The Secret Language of Stones (10 page)

“I don't, no,” I answered, astonished at the coincidence. I already associated Jean Luc with warmth and fire, and fire and warmth were the nucleus of the story his mother had recounted.

“Watching my child in pain and not being able to take it away was excruciating. Worrying he died in pain has been agonizing. I can bear my own suffering. But his? Knowing I could not make it better, could not take it away? Torture.”

I let go of her hands, and she let go of the talisman. It fell against her white smock.

“Thank you,” she said. “I didn't believe you would really be able to channel him . . . but I was wrong. I'm sorry.”

I shook my head. “Don't apologize. I'm just glad if it helps, even a little.”

“It will.”

Eager to leave, I stood. My heart raced. I was perspiring. I didn't understand what had happened and didn't wish to think about it while there.

Madame Alouette escorted me to the door. I extended my hand to shake hers, but she grabbed me by the shoulders and held me to her. At first I recoiled, in fear she'd feel the talisman hanging around my neck, hidden under my dress. Then I realized that, even if she did, she wouldn't question it. There was nothing suspicious about me wearing one of my own pieces. As she held me, I experienced a sudden longing to talk to her about Jean Luc. About the sound of his voice. How special he seemed. About how he was the only soldier who had ever spoken directly to me, not just through me. I wanted to know what he looked like and how he dressed and what pleased him and what didn't.

But I couldn't, of course. She had what she wanted. Even though I hadn't used Jean Luc's hair in the talisman I made for his mother, he'd sent her the message she needed to hear. And as I crossed the courtyard, peopled with cold marble statues, I wondered how any of it was possible. How indeed?

Chapter 9

The next day, I put down my tools as soon as the shop's ornate silver clock struck noon and the lyrical bells rang out the hour. “I'm going out,” I announced to Monsieur Orloff, who looked up from his enamel work.

“I have an errand on rue Drouot. Is there anything you need me to pick up on the way back?”

“The newspaper office?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Why are you going there, Opaline?”

It sounded like a simple question, but he would never take a simple answer. Monsieur examined, thought, angled, delved. He reminded me of my friend Lucille's father. When I was younger, I was jealous at how he inquired about her every move, thinking he must love her more than my father or mother loved me for they gave me so much freedom and questioned me so little.

“I want to see some back copies of
Le Figaro
.”

Of course the answer didn't satisfy him.

“Which back copies?”

I took my hat off the rack and put it on, adjusting it in the mirror.

“One of our clients told me her son was a columnist who used to write for the paper, and to please her I thought I should read some of his work.”

He liked my answer—anything to ensure a sale.

“You might keep your ears open in case anyone is talking about the royals.”

In the Orloff home, as in every Russian émigré's home, endless hours were spent pondering the fate of Tsarina Alexandra and her five children. No news at all had emerged from Russia since the announcement of the tsar's assassination, and everyone was tense and anxious.

“I will.”

“And don't talk to anyone about anything we discuss here. Remember, there are spies everywhere.”

At least several times a week, Monsieur Orloff had warned me and Grigori and Anna there could be Bolsheviks lurking around any corner.

“Why would they be watching you, Monsieur? You're a jeweler who has been in Paris for over ten years. What would Bolsheviks want with you?” I'd asked the same questions before, but was never given a satisfying answer.

That day was no different.

“Anyone close to the royal family is suspect, Opaline. All sympathizers are threats, I've told you that. Don't forget, don't say anything about the shop, about our inventory, about the vaults. Not a word about our business to anyone.”

The same warning. As annoying as it was, it also made me sympathize with the stern man who was teaching me to become an artist. How frightening to watch your country thrown into a revolt and your way of life despised by your fellow countrymen. Even though the Orloffs had already been in Paris during the revolution, the émigrés who'd arrived in the last year, the community they all formed, were a constant reminder of what was now and what was no more.

I opened my umbrella as soon as I stepped out of the shop. The morning's light drizzle was becoming a heavy rain. The dreary weather exacerbated the malaise hanging over the city. Every day was bad, but that day was worse. Morning news reported the threat
of more bombs, and the air hummed with anxiety. Parisians tried to remember before the war, and the wonders of that past grew in our minds. We yearned to take off the mantle of mourning. We wanted our beautiful women to dress up again, to wear too much perfume, throw parties that were too lavish, that went on too late. We wanted the food restrictions lifted and to gorge on gastronomical delights. Our city no longer shone, never glittered. It was drowning. In so much rain. In so much sadness.

I reached the newspaper's office in fifteen minutes. A receptionist asked how she could help me and, after I explained, directed me to a second-floor office. The nameplate on the door identified the occupant as Marie Lund.

I stepped inside, introduced myself, and asked if I could buy some
Le Figaro
back copies.

“Can you tell me the dates?”

“I'm not sure actually.”

She was young, probably about my age. Another woman in a job that had belonged to a man four years prior. There were so few men of a certain age left in Paris, and many were either too infirm to begin with or were soldiers who'd come home. Men like Madame Alouette's clients or Grigori, somehow damaged.

“We've published a paper every day for over ninety-two years.” She smiled. “You'll need some dates.”

“I wanted to read Jean Luc Forêt's columns.”

Mademoiselle Lund gave me a knowing smile, which I didn't understand. And then, her face fell as she remembered what she'd forgotten for a moment. “It's so sad, isn't it?” she said, assuming I knew his fate. And since I did, I nodded.

“Women have been writing us condolences since we announced his death. Hundreds of letters arrived. It's as if they knew him.”

“Does every columnist for the paper engender such admiration?”

“Admiration? It's not admiration. Half the women in Paris were in love with him.”

When I didn't say anything, she cocked her head and gave me an appraising once-over.

“Have you ever read any of the columns?”

“Not the
Ma chère
columns, no. I met his mother recently and she told me about him . . . She made me curious.”

“Ah, I see. Well, he's been writing this column since he went off to war. It's called
Ma chère
because each column is written like a letter home to his lover, you see. He never uses her name, and so we can all imagine we're her. And we all want to be her because we all want him to be in love with us. Oh dear, I can't get used to the idea he's gone. We published his last column just three weeks ago, with a note from the editor at the end.”

“Did you know him?”

“I met him twice,” Mademoiselle Lund said. “When he came home on leave, he would come to the offices.”

“What did he—” I stopped myself. I didn't want to hear this woman's description of him. I wanted to keep my own impression of him intact without anyone sullying it. Jean Luc was a glimmer in the darkness, a deep voice with a musical undertone like a cello playing a solo on an otherwise empty stage.

“Can I buy some of the papers with his columns?”

“We keep copies of the paper for our records, of course, but we only sell copies going back a month.”

“So then I can buy the last four weeks?”

“Yes, but just the first week has a column in it.”

She sold it to me.

I stood in the street outside the building and opened the paper, but as soon as the first fat raindrops fell on the newsprint, I tucked it under my arm and looked around for a café.

Minutes later, I was ensconced in a corner table, and while the rain beat on the windows and I waited for my coffee, I opened the paper again, searching for the column.

The waiter brought my café crème. While it cooled, I started to read.

Ma chère,

Missing you has become a scar I keep opening. Just as it begins to close, I think of some moment we were together, and afresh it tears like a new wound. Is it this way for you? Do you miss me as much as I you?

The trench is wet tonight. It has been raining for days, and I think of you and your pretty blue-and-green umbrella with the silver handle and the blue agate gems set in the top of the curve. I picture you walking down the Champs-Élysées and stopping to glance in a shop window. If I were by your side, I'd take you inside and buy you whatever you liked, just to see the delight in your eyes.

Pining for you, I think of other lovers like us, separated unfairly and through some injustice of society. You and I never went to the tomb of Héloïse and Abelard, did we?

I want you to go there today or tomorrow, and if you can find some anemones, leave them there for me. Do you know the story? Bring this with you and read it while you are standing with them. Put the flowers at their feet, where the dog lies, a symbol of faithfulness . . .

My eyes took in one word and then the next and then I wasn't reading anymore. I was hearing Jean Luc speaking to me. Whispering the words printed on paper.

I closed my eyes.

His voice continued.

“And then turn to your left and walk. There is another tomb . .
 .”

I looked down—yes, those were the next words.

I shut my eyes once more. The voice continued.

“. . . there. I don't want to tell you too much, but it is a message for you. From me because . . .”

I checked these words against the words on the paper. The same. No, it was not possible.

My heart raced. My hand trembled.

I lifted the coffee, some of it splashing in the saucer. My hand none too steady, I sipped the hot liquid, sorry it wasn't hot enough to burn my mouth because I wanted a distraction from thinking about what had just occurred.

There must be an explanation, I thought. I wasn't a scientist, not well educated in how the mind works, how the eyes work, but surely I'd read ahead without realizing it.

I closed the newspaper, folded it, and put it in my pocketbook. I didn't want to read any more of the column there at the café. Jean Luc planned for it to be read at Père-Lachaise Cemetery. I'd never been. I looked at my watch. There was no time to go that afternoon. It was at least a fifteen-minute ride on the metro, and once there, I wasn't sure it would be easy to find the tomb that Jean Luc wrote about. I would need to go on Sunday.

There were soldiers buried there as well. I'd seen photos of funerals in the paper. Some services held without caskets, tombs without bodies.

I hadn't asked Madame Alouette for any of the details of Jean Luc's death, but suddenly it felt imperative to find out if his body was in Père-Lachaise. Maybe if I could face the reality of his death, I could quiet his voice.

Perhaps the paper had reported his funeral service. I left some coins on the table and went back to Marie Lund's office at
Le Figaro
.

“I'm sorry to bother you, but did the paper print Jean Luc Forêt's obituary and information about his burial services?”

She said she thought so and asked me to wait. While she went to get it, I watched the large room fill up as the lunch break ended and reporters took their desks. Most of them were women; the only men were either over fifty or wounded. Nothing good came of war, but at least this one was showing the world how capable women were of doing jobs previously held by men. Like my own.

I heard a commotion to the right and inched toward it, strain
ing to listen. I suddenly remembered Monsieur Orloff's request and wandered farther into the offices to listen for talk of Russia, the royals, or the revolution.

“They found them under the Montparnasse catacombs,” said a gray-haired woman with a telephone receiver up to her ear. Covering the mouthpiece with her hand, she relayed information as she received it to the group of reporters who'd surrounded her desk.

“How many were there?” one of the reporters asked.

“Two of them,” she said.

“How long have they been underground?” another asked.

She asked the question of the person on the other end of the phone. Everyone waited.

“At least a week,” she said.

“What are they going to do with them?” another reporter shouted.

“They are spies, you fool, they are going to throw them in prison,” someone in the crowd answered.

“Based on information the police were able to collect, they think there are dozens more Germans who've infiltrated the city.”

“Spies under our feet,” one of the reporters said. “In the tunnels and the mines.”

“Mademoiselle?”

I turned. Marie Lund held a copy of
Le Figaro
.

“He died on July eighth,” she said. “Here is his obituary.”

The black border was the same as the one on the clipping I'd retrieved after it had fallen out of Madame Alouette's purse.

“There was no formal burial,” she read. “No bodies were recovered from that explosion. There was too much damage and all the soldiers—” She broke off.

With the war all around, with its never-ending reports of casualties, there were only so many barriers one could erect. Some stories still broke through and shook you to your core. You'd find you could endure hearing about the unnamed troops—the hundreds, the thousands, yes, the millions of soldiers—who died, but not any one of
those lives that touched yours, and it wasn't so easy to just buck up and go on as we were supposed to. Sometimes you needed to stop and bow your head and give in to the loss and grieve for the one who always said hello, or once waited for you at the door to help you carry your packages, or kissed you good night, or gave you your children. We could not be like the amazing automatons we'd seen on display. We were not just flesh and blood; we were also tears.

Marie Lund wiped hers away and handed me the paper.

“He was just such a lovely man,” she said with a last little sigh.