Lazare, anticipating this, had made arrangements. The Jeep was prepared and waiting. After a little food, which Maria would not touch, they were driven out into the desert. There they would watch as the mountains, invisible in the darkness when they set out, emerged in that exquisite light, rose and azure, that composed a desert dawn. This sight, which had delighted her in the past, diverted her only briefly. Lazare took her hand.
“Darling, look,” he said. “You see that peak there? You see the snow, Maria? Look how the light makes it gold.”
“It’s cold, Jean. I want to go home.”
“Darling, just a few minutes more. Stand close to me. Wrap your fur tighter. I’ll put my arm around you—there. Think, darling, don’t you remember the collection in ’eighty-five? We came here then, Maria. We stood in the very place we’re standing now. You were so worried about that collection—no inspiration, no ideas, you said—not one! Then we watched the light—and it came to you. Those colors. You remember? We drove straight home, and you began drawing, pages and pages of drawings, the most wonderful drawings. So light, so delicate—and the colors, Maria, you must remember the colors. That year you made clothes for goddesses. No one who saw them will ever forget them. People talk about them still.”
“That was then. This is now. I was happy then. I’m not happy now.”
“Darling, you are. We both are.” He embraced her, and she trembled.
“Jean, I need my present. Can I have my present now? You promised me. You said in the morning. It’s morning now.”
“Very well,” he had replied.
Then they drove back to the villa, very fast. He sent the servants away. He took her into her favorite place, a secluded inner courtyard. In its enclosure there was a formal Moorish garden with jasmine plants and orange trees. There was a small fountain, its water tumbling into a stone cistern lined with tiles of lapis and gold. The only sound was the murmur of the water. Lazare seated her on a stone bench by the fountain, and then, with his usual care and ceremony, he placed the small white box with its silver cord ties in her hand.
She began to tear at the wrappings eagerly. She opened the tiny box with its folded scrap of gold faille.
“What is it, Jean? Oh, what can it be?”
She looked up at him, her lovely face rosy with anticipation. Her wide, dark eyes fixed themselves on his. Her lips were parted: that look, so trusting, so innocent, so childlike, had always cut his heart.
“Don’t tell me—let me guess! It’s something tiny, and very beautiful. Is it a ring, Jean? Or a shell? An emerald? A scarab? A pretty stone—you remember those lovely stones we found that time in Thailand? Yes, it’s small, and hard—I think it’s a stone.”
Lazare smiled. It touched him, and had always touched him, that Maria’s delight in the beautiful was so hectic and so catholic. Was there another woman in the world, he wondered, who could be equally entranced by a priceless diamond as by a lovely but worthless shell or stone?
“None of those things, darling,” he replied. “This is very tiny, indeed—and a little magical. Would you believe me if I told you you held a bird in your hands?”
“A bird, Jean?” She stared at him.
“Yes, my darling. You have a little dove in your hands, a little White Dove—that’s what they’re called. You take it—you see, I have a glass of water here, all ready for you. You must take it with water, darling, never wine—and then, you’ll see. This little dove is very powerful. It will give you a new set of wings.”
“You’re sure?” She kept her eyes fixed on his. “You promise me, Jean? Last time…”
“I know, darling. No mistakes now. I swear to you. Try.”
She opened the scrap of gold faille. She inspected the tiny white pill solemnly, then took the glass of water from him. She swallowed the tablet like an obedient child taking preferred medicine from a concerned parent. Five minutes passed, perhaps ten; Lazare watched her face and listened to the water tumble from the fountain. Some while later, she pressed one of her tiny hands against her breast and gave a cry. Then, very shortly afterward, it began: a day and a night of fevered activity: a drive to the souk, her arms spilling over with small purchases; a swim in the pool; a desire to dance, a desire to lie down, a desire to talk as she had not talked to him in many years, a shifting, endless, fragmented day and night.
Seated beside her in the antique Rolls, Lazare could still feel on his skin the now-unaccustomed caress of her lips and her hands. For him it had been an agony; for Maria it had been twenty-four hours, more, of unadulterated happiness. Or so she had said, many times. The happiness, he judged, was wearing off now.
“This looked so pretty yesterday.”
She was holding up for his inspection a bracelet she had purchased in the souk the previous day. It was made of silver, with coral and turquoise beads. It was old, and indeed pretty, and would once have comprised part of an Arab girl’s dowry. It was exactly similar to twenty or thirty other bracelets Maria had purchased in that same souk before. “And this.”
She held up a tiny bell of pierced brass, then tossed it down. “Jean…” She clasped his hand. “When we get home, I want to sleep. I want to sleep for a year and a day, like a princess in a fairy tale. I want to sleep in the blue room, Jean, with those white sheets you had sent from London.”
“Darling, whichever room you want. Rest. Don’t worry. It’s all arranged.”
“You will stay with me and talk to me? Just till I fall asleep? You won’t leave me alone?”
“No. It’s Sunday, darling. I’ll stay with you all day if you like.”
“Sunday. I love Sundays,” She sighed. “I shall lie there and talk to you and listen to the bells.”
She leaned back against the leather seat and closed her eyes. Jean looked at her face, which he had loved for so long. Her forehead was smooth and still almost unlined. Her long black lashes made a crescent above the curve of her cheeks, and her cheeks were still rosy with faint color. Desire for her washed up through his body, and he was as helpless to resist it as he had always been. Leaning across, he kissed her mouth gently. Her lips parted beneath his with a sweet familiarity. He undid the silk cord fastenings of her coat and slipped his hand beneath the fur. He began to stroke the softness of her once-lovely breasts; he felt with his fingertips for the pulse of her heart.
She moved against him in response, locking her arms around his neck. He began to kiss her closed eyes and her thick hair. Then, abruptly, she stiffened and began to push him away. He drew back at once, and lifted one of her small hands, and kissed it. He could not meet her eyes.
“Jean, don’t. Darling, please don’t cry.” She began kissing his face, trying to force him to look at her. “Please don’t. I can’t bear to see you sad. I feel so much better, truly I do. If I can just rest, and maybe—” She hesitated. “Maybe just one more little White Dove, Jean. You said you brought me more. You said they’d be good for me, darling, and they were.”
“When we get home.”
He drew back from her, settled himself beside her, averted his face, and held her hand. She waited patiently then, because her trust in him was absolute, and she believed that although he had no compunction about lying to others, to her he never lied.
This house, about twelve miles outside Paris, lying in gentle country between the city and the palace of Versailles, was the first Lazare had bought her. Eighteenth-century, pre-Revolution, its every detail had been restored to his specifications with exacting care. Once upon a time Lazare had returned there with a sense of joy and triumph; now those feelings were impaired. It was just another house, albeit perfect of its kind. Lazare found its layout blurred with the details of his other properties, so much so that sometimes he would stand on the stairs, look around him at the corridors, the gilding, the mirrors, and think: which way from here?
Today, as she requested, they went upstairs to the blue room with the white-lace-edged sheets from London, and the bed Marie Antoinette had once owned, and the sma
ll, priceless, uncomfortable Louis XIV chairs. It was a woman’s room, a restful room, its various soft hues calming to the eye. Lazare sent the maid away. He brought out the small white parcel from his pocket; Maria took the pill eagerly. She drank a little of the water he offered her, but she would not drink it all.
“Darling,” he said. “You must take water. You must take more food. Shall I ask them to send something now?”
“No, Jean. Later. Oh, my lovely bed! It’s so pretty, and so comfortable.”
“It was made for a queen.”
“Not a happy queen. Not a very nice queen. Still, never mind, it’s mine now.”
She moved across the room. She kicked off her shoes, tossed the fur on the floor. She lay down on the blue bed with its blue canopy, then she patted its blue counterpane. “Sit beside me, Jean. The way you promised. Talk to me, darling. Talk me to sleep. You’re the only one who can.”
He went to sit beside her. She lay back, closed her eyes. Very gently and skillfully, he unpinned her hair. He spread it out across the whiteness of the pillows. He stroked her hair, black as the wings of a raven, and her forehead, which was as pale as ivory, and he began to tell her about their past.
Maria loved all his stories, but this story, their story, was her favorite. He began it in the old house, which she still remembered, with those balconies that looked like lace but were forged out of iron. He reminded her of how it had been then when both of them were poor, and he was so proud, so difficult, so obstinate, and so wrong.
He said: “It was a terrible time, darling—do you remember? I lived with the truth daily, and it was destroying me. It ate me alive. Then—”
“But then it was all right.” She stirred a little and clasped his hand. “It was all right in the end. Because I showed you the way.”
“You did.” He leaned across and kissed her forehead. “You did. And that was brave.”
He hesitated then, because this part of their story was hard for him. Perhaps she would not notice, he thought, if he moved on, left out these particular incidents.
Maria seemed almost asleep. Perhaps this White Dove was calming her; perhaps reactions could differ day by day.
“Two years after that,” he went on, “we made the journey. We took a train, then a plane—”
“No. Don’t skip.” She had opened her eyes. “I hate it when you skip. Tell me the best part. Tell me the first time.”
“That wasn’t the only best part, surely, darling?”
“No. No—but it was one of them. It’s the one I like to remember best. Please, Jean.”
“Very well.” He sighed. “It was in your room. You remember that room?”
“I do.”
“I had been drinking. I couldn’t make myself drunk, although I tried very hard. I walked. Round and round the city. It was night by then. I came back to the old quarter. I walked around and around the graveyard—you remember that graveyard, with those great monuments like houses? Where you used to play as a child?”
“I remember. I think I remember.”
“I went there, to think of you. There was jazz playing in the distance. A blues number, with saxophones. The rhythms nearly drove me insane. I was very desperate.”
“You needn’t have been desperate. It was simple. I told you all along.”
“I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t dare. So—that night—I felt powerful, and I felt damned. I was at the crossroads of my life. I felt I could live forever, or kill myself then and there. I felt I had to speak to you. I was so afraid of you. One word from you and I’d have done anything, everything.”
“I gave you the word.”
She opened her eyes and turned her gaze upon his face. She had begun to tremble again, and her eyes were unfocused, a little glazed.
“You do remember?” She caught at his arm. “Tell me you remember. What was the word?”
“Maintenant.”
He said it quietly, using the old accent they had both once shared. He turned his face away as he said it, because of the pain that word now recalled. He could see the room where she said the word, which was shadowy, and he could hear the sounds from outside, the distant and mournful drift of the blues. He could hear the shriek of the freight-train whistle, and the rush and rattle of its wheels.
Sound carried in the still of the night, and those freight trains were long: thirty boxcars, forty sometimes. He had heard that sound go past, and watched her face, so pale and so small, looking up at him from the shadows. Now, she had said, almost angrily, in a fierce and peremptory tone, as if she could stand these evasions no longer and was determined to cut through all the pretenses and defenses he had erected before.
Now, she had said, and he had listened to the freight cars, looked at the crucifix that hung on the wall, and understood that he could fight no longer: all his resistance had gone.
He had gathered her up into his arms then, with a deep sigh, and kissed her for the first time in the new way, like a lover as well as a protector and a friend.
“And that was how it began,” he said now in the quiet of the blue room. “I knew then what the consequence would be. We both knew. We began something that couldn’t end.”
She had begun to move beside him as he spoke, he realized, although the movements were slight, and it was a while before he became aware of them, he was so tightly locked in the past. She stirred, moved onto her side, plucked again at his sleeve.
“Touch me, Jean. Please. Touch me like last night. I want to try again.”
“Darling, no. You want to sleep. You said so…”
“I did want to sleep. I don’t now.”
She sat up and tossed back her thick hair. Her fingers began to pluck at the buttons of her blouse. Her face was flushed and her movements hectic. She managed to undo only two of the buttons, then the silk of the blouse tore.
“It doesn’t matter. Leave it… I don’t care. Jean, please touch me. Stroke my breasts. Kiss me, darling. Please kiss me now.”
He could feel the exhaustion deepening as he turned to her, and he could sense his own foreboding, a sapping certainty that this would turn out ill. He began to stroke her back, and then her breasts, as she asked. He tried not to feel or see how terribly thin she had become, but it was impossible. He could feel every disk in her spine, each rib; her breasts, always small, were now those of a pubescent child.
He closed his eyes and buried his face against her neck, fighting the exhaustion, and the shame.
“Darling, no,” he said again gently. “You should rest, and be calm.”
“I don’t want to rest.” Her voice had risen on that high, imperious note he had come to dread. “I want you to make love to me. Is that so much to ask? Why won’t you? Why can’t you? I know you love me. I know you want me. So what’s wrong? Jean, you’re not fifty yet. Are you too old?”
That taunt was a new one. She saw the anger come into his face and gave a small cry of triumph.
“That’s it. That’s it. You’re too old. You can’t do it anymore.”
“You’re wrong.” He rose and looked down at her coldly. “When I have the inclination, I can perform.”
“So perform now. Prove it. I don’t believe you.”
“Very well. Since you ask me so charmingly.”
“Jean—”
“Lie still, damn you.”
He undid his belt, loosened his trousers, left his clothes on. When he thrust up inside her, she gave one long, shuddering cry, then began to writhe in his arms. He pressed her down hard with his full weight and trapped her arms. As he moved inside her, he felt and saw nothing. His mind was completely dark. His one intent was to succeed as quickly as possible, to kill pain with pleasure, even if the pleasure was a brief thing that would not last.
Climax eluded him; he thrust on, and then she began to speak and move under him—and this made it worse. She talked a new whore language and made new whore moves—and that, of course, was not what he wanted; that he could purchase—and when desperate these la
st few years sometimes had purchased—anytime.
He put his hand across her mouth to silence her. He could feel despair just the other side of some screen in his mind, but he refused to look at it. Last night had been a failure. He had to succeed now.
She was murmuring under his hand. He closed his mind to her insinuating words. He summoned back from his memory the lost Maria of their past. He felt the modesty of her hands and saw the trust of her eyes. That Maria he worshiped; to love her had been his only religion, the guiding principle of his entire life. He fixed his mind on this Maria, and even now she did not fail him: just to imagine her was enough. Kissing her breasts, he shuddered and came. The ejaculation felt violent. The instant it was over, he pulled out of her with a gesture of disgust, hating himself, hating the woman his lost Maria had become.
He had not satisfied her, as he had once been able to do so easily. She caught hold of his hand and pressed it hard between her thighs. She closed her eyes and rubbed against him in a frantic way. It took her more than five minutes to achieve satisfaction, but her pleasure seemed intense; she at once released his hand.
“Go to sleep.” He jerked away from her, rose, and began to fasten his clothing. “Go to sleep. You can surely sleep now.”
She made no reply, but lay still, her eyes closed. Lazare sat down on one of the small, uncomfortable, priceless chairs. He felt he hated the chair, the Marie Antoinette bed, all the past years of acquisitions and accumulation. The houses, the cars, the planes, the paintings: he loathed them. He had acquired them believing they could assuage loss, but now he looked down into the emptiness at the heart of his life and felt sick with fear.
He sat there, in hard-faced desperation, for an hour. Maria never moved once during that time. He was afraid to speak or move himself in case she was only pretending to be asleep, but he longed to escape from this room. He wanted to go out into the park and walk beneath the avenues of sweet chestnut. He wanted to breathe clean air, and think, and be alone.
These pills had been his last hope, the last component in a Faustian pact he had made. Now he saw them for the disaster they were. Never mind what happened on the day of the collection, never mind if Maria failed to appear, never mind if her imagination remained barren, never mind if he had to endure another five years as infernal as the last five—he would destroy the remaining White Doves and purchase no more.