The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (13 page)

“It would be my pleasure,” he said.

It was clear to them that a flirtation and assignation had been accomplished with the air of complete respectability. Had Louise’s husband, Hippolyte, been in the room, Gustave thought with a shiver of delight, there would have been nothing he could have pointed to as improper.

Louise resumed posing. Gustave watched fascinated as James rolled clay between his hands to fashion slender coils. On the bust, they became a crude approximation of the tendrils of hair at her nape.

“Done!” James pronounced, once again covering the bust with a damp cloth. Louise hopped down from the stool and retreated to a dry sink at the far end of the studio to freshen up.

It was then that Gustave handed Caroline’s death mask and the cast of her hand to James. Immediately upon seeing the likeness of his sister, his mood plummeted. James stood silently pondering the mask for a long moment. At last, he spoke. The bronze he had used for Dr. Flaubert’s bust was a practical and masculine material, ideal for a distinguished man. For Caroline he suggested marble, befitting her delicate beauty. Gustave agreed.

When she rejoined them, Louise was sharply taken aback by the mask, which was unmistakably the face of a dead woman, the eyes closed, the mouth set for eternity. “Oh, my dears,” she whispered. “Who?”

“My sister, Caroline. My only sister.” Gustave looked down at the floor to control his feelings.

“And so young. How?”

He continued to look down, unable to speak.

“Childbed fever,” said James.

Louise stepped nearer and inserted her hand in the crook of Gustave’s arm. “I am very sorry, my dear,” she whispered, so low the words were barely audible. She touched his hand.

If only he could look up to meet her eyes, to acknowledge her kindness, the physical warmth of her touch. But he was afraid he would burst into tears.

“Come, my new friend, we shall walk and Paris herself will lift your spirits.”

Sniffling, Gustave reached one-handed for his handkerchief. His nose was running furiously.

“Let me,” she said, removing the cloth from his pocket and touching it lightly to his mouth and nose. “There,
chéri
. That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Come. The urchins and beggars of Paris are waiting for us.”

Still arm in arm, Louise handed Gustave her straw bonnet to hold by its satin ties and they exited through the wide door, clattering down the metal stairs.

Gustave could not believe his luck. Not an hour had passed since he first laid eyes on Louise’s curls, and now he was hurrying with this blond Venus to her apartment.

On the street, he fumbled for an instant, unsure as to etiquette. Was the gentleman supposed to be closer to the street in case of horses taking a shit or running amok? Or closer to the houses, to receive the onslaught of emptied chamber pots? He could not for the life of him recall in that moment which was considered more gallant.

Louise’s flat occupied the corner of a golden-red brick, pre-Revolutionary house converted to apartments. Though fallen into mild disrepair—there were pieces of slate missing from the roof, gutters slightly askew, windows cracked here and there—the beauty and grandeur of the building’s origins overpowered its recent history.

Louise withdrew a key from a lavender velvet wristlet, unlocked the massive door, and gestured him into a fair-sized drawing room.
A pier glass caught their reflections as they entered, she confident, he more tentative. She stationed him on the couch and excused herself.

As the curtains floated up in the breeze, he caught her perfume, a whiff of musk and roses. He began to scan the room for clues to her character. Everything about his goddess was blue. Her eyes, her dress, and now her parlor, He was sitting on a worn blue camelbacked sofa draped with a darker blue silk shawl. Throw rugs in shades of aquamarine were strewn in thoughtful asymmetry along the dark planks of the floor, like garden plantings. The furnishings suggested that Madame Colet was financially pressed, that her chairs and taborets, tables and sconces were finds from flea markets and secondhand shops, with the exception, perhaps, of a finely carved alabaster lamp hanging from the ceiling by three brass chains.

Face and chest freshly powdered, Louise returned bearing a tray with strawberries, a bottle of wine, a pitcher of cream, and bread.

In truth, he had no appetite, at least not for food. But it would be rude to refuse her hospitality, so he accepted the nondescript wine she offered in a cheap glass. He swallowed a mouthful and felt it go directly to his head, where it buzzed and faded, like an annoying insect.

Louise drizzled heavy cream over the sugared strawberries and he watched as white rivulets feathered out into ferny shapes that turned pink as they mingled with the sauce. He smeared a spoonful of the mixture onto his bread. As his teeth sank into the soft white dough, a trickle of jam melted onto his tongue, exploding with sweetness and tartness.

“Delicious,” he muttered. “The combination . . .” The flavors surged in his mouth, the crisp crust becoming a moist, tender wad, the fleshy berries yielding to the syrup, all of it clinging to the fat of the cream before it vanished into the cleansing tang of the wine, which flowed tidelike around his mouth. His mouth! He was profoundly grateful for that marvelous organ, which, at this moment, equaled anything he had ever experienced with that other wonder, his prick. Had he ever eaten before? Christ, he thought, the purest culinary bliss I have ever known, the flavor, the savor—

“I am flattered,
monsieur
, that my cooking pleases you.”

“And how,” he mumbled, his voice drenched with the creamy, sugared fruit. “Is there some secret ingredient perhaps? Honey? Lemon zest?”

“I assure you no.”

Soon the tray was empty. She smiled, pleased by his satisfaction.

While she cleared away the dishes, he sat back, content, and peered around the room, noticing its details at leisure. There were knickknacks and sentimental objects scattered about: a miniature vase with straw flowers; an ordinary rock on a table. (Did it represent a love affair, a pleasant afternoon picnicking in the country, an arduous hike in the Alps?) But mostly, there were books. Everywhere. They lined the walls of the salon and the end table shelves. Beneath the coffee table, the floor was stacked with journals and newspapers. Across the desk where it adjoined the wall, bookends kept a regiment of taller books upright. A stack of books leaned in a corner, behind a jade plant. He relaxed into the sofa with a sigh, feeling at home, among his own kind. “My dear Madame Colet,” he ventured. “Tell me, what do you like to read?”

A torrent of authors and titles ensued. The conversation, until then a pleasant stream, roared into a deluge as Gustave shouted out names and Louise pulled books down from shelves. Hugo and Aristotle, Vigny, Musset, Byron, Sophocles—beloved Sophocles—and Plato, Montaigne and Rousseau, Chateaubriand. Soon the open books surrounded them like a flock of hungry street pigeons come to partake of the literary feast.

For Gustave, reading was a sacred event. “To me,” he explained, “words refine experience, the way a smelter turns ore into steel, giving it the luster and strength of truth that is lacking in its coarse, original form.” Quite eloquent, he thought, for a first articulation.

Louise smiled. “Beautifully put. And so true. I could not have said it better.”

“And I wonder if you have discovered the master himself.” He was testing her, hoping she wouldn’t fail. “I am speaking of a writer we have only in translation, and only recently,” he hinted.

Louise rushed to her desk, removed a thick portfolio, and plopped
down beside him on the couch. Whisking a lace doily to the floor, she placed the folder on the small coffee table, untied its suede closures, and removed a sheaf of paper. Her eyes were blue fireworks. “I’ve translated
The Tempest,
” she announced.

Could it be that his goddess loved Shakespeare as much as he did? So few of his countrymen were conversant with the Bard. For some reason, it had taken the French hundreds of years to discover the greatest writer on earth. “Please,” Gustave said. “Would you honor me with a reading?”

Her cheeks flushing, Louise fanned the pages until she found the scene she wanted. “Ah, here is the most captivating speech,” she said excitedly. “It is Prospero’s. You will undoubtedly recognize it.” She paused for a moment, collecting herself like an actress about to declaim, her face growing solemn. When she read, her voice was deeper and more powerful, like a peaceful river that was forced through narrows.

Gustave knew
The Tempest
well. He and Bouilhet had read it out loud together, in French and English, often mystified by the archaic language, but in love with its music and wit. He knew, too, that translation was a difficult art, demanding the precision of a scholar and the vision of a poet. Madame Colet was clearly inspired; she had not lost the passion of the text. But he also knew that Shakespeare rarely wrote in classic Alexandrine couplets. Louise’s rhymes were clanging distractions (“Players/layers . . . palace/chalice”), too loud and predictable for the nuanced images. But surely, a negative comment was not the way to her bed. She might even feel insulted. After all, she was a published poet and he—who was he to criticize?

“And our little lives are circled with a snooze,” she concluded.

“Brilliant,” he lied. He planted a kiss on her knuckles. He couldn’t stop staring at her. “You are such an adorable genius, my dear Madame Colet.” The last time he had felt so moved, he was fourteen and watching Elisa suckling her infant on the beach. Now he ached to take Louise in his arms.

“You must call me Louise,” she said, still using the more formal
vous.

“My dear Louise.” Desire now burned in him like lava rising to
the rim of a caldera. He leaned to kiss her cheek. She, too, pressed forward, aligning her face to meet his lips. But at the very moment the fine golden hairs on her upper lip swam into view, he heard a loud click. The door flew open and a child burst into the room, followed by a nurse trying to restrain her. He and Louise snapped apart.

“Maman!”
the little girl cried, jumping onto Louise’s lap.

Louise made the introductions, but the child was not interested. She wished only to hang from her mother’s neck, playing with her earrings as she recounted everything she had seen outdoors, babbling on and on to Louise’s delight.

The child was as beautiful as her mother, he observed, further proof that Louise’s beauty was not a chance or temporary thing, but an inalterable essence so innate to her being that it could be relied upon to reproduce itself.

Louise cast him a look that conveyed it was time to leave. After peremptory pleasantries all around, he gathered his jacket and hat. Louise suggested that the nurse take Henriette to her room to use the chamber pot while she accompanied her guest to the door.

As they stood prolonging their good-byes, he realized that she had not once mentioned her husband and that the apartment was devoid of male belongings. The esteemed composer must not reside there. “The child’s father, does he visit?” he asked.

“We are separated.” Louise adjusted the hem of his jacket sleeve to reach his shirt cuff. “It’s a complicated arrangement.” Later Pradier explained that neither Hippolyte Colet nor Victor Cousin, a previous lover, acknowledged Henriette’s paternity.

He kissed her hand, hoping she would not object to the tip of his tongue brushing the skin.

“Tomorrow the nurse will return Henriette to her boarding school,” she whispered. “Will you visit again in the afternoon?”

He nodded. The thought of what the next day might bring made him giddy.
“Au revoir.”
He turned to go.
“À demain.”

He pushed through the immense old door into the July heat.

• • •

Still slumped in the temple doorway, Gustave regarded his right hand, which lay by his side in a bright patch of light, as separate from him as a specimen in his father’s laboratory. The shiny pink scar where his father had scalded him while tending him after his first seizure flamed anew in the desert sun. The burn had pained him for months and left him marked for life with this paternal sign—of deep-seated disapproval? Surely it had been an accident, but one that had acquired symbolic importance. On the scar, sweat formed a glistening slick. He could almost see the moisture evaporate in fetid waves.

The woman in the mirage was clearer now as she trudged purposefully forward. A native guide peripatetically extended an arm to steady her, but she seemed determined to outpace him and avoid his assistance. Behind her, a plumper woman trod more slowly, a native pressing both hands against her back to help her up the steep incline. As Gustave well knew, even where the sand was level, it constantly gave way so that one never had secure footing. The second woman was graceless. Hunkered down, her stout arms extended on either side for balance, she shambled forward like a bear.

Abruptly, she lost her footing and shrieked, continuing to yowl as she skidded onto her back and slid down the slope, finally coming to a stop like an upended tortoise. He sprang to his feet and rushed toward her.

He tacked laterally across the sand for better purchase, leaving zigzagging footprints like the trail of a huge snake. Below him, two guides were attempting to lift the horizontal female, but she was fending them off, kicking and slapping at their hands and shouting shrilly lest, he gathered, they touch her. What, he wondered, would be an acceptable anchor by which they could right this beached whale? The hair, no doubt, but that would be painful and might result in baldness. Surely she would have no objection to a native guide grabbing her by the feet. But to drag her the rest of the way would be more of a sanding than a salvation. What was needed was a magician to levitate her above the dune like one of the whirling, swirling dervishes he’d seen in Cairo.

Her smaller companion accosted him just as he reached the comical scene. It was Miss Nightingale. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, squinting into the sun. “Can you help my maid?”