Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [294]
“But what is it?” he said. “Do you think I have come to bring some punishment, or even a reproach?” The plaintive grating of his voice was unpleasant even to himself. Why was he unable to strike a better note?
“Only come back with me to Ennery,” he said. “Everything will be as it was before you went away. Whatever has passed in your absence will be forgotten, as if it never were.”
Nanon did turn toward him then, chin trembling, her eyes large and gleaming under wells of tears. Her lips were parted, but instead of speaking she drew the sheet completely over her head and hunched down on the cot. As if what he’d last said were the very most wounding thing of all. Under the white shroud he saw her shuddering. Though he wanted to touch, to comfort, he withdrew his hovering hand, with a deliberate effort. He was resolved to do no harm.
“Perhaps I was wrong to have surprised you in this way.” The whine was purged from his voice now; he spoke as gently as he might to a sick or wounded person in his care. “But I will come again tomorrow. Properly. I will call on Madame Cigny in the late afternoon. Do you understand?”
Under the sheet, Nanon made no reply. The doctor looked across the shape of her body, through the porthole window and down into the street below, where a man came laboring under the heavy shafts of a two-wheeled cart piled high with sacks of rice or grain. He strained forward at such a desperate angle that, without the cart to balance him, he would surely have fallen on his face. All the muscles of his bare back and arms stood out like harp strings under the black skin. Then he passed from view and the round glass was empty.
Still Nanon said nothing, but rolled away from him, on her side. The doctor suffered a spasm of dizziness as he stood up, and had to lean on the door jamb for a moment to recover himself before he went out.
At street level a hint of a breeze had begun from the port, just enough to cool the sweat that poured from every inch of his skin. On the Rue Espagnole he crossed paths with an open coach bound in the direction of the city gate. General Hédouville himself was the principal passenger. His graying hair stuck straight up like a brush, and a smile flickered across his smooth round cheeks as he spoke to his companions. On his right sat General Rigaud, listening attentively, and to his left, Choufleur.
The doctor stopped in his tracks, watching. He did not know what Choufleur had done, but felt that he radiated some evil intention. That gold-headed cane he affected lay across his knees—the doctor would have liked to snatch it and snap it over his head. Choufleur looked through him without appearing to see him at all, but as the coach passed his head came around like an owl’s, as if an invisible filament connected his eyes to the doctor’s face. This liaison sustained itself till the coach turned a corner out of sight.
“All women are whores,” Captain Maillart announced in the later watches of that night. “Except of course your mother, and my mother.” He hiccupped, then took another slug of rum and passed the calabash to the doctor. They were sitting just beyond the portico, on stools beneath the stars that shone all above the central courtyard of the casernes.
“Excepting nuns also,” the captain belched, “who must be married to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to restrain them from the whoredom of their nature.” He paused, considering. “I’d best except your sister too. My dear friend, your sister is not a whore.”
“Oh, let her be one if you like.” He was quite as drunk as the captain himself, and felt it every time he looked up at the stars wheeling over his head. “And what of your Isabelle Cigny?”
“A whore who has become a nun!” Maillart said triumphantly. “A Magdalen, I tell you. One may be fri-(urk) -friends with her. No more. Perhaps one might also be friends with a nun.” Tilting dangerously on his stool, he gripped the doctor’s shoulder. Their rum breaths mingled.
“Whores and nuns, my dear friend,