27

VALERIE DROVE BACK TO the pension, thinking about Andre, about Jean-Claude, and her longing for consolation. Here she’d come in search of peace only to find herself entangled in a disaster, her son and his partner missing. How fortunate to have met someone in the same situation, a man who gave her hope. They are trying to talk to you, he’d said about her son and James.

Gerard, you keep looking for Andre in that cauldron of hell that never stops burning, but I saw our son in front of a church. It has to do with faith in the unseen. How visible has Andre ever been to us? He is alive. I know it.

She parked the car in the driveway of the pension. Robert opened the front door. Looking dismayed, he took the cooler from her hands.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“Monsieur Leduc wouldn’t let me pay,” she said.

“But you are crying.”

***

She felt a breeze, a swaying branch, a leaf skimming her bare arm, as if it were Gerard, as if he were helping her up the stairs and into the pension. Reaching out, he’d take her hand and pull her through the fire.

Gerard, we must find Andre.

Valerie, I have never stopped looking.

“Your son, is he safe?” asked Marguerite.

***

Only when Ora is safe will I be safe. Gerard once told her that.

Ora’s dead, Gerard.

Ora’s gone to air, he replied. Her cells are in the atmosphere. Every day we are breathing her.

She was like wind, thought Valerie — a voice softening the air of his father’s house in Toronto. Even now she could hear Ora singing in an eastern language, her plucked instrument embroidering its way through a minor key. She listened. The music was still there, drifting out of Gerard’s old room, and she was nosy, like a cat that follows curiosity to a door ajar and pushes it open with its head. Peering in, she could see the glimmer of candles in twilight, Gerard’s form blocking her view.

“Just wanted to tell you the music’s nice.”

He hesitated, then let her into a shadowed, candlelit room, into the kind of solemnity that pushes a knee into bending, a hand into making the sign of the cross. On a table was a single rose in a stem vase and a photo of a fair-haired woman whose look Valerie might have glimpsed in the mirror.

She caught Gerard’s glance at the spinning cassette. “This is her tape,” he said. “What you’re hearing is an oud. An Arabic instrument.” Valerie listened, her hands doing guitar riffs in the air.

“The oud is where the lute comes from,” said Gerard, his speech distant, formal in manner, like a music teacher’s. Valerie wondered if this singer was a recording artist. Yet he’d fallen silent, the air laden with sorrow, so she imagined that this was the voice of an ex-girlfriend, that the two had broken up. Sensing that he wanted privacy, Valerie got up to leave. “Could you tell me the name of her album?” she asked.

“There is no album.”

“Someday, maybe.”

“Never.”

“I’m sorry,” said Valerie, as if she’d knocked over something.

“It is five months today since my friend is gone.”

I was right, thought Valerie. She left him.

“She died in a plane crash,” he said.

***

“Well, is he safe?” asked Marguerite.

“I don’t know. Andre sent me an email just before—”

“Let us get ready for lunch, ma chère.”

***

Gerard, the candlesticks you lit that night had belonged to Ora. They were made of red clay, of a type that is found in the Holy Land. They were round in shape, like ancient oil pots, with pale inscriptions that might have been flowers or letters. Even Ora didn’t know what the designs signified. The candles illuminated a slender perfume jar with a tapered neck, glazed deep blue and phosphorescent gold, spinning with life as if it had just flown from the potter’s wheel. It was the most beautiful object in the room. By candlelight, it shone with incandescent fire. It drew me in, as if it, too, were Ora’s music.

You must have wanted to unburden yourself, Gerard. You didn’t have to let me in the room that night — you hesitated, then decided, yes. You wanted to tell me what had happened.

You told me about your beloved Ora Lévis. Her father was French and her mother Israeli. You’d wanted to marry her, but too many things displeased your parents, her Jewishness being only one of them. Her odd beauty disturbed them most of all. Ora had a strange luminescence, even in darkness. She had silver hair as radiant as the moon, translucent skin, sapphire eyes. To your parents she seemed unearthly, already a ghost marked for death. After the tragedy, your mom and dad felt dreadful that they’d said these things. They understood that you needed to get away from them.

***

“Taste this soup, please,” said Marguerite.

Valerie sipped a spoonful of its cream, breathing in the fine scent of artichokes and hazelnuts. “C’est délicieux.”

“Comfort food,” said Marguerite in English. “I spike it with Armagnac.”

“On your birthday,” said Valerie, “I should have cooked.”

“Beh, you’re a guest in my home.” Valerie set the table with china plates, crystal glassware, woven placemats that she admired.

“My daughter-in-law gave me those,” said Marguerite. “Sit down, everyone.”

Robert joined them. Valerie served the soup.

“She bought the placemats on the Cabot Trail, in Nova Scotia.”

Robert opened the wine and filled their glasses. “Speaking of trails, you have not yet told us about your morning hike,” he said.

“It was beautiful,” said Valerie. “The sky turned blue.”

“Oui, ma chère,” said Marguerite. “But have you heard from Andre?”

“Start before the soup gets cold,” said Valerie. She returned the tureen to the kitchen, taking a minute to warm her ice-cold hands on its surface, hoping Marguerite might drop the subject. When Valerie came back, she caught Marguerite’s embarrassed look. She was fingering the woven cloth in front of her as if nothing else mattered.

“You know, we often have weavers visit from the Maritimes,” she said.

Valerie felt relieved.

“Monsieur Leduc, from the fromagerie, he spent his youth in New Brunswick,” added Robert.

“Did you meet him, Valerie?”

“He would not let Valerie pay.”

“Ben, oui.” Marguerite patted her hand. “He is kind.”

The table fell silent.

She poured more wine in Valerie’s glass, then put some cheese on her plate. “Look at this, fromage parfait. He gives fair weight, n’est-ce pas? Always a little extra, too.”

Valerie squeezed her eyes shut against the hot sting of pain.

Marguerite pressed a handkerchief into her hand. “It will be all right, ma chère. Eat.”