God's Fool (17 page)

From Edinburgh we moved on to Dublin, from Dublin to Belfast. From Belfast we traveled to France, where our audience with King Louis Philippe (a gracious man with a disarming smile who actually listened, head bent forward in concentration, to Dumat’s breathless translation of our words) generated an absolute fever of curiosity among the nobility. We skimmed the cream and moved on, from France to Belgium, from Belgium to Spain. Two months later, having allowed enough time, by Hunter’s estimation, for the curiosity to revive, we returned to the city of love.

Consider the slope of our decline, the arc of our fall. For a year we had been the toast of Europe. For a year we had been among the chosen few, the elect. The Heaven-united pair. The wonder wrought by the Creator’s hand.

But just as God himself had grown bored with his original pair of fools in time, and sent them packing out of Paradise, so did the good citizens of Paris. True, there were no serpents on the rue Saint-Antoine; no apples. No knowledge I would not have gladly risked Eden for, and more. And paradise was a person, not a place.

And yet, as surely as Satan sprang from the whimsy of God, so too did the tiny agents of our fall. Consider it: Who but God could have dreamed a tale so absurd and so heartless? Hand in hand and slow, we wandered out of Eden. Even now I can hear that high, stentorian laughter.

V.

And quite a joke it was. Their names were Ritta-Christina, the Sardinian Twins, and by every measure of horror and pity, they did us one better. Two curly-haired infants above, one below, they were a wonder so profound grown men wept at the sight of them. Two children, each without a flaw, had melted together like wax tapers. This was caprice of a wholly different order. Beautiful in their own right, their arms and fingers perfectly formed, they gave the impression, when the sheets had been swept back by their father, of having absorbed a sister whose equally perfect body now descended from their common chests.

Years later I would read that Dante had punished schismatics by pulling them apart as they had pulled others. In some cases, however, understanding better than anyone that frustrated hope—forever held out, forever denied—is sharper than any punishment, he had left the job unfinished. These few he condemned to strive toward doubling yet never part, to yearn for oneness yet never achieve it: “But look, Agnello, now you are neither one nor two.” Ritta-Christina were Dante illustrated and come alive. But where was their sin? What could they possibly have sown, in this life or any other, that their bodies should be forced to reap such a crop?

•     •     •

And yet there they were, a bit of actual hell in Paris. Imagine, if you will, the hurricane of revulsion and curiosity this new Heaven-united pair elicited, the libraries of verse they inspired. Where was the Hottentot Venus now (“A rump she has, though strange it be/Large as a cauldron pot/And this is why men go to see/This lovely Hottentot”) who fifteen years earlier had taken the town by storm? Where was the Woman with Three Teats; or Hop, the Legless Dwarf; or Prince Ramal, the Living Torso? Where, indeed, were we? In a flash, the wonder wrought by the hand of God had been swept from the stage and replaced by another, greater by far.

Let it be said in our favor that we were neither of us such monsters as to envy them their victory. I’ll admit to a spark of … what? Jealousy? Resentment? The instinctive anger of even an unwilling competitor on finding himself suddenly on the cusp of defeat? To this much I’ll confess, no more. And even this we snuffed out without a moment’s hesitation.

But Ritta-Christina, uninterested in the river of faces moving slowly past their bed, gurgling contentedly or pulling at their ears in sudden rage, as babes will, were really just the final act. For weeks we had sensed the precipice. For weeks, perhaps longer, we had felt the ground beneath us tipping, ever so slowly, toward a future we couldn’t discern. Day by day, negotiating Hunter’s and Coffin’s silences, sensing their obvious unhappiness with us and our declining ability to draw the crowds, we felt the angle of decline steepen.

They themselves rarely accompanied us now, contenting themselves with making the necessary arrangements and hiring a muscular escort (two if the venue suggested it) to ensure the safety of their investments. The scandal they had hoped would revive our fortunes (and theirs) had obviously not succeeded, and though they continued to talk and scheme, arguing late into the night as the rain coursing down the glass blurred the view, it was clear from the canceled engagements and the size of the halls we engaged (shrinking swiftly as if racing to stay ahead of the diminishing crowds) that we had very nearly drained the well.

Day by day the spaces grew smaller around us, the aisles filthier. Day by day, as though the years had somehow accelerated and aged them overnight, the planks of the stages on which we performed grew uneven and rough, the seats worn to a shine. Arriving early sometimes, we would look out at the rows of seats folded like teeth in the jaw of a shark. Poorly lit, the halls were a cavern, a dark mass. Here and there, where the matting bulged from a tear, one could see where the point of something had ripped the fabric through.

But even more telling was the change in the manner of the men whose establishments these were. Quicker than dogs to sense another’s vulnerability, they now demanded what two weeks earlier they would have gladly forgone, and then, when they saw that we neither left nor threatened to strike them with our canes for their insolence, boldly asked for more. Gone were the hat in hand and the subservient smile, the fawning attitude and the will to accommodate. We were one of them now, or nearly so, and they knew it. The lights dimmed and began to flicker as though running out of oil.

But memory is merciful. In truth our descent was slower and more ambiguous, a sideways drifting—like snow, or dust. So gradually did we fall that for weeks we wondered whether our decline reflected anything more than a temporary depression in the public interest, whether the sudden dip in our fortunes wasn’t just a correction to the unnatural height we had soared; whether, in fact, we were falling at all. And yet, as surely as dust eventually settles, fall we did. Bit by bit, as the winter wore on, the reality of our situation came clear. The facts were unavoidable: Though we could still draw the crowds from the shipyards and the horse-slaughtering establishments at Montfaucon, the palaces and the drawing rooms of the aristocracy, where we had once been welcomed, were now closed to us.

Through all of this, lending our lives an air of ever-deepening unreality, we continued to pay our morning visits to Sophia. There, everything was as it had always been. There, though feeling increasingly besieged by enemies both real and imagined, I could restore my strength. Afraid of disturbing the balance of the world we had found,
neither of us said a word about the troubles we faced when apart. I said nothing of our situation with Hunter and Coffin, of our rapid decline in popularity, of the fact that I had had to fight to secure the carriage that morning. I mentioned nothing—how could I?—of my brother’s slight but growing lack of enthusiasm for the visits he had once looked forward to as much as I. More and more, these days, I found myself asking him to get dressed, or reminding him of the hour, and though he still backed me in my demand that we be allowed to borrow the carriage, I was not such a fool, or so besotted, as to miss the resentment growing between us.

I could hardly blame him. For weeks now, perhaps because she was too busy with her own thoughts to maintain the pretense of impartiality, or because she felt it was no longer necessary, or perhaps, even, because I encouraged it, Sophia had been giving me the larger share of her attention. When the three of us walked outside now, her arm was in mine; whenever possible, when we played games in the parlor, we made a team. It was as though we couldn’t help ourselves. Perhaps if we had been able to follow our desires, if I had been able to lose my hands in her hair and tilt back her head and kiss her just beside the small smooth hollow of her throat, we would have had less need to declare our love at the cribbage board. But we couldn’t, and so we excluded him as brutally as lovers in their first fire have always eclipsed those around them, reducing him to reading novels or entertaining himself by looking through colored prints while we talked and whispered in each other’s ears. He had nowhere to go. Neither did we.

I knew what was happening, and I didn’t care. I understood his wounded pride, his discomfort at having to be present, like a chaperon, when everyone wanted him gone. I understood the betrayal he felt when it first became clear to him that someone else had taken his place. I even understood the battle he fought to be happy for me, to behave as he thought I might have behaved had fortune chosen him instead. For years, given our different natures, we had been as easy with one another as men could be. Now, for the first time (desperate to be alone with her, if only in my mind), I reserved the moments of pleasure—so steeped in
youthful shame, for what would she think of me if she knew what I imagined?—for when he was asleep. Oh, I understood how he felt—at times it was as though I would tear myself in two—and yet, I repeat, I didn’t care.

There were things I didn’t tell him now: promises I made to myself, dreams I dreamed of being free. There was nothing I could do. Standing beside her as she peered into the microscope one dark afternoon (what were we looking for that day? I wonder), I had noticed the curve of her, the way her body strained against the bonds of bone and cloth. Almost faint with daring, making sure my brother couldn’t see, I had gently placed my arm around the smoothness of her waist. She hadn’t removed it.

“Please don’t think badly of me,” she had whispered to me later as the three of us sat together in the parlor, my brother, beside me, reading a novel. Or pretending to. “I couldn’t bear it if you were to think badly of me.”

“I could never think badly of you,” I had whispered back, taking her hand in mine. “Never. Never. As long as I breathe.” And meant it. As God is my witness, I meant it.

Ah, but we must never underestimate the malleability of young men’s opinions, or the speed with which others’ changing opinions of us, real or imagined, can alter ours of them. Racked by hope, by fear, by daydreams of fulfillment and by nightmares in which I wandered like an amputated limb through cities I had never known, searching for my brother, I hardly knew what to wish for. Laughing, she would lay her head on my shoulder; taking my hand, she would trace my fingers, or stroke the skin of my palm. I loved her voice, her smell. We understood each other—utterly. I wanted her as I have never wanted anyone or anything in my life. And yet there were times, knowing it could never be, when I almost wished her gone, times when I would have given anything to have returned things to how they were before. And then, hardly would this thought enter my mind before I would be off in the other direction, wondering whether she didn’t feel the same way, torment
ing myself with the thought that she, too, wished we had never met. Arguing with Hunter and Coffin, I could feel my hands trembling, the heat burning behind my eyes. Perpetually exhausted, guilty of crimes I barely understood, I was dimly aware of the world coming apart around me.

An excuse for my cowardly behavior? Hardly. At best a bit of mitigating evidence, offered in my own defense by my older self.

All that fateful Monday morning I had been urging my brother along like an old horse, first cajoling him out of bed, then watching, with increasing impatience, as he moved through his morning toilet. Sophia would be expecting us at ten. At half past nine my brother had barely begun his breakfast, masticating his food with such equine deliberation that I became convinced he was trying to irritate me. I myself had been finished since a quarter past the hour. I had only to put on my coat and leave. I held my tongue, listening to him chew.

At last I could stand it no longer. “Can we go, please? It’s late.”

“I’m eating,” he said, taking a sip of tea.

I made an effort to control myself. “I know you’re eating. But I thought you might speed things up a bit, considering how late it is.”

“I’ll be done presently,” he said, chewing.

“It’s rude to be late.”

“Since when did you start being so punctual?”

I said nothing. A strange, nervous tremor had started up in my stomach and gradually spread to my arms and legs. Even if we were to leave immediately, we would be at least a quarter of an hour late. I could see her walking to the window to look for our carriage. My brother shaved a thin curl off the butter with his knife and began to spread his toast.

“You’re an ass,” I said, quietly.

“You should know.”

It was on our way down the stairs that we ran into Hunter, or his voice, at any rate. The door to the rooms he and Coffin let directly below us was open. “A word if we may, gentlemen,” he said.

There was no help for it. It was now ten minutes after ten.

To my surprise—and my brother’s, I still believe—we found the room occupied not only by Hunter and Coffin (already slumped like an irritable toad in a huge wingback chair by the fire) but Dumat as well. He was leaning against the mantel, dapper as a don. “And how are we this morning?” he said cheerily, trying to obscure the fact that they had been expecting us. “Well, I trust?”

“Off early, as always,” said Coffin. “Wouldn’t do to keep the—”

“We have
discussed
this, Abel,” said Hunter.

“That’s all we do is discuss, discuss—”

“Yes we do, and I would ask you kindly
not
to interfere until we have had the chance to explain our position.”

“Bloody ridiculous, if you ask me.”

“Thank you. Now if we may …”

He paused, then turned to us. “Gentlemen, I see no point in circumlocution”—here Coffin snorted derisively—“so let me address myself directly to the matter at hand. It is something of which we have spoken numerous times, something I am sure will not come as a—”

“But we are being so mysterious, Monsieur Hunter,” said Dumat with a small, nervous laugh. “It is nothing so …”