Isidore had begged Micha to love him once. The scene was a vivid memory among so many tattered ones. The glass-smooth river and the overhanging willow, the golden haze of summer and the endless blue sky. Isidore had been brighter than the sun. Micha had trembled beneath his hands, as if his body had only newly learned how to live.Please. There is no shame in this.He could remember the scene and the words. Even the smell of the grass beneath them and Isidore’s skin. But whatever it had made him feel, the power, the wonder and vulnerability of trust, had been irretrievably lost, devoured by time and pain, and everything he had since become.
“Is that why you ran away?” he asked, pushing aside the daggers of memory.
Mrs. Clark just nodded.
The rumour at the brothel was that she had found herself a rich patron. As for Madame Defleur, she had dwelled more on treachery and broken trust, and Micha had never been interested enough to ask questions. “Throw you out, did she?”
Perhaps she hoped that his questions implied some sympathy, for she gave a slightly twisted smile and said, “Oh no, my mother was delighted. Seeing the success she had made of me, she was more than happy to raise my daughter.” Her hands curled into tight fists against the bedclothes, her eyes gleaming knife-pale through the dim light. “But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t deliver another human being—whether of my body or no—to a fate like mine.”
“How maternal of you,” he drawled.
“Not really.” She gave an odd, graceless shrug. “At first she was nothing but an obligation thrust upon me. It’s one thing to make a rational choice to do what you believe is right, another to commit to it emotionally. Love does not come easily to me, I think. I’d never known it, never felt it, never wanted it. But, in time, she changed ... everything for me. And she changed me too. I was twelve, you know, when my mother sold my virginity.” Again, her lips curved into a smile, as dark as Micha’s, but tempered by warmth, softened by hope. “I know she will only be the child of a widowed servant, but better than the grandchild of Madame Defleur. And perhaps, by the time she has grown ...”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“Oh, but I am. I was never a devout woman, but I pray. I pray there may be a place for my daughter in a better, different, fairer world. And I will do whatever it takes to build even the tiniest fraction of that future for her. If I have to lie for the rest of my life.” Suddenly Madame Defleur’s daughter slipped from the bed, until she was kneeling on the floor, her hands spread in supplication. “If I have to plead with you, now, tonight. Is that what you want? Do you want me to beg? Because I will. It would cost me nothing, Micha. You can have no idea how little this costs me.”
He stared down at her, hating her for how little pleasure her subjugation had brought him. Love, that faithless whore, had vanquished him again, and he felt not powerful, but sickened, worthless, and utterly alone.
“I want,” he said, “for you to stand up, shut up, and bring me a bottle of laudanum tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to do this.” God, why did she keeptrying? Hadn’t she learned that Micha had no better nature left to appeal to? “He will understand, I am sure of it.”
“I don’t care what he thinks of me. I just want some fucking laudanum.”
“I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“Like he’s a miracle you dare not believe in.”
“Right, and you look at him like you want to wrap your lips round his cock.”
“You can be safe here, Micha. I promise.”
He watched her through narrowed eyes. “Is that so? Is that fucking so? Well, how about I make you a deal? You tell him about you, and I’ll tell him about me. And then we’ll see how safe we both are.”
She climbed to her feet, her movements suddenly heavy. She paced back and forth across the room, her head bowed in thought. “I can’t. I can’t take that risk. For myself, I would. But I need to think of my daughter.”
He barked out a laugh. “So you want me to keep your little secret while I spill mine? Either you think this man is God’s gift to the world or you don’t. Get me that laudanum. You sanctimonious cunt. And don’t talk to me again, because I don’t give a fuck about you, or your fucking daughter.”
“I understand.” She left the room as silently as she had entered it.
And the next day, she brought him a bottle of laudanum.
Chapter 6
15th September
I have tried to pray but I cannot find the words, and I do not know for what I am praying. I do not know what I want. Though I do know what is wrong, and what it is wrong to want. And I cannot beg forgiveness because I have not repented. After all, I have not erred—unless I accept the position that thought itself is sin. But these thoughts, these thoughts that many would call iniquity, come from some part of me that, though only freshly discovered, seems inviolable. How can I repent that which I know to be wrong, yet does not feel wrong? If I am made in God’s image, then surely he made this also? Or does that part of me belong to the Devil?
Why is this done to me? I am nothing but His poor servant. I have striven all my life to fulfil my duty, to my family, to my God, to His teachings. Is this some punishment or some test? How can I believe that God is love, as Saint John would teach us, in the face of what seems arrant and arbitrary cruelty? Am I unfit, immoral, corrupt, simply because I look upon a man as other men—other priests—may look upon women? Deed, intent, everything, rendered irrelevant simply by the existence of the thought. The truth.
I am sickened. I am betrayed. By myself? I do not know.
I am come to Carthage burning, burning.
And I ask: am I the graver sinner, though I do not act, than he who lies with women and yet repents? And I find no answer. I am like a child,crying in the night. This is unfair. But mine must necessarily be a limited understanding. Is there not some plan, as I have often claimed to others? Some deeper meaning? But, oh, what is it? What is it? I can find no sense in this. And I cannot see the harm.
