Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [139]
“Yeah, one or two. Here, try this.”
I dial up Eroica, help him with the earbuds, then watch as he listens. His closes his eyes and his face, already beautiful, grows even more so. He smiles. Frowns. Nods. Gasps. He moves his graceful musician’s hands as if he’s conducting. After a few minutes, I see tears on his cheeks and I’m jealous of him. To hear that music for the first time—not in a movie or a car ad, broken up in bits and pieces, but complete, like Ludwig wanted you to—it must be amazing.
I finish my sandwich and put the leftover food up on the mantel so Hugo can’t get it. Then I crawl into Amadé’s bed. I’m so tired it hurts.
As I’m pulling the covers up, Amadé takes the earbuds out. He tries to speak but he can’t. He wipes his eyes, then says, “When did he write this?”
“He didn’t. Not yet. But he will. He’ll finish it in 1804 and dedicate it to Napoléon Bonaparte.”
“Bonaparte the soldier?” Amadé asks, looking shocked. “How do you know this?”
“Everyone knows it. It’s in every tenth-grade history book in America,” I mutter wearily.
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, I know you don’t. I don’t either,” I say. “Look, Amadé, I think something happened when I ran through the catacombs with you last night. I was in Paris—Paris of the twenty-first century. Now I’m in the eighteenth.”
Amadé gives me a look. “You drank too much. That’s what happened. Then you fell and hit your head.”
“No, it’s more than that. Something else happened. I don’t know what, but something.”
But he’s not listening to me. He’s back with Beethoven. I want to watch him, to enjoy his enjoyment, but my eyes are closing.
It dawns on me, as I’m lying here, that I’m hanging out with Amadé Malherbeau, the subject of my thesis, and that sources don’t get any more primary. If he’s still here tomorrow when I wake up—if I’m still here tomorrow when I wake up—I’ve got a million questions for him.
“No! It’s over,” he suddenly cries. He runs over, hands me the iPod. “More, please.”
I take his hand in mine, make him point his finger, and show him, again, how to dial and select. “Now you do it,” I say. “Choose something.”
He stabs at the dial. Hits Jane’s Addiction. Ritual de lo Habitual.
“Wait, Amadé, you skipped two whole centuries,” I say. “I wouldn’t do that.”
But it’s too late. The earbuds are in. He listens for a few seconds, then rips them out.
“Is this truly the music of the future?” he whispers, wide-eyed.
“Yes,” I say.
“Then the future is a very strange place.”
“It’s got nothing on the past,” I mumble.
Then, finally, I sleep.
73
Dead people can’t sit up. They can’t run after you. They can’t move at all. Right?
Then why is that one, the one in the green dress, moving her arm?
Oh, wait. She’s not moving it. Silly me. A rat is. A bulging brown rat. He’s tugging on it. Gnawing on it. Pulling off pieces of flesh and gobbling them down.
Whew. I feel so much better. I feel happy. So happy that I start laughing. Like a maniac. So hard that I can’t stop. And then I hyperventilate. And then I yell at myself to shut up and keep walking before the gravediggers find me down here, rocking in a corner.
I smelled the dead people before I saw them, but this time I was ready. I had Amadé’s little sack of cinnamon and orange peel. It helped with the smell of them a little. It helped with the sight of them not at all. There are so many. Hundreds. Thousands. Headless bodies are everywhere—stuffed into small rooms, stacked along walls. How many people did Robespierre kill?
Once I’m past them I stop and shine my flashlight on the map of the catacombs. The one Virgil made. I stuffed it in my bag right before the police raided the beach. I’d forgotten about it but I found it this morning while I was digging in my bag for Tylenol. I looked at it, then asked Amadé how to get to the crypt—the one we came out of with his friends.
He told me it was in the Ste-Marie-Madeleine church and told me not to let myself be seen entering it. I ate another salami sandwich for breakfast, got dressed, and packed up my stuff.