Chapter 3 #2
“ Donne-moi un moment pour lire le text? ” I say to her—give me a sec to catch up, basically.
Still, no attention. Instead, she sighs, glances at the clock, glances at the thin gold watch draped around her wrist, drums her fingers on her chin.
She glances at her friend, who looks equally uncomfortable after being paired off with the ponytail guy, then stares at the door like she’s waiting for a package delivery or something.
Nothing to me.
Okay, have it your way. I flip open the book and, with a furtive look at everyone else, find the poem we’re assigned and turn to it: Victor Hugo, La tombe dit à la rose.
At least it’s short. I start the first lines.
La tombe dit à la rose :
The tomb said to the rose
- Des pleurs dont l’aube t’arrose
The tears with which dawn waters you ? —
Que fais-tu, fleur des amours ?
what do you do, flower of love?
I wrinkle my nose. Sentimental as hell, symbolism about as sophisticated as an eighth-grader’s. But I keep reading .
La rose dit à la tombe…
The rose said to the tomb…
I scan the rest of it, trying to get the gist enough to have an intelligent conversation about it, barely even noticing when the door opens and shuts.
“Sorry,” comes a smooth male voice. “I mean, désolé .”
My conversation partner shifts beside me, and I take advantage of the distraction to speed-read the rest of the lines.
Que fais-tu de ce qui tombe
What do you do with that which falls
Dans ton gouffre ouvert toujours ?
In your… whatever a gouffre is, a mouth, maybe? that’s always open
The professor murmurs something and clucks her tongue, telling whoever it is he’ll need to join a group.
La rose dit : Tombeau sombre,
The rose said: Somber tomb,
I hear footsteps and the sound of him setting down his bag.
“We’re an odd number now,” the professor is explaining in spitfire French, “so I suppose you’ll have to be ménage à trois.” She murmurs a little French laugh.
De ces pleurs je fais dans l’ombre
Of these tears I make in shadow
It’s not until a shadow falls across the page of my book that I realize she’s put him with us.
Un parfum d’ambre et de miel.
A perfume of amber and honey.
He sits down, and I look up.
This is no scrawny nerd or ponytail geek.
A shock of black hair that’s mussed in all directions, either from styling or from bedhead, hard to tell.
Eyes the kind of lucid blue-green that forcibly puts me in mind of Caribbean beaches and air that smells like coconut and salt.
And a pair of lips arching so smoothly, so perfect and proportional, they could have been carved on a classical statue.
But when he smiles, it’s all flesh and blood.
“You’re new,” he manages.
I blink at him, scoop some hair behind my ear.
“And you’re late!” My partner, at last, comes to life, and the tone of her voice has completely changed: airy, angelic, breathy. And then I realize. She has the hots for him. Beyond obvious, and I suppose—objectively, aesthetically—I can see why.
The latecomer nods. “Bonjour, Elena.”
I chew the end of my pencil, spit it out. Try to focus.
“Hi,” Elena says, then tips her head like she’s just remembered me. “This is…”
“Gwenna,” I answer.
Another nod. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “Gwenna,” he repeats. Then he extends a hand. “Lanzelin Dell’Acqua. Lanz.”
I take it and shake, mildly taken aback by the formality. Not to mention the name . Who’s named something like that? My mind whirrs through my languages, phonemes, roots, and I don’t realize I’m frowning until his expression matches mine.
“ Ca va ?” he asks. You okay?
I give my head a little shake. Be normal.
“ Oui ,” I answer. But then…I can’t resist. “ C’est…italien, ton nom de famille? ”
He smiles, and it’s such a boyish look of genuine delight that I almost— almost —smile back.
“ Si. ” He puts a hand to his chest. “A little Italian, a bit French. And some?—”
“German,” I venture. “Swiss.”
His smile broadens. “ Immer ja .”
The barest hint of a frown shimmers over Elena’s forehead. I come in peace , I mentally telegraph to her. I’m not here to horn in on him. Or anyone. My mind flashes to my dorm room—to Morgan and Kingston. Why does everyone keep assuming the worst of me?
“We should really be reading,” Elena says, pointed but still sweet.
“Elena!” barks the professor. “ En francais, s’il te pla?t !”
“ Desolée, madame .” Elena shrinks a little, but not without a glare at me—which, to my mind, is unfair. I’m not the one not speaking French in French 203.
Lanz, evidently, doesn’t care much either.
“What are we reading?” he whispers in English, lowering his voice with a glance to the professor.
Elena gives a little laugh. “One of the poems.” She offers up her own open book to indicate the page, leaning into him as she does. I catch a whiff of her perfume and get the sense that she prepared extensively for this class, and I don’t mean doing the homework.
“Okay,” he says. “ Merci .” His accent, compared to hers, is fluid, natural, although tinged with something non-native—whatever that pan-European heritage is, coming into play.
I half-wonder how someone as cosmopolitan as this guy ends up at a tiny, unranked American college, but I also don’t much care.
“And what are we doing, exactly?” He switches to French deftly, and this time the question is directed at me. I look up.
“We’re supposed to be discussing the text for writing an explication ,” I reply. “And then a?—”
“Attention!” calls the professor. “ A la discussion, s’il vous pla?t .”
So much for that. At least I managed to read the poem. And it’s starkly simple enough that I’m sure I can bullshit an answer if I’m called upon.
“Very well. Claire,” the professor calls on the blonde girl. “What sort of text do we have here? ”
“A poem,” answers Claire primly in prep-school French. “Which comprises a dialogue between a rose and a tomb?”
She phrases it like a question, even though it’s the most undebatable part of the entire exercise.
I twirl my pencil in the air and look out the broad arched window to the campus beyond—Grove Quad, if I’m not mistaken, looking vibrantly green in the burgeoning morning light.
I think longingly of the coffee I intend to pick up from Holy Grounds as soon as this class as over, maybe find a bench to sit on with my books?—
“And…Mr. Late-to-the-Party,” the professor says, leaning on her desk and nodding indulgently at Lanz. “What themes do we see presented here?”
I force my attention back to the discussion, to the person who’s been called on, and that’s when I notice he’s been staring.
At me.
“Ah…it…” Lanz stammers, looking down at his book and flipping pages back and forth, even though the poem itself only takes up two paragraphs. “I’m sorry, one moment?—”
I’m not the only one who notices, either. Elena, sitting between the two of us, shoots me a look as rigid and cold as marble.
Heat prickles up my the back of neck and scalp in spite of myself. I did nothing, I want to say. I simply came to class. I do not know you, or him, from Adam, mademoiselle.
The professor snaps her elegant fingers. “Too slow. Your partner, Madamemoiselle Elena?”
Elena goes stick-straight in her seat. “Um…” She glances down at the book, at Lanz, at her friend Claire, as if any of them has the answer written on their face.
“ L’amour ,” she manages at last. Love.
The professor raises an eyebrow. “ L’amour ?” she repeats.
Elena looks lost. “Um… oui ,” he says. “It’s about a rose, so?—”
“The poem is titled The tomb says to the rose ,” the professor interjects. “Or did you not even read that far? ”
I snort.
But my amusement is short-lived, because the professor wheels on me next.
“Ah, our little novelty. Mademoiselle Gwenna, you think you’ve unlocked the theme properly, then? Enlighten us.” She folds her arms, her long fingers settling elegantly on the draping sleeve of her blouse. “If anyone in your little threesome was paying attention.”
In fact, I was , I think. “ J’avancerais plut?t que ce poème traite du thème de la mort—ou, plus précisément, de la relation entre le changement, la transmutation et la mort éventuelle de toutes choses dans le monde, qu’elles soient volontaires ou non. ”
As I answer, the professor curls a smile, but it’s not her attention I feel. It’s Elena’s.
Whether or not she’s understood anything I just said.
I conclude, suck in a breath, and turn to her.
“Death,” I say, in English. “Not love.”
A beat of silence. Then the professor claps—with delight, it seems.
“ Formidable ,” she declares. “ Brillamment argumenté .”
I duck my head, loathing the attention even as the tiniest flicker of pride lights in my chest. Elena, for her part, looks like she’s swallowed an entire lemon studded with thumbtacks…and she’s aiming the look right at me.
Sorry , I try to thought-beam to her. But maybe read the poem if you don’t want to get embarrassed ? —
“Show off,” she mutters, glancing from me to Lanz.
And that just makes things worse.
Because Lanz is also staring. At me.
The professor must notice, too, because she wheels on him. “Something to add? You’d like to contribute to the commentary on theme of the poem, then?”
He sits up straighter. Big blue eyes at attention. Clears his throat.
“ Non, mais… ” He begins, averting his gaze to the floor.
Then back up.
And my God, but those eyes are hard to look away from.
“ Mais ici…l’amour, la mort. Ce ne sont pas la meme chose? ”
But here…love, death. Aren’t those the same thing?
Silence.
Even I have to admit, it’s sort of a good point. No, a legitimately good one. But accidental, surely—a broken clock that’s right twice a day.
“ Touché ,” the professor says, after a moment. “But we shall conclude there for the day. A draft of your explications due to me at Monday’s class. Bon week-end à tous. ”
The room hums back to life, people packing up and shouldering bags, and I scoop my things together as swiftly as humanly possible—but not swiftly enough, because as I do, the professor draws to our corner of the table.
“You might do well with a tutor, Mademoiselle Shalott.” She purses her lips, looks from Elena to me. “Or at least start by reading the text, hm?”
I can feel, literally feel, the waves of hot wrath emanating from her to my left. I don’t dare look up until the latest possible moment, until I’m certain Lanz is almost gone from the room.
But not quite. Because I glimpse him as he slips through the classroom door, him and the long, black carrying case slung over his back. Like you’d use for…a lacrosse stick, maybe? Except it’s the wrong season. A rifle? God, I hope not.
Elena, my erstwhile group partner, sees my staring and huffs. I muster every ounce of strength I can to tamp down my bitchy impulses and go for a joke.
“I hope that’s not a gun in there,” I joke.
Elena laughs, in genuine disbelief—at me, not with me. “Sorry, what? ”
“In that…” I trail off. Never mind. Never fucking mind, whatever I’ve said is so stupid I want to self-immolate.
“It’s a sword,” she says, like I’m four years old. “For fencing?” She exchanges a look with Claire, her blonde friend who’s sidled up to her and whose expression in response reads something like told you the new girl was weird.
My stomach sinks.
“Lanz is on the fencing team,” Claire supplies. “Didn’t you know?”
What is this, Caliburn University Quizzo? I clench my fists under the table. “No. Why would I know that?”
Elena snorts again. “Because of that. ”
She looks down at the table, and when I follow her gaze, I see it there, nestled among my notes and textbook:
The handkerchief. Rumpled, but unmistakably marked with its tiny sword.
“I…”
I have no good explanation for why I have that on me. Even for myself, I don’t have a good explanation.
But it doesn’t matter. Elena’s seen it and drawn her own conclusions—and whatever those conclusions are, they are not making me look good.
She and Claire hustle off, whispering together about Friday night plans they clearly don’t want me to overhear. But I do catch one thing:
Camlann House.