Judith Ivory (23 page)

He bussed her cheek as he rose. “Another time,
chéri.
And thank you. But I’m going home to the little woman by the hearth bed—er—fires—er—”

Colette pulled a sulking face that quickly broke into laughter. “Take pity on her,
mignon!
Use a woman who’s better fit—”

But her voice was already fading, caught in the swinging doors between the common room and the entranceway.

These doors flapped to and fro behind Adrien as he shoved his way through the outdoor exit. The night air
met him abruptly. It was like walking into a cold wall. The wind had whipped up into a stronger, colder frenzy. It was snowing again. Adrien wrapped his wool scarf over his face to his eyes as he pushed into the winter night.

New snow rose like powder, making small flurries about his boots as Adrien crunched down the street. He turned down the Rue de Valois, toward the apartment he shared with Christina in Paris. It was still a good walk, but his spirits lifted with each step. He began to hustle down the icy esplanade.

He stopped long enough to buy a newspaper to wrap about the cheese. Those not lucky enough to be able to afford the luxuries of life—food, for instance—did not deal very charitably with those who were when they met on the streets.

Adrien paid the vendor, then quickly disguised the cheese in a copy of
L’ami du Peuple.

“Good God,” he murmured as he realized what he’d purchased, “I may poison us.”

He glimpsed a brief line of copy from the inflammatory sheet, there under the street light, as he wrapped the cheese.

“A man who is starving has the right to cut another man’s throat and devour the palpitating flesh,” the infamous editor wrote.

“Good Lord.” He shook his head. “Adrien, my dear boy, I don’t think this man would take kindly to your wrapping this cheese in his paper. Though, given the choice, I think his tastes would run more to your palpitating flesh than to the cheese. God preserve a nation that allows a man like this to come to power.”

The editor, the same Marat of the Paris Commune, the same Marat of the Paris mobs, in August had become the self-proclaimed head of the newly formed Committee of Surveillance. Adrien shuddered again at how easily Marat was eclipsing the power of the hopelessly divided
Girondins
in the elected National Assembly. Marat controlled the Commune, the Committee, and the mobs—about three hundred hired assassins imported from Sicily and Genoa and all the Frenchmen he could incite to violence through his morbidly slanted journal. The combination effectively controlled Paris, and through Paris, France. Marat’s position was precarious. There were others who wanted the uppermost spot. But, presently, he held power, tenuous or not; power he wielded with a capital P. The friends and relatives of those dead in September, and since, could attest to it.

Adrien had indirect contact with the maniac. When Adrien had first arrived back in Paris to set up a long term identity here, he had been lucky enough to be in on the formation of the revolutionary committees. Paris had been divided into forty-eight sections. Each section had its committee. Adrien was on the one for the district in which he lived—it was a marvelous means of ascertaining which neighbors liked to spy and tattle. “Uncivic attitudes” were reported to the small committees by local residents. It was an unholy arrangement of jealous neighbors denouncing each other over pettiness—vengeful lovers reporting one another on spiteful caprice. But registers were kept. A national agent from the parent committee, Marat’s Committee of Surveillance,
kept tabs with all the zeal of a
petit
commissioner. And repercussions for counterrevolutionary attitudes were often severe, sometimes fatal.

Occasionally, Adrien received a proclamation to “all brothers in the Department” signed by Marat himself. It always espoused justice in the name of the people and, once in particular, tried to justify the mass atrocities and murders in those noble terms, saying the butchery of men, women, and children in the prisons in September was “indispensable in order to terrorize the traitors” at large in the Republic. Who would possibly have the courage to speak out against this rising power if the people’s justice was so swift, sure, and merciless? And so absolutely insane.

Adrien grumbled at himself. He’d let his worries and disillusion grab and twist at him again.

He tucked the sedition-wrapped cheese under one arm, stuck the cigar in a book, tucked both books under the other arm, then went off, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. He kept a brisk stride. He dodged a group of playgoers, a lady of the evening, then a seedy threesome all wearing red caps—Marat’s mob’s cachet—and singing the “Marseillaise” at the top of their drunken lungs.

Once safely past, he mumbled to himself. The song’s overblown patriotic dignity suited its singers. He did not like the new anthem or the spirit it engendered.

His breath drifted white behind him as he stepped up his pace to something just short of a run. It was freezing. He wanted to get home to Christina, hear her voice, absorb some of her Spartan attitude. There was too much on the streets and in the cafés of Paris that depressed him.

Another sneeze. The cold shot through his clothes. Christina became another kind of beacon to him: physical contact. By the time he neared the house, im
ages of sexual possession had begun to glow so sharply, they emitted their own tumescent warmth.

Adrien fairly bounded up the narrow driveway into the courtyard. Past the well, at the end of the courtyard, stood an amply lit two-story house. He and Christina shared one of the two ground-floor apartments, a two-room affair suitable for an on-and-off coal worker and his wife. It was a dwelling significantly lacking in luxury and spaciousness, but it had come to be a place to which he looked forward to returning. For practical reasons, it had to be modest. The size of one’s home was not easily hidden from curious neighbors under a few layers of sensationalistic journalism.

He acknowledged Sam Rolfeman at the front door, then began to readjust the books, cheese, and cigar to reach for the latch. Just as he’d balanced everything in one arm, he sneezed once more. Everything fell.

He was picking the cigar out of the snow when light angled out from the front door, spotlighting him. He glanced out. Christina’s silhouette, arms folded, stood in the doorway.

His good mood curdled. He could tell by her posture, he would be dealing with her tart, priggish nature tonight. The partial erection that had accompanied him home suddenly became hesitant to accompany him inside.

“Four days,” she said as he entered. “For four days I have had to contend with that man.” It was Sam, again; she and Sam didn’t get along at all.

Adrien closed the door and leaned against it. “Do you think,” she continued, “that you could limit your censorship and tyranny over my life to at least only being a nuisance to me when you are around? Living in the shadow of your awesome control when you are fifty miles away is a bit aggravating. I’d like to live a little bit of my life on my own—” She stopped, then
said only a slight bit more softly, “Your nose. It’s all red. Are you drunk or sick?” Softer still: “Are you all right?”

He laughed at her quick reversal. “Yes.” He stared at her as he unlooped the muffler and undid his coat.

She was lovely. It never ceased to amaze him how lovely he found her. Her hair was coming down in a dozen places—actually, she didn’t do too well without a maid. Her face and fichu had something powdery on them; cornmeal, perhaps. Her dress was wrinkled. Her apron had a large, round wet spot where she’d leaned against something.

His eyes rose to her face. He smiled. Her reality was infinitely prettier than anything imaginable. His eyes dropped to the round wet ring on her apron. And infinitely more pregnant. God, but she was huge. It didn’t help her disposition. But it didn’t hurt her appeal.

Conception must have occurred sometime in June. He counted to himself: July, August, September, October, November, December. This was January. She must be at least seven months gone; and round as a ripe peach. He thought she looked magnificent like that: gloriously gravid with his child. Tender thoughts swept over him. Then she confused them with less wholesome thoughts as she plundered on into the territory known as his Innate Dishonesty.

“Must you lie about something as mundane as a bloody cold? Or are you afraid I can turn that against you? You are
not
all right. What have you been doing these past four days?”

The concern in her voice left him smiling again. He watched her fight a responding smile with a disapproving frown. He’d forgotten. She objected to his smiling at her when she was put out with him. This fell under Deceptive Manipulation. He frowned, putting all tenderness behind him.

He shook his coat off one arm. He had to set his packages on the table. “The wind on the water last night was fierce. My nose has been running ever since.” The coat slipped off; he folded it in front of him. He picked up the top book from the table and offered it to her. “Here, I brought you this.”

When she went to reach for it, he pulled it back a little. She stepped a little closer, reached—and stopped.

She puckered her lips and tilted her head back at him. “You’re not going to start that already, are you?” she asked irritably. She dropped her eyes to his pants. His coat, in front of him, covered the evidence. She turned and went to the fireplace.

There, she stooped to work with something—presumably dinner. He didn’t want to think of that. Instead, he watched her bottom swing away from him, then settle on her heels. She didn’t seem hinged in the normal way a woman was; he loved her loose, un-jointed movement, the sway of her hips, the graceful way her body folded where it seemed to need to, even now with a belly so big she occasionally misjudged her balance.

He came near enough so that when she rose he could reach out and steady her: There was no help for it. His mind had already begun to plot how to corner her with a minimum risk of being too rough, of startling her, of toppling her. It was he who felt clumsy these days; clumsier and clumsier as she grew. How to approach her. How to be careful of her. How not to injure her and still get hold of her long enough to…

If only he knew how to not want her.

He stood, waiting; pretending to warm his hands at the fire. He was mentally salivating over her all-the-more-resplendent breasts when he realized she was looking at him. She flushed visibly, pulled herself up by the mantel, and moved away.

He stood with his back to her for some moments, his
hands warming toward the fire and his temper heating just a little with them. Stupid woman. He hadn’t seen her for four days. For the last hour he’d been able to think of little else but her. He could tell by the color of her cheeks, she wasn’t as cool as she pretended. And she was playing this idiotic game again. The urge to give her a good firm kick implanted itself in his mind once more.

“What’s this?” she asked.

He glanced over his shoulder. She was holding both books he’d brought home.

“One is for me. A volume of Homer. The other’s for you. The best I could do was a French translation. It’s from the English
Treatise on Midwifery
by some doctor. Smellie is the author’s unlikely name. It’s supposed to be a fairly accurate account of the laboring and birthing process. You’ve expressed some fear over what lies ahead. I thought some knowledge might lessen your anxieties. I’ll help you with the French if you like.” He’d had considerable trouble in searching out and obtaining the one book. A printer had finally managed to locate the copy of Smellie. Homer had been thrown in for him as an act of love, he was sure. The printer was a good friend of his grandfather’s.

“That was sweet of you. Yes, I should like you to help me with the words and phrases I don’t understand. That’s very thoughtful.”

He turned, put his hands behind him to the fire; held in innocence for the moment. She was saying something about the baby and the book, but he didn’t follow it. He was thankful she seemed intent on the gift. He couldn’t keep his eyes from going over the line of her, all the curves of bosom and belly and buttocks. He wondered briefly if there was something wrong with a man who lusted so passionately after such a gravid little creature.

“Right here. What does this mean? ‘To hold account’?
‘to be held account for’?” She was pointing to something in the book.

He hesitated, then grimaced. He wanted very much to go over, see what she asked, answer it in patrician suavity as he wrapped his arms about her, then promenade her into the bedroom in mutual accord. It never worked that way. And how he detested being rebuffed by her. He went over to see what she wanted, nevertheless.

He peered into the book at the phrase she had marked with her finger. “‘If I were taking into account,’” he translated. “My word! That’s the second sentence. You’re going to need a lot of help.” He tried to sound casual. “Why don’t you come read it in bed?”

“We haven’t had dinner.” She couldn’t have said it any starchier.

“I don’t want dinner!” he blurted. “I want you! Christina, let’s not do this cat and mouse game tonight. Let’s just go to bed together and enjoy it. I’ve missed you. I want—”

She snapped the book shut and dropped it on the table. She spoke in that soft, determined way she had lately. “Don’t tell me what you want, Adrien. I’m here because you want it. I can’t go anywhere unless you want it. Look at me! I’m fat, I think, because you wanted it! You couldn’t be more pleased with this!” She gestured to her middle. She turned, about to put the width of the little room between them again.

He grabbed her arm. “You are such an idiot,” he said. He pulled her back against him. Through the layers of clothes, he felt her delicate form twisting, moving, pulling to get away. Yet just the feel of her was such a relief; like truly coming in out of the cold. He rubbed his body against the squirming woman. He closed his eyes. His breathing immediately altered. He felt everything accelerate. He heard her in front of him make one of those
funny sounds—like a child about to cry while being wrenched from the security of a nanny’s arms.

“No, Adrien! Ask me, for godssake!”

“Will you come lie with me?” He kissed her neck. “God, woman, I ache for you. Come to bed with me, Christina.”

“No.”

A little put out, he stopped long enough to ask, “Why was I supposed to ask then?”

“If I’m only allowed one answer, then why bother asking? You’re so damned presumptuous! Even when you’re asking leave to—well, you expect things to be just your way all the time. You demand it! And what you can’t just take you—oh—oh!”

He’d managed to slide his hands under the loose waist of her apron, skirts, and undergarments. This put his hands on her bare belly. He lifted the weight of the child.