13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [58]
This coin was in the pocket of his own father the day he was born. After pacing his house all day listening to his wife scream behind closed doors, he was granted the gift of a healthy boy. When his sister came out of the bedroom to tell him that all was over and all was well, he was so happy that he flung his arms out to hug her, swiftly freeing his hands, which had been tensely thrust down into his pockets. This gesture violently hurled this coin out of his pants. The clear, loud impact of it against the tile floor of the entryway startled them both so much that they gasped together, then laughed at themselves. The new father decided that he liked the bell-like ping of the brand-new shiny coin to announce the birth of his son; he decided to keep it to remind himself of this moment. (This moment: bittersweet after all, since the Prussians had just marched into Paris.)
The last coin drops into the palm of your heated hand, and this one is so damaged that even your loupe will not yield the year of its manufacture. You can make out the profile of a man, and along the outer edge of the coin, you think you can read NAPOLEON III. Napoléon III, first president of the French Republic and last monarch of the French Empire. You are not certain why his face had to be punched through; perhaps his humiliating defeat at the hands of the Prussians had suddenly rendered his currency obsolete. From one day to the next, worth nothing.
Still, someone saved this destroyed bit of stray cash to memorialize something. Likely, it was Louise’s grandfather. But here we have attempted to reach too far back and we cannot see the day on which this coin presumably dropped out of some pocket or other. Before the birth of Louise’s father, there is only a blank space; there is only a darkness that even the boldest speculation cannot penetrate. Even the pluckiest falsifier cannot reach this time; he finds himself dragged back across the years kicking and screaming, leaving scratch marks back into the twentieth century, struggling back across the hot coals of the Great War, gasping for air back across the salty torrent of tears poured forth over a dead brother and a dead lover, back through the dizzying years to the year of our story—oh it’s so dizzying that you have to close your eyes and when you open them again, it is the afternoon of November 12, 1928, and Xavier Langlais has just rung Louise Brunet’s doorbell, leaning on it with great gusto as if he has something very important to tell her. When Louise opens the door, she does not look at all surprised to see him there. She merely steps aside and lets him in. When she shuts the door, it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness of the entryway. She looks up into his face. She isn’t sure how to start. Apparently neither is he, since he is not moving, despite the glimmers of flame in his eyes.
“Haven’t you done this before?” she asks him, without mockery.
“Done what?”
“Taken a woman not your wife. You looked to me like you had done this before.”
He smiles at this, at this sudden softness. It’s as if all their fury from earlier has evaporated, and now they are utterly flummoxed. They don’t know what to do with themselves at this moment, at this genuine moment after all their posturing and violent ambivalence. Yielding disarms them, makes them into a couple of confused children, alarmed and elated at the vertiginous slide that awaits them. The tension in this pause makes them both unable to breathe, until Louise lets her body lean into his and suddenly his mouth—Our Father who art in heaven, his beautiful mouth!—is on hers. The shock of his tongue sends a shiver of electricity down her back; she wraps her arms around his neck, and he presses her against him. Their pulses speed. Louise pulls away when she starts to get dizzy. “I’m frightened,” she whispers, “aren’t you?”
“Of what?” he answers softly.
She laughs, with no rancor. “You—willfully obtuse! Answering questions with other questions!”
“Don’t be frightened,” he says. “It’s easy. I promise.