—
LUCY HAPPILY settled down to work. First she sent for papyrus and handmade a book leaf by leaf, binding the leaves together between board covers. Then she filled each page from memory, drew English roses budding and Chinese roses in full bloom, peppercorn-pink Bourbon roses climbing walls and silvery musk roses drowsing in flowerbeds. She took every rose she’d ever seen, made them as lifelike as she could (where she shaded each petal the rough paper turned silken), and in these lasting forms she offered them to Safiye. The making of this rose book coincided with a period in Lucy’s life when she was making money without having to lie to anyone. She’d fallen in with an inveterate gambler who’d noticed that she steadied his nerves to a miraculous degree. He always won at blackjack whenever she was sitting beside him, so they agreed he’d give her 10 percent of each evening’s winnings. This man only played when the stakes were high, so he won big and they were both happy. Lucy had no idea what was going to happen when their luck ran out; she could only hope her gambler wouldn’t try to get violent with her, because then she’d have to get violent herself. That would be a shame, because she liked the man. He never pawed at her, he always asked her how Safiye was getting on, and he was very much in love with his wife, who loved him too and thought he was a night watchman. The gambler’s wife would’ve gone mad with terror if she’d known how close she came to losing her life savings each night, but she didn’t suspect a thing, so she packed her husband light suppers to eat at work, suppers the man couldn’t even bear to look at (his stomach always played up when he was challenging Lady Luck), so Lucy ate the suppers and enjoyed them very much, the flavor of herbed olives lingering in her mouth so that when she drank her wine she tasted all the greenness of the grapes.
—
FROM WHERE LUCY sat beside her gambler she had a view through a casement window, a view of a long street that led to the foot of a mountain. And what Lucy liked best about her casement window view was that as nighttime turned into dawn, the mountain seemed to travel down the street. It advanced on tiptoe, fully prepared to be shooed away. Insofar as a purely transient construction of flesh and blood can remember (or foretell) what it is to be stone, Lucy understood the mountain’s wish to listen at the window of a den of gamblers and be warmed by all that free-floating hope and desolation. Her wish for the mountain was that it would one day shrink to a pebble, crash in through the glass, and roll into a corner to happily absorb tavern life for as long as the place stayed standing. Lucy tried to write something to Safiye about the view through the casement window, but found that her description of the mountain expressed a degree of pining so extreme that it made for distasteful reading. She didn’t post that letter.
Safiye had begun working as a lady’s maid — an appropriate post for her, as she had the requisite patience. It can take months before you even learn the location of a household safe, let alone discover the code that makes its contents available to you. But was that really Safiye’s plan? Lucy had a feeling she was being tricked into the conventional again. Safiye instigated bothersome conversations about “the future,” the eventual need for security, and its being possible to play one trick too many. From time to time Lucy paused her work on the rose book to write and send brief notes:
Safiye — I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to think; I’m afraid I’ll only be able to send you a small token for this St. Jordi’s Day you wrote about. I’ll beg my forgiveness when I see you.
Safiye replied: Whatever the size of your token, I’m certain mine is smaller. You’ll laugh when you see it, Lucy.
Lucy wrote back: Competitive as ever! Whatever it is you’re doing, don’t get caught. I love you, I love you.
On April 23rd, an envelope addressed in Safiye’s hand arrived at the post office for Lucy. It contained a key on a necklace chain and a map of Barcelona with a black rose drawn over a small section of it. Lucy turned the envelope inside out but there was no accompanying note. She couldn’t even send a book, Lucy thought, tutting in spite of herself. She hadn’t yet sent the book she’d made, and as she stood in the queue to post it she began to consider keeping it.
The woman in line ahead of her was reading a newspaper and Lucy saw Safiye’s face — more an imperfectly sketched reproduction of it — and read the word “Barcelone” in the headline. Some vital passage narrowed in her heart, or her blood got too thick to flow through it. She read enough to understand that the police were looking for a lady’s maid in connection to a murder and a series of other crimes they suspected her of having committed under other names.
—
MURDER? IMPOSSIBLE. Not Safiye. Lucy walked backward until she found a wall to stand behind her. She rested until she was able to walk to the train station, where she bought train tickets and a newspaper of which she read a single page as she waited for the train to come. She would go where the map in her purse told her to go, she would find Safiye, Safiye would explain and they would laugh. They’d have to leave the continent, of course. They might even have to earn their livings honestly like Safiye wanted, but please, please please please. This pleading went on inside her for the entire journey, through three train changes and the better part of a day. A mountain seemed to follow along behind each train she took — whenever she looked over her shoulder there it was, keeping pace. She liked to think it was her mountain she was seeing, the one she’d first seen in Grenoble, now trying its best to keep faith with her until she found Safiye.
Safiye’s map led Lucy to a crudely hewn door in a wall. This didn’t look like a door that could open, but a covering for a mistake in the brickwork. The key fit the lock and Lucy walked into a walled garden overrun with roses. She waded through waves of scent, lifting rope-like vines of sweetbriar and eglantine out of her path, her steps scattering pale blue butterflies in every direction. Safiye had said that Lucy would laugh at the size of her gift, and perhaps if Lucy had found her there she would have. After all she’d never been given a secret garden before. But the newspapers were saying that this woman who looked like Safiye had killed her employer, and Lucy was very much afraid that it was true and this gift was the reason. At nightfall she considered sleeping among the roses, all those frilled puffs of air carrying her toward some answer, but it was better to find Safiye than to dream. She spent two weeks flitting around the city listening to talk of the killer lady’s maid. She didn’t dare return to the rose garden, but she wore the key around her neck in the hope and fear that it would be recognized. It wasn’t, and she opted to return to Grenoble before she ran out of money. Her gambler was in hospital. There’d been heavy losses at the blackjack table, his wife had discovered what he’d been up to, developed a wholly unexpected strength (“inhuman strength,” he called it), broken both of his arms, and then moved in with a carpenter who’d clearly been keeping her company while he’d been out working on their finances. Still he was happy to see Lucy: “Fortuna smiles upon me again!” What could Lucy do? She made him soup, and when she wasn’t at his bedside she was picking pockets to help cover the hospital bills. They remain friends to this day: He was impressed by her assumption of responsibility for him and she was struck by the novelty of its never occurring to him to blame anybody else for his problems.