BANQUET OF THE SAPPHIRE MOON

c 1995

Tristan Winter

CONTENTS

Part One

The Black Swan

I.  The Light of the Moors

II.  The Aurora of Heaven

Part Two

Babylon

I.  Lucien in Love

II.  Celeste Unchained

PART ONE

The Black Swan

Here jewels spilled from our ancient dream,

The stars we touched in skies once known.

The way I loved you, heart long gone,

You’ll find again in heaven: home.

I.

The Light of the Moors

            For those accustomed to the heliopic brilliance of an alpine meadow, the grave can be dark at first.

            My previous happiness was a mixture of soft groves, breezes, soaring peaks and an imperial blue sky, all of which seemed to greet me personally as I danced out of my shed each day. Miraculously thin from my night’s ruminations, I met each morning with the agile gamboling that made my friend laugh and grab my head for our first kiss of the day. In the afternoons I was inclined to lie in the sun, having reached an elegant circumference by way of sweet grass and wildflowers, while Lucien would lie against a tree with my head in his lap, drawing pictures and chatting of virtues we both assumed to be genuine. The village below glittered like so many agates in the sun and the bells from the cows in the common field rang softly across the air. I was never given a bell because, firstly, I was a goat –not a cow, thank God– and secondly, as Lucien explained: “It’s like this, Mazel: I will always be able to find you, because we share a part of our hearts.”

            When Lucien named me I could barely teeter along on my own four legs and, holding me up close to him while he fed me from an improvised bottle, he quite rightly relayed how he had never had any luck, that any decent fortune he ever saw was of his own making; so he gave me his gentlest affection and his softest challenge and named me Mazel, meaning ‘luck’ in his secret tongue, quietly hoping that love in and of itself would harvest a more providential life.

            The horror of what happened to us since those first days has laid bare the foolishness of such a hope, perhaps. I shall attempt, at any rate, to relate the ebb and flow of such a profound belief in love, as I feel I am in a better position to speak than my friend, although you will hear his voice at those times when my own understanding pulls short. Distraction will undoubtedly shade my sight now and then, for, despite the wheeling birds and colors beyond count, my life had a simplicity to it which left me unprepared for the strange processes of decomposition. –They threw me down here and I must narrate from this pit where I have become one with the scraps of fruit and human waste, the hidden effluvium of those creatures’ discontent. I am a series of bloating, gaseous, explosions boiling up from sulfuric depths I’d never dreamed existed; my jigsawed bones are honeycombed and black inside; my more gelatinous elements –soft gums, sweet eyes– are old pea soup by now, and more, more sudden shrivelings and poppings and liquid releases transform me still further each day.

            Death, do not distract me so!

*

            Are there really more than two worlds, or have I been watching everything from a particular spot in a hall of mirrors? How is it that the same flowers, the same forests, the same dawns continue to give birth to themselves after time takes them firmly by the arm and invites them to leave the festivities? Every day was new for me, but I came to discover that certain elements around me carried within them the odor of the past, even as I saw them struggle through nascence and infancy before my own eyes. Some people, too, can detect this scent in the apparently fresh day around them. Now I myself am immutable in spirit while wildly convulsive in substance. Here again, time is passing this flask of strange salts before my nose; I cannot say precisely how long I have been so, nor how often.

            Sometimes I see it all before me thus: A beautifully jeweled hourglass as high as the heavens, and inside, the lovers, the woods, even the mountains with all their pride, drifting through the funnel struggling and dreaming, never knowing the hand that comes to turn the glass.

            I can state, however, that this tale has passed several times before: many years ago in many different directions. Lucien probably knows more about these things than I do, but, then, he is more or less esteemed for all the things he knows. Shunned, too, but not by me.

            I remember, this time, the house in the clearing and the shed at the far end of the hill, where the woods teased the meadow up to the house, around its four cellar walls, and down the other side. I remember as well Lucien and Genevieve nursing me from a risible winesack on four sticks to a handsome youth with designs on the roses framing their door. The house was small and obviously built of poverty; Genevieve midwifed, occasionally taking in washing, as the creek ran directly past, and Lucien drew pictures and composed songs, both of which aesthetic pursuits resulted more often in fines than remuneration. Nonetheless, it was known throughout the county that he was skilled in these arts, and, beyond building a shed or a hut, there was not much else he could do to subsist.

            I liked Genevieve for her cheerful rotundity, the way it enveloped me when she swept me to her breast after I’d slip into the garden and knock her down; I was mostly looking for this comfort, which came just seconds after she had trumpeted foul names in my face. These were such pleasant moments in her arms that I would run up behind her as frequently as possible. Cursing aside, I also liked her voice, which rang as lightly as cherries on the spring-blessed tree, and which revealed the innate kindness that filled her soft flesh. Lucien also loved her for these reasons, once confiding to me that he had married her because “she might be the only person I’ve met who is not intrinsically mean.”

            They knew poverty as well as one knows a drunken neighbor, one who, in a familiar scenario, fouls one’s house with belches, schemes and imprecations, then breaks something beyond repair; stays to keep the others awake with his fœtid snorings and eventually wanders back next door, leaving his hosts with a little less provender than before the visit, a little more than after the next.

            Neither of them knew it exclusively, though. Genevieve had been raised in a family of bakers and was only suffering because of Lucien’s prospects. Lucien himself had occasionally slept in feather beds without fleas. His skill, as I said, was for the image and the verse, and since his youth he had traveled to wherever the arts could feed him, tracking enormous distances by acting the trouvere where welcome, or setting up as far as Paris and further at times, painting portraits of lawyers and doctors in their scarlet robes or sketching a relief for masons too busy with carving. When providence parched the springs of one art he would abandon one city for another and drink of whatever waters were there flowing. Ballades, allegories, even organizing the occasional charivari had all, at one time or another, kept him near enough to a kitchen. Although he preferred painting above all, such extravagances were barely considered seemly for anyone outside of the Royal Court, and Lucien resigned himself to earning his bread primarily with simple fabliaux and japes, comedy that threaded his life through taverns far removed from the exalted palaces of his imagination.

            For twenty-two years Lucien had wandered, crossing palms with everyone from the rudest of villeins to the wealthiest courtier. Money mattered little to him; when it weighted his purse he would often give it away to mendicants or buy drinks at a strange inn for whoever might have the best tale of love to tell. Love unknown, passion defeated by the grim life of peonage, desire met and abandoned, the perfect matching of souls torn apart by family, rank, infidelity or madness; Lucien heard recitals of the most profound beauty, the deepest depravity and the highest acts of chivalry, but never once did he hear of love supreme.

            Throughout the lands he had passed, the very idea of romance had become a well of brackish sludge, stirred by men and women alike into prescribed patterns of mockery. Lucien had himself profited from this cynicism by way of his fabliaux –coarse tales of cuckoldry performed by drunken actors on wagons that creaked from town to town, delighting spectators with tawdry artifice and inspiring the hilarious participation of the audiences, each one of which was proud to yell out the identities of their own dupes as the players rollicked across the stage. Lucien frequently had recourse to this itinerant art; his travels had matched him more than once with these troupes of wild men. Musicians, actors –dangerous animals at the walls of society– found in him a consanguineous soul. After assuring themselves that he could match them in drink as well as jest, they invariably deferred to Lucien’s direction, trusting that his scenarios, more colorful than the traditional antics of the time, would bring them hotter foods and more pliant company.

            Despite his aversion to the crudeness of the wagon shows, Lucien discovered in them a way to stir the spectators’ dormant wit. Snaring them with diversions of lecherous codgers, duplicitous wives, cruel husbands and credulous lovers, he managed, amidst this shamelessness, to hypothecate disturbing questions of power and evil; he was stirred when he heard the crowds echo within them a reverence for tenderness that, until these moments, seemed to live solely in his verse.

            The actors understood that they were armed with a new and powerful weapon and treated Lucien with a fealty rare in those brotherhoods. He almost enjoyed observing the curious running towards the wheeled stages as they drew into a new town –enticed in advance by criers dispatched the day before– or watching his scenarios enrapt the entire spectrum of society. The shows attracted everyone from serf to burgher, local knights and lowly lords –children running through the assembly at nearly every performance. Women of all ranks grew pensive when his more florid phrases poured over the buckboards. The actors felt ennobled by Lucien’s dramatized passions, considering themselves more like members of the second estate than the jackals they were. After years of intermittent association with them, Lucien’s exploits attained recognition amongst the strange broods, and he was referred to –albeit half mockingly– in the Italianate, as Maestro.

            It was on one of these wagons that Lucien lumbered into the village of Rapelle. The beauty of the town, built between two verdant hills and surrounded on all sides by rolling waves of pine and fir, was a source of annoyance to the troupe. Weary and hungry, the actors resented the idyll before them and sat on the cart embroidering insults to drape the natives in as soon as they had assembled. Pompeux, the eldest, leapt to his feet and announced that he would not waste his lungs –his bronze lungs– on the crulled sheep who lived in such a place. The first of the flock was just then approaching and Pompeux’s lips hung looped out in front of his face when he realized that these were women of a beauty he had not seen for months. He flung his spittle away and demanded that the painted scenery be dropped into place: they would delight their public with a rendition of The Roasted Stocking.

            The actors prolonged the songs, tableaux and licentious buffoonery for more than two hours. Eschewing much of the practiced dialogue, the troupe, led by Pompeux, spoke directly to the crowd, complaining of privations suffered over the past months and bemoaning the lack of carnal comforts in particular. As their appeals for intimate knowledge of this or that member of the audience grew coarser, the citizens of Rapelle responded with whoops and hollered out even coarser histories of the persons solicited. The performance, Lucien decided, had degenerated into a mutual invitation to a debauch. Shaking his head as he laughed to himself, he turned away from the crowd and entered an inn called the Black Swan.

*

Three nights later, Pompeux came to the inn, where Lucien had wrapped himself in wine and seclusion. The actor threw himself into a chair and tilted Lucien’s plate to his mouth, devouring the sausage that had been lying on it and looking bedeviled as he chewed.

            “Ah, this actor’s blood, Maestro! It makes me handsome, it makes me desired. I live to be won by women! You see before you a trophy.”

            Lucien smiled at last. “Atrophy, yes. Do you still recite, or just eat?”

            “These women have no respect for our oratories,” Pompeux chomped. “No sooner do I begin that speech for Roland, than they stuff my throat with globes of mutton; two more will hold my head and try to drown me with ale and, when I protest, the servant girls run in and funnel pasties into my gullet. –And God help the men of this town. The instant they depart for their shops I’m covered with fat wives, enough tallow to light the depths of purgatory, which is surely where we are.”

            Lucien cocked a grin at the complaints: “Perhaps I should write you a song consisting entirely of the working notes of the human body. That at least would spare you the ignominy of the spurned recital.”

            Pompeux rose to the bait, hamming mercilessly: “At last, a piece worthy of the Court! But could I do it justice? True, my tone is richer than any actor in the land, my range the envy of every sprat who walks the boards, but I am old. You might elicit a more sustained performance from the Seneschal’s wife. Her physical notes are squishy, though I thought I detected promise, with proper tutoring. Ah,” he fell back, “but I am far too tired.”

            “Can it be, old friend, that the natives of Rapelle are a match for your crude talents? Has the scavenger fallen ill before this mountain of carrion? –You find me here buttered with patience: I pay for my board with the little we earn. I had assumed we would attempt a show each day, but I failed to account for the magnetism of our company’s art. It seemed nothing could pull you off the locals.”

            “They are idiots. What have you created for me in my absence? Did you miss me?”

            “I am writing to my friend Flamel.”

            Pompeux grabbed the letter and finished Lucien’s wine, pouring himself another from the pot.

            “I see the cruel and peerless mind at work: starting with an account of my conquests in the picturesque village of Rapelle, the hand goes on to detail, what, more flights of spiritual flummery? Your head will explode someday, my boy.”

            “No sooner than your jerkin.” Lucien shrugged. “I research the soul with more vigor, if possible, than you explore those pretty bagpipes you enjoy snoring on.”

            “Of whom there is not one who is blessed with discretion. I am old, Maestro, and I have lost my welcome among the Seneschal’s men.” Pompeux stopped his twitching and gave Lucien a sad glance. “I do not relish the rumors of what is to become of this oaken voice of mine. When do we depart?”

            Lucien dropped his lids. “Now, I would say. Go directly up to my room, I’ll find the others.”

            Pompeux leapt up, the blue flame back in his eyes. “And I’ll find some wine. We shall ride at the head, you and I, and Lord protect the towns we take next!”

            “Pompeux. –I’m staying.”

            “But, what do you say? Why?”

            “I am old,” Lucien echoed. “I know nothing of these people and they know nothing of me. It will be just as though I was still traveling, only less dangerous and less tiring. I have a few livres left. If it grows loathsome I’ll leave.”

            Pompeux stood silent for a moment. The calloused veteran of the wagons blinked twice and said: “God bless your life, Lucien Maroc.”

         *         *         *

Rapelle, though small as any village Lucien had ever passed, was situated along a minor commercial route, which sprinkled it with the sifting dust of trades old and new working to keep the social structures growing.

            Though still held in the grip of the local nobility in major matters of commerce, Rapelle had seven years earlier purchased its charter of liberty from the Sieur de Hagenau, effectively wriggling free of serfdom in exchange for a settlement in silver.

            A free man among seemingly free men, Lucien leased a small corner of land outside the village and built himself a house of sorts, no crazier in appearance than the huts nearby.

            Lucien felt at home in the forest, peaceful yet inspired, alert to all its colors, its smells and its mysteries. He never wearied of the elaborate lace of foliage that canopied the pathways. Guarded by the giant firs, ferns unfurled in questioning arcs while streams splashed around regal, moss-robed rocks. Bright green shoots pranced round the trees, and, above the suckers, larch, madrone and yellow oak leaves glittered, speckled by clusters of red holly berries. Fascinated as he walked by the violet color of the loam, lulled by the music of the dripping boughs, the trickling creeks, the distant beat of dogs or axes, Lucien would raise his eyes to the sight of the sun windmilling down through the trees and lower them again just in time to find himself dazzled by one of the vast panoramas which appeared so unexpectedly.

            From these sudden openings one could drink in the waves of hills spread out below. Across the valley an ocean of gentle swells rolled out for miles. As the mists rose in weird, torn silence, the sun would set the jeweled fingers of forest shimmering as they splayed across the fields, the vista draped in an almost hypnotic cerulean blue.

            No diurnal mystery, though, could match the immeasurable beauty of the forest at night, and it was this more than anything that kept Lucien entranced. He often liked to throw his cloak over his frame and wander late at night through the woods, guided by sensation and wonder more than sight. Initially led by the fires from the neighboring huts as they cast their rays –cut like Maltese crosses as he passed the trees– he would quickly find himself navigating by glimpses of the night alone, that pellucid ribbon floating above the firs, which framed it in black as black as the tomb he carried within. The winter nights were most rewarding. The sky was black yet clear as glass, the stars that always gave him hope seemed to stir memories and pride from lands far beyond. It was an easy miracle to walk along breathing ice flowers and, guided by the mute instructions of the firmament, drop one’s eyes to the shadow lake enveloping one’s feet and bend down, in vibrating but unquestioning surprise, to retrieve with human hands a fallen star that only after a minute revealed itself to be a glow worm.

            These perambulations through the land of miracles provided Lucien with years of solace when he was lonely, years of knowledge when he was dim, years of heaven when he toiled through hell. The black rose of night opened to him all the wisdom, all the passion that eluded him in the bronze age of the sun.

            The stars he trusted and confided in rewarded him one solstice night by taking him in hand and encouraging him to follow a ragged, lost trail hacked into the side of a cliff not half a mile up from Rapelle. When the pathway ended Lucien saw stretched far below him a world he had only guessed at; one he had known and loved all his life but only now could survey in all its radiance: under the vitreous sky he saw the hills and valleys cavorting, buoyant, copulating joyously in a light that tricked him into thinking it had snowed. The voluptuousness flew for miles around him. He held his hat and craned his head back, laughing at the beneficence of his stars. The moon, drunk, serene, and in full heat, put a finger to its lips and invited him to dally here forever, making love to mountains, breezes. The firmament nodded, smiling, and unfurled with even greater majesty than the world below, as though to remind him of their unimpeachable supremacy; Lucien, by way of salute, removed from his pocket a small telescope he had exchanged for a portrait in Flanders and raised it to them, his eye to theirs, tracing filigrees across the face of the universe.

            This crag, opening out into the dreamscape below him and the small meadow behind him, this forgotten ledge of grass and shale, was to become his first conscious home. As silent as the stars themselves, Lucien would never violate this secret.

            For those of you who have spent two days in such a world, I will only briefly reacquaint you with that deep hum of the woods at night. Think back to what the fire spoke as you bent towards it for its warmth; recall, if you please, the sensation of life, life beyond all walls, all mirrors, that boiled in your veins; and now hear the conversations of the dead, the not yet born, the deities of oak and stream, that hovered just beyond your comprehension. Hear the muttering of that anthropomorphic beast crouched low over his own feet. Wisdom beyond that of mankind is being traded slightly beyond your ears. The deepest knowledge of love, of life, is buzzing around and the ghosts of the circle are telling secrets. In these hours the very wind holds its breath; this audible luminescence is the hum one hears in the forest at night. After the night passes a certain hour, you realize that this dolent reverberation has invaded your body as well as your mind, that the vibration is in fact each mote of the cosmos, each and every cubit of time that ever has or will exist; that you yourself have become a lyre, plucked and strummed by night. 

            Lucien could hear and see the hum, converse with it, observe its flickering visions, learn from every oscillation. He had heard it in his childhood and knew the notes as soon as they struck. And so, living half his life in this land of shadows, he stayed in Rapelle as the years stumbled over one another.

*         *         *

Resigned to exchanging this peace for penury, Lucien sold his scribblings for a few sous at a time, thinking no farther into the future than the next stew. When Rapelle hosted an occasional visitor of at least good burgher standing, Lucien would find ways to flatter them into a portrait or a fraudulent song chronicling their virtues, their charms, their deeds of wit and strength. With these proceeds he would pass a number of evenings in the Black Swan, making the most of the inn’s peat fire. When the coins began to ring less loudly in his purse he would lay in stores of cheese and shallots, a large dark loaf and jug of ale, and spend the next few weeks in contemplation or furtive expeditions to poach firewood, for it seemed he had been cold his entire life.

            Great bands of cats would accompany him on these forays. As though protecting him from the canine guardians of the law, wild and domesticated cats would appear as he walked, surrounding him and swatting at each other when the company paused. Many of them would rub themselves against his boots as he filled his sack with fallen burls, for though not demonstrative, Lucien had attracted cats as long as he could remember. He had no affinity for dogs, not because he disliked them, but because he felt oppressed by the pity he sensed they required. The cats, however, like the actors before them, knew him as one of the untamed, and his stoop was never empty, even when his larder was.

            The villagers regarded him with suspicion most days, chill dubiety that he would usually deflect with banter both commonplace and baffling at once. Knowing his skill in the arts as something beyond their capacities, sensing arcane tendencies in his conversation, they only became comfortable once they had christened him eccentric, a title Lucien decided was expedient and safe.

            Safety was no mean settlement for Lucien. He had been an alien and by definition an irritant throughout all the lands he had wandered. He had known the unexpected dagger unsheathed on road and tavern stairs; the old men he had gambled with had seen in their own childhood the martyrdom of de Molay’s brotherhood. Filthy cities had exposed to him the primacy of the sword, the falsity of God’s interest in innocence as passersby found themselves randomly challenged, ravished, ambushed and cudgeled. The walls of nearly every city he had entered were crowned with portions of what had once been a human transgressor butchered by the Church; each road traversed laid down a mocking tale of society’s benevolence as he made his way through the eddying pilgrimage of thieves, murderers, rapacious knights and bands of marauding, addle-brained zealots. Charles and Edward had been warring for some years now, continuing the three decades of battle begun by their predecessors, and ravaging the lands they rode across, viciously pillaging their own peoples, littering bones and embers behind them. Lucien had eluded the more gruesome spectacles, but had passed close enough in their wake to mark how this ceaseless carnage was now coursing through the veins of individuals throughout the land. In one village, coincidentally traversed by the cream of chivalry but three days before –out of hunger or malice, he could never know– Lucien had seen a man gnawing on a human head. The man stared at him as he hurried past, but Lucien had detected more intelligence in the hideously grinning remains. Bloodlust reigned like a sun at the center of nearly every man and woman alive.

            When Lucien inspected the brute stupidity on the faces of Rapelle he gauged the possibility of being left in peace and finally decided that his chances here were minutely better than elsewhere. Because of its traffic with outside commerce, an element of liberality had rooted itself in the village. Whereas peonage groaned all around them, the tradesmen of Rapelle had pressed the advantage of de Hagenau’s ill-fated and costly participation in numerous campaigns and purchased a broad grant of freedom which included eight towns and several hamlets splashed across the barony.

            De Hagenau, who had more than once engendered royal opprobrium for minting his own coins, settled for cash down and a contract for hearth taxes and trade percentages to be paid to his bailiff. By thus insuring the maintenance of his fiefdom, the Seigneur managed to celebrate himself as a man who had freed his subjects of morte-mains and led the valley into a more liberated era.

            Fugitives from other lords’ lands appeared, eager to stay the full year required to enfranchise them with this new, unshackled status. Along with many natives of Rapelle, most were desperately poor and missed the food provided by their liege, which had come with their forced labor. Those who had enthusiastically welcomed this end to a slavery that began before their birth and promised the same to their issue were slowly but surely angered to discover that their autonomy was purchased by even more taxation, even less security, and even more toil. While de Hagenau feasted on rents for his mills, his small lots, his firewood, his vineyards and an ever more creative array of taxes, the open scramble for sustenance similarly drove most men to greater acts of fraud and brutality. In this unheard of abrogation of the manorial might, the hunt for money had assumed primacy over each man’s life.

            Rapelle proper was considered by its inhabitants as a jewel of the new epoch. Over the years, the wealthier savages had parlayed with de Hagenau and applied their freedom to pay towards establishing mercantile territories of their own. The village was neatly divided between the baker, the tavern keeper, the smith, the large land farmers and all the rest, who labored for them and worked to buy their goods. The merchants were learning that the alchemy of success lay in taking the cost of their basic materials and the cost of the labor they paid to achieve their end product and adding on as much as possible before pricing the wares for the public. Although many people objected to this nonsense, the goods were jealously protected by those who had purchased the right to market them, and no other option remained but to pay the prices demanded.

            This inchoate society lent Rapelle a mosaiced appearance; hovels reeked below the newly commissioned dwellings of the merchants. The citizens were very conscious of their liberties and all ranks mingled so closely that Lucien was put in mind of his past audiences. The tavern hosted the most colorful mix of men and women of every station.

            Independence was an atmosphere that the villagers breathed with exaggerated swelling of their chests. Plowmen would seat themselves next to one of de Hagenau’s two squamulous knights and invite reminiscences; travelers would find themselves accosted by philosophic carpenters and crusted field hands; passing monks would reluctantly engage in theological disputes with the lowest and most comical drunks in town. Women of every class habitually visited the Black Swan to scold their husbands or rub against young bachelors. Though backwards, insignificant and inbred, the villagers of Rapelle believed themselves as unfettered as hawks.

            Such soulful eyes the women had. Such lust for life beyond their means. Such simple happiness lit their faces, yet all the while they wanted more. More happiness? More simplicity? More desire? Yes, more of that.

            I knew, them, Mazel, as they paraded before me, old in heart, young in understanding. Their eyes sloped downwards like their breasts, beaten by this search of bobbin box. Who could answer the cry they called in concubinage, angry pregnancy, or weary, desolate motherhood; this call for heart, warm and dear, this cry for heart like fowl to pick? I knew them as they walked around me. Desiring nothing in particular, they could only remember desire.

            The dust of day creases their faces, but their nights are cold and haunted with longing; a longing for respite, or life. ‘Where is the man, that mountain of man, with blood in his veins and fire his heart? Where the man of sweat and earth that I might dream at night? Who shall warm these days of dearth, or kiss my breasts with tears of light?’

            I sat and watched.

            You know me, Mazel, I keep my mouth shut.

            To me, Lucien was as dark and stirring as the midnight wind, but then I loved him. I know from what Genevieve would tell me that he was desired by the women while not being fully comprehensible to them, even physically. His age was so unapparent as to be lost. They liked his slight frame and his long jet wings of hair, the way he glided silently through any crowd. His voice was deep and somniferous and he had the pale delicate hands of a woman, or a man who knows his trade. Unable to guess his race, suspicious citizens of many lands had independently arrived at the appellation the Moor, and he’d become known to friends and strangers alike as Lucien Maroc, Light of the Moors. Sheathed in refined black vestment at all times, his skin stood out with a foreign olive-gold luster. They were startled, when they looked beneath his arched brows, to see all he knew shining out at them through great and dark and dark-lashed eyes. This is how I spoke with him: eyes of smoke and gypsy sorrow.

            When he did talk they laughed or grew indignant at some vaguely suspected sally. He could match the verbal eloquence of any visiting courtier, speak as a hardened equal of the vilest passing gallows bird, or, as was most common, remain sitting, almost unnoticed for hours, silently watching with a perfectly impassive countenance.

            His features themselves brought charges of conceit from many men and women, and his thoughtfulness was seen as reticence to those who had not known him long. In actuality Lucien had resigned himself to perpetual exile from the society of men he considered, at heart, no worse than himself.

*

The ring of these days without visible chains seemed to unnerve the villagers in the most private aspects of their lives. As armies swirled around them, unwittingly breaking the dams of their own order, men and women equally saw their pleasure as less an exalted fruit of euphoria and more as a spice earned for merely surviving. Lubricious behavior had become accepted at the expense of tender passions, aggravating every neighbor and gnawing a melancholy void into the hearts of every tryster; the wells of loneliness bore deeper into every individual. As this fresh flood of time rushed through the land, the merciless clambering towards still peaks enmeshed thousands in its fury and saw a general smashing of skulls, hearts, loins. Hollows slept with cavities. Men no longer felt sure of their sensations as men. Women no longer remembered the exquisite delirium that had been their gift.

            Winds that sing to us of pyramids being built just beyond the horizon, distant explosions laying waste to whole skies as we watch, helpless, the birth of that we know nothing, nothing about, these are the elements that wash away the basic strengths of men and women like the original Flood. Perhaps, you upright ones, the inundation was but one flow of the tide. The men and women of Rapelle did not understand the new tide crashing towards them, and continued to writhe and entangle themselves with less pleasure and an ill-defined dread always standing shrouded and unnamed as they looked up from their beds.

            Cruelty rode the tide, jaws agape, devouring in its course any small particle of friendliness that might nourish the we born of man and woman.

            Lucien drifted among the wreckage he saw around him and found contentment in reclusiveness. Stunned by physical beauty, exulting above all in the love of a woman, he avoided female company, preferring to savor the warmth in his heart rather than subject it to the whims of the confused and stunted souls he met, for he found simple-minded women to be tolerable for no longer than five minutes. He felt that a divine appearance lazy enough to crown itself with the mind of a louse was a blasphemy.

            Yet even the simple women were drawn to him, often discoursing in their hearts what they were incapable of shaping with their minds, knowing, because of his elemental intellect, that understanding succeeded. Lucien never pressed home the advantage, too aware of the iniquity of holding one of these women accountable for his happiness. He was passionate and, in matters of love, devoted every atom of his being.

            The women of Rapelle manifested the same attitude of frightened attraction to him that he had encountered elsewhere. Warming himself at the Black Swan, he would suddenly notice their eyes peering at him from behind the veil of their wariness and would take measure of their spirits at a glance. Sensing the unintelligible clamor inside them, he would return to his loneliness, sometimes meditating on the loves of his past.

            Of Galina, his first lover, he liked to recall only perfection, although he’d seen deception and danger at her fingertips that he had mostly evaded. For two seasons they had lived together when he was fifteen and she thirty years old, side by side learning the world and sinking in seas of sensuality. He always remembered her violent convulsions that seemed to turn her inside-out and always regretted ever having traveled on, which he did at both their inner promptings. Jolie was his second great companion, adventurously lascivious but perplexingly disoriented. She would walk into walls without thinking and fall into holes without looking. The years they had passed were a cataract of shared desire. Tall and tremendously voluptuous, she would slake her thirst by draining him morning and night; the rest of the day she would engage him in acrobatics of every sort, frightening herself and bursting into tears as she shuddered around him, begging him to love her and violate her in every way imaginable. Confident above all else in some fear of herself, her lusts eventually began to encompass too many others of any sort, so he left.

            Hessian Silvia, fair-haired and slender, shared his heart and his thoughts for a long time thereafter. At first a delightful intellectual match, she was ultimately too pressed in the warrens of her own rigorous education, marched in and out of metaphysical dilemmas that choked her senses, leaving her iced and destroying Lucien’s equanimity, despite the joys that would, in their first years together, have her shredding the duvet with her teeth. Of peaceful times, he held a picture of her smile as they talked, and the way her breasts nestled in her blouse, pushing towards him like kittens. Lucien continued on, and Maria, of Bohemia, was the result. Maria swallowing him between her smooth, strong legs. Pouty and dark, her passionate moans, the wild thrashing of her head and the pounding of her fists belied a deeper discordance yet; her pathological fear of birds prevented her from leaving her house, and she, alarmed by the degree of ecstasy attained in Lucien’s company, elected to recall her estranged husband and send Lucien into the winds. The one Lucien had never recovered from was Nisha, a kohl-eyed, currant-mouthed mystery with chocolate nipples. As dark and delicious as her name –which meant night— she was a minor princess from the land of Kashmir whom he had met in the city and who had embroiled him –largely deliberately– in too many near-fatal intrigues before being married by force to her cousin and taken back into the wilds of her homeland.

            And there were other accidents, vicious, quick as knifings. He had somehow survived those with his skin intact, though internally scarred. By fate, most of the women had been older than Lucien, yet whatever their maturity, in each of them he had watched the serene, life-giving, oxygen of kindness consumed by firestorms. Their inexplicable attraction to destructiveness was at odds with his own life’s direction, and, too deeply engulfed in them, he would become lost, unable to discern their truths from falsehoods. Their turmoil always begat his confusion, their predations trepidation. Cumulatively, it had not hardened, but bruised, his heart, and left him sceptical of the constancy of the entire human species. Robbed by the chaos that whipped the minds and sensibilities of these woman, of the chance to give fully of himself, Lucien had clouted such aspirations away, completing his isolation from the external world.

            Thus Lucien was free in much the same manner that I was. He carried his love untarnished within him, trusting that it could radiate through his hide so brightly that others could see it and accept its sustenance without fear of reciprocity.

            I keep my heart pure, I answer my calling, no more no less. The times are treachery and greed, the people lost, the people broken.

            Lost loves, lost visions.

            Through the long, long night I go with this blossom in my breast. Lie still, my parched one, and trouble me not. Brittle bud still nourished on tender or fiery glances, breathe now softly in your sleep, dreaming, dreaming, stone in water, one name yet unknown to you, teasing vaporous laments. Watch the moons like virgin breasts, and dream then, heart, and sigh her name: waken when that one voice calls.

            You know me, Mazel, I keep my heart shut.

            In all of Rapelle, only Amelie, one of the maids attached to the inn, managed to intrigue Lucien as much as he intrigued her. A beautiful, intelligent girl, she was tranquil but carried within her a yearning that ran along the current he discovered flowed between them. He sensed red and humid longings in her that by their sincerity alone elevated her far above the chatterers around them. Also dark, sumptuous, yet elegant, Amelie enjoyed looking at Lucien when he came in to scribble and would engage him in brief dances of conversation while serving him his meager meals, her violet-grey eyes questioning him more than her words. She was married, however, so Lucien restrained his admiration and let the situation smolder.

*

For five years Lucien lived in the most crushing solitude. This was partially a result of lack of trust in others, and partially it served as a test of his will. When the quiet of the woods began to deafen him he would risk the perils of travel once more and journey to Paris, where he would rouse his soul with the noise and squabbles of city life, earning his bread by painting and returning to Rapelle after a few busy months, for he no longer knew anyone in the city. By now –this year of 1371– Khalid and Flamel, the wise friends of his youth, had dispersed, taking with them the words, ideas, insights and indignations that had been the counterpoint of his own mind, leaving Lucien feeling old and fully formed before his time. His life, his discoveries, his questions that always and immediately answered themselves, all existed inside him independent of the world. Lucien lived entirely within his head and his heart, asking nothing of society, observing nothing new from it, and preferring the company of nature in the end.

            His poverty, as much as the weight of his loneliness, was the tax he willingly paid for the freedom of his ideas. He knew that he alone among his myriad acquaintances was ultimately free in mind and soul, that this liberty was unique to him and worth any material deprivation, any dearth of human affection, that cast its ever-growing shadow across his path.

            Devoted to and gravely appreciative of the tremendous meaning of art and ideas –the covenants and towering truths of the human passage– he forsook the sport of proclaiming them, trusting that they, too, could live deep within him.

            For rare diversion, Lucien would sit at the Swan with several other urban refugees who were able to understand his aphoristic grumblings and maintain discussions of erudition and wit. The brothers Bignon, Robert and Roget –geometricians by trade– were fleet-minded and Lucien felt at ease in their company. One gaunt, the other stout, both Bignons were enthusiastic traffickers in thought, reminding Lucien of the years he had wandered the continent. Jean the wagoner was outwardly as misanthropic as Lucien himself, but nourished within himself a generosity and a solid intelligence that recognized a like spirit in Lucien, and they often exchanged sour but friendly quips in passing. Other travelers brought ideas and observations to exchange. Eugene Dirasso was a man of the new laws, enterprising and visionary, and he gradually forged a close bond with Lucien as they discussed opportunities to make use of the avenues now opening up around them; both were able to see through the false science of trade and understand that the right undertaking could elevate them above the poverty that was their birthright. Eugene was energetic, bold, determined and of great dexterity with the people; Lucien was implacable, prescient and possessed of the knowledge that accompanies years of foreign adventure. Eugene was enticed by the notion of luxury, Lucien obsessed by that of freedom. They became close friends and, while taking in the shifts of fortune of those around them, pondered the best approach to the single opportunity they knew they would someday have, each greeting they exchanged colored by the sure success that lay in their future.

            Eugene was also an ambulatory prize for women. Unusually tall and toothy, courtly at times yet unhampered by shame, he busied himself with the pursuit of pleasure as consistently as Lucien stalked solitude. Eugene was by nature amiable enough to disarm most of the cuckolds in Rapelle, and the town eventually accepted his steady liaison with Jacqueline, a married woman who let him roam through the jungles of skirts and stockings while remaining more or less true to him over the years. Almost as tall as Eugene himself, Jacqueline frightened many of the natives with her sharp demeanor, but Lucien saw the shyness behind it, and he wound up treating Jacqueline as he would Eugene’s wife.

            Near brotherhood was the result of the immigration of the man known as Pope Zacharias. He had come to Rapelle with his wife, Lisette, to glorify the kitchens of de Hagenau. Of ancient Phoenician stock, they had traveled from the city of Constantine along with his father, Alexander, a silver-haired magistrate, after suffering the loss of their kin by advancing Turks. Eschewing the sophistries of the law, Zacharias brought from Byzantium a maniacal inventiveness of cuisine, expanded and refined during his journey west, and had by the age of thirty-four achieved legendary status for his artistry. His father had found Rapelle restful and used his rhetorical talents to procure an introduction to de Hagenau’s dismal court. For Easter, Zacharias so dazzled de Hagenau’s guests with a three-day banquet that he was instantly retained and christened “Pope” Zacharias for having ushered in the golden, or Carolignan, age of the court.

            Pope Zacharias was in fact a genuine artist. It showed in his countenance, which was almost as dark as Lucien’s. Like Lucien, he also was built on a slight frame, but the nature of his art kept him considerably more well-padded. He brooded deeply and berated himself for anything short of perfection not only in his creations, but in his thoughts as well. He grappled with sore regard for humanity, and would sit for days analyzing the motives of those around him, his disdain confirmed by the base actions of the people. These pursuits, which were involuntary and merely a corollary of his perceptiveness, would cast him into depressions which only Lucien was able fill, for Lucien agreed with his observations and, indeed, confided even blacker thoughts, while snickering at the pitiless foibles of mankind. They came to trust each other as brothers and Pope Zacharias found in Lucien’s amusement a higher ground for observation.

            Late one evening, having washed their innards with wine at the Swan, Lisette insisted on continuing the diversion up at de Hagenau’s keep, where she and the Pope lived nearby the kitchens. In the night they made their way to the kitchen, where Lucien, after having seen the adjacent dining hall, was offered a stool and a trencher of sour wine from the cellars. Pope Zacharias lifted his glass to Lucien’s.

            “Welcome to the Prandium Sanctorum,” he announced.

            “You must never reveal the secrets here discussed,” added Lisette in stern warning.

            “I shall swallow the contents of each new mystery and hide it in my very bowels,” Lucien promised.

            They dropped bits of dried beef into their mouths, huddled around the table with its single candle stuttering and spitting. Lucien saw that the kitchen was large and that the two culinary priests had brought immaculate order to what had surely been little better than an oubliette before their arrival. The Sieur and his family were gone for some weeks, thus leaving Zacharias and Lisette, by prearrangement, freedom to entertain their own companions. They complained lightly about the crude conduct of the court, the reluctance of the liege to part with money due them, and even the incessant kneading, pulverizing, stirring, and mental acrobatics inherent in this life of transforming the earth and its flora, its fauna, into ambrosia. As the candle fell in on itself, Pope Zacharias struggled to hold his head upright.

            “I’m tired.” he apologized. “I have a small banquet tomorrow night. Important friends of my father.”

            “I’ll leave you to rest, then.” Lucien frowned in concentration, then said: “What if I were to ease your burden somewhat; I could create for you a dessert the likes of which no man has seen around here.”

            Pope Zacharias waved his hand. “No, no. Your offer is kind and I’m sure you know some of these arts yourself, but I find that, at bottom, my job is one of complete responsibility for the table.”

            “But Lucien is an artist,” Lisette countered. “He knows the world, he knows the pleasures of the table. Why not show your guests your liberality?”

            Pope Zacharias considered. “All right. You seem to know something about food. Come by the kitchen tomorrow night and I’ll let you amaze my company.”

            “I give you my word: it will be a memorable cap to your evening. An exquisite dish such as you have never seen in Byzantium or elsewhere!”

            And so the next evening he returned to the scullery and, as Pope Zacharias and his wife marched about like a well-ordered army, preparing and serving, Lucien waited patiently until they had left to join their guests at the table.

            Lucien then locked himself in the kitchen and tucked up his sleeves. From a leather bag he extracted and arranged with great care the ingredients; he first took a whole skin torn from a turkey earlier that day. To his delight he found it repulsively clammy and puckered with pimples. He picked up a sorely broken knife collected especially for this task and proceeded to hack the turkey skin into jagged five-inch squares; with the aid of a newer knife, he cut the ends of his hair, separated this into as many sparse handfuls as there were squares of skin, and adhered the hair perpendicularly to the skins with a discreet drop of mucilage. Lucien then placed each square of skin and hair on one of the enameled plates Lisette had set aside for him, arranged the plates on a serving board and carried it into the dining hall. All conversation ceased as he placed before each guest a plate bearing his lickerish treat.

            “What is this?” someone finally demanded.

            “Armpits,” Lucien boasted.

            Two men cursed and slammed their fists on the table. Three woman shrieked. Lisette threw her head aside and vomited. Pope Zacharias looked over at Lucien very sternly then exploded in laughter.

*         *         *

Lucien had earned a magnificent sum executing a commission in Reims, and had returned to Rapelle with his painters’ purse full enough to last a whole season. He laid plans to depart from the village for good, considering where he might live instead. While working on thoughts of a more metaphysical nature at home, he visited the Black Swan once a week to linger over a glass of wine and chat with the brothers Bignon for inspiration, or Pope Zacharias for guilty indulgences in skepticism. One of these evenings Lucien was fielding questions from Eugene, who desired to know the probable commercial success a nostrum he’d invented. Lucien, upon learning it was a spurious virility elixir, rattled off population numbers of outlying circles, expanding the borders concentrically as he spoke, assuring Eugene he could turn it to good. He then noticed a woman smiling at him in a shy, curious manner. She had a porcelain glow and a cameo profile. Her hair was of a pale maple-wood hue just reaching her shoulders and, like nearly all the women in Rapelle, she had freed her tresses from traditional chaplets and wore them as a pennant of the new times. She was shortish and plump in a warm, spiritual way, and, as she continued to turn her face away from Lucien then smile up at him again, Lucien asked Eugene: “Who is that Englishwoman?”

            “Must be someone new,” Eugene shrugged. But, as the game went on, he rolled his eyes and walked over to introduce himself to the woman and her companion, a woman quite reedy by contrast. In his hale manner, Eugene insisted the women join him in a cup of spirits, ushering them over to the table where Lucien sat, and pointedly presented the first woman to Lucien, who found that he’d been –unusually– deceived by her complexion, and that she was not English, but of these lands. Undetectably steered by Eugene, the conversation grated off the rocks and into the stream, Eugene putting wind in the sail by recounting Lucien’s rare accomplishments. The woman, Genevieve, was intrigued. Lucien hastened to inquire about her own life, feeling uneasy as always at the mention of his endeavors.

            “A widow,” she sighed, “and a mother. Sometimes it seems more than enough of an art.”

            “I see no child here,” Lucien objected, making a show of peering under the table and even up the flu.

            “Ah, no. She’s at home with my father. –She is but four years old. We settled here only one month ago. Even a mother must live now and then.”

            He saw that her irises were almost as dark as his own. As they spoke on, he learned that she was also a midwife, that she was thirty-three to Lucien’s thirty years, and that her family lived not far from Lucien at all. She appeared many years younger than Lucien. When she showed signs of fatigue, he offered to escort her home. Genevieve parted from her friend Jeanne at the stoop of the tavern while Lucien told Eugene that he was interested in further discussing the elixir, for he had some ideas to bolster its chance of success.

            Like the milk of stars they poured along the trees, blissful as they wandered past black giants latticed against the opaque rain of moonlight and the ebony creeks bubbling with magic white stones –all the shrubs and the ferns glittering silver in the night. The moon was bright enough for them to see each other clearly.

            “My friend thinks you’re a vampire,” she said.

            He felt calmed by the sharp sparkle in her eye when she was happy and liked watching the horizontal crease appear above her lip when she laughed. It was a high, light ringing laugh, airy and guileless.

*

            The following week she appeared again at the Swan. Lucien gallantly paid for her supper and they spoke for several hours, Genevieve unable to remove her gaze from the man and wondering what tart nervousness was gnawing within her, Lucien listening in growing consternation as she unfolded her history to him with a cadence of sorrow underpinning her lilting cheer. From one so obviously born for happiness, Lucien was disturbed to hear the long tale of misalliances, mistreatment, isolation and abandonment offered up to him without reserve. She seemed to be a tower reduced to dust as the mistrals of her past blew over her, and Lucien, observing the sudden crumbling, was alarmed, sensing yet again the fragility of others that had kept him apart. He smiled nonetheless as he tried to follow her words, which, chasing her thoughts, darted from notion to notion like so many birds in quick flights of confusion. When she spoke of having been left at the altar once and ended the tale with an exclamation so mild, so inadequate and so childishly innocent, he felt his heart fall out of his breast and climb up to her cheek.

            Embarrassed by his sympathetic good-humor, she finished her wine and flushed, saying that she had to return to her home. Lucien rose to escort her. As they walked, Lucien asked about the child. Was she indeed the source of comfort that could soothe a woman’s trampled heart?

            “Oh, you shall meet her soon enough,” she squirmed nervously. “She has a…well, a puissant personality. Um, very powerful.”

            Invited into her home, Lucien immediately saw why she had been uncomfortable at the mention of her daughter. The child was large and over-inflated, dulled by life’s meager offerings and raging inwardly against a dearth of unbroken adulation. He chuckled to himself as he watched her glowering at him with her lower lip clawed over the upper, her arms folded across her chest. She resembled her mother, but in a malignant, globular way, ready to burst even as the clothes she wore –moired with food and forest– frantically screamed and clutched at their seams. The child, Ursule, continued to glare as Genevieve spun out of her cloak and presented Lucien to her father. He too, appeared stern, but Lucien was soon to learn that this dour monk was genial and wise, eager to discuss all matter of things, more curious than any child.

            The house was too small for her family, but he could see that she had kept it cozy, and she now began to chatter away to her father, Lucien, and Ursule all at once as she swooped around like a kingfisher gathering what appeared to Lucien to be a year’s worth of discarded playthings and eating utensils off the floor. He watched, charmed by her manner, yet somehow as appalled by this domestic scenario as he would be by a public execution. As the foreignness of it began to rise in him, sour and immensely despairing, the child commenced to rail at her mother, lashing out with her foot as she passed. Clovis, the monkish patriarch, observed with hooded eyes while Genevieve barked at the child to behave. Ursule shot up and bellowed in outrage; the child was strident and obstreperous, her natural voice louder than an avalanche. Lucien bowed and escaped as silently as a cloud drawn past the moon.

            He strode through the woods breathing relief at his near escape from madness. Stars strung along the forest break lit his way and he noted the loneliness of the trees as each individual peak lost itself in the vault of night.

            Across the canyons he heard his name echo in one great, despairing summons. He kept walking as the word ‘Lucien!’ continued to break around him like a catalogue of all his hopes and deeds, all his unintentioned crimes and cuts, all his pasts and all his futures, until Genevieve’s footsteps climbed right up his shadow. Facing her he saw the soft white face still smooth and impossibly young but now glistening with tears as glass runs with rain. She darted forward to strike him and fell into his arms as he caught her.

*

            Lucien touched away her tears as she sat on his bed, letting his fingers play through her fine hair. Genevieve let her weeping abate then cursed herself in embarrassment. One taper burned in the hut, leading a song of light to the odd sounds of the woods and they kept their eyes locked on each other as their flesh revealed itself in waves of forgiveness and offering, slowly, evenly and in mute reassurance.

            “I’m not too heavy for you?” she whispered.

            Lucien stroked her face. “No,” he said.

            “The child was so big…”

            “Tiger marks. You’re very soft.”

            She hesitated briefly: “You truly like me?” And when he kissed her she winged up and far away, far from all the mocking mishaps and abandonments of her life, feeling the destiny of her flesh, her fluid giving cradling the two of them in the safety of love –the small and gentle world in which only two people can fit. Her kisses were delicate. Where tears had riven her face a smile now flew. Her eyes sparkled through the darkness and the smile never once pulled in on itself throughout the hours. By her energy Lucien could tell she liked him. She smelled of lemon blossoms in the night.

            She left at dawn to relieve her father of the whims of the child. Lucien dined with them each evening after that as promised, and Genevieve would pass the nights in his bed, energetically happy and endlessly delighted by the exotic pictures and objects which decorated his home, feeling her world swelling with his past, purring in the comfort of his embrace. Lucien found Clovis to be a great one for discussion and speculation. The old man had a young soul and had left his bakers’ trade to wander at will, fascinated by the different ideas people of different lands held dear. As the weeks brushed by, Lucien remained disturbed by Ursule’s belligerence, especially as it seemed to reel Genevieve into a confused and self-castigating state so much that sometimes she would cry in shame until they fled to Lucien’s house, where she once more felt the security she had not known before. Her domestic shackles appeared to Lucien capable of gouging a sort of gangrene in her, and, though he knew that he could not now leave Rapelle, he prayed for peace for her.

            Genevieve herself he was at ease with. She was kindly and affectionate, and she felt lifted by a sort of exhilaration when she looked into his eyes, never having known quite such a man before. She found his silly form enticing. Her insides, as she told him, seemed to crack open like a sky when she thought of him, pouring liquid gold all through her.

            “Are you certain I’m not too old for you?” she asked.

            “Not too old,” Lucien smiled. “Younger ones seem so unsure of themselves, so unsure of life, that one cannot be certain who they truly are. Those gentlemen who seek merely the sport of the thing don’t seem to mind, but I’ve never shared a bed with someone I was not in love with. I do not believe I could. Besides,” he insisted, “you appear ten years younger than I do.”

            And her life seemed so much younger than his, as well. Her joys impressed him with their simplicity, their sincerity. Lucien found great pleasure in the world even as it was, but never wholly forgot the facts of cruelty, or its place as husband to beauty. On the other hand, Genevieve did not show any alarm when he spoke of matters grim, as she sensed the truth of his observations, and his acceptance of the existence of darkness proved in her own mind that she had found an exceptional man to walk with.

            They were strolling back to Lucien’s house after another wild evening with Clovis and Ursule. “You’re like a prince,” she surprised herself saying.

            Lucien chuckled and shook his head: “More like a miner,” he muttered. “I can explore the deepest pits of life with my eyes full open, because I know I will always come back up still higher than when I started, without dread, and only more understanding in my heart.”

            Lucien stared at all the precious stones dashed across the nighttime sky; Rapelle seemed to be blessed with millions of them. They spoke some more, softly, and Genevieve was intrigued by the man’s obvious passion for freedom –freedom against all established fraud and hypocrisy– freedom against all odds and order; Lucien’s freedom, she feared, was the kind reserved for emperors, fools or heroes.

            She felt a cutting wind of worry for his stateless nature, cloaking herself against this chill by teasing: “But if you’ve always enjoyed being alone, why do I see you jesting and talking with some of the people in the village?”

            “I am a misanthrope with a weakness for individuals.”

            “Oh, how unfortunate!” she teased.

            “Yes,” he sighed.

            Lucien was unable to release his fear of what the chaos in Genevieve’s life might do to her. He was shocked when Ursule told him one evening that Genevieve had warned her that he hated children, and he wondered if such a false confidence was not part of the woman’s native inclination to keep things at a boil. The child herself now looked forward to his sly jesting and he had managed to get young Ursule to laugh frequently, amazing her mother. Lucien also taught her all kinds of outrageous jokes which the child then retailed to adults. Following a conference with Lucien, the plump young creature would approach a couple in town and demurely inform them that the King of the Cannibals had complained to his wife that he had ‘passed an irritating young man in the woods today.’ Ursule devoured the astonished crows of hilarity.

            When cornflower smudges of exhaustion began to ring Genevieve’s eyes, she turned them to smiles as she squeezed Lucien’s hand and proposed that they find one house for the four of them. Clovis, she explained, would be travelling on again soon, so he would only need a room occasionally. She was still fond of Rapelle and rejected his offer to lead them all to even more beautiful lands to the south.

            Lucien winced. He could, he supposed, tolerate the village a while longer, and he suspected that both Genevieve and Ursule would ease out of their antagonism if life were more focused, but a greater danger remained. When Genevieve pressed, he warned her that she could be prosecuted for living with a Jew.

            “You?” she soaked up his features, recognizing no sign of the mythical crawed and taloned beasts every peasant in the land had been warned of. He had those large dark eyes, a full mouth, perhaps, but not foaming or even necessarily wet. No one could tell, she informed him; for all they knew he was from some high-hung star.

            “But we have laws against this?” she was unable to comprehend the transgression. “What could they do?”

            “Sometimes burning, or you could be publicly boiled. They still do that.”

            Oddly, Genevieve merely felt closer to the man, and they carted all their goods to a larger house in a clearing closer to the village. Clovis erected for himself a hut across the meadow, and Lucien built a small thatch-roofed room attached to the main house wherein he could pursue his solitary thoughts, reserving for books the reverence accorded by his ancestors.

            The cats followed Lucien with a mass skinny shuttling of legs. Here in the meadow they cupped up sun, pounced upon mice, and watched the deer come down to graze. Genevieve, with her innate sense of domesticity, attempted to name and feed the cats, instilling order in their lives. They resolutely avoided the child, but felt at ease with the woman’s cheer, and one young, spherical male –bearish and incorruptibly innocent– became her intimate. They mewed and cooed at each other in adoration and she christened him Porcette, which he did not seem to mind. While the others stalked about like so many panthers, Porcette would spontaneously patter into the house and hurl himself onto his back with a trill, winking while Lucien or Genevieve scratched his round belly. Other times he would ride on her shoulder, snoring ecstatically.

            Lucien adapted to the regularity she created amidst the pandemonium. Even as Genevieve exhausted herself on the harsh whims of the child, she wished to cook for Lucien, which embarrassed him.

            Ursule, alone or in the company of other children, remained a hulk of rage. Her mania for blind action, he suspected, was a release from a roaring pressure within; watching her, Lucien superstitiously feared an early demise for the child, until he decided that half her choler came from the weight of authority dragging on her shoulders, and that, should Genevieve simply assume more control, she would outgrow her madness. He realized that he had become even more sensitive to noise and activity than he had been before. He discovered his thoughts cringing in dark corners while the child battled with herself, with Genevieve or with the countless other children of the village.           

            For Ursule, by virtue of her age and location, inevitably attracted other children to her side and in Rapelle these numbered in the hundreds, or so it seemed to Lucien. In seasonable weather these miniature Huns massacred life sweeping to and fro across the fields, looting the house and scattering the animals, who feared for their lives. An uneasy silence would pass before Lucien once again heard the screams of glee or disputation that froze him in his scribbling, and the meadow would blacken as the horde flew down from the crest and he would watch in horror as the little ones ran aimlessly everywhere, literally destroying the house in minutes, crashing in and out screaming, slugging and crying without pause for as long as twelve hours at a time. The jolting sounds of breakage, song and cruel browbeating carried across the air to wherever he fled, the volume astounding, the endurance of the creatures vitiating. Lucien would spend the rest of the day sulking cautiously behind trees, along gullies, in pillaged rooms as he tried to elude the hydra of youth.

            Genevieve was happy, however, at having reconstituted a family where she had had none. She felt sure of her love for Lucien and unconsciously wreathed herself in the security he afforded her heart, adorning her life with the bands of domesticity and, when she did not fear it, laughed at his dramatized and sometimes genuine discomfiture. Inured to the havoc the children visited upon the household –indeed almost comforted by it– she was reluctant to understand his nervousness.

Most revealing was the manner in which Ursule could create the same squalls on her own. She would roar commands to her mother from wherever she happened to be, invariably ordering her to ‘come here!’ before bellowing her considered instructions. Lucien gaped as Genevieve dashed all across the grounds to meet these summons. From early rise until the moment Ursule burned out like a sun, all conversation, which Lucien and Genevieve enjoyed with each other, was perforated by this hail of orders. Genevieve’s passion suffered by dint of suppressed rage, high embarrassment and exhaustion.

            As Lucien observed the toll extracted on Genevieve, he tried to lift his finger to brighter fields he thought well within reach: “Why do you simply not accept the tyranny? If she’s not old enough to dress herself, surely she’s not old enough to conduct your life.” He did not add ‘our life.’ 

            At first Genevieve would release her sufferings on him: “She’s my child,” she would suddenly yell. “Not a monster!”

            “I never said she was one. Please, you must see that she’s terrified; she doesn’t even want this sort of power, she’s waiting for you to take it off her head, doing all manner of crude things to warn you.”

            Her objections came as arrows, dipped in the venom distilled from humiliation, for she was desperately afraid Lucien thought less of her daily. Lucien assumed the child, having been raised in the heartlight that glowed from her mother, would eventually reach adulthood in fine shape, but he began to suspect the indictment of thinking the child an abomination came from her mother’s own misgivings, which only made the situation unfair on all sides. He kept the thought to himself, but tasted an unpleasant confirmation when Genevieve confessed, in tears, that she was physically afraid of the child, and had been since her first glimpse of her. Inwardly he clutched his brow and wondered why people clung to such follies, outwardly he held her in his arms until she had spent her tears.

            The child did not have an evil heart –she could be astonishingly kind– but her tempestuousness was ingrained. As Lucien’s head rattled with the ceaseless uproar, he wondered if Genevieve preferred her that way: imperious, threatening and in charge of the court. He watched the child climb up to see her reflection in a mirror one day and realized that this was a rare encounter; she did not live with it as adults did theirs, and he understood that childhood had no ready moral mirror. Ursule even fought throughout the nights, thrashing in bed and arguing loudly with imagined cohorts, yelling ‘No! That’s mine!’

            Genevieve would rouse herself at times and return the belligerence. Then, scant minutes after warring, one or the other of them would erupt into song until they were both festive, milling about like affectionate sisters, perfectly at ease with themselves and the world. Lucien was disconcerted by the child’s affinity for Christmas songs, coming as they did, atrociously loud, frequently and at any time in a twelve-month period. On her own, Ursule invented a march to perform around the house while singing a snappy Neapolitan number that ran: “MAMAmamaMAMAmamaMAMAmamaMAMAmama.”

            When Clovis was not risking travel, he would assist Genevieve in the garden or close himself in his hut where, to Lucien’s amazement, he studied wormy parchments inscribed in Pali. Here they peered at the ancient precepts of the man named Gotama, whose renunciation of the external, and whose injunctions to discover a state of divine love within one’s self in order to reach full compassion and the full comprehension of all time and space, struck Lucien as remarkably close to what he had always pursued on his own. He was strangely moved by the story of the prince who abandoned everything for redemption on earth, and how Gotama had stared at his wife and child the night his pilgrimage began and sighed ‘This, too, I must forsake.’ Lucien was neither monk nor acolyte, however, and could not see the value of living solely for incantations. The renunciation of all human desire rang faulty in his mind; he believed such intensified consciousness came not from deprivation but from love.

            The brilliance of the summer skies, the vibrating colors of the sweetpeas and violets raised against the grass, the wind as it blew the scent of warm wood across the meadow set Lucien’s mind at peace for some months as he sat amongst his cats and painted. Blinding white clouds, miles high and scrolling over themselves in dignified laughter, coasted through the blue, sailing as Lucien himself wished to do, to other lands. Having failed miserably to convince Genevieve of leaving Rapelle, he reposed in its beauty, ignoring as best he could the storms of filial confusion and luxuriating in verse and vision. He traded secrets of the East with Clovis in exchange for secrets of painting, which the man treated as reverently as he did his metaphysics. Lucien as well placed the two wonders side by side, and they would pass many late nights grinding these exotic herbs, talking excitedly with Genevieve along as an equal, for she had been raised as such by her father. To pass the days, Lucien penned humorous rondes for Ursule and ballads for Genevieve; verses silly, bright and loving.

*         *         *

            Although Lucien had grown accustomed to the vicissitudes of his role as an eccentric, Genevieve was astounded to discover the tacit respect many of the Rapelleistes accorded him, even more so when it assumed the form of Delphic consultations.

            Individually, discreetly, and often stuttering with shame, the natives would seek him out at home or sidle up to him in town to beseech his guidance. Lucien would lift his eyebrows in surprise as this plowman or that merchant –all the men and women who shunned him on the streets– appeared before him with anxious eyes and no trace of a smile about their lips to impose on his natural intuitiveness. Upon hearing their polite excuses and their earnest queries, he would release all other thoughts from his head until he detected a dream being enacted somewhere in the middle of his mind, which almost always addressed the contingency at hand. He would quietly interpret this shadow play as soon as it had raced past his skull, and the seeker would depart as furtively as they’d arrived, only to trip his eye a week or a year or even several years later, acknowledging Lucien’s service as much as his accuracy.

            Perhaps drawn by the imperceptible glow of a pure heart, many of the petitioners applied to him specifically in matters of love. Even young Jupon, heir to the Black Swan inn, approached him more than once over the years desiring to know whether he would in fact wed the woman he was currently enamored of, who was often more intrigued by the income of the tavern than the charms of the man.

            Roused from her slumbers, Genevieve could almost hear the thrum of moons and magnets emanating from the man. She awoke some nights to see Lucien struggling with invisible forces, far-off intrigues she felt had no place in his life, and she feared and resented them enormously.

            Do they mock me as they lead me, Mazel, these strange beings, to these lands so far beyond damnation? Night or day they come to me, as roaring fills my ears and I feel the vise of eternity clamping my head down so fast I cannot raise it as I struggle; whipping at lightning speeds back and forth through the immensity of space, the stars and comets tearing past, the numinous men of all our wisdom, the women made of waterfalls. I only hear one unknown word, I name the one I love. I rush through time, walk the psychic paces of my world –two cubic meters of life roiling through both heaven and hell at once– slashing her name divine across the tunneling walls of my journey. And even while awake and lucid: peripheral, perpetually peripheral ghosts, sudden, crashing totalities, fleeting conbobulations spinning past me, complete and total histories told in runes of white Abyssinian cats, there and gone in an instant. How I walk through life I wonder. How many worlds I cross with each haunted step. Wash me as I wander, then, oh woman made of waterfalls.

            Genevieve’s concern was eventually balanced by the fact that he would also wake the both of them up by laughing aloud at something he’d seen or heard in his sleep.

*

            Having introduced Genevieve to Pope Zacharias and Lisette, the four of them would pass evenings together, dining in mystic transports induced by the food, then playing games of chance or skill late into the night. Genevieve and Lisette would prattle and giggle while Lucien and the Pope swapped cynical homilies that alarmed the women but massaged their own stomachs with deep hilarity. Lisette was of brusque disposition and, though apparently devoted, misread the Pope’s reserve and sardonic appraisal of the world as resignation. Thus translating the man’s strong qualities as feebleness, Lisette was prone to scolding him at random. Genevieve, lively, excited by society and enthralled by the darting conversation, was not cognizant of the bitterness, but Lucien observed it clearly. He discovered the Pope sulking in the Black Swan one evening and heard his tale of love on the precipice, so like all he had seen and heard before.

            “Ah. She has left you to your own world of sorrow and waves the sword of severance over your head and home.”

            “Yes, she wishes to leave,” Zacharias groaned. “She leaves me anyway, lost in her own land and I begin to worry, then she belabors me for darkening her spirits. –What sense does that make?”

            Lucien tossed a hand in the air and let his friend continue.

            “My face, my hands –needless to say my mouth– each speech, each silence is subjected to the most malignant scrutiny. She crawls off farther each day, then berates and abandons me for falling into weakness when I protest my love for her.”

            Lucien shook his head at the pattern: “The problem is not uncommon in these cold times. Lisette does not truly think you weak; she fears herself to be so. You are her strength, and when she sees you trudging through the months garbed in melancholia, prey to doubt informed or instinctive, in short, when you suddenly cease to seem infallible, she is left to grapple with her own demons of weakness; it’s only natural that she castigate you for this.”

            “It’s insufferable,” he flinched. “All we’ve tried for together and now this…this contempt. It’s almost as if she planned on hating me.”

            Lucien rested his hand on the shoulder of his friend, feeling that he would never escape the cage of broken hearts erected around the globe. “Pope, old pudding, you cannot berate yourself for being aware of man’s unfortunate lot. But neither must you allow it to melt your resolve. I’ve seen as much tragedy as you have, but I keep myself alive with the elixir of the stars, the secret of the cosmos: nothing in life is so sad that one can not laugh at it. Yes,” Lucien insisted even as the Pope began to smile in protest, “you know as well as I know that there is nothing in this world which is not tragic enough to reduce us to howls of laughter. Hello, brother: you know this and therefore you are a valuable and treasured man.”

            Pope Zacharias laughed despite his heartache, shaking his head and asking: “How is it you know about things like this?”

            Lucien sighed. “It’s a sort of curse. Just as I also know what is in people’s minds –or whatever– often before they do, or ever will. It’s of almost no value, really,” he quickly promised, “as most people cannot hold the same idea for more than an instant. Certainly they rarely act consistently from one notion to the next.”  

            Screwing up his face in utter gravity, the Pope asked: “Who are you?”

*         *         *

By now, Eugene was ready to market his Lucky Pig Elixir. Lucien assisted him in procuring glass bottles in which he could distribute the invention throughout the county. At Lucien’s suggestion, Eugene hung a leathern medallion around the neck of each flask; to draw the eye and the hand of the interested buyers, Lucien had explained, these illustrated shields would increase the elixir’s prestige and, finally, edge the decision to acquire it over to Eugene’s side. Provided his nostrum wasn’t absolutely poisonous, the purchasers would feel privileged to restock.

            “But you can’t paint all those medallions,” Eugene had protested.

            “No,” Lucien’s eyes glittered. “But I shall carve the illustration into two blocks of wood –one for a red ink, one for a silver– and you can impress them onto the hide as long as you wish. With the dark leather serving as black, you will have a dazzling icon of commerce on each bottle.”

            Eugene grasped what Lucien was doing, and he knew that he would have the advantage over all other peddlers. In exchange for the design and his help with the distribution, Lucien was to receive a percentage of the profits gleaned. Both the idea and the arrangement were new, unheard-of. The medallions were so patently an infringement on the rights of escutcheon that Eugene feared the bans of local lords. Lucien prevailed upon him to place his pride and his acumen before the dying laws of privilege. Eugene, bright and bold, and desirous of coin and a command of women, acceded, borrowing the funds to purchase a wagon, and the crest of the swine rampant was sent out into the world as a symbol of Everyman’s long, salubrious and virile life.

            And other creatures of earth were stirring. While Lucien’s cats, both real and spectral, continued to swell and recede like an ocean of fur, Genevieve, to Lucien’s disgust, proved herself a magnet for stray dogs. He was mollified when he noticed that they were without exception small whelps: accidents of biology, doltish, good-natured and of ludicrous configurations. He sympathized with her sympathy when even the cats bullied them, and he was moved when he saw the joy she got from sporting with each of them. Genevieve, he saw, had a predilection for the unfortunate and cast out, explaining perhaps her affection for him. The canines came and went without violence, merely adding to the confusion and bringing Lucien and his feline brigands superior snickers as the dogs fell over their ears, fornicated each other in the ribs, and –to Ursule’s spoon-pounding pleasure- sat with their hind legs up and their red tongues flapping, and skeetled across the floor when Genevieve had guests for supper.

            Legendary beasts appeared as well. Genevieve was called away for a nasty breech, leaving Lucien alone for the first extended time with the child. He reassured her that no danger would befall Ursule while under his watch, and, since she would only be gone for one day and the night, said she should reserve her maternal mind for the new child clawing its way into the light. Lucien had not the fear of Ursule that Genevieve did, and his sole remorse was for the idle thoughts he knew he would have no time to think.

            As predicted, once they’d waved Genevieve off, the full force of Ursule’s attention fell upon him; the feedings, the imbecilic rhymes and games, the messes manifested faster than the finest magicians in Alexandria could produce, the raucous songs and excited calls to ‘come here, quickly!’ to observe a fly husk, all wore fast and threadbare on the both of them, until noon began to worry the child and, learning of her boredom at her own diversions, for lack of anything else of heft raised an unreasonable demand for her mother.

            “Poor Genevieve is working to feed us right now and won’t return until the morrow.”

            “Well, I don’t care for that. I want to do something fun.”

            “What might that be?”

            “Humf! I don’t want to sit here and listen to you all day.”

            “Neither do I. What in the name of all that is holy do you want?”

            Ursule gave the question her fullest consideration. She was not about to be swindled out of either a good passing of time or a satisfactory reward for her durance with this man. She decided to gain the best of both aspects: “I want,” she lowered, “to have a pet dragon.”

            “Splendid. We shall start immediately.”

            Ursule bugged her eyes in surprise as Lucien impaled her shriveled boots upon her feet. A dragon he could do.

            Her fright abated when she, clutching his hand in her thick paw, understood the he was in fact proposing to fashion a dragon from scratch and that they had only entered the woods to scavenge the requisite materials.

            “Look,” he said. “That skull over there. Is that big enough for the head?”

            She huddled beside him as he dug up the rotting boar’s head, not knowing whether it was a true dragon’s skull or if this hunt was one of her dreams. The object in the ground was unevenly etiolated and scabbed with bristles. It had a sharp and malignant appearance and its teeth alone were a reminder that small humans were still easily consumed by the excesses of nature in her wildest temper.

            Ursule bore down on her grip and they moved through the thickets in search of other offerings left by the forest.

            At the end of the day they had a large bag full of parts. Lucien rinsed their hands and carved cheese and bread for their supper. Ursule smacked her mouth around the meal and asked him about the next phase of their labors, all the while swinging her legs out before her.

            A lash of wire, a scrim of sack. It did not take much to construct a dragon after all. Once Lucien, with Ursule always holding the elements in place, had strung the head of the boar onto the fore-part of a deer, then attached the deer ribs to the fresh carcass of a dog they had been fortunate enough to uncover, the monster was willing to stand on its own. The smell was atrocious, but Ursule began to cry when he moved it towards the door. They heated some milk and entered the stage of refinement. A fresh brush of energy, so well known to Lucien from his years of creation, spurred them on to perfecting the beast; two crushed squirrels they had collected were added to its scalp, and Lucien wired them upright and spread in attack where ears might stand, giving an appearance of sciuromorph-sickled horns; two of Genevieve’s supply of brined beets were pilfered to glow and ooze in place of eyes.

            Lucien felt the familiar thrill of creation and the haunting despair of humanity as he noticed the sun rising over the meadow. Ursule had been covered and protected from cold in the last hours of the night, but he woke her now for the critical touch: from his bag of theatrical goods he retrieved a haggard coil of manganese and broke it into several pieces. One each he set behind the ocular cavities of the skull; the remaining bits he worked into the jaws of the dragon. He then instructed Ursule to sprinkle the shavings down along the spine of the fiend and around the corner into the kitchen, where they would await Genevieve’s return.

            Ursule jerked and almost ran out from around the corner when she heard her mother arriving on the palfrey. Lucien quickly restrained her and lit a flint, laying it, giggling, along the line of manganese powder. Ursule suddenly recalled all their efforts and sank back gagging in hilarious anticipation.

            The beast was magnificent.

            Lucien and Ursule observed from their hiding place: I. A grey and trembling (from cold, exertion) Genevieve lumbering in the door. II. The delay –divine, inestimably perfect, for timing is all in physical jest– in which Genevieve confronted her deepest perplexity in the acrid, depraved, excrescence of Hades crouched six feet before her. III. The audible blast of bloody eyes and the concomitant cord of flame which burst from the mouth of that hideous crust. IV. An unearthly but human shrieking emanating from a large round orifice surrounded by beet stains, above which could be discerned two rapidly oscillating maternal eyes.

*         *         *

As the years went on, Lucien was alternately stunned and amused by the life that flowed between Genevieve and the child. It was as though he was observing, in rapid motion, the seasonal changes of the sky, delighting and placid one moment, tempestuous and ruinous the next. Ursule ruled the world around her by virtue of her infantile clarity of want; Genevieve, lost in her odd dreams, would find herself responding to imperious orders or debasing and sardonic lines of questioning until her honor was finally insulted and she would turn on the child with a wide fury. Yelling was just as quickly superseded by the inexplicable need to leap into song. Lucien, for the sake of diversion, would teach them Gypsy airs, Yiddish love songs, Teutonic dirges, Boyar anthems, Italian and Spanish romances and even the high doggerel of his own verses, all of which they followed in fine, happy voices. Chuckling, he would leave them singing at the peak of their volume and retreat off into the woods for a survey of his stars.

            The crystal crown of night, the secret meadow high above the village –these treasures soothed and nurtured him during those years. Work was difficult to come by, his home was an attraction and a distraction at once, and Rapelle was just another vulgar hole of lawlessness inviting him to either wallow in its muck or leave.

            He found he had come to regret the town. As for its beauty, he had seen far greater elsewhere. But the inhabitants were crude beyond belief –even Genevieve dreaded half of them– and a shroud of violence seemed to hang scabbed and sticky over the allure of the surroundings. While the Sieur de Hagenau fleeced the county ruthlessly, other bully barons –lesser nobles, really– terrorized the peons on their own large holdings with the same blend of chicanery and physical brutality, all the while acting like liberators as the waves of change poured over them. Lucien, Genevieve, the Pope and Lisette, along with a very few other citizens found the nobles repellent; they deplored the complacence of the locals and shuddered to see them unleashing their rage on one another. Even Gerard the Donkey –so named for the kind of work he accepted as well as his laugh– had surprised them with an unexplained flare of wrath one day.

            One of the most vicious lights of the town was Hortense, a bloated, bellowing hag who, deprived of the gift of life, meddled unceasingly in the lives of others, and by pure aggression had convinced all around her that her ukases were natural. Slab-necked, blotched and blathering, Hortense would hold court in the Black Swan, slavering over her stein of beer, pronouncing futures, sins and honors for hours at a time. Her keening inspired terror in the citizens, her reeking kisses were the fear of all. Screeching and indecent, she would storm through matches, livelihoods, marriages and intrigues, leaving the suppurating yellow mark of her mind on every couple who passed. Sensing genius, she cornered Lucien as often as possible, dismissing her husband with a yowl and going so far, when Lucien remained unintimidated by her ranting, as to thrust her tongue down his throat or hike up her skirts and display her carrion depths. Sensing doubt, like a vulture she sank her craw into Genevieve’s neck, gleefully snapping it left and right. Hortense was the same age as Genevieve but looked thirty years older.

            “You know what?” she would roar, “when I was young and beautiful I was married to my first husband and he told me that the greatest secret of a man’s heart is –now listen to me,” she would order, slapping Lucien across the head, “the desire to be loved by two women at once –are you listening to me, you little beast?”

            Lucien stared dully and set her straight: “The ultimate fantasy buried in a man’s heart is nothing of the sort. It is the desire to lose himself in passion of one woman; the one woman who can incinerate him with her love. If he can return it he is saved.”

            Genevieve blushed as Hortense yelled on: “Oh, I know you think you know everything already, but if you listened to me you might learn something important– God! you’re a beautiful man! give me a kiss!– When has any one man or woman been able to satisfy their mate? If you knew the things I did in my youth…”      

            “For Jesus’ sake, jam your mouth!” Pope Zacharias would yip. “You’re ripping apart my brains!”

*         *         *

My life, in the meantime, was about to begin. I had lived like a fool, sedate and insensate, in the warm universe of the womb, idling my days and nights as one and steeping in reveries which had no compass. I was unprepared of course for what would follow, but too content to lend myself to much worry about it; I was bold in my own fashion, tiny as a sound, and cute in a fluid sort of way. Perhaps, I mused, as I drifted and rolled, I shall be a seahorse.

            But I had already entered the sift of time and was being funneled down to the corporeal pile –my meathood, if you will. From the isolated miracle of my embryonic days I passed into an eternity of discomfort and annoyance as I tumbled along bumping into brothers and sisters I did not know –bladders within bladders within bladders– until the crush had mounted to an untenable pitch; I heard a great rumbling and my world seemed to crash in on me in one scalding paroxysm. Bluntly dumped, my dream cut short by the sudden blade of cold and light –unceremoniously added to the compliment of life– from blood to mud I shot to earth with a bleat; I was capriform.

            A goat, then. So be it.

            And I became a caprice as well when, a number of weeks afterwards, Genevieve strolled by the filthy pen where I stood in the muck and complained my infancy away. The shiny eyes caught my own and as she smiled wide and full I skidded over to her outstretched hand in hopes of some sympathy in this heartless world. I nuzzled and nibbled while her voice bedewed the air around me and was met by the gruff retorts of the farmer’s man. He then seized me rudely from behind and dropped me over the planks into her arms, wishing her a good stew as we sailed away.

            When we arrived at the meadow, she stroked my head and chided: “Now don’t be afraid. I’ll tell Lucien that you were lost and then everything will be fine.”

            Lucien, almost awed by her capacity for impulsive decisions, only grumbled a little and even then not at me, for he saw in my countenance a small fraternal spirit and determined to let me live in the world around him and see if I thought similarly about it. A pen was hastily built, I was named, I was loved. –And isn’t it just as simple as that to start a life?

*

Genevieve mothered me, Clovis found me bright and amusing and Lucien loved me as a little brother. My sole cause for unease was the child. Thinking she was instructing me perhaps, the little brute charged me, knocking me off my feet, nearly snapping my ribs. Lucien and Genevieve heard my terrified blabs and appeared to coddle me and upbraid the child for her callous act, which reduced her to yowls of shame, impotence and indignation. Like the other animals, I developed a dread of the child.

            The sun would dig through the treetops and shed golden light on the meadow as the deer appeared to raid my berries, my apples, the little flowers that popped their heads up from the grass and sang until I’d found them all out. A neighboring pig –robust, fuzzled with black bristles– would come and pass the days in our field then promptly depart at five in the evening, intrepidly wending through the woods and back up to wherever he ate his slops and slept. The first time I saw him I sprung onto a log, thinking he was a huge tick. I became used to his daily company, however, and all of us –deer, pigs, lizards, foxes, cats, myself and any other visitors—were equally cherished by Lucien and Genevieve, the woman being direct with each of us, the man sly and accepting.

            And for you I killed for the first time in my life. Seeing you cornered and bucking by your poor shed, I almost trod on the viper coiled and hissing, perhaps as frightened by you as you were of it, and the vile, spitting, venomous thing had to go, be dispatched from our garden, or poison us all. We stared, paralyzed by revulsion, at the unyielding angry eyes with their vertical pupils, and the sharp, sharp maw gusting fury from a grimace pulled tighter than hate, and we quailed as the hoe sliced into that glittering mistake of God and watched the blood jet out with the hisses, now angrier than ever.

            I had taken a rude tool of the soil and hacked through the rhythms of existence on my own decision.

The face of the viper spitting blood appeared to Lucien in his dreams. Poverty and devil-driven chaos hissed from its snout, the viscous blood blocked his sight out and he awoke with a dread of remaining where he was any longer. His vision faded as he saw Rapelle become one thick mass of snakes devouring each other and whipping like a slimy flood about his feet. He could take Genevieve, the child and me, leave this beautiful spot with its sudden intimations of evil and return to Firenze, flee this threatening paradise and go to Antwerp; abandon this peristaltic society, this reptilian community slowly coiling and sure to spring one day.

            Genevieve continued to reject the request.

            Lucien pressed: “But why should we not go someplace where I could earn more for my work? What have we to keep us here in this village of somnambulists?”

            “The child has companions here, ones she knows. She cannot speak any other tongue. After all these years becalming her, I know such an enormous change would ignite her again.”

            But even as they were, the child with the unfortunate volume continued to burn and explode like seasoned apple-wood, terrifying the jays and quails, and scattering quadrupeds at her approach. She cried sincerely as the animals fled, unable to soften her conduct to suit them, unable to grasp what she did that frightened them. Lucien feared that both Ursule and her mother considered animals to be playthings; he was glacial when he discovered Ursule threading a shrieking kitten through some old basket weave.

            I had reached some minor height by then, and was eager to test my courage each day. The snake had startled me, then left me with a fear of fear. Fear, I decided as I soaked in the wonders around me, had no place in nature. It was a perversion, as Lucien told me, and might alone be culpable for all the cruelties of man. I sensed none in Lucien, but heard the gut-rumblings of it in Genevieve, and particularly Ursule. As the leaves skipped in the wind and the grasses swept in long, prayerful motions, I spied the child alone by the creek, squatting on the bank and probably tormenting pollywogs; the fear bursting through her sausage-casing smock had driven her to acts of blind malignance, and it remained for me to show her the marvelous properties of memory, of bravery, of cause and effect. I tucked my head down and charged. Rushing out of the house, alarmed by the screams, even Genevieve fell into Lucien’s arms laughing as they saw me grinning and nodding my head beside the two thick legs sticking up out of the mud. From then on we animals were unmolested.

            But Lucien’s theory of fear seemed more correct by the day. As she struggled with her daughter and the rigors of the dusty world, Genevieve trembled at all the possible condemning sentiments Lucien might be silently leveling towards them. She understood he found such domesticity strange, more foreign than any land he’d visited. Nonetheless, she felt rock-sure that hers was the more natural life. Lucien, she knew was from a different world entirely: Fallen.

            She was undeniably in love with him, and he with her, but all her exuberance and all her wonder seemed incapable of loving freedom entirely. Lucien sensed a private world within her, one which she herself might not have known of. She seemed to live in a separate dream, or many disparate dreams, none overlapping, each new reverie startling her into its own distinct modes of thought, feeling, action. At night, depleted by the exercises of motherhood, she had learned to abandon herself to his touch, but still found herself disturbed, invaded by the plebeian toil of the day. She grew closer to his fearful ravishments, finding at last what she had unsuccessfully sought in others, yet still she was plagued by imps of distraction and she cursed herself roundly for this harassment.

            As she drifted through the years, Genevieve was periodically assaulted by a hidden voice, one which had sprung out at her from behind the vernal shoots and blooms she’d passed since childhood, frightening away her bliss and whispering harshly that she was of no consequence to anyone, that she was alone and unloved in this life she had no right to live. This terrifying hoaxer had sprung at her from behind the lilacs of happiness all her life. She did not take the words unmitigated to her heart, but the rasp of the voice froze her quick, sent her reeling off the path of simple, good and comforting joys.

            She never spoke to Lucien of this taunting, but he could detect the echoes of its message in her tears, which would come day or night without any more warning than a sudden drawing of color from her face.

            She loved me with more warmth and effusion than most humans lavished upon their animals, and she was almost as gushing with the others, largely, I suspect, because we embodied the nostalgic innocence wherein such spirits did not trick the mind.

            I mostly ran at her beaming, almost ticklish enjoyment of life; I would sense it from across the field, and would scurry over to her, butt her, climb her, crust her smock with my hooves or jimmy her with my horns, still small and just barely beginning to curl, until she smothered me in her arms and laughed as I was laughing inside. It was the thrill of recognizing the same unsullied pleasure at living that I felt fanning out from her distant form that sparked me to abandon the flashing colors and tastes of whatever patch I was grazing and leap over to celebrate with this fellow reveler of the atmosphere.

            And, when, at other days and distances, I would see her standing by the stream and hear her tell herself “I’m a sorry fool to cry like this,” I would either call to her until she turned her head in my direction, then bob my head twice before showing her how satisfied I was to explore the vibrant world at my feet, or I would simply amble over to her and put my lips to her hand until she distracted herself with a search for something special for me to eat. If I felt that this was not enough to dispel the sadness from her, I would follow her into the house and insanely hurtle around in high and low circles, making the cats dash off in all directions, breaking pots across the room, though I myself had not touched a thing, as she well knew.

*         *         *

When happiness climbed up and skipped through her hair, Genevieve liked to sit with Lucien in the Black Swan, almost lost in a dream of their first meeting there.

            One misty spring eve they were seated alone, speaking of anything that sailed through her mind, Lucien laughing and Genevieve laughing along with him as he attempted to chase her half-spoken thoughts around the table. The inn was crowded, but with no one they cared to acknowledge.

            With a grunt and a coo, a thick toad of a man plopped down beside her and swept his face up to hers in sharp comic passion. Genevieve reeled back but Lucien merely snorted with glee and pushed his glass of wine into the man’s waiting hand.

            “I haven’t sold you,” Lucien assured her. “It’s only Pompeux, back from the wars.”

            “Reeking of victory! Fields of linen, fields of hay, fine bouncing bedding -all my arenas! Ah, how many triumphs I’ve wrested, Maestro! And how you must have ached for my erudition out here in this dainty saucepan of a town!” The old ham boasted around splashes of wine, bouncing his head as he slurupped. As Lucien settled back with a smile on his face, Genevieve began to enjoy her amazement.

            “I thought I would pass through and learn of your death by daydreaming, or at least that you’d gone on to accept the crown of the Khazars.” He shook his head in mock reproach: “But I find you still here instead, hung like an animal on friend butcher’s hook.”

            “And what are we, then, if not rotting carcasses?”

            “God! Already the spiritual doctor cuts. But it’s true,” he said equitably, lifting his arms. “I’m the best proof of all, unless all this is a nightmare. Of all the animals of the wild,” he pointed at Lucien while confiding to Genevieve, “this one alone had the reputation for unimpeachable probity.”

            Pompeux settled into kindness towards the woman as he carefully counted out coins for another pot of wine. Lucien watched as carefully as the man counted. While his voice was still strong, his breathing was squeezed. His face now fallen and sallow, his eyes were dulled as they completed their transit from dawn to dusk. Once gentle, they had acquired a reptilian hood. Panting and spherical, belabored by age, the old actor now moved with great effort, shocking himself with each exertion. His lips hung wetter than before. A sparse fringe of hair was all that remained around the gleam of his scalp, which now attracted flies –plump, animated torments as persistent as his infirmities. He wore a dull, drab-brown robe like a Franciscan’s.

            “All the easier for eating and other little kindnesses,” he explained, slapping the robe and producing a grey puff of dust. “Besides, it’s all I have left.”

            “So you’ve come to Rapelle to partake of the wealth? You shall have to work hard, despite your slight age.”

            “Bah! Now I’m a relic. The shows are all foolish and the marauders and murderers steal all the attention these days. Christ in my eardrums!” he shot forward in a sort of delayed alarm. “-It’s beastly dangerous out there!” For several seconds Pompeux tried to pierce through Lucien’s gaze, searching out the old oracular coves he once knew. “Tell me, Maestro, sweet and true: does my peace lie here?”

            Genevieve released a bright-colored giggle, surprising and enchanting the man. “Oh, you poor thing, only madness lies here. –If you’re half-mad already, then we welcome you home!”

            Lucien took the opportunity to turn his eyes away, speaking in a more pedestrian vein: “Almost seven years have passed since you left –or I remained. The seneschal’s issuing orders in his grave, where he watches over his wife beside him. As you yourself see, there’s still room by the fire, old friend.”

            “I see the fire which warms you these years,” Pompeux flapped his hands around Genevieve’s form as she smiled still more.

            For Genevieve he blew on the coals of his charm, embers still bright from the years of gem-handsome youth, before Lucien had even known him. She giggled and blushed as Pompeux poured gallantries like warm olive oil, smooth, fascinating and unique in color, surely mankind’s oldest balm. As the three of them conversed, Pompeux rolled his gaze across the room, noting with satisfaction that the women of Rapelle were still as free and pretty as birds, if only, as he pointed out, half as intelligent. For the men he reserved the basest contempt.

            “Most unimpressive,” he announced to the crowd. Then, patting Genevieve’s hand: “Without Lucien here you certainly should have been driven to drown yourself.”

            “They’re merely dulled,” said Lucien, “not evil, I think. You shall see for yourself once you come to know them.”

            “Pleh! They shall come to know me!“

            And so, weary of worry and too old to snarl down brigands, Pompeux, too, forsook the road and dug in his groinbag for the coins he’d amassed, renting a hovel on the outskirts of village, settled to grapple with his body in matters of wood-chopping and rose-pruning, chatting boldly with Lucien when he met him in town and always quick to present one of his silvery blossoms to Genevieve, with much flattery and flourish.

            Yet he remained rather lonely, Lucien observed, with both women and men manifestly unamused by his inopportune histrionics, his transparently affected protestations of love and his sardonic grandiloquence. Lucien wondered what his old friend would do to keep himself entertained, as surviving one’s dotage in Rapelle could not be comfortable for a stranger.

            For, despite the pine-tanged breezes, the roll of the hills and peaks, despite the thrill of uncharted commerce and constant plotting with Eugene, despite the talks of mysteries when Clovis came to visit, or the soothing push of my lips against his face; despite the invariably astonishing beauty of the night harvest, Lucien himself remained a stranger to this life.

            In the past two years Lucien had woven a mantle of resignation with which he cloaked his discomfort. He was devoted to both Genevieve and Ursule, but found their tempests unendurable. He was startled to realize he could no longer hear his own thoughts. Worse, what struck him as simple solutions to the daily ordeal were greeted as affronts, and he left the two to act on their humors and desires as they wished. Never having found anything but distaste in the idea of power over others, Lucien was a zealot about retaining power over his own life; when the tumult around him began to eat away at his tranquility, he would draw into himself, his attempts at negotiating away the encroachments having been met with sheer pig-headedness. It was a looping repetition of the same pull towards destruction he’d watched redirect previous loves.

            Genevieve had had youthful fogged expectations of farms and giving birth to twelve children, wedded to a man of brawn. The twelve children, she conceded, were all granted her in Ursule alone. Lucien’s dreams sometimes drifted near the shores of domesticity but in his heart he yearned for the unparalleled love of just one woman who would match him wit for wit, passion for passion, and each quiet heartbeat; together –alone– they would discover the lands within while skimming their fingers along the external miracles. Lucien found Genevieve far removed from the serenity for such a union, regretted it and felt her distraction to be a cruel den she had built for herself. He had had in those years only sporadic success in opening it.

            She spoke of marriage nonetheless, described endlessly the features of the child she would have borne them, and continued to press the point even as Lucien denounced the intervention of the Church or State in his personal life. Sometimes she would laugh delightedly as she plagued him with this request, turning it to a game of irony; other times she would drench the both of them in tears, her fletion lasting long into the night. Her very inconstancy about the merits whistled past Lucien’s ears as an example of yet another unconsidered compulsion, but she finally accepted that he was embarrassed to display his affinities to anyone outside the one person he shared his life with. Her victory, then, was doubly surprising.

            It was an inflammation of the meninges that brought Lucien to this new plateau in his life, a debilitating assault that struck him ferociously and rendered him delirious overnight. Genevieve, in fear of his life, nursed him for seven full days as his body burned and the dreams racing through his skull shook to the beat of a frantic African drumming. When the fever had broken down, Lucien pulled away from the screaming imagery in his mind and opened his eyes to see Genevieve sitting beside him and wiping his brow. She smiled when she saw him conscious for that brief minute and he watched the smile from tropical distances as her voice fluttered around the room. She grinned still wider and shook him by the shoulders.

            “Say yes,” he heard her say.

            Lucien complied and fell back into a burning sleep. When he awoke five hours later, Ursule was watching him solicitously, a bowl of soup in her hands. She appeared to have been waiting for him to rouse himself and take the soup. He had no idea how long she had been waiting.

            “Where’s Genevieve?” he mumbled.

            “She went in to town,” she smiled, “to invite the people to your wedding.”

            I was bound. Genevieve cried at first when I told her that I would write the ceremony, then almost immediately burst out laughing at the thought of what it might be. Since that hadn’t dissuaded her, I decided to make a gift of the thing and unwittingly shifted into production mode. After all, I thought, she had already announced the nuptials –I could never be cruel enough to take that from her– and the show must go on now. Writing, organizing, costuming, rehearsing –it was in my foul blood anyway. The people were shocked by the irreverence, but Genevieve laughed her bright laugh and insisted she had the best wedding in history, and never let anyone or anything alter her opinion of that. The remembrance of it still made her laugh years later.

            Over fifty guests were feted. All came to see what the Maestro might make of such a ceremony. At the climax of the ouverture Pompeux emerged from his hiding place garbed as a distressed Nubian king, marched with comic dignity to the dais and began exhorting the audience to rise in bloody revolt against the fetters of the Pharaoh. His grand opening line, delivered with all the flourish of a veteran stagehound: “Fellow Nubians!” collapsed the crowd with shocked merriment and the rest of the rant, irrelevant, portentous and only incidentally marking the presence of Lucien and Genevieve, was greeted with a flood of amusement. As Pompeux shook his great belly and blessed the union in the name of Ebon and Agon, Ursule stood by dispensing flower petals without end, and I was introduced as the first-born son and heir to whatever fortune Lucien might amass. I stood beside Lucien at this important moment, released a chuckled bray of delight and skipped a quick jig in the air as they draped me with a purple cloak.

            Pope Zacharias and Lisette had spent a full week preparing the feast and it was remarked by them as well as the bride and groom that the inevitable hordes of children had pillaged the tables while Pompeux had been railing at the audience. This, of course, left scant opportunity for me, but I cheered as I discovered a broken pastry swan of near-life dimensions stuffed with fruit compotes that did indeed lend credit to the rumors I’d heard of the Pope’s skill. In the midst of the revelry, however, Lisette caught sight of me eating voraciously of the swan’s belly and let out a yell of rage; I was obliged to run off with the cursed thing stuck completely on my head and must have killed twenty children with fright before the swan was mashed off by a tree.

            Genevieve, disregarding the samite gown she had shed so many tears over, swept me into her arms and brushed the filling off my neck so that I might enjoy what I had, after all, won. Lucien gave me a sip of his wine, which, though I respected the intriguing things it did to my sense of the mysterious world around me, sent my lips into a sort of St. Vitus’ dance and occasioned tremendous laughter from the crowd.   

            Thus the wedding itself furthered Lucien’s fame in the land, brought a brief sense of equanimity to Genevieve and even a bit to little Ursule, and earned me a place in some Imperial succession somewhere.

*         *         *

But as the years continued regardless of anyone’s wishes, the integration into social and domestic molds became irksome to Lucien, abrading, undersized. He found himself dulled by the life Rapelle offered with its droning gossip punctured but rarely by the toll of compassion, unnerved by the raucous battles between Genevieve and Ursule, and disheartened by the incalculable distance he saw between himself and the rest of humanity as he watched them all scrambling like ants as far away from common sense happiness as possible. The easy pleasure he had enjoyed in Genevieve’s company calloused as she held herself just beyond his reach, often utilizing her fondness for stray dogs or children to excuse her growing distraction, which overflowed until it threatened to smother them all: as the house filled with children she would good-heartedly feed them all, mopping their consequent pukes without even a thought of complaint, but would cry and revile herself when she discovered that no food remained for herself and Lucien. She would amble through the days in a languid land of her own, or cease internally like a bear in hibernation, then suddenly spin like a whirlwind of domestic chores, losing herself in that just as profoundly. When fear shook her she would spring at Lucien or Ursule, raising her voice to a startling pitch, and few words or gestures could assuage her until she had released the force of it out. Lucien himself was not one to yell, and although he considered her separateness deliberately fostered, Lucien could find at heart no fault born of meanness in her. Still, Genevieve’s tendency to forgive and forget, her simplistic ability to recover and resume, caused him to question just how deep the roots that founded her lay.

            Nonetheless, even as she midwifed his social acceptance, Genevieve at home plied her own trajectory, and Lucien understood that to breathe she needed clashing winds. He suspected that it was all part of her rush to escape her own sense of isolation, which in turn seemed perpetuated by the running. Innocently, she kept the chaos mounting, unable to accept that it grew like a damn in the artery of his inner peace, and went about things as impulse led her, also innocently expecting Lucien’s acquiescence in these uncoordinated affairs. Equating the maddening jumble with the subtle obstacles she strew between them, he repeatedly attempted to crash through the stones of the edifice. Genevieve angrily rejected his arrogant analyses, his pleading to return to smooth flows, and even to open the curtained world within her. But she seemed to be enclosed in a kind of deaf-chamber after the three years they’d lived together. She continued on, vacillating between animal content and human alarm, and, with the emotional twists arising at a steady pace, Lucien realized that he clearly had no say in any aspect of her life –which meant little in his own now– that they were mashing two very different lives together, and that, ultimately, he had been resolutely relegated to last place in hers. As he had learned in his time that destruction can only remain destructive and not a creative force, so he now came to understand that domesticity meant only a home –not bliss and not order– but a roof sheltering the stage for a danse macabre.

            He came to lift me from my shed, showing me the close of the season as we wandered away from the din of the house, and now the meadow seemed eternal, ghostly, the forest smothered in fog, the world a marmoreal vapor with an occasional stark green pad of leaf leaping out of the whiteness. Drops of air or water, I knew not which, played mutely on my fur, my lashes. The gelid mists were soothing and delicious, and I lost myself in that dreamy world of nimbus feeling a white peace seep through my skin and sinews. Lucien stood by black as my anchor in this milky ocean, letting motes of moisture lick his eyes. I returned to where he stood and bucked him gently, encouraging him to come with me and vanish, to abandon the deserts of thought and wander through the veil flying but a few feet from our eyes, but Lucien was falling down canyons inside himself.

            He seemed to be as old as the trees, disdainful of speech, lustrous against the fog like a golden-olive beam. I settled next to him and nuzzled at his hand. The mica of his fingertips entranced me, like exudate glitter from his heart, reassuring me once more that this one who stood alone could enfold reality in his being, watching the futures flying out before him, caressing the pasts which, after all, always lay in the future –knowing all the oldest and the newest beyond the shell of bone or time, knowing all to be a mirror of the heart; and I loved him because I was happy living in that glass. He loved me, similarly, because I lent a flash of innocence to the tarnished pane. Alone again and resolute, he steadfastly counted his fortune by all he did not need. He was a man of vision and had roamed life alone.

*         *         * 

Along with ostentatiousness, only Pompeux equaled Hortense’s crassness. The two clashed often and with volume, much to everyone’s irritation. Either one alone was liable to ignite a riot of protest from the patrons of the Swan, who, though hardly mettle for urbane debates, had come to find the antics of the two insufferably commonplace. Pompeux’s vulgarity did not disturb Lucien, for he knew it had originally cloaked a sensitive, frightened child and it had always appeared transparent to the Maestro. As age and disappointments gnawed at him, though, Pompeux, to Lucien’s dismay, became loose of mind, forgetful, reduced in wit, and morose, inclined to mistake the obscene tyrants of his acting days for his genuine character. Frequently he exploded in such blasphemy against society that even Eugene and Jupon were shocked stuporous. Instead of applause and gales of glee, following a tirade, Pompeux more and more discovered himself standing suddenly alone in a retreating splatter of repugnance.

            The year of staring at nature’s wonders merely hardened his contempt for goodness. Pompeux began to crack his wit at passing ladies, receiving for his troubles complete romantic isolation and threats of thrashings which began to sound realistic to Lucien. Genevieve understood not at all the man’s inverted displays of affection, and now complained to Lucien about his bile. Aging grossly, sleeping ill, alone and alarmed by the involuntary grunts he emitted each time he moved, Pompeux marshalled his spirit and made a charge for salvation.

            Through the autumn night he waddled from his hut down to the Swan. He did not hear, as Lucien had but an hour before, the tree tops sighing in ecstasy as tongues of fog licked low about them.

            He blinked as he entered, then wet his lips as he trundled over to join Lucien by the peat-fire, lifting his old brown robes to the warmth. “Maestro. Still married, I see, else why would you be here brooding alone?”

            “Ah, peace, Pompeux –will I ever know the rhyme for that precious song?”

            “Too young,” snarled the actor slurping his wine. “One must suffer as I have and devour life with both hands until the belly blasts open or the ballsack implodes with a whistle. –Then you may rest.”

            They stared into the embering nook for a while, each smoking their own thoughts, Lucien vanquishing din from his head, Pompeux rolling along on acclaim he had heard through his years. The old actor spoke:

            “I bore myself here. Write me a play.”

            Lucien thought of all the agonies of creating a new production, a new core of actors, and quickly answered: “No.”

            Pompeux grumbled and hunched over his wine, staring at the skipping light.

*

Since Lucien did not labor in the shops or fields, some of the villagers assumed he earned his money robbing travelers along the highways. The air of perfect quietude he carried with him induced other, more perspicacious, citizens to regard him as indolent; even those who knew he wrote and painted for his keep sneered at the idea that this entailed any real labor. Lucien declined to refute any rumors or assumptions whatsoever, treasuring his private peace above the public traffic.

It was like this, Mazel: I watched and I listened, and over the years learned to revere the advantages of contemplation over action for action’s sake. When action knocked at my door, dispatched by the exigencies of a great ideal, I would keep pace within me even as my passion ignited and rose up in one gargantuan jet of flame until the work was completed. Then I would observe again. Over half the efforts necessary to achieve such designs were, I had learned, diverted into merely letting the creatures around me do so; it was both wasteful and degrading, and by the opposition to even the simplest projects I was compelled to wonder whether I was giving valuable things to humanity or whether I was truly a parasite. I’d no nervous energy. For men of my nature, action –for gain, for defense, for bringing forth into the world structures of proof which merely reiterated the mechanics of nature or mind I had already discerned to my satisfaction, and even for the sake of my own truths, especially when persuasion was required –to act, then, threatened the sovereignty of my mind and spirit; for this careless step meant kowtowing to one and forsaking all the other scintillating ontologies bejeweling my soul.

Thus, the man who loved wisdom and lived with his senses wide open, who would rather sit as peaceful as a goatherd and watch what the sky was made of from one day to the next rather than traffic in human games –all the while listening to the hearts– became by unrefracted rumor a rascal and a layabout. But action was about to seize him by the throat.

*

That night Lucien dreamed that he was walking through the great cathedrals he had seen in Reims, in Strassbourg, Metz, Vienna, Assisi. Then, as he wandered through this unknown one, he felt himself passing as he had in each tall church through the darkness and into the light. The lights played over his hands as he drifted, colors floated across him and stirred his flesh. He raised his head and saw the source of them in the fantastic windows fulminating high above, and he saw the figures in all their prismatic splendor step from the glass and gather in the open space of the vaults until the air was a single great mass of swirling seraphim, and he heard songs of love echoing around him. The angelic shapes evolved into apes, then into castles out of which flowed boats filled with men and women in glittering dress; as these faded the singing overwhelmed him and the invisible notes and the visible forms entwined all at once and revealed the vision of one man and one woman, golden, naked, in tender embrace that finally became a golden tree in which all the knowledge and all the love that had ever existed shone with such blinding beauty that Lucien awoke with his eyes burning.

            At the Swan the next morning he again found Pompeux. Lucien sat beside him and rubbed a hand over his jaw for a bit while he bounced his sight around the inn until he found the second man he wished to speak with. This was a young free laborer and sometime fletcher named Antoine, a shuffling, disheveled, easygoing man whom Lucien had often seen over the years but had only spoken with a half-dozen times. He supposed that Antoine was possessed of an even temperament –perhaps matching his own equanimity– and a clear mind. He suspected that Antoine was also capable and enterprising. He waved him over to find out.

            At first they protested strenuously, remonstrating with Lucien to reel in his imagination, citing that what he proposed had never been done.

            “That is why I wish to do it,” Lucien insisted. “If I can solicit enough money, and Lord knows we’ll need great pots of it, we could start immediately. It will take too much work and too much time, but if we are ready by the spring fair it will be worthwhile.”

            “But why herd the people inside a building?” Pompeux argued. “How are we supposed to be seen well enough to inspire the spectators? And why should they pay good coin to stand about listening to voices declaiming in the dark?”

            “We’ll have more light inside. And far better than that, we’ll have almost unimaginable artifices. Stuff such as royals would dispatch armies to seize. We can do it”

            Antoine pondered the claim. “Yes,” he said, “one can hide all manner of ropes and pulleys by constructing a small wall, but what of the dark?”

            “Candles,” Lucien answered. “Candles and pot-metal. Put to your mind, Pompeux, that if the public is immersed in a rich darkness and you are before them in holy brilliance no eye will dare deviate for a second.”

            Pompeux sputtered while Antoine held quiet, a deep flush of anticipation taking over his face. He started to breathe deeply and played what Lucien had described through his mind.

            “Well, I suppose we could blind them,” Pompeux snorted. “And what shall I become, the old lusty Lord God in this miracle play?”

            “No. I will write something new. No more religious mysteries with bawdy characters. I shall produce the entire history of Love. Not love as personified by one redeemer, but the love of men and women exiled from Paradise, who must find this ultimate redemption in themselves, and in each other.”

            Pompeux quivered and darted his eyes about in shock. “Where is your mind, Maroc? This is no history!”

            “It will be. It is. It’s the sole true history of our fate. And to prove it I will write it backwards, all the way to the Fall. Don’t worry,” he added, “it will be funny as well.”

            “The old man isn’t stupid, Maroc; creating a theater as you’ve described it, the manner of play you wish to produce, it might well be…” here Antoine sighed and grimaced, “it truly sounds impossible.”

            “Sounds what?” Lucien asked. His face was a great grin now.

            “Impossible.” Antoine said it with more conviction this time, but he himself begin to smile as though driven by Lucien’s wild expression. Pompeux squirmed. He had never seen Lucien so close to combustion. Lucien’s dark, dark eyes spewed sparks as he answered: “Say it again,” he dared them. “I love that word.”

*

Lucien left and meandered through the village hoping to find Pope Zacharias on the road, but, having no success, buttonholed his father, the ex-magistrate. Alexander had always appeared partial to the aesthetic world and he now listened with curiosity as Lucien related his plans. The old man nodded his head once, then briskly marched up the hill with Lucien in tow on the path to de Hagenau’s undersized castle.

            As they trundled up to the keep, Lucien saw the squalor of luxury dashed all around him. De Hagenau had great numbers of the fugitive serfs working his vineyards and their aspect was so piteous that he knew many of them regretted leaving their former serfdom for this grueling year of toil. Ramshackle quarters had been erected for them by their own hands and they crowded inside cold and beaten when the Seigneur’s work was finished for the day, only to gulp a few hours of sleep before cracking themselves on the hard life of the following day and the day following that. Behind these hovels Lucien noticed a garden lush with flowers, a rolling, knee-deep foam of roses, poppies, hyacinth and peony, flashing brightly and incongruously just beyond the wreck of the central grounds. Innumerable dogs, slavering, ragged and snarling, roamed the grounds. Horrid miasmas drifted at them as they walked around the curs. Lucien saw a cage in which molting goshawks were being pelted by a child. The child turned to glare at them as they passed; he was a boy of twelve years or so, with henpen hair, gap-toothed, dirty and gangly, and his expression was the same as the dogs’. He had one ear hacked off next to the scalp. Alexander explained in a mutter that this was the Seigneur’s heir, and that the lord had once nailed his ear to a post for some offense, and, a day later, having found the punishment condign, freed the lad with a quick stroke of a knife.

            They approached the citadel just as de Hagenau emerged from the stables, slamming the gate and cursing the stable lad inside. The lord recognized Alexander and tried a look of welcome on. He was a very small man of some sixty years, burly and gnomish, and his eyes were bright grey points with a merry glint masking a colder gaze for calculation. Lucien was surprised at the high register of his voice.

            Alexander introduced Lucien to the Seiur and began a circumlocutious inquiry into the current state of his holdings, complimenting him while at the same time sympathizing with the man’s inevitable frustrations in maintaining the land.

            “Not so very much to maintain,” he complained. “My whole garrison consists of two knights. I’ve a bailiff, a steward, a master of stables, one page here on sufferance and two squires. Oh, and the other varlet in the stables.”

            “I see your granary here is new. This must spare you the expense of repairing the old one below.” Alexander did not mention the rats that had infested the old building for years, convulsing the people with disease while de Hagenau continued to escalate the price of his grain.

            “Yes. More workers this year than last. I can repair at a good clip.”

            Alexander held his finger to his temple for a moment, then opened his arms as though praising the sun. “Two things outside of your own goodness stand out in our town for their unique potential. On the one hand we have an empty granary. On the other an inspired poet. Surely you know of our own Maestro Maroc.”

            “I have heard of his fines,” the lord piped. “Yes, yes. I have heard your impundencies praised for their wit.”

            Lucien bowed as he grinned, beginning to speak on the upswing, but the old magistrate darted first. Alexander proceeded to weave flattery, grandiloquence and cajolery into a crown for the Sieur, all the while drawing the wonders of the old broken granary and Lucien closer together. As de Hagenau listened with growing suspicion, an oleaginous man boldly stepped up to the circle and scrutinized the intruders. When Alexander tapered off his speech in a subtle rebuke at the intrusion, de Hagenau put the man forth as his bailiff, Dadais. The latter glowered a bit and rudely waited for the conversation to resume. Weary of the treating, Lucien summarized his concept and requested that the lord consider for this means the abandoned granary at the end of the village.

            “It will be many months of labor, but it should be successful.

            Dadais sneered as the Seigneur gaped. “What? Use my property for some damned leprosarium? Donate the holdings of my own family to these miscreants and pigs?”

            Behind his back, Alexander made a gesture meaning ‘money.’

            “A theater, lord, and something which will make your name the envy of Court. ” Lucien spoke automatically, detesting the words scrambling out of his mouth like spiders. “I did not say donate. There are profits to reap in such an honorable venture. You would be the first and the proudest name in the arts. I swear there is money ready for your coffers –calling out for your protection. Actors merely need to eat, and even then, not often.”

            At this point the boy incongruously hurled himself against the lord and drove his fist into the man’s side. Without removing his eyes from Lucien, de Hagenau straightened his arm and sent the child pirouetting as his fist dented his forehead. To the bailiff he squeaked: “Get that changeling out of my sight!”

            De Hagenau set his teeth and peered off towards the vineyard. “How much money?”

            “Whatever you wish. Make the theater an attraction of your fair; more people will come, more coins will spill.”

            “How many coins?” he persisted.

            “I’ll draw up some figures,” Lucien suggested. “I shall reckon the cost and the number of people we might expect to attend.” He glanced over at Alexander as he wondered how to hold the lord’s skinny attention. “I would not trouble you thus if such a venture would not bring you the best of returns, both for your purse as well as your fame.”

            De Hagenau nodded, then stalked away. “Tomorrow at nine I will look at your numbers.”

            When he had vanished, Lucien and the old magistrate shrugged at each other before turning back. Alexander was silent as they returned to the inn.

*

Each day, for the next fortnight, Lucien followed the old magistrate up to the keep. De Hagenau was never in place to keep their appointments, and they would stand in the dusty courtyard mutely observing the semi-freed stickmen toiling or rattling off to work the vineyards, their faces like broken spears, their shoulders twigs. Fortunately for de Hagenau, the Church promised them that disobeying their liege was as sure a way to damnation as dismissing the wishes of God. Bare-legged and bent, they stumbled around in thin, ragged tunics dragging the scythes and the hoes they could themselves not afford to own. Some of them cried although parched of all tears as they forced themselves off to slave another day.

            Lucien would wait for hours, flapping his papers until the Seigneur condescended to look over his figures. Each time he did so he was interrupted by his bailiff and Lucien found himself accelerating his speech as the man hulked away. Each day brought promises of interest, intimations of endorsement, and a rude dismissal followed by a summons to appear on the morrow.

            Ignoring the child beside him, the Seigneur was scowling at a sketch Lucien had made based on speculation about the interior of the granary when he grabbed hold of Dadais as the man led a score of wasted souls off to the fields.

            “Where are the rest of the dogs?” he demanded.

            “The rest are too hungry to work today. They were working through the night and need bread and some sleep.”

            He rounded on the bailiff: “Hungry? So am I hungry! See to it as you wish, but don’t let me hear of it again. Tell them we’ll fill their bellies with some steel!”

            Dadais ran off. As de Hagenau began to stride away, Lucien coughed. The Seigneur wheeled on him and growled: “I have no more time for this talk today. Come back tomorrow.”

            “We’ve come every day for two weeks,” Alexander protested.

            “What a generous host I am, then.” He held out his chest and glared at them. In that moment both Lucien and Alexander realized that they were wasting their time, that the only theater de Hagenau would ever sanction was this charade of power designed to make them grovel for his own entertainment.

            As they walked away, the boy bounced a rock off Alexander’s back. At the sound of the thud, everyone turned at once. The child ran off yaffling like a dying animal; de Hagenau, who had made a brief show of fury, now stood smiling.

            Lucien dusted the old man off and turned him firmly down the road.

            “That swine,” he muttered. Lucien had never before seen Alexander ruffled by anger. “In my land such a lord would be cleaning cloacas. I am sorry to have wasted your time with this. De Hagenau is notorious throughout the land for giving empty promises and hooking full purses. It is better, perhaps. He has ruined stronger men than you.”

            Lucien thought as they walked back to the granary for one last disconsolate look. “He can’t comprehend what it is, or would be, so it can’t come to be in his mind. If a man tells me something cannot be done,” he said, “I know that I am the one to do it. It ignites my blood, which tells me there is a way. Just you watch the people flee once I erupt!”

            Alexander grabbed Lucien’s arm hard. “You be cautious, Maroc.” The man calmed himself then let a patina of diplomacy glaze over his eyes as he saw a woman standing in front of the old granary. He looked up at the clouds, back at the woman, then marched Lucien over to the building, explaining quickly: “There is a way indeed, Maestro. Forget de Hagenau –I will present you to his wife. She can be trusted to see this through.”

            Unfurling a ribbon of pleasantries as they approached, Alexander maneuvered them alongside the woman who was regarding the building petulantly, as though its existence was bothersome. Odile de Hagenau, as the magistrate introduced her, was quickly amused by the elaborate speech neatly knotting her name with the young Maestro’s.

            “The gardens we saw,” Alexander explained, “are her doing.” He meant for Lucien to understand that any sympathy for the arts rested in this half of the de Hagenau family alone.

            Lucien took the cue and bowed. “Ah: the flower tamer.”

            She laughed at the appellation. “Less formal, please: simply Odile. –We hold little with ceremony here in Rapelle.”

            “The granary,” began Alexander. “We noticed you looking at it.” She nodded. “Our Maestro here had also been eyeing it. Perhaps you should speak with him. Who knows –sometimes great doings arise from such ruins.”

            Odile looked back at the building, then grinned at Lucien. She spoke of having seen him before, as though offering friendship. Lucien had seen her over the years as she swept quickly through the village, invariably smiling and speaking kind and encouraging words to the townsfolk. Her blond hair had had more luster back then, and she appeared less animated now. Still lithe, where once was a young woman he might associate with bluebirds or strawberries, now stood a fading rustic in her forties. She was sharplipped, with vertical lines of ultimatum settling in around her mouth.

            “The masons from around the county have asked to lease it,” she was saying, “so that they might have a guild hall of their own. I suppose it would be charitable.”

            Lucien thought quickly, then explained what he wished to do with the ruin. Odile understood his notion as slowly as the others had, but, sighing inwardly, he forced himself to recite his tale even though he himself was bored by it now. When he saw her weighing the same measures of prestige and profit he had seen in her husband’s eyes, he added: “The theater could play during the fair seasons and the whole building could be reconfigured so that it might serve as a guild hall for all the artisans in the area. Here’s one way: by alternating time and usage between the theater and the artisans’ meetings, you could bring happiness to the public and earn rent from each guild as well.”

            Alexander dipped his head judiciously. The lady de Hagenau was shocked by Lucien’s audacity, but she trusted the old man beside him; if Alexander could understand this beehive notion, and was now mutely endorsing it, perhaps it made sense.

            At her invitation they sat on a log. Lucien continued to expound on this strange idea, startling her with his extemporaneous weaving of art and commerce, unfolding truths and proofs before her like a peddler pulling carnations from his basket. She had always desired to meet this dark one. Now he was proposing a joining of means: “…Ungodly work and expense,” he said, “but if we both put our halves together we’ll have something even Paris has not seen. I can raise half the monies needed, and I know how to refashion the building so that everyone can use it best. I can pay back my lenders and keep a troupe alive with what we earn from the shows, and you will have new revenues from the guilds. They will start forming themselves anyway and will all wish to use your hall; during the days of the fairs they could even exhibit their crafts here and at night the plays will keep the visitors amused. All Rapelle will profit by the commerce of increased visitors.”

            “Oh, dear Jesus,” she bit her hair. “This is much more than I’d thought of.”

            Lucien quieted down immediately.

            “I believe you’re right. I like it,” she chirruped. “I don’t know how you ever thought of such a thing, but if we do it we shall be looking after the good weal all around.”

            “Wealsome for all,” Alexander agreed, smiling.

            De Hagenau and his bailiff pulled up in a wagon, glaring suspiciously at the group. Odile shrank into herself and rose to meet her husband’s gesture. She looked frightened as she shook Lucien’s hand. “I must give this some peaceful consideration. We might speak again in the next days.”    

            Lucien and Alexander watched as the wagon rolled off. The avian sounds of argument drifted behind it,

            “Well, we’ve done with the great lord,” Lucien remarked. It was but the first step in a long pilgrimage.

            Alexander shook his white head slowly. “Not him, my friend. With him it’s never finished.”

            Lucien steered him to the inn to celebrate this initial victory, saying: “It is now. I have finished with him.”

            To Genevieve’s amazement, Lucien then locked himself away and wrote for a week without pause, falling dizzy into bed long after Ursule had begun to writhe and argue in her sleep, only to prise himself from Genevieve’s soft arms and stagger out to add a vision he had seen while drifting through the reeds of mental twilight.

            With his text half done, he sent word through Alexander that Odile de Hagenau should meet him in the Black Swan, where her husband seldom stalked. On the appointed day she entered brightly, stopping every few steps to greet some citizen and anoint them with her smile. Eventually she seated herself across the table from where he waited.

            Armed with verse and math, he first showed her the calculations he had made; if they each put forward several hundred livres, revenues would, by experienced estimation, come back with an enviable profit. He himself would guide the work of renovation in addition to creating a troupe of actors. She was visibly pleased by the projected revenues. After a flash of monetary joy, the Lady became nervous, gnawing her lip and staring around the inn.

            Lucien pressed on, striving to stoke this faded flame: “Your family is entitled to three fairs a year with all taxes exempted from the gains. Much depends on synchronizing the theater with the spring fair in particular. The fair goers will help pay for the theater, and word of the theater will in turn bring more travelers to Rapelle, bringing more to the merchants, yourself and the actors. It is crucial that they all intermesh so that everyone is content.”

            “And you say that the artisans will be forming guilds anyway, so they might as well make Rapelle their center.” She glanced at the figures he had drawn up, distractedly. “And if I meet these expenditures, I can reasonably expect this much income in return?”

            “Yes. I’m certain of it. Here are my own costs. Outside of food and drink, I won’t be able to pay the actors for the first two months. After that the money should be moving. Because of the amount I’ll need to raise and the work involved, I would like a promise of access for five years. –One play at fairtime each year.”

            She looked up at him then quickly away, brushing her hand over her breasts as she sought reassurance in the satin of her blouse. “Your play –this epic of love– can it truly work?”

            “See here,” he said, laying before her the opening pages of his script. It was an invocation of love, citing the mysteries of sighs and roses, yearning thundering across the years, passion hot and sweet like smoke and honey; brilliant birds erupted from its pages, secret fingers brushed weeping thighs. Lucien mutely recited the words he’d written for the narrator as he watched Odile read. Colors, mists, angels and lovers swirled through the script as they had in his dream, desire began to purr as the narrator’s speech and the alchemy of hearts and lips transmutated the vague ideal into a pageant of timeless love, a great cleansing wave of redemption.

            “Oh,” she flushed. She smoothed the pages with a trembling hand and passed them back to Lucien. He knew he could begin his work if those words had showed her the scope of his goals.

            “Should I do it?” he asked. “Do you see now how it can work?”

            “You’re very different from the others. I believe you.” She regained her smile. “This could be like another garden for me.”

            Lucien added, gallantly, “And with you beaming down on it like a sun, it will bloom into something wondrous indeed.”

            Lucien was concerned that de Hagenau might try to obstruct the project.

            “My husband has no say in this. That building is all I have left in my own name and he cannot frighten me away from doing good.”

            “Then I am accountable solely to you?”

            Odile smiled. “Yes. Only to me.” As she spoke, Lucien heard something crackle inside her.

            “I assume you have an attorney; we shall need a legal contract detailing what we’ve just agreed on.” Lucien knew his position as a free man –a poor man– could prove fatal. Between equals, honor still fashioned a bond, but in the cities he had seen others like himself suddenly deprived of the rewards of their labors due to some whim of the gentry. Often simple greed wiped out a man’s life when a lord scented advantages he could horde for himself. With Alexander’s caveat rumbling in his ears, he sought to bind any de Hagenau in the links of the law.

            Odile kept her eyes on him, nodding gently. “Yes, we have such a man. If you could write down what we’ve said, I will take it to him.”

            “That I will.”

            “And this,” she spoke, touching the script. “You take many risks, young Lucien. –Why this? Why so much romance? What is it you desire from life, from this…this undertaking?”

            Lucien winced then looked off into the corner. “New times. All the old confusions are compounded with those coming. A dire tangling has netted us with all our petty dreads and resentments, suffocating us as we squirm upon ourselves. Someday the world will perish as it was born, in a flame, but by then mankind will be as thick and wanton as weeds or consciously integrated. Cultivated, content in commonality, art, love. Until then, I can only speak of what I know –of what should be. Everyone should hear within them the memory of bliss; one man and one woman ringing together like one great bell. They won’t, but I will warn them.”

            She blushed. Then, laying her hand over his, affirmed: “They will listen. I will listen. Tell me what to do and how to do it and I give you my word that nothing will keep this from the people. All of it –the whole idea– is purely good.”

            “Then this shall be a work of love above all,” Lucien nodded.

*         *         *

The sun rose over the trees, and began to warm the air just as Odile arrived to break the seals on the granary doors. Lucien and Antoine had been waiting on the log out front for an hour. The younger man explained that the de Hagenaus kept people waiting for any and everything, as if this was one of the last means they had to assert their authority. Odile’s morning grin shrank when they entered the building; it was neck-deep in horded scraps and rotting trash. She staggered through the place cursing and Lucien worried she would dismiss their plans in despair.

            “You’ll need luck, certainly. Oh. Leave these things here out the side,” she said, poking her foot at another heap of odd rust. “Some of this belongs to my husband, some to me. We’ll remove them when we find a place for them up at the keep.” She lifted a glance of helplessness at Lucien, laughed and shrugged, then left.   

            With a borrowed wagon and borrowed shovels, Lucien and Antoine hurled themselves into the emptying of the old granary. Before any work could be started at all every hill of muck would have to be disposed of. They were sickened by the refuse yet dug through it doggedly.

            The day half missing, they stood gagging and disconsolate beside the wagon, wondering whether they could survive the ride to the open fields or whether the bludgeoning stench would kill them before they had traveled more than a few feet. Encrusted with filth, fumes visibly steaming off their clothes to belabor their eyes and throats, they looked at each other and began to feel a shared mirth, despite their retching and spitting.

            “God, what are we to do with this dung heap?” Antoine gasped.

            “Are you referring to this collection of treasures? This blessing distilled from the most rarified fruits of man and earth? Antoine,” Lucien said, “we cannot in good or even adequate conscience leave such loot prey to the whims of time, especially not when my own whims are far more novel. Drive us forward, friend, and let us lend a proper cortege to this cornucopia!”

            Thrashing as they rode in a cloud of flies and reek, they navigated the wagon past the villagers who recoiled as this guffawing, coughing, blaspheming load of hell rolled by them, horrified by the two fecal spirits with the four red eyes at the helm.

            They backed the wagon all the way up to Pompeux’s hut, where they could discern his snoring inside, and scraped the contents out into one heap directly against his door. The door, Lucien explained, opened inwards, so that Pompeux would have no choice but to tunnel his way out if he did not care to finish his days barricaded and starving inside. He was too stout to escape via the windows, and it was fortunate that he slept until late afternoon, because Antoine’s crazed giggling was uncontrollable.

            When they had finished the door was completely obscured by a pile of writhing crap as tall as a man and as broad as three. The relief of having done with their task hit them the same moment that the remarkable atrociousness of Lucien’s joke finally struck home. They stood for a minute silent and in awe, marveling at this eighth wonder of the world, absorbing its full symbolism, feeling the gasps of future generations whistling through them as those unsullied, good common men of tomorrows shuffled past to probe the secret meaning of the monument. Pompeux’s Tomb then disgorged a sort of thick, brown spackled gas and began to undulate, maybe becoming a homunculus before their very eyes.

            “Oh, Jesus!” squealed Antoine, peddling back. “We’ve stirred it up too much, the maggots are losing their minds!” As soon as he’d said it he started shushing them and giggling worse as he circled the pile patting his hands at the air around it, tears cutting stripes through his filthy face, until they were both bawling so helplessly that they had to crawl to the wagon and each of them fell twice trying to get up.  

*

A day after having cleared the hall of most of the clutter and offal, Antoine fell ghastly ill, leaving Lucien to carry on with the innumerable tasks alone. Having thundered at Lucien for his trick with the garbage, Pompeux, upon reflection, comprehended that it had been a clear signal that his temple was under way, and chortled as he fumed, knowing that pranks meant progress in the actors’ world. By now Pompeux had read the script as it stood and had as well realized that Lucien was building a masterpiece, with roles such as he had never assayed; he was exhilarated.

            With wine and logic Lucien extracted a vow of secrecy from the old actor. Not until the play actually opened would anyone know what would unfold on the stage. Pompeux swelled still more. Lucien kept his friend at bay while he whirled through the village cautiously testing the soundness and abilities of those he thought might be of value. Fashioning a troupe of skilled players in this bucolic backwater was simply one more ‘impossible’ task Lucien felt himself rising to, and he kept his eye on several people he might approach. Meanwhile, realizing that the scope of the music was beyond him, he dispatched a letter to Ricard de Lille, another secret Jew and one of the most skilled musicians he’d met in his life. They had known one another many years back and had both settled in the county around the same time. Ricard arrived at the Black Swan in answer to Lucien’s invitation and they sat for two hours while the Maestro apprised him of the project and tried to recruit de Lille as a music-master.

            “I have almost half the songs written,” Lucien said, “but those are the comic pieces. For true beauty I need you. Heartbreaking ballads remain to be written; I have neither the time nor the art to do them alone. Then I shall require a man to help train the actors to sing them. Most importantly, I need a man to assemble the musicians and direct them through the rehearsals and during the performances. It will almost kill you, I promise, but the work is rewarding in the end.”

            Ricard trusted Lucien but was unsure of himself. Lucien attempted to erase de Lille’s fright of failure as well as his terror of people in general. Red-lipped, wax-faced and tall as a Maypole, he had a thinning brush of hair haloing out around his head. His eyes were heavy with an unnamed tragedy. Ricard liked to laugh well enough, but he carried a sort of dread around in his purse. Lucien knew him to be gentle and sensitive to any troubling wind, but he expected his talent to marshal the troupe he would supervise. Ricard smiled tearfully over his wine and squirmed as Lucien continued to reassure him of his esteem, his own powerful guidance.

            Ricard decided to emerge from his seclusion and nodded his head in assent: “Ah…Very well,” he puffed. “Just let me know when you don’t love me anymore.”

*

Odile appeared at the granary glowing and dressed in fine satins. She laughed and apologized for her tardiness, then glided through the hall waving phrases of praise for the work Lucien had done. Suddenly his vision seemed to be viewed from her own eyes. He escorted her around the heap of oddities nobody knew what to do with and sat her beside him as he showed her the drawings, carefully explaining what would be removed, what would be built, and how much each task would cost.

            “Your task begins now,” he concluded.

            “What should I do, Maestro?” she grinned and touched his arm as she tasted the word.

            “Contact all the skilled craftsmen in the county. Once the artisans understand that the de Hagenaus want them to form guilds, they will rush to do so. By centralizing their functions here in Rapelle, they will feel protected by your family.”

            “I see. Then I should dispatch a letter around the county championing this and bearing my seal.”

            “Precisely. My schedule,” he said as he flipped through his papers, “will be so; take this copy for yourself. When the artisans respond, you contract with them to lease the hall around my time and accept a deposit for the first year’s rents. This way you can raise what you need to help pay for the renovation; I should be able to raise my half next week.”

            Lucien halted when he saw she was no longer listening. Her eyes had been following the contours of his face and her smile had locked up. He returned her scrutiny until she shook her head and unhooked the smile again.

            “We should be raising flowers together. I could show you how,” she said. “Drop out of your head, Lucien Maroc, even you must like flowers.”

            “Yes,” he ventured. “I like the purple ones like night. Like velvet faces raiding the day.”

            “Dark colors,” she said. “Dark colors, dark eyes.” She twisted her head away quickly. “I need so much life. Orange is a good color for that. Orange feeds my heart.” After a silence she looked at him again. “You like the night, don’t you, my friend?”

            His smile stung her with melancholy as he nodded then laughed: “Yes. I like to see all the little houses kissing in the moonlight.”

            The words fell away like chaffdust as they stood up together. Outside, evening was rubbing its hands together –pushing, urgent, pulsating jasmine. A face brushed across his and when his view reopened he saw Odile crease her brows and shuffle a step back, almost in irritation. She became rigid, staring at him, then said: “It’s love, isn’t it? Oh, no…how can we do this, then?”

            Lucien nearly spat, livid at himself, but spoke evenly enough. “I don’t believe we should do anything at all. I’m sorry.” He stepped away, watching her face shrink a bit. She held her breath and swallowed, unconsciously pressing her legs together beneath her skirts.

            “I understand,” she said. “Ah. Well. we have so much work to do we can at least enjoy the time we pass together.”

            “There will be much of that. It will have to suffice.”

            “Good.” Odile gave him her hand in agreement. “With friendship work is so much more rewarding.”

*

With his dream now sanctioned, Lucien plunged into the toil stretching out before him like a desert. As he tore through the town working and organizing, he heard a strange note reverberating above the rush of creation, and he realized that it was the sound of domestic discord released from his skull. He began to live his life again.

            The characters he’d created from the breath of his mind already lived beside him, seduced and abandoned each other before his eyes, adored and scolded one another and wept, sighed, tumbled and danced across the stage in his head. Every minute of the day, each puff of night, was consumed with the transmutation of the idea into reality. He would dash in and out of bed to his writing table, then leap up and fly out the door in the morning to compose with Ricard, scour the walls of the granary, grab idle carpenters and tear his hands on the rough lumber being extracted or erected, sketch designs for the machines he would need to bring the story to life, then rush over to the Swan to refine the terms of the contract with Odile. De Hagenau openly resented the Maestro’s presence and sometimes came and grumbled as he and Dadais sought ways to interrupt the negotiations. Genevieve feared the distance between their lives would reach continental proportions and she began to quail. Indeed, it was only now that she realized how separate they had grown. Without comprehending the immensity of the crevasse, she felt a panicked need to bridge it.

            “Don’t worry,” he chuckled, “I don’t sleep with actresses.”

            Lucien firmly refused her pleas to assist him in the undertaking, knowing that he would be responsible for countless people and innumerable decisions every second until the theater had opened, and that her unpredictable moods could easily knock him off balance. As Genevieve fretted, he realized that the three years they had known each other he had only done very minor tasks, that he had kept busy indeed, but that she had not known him as he used to work. Organizing revels and speaking at weddings were nothing compared to the creation of whole marvels.

            “But this is what I used to do, what I am supposed to do. These things in my head. For me they are more real, more lovely, more fearsome than anything out there. They scream to live. If I could simply hand them over to another to birth, to raise, I would, believe me, but I’ve no one else to do it for me. Please, forgive me. It requires some work.”

            “How much work?”

            “All of it.”

            Lucien knew far back in his mind that he was building this unique gift largely for Genevieve, that, as much as he enjoyed subverting the public, the grandiosity of what he was doing could only be truly given to one person.

*

Within ten minutes of presenting his script to a lender he knew, Lucien had collected three hundred livres. This was nearly all the money he would need for the production and his share of the renovation, and he was pleased that it had been raised so quickly. Just before counting out the money, the lender had requested that Lucien affix his name to a document deeding his life as collateral. He was annoyed by the last-minute condition and was about to refuse, when he noticed a number of irregularities in the contract. The faults were all in his favor. He shot up a look at the genial old man across from him and realized he was drunk. Lucien almost spoke, almost pointed out that the contract was useless and unenforceable before he shifted his compassion from the lender to himself. He signed the document as readily as he would sign a lake and rode away with the money.

            Construction began on a serious scale. Inside the building Lucien led Odile around as the carpenters worked like men felling trees in the woods. The Lady de Hagenau displayed wonder and fear as Lucien guided her through the bustling forest, her face clouding over with want when she pulled her attention from the great task before them. Then she would sigh and depart for her garden. 

            When the carpenters left, Lucien returned to the Swan and allowed the froth of song and intrigue pour down onto his papers as he rushed to complete the play. Scarcely bothering to eat, he would then run back to the granary to test the skill of potential players, some of whom he’d discovered lying fallow in Rapelle, for over the years the population had doubled, and had brought along some who had once traveled the wagons or had played in pageantries.

            Women found Pierre handsome; for this acclaim he earned a place as the narrator and tenor swain. Rose was a child of sixteen who could be as beautiful as a woman without knowing it. She sang across the scale and would unconsciously bring tears of remorseful longing to the men. The somewhat older woman was Dominique, who had melodized at small functions around the county. Another unconscious beauty, sleep-eyed, sensual as fruit, with a succulent lisp that stunned men and women alike, she sang like a willow but she was reserved and demure; Lucien needed a temptress. He could fix that, set her alight like a torch.

            As the Maestro began to tame time itself, keeping a firm rein on the weeks hurtling past, Odile was torn between Lucien’s advice to dismiss any hope of passion shared and the need to understand and act on the accelerating madness of creation. They enjoyed each other’s company, Lucien noting how she liked to chatter like the bluebells she lifted from the soil. She was shaken by the virulence of her husband’s opposition however; de Hagenau was manifestly incensed that Lucien had successfully set his plan into operation without him, and began to appear unexpectedly when Lucien and Odile were reviewing plans at the theater. Lucien carefully explained each step he took, but the bewildering overbalance of work over love gnawed at her heart and she would fret, forgetting to contact the artisans and trembling visibly before both her husband and Lucien. She could be a welcome sunlight, but she also secreted the brassy smell of fear.

            One afternoon de Hagenau appeared and seized her by the arms, whirling her away as he growled close to her face. Lucien stood up just as the Seiur released her. Odile vibrated towards him as her husband rolled off.

            “We should forget about all this,” she said as she shivered. “Leave off with this, Lucien, stay far from me as well. My husband has sworn to prevent it.”

            “If the building is yours, then nothing can stop me.”

            “He promised that he would make you a head shorter.”

            Lucien smiled. “That is how some small men make themselves appear large.”

*

Antoine was still ill in bed, felled by the initial concussion of the work. Lucien spread out his plans for the carpenters, issued instructions for them to follow along with some ale to keep them warm, then ran off to execute an idea of ringing genius: Etienne. Lucien needed a small child to play the angel –a sort of lone Greek chorus who appeared throughout the story to comment wisely and often sardonically on the mésalliances of the other characters, and for this role he had decided on young Etienne, the son of the woman Gudrun. Etienne was plump, intelligent and overly small for his years. Lucien handed a script to Gudrun and had her discuss the offer first with her husband Hebert, then with the boy.

            Back at the Swan, Pompeux marched in dragging a laughing woman of forty or so. He swaggered up to Lucien and spun the woman around before flashing her into a seat: “See what I’ve found. I can almost taste it!” Pompeux had discovered the assistant Lucien would need to keep the players disciplined and cheerful.

            The woman continuously laughed, untroubled by Pompeux’s lechery, and introduced herself as Helene. She was draped in finery and wore a pearl band around her brow. She had only recently fled the city for the calm of village life, having passed her years assisting her father, a notary. Educated, still energetic and drawn to the new, Lucien expected she might very well make a good driller. Pompeux beamed as Helene gaped at Lucien’s synopsis of all they were doing, all they would do. She was intrigued.

            “Right,” Lucien finished, drawing himself up from his chair. “Come along, then, and see for yourself if you can abide us.”

            Pompeux growled like a badger in heat.

            The three of them strode down the road and entered the granary, ushering in a small group of people enticed by the criers Lucien had sent out; these were the souls who had once stalked the boards or now hoped to do so. Odile was present, having expressed great interest in the auditioning, but Lucien found her reserved and uneasy. When he asked after her condition she hissed that he himself was accountable for it. She left in a steam of squelched longing.

            Pompeux crossed his arms over his belly and watched as Lucien instructed the aspirants to sing or tumble, or, when possible, recite. Lucien saw from the corner of his eye that Helene was making notations on paper on her own initiative.

            When an individual had proved themself skilled enough that Lucien felt sure he could elevate them to the level he required, Pompeux, in concert with the Maestro and without visible prompting, would cavort around them or toss them objects, bobbing his face in theirs as he beguiled or screamed to gain a measure of their reflexes and the charge that might be generated to run between them as two characters.

            A tall, taciturn man Lucien did not know took to the arena struggling with a confidence still slippery. As he produced for the Maestro a deep, sawing voice, Lucien noted calm intelligence behind his eyes. Granite eloquence was carved into his face. Lucien saw that with work this man –Maximillian by name– could balance Pompeux. Pompeux would be the star of the play, but Maximillian would carry the weight on his shoulders.

            Equally sure was the inclusion of Mathilde, a heavyweight older woman who had at sometime both sang and acted, and who relished the role of bruised matron of breeding; she would be seduced and seducing in various historical parts, playing the foil to all.

            Lucien and Pompeux had silently agreed on all the roles open except for the buffoon; this was tricky because all of Lucien’s characters were buffoons to a greater or lesser degree, and the man they still needed would have to radiate idiocy like ten suns at once. They were conferring when an argument without rang above the murmurs in the hall. The people stood still as a woman’s voice was heard to call: “You’re as dumb as an animal and you belong with the apes!” A wagon clattered off and a huge man entered the hall and blinked in surprise at the crowd. Then his face cracked open like a cocoanut as he grinned and craned his neck around the room.

            “Hello,” he said. “What are all you doing here?”

            “More to the point,” Pompeux huffed at the intrusion, “what are you doing here?”

            “Nothing,” he grinned. Lucien watched the man as he toyed with the scraps left on the floor of the hall. He peered into a barrel, then rattled it as though see if it was in fact occupied. The noise was annoying. Pompeux rose to direct the man out.

            “What do they call you?” Lucien asked quickly.

            “My wife calls me Seiche –the squid.” Lucien nodded at the justice of this. The man was a nervous assembly of tentacles constantly probing, grasping and fumbling in a slappy way. He was balding and had a broad nose planted over a big cliff of lip.

            “Make it leave,” Pompeux complained.

            Lucien raised a finger to Pompeux without taking his eyes off the man exploring the barrel. “Can you sing?” Lucien persisted.

            “Why should I sing?”

            “Are you an actor, then?”

            The squid considered this. “Well, my wife no longer likes me around, so she dropped me off here. Is that how one becomes an actor?”

            Lucien caught Pompeux’s eye and answered: “Yes.”

            Sieche caught everything Pompeux hurled at him, no matter the size or point of origin, laughing like a child at play, using his huge mouth as a trap on occasion and nearly braining Pompeux as he zipped objects back at him. Delighted, Pompeux ducked as he danced between the flying projectiles, yelping out praises of “What an idiot!”

*         *         *

Winter roared down upon the province, bringing the annual slaughter that, in Rapelle and its affiliated townships, replaced the carnage of those human battles waged all around. The storms leveled destruction with a regularity equaled only by their ferocity, plunging the environs into bleary black days during which whole trees would crash down indiscriminately, slicing through houses and altering the roadways year after year. For months, only occasionally relieved by calm freezing clarity, the citizens would find themselves besieged by these wild forces, afraid to sleep lest they be mashed by cascading firs or granite avalanches freed from years of sleep by the torrents washing above and beneath them. Winds screamed and dogs –more dogs than had ever been counted in clement days– were loosed, appearing as primeval beasts of sharp bone, hair and water itself as the lightning snapped them stalking the crags; except for the hours of clear respite, even the days were illuminated by a tangible black atmosphere, salted with a poisonous cold. As he roamed, particularly during the evening hours, Lucien forced his way through huge atomized squalls exploding through the blackness and almost imagined himself lost in the cataclysmic birthing of a new planet.

            It was during those raging winter nights that Lucien would sit in a corner of the Black Swan and versify as the hours tore around him. Words as sharp as dirks and halberds clashed on his paper, ambuscades and glittering frontal assaults on the pedestrian despoliations so dear to mankind; words of indignation hurled against worship of the mundane, the daily apotheosis of wormhood; words ignited the paper as he championed the supremacy of the one truly holy passion. It was on one of those winter nights, lost in the cosmography of love as the tavern resonated to the din of boors and grubby gentry all around him, that he first noticed her.

            It was the gentlest sound. Head bowed over his work, he heard the bells tinkling as though far away, in a different world altogether. Lucien looked up just as she had passed and connected the mysterious notes to the delicate silver bells that decorated her belt, then he was startled to find himself buried in the most profound silence he had ever known as he watched the woman pass –watched her hips float by like a petal in the breeze.

            He felt bewildered, as though confronted by something he had never before seen, and tugged his head back as he saw an inexplicable spume of dark gold rippling by atop the dress. Her hair, he realized. Oh. A woman, he thought, and then: How strange.

She settled herself at a table of friends and her profiled face dropped into his view.

            The aural world of the inn returned to at the precise moment she sat down and unleashed a loud laugh coarser than any he remember hearing, but with a roll to it that made him think of proud, wild ships shearing the seas. How strange, he thought again, dissecting her face, now three-quarters in sight: eyes set too deep behind a nose both regal and bulbous at once, topped by almost Slavic brows of the same cured gold that lived from her head to her waist. She was laughing and yelling so he could make nothing of the mouth other than remarking how it rode a rather full face, but the eyes struck him as harsh; deeply set and deeply lined, they seemed unfocused and cold. Those few seconds blew away from his thoughts entirely and he carried his papers home through the storm.    

*         *         *

These nights I learned to invert myself and discover this beautiful world from inside my shed. While the frogs rioted outside by the creek, in the rachety straw-strewn hovel it was quite warm and soothing, and I would lay with my legs folded under me, eyes shining through the blackness, chewing the cud I’d regurgitate throughout, listening to the scampering lessons of the mice, the winds traveling past, and watching the stars through the holes in the thatch. Surrounding all this like a drumbeat was the wise presence of the trees, instructing me mutely like the ancient relics of some tall tertiary race. I could grow with the night and be lulled without becoming dull, wisping off to sleep as I learned, always falling off at the correct point in time. I did not have a clock; the mucilage in my veins connecting me to the universe would reach a certain temperature, a specific consistency and serum strength and I would drop my eyes shut and hobble forth to rejoin completely the march into that tenebrous life where all elements, all existence was one.

*         *         *

Gudrun and Hebert were proud to have Etienne taken under Lucien’s direction and the child infuriated the adult players by memorizing his lines instantly. Once Seiche had been adopted into the troupe, Lucien commenced rehearsing each night as soon as he had finished the day’s construction. All his time, his life, was now bolted to the production.

            Unfortunately, Odile, Lucien was discovering, suffered the same sort of confusion affecting so many across the land. Exacerbated by the flaunting of her husband’s opposition, she had the same dreary tendency to misinterpret words which could not have complex meanings, the same tart ease of affront and suspicion, and the same wearing perplexity that took hours to unravel. Between the labors of the day and the training of the players each night, Lucien would report to the Lady on all the progress made thus far and itemize all that remained to begin. Frustrated in her passion, she became hostile to the project. She either was not inclined to listen or was incapable of retaining the information –the idea– from one day to the next, and half days went by with him repeating himself maddeningly. She reeled each time he presented her with a contract containing all they had clarified in the preceding days, and would object to things she had endorsed before, sending him back to his writing pad to draft yet another agreement. Instead of enjoying her company, Lucien began to resent this decimation of his time.

            She would look at him with suppressed desire as he spoke, but snapped her brow tight in cold revolt whenever he asked her about the removal of the obstructions in the granary or if she had considered a schedule for the yet to be formed guilds. The fair was coming in a matter of months, Lucien reminded her, and everything they had planned must be ready by then. Odile would make a great show of pretending that Lucien was usurping her own rights and properties when he pressed her on these matters. Worse, she now insisted that she was a virtual pauper when he raised the issue of her half of the funds. He found that debating such blatant lunacy was pointless, and sat itching and tired as she paraded through a drill of affection, remorse, indignation and lachrymose poverty until, hours later, she would joke and smile once more, bubbling with enthusiasm for the project. Still, as the months dragged on, she remained paralyzed. Lucien was gradually more depleted by the haggling and, as he grew quieter in an attempt to conceal his contempt for her ploy, Odile in turn snatched at any opportunity to spend time with him –whether it was spent in anger or the profession of heartbreak, she seemed not to care.

            Nor did she seem to mind that her performance had been noticed by her husband. While vilifying him and expressing great fear, she nevertheless mooned about openly, meeting with Lucien under the watchful eyes of the townsfolk while accomplishing nothing her husband could attribute to business. De Hagenau and Dadais now forsook all other duties and stalked both Odile and the Maestro in a blistering rage. Odile quivered more but had the good sense to realize Lucien was right when he pointed out the danger of prolonging their conferences while producing nothing which could excuse her involvement with him. She dredged up a smile and promised to complete the contract, enter into her share of the funding and execution, and enjoy the fruits of this strange but magnificent project. They pressed each other’s hand as a sign of honorable intent and Lucien flew back to rehearse the players, write new verses, build new trick properties and materialize a theater out of soot and sweat.

            For months without pause Lucien toiled like a machine directed by some distant magician. The moving platforms had by now been assembled; the walls designed to conceal ropes and pulleys were rising amidst shavings, dust and discarded pieces of the former structure. All had to be either removable or easily adapted to the needs of the other artisans who would rent the hall at different times, which complicated the labor several times over. Lucien purchased materials and threw himself into the renovation whenever he was not rehearsing or writing, often putting the actors through a week’s worth of direction in the space of one night. He lived between the theater and the Black Swan, rushing home late to collapse into a troubled sleep for the few hours he could spare. In the midst of the bonebreaking hurricane he had ceased to live.

*         *         *

The evening was pleasant and the tavern was filled with bodies, hemming Lucien in behind a wall of standees as Genevieve threaded her way through the room, leaving him to wrack his brains over the day’s escapades, the morrow’s tasks.

            Antoine had recovered then fallen again. Helene was energetic enough to fill the gap, but he needed them both soon. The dagger in his heart pained him often these days and Lucien felt flayed. He several times more that week had to tell Odile that he could not belong to her and she had started to spark like mutton fat as he attempted to remain friendly while seeing through the work. While her earlier unmoving posture rigidified, she now felt entitled to yell at him as well; discussions about the dovetailing of their endeavors or attempts to sign a contract had become pounding nightmares. Lucien reviled himself and began to loathe the world that had granted him so little power over his own life –his own art– so much that he as a human evaporated.

            Eugene dashed in and Jacqueline raced to his arms. He swung her round then flung himself into the seat next to Lucien. In rainbow spirits he related how he had sold his entire stock of elixir over the last two months at a profit which guaranteed the expansion of the enterprise. He slapped Lucien across the back and insisted he celebrate with him, all their scheming having at last opened the door to riches. Wild with glee, Eugene then leapt up and, towering over the mob, proclaimed the success of the new man’s commerce.

            “Come,” he announced, “and be my guests!” He swept his long arms out to encompass the whole tavern. “Jupon’s business will have to wait while you all help me raise a glass to my own!”

            Genevieve, he saw, was merrily speaking to a well-dressed couple as they joined the revelers heading for the door. As they turned, he saw that one was the woman with the golden hair who had passed by him once before on a ferocious winter night. She took the arm of the man beside her and they melted into the crowd. He hadn’t remembered that moment until this one.

            Leaving the tavern and piling into Eugene’s wagon, they drove through the firs until they rolled up to the house. Eugene and Jacqueline distributed wine as the group fell around the room on beds, pillows, tables and benches. All had a reason to abandon their cares for the night, and the conversation was boisterous. A grand toast was raised to Eugene’s success. Lucien, resting on the floor by the fire, allowed his fatigue to settle within while he hid his growing disgust behind a facade of automatic good cheer. At Eugene’s request he sang a few verses of recent doggerel, a veiled impertinence he had titled ‘Pull Out, Henry.’ The drinkers laughed and one shocked stranger inquired if such songs did not usually lead the singer to the pillories.

            “Lucien,” Eugene chuckled, “would sing even worse verses from the stocks.”

            “And much worse he has, too,” Genevieve promised.

            “All laws are inimical to art,” Lucien proclaimed. The roguish band hoisted their cups to this.

            Another asked: “Do you mean that codes and honor should exempt the poet?”

            “Codes and honor?” Lucien was astounded that anyone present would still believe in such a thing. He turned to rebuke the speaker and discovered that it was the young woman who had passed him at the Swan, and he very faintly recalled the sense of confusion he had felt for those few seconds. She had been seated not far from him and now moved a bit closer, towards his feet, her face fixed on his with a nervous and unwavering mien.

            “You’re Lucien Maroc,” she suggested timidly. “My name is Celeste Couronne.”

            Lucien blinked then remembered to bob his head. He knew he was not anonymous in the region these days.

            “Do you truly mean that –all the laws mean nothing to you?”

            He wrestled with the foul opinion he had of everything. “There is no law but that of hypocrisy. We are raised like ptarmigan, solely for the kill. These new times are dark, every man and woman endangered by the unconcern for life displayed by the law, facing on one side the deciding might of anyone’s sword, on the other the cruel caprice of the well-dressed men. –Pray, how does this serve the land?”

            Her face flushed with a quick consternation. “But surely that is why we have our betters, to afford us protection?”

            Lucien scoffed derisively. “Protection? Look around you, child; we live on our knees except when twisting from the gibbet! The kings and nobles exercise their tempers and avarice by first taxing their vassals then testing their mettle in forced and wasteful games of slaughter. While the chivalrous rules you speak of –rules of war, after all– protect the combatants from certain excesses, life for the common man is one great personal threat.”

            Celeste crawled closer and her head seemed drawn towards his with each word he spoke. Her countenance was both blank and intent at once. “But whatever is so odd about that?” she pressed.

            “As the terror is personal, it seeps into the dreams of each individual, and threatens to drive us all to savagery.”

            This last was greeted with a grunt of disbelief by the man who had accompanied her. She shifted her gaze from Lucien to the second man for but a moment.

            The youth moping behind her she distractedly introduced as her betrothed, Paul Fouché. He was reserved and silent although quick to smile when addressed in good humor. He was tall and thin, with wide flat shoulders and a lank shock of chestnut hair falling into iced blue eyes. As Celeste pressed the conversation the way a perishing man would sue for extreme unction, Lucien realized that the young man must be the stable lad mentioned by de Hagenau. He heard Genevieve ask the youth about his life and heard him say that his family had attached him as a squire to de Hagenau’s retinue as a prerequisite for serving as a knight someday. Lucien detected a smack of resentment in the boy’s answer, as though even the squiring was being dangled at arm’s length from the present.

            The girl was objecting: “And what might be made of this, then? I thought things were always so. There are many people striving for a better life, are there not? Are there not always new goods, new rules of trade?”

            Lucien extended a hand and said: “Eugene sees what might be done with it: trading one set of goods for another has often brought mankind some fraternity…”

            “Ah! Then things do work?”

            “Not now. Eugene’s commerce is actuated by the need for freedom, not slavery.”

            “But what do you mean?“

            “At present he is an anomaly. Too much is vested in the system of serfdom. –You are how many years?”

            “Four and twenty.”

            “Then you have seen enough. What sort of society is this? What have you observed of man’s moiety? Work hard, sweat, double over in pain, shred your body and boil your soul until, crippled and unreasonably aged, you are dismissed to perish of want, destitution, having ruined yourself profiting your master. Toiling in frantic despair, racing for the grave: that is life around you.”

            “But why is it so? Can we not merely be happy?”

            Her relentless questioning of each strand of words out of his mouth began to unnerve him. He did not desire to hash over these things; he himself was not interested. He didn’t want to hear his voice at all, and on her part there appeared to be no mentation involved, merely a voracious appetite for immediate answers.

            “Perhaps, but not this way,” Lucien continued. “Even animals turn wild and unrestrainable when brutalized. One cannot expect them to cower in a corner forever. Why not man? How long can he be cornered and fettered to misery while licking his lips at the debauches of his lords? I swear to you there will be a bloodbath one day. A tidal wave of indignation, then butchery. Watch your grand men run then, all the nobles, sheriffs, magistrates who’ve never tasted the cruelties they dispense; no, no, this cannot last. One fine day the masters will find that the flames of this netherworld they’ve ruled will begin to lick about their feet. It will be a time of massacre.”

            Paul Fouché squirmed. Celeste kept her eyes locked on Lucien and jutted her head still more forwards, asking: “How?“

            “As the tormented animal springs, so shall the common man. The weight of his slavery will become too heavy, the ringing phrases of Church and Court will become as gibberish as his blood yells for its natural freedom. He will run mad into the fields and seize for himself the harvests, the firewood, and find himself an animal with the same animal powers as the flesh which had presumed to oppress him. Food and land will be clutched in the same hands that will clutch the neck of any noble attempting to stop him; the facade of laws will crumble; any attempt to collect taxes will be suicidal…”

            Her neck now jutted forth from her collar at nearly forty-five degrees in angular measure; as her face loomed closer to his with each interrogative, Lucien involuntarily began to catalogue her features and assemble them into a coherent physiognomy, for he had no memory of her appearance, only that sense of bewilderment. Inclining towards him was a hard convex brow which she had tried to soften or hide with fringe. The long eddies of her hair, he noticed, did diffuse a dark golden aura about it, and, though different in color and quite fair, so did her skin. The eyes were such a very mild brown that the speckling of jade compelled one to pronounce them hazel, which, after all went rather harmoniously with her hair, her skin and her lashes. They seemed small, but they weren’t –round yet long in fact. This might have been the effect of her pie-shaped face. It was the fullness of this last that disturbed Lucien as it bobbed towards him, eclipsing the rest of the room; the humorless intensity of it as she continued to question him, the bulb of the nose repeating the spherical theme as it stepped advance-guard over a wide but pouty mouth, in itself overawed by the cheeks  –not cheek bones or cheeks as descriptive of high coruscating accents, but rounded just below the shelf of bone– of the sort Lucien had only seen on babies, and tapering off into a delicate chin, struck him on the whole as either comical or grossly sensual. He lowered his eyes as he spoke and watched her nervous hands with the joy of one secretly uncovering something rare and of unparalleled beauty. White and gentle, elegant and magically shaped, they hopped around on each other like innocent snow rabbits, wearing collars of silver imbedded with coral, amethyst and fragile tourmalines. Without thinking he smiled as he lifted his head in mid-sentence, now noting that, while creased along the extremities, her eyes were themselves pretty, turning up at the outer ends with a feline curl –more than his own. This face, whatever composed it, whatever lived behind it, was unusual, unique, unlike any of the thousands he’d seen.  

            Celeste bit her lip when she saw him smile, and looked worried as she followed his words. Then she projected her face still closer and persisted:

            “But why?“

            “God,” I thought. “What an importunate brat.”

            Lucien was rescued from this exasperating press by a sudden and wild occurrence. Eugene had begun to scratch nervously on a corrugated ceramic vase standing beside him; Paul looked over at Eugene, back at his betrothed, pushed at her arm and let out a rill of Saracen challenge, jolting Genevieve and lifting Lucien’s brows. Eugene grinned like a wolf.

            Celeste blushed a second then leaned into Paul with a sudden gleam in her eyes, excited and strangely agitated. “Should I?” she asked.

            “Go on,” Eugene yelled. “Dance for us, Celeste!”

            Celeste uncrossed her legs and rose straight up in one motion, as though plucked by the air. “Drums,” she said. “Now.”

            Lucien, amused, cocked his head towards Eugene’s low scrape and commenced to tap a Bedouin beat on a bottle with his ring, throwing perimeters up in a circle as the others began to follow him with accents drummed on copper pots, wicker tubs, carpet rolls and chamber pots, laying out a rich weave of beat from bass to treble while Celeste’s feet, suddenly bared, turned and slid beneath her skirts.

            Taking the material in her hands, she kept her feet darting and teasing while tossing the skirts one direction and sailing her hips in the other. Her head became suddenly erect as the speed of her bodily feints increased; a smile stretched across her face, shoving her cheeks up to the bone and transforming her entire face into that of a rapturous and beautiful woman, for the smile, like her glittering downcast eyes, was simultaneously ecstatic and distracted as her body succumbed to the visible mating of music and muscle.

            The Arabic rhythm was a fortuitous accident, Lucien saw, as Celeste had in her past been exposed to the disciplines of the exotic tale and had integrated them into a method of rhythm, seduction, and surreptitious release of her own. Eugene and Paul yipped and pounded. Jacqueline crowed as she drummed and Lucien and Genevieve continued their efforts, amused by the turn of events. The sinuous darting of the vermillion skirts, the naked, daring feet, the cries of delight from the bells as they bounced from hip to hip, began to melt into one elemental force. Spinning, thrusting –necklaces, hair and skirts racing in circles and half-twists– escaping the shackles of gravity and soaring up as one lusting column of fire, Celeste burned and flew so fast that she vanished before their eyes, leaving only a cyclone of red sparks and passion. A full quarter-hour of this unendurable exultation, this homage to wave and wind, sound and silence and womb and inferno –this bursting of the mind– this sacrificial ravaging by the powers of all that is hidden, all that is unscalable and inexorable, had consumed the girl whole.

            What remained in the silence was the flushed and palpitating husk of a child-woman, rooted now with her right leg glistening free of the skirt, swept back and aside, foot pointed, arms trained behind her like the wings of a spiring swift, her back arched, breasts straining towards the hands of God, her face raised up into a perpendicular vortex completing its race to suns, moons and stars.

            Celeste collapsed and Paul scrambled over to her, trickling wine into her mouth while she laughed.

            Genevieve laughed at Celeste’s laughter, looked at her pot curiously and banged it a few times then set it aside. Jacqueline groaned in prostration. Lucien passed his hand over Genevieve’s hair and jerked his head towards the door. As they stood up to leave, Eugene left Jacqueline on the floor and prepared to escort them out and Paul tugged Celeste to her feet that she might bid goodnight to the couple.         

            Now smiling, Lucien turned to Celeste, inclined a slight bow while rolling a hand down from forehead to waist and said “Shalom, Salomè.”

            She dropped a curtsey with the same friendly irony that she saw in his bow and giggled: “Don’t preach too much or you’ll lose your head.”

*         *         *

Hortense became interested in Lucien’s business. She seated herself at a table one day while Lucien was eating with Genevieve and Ursule, and began praising Lucien’s industry and vision. De Hagenau walked in to the Swan and pointed a gnarled finger at Lucien, opening his mouth to utter a warning or prediction of death, when he saw Hortense and stomped out.

            “What in the name of God was that about?” Genevieve asked to the empty air; she had been slammed by the intense hostility and was frightened by its sudden appearance and equally senseless departure.

            “I’ll tell you full well what that was,” Hortense cackled.

            Hortense set her rheumy eyes closer to Lucien’s. She smiled with rage as she recounted her betrothal to the first son of de Hagenau, his heir by a previous marriage. The wife, she implied, had perished horribly. The son was a wildman, yet beloved by all for the generous qualities which set him apart from his father in such sharp relief. Hortense had been young and beautiful and had become engaged to him against his father’s wishes. In the woods they had met with an accident while stag hunting and, while Hortense had been severely injured riding at her betrothed’s side, he had not survived.

            “He was meant to be a full prince of the blood, that one. But he had demons. Demons and the example of his father, which he could not entirely shake, so he put it to greater use instead.” Hortense shrieked with laughter. “He had been minting his own coins. While I was in the convent recovering, our fine lord wasted no time digging up the buried coffers and incorporated the wealth into his own fortune, which was pale then.” Hortense spat in disgust. “He gave me nothing of my man’s. But he can’t touch me, you see, because I know all his secrets.”

            Genevieve grimaced as Hortense continued. Revolted, Lucien rose to leave as the woman was explaining that the new heir –the child Lucien had seen at the keep– was indisputably Odile’s, but owed more to her dead fiancee than de Hagenau.

            Lucien returned to his labors wondering what kind of brothel he was living in.

            Odile made a now rare appearance at the theater and brokenly related how, the night before, she had been discovered by her husband and two of his lackeys in the embrace of a man named Bernard. Lucien watched her sob and wring her sleeves as she hastened to assure him that she was no wanton. Lucien swore he did not think her to be one.

            With an involuntary shiver, Lucien returned to the task of sketching the costumes, which Helene would then translate to material form. He then turned his attention back to the construction, setting men to work and sweating as he wrestled with materiel less weighty still than his thoughts. Eugene came by to assist, looking worried. He told Lucien that his friend Bernard, who lived in a house close by his own, had been set upon by several men in the night, all of whom lived in de Hagenau’s keep. Bernard had been slashed and beaten severely.

            In the evening, Odile passed by once more, scowling at the ongoing work, creasing her face into a stairwell of anguish when she looked at Lucien. This time she had her child along. Nor daring to look at the boy, he walked her aside and, as deftly as possible, turned the conversation from her rather forced plaints to the business at hand.

            “We need to finish this,” he pressed. “We need the rest of the money and we need to sign a contract guaranteeing who has which rights to the building.”

            “But I have no means of raising money! Damn you, Maroc, you used me to get what you wanted and now you expect me to talk business?”

            “Good Christ, what is this death-rattle? I have already spent hundreds on this building and all we can do now is comport ourselves like decent adults and carry through as agreed.” He was beginning to resent her for usurping his time and toying with emotions she probably didn’t have. He was in constant pain, exhausted and indebted and her senseless manipulation of him was grinding. As she finally agreed –yet again– to organize the artisans and draw up a contract the next day, Lucien shook off his irritation and assured her that the benefits they would bring to the towns would set their fates aright.

            Turning back he saw the boy’s face, with its permanent gaping grin of a cretin –a fiend. Skipping out around Odile, with both hands he was mashing great handfuls of food into his face while arguing.

            How ruinous this gluttony was. I was living in a world where people had no wisdom or perspective, where all the lessons available from nature herself were deflected off hard little carapaces of self and selfishness. I would look at the beauty of the landscape around me and try to understand the people in its context, but I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was the only one doing so. These people had crabstalk eyes –calipers, really– oiling out to measure the exact size of this or that potential gratification. Missing were the harmonies of context, of proximity and distance, of light and shade –the very lusciousness of the other ones’ contours as caressed by their own breaths; the scintillation of their own placement, their own astonishment at discovering their location –their being– in and on the leaf-strewn road. I saw the loveliness all around me, and I saw no steps towards happiness. I knew that simple or even tortured souls could unleash storms of beauty with a glance or a tentative grin, yet people splashed around in misery. 

*         *         *

            In the evenings, Lucien had to divide his concentration between the skills and the emotions of the actors. He had to pat out the little brushfires of feuds now developing among them and constantly reiterate their obligations to Ricard and Antoine, whom they resented, not having witnessed much of the men’s work. Pierre and Seiche became fuddled and biting. Etienne, wholly competent in his part, turned his attention to pranks played on the others, some of which Lucien taught him. Young Rose earned the ire of the rest by erratic performances and appearances. When that was resolved, Dominique chanced the same game. After that Lucien began to detect grumblings from Mathilde, who was settling into the role of malcontent; this was the most dangerous to all, although the other actors were disarmed by the affectionate comradery she seemed to offer each of them. Helene decided to keep an eye on her. As birthdays rained down among the troupe, Lucien hosted impromptu celebrations, purchasing victuals, drinks and bouquets, all of which profited the Black Swan and riled the citizens of Rapelle. Night after night the new troupe assembled in the old granary. Never raising his voice above a dreamy pitch, he relentlessly trained them all to tackle the new fabliaux.

            Yet Pompeux’s age was besting his aspirations; his years of debauchery had saddled him with an intermittent memory and an obstinate corpulence, which seemed to hobble him at what he hoped to be his greatest moment. Lucien, after days of intensive work, was ultimately unable to coax Pompeux into performing the Strassbourg vault necessary to the second act, and Pompeux, finding his physical routines gradually excised as a result of his infirmities grew furious with himself, with Lucien, with the world that had reduced him to standing stout and static, reciting songs where notes scurried out of his vocal grasp. Lucien restored some balance to the situation by penning more dialogue for his old friend, but the specter of stage-death hung over Pompeux and drove him to fits of indignation. Upon discovering that he could no longer leap nor perform mock heroics without clutching his chest, Pompeux stormed out of rehearsal one evening and marched through the town cursing Lucien and all writers in the loudest and vilest manner. Not even Helene could tamp his rage. He was turned out of the Swan for excessive vulgarity and Lucien was later confronted by a group of insulted merchants.

            “For the love of civilization,” barked Ronald the butcher, “don’t let those actors out unsupervised!”

*

Helene arrived one day with a new suitor in tow, seemingly anxious to turn him over to Lucien, as the man’s attentiveness was elaborate and determined. Helene generally made excellent use of her admirers, but this one appeared more in control than the others and she required a certain amount of distance to reap the best return. Lucien  was introduced to a sinewy, strong and courteous man of middle age who had obviously earned his living by arms. As soon as Helene had deposited him with Lucien and run off to locate the items on her daily list the man, Christian by name, abandoned himself to the fascinating endeavors going on around him. As Lucien collaborated with four other men in the final assembly of a windlass, Christian enthusiastically joined in the work.

            “I heard you were constructing a new kind of theater,” he grinned. “Not preparing to lay a siege. Look at these towers you have here: I could take a small city with all these machines.”

            “And by storm we shall take it.” Lucien avowed. “First Rapelle, then the whole county. We have to secure the windlass before nightfall, though. –That’s when the actors infest the hall.”

            Christian eyed the contraption in bafflement and asked. “What do you need to do with this?”

            “Bolt it over there in the wing, then secure the pulleys and cables up and over here. Once rigged in place this system guarantees a happy outcome for all, for it manipulates the Deus ex Machina.”

            “In that case I could have used one many times.”

            Lucien scanned his wrinkles, his scars. He took note of the way he carried one side of himself rigidly and hazarded a guess: “Poitiers?” he asked. It had been one of the most drastic defeats of the war.

            Christian leveled not unkindly eyes at Lucien and muttered: “Yes, amongst others. I’m not alive through cowardice, either. To have survived that battle required both skill and God’s own intervention. I also fought at Najera and Crecy. All three were massacres. ‘Dismount,’ they told us! We lost four thousand at Crecy including the Duke of Lorraine and the king’s own brother. The Black Prince doesn’t concern himself with the dictates of chivalry like we do: he uses anyone who can string a longbow or carry a pike. Welsh knifemen, too.” He hefted a length of cable and threaded it through one of the pulleys.

            “New times,” said Lucien. “No sense in endangering your life merely because the French nobles won’t fight beside their own peasants. If Edward is making full use of all his people in war then the French will continue to die like peacocks herded to slaughter.”

            “I’ve finished with all that. I don’t care if the English keep Guienne until time rots. I can carry arms for any Seigneur and keep myself full of meat and wine without chasing the great disasters of history all across the land.”

            Christian devoted himself to the installation of the windlass for the rest of the afternoon, working earnestly and in clever concert with the others. Lucien sat himself down after a while and pondered the nature of the warrior class that had born millions of men like Christian. The man himself appeared possessed of all the sensibilities incumbent upon a civilized being, but his spirit was clearly that of a fighter.

            We do not have such a distinction in the ruminant world, and it is with the greatest horror that I am able to even approach the notion of such a class freely roaming the avenues of human commerce. A man might display the finer qualities of his species yet still be set aside from the stock of decency by virtue of his having murdered, maimed, conquered or defended. But these men have always walked amongst other men, occasionally cursed, more often revered, nearly always controlling the lists of fortune by their savagery. And who are they, then? Can I call them human, this vile breed born of its own blood? What race is this hacking and hewing itself, raining down upon itself a shower of ghastly red and sticky precipitation, saturating the soil until the limbs and entrails whirl and eddy like flotsam, after which another one is born without any further touch of God –rises up and assumes human form from a single bloody splash, and invests himself with life stolen from himself and millions before him? Christian was one of those carmine drops rebounded off that endless sea; perhaps one can attain humanity by merely assuming human form.

            Christian began to explore the magic regions behind and on either side of the stage until he was stopped short by the sight of a large cage.

            “Not for the actors,” Lucien explained. “For apes.”

*         *         *

When my first spring came to meet me, Lucien was far along the way to the materialization of his idea. I hear Lucien’s even tread approaching and yell hello as I unfold my legs. The slice of light widens as he pulls open the door, revealing his welcome silhouette planted in the mass light flooding in; another Lucien stretches out towards me across the floor, framed in a second, horizontal, parallelogram of light, indicating all is alive that should be. I join my own shadow to his while he brushes the straw off my shanks.

            “You stay and pursue your studies, my innocent, my wise one. I’m off to fossick around in the wreck of humanity.” Then, looking back at me, Lucien returns and rests himself against the apple tree, saying: “Oh, let it all rot. We’ll sit here today and I’ll finish composing in the sun.”

            He wrote as I began to explore the meadow, marveling over this joyous mix of elements both firm and multiform and so soft as to remain almost nonexistent, comprising the world like one huge bubble blown around me and reproduced a million times in whole in the dew drops glistening at my feet. I taste one drop and roll it around on my lips before letting it tinkle down my throat, where it magically generates little bursts of itself within my skull; a crystalline display of pyrotechnics recreating in that second dozens of microscopic splashes of the exact world without. The light poured down into the meadow and I canted my head to better absorb the visible music of the leaves, the petals, the grasses. Starting from my right and sweeping all the way to my left, I lifted my head and arced it slowly, completely across the stunning expanse. How far did the sky reach? I could see no end to it, and I felt something immortal inside me rise up and follow it beyond the limits of my sight. What time, what world is it today?

*         *         *

As Lucien continued to battle for the completion of his theater the citizens of Rapelle became more and more fascinated by the undertaking, debating in the grip of ignorance the merits of the thing, the possible virtues and certain corrupting influence it would have on society. Those in the former camp now greeted him loudly and with great effusion, those of the latter persuasion scowled and indulged in an orgy of evil conjecture, slander, and mute hostility, occasionally assembling at the Swan and fingering their swords as they glared at Lucien and his troupe. Christian, who had gone from besieging Helene to adopting the company and the theater as he had previously accepted various armies as his family, would sit at Lucien’s side and return the offending stares, fingering his own broad langue de boeuf as it hung in its scabbard. Lucien contemptuously, foolishly, ignored the opprobrium.

            Yet half of the time, in pairs, in groups, or singly, the enthusiasts and the merely intrigued would appear at the theater door clutching whatever tools they’d found at hand and would remain there silently watching the arcane labors until Antione or Lucien invited them in and solicited their expertise, at which juncture they would abandon their diffidence and hurl themselves into the proceedings, proud to have discovered that their skills were of such value to this bizarre campaign, relieved to be given a chance to purchase a berth on this mysterious ark Lucien was building.

            Eugene would pass through and throw himself into any task available before rushing off to hawk his nostrum or seduce a slattern in a neighboring borough. Christian appeared each day as soon as Lucien arrived to direct the work, and he applied both mind and muscle to whatever proved most crucial for that day, according Lucien the unconditional deference usually reserved for generals of the field and marshalling all others to follow suit, which amused Lucien. Travelers would put up in Rapelle, hear of the outlandish scheme and elect to remain until they could witness its manifestation, the more cosmopolitan elements eager to help turn the world on its head. James from distant England wielded a skillful hammer; Pascal, a clever and accomplished artist from Geneva, attached himself to the operation with complete determination, and spent hours with Lucien absorbing whole casks of brandywine and discussing aesthetic developments across the continent; Hebert, father of young Etienne, joined in at all hours. Pierre would make a desultory appearance at the door, sometimes accompanied by Dominique, and gradually set aside his sarcasm as he understood the scope of the task, revealing himself, after several of these visits, to be a sage hand with mechanical quandaries. Pope Zacharias, Lisette, Jean the wagoner, Gerard the Donkey and of course Maximillian the devoted actor would all appear at different times of the week to mold themselves to Lucien’s desires as he raced through the thousands of details forever in his mind until he clicked like a lottery wheel on the task most suited for the applicant. By means of his capital and Helene’s industrious scurrying, Lucien contrived to keep them all fed and well lubricated with spirits as they excelled themselves week after week.      

            Neither de Hagenau nor Odile could be roused to move the useless debris left in the middle of the bustle, and it became almost animate in its treachery as it tripped carpenters, obstructed the musicians and mocked the director with its attitude of iron opposition to the new world emerging around it. It encumbered the work vastly, hulking like the Sieur himself as flocks of men rolled in to work sometimes throughout the entire night. Forcing upon themselves a crucial midnight rest, Lucien, Antoine, Ricard and Pascal would sit on the heap and fall into each other laughing over the day’s accidents –for all except Ricard were now luminous with scars, the musician suffering internal injuries received from the actors– and discuss the bold new aesthetic roads being hewn around them.

            “The touch of the human has spread from St. Francis of Assisi,” Pascal was explaining to Antoine. “It is a new direction completely, and it is carrying new art in its hands!”

            Lucien and Ricard agreed. Lucien, pulling on his own ratchety limbs, gazed into the tallows and spoke: “We are rushing towards a rebirth. Not here in Rapelle, but elsewhere, the artists are using real scenery, real living models, the very clothes we wear; Pascal knows: the workings of the eye have been cast mathematically now, landscapes need no longer be flat; vestments and faces, gestures and limbs are being painted and carved with diminishing severity, more grace, more curves seducing the heart and leading the eye in volant sweeps.”

            “But,” said Antoine, “how can words and histories simply assume new shapes? It is a marvel, but your script is crazed, your language unheard of. Some of your jests are sure to bring trouble.” His voice made it clear he would stand by it all.

            “Again, art leads its own time. Our trouveres are learning to speak from their own mouths, their own lives. –Look at de Machaut: at sixty-two years of age, he writes poetry expressing the most touching love for an eighteen-year-old noblewoman he met in Champagne. With the words of Alligheri and Petrarch, the feudal armor is crumbling, chivalry rusts while real hearts blossom!”

            “But new structures grow tangled. Even the actors are unsure of your meaning half the time,” Ricard sighed. “On the other hand, they are actors.”

            “My story is that of beauty and cruelty, of the one force which unites the male and female gods, the curse and redemption of carnality. I speak of the absurdity –indeed, viciousness– of lust without love, or even love bereft of lust. How men and women fear love more than they fear slaughter; of how many leagues, how many generations they will run to avoid it. Of the cruelty of women who attack their lovers as mere ogres of masculine conceit, of the idiocy of men who see not the universal wisdom running pure and constant through their women, and of the savagery of both as they bare their claws at the fate which ties them together, the image of love facing them, losing themselves instead in arctic, lonely madness as a result.”

*

Even Paul and Celeste appeared in the chaos, drawn by curiosity and the freshness of their minds. Helene, recognizing a kindred joyful spirit in Celeste’s countenance, immediately nestled the girl in her wing, and, though separated by at least sixteen years, the two women forged a bright bond, with the result that Helene, to Lucien’s displeasure, abandoned her tasks and slipped off to engage in girlish distractions with Celeste, who left Paul to explore the theater. The young squire, thus forsaken in the doorway of this buzzing cavern, naturally found himself intrigued by the activity and saw his own shyness dissolve as he first greeted Lucien then began lending his strength to the efforts of the men around him. In a matter of an hour or less Christian had engaged the young man much as Helene had done with Celeste. The martial instincts of the two males melded into companionship and from that day on the young couple was often, albeit separately, in the society of the elder.

            As Lucien’s history of love was maniacally readied for the stage, the affections of many couples in the village caught fire, sometimes burning to ash. Helene continued to defy Christian’s siege. Young Rose fell in love for the first time with a visiting Swedish amber merchant. Pompeux immolated and showered cinders of misogyny over any woman he saw. Celeste would appear at the theater to borrow Helene, pouting over Paul’s transgressions. Lisette, after years of resentment, announced to Pope Zacharias that she would depart to live with her sister. Informed of this, Lucien assured the Pope once more that Lisette was not fleeing because she found his bleak moods cowardly, but because, as he was her strength, she was too shaky to accept his human concerns. One such incident rocked the entire county: A young woman universally regarded as gentle and kind-hearted had recently wed a man she had long loved. Within four weeks of the marriage, the poor girl discovered her husband in the bed of her dearest friend, and went home that evening to set her own house alight, burning to death as she lay sobbing into her mattress, clutching the infant child she’d born him eight days past their wedding. The villagers were further titillated by the fact that the young woman’s friend then eloped with the widower to a neighboring province, leaving their parents with hastily written testaments of their enormous love for one another. Soon bored by the bliss they’d found, the fugitive woman began to despise her lover, seething with hatred and detesting his every amorous word. While the unsuspecting lover prepared himself for his university exams, the woman gradually sold off their valuables until she had accrued enough gold to hire a band of bravos to waylay the man and dispatch him beneath a rain of daggers. All three were now free in a fashion, Lucien thought.

            But Rapelle itself was too backwards for passion. Oddly, in the confusion and crudity of the place, Lucien heard nearly uniform plaints of rebellious genitalia; this one was dissatisfied, that one unsatisfiable, frigid as a clam, limp as a weed. While orchestrating thoughts in his head, Lucien overheard these tales of broken sex everywhere he stood, for acquaintances as well as strangers were all telling the same stories. In these fuliginous times, all men and women seemed to despise each other, chasing their basest cravings and discovering to their outrage that they were all crippled by this hatred. Lucien, astounded by the prevalence of the epidemic, bethought himself of the inevitable effect the outside world and its depredations had on people’s inner selves, and wondered why the others saw it not.

            Forced and arranged marriages were not strictly enacted in Rapelle. Although in the recent past it was unremarkable for young girls and young boys to be fettered to complete strangers, many now saw the sad acceptance rotting their elders’ hearts, or the retribution extracted by whoring on both sides. Cruel games of calumny became the pastime of such unions, finding an easy popularity among the armies of the gender-dead. Lucien had seen Odile through the years, always busy, stopping to greet and bless everyone, the loveliest, most vivacious woman in Rapelle. But these days something was eating her away: her family. De Hagenau was sixty, she forty and worried about it. She now began spreading fearful tales of her husband’s crimes and inviting the townspeople to sympathize with her terrorized maiden’s plight, recruiting support for an annulment of the marriage, The citizens’ loyalties, like their minds, changed by the minute –their one consistent opinion being to put the child away or strangle it. De Hagenau and Dadais slithered through the village dripping imprecations, appearing suddenly on corners, sniffing after Lucien and any other man or woman Odile might have rallied. The Sieur was obsessed with suspicion, jealousy, insubordination and money; every last order mocked. He in his turns would warn all the other lordly burghers.

Scarcely conscious of those crusades, Lucien staggered ever forwards. From twice per week to once a day, Lucien had arrived at the point where he was obliged to meet with Odile and beseech her to fulfill her part of their bargain. He would leave the work at the theater, then pass an uneasy hour while Odile reviled him for seducing her. After many remonstrances, Lucien would get her to admit the falsity of the accusation and the futility of grasping at him, after which she would become both friendly and businesslike until the question of her tardy support rose up like a demon before them.

            “I tell you I have no money!” she would hiss, to Lucien’s confoundment. “Why should I give you money?”

            “Not me, yourself. How many times must we parlay like this? If you wish to rent to the guilds, you place your investment into the project and then tend it so it blossoms with the rewards.”

            “But I don’t understand how. I thought I did, but know I don’t.”

            Lucien knew she was being willfully obtuse. “Like this,” he would reiterate, diagramming, explaining in detail, reminding her diplomatically of his pressing predicament, noticing the dumb pleasure she squeezed out of his presence. An hour or two later, Lucien would return to the theater with instructions to draft another contract to bring to her the next day.

            In the course of her hunger for Lucien and her campaign to remove herself from the watch of her husband, Odile had informed most of the natives that she was –despite her apparent animosity– in love with the mysterious black-winged Maestro. This blithe attempt to seize his life dispelled in Lucien any notions he had held of her innocence; as the Lady devoured his autonomy, his money, his mind and his labor, she now managed to both enrage de Hagenau and crash like a landslide into Lucien’s home. Aware that Odile was brandishing this one last lethal club, Lucien wretchedly realized that nothing but a dread of harming Genevieve had held this tale in check until now, surprising himself with the knowledge; Genevieve surprised him further that evening by showing that she understood it as well. In one of those cool, lucid moments, they both saw that, in the midst of their pains, they were equally targeted by this external threat. Lucien knew that both Pompeux and Hortense’s husband had thrown themselves on Genevieve at various times, mauling her when they thought the coast clear, and so, tacitly, they separated the predators from their own private misfittings, which nonetheless continued to crowd them farther and farther apart.

*         *         *

From words overheard or from Christian and Helene’s cheerful chatter, Lucien unwittingly learned more of the shining young couple he had met in the midst of the upheaval. While Paul was apprenticing at de Hagenau’s stables he was generally countenanced as a squire, although even this remained an aspiration. His family had engaged him in the hopes that he would eventually reach such an elevation, after which he could pursue his dream of battle and glory.

            Celeste came from a fairly wealthy family of wine merchants who had engaged her to Paul at her own unbending insistence. Her father had done well and felt secure pairing his only child with this reverent, presentable youth. Unable to deny her anything, Celeste’s father had settled upon Paul a substantial dowry, or marriage portion as the elders still called it, which included a wagon, all their furniture and a yet to be divested heap of money. Paul’s family had reciprocated by contributing a jointure consisting of land he would possess once the actual wedding was concluded. Like many young betrothed couples of the time, they were allowed to live as though married. Having settled his daughter several hundred miles from the family estate yet close to Paul’s, Pere Couronne’s sole concession to prudery was to ensconce Celeste’s ancient governess in the home as a sort of chaperone. The governess –easily confused and near-helpless Rita– was both a source of joy and a burden to the couple, for, despite her simple-minded and periodically dangerous potterings, Celeste was tied to her with the cords of tender devotion that one finds around the hearts of those who, ministered and adored from infancy, must now care for the one who nursed, raised, protected and sang to them.

            The young couple rapidly entered the milieu of artists and thinkers, such as they were, and could now be found most nights gathered around the voluble troops at the Swan. They enjoyed the company of the friends already made in Rapelle as well as this new throng of madcaps; Lucien noticed that Celeste had a friend similarly named Celestine who laughed almost as loudly as she did. She was small and dark and genuinely beautiful, and seeing her or sensing the sultry gaze of Amelie on his neck released a lugubrious blood inside him as he recalled all the passion wallowing untended somewhere far from his heart. He had walked away from it, however, and had left himself no place to go but his work.

            You know me, Mazel, I sing of love. From far away I hear an echo. Is it me? Is it her? What dreams live on within us, what warm springs of wonder. Each of us have little carrier pigeons and we carry our hearts in a knapsack –the amorous infinite we carry within us. What is this immensity around me? Sailing; drifting, drifting, into the primordial whiteness; oh, white death enveloping all my minutes, all my loves, all the crystal moments of my heart. And black, yes, black, the Prima Niger –the sun in its nighttime passage, the ur-mind of the alchemists, when miracles rule and shadows glow– the black of life and earth together, wherein I’ll touch the one I love, eternally, forever. Lying on my back, weightless in an abandoned skiff, staring up at the stars and drifting off to death, the impenetrable black of the truest love of all. Drifting past the reeds of hands, Love, so dark along the riverbanks, sweet blackness all around me, Love, with wildbirds burning in the night.

            By the end of the day, the actors appeared and Lucien would cease all other labors, concentrating his attention on the rehearsing. Scenes would be played, speeches and inflections molded, dances arranged and entrances and exits chased over and over until perfected. Ricard would plead with the company to attain the notes written, often tearing his hair out in despair. At eleven at night, exhausted and aching, his mind still galloping, Lucien would muster the charge across town to the Black Swan, where he would buy drinks for the horde, and the day’s construction, the night’s travails, would be analyzed. At Lucien’s suggestion, Jupon had eagerly contracted to provide one free glass of wine for every member of the troupe so long as they continued to bring curious or adulatory patrons in their wake.

            Throwing himself into a chair, Lucien watched as Christian kept Paul enrapt with his tales of war. As Pompeux gleefully heaped insults on Lisette, Genevieve, Helene and Celeste, only to meet with feminine scorn too sharp for his aging wit to parry, Lucien discussed verbal delivery and physical wizardry with the actors as they swirled around him. Antoine and Helene kept a written record of the developments spilling from Lucien’s mind, which they would then attempt to integrate with the overall production once they met in the morning. Lucien needed no notes, his memory being unsurpassed in the land, his recall encompassing both the eidetic and iconic, the envy of friends throughout his life, a curse to the man who carried it.

            Young Jupon observed the nightly carnival with an amused and encouraging eye. The Bignon brothers would throw themselves into metaphysical speculations with Lucien as he juggled barbs, words of praise, issues of serene gravity, emendations, purchases for the morrow, descriptions and directions for gestures, new speeches and verse as he spun his head from Pompeux to Ricard, to Dominique, Pierre, English Charles, Pascal, and all the countless others swirling around him; nearly all of them marveled that he did not lose his mind.

            Maximillian would serenade Mathilde, Helene would walzer with Celeste, Jean the Wagoner would mutter drolleries to himself and Seiche would suddenly emerge in his chemise far above the fray, having clambered to the top of a wooden pillar, shouting bizarre gallantries to the flushed townswomen below. 

            Hortense appeared but was incapable of commanding any attention whatsoever amongst this menagerie. Lucien saw her introduce a splash of wormwood into Genevieve’s wine while bellowing at her, but Genevieve glanced up and tittered at Lucien, indicating that she condoned the action.

            Christian was complaining about Poitiers again: “Ignominy enough to last a lifetime, that’s what it was! Sixteen thousand Frenchmen, the flower of the land, vanquished by sixty-five hundred English dogs! It shows that courage weighs heavier on the scales of fortune than idle numbers. I had fought in the front, then the rear. With only fifty horsemen de Buch closed in behind us and we scattered in confusion until King Jean was surrounded.”

            Paul was fascinated by these chronicles of blood. Pope Zacharias would catch Lucien’s eye and exchange a silent condemnation of all the senseless mayhem that wasted the world meant for more humane and delicate pursuits.

            “It was the most astounding thing,” Christian exclaimed, laying his hand on Paul’s arm, “But I saw a group of English soldiers stationed above us with a kind of small pot de feu, meant to shoot bolts at us…”

            Lucien interrupted: “What did it look like?”

            “Not imposing at first glance. A long brass tube in a stock of wood. I saw one man lay fire to a touch-hole at the top and then I cut away before the explosion.”

            Antoine straightened up, alert.

“I know how we could do that,” Lucien exclaimed. “But we’d need sulfur and saltpeter.”

            At this Paul showed interest. He had until now regarded the thespian band as lively wastrels and prone to effeminate views of life unworthy of guerdon; vermin of sorts, feeding off the labors of the feudal order falling over itself trying to hold land and life to a true course. He had followed Celeste to the Black Swan night after night and watched her immerse herself in the society of strangers, feeling resentful and ignored, unable to retain her interest with his own dreams. Lucien often saw the jaundice of isolation appear on his face as she hollered and danced and sprinted from table to table, laughing her grand three-masted laugh. When the nights wore too long he would quietly appeal to her to leave; Celeste, swept up in the action, would remonstrate with him or pet him until he left in dismay.

            When Jupon would shut down the inn and pull himself upstairs to bed, the company would find itself rolling through the village until they landed in Pompeux’s hut or Maximillian’s gracious care, or Dominique’s home or others. Sometimes they would snake into Hortense’s abode, where even Lucien would sip the wormwood she offered, wearily seeking surcease from his pains, his cares, the leaden chill in his heart. To Paul’s annoyance, Celeste began herding them over to her house, and he would greet the invaders with courtesy even as he groaned for peace.

            One night she interrupted Maximillian’s call to revels and announced that all would assemble at her home. Christian, who seemed to have come to know Celeste well in the past weeks, bristled volubly at her imperiousness.

            “I meant only to express my regard for my company. Subtly.” she scolded him.   

            Christian guffawed coarsely and said: “Celeste, you are perhaps as subtle as a battering ram.”

            Lucien saw the insulted fury behind her eyes as she spun on the man, but he could make no sense of the analogy.

*

Through the long hard days, the nights, Lucien directed the men and women around him, watching patiently as his vision grew like the cathedrals he had watched in the far-off cities of his youth. No artifice was hackneyed, each trick required the best efforts of skill and imagination of the men to materialize them. The actors railed against the demands heaped upon them; the scenario was too hard, too rigorous and intimidating, too irreverent, too hot, too large a concept for the stage. It was as well far too fast, for Lucien had lifted the action out of the droll convention of the past and had raised it to a plane contemporaneous to the new world around them. The troupe would veer from helpless guffaws to tears as the scenes shifted, depleting them with the hilarity. The songs were beautiful, they conceded, but elaborate, and Ricard suffered immensely as they defied his directions again and again until, at a despairing glance from the musician, Lucien stepped forth to kick their voices into shape. Entrances and exits were rehearsed exhaustively, until the actors seemed to spin through the performance. As usual, by now all the players had assumed their roles full-time. Dominique astounded the village as she swung her derriere through the streets. Mathilde and Pompeux fumed as their bodies fought them, hacking chunks out of their wild seduction scenes. Pierre and Dominique, quarreled first with Ricard, then each other, then with the two young souls, Rose and Etienne, the latter having earned the scorn of all as a reward for his native skill. Seiche, despite his natural clowning, often failed to grasp the meaning of a jest and would halt the sessions until it had been explained to him by Lucien and then by his colleagues, including Etienne. Maximillian had blossomed now into a dedicated player, thoughtful, conscientious and skilled, practicing his vaults and spills before every rehearsal, often volunteering his aid during the hectic hours of the day. His sole regret was the fact that young Etienne invariably pilfered his wine each night. Helene and Antoine made copious notations of all Lucien said, subsequently addressing them to the songs, gestures, construction and dance tasks to be attacked immediately after the actors departed exhausted yet exhilarated. By now facing his limitations, Pompeux proved himself once more the astute player Lucien had known before, examining his every movement with the Maestro after hours at the Swan. He seethed with excitement, promising all that they would see something new and wondrous when the theater was completed. He would often devise jokes with Lucien, which they would unleash on the others at the least expected moments, even mounting a night-raid on Maximillian’s house and systematically setting every piece of furniture upside-down while the man slept. As a result of the calendar and the daring idiocy of the prank, Maximillian had good-naturedly christened that night Half-wit Monday.

            Lucien never ceased jesting, but felt himself cursed as time staggered on, vomiting out days and nights without end. He avoided looking at his own hands. As the players and townsfolk around him brayed startling complaints of lewdness gone limp, he tailored his script to reflect their disease –the auto-kleptomania that had robbed them of love.

            While all the proceedings remained swaddled in secrecy, a steep hike up the mountain took Lucien to his most secret destination: the workshop of Hector the cabinetmaker. Here Lucien and Hector sketched, sawed, drilled and dowelled over a period of weeks until they had created the perfect set of trick chairs. In the freezing atmosphere of the shop, rechristened during this time the Comedic Sciences Laboratory, they had fashioned two innocent looking seats which, by means of locks and springs, would alternately be used on stage for natural repose or, at the crucial instance, hurl the sitter backwards through the air. When they had completed the first chair silence descended down around them as Hector on one side and Lucien on the other inspected it with the still earnestness of drunks. Hector then raised one finger and gently touched the mechanism and they watched the chair fly into action with flawless precision. They looked at each other simultaneously and burst out laughing at their own seriousness. Lucien then tested the prop himself to check the safety of it, learning how to roll with the force of ejection so that he could later train the players, who spent several nights objecting to the invention; Lucien, shuddering at the passing time, re-scripted so that only Maximillian –who, with typical devotion learned to use the chair– underwent the ordeal.

            Through Eugene, whose Lucky pig wagon was mowing profits across several provinces now, Lucien had sent out rumors of the impending miracle, With less than two months left before the fair, Odile had still not organized the artisans. Since those rent monies remained theoretical, she reared like a ferret at the mention of finances, stupidly arguing that with no funds coming in she had none to put out. Lucien inwardly conceded that it was pointless to expect any promises she made to materialize, but persisted in drawing up contracts to safeguard his work. Odile began to assume the threatening tones of her husband.

            She was angry at Lucien having escaped her control and clutched her treasury to her bosom like a ghost of greed. She would lurk around the theater without entering, and had informed a number of villagers that she had been swindled out of her holdings by this plebeian plotter. She seemed to be physically shrinking. To Lucien she appeared to have aged as quickly as a seawatered suicide.

            Exhaustion carried him in its craw as he staggered out of the theater to find Odile once again.

            “I must have room to paint the scenery now. I clearly cannot remove the belongings you have in the way until you arrange to move them somewhere else.”

            She frowned at this new demand, refusing permission until Lucien had explained the reason, which was obvious.

            He knew now that her sport was the same as her husband’s: cruelty and greed. The Lady de Hagenau was the same coin as the Lord; she, however, campaigned under the banner of martyr. De Hagenau himself preferred to march through town swinging threats like a mace.

            Lucien knew from all his experience that no one sex was inherently less capable –or even less inclined– towards villainy than the other. When men hid their hurts behind crude talk of women, he usually left the hall in contempt. When women hid their own malevolence behind an arras of aggrievance, he recoiled at the mockery made of true feminine suffering, always astounded that they sensed not the hurt they inflicted on their own kind. As the fool life around him danced on the ledge, the Maestro incorporated all of it into his text.

            A further week of toil, outrage and escalating danger elapsed. Smoke and fire pots were assembled. Trap doors tested, Lucien’s painted canvasses were set on turning dowels and rigged to Antoine’s backstage site of command, now treacherous with cables lashed to belaying-pins pegged into rails on all sides of him.

*

Lucien encountered Celeste one day, running in distress along the roads. She wore a look of extreme anxiety and her face was swollen from pressure. Clutching Lucien by the arm as he stopped to greet her, she asked him whether he had seen Rita wandering around, for the old maid had escaped in one of her fits of defiance or dottiness –Lucien could not be sure from Celeste’s broken entreaties which. He was unable to speak much assurance and the girl ran off with a grunt of despair.

            For an instant he was dazzled by the sight of her: a fleet flash of blond in the dark green archway of the woods.

            Another day dead and another night beaten, Lucien entered his home shortly before midnight to discover Genevieve entertaining  young Paul and Celeste by the fire. He had not realized that, while he worked, Genevieve had befriended them, nor could he understand why they’d been invited. He was smitten by a feeling that this was not his house; felt he had walked through the wrong door, through the wrong time. Lucien accepted a glass from his wife and conformed to a chair as he took in the scene and listened, eventually entering into the chatter as he succumbed to the weight of his work and dismissed his initial sense of disjunction.

            “I do as I must,” Paul was explaining to Genevieve. When Lucien arrived she had been teasing the lad about wasting his youth in de Hagenau’s stables, even suggesting that he throw off his servitude and apprentice himself to Lucien. She seemed amazed that Paul did not share the unmitigated loathing the lord inspired in herself and most of the people she knew with brains. “It cannot but be good for me in the end,” he was saying, “for this way I learn to the fullest the lessons of courage, justice and loyalty.”

            “Paul is my brave one,” Celeste beamed. “And someday he will be free to offer his arms to whomever he chooses. Look,” she slid her hand in his tunic and withdrew a silk ribbon in pearl and green, “even though he hasn’t yet been entered in any lists, he wears my colors.”

            “Ah,” sighed Genevieve, “young love and bravery. “If only it could always be so.”

            All three looked over to Lucien as though expecting some fine words of praise. Lucien rasped the dust from his throat, declining to steal away joy from the scene. The seriousness of the couple’s rectitude swung on the beam of his imagination between comic and forlorn.

            “But what on earth do you intend to make of all this archaic gallantry?” He asked it pleasantly, wondering if Paul would appear less diaphanous engaged in probing thought. He suspected some ability in him and wondered what the youth might be capable of put to figuring all the mechanical riddles Lucien and his own knights were faced with each day in the theater.

            Both Paul and Celeste suddenly appeared lost by the question, the girl tugging her brows together, clearly hoping her fiancee had an answer.

            “But…what is that for a…I never thought of it as archaic,” Paul objected.

            “You must always think of any act as archaic,” Lucien laughed. “But first you must think. Then you’ll see that all thought runs miles ahead of any deed, and years ahead of any given social order. Put your mind to better use,” he urged.

            Paul Fouché appeared mild, yet stirred by some impulse to strike out at something, perhaps confused by this worship of violence within him, and Lucien recalled Genevieve once saying that the lad was unbalanced. Death in those days came mostly from blows, reducing bone to sponge, or the grisly slitting of a throat; Lucien could not fathom how the lad equated these with glory. Paul’s real interest appeared to be climbing the ranks, but this was more illustrative of his devotion to his profession than any lack of education, for he was not entirely averse to displaying interest in the words and ideas of those who had no grounding in strictly martial arts. He evinced a curiosity similar to that of his betrothed but more restrained and guided more by a genuine attempt to pursue the notions sketched than a simple grasping for answers, although Celeste was at this time perhaps less intimidated and therefore also more inclined to follow the natural development of conversation. Paul’s course, however, was clearly guided by some innate mix of fascination with battle and the virtuous adherence to a code that no longer existed. He listened with apprehension as Lucien sardonically denigrated the obsolete pretenses of chivalry and enumerated the abuses visited upon the country by its defenders. Genevieve cheerfully seconded Lucien’s list of corruption and perversions of justice as Celeste listened in fascination and Paul squirmed sullenly.

            “But what else is there for me?” he protested. “This is how it is done. This is how a man knows who he is. Men great and plain work to keep the order of things, the honor of things functioning by first serving low, then higher, but always serving God and Church. All I hope to earn –the white cincture, the spurs, the accolade of glaive and knighthood– these are for the good of all! We should be lost without their meaning.”

            “Then consider us lost, for they have no meaning whatsoever.”

            By now Genevieve and Celeste were worried about Lucien’s casual tone and the words he was dropping like crumbs leading Paul through his own woods to a clearing where the sun would illuminate the absurdity of his creed; both women agreed with all Lucien spoke, but Genevieve, still mirthful, was concerned for her husband’s overworked mind, fearing that it could never shut down to rest, while Celeste was growing obviously embarrassed for her betrothed. She wore a wide smile of admiration even as her brows remained knotted and her gold-green eyes tucked themselves back in wary wonder as though she was measuring a precipice. 

            “You mock all order,” Paul concluded, resigned and repelled.

            Lucien lifted a brow and shrugged. “I mock insanity disguised as order. I scorn barbarism preening in a cloak of benevolence, and I will always unmasked as long as I can Ugly Death picking his teeth and introducing himself as Monsieur Life.”

            The women grinned wide at this last. Celeste took Paul’s hand and said: “Perhaps Lucien isn’t so mad. Lord knows you deserve all you wish for, but I don’t think I could live to see you harmed.”

            “Oh, no,” Paul smiled, “I haven’t lost my reason entirely. If I…no…when I am knighted I won’t terrorize the commonfolk like Lucien says, but merely stand by their defense. It’s true, it is their land as well, and for their protection,” he grinned at Lucien, “the nobles band as an army when needed.”

            Lucien grimaced: “The purpose of an army, in the last analysis, is to conquer its own people.”

            Here Paul felt in his own; the Maestro, after all, was never a soldier. He understood now that Lucien meant no disrespect for him personally, and he realized that he took pleasure in the chance to discuss ideas, systems, observations and even open suppositions such as he never encountered up at the keep. Thinking at a stimulated pace thus, he suddenly got the impression that Lucien, too, was a warrior of sorts, engaged in battles of honor and art as he strategized, bivouacked, rallied and charged to bring his enterprises to victory. For a second Paul was seduced by the armies of the mind, the glittering infantry of knowledge, the fearless cavalry of certitude and the bright, snapping pennants of dauntless ability. At that precise moment he sensed that Celeste saw it too, and he wavered between pride of having been accepted onto the field and resentment at having been led there by Lucien.

            “Oh, now you tread too far,” Paul objected. “For nineteen years our men have fought the English and kept them from your doorstep. How bad is that? You’ve stumbled on a falsehood, blinded by sentiment like an old woman.”  

            “Unfortunately the truth of it lies not in my sentiments but in the criminal annals of history. An army is hired, conscripted, assembled, under the guise of protecting its native land, its native folk, but the regent always reserves it in his mind for the day when he must turn it against his subjects, who have been taxed and abused all along.”

            Celeste and Genevieve leapt back into the chatter and the tired night trudged on around them as they sipped their wine and talked. Lucien kept seeing the scene as though tucked up against the ceiling and feeling like he was speaking to the past. Genevieve displayed great affection for the young couple and Lucien was surprised to find himself enjoying their presence, their eager conversation, their shining youth. He peered up at them at one point when they were sharing a humorous exchange with Genevieve and saw the two of them as an icon of paired happiness: untroubled, reasonable, enamored of childish pageantry and the barest delights of life and nature alike; a small door creaked open in his overtired heart and allowed their names to enter. He became sociable and cautiously avoided irony when discussing their interests. He answered whatever questions they happened to send aloft. Paul, he sensed, harbored scorn for much of Lucien’s eccentric acts and ideas, yet because of his own unsubstantial placement in the world accorded him interest if not respect. Paul himself longed for the days when he would be firmly accomplished enough to be held in high regard for his abilities and not mere good fortune.

            Celeste made inquiries regarding the theater, sincerely interested in this enormous undertaking of which she, as everybody in the county, had heard. She had also been observing Lucien’s months of coming and going, marshalling men, ideas, materials and the very forces of nature with a proficiency she knew Paul would be proud to attain. She had secretly observed him –as she saw him now before her and in repose for the first time– dusty and almost jagged from hurling himself against any and every obstruction to his art.

            “I’ve never seen anyone work this hard in my life!”

            “Yes,” Genevieve shrugged in dismay, then cheerfully said: “He always works like this, but nobody sees it unless he does so in full view. Mostly he works at home. And when he’s not moving he’s thinking and in that he probably works faster and harder than everybody in Rapelle combined.”

            “It’s not for glory,” Lucien quickly explained, blushing. “I only do it because there is no one else here to do it. If there was I wouldn’t take on every task, I’d be content to write in peace and direct if need be.” He snickered and added: “I intend to give something back to society whether it likes it or not.”

            “Well, when it’s all finished,” Celeste ventured, “we were wondering if we could recruit you to recite a poem at our wedding. We heard about yours,” she blasted a laugh.

            They looked so perfect together that Lucien almost agreed at once, but then thought better of it. “That might not be for the best. I must warn you, I take things equally seriously and humorously. I’ve had trouble before with wedding audiences not appreciating the extremes of either.”

            Paul appeared uncertain about the idea and turned to upbraid Celeste, who had fielded the request spontaneously: “I can’t say what people would think of us if we allowed ourselves to be ridiculed at our own marriage.”

            “Oh, it’s not a question of ridicule,” Lucien assured him. “In the days of the Roman Empire no funeral was deemed complete without a satire being performed after the elegy. This was especially cherished by the emperors. If humor can smooth the path of a departing spirit, it can surely sanctify the birth of a marriage.”

            Celeste grinned in anticipation of Lucien’s acceptance while Paul remained visibly disdainful of the intrusion. Genevieve laughed and ran her hand over Lucien’s head. “Oh, leave them in peace. You’ll ruin their whole lives with your nonsense.”    

*         *         *

Genevieve had felt distant and distanced for months, but, in the searching illumination of her compassion, she also saw the contentions between herself and Lucien could not be erased by mere cordiality. Theirs had been a mutual abandonment. Lucien himself did not fully comprehend the affection they had for each other; he had not known love without deep devotion and dizzying desire, and found himself addled by their obvious love for one another, which seemed to lie many years in the future, when ease, solicitude and silly companionship took precedence over amorous exploits. Fluctuating between heating resentment and placid friendship, Genevieve had herself sensed this same quirky chronology. The problem was, what were they to do with the present?

            This present seemed more of a barrier than a connective tissue; Lucien worked as many hours as he could remain conscious, neglecting to eat, fervidly indexing the endless insurmountable chores through his mind. Genevieve escorted infants into the land of cruel whims and fought her isolation with the arms of gossip, wormwood and social activity.

            Needing solace, they scraped sparks off each other instead. Lucien accepted her outbursts when they came, feeling them misdirected and deserved at once. He had never before felt inclined to argue with any of his lovers, preferring rather to allow them free latitude unless they herded him into a threatening enclosure, at which point he would demolish the fencing, then focus his attention on what they might truly be saying behind their words or deeds; arguing was pointless nearly without exception, he thought. What was crucial was to discover what somebody needed –what they wanted– then grant it if at all possible. But now the couple had learned that their wishes were both intractable and incompatible.

            As the tussling of their lives continued, Genevieve sought some easement of her pains, periodically ejecting Lucien from the house when her anger burst over her late at night, then, embarrassed by her actions, imploring his return the following day. Dark-eyed and resigned, Lucien would sleep in his room when possible, or hunt fugitive sleep at Pope Zacharias’ or Helene’s extra hut, lugging his work with him like a coffin. After some weeks of this, Genevieve, fearful for both their sanity, brought Lucien home to eat and, after dispensing with the filial battles, settled across the table from him with a surgical rationality.

            “Why do we do this, Lucien? Our lives are not meant to be this way, this way together. I live far from you and you live far from me. You feel no passion for me, Lucien. It’s not fair to me, nor fair to yourself.”

            Lucien stammered, incapable of lancing her with any aspersion of her desirability. He knew her pretty features, her good-heartedness appealed to many men, and he felt the suppurating boils of the devil’s arms would crush and burst over them both if he ever lent her cause to question herself that way. Amidst her flurrying questions, he steadfastly refused to touch the issue, until Genevieve dredged up her own pail of rejection.

            “You should go,” she decided. “When you have finished your work, you should go. I wish to be your friend, but I do not love you anymore.” She regretted saying it as soon as she saw Lucien accept the words as true.

            Lucien laid a paillasse down in his neglected workroom and grew accustomed to the fleas.

*         *         *

Now the work was nearly done; a few notes would be refined under Ricard’s direction, another month’s worth of building and painting would be crushed into a matter of weeks, and the actors were as trained as they could be without losing inspiration. By prior promise throughout the land, they were due to open in two weeks.

            And still the contract remained unsigned, Lucien wasting precious hours of each day presenting Odile with the written form of what they had only yesterday discussed, being rebuffed, scowled at, subjected to teary plaints and miserly clabber. He protested that he could not continue showering money on renovations to a building he had no contract for, that the strength of the enterprise lay in its potential to reward both the public and the entrepreneurs only if it was open to as many activities as possible –all as they had agreed upon day after day for six months now. If, as she now claimed, she felt unqualified to see it through, he would manage the entire project for no remuneration. Her face brightened at the prospect of patronizing the arts without labor, but when she feigned to accepted his offer with the proviso that she also partake of the profits from his performances, Lucien was hard pressed to conceal his disgust. He explained the iniquity of the demand, indeed, the financial impossibility of it, and Odile, after more lip-trembling and hand-wringing, finally reached a concordance with Lucien. Exhausted, he then ran back to the theater, constructed the last fire-pots with Antoine, honed the musical arrangements with Ricard then dispatched Christian to make sure Helene was somewhere near finished with the costumes. De Hagenau entered to scoff at the progress he disparaged as invisible, then, stepping around the barrels and scraps of implements he hadn’t bothered to move, began to stalk off with the boards Lucien had reserved for backstage construction. Lucien wiped his brow and rested until kindly Maximillian appeared, heralding the start of rehearsals. Lucien and Maximillian created what order they could. With the actors all assembled, Ricard conducted their singing while Lucien choreographed, then had them enact it all in context. He slept a few hours that night, then walked painfully back to the granary in the morning to repeat it all again, including the farcical negotiations with Odile.

            And still those whiplash trips through stars. I’d shut my eyes and, instead of peace, would once more find myself torn across the skies, dashed through astral tundra as my very life was ripped from me. Behind the feline wailing comes the voice again, warped by filaments of time: someone is calling me. Come to me it calls again. Away, away, away from here!

            The animals Lucien had sent for arrived but they had to be kept well away from the public eye. Genevieve threw herself into this one task she was permitted, tending the beasts with an excellent touch and unwavering good cheer. When Lucien returned to the building to work, he ferreted through the heaps of his hopes, the taunting obstacles de Hagenau had re-scattered, and, groaning, dredged up the latest contract he’d drawn up for Odile, committing him to five years toil with only his seasonal productions as recompense. He automatically assigned the tasks required to maintain a forward thrust in his absence, then set out to find Odile.

            Entering the Swan, he heard her before he saw her, the inevitable sight causing him to curse his whole life, the town, and above all the theater. Friable, looking more shriveled than ever before, Odile was glaring at him through watery blue eyes crackling with red capillaries as she pounded her hand on her table and shrieked, dribbled and shook.

            “How dare you come to me with this!” Her voice had the force of a horn, her knife-blade lips looked more predatory than any monster of the deep’s. She screamed and assaulted the table without pause. “There will be no play! There will be no theater! You wish to steal me blind, do you? Well, henceforth I will no longer allow you to rip the coins from my purse like hair off my head! Hereon I am finally, for once, going to act in self-interest!”

            Lucien remained still, trying to discover what had led her to this passage –absurd as it was– or where it might head. He was close on collapsing from overwork, stoically staring ruin in the face while the fine lady squawked like a basilisk about her poverty.

            “But this is what we’ve agreed on,” he insisted, dropping the paper before her.

            She squeaked and ripped his work up, finally belching forth the poison: “I have no money! Fry in Hell! And if you like, you can take your whore Helene with you!”

            Lucien stood up, nauseated. “Firstly, I have no affair with Helene. Secondly, it would be no concern of yours; unfortunately for you and your kind, I am nobody’s thrall.”

            Odile hissed furiously, then, hearing the truth in his speech, began to snivel like a glutton who has had her plateful dashed to the ground. Wiping off tears with the insides of her wrists, she began to stumble through her true bad news: she’d been informed this very morning that sometime in the last months her husband had bribed a high and far-off magistrate to record a forged endowerment, and had thereby legally transferred the building to his ownership alone.

At this pass, de Hagenau and Dadais swaggered into the Swan as though cued. Odile hunched into herself shuddering, while she stammered and made a pretense of explaining that she had earlier turned all interest in the project over to her husband, who hulked and glowered with the knight by his side. Lucien sighed as he caught the remorse in her voice.

            Dadais dropped his reeking carcass down into a stool besides Lucien; the Sieur sat across from him, expounding on the weather in his canary voice. The men were by habituation thieves and brutes, but Lucien held Odile and her madness accountable for the coming slaughter; all four of them knew that Lucien had spent his investors’ money, that he would be shackled and left to rot in a stone grave for years if he did not meet his debts, which he could only do by finishing what he had begun.

            “So complicated,” sympathized the Sieur. “Life is not meant to embrace such schemes. It works far better the way I go about it.”

            Dadais was mildging filth from his nails and carelessly flicking it onto Lucien’s lap. “The Maestro is too ambitious for his station,” he sneered. “He must learn that order exists for good cause.”

            De Hagenau brayed at his wife’s trembling. “But I will not have it said that I of all people have stymied the arts. On the contrary, I believe our young visionary should have his chance in Rapelle, and, although I will not waste my time or my money on this guild-hall, he shall have his theater. For four months. Not five years –we can forget about that bargain. For precisely four months. For precisely four hundred sous per month, payable each month in advance.”

            It was ruinous, but Lucien believed he could do it, just. For what de Hagenau was demanding Lucien realized he could just as well hire an army to rid the town of this gnarled scourge, but he had little else on his mind beyond paying off his investor. He knew as well that they knew no sane man on earth would have poured his money and labor into renovating another man’s property in exchange for four months’ use. He pulled up to leave, saying: “Have your lawyer bring me a contract to sign. Surely you won’t prove dilatory with these terms at least.”

            “I’ll have it for you by tomorrow,” de Hagenau grunted. He was disappointed that Lucien was going to accept, stunned, too. Calculating the sizeable but limited money he would make from the rent and weighing it against the chance to annihilate the man, de Hagenau called after him as he strode away. “Hey, Moor! Do not expect much revenue from the fair, I’ve decided to cancel it this season!”   

*         *         *

I hadn’t grown too far above the grass, forget-me-nots. I was but slight, only as high as Lucien’s hips. He would rest with me when he could, letting the sun of spring burn soft into his bones. He spoke again of love, its monstrous goodness, its tragic course, sighing for the mess mankind and he himself had made of the years. Sickened, he told me of the world beyond the meadow.

            Why should love elude us, Mazel? And yet I believe there is no such physical plague as these people pretend; what malfeasance there is that is not created in the mind is but the revulsion of the soul at the touch of another one of the brutes we’ve become. The soul, Mazel, it sees the maggots teeming on our bloody, butchering bodies and flees from the notion of embracing any such thing. The soul itself recoils from the touch of one of these monsters of hatred, greed; mindless, compassionless vampires who believe without knowing belief that all is in order. Men and women are poisoning themselves and each other with the unspoken abhorrence of what they’ve allowed to happen, and are scrambling madly, madly, to tear out of their own flesh.

            Ours was a simpler thing. I would amble over for a light embrace, and nibble at the lashes of those dulling eyes with my lips. He was so much more brittle these days, even the liquid play of his hands stalled as he pet me. I was handsome now, he said. Silky in the sunlight. Black and white, he said as I kissed him; all light and no light he explained. Equal deaths, equal heavens. I rested beside him resting, the two of us listening to the tumbling jubilation of the creek.

*         *         *

De Hagenau did not show up with the contract for another week. To Antoine, Helene and Genevieve alone Lucien confided the tale of his hooking, the steel barb he’d caught himself on in his refusal to drop the project. The monies de Hagenau demanded had been needed for the last materials –of which many were yet lacking– and the hiring of criers. Lucien spent two days in travel, returning without the other loans he’d hunted, and thus remained short a full hundred livres.

            Other pitfalls lay ahead: Rapelle would suffer from the loss of the fair as much as the theater would, and the phantoms of profit would lie still and sour over the town just when he and they needed it. Visitors might fall off as well for a larger reason: while the English still held Guienne and Calais, rumor had Charles and Edward meeting in Bruges to negotiate a one year truce. Lucien knew that if the official armies were recovering, thousands of fighting men would be left idle and would begin again to pillage at will. Rapelle would either suffer the rapine as the marauders swept down or it would be isolated as they plundered the lands surrounding it. 

            When de Hagenau finally came with his beholden escapees to remove the debris from the theater, Maximillian coldly marched out and joined Lucien to sit in the sun. Calescent rage flashed from the actor’s eyes as he watched the lord demonstrate his strength to the men, and he began to mutter to Lucien as they sat. Maximillian, it developed, having known well the tragic, lost heir to the Seigneury, harbored an intense contempt for the Sieur, and became animated as he hissed out a tale of monstrosity that, to Lucien’s surprise, confirmed the worst of Hortense’s gossip. Far worse, in fact, and Maximillian’s stoic character delivered credence where Hortense never could.

            “Antoine told me of his latest grasping,” the actor spat. “I have some money, Maestro, let me help.”

            Lucien glanced at the man, then quickly away.

            “It’s idle silver, Maestro, I assure you,” Maximillian had a croak of a laugh that matched his voice. “I received a credit by an accident of my family’s banker and no one wants it back. I’ve no intention of calling attention to the mistake, but what am I to do with the sum? You’ve worked too hard. We all have. If that troll –that felon– stops us now, I’ll not forgive myself for standing by. Besides, I owe it to the memory of his son; he was mad, but a true prince.”

            “If we run as planned,” Lucien sighed, “I can repay a small amount each month, as I have the other creditor to assuage.”

            “Repay who? There is no who there.” The tall, austere man actually embraced Lucien as he laughed again. “Let’s show the monster what dangerous animals make a theater!”   

*

Having broken her life off of Lucien’s, Genevieve was now inclined to be affectionate in his presence. The airy, flower-scented kindness he had known four years past radiated off her once more. When she would grow equally angry, he assumed she had been ruining herself with Hortense’s decoctions. Either way, he still felt himself at a loss to predict her mood. As their cordial arrangement settled around them, Lucien was able to tell her in detail all the insane exploits he had lived in the last six months; Genevieve laughed at most of them, and reviled the cupidity of the de Hagenaus for destroying everyone they touched.

            I myself would lie in the sun, pushing back at the pig pushing against me. He would grunt amiably, then we would pull ourselves up to chase butterflies or plums. I watched the world spinning around me, peopled by cats and runty whelps blowing across the meadow. I played no part in the dumb-show of animosity Lucien had ignited. From where I stood, I could see it raging like a wildfire across the horizon. Other days, chewing contentedly what I had burped up, I would settle back against Genevieve’s playful hands and let her voice bubble over me. Happiness and sorrow seemed to writhe like vapor through these beings. Lucien himself was but a cup of mourning dove ash.

*         *         *

On the day before the promised opening, Lucien climbed to the roof of the former granary and affixed the sign handed up by the workmen. Christian had even dressed himself up for the occasion and was exercising authority over the crew below, marshalling them as though for a royal inspection.

            “Hard left,” called Maximillian.

            “Too much,” Helene taunted.

            He had painted the long, massive sign with all his love of line and color, all his insight into what stirred the public. It was a curvaceous landscape of exotic femininity, brushed in the night before with his eyes scarcely open. He knew the strength and promise it needed to carry on its own; because the fairs had been thwarted, because the fabled guilds never came, because all this sabotage meant the locals would see no profits, Lucien was too fully aware they would swing their disgruntlement from the Sieur to him. This was no longer a center of goodwill and trade, it was a theater pure and simple. But one astonishingly built indoors.

            Antoine shuffled into view as Lucien climbed down from the roof, and stood amongst the workmen who had come to make the final push. Lucien could see the townsfolk gathering along the roads to gape at the sign as it reflected rich blues and golds in the mid-day sun, bouncing its image across the skies of the entire valley. The gold framed a blue background seemingly as open as the spring canopy around it, and the gilt letters spelling Odalisque Theater arched deliciously over the recumbent harem girl with her black tresses and her carnelian skirts enhancing buttercream skin, the black lashes of her eyes and the wet coral of her lips. They’d seen nothing like it ever.

            Maximillian laughed softly, patting his hands together and rolling on his heels. “This will do it,” he muttered. “Tomorrow, Maestro, we will be as kings in this benighted county.”

            De Hagenau appeared from around the corner and placed himself in Lucien’s path. The glint of his eye was still more sharp than before and Dadais’ greasy countenance stood smeared beside him.

            “Rent day,” he growled, extending his hand without taking his eyes off Lucien’s.

            “Rent day,” Dadais snickered.

            Lucien stared back at the Seigneur, unwilling to show the exasperation rising within him. His voice flattened for the occasion, he said: “This is neither the time nor the place to accost me. I’m busy.”

            “Be quick with it!” de Hagenau snapped. “Don’t draw on my time while meat waits on my table.”

            “No,” Lucien countered as their heads jerked back. “This is no more rent day than it is Michaelmas. You’re two weeks early, just as you are always too late when the time comes to keep your word. Antoine will bring you the rent on the day it is due. If you begin to starve in the meantime I suggest you fry some children in your dumb flunkey’s hair oil.”

            The bailiff stepped forward, but was restrained by his liege who, without ever having lifted his eyes off of Lucien, was conscious of the small crowd which had gathered.

            “Fine.” he spat. “But be sure you keep to your precious contract. I intend to stop thieving in my lands.”

            “Won’t that ruin you?” Lucien shot back. This time Christian stood forward.

            “Bring it to me the week after the next, then.” This to Antoine. “I’ll receive you at eight in the morning.”

            “That means almost a whole day of standing around his hallways,” sighed Antoine.

            De Hagenau loped off, and Lucien and Antoine found themselves facing a crowd of admiring craftsmen, more willing than ever to transform the granary into a temple of Art.

            As the carpenters hammered and sawed, Lucien took Antoine several times along the width of the stage where together they secured rows of candles of alternating height. These candles rode the foremost edge of the platform and once in place were then hidden from the audiences’ view by means of a vertical skirting. Between the skirting and the wicks they installed rounds of highly polished metal, some concave, some flat; this, Lucien explained, would grant an intensity of light to the proceedings which would keep the public transfixed, the source, meanwhile, remaining invisible to the spectators.

            They removed from beneath the stage the large package that had come from the Veneto. Lifting the leaden crate to the platform, they dusted the wood chips from their hair and smeared their hands against their hose; both men were filthy and rank from the ceaseless toil. They would neither bathe nor sleep until the morrow, but they had grown used to the privation by now, having endured it longer than they could reckon. Now all their attention was locked onto the task before them. Tenderly, they lifted out sheet after sheet of colored glass, unwrapping the hide and wool protecting each pane.

            “These,” Lucien spoke hoarsely, holding a red pane up, “are the most expensive, although easily procured only thirty years ago it’s scarce now, so be careful with the ruby glass. This one is a new achievement: the yellow comes from a solution of silver, also costly.”

            Because of the dipping and coating process involved in creating such rich colors, the glass, Lucien explained, was commonly known as pot-metal. With bits of wire they then hung thick panes of the glass in front of the candles according to the color scheme Lucien had matched to the various tableaux. To soften the shadows cast against the scenery, they erected a slim tower on either side of the stage and planted more candles, glass and reflectors in them. They attempted to recreate the footboard lighting up above and eight feet out from the stage, but abandoned the effort when they realized the wax would drip on the public.

            “It might well be a good distraction for when the actors forget their lines,” chuckled Antoine.

            The number of scenarios, it turned out, meant that the whole play required no less than eighty candles. When they tested the lights Antoine was undecided between amazement and wild delight. By means of a very long and narrow pine torch he could plunge the set into portentous crimson, or haunting blue; with practice he would be able to blend the effects and dazzle the audience with most every color of the spectrum. A long-handled extinguisher enabled him to douse whichever lights he chose. The workmen stopped all speech and movement while the lights were lit and snuffed in the precise sequence Lucien had designed for the play. For an hour no one found so much as a whisper within them, until Antoine, strolling out to the center of the room to view his last atmospheric, shattered the silence.

            “Dear God,” he said, “what have we done?” Tears of pride rimmed his eyes.

         *         *         *

On the evening of Friday, May 27th, Lucien and his madmen presented to the world their calamitous epic of love, ‘Pantaloon Ointment.’ Fresh entrails had been delivered by the butcher earlier that day.

            The few criers Lucien had been able to hire returned exhausted, having alerted half the county to the spectacle. Lucien made sure their palfreys were safe at the inn, then eased them all into the backmost space of the theater. They shuffled nervously as the hall commenced to fill with an astonishing mixture of sweat-soaked toilers, merchants, enthusiastic artists, farmers major and minor and even some of de Hagenau’s lesser retinue, who had lied to their lord about descending on the inn. As Lucien had anticipated, the shimmering candles set in girandoles along the black walls, and the resonant height of the ceiling as it vanished into darkness above the perfumed heads of the curious bestowed an almost ecclesiastical sense of awe, which went well with the epiphanies he had in store for the crowd.  

            All performances had been scheduled with the set of the sun in order that Antoine could work his magic to the fullest. No moon crept up, and all the town was fixated on the torches burning below the sensuous harem girl illuminating the night.

            Drawing an invisible curtain between his toil and the tasks lying ahead for the troupe, Lucien dispatched Helene to remain behind stage with the actors as long as possible, with full instructions on coddling, encouraging, becalming and even jesting. Ricard paced all around the building, stretching his long fingers, shaking his head and muttering to himself while fighting back tears. Antoine remained at Lucien’s side, his mechanisms having been thoroughly tested twice that afternoon; Lucien was pleased with his confidence, marking that the young man had not bothered to trick himself out in sartorial fripperies, but was ineluctably concentrated on the sheer work before him. As more spectators arrived, they shook hands and Antoine disappeared into his magician’s den to await the director’s signal. Lucien, against his nature, remained at the entrance to flatter the audience.

            Genevieve had dressed in her finest skirts and stood beside Lucien, rejoicing and cooing in anticipation, now understanding that despite the hardship he had brought down upon them all, his labors of all the months had been the gift he’d wished to give her this night. She kissed his slack face and shook him, giggling.

            “Please, Lucien, it’s been agony these months, tonight let me do something!“

            “You may take the entrance monies if you wish,” he smiled. “God knows I never wish to see another sous again!”

            Pope Zacharias had arranged a trestle of delicacies and was explaining them to the crowd as Lisette, herself eager and hot, once more worked in tandem with him as they had in their early days. Alexander entered the door of the theater and smiled in a triumph all his own as he saw what could be done with the concept of ‘impossible.’ He bowed to Lucien in earnest respect. Eugene and Jacqueline, towering, impervious to rebuke, strode through the doors regally robed and already pleased, as though the performance had finished. Gudrun and Hebert swished in to watch their squat savant decimate the town with his talent. Jupon descended from the carriage he’d driven from the Black Swan, graciously assisting the woman he’d invited down to the road, then through the portals of the glittering hall. Hortense came with her husband and English Charles. The brothers Bignon and their wives handed their coins to Genevieve with a high, knowing look at the Maestro. Celeste approached with Paul in tow and, beaming, smashed her lips to Lucien’s in unaffected enthusiasm. He laughed inside at her spontaneous, display of gratulation then, signalling to Ricard to assume his place, invited the rest of the crowd inside. The hall was full.

            Lucien himself extinguished the lights on the walls. He had previously requested Ricard do so, but the music master had been so fretful of his own chores that he had begun to sob at the mere thought of it. As the Maestro doused the lights, to a satisfying gasp from the audience, Ricard wheezed a fear heard by all, then seated himself in the midst of his instruments, nodding to his players. Lucien slipped to his place besides Genevieve, who now had as her own retinue of honor the Pope and Lisette.

            It was a wild crowd, possibly more crazed than the crazed ones on stage, roaring with laughter and yelling in amazement for two frantic hours. The frenzied misalliances thundering across the boards escalated in speed and absurdity with each howl from the spectators. Lucien had felt perfectly at ease throughout the day, driving the others to pique, and he now felt a little sprite of completion escape from his breast as he heard Genevieve’s squeal melt into the scream of the whole audience as the troupe seized their souls from the very first instant, Pierre’s debonair face appearing suspended in black as he began his sudden, spotlit invocation: “Nighttime! The hour of love and mysterious colors!”

            And on they cheered as the actors faded in out and in –the varied eras of man. The audience recoiled in revulsion, soon churning and falling in spasms of mirth as Maximillian triple-flipped through the air, bedeviled by his convulsing throne; Pompeux’s red-hot, priapic boasts and pursuits astounded even the coarsest. Hearts and pudenda dissolved en masse as Rose and Dominique sang; Mathilde, Seiche and Pierre elevated then annihilated the great romances of legend, and rotund little Etienne entered again and again on his quartz-frosted wings to expound on man’s naked hypocrisy, slamming the whole audience over double like trap-doors as he sang the obscene tribulations of birth. The screams and guffaws whipped the actors to their delirious pace better than anything Lucien could have said now. Slipping in the most startling moments of tenderness, the human story unfolding on stage inspired the audience to excruciating laughter, for, by displaying the contumely which riddled their own lives, Lucien had kept the perspective absurdly childish; showing that malevolence can only be a waterstain of superficiality, that hatred only discerns the barest skin of things and so, no matter how awful, can never escape its pre-pubescent fatuousness. As Ricard played the highest attainments of comic and passionate song, Antoine worked the mysteries of fire, darkness, God-winches, blue smoke, falling castles, fabulous fleets and colors blazing through the eyes of all, while spurting in and out across the stage like arteries rent rolled the history of dupes, brutes –the innocent minxes unfaithful as the wind, the slavering lechers driven mad by their repugnance, the scheming queens of vengeance, the hapless poets seeking without the love within; killers, kings and criminals beaten by breasts, mothers, nuns, scullions and slatterns enslaved by their grief, their shame their resentments; wisps of tenderness, blown aside by selfishness and cruelty, and, ultimately, the teetering, towering insanity of spoiled love.

            Just before Antoine abruptly capped the lights on the penultimate scene, Lucien knew, as he had all along, that he had a success de scandal in his hands.

            For, having raced backwards through time, the play exploded at the end with Lucien’s depiction of the Fall of Eden, and here the mirror was held up high and clear, calculated with every art to blind the spectators with their own flaming hell. All the lascivious conniving of the previous hours had roused the audience to this point, which no one could have anticipated in its perversity. Trilling Etienne, despairing ironically, depended from heaven as a demonic red glow soaked the air like a sponge, and from the depths of the stage the final tableau slowly rose up as he sang. Now all the players converged in a circle, their song weaving itself together as they hymned how the Original Sin was not the coupling of woman and man, but their separation. Sin was not love –the passionate, spiritual and carnal love that melted two hearts into one– no, they sang: the Fall was selfishness and self-adulation. From beneath the stage, Maximillian and Mathilde began to creak up into the carmine vapor as the circle lambasted the crowd with the vices of self-serving and self-devouring seclusion. The hall was one gasp as a great gallows-tree of false knowledge twisted up from the center. On one side stood Eve, two-headed, undulous, dripping sausage-strung innards while cannibalizing herself, and far on the other, amidst the screams of man and beast, ran desolate Adam, molesting the apes.

II.

The Aurora of Heaven

Splashing bawdy wounds across the faces of the natives, the bonfire lauding midsummer snarled as Lucien crossed the square. Drifting like a raven’s wing, he was reading the map borne in his head, wondering where in the world he might go. In the dark red sky he saw the moon folded into a tunnel of white clouds, cylindrical and miles deep. It lit him once, then retreated into the tube of cirrus, leaving the hot-blooded night to the fire.

            Genevieve, accompanied by Pope Zacharias and Lisette, was waiting for him at the corner table of the Swan.

            “You have to escort me to the banquet tonight,” she cooed, dusting cinders off his vest. “So I will meet you here after the performance.”

            Lucien wriggled under her sweeping. “What banquet?”

            “Paul’s birthday,” she shook his head. “He will be twenty-eight today and Celeste has organized a revel for him. How is it you don’t know this?”

            Lucien shrugged.

            “You have to come. Celeste specifically instructed me to bring you there in irons if necessary.”

            Lucien wrinkled his brow in confusion. “Why should she care so much for my attendance?”

            “She’s a friend of ours and thus you must be a friend of hers,” she insisted.

            “Oh, very well, then. But I swear I’m in no strength to entertain a gaggle of colicky swaddlers. I’ll escort you there and pass an hour or so, but no more.”

            “Must you be curmudgeonly?” Lisette sniped.

            “He finds it amusing,” Genevieve told her.

            “I have to go too,” Pope Zacharias sighed. “I made the supper.”

            “Ah! Under those circumstances I feel compelled by honor to join the festivities.”

            They crossed the square until they had reached the theater. They agreed to meet Lucien after the play finished and rattled off with Genevieve to put the final touches on the meal, briefly silhouetted as they lumbered past the flames raking the sky. Lucien watched the blaze and listened to the drunken chanting in the solstice night as he waited for the actors to appear in the quiet manner they maintained before taking to the stage.

            The performance as witnessed from the prow of the stage elicited gasps of outrage, unbroken laughter and raw horror. Behind the scenery, careening around the mass of engineering, however, a second play unfolded each night, far surpassing the public version in wit, physical daring and comic timing. Lucien could detect, or even sense, a good deal of this pandemonium from his station out front, but it was always the exasperated, sweat-drenched Antoine who narrated the details each night. As they fled the theater and reassembled in the Black Swan, the actors would crush around Lucien for praise and advice before grabbing their free drinks and stunned admirers while Lucien dipped his head together with Ricard and Antoine to review the night’s gaffs.

            “Why can’t they sing?” cried Ricard. “I swear they have a contest to see who can ruin the finale each night!”

            “Why won’t they act?” moaned Antoine.

            “We’ll have them rehearse the song once every evening before opening. –Why are you shaking, Antoine?”

            “Etienne,” he croaked. “Tonight I was running from stage left to stage right to release the trap and I discovered him about to ignite the explosives. I had to chase him then dash back to pull the levers. I nearly destroyed the second act. I’m back there running without pause for two hours and I have no time to spare on these sallies. Last evening he hid Pierre’s costume. I had one naked actor and one ball of deviltry chasing around and crashing through my cables”

            Lucien was delighted. “I’ll speak with him. After all, I talked him out of sawing through the apes’ leashes when I caught him.”

            Antoine groaned and let his head hit the table. Ricard stuck out his hand and told Lucien: “You owe me two sous. At the crucial moment, Etienne crawled out from the curtain and refused to sing his ballad unless I paid him.” 

            Lucien dug out the coins and set them in the trembling hand. “I’ll speak with them all tomorrow night. Unfortunately I have another job for the evening.” He sighed and stood, still aching from the paltry sleep on his paillasse back home. Parrying as he could the thrusts of complaints, inopportune quotes from his own script, desperate pleas for compliments and whirling snatches of song and dance, he slid through the chaos until he found Genevieve back at the inn, seated between Hortense and her husband, the three of them screaming uproariously as Seiche crouched on the table and showed them every bizarre face he could make.

            “Oh, where did you find him?” Hortense screamed. “And those awful things you have him do in there! I love it! Lucien, you’re a genius! Give me a kiss!”

            “No. What became of the Pope and Lisette?”

            Genevieve grinned at Hortense’s dudgeon. “They needed to add some flourishes to their handiwork. I could do nothing more.”

            “Well, then, let us leave this cauldron and go step in the coals.”

            “It won’t be so trying.”

            Genevieve was at peace in her heart this night, gaily smiling her guileless smile and pressing Lucien’s arm as he stalked along beside her. The simple companionship she was relishing in Lucien’s presence still confused him, still becalmed him, and he wondered what hot gas in him kept him aloft in airless, dark sky, feeling like a burning star so many miles away from her.

            “So black now,” she tittered. “Or red, actually. Through the red, red night I go with my black knight on my arm.” She began to sing it softly, putting a skip in her step and laughing at Lucien’s attempts to walk with it, locked in her elbow as he was.

            “The moon might come back later,” he observed. They seemed to be headed for de Hagenau’s grounds. Genevieve confirmed this when he asked. She patted his hand and instructed him not to worry, for the lord and his retinue were off milking outlying villages for taxes and Odile had been sent on a combination pilgrimage and cure on de Hagenau’s orders. No one knew when she might be allowed to return.

            The dining hall had been decorated by Celeste and Helene during the day. They had dusted the floor with fresh flowers, oiled the great table until it shone like a lake, and had arranged the flaming wall sconces dramatically. After consulting Ricard, Helene had induced Celeste to hire a trio of minstrels only too glad to scrape their viols and harmonize in exchange for a rare repast. These last were already engaged when Lucien arrived.

            Celeste welcomed them ebulliently as they entered. She had dressed her hair with faint oils –not enough to keep it from fluttering at will– and wore a viridian velvet gown embroidered with pearls. On her brow was another strand of pearls studded with lapis lazuli, embracing her neck, a garland of violets. The silver bells still played around her hips.

            Lucien glanced over at Helene and realized that for the past month Celeste had been wearing filets on her brow in emulation of Helene. He assumed the older woman had been dressing the younger.

            With Christian seated beside him, Paul stood up and greeted them from the table, where Lucien saw Pompeux and a number of others leering at the rye breads, puddings, and gilded perches gleaming among pasties, fruits and great silver chalices of spiced wines, all disporting in the torchlight.

            Conversation was shouted and feral, enthusiastic and vulgar, with quips racing from one end of the table to another in the directionless fashion of rabid squirrels loosed in a cellar. Pompeux vied with Gerard the Donkey for masticatory volume, teeth and sweat flashing like riverstones. Lisette and the Pope ate on the run, scurrying back and forth from kitchen to hall, whispering encouragement and trailing the steam of competence they did whenever so engaged, speaking the elisions of their private code, the secret language of the prandial priesthood. Helene flirted cheerfully, laying cool hands on Christian and Pompeux as they eyed her up and down the feed-board, assisting Celeste, who ran it all.

            Ringing off the walls of the hall, the dissonance was if anything greater than that at the Swan. As the food was reduced to puddles of grease and hillocks of bone, Celeste rose amidst the clamor and inaugurated the somewhat facetious procession to the head of the table where all laid before Paul the gifts they had brought. Celeste had given him a beautifully jeweled dagger. Eugene, always busy, had passed by just long enough to present him with a flask of his Lucky Pig Elixir, promising a long and virile life.

            “Ah, but I must leave you now as I have an assignation. All,” he boasted, “thanks due to the fame of my potion!”

            Christian had borrowed a few sous from Lucien and bought Paul a headpiece of chain mail. Helene brought sacred stones and special feathers. Lucien and Genevieve gave him an enameled bottled full of an herbal liqueur that she had made. Paul was embarrassed by the attentions of the people he had not until now considered close friends. With this affair, Celeste had proven her devotion to him and was elevated in his eyes with each succeeding moment, each mark of consideration, and the solicitousness with which she tended to him set his heart at perfect ease. He felt as though he was celebrating his wedding night. He grinned and pulled his lank frame up to face the crowd.

            “Many thanks I owe each one of you,” he called. “I am ashamed that words do not serve me so well, that I am so tested to express my happiness. I stand here at a loss for complaint against anything under the sun, at peace with all men for tonight, and deeply –very deeply– inspired by this display of kindness and loyalty, especially by my friend Celeste.”

            “Bah!” roared Pompeux. “The woman who pretends loyalty only does so in order that she may have the pleasure of the first betrayal!”

            Gerard cut a bray of laughter worthy of his name and Celeste rolled her eyes at Helene, who smacked Pompeux upon the ear.

            Celeste approached Paul with the dagger and bid him put it on. Paul first drew it from its sheath and held it up for all to admire: It was a fine misericorde, well designed to pierce the joints of the armor should one’s foe become unhorsed. With Celeste’s attentions, he placed it back in the beautiful sheath and lifted the cord to lace through his belt.

            “Not like that!” Christian leapt up and took charge of the fastening. “On the right side, boy!”

            Paul blushed for a second. Celeste glared at Christian as he energetically set the dagger in place, straightened the youth’s shoulders and clapped him on the back. “All you need is your hauberk and you can lead the second charge on the food!”

            Paul actually reached for the head mail and appeared ready to put it on when Celeste snatched it from him and, whirling, set it aside with the other gifts. She felt the half-gargle of a scream inside her as she witnessed the clash of her efforts to make a man of her betrothed with the willingness of others to make a clown of him.

            The table was cleared and then heaped yet again with pears, rissoles, capons, nuts and hares. The light from the flambeaux ricocheted off the silver plate, the gilded skins and delicate green peels dressed out across the board, and the garnet reflections of wine hopped around the hall as the steward kept the glasses filled.

            Pope Zacharias, assisted by Lisette, then hoisted atop the table the crown of the repast: a two-foot long crocodile constructed of herbed lamb’s meat, pork and leek mousse. Its glistening trunk was scaled with oversized mint leaves varnished with aspic.

            Paul fondled his dagger lovingly and spoke of the tournament Christian had vowed to enter him in three weeks hence. It would be his first. The youth had no apparent fear in him, and Lucien supposed he might do well for himself.

            “Let the sour old Sieur try to step on me then,” Paul snorted. “I’ll be placed well ahead of the game by then. To hang a shield around my neck at last…”

            Here the party broke into opposing factions. Christian remained cynically amused; while the majority called out acclaim for Paul’s ambition, Lisette and Genevieve shouted dissuasion; Pope Zacharias snickered quietly and glanced at Lucien.

            “Tourneys have been condemned by the church for years,” Lisette insisted. “You joust at the peril of excommunication if not your carcass.”

            But Paul was full of wine and happiness. He felt himself already knighted, tried in battles he had played in his imagination for ages, and with some invisible complicity surging off of Christian, felt the heat of heroism bubbling through his blood.

            “The Church doesn’t dare touch the likes of us,” Paul boasted. “Old Mother Church needs her warriors and warriors need to earn their prizes, their scars, their good names and their own proud houses; the prize of any house is a beautiful wife, children to play and a man to fight.”

            “For what?” Pope Zacharias pressed.

            “Whatever might be worth fighting for. I desire nothing so much as to go to war. This muddy life would then be clear to me and I would stand on one side of the swamp or the other.”

            Lucien was repelled by Paul’s thinking. The truce between England and France had indeed been signed at the beginning of the month and the disbanded armies were ravaging freely. Christian cruelly encouraged the lad by telling him of a possible campaign being promoted largely to pull those maniacs back into the fold of ‘order.’

            “Murderer or corpse,” Lucien grumbled. “What a felicitous choice.”

            Paul objected: “A man slain in stour is no victim.”

            “Victims,” Lucien insisted, “even if fallen in acts of aggression. Human manure.”

            “Manure?” Many of the party were insulted. “Dung? How can you dare to call valiants manure?”

            “By virtue of their numbers,” Lucien reasoned. He tossed a disgusted hand in the air. “See this: the great results of civilization, from ancient times: Philipopolis: one-hundred thousand corpses polluting the fields; Naissus: fifty thousand; Pavia: one-hundred and twenty thousand; Chrysopolis: twenty-five thousand; Mursa: fifty-four thousand chopped up bodies littering the ground.” Lucien drained his glass and returned to his enumeration. “Adrianople: forty thousand on the Roman side alone; Chalons, courtesy of Attila: three hundred thousand husks of human remains heaped like mountains; The sack of Athens; sack of Rome; sack of Tongres, Worms, Constantinople, Cologne, Strasbourg, Treves, Spires: no exact count, but much flinging around of civilian pieces….Of recent note: Poitiers…”

            “Eight thousand massacred before my eyes,” Christian asserted, a twitch of horror zipping across his face.

            “And a damned fool King taken prisoner,” Zacharias chuckled.

            “So eat well, boy, for what other than a proper diet leads to virtue and victory?” Lisette teased Paul, who had leapt to his feet at Zacharias’ irreverence.

            “Enough! Enough from all of you,” Celeste commanded. “How can you speak of such things when we are trying to celebrate?”

            Christian let out a gust of laughter and punched Paul on his thigh by way of reminding him that it was all part of the fête. The rest of the room splintered into debates and zinging jests. Celeste busied herself looking after the musicians and stewards, drifting left and right across the hall, lively and gracious. As she paused to speak with one of the men from a neighboring town, she held his arm and inclined her face to him. Lucien at this moment looked up and saw the strange profile he had first noticed several months back and startled himself with the lost memory that was not a memory, and again it and now this sight vanished before he’d remember. 

            Lisette stood up and called upon Lucien to deliver a song.

            “There are no more songs,” he glowered. “Only desperate prayers for wealth and pleasure.”

            Those around him applauded he thought –he felt too absent to be sure. Pompeux teetered on his cushions and managed to elevated himself upright, thrusting his empty glass under the nose of a passing steward, swaying while the latter filled it.

            “Worms,” he peered at the gathering. “Larvae, pupating grubs! Why don’t you let the slop gush from your ears and listen to him? Listen!” he bellowed. “This man knows of what he speaks, and of all the universe, there is nothing of which he cannot speak.” He squinted at his outstretched hand, followed its line to Lucien, and said: “Tell them all, Maestro!”

            In the silence of the hall, Pompeux suddenly dropped his glass. His humid lips exploded out and vibrated as he belched. Several women standing next to him screamed and covered their noses as Pompeux collapsed back onto the cushions and commenced to snore.

            Lucien made a grave and courtly bow to the assembly, acknowledging “This most exalted endorsement.”

            Celeste stepped around Pompeux and enjoined the musicians to wipe the food from their hands and play. Christian, sure, quizzical and undaunted by gentility, smacked the table in great humor and called down the length of it to Lucien: “And how come you to know all and yet leave us friends and colleagues to stumble through our days in ignorance? Do you really live so far above us?”

            “You can see for yourself I live on the same Earth as you.” Lucien, like everyone else, was well warmed by wine, and had little shyness left in him this hour. He liked Christian for his curiosity and lack of restraint, and felt welcome to speak most of his mind in such amiable surroundings. Lucien fluttered one hand aloft and related to Christian an amusing version of his singular nature: “I was put here on this pitted sphere to do a job of crucial importance. Understand,” he said, eyes flashing in comic emphasis, “that I was once of the angels themselves.”

            The thought of Lucien’s dark bearing and his sardonic nature being of angelic origin brought roars of hilarity from the table.

            “That must have been a spectacle worth paying for,” sputtered Zacharias. “Our Lucien masquerading as a ray of sweetness!”

            “Ah, but I wasn’t! Not sweetness in its unquestioning guise. In fact,” Lucien invited them all into his confidence, “I was thrown out. I had played one too many pranks, I suppose, and was duly dropped down here for penance.”

            Genevieve chirped and combed her fingers through his hair, telling the group: “Now this must be true!”

            “What is your penance?” Christian pressed.

            “Pompeux,” barked Zacharias.

            “De Hagenau,” Lisette called out.

            “Me!” laughed Genevieve.

            Paul and Christian fell back in their seats bawling and locked their arms around each other. Celeste let loose a loud laugh then turned a dark carmine as she coughed wine out of her lungs. Someone lamented the absence of a scribe throughout the evening.

            “Oh, it’s not so cruel as any of that,” Lucien reassured them. “Merely a case of too many japes and insubordination; after knocking me down here the boss seraphim must have decided I had to earn my keep in arrears, so they scratched their heads a bit and asked God: ‘And now that he’s been banished, Lord, what do we do with him?’

            “‘Him? He shall be my eyes, my ears. Give him a brush and a quill that he may tell me all that occurs beyond my gaze. Let him redeem himself so: accept the torment that comes of watching, but stay fast to my interests and be my eyes and my ears.’“

            No elation greeted this last sally. Genevieve, who had heard such a claim before, kept the smile on her face, but the other smiles were silent, frozen and awkward. Faces, as Lucien looked around the table, seemed to be measuring the audacity or justice of his remarks. Lucien, to erase the effects of his story, leapt up and pointed to the rasping heap of flesh and saliva in the corner and commanded: “Steward, more wine for Pompeux!”

            Amidst the chucklings and murmuring, the conversation resumed from the far end of the table.

            “But you see more than we, my friend, and, I’ve noticed, in many different dimensions.” Christian was delighted to pursue the badinage. “You’re a prophet in our midst, and a welcome one at that!”

            Lucien accepted the toast and avoided the eyes of the assembly. Genevieve touched his hand and smiled at him in good-natured encouragement. She knew well the misfortune of his abilities, both for herself as well as Lucien, and considered it best for him to assimilate mildly and as unostentatiously as possible into the cut of life around them. Lucien treated such proclamations from others with supercilious hamming, and she wished he would continue to do so this night. Christian, however, while maintaining an equally frivolous bearing, smelled the blood of truth in Lucien’s remarks.

            “So what happens next, Maestro?”

            “A little wine, somewhere in life a brief taste of love, and then we die again.”

            “Ah! Again yet!” Christian laughed. “You speak from vision or from experience?”

            Lucien stayed the course: “Experience, of course. Some souls are old, and some of them retain their knowledge and indeed concert it no matter how many times they are rescued from this wretched clod and dashed back down again.”

            By now the entire hall had settled. Genevieve quit Lucien’s side in resignation and seated herself between Pope Zacharias and Lisette. The night itself seemed to have seated itself at the great table, bringing its purse full of possibility into the hall. The torches guttered and spun the light around in mad flights. Lucien, a voice said, continue.

            “You’re a young one.” he suddenly announced, pointing at Christian. “Once around you’ll go in ignorance. A warrior’s soul, but cloaked in the dew of first morning.” Lucien gibed. “You still suffer from dizzy spells when the wren starts to sing.”

            Christian kept smiling, but looked very intently at Lucien’s features as the rest of the guests demanded to know what their true natures were. Lucien had successfully presented it as a game.

            “Paul,” they asked. “Who’s our Paul, then?”

            “Warrior,” rapped Lucien, instinctively courteous.

            Paul was satisfied with the answer, particularly as Christian threw an arm over him and roared fraternal blessings. Lucien glanced up at the boy he simply thought of as lost and hoped that he would truly find his course one day. As more drunken guests darted in and out of this conjurer’s sport, Lucien felt in his heart that ‘lost’ defined their psychic cartography almost to a man, and he became sullen and dark as they crowded him with mouths that made no sound to his ears. Lisette actually waxed indignant when he dismissed her with a flip of his hand. Zacharias and Genevieve both upbraided her in whispers for participating in the buffoonery.

            A voice, timid and intimate, as though Lucien was alone in a room with it, touched his ear and said: “Who am I?”

            Celeste was lying on a window bank, smiling and awaiting his response. There was a depth in her eyes from which poured forth a concentration of knowledge –an inexplicably warm and happy knowledge– that he had never seen elsewhere. He was startled in the extreme to recognize it, doubly so in Celeste. The hilarity continued around him, yet he spoke, without thinking, as though Celeste were alone; as if he himself were in another room removed from her.

            “You’re an angel,” he said in quiet surprise. “A fallen angel. My God, you fell! You don’t belong here at all.”

            Lucien, unbalanced by the recognition, immediately righted his heart and proceeded with a mantle of unconcerned, strict civility around his vision.

            “Just like me, except that you weren’t thrown out like I was. For some reason you fell, and I can only say for certain that nothing must ever harm you here.”

            The crowd, which had every reason to adore Celeste, considered the appellation fitting, and found the exchange a gallant summation of Lucien’s tamed gypsy act. Paul was rocking blissfully at the far end of the table, pleased with the affection his friends had displayed in his honor and proud of the social achievements of his beloved. Christian, who had been watching over him, now rose and put a histrionic cap on the display by raising his goblet to Celeste and saluting: “The Angel.”

            He turned to Lucien and, wine held proudly to the heavens, announced: “The Prophet!”

            Lucien and Celeste, in spontaneous unison, merrily shot up their goblets and toasted back to Christian, who held Paul forward, with an acknowledgement of: “The Warriors!”

            With relief, Lucien and the three people who knew him best saw that the dangerous game had passed. Genevieve, Lisette and the Pope secretly prayed no one had been too startled or too enchanted by the portentous atmosphere that had briefly invaded the hall. Lucien himself returned to the grottos of his own mind, questioning what cursed force of vision unveiled such things, then plunge him into the awkward role of hariolizer or fool forequidder. But, then, was this not the essence of his whole art anyway? The steep rise of all the different conversations brought his focus back outside.

            As Christian rattled and chattered, Lucien’s eyes fell over to where Celeste was lying prostrate on a bank of cushions. At that exact second Celeste, lying on her stomach, legs curled aloft, feet gently crossed, raised her head a fraction and fixedly looked at him from beneath her brows, her hair. Lucien saw the most exquisite complicity in that feline glance, his inner voice silenced by the vision that would remain with him beyond the measure of time itself: Celeste lying on her stomach, resting on her elbows, vibrating sensual and spiritual assurance all along the rich swells of her body; the smooth line of her cheek as she almost imperceptibly smiled at him, the soft curve of her arm ending in hands so gentle that he could feel their tenderness from across the room, the vaguely oiled and briefly scented edges of her breasts, caressed by her smock, the daring race of her back to the vertiginous glory of her hips; a hidden, smiling exhilaration, unmoving, of pure love timidly touching him through those catlike eyes. That one glance, unnoticed by all except he who was meant to see it, that secret question, that immortal answer, that single peek from the face tilted towards him suddenly broke over him like a wave that had been coursing towards him for eons and Lucien’s life was thrown over.

            For the next two hours he felt a mute. The words slipped through his lips and escaped into the wavering darkness, but he neither heard nor tasted them. People eddied towards him, smiling, laughing, dancing in response and query, and Lucien was aware that he was holding conversations without recognizing his speech, only noting that he must still be murmuring insights of color at a steady pace, judging from the expressions that wafted over the faces around him. As he rumbled on and joked, he tried to think of what he might do next in his life, saw great seas crash at his feet, and icy lands roar out before him; the shifting gold of torchlight set him off across the desert, where he sought and found dark purple rosetrees and dates reserved for those who have learned the secrets of surviving life with a goodly heart intact. Without watching her, he sensed Celeste reaching her white hand up and catching his words out of the air like sugared lunar moths.

            Lucien grew into his seat as oaks grow from the soil, allowing himself sociability even as his wrecked body drowsed. He heard the sound of twenty-thousand existences bearing down on him like so many tumbling angels, but even they feared to step forward from the back of his head. The heavy hand of night pushed down the gaiety after a long while, and the guests began to depart for home, embracing the ones remaining with the peculiar rites of people seeking one last human touch before running off into that other land they lived in half their lives without ever knowing if they are waking or dying. When Genevieve waved her hand at him and rolled off in the Pope’s wagon, Lucien saw that only he and Christian still kept the young couple up, and he stood to leave, not tired but now out of place.

            “Stay,” Christian shifted a sleepy glass.

            Paul splashed more wine in his cup. Lucien ducked his head in thanks and creaked back into his repose.

            “It’s so quiet now,” Celeste whispered. “I guess our fire-worshippers have all fallen dead drunk.”

            They listened to the silence for a minute, each appreciating its notes.

            “Sometimes I think there’s magic near here.” Celeste peered through a wall. “Not a year we’ve been here yet, but I always feel that something marvelous will come to pass.”

            Christian chuckled and rubbed his belly: “This is marvelous enough for me. Any further magic will have to come from our prophet there.” He smiled benevolently at Lucien, easy in his torpor, as though to say he would believe all the Maestro said. Paul hummed gently to himself, and Celeste now openly turned her gaze on Lucien.

            “Are there such things as magic places?“

            “Without question,” Lucien answered. “One can feel it soon as one is there. Oh, yes,” he smiled, “well I know there are.”

            Celeste kept her eyes on him. When he said nothing, she sighed: “I wish above all that I might someday see such a place.”

            In the pale tomb of the hall, where all the bones and scraps of creatures mammalian, piscine, avian and herbaceous lost their color and receded into the eerie fog of the past which hangs so insistently upon the shoulders of the present late at night, Lucien saw the three of them watching him expectantly and immobile as stones waiting for his word to animate them.

            “I know of one,” he heard himself say. “Here. Not far, that is, above the village.”

            Celeste glided up. She took her eyes off Lucien, turned them back to him before they had alighted on another object, then let them lean into the drooping forms of Paul and Christian. Turning again to look fully at Lucien: “Let’s go there,” she almost whispered, her mouth moving with a strange slight emphasis.

            Automatically, the two men planted their hands on the table and hoisted themselves out of their chairs.

            Lucien regretted his words. Then he saw Celeste wrapping herself in a vair-lined mantle, her eyes signalling secret messages of sublime understanding. He turned over a hand and said: “First we must find the moon. It won’t work unless we have a moon.”

            Christian gripped Paul by the shoulder and announced: “So be it. Squire, the hunt beckons!

            Out they went, four spirits in search of that one magic spot. The inferno of the solstice bonfire was now a wreck of sultry, glowing embers casting a ring of light onto the particles of night as the figures filed past. Cloaked, determined, hair and spangles playing in their wake, quick glints of brocade breathing in the firelight, they padded off to the woods, testing the soil with their feet, brushing through invisible ferns like webs. Lucien wondered why he had ever consented to share his secret world with these others.

            “I found it! I found the moon!” Celeste commenced to dance down the pathway.

            Lucien, who inexplicably felt that he was Celeste at that moment, merely whipped his cloak over his shoulder and said: “Good work, Angel.”

            Prophet, angel, warrior and warrior-boy, Lucien led them in crazy steps through field, forest, brush and boulders until they had ascended high above the town. As they climbed into the thinning clouds, he felt a catch snick shut inside him; a sudden warning sounded in his heart, and he stopped well away from the sacred spot, understanding that he was not to show it them. The others stopped as well, sensing his precipitous reluctance. No one needed to speak of it. The two men shuffled their feet and immediately found other creations of nature to occupy their curiosity, but Celeste looked imploringly at Lucien. He kept his gaze neutral. As she took a step towards him, Christian and Paul let out an exclamation, for they had just discovered boars’ tracks. The woman flicked her glance at the two in the bushes, then rested them again on Lucien, and he saw that she suspected them to be the disturbance, that he could go no further with Paul and Christian along. Returning her to the protection of her warriors, Lucien left to head for his house; his cloak waved farewell behind him.

*         *         *

The following afternoon Celeste came in to the Black Swan and sat next to Lucien as he was drawing up the accounts for the week’s performances. Surprisingly, she still wore the clothes of last night, but with all jewelry discarded. She moved slowly, each gesture executed as though the air around her was made of the most fragile glass. Her eyes, he noticed, were locked downwards –to the table top, to the floor, to her hands, which she hid in her lap.

            “Hello, Lucien. It is Celeste.”

            Lucien was unsure what he should answer to such an opening.

            Incongruously, with a shocking sadness, she said “I think I tore my dress,” and as he looked to her fumbling hands, Lucien saw through the rent at her waist a snowfield of woman, dazzling through vales of lush green velvet.

            “Lucien,” she spoke as soft as water, “what happened last night?”

He said nothing.

“With us, I mean.”

            Dear God, I was only talking. If I saw you then as you truly are, I did not ask anything for myself. I was only talking.

            “How so? Nothing happened. Unless you are referring to what I said. It was a parlour game that kept your guests amused, that is all. Nobody took it in earnest.”

            “I did.”

            Lucien sensed a shipwreck, one on a coast that hadn’t been explored for centuries, a shore belonging to a different epoch altogether. For a second he saw the crust of long forgotten sea creatures as they lay in silence, waiting among the mad tessellation of shell and shard.

            “Celeste,” he began, realizing for the first time as he spoke her name that he had always thought her odd features beautiful. The individual elements receded from their irregular prominence and, once fastened into loveliness –a resonant beauty– remained beautiful and would remain so forever. “Celeste,” he said, determined to wave away the drops of feeling that were beginning to rain down, “there are times when one must simply state what one sees. Some things suddenly appear clearly through the shadows of the past or future; this happens to me frequently. These things I notice not in relation to me or regarding how they might affect my happiness, these are things the knowledge of which simply exists, unfortunately falling into my hands for an instant. I almost never speak them aloud.”

            “You didn’t have to.” She became hoarse and appeared to be trying for some control over herself. “After last night my life can not remain as it is any longer. I don’t know what to do. Everything is different now.”

            Lucien found the situation so unexpected that he could think of no way to excuse what he thought must have been the most foolish act of his life. “I am sorry, Celeste.”

            Yes I felt you then as you looked at me and sent my life spinning and yes I knew you then, throughout the night, but I would not ever have said another word. It was the fact that you did know, that in those obsidian hours you knew the long years behind us, before us; that no matter who spoke, who walked, who drank or sang, you stayed the night through riding on my breast like a ruby in my lapel; that no breath passed our lips without alighting on the other’s; that throughout the night I knew you at my side holding the sextant along with me, navigating the vast perfumed expanse of our lives, our life.

It was the fact that the rivers turned to opal that let me dare to touch you. I reached under the table for your hand.

            Barely able to squeeze his hand with hers, Celeste began to tremble.

            “Dear Celeste, you will be fine. Be at home with what you are, don’t think about it anymore.”

            Lucien was alarmed to see that she began trembling even more violently. Her breathing was little more than a rapid, soft gasping and she was flushed. He did not know what to do for the girl. It was dangerous for her to remain and it was dangerous to lend her any hope. Lucien knew that he could hide in his heart, obliterate if necessary, the feeling that had suddenly engulfed him, but he would have to do so without letting her know of its existence. The great caves of passion that lined these coasts were enticing perhaps, but he knew that one must be fearless to wander them, that the explorers must put all their faith in each other and pursue each bend happy, even proud, to be lost forever. He would not ask this of a fragile young woman.

            “You should go back,” he said quietly. “Paul must be waiting for you.” He stood up beside her and gathered his accounts. “I have to go to the theater now.”

            “I don’t want to go back. I’ll come with you.” Celeste looked up at him for the first time.

            While Lucien waited, she held her breath and slowly pushed herself up from the table. She fingered aside a strand of hair and walked out after him.

            Neither of them spoke as they traced the familiar route from tavern to theater, and Lucien, once inside, stood with Celeste still behind him, unable to recall any of the many chores that had brought him here.

            He turned around and they feathered their lips across each other’s mouths.

            The warmth and the softness was such that neither had ever known. As passionately as Celeste began to kiss him, Lucien began to kiss her, until they were lost in a dazzling arabesque of kisses. The eyes that could not close, the fragrance half remembered and yet unknown until now, the taste that plunged their minds into blackness, this thunderous sweetness turning their blood to some supernal elixir and making them drunk for life –all said the words they had not dared to speak.

            “No,” Lucien said. “No,” he begged. “We can’t, Angel. We can’t do this.”

            “Please.” still kissing him, eyes, mouth, throat. “We have to!”

            From her, the words set in him completely, a finality like some ancient wisdom, and Lucien instantly stopped veering his head away and looked into the face before him, held her fixed at arm’s length, saw all the beauty, all the appalling magic that made up this woman whose love he seemed to have known his entire life, and said “You’re right.”

            He touched her head with fingers that felt like dragonflies on their maiden flight and crossed the centuries until his mouth was home again.

            Drinking voraciously of one another, they did not stop drinking until nightfall.

*

The next morning Celeste ran over to Lucien’s house. Genevieve had left for several days, taking Ursule along with her. Lucien looked at the young woman and wondered if he was again seeing that word: impossible.

            “I cannot make love to you,” he told her. “Not here. Perhaps not ever, but I will wait until we are free of this place and free of all others if I do.”

            Celeste had already taken steps: “I’ve spoken with Paul and informed him that we must end our betrothal.” She added timidly: “He agreed. He knows that we are not to be, and that we had been ill-suited and as children.”

            Lucien was astonished by her decisive nature. “I still won’t share a bed with you so long as we are in Rapelle. It would bring the entire village down around our heads.” It was not what he wished but he believed he was protecting what was living within them. “I will wait. Live with it or kill it off if necessary, but I will in no manner allow any pain to come to anyone. It would be best if I alone assumed whatever grief were to come of this.”    

            Celeste breathed deeply. “You’re very strong, aren’t you?”

            Lucien was embarrassed by her words.

            “I meant inside,” she smiled. “Although I used to watch your arms whenever I saw you building something,” she confided. She sighed, squirmed once, then continued in a graver tone: “I don’t understand how you have the power to make us wait like this. You have such fire within you, yet you wait and watch and worry about Paul and Genevieve and take onto yourself all the problems of those around us.”

            “I feel if anyone suffers from this it should be me, as I can treat with it better. I suppose that’s what you see as strength, although there’s not much in this world or any other that flusters me. The one thing that has ever frightened me is stupidity.”

            They watched each other in silence, their eyes gently drifting across the other’s features, knowing that this world between them would never expire in peace.

            “What do we do?” she whispered.

            “I shall leave. Go far away.”

            She bolted up in alarm. “Where are you going?”

            “Someplace peaceful. Someplace beautiful.” He rubbed a finger along his lip and lowered his gaze. “I have an idea which might well provide me with all that, and a hot supper every night as well; it’s something I’ve been contemplating for a year or more. In fact,” he considered aloud, “I am sure it will work.”

            “But where will you be?”

            “The mountains.” he asserted. “The most beautiful mountains in the world. I will travel to the land of the Helvetii and the Allemanni, and there, in Switzerland, I shall do what no man has done: I shall build something for gods and people alike.”

            Celeste stared at this beast of Canaan and felt the sorrow flooding her breast. Lucien raised his eyes to her and let a smile twitch his face.

            “You might miss me,” he suggested.

            Celeste leapt up and threw her arms around him in an explosion of laughter. “Not before the Devil takes me I won’t! Oh, Lucien, we’ll have an exquisite life! Nothing will ever tear us apart again!”

            And Lucien himself laughed as he swung her around in his arms, battening down the pain of the devastation he would have experienced had she not decided to accompany him.

            “I’ll have to bring Rita,” she said after they had ceased embracing and Lucien, with his head on her lap, chuckled, thinking she was jesting. She wasn’t.

            “Why must it be the mountains?” Celeste asked.

            “A dream. I had it when I was quite young, and then again at later times. All I can see of it is one great snow-covered peak easing into a fabulous green bed which ends at a lake; on the shore of the lake, lying back on the grass are a man and a woman in love. It is springtime, warm. I don’t know where the image came from, but now I feel that I am walking right into it.”

            As they explored their hands, speaking hushed and brave, they knew that there was no limit to this love, that the passion and desire churning within them was the lava of the suppressed miracle of one man and one woman alone in the world, alone in the stars, forever bound to each other by something softer than flesh and hotter than heart, a recondite rapture meant for them alone. A voice, a wind, eternal and true was now their fate. An undertow of fright tickled them as they clutched each other’s words and walked together into the sea where their sails now began to fill. She knew his age and they both knew she was ten years younger than him, an eventuality he’d never even considered with anyone before, but now Lucien fairly reeled inside as he watched the unexpected calm and mature sensuality coursing through her; he realized that he had found the one woman strong enough, wise enough, passionate enough to share his life, and he stared in fascination as the world seemed to disappear each time she slowly blinked, only to burst forth in full and perfect everlasting wisdom as she raised her lids again.

            “I cannot wait, Lucien,” she breathed. “Not after what I now know of us.”

            “Wait. I need a few weeks to do this properly. We’ll have forever then.”

            Heaven bellowed indignation as he walked her to the door. With hips like birds she flew along, and Lucien suspected all his life up until now had been wrong, and he feared that it was now wrong not to follow Celeste’s gloriously feminine wisdom and leave together immediately.

*         *         *

The cancellation of the fair in addition to the collapse of the artisan center began to tell on the theater attendance. Lucien watched warily as the county shrank around him, the supporters and the merely inquisitive having by then seen the play, visiting merchants now forming the core of the audiences. Many of all classes were offended at the antics, despite their roars of hilarity. Uncontrollable laughter some nights gave way to shock. For some it was a life-altering experience; for others it was their most salacious nightmares mysteriously netted from their depths and held up to mock them. Yet he noticed that the older spectators appreciated the skill and the wit enormously, rollicking freely without wasting precious beats on shame. A far too great number of county residents banded off with the de Hagenaus and cursed the venture sight unseen. De Hagenau himself continued to come and go as he pleased, curiously picking through the properties as the actors looked on scornful or cowed. The Sieur felt complacent with his ruinous terms and did not respond to demands from the reverent to close the place down, preferring instead to relish his vision of the Maestro in the poorpit.

            Genevieve had returned by then, and went about her life with Ursule as though Lucien was not present. He found ways to keep himself busy at the theater, thus avoiding the disturbances of that strange domestic chaos he had never found peace in, and considered all he had to do to leave Rapelle without any cause for return. He could no longer perfect the actors’ work; what could be done had been done, and no matter how erratic the performances were, how cruelly multifarious the catastrophes were from night to night, they had all been led to the point they knew as finished, and could only refer back to that when lost. He silently ate his own teeth as he watched them shred words and spills, sitting in the very rear of the hall, waiting for Celeste to come and whisper in his ear, bless him with a glance, or even rest her elegant fingers on his for a second. The world spun around him as he tended the theater and realized he had lost all taste for life except when Celeste was by his side. Celeste too made it clear that she could not continue passing idle days without him, that her nights were grating, sleepless torments; this was not animal lust, she swore, couldn’t he see they were suffocating apart? And indeed she began to look as tortured as Lucien.

            Lucien politely stayed out of Genevieve’s way, meeting with Celeste for precious minutes that exploded into hours every night, walking home and collapsing on his mat, shaken by her voice, her scents, her full, dangerous beauty. Paul sulked over his dismissal from Celeste’s heart, although not severely at first, and rigorously prepared himself for the first joust of his life, which Christian had arranged to enter him in three weeks hence. It was only when Helene marked the borealis flaming up thousands of leagues high when Lucien and Celeste brushed past each other that gossip and consternation began to assemble forces for a charge. Celeste was suddenly followed nearly every step she took, quick to resent Helene’s maternal shadowing. Through this and ill-disguised admonitions from Helene, Paul became alert, slowly scanning each corner as he sought the cause of the disturbance, maddening Celeste yet more.

            Lucien, his mind torn between treasuring moments with the young woman who had so suddenly and so inexplicably risen up before him as the fruit of all his hopes, all his lost desires, and the task of liberty at hand, commenced to prime the mechanism to run without him. He took Antoine to the inn one afternoon and bought him dinner.

            “Better now, is it, with Etienne?” Lucien chuckled. He had not heard of much trouble lately.

            “He’s the best of the lot,” said Antoine, “But because of that he has mind to spare for mischief. Yes, it’s better, but I have to pay him to behave; he doesn’t do anything, just comes to me at the most critical moments with a smile on his face and a fire-pot or worse in his hands. I merely point to my purse and he takes what he needs.”

            “You run it well, all of it.”

            Antoine looked up from his mutton, just then realizing that Lucien had been gradually recusing himself from the nightly operation. He laughed when he understood the full extent of the compliment, and its honesty.

            Lucien set down his wine: “You can have it,” he said. “If you desire it, the theater is yours. You can play ‘Ointment’ as long as you can, then entice other troupes to come to the county and use it. You can accept a percentage from their earnings and pay the rent with it, retaining some for yourself.”

            Antoine stopped shoveling in food altogether. “I…but I never expected…We did it together, all of this. Almost half a hundred people worked for this. You did it, Lucien. You did what no one else could have done, it was a miracle, and now me? What about you?” He was overwhelmed and confused.

            “Only if you want it,” Lucien repeated, holding up his hands. “See now: I’ve repaid all the investment, except Hebert, for some wood,” he frowned. “And he is to be paid at a minimal rate per month. The balance of the county sentiment is weighed against me, but still unsettled regarding the theater itself. If you were to prove that it could serve as it was meant to…”

            “…De Hagenau would raise the rent but allow it to continue operating…”

            “Since I paid for it, the equipment is mine and should be sold to a house in the city at the slightest sign of trouble. Only this way could I ever recover anything. In the meantime, however, you solicit visiting shows, guilds –every new thing you can find— and from what we’ve seen you should be able to earn enough.”

            “But shouldn’t you get money as well? For yourself, I mean?”

            Lucien mashed his plate aside, still unused to eating. “No. By now we should be able to pay the actors real money, not wine. This damned extortion drained money from the whole troupe. I have a small bit to go on with, and I might still have credit with city bankers for my next insane idea.” He shook his head at Antoine’s curiosity. “No, no. That comes later. Today you need only consider the Odalisque.”

            De Hagenau was dumbfounded. He suspected Lucien of having slipped the snares, but could not see how completely. The contract ‘til now remained in Lucien’s name, he could still close the hall down if he wished –burn it to the ground if it pleased him– or he could squeeze more money from the rough young field-dog now sitting across from him with the Maestro, explaining the full transference of authority. He flushed hot carmine as the boy droned on cheerfully, trying to discover if he had been humiliated or not. Dadais was still absent with Odile, making sure the Lady would keep her frothing impudence far from his weary, worried mind, and without him he was unsure whether to lunge or lurk. He darted his small grey eyes back and forth between the two upstarts.

            “You say to me, then,” he whistled, “that I need never see you again, and that henceforth all business is to be conducted through this boy here?”

            Lucien merely lay flat a palm to Antoine, who answered: “Yes, sir. Everything through me.”

            “Fine.” The Sieur could not lose. He grunted and pushed himself up, his gnarled, stout form already walking away. “God save you if you try to cross me, boy.”

            “Not a thought of it, sir. And I’m not either a boy.”

            Lucien’s grin was so slight that only Antoine, who had learned to read his cyphered presence, saw it at all. 

            The actors were still more suspicious than de Hagenau, barking objections that Lucien hastened to destroy before Antoine could sense their lack of confidence. He rebuked them for ingratitude, for ignorance of all that had been done and taught and learned over the months between their rehearsals –when they weren’t even present–for blindness as to how the show was run each night before their own eyes, and for questioning him like children about matters he alone was knowledgeable in. He was sharp and rude, wishing to eliminate himself as a point of sympathy or covert opposition to Antoine’s new authority. Receiving a final nod of endorsement from Ricard, Lucien swirled out and spent his first full evening at the Black Swan, patiently awaiting the end of the performance.

            Celeste was there, secretly waiting for him, sitting at a corner table with Pope Zacharias. They both winced at Lucien’s battered appearance as he hobbled over to them with a smile. Celeste’s nostrils flared imperceptibly and he saw her breasts shiver as he groaned into a chair beside her. He surreptitiously rested a hand on hers when she began to breathe hard, and she smiled at the table-top and calmed.

            Responding to the Pope’s inquiry, Lucien explained what he was doing at the inn while the theater was running, neglecting to add that he would have to stand by in reserve for yet another week at least.

            “Why don’t you go home and sleep for a change?” asked the Pope, agog.

            Celeste’s eyes went wet and pleading as she waited on Lucien’s response. “I’m not so welcome, there,” he said. He seemed to stay awake solely on the love Celeste breathed over him. “It’s alright, Genevieve has a different notion of life than I do. Believe it or not, I get more peace here than beside my own hearth.”

            “Well,” he said, “my hearth’s peaceful now, but cold.”

            “Mine is empty,” Celeste whispered. “Waiting…”

            Lucien cleared his throat and with tremendous effort took his eyes away, creaking over to Jupon to call up a pot of wine suitable for three. He returned to the table and splashed out a glassful for each of them, falling back in his chair as he raised his drink up in toast: “To our happy club, then. The Lonely Hearths.”

            Cheering in the face of everything on earth and in heaven, scorning the antics of hell, they pushed their cups against each other’s and drank to the one thing which could not be taxed any more than it had to bring them to this point.

*

For me the season was a banquet. Hummingbirds hung like gems in the air. Pollens spinning in the rays of light, foxes leaping carefully around the deer as we all refreshed ourselves with the cool water of the creek. I vied with the pig and the others for the apples fallen in the grass until I discovered the infinite colored delicacies blossoming all about me: narcissus and tigerlily, nasturtium, violets, wild irises all brighter and sweeter than dreams. Wild roses melted on my lips. Dandelions, chicory and snap-dragons delighted, but best of all I liked the blackberries.

            Genevieve and Lucien alternated my care. Lucien would rest his hand on my head, staring into the distance as though measuring how far he could fly if he willed it; the woman smelled bitter and had less time for kindness these days. They never appeared together, I noticed, I would but hear her shriek from the house, then Lucien would come to sit beside me, or find some meager task to absorb him at the theater until night lay down across the mountaintops and Celeste would find him no matter where he was, for they heard and saw each other even when separated a thousand times more clearly than most people do when face to face. The stars were their guardians now, watching over their fugitive love, raining gentle promises down upon their newborn planet. Too many ages had already passed since their souls had fallen relieved and ecstatic upon each other, but the exhilaration of discovery was rapidly and brutally being superseded by the agony of minutes apart. Lucien steeled himself again and again, and took great hope from Celeste’s astonishing strength, but they both knew they were perishing this way. No purely physical torture could have matched the excruciating sensations shredding them.

            Night was their escort. As they walked, Celeste squeezed his hand in both of hers.

            “I have to tell you about me. I can’t seem to stay with any man more than a year. I don’t like them any more after that, and I leave. Perhaps six months. I can’t help it, it’s always been that way. I’m always the one who leaves,” this last with young pride.

            “If I only get a year with you my life will have at least known happiness.”

            After walking on a bit she stopped again. “There’s something else,” she added, quietly, sadness blowing across her voice. “I have had a free life. It was always so easy to find a man for diversion. But I am unable to feel very much…what I am supposed to feel, at the end, you know. I’m only telling you this, I’ve never told the others. They find out, but I’m only telling you because I know with you everything else is the past.”

            “That is more a matter of your mind than your body. The heart changes that.”

            “Oh, Lucien,” she flared, “I know it’s true. I’m not afraid of anything with you. When my friends and I were younger we were all terribly behaved, but because of my disgust I was mocked by my men after some time and they began to call me ‘Princess Touch Me Not.’ So I would always leave them and find the next man. Paul and I have been together for two years but this past year was just a charade. And now I hate him.”

            “What happens?” Lucien looked up at the trees.

            “I don’t know. After six months I can’t abide them touching me at all. It was terrible with Paul. He used to ask me every so often: “Why won’t you sleep with me, Celeste?” I couldn’t tell him, or I’d tell him that it was because of something else. But,” she turned to smile at him, “I’ve never really been in love before, either.”

            Lucien couldn’t imagine this happening with them. “I’m quite the opposite. I know most people gradually lose interest in their lover after a while, but, for some reason, I become more attracted to them all the time. I suppose I’ve been alone most of my life. When I am with somebody, though, I like to be very close. The laughter keeps singing, the silences blessed, passion grows, the tenderness blooms. I’ve always imagined that I would find someone like me that way. We would become decrepit and, fifty years from now, help each other dress in the morning.”

            Celeste giggled at the image and pressed all the way to his side like a warm rampart of kindness.

            But such arid exchanges could not oil the yoke of destiny, and, as Lucien and Celeste, lashed by primeval powers and their own horror of separation, galloped towards the fury of nature on their horizon, the thunder of their charging passion resounded off the hills, alerting the townsfolk. As the approaching explosion of their love sent every fiber within them into a vibrating delirium –the music nearly deafening– the natives of Rapelle, like lowing kine, sensed the coming love-storm and herded together, sullen, resentful, to ward off the weather.

            Companions of Celeste’s, who now struck her as simple and girlish, sidled up to her to press for explanations of her new distressed abstraction; Paul worried her with his concern for her incessant trembling, her deep flush and steamy eyes. Helene circled Lucien, uttering hawkish cries of warning, sensing his moral departure. She was seconded by Christian, who, sensitive to the extreme emotional state of men in slaughter, noticed the smoke accruing around Lucien and Celeste. To both, Lucien honestly denied any wrongdoing, then slashed a line through the world demarking the inviolable edge of his liberty. Both lovers despised this gratuitous raid on their lives, on the life they were suffering to imagine together. Their thoughts were hammered minute by minute by the name of the one they ached for. Daily, their agonies swelled. Their chastity became a chamber of torture, and the teeth of cruel warders glittered in the craws of every man and woman around them.

            Eternity guided their hands as they stroked the throat of delirium.

            Standing nearly paralyzed, crushed under the weight of their passion, Lucien would watch her as the people filed into the theater, shaking inside, avoiding the commonest word of greeting, until she turned to look at him. This glance, so well hidden from the rest of the village, this collision of earth and sky, cliff against ocean that kept them breathing from one day to the next; this merest glance would be unbearable pain and pleasure at the same time. A comet could not have torn through his body with more force.

            And later, at the tavern, life would again be sustained with these ocular orgasms. With all his strength he would keep himself from passing behind her to transport himself to whatever garden her hair was rooted in. One feathery touch of her face, one word from the pout that held her love hidden from the world like the heart she stole from him each night and carried on her tongue each day, one touch of foot or finger would have destroyed any reserve left in him.

            From across the roads or rooms they trembled in, Celeste’s kisses scalded him; her mouth poised like a panther, the pressure of her lips against the air staggered him.

            Genevieve scented the mounting buller, frequently and innocently praising Celeste to Lucien, jokingly encouraging him to wed his life to hers, as though she too caught the fragrance of some forgotten past –that same elusive perfume that haunted the lovers day and night. As the grey saurians of the village crawled out into the heat of this unprecedented sun, they flicked their tails in opprobrium, shickered their tongues coated with hate. Lucien, half-starved, exhausted, unable to think of anything not named Celeste, again ignored the splatters of venom falling all around him, scorning the perverse castigations of these selfish, savage, incontinent louts who rutted with one another with all the discrimination of beasts. Doddering Rita would transmit their messages, and Celeste would seek him out in tears, despairing of caution, crumpling under the weight of delay, rushing into his arms on the stairs of the Swan and cursing Rapelle vehemently when he, with supernatural strength, extracted himself from her inebriating tongue, her sopping thighs. The uniformity and hypocrisy of the world’s opposition to their love finally exasperated Lucien when Eugene, also detecting some disturbance in the atmosphere, became openly hostile to him and ventured to question what Lucien ‘was doing to Celeste.’ Once more brandishing the truth and answering ‘nothing,’ not deigning to add that they were doing nothing entirely against their own, and for everyone else’s, pleasure, Lucien glanced over at Jacqueline, back at the moralizing visage of Eugene, then walked away in disgust.

            Helene escalated her surveillance of both the lovers. Christian, while professing loyalty to the Maestro, adopted a suspicious hue in his eye, and all about them hard rebuke clanked like chains as Celeste found herself driven to the edge of insanity and Lucien hacked at any ambush of his independence.

            All was forbidden us. The world had been rigorously structured to destroy this supreme force, this highest of individual, social, and moral essences, this criminal act called love, perhaps more out of petty material jealousy than anything else. My presence alone was an admonishment, Celeste’s was a miracle; together we were a divine reproach. From where we’d fallen, we’d now found ourselves in a twisted Gehenna where what was pure was deemed evil.

            They burned for each other and heard with horror the screams of each other’s bodies being devoured by the fires. Eugene’s final hypocrisy spurred Lucien to accelerate his escape from this prison colony. Despite the blinding pain, neither Lucien nor Celeste could forego the nocturnal hours they shared away from the others. When Jupon closed the Swan, they would march out into the forgiving night with scalding lips and liquid, boiling hearts.

            As they walked back through the village Celeste complained vigorously about going home to Paul.

            “I hate him,” she fumed. “he doesn’t even know who I am.”

            “You shouldn’t hate anyone, Celeste. Paul is a decent man.”

            “Oh, perhaps it’s not his fault, but I just hate the sight of him, and I hate knowing that he is in the house with me. When we sleep I wrap myself up in as many covers as I can and close my eyes tight until he stops trying to touch me. It makes me ill.”

            “What will happen to the dowry your parents paid? If you leave him they will be angry I’m sure.”

            “Yes,” she sighed, “if I go with you I will lose everything that had been destined for me. They will hate me as much as I now hate everyone around us. But I don’t care anymore what others think of me. I feel besieged in this horrible place. They should all burn in hell,” she snapped.

            “Hate and danger all around us,” Lucien grumbled. “And all we wish is love.”

            Celeste was now thoughtful. “I’m not sure I know what love is. Does anyone?”

            Lucien felt his heart unfold the resume of love he had rejoiced in and suffered from over the years. “I do. Very well.”

            “Tell me what it is, then. Tell me exactly how it comes, how to make it stay. I know that you know, Lucien,” she was pulling him by his jacket from one side of the path to the other, innocent, firm as Minerva, petulant as a child. “I want to know everything you know!”

            Lucien laughed, wondering if life around Celeste was always so much like a youthful game.

            “Love,” he considered, “is not the musty resignation, the doleful acceptance of another person who merely shares one’s bed or table. It starts and ends deep within the heart.” Celeste smothered his hand in hers as they walked and stopped, Lucien venturing to put in words the truest knowledge he had. “That first part you must know and feel for yourself,” he said.

            Celeste opened her eyes wide, then nodded as if she had answered a question she had asked herself.

            “Love must stand radiant and breathtaking amidst the daily fusillade of hunger, war, destitution, greed and mendacity that make up the mindless human existence. Love, true and deep, is born like a sun in the soul of those so blessed, and warms the once dark woods and oceans of the human shell until everything is boiling, cascading sheets of fire and consuming, ruthlessly, the spirits of the lovers, which then fall together and combust in the one magnificent star that is their carnal promise.”

            Celeste closed her eyes and pressed their hands to her breast.

            “Man’s horrors have become commonplace and institutionalized. To us it appears that society has won all, for everything around us is working to deny this genuine human need, and we mourn that we cannot grow according to these inner laws. Because of this state of the world, when love comes as it has to us, this miracle, this love, must live in every molecule of the man and woman, beat within them with every step, swim between each glance, each touch. It must be allowed to live and yet it must be at all times protected from the massive forces that despise it. True love must be exalted, tended on an altar cushioned with all humanity’s dearest hopes, bejeweled by all mankind’s tears running silently down the twisted silver threads of broken hearts, bathed, daily bathed in the milk of mermaid and guarded fiercely through the nights by the glowing figure of the ghost tiger.”

            “I think I know what it is, but only with you. And not,” she pulled his arm, “because of all your magic gummery. Ghost tiger! You are the ghost tiger, stalking here beside me. If I know what love is now it is because I can feel it and hear it completely inside me, then watch it go and bring me back presents from your heart.”

            Celeste suddenly melted her mouth against him and pulled them back against a tree. In one determined hand she grabbed up her skirts while her other tried to find Lucien’s nakedness to throw herself on.

            Lucien struggled comically, holding himself away from her and forcing her skirts down.

            “No,” he said. “We will not be together until we live someplace where we can be free and know that it will be forever.”

            “Please! Just a test?” she was giggling and shuddering at once, her hands and legs moving faster than Lucien could untangle.

            “No, my Heart, not tainted by this awful place!”

            He kissed her like a waterfall washing over her face. Celeste let free a few tears and held him close until the vibration in her legs subsided.

            When he saw that she was composed, he took her hand again and walked, with their legs moving next to each other, back into town. As the forest parted and they entered the bowl of the village, Lucien lolled his head back and lost himself in the stars, and she saw the unconscious smile ennoble his face. He pointed up at the sky spread out above them. They remained still for a while and Lucien showed her how one could almost see the grand curvature of the universe from this unique spot, as the sharp colored lights of all sizes and distances dazzled them from all sides, stretched from the horizon to the apex of the dome. All the promise, all the beauty that they knew would soon be theirs seemed to be draped above and all around them. The stars, strewn across the breathtaking, unbarred sky, spoke directly to them and gave happy assurance, joyous blessings to the day when they would live together once and forever.

            “Look,” Lucien whispered, handing Celeste his telescope. “If you wish to see their faces look through here.”

            Celeste sat on a boulder and played the instrument along the highest reaches of the sky. She was delighted with the brilliant color, the intensity of the light whenever she managed to cull from the smudged blackness a star. Lucien watched her as she searched the cosmos, and felt a brief catch inside as he observed the winds dancing through her skirts, her blouse and her silent, flying hair.

            “I was told to revere God,” Celeste said. “But I think the stars are better. This,” still peering through the glass, “is more real to me than anything down here. It’s another world, a lovely, loving world. I wish we could go there right now.”

            “We will, Heart.”

            “Do you think there is a God? He seems so mean.”

            “I believe in love,” he answered. “That is my only religion, love and art –which are the same thing.”

            Celeste stood up and smoothed her skirts. Without another word they walked until Celeste was outside her home and Lucien was strolling back to his house, tenderly touching his lips and repeating in his mind the biting kiss Celeste had left him with.

            Celeste raised to him the telescope he had forgotten, but could not see anything more than a bobbing shadow as he walked away. She lowered the glass, pursed her lips in a slow kiss and went inside to dream about her ghost tiger.

*        *         *

The infernal rumblings assailed them from all sides now. Rapelle was far too small to contain such a force, and the imminent blast had panicked everyone, sending them scurrying in frantic circles, clutching each other and collectively leaping into a safe pit of hysteria. The light burning off of Lucien and Celeste was blinding. The villagers, instead of raising their voices in song at the incandescent meeting of angels, hammered their fear and their awe into scythes, now, as always, intent on the annihilation of the spirit, the sun that had landed amidst their treasured darkness. Both the lovers were followed, glared at, tacitly cursed and coldly threatened for their denied passion. Lucien felt his blood boil; Celeste raged.

            Only Genevieve left them in peace, but Lucien suspected that could not last. She was affronted by Lucien’s remoteness, incensed at herself for her own haunting distance, and, to Lucien’s mute alarm, she was spending night after night huddled around the wicks in Hortense’s dark kitchen, downing her wormwood and falling into a coven of infamy, her head clanging as the voices of hags chanted strange and illogical words of accusation, exhortation, fury and consolation.

            Again she returned with the sickly dawn and, seeing him lost in thought, repeated: “I do not want you here any longer. I don’t love you anymore, Lucien.” She almost appeared to recite it from promptings against her own nature.

*

While the villagers hounded Lucien and Celeste, and Christian, still covetous of Helene, assisted Paul prepare for his joust, the both of them circling round the lovers like hawks, Hortense landed like a ravenous buzzard directly atop Genevieve and the child. Eugene kept one squinted eye on Lucien and one hand on Jacqueline; Celeste reared up when Lucien told her of Eugene’s antagonism, damning him as a fraud and blurting that he had once almost seduced even her one night far back, though Paul, of course, had known nothing of it. The Bignon brothers watched everything and telepathically tried to configure the source of the strange vibrations shaking the town. Jean the wagoner by subtle civility let Lucien know he was sympathetic to what he did not understand precisely. Pope Zacharias maintained a Byzantine reserve except when humoring himself with Lucien’s unflagging irony. Pompeux, more offensive than ever but clutching the honor derived from the play, inwardly dismayed at his decrepitude, allied himself with Mathilde, applying all the energy they could no longer rally for acting to sowing dissent behind poor Antoine’s back. De Hagenau lumbered through the streets, terrorizing everyone he met, practically unhinged by all that had happened. Lucien kept his silent stride and the countless others parted as he walked, closing tight again behind him.

            Three weeks had passed since the night they suddenly understood each other. Twenty-one days and nights of insults, damnation, denial, shredded hearts and pilfered touches; fingertips and lips, ivory and eiderdown. Do your work and trust the stars, Lucien admonished himself by the hour. Love us, Mazel, for we are about to become love itself.

            The pressure building was positively volcanic.

            Through the dust and smoke Lucien had watched great pieces crumbling down over the months. The catastrophe then took an ominously soundless turn. He kept one eye to the sky and wondered what ill-wind would come and blow it all apart and when. As he feared, the next lavine burst from the theater.

            The Lonely Hearths were duly seated when Pompeux swirled in with Mathilde on his arm, grinning wickedly at Lucien, bursting to impart his news.

            “Maestro,” he bowed, but both the name and the act were tangy with animosity. “I was never better than I was this night. You truly should have been there. Perhaps I can surpass it one time only, and that is a performance you won’t wish to miss…” here he paused and kicked his grin wider while Mathilde tittered “…because there will be no more performances after that whatsoever.”

            Lucien watched as they sneered uneasily, waiting for some response or interest from him. They could not know how little concern Lucien had for all but one object any longer.

            Pompeux drew himself up and elaborated: “We have revolted.”

            Lucien brushed a hand across his breast. “This is the sort of matter you are to discuss with Antoine.”

            “No need, my boy. We simply told him. He has our instructions to maintain the production for one more week. We also directed him to keep that motherless minstrel of his around for our amusement.” Pompeux rolled away chuckling.

            The troupe ran in with great shouts of triumph, followed by Ricard, who hung his head lower than ever, and Antoine, who was livid and balancing tears in his lower eyelids. They joined Lucien at the table, gripping their brows and reaching within for the courage to present this irregular review of the backstage foolery. “I already know,” Lucien said with a shrug. “Pompeux couldn’t contain himself, he was so proud.”

            “Proud?” Ricard gasped. “Is the whole world no better than your apes? What piss-pot lunacy does humanity drink? –They hack off their feet and boast that they no longer have to weary themselves walking, or ram their heads into walls so they won’t wrinkle their brains absorbing new sights, new thoughts!”

            But Ricard had seen much of the world; he would quickly accept the stupidity and return to the music in his mind. Lucien’s concern was for Antoine. the young man’s gaze was dripping as he held his face too close to the candle. “You must rise above it,” Lucien told him. The racket of the celebration obviously stabbed.

            “They did this to me,” he hissed. “To me and for me. They didn’t want me at all, did they now?”

            “Nonsense. They were killing themselves trying to keep up with the show and I wasted the money on de Hagenau’s stomach.”

            “They could have had their filthy money,” he snapped, “if they had played the show another few weeks. We could have been famous by then.”

            “Or notorious,” sighed Ricard.

            “No. It was you they wanted, Lucien. They behaved as children when your face left the hall. Thank God the apes respected me!”

            Lucien set his hand on the man’s shoulder as the actors leapt around with their drinks and their courtiers. “We’ll see them through then proceed as planned. They will be walking out into thin air, but the theater remains yours.”

            Seiche appeared fuddled, and only Maximillian was mournful, sneaking an occasional glance of regret at them. Pompeux and Mathilde in particular were exuberant in their aggression, the others largely lost to the revel. They kept looking towards Lucien to see if he’d rage. Lucien merely watched.

*         *         *

The towering firs were gleaming bright golds and greens and the sun was climbing from its lazy morning bower to the throne of noon, slicing through the limbs spiraling fifty and eighty feet above and illuminating small disparate worlds of grass and stone, fern and moss, gnatdusts and orange-bellied newts as the beams alit. Tellurian societies sent out their numbers of brave little bugs to scale the grass and clear the terrain of debris.

            Bells drolled from over the hill. The sharp blues and greens that made up this natural color wheel –so distinct from the hues of the human journey– flooded the retinas and set them to vibrating in time with the day and I heard clearly for the first time the call.

            I couldn’t say that it was my name I heard, rather it must be some tocsin of nature or time that lurks within us all. For love and for destiny nothing can happen I believe without hearing it; it is all knowledge and all destinies and all the joys and sorrows ever born, and I heard it and followed it far from my field, now only vaguely sensing the little actions of life all around me as I lifted my head in response to this strange voice. I had trotted some fifteen minutes blindly and found myself on the edge of a steep crag at the end of a meadow overlooking oceans of green and blue. I was plunged into a silence and understood that by reaching the source of the voice it no longer sought out my ears. Along the inner wall of the ledge was some velvety grass and, I noticed, a few bulbs. I tasted a shrub then went to work on the bulbs.

            Three seasons I had seen. I felt enough beauty inside me to go on dancing and distributing kisses forever, and I supposed I had been called up here to pay some respects to that voice of oneness, to give pause and thanks before trundling on. I saw a strange illusion of Lucien, smaller than I, appear like a raven and land in the rut on the interior side of the cliff. I dropped my bulb and ambled over to look in and saw it fade at the bottom. Then the dogs came. The cowards had approached silently and from behind and they snarled and tore at me from all sides as I spun round to poke them, but there were too many mouths, too many fangs, too many sawing sinews and claws and I yelled in fury and grew dizzy from the circling and counter-circling, and felt my flesh burn and my breath flee the battle.

            My bleatings ceased, my blood stopped its frenzied charge, and I slipped to my knees forward through time until I realized with surprise that I was dead.

            A man appeared from de Hagenau’s keep and beat the dogs away from me. He pondered the situation for a minute then flung his arms at the dogs and walked back down the path. In the morning the children came to laugh at the way I had bloated up and I was still present enough to hear the odd thud of the rocks they hurled rebounding off my ribs. Silence. One tardy thud. Then, behind the children came three or four men from the village, some from the keep, and they prodded my corpse with their boots while conferring about whether to inform Lucien of my fate, for the first time fearful of what he might do. They made use of a deep rut in the ground and dug out enough to bury me along with the remains of their breakfast.

            Genevieve howled in agony when she understood that I was not to be found ever again, that they would never again know the kindness of what they’d called the sweetest, gentlest eyes, or the nibbling kisses, and Lucien, for reasons he could not or would not tell her, refused to come seeking me, letting her cry in his arms while he stroked her head, but he heard my confused complaints of those first days, and took it upon himself to carry the stain of guilt for my short life.

*         *         *

Genevieve mourned horribly for several days. She held Porcette to her breast and cried while Lucien cautiously nursed her and Ursule. She then took the child and left to dissolve the sorrows of the past year at Hortense’s house, passing whole nights in her kitchen and returning home to sleep in the mornings, sometimes leaving Ursule in Hortense’s care until she returned the next evening. Lucien staggered on, still meeting each day with Antoine, to insure the success of the theater, now being offered to more and more distant troupes, and dreamt of Celeste, whether asleep or awake. This last week saw both a welcome pattern of future engagements at the Odalisque and the nearly complete exhaustion of the lovers, despair and agony having consumed them. Lucien feared there would be nothing left of either of them soon, and sought to draw to a close their tortures, and in this he was assisted by the very elements they’d battled.

            Genevieve was still gone when he awoke in the morning. He combed his fingers through his hair and cupped water to his eyes, feeling the twinge of migraine pumping along his occipital pit. My shed stood mossy and sadly askew in the sunlight, but Lucien had not been able to dismantle it. To check on Antoine, he walked into town and drank hot water and lemon at the Swan. He sat in blessed silence as he waited, praying the headache would melt away with the hour. Happily, Celeste appeared with Antoine. As with the Pope, partially as a means of remaining near her lover and partially because she enjoyed silly games in the man’s company, Celeste had attached herself to Antoine in the past two weeks, and Lucien was relieved to see her still able to laugh as they played games of thumb-battles and joked while Lucien kept his eye on their lives. He wondered briefly if she might be better off with Antoine than with himself, for she needed to lose herself in nonsense or be calcified by the salty storms of the world he felt should never corrode her, and he realized only then that Antoine was just two years younger than he was.

            But Celeste still breathed hard when she sat down beside him, her clean, woody scent speaking his name. His eyes watered up as his heart raced, increasing the power of his headache. Antoine, as usual, was carelessly groomed, recovering the health lost during the months before, and in solid good humor as he related all the inferior troupes he had managed to interest in this coveted venue. The sun pulled up high outside the inn and very slowly the villagers began to appear for food and ale. The three at the table were suddenly surprised by a loud snort of disgust flung their direction. Several men stood glowering, and, although Lucien had come to accept the villagers’ rancor over the months, he noticed something fixed about it now; as though they had finally seized on some Grail of culpability, and had reached the end of their quest with their reward spread out before them. The men muttered some insults then left without finishing their drinks. Lucien stayed impassive. Antoine looked confused and Celeste widened her eyes and paled.

            Another pair of merchants walked in and repeated the performance; three women followed, laughing viciously as they settled their sneers on Lucien, again whispering between themselves, yet just loudly enough for such words as ‘brigand,’ ‘adulterer,’ ‘charlatan’ and ‘finished’ to be heard. They, too, left almost immediately. Then some field-hands, shirking their labor to come to the Black Swan and noisily collect phlegm in their throats as through readying to spit as they swaggered past Lucien. This time the words were inflammatory, the sentiments rabid. Celeste watched, trembling, and even Antoine was now white.

            “You had both best leave,” Lucien sighed, rubbing his neck. “Something has happened, or will happen soon.”

            “You had best leave,” Antoine countered. He watched in amazement as more townsfolk appeared, mudhole sullen and stinking of hate.

            “No. My head is ringing like an anvil and I am sick to death of accommodating these cretins. I’ve had enough to last my whole life long.” He spread out his hands, saying: “What am I doing to harm them now? I come here to attend to my interests and sip dull water. I shall ignore them. Take the girl away.”

            Celeste started. “Come away, Lucien, for the love of God!”

            Lucien merely settled deeper into his chair.

            “We’ll stay then,” Antoine said.

            A full hour they sat, silent and stunned by the menace radiating off the men and women as they came to revile the man. Lucien did not even bother to return their stares, and the deliberately audible words of opprobrium dashed against the back of his head, but the convulsions within it were growing unbearable. He began to laugh. The thing was so awful he found it had passed beyond evil and appeared to him hilarious. His eyes lit up and he laughed, infuriating the Rapellistes, and Celeste and Antoine, comprehending the absurdity of the hell-show, began to laugh as well.

            Then the doors ripped open and Genevieve charged in, eyes hot, hair uncombed. At a glance, Lucien could see that she had again passed the full night at Hortense’s, soaking up wormwood and marital advice from the cabal of crones that keened away the night. Antoine took Celeste by the arm and marched her out.

            “You vile, monstrous, conceited swine!” she began. She hurled herself into the seat across from him and deluged him with undiluted opprobrium, her voice shaking and voluble. “Sitting here like some evil crow, believing yourself too, too clever for the rest of us! Or perhaps you’re simply too good for us lowly clods!” Lucien watched her by now familiar intemperance, knowing that it was inextricably bound to the displays of hostility he had witnessed all morning, waiting for her to speak the clue which would lay bare whatever had occurred to touch off this detonation. “I’ve learned all there is to know of you now –finally– and if I’m your laughingstock, then you can taste my disgust with you for once! The whole night long I worried what to do about us, and every hour, every horrible minute I heard worse and worse.” Her eyes swam in blood. “They at least had the decency to tell me that you have been sleeping with Helene.”

            All was clear now. “Convenient, but wrong. Ask Helene about that. In fact, why don’t you and your congregation just burn her regardless.”

            “Oh, they know more than I do! They also informed me that you are in love with Celeste. I knew this already, for you said so in your sleep. Your sleep, your dreams, Lucien, they will always betray you.”

            “I am doing nothing improper with Celeste. You and I are both independent beings now, we have been for a good while. You wished me out of your life and that is what I am working towards. I ask you nothing of your own conduct.”

            Genevieve hit her fist on the table. “They said you offered our house as collateral to your investor!”

            “Again, misinformed.” Lucien began to bleed thick sarcasm. “How generous of your friends to speculate on my life, since their herb-boiled brains are so better suited to it than my own. Thank God I have the chaste, altruistic and above all brilliant citizens of Rapelle to assist me –or should I say you— in making sense of my existence!”

            “They say you have stolen monies from everyone, that we are condemned to eternal penury because of your scheming!” Her voice rose to a piercing shriek, startling the drooling spectators.

            Inflamed, a piteous dupe of the hyenas who toyed with her, she went so far as to demand a look at Lucien’s accounts. Incredulous at her effrontery, he stared in shock, then contemptuously tossed his ledger down in front of her; she could not, flipping through it under his hostile gaze, fully comprehend the myriad entries, but she saw that there was naught amiss. She glowered briefly in confusion, then snapped: “Well if all I hear is unfounded, then why is your life such a cursed secret from me? What damned thing am I supposed to think if you don’t tell me what you’re doing? Half a year you killed yourself on that theater and kept me away from it like a child! How do you explain that if not for your criminal hopes?”

            “I needed my mind, all of it. I couldn’t have you there to upset me with your changes of temper.” He shook his head, regretting the movement for the flash of pain it brought, and tried one last time to invite her down from her mount of rage: “See now, you have always kept a great part of yourself from me, retreating willfully whenever it suited you. After some years of this I ceased pressing at all. You also keep your words, your thoughts, your deeds and now much of your whereabouts beyond my ken, but does this missing information necessarily convince me you are a felon? A person of unparalleled evil? –That is the logic of the spiteful fools around here!”

            “I’ll have no more!” she screamed. “I don’t know what you’ve done or how you’ve done it, but I want no part of you in my life!”

            “But you don’t know what you’re speaking about!”

            “I know only what I hear from others; you keep all from me!”

            He spread out his arms, sweeping all the inn and Genevieve in his gesture. “For this very reason! I cannot trust you with my life, my confidence. My business is mine, not the town’s. My life’s not a plaything for everybody here in this village, and you have no right to offer it as such!”

            Genevieve shot up and roared. “Well, I won’t be your excuse any longer! Never come near my house again!” She tore out the door.

            Celeste returned alone and quietly sat beside him. The trickle of curious and scornful resumed, old acquaintances, earnest laborers, tangential vassals of de Hagenau, all filed in to gawp at Lucien, speaking vociferously among one another about the rumors of his thievery and grossly wicked secret life, hoping for some word of reply from the man. Those who came and spoke thus left with no response to retail, only to be replaced by others. Fueled by his very silence, legend burned through Rapelle like a comet, and throughout the morning the villagers came and went, eager to see the immolation of this too proud eccentric. Like hyenas they came, lowering, snarling, sniffing ominously, some swiping up against him as he sat, others baring red-eyed rancor; as Lucien sat deflecting the contumely, Celeste stared in horror at the parade of citizens all seemingly about to spit on the emissary of Lucifer calmly sipping his water, and, finally, Hortense herself staggered into the inn, smirking in victory, loudly rasping to her bevy, all wild-eyed and thrilled, about the forces of order coming to reassert themselves in fallen Rapelle. Celeste’s bravery visibly drained from her face when confronted with this last ragged peer of perdition, and Lucien silently instructed her to leave. Her parting glance smothered him with kisses and desperate embraces. Others he did not know arrived to scowl, tossing hot and vicious looks his way. It was a cyclone of slander, a brainbashing Armageddon of hatred, malice and molten lies, and in the very center of it Lucien sat where he was for another half hour, finishing his water, savoring its unpolluted taste and ignoring the crowd that had assembled around him; when done, he collected his books beneath his arm and walked to the one refuge remaining him, the theater he had built with six months of pointless toil.

            Antoine was there, mulishly setting to rights the belaying boards disturbed in a backstage tussle the night before. Lucien, still deferring to the man’s new authority did not question him about the fracas; most likely Etienne had led Pierre on a wild chase after setting his boots afire, for Lucien smelled the residue of smoke too sour and pervasive to have come from the trick pots. In the cool dark of the theater he carefully stretched himself down on the stage, resting his head on his arms as the pain tore through his skull in breathtaking spasms.

            “What now?” asked Antoine.

            “The theater’s yours.” Lucien grimaced, squeezing his neck. “I have ideas yet. They can never take those from me.”

            “They’ll learn better after a while. All we’ve done is for the good, after all.”

            “Is it, then? I’m not as sanguine by now.” He let himself fall back recumbent, praying for a stop to the excruciating bolts. “I cannot help you with that, not right away. Let me rest for a bit, then we’ll fix it.”

            Antoine waved off the offer and continued to work with all his native and newly acquired skill. Lucien remained as paralyzed, rolling with the plangent pain, sucking oxygen with his eyes shut against the scarce light of the hall, suffering sunbursts beneath his lids. The two men held the silence for a calm quarter-hour. It was broken by the sudden rattle of the door, beyond which came noises like an animal being beaten. Antoine opened the door to the racket and Celeste dashed in frantically.

            She was rufescent and disheveled, her hair ragged from being tugged in all directions. She gasped and emitted strangled sounds as she darted in short bursts first left then right, as though frantically seeking escape. Her arms flapped senselessly.

            “It’s Paul,” she sobbed. “These people have been at him! He’s coming now. Here. He is going to thrash you. He wants to kill you! Lucien, go!”

            Antoine was energized by the woman and marched over to grab Lucien’s arm. “Come along. We’ll use the trap.”

            “No.” Antoine and Celeste stopped moving as Lucien spoke. “No. This is my last sanctuary. I will not be hounded out of it.” He lay back on the stage boards and arranged himself more comfortably.

            Celeste spun around to face Antoine, clutched herself and cut a sob, then ran out in crashing frenzy. Antoine shook his head in distaste before following her.

            Lucien savored the three minute’s peace. Paul slunk in looking more abashed than irate, but his agitation was fresh. He stood nervously at the door for a minute before striding halfway down the room, then cleared his throat to speak: “I don’t know what Celeste has been telling you,” he muttered, “but I only came here to ask a favor of you.”

            Lucien watched as the lad shifted.

            “Celeste will no longer have me, will no longer hear me. I understand that she is somehow enamored of you…” He twisted again.

            “Insofar as that is,” Lucien interrupted, “I can tell you that nothing will happen here.”

            Paul remained very still, absorbing the import of the statement. Bravely, he drew forth his resolve and began to treat the matter in the only way left to him. “I leave in one hour’s time for the tourney. Christian and I will both be gone a week. You are the only one who can look after her then, and that is my sorrow, that she is now in such a state that someone must do so at all. She doesn’t know her own mind sometimes. She cannot control her company or her pleasures. I ask you to see to her in this respect: see that she doesn’t shame herself here.”

            Lucien was astounded by the request. He squinted at Paul and saw that the squire was earnest in both his concern and his summary. “If you are correct,” he said, “I do not believe I or anyone else could stop her. I don’t seem to know anyone anymore. I shall do what I can.”

            Paul sighed, nodded, and left the theater.

            Lucien continued to lie on the stage, each pike in his skull unleashing a fluid vision of Genevieve in wrath, Hortense in victory, the others in ignorant yet exuberant enmity, Celeste in hysterics, Paul in confusion, all commingling and spurting the juice of agony against the inside of his cranium and splashing down his neck. He briefly wondered what had passed between Celeste and the young man, even weighing whose emotions had been genuine, whose actions had been feigned. It was a discomfiting thought and he decided he could no more know the truth of their exchange than he could divine the advantages the villagers could gain by reviling him. A voice from a grave suggested that he could trust no one.

            Antoine did not return, but Genevieve did. Quite unexpectedly she let herself in the door and approached Lucien with supplication on her face, clearly horrified by what she had done and illustrating her regard for the pride of the man by holding herself a few feet away from him, silently imploring forgiveness. Lucien glowered at her with the sternest gaze she’d ever known from him.

            “Lucien, please. I don’t know what happened to me.” She bit her hand and let the tears rush from her eyes. “I…It was Hortense, and all the others…they were there last night. What we drank, what they said…Oh, damn them all! I was so afraid. They said everything to make me angry. They didn’t stop the whole night long.”

            He pulled himself up to face her, furious. She wept and pleaded with him until he reached an agreement in his heart: he would no longer be the sport of anyone’s turmoil, but he would learn again what he had known all his life before this cursed theater exploded out of him –that he would do whatever was in his power to avoid causing pain to anyone and go to his end with that victory over the world.

            Lucien explained, hoarsely and coldly: “There is an evil cloud smothering this town. Wickedness. Be careful…and listen now. I will remain your friend, but I will leave as I told you and take my life out of this evil’s reach. You must protect yourself from what will happen, for the deluge will escalate the moment they find me gone; they will be outraged that I have deprived them of their quarry, and they will tear at any proxy until they finally turn their fangs on each other.”

            Genevieve gaped at him, knowing what he said to be true. She shuddered at the adamantine ring of his voice and trembled at the chance for forgiveness she was being offered.

            “I do not know how to mend what has happened here,” he continued, “but it will no longer happen.”

            She looked at him as he seethed, and Lucien noticed the starry highlights in her eyes that he had always loved. He knew full well that he would remember them. Genevieve shook her head sadly even as she smiled.

            “You’re a very good man. This I know, and nobody can make me forget what I’ve seen of you anymore. You should have stayed at home and painted; your life has been destroyed by all this.” She winced at the surrounding walls.

            “I got the job done.”

            “But why did you have to do it?” she cried.

            “Because throughout my life, no matter how insuperable, how daunting or life-devouring a task may be, what I’ve promised I’ve produced.”

            “You were given so many gifts, Lucien, but, sadly, not some of them: luck, peace, maybe even love.”

            She lit her lips against his face and left. Lucien remained where he was until the actors began to arrive, then lumbered out into the dusk.

            “From Maestro to miscreant,” he growled to himself. “And here, of all the God-forsaken places!”

            Paul and Christian rode past without seeing him. He was glad to see the younger man finally astride a beautifully caparisoned destry and he wished him peace of heart and less strife and striving. With such as Paul, he reasoned, it could go either way.

            Undaunted by the day’s skirmishing, he entered the Black Swan and collapsed at the table with Pope Zacharias and Celeste. Both were devoid of japes or pleasantries for the first time they had sat together. Lucien was himself rigid, but called over a pot of wine and insisted they raise a glass to the club. The idiocy of everything smote him and he chuckled as he toasted, bringing a fragile lift of cheer to the friends. When Celeste excused herself, he informed Zacharias of his plans, and told him he would write; if there was work to be done, he would send for him. Celeste returned and Genevieve walked in and joined them –her way of showing the town that she and Lucien had their own concord.

            Antoine skulked into the tavern, signifying that the final performance had ended, Ricard behind him, looking hopelessly forlorn. They were soon followed by the actors, who had planned a celebratory funeral at Rose’s house, and who had come to persuade Lucien, Ricard and Antoine to attend. Expecting a pillorying, the three declined. They were pressed still harder, first with wit, then with insults. Antoine argued in defense, while Ricard swayed, dumb with shock. The harsher the comments became, the more firmly Lucien and Antoine refused and a general air of hostility filled the inn. When Lucien arrived at the point where he returned all curses with silence Pompeux burst from the group and hurled a small firelog at him with all his might and fury. The oak raced a mere inch over Celeste’s head and hit Lucien’s arm with a crack.

            As Pompeux pounded out through the stunned crowd, Genevieve leapt after him, primed to kill. Amidst the rising arguments Seiche and Maximillian began apologies to Lucien —Maestro— and as the din became impenetrable Pompeux wheeled back in before Genevieve had reached the door and swung up a chair to hurl at his old friend. Eugene and Pope Zacharias flew through the air to muscle him out and the entire tavern at last erupted.

Centered in the pandemonium Lucien, still sitting like a rock, looked down at the log and muttered: “A simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.”

*

            Late past midnight Lucien arrived at the house and lit a candle in the kitchen. He let himself rest at the table. He glowered and released all hold on his thoughts as he traced with his fingers the grain of the wood. Soft footsteps tracked him; Genevieve had awakened and come to pass a few minutes beside him. She padded in sleepy and smiling and, with a slight flash of joy lighting her face, pulled from behind her back an exquisitely tooled case designed to carry quills, inks and papers, and quickly laid it down on the table before him.

            “Here,” she beamed. “It’s for wherever you go.”

            He sat staring at the beautiful bag of dark scented leather and turned to see her observing him as he sat; saw her standing a few feet respectfully away from him, kindly and smiling, all rancor gone. Suddenly at peace in herself, collected and caring; as gentle as her voice, proud of her gift and confident of his fortune, not seeing at that brief distance that it was too late, and her smile froze as she watched what she had never before seen as he cracked and then broke and Lucien wept.

*         *         *

            The theater was dark, with just a distant lick of moonlight enchanting one corner of the silence. The entire village was snaking through sleep and only Lucien and Celeste were alive to the swells of conscious night, the vibrating woods, the insistent ebb and flow of this secret life. She glided towards him. Taking her face in his two hands, Lucien floated kisses upon her eyes, which were wet. Celeste sobbed and slowly raised her arms from her sides until she had his hair in her grip, and pulled his mouth to hers in a desperate search for all the words they could not speak, all the kisses they had swallowed over the weeks, an answer, a reason, for all the excruciating pain of separation they had suffered. He recognized the fragrance of the oldest tree in the world that she carried on her from so long ago, and knew this scent as the love he had been waiting for. Celeste tore at his breast with fingers stiffened in locked-up passion, sobbing his name and praying love, love, tearing his jacket as she spilled them over and across the ground. She rolled with him drawn almost inside her, knotting her legs around him and soaking him with the flood of all her found desire. Lucien tried to raise himself, still bombarding her with kisses, saying “Not here, God, not here!”

            Celeste cried and ripped the ground as though to bury herself. Lucien ceased his resistance and lay on her as he’d fallen; without moving, they were as flames in the Black Swan’s fireplace. Lucien pressed his face to her and spoke hoarsely.

            “This will be a fearful love, Celeste, should we let it out. It will be pleasure beyond sanity and it will be unendurable pain. Between us we have found a love that has existed before time ever ran, and it will thunder and live long after we ourselves have been consumed by it, long after the world goes black. I know what is raging through me and I can tell you that my love for you is a holocaust.”

            She flared crimson and raked her fingernails along his neck, hissing “Yes!” She tried to turn him into her, but Lucien retreated to a bench and waited. He wanted her so much that his eyes burned, unable to focus.

            “Not here, Angel. So long as we are trapped in this town, so long as we are in this damn cloud of evil, it will be our destruction. We have to wait until we’re gone.”

            “God, I want us to be gone! God, I love you so much!” Celeste began crying softly. She pulled herself up enough to lay her head on her knees. “Why can’t they just leave us alone? They know we belong together, nothing else in the world matters anymore, I’ll die if I have to wait for you any longer!”

            Slowly, Celeste raised herself up and looked at him for a minute, then walked over to the light and began to remove her clothing.

            Lucien nearly yelled: “What are you doing? Stop it, you can’t do this! Do you want to kill me right here?”

            “Don’t you want to see what you are getting?” Celeste was regal, yet verging on giddiness, like a martyr who has heard her call.

It was the most bizarre thing he’d ever heard a woman say. Then he understood that she was at the end of her strength, that she could not live with any more walls, mobs or even fabric separating them any longer. Still, at his insistence she retied her skirts before he would look at her again. When he did, there were tears boiling down her face.

            “How can I open myself to you? How can we ever hope to be together when the whole world hates us for it? Oh, please, heaven,” she cried, “don’t keep us apart any longer!”

            She crawled over to him and cradled her head in his lap, where he stroked and held it firmly, until her shuddering grew less tortured.

            Lucien, nearly shattered by the intensity of the current between them for the past weeks, bent over the girl and stared at the beautiful head he was petting so frantically. He felt the heat of her warm the shell that had suffered from cold since he was a child and thought: “My life is in your hands, Angel. Lord knows I’ll try to be strong enough for the both of us, but if your heart falters I don’t know what I’ll do. This child in my hands, this angel in my life, can she really love me?”

            Celeste whimpered in his lap and tried to nod her head.

            Lucien looked at the now calm form he was holding. “Does she know who I am? Can she possibly fathom my love for her?” he thought.

            Celeste performed another lateral nod, then raised her face to his and cried: “Yes! Yes I know! Yes I love you!”

            Stupidly, knowing it to be true and somehow not at all surprised, Lucien held her wet face directly in his and thought: “You can hear me, Celeste, and I love you.”

            She lifted her eyes quickly and almost immeasurably, nodded, and said: “Yes. I know.”

            “Damn!” Lucien flung her away from him and stormed off to a farther corner. Celeste knew he was angry at the inevitability of their fate and the notion that they had been kept apart at all, that he was afraid of any further separation, or of any unknown aspect of their life together that could threaten their happiness. She stood up directly in the breath of light that entered the hall.

            Her voice was just barely tinged with surprise –sage, almost neutral– and she spoke like a little girl wiser than the galaxies: “Oh, Lucien, what are we going to do? We’re the same person now.”

            Lucien sank to the floor and watched her without speaking.

            Celeste was suddenly alert again. The indomitable curiosity Lucien had come to expect from her had reasserted itself and she was clearly about to put forth more questions.

            “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

            “More than I can recollect.”

            Celeste caught the thread and began to trace the twisting line of destiny back to the vague light of entry Lucien had always seemed to carry in his mind.

            “This has happened to us before, hasn’t it? I mean here, down here, with all those hateful people around us and the two of us just fighting to be together. We were lovers, weren’t we?”

            “It was a long time ago.” As it unfolded, Lucien seemed to her even more disconsolate as he spoke. She tasted a defeat in his admission and wondered why he was removed from the pleasure she felt at having put the two of them together at last, even if it had been in some lost oceanic trench of time.

            She took her lip between her teeth and considered approaching him, but she realized that her questions had pulled him too far down within himself for him to respond to anything more than a voice, so she held herself where she stood, rooted in the light. She suspected that she should fear this distant knowledge Lucien dredged up at her promptings, but let practical self-interest continue to guide her with a lucid and ineluctable, if impromptu, courage. Lucien’s reluctance to speak convinced her that the story was speared with misfortune somewhere.

            “What happened to us?” she continued.

            Lucien wafted a baleful visage across the theater and shook his head.

            “Why haven’t we stayed together all along? Why is this so hard for us now? Did something horrible happen?”

            Lucien remained mute. Celeste saw the answers swimming deep inside him and went to him, half lying on the ground, her arms around his knees. Almost all the information she sought was audible, but she was by now too perturbed to hear. Still, she followed what words she did manage to hear.

            “It was you. They took you away from me. Something happened to you!”

            “Yes,” He whispered. “I don’t remember what.”

            “You do remember! I know you do!”

            Lucien froze.

            “Please don’t cry.” She swept her hand over his face again and again as her own tears fell into his. “Don’t. Dear God, what did they do to you?”

            Lucien choked out his words as he spoke what he had himself just recalled: “They beat me to death.“

            It was the loss of Celeste that burned most intensely through this fresh reconstruction; for the gruesome, shrieking, abuse of his own lost humanity he cared little. They both understood that they were loosing the tears of having ever been torn from one another. They held each other in silence, until, after a long time, the rhythm of the nocturnal air carried them back to the present and away from the disturbing dumb show of their past. Both Lucien and Celeste were shocked by their unquestioning acceptance of the discovery, yet both felt beyond doubt that truth had indeed unraveled at their feet, albeit with one or two folds of the bolt still turned in on itself and away from their sight. Lucien finally spoke in an even voice and suggested to Celeste that she had managed to proceed with her life –here Celeste fell victim to the last, but most bitter, tears of the evening– and stated firmly that he did not know precisely how or with whose contrivance his demise was executed.

            Clutched by night, they remained heaped together in the darkest corner of the hall, unable to speak or move beyond the automatic running of their hands through the waters of each other’s hair. For another full hour the lovers held as soft living stone against the waves around them. But the theater, like every other human edifice they would ever huddle in, was insufficient sanctuary for these two souls whose only wish was to find a home within which they could melt in to one another until mortal life had tired of them. Lucien’s fabled lassitude, in actuality a mechanical realignment designed to preserve the autonomy of his mind, wound up guiding them through the next brief trip past the veil.

            Celeste raised her head in alarm when the first one swooped past their faces, and Lucien had to bring her as tightly to his side as possible to keep her from running out. The room was suddenly packed with small cavorting skeletal creatures, outlandish kinetic little demons swooping through the air.

            “What is it?” she instinctively asked him.

            Lucien sighed and explained: “It’s all the evil in this town, all the furies of these people, little crimes and hatreds come to mock us for what we want.”

            She looked up at him, any animal fear assuaged by his indifference, although she had never in her life seen or expected to see such a thing, and asked him with her eyes what their safest course might be.

            Lucien gave dull chuckle. “Let them have their fun. Don’t be afraid, it’s just a like little carnival flying around us. Little demons need their festivities occasionally.”

            Celeste was fascinated but clearly discomfited by the acrobatics surrounding them. As the little beasts flew, Lucien, knowing he had to hold her attention, put his lips to her ear and said:

            “I can do nothing more here. I’m leaving tomorrow. Almost three hundred miles away –towards Lothringen– is an outpost where I can catch my breath. A friend of mine, Khalid, an old brother in the arts, if you like, has forged his life there. I’d written and have just received word from him that I am welcome to stay in the hut that overlooks the settlement.”

            Celeste drew her ear away from him, eyes round, and smiled. She pulled him roughly to her mouth and said, in an exaggerated whisper: “I’ll meet you there.”

            They lay in their corner together and watched the mad ethereal evils looping through the air like gnats, and eventually fluttered off into peaceful sleep, their heartbeats in unison, Celeste’s head pressed against Lucien’s shoulder, Lucien himself dissolved in the sweet warmth from the arms she’d locked around him.   

*         *         *

            In the morning Lucien filled the leather case with some of his drawings and three books he wished to have with him: his Rubaiyat, his Petrarch and a new volume by an Fiorentine named Alighieri. Genevieve had attempted to fix him some food, but, incapable of eating, he refused this last gesture callously.

            They stood facing each other in silence until a rap on the door brought Lucien out to the front of the house. Antoine was there looking dirty and beleaguered, the sun reflecting off his stubble.

            “I’ve been instructed to deliver this to you alone,” he said, handing a small hide package to Lucien. Lucien slipped it into his blouse as Antoine explained: “Celeste sent it. She gave me to believe it was the most important charge I’d ever receive. For the theater, I hazard?”

            Lucien shrugged, then looped his arm over Antoine’s shoulder and walked him a ways down the path: “I’ll be away for some time,” he began. “I need peace and I shall find none here. Genevieve has the means to contact me. The theater is in your capable hands, but if you divine the slightest trouble coming from de Hagenau or elsewhere, your first duty is to remove all our equipment to a safe quarter; both Genevieve and Christian have been apprised of this and will assist you as you direct.”

            Antoine looked worried, astonished: “But what will you do? Why leave?”

            “You saw why I wish to leave. I could remain here and fight for my name, my works, but there is naught here worth fighting for. I shall be busy implementing the next phase, and I’ll send for you only once I am certain that we can achieve it. But I will send for you.”

            Antoine began to fret, then to object almost angrily, but Lucien held firm and refused to divulge his precise plans. Feeling that he was facing exclusion from the future, Antoine shoved his fright aside and fixed Lucien with an accusatory glare before shuffling off back into Rapelle.

            Sighing, Lucien returned to the house, took up his bags, taking especial care of the writing case Genevieve had given him, and extended his hand until she came up to grasp it and accompany him outside.

            As they came to the horse he’d procured, all the love she had struggled to give him over four years suddenly and for the first time crystallized unfragmented in her heart and emerged from its winter cavern for one revealing moment before crashing down and shattering around her; and having seen what she’d longed for so clearly now lifted and dashed to the ground, she was seized by an even greater terror than that which had haunted her before and burst into tears, sobbing as she clung to him, her fine voice calling out lonely ‘hoo hoos‘.

            Lucien ground down the conflicts inside him and mashed her close as he wiped the tears and kissed her.

            “You said it was over,” he reminded her, “that you didn’t want me here, didn’t love me any longer. Now you see that nothing is ever truly over.”

            “Will you ever come back?”

            “I pray not. Leave me see what I can do; perhaps someday I can send for you and Ursule. We part as friends, as you desired.”

            “Promise me one thing: that, no matter where you go or for how long, you will write me a poem for my birthday.”

            Lucien smiled. “Without fail.”

            She stopped crying and let him mount. Lucien, from atop the horse, could see the village ingenuously shining through the trees. The animal shied as if anxious to depart.

            “You may write me at Khalid’s, but under no circumstances inform anyone else where I am.”

            “You can trust me this time: I won’t let anyone disturb you, Lucien. Go.”

            Lucien cast his eye over the forest, the house, the small, soft woman beside him who would now have to discover her own courage. He kissed his wife, cursed the town, and left.

*

            It was not until he had covered a full hundred miles that Lucien stopped and rested the horse. At an improbably small inn set off by itself beneath a huge moon Lucien arranged for an exchange of horses and, in response to the cheerful proprietress’ exhortations to dine, rudely demanded a glass of wine and solitude. The woman was nonetheless still smiling as he took his glass and spun out the door. He walked with a skeptical eye cocked to the foreign sky and set himself and his wine down against the stable. After a breath he pulled out the package Celeste had given him.

            He unwound the string and, blood racing through his fingers, removed from the hide a small velvet sack of touching delicacy. Opening it, he was startled to find six silver coins like more moons in his hand. Slowly he set the coins back inside the bag, not knowing whether to rejoice or die of shame. Undecided, he nervously checked the rest of the contents and shot a single laugh when his telescope appeared. A note was tied to it with gold braid. He hurriedly opened the note and tilted it until it was illuminated. It read:

     “Lucien Maroc,

     The next time we see each other the world will look very different. 

     I’ll wager it is beautiful.”

She had signed her name with a feminine flourish then added below:

       )you(

echoing a billet-doux Lucien had written her during the previous tortuous month. By putting the reversed parentheses around his calligraphic invocation of her, Lucien had made it clear that everything else in the world was of no importance to him, that Celeste alone made up the text of his life. Celeste had understood and returned the sentiment.

            The package, the words, could have come from no other woman on earth.

            Lucien knew that despite having lost everything, he had in his heart the opulence other men could but dream of, provided their dreams could ever begin to approach such scope; this woman amazed him, deluged his heart with beautiful hope, pride and servility at the same time, and sent his courage soaring.

            Gulping his wine, he ran back to the tavern, arranged for a fresh horse and galloped off to the northern roads.

         *         *         *

            By previous arrangement, Khalid was waiting outside the posthouse. As Lucien approach his wagon, Khalid turned impassively towards him and let his eyes map the grey waste that was his friend. Lucien, bent and cracked, his full mouth chafed, his almond eyes ringed with ultramarine, his locks twigged and brittle, climbed into the wagon with a pained smile worrying his lips.

            “The Light of the Moors burns in upon himself,” Khalid spoke. “You have had dealings with mankind and are depleted. Most men fear to speak to you, but you insist at times, and you will accordingly grow fainter as you give of your flame, until you are but the hissing of frustrated light.” Khalid chuckled at his own eloquence, then pounded Lucien across the shoulders and said: “Welcome, brother Broken Lamp!”

            “Huh! I can breathe once again. Thank you for your help, O Snake of Fortune. I should warn you: there is a woman in the story.”

            “What story lacks woman? As many leaves as there are across the globe, there are corpses of men whose end was inspired by  as many women.”

            “And here sits such a corpse.”

            Khalid grinned to himself but did not dispute the statement.

            As they rode along the path to Khalid’s isolated compound, Lucien began to relate, grudgingly at first, then with rising indignation, the tale of the past months. Khalid reflected, as Lucien spoke, on his own years of wandering and wresting payment from the world. Love, he considered, was perhaps something he no longer believed existed. He had left the pathetic world of man behind him and entrusted all his knowledge, curiosity and love to his God, who was probably no longer any more romantic than Khalid himself.

            Khalid drove on in stoic reserve, unwilling to excite himself over Lucien’s ruination and exile in the knowledge that rest would perform the duties of the physician far better than loud sympathy at this point.

            “These rocks,” said Khalid, indicating a hill that had been sheered away, “are as old as the barest dream of Adam. Look: what is petriform now,” he indicated the great valley through which they crawled, “was once under water, and these hills were islands, the tops of which hardly appeared above that untamed mass.”

            Lucien silently shot his eyes across the wooded ranges and saw as though from atop the peaks, their wagon, minute as plankton, bravely winding its way through the floor of this sere archipelago, until it vanished behind one of the dead islands.

            He coughed atrociously and held himself hunched over on the seat of the cart as he slid his gaze over to his friend; with his towering attenuated frame, his pitch-black beard and his resolute black eyes, Khalid well warranted his family’s election of himself as the Snake, the charge of protectorship that each Arabic clan devolved upon one of their own. The tradition was as old as any ancient Semitic lore, and Lucien knew the story of how the firmament was formed from the blood of such a serpent during the time of Gilgamesh. Contemptuous of notions of strict primogeniture, the office was passed on via spiritual selection: Khalid was the youngest of seven children, but he was instantly recognized by the elders as the sharpest and certainly the fiercest of the litter. Thus to him was handed the symbolic guardianship and continuity of the tribe.

            His entire life was now dedicated to proving that office. Lucien and Khalid had met in Paris, when Khalid was nineteen and Lucien but sixteen years of age. Both were by then already held in awe by their fellow thinkers and artists, for the unmatched power of their accomplishments as well as their precocity. By some, Lucien had been dubbed ‘the Tiger’ because he lived and hunted alone. They met after having heard of one another for many months, and the Snake and the Tiger became as brothers for the rest of their years. Khalid was the only person Lucien entirely trusted. Lucien judged Khalid’s unadulterated expression of human emotion to be unsurpassed by any poet alive, his grammar of the human soul entirely new and unparalleled, his courage, even rage, in the face of prosaic torments titanic. In Lucien, Khalid saw a universal being, one who could reveal the deepest secrets of the individual or humanity as a whole in any medium he set hands to; his constitution was a rarity in that it would instantly and simultaneously grasp firmly the precise cosmic address of an idea, its terrestrial applications, its every detail and its full potentialities. Khalid admired his art as much as he admired Lucien’s complete and unaffected inability to accept the external world as anything more than an orgy of deception. Yet he saw this younger brother could produce miracles both on his own and at the head of groups of men organized and directed by him –in either case never diminishing his vision or his mastery of production. Between the two of them they seemed to see all directions at once; all the elements filled their pockets: the blood and the sand, the gold and the cedar. Together and individually they had risked their lives and livelihoods by ambushing and stripping bare absurdity, fraud and dogma wherever they went. Together and independently they laughed and terrorized their earnest colleagues, staged demonstrations of trenchant metaphysical humor, wrote and illustrated the most mordant attacks on King, Queen, Pope, poet and plunderer, and drew from the well of their beings such works of beauty and hideousness combined that not an artist in the land could pronounce their names without envy. But, eventually disheartened by the magnitude of the lunacy around them, and feeling that their own parodies paled beside the parody of existence which passed for daily and even historical life, Khalid had retired from boisterous arts and walled himself off from the world heeding above all the duties of family.

            They would write sporadically, or see each other once every few years, but with no break in their thoughts or conversation. As Lucien travelled, loved, worked, watched and listened across all borders, Khalid, with his family gathered around his skirts, settled as solidly as a boulder on the land he was granted in exchange for his service to the Graf, which consisted of gathering, analyzing and reporting military information of all shades. This tract grant now lay immediately to their left as Khalid slowed the wagon before turning from the fortress road.

            As they approached the small Anwesen, their wagon curved up the hill, through a five-acre grove of fruit bearing trees. The trees were laid out in what Lucien through his fatigue discerned to be a Cabalistic pattern, and he wondered if Khalid had somehow arranged the groves to produce the harmonious sounds that now emanated from them as the wind lightly skipped across the leaves.

            “It’s perfect,” he said.

            Khalid let his own eyes glitter over the foliage, inhaling the peace he had created. “This is ten years’ care and labor. I am at home here amongst these bright little offspring. Oranges, lemons, apples, plums, some cherries, peaches, very sweet pears, soft, not at all powdery. The children call it my fruit forest.”

            “What ever do you do with all that?”

            “We harvest it when the hour is right and exchange it at the market for fowl and mutton, for the inhabitants around here are frankly not intelligent enough to produce such beauty on their own. Some we preserve for the winter. Much of the time we eat like angels.”

            “Celeste,” Lucien mouthed. The word emerged involuntarily, as though escaping from his heart and flying up to pluck a fruit. “Then we shall eat like angels,” he said.

In the bearing of Khalid’s wife and children, Lucien detected the stern execution of justice that had become Khalid’s greatest weapon against a depraved and seductive world outside those walls. The rigidity would melt as they grew older, Lucien thought, for he saw an impishness darting around in each of them despite their formal deportment.  

            They pulled him by the hand to one of the outbuildings. Eyeing it not for himself alone, Lucien would do what he could with it later. He laid his few bags down and prepared a corner in which to drop a palette, which he and Khalid carried out from an adjoining shed. He beat the straw and wondered if he would be able to rest, to leave for now the sore sinews of his body, forget the calumnies that had driven him here, and curl up in the dark aching lair that echoed the name of his missing love. Khalid returned with a goblet in his hand.

            “Drink this and we can talk more later.”

            “Foul spit of Satan!” cacked Lucien. “What is this ghastly stuff?”

            “It will help you sleep, or at least anesthetize you. I decocted it myself from the hemlock which grows hereabouts. I hope I measured it judiciously.”

            Khalid was indulging in humor; Lucien knew that he was safe with any of Khalid’s experiments, and in fact did not sleep any longer than two full days.

            When he awoke, Lucien wrote a letter to Celeste full of passion and longing, controlling his effusion enough to describe the route that would bring her to the post house and swearing, amidst promises of love and fealty, that he would meet her there one week hence. He had instructed her to wait a full three weeks when they had spoken, but she had refused vehemently, and swore that no force of God or man could keep her away longer than a week. Khalid had the letter dispatched and warned the courier not to let it fall into any hands but those that Lucien had rather unrealistically described as resembling virginal rabbits.

            Lucien then set about enhancing the hut, recruiting the children to locate hammers, saws, usable planks and all the other elements he sought but knew he would never find in Khalid’s very particular world of systems and associations. He labored on for several days, fearful of the discomfort Celeste would find when she joined him. The valley was packed in a dry but oppressive heat, and he gave much thought and energy to reducing its pervasiveness inside the hut. He worked during the day and when evening blew across the bowl he would comb his hair and walk down to dine with Khalid and his family, after which they would all repair to the fruit trees and harvest according to Khalid’s direction.

            Gradually he was able to sort through the heaps of oddities and exotic souvenirs which filled the room. With Khalid’s assent he organized the items by geographical and applicable characteristics and transferred them to a room off the stable. Among the innumerable lamps, fans, castings, skulls and carpets he found an old lute with a rich sap-stain ingrained down the center. “Ah, I shall be able to compose while I’m here,” he thought, and set the instrument aside. The table with retorts and powders remained where it was.

            Khalid would wander up to the hut in those days, picking things up and passing them to his children in an absent-minded fashion. The children would shriek and threaten each other with some of the more grotesque bits of the collection and Khalid would send them off so that he and Lucien might find a free space to sit and talk, which happened spontaneously despite their many years of separation. Lucien saw in Khalid’s eyes a concealed watchfulness that revealed his concern for his health, although he had said nothing about it since bringing the hemlock.

            “So,” Khalid said, “by now you must know the meaning of man’s every act and thought after all that time in the wilderness. Your tidings are as bright as your name, no doubt.”

            Lucien smiled at the irony. “Were it not for my unexpected discovery of Celeste, I would have claimed that betrayal is the first order of humanity.” He shook his head as though casting off the sweat of denigration.

            “You exhaust yourself. And for what? You haven’t the heart to enjoy a lifetime of senseless combat. You will find no reward out there, no matter how beautiful you make something. Envy, rather. And men and women alike fear those whom they have victimized.”

            “Perhaps I shall fight back some day.”

            “I see,” Khalid said, “that you anticipated happiness here on Earth. What evidence do you have that happiness is a natural human condition?”

            Lucien was unshakable: “Internal evidence. That and the face of the one I await. Both incontrovertible and analogous to an epiphany.”    

            “Perhaps,” Khalid sighed. ” But these are twisting times, my friend, and I fear you will find the worm of corruption has bored into everything. Even the spirit is inextricably enmeshed in the kingdom of worldly pleasures, despite the most basic precepts against such.”

As time had forked and sent the friends down their divergent streams, Khalid had removed himself from the swamp of expectations, renouncing the idols of romance and human interpretation, trusting now the sciences for art and lashing all his hope to the cross of the Nazarene. In the former world, he had attained a mania for experimentation and record keeping, often divining tremendously comic coincidences and invariably proving the difficulty of burning through organized stupidity. In the latter sphere, if such a world outside of worlds could be called a sphere at all, Khalid found solace for his fury, love for his species, a kind explanation of evil and a devout contract of hope that seemed to mitigate his view that the entire human condition was poisoned after all.

            Of Syrian birth, Khalid had been pious and rigorous in his Christianity. In their discussions they seemed to agree that the freedom necessary for each man to know his own faith was offset by the immensity of the crime against this committed by the Church.

            “You always held the message of Jesus as love,” Lucien began, “yet I see the message of the church as one of cruelty and hypocrisy. See now: it becomes complicated even starting from that first message. That is the torment of man. I have no argument with love, and so might in fact be the most religious man alive, but I sometimes think the belief in God is more inspired by hatred of the world than by anything like enlightenment.”

            Khalid considered this, then nodded when he understood Lucien’s last meaning. “Also true. What times, Maroc, what times! One Pope in Avignon, another in Rome, Greeks in Constantinople, over one hundred different orthodoxies come and gone since James and Paul first quarreled. And what dogma! How can mortal man uphold the sanctity of the faith when simony and sodomy take precedence over goodness? Offices, dispensations, absolution for murderers all for sale!”

            “Oh, it was aimed that way as soon as your Saint Paul began fulminating; Paul the persecutor. Paul the proselytizer.”

            Khalid began to object to any direct aspersions on the one Lucien considered the sower of the intolerance.

            “It was in spite of Paul,” Lucien pointed out, “that the first hundred years were passed in liberty of faith. The church was tended by the apostles who cared more for the ideals than they did for power. It took two hundred more years for the self-designated prophets to crust their office with enough abuse that Bishops assumed leadership and tried to federate all the congregations. Once the Bishops decided –of their own accord– that they were divinely invested, they expropriated all the powers of election to office and by the time of Constantine, when the church finally shared the interests of the Government, the needs and the wealth of it exploded and all its offices became objects of venal struggle.”

            “Well, it reeks of suspicious activity consolidated and growing,” said Khalid. “Both sense and belief,” he declared, holding wide his arms, “know that faith has no locks; it is only the churches that have doors.”

            “Pah!” Lucien huffed. “Who would want to enter any church? Most religions push men down the road of bitterness,” he complained. “Fine, I can also be cold, be hungry, dispel all sensation for the goal of a pure and peaceful soul, but this can come still more from perfect love. The cosmic passion filtered through the human form: this is what I believe in. Redemption through the fire of passionate love alone can eliminate all impurities!”

            “You,” Khalid chuckled. “You’ll forever be your own church, your own Christ. Your religion is Lucienity.“

            “And yourself?” he asked.

            “To hell with the church,” Khalid growled. They like doors, I closed them out.”

            “Good man,” Lucien laughed, slapping his back.

*

            That same evening Khalid held the first of what he hoped would be many meetings with a band of men committed to probing to the fundamental secrets of existence. Lucien had never been a practitioner of these ‘black arts,’ but he knew about them as well as his friend, and had followed his interest in alchemy since their Parisian days. Khalid assured him that he was on a more practical pursuit at this point and had forged this group with that in mind. He would see now if they were individually and collectively suited for the tasks he proposed.

            As Lucien was writing in the hut, the men came up to make use of all the retorts and burners cluttered upon the table. He gathered up his papers and stood a little aside. As many more candles were lit, Lucien was surprised by the diversity of the types he saw. Watching and listening, Khalid, he thought, must have made a very deliberate selection. Mathieu was a pale, slender young man of twenty-five, well-bred and dressed accordingly. He carried himself with an air of university learning. His gaze was alternately liable to fix on the floor in concentration and attention, or, when engaged, firmly hold the correspondent’s notice as he quietly spoke his piece, always tersely but with a bend of irony in it. Gustave was Khalid’s age and close to him in height. Robust, elegant and without question the most experienced of the four, including Khalid, he nonetheless accepted the arrangement and showed himself as willing to lend his talents as to realign them in the service of this experiment. He was well spoken and confident and would have been considered a dashing figure were it not for his natural modesty. A longtime friend of Mathieu’s, and like him in age, Luc was an angular, emaciated, unkempt youth who radiated impulsiveness. His wild locks and serpentine posture, the intensity of his speech and gesture slid a smile across Lucien’s face. He saw in a moment of clarity that young Luc was as devoid of calculation as he appeared to be of bone, and was impressed that this purity enveloped the kind of raw talent that usually lived in monstrous men. Coasting an amused eye over the men, Lucien realized that Khalid had great things in store for them, and that he had successfully sought out those who would do great things together.

            Khalid assembled the band around the table and summarily apprised them of the contents of the phials as well as their salient properties and potentialities as he pointed: “Firstly, there exist four spirits: mercury, sulphur, arsenic and sal ammoniac. Secondly, there are six bodies: gold, silver, copper, tin, lead and iron. Copper is simply arrested silver; to disabuse it of its red attributes will reduce it to its true state of silver. Pure white mercury, imbued with pure red sulphur will form gold.”

            Luc was less amenable to introductions than the others: “Save your summations,” he complained. “We know these things and yet most of the alchemists merely achieve appearances; I myself know enough to produce counterfeit gold. What use are these experiments you plan for us?”

            Lucien answered: “The sole value is in the understanding of principals, which are more allegorical than not,”

            Khalid resumed the course: “True, but the principle applies itself indiscriminately to all natural occurrences. Understand it this way: everything has an apparent quality that is contradicted by an opposite hidden quality.”

            “Especially humans,” Lucien growled.

            Mathieu, Luc and Gustave glanced at Lucien in confusion. Khalid coughed gently and Lucien excused himself and went out to sit with his thoughts in the depths of the fruit forest. He saw the wickering of the lights through the window and heard the low purr of his old friend initiating the band into his cabal, and let the fragrances of dusk and decidui play their fingers through his hair. The delicate laughter of the trees seemed clearer at night. He closed his eyes and saw the one he loved appear before him: lips full and slightly parted, breasts and thighs throbbing across the space of the Swan, across the centuries, across the miles that held them in either hand so far from one another, thundering passion and calling him across the crowds of mankind in notes that he alone could hear; he saw her shudder slightly as her entire being asked him to bestow his on her; a silent breath from across the globe kissed her skirts and fell, as Lucien longed to do, at her feet, throwing its arms around her knees and burying its face in her hot blossom; her eyes, soaked with desire and yet at peace with the invincible strength of love, locked on him and spoke to him across the night, and, as she stood there before him, white, glowing with the fugitive mists of snows and clouds, floating upright and ephemeral like Ophelia braving a storm, she let one white hand wisp up and set it, as he smiled with his eyes still shut, beside his cheek.

            Later, disturbed by the voices of the departing band, Lucien opened his eyes and watched the shadows filter past the trees and disappear down the path to the donjon. He held one knee clutched to his breast and lifted his head back just as a thin kerchief of cloud drifted past the moon. The cloud glimmered and rolled over the hill, leaving the immense sky open above him.

            On this empty ocean bed he would watch the stars and wait for Celeste.

*

            Lucien was uneasy now that he could do no more with the hut, and though he had picked out the tune that he’d heard in his sleep that night, a melody of haunting sweetness that he would write words to and present to Celeste when she arrived –for it was clearly a song his heart had composed for her– he felt the lute inanimate in his hands and had set it aside finding his mind and body confused by the absence of labor that they had charged at without pause for the past months. He tied his shoes around his feet and went to assist Khalid in the orchard.

            The day was sharp with heat and Khalid was glistening beneath his pitch brows as he dropped peaches into a bucket strung over his shoulder. As Lucien approached, Khalid was upbraiding the children for hurling the rotten produce at one another. They considered pelting Lucien for a moment until their father ordered them to go back to the keep and wash themselves. They had been out of sight for less than a minute when a larrikin plum exploded against the back of Khalid’s neck.

            He roared at first, then laughed to himself as he mopped the fruit out of his collar. Lucien righted a bucket left by the children and began to fill it with whatever he could reach.

            Khalid cocked his head and asked: “What was your impression of the band?”

            “Stout ones. Every one a gem.”

            “Good. I thought so, but you give me the final confidence I need.”

            “Just what, pray, do you see as the aim of all this?”

            Khalid wiped his hands and pulled at his beard: “Life as we chart it seems enamored of its own destruction. Overly so. I cannot convert every man and woman to a theology of forgiveness, but I can, with the aid of my colleagues, bring forth a science of kindness, one which will respect the human form as humanity should respect God.”

            “Ah,” Lucien replied, “from ancient mysteries to modern comprehension. You are what the Greeks once thought of as a Humanist. You wish to find a formula guaranteed to bring light to these caliginous decades.”

            “Yes. We will show people the stupidity of their fears. It was only thirty years ago that the Black Death swept through here. Even now, the people cannot attribute it to anything more tangible than blue auroras or the bare existence of Jews, whom they tend to mistake for a race of noxious firewood. I feel sure that the disease is distributed the way these seeds are dispersed, and that it is possible to locate that kernel and catch it as it flies.”

            Lucien stared at some seeds, wondering if it was possible to chart the world as Khalid desired. Looking at the handful of seeds, it seemed he saw all the world contained. “Who else knows of this theory?”

            “Not many. Superstition remains more entertaining than truth. Apropos of which, what word of Flamel?”

            “Not much. I write rarely. I last saw Nicolas about the time he claimed to have discovered that lost book by Abraham the Jew. After thirteen years of fooling with it he decided it still required some deciphering so he went to Spain to search for help from some Marranos.”

            “He’s a fool,” Khalid suggested.

            “Yes, but he keeps a nice house. I’ll go there again someday.”

*         *         *

            Lucien turned on his side and stared at the wall a few feet away from him. He rose after a while and swept out the hut. He collected a bowl of fruit, following the pleasures of his eye, and brought it back and placed it on the spavined little table. As the sun climbed over the roof and straddled the peak, Lucien sat in the doorway and reassured himself that life held out no easy goodness to him; that all he’d done and had was of his own force, his own wisdom, that no untangled felicity was reserved for him in this lifetime, and that he would be an unusual dunce to believe that happiness would ever come to him so long as he was exiled here on this dusty ball of rot. Nevertheless he carried up several buckets of water and bathed himself, watching impassively as the grit and pulver of the orchard beaded up and rolled off his body. He dressed himself, then walked down to the stable to prepare the wagon he would take to the post house to see if Celeste would come today as they had sworn, or if Celeste would come at all.

            Before leaving, he laid upon the bed he’d made for them –for her– a single red rose.

            For love he waited at the Royal View tavern. A love he had waited for since longer than his memory could hold, a melting of souls he had breathed and dreamed with every step he had ever taken; the promise of their breasts finally reunited that had driven him some three hundred miles to this rendezvous.

            Lucien stood at the window searching the southwards sky, defeatist like lard spread over the valley, wondering if Celeste would truly come, or if his heart, hollowed out around her absence, would be reduced to beating a funereal march for the years remaining him, each lugubrious echo sounding her syllables within him as painfully as it had for the last five weeks. He was unable to decide whether he could survive such a blow.

            A carriage dusted to a halt outside the window and Lucien’s limbs went cold as he saw Celeste emerge. He watched, unobserved, as she collected all the cases and bags filled with the life she’d elected to build alongside his, saw her eyes crease in a tired smile as she helped Rita down to this new world, and, with a sudden bursting inside him, as though every beautiful flower on earth, both known and unknown, had blossomed at once, thought “My life has changed forever.“

            He stepped outside the tavern at the precise moment she turned towards him and they collapsed in each other’s arms, clutching each other fast and kissing hair, eyes, lips, and hands.

            There is no other moment in time, before or after this.

            I shall continue with this story if only for the sake of form, or, perhaps, because the destiny that had torn these two souls apart, hurled them together again, and propelled this love in all directions of time and place has not yet fallen inside itself fully enough to fit neatly into the finite package I meant to present to you as history. We have found the very core of absolute love, and, would that the world recognize such as the highest order of individual and social existence, the cynosure of all being, the story would end here.

Lucien and Celeste rode back to Khalid’s outpost, where they spent the remainder of the day, locked hand in hand, effusing thanks to Khalid for his sanctuary and arranging a comfortable room for Rita, who, despite the confusion of having to assimilate new people as well as new surroundings, sensed the beginnings of joy in this new life. Celeste tended to her feeble minded nanny with an attentiveness which barely concealed her desire to end the day and immerse herself in Lucien’s caress. Khalid produced an evening wine to bless the arrival of both the women, and deliberately made Rita drunk. Lucien and Celeste draped the old woman across her bed and waded through small pools of shadows until they found themselves in the hut he had prepared for them.

            The silence inside was made of silver, pearl, and midnight moth; the moon pressed its face to the window and filled the room with a fresh eidolon snow. I mute, my love trembling, we heard no sound beyond our own names echoing through the idiot centuries; I pressed my lips to the mouth of that voice so long worshipped by me, kissed that breast of dove and gently licked the tongue that poured my name. As the world unfolded like a rose a stream flowed through the room and said our hearts, our heart, always thus. Our new voices faded into the hum of a great rustling, deeper than velvet, and we saw the walls around us fully draped and alive with angels, millions of blue, iridescent angels, wings opening, fluttering, as we ascended the sky on her own open wings. I fell into the molten core of her and my hands marveled at her fullness, this women I had sought for eternity, this one, fallen like myself, but with the hair of a mermaid and arms of fire. My life, I now know, was nothing more than that white night, and that night was Celeste. I could not leave that face of infinity. We stayed in each other throughout the night, watching the secret colors of sorrow and ecstasy wash over each others’ face, holding on in case we were to be cheated out of another chance, and thinking to each other, like oceans that have poured into one another all their salt, their foam, their fathomless depths: “Forever.”

*         *         *

            They awoke timid and overwhelmed by passion at once. All their terrors seemed far behind them as they stared at each other in the powdered sunlight pouring in through the window. Neither of them could speak of what they felt, but both of them sensed it rising higher each moment, an overwhelming wave, and tacitly agreed to let it swell as high as it liked while they pretended to execute ordinary duties throughout the day. Only the manner in which they moved through it indicated the presence of this force within them; each step, each reaching of an arm, each tinkling word was tinier than normal. As she drifted through their first day as lovers, Lucien watched Celeste in beating amazement, each minute packed with what he had discovered about her, each glance warming him with the knowledge of what moved beneath her clothing. She was warm and ripe; she was tangled, the perfumes of all her hidden coves were strong, and Lucien found these qualities purely feminine and wildly exciting. He licked her face with his eyes –that stunningly beautiful face– and realized that there was not one millimeter of her that failed to inflame him, that in Celeste’s form he had accidentally discovered perfection. It was astonishing when added to the voice, the tender heart, the volant spirit of the woman, and spinning her all back together in his mind, Lucien knew with a fearful certainty that he had never before and would never again in his years meet another creature, another life, as beautiful as Celeste.

            In the evening Lucien brushed off a bench from which they could watch the great sweep of stars and Celeste, digging through one of her aumbries, produced two silver chalices for them to sip from. As Lucien filled them with wine, she explained in a husky voice: “These are my wedding chalices.”

            As they sat, Celeste apprised him of all that had transpired in Rapelle since his departure. As Lucien had predicted, confusion gave way to rage amongst the villagers. Celeste, however, had been busy packing her life into crates and avoiding Helene while comforting Paul. He had returned from his tournament successful and proud, but then plunged into a hole of regret as he watched Celeste prepare to leave. She had told him she was going to visit her childhood friends, then return to her parents.

            “He couldn’t understand why I no longer wanted him. He cried and asked me ‘why’ a dozen times. He also said I was the most intensely disloyal person alive,” she pouted.

            Lucien waited as her tone indicated further revelations.

            “He hates you now. I didn’t say that I was coming to be your…well, to live my life with you, but he blames you for changing me. He said that I had had my mind stolen. All this he attributes to you.”

            “How generous.”

            “I didn’t argue with him. There was no hope. He said you were a felon and robbed and lived off women…”

            Lucien leapt up. “What? That wirbling plaything? He knows nothing of me if that’s how he speaks! I hope you pointed that out to him.”

            “I didn’t. I couldn’t argue with him, there was no hope.”

            “No,” he spat, “there was no hope. There is no hope. Anybody can think anything and no record on earth or above will pry them away from their lies!”

            “I’m worried, Lucien. He said he wants to kill you.” She became agitated at the thought. “He could find us, I believe. He could come and take you from me in the night. If Christian helps him he will feel obligated to see his justice done!”

            “Christian? And who else will hound me through my days? Whomever choses? Oh, why must everyone feel so damned welcome to hate me?” he groaned.

            “You have me instead of having everyone. You will always have me, Lucien. Let them hate. You will always have all of me.”

            And Rapelle and their past dissolved like a vapor as they lay their faces beside one another, listening to the soft melody of the trees, letting the breeze add so many fingers to their hands as they touched one another. It took the colored planets and the shimmering night air to make them realize that they were happy now, and as one they felt this joy well up in them, surprising them with both its limitlessness and its full and unharried presence –a happiness neither had ever expected to feel was suddenly theirs.

            The coolness of her cheek, the soft wetness of her lips marked this final arrival for Lucien; he would never turn back, would never forget that every minute of his life was spilled from the matrix of this, their exultation. Leading her back into the hut, he lifted her to the table, parted her skirts and feasted on her.

*

            The smallness of the bed kept them pressed together and by its very minuteness deposited them in a land of infinite happiness. Lucien and Celeste slept as one body and, when they were not tearing through time and space, visiting each other in the guise of each other, Lucien as Celeste, Celeste as Lucien, both as creatures of the sky, their happiness was kept at the same vertiginous pitch by the meshing of their beings even in repose.

            The first week left them bruised, skinned, drenched. Despite their shyness they were incapable of civilized restraint. Lucien had recovered a portion of his health and Celeste had discovered the exquisite tortures of love, maintaining her last-minute flights from oblivion only by habit and the greatest effort; she would live entire centuries in his desire then shoot open her eyes and grab his hair, pulling him away from her at the moment of madness.

            “Why do you stop?” he asked.

            “It feels too good,” she gasped.

            Lucien would hold her to him, whispering confections that melted through her ear and poured down hot and liquid deep in her heart, and they would fall together again.

            They were both stunned by the power of their love.

            “It’s never felt like this, Lucien, not with anyone.”

            “I know, Angel. This is the real alchemy. I’ve never felt it before either.”

            “I love you. That’s all I can say anymore. That’s all I can even think anymore. Don’t ever stop. Let’s just live our whole lives like this.”

            Lucien buried his mouth in hers and stroked her face for the next hour.

*

            Lucien had promised his love that she would see something unique that evening. He had repeatedly apologized for the bench of alembics heaped against the far wall of the hut, but now, he explained, she would see what they were for. Her excitement rose as Khalid and his new colleagues invaded their grotto and began the lesson.

            For two hours Khalid drilled them in various techniques of distillation and purification, never resting until each trial ended in the successful reduction to the essence. Celeste pressed around the lamps and could not restrain from asking questions.

            “But where does this art come from,” she finally cried.

            “Ah. For strict history you must inquire of Lucien.”

            Lucien explained: “Arabic tradition traces the knowledge from Moses and Aaron through Hermes Trismegistus, through the tenth-century al-Nadim.”

            Khalid had by then been in summation of their purpose. He now went on: “We are to take this course of inquiry out of the tombs of the priestly castes and present it to the man of earth, the man of feeling.

            “As in all the universe, there is but one unifying, or original matter: the prima materia. As in all study of the world and human deportment, we shall learn to distill the apparent characteristics and divine the core construct.”

            “The ultimate,” flashed Luc.

            “The one,” grinned Gustave.

            Matthieu was more practical: “The mercury from which has been removed all the essences of earth, of water, of fire and of air.”

            Lucien whispered in Celeste’s ear: “The philosophers’ mercury, or philosophers’ stone.”

            Khalid had marshalled their minds and was satisfied with the quick concert of hearts that had flared up at a touch. He hid a smile behind his hand and pointed to the next step: “We can record the differences and the practical affinities of the elements, classify them as alkali or acid, and explore the salutary values of what are classified as poisons. This is laborious, but of itself will lead us to solve the mystery of Ostanes’ divine water, which legend says cured all infirmities.

            “Our true aim, therefore is not the juggling of venal substances, but, rather, the new and strictly documented science of these mysterious elements on the human body, and, thus, the soul. After each evening’s work,” he concluded, “we shall sing.”

            Lucien now chewed back a smile as the last injunction clanged like a bell of shock over the group. He knew what Khalid needed from them: each man must perform the same experiment on himself at the end of the night. Khalid overcame the murmurs of dissent by sweeping them out with a wild flourish, and pushed them down to the keep, leaving Lucien and Celeste alone. Celeste stared at Lucien as though afraid to ask the degree of his friend’s madness. Her question evaporated as the sounds of desert songs released from caves and hidden rose trees came ghosting up the hill.

            Lucien tucked his head to one side and explained what Khalid was doing: “The songs speak to the transmutation of the soul. The guided emotions, the distillation of our internal elements through vibration, beat, sustain, anticipation, all work to purify. At least, he hopes so.”

            Celeste had been excited and distracted from their troubles by the band’s assembly. She had followed them along this hitherto unsuspected highway with all the intent inquisitiveness with which she explored any fresh path that fell open at her feet. She saw her new life laid out before her boundless, blue and imperishably miraculous. With Lucien she would fly in all directions, and cleanse her memory of all the rote gestures she had mistaken for living until meeting him. It was exhilarating but not inherently restful. No matter; she would never flag so long as her heart had Lucien’s name etched on it.

            Celeste filled their two silver cups and sat beside Lucien on the tiny mat, propping herself up on one elbow, letting her coltish legs flow out from her hips and off the bed as she sipped first from his glass then from her own. Lucien smiled and followed her lead, understanding that this was a kind of alchemy of devotion that no one needed to teach a woman in love. She spoke to him of her perplexity at Khalid’s quest, then, looking at the one she had selected instead of the Pauls, the Khalids, she remarked: “You don’t need any of that, do you?”

            “No. I have whole worlds within me; galaxies and eons, distant spheres whose light pulses forth long after they’re dust; bumblebees and stalactites, frozen wastes and dancing dunes. Secret lands of life and death. More. All,” he skimmed his hand lightly around his temple, then over his breast, “here, and here.”

            Celeste nodded solemnly, eyes fixed on his ethereal gestures. “And perpetual youth? Eternal life?” Proud of what she had learned, she added: “Your prima materia?“

            He passed his hand over her face and breasts, down her stomach and her thighs, all without quite touching her flesh. “Here,” he breathed.

            Her eyes remained closed and she trembled for an imperceptible space. The lids rose and she spoke: “It’s all very odd. Well, they seem like goodly sorts, but I don’t know if they liked me. What do you think they are truly about?”

            “Mathieu is of a rigorously empiricist disposition, closest of them all to Khalid in his analytical bent; Luc is some manner of self-generating spark; and Gustave seems to be a combination of the two with the additional gentleness which comes of wisdom. A very talented band.”

            Celeste twirled a tress of his hair in her fingers and distractedly asked: “Do you think Khalid is like us? One of us, I mean.”

            “No. Khalid is a man, of this plane. That is precisely what he rages against.” Lucien thought for a moment. “Luc might be. At least to some degree.”

            Celeste smiled at his unerring penetration of the many worlds around them and knew in her marrow that she had indeed finally found the one other in whom she could lay her spirit unreservedly, and with a tranquility that would nourish her for all their days.

            The leaves, thousands of them, repeated to them the sensuous notes of the Arab songs. A baby owl cried out from its hidden nest while its mother prowled the skies and earth for food as the night paced back and forth outside the cabin, strangely stirred by the scents rising from within.

*

            Genevieve had held barely true thus far and, via her, an unopened missive from Antoine arrived warning that Paul had been reported seen with a band of the worst marauders in the land, and that he had spoken of insinuating his quest to find her into their ruthless program. Disgust with the world, a void of spirit that insisted he find some martial task by which he could define himself and raze the specters of his enemies, had led him to declare a vendetta against Lucien. Spurred, as was Genevieve by the frustrated hounds of Rapelle, he now believed Celeste had eloped into Lucien’s arms. To apply himself to this end alone, he had galloped out of de Hagenau’s stable and joined the Sons of Iniquity.

            Having ravaged church and field, civilians and soldiers of England, France, the Italian peninsula and the Kingdom of Hungary in the most barbarous fashion, this mass of human refuse had been collectively excommunicated by Pope Innocent VI in 1360 for their unbridled terrorizing. In response they had besieged Avignon under the generalship of the mercenary Sir John Hawkwood, and Pope Urban V excommunicated them twice three years later. As they continued to visit atrocities on the lands of Burgundy, Champagne and Lanquedoc, the Pope joined treasuries and authority with the Emperor in ’65 and, unable to coalesce the roving companies into a disciplined standing army in the service of the state, bribed them to plunder first Hungary, then Spain, but they only came back more convinced than ever of their rights of slaughter. By uniting with the Sons of Iniquity, Paul had passed beyond the pale of humanity.

            Celeste was terrified by the news; it was impossible to predict where the scourge might pass, and she feared the worst influence on Paul’s mind. She flinched at every nocturnal sound. Lucien was annoyed at the development, and pensive. She flared at this new intrusion on their life.

            “This is too much now! How dare he play his stupid soldiering games with us? How could I have ever tolerated him? He’s a poltroon!” she insisted. “Frothing on about his bravery when he never did a thing to protect me when I did need it!” Nonetheless, she worried. “He’ll try to come and take me. He’ll convince himself it’s for my own good.”

            They checked with Khalid about the inaccessibility of the outpost. Khalid was shocked by the lad’s effrontery, but unmoved by the threat: “I would have heard if any of the brigands were marching this direction.”

            Celeste was unsure. “He might decide to come with just a few men. I know his mind. If he’s encouraged by someone he admires as valiant he’ll do whatever it requires to find us.”

            “He won’t make it this far without me knowing of it. And may God help him and anybody else who steps on my land uninvited.”

            Matters were further disturbed by Antoine’s assertion that Genevieve herself had tragically fallen deeper into the pit of slander and had compulsively spoken of Lucien’s general whereabouts. Lucien suspected he would have to break all communication with her or risk eternal persecution from the natives of that insignificant grub-hill called Rapelle. He shook his head at her propensity for doing exactly the opposite of what could be done to bring herself peace and maintain his trust. The unnecessary sorrow of it pinned him as Celeste ceased walking one afternoon and said in all sincerity, a crinkle of remorse skipping over her face: “I miss Genevieve.”

            “I know. I do, too. Maybe some day we’ll see her again, after she becomes calmed again, after everybody understands that they must leave us in peace.”

*

            Because the heat was so difficult for Rita to adapt to, Khalid would frequently abandon the ministration of the fruit forest and lead everyone down to the river. Rita would be left to sit in the shade, watching her feet with a puzzled twist to her face as the water made them shoggle and stick out of her legs at peculiar angles. Celeste would play with the children and wade through the current like a voluptuous naiad, laughing her seaward laugh and brushing diamonds from her face over and over. Lucien, while generally immersed in conversation with Khalid, could not stop trying to smell the different colors she became as she passed from sun to shade, stone to stream, flesh to time. Khalid would sit on the bank secretly at peace within himself and shimmering with pride at his children’s capering until he found himself too full of wine and exploded in abuse against the crimes of organized society, often railing, quite suddenly and at top volume, against perversions in particular, which amused the children immensely –his outburst, that is.

            At night they would hold each other beneath the stars, drinking liqueurs from the silver wedding chalices and wandering through the moonlit gardens both outside and in each other’s heart. Each time they fell into one another was a shock, a transit through spectacular worlds they could find no words for; a gasp of wonder, a look of utter bewilderment, slow, almost unendurable pleasure prolonged through the night, sudden flashes of colors, clouds and centuries, silent and towering as Lucien and Celeste sped by. Worlds they had never known before, new worlds each and every time.

            “What is this, what is all this?” Celeste would ask.

            Lucien sailed with her arms melting around him and smiled.

            “It’s only love. Don’t be afraid, it’s only love.”

*

            As the weeks whispered past, Celeste felt herself swept along in some magnificent, graceful flight. The music from the fruit forest led her, her hand in Lucien’s, along exhilarating designs, great, breathtaking loops and whorls, both day and night. The life she had promised her heart had been born at last here in this strange outpost where she could lie next to her lover and speak of all the hopes, chills, fevers and flights that had fed the bitterness within.

            A new life carried her in arms so protective, so compassionate and far-seeing, that she seemed to be drifting through a dream, where all around her blossomed in vivid colors of joy and a laugh inside her never ceased. She felt she was living through an immortal ascension and abandoned herself ecstatically. This new spirit, this God she christened Love, carried her and at the same time its very touch filled her, completely filled her, with all the sagacity of its nature. She was constantly amazed and delighted by the genius of love, its wisdom, its shrewdness when necessary, its intuent benevolence, its omnipotent sapience.

            As it held them in the benevolence of its arms, this love, this wisdom, was itself rewarded by the sheer delight Lucien and Celeste experienced in each other’s proximity. 

            Sometimes, as Lucien sat working out another song, a hot, thick wind would burn through her at a rush and desire would shake her so unmercifully that she would grip the mound melting between her thighs and call him to her, breathing his name, saying: “It hurts!”

*

            Lucien was watching Celeste as her features betrayed that innocent concentration he loved to see as she was plucking the lute and singing the song he had written for her.

            “So sad my heart

            So sweet my love,

            So far away you fly my dove

            From meeeee”

            He laughed as she tried to reach the high notes.

            “I still can see your eyes of gold

            aflame but not for me.”

            The children interrupted her efforts by asking for Rita. “She promised to embroider our collars for us but she’s not in her room.”

            Celeste dropped the lute and shot up, the blood drained from her face. “Rita’s vanished! Lucien, what will we do?”

            “We’ll find her,” he said, walking out the door.

            The children scattered as Celeste shook and followed close on Lucien’s heels. “Dear God, what if she’s been taken hostage? We have to discover what happened to her, I couldn’t live if she was harmed.”

            Lucien was amazed at the instant transformation from gentle young woman to the wild-haired beet-faced creature ripping at her own hands and rushing without aim. He was doused with a cold mix of irritation and contempt that often removed him from hysterical people. It fell off as soon as it had splashed him however, and was replaced by compassion for the girl’s anxiety. He calmly set about locating Rita, careful not to inflame Celeste with the appearance of either haste or indifference. Celeste ran off up the mountain and into the forest, crying and calling for her governess; Lucien made a thorough inspection of all the sheds before heading off down the road to the highway, and he was passed by Celeste, still weeping and jerking her arms, before he had reached it. When he did so, Celeste and Khalid met him with Rita firmly supported between them. Celeste was now crying tears of relief as they marched Rita, dazed and, Lucien thought, mildly happy, back to her quarters.

            “I found her trotting down the middle of the highway,” Khalid told him, rolling his eyes. “There were three very angry wagoners behind her and I had to pass bribes to restore public peace.”

            “You just wandered off,” Celeste was informing the old woman. “You just wanted a little adventure of your own. Now you must come back and never do that again, because I love you and I have to look after you.” She wiped her face with her sleeve.

*

            And Celeste discovered to her own alarm that Lucien was prey to torments from afar, that he could sense evils being considered or executed even from great distances, and that he was disposed to sudden leave from the corporeal world. Although she had previous acquaintance with his strange parleys with what he called the world ‘on the other side of the mirror,’ the enervation he had suffered and the roiling forces of rage and resentment that were convulsing distant Rapelle were such as to plunge him into deep trances and fearful agonies. Seeing him swallowed by forces she did not understand, Celeste set aside her fright, marshalled her strength and checked his fever, his stertorous breathing, anchoring his essence with her love. Through Lucien, or what passed through Lucien’s immobilized form, she learned what was occurring at home, who was vituperating, who was scheming, who was pursuing and laying traps for them. With fear surmounted by curiosity she also found herself conversing with spirits long dead and began to keep a journal of people and lands that appeared to her via Lucien’s barely intelligible narratives.

            Celeste, ferociously devoted to restoring Lucien’s health, applied all her courage to grasping his character, and even reached beyond their own borders to ask Khalid for his help.

            “It will pass,” Khalid said after hearing of the ravings. “Our Lucien is very sensitive to other beings –of all places.”

            “I know,” she responded. “But how does he always seem to be right? Sometimes it drives me mad.”

            “Aha! Yes,” he laughed through his beard, “it can be annoying, but it’s no illusion, either. You have yourself a regular Cassandra, and you must learn to respect that.”

            “Oh, sweet God, I respect no one as I do Lucien.”

            “Good. You must stand by him. Remember what they did to Cassandra.”

            Celeste did not know, but it made no difference in her heart. No philosopher, no priest, no burgher or baron need tell her how to love her Lucien. And Lucien had never been so loved; it awed him and gave him the internal strength that surpassed anything he’d ever known on his own.

            Celeste the fallen, Celeste the seeker, Celeste indomitable by virtue of her curiosity ministered with love and all the skill of mature womanhood to the wracked man at her side, and rapidly accepted the spells as part of the singularity of the one she had sought on Earth. She nursed him through the periods of torment with unequalled finesse and loved him still more for it.

            Lucien, however, was embarrassed by these involuntary travels, regretting any connection with humanity past or present that could induce him to follow the fortunes of anybody but his beloved Celeste, that could sap the strength he needed to treasure and protect her, that could whisk him so far from her side with such immediacy. He pleaded with her to forgive these fits, explained to her that they were seldom happenstances and only now recurring on account of the jokes of providence that had broken him down over the past year. Lucien hated himself for being able to sense the passions of others, and began to suggest that she remove herself from him until he was whole again.

            “Please,” she begged, tears filling her eyes, hands rushing down his face. “Never say that. Never ask me to leave!”

            “Go away. Do not love me, I’m a monster!”

            “Don’t.”

            “Sometimes I believe that you are the only good part of me. You should leave. Now. This is not good for you, Celeste, this kind of thing should not brush up against you. For the love of God, I’m lying here tortured by any and every detestation with wings, wracked by the actions and animosity of people hundreds of miles away, sometimes more than that and more than that in centuries; get yourself away from my humors and live your life!”

            “I can’t!” she shook him. “I don’t think I can even breathe without you!”

            “Then do not breathe the breath that has been poisoned around me. Go home to your parents and let me work, writhe, die if necessary, but without drinking of you!”

            “No!” Celeste would not hear of his promises to send for her later. They had been separated too long and would never be so again.

            Lucien ached with shame that she should see him thus. Still shaking, he reached one hand out to her and showed her a book with the other: “This man Durante. Alligheri, I mean. He found absolution. Opprobrium, penury, exile, dashed by winds of wretchedness both man-made and providential, he burned like a city against his indignities, but he found his way to absolution, guided only by art and by love. It may be,” Lucien spoke, now pensive and slow, “that I will someday be as well redeemed. Led by art, knowing in my heart the strength of love and holding it, covered in kisses, to my lips and high against the malversions I have passed, I, too, shall find my way from this dark wood and wash away my sins, my sorrows with the blinding light of my love.”

            Beatrice. You are my Beatrice, my light and my redemption, Love. No flame, no inferno, could ever throw me back from your path, no wrath of man or God could ever frighten me away from your track; I follow as I have always followed, those perfumed footprints that you drop behind as if to tease me with the promise of your sacrament. Turn to me, grant me a glimpse of your face, blind me with your radiance, for I cannot so much as move my head when faced with all the love you are. Immolate me, Love, for I have tracked this world and every other world bloodied, battered, starved and unwavering, forever chasing your shadow. Look full upon me, my Beatrice, and speak again my name, reach your hand through the inviolable membranes of heaven and set my cheek aflame. I have reached you; now turn your face to me and bathe me, wash away my sorrows, Love, I shall find salvation by hurling myself into the sun that is your beauty.

            Celeste held his face in her hands and shook it roughly. “You have not done anything to be redeemed for, you fool! You have worked and spoken and given and given again and we love each other. I love you! How can you worry about redemption when you have only done what had to be done, what finally allowed us to be together?”

            Lucien was still distant. “I have loved you too long and too massively for all to stay well in this world.”

            In confirmation of his somnambulistic tortures, Lucien received a second letter from Antoine detailing his end. As soon as Lucien removed himself from the hostilities, Antoine wrote, the citizenry of Rapelle almost to a man grew furious at his temerity in leaving. They were simply incensed that he did not stay to be harassed, and the fury continued after four weeks absence, unabated and even growing.

            “As you predicted,” Celeste said.

            Lucien continued reading. The day appointed for rent collections descended before Antoine had had enough time to promote the next performance and, although he was always paid in advance, de Hagenau immediately sealed the building.

            “But that’s not even legal,” Celeste objected.

            The Seigneur then gutted the theater of all the mechanisms, lights, musical instruments, costumes, lumber, glass and, as a final gesture of avarice, Lucien’s marquee sign. Many of the craftsmen had stored their implements in the hall and these, too, were carted off by de Hagenau’s men. Antoine’s hope and livelihood were shattered and he had suffered threats and public humiliation at the good lord’s hands.

            “That is despicable. All of that can be recovered in a court, Lucien. You built and financed that theater. That beast can be hanged for stealing!“

            Lucien dragged the back of his hand across his brow. “Yes. I could go back to Rapelle and fight for all of it and win, but I won’t go back. They’re hoping I’ll do just that. Well, they can steal whatever they like, I have nothing more to take except my own freedom of mind, and that’s what they want above all.” He thought for a minute about what he had lost, then gave a sad lift of his head. “Antoine should have sold the equipment earlier. Genevieve, Christian, Antoine: they all had explicit instructions as to how to avoid this.”

            “They need you there, Lucien, the great things, even the basic things only happen when they have you with them. When you stopped running the theater every night the actors took fright and Antoine –dear Antoine– wasn’t the one they loved and needed.”

            “They were supposed to sell the equipment at the first sign of danger,” he repeated. “The money was going to keep us alive until I raised some more.”

            “Don’t speak of money, I have enough.”

            “We can’t just live on your money.”

            “Our money.”

            “Well, I still have some left, and I can get more credit. If I do everything right I can finance the new venture in four months’ time.”

            “Don’t be an idiot. We are together now; all I have is for us and nobody can change that. I know what you’ve done, I know what you are. You needn’t feel shame around me. We’ll do everything we have to stay together and live in peace. I love you, Lucien, more than any living creature in the world.”

*

            Celeste tried to befriend Khalid and would sit with Rita at her side, talking with him about his unusual friend, their unusual life and their constant, intangible peril.

            “No one will pass my gate, I assure you,” Khalid promised. “My temper is as a beast which frightens even me; I have never feared any man, not even my own brothers. If your aspiring stable-boy makes any inquiries about this land he will hear first and foremost of the wrath of Khalid.”

            “Did you and Lucien engage in many battles then?” Celeste gently slapped down one of Rita’s hands as it wandered from plaiting her hair and landed in the corner of her mouth.

Khalid swayed backwards in surprise. “Me, naturally. Lucien? Never.” He thought back, amused. “The largest brutes around would always threaten him and Lucien would simply ridicule them almost to death. Or he would wither them with indifference. But I’ve never seen Lucien angry, or even heard of him being angry.”

            “Well, he’s close to being so now, and I think he should be.”

*

            Lucien accelerated his sketching and writing, spurred on by the loss of all his possessions, determined to create an edifice for the arts that would justify all his theories, all his experiments. He worked up several songs for the new production and wrote both the second, crucial, scene as well as the triumphant ending of his new play. He and Celeste laughed as he read to her the chaotic misunderstandings that wound through the pages. He festooned the piece with outlandish contraptions, and dedicated the play to Antoine.

            Celeste opened herself up to him each new day, revealing the hidden layers of her own past torments and sharing those which ate through her blood even now. In her childhood, she told Lucien, her parents had engaged an equerry who had wormed his way into the best graces of the family only to visit upon the radiant child his depravities and basest lusts. Hence the current aloofness from her own ecstasy. Lucien was unable to extract any cohesive account of the man’s abuses and had to content himself with an unspoken pledge to set aright the passions of his angel without any specific map of where to build or where to beware of swamps and mires. Celeste maintained that the equerry had exercised various liberties –not the ultimate, was the most Lucien could ascertain– for years before she had him dismissed him from service.

            “And whenever I saw him in town,” she continued, “I would look directly through him, as though he didn’t exist. If he greeted me I would merely address whomever he was with and ask them if a ghost had spoken.” She seemed inordinately proud of this last, remarking especially on how it never failed to disconcert him. “He is the only man I could murder with pleasure, and I would not hesitate to do so if I ever saw him now.”

            She then rose up in anger and from one of her trunks removed a letter which she showed Lucien. Apparently, only after many years had passed since his dismissal, Celeste had related the story of his conduct to her parents, also, it seemed, without detailed reportage. The man having by then vanished from the land, her parents had sent a letter to his mother’s address, primarily expressing their indignation and hope that he could know remorse for what he had done. Celeste was tremendously agitated by her parents’ letter for some reason, and Lucien was left with a greater mystery than before she had confided in him. She railed against their ineffectiveness, yet appeared more upset by the fact that they had contacted the man at all.

            Lucien for the first time fully comprehended that it would take all his strength, all his knowledge, to protect her. The huge aurora of innocence that emanated from this woman would of itself attract corruption, confusion, false guidance leading her to harm; the obverse struck him that she might herself be habitually attracted to such penumbra; Celeste as he looked at her seemed to wear the rime of the forbidden on her lips. Her courage he now divined as disguised hypersensitivity. To every other man on Earth she was the happiest soul alive, but this was in fact the result of the delight she imparted, not necessarily bore by nature; her lilting joy of life was almost certainly a desperate dash from pain and sorrow.

            He would need all his years and all the years before them to look after this blossom. He knew that such a solitary flower could just as easily wither as sprout thorns.   

            Mirror black and mermaid white. Depend the probing, screwing juggernaut through our fluttering forms. Lay here, let us lay here, Love, and close our eyes as the drilling starts. What, in the dark, is boring into us? What is that infernal noise that checks the progress of this inversion? What years, what names, what secret stories of shame have you twisting out of your stomach as you lie there, Love? Archimedes built a screw to spiral all my sins away: envy, anger, these are sins. Drill further, Arch, and find the rest: hunger, thirst, insufferable poverty, knowledge, clairvoyance, despair and her sister despair, carnal love timidly stroking the shoulder of that one love supreme; these you can drill and find, but not mourn as much as I have mourned them. If they, too, are sins, then I am as an albatross putrefying around the neck of the innocent mariner; if not, then I am the mariner.

            And what years, what names, what vermillion shame is that twisting out of you, Love? What secret collaborations? What Calcutta extrapolations emerge like jewels? What, behind that sweetest of all facades, is that steaming stench I know?

            So much love and, opened up, butterfly, I smell the lies already flying out.

            Don’t lie, Love. I only wish to love you.

            My blackberry pearl.

            All life seemed contained within that tiny room, all the secrets of Lucien’s mind and heart, of Celeste’s exotic existence, opened up in their hands. They would speak incessantly, holding one another like delicate creatures of the sea, luxuriating in the deep regions of something so much more immense than happiness. When they did venture without, Lucien and Celeste would work side by side in the fruit forest harvesting the ripe gifts of the soil for Khalid’s table or trade, brushing up against each other and sending great charges through their beings, sometimes laughing for hours at once, othertimes standing suddenly immobilized and panting as they faced the figure they adored, Lucien breaking the transfixion with slow, spun-silk gestures that spoke entire sentences to Celeste, who would read his silent speech and return her own by way of glance or movement. Back inside, the ragged hut became a temple of Venus. Celeste would inflame her lover with the merest touch of her voice, soft, slightly hoarse and sultry, spilling tourmaline, garnet, jasper gems that he alone could see. A force stronger than nature drew him to her mouth and he began to believe he could subsist on her ichor alone. They slept so closely their nocturnal life was compressed into one paradisiacal cloud of dream and desire; their hands burned and sought each other out, explored each other and released the scented waters of delight before their minds could even awake: opening their eyes long before dawn, they would find themselves enmeshed and soaring.

            As the month departed, Lucien had come to accept his losses and learned, to both his and Celeste’s surprise that he could muster no true anger against de Hagenau or any of the citizens of Rapelle who had execrated him. He sighed as he tried to recall the few instances in his life when he had discovered the art of anger and wondered if, instead of maintaining silence and allowing himself to be traduced, he should cultivate the firmness and righteousness that Celeste carried within her. She thrilled him with her apparent strength, her refusal to forsake the fires of resentment the Rapelledistes had sparked, yet he saw a kind of gratuitous recklessness in such enmity, and desired to lead her away from it.

            “The sole revenge,” he protested, “is love. Spite is crippling, poisonous; never let it in you, no matter what has occurred.”

            “But how can everyone escape with such crimes? Why should we suffer for their entertainment? They deserve all the venom in the world!”

            “They are driven to madness by the world around them,” Lucien said, pulling her closer into his embrace as she fumed. “I’m not sure how to battle madness, but I know for certain that it is a defeat if one allows such senseless mayhem to alter the recognition of good one has in one’s heart.”

            “Oh, how is one supposed to keep that so damn sacred?”

            “Look, Love, like so:” And in the sunlight, with a touch of her lips, her locks laying gold across his shoulders, they destroyed centuries of hatred with the one eternal essence distilled by their fires, Celeste allowing her eyes to fly up like birds as the sweat not of exertion but of heaven’s own power and passion popping out along her brow, her neck, her breasts, fingertips and toes ran silently over them like silver, like the bells of her waistcord, like holy rain.

*

            Lucien was enchanted by the woman’s unbounded curiosity, which never strayed too far from timidity somehow. She soaked up his words, his capers of love, and laughed and chattered like a jay, flying about as she queried him about his devotion to her, or what others might think of her. She enjoyed the exploits of Khalid’s troupe, but remained intimidated by the tall man’s intensity.

            “I know he is kind at heart, but Khalid frightens me sometimes. You are so different. What is it that you share with Khalid, that can bind you the way it has no matter how many years or miles you place between yourselves?”

            “I couldn’t say precisely.” Lucien arched his brows in reflection. “It is, I suppose, more than anything –if we lay to one side all the arts and learning and structured forms of faith or life as results and not sources– something we both have within us that most men quite simply do not: a respect for human wisdom and the human heart.”

            “But doesn’t everyone believe that? Well,” she blushed, “or want to?”

            “That’s my point: it is not something to believe in or adhere to; it is just inside us by nature, complete and whole at birth. Many people believe in these things, but they must be the very core of everything else; they must be the very center, the fundamental soul of a man, not merely virtues that he possesses in addition to other virtues. The immutable starting point for all, with everything else growing out from that trunk.” he insisted.

            “Oh, Lucien,” Celeste suddenly fell, “aren’t you afraid that I won’t understand enough for you?”

            “No.” Lucien was genuinely astonished.

            Khalid laid his head on the windowsill and growled like a decapitated genie. Celeste jerked and hit her hand against her heart.

            “Look,” he chuckled, one arm snaking in the window. “Very good wine. I traded it at the market. You’d best come down to the keep and play with me or I won’t let you have any!”

            As they walked down to the kitchen Khalid put a kindly hand on Celeste’s shoulder and grinned: “I heard what you asked. And Lucien’s. I’ll tell you this much: it’s a Semitic nature he’s describing.” He laughed, as if the scope of it amused him: “Hah! While we were measuring heaven your people were still drinking blood soup!”

            “But I don’t know those things,” she protested. “It’s all so strange to me.” She marched on a few yards then concluded: “It doesn’t change anything. I feel the same as him now.”

*         *         *

            By September’s end Lucien had drawn up most of his plans and had what he felt to be a sure draft for the repertory pieces needed. Lucien, Celeste, Khalid, the children and even Rita had effectively denuded the fruit forest of its harvest by now and Khalid was busy marketing the bounty and supervising the stern preparations for the winter onset. Mortar and mud were patched, trees were pruned and their parings artfully stacked in the room  designed for firewood; smaller branches knit along the east and south walls, larger faggots solemnly inlaid to the very top of the north and west walls, protecting the house from the coming elemental charges.

            Celeste, who had been suffering pangs of ennui for the last weeks, was reinvigorated when Lucien suggested that they load the wagon Khalid had given them and depart at last for the new world, the final journey they would have to make before their life could truly begin to take root and bloom.

            Khalid, Lucien and Celeste took one last supper on the river bank, sketching possible routes in the sand while Rita played in a safe a shallow pool. Fish leapt and belly-flopped with great splashes. A huge heron swept directly down the river, skimming the water with its wings.

            “If you attempt to cross directly into Basel,” Khalid explained, “you will risk what is left of your lives at the hands of brigands.”

            “Unwise,” Lucien agreed. “Besides, it was only a matter of a few years ago that they boarded up all the Jews and burned them in the middle of the city. If I exit this world in flames, it shall be as a free man, not a prisoner of some mob.”

            Celeste was bemused and asked “Why do you two always speak of Jews?”

“It wouldn’t ever enter my mind,” said Lucien, surprised, “except for the prevalence of those thoughts in others.”

After a blank second she saw the reasoning and nodded. Then, bold as ever in the face of obstruction, kicked her foot across the sand map and declared: “We shall go right past Rapelle itself, and later cross the Aare at whatever point is calm.”

            Khalid looked up at Lucien. Lucien smiled.

            “It would give us the opportunity to maneuver as we saw fit,” she insisted. “We can take the old roads from some junction just past Rapelle. –Lucien must know them.”

            “If done during the very first of the morning hours,” Lucien considered, “we should be able to pass a good thirty miles without fear of encountering anyone from de Hagenau’s retinue.”

            “Or anyone else belonging to that cursed land.” Celeste spat on a circle she had drawn on the new map.

            Khalid took his hand from his mouth and looked inwards, as though trying to calculate one of his chemical formulas. “That route, too, will prove perilous, soon, if not already. I have knowledge that the roving Bretons are to be brought back to the fold of lawfulness and will be sacrificed by France as it prosecutes its demands against the dukes of Hapsburg.

            “Execrable timing,” Lucien complained. That makes for three groups of belligerents and us in the middle.”

            “You must not find yourselves ensnared in this campaign. It’s all very confused right now. I can’t give you any better information that this.”

            “Here,” said Rita. “We must stay here.” She lifted one foot from the pool and watched the water pour down her toes. “I want happiness, not running. Celeste needs this, too.”

            “We’ll stop running when we’re free,” Lucien muttered. Celeste got up and put her arms around Rita, explaining to her that they had to continue on for now, but that they would all be happy and settled soon, that there would be no more intrigue, no more fears, no more adversity, and that a beautiful home awaited them somewhere, but that they had to search it out.

            “It might seem safe now, but I cannot predict the sinuous route of the armies. No matter which path you take,” Khalid insisted, “it will be dangerous.”

            Lucien looked over at Celeste and Rita. “Danger I am used to. We shall find a way through, and we won’t stop until we find a land of peace.”

            The fish slowed their vaultings as the sun burned down behind the trees; the cool air skipped down to lay a restful hand on the evening and the strange band wandered back to the keep for one last supper, a last flagon of wine, and concentrated farewells. Khalid set a last piercing look of encouragement on Lucien. Celeste held the children to her tightly, leaving each of them with a piece of her jewelry to remember her by.

            That night Celeste pulled herself still closer beside him, laying a hand on his breast and shuddering.

            “Lucien,” she whispered. “Lucien, I’m afraid.”

            “Of, what, Angel?”

            “I don’t know. I’m afraid for us. What if they find us? What if Paul decides to make an example of us to the rest of the world? I would rather be cut in half than have any more harm come to you.”

            “Anything can happen, my Heart. We found each other and as long as we never let go we will live or die together.”

            Celeste sighed into his neck. “What if we don’t have enough money? What if we get stranded somewhere and it’s all wrong for us? It’s been so hard, I sometimes think we were never meant to be together after all.”

            Lucien kissed her head, then said that she should never think like that; that obstacles only meant anything to the rest of the world, not them.

            “Oh, Lucien, what if we have no food? No place to go? On what will we live?”

            He lifted her lips to his and told her: “On feasts of love, my Dream, my Heart, and banquets of the sapphire moon.”

*         *         *

            As they detoured back south-west and veered around in the subsequent days and nights the region of Strasburg, evidence of advance forces unrolled before them. While the French were still amassing an army, the free bands had piously ravaged the territories in the projected path of chivalry, wasting humans and habitations with their usual thoroughness, and, where the French forces had already trod, completing the devastation behind them. Many citizens of Strasburg had been reduced to living in wagons by the wayside; Colmar had, according to the pilgrims, been pillaged unmercifully. Taking their bearings from the camps of despair, Lucien and Celeste steered southwards, wasting days on wretched roads that circumscribed the areas of immediate danger. By the time they returned to the main roads through the environs of Wattwiller, they encountered their first glimpse of the carnage leveled by the grand forces of protection. One weeping mother described the massacre of over two hundred innocent townsmen, and begged them to drive her out of the area in exchange for guidance through the maze of peripheral roads. This treacherous course took them as far as Altkirch, where the unfortunate woman was reunited with her parents. Lucien and Celeste returned to the main route, hugging the upper lines of the Sundgau. 

            At the first scent of smoke, too strong and acrid to herald a mere cluster of chimneys, they altered their direction. Because they were not walking, however, they were obligated to remain on the roads, and the roads through Alsace all opened onto panoramas of waste. Without ever seeing any assembled force, it was clear that they were following a path of barbarity as they rattled on towards their hopes; Many villages were silent, in mourning or in the process of scooping heaps of citizens into common graves hacked in haste. As Khalid had warned, French were harassing the Austrian Dukes, and chasing the disenchanted hordes of former soldiers ahead of them. The brigands, with their ethereal allegiance to God and King still pronouncing absolution in their minds, viciously swept the sharp rake of rape, murder, denucleation and pillage along the crust, leaving the devastated villagers and townspeople to the mercy of the officially sanctioned troops –the army bound by the grand order of chivalry to protect them– who, incensed by the dearth of provisions and sorely needed tributes left to them, would repeat the horrors of the brigands and put fire to the fields for good measure.

            Having skirted beneath Basel, Lucien and Celeste turned east. Safety would come after crossing the Aare. The journey remained terrifying and grinding. Rita was cruelly indisposed upon a heap of pillows in the back of the wagon, where Celeste hoped she would not witness the ravages they passed.

            As they drew closer to their goal a stillness settled down around them. Lucien took this to mean they were no longer caught in the wake of the warring groups, but held Celeste close to his side as they became aware of a padding of refugees pushing along from the direction of the border. Ashen, dazed and mute, they increased in number as Lucien navigated against them. Their points of origin slumped into view in the dusky miles along the road. As the refugees evaporated, Lucien drove through villages crushed as if by meteorites, though this was the work of small men of Earth; in the gales of smoke, red and black beams crumbled as they glowed and smoldered. The horse pulled his ears down, stretched hard against the bridle and whickered. Lucien gently tucked Celeste’s head under his lips as he kissed her and spared her the sight of the gibbets that swung carcasses, human victims of misfortune and malice, their legs torn to curled sinew just above the knee, where the dogs could no longer reach. The fields on either side of the road glittered with the same red on black brilliance as the houses, but their fearful beauty was marred by clumps of stray, mutilated, half-stripped, startled forms with mouths and bowels agape in wonder.

            When they had passed through this tunnel of carnage and the lugubrious odor of roasted meat had swept off into the night, leaving only a sassy sting to their clothes, Lucien stopped the wagon and jumped down to stretch himself. The moon, distorted through a lens of smoke, loomed massively bloodshot, like an angry planet scarcely miles away. He lifted Celeste down and told Rita that she should unwrap some cheese and whatever other victuals –but no meat– they might have for supper. Celeste insisted that she herself would drive through the night.

            They gave the horse its peck; its coat still bristled. Celeste walked silently beside him as Lucien tried to determine, by the non-tactile hand that hovered around him, how near they were to freedom. He ceased walking and breathing at the same time as he noticed the object before them. 

            There, lying on the earth, was a human foot. Rotting. Blackened. Alone. Devoid of humanity, yet all the more human and pitiful for its isolation, its finality.

            Celeste let out a quick cry when she understood what it was and Lucien, repressing an insane impulse to kick it away from her sight, instead gripped her firmly and forced her to march back to their wagon, on towards their goal.

            “A foul omen,” he thought. “Like all the others.”

*

            Early snows increased the dangers and impeded the progress of the wagon. The air became finer and spiced with ice. They could not rest at such an elevation –Rita was half frozen already– and Celeste drove on through the night as Lucien sat in silence, watching the eerie peaks rotate past. By dawn Celeste had cleared the Hauenstein pass.

            Rose, gold, and tangerine brushed at the top with a fine indigo still perforated by stars stretched up and out over the exhilarating landscape below them: the forests receded as they rode and by the first bell of evening they were in Zurich.

            They negotiated a small room beneath the eaves of an inn directly astride the river Limmat, Lucien speaking to the wizened old keepers in his newly-remembered German, impressed with their sanguine banter and their affection for cleanliness. Celeste dealt with the ostler and guarded their property and Rita as Lucien toiled for an hour carrying all their belongings up to the room in the Limmathof, where they soaked the dirt off their bodies, put on new clothes and, taking Rita between them, went out to explore the city.

            It was Friday night in the proud city, raised on the corners and hills of ancient Turicum; bells rang from all quarters to mark the end of another lucrative week. Horses pulled merchants and miniature nobles through the winding roads in dark burnished carriages. Celeste breathed in the sweet river air as the three of them followed its banks in the lamp-speckled gloaming, then turned to follow the cobbled roads that wound through the center, with its high crooked houses boasting shops and alehouses on each parterre; mercers, cobblers, coopers, lenders, bakers and butchers all had huge, brightly painted signs swinging out over the lovers’ heads. Taverns were full of musicians and drinkers. At Lucien’s insistence they entered one such inn and indulged in a warm meal of diced veal in cream.

            Lucien, with Rita beside him, had stepped up to the owner to pay for the supper when he heard the unmistakable tumult of brawling explode from some four yards behind him. Amidst the ringing battle, he heard Celeste’s terrified cry clutch him like magic.

            “Lucien!”

            He spun around and saw her caught in a net of fighting men woven completely around her. Acting before thought, he dashed in sideways, grabbed her roughly by the blouse, pulled her out of the melee and, twisting, hurled her around the corner to safety. Immediately he turned and full-shouldered down the men closest to her exit, determined that no one should have a chance to hurt her. One man stayed down and looked at Lucien, then nodded his head as if to acknowledge the fairness of his action; another leapt up to strike Lucien, but stopped and stepped back when he, too, realized that Lucien had merely been securing the escape of an innocent woman. Lucien stared at the others, informing them with a glance that none would pass him, and they all returned to their battle.

            Celeste was, mercifully, unharmed. Lucien cloaked her in his arms and led her away as she related to him, half in terror, half in effervescent excitement, or hysteria, how she had simply looked up and found herself in the middle of a bloodfest. This angel was both frightened and delighted at her first adventure in the new land. To Lucien it felt odd. The rapidity with which the two men had paused to think and weigh right in the whirlwind of fighting, that chance that Celeste had been caught in its center –somehow it all together was off balance.

            Later, leaning out the window of their room, laughing, kissing, pressed against each other, Lucien and Celeste let the high night air lick their skins as they stared out over the rooftops, across all the glittering lights of the city and down to the serpentine length of river reflecting all the life below them, listening to the drunken celebrations rolling past their street, and swearing to heaven that they would never return to the land that had tried to crush their hearts. Lucien draped Celeste along the eiderdown covers and made love to her for the first time in absolute freedom, until the face he adored wavered and fogged itself in her drastic desire of dream and fluttering delirium, the voice he was always ravenous to swallow rising from low moans to shredded grunts to an unbroken siren of love –of disembodied emancipation.

            As the morning sun slid down the slate tiles outside their window, Celeste returned from a tentative stroll with Rita, both smiling.

            “It’s an odd place, Lucien: there are people on the streets sleeping off their revels from last night.”

            As the city mopped its brow and staggered back on its feet, the three refugees cheerfully explored all they could see. Past the great cathedrals they walked –Grossmünster, Fraumünster, Saint Peter’s—and along the Lindenhof where the Emperor’s representatives, the Reichsvogt, hid in the castle. Although it was still an Imperial city, Zurich was in the unusual position of having its real power apportioned between the Constaffel –the nobles– and the stern heads of the thirteen principle craft guilds. In defiance of the Hapsburgs, it was a staunch, if vain, member of the Swiss League.

            The air was warmed and brightened by the sun, which burned like a hammered medallion in the open sky; the lovers took Rita between them and waded through the forest of signs heralding vintners, surgeons and spinners, bumbling their way through the rough streams of traffic, surprised at the natives’ predilection for walking directly into them. Lucien was satisfied, however, with the flavor of comradery in their endless, rapid exchanges. They thrilled at the market set up along the Limmatquai offering all the products of man’s industry in one short mile: fruits, flowers, fresh fish and beef, vegetables and crockery; the Zurichers rolled past them dressed in tanned leather and silk, some wore hats with satin festoons, all the while stirring up flurries of badinage, sausages and silver coins. As they passed the foundlings’ home, Lucien smiled and said: “Perhaps we can live there.”

            A brace of magistrates rattled by in their carriages, nearly trampling the three innocents. By the time they had reached the mouth of the river at the north end of the Zurichersee, both Celeste and Rita were overwhelmed by the activity and they requested a pause for ale at one of the inns with benches available outside in the sun. After eating and resting for an hour they stood on the Quaibrücke mentally rowing out into the lake, their backs now turned on the universities and churches, the edifices of these merchant-warriors, and watched as the ghostly Alps rippled against the sky. Celeste seemed to be struggling with an idea, swaying mildly and fingering her locks before turning her gold-dappled eyes upon Lucien.

            “This is all so much to live with, Lucien. I fear for Rita.”

            She marked the disappointment in his features and sought to assuage him with the logic of peace: “We are all enervated, Lucien, let’s go to the countryside, at least until you have your work readied. It will be our first time of real calm, our first time of innocence.” 

            And so together we slipped out of the city and into the arms of the country we felt certain had waited for us as long as we had awaited each other. Once along the roads that perfectly shared happiness began to caress us as the new scenery unfolded on all sides, a snug, discovered feeling that warmed us within as our skin touched the chilled beads of moisture filling the air of our new life together. I remember, Love, the luster of that air as it glided around your face then swept back to close around us and rejoin the sky; the sweetness of each breath we took as we bravely made our way and how our happiness grew as we traveled through that moist delicious air and watched the world embrace us. Everything was soft. Past the lakes that bathed Lucerne, rolling past the weather-darkened farmhouses and the peaceful farms, we were so very small, as small as dew, but our heart was greater than all mankind’s. Together we passed the lissome, lucid streams, the damp velvet hills, the trees and the forests of lush dark greens, pistachio and stately bice, as we were transported through this viridescent world.

            Our excitement swelled with each new mile gained as we ascended the Brunig pass; stopping and turning our heads to look back, we realized all the risks of our flight had been justified, that this steep world of fearless heights and swooping vales had been awaiting us all along, that we had been forced by mankind’s interference and opposition to seek this land where we breathed deeply of one another and wore smiles in our eyes like medals won for our determination and truth; that the inimical cruelty that had held us apart was no longer a curse, but a blessing that had led us here.

            And the vistas grew more breathtaking upon descent. October skies lay laughing, blue and bountiful on this side of the peaks, like a great blue salver top over verdant folds and jeweled lakes unfurling below us, around us, as far as our dizzying sight could fly.

            Like children rolling themselves down hills, we bounced along the road winding left and right as it stroked itself until we found ourselves tracing the shore of the blue Brienzersee, huge, crystalline, delectable –dreaming of peace, beaming with benevolence. We passed together through the village with its dark wooden houses, great hanging roofs and painted verandas and watched together as the peasants slowly trod the paths from church to inn, mumbling their subdued greetings to each other and observing us together as we drove on together to the westernmost tip of the lake until we found ourselves wheeling through a large expanse of fertile pastureland quilted with cattle, enveloped in sun, surrounded by towering walls of mountains capped with snow; we watched the beetling gait of the Augustinian friars as they bustled through the village in their black robes and lost count of the flowers still blooming across the fields; together we melted in the welcome of the sun and navigated the cobbled road as we passed the stone monastery of Inter Lacus and saw in each window of the town the thousands of geraniums sparkling in the light, waving to us as they played in the breeze, turned to see once again the huge massifs rearing up far above the conifer lines and you said here, my Love, here, together we shall be here, my Heart.

            Off the little alley named Marktgasse, they stopped outside an inn. Backing right up against the river Aare, it was small and inexpensive, marked by a scarcely noticeable sign reading ‘Alplodge.’ A young girl of around nineteen years, brunette and buxom, appeared and with a mixture of deference and subtle salaciousness treated with Lucien for a room on the third floor. She retreated into formal civility when Celeste came in with Rita to stand by his side. The formality was in turn discarded as soon as Celeste impulsively began chattering with her, delighted that the girl spoke her language, and they became as friends in the space of a few minutes.

            As they finished carrying all their belongings up to the tiny room, a deafening and yet inviting din rose from without. Rita dashed to the window and craned her head this way and that until the source of the racket rounded the bend of the river and poured into view. The three of them gaped as two monks, assisted by as many peasants, passed directly below herding a seemingly endless parade of cattle through the alleyway; each cow wore a great brass bell around its neck riveted to a thick leather collar embossed and painted with gay floral designs. The bells were of all sizes and evidently selected to match the size of the cow, which gave the clamor its polyphonic depth. Celeste shouted over the clanging and stroked Rita’s hair. It was Sunday, October the first, in that fateful year of thirteen hundred and seventy five.

*         *         *

            While Celeste rested, Lucien ran out to examine the surroundings. He would stride through the village taking in all around him, greeting the sullen residents as they edged past him, then charging back to the inn to relate all he’d seen to Celeste.  With an unexpected reticence, she would amble over to the window and gaze out while Lucien effused and told her what wonders lay beyond her view. Declining to accompany him, Celeste returned to the bed and fixed her eyes on the ceiling while he kissed her and promised to bring supper along with him when he returned from his survey.

            The village was stretched along the main thoroughfare, known as the Hohenweg, which extended from the Augustinian house, past the open grazing lands called Hohenmatte and as far as the canal which opened into the river after meandering through some two miles of farmland. A matter of yards across the bridge, the northern end of the settlement was rooted at the very base of the 5,000 foot high Harder Kulm, which the natives referred to as the Hardermannli on account of the mysterious sclerotic profile casting its gaze over their activities. In these steep wooded rocks ran ibex, chamois and marmots.

            The millennia had washed the soil down via supernal streams and created a wide bridge of earth in the middle of what had once been one enormous lake lapping as far as the city of Bern. Nearly fourteen square miles of alluvial deposits had emerged, and the Augustinians, delighted by its fertile nature, had established themselves in the valley two hundred years earlier, christening the land Inter Lacus —Between the Lakes. They currently owned most of the land even as far as the alps –or pastures– high above the village. The Hohenmatte served as a kind of commons and was tended by the monks whose convent, with its lovely cloister and interior courtyard, sat at the east end of the field.

            At the western end of the Aare, guarded by a castle first build by Barbarossa, passage to the great lake of Thun was levied and strictly controlled. This second lake, while not as immaculate as the Brienz, covered an immense portion of the valley and was crucial to commerce travelling the watercourse to Bern, hence the toll castle at its mouth, called Weissenau.

            The soaring mountains ringing the southern end of the valley, Lucien learned, were first and foremost the Eiger, the Monch and the Jungfrau; coarse legend attributed these appellations to the pristine and unconquerable beauty of the Jungfrau –or virgin— exciting desire with its nearly 14,000 feet of heaving luxuriousness, necessarily separated from the angular attentions of the Eiger –or letch— by the solemn Monch –or monk, God’s thirteen and a half thousand foot high reminder that carnal love can only be frustration. Rising in chorus around this elemental drama were the comminative talons of the Wetterhorn and Schreckhorn, ragged terrors of the clouds; the Breithorn, Tschingelhorn, Schilthorn and Gspaltenhorn, gashed and hewn by glaciers, spurting up into the sky and proscribing human passage between the base of the village and the world beyond. Some fourteen miles lay thus unexplored since humanity time first commenced to trickle by, and would remain wild and uninhabitable long after.

            Hidden away in the crevasses and undulating slopes of the massifs, Lucien knew he would find the meadow with its brilliantly blue lake that had appeared in the mists of his dreams; Celeste at his side, Celeste in his heart, would realize the vision.  

            Except for the dark clouds that came to hide it from his sight. Celeste was grim and silent as they ate the bread and cheese and sipped the wine he’d brought back with him. Later, she had relaxed while they sat with Nicole in the tavern adjacent to the Alplodge, but, after prattling merrily for several hours, resumed her distrait air and fell directly asleep in Rita’s arms while Lucien sat at the open window. She barely ventured outdoors the following day, her eyes empty as he tugged at her hand and escorted her the length of the town; light flickered in them as she lifted her face to the peaks, then died out again.

            Again that night, as during the night before, Celeste bundled herself up in her blankets and her companion, with barely a word to Lucien. He supposed her still vitiated from the traveling and let her rest, but the days and nights rumbled on one after another with scarcely any sign of happiness from the woman. Before selling the horse and the wagon for cash, they had managed to take one brief excursion up into the heights and were well rewarded for their efforts; gasping in disbelief at the gorges and falls, the incomparable jags rushing straight up above them, dwarfing the very notion of humanity, the narrow winding roads revealing spectacular vistas at each turn, Rita darted back and forth in excitement and Lucien was relieved to see the enthusiasm gush back into Celeste’s countenance as she clung to his hand and shared his awe.

            Upon returning to the inn, both were dulled by the subdued quaintness of the little town as it paled beside their memories of the day’s sights. A premature and entirely unexpected cold had fallen on the valley, grey and blustery, chilling them both to the marrow. After collecting provisions, they closeted themselves in their room and ate while hoping to warm up. From comments grumbled among the baker’s staff, Lucien learned that the cold was unwelcomed so early in the year and that it bode a severe winter. Celeste shivered as she ate. As night blew down they understood that they would not be far from freezing in their bed.

            Lucien wound down the crooked stairway and sought Nicole. The girl rapidly smoothed her frock upon seeing him. Her face reddened and her eyes seemed stung by her own heat. He was surprised by her unease but even more so to discover that he would be charged nightly for the loan of additional blankets. A pettiness appeared to lead the minds of these people. Nonetheless he paid what was asked and felt his way back to the room, where he spread the covers over the two sleeping forms.

            As the week progressed, the cold penetrated harshly into the room and Celeste remained abstracted and indolent beneath the covers; except to converse and share a glass of wine with Nicole or to pursue a reluctant and desultory stroll with Rita, she would not leave the room.

            To Lucien’s kisses she would hold her cheek still and passive, avoiding the touch of his lips on hers. To his caresses she would place her hand down upon his and prevent them from reassuring her loveliness. She declined to get out of the bed unless absolute necessity or the grasp of boredom imposed itself upon her. Her eyes scurried away from his. Something had gone wrong.

            Lucien accepted her claims of fatigue and spent much of his time exploring the area, inveigling residents to discuss their aesthetic tendencies and those of the neighboring cantons, meticulously noting the prices both wholesale and retail of comestibles, potables, construction materials, and all the varying grades of labor, comparing the information with his estimates and rechecking the costs in many conversations. He would usually start his searchings after bringing Celeste breakfast, returning to the room with local sausage, cheeses, breads and wines for dinner. He made every effort to put a humorous turn on her withdrawal, smiling as he entered and announcing that the citizens had proclaimed it a day of adulation for Celeste Couronne, or by saying that the terrible news that day was that he loved her even more than the previous day. Celeste merely turned away.

            Celeste would rarely look at him directly, a mournful tenting of the brows being the most expressive she would get outside the presence of others. Her silence continued into the beginning of the following week, only broken by kindly words to Rita, banter with strangers or Nicole, with but the most reluctant mumbling reserved for Lucien. She would lie on the bed as far from him as possible, or invite Rita to sleep in her arms, between Lucien and herself.

            Lucien knew very well what had happened. Celeste had shut herself off from him exactly as she had her former attachments. He was shaken, disgusted. That Celeste could have come to this arctic pass with such celerity was appalling. That the sudden and entirely unforeseen crunch of alienation could have attacked them at all, that this ungodly dissolution of what Lucien had assumed to be indissoluble should come after Celeste had loved him, including the time in Rapelle, for three months at most, was an abomination of everything he believed in.

            The woman he loved more than any creature he had ever encountered remained unmoved by his words, his touch, his months of demonstration and even the thundering forces that connected them to each other day and night. As she sat bent in the bed and remained insensible to his kindness, Lucien felt the full measure of his horror; before his eyes he had watched Celeste dispose of their love without a tremor, without a reason; he had heard her boast of this and had in fact witnessed it –this dreadful art– in earlier, oh so distant cases, but he had no reason to expect it to occur in their lifetime. His heart, every filament of his being cried out against this sacrilege. He realized that he had witnessed a senseless, overmastering power that he was less able to predict or avert than the worst ravages of nature itself, and that he would forever be at the mercy of it.

            He heard Celeste’s inner voice belaboring her for having embarked on this hegira, and heard as well her questioning it if she hadn’t, after all, made a mistake, and, after watching and listening with ever growing alarm, he looked at the girl mournfully slumped so many miles away from him and wondered if he had perhaps made a mistake in entrusting his whole heart and soul to her; indeed, in such an inconceivably short time she had become his life, then had withdrawn it from him and disposed of it without cause or mercy.

            Like the mountain cold without, a thick layer of snowcloud began to form within him. As the second week elapsed, Lucien was depleted of any further means or ruses to elicit any connection with the girl; she had ossified into a different person and nothing could revive her. It was well, he thought, that he discovered her inconstancy so early, for he had fought with all his being to place his life in her hands and now he saw with what insouciance she let it shatter to the ground. Never in all his years, in all his wanderings, had he witnessed such drastic treachery, and he raged at himself for being fool enough to have devoted his whole being towards this end.

            Lucien glanced at Celeste and felt ineffable sorrow bite into his heart, then, marshalling his pride, began to pack his belongings into his bags as she moped.

            “Are we leaving?” she asked.

            “Not precisely. I am removing an unwanted irritation from your life. I shall rent a separate room and consider where I wish to go from here.”

            She bolted up in fright. “Why? But what do you mean by this?” Tears began to fill her lids. “Lucien, please! What will become of me? Why? Why are you going?“

            “It is as if the innkeeper had bedded me with a complete stranger.”

            Celeste clutched her arms tight across her breast as though it were the only way to hold herself together, her face growing red. “Oh, God, you think I don’t love you!”

            “I am weary of persuading myself otherwise, and you persuade me not at all. Look at you!” he turned, dropping his bundles. “Measure yourself what you’ve done! What am I to think?”

            Celeste groaned and stuttered, dropped her arms down on the bed. “I…oh, Lord, I’ve been lost, I am lost somewhere! I…I was thinking about Paul. I didn’t treat him very well.” She burst into sobs.

            “You did what you wanted to do and now you are treating me worse than an undesired dog.”

            “Please, Lucien! Wait! He was my friend…”

            “And I am evidently not. An accurate assessment indeed!” But her words didn’t add up accurately whatsoever. Lucien was old enough to know that people’s explanations of their behavior were always fabrications, justifications were retrospective by definition, retroactive by cardsharping. Only a few dozen humans on Earth were conscious enough of their own workings to analyze them correctly. Regardless, he didn’t expect so much of her, but that Celeste was capable of this at all meant his own perception of love was a delusion.

            “I don’t know why I hated him,” she cried. “Oh, but I did hate him! I hated them all, and I still do! I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I think I love you, Lucien, dear God, I do, but I’m so afraid suddenly!”

            “However you please to state it. God knows I shall never hear any honest clarifications from you. We can arrange for you to go home, to Rapelle, to Paul, to your parents, wherever you decide.”

            “No!”

            “There’s no sense in having you suffer as you say, and I refuse to be toyed with any longer. I cannot believe I was fool enough to think that you would share my life! I blame myself for letting you try. I should have insisted you stay with Paul and consider what I might mean to you before letting you join me.”

            “Please don’t be angry with me! I meant no harm. My head is awhirl and I don’t know what’s happening any longer!”

            “You are a flaming deceiver! You know perfectly well what you’ve done. Any other man would have left you immediately after you began this wicked game!”

            Celeste bit her hand and stared at him in such confusion that Lucien could watch the refuse of her mind flackering around her: apple cores, leggings, wood chips, dolphins, bones, cheap wigs, pig feet and stars all bumping into one another.

Celeste, wrinkling her brows and gnawing her hands, quailed: “Where do you go?”

            “Out. Away. I have no place here.”

            Lucien located Nicole and requested that she rent him another room. Nicole fixed her eyes on him and inhaled, sharply but expansively. He stepped back and firmly repeated his request, then adjourned to the tavern next door.

            It was there Celeste found him, dulling his mind, drowning his heart in wine and writing new songs –these of pranked love. Nicole had informed her of his request and she now understood that she had occasioned a genuine snapping of their lives apart.

            “Is it true?” she inquired.

            “Yes.”

            “But what will become of us?”

            “I’ll see that you get safe passage home.”

            “Lucien, you can’t. We belong together, even our enemies understand that!”

            He looked at her for a minute before responding. “And how is that to be?”

            Celeste looked frightened, ashamed. She turned her head left and right in frustration, eventually calming herself with resolve. “It was my nerves. Everything has been so hard for us, that I didn’t realize it all until we arrived here. I know now what I’ve done and I know that I would do it yet again so long as you loved me.”

            “I do love you. More than anyone else ever will; more than you can ever know yourself.”

            “Please. Do not leave me tonight. Ever! All is clear in me again. Come to our bed, Lucien. No bed makes sense in the world unless it may be called ours.”

            The cloudbank ceased rolling, then simply disappeared within him. He could find no voice in the sunlight capable of refusing her. Her face now full only of love for him, his heart as full of his love for her as it always would be, all wariness vanquished by her beauty and the soft solicitude glowing out of her, he could say only yes.

            You took me to you, smiling and tender. I parted the heavy clouds of your thighs until I found the thick globe traversed by fire-water, losing my hands in its cascade, entranced by its magic lightness –an element unknown elsewhere in the universe– and hailed my kisses upon your eyes as I gave you the full knowledge of the love I carry. And now I watched once again the genuine love beating its wings across your face as I tried to find some way to hold you entirely, embracing in my hand your waist, hefting in the other one sumptuous breast, lifting it to my mouth so that I might whisper directly into your heart the ancient words that sang of our life.

*         *         *

            At Celeste’s request, Lucien set off to procure a house for them in the town, where they would live in the exalted beauty of the countryside and breathe peace with every passing moment. Reckoning the monks to be inutile, he wandered through the alleys until he found a notary; he applied his knuckles to the door and entered as bidden. The old man within was large in height and huge in girth, with the dapper cleanliness that often becomes a point of pride to the aging. He recoiled somewhat at Lucien’s formal German, but listened attentively when he understood that he was being offered a commission for his assistance in locating a house for the stranger. The old fellow jovially interrupted and introduced himself as Herr Seiler, and leapt up to lead Lucien to ‘the perfect place.’ Herr Seiler chatted amiably as they wound along several streets, Lucien thinking that the man had a store of knowledge and wit in him, setting him apart from the churlish denizens as the whole. They climbed a long stairwell with Seiler huffing and rolling in the lead, until he opened a door and ushered Lucien inside.

            Lucien explored the place, conceded that it was in fact ‘perfect’ and, learning that the old man was himself responsible for the lease, negotiated a contract advantageous to them both. He counted out a handful of coins for Seiler to fondle and threw open the wall-sized shutters so Celeste would see the view of the river speckled with ducks directly below and the three enormous mountains standing above it. With a clasp of hands they parted; Herr Seiler to lock the money away in the boards of his office floor, Lucien to fetch the woman he had referred to as his wife.

            “I must now tell you,” Seiler panted as they descended the stairs, “we are a good people, but the weather makes us hard and thirsty; there are many taverns here, but in this house we make no noise after ten o’ clock.”

            “I’ll stand by your ruling, Mein Herr. I have often wished I was deaf by ten.”  

            Celeste was charmed beyond measure by the place. It was a garret built under the eaves of the roof five floors up. Originally one large room, it had been scrubbed, limed, coddled and worked so that it now held a rude kitchen and two partitioned attic ends on either side of a dining area. At Lucien’s request, Seiler had delivered two straw mattresses and had shoved them together to for a ‘wedding bed.’ The sun streamed through the enormous windows, lighting the apartment fully and with ease; Celeste tore herself out of Lucien’s arms and cantilevered herself out the window laughing with joy at the perspective of mountains, rivers, rolling forests and the rich, green valley reaching west as far as the Thunersee.

            “Oh, Lucien! How did you ever find it? It’s magnificent!”

            “See what we have,” he beamed, opening his arms as though to embrace the scene. “Everything we could possibly want to see, here before our eyes every day! Everything!“

            “Look, Rita: ducks, dozens of them, all colors, and swans, too! –Beware of the swans,” she warned her, “they can attack you.”

            “And here,” Lucien said, leading them into the attic room, “We shall make a bed for Rita; this will be her own room.”

            “That’s right,” said Celeste. “You mustn’t sleep by us anymore. Now we are a family, with our own home, and you must learn to be by yourself sometimes.”

            Rita seemed intrigued by the concept, which only completed Celeste’s delight. She ran at Lucien and roared with laughter as she swung him around and around until she had spilled them onto the bed. As they grinned like fools and gazed around their home in silence they saw at once there in the ceiling over the bed, mischievously hiding amidst all the pale pine wood were two identical planks lying side by side, each knot, each pock, each whorl and rib mirrored exactly in its companion. Twins, they had been felled, carved, planed, cut apart and dispersed into the world only to meet at last, and now they lay here in this home together and at peace.

            “Like us,” she whispered.

            And her happiness, Mazel, burned brighter than any woman’s ever had; brighter and more radiant than any sun or star and far more blinding than the most stunning fish in the sea. And it was in the glory of her jubilation that we blossomed, free and vibrant like wild irises nourished by this living, feminine helion. Our soil, our shoots, the breeze and the prisms we tossed to each other were ours alone, our life was ours, replete with open and secret splendors, dazzling, luscious, galloping.

            We made love to each other, with one another, like whole civilizations, like wild winds, like flowers falling into one another, and we walked through the fields, along the river to the toll castle and back to our home, scattering ducks and stars in the great embrace of the mountains. The woods, the lakes we greeted knowing that even they could not possibly know the miracles we made each morning, the seas we sailed night after night, the marvels and the terrors we knew when we lay together in rubelite flame, spinning through eternity as we met our very deaths in the force of our ecstasy and tore through it without fear.

*

            Now, once again vivacious and besotted, Celeste glided through the village by Lucien’s side as he spoke with craftsmen and compiled the information he needed. The late autumn landscape painted soothing and dumbfounding pictures for them in this land of divine surprise. On her own, Celeste conquered the geography of the little streets and the local habits of bartering, often returning with pretty silk skirts or flowers and vegetables. She visited the countless taverns with Lucien at the end of the day, radiant, merry, a bonfire of beauty.

            “But why do these people walk into me as if they were blind?” she wondered.

            Lucien thought of the dullness he had sensed buried far inside the locals and offered: “Perhaps they are all dead; perhaps we’ve come to heaven but the inhabitants do not yet understand that they have died.”

            Celeste was splashing her ale around and hailing the musicians during one of these evening forays when she was approached by a lank, fibrous woman with wild dark hair and poorly plucked whiskers spiking out of her face. In Celeste’s own tongue the woman engaged her in conversation and introduced her to her companion, a tall blond girl with a hard Almanni profile. The younger woman’s name was Renée, the elder’s Agnes. They pointedly ignored Lucien, who was composing songs in his head, for he had no instrument of his own, and enthusiastically offered to guide Celeste along the more interesting paths around the countryside. By the time Lucien and Celeste left the tavern, she had arranged to meet them at the boat locks the next day at noon. On the morrow, she set out with Rita to meet her new friends, as Lucien kissed her farewell and set to his work.

            Lucien elected the house of Bardi as his first line of inquiry. He copied the documents and sketches detailing his proposed theater and dispatched the package to the Florentine bankers with an invitation to address to him any and every question they might have regarding the operation, duration, technical innovation and, of course, profitability of the scheme. The documents numbered thirty pages and included an intricate yet accurate chart of expenditures set against projected income, season by season, for the first five years of operation.

            When Rita and Celeste reappeared, he turned from his labors and prepared their supper while she giggled and told him all she had learned of the two women. Renée had lived in the village all her life, had married her first love and had been befriended by Agnes one evening only to discover herself the object of the woman’s passion after they had passed a few weeks together. Agnes had been visiting from her native Brussels and was now set on having Renée flee with her.

            “It’s peculiar, don’t you think?” Celeste asked without thinking it peculiar at all. “Renée is the same age as I and Agnes is ten years older, just like you. They comport themselves very harshly, almost as though they were aping the field-men.”

            “Oh, that kind of love is as old as any other, I suppose. It does no harm to God or humanity so long as it is genuine.”

            Lucien was always happy to see Celeste happy, so he enjoyed Celeste’s excitement at knowing these two illicit wooers, although from all she related over the days it seemed to Lucien that only the older woman was in love. Celeste continued to explore the terrain, hurling herself into her two friend’s emotional topography with equal enthusiasm. Renée, it developed, was so indecisive as to cause Agnes great anguish; she threatened to depart alone and forever if the young woman spurned her much longer.

            After a few weeks had passed, Celeste informed him that he could meet her friends at the tavern that evening if he so desired. Lucien looked up from his papers and shrugged agreement.

            He found them coarse and hard as iron at first. Celeste beamed and tittered like a child as they growled at each other and swaggered like smiths, until, having spoken almost by accident, Lucien relaxed them with his languid wit, the two women bugging their eyes then laughing at his eccentric observations of life in the village. Lucien started as he realized Celeste was speaking to Renée in Renée’s own tone of voice, mirroring her accent and gestures almost to perfection; he smiled as he saw her eagerness to find unhampered acceptance. They all played a game common to the taverns wherein one must drive a nail into a round of wood using the edge of a hatchet. Since Agnes was also a pilgrim, talk soon turned to the sweetness of existence in the beautiful valley, and the crude life of the visitors’ homelands.

            “I like it so much better here,” Celeste bubbled. Then, turning to Lucien, she added with severity: “You were not very kind to me when we lived at Khalid’s.”

            The complaint took Lucien entirely by surprise. In an instant he relived in his mind the two months of passionate delirium they had passed at the fort, the hot days of shimmering peace and protection, the leaf-strewn nights of strange birds and stars, the world of adoration and ecstasy that throbbed through the small hut and kept them both mesmerized by the superhuman power of love.

            With his cheek in his hand he considered the immeasurable flood of adoration and desire that had inundated them during those day, and slid his eyes over to the animated young woman beside him. Perhaps, he thought, she has forgotten already, or, now that we are truly on our own together and at large in the world she is so much more herself again that she feels a bite of resentment at the memory of those exquisitely intimate months.

            Whatever the actuating cause, her remonstrance, delivered perhaps for the benefit of her new friends, bore through his heart like a drop of acid, though he knew her statement impostrous.

            As they undressed one another back in their high, nurturing home, Celeste congratulated herself on having found companionship so soon and so easily in their new country.

            “I’m so happy to have befriended Renée. She’s a very kind woman. I think she’s very pretty, don’t you?”

            “No. No one is besides you.”

*

            Celeste sprung out of the bed and washed herself as she sang, Lucien gaping like a village idiot at the argent limbs undulating in the basin.

            “Get up, Maroc,” she exhorted, innocent of the effect she was having on him. “I want to show you the path Renée took me to.”

            She draped some fortunate material around her body, preened herself and Rita and yanked Lucien out the door, laughing as they tumbled down the stairwell.

            The air was bright, sharp and cold, but magically alive. Shimmering white clouds coasted across the sky, freezing the lovers when they passed between them and the sun. Swallows looped through the blue and Rita skittered away from a forward swan. They pushed through the woods drunk on the smells, walking an hour without fatigue or exertion, until they arrived at a small meadow where the vibrant colors of flowers still illuminated the grass in spite of the late season. They ran in circles and tripped each other from one end of the meadow to the other. Lucien pulled Celeste to her feet and led her to the edge of the woods.

            “Look,” he said.

            Clinging to the hillock was a small tree with fading clusters of white flowers which Lucien knew should have withered well over two months before. He took a small knife from his pocket and made an incision on the trunk in the shape of a C, then held his finger under it while the nacreous sap began to weep. He rolled the stuff around his finger then brought it up to Celeste’s lips as she automatically parted them.

            “It’s manna,” he said. “Sweet, pure manna. This is a manna ash tree that remained in bloom just for you.”

            She licked her lips, then melted her mouth into his, savoring the sweetness, the bitterness, the cold plates of teeth and tongue that always came alive like a bird, making her dizzy and wanting to weep.

            “We have to go home,” she spoke directly into his mouth before tearing herself away and pulling his arm. “We have to go now!“

            Celeste rushed him up the stairs and threw him on the bed with a look of pure agony on her face. Afterwards, as they lay locked together, she looked up at him, a breathtaking shine in her eyes, put one finger on his lips and whispered in serene surprise: “Oh, Lucien, you’re my lover!“

*         *         *

            Lucien drew designs on paper, elaborating more and more on his plans until it seemed that the theaters had come into being already as he toyed with the mechanisms, the lights, the hidden spaces between walls in which the most uncanny artifices would lurk. Celeste entertained herself by exploring his peculiar mind or visiting with Nicole or Renée, who had quarreled with Agnes and sent her packing. Celeste took tremendous interest in the woman’s fate, regaling Lucien with all she had learned of her.

            “She has been married to Ulrich for seven years, but she cannot sleep with him any longer. She is ashamed of Agnes and not at all certain that she could sleep with her. Oh, Lucien, I wish that everyone could love as clearly as we do!”

            Another day Celeste returned and told him of a most interesting man she had met while buying vegetables. He was from distant Eire, she told him, and spoke so strangely that she could comprehend but a forth of what he said. He had lived here for years and was employed in a tavern, working late into the night to quench the vital thirst of the mountain folk. She promised Lucien that he would be intrigued by the man, suggesting they visit him at his tavern that evening. When they had finished their supper, Celeste tugged him along the streets to where the new friend, Jim, worked. They sat for a while and Celeste glowed and chatted while Jim returned desultory answers in a gruff and distracted manner. He was rangy, with a brush of dark hair patching his scalp, hard little eyes and prominent teeth stuck in a pasty complexion. Speaking with him, listening to Jim’s mumbled responses to Celeste’s fascinated questions, Lucien could find little of interest about the man at all; he was irritable one moment, good-natured the next, adept enough at the jibe but clearly a man of plain earth. Lucien elected to stick with the joking.

            When Jim had completed his work for the evening he escorted them out, offering to stand them drinks at another inn he frequented. Celeste was delighted with his gallantry, following along in the late night, raining questions down on the man as they walked. Lucien watched the mysterious shapes of the Alps as he went until Jim pulled up short outside a house called the Drei Schwyzer in honor, Lucien guessed, of the men who had formed the first Everlasting League for mutual defense against the abuses of the Hapsburg rulers. It was warm and dark inside, but both Lucien and Celeste were welcomed by the drinkers and treated like visiting royalty by the owners, and the tavern became a second home for them as time swam on.

            The tavern was owned by Claudio and his wife Isabelle, the former being a gentle, confused man who drifted about the place effusing compliments and warmth, the latter a hard, offensively thin blond who drank herself stuporous each night and threw herself on the laps of the masculine patrons whether her husband was present or not. Isabelle had a piercing voice and haggard features although she could not have been much older than Celeste. They were notorious throughout the valley for overcharging everyone every chance they got. Lucien heard Isabelle order her husband to see to his wishes with uncommon diligence, as he appeared to be a man of good breeding and therefore good finances.

            Their assistant was an enormous slab of undisciplined flesh who cheerfully introduced himself to the lovers as Marius. Marius was judged in the village a clever man, fearless, honest and capable of executing great things when roused. He spoke good German and possessed more intelligence that many of his compatriots, with the possible exception of his old friend Gerhardt, a small, peaceable man with a generous nature and a flaxen crop of hair.

            Around one particular table sat night after night a group of twenty sworn brothers and sisters of friendship and drink. Both Nicole and Renée were tangential members of the federation, which included a strong, stoutish man named Sandro, and a young woman born in England called Althea; as she worked in the stables, Celeste, who had had her young girls’ attraction to horses encouraged throughout her childhood, swept her in as another dear friend. These hardy Swiss welcomed the lovers with good cheer and a fascination for their almost concrete passion; Lucien was pleased to find diversion from his work in the evenings, Celeste delighted with the mass acclaim.

            As they walked home one night, a shadow and a plum flower drifting through the huge peaks glowing in the blackness like star-catching monsters, Celeste scowled and blurted to Lucien: “You like Isabelle, don’t you?”

            “Certainly not!” Lucien was horrified by the thought.

            Celeste circled around in front of him, bending towards him from her hips, grabbing his hands together in hers: “Please don’t lie to me, Lucien!” Her face compressed as she pleaded: “Only tell me! I don’t wish to find out later!”

            “Why are you doing this? I couldn’t ever love anyone but you.”

            “And what about Nicole?” she continued.

            “No!”

            She screwed her brows together as they walked on. “I don’t like her anymore,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have faith in her to stay away from you if she had an opportunity.”

            “She wouldn’t get near me,” he asserted.

            Celeste smiled at his answer, having heard the rich note of truth in the words. She swung his arms and rolled herself full against him in the bed that night, content to be loved by and to love this one.

            In the morning she lay against the pillows with her arms draped like silk around him while he kissed her eyes, her ethereal mouth, her nose and her full, flushed cheeks, no thought of termination in his mind, living with her as one dreamy systole, diastole, one spirit of soft skin and flesh distilled to its purest essence.

            “I like the way you kiss me, like you are making love to my mouth when we are together,” Celeste sighed, “I like everything you do with me, you know me, Lucien, you know exactly how to touch me all the time.”

            “You are my life.”

            Celeste smiled gently and curled her legs down and around his back as she continued: “You always call me ‘mermaid hair’.”

            Astonished, Lucien said: “Yes, but I’ve never said that aloud.”

            “Always. Whenever we make love.”

            “Celeste, it is just my heart speaking. I swear I’ve never said those words to you. You hear my heart as I hear yours.”

            Celeste tightened her arms and legs around him and drew his cheek to hers.

            “I hope I die before you, Lucien. If you go first I’m afraid I’ll not be able to find you again. You know how to find me, you always will, so if I die I can wait for you knowing that you’ll come for me again.”

            “We’ll die together,” Lucien assured her. “by melting into each other.”

            “I don’t want to lose you again. How many times have you been taken from me? Never,” she kissed him, “never, never,” each defiance of the fates punctuated with that sweetest of all affirmations, “never will I let anyone take you from me again.”

            She thought for a moment then, with grave attention to her words, said: “My heart would break for good if anything ever did take you from me. That’s why I should go first. Before you came to me I felt nothing inside. The men didn’t like it and neither did I, but it was as though I had no heart. Or I had a heart but it was locked away with only your name carved on it.”

            “Our names,” Lucien insisted.

            “My love,” she said.

*         *         *

            They found in the Drei Schwyzer a quiet old man with sad eyes named Peter. He befriended them, generously buying them wine, which they would attempt to repay in kind only to have him lay his soft hand over theirs and smile wistfully when they reached for their purses. Lucien and Celeste enjoyed the peace of his company, often preferring it to the crush of the semi-official federation. With Peter as their guide they would visit new inns, dining and drinking, laughing when the old man became tipsy, for he seemed ever gentle. Drunk one late evening, Peter insisted they come to his home so that he might feed them. The three of them walked through the forest as far as the mouth of the quiet Brienzersee, then Lucien and Celeste sipped wine and held each other’s warm hands while Peter made a comical show of teetering as he prepared hot food.

            The others appeared leery of Peter and Lucien and Celeste thought them brash, young and callous-hearted until, after many weeks, they noticed the bitterness slipping out of him as he became more melancholy, then pathetically aggressive as he mourned the recent loss of his wife and drank at an increasing pace. Celeste was harder on him than Lucien, and Peter became sour towards her, stumbling in to them one evening now drunker than ever and plopping down to stare at the girl. He scrutinized her peculiar face with wine-poisoned intensity then announced: “She doesn’t love you.’

            Lucien brushed him aside.

*

            A messenger arrived with a sealed note from the Bardis which, when he opened it, surprised Lucien with a polite appraisal of his skill and enterprise yet ended with a rejection of funding. Bardi had been nearly ruined by the defalcation of several nobles who had borrowed heavily to support their campaigns against England; Lucien’s venture, while novel, was considered too far afield from the common run of investment and Bardi could not accept the risk at the present time.

            “What now?” Celeste asked.

            “Well, I have a strong recommendation for the project from Bardi, so I shall spend the next days copying out the package and send it off, one request at a time, to the other houses. It will take some time, but one of them will either loan me the money or enter into an agreement to share the spoils. The note from Bardis merely affirms the value of my idea.”

            “I wish there was someone here you could borrow from. Who will you contact?”

            “I’ll keep mining the Italian bankers for now. I’ll keep a record as I contact them. We still have the Strozzi, Pitti, Peruzzi, and almost twenty other houses just across the Alps. One of them will endorse me.”

            “This is crazy. How does anyone get money if not born to it?”

            “Money is as jealously guarded as the most arcane secrets of the occult. It has no meaning whatsoever yet it can stamp a man with the value of his life and chain him to despair for the entire stretch of his existence. People actually kill people for money. Even the artists act like wild dogs when protecting their profits: the seven major guilds of Florence control the earnings of the fourteen lesser guilds, and both of them stand on the neck of the seventy unions of laborers who are denied the power of votes. Should any of these plebeians attempt to apportion themselves more money they are ruthlessly destroyed, as they were seven years ago.”

            “But why not just give the poor ones more money?”

            “Because the game only works if money is finite: in order to raise the poor up, one must draw from the lot of the wealthy.”

            “If you are so poor, why do you know all about money?”

            “It’s a simple system, based on illusion, which only appears complicated when specious arguments are spun to justify it.”

            “Yes,” she laughed. “If only we had some more money we could live without it.”

*

            Celeste was still capable of feeling great rushes of love howl through her without warning.

            One day she approached Lucien with the unmistakable feline happiness lighting her face, when, upon reaching him, she winced and recoiled as though stabbed. Lucien quickly took her hands and begged her to tell him what had hurt her.

            Celeste, blinking hard, swallowed and told him, in a kind of pained surprise: “It’s you. I love you so much, sometimes it hurts dreadfully. Right through me, like a lance, often, even when I am not looking at you. This terrible ache cuts through me if I so much as think of you.”

            “I know it well, Angel. I feel it every day and every hour.”

            Lucien did indeed feel the biting pain each minute. He had, however, grown accustomed to it and, now that they were away from Rapelle and together for the remainder of their lives, he accepted it as an essential bitterness of this ambrosial feast.

            “I feel it, too, Angel, whenever I watch you sitting, speaking, dreaming or sweeping like another dream across the room. So long as you let me love you I can survive it. When you leave me behind and travel those secret streams of yours it is agony.”

            Celeste became contrite. “I am sorry that happened. Lucien, you are the love of my life and, even though that has always happened with other men, I don’t fear it this time because I know I will always come back to you.” She had calmed herself by now. Taking her hand from her breast she stroked his long black hair and said, proudly and with stern conviction on her face: “I am yours forever and you belong entirely to me.”

*

            Agnes had come and gone several times, fleeing her frustration for weeks, then returning in response to Renée’s letters, only to again find herself tantalized by the younger woman’s heartless indecisiveness. As Renée was the one who remained, Celeste became closer to her than she had to Agnes. She learned from her the idiosyncrasies of the various people they had met, including Peter, who was condemned as being on the path to total insanity, and explained them all to Lucien without reflection. As for Renée and Agnes themselves, the immobility of their affair, the somewhat superficial mentality of Renée and the pitch of the lovers’ wrath as they warred were not only detailed to Lucien, but became a presence in his life as Celeste invited them to the garret together and individually to argue. He felt increasingly oppressed by their histrionics, which culminated in a tearful visit from Agnes while Celeste was out one day.

            “I came to bid you good bye,” she said, wiping the back of her hand along her eye. “I must leave this time for good; she does not love me. I must have been a fool.”

            Lucien sat her at the table and poured her a cup of wine as she cried.

            “What does one do, Lucien? What does one tell the heart when it loves only that person who cannot return the love? How does one live then?”

            He felt her agony as she sat across from him weeping, the tears hooking down her coarse black whiskers and splashing off onto her dirt-laden mantle. She shook her wiry frame with each gasp occasioned by the memory of what might have been, and she understood as she spilled her sorrows to him that he saw himself in her, that he could taste the possibility of this same devastation.

            When Celeste returned, she offered to press the suit once more on Agnes’ behalf, but the woman wisely insisted that she could not be played with any longer, gathering up her satchels and embracing them before leaving for Brussels.

            More of an irritant was Jim. He would visit the garret and Celeste would take Lucien along to visit his own small cellar room far out in the marshland. Celeste’s excitement in his presence was inexplicable to Lucien, more so than her assumption of Renée’s travails had been. She spoke of him constantly to Lucien, taking Rita in her arm and seeking the man out while Lucien looked to his business. The nights they shared with Jim struck Lucien as duller than others, the blunt and vulgar conversation Celeste conducted with Jim muffling his mind in cotton, squeezing it painfully when the two encouraged each other to keep longer and longer hours together. This prolonged suffocation inspired Lucien to decline accompanying them over to Jim’s late one night after Claudio had closed the Drei Schwyzer. He looked at the two of them, measured his sleepiness and said: “No. I’ll go to bed now. You go if you like.”

            Celeste glared at him briefly, then turned and walked away with Jim.

            Returning to their home, Lucien belabored the interference in their life; first the unrestrained inclusion of Renée and Agnes and all their battling, now Jim, who Celeste had been pursuing with more interest than she displayed in Lucien. A quick resignation stung him. He feared the hoydenish character Celeste had revealed in those people’s company would gain the advantage over her sweetness, her devotion to him. His eye caught the odd assortment of delicacies she had purchased: worthless foodstuffs each limited to its one hedonistic flash of taste, and saw them as a manifestation of fecklessness. There were not many, but Lucien took them up and tumbled them out the window, as though eliminating all the distractions enticing Celeste away from him.

            Rita was asleep in her side-room and Lucien was drifting through ominous vapors of sleep when Celeste returned between lauds and prime, scarcely an hour before sunup. He woke easily as she entered.

            Her legs folded beneath her as she reached the bed, clutching Lucien and shaking him. Her face was flushed with wine and cold, but her eyes were aflame with something passionate.

            “Lucien,” she shook him. “Lucien, wake up. I love you!”

            Lucien grumbled at the incongruity of the situation, at the same moment divining that she had in her absence astonished herself by this realization. He was simultaneously relieved she had discovered it and indignant that she had had to stumble across it at all, let alone while drinking with Jim all night.

            “I love you,” she cheered, her voice growing outrageously loud. “Don’t you understand? I love you!”

            “Keep quiet!” he hissed, “You’ll wake the entire house!”

            “I love you!” she yelled.

            Lucien groaned, then took her hand limply in his. “I love you as well, Celeste, now come to bed and let everybody sleep.”

            His weary aloofness began to frighten her. Her features changed from passionate to panicky and she began to weep and claw at him, yelling at peak volume in a desperate effort to make him understand the inexpressible significance of her revelation. Lucien, unable to staunch the torrent, sprung from the covers, and shook her firmly, hissing, pleading and commanding her to cease her theatrics and keep still. Celeste saw only the steely exasperation before her and this increased her sense of rejection, the lonely absurdity of her new, full grasp of love, and finally imploded it all in hot and terrifying heap of fear inside her.

            She writhed, slipping herself down to the floor. Only then did Lucien remember what he had known forever: that no matter what her external conduct, this flailing creature in his hands could only be nourished on the most refined tenderness; that no force of reason or choler would ever do more than disturb her precarious balance on this earth, and that, no matter what gusts of heat or ice chanced to blow through her at any hour, month or year, love alone, patient and unquestioning was to be her deserved accord.

            “I believe you, Angel. I know. Calm yourself now, it’s far too late for you to be so excited.”

            He picked up the sobbing, jerking animal sitting on the floor and led her to the bed, rolling her towards the middle and reinserting himself before drawing up the covers around them. Celeste continued to cry for a while, then laid her hand on his chest and slept.

            The next morning brought an echo of the crisis.

            “Why did you throw the food out the window?”

            He felt it certain to disorient her if he explained. “It wasn’t all the food, just the small, useless things. I simply felt like it; don’t even think of it, I’ll get you some more today.”

            “But why?” She began to cry.

            Lucien sighed. “I saw them as all the external baubles that keep drawing you from me.”

            “Oh,” she said. “Like Jim. Well, I didn’t so much wish to go there, but you acted so foolish about it that I got angry, so I went with Jim anyway.”

            “I wasn’t acting foolish.” He paused. “Forget it.”

            “But, Lucien, I get scared when you do things I don’t understand.”

            And Celeste stayed on her course, her hours growing later, her attachments more intimate as she sought out the disturbing people, lighting up in their company, unconsciously imitating the vocabulary, gestures, accents and even vocal tone of whomever she was with at the time, instilling a profound dread in Lucien even as he saw her happy. Pleased to escape his work, ecstatic to be in her proximity, he accompanied his beloved where she liked, even to the noisiest inn in the village, where they yelled futilely over the blasts of horns and other shouted conversations, huddled in the smoke from the flu and watched Renée spinning from her husband Ulrich to the resolutely returned Agnes late into the night. Celeste danced through the crowds while Lucien nursed his ale mashed into a corner until Celeste waved at him from the entranceway, signalling that her friends had begun to bore her.

            The moon hung full and brilliant above the crags, touching the tops of the trees it liked best. Celeste swung on Lucien’s arm and they saw Peter scurry like an insect into an alley, trailing a flagon of wine. As they walked home through the empty streets, she released all the Agnes and Renée she had absorbed that evening.

            “Well, Renée might be toying with her, but I believe she should leave Ulrich and go live with Agnes.”

            Lucien chuckled at the firmness of her decision. “I think she must consider whom she truly loves as well as who loves her. Or if she even loves anyone. Renée does not seem entirely dedicated to the love of another woman.”

I began to wonder if Celeste was more fluid in her identity than I had expected. With her uncanny ability to adapt her persona to whomever she felt affection for, the innocence and the curiosity that formed her core visibly altered her current to flow alongside each new friend. Much of it I assumed was simple inquisitiveness. With men and with women, Celeste would abandon her surface self and dive into the streams of their desires. Tender, brutal, decadent, elegant, she was easily intrigued, although I’m sure it wasn’t obvious to her.

            And yet I watched her scowl and run back to blinding day whenever she started to convulse around me. This flower was subject to harsh weather. Celeste herself squirmed and struggled to be simultaneously alone and entirely present in the arms of another.

            So, like the bells that begirt her, confusion jangled. I sensed that any romantic fidelity was not so much the result of an exclusive passion but another result of fear, or embarrassment at a lack of physical release –determinations made mentally as to what to prop herself up with and what might be malleable, one at a time; her preferences, if not wholly pretense, an uneasy concession to habit. Her acknowledgement of her own gender itself appeared tenuous, and she seemed perpetually cowed by the questions this sparked around her. How much of the Celeste I saw was accommodation? Haunted innocence? Hedonism? Caged fear? It seemed that her sex and what she made of it was as mercurial as the rest of her.

            As they walked past the commons Jim approached on his way to the tavern they had just left. Celeste grabbed Lucien’s arm excitedly, so he took his cue and invited Jim to yet another inn for a cup of wine. Celeste and Jim shared a plate of sausages while Lucien waited for the house to close, which it did by three in the morning. When they arrived at the door of their building, Celeste instructed Jim to come up and visit. She plied him with questions about his life for two hours, gasping at the exploits of his estranged wife and proudly showing Lucien Jim’s cuts and bruises.

            “She took to him with a knife last week!” Celeste exclaimed.

            Lucien excused himself and lay in the bed digging for rest and listening to the catechism of query and response droning on with both participants muttering in Irish accents. Unable to sleep, piqued by their rudeness and embarrassed by Celeste’s mimicry, her denunciations of Jim’s wife, her interminable fascination with this common stranger, Lucien wrapped on his shoes and left the house to wander around and watch the approaching dawn.

            An hour later, Lucien came back in through the door and found to his amazement that they were still huddled before one another conversing away. They took no notice of his return and he pulled up the covers of the bed to try and block out the words and fall into the blackness.

            With little else but Lucien in her life, Celeste hungered for diversion, bounding from tavern to tavern, fearlessly entering the revels and bestowing friendships on people like benedictions, and as the nights became wilder as the villagers fought the sloth of winter, Celeste and Lucien would often end the late evening in the homes of complete strangers, Celeste drinking and making merry conversation indiscriminately with any and everyone while Lucien paced like a caged beast.

            And with the gleeful reconnaissance of this valley of new faces, Celeste once more forsook Lucien’s attentions, preferring to carouse, and, perhaps unconsciously, arranged her days and nights so that they could only be alone together when exhaustion had crushed them. After excusing himself from the protracted roistering in honor of Althea’s birthday, Lucien fell into a haunted sleep late that night and awoke throughout it to find Celeste still gone. She returned in the morning, ill and exhausted, pleading compassion, vowing that she had been carted off to some faraway hovel where the drinking had continued past sunrise, that she had only now been able to solicit a ride home. This time Lucien laughed it off.

            “Oh,” she beamed through her blush of shame, “and Marius and Althea have fallen in love.”

            He sensed a deep intimidation of the world in Celeste, a need to flee from sorrow inside her. By now Lucien understood that she was disposed to crises of nerves, that there would in their life devolve periods of unknowable duration wherein even love would appear as an ogre to her, that in her flights she was inclined by turns to the rudest and the most tender actions; he nonetheless loved her as perhaps no man had ever loved a woman, and instructed himself to ride these wild horses as they ran, to soothe them when possible; he knew that only tenderness, words of love and words of reason could protect her from excesses external and internal. Her face of sun and swansdown and jasper, this fear would sometimes pull her leagues from him until, sitting, he saw her as minute as an eyelash trembling in the wind.

            She had recourse to the debasement she’d hinted of in her past: when Lucien, thrilled by the sight of her regal form lain across the bed one morning, passionately opened her legs to bury his mouth in her tangle, she vised them closed and ran out of his reach, saying: “Don’t do that. —He used to do that!”

            She’d never objected before –much the contrary– and only after a second did he comprehend that she meant the ghostly equerry of her childhood.

            “It’s me,” he said. “For God’s sake, Celeste, let me love you!”

            She stopped all her movements and turned to cast a look on him that stunned him completely. Her voice got hoarse, nearly threatening, as she fixed him in her gaze, saying: “So. You, too, are conditional, my friend.”

            Lucien only after a minute understood that she had meant to imply that he, like who knew which others, made his love for her contingent on her being physically whole. What had thrown him most of all, however, was the intensity of the cold animosity in her countenance; her face had altered almost beyond recognition and he recalled with horror that he had seen the look in her eyes before: they were crazed old man’s eyes.

            After recovering himself and brooding over the import of this strange genie that had so rashly materialized in Celeste, he cleared his throat and attempted to calm her, smooth away her anxieties. She listened cautiously as he spoke, the foreign spirit having vanished as soon as she had made her odd comment.

            “I could not condition my love for you on anything,” he said. “There are no limits to what I feel for you, Celeste. If I wish to make love to you every minute of my life, it is solely because it is the only language I know that even approximates the complexity of what I wish to tell you.”

            She considered this, then asked in a worried and hurt tone: “You mean it doesn’t make you feel good?”

            “Lord, yes! At least I think it does. I get so lost in you I don’t notice myself. But,” he smiled, “It’s undeniable ecstasy, so you must do something wonderful to me.”

            “I don’t wish to lose you, Lucien. You must not hate me for what I am.”

            “Never, I swear it! You don’t understand, Celeste: I love you so much…”

            They left off the frailties of speech and walked out into the drizzle, which was deflected by the boughs of the trees. While walking they saw Mad Peter ripping off his clothes and hurling them into the river despite the piercing rain.

            But the distance remained and Celeste still avoided finding herself alone with Lucien. Lucien decided that he would simply learn to live with his fire and hoped that one day all his love would have dispelled her fears and that she would awaken joyous and perpetually warmed. He felt himself living two lives with her, for, even in their happiest days, Lucien invariably spent the night dreaming of making love to Celeste, sweetly and with ineffable tenderness. He corresponded with his potential financiers and saw to his duties at the Drei Schwyzer, where Celeste would turn to face him while talking with one of the many men who were drawn to her beauty and charm, and tacitly rebuke him for the concupiscence she caught in his eyes. Privately, she showed exasperation at the lust thundering out of him, feeling herself a freak for fleeing it and reversing this anger so it nipped at Lucien. She became sardonic about what he had assumed was his neutral expression, prone to sharp thrusts of anger.

            There was a danger in this that Lucien was unable to ignore. It was like a fly had attached its proboscis to the back of his neck and was draining him daily, a slick black and green parasite of doubt, engorging itself and growing larger than its host each minute, until Lucien would be as a pulvillus on its hideous face.

            I have witnessed this disastrous predilection amongst those creatures, and have sighed every time I’ve seen it rise and usurp their own dearer potential; I have seen this destruction take so many of them by the hand and lead them in that frenzied backwards revolt, away from their own happiness, until they are stampeding each other in their rush to hang black wreaths around their necks. I have seen this angry smashing of the human mirror so many times that I can actually trace the shards as they burst from the frame and scatter, sharp and lethal, across the small bedrooms within themselves. From the ones who will simply die soon –the wracked, the obese, the dipsomaniacs– to the ones who will live yet, but whose lives must be miserable, the fragments always fall in the same pattern: the mind betrays the body, the body betrays the soul.

            Celeste’s assault on this mirror was a mortal blow. With the wisdom of the grave at my disposal, I can warn you, dear creatures, that the person who is incapable of emotional or physical love –either giving or accepting, they are, in the end, largely the same– is, on one level or another, definitely aware of and acutely embarrassed by their condition, and will invariably take their fury out on their loved one, and, less vehemently, on anyone who represents affectionate interest.

            One of the men at the Schwyzer drawn to her fire was a young man from Portugal, small and pudgy, yet handsome with his gleaming baby-face and neat black hair. He initially offended Lucien by inserting his face between him and Celeste and pointedly addressing Celeste night after night without so much as a word or a glance of acknowledgement to Lucien. Celeste giggled and forged a friendship with him over those nights, leaving Lucien to talk business and law with Marius while she played games of cards with the young man, whom Lucien learned was called Sergio. After a full week of this peculiar behavior from Sergio, Lucien protested to Celeste, upbraiding her for encouraging it.

            Celeste apologized, avowing that she had not been aware of it, then began bringing him home. The sanctuary Lucien had hoped to build away from all the travails of the world became as a lazar house to him, with the now amiable Sergio, Althea, Jim, Renée and Agnes when she came through town, all tumbling in to entertain his beloved, who had built a wall of rudeness and activity around herself with all the energy of the childish spirit inside her. Lucien began to object to the situation, careful to point out that it was only her avoidance of him that disturbed him, that the socializing could not be condemned on any other grounds, and the result was more of the same.

            Ah, Mazel, she was the most pliant Penelope. Her feet would pump against the floor and her face would jump forward when she became obstinate or irate, anticipating all my pains and, planting herself directly before me, magically transforming her defenses into martial offenses, and while still in the throes of my shock and my searing agony, I would hear a tiny laugh inside me lauding her incomparable spirit. What a wonder she was! Who could match her loveliness, her fierce charges, her uproarious logic? What providence had brought her to me, returned her to me? In anger her odors warmed up and drifted over to seduce me, and I of all people became unconcerned with words, forgetful of what I was going to say. She became more the center of my life each passing hour, and I reviled myself for the appetite I had for her. I would build myself into a mechanism designed to turn my passion down to meet her steam and live in happiness, because no matter how her words smote me I was glorifying in the fact that she was alive.

            But, driven by love, Lucien was incapable of diluting his desire enough to match hers. He carefully avoided any impropriety with the girl, but his baffled affection began to cry out inside him, a jarring, confusing clamor that rattled his mind as well as his body, and Celeste, insulted by his consequent formality, countered with a sclerotic, proud belligerence in private and increased hilarity in public. Brandy wine did nothing to quench the fire within him and with that last solace discarded as futile, he found himself invaded by resentment. The very inappropriateness of this alien sensation riled him still further and he left Celeste to her own doings one night and wandered around the little town foolishly analyzing its source. He tried again to settle himself with spirits but only made himself stupid. Throwing his hands up in defeat, he returned to the garret room, but when he saw Celeste lying innocently in the bed they shared, the futility of his presence in her life kicked him, and he went straight to the bed and yanked off one of the mattresses, hauling it into the kitchen and muttering curses in Hungarian.

            Celeste watched him silently, having smelled the wine on his breath, sensing his complete and final disgust. She had started to object to his sleeping away from her but Lucien had pulled his bedding out of her hands with a single jerk which warned her to let him in peace. Peace was far from his heart, though, and as he worked round the straw on the kitchen floor he abused her bitterly for the mockery she had made of their life, and complained coarsely about his own idiocy in trusting her. 

            “How can you concern yourself so damned much with your image and whatever comforts it might gain you?” he growled. “As long as you are going to live down here you should learn the merits of humanity. You lose me in a dust storm of jollity and you think I don’t see that you are no longer beside me? Am I to remove the curse of my sight if I am to stay with you? My ears? My wits and my heart? How much more of an idiot must I be to keep your affections even slightly warmed? Is this how you wish to live with me, as a jilt?

            Leaping naked out of bed, she ran at him from across the room with both arms locked out straight in front of her and rammed her fists into his stomach, knocking the air out of him and mashing him back against the wall.

            The physical throb bounced into his center at the same instant astonishment burst in in his head. Lucien growled at the effrontery and Celeste felt her rage flare and turn to fear as the insult appeared on his face. He picked her up and, carrying her back to her bed flung her down on the slats. It was only when she released a yelp of terror that he saw his own fist drawn back and, looking from that strange marbled object grafted to the end of the arm that had never known anger then down at the disheveled young woman blinking before him, he realized the full horror of the moment. He bounded backwards, nauseated by the thought that he had almost struck at Celeste, revolted by the thought that she had struck him, and charged for the door and away from this creature who had reduced him to savagery.

            Celeste ran after him, throwing her arms around his knees and sobbing.

            “Lucien, no! Don’t leave me here like this. I’m so sorry!”

            Unable to speak a word, he threw on his cloak and pried her fingers off his legs, his arms, as he scrambled for escape from her terrors, her furies, her tears and her demons, knowing only that he must separate the demons within them both that had clashed in this gruesome way. Celeste collapsed in a piteous heap of remorse as Lucien blew out into the night.

            Lucien awoke the following morning on the mattress he had dragged into the kitchen. He scowled at the taste of brandy-scorched flesh in his mouth and tried out a few humorous complaints as he felt the weight of his head bearing down on his neck. He saw Celeste sitting up in the bed across the room, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms locked around them and her eyes open wide in a lost expression as she watched him wake. He remained silent while dousing his face with the icy water left in the bowl, wondering what she would say of the night’s histrionics. He prodded his solar plexus and found it was tender. He sighed and turned to the woman watching him, asking flatly: “Are you alright?”

            Celeste shook her head and began to weep, lightly, mutely.

Lucien reflected for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You beat me with your cloak,” she wept.        .

            Lucien peered at her on hearing this oddity –of all things– then decided she needed love and forgetfulness more than he required a strict accounting of events. He seated himself beside her and let her fall back against his breast, tickling his fingers through her hair and catching the hot sorrow of her tears with the back of his free hand. “I’m very sorry, Celeste. You know that I love you more than my own life or that of everyone else’s combined. Let it fall off into the past, we have no business wasting time meant for love on battles like that.”

            “Don’t ever do that again,” she sobbed into his blouse. “I can’t live with you if you hurt me, if you frighten me like that.”

            With Celeste buried in his arms, Lucien stared at the twin boards above him and lifted one eyebrow in a deep but silent perturbation at her words, which he understood less than her actions.

            For several days thereafter, Celeste mourned that palpable passing of innocence, keeping to herself and finally leaving Lucien a note expressing the deepest shock at what had become of them, yet begging him to stay with her and find again what she knew was love. She signed it ‘your sad little angel,’ and had drawn a picture to match it.

            Lucien sighed, and spent his days and nights showing the woman that neither he nor his love was capable of harming her, and Celeste blossomed in his hold.

*         *         *

            Three letters arrived for Lucien: two rejections from the troubled banks of Strozzi and Pitti, the third a possible warning from Khalid.

            It read: “Blessings and felicity to my brother. In addition to love, you might have friends in your new land. Tell them, if it pleases you, that of Picards, Bretons, and mercenaries both English and of the Teutonic Order, an estimated 10,000 all calculated. Now concentrated in Basel, feared moving south.”

            Lucien realized that he had been blessed to have avoided this huge number of men all the way from Lothringen to Inter Lacus, and that they must have been converging as he and Celeste had crossed into Switzerland, explaining, though pathetically, the extent of the misery they had brushed. Celeste wondered why Khalid would have sent military information to Lucien.

            “War is not your interest.”

            “No. Decidedly not. But information is.”

            He contemplated what sort of society these burghers, if they cemented their freedom, would create. It could be sage. It could be just and devoid of all hatred, a land of learning and compassion reaching from the lake of Zurich to the indefatigable monuments of freedom rearing up outside his window. A new kind of world wherein man in the abstract as much as the man standing before one meant more than all the numismatic fantasies and sadistic consuetude that made up the sum of the human act.

            At the Schwyzer, he drew Marius aside and slipped him the letter.

            For the next two weeks Lucien was unable to conduct either negotiations or inquiries, as that entire swathe of civilization commenced a celebration of Christ. In the Latin lands, in France, the German lands and above all in the Confederacy, homage to the Nazarene assumed the form of ceaseless debauches; from early December until beyond Christmas day the mountain folk caroused both day and night and immersed themselves in wild bibulation. The taverns were kept open all hours and citizens staggered through the streets roaring songs and swinging tankards. Swept up by the abandon, Lucien and Celeste dutifully reported each eve to the Drei Schwyzer, but never managed to keep pace with the band. Mad Peter would appear in the throng, barefoot and delirious, holding high a bottle of spirits; Marius bellowed and downed whole oceans of wine; Gerhardt, after a full week of this, was unable to speak and communicated by buzzing loudly as he carried on undaunted, sleeping an hour or two each morning then galloping back to the stores of liquor that had inundated the town. Lucien chafed at the forced hiatus while Celeste hurled herself into the riot with brilliance, laughing and dancing, chattering with so much ardor that she didn’t notice when her hair caught fire from a candle. They drank with the friends at the Schwyzer and with Jim and Renée and hard on a hundred strangers, and were proud to accept an invitation to the banquet organized to formalize the merry group’s federation.

*

In the midst of the revels, Celeste was overcome with longing for her distant mother, from whom she had never been apart on Christmas day. She sat herself down and began to cry.

*

            Dressed in damask, her throat ringed with pearls and her hair scented and radiant, Celeste took her seat at the great banquet table across from Lucien, draped in black velvet. She rollicked with Sergio, who sat at her side, and glided up to the top of the table to joke with Althea, incarnadine and spinning in and out of the loyal troupe as they awaited the next course. Marius thundered from the head of the table demanding a charter of the club be drafted and opening the raucous floor for opinions; Lucien, being a foreigner, merely wrote his on slips of cloth and had them passed along the seats to Marius, who waved back and roared with merriment at the absurdities. Celeste flew up and down like a thrilled little finch. From Denise she learned the names of all the relishes and aspic delicacies which sparkled in the center of the table. The victuals and the people seemed endless to her, and she abandoned herself to the banquet as she might to a dance, concentrating all her spirit, all her burning desire, all her senses on it, sending huge cresting waves of laughter across the hall. And when the sommelier came in with the waiter beside him and announced that whoever guessed the massive number of pounds of meat or gallons of wine had been consumed in that night would have feasted gratis, Sergio, who had just visited the kitchen, whispered the answer in her translucent ear, crowning her queen in the eyes of all. As the crowd groaned and sat stupefied by their efforts, Marius prorogued the meeting until they had all reassembled at the Drei Schwyzer. Celeste turned her face to Lucien and he saw her regal bosom heave as she pressed herself to him then tugged at his hand until they were running through the street.

            Like fire they raced up the stairs and burst into their garret. Celeste swept her face across his and threw herself onto the bed panting and raising herself to him as she knelt. Lucien took her skirt and gently peeled her open like a flower, exposing all her dark secrets, dark secrets which blinded him as the sun once had, burning through the woods in Rapelle. He paused to kiss with his tip the calyx exploding out from her thighs, then sank himself into her until they were one.

            By the time they ran back to the tavern the union had shattered into warring factions, the final blow being Isabelle’s attempt to overcharge the group for the night’s wine. Celeste was aggrieved at first, until Lucien whispered to her that this sort of battling amongst drinking fraternities was so common as to be comical, and was in fact almost required. She laughed and stayed beside him as they pursued the disparate clusters of friends through the night, holding his hand and breathing her amaranth breath on his shoulder as in each different inn the different sects groused and plotted. At home, Celeste drew Lucien into her full white body, whispering love me oh heaven we’re the only ones who know, Love.

*         *         *

            But the festivities were suddenly interrupted by a mortal danger to all, as the armies of the French and their allies, or mercenaries, were pressing their advantages beyond the northwest and threatened to consume all of Switzerland. While many of the people began to empty out of the village, an equal number, drunk on wine and the ancient ferocity of their blood, determined to hold the aggressors to accounts. The mountaineers were naturally hardy, and their parents had already, sixty years before, marched out of Inter Lacus to help the Confederation uphold their independence and defend the charter against Leopold of Hapsburg; Inter Lacus had been an instrumental ally of the defenders, along with Glarus, Arth and Urseren, and the Everlasting League had been both victorious and boldly renewed. Lucien kept his eyes and his ears open, and would take Celeste to the now sedate Schwyzer each night after supper to discover what news he could; their life and the lives of countless others depended on the unknown plans of the defenders. Celeste feared Paul had come with the brigands.

            Six days before Christmas, enraged at by the abominations of the conquerors and their bastard marauding spawn, the local men, just over half a hundred strong, surprised the enemy in Buttisholz and hacked down fully fifty percent of their six thousand troops. Some of the burghers returned to disperse the tidings, while the majority of the citizen-warriors decamped to the foothills until Christmas night, when they retook Jens, leaving a further several hundred invaders –mostly Bretons– slain on the field.

            Beyond the toll of matins and a bleak hour into the night following Christmas, a clatter of horses was heard approaching, then stopping outside the Schwyzer. Both Claudio and Isabelle stopped running about and fixed their eyes on the entrance, fearful of news capable of sending the residents up to the mountains in a defensive exodus. Lucien looked at Celeste and wondered if the locals would extend their hospitality so far as to welcome them along in retreat, or whether Celeste and Rita would still be strong enough for such an undertaking. Through the doorway came Marius and Sandro, supporting Gerhardt between them.

            All three were laughing, but Sandro coughed as he did so and Gerhardt yelped in agony when Marius tried to undrape his arm. They were sooty, muddy, shiny with fear and exhaustion, and spattered with blood. As they staggered Gerhardt onto a bench he yelled again, then laughed feebly as Marius roared at Claudio to go out and retrieve the cask of brandywine before the horse drank it. Sandro emerged from the back and brought Isabelle in his train as he placed a bowl of water on the table while Isabelle whined and tore her smock into strips. Growling, Sandro wrenched Gerhardt’s head up and dabbed at it with the rags. As the blood lifted, the gash and the hanging eye stood out for its gruesomeness. Celeste swallowed rapidly and buried her head in Lucien’s cloak.

            Marius held the thrashing Gerhardt and forced a huge amount of brandywine down him, then clutched his head as the man sputtered, while Sandro rapidly pushed the eyeball back into its socket. Lucien could see that it was sorely cut and would not mend itself properly, but it would be of some use. The two larger men quickly wrapped Gerhardt’s head with bandages fashioned from Isabelle’s smock and splashed with liquor. When Gerhardt stopped howling he began to laugh again. At a sign from Marius, Claudio poured the brandywine for them all.

            Marius guessed what was in Lucien’s thoughts: “No. It was not for you to fight. It was for us and through our arms alone to seize our own freedom,” he said.

            “Are we safe?” Claudio pleaded.

            “Was it a slaughter?” the crowd demanded to know. “For the love of God, Marius tell us what’s happened!”

            “Bern threw its best at the English filth who were whoring for Picardy, and their deaths will be mourned for generations.”

            “Then we’re lost!”

            “No!” shouted Gerhardt. “No! We’ve won! We vanquished them!“

            He seemed as incredulous as the others. There was a tremendous swell of hope and amazement that rolled through the room, and everyone began arguing at once about the stupidity of his statement, all the while standing on a massive joy.

            “It’s true,” Marius roared. “They’ve turned back. We marched –and froze—until joining with others, and surprised them billeted in the abbey of Fraubrunen. We put our torches to use and fried them as they slept. The Berners fought off the rest and carved them to pieces. A thousand men defeated by us! They won’t return!”

            Sandro spoke up: “The threat’s gone for now. Fraubrunen still burns as we speak. Also parts of Bern. You can see it from here.”

            Those who had been huddled in the tavern awaiting developments now ran out the door to witness the glow cast by the fires. A bank of snow clouds had begun to crawl towards the valley, and reflected the conflagration as it swept down from Bern and headed for the great mountains. Upon reentering, Lucien saw that Celeste was pale and rigid. The weeks-long crescendo had taxed her almost beyond endurance; exuberance, fear and exhaustion threatened to break her. He paid Claudio and assisted the girl to her feet. Marius quietly approached Lucien, taking his arm as he murmured:

            “Your information was as men at arms, my friend. I hope to repay you some day. There can be no limits to your request should that day arrive, and I hope you do me the service of asking.”

            Lucien shrugged. “Freedom is the sole favor I’ve ever sought.”

            Marius grinned. “Is it free?”

            The fires rampaged throughout the night, illuminating the northern sky and throwing an eerie aurora across the wall of clouds rolling south. Walking home, Lucien and Celeste gaped at the three huge mountains looming closer than possible, flashing and wavering as they reflected the gore of the sky; scowling defiance, they seemed to be bearing down on them, indignant with the perpetually warring tribes of mites and daring them to violate the divine sanctity of their domain. Celeste gasped at the sight, spun and saw on the opposite side the heavens heaving and cascading their way, blood seeping upwards as the scud flew right through it, loosed a half scream and ran towards the house.

            Lucien caught up with her but failed to hold her until she had flown up the stairs and collapsed, sobbing, on Rita’s breast. Rita looked blankly at Lucien and he carried Celeste to the bed, where he wrapped her in quilts and kissed her brow until her breathing had ceased its raw tearing plaint. He forced her to drink a glass of wine and spoke idle phrases about the snows which would come by morning and restore peace to the land, locking their home in a silent space of its own. Within thirty minutes Celeste was calm. She clutched his hand and tried to paint over the shame she felt at having been frightened.

            “It was Gerhardt,” she proposed. “Poor Gerhardt with his eye half carved out. What has he ever done?”

            “He was fighting. He wanted his freedom, as we do ours.”

            “I don’t like this violence. It lights something inside me that I cannot control, something deep and evil and terrifying.”

            “There won’t be any more of it, surely not for a long while. They’ve won, understand. Without an army they’ve decimated the brigands, defeated the noble bastards of France, and scared the Austrians. It shall be quite peaceful now, Love.” 

            “Why is life like this, Lucien? Sometimes I’m so scared I can’t see at all.”

            “It’s all a dream,” he murmured. “Everything. Just a dream.”

            “Do we awaken?”

            “Sometimes. Sometimes many times throughout the same dream, sometimes one merely awakens in yet another dream.”

 *         *         *

            Day dawn, white again, again my love held to my heart. White day dawn within, white my love and white the flame; slow to rise, slow to move, my eyes take in her darling face before I know the day now come. Ancient stone and ancient stream, ancient soul to stir my shores; deluge come and locusts’ plague; temples rise before my eyes, whisper dust before they’re done; falling with my borrowed wings, chasing breaths careening by, floods recede and leave me mud. Passing souls in exiled airs I find the one I’ve loved since then.

            Time, you stole my heart from me.

            Hour, you named false names to me.

            Day dawn white my love, I know your face before I wake.

            Knowing nothing but Celeste, knowing the farthest expanses of the possible, I give you this day, Love, and need no further calendar for myself. The lonely summit of my name is bathed by your queenly snows. Standing neither right nor left, neither above, beyond, or left in shadow, but at the precise center of your storm, Love, I am roused from the moors of sleep to crawl out and take my place at the center of my life and the center of your heart. Rage on days if you need to, Love, for you are my courage and my calamity. I am deep within you, my angel, and will never take another breath again. Your breast is forever in my hand. Your thigh forever on my lips. Standing neither left nor right, I am as old as I will ever be, you alone and only you pour like honey through my life.

            Lucien awoke bleeding inside and riding across the bed with Celeste tearing at him with her satin hands. Born, like a subtle curse, in the very heart of winter, he was thirty five years old this morning.

            Celeste embraced him in her arms, her legs and deep within the fiery cleft at the base of her belly. He drank her mouth, her hair, that glory of womankind; her fingertips played like dreaming doves across his mouth as she whispered his name in a chant of amazement, love, compassion, protection, idolatry, challenge, friendship, passion, fright, surrender, pride, savagery, belief, disbelief, virtue, prayer, desire, eternity.

            “I love you,” she breathed. Then, throwing her arms around him and drawing him as far into her as possible, she cried: “Oh, Lucien, promise that you’ll never leave me, ever, please!”

            Lucien laughed.

            “After I took all this trouble to find you, my Angel? You would have to beat me away with a club!”

            “It’s your birthday, isn’t it, Sweetheart? God, I wasn’t even born yet.” She hugged him closer. “I was still looking for you, though. How did I ever lose you? How old are you, Maroc?”

            Lucien rubbed his hair and answered through a lopsided grin: “Too young to be so useless, too old to be so helpless.”

            Again Celeste teased her lips along his eyes, combing his lashes with her soft pout.

            “You don’t seem any age at all, and you’re certainly not useless or helpless!” She held his face away from hers and peered at him. “I wonder if you’ll look any different when we are old.” She turned his head meticulously to the left and to the right. “I think you’re beautiful, but you can be so strange sometimes! You don’t seem short, you don’t seem tall; you don’t seem old, but you never act young; you are the wisest, kindest man I have ever met, but you perfect buffoonery to the point where neither philosophers nor buffoons can understand what they are laughing at and you hide your heart to everyone but me.”

            “No one else can see my heart. I kept it for you all these years.”

            Celeste soared from the bed and opened the shutters. Standing like a silver lamp consecrating the spot, her naked form shivered as she yelled “Lucien, come quickly! It’s snowed all over! Everything is white! It’s snowing huge, beautiful blossoms!”

            He took the full fruit of her loveliness into his arms and stared out over the valley, the mountains, the forests, all held by snow as completely as he now held her. The world was finally white.

            Pure as love, plush as heaven’s ten thousand quilts of joy, the country around them had been seduced in its sleep and left enceinte with this magic; nothing was as it was before. Now, Lucien thought, all life is blessed. 

            Cradling the contours of Celeste’s elegance in his arms, staring, awestruck at the silent romantic moonscape, Lucien took a lungful of this new air, exhaled and felt all the mysteries of his years, all the sorrows, all the demons congeal into that single breath and disperse out of his spirit. He dressed Celeste in layers of wool, cotton, leather, anything he could find, and pulled her by her now hard to find hand out into the new world.

            They wove and strode into the floes. The storm that had transformed the valley overnight was again whirling its fists around them and they laughed at its ovine fury. Running along the lee of the woods, Celeste tottered and slid, making enormous sport of Lucien having saved her life by catching her for a second, then, later, reversing the epic as he trod an unseen slate of ice.

            “What do you think it means, Lucien? The snow.”

            “It is pudicity itself. Listen to the softness of the silence. Not hard and crystalline like in Rapelle, but maternal, paternal, soft as a baby.”

            “But what does it mean?” She held her arms out and spun in a circle. “What can it tell me that makes it so different from rain or sun?”

            Lucien walked straight, only backwards, so he could watch her cavorting. “It is art. It is a holiness come down to remind us of the magnificent, unparalleled, roar of silence; the devastating, breathtaking, physical bounty of purity. The sun is narcissistic, solipsistic and of combustion: it can only radiate directly, like you, my angel. Rain can be sprightly or dirge-like, depending on what humors it has absorbed, for it can only serve to distill and regurgitate like the sparrow determined to rid herself of her chicks as soon as possible. The sun, raising one nostril in scorn, no less than the rain, sighing for weeks on end, can only mourn its isolation, like most, my Love. But this,” immediately a hill of white appeared in his palm, “is plenitude, ecstasy per se, this is the luminosity of peace and happiness; it is water, water simple, water elemental, water loose and watery, evolved into high art.”

            They plunged their legs, watching, one at a time into the drifts. They unstuck them and, oftentimes glancing at each other or holding each other for encouragement, then made them disappear again beneath the smooth beauty that reminded them of nothing as much as, for Celeste, Lucien’s body, integrity and determination, and, for Lucien, Celeste’s innocence, timelessness and absolutely succulent immaculacy.

            The storm threw flakes now all about them, and, turn as they tried, around and around, they could not avoid the stinging assault any longer. The roads were by now buried; no sky, just a solid roof of white arrows coming down towards them as they stood, laughing, with their heads smattered.

            They had walked as far as possible. Beyond their voices, all was muted by the snow.  

            At the end of the path –at the end of this white world– Lucien turned to see his love full on.

            Like a secret, a divine revelation; like a talisman found lying on the road; like nectar in Elysium and like a kind and paradisiacal companion known, lost, found, and, finally, betrothed for life here and forever, she stood, buried in storm and paralyzed by cold.

            Like a coral reef known only to me, Celeste stood pink and trembling at the end of the path. She puffed the storm out of her face and blinked in a sort of perpetual surprise as the snow frantically covered her eyes with all the kisses I had saved for her over the centuries.

            I gently reached over and placed my lips to the coldest, roundest, softest cheek I had ever touched.

            At home they ate and kissed endlessly. Celeste ran her fingers through his hair, then began dressing Rita up suitable for calling. They were expected, she explained to Lucien, at Renée’s home. Agnes was back playing the suitor.

            “Oh, Lord, not today.”

            “But we must,” she insisted, yanking his arm. “They know it’s your birthday and they wish to toast you. They esteem you as special.”

            Against his will, Lucien sat in the warm house sipping his wine, watching Agnes and Renée arguing about how to best soak up the wine Rita had spilled, and keeping his elation alive by letting his eyes caress the lively woman he had found in a world he had thought sure to be barren of such. An hour had passed with Lucien sustaining his life with this secret leeching when first Rita then Agnes remarked on the distant clash of cloudcaps. Renée leapt up and ran out to the open framework of the house that had once been attached to the mill, verbally swiping at Agnes for her ignorance; it was, she said excitedly, the procession of the forest and mountain spirits coming to defy the winter.

            Over Aare and millstream landing they stood as the beating of the drums lifted its echo off the mountain and placed it determinedly on the streets. Still, they saw nothing. Nothingness thundered to the beat of the march as they stood on the balcony, wetting themselves in the gentle flow from above. Nothing soft, nothing hard. Nothing but nothing beating ominous void coming closer as Agnes and Renée dug their fingers into each other’s arms and Celeste and Rita compared high registers of anticipation. Lucien stood with his face held directly to the sky.

            Shrieks. Batterings worthy of Goths. Shrieks and wails and the sounds of rapine, led by Aleric, a reboation centuries old. Agnes and Renée start chewing themselves. Germanic pre-battle mysticism railing as though to outdo even Picts. Drilling, riveting drumming far along the channel. Agnes whoops as the swans rip the river in their fright and flee. Rita clings to Celeste in fool anticipation. Wailing and snaps of the auto da fe; wheezing malevolence tripping the corner. The timing is rushed and a blood-chilling scream is released ahead of the landslide of drummers rounding the corner. Hard Helvetii roll; drastic Allemani crash. Goblins rush forth by the hundreds. They recruit them from the frustrated farmers of passing miles. Winters spent in bitten misery, death lying like thirteen-foot deep ice at the door and all the damn fool bloodsuckers down here in the village waiting for the cheese to age as they starve up the mountain. Age of demon, age of lust, age of evil blasted things one cannot even imagine any longer without their wigs of hay, their wigs of twig, their wigs of living, spitting rats.

            The procession lurches past Agnes’s balcony like the worst horrors of Lucien’s mind, only joyous.

            Sprites in tunics of bright snail shells, gnomes with wooden pants hiked up to mid-sternum, forest spirits with noses of long and gnarled pine abortions scatter round anointing the villagers with pig bladders; Another phalanx of drummers, barbarous, tight, an avalanche of them beating blood rhythms of battles they have confused and immortalized. Screams. Behind the drummers run the slaves. These are no normal slaves, but slaves of snow and man in snow. Blackened with charcoal, the slaves skip along behind the drummers like drunken hellhounds chasing their persecutors. The drummers, of course, having accustomed themselves to this ritual over so many years, have not the sense of dread we do.

            Legions of women dressed in shimmering, body-casing vestments of leather, fur, brocade gold and silver. Hips break the paper window panes as they riot through the street. Maidens, voluptuous as any houris of Mohammet’s paradise, sashay and stomp, raising their skirts after each step to display the searing curse of their own desperate nights. Flashing red painted vulvas as they rip their dresses right and left, this harem of chastised winter now send us into spasms as they synchronize their tantalizations to the beat. Boots and thighs, what left is there for adoration? Another band of wind and brass break through the corridor, shaking us with pleasure, angst.

            Moons, too, chase the population down the cobblestones. Massive round moons with corkscrewed phalluses bouncing off their thighs. Penises as large as cattle stampede the grounds; the ghouls and gremlins display their phallic might with shouts and great swings to this side, that side, singing hell to the moon, hell to the womb, hell to the cheese we built all winter. Cocks of shrub, cocks of sausage, blood and guts, pricks of red holly berries chasing the squealing women, huge, bouncing, rotten logs of dick pleading after the undulating temptations who run before them.

            Hair of flame, head of wood, heart of cold dog hate: Lucien watched and laughed as all these masterful demons marched their pageant down from the woods and through the streets. Agnes and Renée moved into each other like starfish; Rita looked upon them confused, but Celeste spoke to her and convinced her of the sanctity of their grind; she herself looked and briefly wondered if love so sapphic brings absolution –but then she was oft in the arms of another woman within her. Lucien, wearied of knowing every wrinkle of time and carnality, concentrated on the unexpected miracle parading below him.

            Costumed in filth and mold, monsters of the pine primordial, gnomes and cripples disperse like leaves, chased and chastised by the final column of vengeance: the enraged wives of terrifying demeanor; adder-eyed crones, hags and scolds, shrews and nags, vicious vixens and stupid sluts all pour around the corner at once, in turn mocking the phallic lances before them; storms of hidden madness finally loosed from their hold, blowing through the blizzard.

            Snow. Lucien felt his eyelids fall as the women gave a loud and prolonged cheer for this last assault. He did not wish to waste the sweet rain of the snow on these malicious witches bouncing their bottoms, as bubbled as their cheeses, writhing through the street.

            The procession having vanished down the streets, Lucien gently pulled Celeste out behind her friends’ backs, and they set Rita up in the house then went to sup at the elegant Harder Post tavern, dining on lamb and veal and spaetzle.

            Most of the populace had spent and depleted themselves over the preceding two weeks so Lucien found the Schwyzer quiet, and gladly absorbed the calm. He sat with Celeste pressing dear against his side as they drank with Marius and Althea and savored the fire burning in the stone chemenie. The two men took turns buying brandywine and Claudio even insisted they drink several cups at his expense, which was all the better since Lucien, like most others, had been overcharged by too many tumbling francs during the last weeks. Beyond the tardy din of the cowbell band –who marched through the streets with gargantuan brass bells strapped around their stomachs all clanging in a deafening concert as the men bounced along– the night drowsed on in this pleasant manner with the sole excitement coming from the gales dumping great troughs-full of snow down without. Lucien, delighted and stirred, repeatedly excused himself to slip outside and watch for a moment the rising white dreamscape, head to the wind, letting the cold flood over him as he burned inside from a happiness he was ashamed to speak of to anyone.

            It was late when Claudio determined to close, but the deep fatigue that they had earned evaporated as soon as Lucien and Celeste stepped out into the storm. Through the barely discernable black the air was alive with skipping white stars, thick as wings, and softer. The silence that blanketed the valley was broken only by the crunch of their feet, and even that seemed miles away. The elation of their single life was yet again animated by this heavenly gift, and they looked at each other and laughed, knowing that they had together unleashed such happiness that no other souls on earth could feel anything of its magnitude, and for the moment they seemed to be alone with their shared heart in an immense white galaxy.

            The blizzard unfolded in a thousand different directions at once, burying them as they tried to run, laughing, home. The face of the Harder mountain rose like a huge white slate, the top of which was impossible to see from this close proximity. Waist-deep in the pilgrim drifts, they held each other’s hands, fell together, clasped each other, and pulled each other out of the miraculous cloud garden. Celeste’s treasured laugh reverberated off the peaks and chased them home. Exhausted, she threw herself under the quilts and shut her eyes before she had even stopped laughing.

            Lucien sat at the open window, wrapped in the most peculiar content he had ever felt, watching the snow as it transformed the valley into a world as pure as his love.

            After a while she said: “I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything.”

            Lucien turned in surprise to the voice from in the bed, then turned back to the window and spoke in a long, quiet voice.

            “I have never been happier. To be with you was all I wanted. But I want to tell you, Angel: of all the things I have done and will ever do in my life, I will always be proudest of having found you.”

            The quilt sighed. Lucien, after another minute, went and sat on the bed and watched Celeste sleep, her childish face shelled in the pillow.  

PART TWO.

Babylon

Tear me with your heart, your hands,

Sear me with your sucking anger.

I’ll burn within your deepest night;

Love me like your darkest danger.

I.

Lucien in Love

            Blue. An explosion of sky as the train burst from the tunnel and raced towards the last station before Interlaken. Roaring through a curve, the Schreckhorn rose up before me, gouging the heavens with its twisted peak, ragged, fierce and fearsome. Exploring my pockets for a cigarette, I found in my suit the tickets from the first train ride the three of us had taken. We had spent one of our earliest days in Bern, where we bought Celeste a wool sweater at the flohmarkt, walked through the arcades in the old city, discovered, to our gustatory satisfaction, a donner kebab stand, and had taken Rita to see the bears. We stayed at the Bärengraben for a long time, both of us laughing and wrestling Rita’s leash as she barked at the burly animals she thought were new playmates.

            “She has no idea what they are,” Celeste said.

            “And I’ll bet none of these people have ever seen a pet wolf trying to dive into the bear pits,” I added. “We’re providing more entertainment than these folks’ve seen in centuries.”

            I had spent this day in Zurich, ostensibly pursuing my business, but in reality being hustled by a dowdy Swiss financier with whom I had been treating for several weeks. I entered the specified cafe overlooking the lake on the Bürkliplatz and was accosted by the man, Herr Gerbern, as soon as he’d identified me from my description. He pumped my hand feebly as he took a quick inventory: heavy grey overcoat with black fur trim, dark wool suit, white shirt and tie, black Rossilino hat and long black hair combed back in stern knot; as foreign here as elsewhere.

            “Please,” he indicated a chair. “You look like from Chicago, I think.”

            “No,” I smiled. “All over, via San Francisco. A couple of hours north of there, really.”

            “Ah.” That seemed to mollify him. “I am looking over your business proposal, as you know, with a desire to fund it.” He flipped through my package. “Yes. Yes, it is quite excellent. Very much the elegant work. Ausgezeichnet. So much information,” he grinned.

            “Thank you. I’m quite serious about it. I’m sure you can see how it would be profitable.”

            “Oh, but of course. But allow me to ask you, Mr. Maroc: you wish to establish three of your blues clubs in Switzerland; why exactly here, and not in your own country?”

            I pointed to the proposal. “I’ve explained that. It’s all showbiz. But it’s also basic import/export commerce –bringing the best of one culture to another. I set up these American-style clubs, serve real barbequed ribs and pour nice, big, American sized-drinks while bringing over live bands to play seven nights a week and the Swiss, who have no place like it, will be tremendously appreciative to say the least.”

            Gerbern grunted, appetite primed. “And you will be using on these ribs this Lucky Pig Sauce you describe?”

            “That’s just a hook. The sauce was created by a friend of mine. I did the logo you see there as well as the initial marketing. It’s already established in the States, so I’ll use that as the clubs’ name and image, and slide this man, Mr. Dirasso, a licensing fee.”

            “I must inform you, Mr. Maroc, that I find the idea perfect. We will be able without fail to raise the capital you have here detailed possibly in as little as eight months. My company will publish a memorandum and secure the investments from private sources, of which we have many. However, I shall require from you seven thousand francs to pay for the cost of the memorandum.”

            It wasn’t the first time I had caromed off one of these sudden barricades, although the English firms were more inclined to spring them on one than the Germanic companies. Masquerading as due diligence costs, placement fees, escrows and administrative expense reimbursements, these attempted extortions provided no guarantee of funding and were, in fact, the life’s blood of many companies purporting to be in the business of raising funds. A memorandum, for example, was little more than a copy of my proposal. I had wasted months cautiously waltzing with a number of such establishments only to encounter the sting after a while. Budgeted according to European costs, the project required a substantial investment –half of which would remain in the bank as a six-months’ safety net– but not enough to warrant feeding these sharks for pure entertainment. My money was finite and reserved for Celeste and me. I’d heard enough from Gerbern.

            I kept it courteous, collecting my hat and coat as I rose. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.     

            I walked across the Quaibrücke over to the Odeon, where I inserted myself in the crowd of smug, well-fed students and drank a pear schnapps, lightly raising my glass to the table I imagined Lenin had sat at almost eighty years ago. Then, with time lurching along, I made my way up and around the winding alleys that opened onto the Münsterhof, enjoyed a smoke and a hazy view from the terrace, then ambled north through the cobbled passages of the Niederdorf, retracing the steps Celeste and I had taken on our first evening of true freedom, hugging each other and sighing at the sight of that beautiful, huge, sharp, European neon, until I came to Spiegelgasse 1, which was surrounded by scaffolding and the strictly delineated castes of masons, carpenters, hod boys and plasterers. I wondered if this little-known landmark would be coming up for lease or sale by the time I was ready to set up the first club in Zurich. The racket they’d made there in ’16 drove neighbor Lenin so batty he went home later and, bucking Trotsky and Lunacharsky, refused any commissions for Constructivists, Furturists, Suprematists and others, convinced that all young artists were Dadaists, so starving them out of his paradise. Before tearing myself away from it I crossed myself facetiously and elegized: “From cartoon to documentary, oh man.” 

            I jiggled through the Hauptbahnhof and settled in for the long ride back home.

            “It’s like this, Mazel,” I thought. “I did what I could and poured my blood into it. I know better than to expect any sudden rush of luck, but why must these people always ask me for money at the last minute?”

            Lucien never left me even at that huge distance; it gave me a star-point in this black, black sea, and my grave became my frigate as I sailed across eternity. I watched silently over Genevieve as she struggled through the brambles of sorrow and regret, losing her nights to Hortense and the other succubi of scandal until she found again her courage and all the men who liked her sparkling eyes and chiming voice, and I watched over Lucien and his love, Celeste. It was always my heart he spoke to, and it was always my voice he heard.

            Four hours later I climbed out into the crowds milling around the depot at Interlaken and stood a few paces from the train eyeing the mountains. I took a breath and rotated to cast a proud look at the windows of our apartment five stories high above the river, wondering if Celeste would be watching for me as I always did for her. I stood where we nearly always started our walks, watching the iridescent ducks skimming through the Aare, reminding ourselves that swans mate for life; walking through the fog some days, succulent chalkflows kissing wet and silent, nursing us, lactating for our eyes, the moss, your delicious teeth, Love. Other days, in perfect alpine brilliance, Celeste would grasp my hand for hours as we wandered through the art nouveau town, the chalets old and new, the modern cubes of Swiss efficiency, showing me the gardens she liked, the wrought-iron lily fence she wanted for our home someday, until we found ourselves again beneath the autumn golds and gunsmoke blues of the woods, walking off into the open world in love, at peace, at last.

*

Bright balls of humanity bounced off my legs; all of Interlaken, even the Westbahnhof, was a madhouse of spoiled children learning from their progenitors how to violate a man’s space; three or four large locals plowed into me as I stood there, cursing me quietly for my intransigence.

            We had thoroughly absorbed the splenetic individualism of the Swiss nature in our first days here. From the careless trammeling of crowds in Zurich to the blatant shoving of the Bernese yokels, every encounter with the public became a tangling boogie of dodging, ducking, side-stepping and spinning as one focused on avoiding collision. Celeste was horrified at first, her face accordioned with wrinkles of shock and indignation. She had approached panic when we had met, on a small road in Grindelwald, another car forcing its way towards us with such righteous determination that the driver continued to charge us at a distance of perhaps one yard the entire time Celeste was backing up, which was lengthy.

            Grindelwald itself was our first step out into the splendors, and we’d made full use of the rented car to explore the mountains in those early days. The valley cut down from the steep terrace of First and stopped precipitously at the foot of the Eiger, which rose thirteen thousand feet flawlessly, awesomely, perpendicular. We held hands and goggled at the sheer wall roaring up before us; we rubbed each other for warmth as we watched the clouds skin themselves on the topmost peak. Pulled further along by the endless display of beauty, we walked as Rita ran through narrow defiles, pristine forests and sweeping rises of green, granite and impenetrable white until we reached the mute blue base of the ancient glacier that tumbled down from the crag dividing the valley from worlds inaccessible. I scanned the frozen torrent as it lifted itself up and away from me over the saddle of the Schreckhorn and retreated to the otherworldly wastes of the Aletsch glacier, fourteen miles long and as thick and terrifying today as it was a million years ago. And it was here, I remembered, that an impecunious young tutor by the name of Hegel escaped his employment in Bern and passed the summer of 1796, initially enthralled by the waterfalls cascading throughout the gorges, but disgusted by the minute imaginations of the Swiss themselves; here, where the wooly mammoths had roamed at the same time man was weathering these implacable elements, here, where the massive glory of nature rent the skies and jerked the soul out from a man’s eyes, he had commenced to quilt a fabric of deistic triangles and became so preoccupied with them that he left the majestic Bernese Oberland and the future tourist industry the dismal assessment: “Es ist so (It is thus.).”

            The houses popped across the sharp valley and we told each other how beautiful they must look in the heart of the Christmas season. It seemed that we had finally found the idyll of our dreams, a place of such raw beauty that we could live and love forever free of all the misfortune that had chased us to this spot.

            “Lucien, look: that says that house is for rent, doesn’t it?”

            “Yes. I can telephone the number. Are you sure you want to stay here, though? We’ll be neck-deep in snow for months.”

            “I thought you liked the snow.”

            “I do, but I’m worried about passing the entire winter here. I’ll do fine, I can work on my play or write some songs, but I can’t imagine you locked in a house the whole time. In the winters here,” I told her, “women have been known to eat their mates.”

            “Good!” she pinched me. “I guess we should probably live in Bern, though. These people are rude. We’ll come back here as often as possible.”

            I could have stayed in those reaches forever. Celeste would have lost her mind, however, and it was with genuine sorrow that we drove back down to Interlaken.

            I had then spent several days scouring the streets of Bern for suitable quarters, but with no luck. We were still ensconced in the Alplodge, still dining on jam, bread and cheese in our cold little room, and though Celeste had broken through her strange fit of alienation from me and was once again as close as she had been at Khalid’s, I was now sharply aware of the importance security and protection held for her peace of mind so, abandoning my daily train trips to and from Bern, rented an attic studio apartment in Interlaken. Being located on the north bank of the Aare, it was officially in the township of Unterseen, but there was absolutely no discernable difference between the two communes. Celeste was delighted with the apartment at first, congratulating me on striking an advantageous deal and immersing herself in the niceties of decorating and arranging the place until she felt it was truly our home. She nailed talismans into the hard, sharp sprayed plaster, and conjured flowers across the room, arranged her photographs of Rita, and organized her wardrobe for the season. The place was, as per my negotiations, furnished, but only minimally; stray fruit crates made up for whatever lacked. I wandered around town buying necessities such as blankets and pillows.

            The light, the imperious panorama outside the kitchen window, the radiant heating that afforded me the warmest winter I had ever passed in my life, all contributed to the final easing of my mind and the firm relegation of my troubles to the past. I was at last whole again, and with Celeste ever effulgent at my side I would live each day in a state of happiness known only to the gods.

            Standing at the tall window that first evening, watching the ducks in the river, the play of lights flickering across the valley as far as Lake Thun and as high as Piz Gloria on the peak of the Schilthorn, following the little gusts of human activity outside as she lay back in my arms, Celeste spun herself around and grabbed me as she thought of something crucial: “Let’s just keep this place for ourselves. Let’s keep the rest of the world away from here, never spoil it with anybody else’s bullshit. After all we’ve been through we deserve a sanctuary.”

            “Brilliant as always,” I smiled. “So be it: this house is consecrated to love alone.”

            And, as Rita excitedly watched the horses ride past, Celeste laid her lips against mine and sighed as the fire she’d come to crave roared through her like a blast furnace.

*

            For some time, then, the house was indeed all ours. Without, the first months had sucked us into a vortex of social foolery that swept us along from the Drei Schwyzer to the cramped cell of Jim’s and countless other stranger’s digs, Celeste pairing up with anyone who had hash to offer, drinking and bantering at all hours of the night and in all corners of the region. I often wondered where the hell we were as I looked out and tried to deduce the strange location from the position of the mountains, wishing as I watched Celeste laugh and dance, that we were in our home and in our bed. I had also already seen enough people to suffice for a lifetime. The strain of the hours alone was beginning to tear at me; the smoke and drink were normal for this culture but exhausting nonetheless. Still beaten from the past year’s labors, I would climb out of bed to start the coffee and dive into the floor, coughing and suffocating on the phlegm accrued from the night’s roistering.

            “We drink too much,” Celeste would say.

            “No kidding. I’m getting too old for this. And my lungs are so caked I think I’m getting all my oxygen through my ears.”

            I loved the sound of her voice as she rested her hand on my head and asked me if I was okay.

            The house was finally violated as the crush of new acquaintances spilled over; first came Renée and Agnes, crying, joshing, feuding and despairing; then Jim, who would stay until dawn, listening to music and smoking hash with Celeste, who had also discovered a smoking mate in Sergio. I found myself groaning over these visits, unable to sleep in the open flat while Jim was yakking, and very quickly uninterested in the melodrama of Renée and Agnes, or Sergio’s and Celeste’s bickering. Celeste would call Jim at work and invite him over for dinner, but he never seemed able to make it, which suited me; I had yet to understand what Celeste saw in him, what set him apart from anybody else in the world, and was disturbed both by her enthusiasm and the fact that she had told me that she had been smoking heroin with him one of those long nights I had lain sleepless in bed, eventually sticking on my shoes and walking around the boat house for a predawn hour before coming back to find them still at it and oblivious to my comings, goings, or groanings. Fortunately the neighbors had not complained about the music. I myself was indifferent to drugs –I thought them redundant– and rarely concerned myself with others’ affection for them, but I knew Celeste had no notion of insidious pathology of heroin and I resented Jim’s influence. Celeste had also claimed that Jim had been strongly propositioning her. It was odd that she only spoke of these things long after they happened and then only after elaborately divagating and extracting from me promises in advance that I would not concern myself with the matters, and I was struck by the flexible and dilatory sense of honesty she reserved for me, whom she loved.

            The second time she spent the night at Jim’s she lost her keys and I resolutely ignored the intercom that began buzzing me awake at five in the morning. Likewise the phone, but I had been roused regardless of my reactions and immured myself in an unquestioning silence for the remainder of the day.

            It was the snow that brought us calm. The season’s gift was luxuriant that year, pouring down in massive soft flakes, spinning silently through the night sky and giving us the isolation and protection one would find by living in a souvenir paperweight. It covered the land with the thickest, gentlest expanse of grace we had ever seen, calling to us in dulcet melodies day and night, soothing us with its ever elusive voice as we waded hip-deep through its embrace, Rita charging ahead and trackable solely by her upright tail, burrowing through like a submarine. The shimmering ropes of it as the night’s bounty dressed the trees, the joy of the mountains as they sighed beneath its dreamy cover, barely visible now as the world rose up white from its floor to the top of the sky, inlaid with turquoise waters and slate-colored firs, the ghostly glory of it soothed our beings and gave us the benediction we had needed, the blessing of innocence we had sought for our love.

            Celeste would still meet fairly regularly with Renée and Agnes, going for long walks along the river, ensuring exercise and long periods of freedom for Rita. Renée demonstrated how to use the plastic bags available from the green metal boxes planted throughout the land to pick up Rita’s huge excrements, as required by law, and deposit them, nicely bagged and knotted, in the adjoining receptacle.

            As it was part of the building’s roof, our flat  –a Dachgeschoß— was tapered along the western side, creating a wall of perpendicular ceiling-high kitchen windows, each of which could be opened, while leaving enormous dormer closets at each end of it. One was large enough for all our clothes, enough space to live in, actually, and Rita was visibly proud of having her own room –the entire south attic– and would drag her stuffed bears in there to mangle. Celeste constantly brought her pigs’ ears and bones and bits of fur to keep her happy, but Rita preferred the small teddy bears above all, and we began to buy them regularly. Both Celeste and I felt a maudlin twinge of regret whenever we sacrificed the poor things to Rita’s jaws –as though we sensed a helpless sort of soul somewhere in its stuffing– and Celeste often gently nuzzled the bears against the dog and tried to convince Rita that these were her friends and perhaps susceptible to hurt. It was futile, of course, and Rita continued to gleefully devour each new bear.

            After much conniving and a xenophobic deposit I managed to twist the laws enough to get a telephone installed, and Celeste plopped down on the floor to sort through the mesh of cables, adaptors, surge protectors and plugs as she wove her lap-top computer to the hidden world of electronic communication that baffled me. Observing the proceedings, assisting her as much as possible, reaching into my armful of inanimate vipers and handing her random articles as her hand appeared from beneath the desk –which wasn’t much use by way of streamlining things– I figured I knew less about the infernal contraption after we’d passed half a day setting it up than I had at the outset. By afternoon we were successful and once she’d ascertained that the connection was working she dashed off messages to her friends in the States, then compelled me to watch as she pranced through a course of mice, field codes and cartoon icons, explaining in that chipper prattle intrinsic to the children of the new cyberworld how easy it all was to operate. The frightened shock on her face when she finally plugged in the printer and watched it explode was much more my kind of gag.

            “It’s not funny, you idiot! The manufacturer promised me it could adapt to the European current.”

            By the following morning Celeste had forgiven me, having rolled into my arms sometime before waking, murmuring desperate endearments while still in the mists of sleep. The puffing innocence of her face as she dreamt, the languorous heat and fullness of her blessed form as it flowed across me, the woody fragrance of her hair that reminded me of a time and a place I could never quite name never failed to reassure me that my life was now a passage of unassailable wonders.

            Dreaming, she was a dream. One of most supreme delights I’d ever experienced was sailing my eyes along the beautiful rivers of her hair, her limbs, flowing from the sublime white lake of her hips and stomach, her luxurious breasts, her lissome neck and the radiant pool of her face. All the innocence of paradise had survived in this one exquisite being and I would watch as it susurrated through her veins.

            Awake she was snows and skies and tropical fruit, crimson and bursting and thundering scents. Deeper than jungles, disturbing as the passion flowers thrusting, taunting and licking the recesses of sanity. White and untouched, misty and shimmering like some fata morgana; red-hot and roaring, a crackling corona.

            Rising from the fog of sopor, her body would hover a moment before blending itself into mine, her kitty eyes fluttering as the world crept into her mind, and Celeste would part the heavy dry warmth of her thighs to brand me with her desire, then with a cry pull me over her. I sink into her, stretched beyond any measure of simple lust, straining still for passion’s infinitude, unable to move while the first flashes of ecstasy erupt in my skull. She rolls her eyes up into her own secret heavens as I instinctively clutch at the face of love gasping and huffing beneath my lips. One blind hand flying against my chest, my back, the other fanned out against the wall past her head, Celeste presses onto me, locking her being into one with my own, twisting and bursting as tears cascade down her face. And here, where the billowing richness, the heaving sumptuousness of her existence has surreptitiously left in this otherwise sealed Eden a window open to my songs of love, I gently retreat only to bore in again, driven by all the poems I long to speak to her. Celeste abandons herself to soft moans as she clasps her belly. Chasing her heart through this labyrinth of sensation so grievous that the human mind cannot distinguish whether it is pleasure or pain, I brush my face across hers, whispering “I can smell you from here,” and this very perfume by itself rips my mind into reeling suns.

*         *         *

            I lost a good month’s work as the jolt from the printer had spiked up into the computer itself, which now sat smug as a stuffed cat on the table. I continued to write up my proposal by hand, adding statistics and fulminating forth with supporting arguments, sometimes passing hours with Marius learning the Swiss laws; he had himself started businesses and raised investments for them, so comprehended what I was up to and followed it appreciatively. In these weeks Celeste indefatigably tracked down a firm in Bern that would honor the warranty on her computer. Since the phone was all set, she also called her parents and her friends in the States both to let them know where she had settled and to work on the details of the wedding she had promised to serve as a bridesmaid in come July. I noticed a shocking change in Celeste whenever she spoke with her American girlfriends: she would shout and laugh like a giantess, and it was so deafening that it scared the hell out of me the first time she did it. I gathered some were friends of her youth, her adolescence in Orange County, others from her college days in Chico. They seemed to enjoy speaking with one another, however, and the image that came to my mind as they squealed their greetings and shrieked with glee was of a set of wholesome high school and college companions bonded in schools; another thing of which I had no experience. I had been writing the first time she called her friend Leslie, and had actually leapt up startled by the racket. Celeste cracked up at my state when she’d hung up.

            “I know,” she glowed, “we’re loud!”

            She did not yet feel comfortable telling anyone, friends or family, about me. I shrugged it off, assuming she knew what she needed better than I. Through various calls I wasn’t aware of, she’d also heard that Genevieve had filed for a divorce, although I couldn’t recall whether or not our uproarious wedding had been legal. Either way, it was right. I had been clear that she should keep the house and whatever was in it.

            Between my German and Celeste’s determination, we had arranged a date for her to get the computer fixed at the one place in Bern that handled her brand. In order to save train fare, we decided that I would remain at home with Rita. When the morning came, I ran over the map with Celeste, showing her the easiest route from the Bern station to the repair shop until her trepidation subsided and her natural vivaciousness had regained the ground. She dressed her beautiful body, packed up her maps and equipment and held her hand out for me to hold as we walked with Rita to see her onto the train.

            “If these people are all ghosts like you said,” she wondered, dodging the foot traffic, “why must they always boing right into you?”

            “They might be dead, but they’re still greedy. It’s a nation of pickpockets —Taschendieben.”

            It was one of those innocuous partings that nonetheless chime an unnamed, wholly unexpected tenderness in the heart. Celeste appeared as vulnerable, as delicate, as young and as lovely as the edelweiss protected by all laws of man. Her golden face pulled away as Rita and I stood on the platform.

            We went back to the flat, where I invented some food, then read the paper to Rita. I followed her along the river later, but even the bright Aare and the walls of the Alps seemed dull without Celeste. Looking at Rita as she came and stared at me, it appeared that we both felt the foolishness of nature, no matter how gorgeous, deprived of Celeste.

            I caught her phone call from the Hauptbahnhof in Bern, telling me how things had gone, that the machine would have to stay in traction there for several weeks, but that she herself was planning to clamber aboard the train back to Interlaken in ten minute’s time, and that she loved me.

            I watched the clock until I figured the train would be charging home and rigged Rita up so that we could surprise Celeste at the station.

            “Come on, then. You won’t need your bear. Besides,” I admonished, prying the shapeless little skinlet from her fangs, “I’ll bet you’ll get something real to eat.”

            We waited as the train pulled up and scanned the passengers until that luminous sun that held our lives together emerged from the coach looking startled and proud. Inside, I beamed like an idiot as I let Rita go and watched her hurl herself into Celeste’s arms.

            At home, Celeste could not conceal her pride at having conquered the city, and she ran back and forth between whirling the dog and pelting me with kisses as she chattered delightedly about the routes she had taken, the arrangements she’d made, the weather she’d enjoyed and all the people she’d seen, and I continued to glow like a fool as my own pride in her warmed the inside of my face, my breast.

“Hey, you cow!” she laughed, hauling Rita out of her bag. She then produced jerky bones for Rita and donner kebabs for our dinner, hiding the new stuffed bear in the cupboard until later. It was a big pink one, obviously special.

            Renée phoned that week and said that Agnes was back in town and that they would be at Da Rica, in the old Unterseen center, if we cared to join them for a postprandial drink. Celeste wavered between heading that way or passing the evening with Jim as he slogged through his shift at the Artful Dodger. Having finished redressing herself and applying her make-up, she opted to drop by Da Rica, since it was a new setting. We distributed various treats for Rita around the room and shot through the door before she could grasp what we were doing. She was still not used to being alone.

            Da Rica was dark, warm and homey. The waiters were surly until I addressed them in Italian, then they became my best friends. Renée and Agnes appeared to be reconciled, and we siphoned off a large carafe of red wine while Agnes narrated her adventures in Brussels, including several violent encounters with a former girlfriend. Renée chided her a bit for her rough and tumble approach to life, but I could see that she was still weighing it against her life with Ulrich and all he provided. At eleven o’ clock we saw that we would have to buy another carafe. Renée moaned about her funds, but accepted our offer to cover it.   

            “Ok,” she acceded. “You pay me a wine today and I do it for you tomorrow.”

            Celeste had no objection. “Don’t even think about it. So, you’re expecting a big check tomorrow?”

            “No.” Renée looked irritated. “I go for stampe.“

            “Ah, at the Arbeitsamt.” I explained: “She means the unemployment office. You can do that here whether you were working previously or not.”

            Both Celeste and Agnes were impressed. Both congratulated Renée on fitting into the system so well. The money was substantial and unconditional but the stigma attached to such a lifestyle was potent enough to dissuade most of the Swiss from simply plunking their feet up on the table and dipping into the dole til the sun set on their lives. I shocked both the women by explaining how at least forty million Americans had neither money nor medical insurance of any kind, and that those who did have coverage received dangerously grudging care while paying more and more of the costs themselves; these costs, I told them, continued to rise at a rate fully sixty per cent higher than the national inflation rate.

            Renée was appalled, but still disgruntled with her own predicament: “I’m tired of going to the Arbeitsamt just to buy me food and a wine. I wish we could make some money some way.”

            “I’ve got an idea,” I brightened. “We replace all those doggy-bag dispensers with firecracker dispensers and charge a franc apiece.”

            A sudden “HAW” jumped from Renèe’s mouth. All her steel melted, I noticed, when she gave herself up to simple amusements. “Hey! I think we’ll be rich! Everybody in Switzerland will want to explode the shit.”

            Agnes chuckled. Celeste rolled her eyes and complained “I don’t think it’s safe for you two to speak to each other.”

            Renée pressed on: “You must run fast, though.”

            “And hope that nobody’s passing by when it blows,” I cautioned. “Maybe.”

            Agnes slapped her hand on the table and, recollecting a choice American phrase she’d encountered long ago, and had always treasured for its boundless propaedeutical applications, barked: “Ok, enough! If I stop this car I’m gonna smack you kids!”

            At our invitation Renée and Agnes joined us for nightcaps at the Babylon. Located in the sprawling cellar of the Hotel Intercontinental just across the bridge from our flat and managed by a kind little man named Walli, Babylon was the most popular nightspot in the valley, abominably loud and overfitted to groaning with all the latest discotheque accoutrements: mirror balls, strobe lights, computer operated color bars and revolving spots synchronized with the music, three bar stations and countless mirrors, which the patrons seemed to enjoy above all. The sauce, I noticed, was dispensed from opticals regulated by a central computer installed to prevent any such travesty of commerce as free drinks or a drink poured above the official line printed on each glass. As the three women huddled and yelled I inspected the place, keeping a corner of my mind on the bars and adding up the drink profits as they gushed forth.

            Stinted to the point of retardation in their natural sense of taste, the Swiss were currently cultivating the afflictions of Techno-music, a glorified rehash of the worst disco innovations of the previous decade and a half. The music itself consisted of virtually any sort of composition and blathering set to an overpowering 4/4 beat; the difference between Techno and genuine music of the 4/4 genre was that in the latter case the accent is usually placed on the second and forth beats –unless funk is played, in which case the accent will hit on the one-beat– whereas in Techno all four beats were equally accented, ferociously enough to pound through your innards. I contemptuously mentioned as much to Celeste, who seemed just as annoyed by the garboil as I.

            Pulling my hand and nesting her lips in my ear, she hollered: “Why do they do that?”

            “It’s a kind of gluttony,” I screamed. “Music relies on the pause, the anticipation, as much if not more than the notes to achieve its form. This stuff has no form. It’s like shoveling food into your mouth nonstop.”

            “It’s for people on drugs.” Renée explained. “They take ecstasy and have to do this because they are completely nervous.”

            Her analysis seemed to fit a number of individuals there, but many were just too deprived to know any better.

            Jim came in greeting the multitude right and left. Celeste leapt up and waved him over to our table where he settled his pint and mumbled hellos.

            “And hows it by yourself?” he asked me.

            “Not bad. Just enjoying a little digestion music.”

            “Take a gander at somethin’.” he said, hiking a wad of paper out of his back pocket. “A letter from the ex, threatening to call the coppers if I’m late visitin’ the kid again. Any chance of what she says going through?”

            I spread the sheets out on the table and read through them with Celeste hanging over my shoulder. The stuff was wheedling and vituperative –extensively so– meandering and peppered with threats of legal action for the most absurd things, none of which would be prosecuted or even noticed by the law. It was infantile and demented, but I confined myself to assuring Jim that he had no legal problems in sight. Celeste finished the letter then returned it to Jim, laughing as she yelled: “What a stupid bitch!” Jim grinned and nodded. “Psycho!” he asserted. Celeste bought another round and I abandoned the conversation for further scrutiny of the Babylon operation.

            Video monitors leered at me from every corner. Across their screens paraded witless strongmen, lingeried nymphs, bearded reptiles getting tangled in their guitar strings and trying to match their lip movements to the lyrics, and, in sum, a ghastly assortment of sterile sci-fi sets and low-budget, speed-cut scenarios withering by the eighth-second for lack of narrative; even this cinematic embellishment ranked fifteen years behind in everything but the presenting technology. I did not feel the Swiss promoters would be much competition. Meanwhile, the place had made an easy nine thousand dollars profit since I began watching the trade tonight, and the throng ranged in age from sixteen to sixty, all dying for diversion, all bulging with banknotes.

            The dancing and the music set me to reflecting on more elemental matters of existence, however, and I returned to the conversation with a follow-up bulletin: “What I was saying, about the pauses; it’s odd, really, but music is an essentially temporal construction, yet I’ll sauté my pants if most people don’t register it in their minds in exclusively spatial terms.”

            Renée and Agnes stared at me and Jim said “Jaysus,” making me suspect that my pontification was unwelcome. Then Agnes pointed a cautious finger at me and looked solemnly at Celeste: “He’s a very smart man,” she said.

            Celeste’s eyes shone as she squeezed my leg and nodded.  

            By the time we began to long for the serenity of our lovers’ retreat we were all nicely, but just nicely, souped. Escaping the mashing hordes and porridge-thick smoke, we took deep breaths of the air tumbling down from the Hardermannli and crossed the black Aare to the door of our building. It was only when I’d reached for my keys and was swapping see-you-arounds with Jim that I realized Celeste had fallen behind. From just across the bridge I could hear her voice defiantly chipping away at some second voice. I shrugged at Jim and turned to retrieve her only to see her shadowy figure already on the bridge, marching towards us. Upon arrival she looked piqued. 

            “There’s some fucking guy over there who refuses to believe I’m American,” she barked.

            “So?”

            “So I want you to go set him straight and tell him to stop giving me shit!”

            “What are you arguing with him for at all?”

            “Ahh, go on,” Jim teased.

            Celeste hit the sidewalk with her heel. “I mean it, Lucien. This simp is really pissing me off!”

            I could make no sense of the thing. I shrugged again and said: “Ok, I’ll go tell him you’re American.”

            Halfway back across the bridge she saw that her antagonist was no longer lurking about and a more detailed inspection revealed that he was not to be found at all. Celeste grumbled and fumed while I walked her back home, and she actually bit Rita on the lip after she finished scrubbing the urine out of the carpet and picking up the contents of a an overlooked teddy bear that had been strewn across the place in revenge for our excursion.

*

            Celeste made a final assault on Bern to retrieve her computer, which had been rebuilt and resurrected, ready to do our bidding. I fooled around with Rita and again we polished ourselves up to go meet Celeste at the Westbahnhof and carry her home like a heroine.

            Grinning victoriously, she squared up the computer on the desktop, then darted over to me at the kitchen table. When she ran out of descriptions of the sights of the city, Celeste grew nervously silent and serious, lifting herself from the table and returning with her purse pulled to her chest.

            “I got you a present,” she offered. She seemed unsure about it.

            Rapidly, she set down before me a gold-plated zippo lighter with florentine designs etched over it, one elegant blank rectangle running down the front for an inscription.

            I was embarrassed. Presents had always been a rarity in my life. It was an act of togetherness in a way, as she always liked me to light her cigarettes. I managed to whisper my thanks.

            Celeste pointed to the blank space on the front. “I didn’t get it engraved because I wasn’t sure what you’d want.”

            I laughed gently, even nervously at this token of love gleaming in my hand. “A true treasure,” I said. “Thank you, Celeste, and thank you for living.”

            “You really like it?” she looked positively terrified.

            “Of course I do.” I scooped her onto my lap. “I know what I want engraved on it: ‘Forever.’“

            “Forever,” she agreed, kissing me.

            I whipped out a cigarette for myself and one for her, planting it between her lips, and lit them both with this unexpected gift.

            “You have to admit,” she grinned despite herself, “that it’s better than the exploding lighter you tricked me into using back in Rapelle. Boy, was I pissed off!” She smacked me for the remembered offense. “I can’t believe you did that; we were barely even friends then!”

            “Hey…I just set it on the bar…I didn’t know who would pick it up. Anyway, everybody was laughing because you leapt up yelling ‘That’s not funny!’“

            She dug her fingers into my ribs, making me squeal and squirm until smoke started seeping into her eye. “I wish I had known you all your life,” she sighed, rubbing it. “You must have really been something before you met me.”

            “Oh yeah,” I grumbled. “A regular Saint.-Just.”

*

            With her lap-top roused from its infirmity, I typed up my proposal, with Celeste eagerly peeking for typos and punching up font commands until I had what I needed. We both knew that we had wasted time and money during the month behind, so we redressed our sins by working like hummingbirds, charting in numbers, faxing out inquiries, myself pasting it all together by hand –which I could do faster and better than any computer– using the window on the Alps as a light table. I altered the original logo I had done for Eugene and we used the printer at a nearby shop to run it all out before printing it up on a classy marbleized paper. First responses came back and packages went out.

            Celeste explored the internet and e-mailed her friends as I went about my stuff, sometimes chattering effervescently, sometimes griping about what her friends or even the complete strangers on the net were doing.

            “That guy Michael in Texas is getting roped into a marriage he doesn’t really want,” she informed me. “I’m torn between telling him what I really think about it and just writing something a little more abstract that might get him at least thinking.”

            “Are you nuts? You don’t even know those people.”

            “Yeah, you’re right,” she sighed. “Maybe I’ll just stop responding to him.”

            “Either that or stop telling me about it. I’m not interested in everyone else’s problems. They’ve been the death of me.”

            “You just don’t like computers,” she laughed. A dreadnought it was, a roaring laugh shouting down the seas.

            “I don’t understand this rush into yet another world of illusion, people wasting their lives in these cyber-relationships, whizzing around in the grand nowhere for eight to fourteen hours a day. Beyond saving on typesetting costs, those things are about as beneficial as televisions. I’d rather stick with my old Olivetti.”

“Or just stick with a stick,” she hooted.

“Ok. Neither art nor love need adhere to the laws of scientific development. I am the last cave-painter,” I explained, sprinkling my fingers through the air around her. “The man who draws in the sand with a shaman-stick, so both the women and the hunters know their names, their spirits. I am the last coastal fire.”

            Other times she would glide over to me and fill my lap with her tangible luminance. “Why do you want to do the blues so much?” she would ask me.

            “They need it in Europe. It’s the real thing, as they say. It’s raw. It’s love, and the hell of love, breaking through with a voice raised to heaven, or a guitar slashing like a dirty, rusty razor.”

            “Like what? I mean, who does that? Khalid’s band is good, but they’re all white guys.”

            “These days many are. No,” I rested my hands on her breasts, “for the original best you would have to experience something like…” I stuck my hand in my memory, “Oh, Otis Spann and Robert Lockwood Jr. doing King of Spain, or Ray Charles’ On the Other Hand; Big Boy Cruddup’s That’s All Right. Once I saw Muddy Waters perform Terraplane Blues. Just the drum, one guitar and him. I swear the tension was chilling!”  

            She flicked my nose. “How do you know they weren’t white?”

            “Same color inside,” I shrugged. I curled my fingers to smick her snozzle right back and set them under her nose as she whimpered and keened “Owwwww!” I always collapsed at that and consequently she was never flicked, as I had to abandon the set-up, laughing myself blind while she “Owwwwwwwwed” in various pitches for as long as ten minutes.

            There was work still ahead, but we felt released, having won the long war and surmounted the unendurable agony that had held us apart. And although we knew all we had and were was floating on some mystical, molten layer of some sphere, we gradually became our natural selves: playful, and of constant quick humor, perfectly matched in pace.

            When we realized that it was Thanksgiving day, we walked, hand in hand as always, over to the Drei Schwyzer and asked Marius where to buy a fresh goose or duck. He gave me directions to two possible Metzgereien, the first of which was run by a xenophobic blockhead who chatted with the other customers, assiduously ignoring the two foreign love-birds waiting before the counter. Celeste grew angry and insisted we leave. The second shop was a specialty delicatessen, and we were greeted perfectly courteously. As I haggled for a bird, the butcher trotted back and forth with smaller and smaller ducks, until, dismayed by Celeste’s queasiness as much as the heft of the fowl, I opted for a large, plump chicken. We walked over to another store where I purchased all the ingredients for stuffing and side dishes, then returned home to prepare the feast. I spent several hours creating from memory elaborate flavors and textures; I had Celeste chopping walnuts while I introduced her to the secret of cooking celery root, which she had never seen.

            “How do you know how to do all this?” she asked.

            “I don’t. It’s like painting”

            We bustled back and forth with offerings carefully prepared, chopping, slicing, chatting and leaning up against one another.

            “This is the best way to cook,” I said. “Both of us in the kitchen raising scents and kisses, building meals marinated in love.”

            “I know!” she enthused. “I’m so happy that if I died right now I would never look back on anything with regret.”

            “What? You’d leave me to finish this all alone?”

            “You’re right. I can’t let you get fat and fall apart. I guess I’ll have to stick around. –This shit smells great! It’s a good thing you know what you’re doing. I only made a thanksgiving dinner once and that was mostly taken over by Paul’s parents. God, I was nervous. We had to go out and buy decent plates and silverware just for them.”

            I pampered the chicken while Celeste rested at the table and I watched as her eyes gently rolled upwards and sideways as she tried to sing in her hilariously off-key voice a song I had written, and I caught myself swallowing hard as her face assumed the abstracted look of absolute impeccancy it did when she tried to remember lyrics. In the steam from the celery root and the cranberries we’d found, she painted a heart on the window with our names safe within it.

            We washed the clumps of fruit, crumbs, nuts and spices off our hands and fell, quite spontaneously, onto the bed, where we remained until I had to rescue the dinner.

            I lifted the soft leadfoil off the bottle and Celeste bejeweled the table with cloths and candles, and used the most artful selection of bowls and platters to array the feast; she brought out her two silver goblets and filled them with wine. In the last glow of the sun, sliding off the mountains and reflecting on the silver; in the soft and silent flames of those medieval tapers, and in the inseparable delight that flashed from our eyes, we touched our glasses and lips across the table and felt the untrammeled expanse of love spreading out on all sides of us.

            “This is strange,” she whispered. “I’m embarrassed to even say it, but I really feel thankful for the first time. It sounds stupid but, believe me, it doesn’t feel that way.”

            “I know exactly what you mean, Angel.” I raised my glass again. “This is just for us. No one, nothing else matters anymore. I’ll go to my grave loving you.”

            And that night surely entered the Empyrean Cartulary as they sighed and laughed and placed upon their lips the designs of their life, that rich sacrament of their lovers’ banquet. And afterwards, as they walked, in their comical wraps to the meeting place around the corner, Lucien pointed to the mountains now a mere whisper, barely visible against the sky and spoke the voice she loved, explaining how to recreate the ghostly landscape by washing a canvas with Prussian blue –lighter across the center and almost equally darker at the top and the bottom– then painting in with the brush dipped in oil just the white contours of the snow suspended against nothing except the blue. He observed the work of art manifesting itself in the space between her eyes and the wall of Alps in the distance and felt a surge of longing for the woman not six inches away from him. All the tricks of life and mind crashed about his feet like so many useless ornaments as he suddenly said “I love you.” Celeste lifted her face to smile at him but felt herself soften to the point of immobility as she saw all the grief of love in his face, and her eyes welled up with the same tears he was holding in his. As the jungle of language overgrew itself helplessly inside her, Lucien dashed them both against a wall and chased his hands along her face, devouring her eyes, her mouth, her cheeks, with his lips, holding her gaze with a ravening look and whispering words that finally spilled the tears from her lids as she nodded her head then said “Yes, I will marry you, Lucien. I didn’t know. I didn’t know you wanted me like that.”

*         *         *

            Starting a chain of nightclubs was far from what I’d prefer to be doing, particularly after having worked myself to death on my theater then learning the transitoriness of it all, but I figured this would be the most direct way to cement our future; do the damned work just once more then Celeste and I could live in liberty. As I’d told Gerbern: it’s all showbiz anyway. In truth, the inspiration came to me musing on the old Vaudeville circuits, then transferring that model to ‘exotic’ Blues, with the food and the interior design completing the atmosphere. So now I spent a hideous week tracking each projected franc of income and expenditure for the five-year cash flow charts Celeste was going to grid into her computer. With all the categories, contingencies and incrementations involved I was half-blind and panting by the time afternoon rolled around, so we would wrap ourselves up against the snow and go walking with Rita, who was –slowly– learning to restrain herself from running away. She was happy and rampant as she teamed up with other dogs or fled from the swans along the river.

            “See that?” Celeste asked. “That’s called cross-cantering. Rita’s run like that ever since that farmer shot her”

She meant back in the States, before Rapelle, before everything before.

            As Rita galloped off to scare the cows and returned to us in great arcs of freedom, Celeste rested her head on my shoulder and swung my hand in hers. The nattering shadows of green and gold chased up her face, over her head and down the back of her skirt as we traversed the play of light along the banks. We sucked in beautiful clouds of cold air and twisted around as we strolled to keep the mountains in sight. I invariably felt like running up into those massive, stately breasts, admiring the view afforded from the valley but envious of the hidden lakes and racing plateaus that nested among the peaks.

            “Don’t you worry,” Celeste assured me, “we’ll find your meadow. That’s where I want to get married, in our meadow, the one you always saw in your dreams, with the lake opening up right at the foot of the slope, all the wildflowers powdered across the grass, and a beautiful, huge mountain at our backs. I don’t even want anybody else there but us. And we should do it at just the right time: my favorite time of day, in the late afternoon when everything is pink and amber at the same time.”

            ” Ah, the Alpenglühen.” Meadow of my dreams, lovers at the lake. I never thought I would ever find the one who was pictured at my side, the one who cracked open my heart and let it grow as immense as the soaring blue sky above that magic spot.

            “We’ll have to wait until spring. Or summer. We can tell my friends and my parents later, even bring them all over for a celebration once we decide where we’re going to live. I just don’t want anybody else there when we do it. We can make up something to say, something beautiful, and marry ourselves. Forever.”

            Rita loped through the trees, bounding onto the path and lunging at us, then running back into the woods to forage for rotting carcasses to roll in.

            “Tell me something, though,” she said. “If you never believed in official marriage, why do you want to marry me?”

            “Oh, it’s not the official stuff that moves me. It’s me –trying to catch up to all I feel for you– the inestimable age and duration of it; it still startles me, your fate and mine, this hot honey that starts to pour down my heart whenever I look at you or think of you…”

            “And not just the heart, either,” she shuddered.

            I stood stock-still and tried to summon the words. “It’s you, Celeste. Your face, your hands, your ideas and whims. I love the wild horses in your blood, in your mind…” I blushed, “…I love the birds that you call ‘ours’ in the sky you carry with you, the angelic limbs of your inner Celeste; I feel unspeakably ugly watching the fluttering, fluttering, mute and dazzling embroideries of your heart. I want to see you in the sunlight, fooling with flowers, or staring off into the air, knowing that we’ve made love that morning –gently, despite the way you drive me insane– and knowing as peacefully as the breeze that would slip through your hair as I watch you that we have made love all our lives, that we would walk and drink and see places and continue to make love all our lives.”

            We varied our course and left the river behind, stepping deeper into the forest, passing an apiary manned by a Brueghelesque old peasant. Celeste bubbled with plans and dreams for our future. I walked on like a somnambulist, enchanted beyond recovery by the loveliness of the world –this new world– and the voice and vision of Celeste gently washing over me in waves. I would be awakened only when she pulled me, as in our first days, tight to her and kissed me, murmuring words of love and happiness, mashing me against the trees, warming me with her breasts, her stomach, the light of a young woman’s exultation flashing out from her eyes and straight into mine.

            Our life had settled down, the days devoted to walking and love and outrageous antics, the evenings usurped by our obligations at the Schwyzer or the Babylon, which Celeste had begun to enjoy, only when we wanted them so. Having by now grown weary of Renée’s tedious worries about Ulrich and Agnes, Celeste began to resent her.

            “I think she just wants to not have to work and have Ulrich support her,” she decided.

            I didn’t care one way or another. Celeste was once again intrigued by me, inclined to hug me to her at any moment, play with my hands for hours at a time as she merrily shared her thoughts and questions. She would insist on pulling me into the shower with her, exchanging love potions beneath the warming stream that caressed her and rolled through her mermaid’s hair, along her ecstatic face, her rich peasant’s body. She kept my hand in hers as she pranced from space to space, humorously but insistently calling me in to keep her company as she sat in the bathroom; and she was the only woman in the world who could look so angelic, so shockingly gorgeous while ensconced on a toilet, laughing and delivering a constant commentary on the progress of her evacuations.

            “It’s stuck!” she would cry in comic alarm. “Lucien, do something, help me, help me!”

            Charmed by this as by everything she did, I would wind up laughing; she would squirm around in a kind of washing machine agitation and laugh and worry simultaneously. Rita would run in eager to participate in the commotion, assess the vulgarity of it and return to her room with a quiet shame on her face.

            “Why must I always be present when you go to the bathroom?”

            “I miss you!” she would giggle. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s like I’ve known you all my life. –I’ve never felt this free with anyone before. I want to be with you, Lucien.”

            Renée would still occasionally call to arrange outings and Celeste would display signs of both complete indifference and interest, finally going off to meet her while I stayed at home and pursued the necessary writing, research and telephoning. I would sometimes initiate negotiations with as many as five funding groups in one day, cautiously suggesting my concept and listening or reading with all my attention to their response, patiently weeding out the obvious frauds from the potential deceivers, working at all hours to establish a serious investment structure. The patterns of both obscure and prestigious lending houses were the same: I would treat with them until a definite interest was expressed, after which I would fall into a flurry of packaging; tailoring the capital needs and projections to meet their minimum or maximum investment guidelines, specifying the attributes which might otherwise sink in the mathematical swamps of the business plan, enjoining them to interrogate me on any aspect of the projected venture that might give them cause for hesitation. This would all be dispatched and reinforced with telephone conversations, then I would be released back into the external world to await the secondary, more definitive response.

            Patience was always my forte. I had devoted myself to art on a professional, sometimes lucrative basis, since the age of twelve, and I knew the hiatus between idea and payment better than most people. The end product could sometimes be monumental, in the literal sense, and the unrelenting, monomaniacal focus one must maintain through the agonies and the apotheoses that carried one from conception to preparation to execution demanded as much spiritual fortitude as craftsmanship and inspiration.

            On Sundays, since work both in town and abroad was ground to a halt, Celeste would throw on some odd rags and dart out to squeeze the dog and purchase our cigarettes and the London Sunday Times while I boiled water for coffee. If the news didn’t strike us as interesting we would climb back in bed and solve the crossword puzzles saved up from the IHT. These were the best, I explained, because they were reprinted from the New York Times. I believe it was a new diversion for Celeste but she rapidly grew to like them, insisting we curl up and grapple with them as “one great mind.” Often, as I lay next to her, an insane happiness purling inside me as I watched her face, she would lean her head at me and make imploring noises, which meant that she wanted me to pinch her cheek –gently– I’m not sure why. Or, if the puzzle raced too far ahead of her, she had me hold her mouth open wide –also by the cheeks– while she attempted to sing. We would howl and this would bring Rita charging at us, ready to romp.

            As I usually cooked the rest of the week Celeste would use the weekend to display her talents, generally coming up with a sort of slumgullion that, in addition to spaghetti and, later, asparagus, was her specialty. Either of her two entrees were designed to sustain us for several days in a row, and Celeste took immense pride in shopping for the ingredients on her own, faultlessly mimicking the cashiers’ bizarre duolingual chant of ‘Merci viel mal, adieu,’ and once successfully catching the minx at the register overcharging her. Celeste was learning the arts of cooking and loving, fearlessly clubbing her way through the native shoppers who took no notice of other human forms as they tore through the stores. She made use of her high school French to read the strange, dingy labels which were all printed in three languages, and became fascinated by the colors and shapes of the vegetables she found, collecting grubs, roots and sharp red peppers like a girl gathering wildflowers. And after each triumph she would throw herself into my arms, wrenching at her dress, revealing her smooth fullness to my perpetually astounded senses. Her lips would cover me as I reached down to touch her and she would be dripping wet, scorching liquid curling her hair into tight, sharp scythes.

            This Sunday it was traditional slumgullion –peppers, onions, potatoes, whatever, all glued together by eggs. Hovering over her plate with the crossword to her right, she smacked: “Here’s one you should know: what’s a Hebrew month, four letters?”

            “Jewn.”

            A triumphant forkful. She wrote as I spelled it out, looked, then popped the potato back out of her mouth and rebounded it off my forehead. My helping had more egg in it so she came out fairly worsted after a few minutes of this. With my last gooey handful I chased her squealing onto the bed while Rita ran around the flat earnestly demonstrating how gobbling was next to godliness.

            “I like this,” she said. “I like our twin boards. I like the shower. I like the air and the colors around here. I like our home.” She rolled over onto her side and watched me with that bright happiness in her eyes. “I like my family. –Don’t make that face! I mean it; the three of us are our own family now.” Innocently, she put my hand on her breast. “I guess pretty soon we’ll be too busy to even remember this time.”

            I shook my head. She knew I wouldn’t forget any of it.

            “Oh, well. At least I’ll get to see you in action. If I get to see you at all.”

            “Ugh,” I considered. I’d already drawn the designs down to even the table lights, had found some possible staff here and, once I got a start, I wanted to send word to Anton; by now he had enough experience, and I could trust him to manage the flagship club, maybe all three. Then we’d be free. I didn’t want to think about how making the circuit run smoothly might see us wind up as a booking agency, too. Then I realized she’d be good at that if she learned the genre, but even rolling, Celeste would be happy with new discoveries each day; it’d all be phone and computer –near me– and I had already engineered a roster for three stages she’d reset in her laptop. I put a positive hat on it: “I know I’ll be working fourteen to twenty hours a day for the first half year or so, but somehow it always seems worthwhile on opening night.”

            She plowed her head towards me, scenting excitement. “You know what it’d look like already, don’t you? What would you do? Tell me how you’d kick it all off!”

            I flapped a hand insouciantly. “It all depends on who can tour. If we had Khalid, for example, I’ll dust off the old white tie and tails for one. When the hour has struck I’ll swallow my stage fright, thank the audience and introduce the band. The band will come on in complete darkness. Start off with something direct and hot, hard. ‘Mellow Down Easy’ —the original version– just the drums at first, pounding out that deep beat from the blackness; I’ll slowly bring up the backlighting: red, blood red. I can lay a scrim across the backstage wall and burn a glow through that. By the second bar Khalid will come in on his harp with the key riff. Then Luke will begin sliding just the scream on guitar, then Gus growling in on the bass, all the while bringing up that deep red backlight until the entire band is silhouetted. Hah! We’ll have them hypnotized already, corpuscles racing in anticipation. Then, when Khalid comes in on the vocals, I’ll fade up the blue spots out front and cook him with a special directly over his head so that he has that Rayographic needle outline popping him up in 3-D. –That’s the opening,” I decided.

            “Jesus!” she breathed.

            I nodded. “They’ll flip. But, thwpppp,” I tongued, “that’s just a courtesy, though. I mean, the lights, the atmospherics…the entire venue is just to help the bands and make the public enjoy the time.”

            As for Khalid’s quartet, they were a powerhouse. First I, then both of us had watched them forming and rehearsing, perfecting the alchemy of that spiritual stuff. We’d seen their first gig and the transmutation of the audience’s base elements into electrified gold. They had even performed some of the four songs I knocked out for them while waiting to see if Celeste would come: Married Man, Blowout, Backstreet Blues and a zydeco boogie —Thigh High Baby Gator Boots— though we’d only run through them one time. And out of those days of lonely dreams, for Celeste I’d written a love song with a lingering Brazilian melody that came from God knows where. But that one was just for us. Later, as we prepared to leave, I’d also begun a farce to follow up the piece we’d just closed, featuring characters based on the de Hagenaus, which had us in hysterics.

            Khalid knew where we were, and had sent a copy of his first demo tape, recorded at a studio near his farm in Oregon. I filed it away with the Lucky Pig T-shirts, the bottles of sauce with my design and the outrageous story I’d written on it, and all the other supporting collateral. To Eugene as well I had confided my whereabouts. Embarrassed by his earlier opposition, Eugene now wished the two of us happiness, maybe recognizing the destiny that swore we belonged together. He applauded my idea, which, after all, would bring him free money. Celeste received phone calls, faxes, e-mail and letters from her circles, thus keeping abreast of life in our forsaken homeland. Even Prozac, with typical irony sent us a postcard of the Alps.

            “He’s executive chef at a new restaurant in Santa Rosa now,” I read.

            “Why do you call him Prozac?”

            “Oh, since his name is Zacharias most people shorten it to Zac. He gets depressed about the state of the world sometimes, and I used to be the only one who could get him to laugh his way out of it. I don’t know,” I hiked my eyebrows, “I just started calling him Prozac and he actually liked it.”

            “You guys are weird,” she giggled.

            I nodded. “Creeps, in American parlance.”

            As we worked and walked, cooked and loved and quietly built our life, my heart seemed to leave me little by little, preferring to nest somewhere inside Celeste herself, the object of its existence. And even with this truancy, I could be happy just watching her for hours.   

            Celeste was, however, a fundamentally restless soul. The fathomless ocean of her spirit that had drawn me down so deeply was, I discovered, often hit by savage tidal forces that rolled or stormed across the surface miles. These waves would be driven by pride or love, strength or antagonism, devotion or revulsion, or even simple undirected energy, that could transform the scintillating beauty of that placid but sparkling skin the world saw to a churning, foaming, battering storm that sucked and poured in all directions, eventually murking even the precious depths.

            I was discovering that she had a rambunctious side to her, a very Southern Californian way of heel-walking with great din across the floors, or unconsciously bellowing conversation. Several times a day clothes would fly around the studio as she changed her appearance. In her spirited hands the front door would slam or simply remain open, sometimes exposing me to the curiosity of the neighbors as she left me in bed to rush Rita out early mornings. As she opened and embraced us as natural, she somehow seemed to revert to being more American. And, with the Americanism, younger, although that was perhaps just when we weren’t immersed in serious matters of love, destiny, life and death. A counterpoint to the profound maturity and dimension that she’d amazed me with. It surprised me, but I had no urge to change anything. I adored her.

            Celeste was riled by the waiting pursuant to each rush of activity and I noticed that she personalized the negotiations, deciding in her mind and talk who, though we had yet to meet them, was ‘scum,’ who was ‘a slimeball,’ who was ‘an asshole.’ But her nerves in general were easily scalloped. She would belly-flop into bosom friendships, then flee ranting in disgust when she’d concluded her companion was crazed, vulgar, or just plain crummy, having already broken relations with Nicole and Althea. Meteorites of jealousy would crash through her skies at unexpected moments, and she would worry herself sick about the barmaids or the lady at the watch shop who replaced the battery in my timepiece, aggressively laying plans to confront these women and growing still more suspicious when I declined to accompany her on such missions. When the initial official business followups began coming back to me she seemed content, and I, though constantly burdened with the nuances of each prospective arrangement, belonged to the immense pleasure of those days with her.

            When my work was done I would follow my heart and track her, most frequently, to the Drei Schwyzer where she would be sitting radiantly amidst the group of core patrons who had adopted her and Rita as their mascots. Fresh and glowing from her cavorts with Renée or flushed and slothful from drinking all day instead of walking –for Renée would often sink them both into her habitual indecision and the day would sneak past without their detecting it– Celeste would beam as I entered this dive of ours and climb halfway over the table to kiss me. Rita would leap up and massacre me with her paws, soaking my face with affection and laughing wildly. Renée would snap a greeting and climb out of the booth in order that I might plant myself next to Celeste’s dreamy thighs, her passionate, curious hands.

            It was not unusual for us to pass the remainder of the evening there. I would exchange quips or philosophical twaddle with whomever was speaking to me, as they were all now used to my formal German, and Celeste would converse in pidgin English with any and everybody or have me translate conversations which she would excitedly conduct while listening for words she knew she could remember later and which she would triumphantly rattle off to me or question me about when we were alone.

            Rita would bark and frolic with the endless flow of dogs that ran in and out of the place, or parade from table to table gorging herself on cookies, sandwiches, pretzels and Feigling, a revoltingly sweet fig-flavored creamed vodka liqueur. As the couples astonished us by the rapidity by which they switched paramours seemingly from week to week if not nightly, our morality was shaken to discover that Rita had embraced the general laxity and insisted on throwing herself at Gerhardt with embarrassing and obvious passion. At this mid-point in her life she had discovered love. Kindly Gerhardt, with his one damaged eye, returned her affection reluctantly at first, then with gentlemanly attention.

            Being three-quarters wolf, Rita was a victim of her own secret natures, intent on escaping Celeste’s loving but occasionally stern rule. She had vanished one afternoon from outside the grocery store, sending Celeste into paroxysms of frightening and uncontrollable anguish; I stood guard back at the telephone in case someone found her and read her tags, and scanned the grounds from our high windows while Celeste sped through the town hyperventilating until solid Agnes and quick Renée found the dog around the corner at the Drei Schwyzer, panting for cookies and Gerhardt.

            While Rita passed her time gushing and pining for poor Gerhardt, Isabelle would inveigle Celeste into guzzling tequila and reassessing her devotion to me.

            “Lucien is too old for you,” she would squeak in her helium-flavored voice. Taking Celeste in her arms and executing a few wobbly dance steps, she would press home her insights: “You need a young man, many young mans. They make you happy.”

            New faces would appear at the table sometimes, though evidently familiar to the core of the gang, and, at Celeste’s timid promptings, I would introduce her: “Darf ich vorstellen: Celeste Corday.”

            “Couronne,” she would wallop me.

            “D’accord. And I’m Lucien. Maroc.” I would stare at them seriously then confide: “Although I prefer to be called ‘Mr. Precedent’ when I’m the only one here.”

            It was a comfortable retreat from the worries of the business. The big booths would fill to overflowing as the night bubbled on, all the faces cheery as they arrived for what had become a regulation meeting. In addition to Marius, the mainstays were Gerhardt, Althea, Connie, the two Marcos –one tall and brooding, the other slight and hilariously flip– Sandro, Renate, Gaby, Sergio, Nicole, Denise, Rollo, Beatte, Andreas, Christina, Remo, Yves, Charlie, Rouge and people whose names we hadn’t time to catch but who assembled dutifully every night. Mad Peter had been sequestered in an asylum by then. I was for only the second time in my life no longer the youngest of the group.

            For the most part, they were uncomplicated souls, living out long friendships, inured to the divine surprises of the landscape around them, given to passing evening after evening forgetting their jobs and drinking in the company of honest, thirsty mates. The country was still run with an almost medieval apprenticeship system; many of these good youths were spending their days being ruthlessly underpaid as they labored for years doing brute, minute tasks in the profession that would then be their cage for the rest of their lives. The advantage was the artificially high wage they would later receive, sustained by an equally artificially perpetuated isolationist economy in which a stingy drink cost ten dollars or more. For us Auslandern it was all one big clip-joint. Mostly they left all troubles behind when it came time to assemble around the reserved table, but occasionally a bitter joke about parasitical asylum seekers would cannon around the booths. They were fascinated by us, astounded that I had procured house and home and telephone without papers or registering with the police, that we were boldly living here in their tidy land illegally, with great things in mind and no concern for their laws or permit restrictions. They sensed the overwhelming love we shared, and were baffled and impressed by my humor in the face of everything, Rita’s wild-west history, and above all by Celeste, that irrepressible Oceanide with the aura of impudence.

            They all wanted to go to America.

            Lucien had always been drawn to bars, dark of course, but preferably corseted in elegance. When working or socializing he found them congenial. When alone he positively luxuriated in the isolation they provided. Once seated he never heard the slightest sound, be it from deafening music, clanging games or shouted conversation, and was thus able to pursue according to his inclination of the moment, sketching, writing, composing or –most hedonistic of all his vices– rolling through beautiful and unexpected lands in the arms of his thoughts. It was lost to this supreme delight that women found him, unbalancing them and preempting them from any coy or conquering approach. The men would roar fraternal or belligerent invocations only to find themselves similarly excluded from these lush worlds. And yet Lucien was at peace in the midst of the chaos, a warm sensation of invisibility purring through him as he sat in the eye of whirling time.

            He loved to gorge his eyes on the polished mahogany, the silver plane of the back wall behind the bar, mirroring the leaping lips and clattering teeth of the crowd bobbing back and forth before the reflected chandeliers and pinball pyrotechnics; all hiding another world on the other side of its silver. He feasted his sight on the spectacular, warring, kinetic gleams of light shooting off the bottles of all shapes and colors, each reflection imbued with its own unique fire and dimension: rose cut garnets burning at him from the shoulders of the rich liqueurs; emerald cabochons secreted in the bellies; tear drops glittering with delicious pathos; marquis dazzling as they cling to lips and molded feet. Here the glasses leap out demanding attention in their polished, elegant array, glasses bosomy with delicate stems displaying their medals and garters full of blinding white crystalform wonders: dodecahedrons, hexahedrons; from the rocks glasses bounce the three-faced octahedrons, martially pre-named triakis; balloons and flutes winking scalenohedrons, the divine confluence of twelve scalene triangles imperceptibly rotating in space a mere hairsbreadth in front of the vitreum. From the upper reaches of the bottles, pear cut golds and heart cut peridots flash orange, green, stunning yellows as they burn a line through the black air; brilliants and table cuts adorn the flagons, captivating with their wet zinc accent in wet cobalt technique; square cuts of aquamarine and malachite floating forward, glowing sharp and bezeled; baguettes bold and needle thin ranging from the deepest to the most ethereal colors of the spectrum dance across the eyes at every degree of the compass, as though God had thrown a handful of illuminated colored gems against this magic, wondrous, vertical plane.

            Embraced by his thoughts, oblivious to the human squalor erupting around him, endlessly dazzled by the mysteries of color, form and space that materialized in these temples; at peace and alone, Lucien would warm in one hand the potable amber of fine cognac, and a pen in the other, at home throughout the world in these Hippocrene tombs.

            Sergio had by now established a running battle of snipings with Celeste, his English being proficient enough to rile her up, using ironic comments about the dog to jab straight to her center. Celeste, in return, maintained that he was in love with me, and pinned him to the mat by christening him ‘Baby-Butt-Face,’ to which he for once had no riposte. After days of tearfully pestering me for a comeback, I finally pointed out to him that –on occasion– Celeste had some resemblance to W. C. Fields when viewed in profile. Sergio extracted his revenge and I was cauterized by Celeste’s glare as I sat safely across the room. It never availed me much to assure her of my affection for Fields.

            They lay down their cleavers after a while and Sergio timidly asked Celeste what it was like to be in love, what made love what it is, how it had shaped our lives. I had joined them.

            “It’s different,” she beamed. “The whole world is different. Everything you thought was wonderful becomes a thousand times better than that and at the same time you don’t even care anymore. Nothing else matters except the life you gave birth to with that one person.”

            Sergio sucked this all in like a great but unknown hunger, his eyes expanding as Celeste spoke and let her own eyes dampen and she gripped my hand to tell me what her body and spirit was desirous of telling me.

            “There’s only one time, really,” she continued. “You’ll know it. It will either destroy you or plop you right down in heaven. I can’t describe it.”

            “So why must you come to Interlaken?” He had heard rumors about us and correctly deduced that our passion had something to do with our exile.

            “Well, everybody hates Lucien and my ex-boyfriend is crazy and very violent and he’s trying to hunt us down.”

            “We’re on the lam,” I confided.

            Celeste laughed and told him what it meant. Sergio’s face burned with excitement.

            “Okay, not precisely,” I said. “We just want to be left alone once and for all.”

            “But he’s got a gun, my ex does,” Celeste insisted.

            “Packing heat,” I had to giggle.

            Sergio looked at each of us in turn, obviously moved and inclined to view us in a new light. “A real love story!” he exclaimed, serious and floored, like he’d found a fabled buried treasure.

            Celeste hurled her face into mine, kissing me with spontaneous elation.

            Like everyone else in town, following centuries-old drives, we would, after passing the evening at the Drei Schwyzer, charge with the herd around the corner to the Babylon, where we would cluster in intoxicated circles and fall through the ages as the drums and dervishes stole our souls beneath the flashes of lightning, Celeste hurling herself into the mad rituals while I pondered the form of all things, all loves. And when the spell was broken by the sudden fright of white fluorescents leaping out at us, we would take one another by the hand and float out into the sidereal world of night and snow, silent mountains and soft winding rivers that presaged our nocturnal journey to each other.  

            My shuddering night life commenced to slow its vibrations and leave me to rest and dream of fair things, Celeste relentlessly occupying most all those sleeping hours as her corporal form steamed alongside mine. The reverberations of Rapelle and its choir of obloquy now failed to shake me. I would still know things that were occurring, however, never understanding how it worked, only knowing that it was part of a world which indignantly refused terrestrial investigation or verification. When I saw in my sleep a door ease open and a cat appear at my feet to stare up at me and open its mouth just once telling me without words that it had returned, I sat up and sighed “Oh, hell.”

            “What is it? What’s wrong, Sweetheart?”

            “My cat Luis just died.”

            And he had, as I learned from my mother sometime later. In another night I heard a poem –an incongruous passage, actually, being narrated to me detailing the exuberant awaking of a woman as she regains her consciousness in a meadow surrounded by morning fog, each mote of hydrogen buzzing with life and bestowing it on her as she rises in a kind of ecstasy, and I knew it to be what I had promised Genevieve I would write for her birthday. I got up and wrote it down exactly as it had been recited to me, then slipped it into the expensive leather shoulder–strap briefcase she’d gifted me for my departure.

            Almost every minute, though, was spent with Celeste accompanying my dreams as the moon travels with the night.

            Celeste was almost childlike in her new country, and seemingly at home. In these days she exhibited none of the ruinous distance that had shocked me during our first weeks here, or had nearly resolved me to adjudge her half-mad and wholly frigid when the expanse between us made its second appearance a month or so later. When we were not drowning in each other’s passions, we would crunch through the snow, or we would read together and discuss every notion that came into our heads.

            “How can anyone live in that shit-hole?” Celeste would ask after reading the U.S. news in the International Herald Tribune. “All there is rape and murder and cheating. I don’t ever want to go back there and if Leslie wasn’t such an old friend I would make some excuse so as not to go back for her wedding.”

            I couldn’t quite grasp that –it always slipped off to the side of my mind. We had really just arrived here, risking everything, yet I kept hearing this leitmotif –a call of return. And for what? I never overheard a word of love in those conversations; it sounded more a demonstration of the girls’ horsepower. Like bringing Rita, I thought it was a passing joke.

            “It’s a culture of habit and ingrained lies,” I resumed. “People in the U.S. actually believe that their system is some sort of organic phenomenon. They have no idea that it hasn’t always been that way, or that it’s developing into something more leeching and monolithic with each breath they take.”

            Celeste shuddered. “I guess I am special. Like you.” She peered up at me, explaining: “Fallen, you know. And I know why: I was looking for you, I know I was. I guess that’s why everything seemed wrong before I met you. My parents told me I had to go to college, I had to get a job in some crappy office that would suck up my life that I had to get married and have children. I couldn’t do it.”

            “Well, I’m no prize, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept the rules others make for you. It may not be, but banality certainly seems more inevitable in the States. Hah. Smelly salesmen for gluttonous women. Then what have you got: one mass of mindlessness whose sole, albeit great, contributions to culture are the second half of the history of western music, the almost perfectly algebraic construction of the gag –also invented by immigrants, and the multifarious worlds of breakfast cereals –not just a box of something to ingest, but each one an entire cartoon universe all by itself.” 

            “Yuck. Fuck the States. What else is happening?”

            I flipped a page. “Well, Toto Constant is threatening to spill the beans on U.S. complicity in the Haitian death squads. They’ll keep him in pokey like they’ve done with Noriega, just another monster gone badly.”

            “What did he do?”

            “Oh, his squad got caught with a cache of what they call “trophy photos” of their victims: all mutilated and lifeless bodies. A sad counterpoint to Toussaint l’Ouverture.”

            “At least it’s peaceful here. Thank God we left Rapelle!”

            “Switzerland’s only peaceful because the Swiss are naturally brutal and no one wants to risk antagonizing them.”

            “I guess that’s true. They’re always threatening each other and pulling out knives and guns in the Babylon, and for no reason from what Marius says. Still, I feel safer here in Europe; it seems so much more civilized.”

            “Yes but this civilization has its savage foundations. Not a single blade of grass grows in Europe that has not been fertilized with human blood. Think of all the lovely fields and then drift into the past and wade through all the corpses that lay over them: Malta lost eight thousand and two hundred men in 1565; the French fought the Swiss at Marignan in 1515 and thirty thousand bodies were left to melt back into the soil; at Marengo, thirteen and a half thousand; Waterloo: forty-five thousand. Forget the battles,” I flapped away the numbers hovering in the air. “Battles are a comfortable limit. All-consuming war is humanity’s gift to the present. –Seven million cadavers comprised the harvest of the Thirty Years War. The first World War consumed some ten million soldiers, an equal number of non-combatants and as many as twenty million additional victims of famine, epidemics and other related disasters. Barely thirty years later another fifty-five million inhabitants of this mighty civilization were reduced to compost. A matter of ten years ago Yugoslavia was a semi-functional country…”

            Celeste looked at me with wide but quiet eyes. “I know there must be more, but please stop.”

            “…Then Milosevic and Tudjman ran their respective power grabs and innocence was again the victim. Their actions exacerbated every petty regional vendetta and every nationalistic impulse in Europe. Milosevic is vicious but Tudjman’s a moron, which might be worse. Did you know that until a few years ago his defense minister ran a pizza parlor in Canada?”

            It was true, but the levity was wasted on her. Celeste did not as a rule torment herself with this kind of perspective, and she was unnerved by my words, or even that I knew of such things.

            “Why can’t we just be safe?” she moaned. “Why must life be so…oh, I don’t know! Why is it all such hell?”    

            I pointed out the window to the top of the Jungfrau. “Maybe up there, where I keep trying to go, the earth is as virginal as its name suggests.”

            “We’ll go there when we get money. We’ll stay for a month, or maybe even buy a house up there.”

            “It’s as though the entire human race has become devotees of Kali, thugs, everyone madly tearing, tearing at oneself, at others, trying to set free the soul, escape the monstrous things we’ve become, break through the fearful separateness. And why must we be so separate? Is it necessary to wall off our graves, even? Even there, in that most wide-spread and populous city, so perfectly built exactly six feet underground? It’s what I’ve been telling you since the beginning; about the terrors of life and all the lovers who’ve been torn apart by them. All this,” I swept the newspaper onto the floor, “is what love has to struggle with. That and their own fear of love.”

            Celeste stared at me for a full minute before speaking. “What if it can’t struggle anymore? How does everyone live if they don’t have the strength to hold on to it? Look at how hard it was for us, how hard it still is –everything is against us, Lucien. I see the way that bartender at Babylon smiles at you. That stupid Sandra. What if you give up on me?”

            “I’m not terribly integrated with the world outside of me. Nothing’s likely to alter my heart, and my heart is full to bursting of you. Everything else is an illusion, a teetering edifice of mistakes and blind aggression,” I indicated the heap of newspaper. “As you see.”

            She stared at me awhile longer. “Oh, Jesus, I’m glad I found you again.”

*         *         *

            Day would rise, night would dash in, awake, asleep, no force of light or time could distract me from my desire for Celeste. I often awoke deep inside her, found myself living through a delirious rush of kisses, raptures, the both of us clawing, begging and hissing. One moment my eyes would open and I would see by the moon the roots of her hair as she pressed herself into my arms, and my hand, in which her breast always slept, would vibrate with the power of our hearts, then, before I knew what had happened, it was another day. Another day to watch her ripple across the room, innocent and laughing. Another second of this absurd time and we would be holding each other on the floor, beneath the sink, on the ceiling. Raging with passion, she liked to crawl in front of me and, folded in half, be ridden like a wild animal. Over her shoulder she would turn to look at me with a snarl on her face.   

             She whipped her mind for words to give him, some way to tell him of the stunning abyss her heart tumbled through whenever she thought of him making love to her, and could release but groans and maddened breaths. She could lose her speech but knew he always saw her mind, and so she looked at him, tore at him with her glance, asked for harder and wilder pleasures to ignite them, desperately sought him out with her eyes and burned the love she felt directly into his.

            When they made love, she was the most feminine woman he had ever known. Life everlasting would still be too thin to absorb her magnificence.

            Again the night, the golden form pressed in my arms. Again the night, this love I hold, soft and sweet as no life known. Words like wisps drift past my ear; a cheek like cloud to press my lips to, a breast like swan to kiss my hand; belly nestling ruby coal of passion at its soft undercurve; remember always, clutched by night, the immeasurable beauty in that sound: as though a doe had barked small happiness in my arms.

            The days buzzed around us benevolently, our hours marked by passing hoofbeats from the horse-drawn carriages, merry birds, multi-toned cowbells and our own surprised cries of passion. We spoke often without words. Perpetually annoyed that we were being deprived of the high mountain scenery, we were grateful when Renée offered to guide us up to Hapkern, a cliff-encased farmland hidden high behind the Harder Kulm, and buried in snow, where we spent the day chasing each other through the bottomless flocculence, and the land and the sky formed one undivided mass of white, given form only by the ridges of fir in Grünewald blues; but I was always scanning the skies. The air was starred by swifts and thrushes, and the mountain-loving Bergdohlen –jackdaws– with their lemon yellow crests riding the black boat of their bodies. Sometimes at night when we savored our quiet lovers’ life, our egg-shell home from where we could watch all the neon signs and passing revelers, we would scratch in our pockets for coins and I would take Rita down to the Westbahnhof station and buy candy for us from the big glowing machine. Celeste liked to let the dark chocolate and hazelnut toffees melt slowly through her mouth as she leaned back in my embrace watching the broad thunderstorms, thrilled with an inspired glee.

            Gold thread she was, Venetian glass; tiramisu and dark ganache.

            Celeste loosely maintained contact with Paul, telephoning him monthly or so at first, gradually weaning it that so that the communication was spread out over every two months. While purporting to be frightened about having our names appear on the mail box down on the street, she told him she was in Switzerland, but alone, pretending to have no reliable mailing address and to be calling from the home of a friend or a public booth. She retailed to me stories of Paul’s crusade to discover my whereabouts and have done with me, as per his conversations with her, but I noticed she never attempted to dissuade him from the notion that he had any right to threaten, seek out or murder people based on his pious moral judgements. For some reason, Paul had decided to track me down by meeting with Genevieve and playing on her credulity with the promise of locating me, in exchange for which she gave him my social security number, my bank account number and God knew what else. He informed Celeste that he had diligently passed some days at the county recorder’s office, which was idiotic as the sole mention of me he would find there was a business license for the theater. Once again Paul appeared to be living in a world of half-thoughts and impulse. Vaguely, Paul’s homicidal intentions included Anton as well as myself, which seemed even more absurd, but, then, he was apparently reacting to any and every perceived force that might have come between Celeste and himself.

            Paul the persecutor. Paul the proselytizer.

            I still couldn’t say if he was a dolt or a danger. To me he’d always been timid, deferential, even that day Celeste had burst into the theater with hysterical warnings that I was to be slaughtered. Thinking back, I had indeed seen him threatening mayhem without provocation, but only on men much smaller than himself; I once had to argue him off a man too drunk to stand. Then there was the story Celeste had told me about finding a revolver stashed under the seat of his car. I wondered why Celeste had told him where she was if he remained a real threat; I wondered why she never spoke up to remind him that they had in fact split and that she had been innocent of any liaison before that occurrence, or why she never asked him to question himself about the right to lash out at others. Why, I wondered did she stay in touch with him at all if he was such a source of fear and contempt? She answered that she simply wanted to know who was where and up to what. Spurred by whatever Rapelle gossip Paul had slipped her, Celeste even telephoned Genevieve once, pouncing verbally and commanding her to ‘stop talking shit’ about her, also vowing that she knew not where I was.

            Following these calls to Paul, she would then seek out Jim either at the Artful Dodger or at the Babylon, and discuss with him the latest conditions. She once brought a photograph of Paul along to show Jim, who studied it for a minute then assured her he could handle the matter if Paul ever decided to leap the ocean and dispense his unenlightened justice. Celeste and Jim would huddle together and swap stories about the shortcomings and overreachings of their respective ex-mates, grumbling, scoffing and snickering as they spoke. Celeste was enthusiastically disparaging of Jim’s wife Gitte, despite my insistence that it was unfair to consolidate such an aversion to someone we had never really met.

            “You’ve never spoken to her,” I explained. “So there is no way you could understand what goes on between them. Why should you care so deeply, anyway?”

            “I’m just sick of people getting away with murder. You’ve seen Jim’s scars. God, she sounds like a crazy fucking bitch. She was a heroin junkie for a long time before she had the baby.”

            “There are a lot of junkies here in paradise; it’s too easy to get the stuff.”

            Indeed, we did see her once passing through Babylon drunk and wrapped around an obviously wealthy man who was embarrassed when she stopped to yell at Jim. Another time we spotted her outside the place screaming and kicking him with jackhammer action.

            We still had our own cartful of misfortune and Celeste almost savored her resentments, her animosities, using the telephone as a means of release and attack no matter how much I begged her to let the past lie undisturbed.

            In Rapelle, she had tired of waitressing and, later, secretarial work, and had opened a small gallery for local artists. Unsure of whether it could be done or how, she retained the idea in her mind as a vague desire until the townsfolk said ‘Talk to Lucien.’ Nervous about disturbing me in my push to open the theater, she approached me one afternoon and blurted out her dreams. I assured her it could be done, tossed off a few scenarios and, sensing uncertainty in her timid, round features, insisted she could do it if she wanted to. We spoke just a few times after that and I was flattered when she showed me her designs for the sign and the logo; I saw she had chosen a name I had suggested as an off-the-cuff example. She then got financial backing from her father and physical backing from Helene and Paul and saw the thing through to opening with elan. About this time, at her request, I painted some enhancements on her sign –which I didn’t think were needed– and she returned the favor by computer-typesetting my poster and program.

            A month later we were writhing in agony, desperately seeking some way to shut out the interference of everyone there and live our life as one fiery ball of passion. Christian, to impress Helene, approached me and requested that I broker the sale of the gallery to him, disdaining to negotiate with a woman. Celeste had consented and a decent price was agreed upon. Celeste also sold him most of her furnishings and Christian took over her home and her business. Unfortunately, he neglected to make more than one payment. Celeste, like myself was denuded of both the fruits and the profits of her labors, which could only be regained by a fight in Rapelle. I knew enough to walk and stay away; I had in my years seen particular buildings, whole towns, entire countries inundated by evil as the frustrations of man steamed up from the earth until the weight became too much for the heavens to bear and it all poured down in terrible onslaught.

            But in these weeks she telephoned Christian and screamed ‘Fuck you!’ into his answering machine —her answering machine, she reminded me– and burned scarlet whenever she dialed up Helene and heard her voice answer on the far end of the world. I walked into the apartment one day to find her listening to the receiver with a grin on her face and a skewed glint in her eyes; she quickly waved me over and pressed my ear to the phone where I was surprised to hear Genevieve’s voice requesting that the caller leave a message. I must have winced upon hearing her voice after so long, sounding brave, or bravely determined to be cheerful, because Celeste, after watching my face, became alarmed.

            “What’s wrong?” she worried.

            “What did you do that for?”

            “I just thought I’d make sure that she hadn’t moved. What’s wrong, are you still in love with her?”

            I scratched my eyebrow and grumbled. Celeste knew that I did still love Genevieve, but that it was wholly different in depth and form, that it lived separately within me and without regrets or possibilities. When I did think of Genevieve, I simply prayed for her happiness, which was in no way connected to me, as I had merely brought her pain. It was still impossible to speak with her, although I wished it might be someday. I would often taste the vulnerability, the frightened isolation that had tormented her, and could see all the travails of her childhood in my mind. Her mother, like too many others, had insisted on reproducing in the hope of generating unconditional fealty and vicarious maturation; instead the fool was offended by the realization that this whim would last more than a pair of years, and wound up seething with resentment. I sighed whenever I saw the image of Genevieve as an eight-year-old, boldly running away from home with her colorful round suitcase, and sadly returning when she realized that her absence had gone unremarked. I remembered the demons that taunted her and tricked her into filling her car’s gas tank with kerosene. True sorrow floated through me when I remembered her fear of never being loved and my ultimately futile attempts to convince her otherwise. It did not and could not however, affect my love for Celeste. There had come a time when Genevieve’s mood swings were so explosive that they surprised even her. But then she would sign her conciliatory notes ‘love, your tomato-faced bitch.’ And both of us would forget the outburst and laugh instead. -It made more sense at the time. Since all reports still had her irritable and carousing until five a.m. with Hortense –the area’s main coke dealer– and others who out of boredom sported with her suspicions, I remained incommunicado. I hoped Genevieve would become bold and at peace with herself, that she would be loved by a kind man. I remembered I’d always called her Pirate Jenny to give her a salty drop of courage.

            At a loss for anything better, I believed Celeste felt similar desperate distance and helplessness regarding Paul. When she ranted about his inability to function in the world, his temper, his lack of understanding for her, his confusion and lack of direction in all aspects of love and life, I sensed and hoped that she was experiencing authentic pity and not just hostility.

            “He never had any idea of his own,” she railed. “It was always me who had to plan everything, pay the bills, even pick up the mail. Like all my other boyfriends he would never initiate any sex and he only said he loved me if I said it first, and then he would have to think for a minute before acting surprised and saying “You know, Cel? I love you too.” Once I cornered him on the back porch and just started pushing him and hitting him in the chest –hard, like this– just to see if he had any feelings at all. I kept doing it. All he did was shake his head and repeat: “Don’t make me do this, Cel, don’t make me do this.”

            I was shocked by the intensity of her resentment, by the value she put on her antipathy. As she fumed, I suddenly recalled Genevieve, aghast, telling me that Celeste had complained to her one night in the Black Swan that she wished Paul would slam her up against a wall and rape her for once. Barely knowing them, I had waved the foul words away at the time.

            “All he cares about is that stupid O.W.P.” Celeste continued.

            First I heard of O.W.P. was that one night when Genevieve called me at the Swan and insisted I run home, where I found her entertaining Paul and Celeste. I didn’t exactly know them and I was surprised she did. They were conversing like old friends, stoked by cocaine, which they insisted I catch up with, which I thought silly since I had been working all day and night and again tomorrow –months of sleeplessness killing me. I couldn’t understand what they were doing there, or who had instigated it, or why I’d been called away so urgently.

            They’d brought up the name then and to Genevieve’s question Paul had explained that the O.W.P. was the Old World Party, a group of people who would meet to recreate medieval life, including tournaments and feasts. Paul had devoted himself to it for years, working up to the right to dress up like a knight and meet foes in single combat, armed with rattan swords. He’d graduated to important roles in ongoing wars, joining a faction dubbed the Sons of Iniquity,

            “It’s sort of a dork magnet.” Celeste had added. “I only go because I’m learning belly dancing.”

            Now she said: “Most of his friends are from O.W.P. But there’s something dark about them. Like, sexually. One guy –I think that’s where Paul got the gun– he looks up to, but he’s bad news.” She would then decant her disgust with his physical or amorous malfeasance and malformations with a pretzeled horror on her face.

            Nevertheless, with all the opposition six thousand miles away, Celeste and I were inviolate, a sacred union, far removed from the burrs of the wastes we saw all around us. It was clear that no previous dalliance, passion, or muted flash of heart or flesh had any meaning whatsoever when set against our delicious rediscovery.

            We stayed as close to each other as we did in the tiny bed at Khalid’s, and if, before dawn, she slept poorly and began to wash up on the shores of consciousness, I would gently tickle her along her upraised arm until she swept back into untroubled gulfs.

            The treasured hiatus between running Rita out in the morning, strolling with friends, whizzing out faxes or sharing the stamtisch at the Drei Schwyzer then raiding the Babylon was spent swimming through the aquatic gardens of love primordial, delirious, and endlessly fascinating. We never failed to surprise one another and the intensity of this third life we’d spawned grew bolder by the hour, as we both realized. The subtle explorations of arms or toes were themselves delightful, but the mysterious memories stirred up by the slightest touch of our lips drew us relentlessly and sent us rocketing again and again through time and desire. The spirits within us would insistently melt us together as they clawed towards each other; in these nameless hours we would move together so slowly that we roared with delight. I would feel her throbbing and almost exploding around me as we crawled through excruciating pleasure. Snowdove, involute and fly, silver languor turn to flower. Mouth and mind speak stars to me. What quicksilver heat makes your breasts shudder so?

            “It’s really you,” you said. “You are me, touching my lips, holding my heart. You know already, my mind has told you a thousand times before.”

*         *         *

            I had let one offer slide for reasons of caution, had squelched through the murk of a number of other spurious houses and was recontacting more when we got a fax from Finance Mutuel applauding the plans and inviting me down to Nice for a meeting in which we could finalize the offer. I telephoned the office, reaching a Mr. Borstal, and toyed with the commitment until he made it clear that he would say no more without taking a good look at me and my contractual requirements. He spoke with a brash Australian accent and reeked of evasiveness. I glanced over at Celeste and saw her irritation at the length of the process, which was only beginning. I felt I should get her away before she went nuts. 

            “My Angel,” I said, hanging up, “Dress your hair with camembert. Let’s rent a car and drive down to Nice. I’m skeptical, but it’s the only way to find out.”

            “And if it doesn’t work?”

            “We’ll see.”

            She jumped at my carelessness: “Well, what are we going to do?”

            “Don’t snap at me like that. If I wanted to live with someone temperamental I would be back in Rapelle with Genevieve.”

            “Don’t you dare compare me to her!” she actually yelled.

            “Look, we have limited resources, but that’s no cause for all this excitement. I have to play this thing through. Then we’ll know.”

            She pressed on with questions, scenarios, anxieties that I should have soothed and smothered with tenderness, but instead ignored and brushed off with the hand of silence.

            Feeling excluded from my thoughts, she took Rita and stalked off to the Drei Schwyzer. I found her there with Renée later that evening, sullen and hard. I returned the aloofness until it was embarrassingly noticeable to the others, so I took my leave and settled in back home.

            Late that night Renée phoned to tell me Celeste had fallen asleep at her place.

            By morning I was offended. Celeste returned and acted both ashamed and afraid, offering poignant assurances that she had merely drifted off in the middle of a movie.

            “Forget it.”

            “So I’m just going to get the silent treatment all day?”

            “I’ll be fine in a bit. Forget it.”

            “Renée says you never let me do anything on my own,” she was turning the table now and I didn’t want to be tripping over it, so I flipped the conversation, tersely, to our meeting in Nice. Celeste glowered at me then threw herself into the challenge of getting good rates on a rental car and still better ones on hotels. It was a tight, strained day. When evening finally came, I realized we had no coffee to jolt us up in the morning before we had to leave, so I excused myself and scooted down to the Schwyzer to buy some from Claudio. He phoned upstairs to Isabelle then sent me up to pour some brewed stuff into a jar.

            “Thanks, Isabelle. This will be crucial in the morning.”

            “Does Celeste go with you?” she peered at me.

            “Yes, of course.”

            After another squint she asked: “What is with you and Celeste?”

            “Hmm? Oh. I wish I knew.”

            “She is too young for you. You need older woman, many older womans.”

            I spritzed derisively. “No, no. I can’t even think of another woman ever again. You’ll see, Celeste and I love each other far too much for anything to do any damage.”

            So they launched themselves onto the roads in the morning, wary and circling one another, each wondering how barred they were from the heart of the one they treasured, wondering how distant they could truly get from each other, feeling unwanted, unloved by the one person they ached to be desired by, watching each other’s faces for some divine flash of forgiveness, of future, and they traveled hundreds of miles across France before they understood that their hearts must always beat together if they were to avoid the snares of dudgeon and discord. In their high room in the hotel, Celeste lay her sore body down on the bed –their first real bed– and let the waves of gravity massage her as Lucien inhaled her warm smells, stuffing his eyes with the sight of her until she stood up and went with him to give Rita some freedom and they found some Vietnamese take-out that they ate in their bed before rolling into each other’s smooth arms.

            Celeste was snoring prettily when I awoke, so I went down to the cafe and funneled sugared coffee down my throat for an hour before bringing some up to her like I had at the Limmathof and at the Alp Lodge. I liked doing it, bringing her the first cup, watching her sweet face puffy and reddened as she sipped and rubbed her eyes, that first smile coming into her face as she caught Rita’s glance and the dog started beating her cheery tattoo of tail against floor.

            When she had finished her coffee I smiled at her and made a silent gesture inviting her over to the window. “Look out there,” I said, giving her time to drift over the rooftops and through the bald forest of clotheslines and aerials. “That line right there: the Mediterranean.”

            “Oh, Lucien!” she clutched my arm. “The ocean! Let’s go down there later. We haven’t seen the ocean in ages!”

            “Throw on some clothes,” I protested. “Let’s see what’s out there. We can let Rita stretch her legs for an hour or so before we have to come back and tart ourselves up.”

            In street shoes and sport coats for the first time in three months, we tumbled out into the brightness and inhaled the bustling Carthagian atmosphere as Rita pulled us along to a satisfactory dumping ground. As we skidded past the train depot she charged towards a small landscaped island with a palm sprouting up from the center of it. She had seen at a glance that this was a sort of fairground for mice, nearly a hundred of them.

            Ecstatic, Rita lunged towards the center of the mound just as all the mice darted like so many spokes into the hole at the foot of the palm.

            I laughed. “We’ll have to make sure she has mice to play with when we settle down.”

            “Oh, she’d love that! It would keep her busy for years,” Celeste grunted, hauling away vigorously.

            We managed to pry Rita off the island and she was soon trotting along beside us with nothing in mind but the rushing cheerful acclaim of the crowd. We wove through the old city and discovered that the beach was a mere half hour away from our hotel, which meant that Celeste would be able to return to the strand frequently and easily once our work was done.

            “It smells wonderful here,” she inhaled.

            “As well it should. This joint has an ancient tradition of producing natural perfumes. Rose, acacia, jasmine and violet have been specialities for ages.”

            “I’ve always wondered how they do that with flowers. Real flowers, I mean.”

            I teetered around in my brain for a minute until I found the word. “Maceration. The attars are extracted by maceration. Means they soak the flowers in hot fat –both oils and fats being sensitive enough to retain the odors, where distillation in water would prove insufficient.”

            “Hah! Maybe that’s why you stink,” she pounded the dog. Rita seemed to enjoy the conjecture.

            Having explored the bare layout of Nice, we drifted back through the alleys and side-streets to prepare for the meeting, grabbing a pair of kebabs on the way. Back in the room we muscled down lunch and Celeste played first in the shower, then at the mirror while I slid myself into a cool thousand dollars’ worth of gentlemen’s’ raiment and tested my briefcase for heft.

            Celeste emerged glamorized by a French braid, in a demure linen suit; white silk blouse and matching jacket and skirt in that light mint color only she could wear with grace. Celeste, pure Celeste, floating inside her blouse and her skirt.

            “I look okay?” she worried.

            “I believe the technical term is ‘knockout.'” As she sat on the bed to slip on her shoes, I knelt down before her and took her hands in mine. “Now don’t get too wild about this meeting,” I said. “We’re here to find out what they have to offer and it might very well be nothing. Keep yourself off the roller-coaster and let me see what if anything is possible. I suspect we’ll walk out of there with nothing at all. I just want you to be at peace and to know all this before we start.”

            She blinked at me then nodded her head.

            I kissed her worried, tired, pouty lips and gently lifted her up. “Ok. Let’s go to the zoo.”

            She cooed and set about making Rita comfortable on the bed, arranged the dishes of leftover Vietnamese food on the pillows and darted out after me into the corridor.

            Celeste cursed and gulped as she narrowly dodged the maniacal French drivers, whizzing us round and round until we finally located the offices of Finance Mutuel in a glittering new high-rise. We trundled up to be met by a receptionist in the seventh floor foyer who buzzed Borstal out. He greeted us and scooped us along with his assistant into a small office down the corridor, plunging into the business as soon as we met out seats.

            He flipped through the business proposal uttering sharp grunts of approval. “You certainly seem to know your business, Mr. Maroc.”

            “Yes. I know what I’m doing.”

            “As I indicated in our correspondence, my firm is convinced that this is one of the best ideas and one of the most carefully planned proposals to come across our desks in some time. I’ll tell you right off that the Board of Directors has already decided to fund this one.”

            Celeste, despite the skepticism she’d learned over the past months, flushed a happy red and let her eyes sparkle at me for a second.

            I lifted an eyebrow. “The procedure?” I prompted.

            “Well, we propose to fund the project through what is known as zero-coupon bonds.” He leapt up and cleared his throat before picking up a stub of chalk and swinging a blackboard over to the table. Borstal began to whip a hatch of numbers, arrows and anagrams across the slate, elucidating simple matters and glibly hopping over crucial ones, firing his arm out past the edge of the thing in triumphant blasts, peeking his head under his armpit now and then to apprise me of the benefits of his plan. “In other words,” he twinkled, “we arrange to secure your two million dollar loan with the purchase of U.S. Treasury Bonds worth four million. This creates a situation which I would illustrate like this.”

            While Borstal chattered and applied his chalk in a kind of Morris-dance around the blackboard, I appraised the situation from the corner of my mind: the suite was furnished in a generic office style; an obvious front, leased on a shared basis with the rest of the businesses in the building. The receptionist was likewise shared among all the alleged occupants of the floor. Borstal’s suit was English wool tailored in England to lend him a natty, nerdy appearance. His assistant was a bovine floozy who seemed uncomfortable in clothes. Celeste was frozen in her seat with a look of frightened disbelief gripping her features.

            I scraped a nail along my neck and interrupted the pitch: “What’s it going to cost me?” I thought I might as well ask just for a laugh.

            Borstal bounded back into his chair, suddenly glum. “Ah. The project’s sound as a bell, so for due diligence –which I assure you is merely a formality at the point– our firm would only require forty thousand dollars deposited into our account in Zurich.”

            I heard Celeste’s mute scream and hastened to get her away from the man before she pounced. I protested until he threw out some other proposals, only one of which might be acceptable, then got up to leave with promises to consider their offers. We all grinned and pumped hands like true movers and shakers.

            “Mr. Maroc, I am so very glad to know you.”

            “Why, thank you, Mr. Borstal, I feel much the same. It was absolutely stultifying.”

            It wasn’t until we were locked in the car and dodging traffic on our way back to the hotel that Celeste unleashed herself. “Goddamn that little weasel! Why didn’t you tear into him for dragging us all the way down here just for that bullshit?”

            “Oh, let them have their fun.” I flung out a hand. “They probably have to work a full year to rope in a punter dense enough to hand over forty grand. Once they catch up with their outlay they really don’t make all that much off the scam. I had to find out if anything was possible here and I did.”

            “But why don’t you ever get angry? You may not fall for it but you always let them think they’ve fooled you. You should tell them to their faces what scumbags they are to even think they can pull that kind of shit on you!”

            Back inside the room we made love in a lugubrious melody, as though we knew we only had each other in this world.

            We strolled some more, revisited the Vietnamese restaurant and rested in bed, Celeste relaxed and chomping away as she soaked in the French programs on television, making up for all the broadcasting she had missed since she left Rapelle. My French was barely passable –I’d forgotten it years ago– and Celeste was proud to translate the parts I missed. She gave me a huge grin and suddenly planted a kiss on my forehead, leaving a ticklish ring of sticky Asian sauce.

            “I want to stay another day,” she said. “Maybe even two if we can. We came all the way down here, so we might as well pretend we’ve earned a vacation.”

            That night I was wakened by a deep, exhausted moan. I opened my eyes just as Celeste shook my arm, bubbling with excitement: “Lucien, wake up. I just had an orgasm!”

            I blinked while she panted and bugged her eyes in absolute surprise.

            “All by myself! I wasn’t even doing anything, just sleeping! I guess I was dreaming about us, you know…”

            I laughed at this constantly funny, irresistibly wonderful being I found beside me and pulled her closer into my arms.

            I brought her coffee in the morning and Celeste lazed about content, at ease now that we had decided to take our time. She stretched and sighed, played with the dog when I brought her back from her first scumble, and rolled around the bed in luxury. When she lilted into the bathroom to wash and dress I lay back on the bed to consider what I could do when we returned to Interlaken. I had always felt my need for freedom as tangibly as a shotgun blast to the chest, and I was convinced I could find a way to that freedom.

            She emerged dressed, and began digging around for her make-up: “I like the way you always wear a tie, even if we’re just sitting around home –wherever that is.”

            “Man’s got to look civilized.”

            “I know what I want to do today: I want to buy myself a new dress. Do you think we can afford that?”

            “Who cares?” I flung open my arms. “I’ll teach Rita filthy jokes while you find the best in town. We can look all day if you like.”

            Celeste started scooping everything into her purse, stopped, popped her lips once nice and loud and announced: And another thing, Mr. Lover…” She leapt on the bed and set her eyes right up against mine, that untamable smile flying all over us. “I want to sit in the sun and drink a noontime glass of wine!”

            Forgetting our toils, we pranced along peeking at boutiques and department stores. I was about to herd us all across the street when I noticed the name plate affixed to the corner. “My God.” I stopped. “We’ve reached Elysium.”

            “Celeste didn’t see anything unique. “What are you talking about?” She gripped my hand just in case.

            I almost folded her in my arms and danced. “Look!” Celeste followed my finger to the bright enameled street sign that proclaimed Rue Jean Vigo. She had always instinctively enjoyed seeing me excited and now looked up and down the street indicated, skipping her eye along the stone and stucco villas all clean and inviting, palms trimmed and gardens fresh and quietly cheerful beneath the southern sun, but still could not discover anything to distinguish this neighborhood from the others. She maintained her unguided enthusiasm, squeezed my hand, then, after searching my face, decided it must be the street sign itself that had bowled me over.

            “Who is that?” she asked, tilting her head. Rita grinned and waited to see what we were on about.

            “The greatest poet in cinematic history,” I said.

            “Poet? For movies?”

            “He once got the Prevert brothers to be part of a lynch mob! They were just extras, of course, but it was completely improvised and they had a blast.”

            Celeste shrugged and took Rita’s leash up in both her hands. Before she could escape I threw my arms around her from behind and set my face against her cheek: “Because of Vigo we know that if you ever lose the one you love, you can see them under water if you keep your eyes open.”

            “Does it work in rain, too?”

            “Why not?” I asked. “Come on now, ladies, let’s get you that glass of wine you ordered.”

            Later she rolled up her cuffs and, tugging on Rita, strolled into the waters of the Mediterranean. Celeste, wading off to Africa. From my perch on the stone wall, I watched her sing to herself as she plashed through the cobalt blue sheet, pricked my eyes with the golden reflections off the caps, her hair and her skin, and wondered why it was that she looked so lonely when she was happy.

            “We should have just moved here,” she said. “That way I could have the sun and the ocean. Also we wouldn’t have to be treated like shit by Swiss people.”

            “I’ve been reading some of the realty notices. Rents are much cheaper here, too.” We had already remarked on the relative bargains in the comestible and clothing departments.

            Both Rita and Celeste were electrified by the massive puppet heads springing up throughout the city like garish mysteries of Easter Island. When I explained that Mardi Gras was coming up and that Nice was famous for its carnival, Celeste duly repeated the information to Rita, who grinned and capered in circles before tearing on.

            We hiked up the stairs to the ancient fortress overlooking the bay, pausing on the bench set in the old archway where lovers had carved their names over millennia, rested as we watched the boats around St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, wound down the hill through the venerable Jewish cemetery and back through the bustle of the old city center, unable to find a dress Celeste liked enough to purchase, or one that I thought even deserved her.

            The day came when we had to check out and return to our home in Switzerland. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars on the French toll roads, we decided to run down the coast then up through Italy. We drove along the sea through Monaco where Celeste was stopped and growled at by a very well tailored traffic cop for plowing the wrong direction down a one-way street. Bored, pampered, officious and intrigued by the smell of American blood, the policeman subjected us to an edifying lecture in complicated French. I nudged Celeste and hissed: “Start crying.” The cop glowered and compressed his lips as Celeste blinked and trembled until he waved us along disgustedly. “A fat lot of good you were,” she teased Rita, who had snoozed through the whole thing. We wheeled on into Italy and through the sad villas that remained of San Remo, then turned north at Imperia.

            For hours we drove along scarcely marked roads that wound their way through flower farms and ever higher vineyards, ascending steep shelves of rock squeezed up and out over the ages. Tracing still smaller paths northwest of Cuneo, we were lowered into a vast forgotten valley hacked out of the granite, a slender riparian defile almost bereft of life, the icy floes in the river crashing past as though they, too, had no business here in this stark but oddly exciting land. It was rugged, fiercely wild, but beautiful. We had insensibly been dropped into an undiscovered ancient world.

            As we trickled through an unexpected village Celeste wrapped her fingers around mine and said: “Can you imagine if we’d come here? No one would ever be able to find us.”

            It was a perfect thought. I only wish we had.

            To pass the time, she then began to sing the song I’d written while waiting for her in Oregon, keeping the soft Brazilian beat in her head while trying to reach the highs she never could:

            “A gentle wind

            A gentle sigh

            A gentle word

            A lover’s cry

            A secret room, my Love,

            Is in my heart…”

            “Oy! The notes!” I yipped.

            “So help me!” she laughed.

            She cackled along gleefully as the tires spun us through the dusk and into the violet air of night.

            Outside Turin we passed an old, sprawling complex that hummed with industry and ugliness, but hummed as well with a secret, fervent life. The winds tore purple heads of smoke from the chimneys as soon as they appeared, flinging them across the sky. Machinery and frantic workers cold and blue could be sensed merely by driving past. Twisted wire spilled out around the institution caging the geeky neon lights which towered over the empty lots on either side. Huge, bleak, ominous, the thing lay ready to pounce on us as we sped by. Celeste pinched her head back and widened her eyes in grim inquiry.

            “That,” I reassured her, “is the factory where blind people make all the mortadella.”

            Through darkness and neon we flashed along the Autostrada, dodging drivers who, though reckless in an almost sporting manner, made the French appear all the more crazed. At Aosta I navigated us onto the back roads that began to lift us up to the Grand Saint Bernard Pass. It was here that we realized we had been once more cheated of the alpine magic we had come so far to see, to live and breathe, for the night had clambered down in formal wear and the faint glimpses of the Valais we caught taunted us with jilting beauty. I grumbled as I darted my head around trying to see the landscape, and Celeste, while promising me that we would return some day to soak it all up in daylight, launched into a sarcastic travelogue describing all the wonderful things we could not see as we passed.

            “And on our right, you would see, if we could see, which we can’t, the infamous hut where little Grandma Cheese gave birth to all the future kings and lords of the Fromage dynasty, the chief cow of which is grazing right down there, although you can’t actually see it. In fact, if we could see, we would see that we are now approaching the castle where the Queen Brie miscarried and flooded the valley below, which we can’t actually see, with all the little Swiss Cheeses who had holes in their heads where they kept getting their fingers stuck. That big cluster of lights on that cliff is the village, not that anyone can see it, where the first great King of the family, Raclette the Hot, melted all his children into one big stinking fondue before cooling and breaking them into little gummy crumbs who then went out to settle this village here on our left, which you would see if we could see, not that we can of course…Now you take it.”

            I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t possibly speak. I simply held my aching face and collapsed in the floor well, flapping a hand at her to signify that she would have to continue the tale herself, which she did for another half hour.

*         *         *

            I took my cue from one of Borstal’s scenarios and set about trying to get a bank letter stating that said bank would loan me the necessary amount provided the loan was fully guaranteed by a second bank. While initiating more inquiries and sifting through the potentials, I had Renée arrange a meeting between myself and her uncle, who happened to be Vice President of the Credit Suisse branch in Bern. We rode the train to Thun together, then met with Ulrich, who sped us along in his car the rest of the way. Renée was easy to be around when she was alone and willing to abandon herself to twisted jesting. Unfortunately, the Swiss being even more cautious than other investors, my proposal snuck back into our mailbox a week later with a curt ‘Sorry.’

            Marius had taken over the management of the Babylon, skillfully bartering up for a higher wage than Walli had earned on the promise of bringing in even more sufferers, so it became protocol for the Schwyzer group to leave at a certain hour each night and put in a mass show of support for Marius, which extended the hours almost as much as our earlier debaucheries had done. Celeste relished the large gatherings, soaking up the friendliness and forming quick ties with each individual for about a week at a time. I had songs in my head, paintings on my eyes, cognac in my belly and a cigarette hanging from my mouth as I chugged along behind Celeste, lost in a reverie spun by the sight of her as we whirled through a night land of diamonds and desire. And Celeste danced on.

            Watching the strobe-lit convulsions of the dancers, barraged by the music, turning to the video monitors, I was being massacred by the full power of the crap, and felt myself foreign not to the country but to the times. Despite my regard for music, I had always been appalled by people who actually placed it at the vanguard of the human spirit. Surrounded by writhings and caterwauling, I looked again at the video playing above me and I was defeated by the neo-Flemish inanities of pop music. I resigned myself to the music. Then I heard nothing more, saw nothing more except from within; I dug out my pen and dashed off an idea: a few days in a studio and I could record a Techno song mixed and thundering exactly as stipulated, but stubbornly keeping the accents on the two and the four beat; approximately halfway through the piece both the tune and the video narrative would become clear: as the song evolved into a recognizable but thoroughly bluesified rendition of the Wedding March the film would tie up the storyline by showing the victorious cresting of a hill by a huge tank (Panzer, I pointed out to Marius) being met by a sweet, wily, dear, plucky tricycle as the two pushed on passionately towards each other, ultimately uniting in love while the last aerial shot revealed them under their canopy surrounded by human wedding guests dancing around in technojerking matrimonial joy. Marius roared with laughter when I’d finished showing it to him and declared it genial. Celeste returned mad-eyed and flushed and I jokingly presented it to her as our own true story.

            “That’s fucking hilarious,” she hollered, “but which one am I?”

            “Der Panzer!” everyone yelled, though I’d thought I’d scripted her as the trike.

            She flashed her worried look around the table then let herself laugh anyway.

            The lights bounced and spun around, the chimps on the dance floor continued to thrash and the deejay cheerfully beat the night to a pulp. The two Marcos drifted out through the crowd and were followed at intervals by Connie and Roger, Sergio, Gaby, Sandro and most of the group. Celeste joined Isabelle at the small bar and at her insistence bolted two or three tequilas. Isabelle gradually lost interest in their broken exchange and melted laughing into the arms of the men strung around her. Celeste glared at Sandra then skipped over to rejoin me at the table. We were finishing our drinks and climbing back into our overcoats when Celeste became interested in something over my shoulder.

            “Fuck you!” she screamed.

            I turned around to see what had sparked her, but detected nothing unusual in the chaos. I hoisted an eyebrow at her.

            “Those three punks at the table behind you,” she explained. “They were giving you dirty looks.”

            I swiveled again and located the men in question; hulking, pamper-faced brats indistinguishable from the rest of the buffoons. They stopped grinning and elbowing each other as I caught their eyes. They’d most likely been wondering what the woman was wasting her time with me for; this voluptuous, glowing young woman with the golden hair falling down to the top of her miniskirt and this slight, dark outcast with the black ponytail spilling down his black suit; Salome and her Wandering Jew, Melmoth and his Immalee.

            “Nobody’s going to threaten you as long as I’m around,” Celeste declared, her eyes popping at them.

            “Hardly a problem,” I chuckled. I clamped my hat on my head, untangled the collar from inside her shoulder and stuck her purse in her hands. “We’re through here for tonight anyway. They’ll have to find other playmates.”

            She turned back to them at the door, grinding her heels down and bellowing past my ear: “Fuck you! Just fuck you!”

*         *         *

            By now, Jim had reconciled with his ex, and we would see them together in relatively good cheer. We naturally wound up joining them for drinks here and there. Gitte was small and very blond; she giggled nervously a lot and spoke fluent English very softly in an accent that was half Swiss and half Irish, which Celeste unconsciously mimicked. Outwardly timorous, she was also prone to sarcastic reflections on most all of Jim’s movements. He seemed to bear it as a natural outcome of their rough times. Celeste thought it witty and fed it as she blended her life into Gitte’s.

            “When I first saw you,” Gitte giggled to Celeste, “I thought you were a real whore, shaking your ass like that at all the men on the dance floor. –I’m sorry,” she burst out, covering her mouth in shock. “What I mean is that I’m glad that you are so nice!”

            Celeste was sincerely charmed and flattered in an odd way.

            “I’ll be right back,” I said.

            “Where are you going?” It was touching that Celeste always wanted to know where I was.

            “Check on Jim,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I think he might be getting into a brawl with those guys he was arguing with when we came in.”

            Jim was okay and the rest of the night’s fighting was relegated to the drunken Swiss busting through their repressions and belting each other unexpectedly. As we left the place with them, Jim and Gitte were politely arguing about whether or not he should stay at her house. Gitte teased him for so much as thinking he might.

            Celeste and I went up to the flat and she coddled Rita and checked the faxes while saying to me: “I’m surprised that she’s so nice after all we’ve heard. I think she’s pretty, don’t you?”

            “No. She’s dwarfish and she has a face like a death’s head.”

            “Geez, Lucien, that’s kind of rude. And she was asking me if you had a brother just like you.”

            “Nope. There’s only one and it was meant for you.”

            When Celeste spoke he turned to her and felt that inevitable and yet invariably unexpected white jolt course through him whenever Lucien set his eyes on her. What molten talons, so sharp and sudden sank into his heart when faced with the lush beauty of her form? What luscious Chambord burned through his veins? What perfect symphony of the feminine strands braided his thoughts, and what paradise –eternal, lost in mists, but always remembered– suddenly burst his breast when regaled by her appearance? The very existence of her spirit and mind, caressed by that one female body, was proof to Lucien of some supreme genius and to hold her was to shut his life and lay in the arms of oneness, the kindness of ages murmuring through her, the unwavering light of energy and blessings shining from her eyes, her fingers, the effulgence of all the goodness life was made of flickering out from her and dissolving his being every time. It drew on all his strength to withstand this day after day, and he feared that if a fraction of this living epiphany radiated in turn from him to the young woman he loved, she would crumble.

            For I now sensed the weaknesses in Celeste, and weakness, like stupidity, frightens me, makes me wary. Perhaps the two were identical. We had been closer than any lovers had ever been, so it was no impressive feat to discover the tenuous spots in one another’s rigging. Mine, I thought with a dull razz, were possibly innumerable, for I had paid no heed to my weaknesses whatsoever; my strengths had been my life.

            Not being in on the conversations I heard only what Celeste relayed, but her infrequent, preemptive, calls to Paul brought her such fright and worry that she very decisively and finally extracted herself from all communication with him, certain, as she said with a scowl of revulsion, that he would forget about her quickly that way. With this last Rapelleian knot severed, Celeste flung herself into local activities, primarily with Jim and Gitte, oddly withdrawing again from flights of love as she transferred the full beacon of her interest to these friends for the next few weeks. Gliding happy and gorgeous through the streets, swapping snideries with Sergio at home while they smoked hash until she was insulted by his sarcasm, bubbling into Da Rica or Babylon to meet Jim and Gitte for another round, she held on to my hand like a little girl while soaking up joy like a golden-haired sailor on his first shore leave, innocent of evil, fearful of loneliness, suspicious of phantoms.

            But I remained faithful to the gouting passion of the first Lucien and Celeste. The inferno raged inside me, charring my soul as it roared for the woman Celeste to devour. I followed her perfume from here to there, wondering if such a love was too untamable to not be a crime against all order.

            Twice I had to leave precipitously when the clash of her oblivion against my passion became too overpowering to simply sit and endure in a smoke of smalltalk. The second time I had pushed my drink away and fled the Babylon, occasioning a quarrel between Sandra and Celeste, which Gitte subsequently exacerbated by first gossiping with Sandra after Celeste’s departure, then goading Celeste with the barmaid’s disparaging comments in the morning.

            The two women spent more time together, as Gitte was on the dole and Celeste hadn’t much to keep herself occupied, strolling Jim and Gitte’s child Rosy through the streets of the town or passing days in close feminine conversation in a booth at the Schwyzer. When Gitte was able to park her baby at her mother’s house –sometimes for days– she would experiment with Celeste’s clothes and join her for an evening’s dancing at the Babylon. I would drop in periodically, but a number of my nights were now passed placing or awaiting telephone calls. Gitte would also bring the child up to our place and rest in between errands, subtly mocking Jim and his dissolute ways, never more than touching on her own days as a heroin addict, seemingly mortified, ashamed of the idea that she had ever been able to sink so low. She boasted to an awed Celeste that she sometimes lost her head and kicked the shit out of Jim. “Sometimes I think he’ll murder me for sure!” she laughed. To me she seemed polite, but the bilirubin of intrigue trickled off behind her steps, and I found myself retreating from my initial bonhomie as I watched Celeste discover and follow the glittering trail. More and more I began hearing about the problems in Jim and Gitte’s lives, relayed with a frightful enthusiasm.

            “That poor girl better just move the hell out of this town,” Celeste announced one afternoon. “Don’t tell Jim, but she’s already checking into taking the baby and not letting him know where she is.”

            “Why?”

            “She says he beats her.”

            I peered at her, sensing her thrill, dreading the invasion of this new friend’s turmoil. “Well,” I said, “you used to think it was she who was beating Jim. In fact, I seem to remember you making me look at his wounds and hearing all about it.”

            She popped her face a bit forward, almost in defiance of something: “Jim’s an asshole. I don’t think he deserves her.”

            Gitte’s companionship proved at that time both aggravating and benevolent, as she began to hold me up in conversation against Jim, whose mundane existence and most unromantic nature appeared to her awkward besides mine, and her fascination somehow sparked Celeste’s appreciation of my presence again.

            For some reason she thought it remarkable that I would trot around buying Celeste’s cramp medication, flu remedies and tampons, but to me it was merely part of life with Celeste in a land where I spoke the language required for extracting things from hidden shelves.

            “I love him more than I ever thought possible,” I heard her avow to Gitte. “Have you noticed? You can talk to him about anything, he doesn’t make you feel like there’s that border between men’s world and women’s. You can just be with him.”

            Thus I found myself in the unexpected role of the masculine paragon, extolled expansively while Jim was punctured as a lout. They might as well have spent their days and nights sticking pins in a little hoodoo doll of him.

            When another Sunday came and painted the sky with dazzling blues and seductive winds, Celeste and I took Rita away from her toys and walked down to the castle ruins at the mouth of Lake Thun, well provisioned with picnic delights and newspapers. We drank in the air as we shadowed the river, Celeste greeting the other strollers with a hilariously accurate parroting of their own ‘Gruetzes.’