Illuminated (18 page)

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Authors: Erica Orloff

BOOK: Illuminated
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We stood on the deck of the Eiffel Tower for a long time, not saying anything. The air in Paris, I decided, was more romantic than at home. And I wanted to breathe in every bit of the city’s love and August’s.
I wanted our kiss on the top of the Eiffel Tower to mean forever.
16
 
My secrets are as deep as a mountain valley.
—A.
 
 
T
hat night, I dreamed of Heloise.
She was young—my age—but already a nun, dressed in a white habit, and sitting at a plain wooden desk beneath a small window composing a letter. I was invisible, there in her room, which had stone floors and little gray light, a plain bed with a straw mattress. She shivered in the chilly dawn, a small candle lighting her words.
I peered over her shoulder. Her script was neat, each letter perfectly aligned in height to the letter next to it.
My Darling Astrolabe,
All of the world knows of the sin of thy mother and thy father, speaking of the wages of our love, the price extracted for my unchaste nature. Thou, dear child, are an evidence even the most vehement of denials cannot hide. No stomach burst with love’s greatest rose can be hidden from the eyes of the whole of the earth.
My child, ’tis best for thou to be apart, raised in the bosom of a family of reputation worthy of an innocent.
Cast your eyes, my Astrolabe, not on the stars of Heaven, but on the Son of Heaven. Do not be tempted by lips nor hair nor face so fair. Do not make the mistakes of thy parents.
I sign this as thy mother, and as thy example of a woman fallen now given up to God in penance, the wife of thy father, yet not his wife.
H.
 
 
Heloise’s face was unlined, but her eyes were sad. She touched her breast, as if writing the words pained her. Suddenly, Heloise looked up at me, and she was transformed into my mother. And then I woke up.
I sat up in bed and could see by the sky that it was the middle of the night. I tried to shake off the dream. But it lingered.
I looked over at August, who slept in the other bed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, undisturbed, unaware of my dream. I slipped from my own bed and went to the window to look out at Paris. August and I had decided we wouldn’t have sex yet—I wasn’t ready—but even being in the same room at night was awesome, whispering in the dark until we fell asleep.
Harry was arriving in a day. I had spoken to Gabe, and he said after two stiff martinis—something Harry rarely, if ever, drank—he had calmed down enough to phone my father. According to Gabe, there was considerable yelling, but then some sort of truce. I hoped I could forge my own truce with my dad over this.
Paris was as romantic as I had hoped, but I wanted to find the path of Heloise. I sat in the small chintz chair in the corner, and sometime in the night, I fell back to sleep.
After a restless few hours, I woke again. My cell phone rang, and it was Etienne telling me that August and I had time for café au lait and croissants before the drive to Nantes, since he was stuck in traffic.
I woke August, and we got ready. We met Etienne in the lobby. He drove us in his BMW. August sat up front, and I rode in the back, occasionally drifting off to sleep; each time I woke, the scenery was spectacular and unlike any place I had been before.
The previous night, over dinner, Etienne had taken us through what he knew. Miriam had bought several books and items from him over the years, and they had a warm correspondence, but she was most interested in a Book of Hours. As he searched, a monk had told him of a rumor that a Book of Hours had survived from Heloise’s convent, which had been forced to scatter. Whether this book was fake or real, the monk had no idea. There was always a chance of forgery, but still, Etienne felt it was worth pursuing.
In the front seat, August stared out the window.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Of course I would.”
He leaned over the backseat to talk more softly. “Last night, Abelard came to me in a dream.”
I swear the car got twenty degrees colder.
“What?”
He nodded and whispered. “He came to me, and the dream was as real as you and me, Calliope. I mean, if I didn’t know any better, I would say a ghost visited me.”
“Heloise visited
me
last night.”
He stared at me. “What happened in your dream?” “She was writing a letter to Astrolabe, and she let me read it. What happened in your dream?”
“He was saying prayers, reading from a Book of Hours. I went and knelt down next to him, and when I looked at the book, it was A.’s. I could read some of the lines we know, like the one from Genesis. All of a sudden, he grabbed my hand—tight. I tried to pull away, but he was tugging on me, and he said, ‘Find her.’”
“Find her? Who? Heloise?”
“I don’t know. I thought so, but I don’t know. He was really distraught. He was crying.”
Even though the day was sunny, I was chilly. It seemed like from the across the centuries, ghosts were leading us on this chase.
We drove on for a couple of hours until we came to Nantes. My breath caught. The city was beautiful. A port town, old schooners rested in its waters, their tall masts reflected on the blueness on the clear day. A cathedral stood guard over the city’s inhabitants, its spires rising to the heavens. I hoped Nantes, with its verdant lawns next to courtyards and old buildings, would lead us a step closer to the son Heloise had to give up.
Etienne parked the car next to a shop, and we climbed out. Like his own location, this one had elaborate security, and we waited to be buzzed in.
Once inside, though, any resemblance to Etienne’s shop was gone. This one was cold and modern inside, with marble floors and glass cases containing illuminated manuscripts. I saw August’s eyes scanning the array of ancient treasures.
The book dealer, a portly man in a starched white shirt, black pants, and a pair of paisley suspenders, greeted us and began speaking rapidly to Etienne in French. Occasionally, I made out the words
manuscrit
and
livre.
Etienne, who was the picture of a gentleman the day before and at dinner the night before, suddenly grew angry. His voice rose, and he started talking with his hands. He inched closer to the other man, until they were almost nose to nose.
The book dealer turned his backs to us and slammed his hand down on a counter—I thought the glass would shatter.
Etienne crossed his arms and stood his ground. The book dealer stared at Etienne. It reminded me of the playground staring contests when I was a kid.
The book dealer blinked first. He threw his hands up, rolled his eyes, and stormed to a back room. When he returned, he handed Etienne a piece of paper.
Etienne took it and, face impassive, motioned for us to follow him out.
Once out on the street, we climbed in the car and he drove to the port. “Come, we walk and talk,” he said as he put the car in park.
Climbing out again, we stood with him at the water’s edge, hearing the waves lapping at the dock.
“Voilà!” Etienne said, and turned the paper around.
“Abbé Bruno?” I read the name aloud.
“
Oui!
”
“And who is Abbé Bruno,” August asked.
“The abbott who will lead us to the truth. Tomorrow, we depart.”
Etienne strolled in the sun, a look of satisfaction on his face, after having stared down the dealer.
“It was as I suspected. At some point in history, the manuscript was stolen. This man the dealer supposedly bought the manuscript from had manufactured a provenance. And when Miriam and I wanted to check further, her husband, Monsieur Rose, was in such a rush to acquire, he didn’t care what was forged. He wanted to possess it.”
“But he never cared about Heloise,” I said.
“Miriam did.”
August raised his index finger. “Ah, but we know Rose was a collector. He wanted to own it simply to own it. That was how he was with everything in his life.”
“Precisely, my American friend. So this abbott—he knows, supposedly, more than anyone about Heloise and Abelard. And he has a story to tell. And tomorrow . . . we go to hear it. Face-to-face.
C’est bon
.”
“Harry will be here in the morning. My uncle. He will come with us.”
I squeezed August’s hand. We were close, so close to history. So close to Heloise and Abelard and Astrolabe. They were all around us. I felt it. I dreamed it.
August dreamed it.
They needed us.
 
That night, August and I had a romantic dinner at a place on the Seine.
I dressed in a black miniskirt, a black sleeveless turtleneck, and my most favorite shawl, which Gabe had bought me one Christmas. It’s pashmina, in a deep shade of green, with beading on the fringe.
“You look gorgeous,” August said as he greeted me. He had gone for a walk to buy me a rose.
“You look handsome yourself,” I said, walking across the lobby to kiss him.
He grabbed me by the hand, and we strode out into the night air.
After dinner we walked along the Seine, and it felt like I had somehow stepped into a movie.
When we returned to the hotel, we rode up in the elevator together. When we got to our room, I slipped off my heels.
“Calliope, I found out something really cool.”
“What?”
“
I found out that at the cemetery where they are buried, if you are single, you write a letter to Heloise and Abelard, asking them to find you a soul mate. But if you already are with your true love, you each leave a letter by their tomb, professing your love. So just before closing on Saturday let’s go there, where they are . . . with letters, and leave them there for Heloise and Abelard.”
I looked at him. “My dad and mom did that. And look how
that
turned out.” At the thought of my dad, my stomach clenched a little.
“Come on, we’re not them. We’re different.”
“All right. But . . . what do we write exactly?”
“What’s in your heart.” He kissed me.
I looked into his eyes. I wasn’t sure exactly how to explain everything that was in my heart. How do you explain feeling like you were meant to be with someone? As if history and a book and ghosts and dreams were bringing you together?
17
 
To whom do we take our vows?
—A.
 
T
he next day, Harry finally arrived. He then marched me and my suitcase to
his
room and said he would stay with August. It wasn’t like I could argue with him. However, he barely had time to set his suitcase in his room before we took the train to Avignon, where we were to meet Abbé Bruno at the monastery where he lived and worked. We were to stay overnight on the monastery grounds, and Harry, Etienne, August, and I each brought a small overnight bag.
Harry sulked at me for about fifteen minutes, but when we told him about our dreams, he said, “All right, I give in. Maybe this is bigger than all of us.”
The train ride passed from the bustle of Paris. For over two hours, we sped through France, to the bucolic Avignon countryside. A three-arched bridge spanned a river as calm as glass.
We disembarked at the station, and Etienne arranged for a car and driver to take us a couple of miles up steep country roads to a monastery on a hillside.
“This monastery,” Etienne said, “makes its own bread—very famous, actually. And wine. They take orders from as far away as America for their wine.”
I gazed up the mountain as the car completed its climb.
“Laypeople may come here to stay as a retreat. I believe they have thirty beds.”

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