Alise handed her one of her own concoctions—a cassoulet in a jar. She even opened the jar for Madame and let her smell it. Madame said, “Ah, yes! Perfect!” She closed the jar with her trembling hand, placed it carefully in the trolley, and handed Suzanne the money. On the way home, they bought a strawberry tart. Étienne could tell she was excited. At home, she still seemed restless—no afternoon nap, insistence upon being taken for a walk around the front courtyard (where Étienne planted the sweet William and Paras stayed out of the way). While Étienne prepared the asparagus, Madame sat in her chair with her giant afghan on her lap, fingering the patterns she had created and the seams between the sections. She insisted that they eat in the dining room rather than the cuisine. She sat quietly in her old chair while Étienne set the table, carried in the asparagus, warmed up the cassoulet. When they were full and could eat no more, he brought in the tart and set it before her. She took a spoon and ate the strawberries one by one off the surface of the tart, then a few bites of the custard. All of this as if it were the greatest indulgence she had ever known. She said, “Ah, you are a good good good boy.” Then she drank her nightly cup of mint tea (the mint in the garden was doing as well this year as everything else—sharp-flavored and richly green). She said, “May Day is a day of marvelous pleasure.” And then she sighed, because she still had not solved the puzzle of what to do about Étienne. She went into her room and fell asleep before the sun dipped below the courtyard fence.
SIXTEEN
Of course Paras does not “talk” to Étienne—none of the animals talks to Étienne—but Paras does make her wishes known, and one morning a few days after Madame’s feast, Étienne wakes up very early, when the world is still absolutely dark, and he cannot go back to sleep. When he looks out his window at the horse, she is standing, staring upward at him. He puts on his clothes and goes to her silently. When he gets there, he sees that Frida is asleep, and the raven, too, is quiet in his nest. There is a bright, silent moon—that is all. Paras sidles up to the sixth step. Étienne slides his leg over her back, wraps his hands in her thick mane, and settles himself. He is as wide awake as he has ever been. Paras walks out the gate.
Toward the Avenue de la Bourdonnais, there are a few wan lights, but no cars, no activity. Toward the Champ de Mars, there is nothing. The trees, which seem short and orderly during the day, now seem to muffle everything—light, sound, activity. Étienne can feel Paras’s walk speed up—longer strides, quicker rhythm. His hips shift back and forth. She turns right, down the dark allée between the row of trees and the row of fences that hide the houses. Her walk speeds up again, and then they are doing it, the very thing that he has read about so many times: they are cantering. He tightens his grip on her mane, tightens his legs around her sides, but her movement is light and smooth, rocking gently forward, gently backward. The sharpest thing about it is the cool air in his face, his hair blowing upward. Paras makes a noise with each smooth leap, a ruffling sound out of her nostrils, one-one-one-one. It is comforting and dreamy, as if she is counting. They come to the end of the allée and loop around the Tour and the ponds and the fences, passing the dark, still vans belonging to the vendors, passing the lights of the Tour beaming onto the empty dirt, rounding the trees. They then proceed (it now feels almost like a ritual movement, this graceful rocking) up the allée that parallels the Avenue de Suffren, a street Étienne has never explored—too far for his great-grandmama to walk. Halfway up that allée, Paras slows, first to a jerky gait that dislodges him, then to her regular walk. Étienne takes a deep breath, shakes his head. He unclenches his fists, strokes her on the neck underneath her mane. Paras, too, takes a deep breath, and tosses her head, obviously pleased with herself. They walk along. Behind the great building at the far end of the Champ, just the thinnest string of brightness appears. Étienne does not want to get caught, but he leaves everything to Paras. She wends her way back to the house. As she enters the gate, Étienne sees the headlights of a car on the Avenue de la Bourdonnais. Once he dismounts, he is careful to close the gate, so that they are back inside their leafy sanctuary, quiet. Étienne discovers that he is so tired from his exciting adventure that he falls asleep in the grand salon, stretched out under one of his great-grandmama’s ancient coverlets. He doesn’t even wake up when Kurt runs across his body two times. Kurt gives up, goes into the cuisine, helps himself to grated carrots and a few croutons that have fallen on the floor. Kurt is wide awake, but, indeed, he seems to be the only one. The windows brighten.
IT WAS CONRAD who discovered that the old lady had vanished. Oh, yes, her husk was still present in the bedroom, neatly covered so that only her nose was visible. Conrad hadn’t intended to discover this—he had never skittered over the old lady, or any human, before. But the bed was so flat, and the room so empty of energy, that he thought she was in the grand salon, and so he planned to check her night table, where there was often a crust of something. When he saw the nose, Conrad squeaked in surprise, but the nose emphatically did not twitch. He crept up to it. It gave off no vapors. He touched the tip of it with his own nose. It was cold and hard. Conrad sat back on his haunches and curled his little fists against his belly. He stared at her and was silent, which seemed appropriate.
Nevertheless, Kurt had to be told, and so Conrad finished his foraging, then entered the tunnel. Although the tunnel was his home, it seemed a little darker than the old lady’s room, darker than he was used to its being, darker, colder, a bit narrow. He could feel the top of the tunnel, and the sides pressed against him as he ran, almost squeezing him. He did not know how old the old lady was, or how old a human could get to be. Every rat in his family had known the old lady more or less intimately. She predated every story he’d ever been told. Some rats said that humans were immortal, but other rats said that this was impossible—all you had to do was receive their broadcast and sense how they varied in order to understand that immortality was unlikely. Conrad stopped, flicked his whiskers. He heard Kurt’s characteristic squeak, ran again, and popped out in that room where the books were. Kurt was sitting on the windowsill, looking out at the horse. Conrad joined him without saying anything. The horse and the dog were still sleeping, even though it was full day. The raven was perched on the greenery that flowed all around the courtyard, picking at something with his beak. Finally, Conrad said, “Remember that talk we had about broadcasts?”