Lovers (9781609459192) (2 page)

T
he curtains have been drawn, the seats are padded with cushions, from a basket there wafts a rich smell of roast poultry, fresh bread, and pears.

The coach is a trundling cage, a swaying cradle, a cave.

It is dark and cold. Yes, the trees that line the road are doubtless the same as on Saint-Polgues' property, and so are the animals that loom up out of the darkness, little owls and roe deer, but to Sébastien this world, however familiar, is imbued with a sense of the unknown. In a state of elation, he says farewell to this thing and that, a bridge, a wood, a fallow. What traces will these surroundings leave in him? Do some things sink into oblivion forever? Landscapes, feelings, habits.

I
n calm but unequivocal words (though Sébastien has stopped hearing him: his head nods, his body sags, his eyes close, and he falls asleep), Balthazar ventures declarations, dares to announce what his protégé's future will be, wonders about the indestructibility of all friendship.

You will be my pupil, you will be my master, you will achieve fame, you will be faithful to me, you will abandon me, you will always come back to me.

And at dawn we will say to each other: We are together.

C
réon will forget nothing of this journey, the only one that will ever truly matter to him.
Amid the reds and silver of the cushions, their silk smelling of chalk, and against the damask covering the window, a fifteen-year-old boy, thin, frail, very frail, but beneath his rough clothes his flesh is warm. A young peasant, a boy exceptionally gifted to feel love. Créon will often tell himself that.

He will never forget the darkness glimpsed through the chinks in the curtains. Soot studded with slivers of moonlight, blackish-brown velvet for league after league. It was deadly boring, and his eyes were constantly drawn back to the confined, shimmering space where his friend was dozing.

He will never forget any of it. But what does that mean exactly? It is vain to believe that one's memory is infallible.

To believe, to hope, to live.

C
réon's chateau is not far from Moulins. Its gardens are adjacent to a broad, deep forest. Throughout the year, an army of gardeners labors mightily to ensure that the flowerbeds, statues and ornamental lakes are not overrun by tall grass and brambles. Referring to this conquering vegetation, the Princesse de Créon writes to her cousin Angélique de Fombeuse: It watches us, threatens us, soon it will cover the marble.

D
ear Angélique,
It is a theater of box trees and roses that I gaze upon, but a theater where no actor performs. The audience is unusually restricted, a mother and her son, and a young man forced upon me by Balthazar. When will I see you, my dear?

F
rom the terrace that runs the length of the chateau's façade, Anne de Créon watches them. They have jumped down from the coach, and are now coming toward her. It is almost noon. The sun breaks through a sky honeycombed with clouds. Behind Anne de Créon, a tall French door in which her figure is reflected, fragmented by the eighteen panes. That is how Sébastien sees her for the first time and that is why, to him, she will always be two women, a creature of flesh and blood and a shimmering ghost.

Balthazar wrote to his mother: There will be someone with me. I wager that once you set eyes on him you will fall under the spell of my friend Sébastien Faure. In any case, I order you to like him.

Curious, skeptical, horrified, she looks the stranger up and down.

Is this the marvel of whom he spoke? she wonders.

She tells herself again: They are not lovers, I'd stake my life on it. But they are in love.

Anne de Créon accepts defeat.

Welcome to Créon, she says to Sébastien.

I
mmediately upon his arrival, he was installed in a wooden lodge, a kind of chalet, which Balthazar's father Louis de Créon, who died of consumption in 1739, while still in his twenties, had built at the far end of the grounds in order to devote himself undisturbed to the art of the miniature.

The lodge, covered in Virginia creeper and wisteria, consists of two rooms: a bedroom and a study, whose walls are hung with miniatures. They do not depict faces, but apparently idyllic country scenes; only when examined closely do they reveal certain disquieting details: a pond tinged with purple, a hanged man swinging from a branch, an animal choked by a snare, a road obstructed by a mass of fallen rocks, a cutlass driven into a tree trunk. At the foot of the desk are heaps of little canvas bags filled with simples. The hearth is constantly aglow, as there is always some concoction simmering in a pot. The bucolic lair has been transformed into an apothecary's dispensary. Sébastien tests his preparations on the Créons and their servants. Most of the time, the results are convincing. Which gives credence to Balthazar's prediction that sooner or later his friend will becomes the king's doctor. He visits him every day. In the evening, they dine in the chateau, in the company of Anne de Créon. Yesterday, a place was laid for Saint-Polgues, who was passing through on his way to Paris. The conversation was of ancestors and court intrigues. Glittering, uncontroversial chatter, until all at once the Princesse declared that the authority she had once had over her son was on the wane. That cast a chill over the table. They parted soon afterwards. And Sébastien went back to Louis de Créon's miniatures.

H
e has seen the Virginia creeper turn brown, then lose its leaves, he has seen the rain become a daily occurrence, turning the trees and the sand and the flower banks blue or grey, depending on the time of day, he has seen autumn and winter. He has now spent four months in his wooden lodge.

Balthazar always walks him back after dinner. They sit by the fire. There are evenings when Créon says little. A man who keeps silent may touch the emotions. It was during one of the first of these intimate, almost silent sessions that Sébastien discovered how carnal silence may be. Thanks to Créon's silence, he learns to savor the waiting, to imagine what tomorrow will be like, to be silent himself, the better to dream of what is and what will be, of all the possibilities gathered on a threshold still invisible but anticipated. But Créon always takes his leave, always long after midnight. And then the silence that surrounds Sébastien is quite strange, the silence of absence, a silence that drives away sleep. It is possible to lose oneself in it, as in all things.

And tomorrow becomes today.

Balthazar knocks at the door of the chalet a little earlier each afternoon. One of these past days, he declared himself a tutor. He wants Sébastien to learn to read and write, to learn to count, to memorize thankless facts. He teaches him grammar and a smattering of Latin. The pupil is gifted, Balthazar convinces himself; the pupil sometimes expresses his disappointment at some rule or theorem. Is that all it is? he says in surprise. When they go for a walk in the grounds, it is Sébastien's turn to give a name to things and to reveal the daily life of plants and animals. Here is a shrike and here is an oriole, there is the bellflower, there the starflower. It is not unusual for them to venture beyond the gates. With Sébastien, it is impossible to get lost.

Four months, six months, a year.

M
uch to Anne de Créon's displeasure, Balthazar seems to be in no hurry to go back to Versailles. He has been sent for. The King has informed him, through Saint-Polgues, that he is getting impatient. But Balthazar delays his departure. He has even written a brief missive to his monarch, explaining that a strange wasting disease has confined him to his bed. The tone was expeditious, to say the least. It was not well received. He is lying, they say in Versailles, he is handsome and witty but he is a liar. They begin to suspect him of plotting a rebellion, or indulging in some scandalous pleasure, or practicing alchemy. He is a buggerer, they whisper to the King, one who obtains his gold from dark sources. The rumors reach the chateau, the Princesse grows anxious, Balthazar answers his mother's warnings with these words: I am here and they are there. He shrugs, he idles and daydreams, sometimes he even neglects Sébastien and his future. Another day dawns, another night gathers, but he forgets even the passing of time, he forgets that he belongs to this world.

G
od, how commonplace it is to have enemies, how commonplace is naivety, and hatred, and narrow-mindedness, and cowardice, and jealousy, and cunning, and death too, of course, death that comes and goes, a great walker, and madness, and fear, and infatuation. As for love, that is much less commonplace, less than death anyway, but death comes and goes, it is there, it will arise, a distinct event, clearly demarcated, unadorned, death is not a fable. Oh God, how commonplace also are the wind and the rain, the snow, the elements, everything in fact, they too come and go, they come and go but they are not death, not always, they are not its messengers, not always.

And let us not neglect men. Most are insignificant, except them, these two lovers Balthazar de Créon and Sébastien Faure, they are not insignificant, they cannot be, here they are: magnificent.

A
n incurable sodomite, they say of Créon.
Terrible stories circulate about him, at Court, in the countryside, and no doubt in the chateau too.

They surround him like an aura.

Terrifying, but untouchable.

He organizes saturnalia that end in murders, they say.

He is one of the damned.

And as rich as Croesus.

Tall stories, sighs Créon.

He is an ogre, they say.

A tall story, fairy tales, but what is his story?

Who are you, Balthazar de Créon? the local prelate is tempted to ask him.

Nobody can touch him here, on his own lands, he tells his mother.

Anguish is buried deep in his being, silent as yet, but prodigious. It finds expression in an irrepressible need for tenderness. More even than that: in the need to express his desire for Sébastien.

The man they think of as an ogre is a virgin.

T
hese days, visitors to the Créon chateau are shown, in what was once the Princesse's salon—no fire in the hearth, no lighted candles—a series of five tapestries depicting the intellectual exchanges between a Greek philosopher and his disciple. Balthazar and Sébastien were the models for these tapestries. The figures do not look at you, they seem absorbed in their own feverish complicity. If you visit this room, which is known as the Lovers' Salon, you will not linger for long. You will feel unwelcome. You will fall silent, and to them your silence is a noise from the outside world. Approach this tapestry, or that one, and when you are close you will become aware of whispers, the rustle of fabrics. You will hear the vows they make each other. It is impossible to take down these tapestries, so it is said. They are in urgent need of restoration, they are a sorry sight, but, so you have been told, it is impossible to take them off the walls. The walls and the tapestries have become one. In ten years, perhaps even earlier, they will fall to pieces, they will be nothing but rags, they will disappear. We will have to rely on photographs for an idea of how those lovers looked. They will vanish, they will be at peace. There will be no farewell.

 

Miniatures are on display in one of the chateau's boudoirs. Some carry a signature—Louis de Créon—others are unsigned.

 

The grounds cover a mere tenth of their original area. As for the wooden house, nothing remains of it, and nobody is even sure where exactly it stood. Was it there, where the big pond surrounded by gorse bushes now lies? Or there, on that area of lawn? Or there, where they have built an arbor?

 

But what are these whispers, this rustle of fabric? The lovers?

M
ay the fire and the hate spare us, Anne de Créon writes to her cousin.
The rumors about her son are spreading. From Paris, she is sent lampoons in which he is slandered, branded a seducer of pretty boys, a werewolf, a vampire.

Balthazar shrugs. He is not the kind of person to laugh.

False testimonies are fabricated.

What is true and what is false? Anne wonders.

The Princesse de Créon has a son, and her son is a monster.

Whenever she tries to warn Balthazar, he sends her back to her needlework, sends the titled gossips of Versailles back to their hunts and their balls.

He says: I'm going for a walk. In a wooden lodge is a young man. What they feel for one another has a name.

But what is the world coming to? Anne laments.

Who is untouchable? And who isn't?

She writes less and less frequently to her cousin.

Self-questioning, anxiety, presentiments, a faraway look in her eyes. She is suddenly aware of what quicksand is, and fear, and a gathering storm. Tomorrow is no longer just another day.

M
adame,” Balthazar said to her once, “Madame, you are my father's wife, and you are no more allowed to weep than he was. But I, Madame, cannot hold back my tears. They flow sometimes, they are mine, they are precious to me. Why suppress them? I am sure I am like no one else. Not you, in any case, nor my father. Whose son am I, Madame? Tell me that.”

 

What has she passed on to her son?

What does a mother pass on?

She has no idea, no, she has no idea.

 

Be quiet, she told him.

T
hat Balthazar is a sodomite is something she will never get over.
That he is a murderer is something she cannot believe.
That he must end up at the stake makes her love for him all the stronger.