Chapter 14
During the night Suzanne woke up and heard voices. She was lying with her head close to the window, only a mosquito-net between her and the stars. The voices drifted up from the veranda; the words had lost their shape, turned into murmurings. Théo and another man. She sipped at the tea Imelda had prepared for her — to calm her, Imelda said. It tasted of grass and dust. She wondered how late it was, wondered if she should go downstairs. Sleep took her again before she could come to a decision.
In the morning she woke with the same dream in her head, the dream about Montoya’s house. She could not be sure whether she had dreamed it again, or whether it was just a memory, fostered by sleep. She lifted the jug off the floor and poured some water into her china bowl. She washed slowly, the dream becoming clearer in her head, though she could only remember that one fragment: two women dancing in the hallway — that was all. There had been no reference to their appearance on the night of the doctor’s birthday. She did not know if she should feel reassured.
She thought back to the time when she realised that she had the power of dreams, dreams that were like prophecies, dreams that came true. It had sent fear screaming through every layer of her skin. After the death of her friend she no longer trusted sleep. She saw beds as enemies. She even gave up eating cheese, afraid of what she might dream. But sleep lay in wait for her, knowing she would come, and she could not keep the dreams away.
Time passed; she became accustomed to the gift. She found that she often dreamed of people whom she did not know. It was like receiving a letter that had been intended for someone else; the dream postman had delivered to the wrong address. But what a relief that was. She could not be blamed for what happened. There would be no policemen calling at the house. Other times the dreams were commonplace or trivial. Always accurate, though. Once, for instance, she saw her father meeting a man on the road from Paris to Dieppe. The man was an old friend of her father’s. He wore a blue swallowtail jacket with gold buttons, and his horse was lame; she even knew which hoof. When her father came home, his face was lit with astonishment. ‘Do you know who I met today?’ Yes, I know, she thought. And I know what he was wearing. And his horse was lame too, wasn’t it? But she did not actually say anything; she did not dare. It was only the servant classes who believed in signs and portents. She turned to their African maid, Olique, with her wide eyes and her credulous heart. Every Thursday Olique would pay a clandestine visit to the bookstall on the Rue Chartreuse, returning with pamphlets and treatises, almanacs and horoscopes, which they would then spread out on the dark oak table in the servants’ kitchen. They would explain the present, explore the future. Excavate the past. Telling Olique about her power made it more bearable. She even felt a sense of privilege because Olique told her that, in the country she came from, only very few were chosen, and they were almost always women. She came to treat the premonitions as a thrilling edge to her existence rather than a core of fear and unease.
And then they stopped.
She had been married for less than a week. She could still remember entering the library on the first floor of their house on the Rue de Rivoli, the tall window standing open, a sheet of white sunlight on the carpet. Nobody had used the room in days; the air had settled, motionless and dense. She held her arms away from her sides as if she were naked and about to be dressed. That moment had, in fact, been like a kind of nakedness. She had been stripped of her power. Her gift had gone.
Standing in the library that morning with the doves calling from the garden and the books in their hushed rows on the walls, she did not know what she thought. From being open, her hands closed up; she felt her fists begin to shake. She ought to have been warned. Too much was being taken from her. She seemed to have to pay so heavily for anything she gained.
And now that Théo would not touch her any more, she thought, as she dried her face and draped the towel over a chair, now that the ghost of her purity had been summoned and was walking through the house, could her gift be returning? It made a kind of sense. It was so logical that even Théo would have been compelled to agree with her. She left the room and moved down the corridor, her hands shifting among the folds of her dress. The thought of her gift returning was like a shiver in the heat. She did not want to use that part of her — not any more. The future was too volatile, too uncertain. There were things just out of sight that she would rather have no knowledge of, like other people.
It was late by the time she walked downstairs, and Théo was long gone. She thought that it must have been a relief for him to leave while she was still asleep, to be able to avoid what would certainly have been an awkward encounter. To think that she had almost set fire to the house. This morning the whole episode seemed ludicrous, beyond belief. She smiled faintly, had to shake her head.
In the parlour she found her breakfast, which Imelda had left out for her some time before. There was coffee, still warm in its blackened pot; a few sweet rolls; a bowl of peeled oranges and pitahaya, covered by a sieve; some fresh dates. She stood above the table, looking down. The world crackled at the limits of her vision, as if it had been fed with bolts of electricity. That fruit, for instance. Glistening in its prison of fine wire-mesh. That china vase, the hooped back of a chair, her paintings on the wall. Just ordinary objects, but each one invested with a shimmer, fizzing at the eges, rimmed in white. She could not explain it. She was just aware of it as she poured herself some coffee.
She ate her breakfast at the table, her robe draped over her shoulders, the pale silk hanging loose against her chemise. It was too hot to bother with the sash, too hot to dress. Beyond the surface of the table, through the window, she could see a section of the coastland. It looked like biscuit; if she reached out and touched it, it would crumble. Above it lay the sea, smooth and dull, the colour of slate. She lifted a slice of pitahaya towards her mouth, one black seed embedded in a strip of redness. She had held her second child on her hand, with Théo calling through the bathroom door. She had stared down at her second child, thinking nothing, only curious, perhaps. That black seed eye, that formless redness. The echo was too faithful. She put the fruit back on the plate and waved a fly away. To bear a child in this town. Her lips twisted in a wry smile. The conception would have to be immaculate. She sat back in the chair, her smile gone. She would not be drawing today, or reading, or embroidering. She would not be doing any of the things that women were supposed to do. She would not be doing anything at all.
The minutes passed with no division. Time had flattened into a single, smooth dimension, like the sea. Nothing separated one minute from another, or one hour from the next. As she stirred a spoonful of molasses into her coffee, her eyes moved to the divan. She reached out, took a cushion between her hands and, unfastening the pearl buttons one by one, felt deep inside and drew the hidden letter out.
She sat on the window-seat, her legs folded beneath her, the envelope caught between her thumb and her remaining fingers. The ocean filled the window, still and hot and flat.
At last she sat up straighter, reached into the envelope. Unfolded the single sheet of paper it contained. Her eyes travelled through the unfamiliar words, tangling in the loops of some letters, slipping down the tails of others. Not understanding it only fuelled her excitement. Not understanding it, yet knowing what it was.
‘Amor,’ she read.
She saw a man borne down a flight of stairs on an uneven tray of hands. Her belly tightened; a tingling began inside her. The letter slipped from her fingers, swooped to the floor. She lay back. She thought of the point at which the ocean touched the land. The sun beat down outside, reducing everything to silence.