Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [372]
“You mean?” said Guizot.
“I’ll present your offer,” Maillart said slowly, and raised his eyes to the glowing doorways of the balcony above. “But not, I think, tonight. Tomorrow it might have better hope of success. If not, Captain Paltre must plan to keep his appointment in twenty-four hours’ time.”
With a nod, Maillart stepped back into the house. Michau shut the door behind him. There was the sound of the hook scraping into its iron eye. Daspir and Guizot walked back the way they had come, in the direction of the Carénage. From a block distant came the muted sound of the waves beating on the embarcadère. Neither spoke until they were crossing the arched stone bridge that crossed the ravine.
“Do you think Paltre will go through with the apology?” Daspir said then.
To that, Guizot merely shrugged. And Daspir knew there was no definite answer to his question. The only sure thing was that Paltre was plainly unwilling to face certain death for his point of honor. Otherwise he was in such a volatile state that no one could predict what he might do. For that, Cyprien had stayed with him tonight, to supervise his drinking himself unconscious.
“Did you ever suppose he deserved to be shot?” Daspir said.
“Paltre?” Guizot said. “I don’t know. Lately I wonder if anyone deserves to be shot.”
In spite of himself, Daspir let out a dry laugh as they turned into the barracks gate. “Now that’s a very odd thought for a soldier.”
As soon as Maillart had shouldered Guizot and Daspir down the stairs, Nanon gathered up her sewing, rose from her chair, and retired from the room with a ghostly calm. Conversation had faltered, but Isabelle, with much tossing of her head and fluttering of her hands, forced it back to a semblance of life. The doctor sat in the stupor of his exhaustion. In five more minutes, when Maillart had still not returned, he pleaded fatigue and excused himself.
Nanon’s small room beneath the eaves was dark. The doctor groped his blind way into it, trailing a hand along the angled ceiling. Just as he had shrugged out of his shirt, she caught at his waistband and pulled him down. Her mouth fastened hot and tight as a lamprey’s into the hollow below his breastbone. They coupled with a wild ferocity, with no words. When they had finished, the doctor dropped into darkness like a lead weight, but twenty minutes later he shot awake with his heart pounding and a sick tightening in his gullet.
Since La Crête à Pierrot he had known many such awakenings. He’d learned a special concentration which could slow his heart and ease his breathing. Tonight let us be merry, he repeated like a silent prayer, for tomorrow we die. It was strange how this sentence always did soothe him. At his side, Nanon slept peacefully, drawn up into herself, turned away from him. She had a talent for deep sleep, no matter her trials. It was only one of her several accomplishments. The doctor replayed the details of their embraces, detached as though he were some voyeur watching. It had been a virtuoso performance, much aided by her experience and expertise. They knew each other’s likings very well, and could anticipate each other’s movements, like a pair of long-familiar dancers, but for all of that each of them might have been anyone to the other that night.
After all he had hoped for, and even had begun to taste when they first found each other that afternoon, it was a bitter disappointment. But the doctor divorced this feeling from his heartbeat, watching the round of faint starlight cast by the unglazed round window on the angle of the ceiling and the opposite wall.