Mai at the Predators' Ball (7 page)

Corridor 1
and
Corridor 2
spreading their metallic wings against the green background, giant sculptures dipping and weaving in the wind night and day, weightless and bodiless he proclaimed, that’s what drew them all to him, all these women, female artists and critics, all partners in his adventure he announced, so exasperating and pretentious, totally incapable of living without a woman won over by the force of his ideas Lou thought, and sure enough here she was, a young sculptor and critic for an art review, Noémie, that was her name, Noémie, a charming young woman, her forehead beaming with willpower, that’s how he put it, and here she was at the feet of his aggressive, phallic
Hanging Mural
, a heavy, overbearing shape Lou disliked so much, no matter if her father kidded himself with all sorts of Buddhist thoughts on the subject, to hear him tell it the encounter with Noémie was mystical, and though she was every bit as athletic as Lou herself — big for her age and looking ever more like her mother and hardly any taller — she was also meditative, which is what brought her to the foot of Ari’s suspended wall, barefoot in the grassy park she was actually meditating, her perfect proportions contrasting with Lou’s overgrown youth, and they were bound to get on just fine together Ari said to assuage his daughter’s anguish at not being Daddy’s Only Girl, you’ll get on like a house on fire, and if you study hard you can come visit us at Noémie’s apartment in New York, we’ll take you to museums, oh he had his conditions all right, bargaining with Lou, dropping her off at her mother’s or at Rosie’s whenever he had to go off to Noémie’s, the basest fleshly pleasure it was, and her father was only a mystic as far as common ordinary love would take him, a slave to instinct, basic primal needs, no longer the farsighted, attentive man that Lou had once loved, he’d betrayed her and he’d do it again, the same as her mother Ingrid, and she began to doubt he meant it when he said they’d sail to Panama together with her sitting on his lap as she learned to sail, such a long way to go, it had to be just one of those comforting lies he told, just one of those useless promises she thought, because from here on, from here on his real companion was going to be Noémie, yes
her
, she weighed all the pain in that one word, wasn’t she. And this fog kept on burying the hood of the car in its black smoke thought Daniel, not a heat fog or a sea fog, maybe it was some toxic stuff he couldn’t protect his daughter from, but Mai didn’t seem to need him now, locked in her rebellious silence, yes if this carbon cloud kept enveloping them in its bitter shadow, from Los Angeles all the way to the slums of Mumbai, melting glaciers in the Himalayas, industrial smoke had started to cover the oceans from the Arctic downward, and even the paradise Mai and her friends inhabited was being draped in a funeral pall that caused millions of premature deaths every year on and off the island from sheer suffocation, and what to tell Mai, that it was too late, that this carbon cloud might be coming for her tomorrow just as it might for the polar bears or fish, the melt and burn no measurement could comprehend, an unredeemable tragedy his daughter was too young to imagine Daniel thought, no more than the deer herds or the foxes that he and his ecologist friends had saved from entrapment and certain death, the carbon veil drawn over all of them alike, its invisible pellets blackening all before them, pond water, rivers, the leaves of fruit-bearing trees, but he steered clear of these troubling matters with his daughter, frustrated that his efforts were so often in vain, and simply said I don’t know when this sea fog’s going to lift, but don’t you worry, we’ll soon be home, his way of telling Mai she wouldn’t be late for her evening out and that now she could even use her cellphone, he could see her hand getting fidgety, though he hadn’t yet touched on the real reason for their little outing together, which was to tell her they’d decided to take her out of the public school where she’d been subject to such bad influences and would soon be sending her to a private institution, no, not just yet though, being highly intuitive like him she had an inkling something serious had been determined without her knowledge, being as hard to manage as she was she wondered what words he would choose to back them up, that the school was close to home, no, then she’d say the distance didn’t matter, she was soon going to learn to drive, they were wrong to see her as the same turbulent child she’d once been, still who knows where she’d be tonight or tomorrow, camping on the beach like the tall June bride maybe, hanging out with the filthy men under the pines, feet shredded by glass shards, no roof over her head like thousands of other so-called
new homeless
, women and men out of work and living in the crop of tent cities that was springing up along railroad tracks and under bridges, feeling the cold through their nylon tents as far as Fresno, California, and she’d soon be looking as haggard as the June bride, staring fixedly at the great white clouds, still better a nylon shelter on the beach than nothing, that’s what the tall girl or one of her friends said, garbage is better than nothing at all, each one after his own shelter, the Pacific coast railroads or bridges, entire families in fact, an exodus of the rich turned poor in a single day or simply overnight, just like that, leaving behind their beautiful houses with swings on the lawn and two or three pups at the window barking with no one to feed them tonight or tomorrow, then to the pound where they’d be put down, leaving behind their crimes, their rejections, their surrenders, harassed and in flight like criminals, that too in a single night, charged with the crime of abandonment, pursued and guilty, lying down for a few hours in her tiny cottage on the lawn, Mère rested her cane on a chair by the bed and contemplated the reproduction of the Albrecht Dürer engraving she had long kept over her bedside table, how long would she hold out as its untiring devotee, struggling for life while others looked on, expecting her to wane or fall from the saddle, she’d noticed these annoying attentions of theirs, the Sonata for Cello and Piano, Opus 40 by Shostakovitch put her in mind of Augustino’s turbulent existence, in a still legible hand she had noted the music she listened to this day as she did every day in the isolation of her little room out on the lawn, and the attentions of her daughter Mélanie and of Mai’s governess Marie-Sylvie de la Toussaint irritating her now she and she alone in this house received all the attention, though she could stand and walk perfectly well on her own, admittedly she did tire quickly and she’d asked Mélanie to leave the blinds half-open so the brilliant midday sun could reach her, then later in the afternoon before her nap she remembered listening to Schubert’s sonatas for piano and violin, yes she’d been taking these afternoon naps for quite a while now, and in the garden the sometimes strident music of the birds accompanied her writing, setting it all down, sometimes using her left hand so as not to overtire her right, at night you can hear the toad-song, she thought to herself, thus closing her eyes she thought of Caroline in her summer robe who once appeared to her coming for a visit in the garden cottage, so happy and quiet, she bumped into the tall wardrobe when Mère said wait, I know what you’re looking for, I’ll help, no don’t get up Caroline said, there’s no point since I can’t see, I’ll never find what I’m looking for, I knock into furniture and all sorts of things, I can’t see anymore, sleep Esther my dear, I’ll wait till my sight returns and I can see you, perhaps tomorrow, then Caroline wandered around the room complaining that the wardrobe was so high she couldn’t reach a thing but, she explained to Mère, her sight was gone and she couldn’t see a thing anyway and if Mère touched her, brushed her arm or her hand, she didn’t feel a thing, such a pity it is she said to Mère, this void of contact, Mère could no longer stand seeing the shadow of blind Caroline continually bumping into all sorts of things in the room, her fleshless arms no longer able to embrace the one she so longed to confide in, oh the end of all physical touch is the worst privation of all, isn’t it, Caroline said tonelessly, so Mère thought I’ll get up, and when she feels the weight of my hand on her shoulder, the movement from somewhere else will brush her summer nightdress and awaken her, but Mère noticed she was still in her bed, that feet and legs were heavy as stones, preventing her from greeting Caroline, a sound ran through her mind, a piece from Schubert’s sonatas, what would become of her if ever she could no longer hear this music that was her lifeline, I shall come back later Caroline said from her vaporous nightdress, and already she was on her way soundlessly, not even a footstep, oh how Mère wished Marie-Sylvie were here to pour a glass of ice water from the jug, but she’d asked to be alone, imperiously in fact, not politely, poor servants, always putting up with the bad temper of their masters and mistresses, Marie-Sylvie de la Toussaint, though, was neither poor nor really at Mère’s service, she was just a fixture in the house now, like Julio or any of the other refugees they’d always sheltered here in this kingdom where Mère was crumbling a little at a time, this kingdom of the heart not long for this world she thought, not tonight though, oh no, and not tomorrow either, Mère was that indefatigable, the stalwart knight in the Dürer engraving, through all of this Franz was away rehearsing, forever leading his orchestra, and wasn’t this about the time when Samuel always used to jump from the high veranda straight into the pool, Mère replayed in her head the Schubert sonatas she’d listened to and duly noted since morning, also the memory of Samuel and his swim, of Franz and his orchestra, in decline perhaps but still a solid man, Mère wanted never to let one of these scenes escape from her yet her mind seemed to be giving way, more and more, to indolence, and so it was with the symphony Franz had written in his younger days when he was inspired by the Psalms, how was a man so carnal and celebratory of life inspired by religion, still that was Franz through and through, revelling in all his contradictions, it was precisely his celebration of life that kept him on earth for so long Mère reflected, wondering would the old miscreant be coming to see her today, always in a rush, bustling up to the door with his scores under his arm, would he be shaking his wayward hair among the African lilies that formed a bower overhead and drooped their heavy corollas over the garden path, and shouting it’s me, Franz, I can only stop for a minute my dear Esther, just long enough to embrace you, would he now talk about his women, so many of them, and his copious offspring or perhaps his latest opera, still not finished what with all the biographies coming out recently on him and his work as a conductor, one of them illustrating his career with photos of a time gone by, such as Franz stretched out on the deck of a transatlantic liner next to one of his first wives only to be divorced a few months later, the sun-framed picture was part of his European tour not long before he met Renata at a university in Chicago, Mère thought with the brilliance of his success and sporadic moments of wealth he seemed happy, darkly beautiful, and attractive, though it was a mirage, the woman beside him shared that comforting radiance and they did seem so very much a couple bonded in this Mediterranean landscape, their tanned and barely clothed bodies, even a black-and-white photo made evident the pleasure that welded their two bodies wildly together, Franz would have torn that one up, saying what was past was past, that’s what they always do, try and make us things of the past, but I, Esther dear, live only in the present, and I can’t look at that picture without suffering for the hurt I caused that woman, yet still you can see how much happiness melted us into one another with a perfection that could only be of the present, before instinct led me to destroy everything, but that’s the way we’re made, always we must have more, more, more, taking more than life could offer freely, you are a woman of duty Esther, who can’t comprehend this headlong destructive impulse that drives us, but then perhaps he would simply look at the picture with inexpressible, silent nostalgia at the sight of these bodies in their transatlantic abandon and surrounded by an azure sea, oh adieu, adieu youth, he’d surely remember the colour of the water that day, the smells of that day, the happy exhaustion of the senses by this woman’s side, then a long shudder right down his body at the memory of it, would Franz be coming for a visit today Mère wondered, elbows on the bar at the cabaret in the soft lighting on stage where it was Robbie’s turn to sing, emerging like a sprite from behind the purple curtains as Yinn introduced him:
our splendid fairy thug, our adorable Robbie, be generous as she strolls among you with her tip bucket
, Robbie, don’t forget the bucket Yinn murmured in his ear before his entrance, dragging him by the sleeve because he was so eager to sing that he’d forgotten it again, we can’t live on air you know, Petites Cendres thought he was hearing the voice of Reverend Ézéchielle through the thunderclaps outside, asking him what have you done with your friend Timo, my son, why on earth was the Reverend hassling him about Timo, couldn’t he even have bit of fun, Timo, I don’t have a clue thought Petites Cendres, honest, Reverend, I really don’t, to each his own in this world of men, there’s nothing I can do about it, what have you done with your friend Timo, replied the Reverend once more in the thunder over the cabaret roof, and it was seriously getting in the way of Robbie’s sentimental melody, ah geez all this thunder has to happen just when I’m singing, sure we’re all used to it, but with all this going on his voice just might waver, I don’t know anything about this Timo, besides, ratting out is the ugliest sin of all Reverend, I’d never turn him in Reverend Ézéchielle, no never, but the sight of Timo maybe killed by the police would not go away, first they lay you flat on the ground, three of them most times, often shoving your head into the sand, or the mud if it was a swamp, if not, into the asphalt or cement that burns your face, or the steel door of a car, like the stolen Sonata maybe, they give your back a total pistol-whipping before they slap on the handcuffs, I haven’t done anything, and Petites Cendres just kept repeating why would I turn in my brother, they grabbed that splendid hair of his and in his fall Timo had struck his head against the steel door like a whiplash, then the hair, once so clean, was drenched in blood, Timo my friend, Petites Cendres thought, but none of this is true, Timo’s still driving that Sonata, he’d get away again through the swampy brush trails or scrambling on foot where alligators crouch with pale green eyes, nobody would be able to get around Timo, and for a few grams of cocaine he’d always win, and Robbie’s melodious voice rang across the stage, complete in black velvet décolleté, long white gloves all the way to the shoulder, and scuffed and worn leopard-skin boots, of course everything Petites Cendres saw was a staged illusion, interchangeable on Robbie’s enticing body, only to become someone else again in a few hours, singing differently, dancing differently, as though he’d switched bodies as well as costumes, and winding almost serpent-like with such supreme ease that no one would ever suspect, and that voice with its