Blue was in her studio, making eyes for her dolls, letting a single drop of dye fall from a pipette into each glass ball, watching it until it soaked through. She didn’t greet him — she was lost in detail. He picked up a brown eye and was impressed, as always. The dye floated in the centre of the sphere, surrounded by clarity.
He handed the doll’s eye back to his wife, a woman his friends gazed at with awe and admiration, a woman whose flaws were far outbalanced by her virtues, and he told her: “Leave me.”
She looked up. “I beg your pardon?”
“Go,” he said. “Leave me. Please.”
“For how long?”
He turned away, so as not to have to look at her shock, so as not to have to watch her patience take form. He knew that he was bringing ruin upon himself.
“You’re talking nonsense,” she said to his back. “We work well together. We have a life together.”
“I know,” he said. “But if you don’t leave, I will.”
“Is this about. . her?” She didn’t ask angrily. She sounded. . curious, wistful. “Still? After all this time?”
“No,” he lied.
“I don’t understand you. Her love was bad. You told me so yourself.”
When he turned to face her he saw that she had picked up her pipette and returned to work. Drop after immaculate drop.
“Whatever you’re feeling now, it will fade. I’m not leaving. And neither are you,” she said.
“I see,” he said. And he nodded. He went to his own studio, where he fell into a stupor he couldn’t wake up from.
Brown thought she might be grieving for someone who had died. She walked around Père Lachaise looking for a name that meant something to her alone. The cemetery watchmen pitied her. When she hid in the cemetery just before closing time, the watchmen all looked the other way. She was harmless. And perhaps the additional hours would help her find the right tomb at last. She passed the first few hours of the night surrounded by tall, green fragrance. Lavender buds tickled her arms and back as she went up and down the tree-lined paths, looking at names carved in stone. Her hands were tucked into her sleeves in case of stinging nettles, so her torchlight kept faltering. Dormice shook the lavender with their paws and tails, caught Brown’s reflection in the dark shine of their eyes and ran away with it. White-flowered shrubs thickened around her and so did sleep; it directed her limbs. Lie down now, sleep said sweetly. Lie down. These are the secret hours of the day, the time that owls and bats take to themselves. The stars change places now; let them. You lie down.
She stopped walking when she saw the name Étienne Geoffroy for the fourth time. The cemetery was smaller than she had thought it was. Or there were parts of it that couldn’t be brought to light, not by her torch, not even by the moon. She came to a path that divided into two, and she shone her torch to the left, then to the right—
She saw a man. He was standing on the other side of the path, half hidden by a sapling. For a fraction of a second, less than that, she saw him. He darted out of sight; the rattling of branches deafened her. Her throat froze. Move, she told herself. You must move. But if I take the wrong path — if I go deeper in—
She listened for some sign, tried to find out where he was, but there was so much calling amongst the tombstones, croaking and chattering and echoes. I must move. I must move. After the first step the rest were easy, the way was sure, left, right, left right, and she fell down and cut her hands on stones because she heard him calling her. “Madame la Folle! Madame la Folle? A word in your ear, if you please. Just a moment of your time. .” She had lost her torch. A loud cracking sound nearby — him? Where was he? Everywhere. His voice was behind her, ahead of her, above, below. She rolled into a ball against the exposed roots of a tree for a moment. Then she raised herself up onto her knees and crawled, slowly, slowly, so slowly, cover me, leaves, cover me, earth, don’t let him find me.
Hands plunged through the leaves, seized her wrists and dragged her up. She screamed then. She screamed and screamed, first at the sky, which was whirling like water; then she was screaming into a hand clapped over her mouth. She looked into eyes too wide to be sane. He released her once she was quiet. A man with a shock of white hair and a face painted like a harlequin’s, dead white with black diamonds around his eyes. His features were very hard. Skeletal.
“Why won’t you just write the stories?” he said. “You’ve been asked nicely.”
Fear pressed her tongue against her gums.
“Fear not, Madame,” the man told her. “I am Reynardine. And I can get you whatever your heart desires.” He sat down upon a tombstone and patted the space beside him. What could she do? She joined him.
“The stories are for you?”
He shook his head. “One moment.” He cleared his throat and his gaze grew shadowy, as if something dark had spilt into him. When he next spoke, it was with an accent that was familiar to her but in a voice that was not. It was deep — more a vibration that came through the ground than a voice.
“Who is it?” she whispered.
“Can you see us?” And for a moment she saw and felt them all, crowding her. Faces she recognised from family photo albums, some she had never seen before, old ones leaning on walking sticks. They were all familiar. They all knew her, and she knew them. Then they relented and faded away.
“We’re here,” they said, through Reynardine’s lips.
“What do you want?”
“You are Yoruba.”
“Am I?”
“So you think your accent fools us. . ”
“But I can’t even speak Yoruba!”
“That doesn’t fool us, either.”
“All right,” she said. “I know. But look — I’m in Paris at the moment.”
“Don’t interrupt,” they said. “You might want to get away from us. You might feel that we crowd too close, that we want too much. But we like you. We think you’re spirited. And we’re trying to listen.”
“To what?”
“To what you won’t tell us. We want your stories.”
“I don’t have any. I don’t know what to write.”
“Tell the stories. Tell them to us. We want to know all the ways you’re still like us, and all the ways you’ve changed. Talk to us. We’re from a different place and time. . ”
“I’m not lying to you,” she said, shaking her head. “I really can’t do it.”
“You can and you must,” they snapped. “Those stories belong to us. It doesn’t matter what language they’re in, or what they’re about; they belong to us. And we gave them to you without looking at them first. So now it’s time to see what we’ve done.”
After a long moment, the harlequin returned to himself and began speaking reasonably. They weren’t asking for very much, were they? he asked. Just a few words on paper, anything she liked, anything that came to mind, nothing that anyone else need ever read. It didn’t even have to be good.