The Saffron Gate (29 page)

^{At that Mrs Barlow put her arms around me. 'They always act like they care when they want something, Sidonie.' She sighed, and I leaned against her. 'You know so little about the world, my girl,' she said. 'And about men,' she added. 'I saw this trouble coming from the first. I saw it, Sidonie, but you were still sorrowing over your dad, and I thought, now, Nora, let the girl have a little pleasure.'}

^{She pulled away from me. 'But there's no pleasure without pain, Sidonie. No pleasure without pain,' she repeated. 'And you can count on that, as surely as you can count on the first frost each year.'}

^{The day before I left my home, I went to the shed. The old Model T was still there, covered with a thick tarpaulin. I pulled it off and ran my hands over the car's hood, but didn't get inside. I thought about my father, sitting in it and smoking his pipe. I thought about my mother, sitting at the kitchen table in front of the sewing machine. I thought about the way Etienne had said
our child.}

^{I re-covered the car.}

^{I walked all the way down to the pond for one last look. It was the first week of March, and a warm day, the sound of water dripping everywhere in a steady syncopation. The ice in the middle of the pond was softening, and had opened around its edges. A small wind ruffled the water into pretty little ridges that slid, like thin tongues, up on to the hard edges of earth. The late afternoon light flashed on the water, and the smell was spring, fresh, with the promise of new beginnings.}

^{I put my hands on my belly, just the tiniest rise now.}

^SIXTEEN

^{I
had to stop overnight at Marseilles; the ship for Tangier sailed late the next afternoon. I was strangely weary after the week of sailing from New York, even though I had done little but lie on my narrow bed and, twice a day, walk the deck alone. I looked at the port with little interest as my cases were loaded into a taxi; and we drove through the streets to the hotel recommended on board.}

^{At the hotel, the concierge asked my name, and I hesitated, and then said, 'Madame Duverger.' I hadn't intended on saying this, and had no reason to lie.}

^{'How many days?'}

^{'Only tonight. I'm taking another ship to Tangier late tomorrow.' I was also not sure why I felt I had to divulge my business to this unsmiling, severe-looking woman. The name tag on her blouse said Madame Buisson. She held out her hand.}

^{'Do you wish me to pay in advance?'}

^{She shook her head. 'Your passport, madame. We keep the passport until you leave.'}

^{I swallowed. 'Surely it's not necessary,' I said.}

^{'It is necessary,' she told me, her hand still waiting. 'Your passport,' she repeated.}

^{I reached into my bag and handed the stiff, red-covered little book to her. She opened it and looked at my photograph, and her expression changed, subtly, as her eyes went over the page containing my name and date of birth and marital status:
Sidonie O'Shea. 1 January 1900. Albany, New York. Single.}

^{Even if she couldn't read English, Madame Buisson could see that the name I had given her different from what was in my passport. I was not a madame.}

^{She said nothing, but turned and went into a small room behind the desk with my passport. When she came back, she handed me a large metal key on a leather strap. 'Room 267, madame,' she said, and I was grateful that she said the last word with no sarcasm. 'The boy will soon bring up your bags.'}

^{'Merci,'
I said, and taking a deep breath, slowly climbed the wooden steps to the second floor.}

^{The room was small but clean, with the luxury of an attached
salle de bains.
I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for my bags so I could undress and ready myself for sleep.}

^{I had no desire to see more of Marseilles. The docks had been filthy, piled with boxes and shipments, and dark-skinned men lounged everywhere, watching with veiled expressions. On the ride to the hotel I had seen too many wasted children and crumbling, decaying ruins of tall buildings.}

^{My mother's family had, at some point in history, come from France; French blood ran within my veins. My baby's father was from this country. Our child would be three-quarters French.}

^{As soon as my bags were deposited on the floor near the wardrobe, I took out my nightdress. It was only seven in the evening, but I had an unfamiliar, persistent pain in my back. I longed for a hot-water bottle. I fell into the single, hard bed with a sigh of relief, and in spite of the discomfort in my back, fell asleep almost immediately.}

^{My body woke me in the night. The pain had moved into my abdomen, more painful now, and I curled tighter into myself, wanting it to stop. I thought a warm bath might help. I slowly put back the covers, and as I stood, there was a rush of fluid down my legs. Horrified, I looked at the wet darkness on my ankles. My hands over my belly, I made my way to the bathroom and switched on the light. The brilliance of the blood made me weak — not because of the sight of it, but because I knew what it signified.}

^{'No!' I cried out into the empty bathroom, my voice echoing. I couldn't leave my room and make my way downstairs to find the concierge; the cramping and blood flow were overwhelming. Who could I call? 'Etienne,' I said, aloud, for there was no other name. 'Etienne,' I repeated, quietly now, but of course there was only my own voice bouncing off the walls and ceiling.}

^{And there appeared nothing for me to do, no way to stop the life rushing from me.}

^{Afterwards, I lay on my side on a towel on the hard tiles of the bathroom floor, my knees drawn up. I had wept so much that my head throbbed; I was so thirsty, and yet I didn't have enough energy to even pull myself up to drink from the bathroom faucet.}

^{I stayed that way, on the floor, until a thin morning light came through the window and on to my face through the open bathroom door. I stared at the light as it moved across the bed and wall. There was a light tapping on the locked door, but I didn't call out. I couldn't get up, and I couldn't close my eyes. It was as though my body was an uncooperative, flimsy shell, but my mind was a tight, rigid fist, with only one pulsing, hard sentence that kept running through it.
Your baby is dead. Your baby is dead.}

^{Shouts came through the partly opened window, then children's voices, the ceaseless barking of a dog.}

^{Someone knocked, more heavily, and a girl's voice said, 'Madame! Madame, I will clean the room.' The handle rattled. At that I drew a deep, shaky breath, and managed to lift my hands to my face. My cheeks were wet. The rattling on the handle stopped.}

^{It hurt to move; my joints ached as though I were in the grip of influenza. Shakily, I managed to sit up, looking at the bloodied towels on the floor around me.}

^{'Etienne,' I whispered.
What do I do now? What do I do now?}

^{I pulled myself upright, holding on to the sink, and ran water into the bathtub and slowly bathed. I put on a fresh nightgown, bundling the soiled one into the waste can. I was too weak to attempt to rinse the blood and tissue from the towels, and left them in a pool of murky pink in the bathtub before going back to bed. I lay there, finally unable to cry any more.}

^{I kept touching my abdomen; it was difficult to comprehend that the tiny thing Etienne and I had created was gone.}

^{I believe I was in a state of shock; I was unable to think of anything more than the death of that little being. I know that at some point I clasped my hands and prayed for its soul.}

^{I don't know how much time passed, but the next time there was the clanging of a pail in the hall, and then knocking at my door, I called out.}

^{'Please,' I said, as loudly as I could. 'Ask Madame Buisson to come to my room. Tell her to come in. I'm ill.'}

^{When she arrived, unlocking the door and standing in the doorway, looking at me across the room, I told her, flatly, that I had been sick during the night, and wished to have a doctor visit me. I had pulled myself into a sitting position in the narrow bed, the blankets piled haphazardly over my legs.}

^{She nodded, her face unreadable as it had been the day before, but when her eyes flickered to the open bathroom door I saw her chest rise. I followed her gaze. I'd left one of the bloody towels on the floor. She went to the bathroom and glanced in, then closed the door with a firm thud, bordering on a slam. She stared back at me, her head giving an almost imperceptible shake, and left.}

^{I think I slept, for within what felt like a very short time she returned, this time with a middle-aged man with a thick moustache and too much hair cream. He carried a black bag, and his fingers were chapped.}

^{'Mademoiselle O'Shea,' Madame Buisson said, adding, 'American, just arrived', as if she smelled something unpleasant. The doctor nodded at me. So the concierge was now calling me by the name in my passport, with special emphasis on the Mademoiselle. She stayed in the room, by the door, her hands clasped in front of her.}

^{The doctor asked her — I wondered why he didn't speak to me — the nature of the visit. The woman said, in a very low voice, that I had suffered a loss of blood in the night. She said the phrase,
pertes de sang,
in little more than a whisper, as if it were highly shameful to utter the words. And then she raised her eyebrows in a knowing gesture.}

^{'Ah,' the doctor said, glancing at me.
'Une fausse couche?'}

^{'Most certainly. There is every indication it was a miscarriage, Doctor,' the woman said, seeming to take a strangely bitter pleasure in answering his questions.}

^{Glancing back at me, the doctor spoke quickly. 'She's alone?' he said, turning to the woman, and by his tone it was clear he already knew the answer.}

^{Then he asked the concierge what I was doing in Marseilles, and she told him I was going on to Tangier.}

^{He looked back at me and shook his head.
'C'est impossible.
Oh, but it's not possible, mademoiselle,' he said in tortured English, his words loud and slow, as if I were very deaf or very unintelligent. 'You must not make the travel,' he said, and then I knew why he had been ignoring me and speaking only to the concierge about my situation. Because she had emphasised that I was an American, he didn't realise I spoke French, and she hadn't told him. He switched back to French as he again faced the concierge. 'She'll never make it there alone, having just gone through a miscarriage.'}

^{'And she's a cripple,' the woman said, looking over the doctor's shoulder at me. I was too weak, too distraught to care about her callousness.}

^{The doctor shook his head. 'Well. It's all the more obvious that she's not the sort to travel to such a dangerous location. And it will most likely take her some time to recover. Tell her to return to America as soon as she's able.'}

^{'Monsieur le Docteur,'
I said, in French, 'I understand. Please speak to me directly.'}