Illuminated (17 page)

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Authors: Erica Orloff

BOOK: Illuminated
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We went to the lobby where a chauffeur waited, cap in hand. Etienne had hired us a car—which turned out to be a sleek black Mercedes—to take us to his antiquarian bookshop. We were finally going to meet Miriam’s true love.
After a ten-minute ride in heavy Parisian traffic, we pulled up in front of the shop. Nestled on a side street, the store’s bay front were windows filled with books and first editions that cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. It was filled with nooks and crannies, like a cluttered curiosity shop.
We rang a buzzer so he could let us in past the security alarm. I stepped inside, and August followed.
The old wooden floor creaked, not so different from our hotel, and I stared upward. The ceiling had to be at least twenty feet high, and ladders on wheels rested up against shelves that lined every wall, stretching up with books as far as my eye could see.
“
Bonjour,
” Etienne greeted us. He shook August’s hand then mine. He switched speaking to French-accented English. “Welcome my friends. Come, come. Welcome.”
We followed him to the back of the store, passing tables filled with books. An antique couch, coffee table, and two chairs stood in a grouping.
“Sit, sit,” he said. He looked just like in the pictures Miriam had shown us, his mustache perfectly trimmed, his suit elegant, his face handsome.
We sat down, and he offered us a plate of elaborate pastries. I was famished and took one. So did August. If I could have gotten away with taking two without looking rude, I would have.
“Tell me, first”—Etienne leaned forward, his face excited and pensive at the same time—“how is my friend, Miriam? Please tell me she is well.”
I nodded. “We went to see her. She lives out on Long Island Sound now. And we ended up staying the night because of a horrible storm. She told us the whole story of the book.”
I exchanged a glance with August. I wanted so much to tell Etienne that I was certain Miriam still loved him. But I had to be certain he felt the same.
“Her home is beautiful,” August offered. “She looks . . . at peace there.”
“I am so glad to hear she is all right.”
I nodded. “She showed us pictures from her time here, from the search for the book.”
“I have pictures, too.” Etienne jumped up, as if he had just been waiting for an excuse to retrieve them. He went to his desk and returned with a photo album and a picture in a frame that he clearly kept facing him while he worked.
“Here.” He showed me the picture in a frame.
“This is Miriam on a hill near the site of the original convent.”
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered. Miriam was smiling at the camera, her face glowing and flushed with what looked like exertion on a summer day. Wind was clearly blowing her hair, and the sun shone on her—she wore a simple white sundress, and yet again I marveled how time hadn’t dimmed her beauty at all.
August squeezed my hand. “She has a picture of you, too.”
“Does she?” Etienne’s eyes twinkled with pleasure.
I nodded. “I think she . . . misses you.”
“Oh, how I miss her, too. You know, our search was the most exciting I have ever undertaken.”
August leaned forward in his chair. “Did you know it was a palimpsest?”
Etienne shook his head. “You must understand, the book was nothing but a rumor. We thought, at most, at our greatest hope, that it had belonged to Heloise. That it had a connection to her as abbess. And so we paid a large sum to a dealer who said it came from a family—who wished to remain anonymous. Passed down through generations. There was some paperwork. I had no reason to doubt its truth but even so, I scrutinized. But Miriam needed to get it to New York. Perhaps it had been too easy. We were so excited, so enchanted by the book.”
“But why the hurried sale? Wouldn’t the palimpsest be worth so much more money if it had been verified?” August asked.
“Because, I fear, the dealer knew the book had been gotten by suspicious means. I believe he knew that if it had been verified as a palimpsest; it would not be allowed to leave the country, it would be a museum piece, for all the world to share. I believe the dealer was paid, that the entire transaction was orchestrated by thieves. Perhaps the dealer knew she would never take possession of it by less-than-honorable measures. They knew Miriam was very, very wealthy, but very, very honorable.”
“Then where is the book from? You see—
We
think . . .” I looked at August, who nodded. “We think the book may have belonged to Heloise and Abelard’s son.”
“Astrolabe? No!” Etienne jumped up, excited and moving about like a nervous bird.
I nodded. “Yes. We think so, and it’s so very important to prove that, Etienne. We need to dig deeper. We have to find out who was really behind the book, who last owned it, and the person before that and before that.”
“Does Miriam know about this? About Astrolabe?”
“Now she does,” I said. I was willing him to declare something more.
“I must speak to her.”
“We have her number,” August said eagerly. “We’re certain she would love to hear from you.”
A cloud of doubt seemed to pass over Etienne’s eyes. “It has been some time since we last spoke. It did not end well, our journey . . . ”
“Time doesn’t matter with someone like Miriam,” I offered. “Think of Heloise and Abelard. They went twelve years without communicating.”
“I . . . She was very wealthy.” He faced a bookshelf and rested his hand, as if composing himself. “Married. I had no hope of . . .” He turned to look at us. “I would like to hear her voice, after so many years. Do you think it is possible?”
I nodded. “Call her.”
“I will tell you more about the book, but this I must do right now. Will you excuse me, my new friends?”
“Of course,” I said. August looked up Miriam’s number on his BlackBerry and handed it to Etienne, who went into his office while we waited.
As soon as he was gone, I took a second pastry. “I am so hungry!”
I happily ate flaky French pastries filled with cream and fresh raspberries. We waited and Eitenne returned about twenty minutes later, beaming. “My friends! She is coming to Paris.”
I clapped my hands with delight.
Etienne sat. “I am as happy as a schoolboy. Now the book.”
August nodded.
“For this, we go see the other dealer. His store is in Nantes. It is four hours by car. I will make arrangements, but you must be careful. We mustn’t reveal what our trip is about. I will simply say I have some American buyers perhaps interested in his first editions—he specializes in religious texts. Thus, he had the Book of Hours.”
He walked to the phone on his desk, placed a call, and spoke rapidly in French. He nodded several times, then hung up.
“We go by car tomorrow morning. We will find the origins of this most special book. We will do all this for Miriam. She will be very happy to know,
non
?”
“
Oui
,” August said. “Very happy.”
We left Etienne’s bookstore after agreeing to meet him for dinner that night. We spent the rest of the day wandering Paris. We made our way to the Eiffel Tower, and we strolled, hand in hand.
The streets, the whole city, felt so ancient compared to Manhattan, which always felt, to me, like a place built in a rush of skyscrapers. My favorite places in New York had always been those with older buildings—neighborhoods like Tudor City—where you could imagine more history. Maybe, I mused, I’d been bitten by the history bug long ago.
“Remember your promise,” August said, leaning over to kiss my neck.
“A kiss on the top of the Eiffel Tower.”
When we reached the tower itself, there was a long line of tourists waiting to go up to the top. And there we encountered a hitch to our plan.
“August . . . there’s no way to go to the top without getting in an elevator.”
I watched the color draining from his cheeks. “What?”
“The stairs go to the second floor. But that’s it.” He let go of my hand and began pacing. “You know, I wouldn’t blame you if you . . . I know, I know, I’m a little like him. My dad. I try not to be, but I am.”
Just then my cell phone rang. It was my father. I exhaled. This
so
wasn’t going to go well.
“Calliope!”
I winced. “Yes, Dad?”
“So we finally settle things, finally have a conversation—a real conversation—and this is how you repay me.”
“
Repay
you? I’ll admit that this was maybe the most . . . crazy thing I’ve ever done, but I don’t owe you for you finally answering questions about my mother.”
“I could have that boy arrrested.”
“Dad, don’t . . . Mom is the reason I’m here.”
“Your mother has nothing to do with this crazy scheme.”
“I know you don’t understand, but she would. I want to leave a letter at the tomb of Heloise and Abelard.”
“Calliope, this is a serious, serious breach of trust.”
I could practically feel the rage in his voice. I was very glad there was an ocean between us.
“I know,” I said softly. “But for once, trust that I know what I’m doing. Without you planning out my whole future for me.”
“Harry assured me he would come and retrieve you.” He was talking over me. Ignoring my end of the conversation.
“You’re not listening to me again.”
“Calliope . . . You are lucky it’s not me coming over to get you. And when you get home, there
will
be consequences.”
“I know. Dad, please. Just try to understand. Remember how you felt when you saw my mother?”
“You’re too young to feel like that—”
“You can’t make me
not
feel like that.” I cut him off. “And calling August ‘that boy’ isn’t going to make him go away.”
“I have to go into a meeting, but we will continue this discussion at a later time.”
“Fine.”
I ended the call. Of course he had to go into a meeting. I’d never heard him so furious, but what did I expect? I looked at August, who was shaking his head.
“Between my neuroses, and me getting you in trouble—”
“
I
made the decision to go.” Just like Heloise.
August looked up at the Eiffel Tower.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We don’t have to go to the top.”
“But we promised to. It would be bad luck to break the promise.”
“Well, it’s not like we can climb to the top. It’s the elevator or nothing.”
He looked at me with real fear in his eyes. “We have to go to the top.”
“Can you?” I hugged him tightly. “It won’t be any fun if you’re up there half terrified.”
“No. I’m doing it. You came all this way to go up there, and from what I could hear of that call . . . you are in
so
much trouble. No . . . I’m doing it.”
Face resolute, he grabbed me by the hand, and we stood in line. I could see him tensing each time the yellow elevator doors opened and people poured out, and then people boarded, and we inched forward bit by bit. A variety of languages filled the air—French, Spanish, German, English, and I heard what sounded to me like the accented English of Australia, Scotland, and Ireland.
“August,” I said firmly, “we really and truly do not have to do this.”
“We do.”
Finally, we were near the front of the line. He was clenching and unclenching his jaw. I reached up with my free hand to stroke his face. “I love you even if we don’t get to the top.”
The doors opened and the last passengers climbed off. Almost as if the crowd was a living creature, we were pushed slightly, like an amoeba moving along, into the elevator. I wrapped my arms around August’s neck.
“Look at me,” I whispered. “Only me. Nothing else.”
August looked in my eyes. The elevator doors closed, and we started moving up. His breathing was shallow, so I said, “Breathe with me.”
I slowed my breathing, and I stared at him with all the love I could show him. And before we knew it, we were at the top. The doors opened. We stepped off.
He looked around in amazement. “I did it, Calliope.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Promises must be kept,” he said, then he bent me over backward in a dip and kissed me full on my mouth. When he raised me up again, he said, “Now we’ll never be parted. It’s the City of Love, the City of Light. Our promise is sealed.”
I hugged him, and we walked and stared down on Paris, her streets and the river laid out before us like a picture postcard.
“I never want to go home,” I murmured. “Wouldn’t it be great to live here, even for six months or a year? Study here?”
“Yeah. Maybe someday we can.”

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