Amandine (25 page)

Josette pulls Amandine’s head back with one hand—tugging at her hair with just a touch too much force—and, with the other, tips the glass into her half willingly open mouth.

“Thank you, Josette. May I have my satchel now? I would like to study the fingering for my new piano piece. I have a paper keyboard you know and I can practice quite well with it—”

“Not right now. Now it’s time to sleep.”

“But it’s ten-thirty, almost time …
pour le goûter …
I mean. I’m a little hungry.”

“When you wake. Now lie back and close your eyes. I’ll just pull the curtains and—”

“Where will you be?”

“Right here in the parlor. Just on the other side of the door. Hush, now.”

“Will you wake me when they bring
le goûter?”

“Certainly.”

Passiflora, valerian, hops, lemon balm. Another of my mother’s potions. This morning when I asked the herbalist for three vials rather than my usual single one, he barely blinked an eye. Mild but efficient, he said as he always did while he twisted the thin blue paper about each vial. I knew that, of course. When Annick was teething or restless or in any sort of pain, a few drops on my finger rubbed across her tongue. And then for Paul, fifteen drops in a bit of water to help her sleep. She’s hardly been asking for it lately, though. Now she takes those long white pills. I took those, too, from her drawer. Way in the back on the left-hand side; she’s never been able to hide much from me. I can’t read the label except for
b-a-r
and then the ink is smudged. I wouldn’t be able to read it anyway. But if these help Paul to sleep
,
imagine how they will help the child. I’ll just mash up a piece of one in with the next dose of the potion. In a few hours. Wait to see how she fares with the thirty drops. Such a tiny mouse, she is. To have caused so much trouble. I don’t want things to go too quickly, though. No, not too quickly. Ah, look at her now. See how she sleeps

Josette checks her watch, unlocks the door, leaves the room, locks the door again from the outside, walks to the place where the trays of food and drink are to be left. The midmorning tray waits on the table. Two trays. Amandine’s with a pot of tea, toasted black bread with raisins, still warm and wrapped in a yellow napkin, a small ramekin of fresh cheese. Someone has placed a blue glass plate laid with six candied violets on Amandine’s tray. On Josette’s tray, the same elements are there, save the violets—but in larger quantities. Practiced in such matters, Josette balances one tray upon the other, walks back to the rooms, sets down the trays, opens the door. Closes it. Locks it from the inside, pockets the key. She sits herself at the table in front of the window, opens the curtains just enough to let in a streak of light, then slowly, deliberately, works her way through the tea and toast and cheese from both trays. She sucks on the violets, crushes the sugar crust of them between her teeth. Retraces her steps to the pickup and delivery point, and returns then to the rooms to rest herself in Philippe’s old high-back chair in the parlor.

Limbs askew, breath faint, Amandine sleeps the sleep of the dead, a black and white butterfly pinioned rakishly upon a board. Hours later, when she stirs, it’s to look about, to try to recall where she is and why.

I know now, I am in Père Philippe’s room. Yes, the fever, I am here so that I will stay safe from the fever. How thirsty I am, mouth dry, cannot swallow. So warm. Perhaps
le goûter
has arrived by now
.

“Josette. Josette. Josette.”

Startled from her own sleep by Amandine’s feeble call, Josette approaches the bed. “Yes, yes. I’m here. Awake already, are you?”

“I’m thirsty. Some water, please.”

“No water, child. Doctor’s orders. Nothing to drink. Only sleep.”

“But my mouth is so dry and I’m hungry. Please. My leg, the bandage, will you take it off? It hurts, Josette, and my arms feel so heavy I can hardly reach—”

“Here, let me see the leg.”

Josette pulls back the sheet, raises the bandaged leg, moves it about roughly as though priming a long-unused pump, and Amandine screams in pain. Screams until her breath catches and tears run and she wills herself to wake from the bad dream. But Josette has found a good game and so moves the leg about in the same way again while Amandine, pulling herself upright, flails stick-doll arms in futile defense. Josette laughs, and Amandine knows she is not dreaming.

“Solange. Please, call Solange. Some mistake, Josette. Please call Solange.”

“You can call out all you care to for your Solange, but she can’t hear you and neither can anyone else. You’re mine. No mistake at all. There is only Josette. Let me see to that bandage now.”

Unwrapping the ankle, then lashing the stuff round and round the tiny bones so tightly that, had there been no wound at all, the pain would have been grinding.

“There, that’s what Baptiste wanted. Better, isn’t it? Of course it is. And now, your medicine.”

“Why, Josette, why?”

Josette walks to the oak dresser, pulls the vial from her pocket, measures out into Amandine’s glass a generous forty drops of the valerian potion, perhaps a few more. From some other place in her voluminous skirts, she takes the bottle filched from Paul’s drawer. Shakes out a tablet. Breaks it between her fingers, takes a shard of it and rubs it to a powder in her palm, flicks the powder into the potion. A little water then, not too much. She swishes the cocktail and takes it to Amandine. Putting the glass to the girl’s lips, she pours the liquid into the dutifully open maw, moves the little pointed chin to be sure she’s swallowed.

“Good girl. Now all you need to think about is sleep.”

“But I’m thirsty and hungry …”

As she had done with
le goûter
and with the lunch, Josette does with the evening’s dinner. This time, though, after collecting the trays, she pulls the small round table to the bedside, sits herself on the edge of the bed very close to Amandine. Josette sprinkles a bit of water over the sleeping child’s face, her eyelids, rousing her, if only partially, so she might witness the feasting.

“Amandine, do look at this. A puree of potatoes with a poached egg on top, and when I pierce that lovely yellow yolk, see how it trickles down into the potatoes and, oh, how delicious they are mixed together, yes, yes, you must taste this, just be patient while I taste it again and then I’ll spoon up some for you, yes, just wait a moment.”

Willing her eyes to stay open, smelling the food, Amandine is ravenous for it yet does not ask Josette to feed her and neither does she reach to take the spoon from Josette’s clutch. With no sound, no sigh, slow, hot tears fall, collect in the corners of her mouth, drip from her chin, wetting her neck and the white lace of her nightdress. Like a wind-fed fire in a hay barn, the knowing sweeps over her, the knowing that hers is a helpless rage, and so she is, in her way, serene watching Josette, watching her with the clear-mindedness of one who has understood—not that life is always bad but that, bad or good, it is mysterious. That it will always be mysterious. That life has so little to do with our will for it, and less is it linked to our own goodness or badness. However shakily goodness and badness can be defined. So if not that, if neither will nor just deserts shape life, what does? She lies there licking the salt tears and wondering. She will have to wait awhile longer to understand about the weight, the power of historical revenges and follies and Judas kisses. She will have to wait to know that we inherit life much as we do the slope of a cheek or silver in a velvet-cushioned box. And to know that it’s we who then perpetuate the life we inherit—gently or ferociously, according to our natures—repeating the ancestral follies and the traitorous kisses and leaving the legacy nicely intact for those who will come after us. Like silver in a box.

And so Amandine lies there in the soiled, crumpled bed where someone means her to die, magnificent as only a stick doll with unshackled curls and a daintily pointed chin and eyes like drowned plums—the same weepy black plums that are her mother’s eyes—can be magnificent, while Josette, amid her guttural swallowings, says once again, “Just one more spoonful for me and then …”

Amandine watches the thick black veins in Josette’s hands as she runs her fingers over the plate, brings them to her mouth and sucks them dry. Still holding the plate, Josette bends her head close to Amandine, whispers something into the tight pink whorls of her tiny ear. Her spittle warm, her sibilance deafening, she asks Amandine if she’s hungry, wishes her a bawdy
bon appétit
, swipes her mouth with the back of her hand, licks her lips, sets the phlegm-smeared plate down on Amandine’s chest.

“Mater, Baptiste has just pronounced me fit, no symptoms after four days in isolation. I asked him if I might take over for Josette and he agreed, asked that you accompany me to relieve her. He said that Amandine should stay another day or two apart and then she, too, can be released, join the others who’ve returned to the dormitory. Will you go with me now, Mater?”

Marie-Albert waits as Paul considers the request, straightens the already perfectly organized elements laid out on her desk.

“Yes, I suppose Josette should be relieved, but are you certain you’re not needed elsewhere? I mean Josette’s usefulness is limited more than yours, isn’t it?”

“Actually, I think it’s Amandine who might enjoy a respite. Four days and three nights with only Josette for company, well, you understand what I intend, don’t you, Mater?”

“Yes, yes, I suppose I do. Though one might look at it from the opposite view and say that four days and three nights with only Amandine for company … Poor old Josette. Yes, well, let’s go. Just be sure to be gentle with Josette, tell her what a good job she’s done. Did Baptiste tell you how she’s charted the child’s vital signs, marked down
everything she’s eaten and drunk? Absolutely perfect records she’s kept.”

When Paul knocks on the doors to Philippe’s old suite, there is no answer. Marie-Albert knocks harder. Still no answer.

“Josette, open the door. It’s Paul. And Marie-Albert. Open the door, Josette.”

Josette is sleeping. Having neither washed herself during these four days nor changed her clothes, she sits, barefoot and wearing only her shift, in Philippe’s high-back chair in the now putrid air of the parlor. Not speaking a word in answer to Paul’s commanding voice, Josette walks quickly to Amandine’s bed, hoping to find that her breathing has stopped. That the affair will be finished. But no. Not yet.

“Just a little longer, Annick,” she says quietly. “If only you could have waited just a little longer.”

“Josette, open this door. Do you hear me, Josette?”

In a joyful falsetto, Josette asks, “Is it you, Annick? Darling Annick? Just a little longer. Nearly finished.”

“Who is Annick? What is she saying? Use your key, Mater, I don’t understand this.”

“I don’t carry the keys to this wing. In my desk, top right-hand drawer.”

Marie-Albert is already racing away as Paul screams after her, “Get Baptiste.”

Paul rattles the knob, flails her body against the door, pounds it with the heels of her hands, all the while shouting,
“Josette, Josette, Josette.”

But Josette, if she hears Paul, does not respond. Yellow-streaked, white hair falling in thin unctuous points about her shoulders, the stench of her diffused now about the bedroom; she is a crone inflamed with her last act of devotion to little Annick. A small pillow, white linen embroidered with dark green leaves and their tendrils, she holds over Amandine’s face, pressing it with all her might. The job finally done, she lifts the child in her arms, turns toward the door as Marie-Albert bashes it wide against the wall.

Josette holds Amandine out to Paul. A trophy. It is Marie-Albert,
though, who pushes in front of Paul, takes Amandine in her arms, carries her to the bed. Paul pushes Josette to the floor, kicks her about the face and chest while Josette repeats and repeats Paul’s own words.

I wish her dead and gone and never having been
.

“For me? You’ve murdered her for me?”

Paul kicks Josette again, goes to stand at the foot of the bed, shaking the bedpost as though to wake the child.

Marie-Albert lifts Amandine’s head, a ripe fig lolling on its stalk, gently lays it down again, places her open hands over the tiny, cadaverous yellow face, like wax even to the touch. Her keen the plucked string of harp, Marie-Albert caresses Amandine’s lips with her thumb. Lays her ear to the child’s heart. So accustomed to asking permission, she looks up at Paul, then quickly bends to force her own breath into the small dried rose that is Amandine’s mouth. She thrusts breath after breath into the child until the narrow, sunken chest of her begins to heave and, from the small dried rose, shallow gasps come. Amandine opens her eyes, rimmed and crusted and wet with grief.

“Marie-Albert, are you dead, too? Are we all dead? Where is Philippe and his grandmother? Blue hair. Maman, Maman, where are you? Are you dead, Maman?”