The Oracle Glass (7 page)

“Get in,” said the fortune-teller, “or would you rather finish what you'd intended?” Her lackey had opened the door of her carriage, a discreet vehicle painted rather somberly in black with red and gold trim. A handsome pair of matched chestnuts in brass-trimmed harness breathed steam into the icy air. I could see where she sat inside, in a heavy cloak trimmed with silk cord and broad hat over a woolen scarf that hid most of her hair. A fur-lined lap robe was thrown back to reveal her feet, in red leather boots, resting on a little metal box full of warm coals. She gestured to the seat opposite her, where a similar robe lay. “I have in mind to make your fortune, if you wish—unless, of course, you have a deep desire to join the other drowned corpses laid out in the cellar of the Châtelet. Most damp and unattractive.”

“I don't deserve to live.” My voice sounded faint.

“No more or less than anyone else in this city,” she said in a careless tone. “What is it this time? Murder? Rape? Blackmail? Incest? Trifles—the commonest of the common in this great capital. What makes you think you can set yourself above everyone else, wringing your hands and flinging a perfectly good life away in a nasty, chilly river?” I stared at the padded brocade interior of the coach. It looked cozy and warm. Then I looked back over the snow-covered rail of the bridge. “Who are you to judge yourself?” she went on persuasively. “God gave us all life, and the judgment is His. But it is I who will give you fortune and happiness, if you will get in and hear what I have to say.” She leaned forward to inspect me, as if she could spy out from my disheveled appearance all that had happened. Then she gestured impatiently. “Make up your mind, and be quick about it. You're letting the cold in. I don't like weak people who can't make up their minds. Jump or get in.” I got in.

“Now,” she said cozily as the carriage rattled off into the tangle of narrow houses beyond the Quai de Gèvres, “isn't it excellent that fortune caused us to meet this way? I have an outstanding business proposition for you.” Fortune, indeed, I thought, for the habit of logic was strong in me. It is a strange coincidence that would provide two lap robes at this accidental meeting. But how could anyone know the mad rush of horrors that had swarmed over the Maison des Marmousets, or the exact time I might appear on the bridge? Clearly, I had gone insane. The idea that I might somehow engage in business confirmed it. It was impossible. A delusion. However, it was certainly a solid sort of delusion. The fortune-teller looked at me and spoke again:

“You're Geneviève Pasquier, the little girl who reads water glasses and speaks in great long words and learned phrases, like a little old man.”

“I have studied philosophy with my father.”

“My, my, such a strange thing for a little girl to do. You were smaller then, but you're exactly the same now. The limp. The way your back is all hunched over and twisted to the side. How old are you now? About fifteen? Yes, I think.” She was looking me over closely with her calculating black eyes. “And, oh, yes, my condolences about your father. That was very sad.” She had an eerily sweet little smile, pointed at the center. Her figure was going just a bit to plumpness, but still quite elegant. And such friendly sympathy, when she hardly knew me. It didn't make sense.

“Now,” she said, smiling her peculiar smile with the little steel barb inside it, “I imagine that you think I don't make sense. But I am a businesswoman and always make sense.” The carriage had slowed almost to a stop as the coachman tried to make his way through the crowds of basket-laden market women and heavy carts that made the area around Les Halles almost impassable. A cacophony of voices, singing and shouting their wares, invaded the carriage.

“I don't know anything about business.”

“Look out there,” she said, pulling back the carriage curtain. “That's business—buying and selling. People want things; if you sell them what they want, you become rich. If you persist in trying to sell them things they don't want, you starve. Remember that; listen to those people out there, and you will create a fortune, as I have, starting out from nothing. Those people, there, have one thing in common—they all want to know what will become of them.” She waved a beautifully manicured hand, decorated with several costly rings, to dismiss the hurly-burly outside. “How fortunate for me, and for them, that through my knowledge of the arts of physiognomy, of chiromancy, of horoscopy, I can provide them with such satisfactory answers. As my reward I have become rich. And now I wish to assist you to do the same.” She seemed so reasonable, and so pleasant, that I found myself listening to her in spite of her obvious lunacy. She pulled from a little sack she had hidden beneath her lap robe a clear, stoppered jar of water. “Now, my dear little philosopher, tell me what you see here.”

The glistening colors of her clothing and the interior of the carriage shone in distorted reflection in the jar.

“I just see reflections—that's all anyone sees.” I looked at her and spoke firmly, as one rational being to another: “The pretense of reading fortunes in water, mirrors, and cards is superstition. The unfolding of the laws of nature follows the rules of logic; according to Monsieur Descartes—”

“Oh, my,” she interrupted. “Are you quite sure that's all you see? Well, my goodness, if that's the case, our ride will certainly be shorter than expected. One more try, my dear.” She halted the carriage just beyond the Cimitière des Innocents to still the vibrations in the water. “Now,” she said, “hold it between your hands…yes…this way…look down through the water…now…” She chanted the odd words I'd remembered. “Tell me what you see about me in the water.” Her voice was very soft and slow. “Tell me, tell me—just let the picture come up like a bubble in the water.” I felt a sort of weakness and warmth go through me, and my stomach felt queasy as I saw the little figures start to form up, all rippling at the edges.

“I see—I see a well-dressed woman with dark hair, wearing a mask, coming to you. You are wearing a green dress with a red quilted petticoat and a lace collar. You take her to…the oddest little cabinet…it's all furnished with gilded, inlaid wood cupboards, and has a little window in the corner with tiny panes of glass and a seat beneath it. You open a door in one of the cupboards and there are shelves inside it…you take out a green glass bottle and give it to her.”

“Yes, that's what I thought,” she said quietly. “You see too much.” Then her voice became energetic, and she was all business. “You are fortunate to have fallen into my hands. Others might have exploited you instead of assisting you to make something of yourself. Drive on, Joseph—Yes, where was I? Oh, yes. What is a gift without training? Nothing! Gold in a rock in the forest. It is artifice, artifice, my dear, that makes a gleaming jewel. Remember that.” The carriage lurched forward, and I nearly slid off the seat.

Recovering myself, I answered, “I still don't understand.” It is, after all, always best to appear stupid around people that have hidden purposes. It lures them into the open.

“My, you are slow today, for all that you've studied. Well, know this, Geneviève Pasquier. I make it my business to help people. Women, in particular. I intend to help you the same way.” Her voice was warm and persuasive. I looked at her face, but her features were an enigma.

“After all,” she went on, “what can an honest woman do, when she has fallen upon hard times? A new widow—the sole support of a brood of little ones. Laundry, mending, even prostitution wouldn't bring in enough to fill their dear little stomachs. But oh, she makes lovely rose water…knows how to compound lip rouge from an old family recipe. I hear of her…I pay her rent, buy her children a lovely dinner, and then I lease her a nice little booth in the Galerie, or maybe a little shop on the Pont Notre-Dame, I arrange things a bit with the powers that be and
voilà
! She's a fashionable
parfumeuse
, or a seller of elegant perfumed gloves from Italy, and no longer poor. She repays me with interest, helps me out a bit—from gratitude, you understand. We both benefit. You see how it works? Who else would help a poor woman down on her luck? The priests? The bankers? The King? All they offer is the debtors' prison, the Sâlpetrière, transportation for life. How different it is when a woman has
me
for a friend.” She looked at me benignantly, expansively, as a woman would look at a particularly nice piece of china she was acquiring to complete a collection.

Outside the carriage window a group of beggars stood shivering in the snow. Among them was a blind woman and another covered with hideous sores. “See all those people?” she said, gesturing out the window. “That's what happens when you haven't the craft to earn a decent living. I imagine the police will be rounding them up later today.” I shivered. It could be me, standing there in rags. And now I'd lost my courage for the river.

“But you see,” she continued, after the carriage went over several jolting ruts and we had to steady ourselves, “I offer more than the King—wealth, independence, happiness. Don't look at me that way. I'm not stupid, you know…Oh, my, yes, I can't count the help I've given. I buy lovely little houses, rent apartments, find sweet orphans positions as ladies' maids, or, if they're wellborn, companions to the very highest aristocracy. And they're all, all my friends and helpers. How grateful they are! And how happy I am! Yes, we must all help one another and become rich. So you see, I am a philanthropist.” She gestured grandly out the window to the long, narrow street, where ancient buildings closed in like walls on either side of the slow-moving carriage, as if she somehow possessed the world. “I am a philanthropist of women. I bring them all fortune while I bring fortune to myself. And I can bring you fortune, too.”

I was more convinced than ever that I was entirely demented, and listening to the ravings of a madwoman in the bargain. Still, it sounded good. Suicide began to recede in my thoughts as the puzzle of the fantastical creature sitting opposite me began to pique my interest.

“But you have just said that people only buy what they want, and though my father left me the treasure of philosophy, as he called it, no one wishes to buy it—it can't even be given away. And besides, I have no knowledge of business.”

“Ah, but my dear, you have the talent! And—lucky you!—the way you are, you will doubtless remain a virgin forever, and we shall do such wonderful business together, not like that silly Marie-Marguerite, who has spoiled her future already—” She broke off and looked at me closely. I must have looked very odd, for I was thinking of Uncle. “Tell me,” she said, peering at me up and down, “you
are
still a virgin, aren't you?”

“Not anymore,” I said, staring resentfully at her. She took my hand and patted it. There was something almost commercial about her sympathy. Still, I hadn't had any lately, commercial or otherwise. Besides, she had an excellent carriage. I could feel myself warming toward her.

“Why, my—That's very interesting. All the better. Yes, so much the better. You and I, we'll be in business a long time. I'll teach you everything you need to know, establish you, and then we shall work out a plan of repayment. You'll soon be wealthy—fine wines, beautiful gowns, a carriage of your own…”

“What good does money do for a person like me? I don't want all those things! I want…I want…I don't know what I want.” I knuckled my eyes fiercely to keep the stupid tears from welling up. Here I'd just been planning to commit suicide, and she told me a new dress would fix everything; the insult to my intelligence, on top of everything else, proved entirely too much to bear. Did she think I was an ordinary idiot female to be bought off with a lace collar or string of beads? I watched the look in her dark eyes shift as she spoke again, leaning forward to touch my knee.

“Believe me, my dear. Say yes, and I can give you what you dream of: beauty—” I looked up. Her face seemed perfectly normal as she spoke. Her eyes were a little intense, but not demented.

Look at me. Are you blind? I thought. You can't tempt me with the impossible.

“Impossible? Not for me,” she answered my thought. “I can create you anew, and with my powers, make you desired by any man you dream of. Surely, a girl like you must have seen someone she fancies? He's yours, my dear, if you join me. I've done as much for ever so many grateful ladies.” For a moment, I remembered beautiful André Lamotte, the cavalier of the window. And then I remembered the light in his eyes when he spied my sister. What a stupid fantasy.

“I don't want any men,” I said, but the fortune-teller only gazed at my face and nodded ever so slightly.

“Come now,” she said, “everyone has a heart's desire. Tell me what you crave, and you shall have it. Consider nothing beyond me. Now, do confess. You've thought of something, haven't you?” I could see her watching the play of emotions on my face as it all came back to me, my vow in the tower room, the hate, the fruitless rage bottled up like poison.

“I want revenge,” I said.

“Revenge?” said the fortune-teller, and then she gave a little laugh. “Why, my dear, what could be easier for me? I am a specialist in revenge.”

“He said no one would believe me, no one would listen…”

“Why,
I
listen. So many ladies come to me. What man listens to women? But I, I am the ear of Paris. Just think of me as Justice.”

“I told him he'd pay, and he laughed at me—”

“Ah, you dear, talented child. Say no more. Join me and you shall have vengeance: bloody, satisfying, overflowing. Believe me, there's hardly anything as fulfilling in life as the destruction of an enemy.”

“I want him ruined. I want him dead.”

“Good,” she said as she leaned back in her seat. We had reached the Porte Saint-Denis, that vast imitation of a Roman triumphal arch in yellow stone, dedicated to the glory of Louis the Great. “We understand each other now.” The carriage turned to the left, into the long, narrow streets of Villeneuve and entered the rue Beauregard. The street was lined with recently built, medium-sized villas of two or three stories, widely spaced, with high walls between them over which peeped the barren branches of trees in hidden gardens. Big arched gates indicated that there were coach houses and stables behind the walls. Maids were throwing open the heavy shutters of the front rooms of the houses, and the first hopeful street vendors had made their appearance. A shabby man in a dilapidated hat and ragged leggings cried, “Flints and steel, flints and steel!” while another, carrying dead rats tied to a stick by their tails, offered up rat poison by shouting, “Death to rats! Death to rats!”