Early one morning before dawn, I was woken by Le Jumeau’s strident voice echoing in my room. I went to the window and stuck my head out, peering sleepily down into the courtyard. Two harnessed carriages stood on the cobblestones, along with an open cart laden with luggage. Le Jumeau looked up and saw me.
“Hurry up and pack, we’re leaving in half an hour!”
“Where are we going?”
“To Villars, Le Naïf!” He used my new nickname, which had, unfortunately, stuck since the incident with the prostitutes, with exasperation, as if I should have known. Breathlessly, I rubbed my teeth with a scrap of linen, dressed, and packed my few things: aside from the livery I was wearing, I had a set of clothes I had bought secondhand with Solange, at the market in Les Halles. I ran downstairs. Le Jumeau had me climb on top of the tarp covering the luggage, to be sure none of the cases fell off. If it rained, he said in his usual mocking tone, I would get wet.
The cortège set off: inside the first carriage were the count and Le Jumeau. In the second were Solange, Clothilde, and Frechette, a hairdresser who was in charge of the count’s wigs.
I had only been out of Paris once, as a boy, to visit Metz, and I barely remembered it. As we left the gates of the city, horses trotting into the countryside, all was white. Hard frost had sugared the leaves on the ground, the grass, the branches. The pink sky cast a rosy glow on this sparkling confection. Far off, a raft of purple clouds seemed thrice lanced. The brilliant wounds poured three shafts of golden light on the distant hills. A flock of black-faced sheep stared at us through a wash of mist. The wheel of my cart hit a stone with a pop. One sheep started, turned; the flock followed her in perfect sync, scampering off as one. I lay back on a soft leather case, bathing in the cool air. I had never breathed air as pure as this, never seen so much sky. I imagined falling off my luggage cart and careening, untethered, through the clouds.
In the past, reflexively, I would have thanked Hashem for the day. I felt my tongue tense to utter the silent prayer, but I relaxed it. The need had passed. I unwrapped my freedom, marveled at it like a gift.
At noon we stopped at the rim of a great valley. Le Jumeau and I set up a little table and chair on a hillock for the count. Clothilde presented him with a meat pie. I poured him a glass of wine. Solange, meanwhile, set out a cloth on lower ground for the servants to sit on. We sat in a jolly circle as Le Jumeau doled out thick slices of salami. It was the first pork I had ever had. It tasted salty and fat. I completed the sacrilege by chewing on a hunk of cheese forthwith.
“Gebeck!” the count called down. “Sing a song. Something your mother used to sing you.” I shook my head, ashamed, but they all insisted. My cheeks burning, I stood up, sang out a quick Yiddish ditty, then sat down, mortified. The moment I’d finished, as the party was still clapping and hooting their amused approval, Solange stood up and sang out in a harsh, strange language. Strands of her dark hair came loose from her lace bonnet and whipped around her face. When her song was done, she smiled shyly at me, revealing her charmingly narrow, crooked teeth, and said:
“My mother is a Basque.” What a gesture.
Later that afternoon, we passed over a humpbacked bridge into the tiny town of Villars. Barefoot children teemed from every cranny of the village to see the count’s gleaming coat of arms. They had plenty of time to do so; our wide carriages could barely pass through the narrow streets of the town. We inched along like a royal procession. Men stood outside the shops, clutching their hats and bowing their heads in feudal deference to the lord of the village; women curtsied. When we finally reached the town square, the count’s carriage came to a stop. Le Jumeau disembarked, followed by the little count, his habitual scarlet stockings vivid against the wet gray cobblestones. As the hushed townspeople looked on, my master mounted the steps to a bronze statue of Henri IV, faced the crowd, and made a brief, impromptu speech, coating his silly manner in a lordliness so overdone, it would have been perfect in a farce at the Comédie-Italienne. Fluttering his hands till the lace at his wrists shivered, exaggerating his lisp, he said something to the effect of being glad to return to the bosom of his true people. A pretty blond girl in peasant dress walked haltingly up to him and, trembling, laid a bouquet of wildflowers at his feet. Le Jumeau stepped forward, snatched up the bouquet, and handed it to the master, lest the count be seen to stoop and possibly split his pants in the process. At this, the townspeople piped up with a rousing folk song. It was fascinating, but I was uneasy, despite my disguise: a Jew was never safe in towns like these. If anything went wrong—if a child went missing or a rotting animal poisoned a well—these quaint types would lose no time in stringing up the first Hebrew they could find. That’s what I had been told, at any rate.
Built in the fifteenth century, the Château de Villars was a turreted, moat-encircled palace. As we drove up, the staff of the château—over a hundred persons—filed out and stood waiting to greet the master. At the front of the crowd was a barrel-chested man with a proud, ruddy face, wearing a suit of stiff corduroy, his feet encased in a pair of muddy boots. He stood very erect and watched the approaching carriages like a guard dog whose master was returning after a long journey. When the count emerged, the proud man greeted him, then went straight to the next carriage, opening the door for Solange, whom he met with an intimacy I found most disconcerting. Le Jumeau whistled at me to get off my ass. I broke my trance and disembarked, grabbing some luggage. The count was greeting the waiting staff one by one when bodies parted to allow a slender, very beautiful woman to emerge. Flaxen-haired, with a profile so perfect it could have been carved out of ice, she stood looking at the dumpy count with a tense smile. This was the first I knew of the Comtesse de Villars. The count dove at her, kissing her hand. They walked arm in arm toward the château, but, after an exchange of a few words, the couple halted. The comtesse turned, scanning our party. Villars pointed me out. The elegant lady took several steps in my direction, fixing me with a curious, hostile stare. Then she turned, taking up her husband’s arm once more, and they walked toward the castle.
It was my duty to unpack the count’s things and put them away in his room. A high-handed little housemaid directed me in this undertaking. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen, but she treated me as though I were the child, scolding me when I failed to find the glove drawer or installed the count’s beloved ermine muff on the wrong shelf. Her harelip was my only consolation.
I was relieved when Le Jumeau entered, a fur coat over his arm. Small, dark, muscular, his britches inevitably snug, the valet exuded a brutish sexuality that had a universal effect on females. The housemaid giggled the moment he arrived.
“I didn’t know there was a countess,” I said.
“But of course,” said Le Jumeau, handing the pelt to the blushing maid.
“She lives here?” I asked.
“Much of the time,” he said, walking to the door and clicking his tongue at me. Like a dog, I followed him.
“Are there children?” I whispered as we hurried down the hall.
“No, Le Naïf.” The satyr grinned at me, dark lips curling. His eyes were little black pits of mirth.
The guests began to arrive that afternoon. There were so many of them, I couldn’t keep track of their names. The countess was issuing orders to the servants with imperious calm. I imagined her skin to be cold to the touch. She had a way of raising her chin, cocking her head, and narrowing her eyes as she listened. Yet, surprisingly, she could melt into laughter at some witticism on the part of her guests. This helpless hilarity caused her head to flop over on its stalk, her tense arms to dangle at her sides, the firm flesh of her bosom to be squeezed over the rigid bounds of her corset as she rocked with laughter—until she regained her composure and solidified into marble once more. I found her fascinating and repellent. At one point, to my alarm, she fixed me with her metallic gaze, her eyes the color of pewter.
“Tell the count there will be a game of whist with the Marquis and Marquise de Clermont-Tonnerre in the pink drawing room in half an hour; we would be most pleased if he could join us as a fourth. I believe he is in the library.” I bowed, turned, and walked off blindly, anxious to remove myself. I got lost and increasingly panicked, speeding down a nightmare of hallways, entering door after door, running through rooms that looked familiar yet strange, bursting in on clusters of gleaming aristocrats in the act of playing cards, tinkling clavichords, or stealing kisses, until I wept with frustration. In the end, the count came upon me, in an intimate study adjoining the music room. He had been searching for his snuffbox. He laughed at my distress.
“Gebeck. Are you all right?” he asked. I wiped my eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, standing up. “I was lost.”
“Well, now you’ve been found,” he said with gentle mockery, as if to cheer up a child.
“Madame la Comtesse wanted you to know that she invites you to the pink drawing room to play a hand of whist with … with …”
“It doesn’t matter with whom,” said the count, thudding down despondently into a gilded chair and regarding his red stockings, one of which was wrinkling at the ankle. I knelt and straightened it for him, pulling it up tight about his calf.
“I wish I could change places with you, Gebeck, just for this one week.” He sighed.
“You do, sir?” I asked.
“Most emphatically,” he answered.
The next morning at first light, I dressed the sleepy count for his hunting expedition. Woolen undergarments, thick woolen britches, chemise, socks: my master stepped into them all dutifully, like a small boy being outfitted by his nurse.
“You are doing well, Gebeck,” he said, as I did up the buttons on his waistcoat. “I am well pleased.” I looked up from my task. The wide pores of the count’s skin, his fleshy mouth, that hunk of a nose—without being conscious of it, I was constantly lending him other features that seemed to go together better.
“I’m glad, Monsieur le Comte,” I said.
“I would like to give you something,” said the count, his protruding eyes roving around the room. “Ah!” He grabbed the candelabrum at the center of his round table and handed it to me. “Here. It’s quite a valuable piece. Belongs to my wife, but she’ll never notice.” I took the candelabrum in both hands. It was heavy. I examined the intricate porcelain work, the tiny cherubim gamboling on the base, the lifelike flowers winding around the candlesticks.
“Thank you very much,” I said.
“Put it in your room, and then we must be off.”
The party set off after breakfast: ten nobles, dressed in the finest woolens, carrying muskets and little kidskin bags over their shoulders, the servants following close behind. I was one of three valets de chambre to accompany his master. The others were both older men who looked as though the last thing on earth they wanted to be doing at this moment was traipsing through the woods.
The master chatted away to his guests as we walked through the tangle of woodland and into an open field. Solange’s husband, DuBois, walked ahead of us, his back rigid, a clutch of hunting dogs sniffing at his heels. He was giving terse orders to the beaters, bent, stick-wielding men in tweed caps and baggy britches. At a word from DuBois, the beaters thrashed the bushes with their sticks, and a frightened bird blasted itself into the air, only to be shot at by ten muskets simultaneously. When a bird fell, DuBois sent a dog after it. I watched the man for hours as he stalked through the countryside, grimly providing pleasure for the count and his guests.
As the morning progressed, the poor count did not shoot well. His shots were wildly off the mark. All the other guests had at least a brace of partridge each in their hunting pouches. My master had one bird. Eventually his gay chatter petered out and he fell back from the group, dragging his musket dejectedly along the thawed ground. He didn’t even bother to raise his gun when a spray of partridge erupted into the air in front of him. DuBois knew the count wasn’t hitting anything, yet he continued marching along, ordering the beaters and the dogs about, and keeping a careful tally of each guest’s kill in a small notebook. Cruelty nestled in the rectitude of the man’s corduroy; I knew it. Poor Solange. At noon, the party disbanded. The count muttered something about work he needed to do and walked into the gardens, while the others returned to the château to dress for lunch. I followed the count, taking his musket from his limp fingers.
Dejected, he walked some distance without even acknowledging my presence, yet he expected me to follow him. I knew he needed me. He sat on a bench by one of the rectangular ponds, staring into the water listlessly. I stood by his side, watching him. After a long moment my young master’s gaze quickened. He stiffened like a bird dog, staring into the pond, and stood up very quietly, gesturing urgently for me to hand him his gun. Aiming, I soon realized, at one of the large carp that lazed at the bottom of that shallow pool, he blasted it to pieces. Then he handed the gun back to me, saying, “I’ll wear the chestnut silk for lunch.” And off he tromped toward the castle, as the golden corpse of the bleeding fish tumbled up to the surface of the pool.
At lunch, as Le Jumeau and I joined the other servants bustling about bringing in new dishes and pouring wine, I noticed Monsieur Cabanis, the desiccated man I had met on my first morning out of prison, watching me gravely from his seat beside the countess. My service was, by now, impeccable. I was a natural mimic, and acted the part of a servant to perfection. Over the course of the meal the count sent me out for his snuff, and then again for his tobacco. Each time I returned, I felt Cabanis’s eyes on me. The count, taking the requested object from my hands, seemed to be checking on the other man’s reaction to my service. I was relieved when, at last, the guests stood up.
“Gebeck,” said the count, “follow us please.”
I followed the count and the shriveled Cabanis to the count’s study, where they both sat down.
“May I bring you some brandy?” I asked.
“Later,” said the count. “For now I want you to show Monsieur Cabanis some of what I have taught you. I am proud of my achievement.” I looked over at Cabanis. His wig was very dark, and curled along the front, with two pointed braids trailing down his back. He seemed like a vain, serious person. From his inside jacket pocket he produced a sheet of paper, clamping it between the tips of his fore- and middle fingers.
“Please translate into French,” he said, stretching his arm out and handing it to me. It was Latin. I recognized it as the work of the poet Virgil. I sat down and translated as best I could. This took me over half an hour, I believe. In all that time, neither man said a word. The only sound was the scratching of my quill on the paper.
“There are some words I do not recognize,” I said.
Cabanis took the paper from me and read, then looked over at my master, nodding. He then asked me questions about Aristotle. Voltaire. Diderot. I did my best to answer. Then, he turned to my master. “And the habits, the rituals?”
“Gone. You have my word.”
Cabanis thought this through for a few seconds. “The final act,” he said. “Nothing until that is accomplished.”
“In time,” said the count. Then, turning to me, he said pleasantly, “Monsieur Cabanis has been kind enough to advise me on your education, stage by stage. He is a man of letters, far better qualified than I to devise a curriculum. But I insist that such a radical reorganization of a person’s mind takes time. Now. Go on. Take the rest of the day for yourself.”
I spent the afternoon in the kitchen, watching Solange add up the week’s purchases in a large ledger, sipping coffee with milk.
“What’s the matter, Johann?” she asked me. “You look so mopey.”
“Is he good to you, your husband?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“The personal kind,” I said.
She pushed a plate of cakes toward me. “Eat,” she said.
“Why is that your solution to everything?” I asked, piqued.
“It’s not the solution to everything. Only to nosy little boys who say things they shouldn’t.”
“I can’t help it if I care about you,” I said. “I—I love you.”
Solange looked at me, astonished at my clumsy outburst. I had the terrible feeling she might be about to laugh.
“Oh, sweet boy,” she said.
“I am not a boy,” I said. “Not that you care, or have ever asked, but I’m married. Was—married. I am a man.”
“What happened to your wife?” she asked earnestly.
“I have no idea, and I don’t care,” I said. “I only mention her because you all insist on calling me Le Naïf and treating me like a child, when I was once the head of a household!”
“Do you want to go back, perhaps?”
“I couldn’t go back if I wanted to,” I snapped. “All I ask is, if I tell you I love you, treat me with the dignity I deserve.”
“All right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I cannot return your love, not because I could not love you, but because I am married.”
“But look around you!” I said. “What does marriage have to do with anything? Look at the count!”
She shrugged and smiled. “It’s not the same for us.” She drew the ledger toward her and began writing in her tiny, flawless script. I bit into a cake resentfully, but I didn’t leave her side.
A week later, the count had gone into the village with Le Jumeau.
I was in the library, up on the ladder, replacing some books on the highest shelf, a great distance from the floor, when the mirrored doors to the room opened and the countess walked in, shutting us in with a deliberate push.
“Madame la Comtesse,” I called down, assuming she did not know I was there.
“Come down, Gebeck,” she called up in her open-throated, sonorous voice. “I need to speak with you.” Fearing I was in trouble, I traveled down what now seemed like an endless ladder, acutely aware of my baggy britches. Reaching the ground at last, I bowed. The Comtesse de Villars was ghostly in a bone-white dress with four black silk bows tied adamantly up the front. The slender silk bodice emerged from the wide frame of the skirt like the neck of a precious vase containing a single perfect white flower. Her mask of daubed skin was unlined, yet she did not seem young to me. Her cornsilk-blond, lightly powdered hair was bedizened with flashing black birds. Diamonds spangled at her ears.
“Madame?” I asked. She walked over to the library table, surveying the messy papers spread across it and touching the edge of a portfolio thoughtfully.
“Have you ever wondered why my husband went to all that trouble to hire you as his second valet?” she asked, a little curl, like a snail’s tail, rising at one corner of her lips. “I mean, why you, and not a Frenchman, or someone not in prison, for that matter?”
“I have wondered, yes,” I answered.
“He hired you because he needs a Jew. He needs a Jew because, to put it bluntly, he needs money.”
“He made a bet,” she said, walking to the window and looking out at the endless lawn with her large, heavy-lidded eyes.
“A bet?” I asked.
“My husband is a compulsive gambler. Some years ago, he bet Monsieur Cabanis four hundred louis that he could change a Jew into a Frenchman in six months. Like most of us, Monsieur Cabanis believes that your people are too obstinate, too steeped in their own primitive, superstitious world, and, moreover, too vain, to truly become a part of our civilization. My husband insists that all people are essentially the same, that all customs are learned, that there is no such thing as inherent Jewishness. If a Jew can change, anyone can change, he says. But let me ask you something. Do you think, in biblical times, hawks ate pigeons, when they had the chance?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Have hawks always eaten pigeons?” she repeated.
“I suppose so,” I answered.
“If hawks have always maintained the same character, it’s absurd to think Jews will change theirs. Human nature does not change.” Her deep-set large eyes were fixed, inhuman, as if made of gray glass. I peered through those glittering windows and glimpsed an intelligence so cold it stilled my breath.
“So you see, his interest in you is scientific as well as financial,” she continued. “But the thing is—and here is the truly difficult element: the count will lose the bet unless you are baptized as a Christian within the next two months. What do you make of that?”
“Madame, why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“I just wanted to know how you would answer.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You would do it? You would betray your faith to enrich him?”
Le Jumeau oozed into my room, slid onto my bed, and settled his stocking feet on my pillow. Two grimy middle toes protruded from the brown stockings like unearthed parsnips. I saw them through a blur of tears.
“What’s the matter, Le Naïf?” asked the valet. “What are you doing pouting in your room?”
Weeping with rage, I told him about the bet. There was a pause as he let it sink in. Then he chuckled. “And that fat little bastard kept it to himself all this time,” he mused.
“Would it have been better if he’d let you in on it?” I asked, folding my clothes jerkily and setting them into my small canvas satchel. “I don’t care to be used as a performing monkey to enrich that cynic.”
“Here’s what I would do,” said Le Jumeau. “Confront the count, and tell him you’ll only go through with the baptism if you get a third of the money. No, say half, and you’ll end up with a third.”
“But I don’t want to be baptized!” I said. “It’s completely out of the question for us.”
Le Jumeau sighed, rolling his eyes. “Come on, Gebeck. Do you truly believe in all your rules and regulations now? It seems to me you sank your teeth into that pork sausage pretty happily. I haven’t heard any of your chanting lately either. For better or worse, the count freed you, he’s educating you, and now you can earn a nice fat parcel if you just play along. Ah, forget it, you don’t deserve my advice. I don’t know why I bother. Go ahead. Pack up, get on the highway a penniless Hebrew, and see how the fates treat you.” He folded his hands over his taut belly and closed his eyes.
I stomped over to where the count was surveying a new building project. He was having a small pyramid built at the end of a path in the woods. Six strong village men were setting the slanted stones. The count stood, plans in hand. The architect, a tall man with a pointy beard, gestured grandly at the useless edifice. Villars turned, and, seeing me, lit up.
“Le Naïf! Have a look at my pyramid.”
“I need to speak with you privately, monsieur,” I said breathlessly.
“Has something happened?”
“It’s a private matter,” I insisted.
The count handed the plans to the architect, who rolled them up in an exaggerated show of discretion.
“I’ll be back,” said the count. “Come. We’ll walk through the park.”
As we walked through the magnificently organized park of the château, I unburdened myself, my voice shaking. The count walked for a long while in silence, his hands behind his back, a frown on his wide, froggy mouth.
“It’s not as simple as you make out, Gebeck,” he said. “I need money, it’s true, but there are other ways, easier ways, to get it. My wife has her own reasons to discredit me. I took you in because … I suppose I wanted to know if it was possible to … wash a Jew clean of his Jewishness. To make him simply a man. It’s a debate that’s all the rage, what to do about the Jews. How to make them more useful, less scheming, less ‘a nation apart.’ There are those who would love to ship you all to South America. I simply wanted to prove them wrong. That it’s a question of education and habit. Do you see? My project is simply … ideas made flesh. Instead of writing a treatise. You are my theorem. As for the baptism, that is Cabanis’s requirement. He’s an ardent Catholic. If it were up to me, there would be no religion involved whatsoever. I detest it, as you know.”
“Give me half,” I proclaimed, “and I will do it.”
“Half! Do you realize I am giving you a free Jesuit education, minus the beatings?”
“A quarter, then,” I said.
“Very well,” he said, chuckling. “I suppose there will always be a bit of the businessman about you, if you know what I mean.”
“It was Le Jumeau’s idea,” I retorted. “He suggested a third!”
The count stamped his small foot in mock outrage. “That con artist! He’s always looking for a way to fuck me up the ass.”
A date was set with the parish priest.
The count, Solange, and Le Jumeau were in attendance as I stood bareheaded beside the baptismal font and became an apostate, swearing to the doddering priest that I believed Christ was Moshiach. I did not even bother to cross my fingers, as so many of my brethren had done when converting to save their own lives. I didn’t deserve to cross my fingers; my life wasn’t in danger. Try as I might to shrug the feeling off, I felt the Old Tyrant’s eyes boring into me, his fury gathering. “I am a jealous God,” he liked to say in the old days. Didn’t like competition. The old priest etched a wet cross on my forehead with his trembling digit: holy water trickled down the side of my nose, spread along the seam of my lips. It was done.
As my master and his valet looked on my conversion with a depth of cynicism difficult to find even in eighteenth-century France, I saw that Solange’s eyes were brimming with tears. Afterward, as we left the village church, I asked her tenderly, “What is it, Solange?”
“You are in the house of God now,” she whispered, her face glowing. “Whatever the reason for it, now you are safe.” That’s why she had helped the count find a Jew in the first place. If it were up to her, we’d all be converted.
I was paid within the week.
The holy day following my baptism, which was, unfortunately, Good Friday, Solange took me to afternoon Mass in the quaint country church where I had been baptized. We were celebrating the Passion of Christ. I sang out all the hymns and recited the special Easter prayers, one of which spoke eloquently about how the Jews had insisted Christ be killed.
And Pilate … said again unto the Jews, what will ye then that I shall do with him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil has he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him.
The congregation joined in lustily whenever it was time to yell, “Crucify him!,” playing the bloodthirsty Hebrews with passion. So did I. It was an awkward moment, but I got through it by pretending I was in a play.
The final ritual of my stay in the Château de Villars was a celebration in honor of the finished pyramid. There was to be an opening ceremony, followed by refreshments, music, and fireworks. The count invited the treasurer of the local assemblée générale, Lefèvre the architect, and various local bourgeois, who came dressed as if for a coronation. The countess was a disapproving cloud of black muslin, the stones at her neck flashing in the late pink light.
The count, dressed in his chestnut silk waistcoat and britches, his red stockings glowing, raised his double chin, readying himself for one of his speeches. He swayed slightly; I realized with alarm that he was drunk. The squat pyramid behind him had been wrapped with a cord of white ribbon tied in a sad little bow.
“Ladies and gentlemen, all of you gathered here, I am so happy to say that the wonderful work of our local stonemasons, as well as the superb architect Monsieur Lefèvre, has yielded this lovely edifice, an ancient shape with no purpose or use whatsoever but to perplex and entertain. And, in memory of the great people who were once enslaved by the Egyptians and yet came out of Egypt by divine intervention, according to our Bible, which so many of us here hold to be a historical document and not the product of feverish priestly imaginations—and in memory also of the character—or should I say man—revered, revered man, Jacob, also known as Israel, who, in our deepest past, wrestled with an angel of God …” By now the crowd, predisposed to enjoy the speech, was utterly lost and moving toward being insulted. Lefèvre cleared his throat.
“In honor of the great old biblical times,” babbled the count, “when an eye was an eye and a man was a man and God ruled the world, I am naming this small building ‘Jacob’s Folly.’ I shall have it etched in the lintel above the doorway. So that, for all time, as long as these stones stand, people passing will think of Jacob, and the past, and the Egyptians …” He looked at me and raised his glass. It was strange to hear myself called Jacob. I had nearly forgotten my name. The ribbon was severed. Champagne was poured. Fireworks ripped across the sky. The count disappeared and was found some hours later, passed out on a mossy rock.