CHAPTER TWO - The Dance of Shiva

I wrote Christine, and sooner than I wanted, the day of her visit arrived. Carriage wheels crunched on gravel, and then I heard the silvery tinkle of the doorbell. She stood at the door, small and fragile-looking in a powder-blue afternoon dress.

"I'm glad to have you in our home." I wasn't so sure about that, but it needed to be said. I took her hand and led her inside. "Your coachman can come into the kitchen and have his tea there," I said as she crossed the threshhold into our greatroom. "Good man, come round to the kitchen door to your left and Rochelle will have something there for you."

I liked his looks, a tall, cheeky man of about thirty, with a reddish face and foxy-colored moustache and sideburns. He tipped his hat and smiled as he went past me toward the kitchen door.

Christine stared around the room, and at once I saw our house through her eyes.

You had designed our stone villa on the small plot just outside Paris. In the center was the kitchen. Rather than shunting it off to some dreary remote corner of the house, you put the kitchen at the center and around it wrapped our "greatroom," as you called it. Your great space soared upwards, full of light and moving air.

Always a magpie, you collected shiny or unusual objects and filled our central room with all sorts of oddities. Christine stared with parted lips, her face far away. "It's beautiful. So familiar."

A sharp pang went through me. She had seen your home under the earth, stayed there, probably looked over your drawings, your models, heard your now-vanished music, all lost now. I had only glimpsed it in passing as I ran to follow you through the darkness. But she'd had her hands on it, just as she'd had her hands on you.

She paused in front of a bronze of Shiva and his wife Parvati, the goddess's hip inclined to the right, breasts jutting out. Leaning on her thigh was the fat-bellied, elephant-headed Ganesha.

"There's a story behind this," she said. "He had a statue like it. I never got to ask what it was about."

"This story I know. Do you want to hear it?" I said. That statue was in your bedroom. I saw it there, too, but only for a second.

"Thank you. I always wondered about it."

"Shiva was lord of the gods and Sati was his true love," I said, pleased that she wanted to hear. "She died, and he hid himself in a deep cave, leaving men to fend for themselves. The rest of the gods complained but it didn't do any good. Shiva just sat in his cave meditating.

"So the queen of the gods took the form of Parvati, who tried to lure him out of his cave. He ignored her and just kept on contemplating. Parvati decided to show him up. She slept on the ground, didn't bathe, wouldn't eat. She denied herself so long and so hard that Shiva finally woke from his trance and took her as his wife.

"It was Parvati who woke Shiva to song, to dance, to art. See, there's another one over here of Shiva dancing. Shiva watches over the arts."

The greatroom had a door to the garden, and I headed that way, but she stopped in front of a large wash sketch of Bathsheba.

"It looks like you," she said softly.

"I was the model, yes. It was just a rough idea. The costumers made it all stiff and horrible, and the soprano threw a tantrum."

"Some things don't change, do they?"

I smiled, and for the first time since she'd arrived I meant it. "No, they don't. Come on, we'll have our tea outside."

In the sun-drenched garden Rochelle's motherly hands had coaxed from the lilac bushes a purple weight of thick-smelling flowers. Between the lilacs you had built a bower, and Rochelle had planted wisteria. Under this violet covering sat a small table set for tea. The sun was still high, but twilight could just be seen coming up the path.

"Oh, Rochelle. Puff pastry, and shrimp salad. And lemon bars. You outdid yourself. What's this, a bottle of Fino sherry? Christine, do you care for some?"

"Tea first, please. But later, yes."

A few screeches came from behind the yews and Christine looked around swiftly. Two little boys streaked out through the bushes and headed down the path that led from the house out to the pond. Nabilah followed, calling out in Arabic.

"It's only Ahmed and Yasim," I said. "Nabilah's boys. They love the garden."

"How did you find them?"

"Nabilah's husband helped build this house. He was a Coptic Christian from Egypt. My husband liked his conversation and he was an excellent stonemason. It just seemed natural that they should live here, and the children were so happy. But then he grew ill and suddenly died. The doctors said it was his heart; there was something seriously wrong with it inside. There was never a question of Nabilah leaving after that."

"I didn't know anything about managing servants when I married Raoul. At first they stole the salt and sugar shakers, wouldn't make the beds, drank the cooking wine."

"How did you manage?" I asked, curious.

She smiled, and a little light crept into her face. "I had to ask my mother-in-law, the Comtesse. She took me in hand. I was only 17. I didn't know anything."

"Who does, at that age?" I laughed. "We didn't have servants in New York, except for a woman who took in the washing. I had to haul the sheets through the street to her house. She was poorer than we were. I used to give her our shoes when we wore them out from walking on the pavement, and somehow her family used them."

"So you've been back from America five years now?"

"Almost exactly. We both missed Paris. I wanted to try some new forms of dance, and the Americans weren't having anything of it. And my mother was dying." That hurt to say.

Christine crossed herself. "I'm sorry we missed the funeral. She was like a mother to me in so many ways. Raoul had to go to Berlin because of that flare-up on the Alsace border. The Prussians were threatening to send troops."

"You sent so many Mass cards. I did appreciate it." I felt embarrassed for thinking she had bad manners. I was the one who didn't have a single Mass said for the Comtesse when she died last year.

"I needed to do it. Meg," she said, and her voice got very quiet, "do you believe that souls can come back? That they can visit us? Because I sensed your mother. In my house, and sometimes when riding past the Opera Populaire. As if she were still there. One evening I was afraid to look, afraid that she might be there. Standing on the steps."

It was time for some sherry, and I poured us both generous glassfuls, as generous as a sherry glass could be, that is. "You're giving me gooseflesh. I used to not believe in ghosts. You remember I didn't believe in yours. But it's strange; she's been gone five years ago, but sometimes I do feel her, myself."

A cloud covered the late afternoon sun, and the wisteria suddenly looked very purple and heavy. "I have her first shoes," I went on. "I got them from the hospital, with the rest of her things. She had so little, but she kept those. They had little brown flecks all over the ribbons. I thought they were stains, but the lay sister who cared for her had been a dancer before being consecrated. She said that the dancers would prick their fingers before lacing up their shoes, for luck. I hung them in a little niche in the wall in our room, and I always have a candle."

"I never heard of that, with the finger pricking," she said.

"Perhaps it was something they did long ago," I offered. "The sister was about my mother's age."

"Do you remember when we'd go into your mother's room and have tea parties? It was so full of pictures, of statues, little boxes full of shells and buttons. I remember she had a scarf embroidered with poppies. She used to let me wrap it around my head."

"I remember that. You pretended to be a gypsy."

"Whatever happened to all of that?"

"I don't know," I said. "We received the letter in the dead of winter. The harbors in New York and Boston were frozen over for a week, and we couldn't get passage. By the time we got to Paris, she'd gone into the hospital. I went to the landlady and talked to the servants, but no one knew anything definite. The landlady complained about the coal fire. Mother had burned all her letters."

"I didn't mean her things, Meg. I meant us as girls. All of it."

I took another swallow of sherry. It went down like clear silk. I didn't want to talk about Mother anymore. So we sat quietly for a time.

"You said you came back for the dancing, too," she offered.

"Do you know much about what they're now calling modern dance?"

"I've read about it in La Mode. You don't get up on your toes, I remember."

"I started working on it in New York about ten years ago. There is a group of us in Paris, mostly from America. It's funny - Americans generally don't like anything but classical ballet, but here in Paris they're on fire for interpretive dance, or what I like to call 'elemental dance,' here in Paris. It's like you have to try it in America, get kicked around there, come to Paris, and then go back to America. Then they like you."

"Elemental dance?" she asked.

"It's based on the idea that the student uses her body to mimic one of the four elements - you know, earth, fire, water, or air. The elements are combined into the dance as an expression of the music."

"Don't you also wear almost nothing, just a short toga?"

I laughed. "I remember when we spun around on stage with almost nothing on."

"That one costume with rose-buds all over the shoulders. I can't remember what opera that was, but those straps. Mine would never stay up." She laughed, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of the girl I used to run hand-in-hand with, exploring the backstage of the Opera.

"They itched, too. Come to my studio and watch us practice sometime. Who knows, you might enjoy it. You might even want to try it yourself."

She nodded, surprised. "I'd like that. I don't know if I'd try it, though."

"Well, you never know. Sometimes when you see those girls leap, you want to jump right up there with them."

"Do you have any children?" she asked.

"No. I've never been blessed. But tell me about your family."

"The Vicomte has been offered a position in the diplomatic corps, to a posting in Belgium. He left a fortnight ago."

"Wonderful," I said. "I love Brussels, myself. You must be so proud of him."

"I am. It's been hard for him, with our son…"

"Your son? What's wrong?"

"Luc-Pierre is twenty-eight, but still thinks he's an adolescent. He won't marry, won't take up his family responsibilities, and then there are those books. The Americans smuggle them in, do you know that? What's worse is that Raoul seems to encourage him. I think it's hurt Raoul with the emperor, but he says not. He says that the reason he hasn't yet been made an ambassador is because he wants to stay in Paris. With us."

"He sounds very devoted."

"I was dreadfully ill after Luc-Pierre's birth and had to stay in bed. We had a baby nurse, and a wet nurse, of course, but Raoul wouldn't leave Luc-Pierre's side. He fired two nurses himself, saying they let the baby cry or didn't change him fast enough. You should have heard Raoul's father, the Comte. Unmanly, he said. But Raoul and Luc are very close."

"So what are his books about?"

"Oh, I haven't read them myself. But the way he described them, it's women living on their own, taking lovers whenever they please and leaving their husbands and children - the whole social order turned upside-down.

"But that's not the worst. The police arrested him a few months ago, did you know that? He was writing articles in some cheap Montmartre broadside against the monarchy. He thinks we should have elections. I'm terrified for him."

I understood her fear. The prisons of Napoleon IV were not accommodations to be sought out. "Is he released now?" I asked nervously.

"They roughed him up and let him go, but it's only made him worse. He goes to cafes with these radicals who want to start a new political party. They call themselves the Republicans, after the Second Republic."

"That's dangerous talk," I remarked. "Erotic books are one thing. Challenging the monarchy is another."

"After he got out of jail he came to the house afterward. I was afraid to let him in. Raoul actually raised his voice to me and said that he was our son and was welcome anytime he wanted. I told Raoul he was betraying his class, and he actually snapped back at me, 'You have a right to talk about class? You were an orphan, a peasant orphan, and I fished you out of a cellar.' "

"Oh, no," I said. "I can't imagine Raoul raising his voice. He couldn't have meant it."

"He had never said anything like that to me before. He was so angry."

"What did Luc-Pierre do when Raoul said that?"

"Amazingly, he defended me. But shortly after that, Raoul accepted the posting in Brussels."

"You must be anxious to join him."

Her face darkened. "I'll have some more sherry, if you don't mind."

"All right, then. What about your daughter? How is she? She's, what, twenty-four?"

"Twenty-three. Martyniere's about to become a novitiate at the Convent of the Seven Sorrows in Port Royal. They're entirely cloistered. Once she takes the veil, I won't be able to see or speak with her. They're supposed to be dead to the world."

"Oh, Christine," I sighed. "How could you bear that?"

"We were never that close. She went away to boarding school when she was seven. They didn't even like them coming home for the whole summer; they said it made them worldly and unfit for the religious life. Raoul wouldn't send Luc-Pierre away. He said that boys' schools were like prisons. The Comte was so angry, but Raoul wouldn't give in."

"From what I've heard, your husband is probably right. For me, I couldn't imagine sending children away to school, although I know almost everyone does. Did Raoul have a bad time at school?"

"Not at all," she said. "But he felt Luc was somehow different, that the boxing, the fencing, the sports, the riding wouldn't suit him. Luc loved to write, and to talk."

"Cake, or lemon bars?" I asked, when she sat back, quiet, and a few hummingbirds darted in and out of the wisteria vines. I helped myself to a lemon bar and said, "I'll be honest with you. We've been back in Paris five years. I saw you and Raoul in your box at the opening of Attila the Hun three years ago, and at the Dutch ambassador's party last year. Why wait till now to see me?"

She looked very small and sad, bathed in soft purple light. "Because I missed you. You were my closest female friend. And it's not like you wrote or called on me, either."

That was true, and it hurt. "We were more like sisters," I said. "We grew up together."

"I look at my life, and I'm just sad. It feels as if it's all gone wrong. I don't know how or why."

"I've felt that way too, sometimes. It's not unusual at our time of life when everything changes. I'm what, a year older than you? Last year my courses stopped and I thought I would go mad, seriously. Perhaps it'll come later for you because you've had children. But it gets better."

"It's some of that," she said.

"But that can't be all, can it?" I asked gently.

She shifted in her chair. "Because I missed him. I miss him."

"Yes," I said slowly.

"You were always so kind, Meg. I wasn't kind."

"I'm not kind. I didn't want to invite you, at first, but he told me to. He's told me some of what happened back then. Oh, please don't look like that."

"He speaks of me, then?" she said in a trembling voice.

"Sometimes. When he does, he speaks of you gently." I can't tell her all of it, that sometimes I see her behind your eyes or when a certain expression crosses your face. I'm not that good.

"He doesn't hate me? It would kill me if he hated me."

"I promise you that he does not hate you."

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for telling me."

"You didn't think he would be here, did you?"

"I wouldn't have hoped for that. In fact, I was afraid of it, almost so that I didn't come."

"There are some things a person can't take. That you can't ask of someone."

"No," Christine said quietly. "I suppose there aren't."

(To be continued)