M. Rose - The Secret Language of Stones

Grigori was still close enough to me that I could smell his peppery patchouli cologne. Other days, other nights, I’d found its spicy darkness seductive. I tried to remember that and focus on him and his scent and not on the voice in my head. Here was an actual man, not a- What was the other? Surely just a manifestation of my imagination. I was reading too many of my great-grandmother’s books and believing the fiction. My ability was curious to be sure, but I was no different than a telephone or telegraph operator receiving messages over wires. Mine were just invisible. Either I was mind reading the mourners’ wishes, or reaching out into the ether and picking up the last lingering thoughts of dying soldiers. The one thing I wasn’t doing was actually speaking with the dead.

“Thank you for the drink,” I said, and took another sip.

“So you are refusing to show me your jewel?”

“Yes.”

“I’m quite bereft,” he teased, his dark mood lifting, thanks to the vodka.

“Oh yes, I can see that.” I forced a smile. “Tell me about your client’s purchase. How much did you discount the tables?”

“Not a franc,” Grigori said, and began to regale me with the nuances of his transaction.

Anna once told me Grigori left his best self on the battlefield and the man who’d come back was an exaggeration of all of his worst traits. She tried to help him, offering all manner of talismans and brews, some to make his physical pain lessen, others to help heal his broken soul. Jealous and angry because one of her sons with his father became a hero and died on the battlefield and the other was on his way to becoming a hero, he dismissed her and her efforts.

“But how did you convince him to buy both tables?” I asked.

“I showed him how the lovers’ tale that begins on the first continues on the second. They were clearly created to be a pair, one on either side of a settee, together for almost two hundred years. To separate an artist’s work like that would be a travesty…”

This was the time I enjoyed him the most, when he forgot about his mangled leg, when he could smile and talk about beauty and art.

“And that convinced him?”

“Not quite. It wasn’t until I threw in the pièce de résistance, telling him about a centuries-old legend that it was bad luck to break them up. Russians are so susceptible to superstition.”

“Is that true?”

“Would I lie?” he asked slyly.

“You might. Was it true?”

“I made a lovely profit on them and feel like celebrating something going right in this forsaken mess of a world. Would you join me if we can find a café that isn’t closed because of the raid? Champagne might help us forget we’ve spent the afternoon in a bomb shelter. We can pretend…” He left the thought unfinished as he reached out and touched my cheek with one finger, moving a curl behind my ear. I tried not to notice that the talisman remained warm against my skin.

“What? What would you like to pretend?” I asked.

“That the lamps all over Paris are blazing and we’re carefree lovers living in the city of lights.”

His voice sounded as melancholy as I felt. Such a small wish, yet such an impossible one.

Sometimes at my great-grandmother’s, her “friends,” as she referred to the men who frequented her salon, would flirt with me, the way Grigori flirted and I would try to enjoy it. Wasn’t a girl supposed to? But I never did. I sensed the sadness beneath the outward show of gaiety. I had real affection for Grigori. Yes, his moods and aborted efforts at seduction took their toll. But he was my penance for Timur. I’d hurt one soldier; I couldn’t hurt another. And so yes, I would go out with him and drink champagne and bring him back to my room once more and give him what encouragement I could. I owed that to him, just like I felt I owed it to the men at Grand-mère’s to endure their flirting. They’d fought for us. Been damaged for us. Lost brothers and friends for us. Would be scarred for life for us. The least I could do was smile and drink or laugh with them. Let Grigori kiss me and smooth my hair and whisper promises he couldn’t keep. That was the hardest part, to witness his failure over and over. At least with Grand-mère’s friends, it couldn’t go further because, as her granddaughter, I was ultimately off-limits. Yes, they thought I was her granddaughter. Since she looked to be only about sixty-and young for that age-we kept it a secret that she was my great-grandmother.

No one would accept she was closer to ninety. Just as Grigori couldn’t accept he’d ever be healed, which is why he rejected Anna’s potions and brews. In our war-torn world, no one believed in enchantments. They thought witches and spells and conjurers were the stuff of fairy tales. The only mystery anyone believed in was ghosts. And only because memories of the war’s endless dead haunted the living.

Grigori and I never drank any champagne because we’d only gone a few blocks in the dark, moonless city when the heavens opened and a heavy rain poured down on us. We ran back to the Palais.

Our puddle splashing wasn’t gleeful. It depressed me and reminded me of the futility of trying to get out from under the clouds of war, even for a few drinks at a café.

At my door, Grigori leaned forward and kissed me. I’d enjoyed his attentions before, but that evening, his lips pressed too hard on mine, his beard scratched my face, and the scent of his cologne, mixed with a lingering cigar, made me queasy. When he didn’t suggest coming to my room for a drink, I didn’t press him. Not until I’d dried off and pulled my nightgown on, and then just before I got into bed and slipped Madame Alouette’s crystal over my head, did I realize why.

I preferred even the frightening possibility of hearing Jean Luc to engaging with Grigori. Rather than Grigori’s touch, I chose to feel the crystal against my skin. Instead of listening to a man who was my friend and who I might be able to help, I wanted to listen to the dead soldier far beyond help.

Lying in bed, my head cushioned by a thick feather pillow, I tried to draw a picture of what the amulet’s soldier looked like, but could cull no clues from his voice. I closed my eyes and waited to see if an image would reveal itself, but none did. I lay there alone, in the quiet of my body under the covers, and experienced a curious anxiety. Would he come if I called him? Could I entice him? And most of all, why did I want to?

I tried, but after what seemed like a long time, gave up and was falling asleep when I finally felt a warm breeze. Impossibly, because there were no windows in my basement apartment.

“Jean Luc?”

Yes. I’m here.

“I’m glad.”

I was lonely.

“I was too. Till you got here.” Despite myself, I smiled.

But now neither of us is. How is this possible? We don’t even know each other. I would have remembered if we’d met.

“No, we don’t know each other. But I used to read your columns about art. I was a young girl playing with stones and metal… I wanted to change the way women wore jewelry and have my pieces viewed as art. The way you spoke about artistic endeavor…” I shrugged. “It’s hard to explain what your writing meant to me. You said the things I thought. I feel as if I’ve known you for a long time.”

Then me being with you is all right?

“Yes,” I whispered into the darkness.

I felt the warmth between my breasts, where the talisman lay. Had I been more awake I might have been nervous, but instead, I allowed the sensation to lull and comfort me, relaxing in its embrace. After the warmth encircled me, it seemed to enter me, heating not just my skin but my blood. Heating not just my blood but my bones. These were the sensations I’d always hoped Grigori might rouse in me, but he hadn’t.