Andrew Miller - Pure

‘I am. .’ begins Jean-Baptiste, then shrugs. ‘I am as you see. And I should be pleased if we settled at last on some fee. For what you did. Your kindness in waiting on me. I have never properly thanked you for it.’

The doctor waves the suggestion away. ‘Unless, my dear engineer, you have changed your mind about leaving me that famous head of yours?’

He is coming back from the cemetery in the late twilight when a boy, leaning his shadow against the shadow of the cemetery wall, steps out and stands in his path. It is the mute boy, the one who helped carry his trunk the night he moved to the Monnards’ house. He has his hand out and for a moment Jean-Baptiste thinks he is asking for something, that he has learnt to beg, but he is offering something, a square of folded paper. There is — by stepping into the middle of the street — just enough light to read the note the paper contains. It is very short. ‘I will come if you still wish it.’

He does not have anything to write with. To the boy, he says, ‘Can you sign? Can you make yourself understood with signs?’

The boy nods.

‘Then go back to the woman who gave you this. Tell her she should come tomorrow. At three in the afternoon. Now show me how you will do it.’

The boy shows him. To Jean-Baptiste it looks perfectly clear. He gives the boy a coin. ‘Go,’ he says. ‘Find her tonight.’

For the time it takes to walk back to the house and up the stairs to his room, he imagines himself the happiest man in Paris. He does not light a candle — he sits on the bed in the cool almost-dark as though wrapped in the purple heart of a flower. How simple it all is! And what idiots we are for making such a trial of our lives! As if we wished to be unhappy, or feared that the fulfilment of our desires would explode us! Briefly — the old reflex — he wants to examine what he feels, to name its parts, to know what kind of machine it is, this new joy; then he lies back on the bed, laughing softly, and like that comes close to sleep before sitting suddenly bolt upright, everything uncertain again. What exactly did she mean by her message? Was there some ambiguity? Could he have misread it, he for whom words have become such unreliable servants. And then to have sent a mute boy with his reply when, with a little sobriety, a little patience, he could have brought the boy into the house and written something plain and explicit!

He stands, paces the little room, stops by the door, looks into the room — where now all its objects offer only the faintest outlines of themselves — and realises that if she does come tomorrow (and why three o’clock?), they cannot possibly be in here, stay in here, live even a single night together in here.

He steals down the stairs, past the door of the dining room, gets a candle lit at the hall table, returns — two steps at a time — to the top of the house. He stands outside Ziguette’s room, catches himself listening at the door, rebukes himself in a whisper, opens the door and goes in.

He has not been in here since the night he visited her to see what a melting girl looked like, and found both girl and room in an advanced state of disarray. It is orderly enough now, its atmosphere a little damp from being left to stagnate, but that could quickly be put right. He lifts his candle, takes in the painted wardrobe, the fireplace, the dressing table with its oval mirror (in which his candle flame now sparkles). A bed big enough for two. Does the room still smell of her? He doesn’t know; he cannot tell. He crosses to the unshuttered window, gets it open, feels the evening air flow past his fingers. His fit of doubting has passed, but so too the dizziness, those lovely blind minutes of joy. He is hungry. Very hungry. He goes downstairs to join the Monnards at supper. They have almost finished the soup but the tureen is still on the table. It is the moment when he should tell them, Monsieur and Madame, what he intends, who, tomorrow — if a mute boy’s signing is understood — will be coming to live in their house. Spooning soup into his mouth, he tries to discover some elegant, decisive way of saying it all, but before he can begin, he starts to laugh. The soup, in a thin, brown stream, comes back past his lips into his bowl. He wipes his lips, clears his throat. Apologises.

First light. He dresses in the black suit, goes looking for Marie, finds her in the kitchen. She is bent double by the kitchen table, dangling a piece of cooked meat from her mouth for the cat to reach up and take.

‘It’s a game,’ she says.

He nods, then asks her if she will remove all of Ziguette’s clothes, all the china shepherdesses, amateur watercolours, seashells, painted thimbles, painted fans, all of it, out of her room and into his own, where, for now, it may be conveniently stored.

‘Why?’ she asks.

‘I wish to use it.’

‘Her room?’

‘Yes.’

‘For you?’

‘For me. Yes. For me and. . for another. A woman.’

‘A woman?’

‘She will stay with me.’

‘A woman?’

‘Yes. A woman. Is it so remarkable?’

‘She is your wife?’

‘It is. . an arrangement. Between us. Are the men and women who live together in the faubourg Saint-Antoine always married?’

‘No.’

‘Then we shall be like them.’

‘You will want me to wait on you,’ she says. ‘And her.’

‘I will give you something extra for it. Half again what Monsieur Monnard gives you.’

‘When is she coming?’

‘Today, I think. Perhaps this afternoon.’

‘So you will pay me today?’

‘I will give you something when the room is made ready. You will have time to spare from your. . other duties?’

She nods, grins at him slyly, excitedly. All through their conversation the cat has kept its eyes fixed on the maid’s mouth.

At two o’clock, having told a series of lies to Lecoeur about having to draw funds at the goldsmith’s on the rue Saint-Honoré, Jean-Baptiste returns to the house. When he opens the door to Ziguette’s room, he looks with relief at the open and empty wardrobe, the dressing table where not a pin remains, the bare walls. Excellent Marie! He will see she has something handsome for this, enough for a new dress, a good one, something to show herself off in when she visits her home, if she has a home, somewhere one might recognise as a home.

Did she change the linen? He pulls back the bedcover, examines the bolster for blond hairs, then, on impulse, looks under the bed, finds there some small, fine thing, which he pulls out and turns in his hands. Purple satin. A thing of purple satin laced with a purple ribbon. A type of shoe, a soft sort of. . What does it matter what it’s called? There’s no time for that now. He folds it, puts it in a pocket, perches on a corner of the bed, then immediately gets up and goes to the window, leans out, scowls at the street, mutters to himself some weak witticism about women and punctuality, goes to the bed again, goes to the mirror, bares and examines his teeth, takes out his watch, sees there is another fifteen minutes before the hour, sits on the bed again, looks at the dirt on his shoes, cemetery dirt, the humus perhaps of dead men and dead women, then finds himself thinking of Guillotin’s Charlotte, the preserved girl with her long eyelashes sprouting from grey and sunken lids, lids like old coins. Why must he think of her now? Can he not be free of them, even for an hour or two? Other than for his father he used never to think of them at all. .

And who the devil is that old face looking at him from the window across the street? So you like to spy, eh? Very well. He stands and stares back, arms folded across his chest, staring, sneering, and is starting to suspect that it is not a face at all but something hanging, perhaps even the soft light of a small mirror, when he hears the sprightly trotting of horses, the rhythm of sprung wheels. Cabs have their own music and this is unmistakably a cab. He jumps to the window, looks down, sees it draw up outside the house, sees an old cabman slither off his box and come round to open the cab door. Sees, a moment later, the top of her head. The crown.