Chapter 28
Zina
Before I knew it, Agnès and I had arrived at a shabby apartment building on rue de Paradis, me nervously clutching the white lilies I had brought for the séance.
To my surprise, a long queue of people snaked down the narrow street deep into the building, probably to the very door of the apartment at which we were due.
The people shouted complaints at us as we walked past, their irritation wafting over to me like a pungent black smell. The nerve! What do they think they’re doing? Who do they think they are? Pigs! This country has gone to shit. Oy! Wait your turn!
“We have an appointment” was all Agnès said, holding her head up high.
She led me up the stairs to the fourth floor and through an apartment door without knocking. It was cluttered and stuffy, reeking of a sugary old-lady perfume that smothered.
We came to a similarly cluttered sitting room. It was chock-full of dusty, ancient-looking furniture, dark paintings mostly of religious scenes, and wooden crosses that leaned against or hung on the flower-patterned walls.
A circle of people already sat gathered at a round table with angels and cherubs carved into its wooden legs.
Agnès turned to me. “Zina, it is my pleasure to introduce you to our hostess, Madame Henriette Couedon, ‘the Seer of Rue de Paradis.’ ”
The sitters at the table studied me with undisguised interest. “Welcome,” a black-haired woman of around sixty said in a serene voice. She had a long face and a large chin, and seemed well-bred and respectable. She wore a black satin robe trimmed in gold with flowing batwing sleeves.
The queue in the street made sense now. Henriette was probably a well-known seer. But I had no time for nerves, as she began making the introductions.
I would be judged by a tall, big-shouldered Russian woman named Klara, a mechanic, cabdriver, and fortune teller; a petite blond Frenchwoman named Coralie, who sat unspeaking next to Marie-Louise—the same Coralie from Oracle, I supposed—two striking, finely dressed Russian women named Mila and Dasha, co-owners of a Montmartre brothel; a handsome Black woman named Mary, American by her accent, an ex-dancer of Josephine Baker and a witch; and the only man, Sergei, also Russian, a former ballet dancer turned medium and patron of the Ballets Russes.
My pulse quickened. He had to be the Sergei Bolshoi that Baba Valya had referred me to.
He was alive, and in Paris, after all. I also realized Mila was the woman from my vision in the crimson drawing room.
A flash! and another vision burst in. The same table, the same faces, but with two more: Mama and a much younger Baba Valya.
Instead of the flower vase, coins, gems, jewels, and banknotes were strewn everywhere.
A voice counting, a pen scribbling, self-congratulatory laughter.
As though gloating over winnings after a gamble.
“So, now the pleasantries are over and done with, go ahead. Summon Svetlana, if she is indeed your mother.” Marie-Louise wrenched me from the vision.
“Marie-Louise,” Henriette admonished before turning her blazing black eyes on me.
“The young lady is who she says she is. I would know. After all, as you recall, it was I who predicted the fire and death at the Bazar de la Charité back in ’96.
Also Svetlana coming into our lives, and her eventual, too early, too tragic death. ”
I saw eye rolls, heard My God, not this again.
“And yet,” quipped Dasha, “your prediction about the glorious return of a French king has not come to pass.” Her giggle was nasty, turning too quickly into a hacking cough; her handkerchief came away bloody red.
“You are a very rude and ill-mannered woman.” Henriette folded her hands in front of her primly. “And you deserve whatever fate the Lord has in store for you. Archangel Gabriel told me so himself,” she chanted.
“That is enough, ladies.” Klara’s voice was deep and confident, all too familiar with the role of peacemaker. “We should treat our guest with respect. You don’t need to possess Henriette’s talents to know she is Sveta’s daughter. Just look at her.”
“I agree wholeheartedly,” Sergei said with a charming smile.
Mila and Mary nodded their assent while Coralie remained impassive.
Her bright, intelligent eyes stared past me.
I wondered if she was blind. Regardless, I could tell she was listening.
Her head was tilted toward me, her features focused.
Meanwhile, Agnès was making her rounds, greeting everybody at the table.
I sat in one of the empty chairs with more confidence than I felt.
“Well, get on with it, girl.” Marie-Louise gestured. “As you saw, there are many who wish to visit with Madame Couedon. She has little time, and I have little patience.”
I decided I wouldn’t give the horrible woman the satisfaction.
So I got on with it. I asked for the materials I would need for the séance, and when the room was awash in candlelight that glimmered like sunlit water, and a serving girl had placed a pen and paper before me at Henriette’s request, I glanced at Mama’s cards.
I had propped them against the vase of lilies.
I pictured Mama as she was in the last vision, beautiful, bewitching, alive.
I took up Agnès’s hand and Henriette’s, both reassuring, and I closed my eyes.
Then I said the necessary words, trying to mean every one of them.
“Svetlana Lenormand, Sveta, Mama, your friends and I summon you. We bring light into your darkness, life into your death. Commune with us in any way you know how. We are here, waiting for you. Are you with us, Mama?” I said the last in an aching whisper, calling forth all my lifelong desire to meet her. All my love, all the regret.
A cold swell gasped through the room. I smelled wax and smoke as the candles were snuffed out, though some were left alive, if the pulsing orange light beyond my eyelids was any indication.
The sitters remained quiet. But I could feel their focus.
I had done group séances only with Katya or Olga and her émigrés, but I knew this was different.
I sensed the sitters’ minds reaching for me, toward the warmth in my chest, somehow pushing me farther into myself.
I sank deep inside, into the warm womb-like darkness of my affinity.
I didn’t see the spirits there, or anything.
I heard no noise, felt nothing. Just a salty, watery kind of peace.
Then the cool shimmer of an otherworldly presence.
I could tell it wasn’t in the room, but somewhere beyond it. Flickering, there and gone, like a dying star.
I had the acute need to pick up the pen.
With my eyes still closed, I did, and I started writing the words that materialized in my mind.
I did this quickly, reflexively, as an invisible force directed my hand.
I heard the scratch of pen against paper, felt the rasp of the heavy breath in my throat; it was growing unbearably warm in the bubble, similar to the one with the Grand Duke, but more linked to the real world.
Suddenly, the words dried up like the inside of my mouth.
The warmth in my chest flared out, leaving me empty and drained.
I was yanked back into the room—but not before I felt the pen being wrenched from my fingers.
I heard the violent tearing of paper, the breaking of glass, the howl of a raging wind.
An impassioned, angry voice. His voice. Finally, the blackness.
I was revived by smelling salts, and I came to in a rush, salty like the sea when you’ve swallowed too much.
I blinked rapidly, woozy, disoriented. Something square and melting was pushed into my mouth, and I tasted the exploding flavor of bittersweet dark chocolate. It reminded me of Inspector Allard’s mouth.
I recalled my scribbling those phantom words and scrambled up to look for the pen and paper, but I felt hands on my arms and shoulders, pressing me back down into my chair.
“I wrote something,” I gasped, the air smoky from the extinguished candles.
“Someone told me to. I don’t remember…” I glimpsed the broken vase then, the lilies lying mangled like bits of pale flesh all over the table.
It was Agnès who handed me Mama’s deck of cards before placing a soggy, patched-up sheet of paper in front of me. What I saw there shook me to the core.
He…keeping me…He does not…you to know…it was him.
Beware.
Be careful.
Daughter.
[something scratched out] Mother.
A message—from Mama. This had to be confirmation the Grand Duke had killed her and was now somehow imprisoning her spirit.
But if that was true, was Inspector Allard’s theory correct that Baba Valya killed the Grand Duke to avenge Mama?
What if the grandmother I had known all my life was a murderess after all?