Interstitial #5
Then I saw that Marcel was flashing one of his pistols.
He had a ghastly smile on his face and in the shuttered room, his teeth seemed to glow like huddled white mice.
I knew at once what had happened. Someone told Marcel about the Chaton and me—a servant seeking favor?
A guest that had overheard us? Then, armed with the gunpowder of his anger, he’d battered into my cottage and found the painting, which he considered proof of our unnatural crimes.
For a man like him, there’d have been a sort of pleasure in the discovery, as if he’d finally found a path for his violence to follow, one that glimmered straight and true.
“I swear on my life,” Emil pleaded, “there was nothing untoward.”
Marcel pointed to the smattering of evidence I could not deny, evidence I’d stupidly left in the cottage for too long: a vial
of the Chaton’s perfume, the copy of Nightwood that she’d inscribed (To my love, from her love), her chemise tossed at the foot of my bed. Where I saw a summer of vital and careless routine, he saw a season of betrayal.
We were both right.
He waved the pistol toward Emil. “And you, heathen that you are, let this into our home. I should shoot you for your perversion.”
“Stop, Marcel, and think!”
“Do you expect me, me of all people, to look the other way, like some frail cuckold?”
I came into the light. Surprised, Marcel swung the pistol toward me.
“Don’t hurt him,” I said.
“You.” His eyes nailed into me and I understood that what lived inside of him at that moment was not only hatred for me, but
hatred for himself.
I held up my hands. He advanced toward me. He lifted the pistol.
The barrel, luminous and shifting, reminded me of minnows darting in the stream by my childhood home. We’d catch them by the
handfuls. Silver and blue, shades of the same fleeting life.
I began to back away. But then, behind me, another body, the Chaton, throwing me out of the way with astonishing force. I
crashed onto the ground on my elbows. The air flew from my body.
“Justine?”
Did the question come from me, or Emil, or from Marcel?
I can’t recall. I heard it, and then I saw Emil lifting the tea kettle from my stove.
He brought it down on Marcel’s head. The sound of cast iron hitting skull bones was so loud, so terrifying, that I screamed.
Marcel fell with a thump. The pistol clattered under the bed.
Justine crawled to her husband and felt for his pulse.
“Is he alive?” I gasped.
“Yes.” In a voice teeming with finality she said, “Go. Both of you. Go before he wakes.”
“My darling,” I began.
“Never come back.”
Justine did not look at me again. Emil pulled me, panting, upright, and though my ankle ached and my head pounded, I didn’t
resist. We ran toward the station with nothing more on us than the money in our pockets. Thieves, criminals, reprobates. Past
the bench, past the almond trees, past the houseguests filtering into their cars, past all the precious landmarks of the summer.
As we came to the gates at the edge of Maison de Notre Rêve, I stopped with my hand on the post.
“The blue lovers. We must retrieve my painting.”
Emil was not a violent man, but just then he looked like he might slap me. “Let them destroy your goddamned painting. You
were a fool for making it in the first place.”
I didn’t argue that he was the one who capitalized off the pain in my art. He’d always encouraged my tempests, as a sort of
rod for inspiration. His anger was justified. With that painting, that stupid, terrible, beautiful secret painting, I’d cost
him his sister, as surely as I’d cost my own love.
“I’m sorry, Emil.”
Relenting, he squeezed my forearm. “You will paint others. Let’s get out of this godforsaken place.” I have never deserved
such a friend.
We left the Camargue that very morning. I didn’t see the Chaton again. She and Marcel emigrated to Germany as planned, and,
from what I heard, became important art patrons there. Marcel aligned himself with power, as usual. This time, it was with
the rising star of a charismatic chancellor who would, one day soon, bring Europe to its knees.
After Arles, I buried Tam for good. Cut my hair again, donned my severe clothing. Burrowed in my solitude like a pig in filth. For the remainder of
my life, however brief it shall be, I will only ever be known as K. P. Ly. Once, I’d marveled at the prospect of being known, truly known, by a person who loved me. Now I understand the dear price
of that knowledge.
And Emil—he might never truly forgive me, though our friendship has continued to soldier along, weary and battered, but faithful
to the last. After all, he’d protected my identity; he would not betray me, not even after all I’d cost him. We did not speak
of Justine, but seeing her resemblance in his face, slight as it was, never failed to make my heartbeat stumble.
This very winter, as a birthday gift, he took me to the Hautes-Alpes, where we spent many cold mornings walking among the
famous sundials of the region. Knowing of my devotion to the study of light and all its acrobatic twists across this great
earth, Emil wanted me to witness the enduring presence of this ancient craft. He meant it to be a kind of solace, or perhaps
a relief from my failing health, but the sight of those sundials filled me with despair. What of my creations could hope to
touch immortality?
My favorite sundial, one I wish I’d painted, towered on the exterior of a church. Its inscription, written in Latin: Ab Ultima Aeternitas.
“From the last hour begins eternity.”
Seven quiet, lonely years have passed since I’ve spoken to the Chaton. My letters were never answered. The blue lovers, lost
or destroyed, I’ll never know. I write these pages from a mournful distance, no longer the same woman who trod through the
brilliance of a Provencal spring, to a fate I held but could not keep.
There’s the old adage that time will heal pain.
But all it’s done for me is exacerbate it.
I cannot seem to forget that summer. Even now, as the tumors eat away at my body, I think about the bench behind the cottage, the way the drooping sun set the Chaton’s curls aflame.
How, when we sat there together, I could pretend that she and my Huy were with me, that I had not lost so much as I thought.
But she is gone, she has made a new life beyond the borders of mine.
Now Huy is my only concern. What can I do for my son, a man of twenty-nine? He is not young; he no longer needs me. Does he
have a partner? Children? The thought of my phantom grandchildren fills me with grief and something more. A prod of curiosity.
If I could find Huy, what might I say—what might I do? If he has thought at all of me during his years, it would have been
with pain. And I have no fortune to leave. Only love. As if that has ever been enough.
My doctor, a stodgy old goat with no gift for bedside manners, has decreed six months for me. Perhaps longer, he said, with
temperate weather and a restful routine. Somberly, he advised me to settle my affairs. Time, that velvet-gloved old vise.
“What will you do?” Emil had asked. “Imagine the world is yours. Where would your feet take you?”
I know the answer now. First, I’ll find my way back to the Camargue. Leave this document of our summer where it belongs, with
the worms and the debris of that epoch. Perhaps Justine will stumble upon it and finally know how sorry I am for it all.
But I can’t stay in France. Paris has been occupied for three years now. Europe grows more dangerous with each passing day
and I, more vulnerable in it. If these are to be my final days, I do not want to spend them in flight from a hidden menace.
If darkness must be my final end, then I will seek, for what few days and months I can, the radiance of the sun. I will go
toward the light and leave the best of myself there.