Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [76]
November gave way to December and December to the new year—1790. There were nights when I got nothing, not a sou, for it was cold and miserable and people stayed inside. But on those nights, I still played. With no one to hear me and no one to pay me, and it did not matter.
On those nights, the words were for me alone. They came up unbidden from my heart. They slipped over my tongue and spilled from my mouth. And because of them I, who was nothing and nobody, was a prince of Denmark, a maid of Verona, a queen of Egypt. I was a sour misanthrope, a beetling hypocrite, a conjurer’s daughter, a mad and murderous king.
It was dark and it was cold on those nights. The world was harsh and I was hungry. Yet I had such joy from the words. Such joy.
There were times when I lifted my face to the sky, stretched my arms wide to the winter night, and laughed out loud, so happy was I.
The memory of it makes me laugh now, but not from happiness.
Be careful what you show the world.
You never know when the wolf is watching.
I put down the diary because I see her again. Alex. She’s playing Hamlet and Juliet and Cleopatra in an empty court on a dark, cold night. For no one but herself. Her breath steams in the air as she fences to the death with Laertes or dances with Romeo. Her pale cheeks glow. She’s thin and ragged, but she shines so brightly.
I touch her words with my fingers. Words written quickly. Written on the run. Written when she was hurt and scared and hiding in the catacombs.
What was it like to be down there? Alone and afraid in the cold and dark, with nothing and no one but the dead all around her. I’ve never been in the catacombs. I don’t know if the tunnels are wide or narrow. If you can stand straight in them or if you have to crouch.
And suddenly, I want to be there. In the catacombs. I want to be where she was. Like I wanted to be in Truman’s room after he died. Sitting on his bed and looking at his things. Like I wanted to be in my father’s study after he left, listening to the ticking of the clock on his desk. Like I wanted to stand in the kitchen after my mother stopped talking and press her apron to my face.
I wonder if Alex died there, in the catacombs. G said the worker, the man who found the old guitar, found it under a pile of skeletons. Was one of them hers? How did it end for her? Did it end in the dark tunnels of the catacombs? At the guillotine? Or did she escape?
A small, quick movement catches my eye. I look up. A sparrow has landed on the table next to mine. It cocks its head, staring at me with its bright black eyes, until the woman sitting there, yapping on her cell phone, notices it and swats at it with a menu. It flies off.
“Will there be anything else, miss?” the waiter asks. “A croissant? Tartine?”
“No thanks,” I say, getting my wallet out of my bag and standing up.
I need to make tracks. The entrance to the catacombs is on the other side of the river. I’ve got to get all the way over there, go through the tunnels, and still make it back to the library in time to talk Yves Bonnard into letting me back in. I put the diary in my bag, take two euros from my wallet, and hand them to the waiter. Then I grab my stuff and head. From somewhere high above me, I hear a bird singing.
37
They’re not so easy to find, the catacombs. They feel like a secret.
I came up out of the Denfert-Rochereau station and walked around for ten minutes before I saw a small sign pointing the way. Then I had to sprint across a traffic circle and walk some more, around a park, until I found the entrance. The line to get in is pretty long. I don’t know why. I mean, it’s not like Jim Morrison is buried here. He’s over in the Père Lachaise.
I take my place behind a talky American family. There are five of them: mom and dad, two teenaged girls, and a boy of eleven or twelve. They’re scrubbed and shiny. Their sneakers are spotless. They have fanny packs, water bottles, maps, and Luna