47

I sat up, and blew out the candle.

No. It wasn’t possible.

Something about the garden. About my mother. Something about—

I could remember it all. And just as quickly the memory eluded me. I found myself huddled against the wall. I would not think that way. I would never think that way.

The memories were gone. I wrapped a blanket around myself, and huddled there in the dark of Valfort’s sitting room. His hand must have fumbled, groped, and found a light, because there was a rattle, a lamp went on, and I blinked.

Valfort was at a distant wall, his eyes on me, his arms crossed, his entire posture communicated one powerful emotion. He was outwardly steady. He was professional. But he was afraid.

“That’s enough!” I said. My words erupted, my voice ragged.

The remains of the candle smoke drifted. There was a long silence. Valfort did not make a movement, waiting, I sensed, to see what I would do.

“Did you learn anything interesting?” I asked. Why did I ask this with something like a sneer?

“It’s so difficult for a man like yourself, to see the truth after such a long time,” he said.

“What did I tell you?”

He did not answer.

“Tell me!”

“You would not believe me.”

I bunched the blanket into a wad and threw it on the floor, where it swooped and drifted, skimming the surface before it fell. “I want to know the truth.”

“You might say that Satan does not exist, and that none of the powers you have contacted are supernatural. That may be only a way of describing it, a manner of thinking. But it is clear to me, Mr. Fields: a career of marvels awaits you. You will be more famous, more important, more influential than DeVere ever dreamed of being. You wanted good fortune. Now you have it.”

What sadness, I realized, embellished each one of Valfort’s words.

I asked, “What do you know about me now?”

“It would be wrong for me to tell you. You will have to discover the truth you have hidden from yourself.”

He must have read my eyes. “As soon as you surrendered possession of your soul, you ceased to love. Soon Nona Lyle will mean nothing to you. You will forget.”

“Impossible,” I said, my voice hoarse.

But I may do something to hurt her.

“Perhaps Nona was injured simply so the Powers could trap you.”

“Using her as bait. So I would agree to sell my soul. But it didn’t work. She wouldn’t come back to life.”

“Do you know why Nona Lyle turned to the study of the mind?”

“She was influenced by her father. He was a physician in Oakland.”

“She had a history of psychological troubles as a young girl. She had a tendency toward a hysterical reaction which made her slip into a form of trance so deep it resembles a coma. My primary work with her was to cure her. I had reasonable success. I see the look of hope in your eyes. I must caution you. Don’t be reassured. What has happened to her may be worse than anything purely physical. She may have collapsed beyond hope of any recovery, forced into a preconscious state by the shock of the beating.”

“I don’t want any of this—I want to go back to my old life, the way things used to be.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Even Faustus in the legend could have asked for forgiveness—”

“Faustus believed. Besides, what Faustus wanted was knowledge, and experience. He wanted to know the workings of the planets, and to make love with Helen of Troy. What you want is yourself.”

He was astounding, this wiry, keen-eyed man. “What should I do?”

“There is a secret in your family. Several secrets. That you will not allow yourself to acknowledge.”

“Did I kill DeVere?”

“You believe you did.”

I could not control myself. My feelings snapped. I picked up a chair and hurled it. It stuck the solid wall and bounced off. The chair spun on one leg, and then fell to one side and was still.

“You’ll never beg to be forgiven for anything, Mr. Fields,” he said. “Look at you.”

I struck the mantelpiece so hard the timbers above us vibrated. “You will help me!”

Valfort was calm. “That’s what you wanted. More life. So much life you can kill. Your ambition killed DeVere and Peterson, and your old friend Blake Howard. You are responsible for what happened to Nona Lyle.”

I turned to him, and my shadow fell over him, or perhaps it was the shadow inside me, rising up and covering him as a dust storm falls upon a sole figure on a plain. I would make him stop speaking such falsehoods. What did he know, this man who had tricked me into a trance, this stranger?

There was a whisper behind me, a step, the light sound of a presence. I spun, and the young woman was there, her eyes wide with terror.

I glanced at Valfort, feeling suddenly numb, speechless. “Why are you both so upset?” I said, in something like my old manner. I shook myself. I tried to laugh. “You must forgive me.”

French money crackled in my hand, new notes, fresh from the change window at the airport. I left a bunch of the colorful currency on the table, their leaves shifting slightly after I had tossed them down. “You must think me a terrible creature,” I said with an approximation of good humor. “The way I acted just now.”

As Valfort looked on, the young woman shrank back against the doorpost. “There’s no need for this display of fear,” I said. I touched her cheek, and I knew.

I knew as surely as I could see the five fingers of my hand. I would trade my soul again in an instant for another taste of the power I had experienced just now, the sensation of strength, the knowledge that my name was, in truth, going to master the world.

The world. The scope of the future occurred to me, like the taste of salt air recalling the vast empty expanse of horizon. Valfort was a little man, a weak, small man, but he had insight, a mouse’s glimpse at the truth. I would lift myself out of the characterless accomplishments of my life.

“What did you do, to make me feel so wonderful?” I asked Valfort, my voice husky with lust. A lust not for woman, but for air, light—for everything.

“I spoke to your lover,” he said.

I blinked.

“The woman in white, that demon resident in you.”

“Ancient superstitions,” I said. “Ancient and glorious.”

“And true.”

I laughed. “You do have a certain courage, Valfort. And for that I will spare you.”

Valfort stood on the doorway of the sitting room. “They chose you because you were noble, Mr. Fields. Because you were loving. Because you tried to live by an old standard of conduct—to do good. But They have won you.”

“This is the way you help me?” I laughed, feeling almost merry.

“I admire you, Mr. Fields. You had a quality that is so rare.”

“I thank you for your advice.”

“Nona’s hospitalization is doubly tragic because she was on the verge of a major triumph. She got wealthy and powerful people to agree to come to a meeting here in Paris. It was to have been a major achievement for her, a chance to establish an international committee to help children. It was not going to be easy to get these people of ease and power to part with their money, but Nona would be able to do it. Now, her plans are nothing.”

The sunlight was bright, spilling across the stairway. I looked back and asked, leaning against the railing, “What was it you saw, when you were dying, Valfort? How little you had done with your life?”

The streets outside were sunny. The wind was cold. The gutters were filled with running water, the flow directed into drains by rolls of toweling.

I wandered, fretful, even feverish.

The traffic was the usual hectic Paris rush, but at the same time it was without the malice of the traffic in other cities. I watched my reflection glide across the shop windows.

To not know, I told myself. To not know. That is to be free.

I stood outside the Cluny Museum, the ruins of the Roman bath before me. Wind shivered my trouser legs, but I did not mind. Valfort did not know me. I had strengths against more than one sort of riptide.

I turned into the wind and stepped into the street, alert for a cab. I have always weighed the consequence of what I did, and sometimes I have mourned. But, in the end, I have always returned to life.

How little Valfort knew, that man who had seen himself die.

A cab squealed to a stop. I seized the door handle.

But then I realized what I was doing. I understood that I was about to return home more lost than before.

I hurried through the streets, and at last found myself on rue San Mames once again. I pushed the door, and it would not open. I pounded on the heavy glass, shook it, but it made only a metallic rattle.

“Please!” I called. “Not for me! For Nona!”

A man in a uniform was at my side, asking me what I was doing there, banging on a door. Where was my key? Who did I want to visit?

Rapid French words wrapped around me briefly, and escaped, losing me.