciting conversations? Intuition and curiosity?” Bois asked.
“I’m not quite sure of that, either.” I smiled at him. “Certainly the most unusual.”
“Does the unusual disturb you?”
“Sometimes yes. There are a lot of things about this world you all inhabit, that my mother inhabits—”
He interrupted. “That you inhabit, too, yes?”
“Yes, that I inhabit, too. There are a lot of things about it that disturb me, because the occult is the search for hidden knowledge, and hidden knowledge is in the shadows.”
“And shadows frighten you.”
“No.”
“But I can see that they do,” he argued.
“You’re mistaken, Monsieur Bois.” I didn’t want to encourage any more prying.
“I think not. Let’s find out what the others see. Picasso? Cocteau?”
Bois got their attention.
“Let’s play a little game to help Delphine understand the aura she projects.”
My discomfort increased. “No, I don’t want to—”
He interrupted me again and said with a smile, “It’s just a game. And it will help you.”
“What are the rules?” Picasso asked. “I need to be forewarned so I can break them.”
Everyone laughed.
“Name me five adjectives to describe Delphine,” Bois said. “There are no rules. You first, Picasso.”
Picasso studied me the way I study my subjects—as if he were going to paint me.
“Sensual . . .” He cocked his head, searching my face. “Frightened, secretive, intelligent, and angry.”
“Cocteau?”
“I see intelligent as well. And curious. Rebellious. And yes, frightened. Some sadness. Definitely, sad.”
“What are you doing, Jules?” Madame asked.
“Helping Delphine see what she would prefer not to see. Describe her in five adjectives, Emma.”
I was becoming more and more embarrassed and uneasy, as everyone at the table turned his or her attention to me, including Mathieu. I watched his face but couldn’t read his expression.
“I only need one. She’s upset,” Madame Calvé said. “With you, Jules. Do apologize to Delphine. She’s not one of your characters.”
“Mathieu?” Bois asked, ignoring Madame.
He was about to answer, but before he could say a word, I interrupted and stopped both him and the game. “I think I understand, Monsieur Bois. There’s no need for anyone else to play. You’ve made your point.”
Sebastian sensed my distress. “Are you all right, Delphine?”
I nodded. “I’m fine.”
My brother asked Cocteau what he was working on, Madame said something to the opera director, and conversations around us resumed. I still felt Mathieu’s eyes on me but kept from glancing his way.
“I bow to your ability to see through me, Monsieur,” I said to Bois.
“So the shadows have you in their grip?”
I wasn’t sure what he knew or which shadows he meant, but it didn’t matter; it was true, they did. I nodded again.
“You need to embrace them, you know. The only way to cope with them is to invite them in, to sit down with them at your table and look them right in the eye and confront them.”
The idea was horrific to me. It was terrible enough to look at other people’s shadows. But my own? I’d never tried to purposely paint my own shadow portrait. The one time I’d done it by accident had been destructive enough.
Amid the comments about how delicious the chocolate mousse was, rain started to pelt the windows and grew in intensity. Not a gentle, comforting drizzle but an erratic, disturbing downpour. And as I listened to it, I thought of Satie in the heavens, writing this composition for an orchestra of rain and thunder and wind, the symphony of storm.
Chapter 38