Guided Tours of Hell (27 page)

“De rien, au revoir,”
trilled the guide.

“Au revoir,”
Susanna Rose told Leo and Nina, and then she and her daughter were gone.

So Nina’s premonition had been all wrong. She had mistaken Susanna Rose for a demon instead of a guardian angel. She had thought Susanna Rose would sow discord and erotic unrest when in fact she was offering help in the form of a grisly story that Nina hoped she could keep in mind after she and Leo left the prison and returned to their regular lives.

Nina felt like an explorer in one of those misty historical paintings of white men in armor or buckskins on the edge of a cliff from which some misguided native scout points out the promised land. Though what Nina saw before her was hardly a heaven on earth, but rather a desolate wilderness she would have to cross and would cross, out of faith in what waited (well, what
might
wait or what might not be there at all, who could possibly say?) on the other side. How she longed to bridge that chasm and find someone to trust, to know as well as she knew herself. And they
wouldn’t
have to discuss their love, this time because what existed between them would be as tangible, as real, as simple and mysterious as a loaf of bread. She would—that is, she
hoped
she would—feel that way about someone. But it seemed unlikely that this someone would be Leo….

Her desire for Leo would intensify, growing more obsessive and tragic the nearer it got to ending, to changing from a constant presence into a constant—and present—absence. Their passion would die, finished off by deepening misunderstanding, by their inability to exchange one unambiguous word, to break their sacred taboo against admitting the other mattered. Nina tried to tell herself: No. They would love each other forever. The love they’d made, the love they’d shared was a fact of nature, an entity that existed and had its own survival instinct. But Nina didn’t believe that. She and Leo would edge apart. Leo wouldn’t dig up her grave or come down to hell to save her.

Meanwhile it would help to think of Danton lifting his wife from her coffin. It would inspire Nina to keep her sights fixed past Leo. Danton’s story was a light to steer toward without knowing where she was going, the light of a love that couldn’t be argued with, nor told it couldn’t succeed: Don’t bother. Leave that dead woman alone. Stay out of hell with that lyre.

Nina imagined Danton hunkered down, his wide strong back muscled like a Rodin bronze. And her hands flew to her ears as if he really were howling—

Someone touched her, covered her hands with his own. Nina shuddered. It was Leo. She knew it was Leo. But her heart refused to quit hammering as he tenderly peeled back her fingers, starting with her thumbs. He leaned close and began to whisper, his warm breath on her temple. The guide was still there, though she’d moved farther on toward the exit, as if to urge them forward. Really, they should be leaving and let her get on her way.

Leo’s chest brushed Nina’s shoulder as he whispered in her ear. She longed to arch her back and rub up against him—that is, till she understood what he was saying.

He said, “The best part, the really terrific detail that what’s-her-name, Susanna, left out was that Danton remarried within a year.
Within one year
of digging up his wife and howling over her grave. The second time, he married a girl of sixteen. Some nubile sixteen-year-old cutie…”

Nina took a few steps away and again covered her ears. Once again she shut her eyes, and once more she saw Danton.

She stood where the gravediggers must have stood and watched Danton, crouched and howling. She felt what the gravediggers must have felt. She tried not to breathe. She was determined not to move, not to disturb or stop Danton, not for fear of him but from respect for what he was doing, for the ambition, the foolishness of his doomed impossible hope, disinterring his wife from the grave, that grand ridiculous gesture that proved, despite what Leo said and despite any whisper of doubt, the existence of love beyond reason, beyond the reach of time’s sharp blade: the love that—miraculously, narrowly—evades the arc of the scythe as Death stalks past in his hooded cape, mowing his way through the world.

Francine Prose is the author of sixteen novels, including
A Changed Man
, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and
Blue Angel
, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed
Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife
, and the
New York Times
bestseller
Reading Like a Writer
. A former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prose is a highly regarded critic and essayist, and has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, and she lives in New York City.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Francine Prose

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

978-1-4804-4512-3

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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