“I should put this in the newspaper,” he said, knowing that Bryant would surely find some excuse to refuse its publication.
“Never,” she said. “They’ll kill you, and worse…” (smiling broadly) “they’ll kill me.”
They both laughed. She took Cormac’s hand and led him across the hall to her room, closing the door behind them. She talked a lot about how real estate was the most important of all businesses in the town whose true god was Mammon. That was why she thought the Wax Man’s raving was more than raving. She rang for a maid and ordered two omelettes, fresh bread, and a bottle of water. She swore Cormac to secrecy. “This is not about some stupid thugee like Hughie Mulligan,” she said. “This is about the big boys.” And then mentioned names. Ruggles, Hewett, Vandermeer, Astor. “They’re not thinking about Saturday night,” she said. “They’re thinking about the future. A future we can’t imagine, and they can.”
Months passed. There was no fire. There was at least serious talk now about building a reservoir in Croton, high in Westchester, and digging a system of pipes to carry fresh water to the city. That was still the distant future, and it was still merely talk, but the newspapers were finally behind it, in the name of the expanding metropolis. In the present, Cormac was more grateful than ever for water and the aroma of lavender and clean flesh. His hands grew a bit looser on the keys of the piano. The playing of the countess, in contrast, was richer and more supple. He understood better the theory of half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes, of semiquavers and time stops, but his execution of the theory remained mechanical and crude. The countess was kind and patient.
Cormac worked hard at the newspaper, mentioned the rumors of an impending fire to Bryant, asked discreet questions of Beatriz and other friends on the streets, but he heard nothing more that was concrete. Neither did the countess, although the Wax Man continued making his Thursday night visits to the various rooms of the house. Sometimes he brought his own candles.
Cormac was careful in his movements, his eyes searching Duane Street before leaving the house. He avoided the frontiers of the Five Points at night, when the friends and associates of Hughie Mulligan might be watching from ambush. On most days, the sword was too bulky to strap to hip or back, but he did start carrying one of the revolvers he’d taken from Hughie’s boys. He kept this hidden from editors and other reporters, and did not even tell the countess. On several Sundays he went off to the north on a rented horse to practice shooting at targets in the woods.
The stranger arrived in November. It was just after midnight, and Cormac was sitting back, deep in a plush chair, while the countess played an aching tune, full of longing. His eyes were closed, and he saw rain-washed streets and gabled rooftops and a river. The music was full of the river, the water flowing through time.
Then, from beyond the door, he heard the music of a violin.
Playing in counterpoint to the music of the piano.
The countess stopped playing, and he saw shock in her eyes. She did not move. The violin continued, picking up the melody of aching loss and an unseen river.
She got up without looking at Cormac and walked to the door. She paused while the music played, then turned the knob and opened the door.
A man in a cape was standing there, playing the violin. He didn’t look at her, for his eyes were closed, his square jaw pressed into the chin rest, his brow crumpled into concentrated creases. His left hand moved subtly on the strings, there seemed no movement at all with the bow, yet he was pulling music from his instrument that was charged with enormous delicacy and power. The countess touched her mouth. The stranger kept playing and then glided deftly into a diminishing passage of farewell.
He finished and stood there, his brow still furrowed.
“Hello, Monsieur Breton,” she said. “Come in.”
He stepped across the threshold, his hazel eyes taking in the room and falling upon Cormac, who was now standing. The countess closed the door. The stranger did not move and neither did Cormac. For the first time, he saw the countess appear awkward.
“Cormac, this is Yves Breton,” she said in French. “Yves, Cormac O’Connor.”
Cormac stepped forward and offered a hand. M. Breton ignored it, busying his hands with bow and violin. His cape was dirty, his shoes slippery with black city mud.
“Can I get you a drink?” Cormac said.
“Yes,” M. Breton said. “Cognac.”
His tone was dismissive, and he turned to the countess. “You’re playing again,” he said.
“Yes. I tried to give it up, but—”
She shrugged and gestured toward a chair. M. Breton looked in an inquisitive way at Cormac, who was returning with a small glass of cognac. He did not take the offered chair. In a sacramental way, he placed the bow and violin on a table, then sipped the cognac, thrust a hand in a trousers pocket, and stared at the countess. Cormac thought: Too theatrical by far.
“You look well,” M. Breton said to the countess. “Better than I expected after, what? More than five years.”
“Thank you,” she said, but did not return the compliment. M. Breton stared at her.
“How did you find me?” she said.
“I looked. I asked. Someone told me you were in New York, and I thought, She could only be a whore.”
Cormac’s stomach churned. He felt something new: that he was an intruder in the suite of the Countess de Chardon. Who denied the past, and now clearly had one.
“And how was prison?” she said.
“I survived. I’m here. It doesn’t matter.”
Now he turned on Cormac.
“Bring me another cognac,” he said.
Cormac gestured toward the bar. “The bottle’s over there. Help yourself, Monsieur Breton.”
The Frenchman turned to the countess. “Is he the butler?’ “No, he’s my lover,” she said.
Cormac could hear himself breathing now. And the countess breathing. And M. Breton too.
Then M. Breton stared into his drink, laughed, and shook his head.
“Well,” he said, “every cunt must have its servant.”
Cormac stepped before him, anger quickening his pulse.
“You can leave now, my fiddling friend. There’s the door.”
“I don’t think so,” M. Breton said.
The countess stepped between them.
“Cormac, this is my husband.”
76.
That night, as on every night, he retreated to his room down the hall. But now everything was different. No word had passed to him from the countess, but it was clear from her posture, her silence, and her eyes that he must stay away from the suite. This was a complete change. Before the arrival of M. Breton, after food and music and water and bed, they had always kissed good-night and retired to their separate beds for the replenishments of sleep. She wanted it that way, and he came to luxuriate in his own solitude. Alone in his room before sleep, he could read, he could imagine, he could paint, he could hum vagrant melodies. He could think, too, about the strangeness of his life, the long years, the old vows that were printed on him, the names and brief lives of the dead. He could indulge in the secret pleasures of philosophy. He could exercise blankness, wiping away all imagery and all regret.
On the second night, the countess stopped him in the hall and kissed his cheek.
“He’ll stay with me,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
He said, “Fine, no, no, I understand. I don’t mind.”
But, of course, he did mind. Part of it was the impression made upon him by Yves Breton. He was arrogant and vain, convinced, it seemed, of his genius as a violinist and the superior rights that must be granted to him as a result. Who the hell was he to show up after many years and move back into his wife’s bed? Cormac lay in his own bed thinking these things, and felt his anger growing in spite of his attempts to control it with his will. How could she take such a man to her bed? She had never told him everything about her past, and that was all right with Cormac. The past was the past. It could not be changed. If she did not tell him everything about her past, then he had no obligation to reveal his own, even if what he told her was an elaborate lie concocted to hide the truth. She would have laughed at the truth and suggested he take a room in the madhouse. But the past never completely passed, and here came her past, embodied in M. Breton, walking into their present.