The Black Tower (9 page)

Authors: Louis Bayard

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

BOOK: The Black Tower

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CHAPTER 12
The Reeducation of a Parrot

G
ROWING UP IN
a quiet house on a quiet street, I became, through no choice of my own, a connoisseur of silence. From the earliest age, I could distinguish early-morning from late-evening silence. A husband’s silence from a wife’s. Hope versus despair…if you listen long enough, everything gives off its own timbre of quiet.

But I’ve never known anything quite like Vidocq’s silence, which lasts from the time we leave the Baroness’s apartment to the time we turn up the Rue Soufflot. A silence of
containment,
with all manner of emotions vying against it. Imagine a pig’s bladder, noiselessly expanding before your eyes.
This
silence grows quite terrible, and there is, if anything, a profound relief when it breaks.

“Why didn’t you tell me your father had the same first name?”

Still in his old-man garb is Vidocq, but there’s nothing old about this voice, which rattles off the market stalls, knocks the melting pot from a street tinker’s charcoal fire…
claws
through the shawl of fog that still hovers round the Panthéon’s dome.

“Why didn’t you
tell
me there was another Dr. Carpentier in the world? You didn’t—you didn’t think I might want to
know
such a thing?”

“But he
wasn’t
a doctor.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means—it means he gave up medicine when I was still quite young. He ground
glass
for a living. For as long as I knew him, no one ever called him
Doctor
Carpentier.”

A
ND HERE
I
MUST
interject and call myself…a liar.

Because, every once in a while, about as often as the sun aligns with the moon, someone not too deeply ingrained in my family’s circle—a mason, a mendicant, a functionary with the Ministry of Justice, someone concatenated to him in ways too obscure for me to fathom—would slip and call my father “Dr. Carpentier.” To his face.

I always studied him closely in those moments, and yet I find it hard even now to describe his reaction. He never corrected the mistake, he simply let it hang there in a perfect suspension. At first you might have thought him insulted; only later would you realize he was
embarrassed,
as if an old nanny had reemerged and called him back, with a single name, to the days of chasing pigeons.

What I mean to say is it
cowed
him, this name.

You will understand, then, why I learned never to associate my father with the word
doctor.
And why, when I made it my life’s goal simply to break through the carapace that surrounded him, I could think of no more effectual mallet than to declare myself…a doctor.

“Hm.”

That was my father’s first response when I told him I was enrolling in the École de Médecine. The second was this:

“Hm.”

I will confess that his usual veil of abstraction did lift for a few moments. His eyes were pinked with alarm, as though I had coughed up sputum. And then he could no longer look at me.

He would have been less concerned, maybe, if he’d known how long it would take me to become a physician. Indeed, in these early days of the Restoration, it seems unlikely I ever will.

So when a dead stranger, a certain Monsieur Leblanc, chooses to grant you a title before you’ve earned it, you may be excused, I hope, for accepting the promotion. Yes, I’ve quite enjoyed being Dr. Carpentier, if only for a few days. I like to think I’ve been enjoying it for both of us.

And if I never worried overmuch about that
other
Dr. Carpentier…well, grant me this. Even my father wanted nothing to do with him.

“W
HEN DID HE
flop?”

That’s Vidocq’s voice, black and guttural, pulling me back to the here and now. I stare at him, uncomprehending.

“Die,”
he explains. “This papa of yours, when did he die? How long has he been eating dandelions by the roots?”

If you want death broached from an oblique angle, Vidocq is not your man.

“A year,” I tell him. “A year and a half.”

“What a fine empirical mind you’ve got.
A year. A year and a
—”

“Eighteen
months,
will that do? And twenty-one days and—eleven hours…”

Frowning softly, he fingers his Saint-Louis cross.

“Not much fuss, I expect, with the funeral,” he says.

“He didn’t want any. At least Mother didn’t. We had a little service, it was five minutes, no more.”

“Who was there?”

“No one. Mother and me and—and Charlotte, that’s all.”

And someone else. A
fourth
figure, stirring now from memory’s vault. Shrouded and comma shaped, leaning over the open coffin and breathing in that peculiar odor of wool and paraffin…

“Father Time.”

“Ohh,” snarls Vidocq. “It’s to be
allegory,
is it, Doctor?”

“No, he’s—Father Time’s a friend of the family, that’s all. He has a
real
name….”

“Which is?”

“Umm, Professor Racine, I think. No, wait, it’s
Corneille.
…”

And then another thought comes hard on, surprising me with its force.

I wish my father were here.

“There were no notices in the newspapers?” asks Vidocq, in a quieter tone. “No memorial services?”

I shake my head.

“So…” He removes his shako, glances heavenward. “Word must have been slow to reach the—the
lamented
Monsieur Leblanc. He went to his death looking for a man who was already dead. The angels weep.”

And now another voice enters the picture. Not the voice of angels.

“Good afternoon, Monsieur Hector.”

Nankeen stands before us in a cloud of swallowtail, framed almost perfectly by the Panthéon’s portico. Gold buttons and a lace jabot and a trailing indolence—he must have just slept through a lecture on torts.

“You’re not going to introduce me?” Smiling, he angles his spectacled nose toward Vidocq. “May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?”

“You’ll have the honor of my foot up your ass if you don’t move along.”

It’s important to point out he hasn’t raised his voice a fraction, but his intent is clear enough to mottle Nankeen’s pale brow. Who would have expected this from a veteran of Louis XV’s army—who, by the looks of things, is eighty if he’s a day?

“See here.” A bitter smile crawls across Nankeen’s face. “I don’t believe there’s any call for that.”

Vidocq seizes him by the lapels of his swallowtail coat and hoists him straight up in the air. Nankeen’s boots, suspended a foot above the ground, execute a pas seul. His eyes twitch, the very threads of his clothing recoil…but the smile never quite unfixes itself, even through the gale of Vidocq’s roar.

“Was I unclear?
Was I unclear?
”

One good thrust, and Nankeen falls to earth a good body’s length from where he started.

“Mind your elders!” cries Vidocq. “Move along!”

With clinical attentiveness, he watches Nankeen reach for his toppled hat and, without a backward look, trot round the corner.

“This papa of yours,” he says, peering off in the direction of the Val de Grâce. “He never mentioned any dauphins, I don’t suppose?”

“Never. He was—he was the son of a notary. Mother came from potato merchants. We weren’t the type to mix with royalty.”

“Ah, but you know the old saying, I’m sure. Strange times, strange bedfellows? And if there was ever a strange time, it was the Revolution.”

He does something quite unexpected then: loops his hand round my elbow and, with a gentle pressure, pulls me along. We’re
strolling
now through these narrow, gently decanting streets: gentlemen of leisure, fresh from the Théâtre des Italiens.

“I was in Arras,” says Vidocq, “when all the wheels were coming off. We had a woman there, I’ll never forget her, Citizeness Lebon. Used to be a nun in the abbey at Vivier until the Jacobins forced her to marry the curé of Neuville. A real love match, as it turned out.
She
decided who the Republic’s enemies were,
he
made sure they died for their sins. I was there the day they executed Monsieur de Vieux Pont on account of his parrot.

“Seems Citizeness Lebon had overheard said parrot crying, ‘
Vive le Roi!
’ Before the week was out, the parrot’s owner had been divorced from his head. The bird himself was pardoned and handed over to the citizeness for reeducation. She was still working on him, probably, when they came for
her
.”

Half smiling, he tilts his head toward mine.

“You can see how things worked in those days,” he says. “A woman of the cloth becomes a woman of the people and spends her waking hours with a royalist parrot.
Three
estates, rubbing shoulders under one Republic.”

Without my realizing it, the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève has stolen up on us. Once more we stand on the corner. Once more I stare at the crackling plaster housefronts, the old well, the mud-blackened gutters…the street itself, falling away at such a pitch that horses rarely venture down it. Everything looms more
real,
somehow, through the departing fog-floes.

“So you think my father might have rubbed shoulders with a Bourbon or two,” I say.

“It’s possible,” he answers, shrugging. “The only problem—
Doctor
—is that everyone who can sort it out for us is dead. And unless you can figure out a way to make the dead speak, I’m afraid I must classify you as an official waste of my time.”

And with that, he loosens his grip on my arm. He nods curtly, bids me good afternoon, and becomes once more that veteran of forgotten wars, marching down the Vieille Estrapade de Fourcy. Only two details mar the illusion: the right foot, dragging ever so slightly after him, more afterthought than wound—and the skewed smile that wrinkles his face as it turns back to me.

“Now might be a good time to get reacquainted with your father. Don’t you think, Hector?”

28 T
HERMIDOR
Y
EAR
II

Must speak w/Barras & commissaries re restrictions. Am permitted to see Charles for only 1 hr in early
A.M
. Guard must be present at all times—confidences of any kind btw patient & me impossible. If I wish to stay longer, I must petition Committee 3 days in advance.

For rest of time, Charles remains utterly alone in cell. No fire, no candle. Only sounds he hears are
bolts
; sliding of earthenware plate thru wicket; voices commanding him to go to bed; voices waking him up, periodically, thruout night.

Before incarceration, boy was, by all reports, outgoing, good-natured. 6 mos. of confinement have left him almost entirely w/o affect: eyes languid, expression fixed & disinterested.

Food
extremely
poor. 2 daily portions of soup, watery, flavorless. Morsels of beef. Loaf of black bread. Pitcher of water. Have explained to Barras that poor diet & long confinement have substantially weakened patient. Have expressed desire to personally escort Charles out of cell for limited exercise. Must await decision of Committee of General Security.

This
A.M.
, Charles asked why I was taking care of him. Because it is my duty, I said. But I thought you didn’t like me, he said. Quite the contrary, I said.

It’s clear he experiences far greater alarm at kindness than at ill usage.
Must learn more
about prior treatment.

3 F
RUCTIDOR

Progress
. Charles able to walk for greater distances w/o support. Still experiences great pain in knees, ankles.

Have just received word from Committee: Exercise request has been granted. Patient may leave cell for 10 minutes, no more. Must be escorted at all times by me + 2 guards.

Upon further consid, have made addit petition. Given patient’s extreme sensitivity to light, wd like to schedule exercise for twilight. Am awaiting Committee’s decision.

6 F
RUCTIDOR

Request granted. We are now required to have 3 addit escorts.

7 F
RUCTIDOR

Prospect of leaving cell did not appear to gladden Charles. Expressed serious
doubt
at idea. Agreed to join me only after I promised he might return as soon as he liked.

As precaution, I tied linen bandage round eyes. Led him carefully out of cell. Guards followed at 10 ft. We approached stairs—
1st
stairs patient has undertaken in 1+ years. He leaned heavily on my arm. Climbing v. hard for him—legs gave way more than once—was breathing v. hard when we reached top of Tower. I sat him down until such time as he cd stand again.

Platform here =
gallery
, offering views of Temple courtyard + streets outside. We stood there for some time bf Charles, w/o asking leave, removed bandage from eyes in single motion. Stood blinking in dusk. Able to keep eyes open for 5–10 seconds, no more.

Patient’s attention gradually shifted toward sounds. Asked me what bird that was singing? I informed him it was nightingale. Yes, he said. That’s right. One by one, he asked me to identify sounds: water carriers, crossing sweepers, hacks, stagecoaches, fruit carts, etc.
One sound in particular. What’s that? he asked.
Whistling
, I said. He begged to know who was doing whistling? Grp of children, coming down Blvd du Temple. Describe what they were doing? Chasing each other, somersaulting, laughing, rude noises, buying cakes at corner, etc.

Intelligence appeared to satisfy him. However, I observed alteration in demeanor. Asked if something was wrong. He shook head. Later, tho, as we descended stairs, he asked (in a whisper) if the children were coming to kill him.

17 F
RUCTIDOR

Have made repeated requests for assistant. 1 hr/day of care not sufficient. Guards refuse to carry out instructions. Lacking anyone to administer physics, salve & dress lesions, exercise limbs, etc., patient unlikely to recover. Have been told that Committee has it under consid.