The Secret Language of Stones (3 page)

“Yes. Magical powers can be produced by tapping and then trapping astral influences.”

“Which do you make?”

“Talismans.”

“How?”

“I enclose an object belonging to the soldier inside a piece of rock crystal that I've carved with the soldier's name, astrological symbol, his birth and his death dates. I fill in the crevices with powder from his birthstone. Then, using gold wire, I enclose the crystal and lock it in.”

“You know, I'm a sculptor,” she said. “I never realized it until I heard you talk just now, but jewelry is miniature sculpture, isn't it?”

“I've never thought of it that way before either, but of course you are right. What kind of sculpture do you do?”

“Before the war I did portraits, mostly busts. But three years ago, Anna Coleman Ladd commandeered me. She's the American who opened a studio here to make metallic masks for soldiers who return from war with facial disfigurements. To give them back some dignity. She believes each of us has a divine right to look human. That is how Madame Maboussine and I met. She brought her older son to our studio. He had extensive cheekbone and ear damage.”

I knew about Anna Coleman Ladd. The newspapers had printed a series of reports about her “Studio of Miracles,” as they called it. Shrapnel made a horrible mess of many soldiers' faces that couldn't be repaired with surgery. Some men lost sections of their noses, chins, chunks of their cheeks, an ear. Ladd's studio provided a noble service to those boys. In London, another sculptor, Francis Derwent Wood, did the same work.

“It's really a pleasure to meet you then. I've read about the amazing work you are all doing. This war is . . .” I shrugged.

What more could be said about the never-ending war?

“I prayed my son would never need me to help him . . . but now I wish he did. At least then he would be alive . . . Well, it doesn't matter what I wish, does it? . . . Now I am here.”

“Tell me about your son,” I said, steeling myself for a fresh onslaught of heartache.

With measured motions, she unclasped her purse, reached inside, and pulled out a piece of paper that fluttered to the floor. I bent to retrieve it and found myself holding a black-bordered obituary notice, carefully cut out of a newspaper.

“No . . . no . . . that's not what I wanted to give you.” She held out her hand.

As I returned it to her, I tried to read it, but it was upside down and I wasn't able to make out the details.

Returning the notice to her purse, she pulled out an envelope and
gently emptied its contents on the desk, as if handling something as fragile as a spider's web.

I examined the lock of hair, the same dark chestnut as her own, tied with a faded blue satin ribbon.

“He had his first haircut at three years old. How he hated it,” Madame Alouette said, reaching out and touching her son's hair with her forefinger.

I remained quiet while she lived out the memory. Her sorrow overwhelmed me and sent chills down my back. Any time a client began to recall her loved one and share her story, each word spun an invisible thread that connected us. Her emotions traveled via those byways, and I experienced them as if they were my own. I found no escape, no option but to suffer through each woman's mourning.

“But he needed that haircut. My husband said he looked like a little girl with all those curls. And he did.”

She stroked the strands, and I pictured the child in the barbershop chair.

“The barber did everything he could to distract him, but my son fought back, covering his head with his arms so ferociously none of us could pry them apart. Such a determined little boy.” She looked up, her eyes bright with tears. “Who became such a determined man.”

“What did he do? Before the war, I mean.”

“He was a journalist. Maybe you read some of his pieces? Since the war began, he's been writing a column of weekly letters from a soldier at the front to his fiancée.”

“She must be devastated.”

“Oh, he didn't have a fiancée. I'm not even sure if he left a special woman behind.” She smiled sadly. “He told me there wasn't one—except for me.” She smiled again. “But his editor wasn't interested in a soldier's letters to his mama. So my son writes to an unnamed, imaginary lover every week and in the process shares what the war is like, what he's feeling.”

The suffering in Madame Alouette's voice as she spoke of her
son in the present tense was difficult to listen to. It always was. The mourners' pain reached out and ensnared me. Encircled and paralyzed me. It infected the air I breathed, got into my lungs. I felt their anguish in my own heart.

“What is the name of the column?”

“
Ma chère
.”

“But isn't
Ma chère
written by Jean Luc Forêt?”

“Ah yes, Alouette is my second husband's name. His father died in a fire when Jean Luc was only four.”

“How terrible.”

She bowed her head a bit and nodded.

“So Jean Luc Forêt is your son. My father and I read him all the time . . .”

Now it was my turn to be lost in thought. Before the war, my father and I had always read Forêt's column on the avant-garde art scene. Like us, Forêt believed art was the highest form of individualism. He believed in beauty. In rage. In the pure form of expression through the arts. A fearless crusader for those artists who forged ahead, he never seemed to care how much criticism he got for it.

My father and I both admired him and worried for him whenever he went so far as to make a new enemy from what he published in the pages of
Le
Figaro
. I remembered one column in particular he'd penned about a young artist being ridiculed for his work—for it being too ugly. Jean Luc argued that art frees us from our prejudices and gives us the chance to become our best selves, individuals who dare to dream. And even if those dreams aren't always as pretty as we'd like, or don't conform, or frighten us, it is our duty to encourage art to flourish. All art. Every kind.

I'd torn it out of the paper and glued it in my sketchbook. Without knowing him, I'd felt as if the writer in
Le Figaro
had spoken directly to me, offering a credo I'd taken to heart.

But once Jean Luc started reporting from the front, I'd stopped reading him. The war was too much of a presence in my life. Timur's
death still too fresh in my mind. And now Jean Luc was dead as well? My heart seized up, sharing Madame Alouette's grief in a way new to me. I'd never before known of any of the soldiers I'd messaged.

“I got the telegram last week,” Madame Alouette said. “Jean Luc's entire outfit was killed. All his men . . .” She shook her head desolately. “And for each is a mother and father, perhaps a wife or a sister or daughter or son.” She stopped speaking, closed her eyes, collected herself, and then continued. “I am trying to accept his death, but I find I'm in limbo. I have a sense Jean Luc left something undone he wants me to know about. My husband thinks . . . Well, it doesn't matter what he thinks. Do I sound crazy to you?”

If she did, I shared her craziness. Of course, if you think you can commune with the dead, then you must be a little crazy. We all knew it was impossible. Except was it? Did I imagine it, or did I actually hear their voices? Did the souls of the dead soldiers whose lives had been stolen by the vagaries of the war really speak to me? Did they hover somewhere in the dark sparkling ether that we call eternity and communicate their last thoughts through the talismans I made from their belongings? Did those little bits of their lives—a lock of hair, a photograph, a baby tooth, a handkerchief with a shadow of scent clinging to it—function as tunnels through time and space, enabling one last message to reach their loved ones? Did they operate as doorways through which I gained access to another plane, where I received messages? Or was I, as Madame Alouette implicitly suggested, crazy?

After making a talisman, I would decorate it with jet and gold, lock it, and hang it from a cord. A small gold key, attached to the knot on the chord, dangled at the back of the wearer's neck.

Once completed, I would present the charm to my client. After putting it on, I would instruct her to clasp the talisman, and then I would cover her hands with my own. Shutting my eyes, I focused. Typically, I would hear a cacophony of all manner of noise at first. Human voices, wind, rain, the ocean's waves, train whistles, automo
bile horns, ambulance sirens. Withstanding the onslaught, fighting the discomfort, I would concentrate, and in a matter of minutes, as clearly as if he were in the room with us, one soldier's voice would rise above the rest. Inside my head.

Sons to mothers, husbands to wives, fathers to daughters, brothers to sisters, lovers to lovers, the communiqués were deeply personal, and often I blushed with embarrassment at having to speak their words aloud. But my discomfort only lasted a few minutes; it was clear to me that the solace I gave would probably last forever. From what I could gather from their messages, the soldiers seemed trapped in a kind of purgatory like the one Dante wrote about in his great poem. They were souls awaiting entry to heaven, unable to completely leave this realm until they found some kind of release I didn't yet understand.

In all the time I'd been doing this, none of the soldiers had ever spoken to
me
. Their spirits seemed unaware of a conduit.

“What you said to Madame Maboussine, you weren't making it up, were you?”

“What kind of monster would I be to lie? We don't make profit on the charms. I have nothing to gain,” I said.

“You might be looking for fame.”

“As you yourself said, what I do is now illegal. Fame is the last thing I'd want.” This interview wasn't getting off to a good start. I didn't blame Madame for being suspicious, but her questions bordered on rudeness. There was more I could have said. I could have told her how frightening it was to dwell in the land of the dead and that I would never willingly journey there. I could have told her it was like entering what one might imagine hell to be like. If I could, I would have boarded up the gateway that connected me to these souls.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “It's just that I've never believed that what you do is possible.”

“Neither do I, actually.” I smiled at her.

Madame Alouette returned her son's hair to the envelope, which she handed to me with a reluctance that tore at my heart. As I reached for it, the scent of apples materialized, and a combination of nausea and dizziness descended over me.

Pulling out one of the boxes we use to encase our jewels, I quickly slipped the envelope inside, trying to outpace the headache coming on. I'd learned that if I could tuck the soldier's item away fast enough, I could prevent myself from becoming ill in front of my client.

Taking an ivory label from the desk, I picked up my pen, dipped it in the Baccarat inkwell on the table, and wrote out Madame Alouette's name. After placing the label on the box's lid, I slipped the package inside a drawer.

“Are you all right?” Madame asked.

Usually, so caught up in their own turmoil, my clients failed to notice mine.

“Just the beginning of a headache. How did you know?”

“I'm a sculptor, I study people's faces, I recognized the changes on yours. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I'll be fine.”

“It began the moment you touched the envelope, didn't it?”

I nodded.

She placed her hand on top of mine. “This ability you have, is it painful?”

“Not compared to your pain.”

“Can you describe it?”

I hesitated.

“I'd like to try and understand.”

“The objects often cause me distress when I first come in contact with them. As if my body is rebelling and doesn't want me to take on a new assignment.”

“You have to steel yourself?”

I nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “It's like that when a new soldier comes in to see
me. I pretend I can deal with his deformity. That my stomach isn't churning. That I didn't wish I could look away. What happens to you exactly?”

“I smell apples, even if there are none to be seen. And my head fills with noise, starting an avalanche of pain.”

Madame Alouette nodded, but I stopped. She didn't need to hear more, and it wouldn't do to share any more details with a stranger, especially one suffering her own crisis. There was no reason for her to know that once I finished fashioning a locket I was so exhausted and depleted that often Monsieur Orloff sent me to bed. Anna would serve me hot tea sweetened with jam and laced with brandy and sit with me.

Neither did Madame Alouette need to hear about the despair that would follow the next day, that fell like a thick heavy curtain around me and made me feel as if I inhabited some other world . . . not quite here on earth . . . but not quite in the land of the dead either.

“And yet you do it? You willingly put yourself in this state of distress.” Madame Alouette wasn't asking me a question. She was telling me something she knew about me because she shared that willingness with me. “You are very brave, Mademoiselle, and very kind.”

Tears came to my eyes. I shook my head. “Neither brave nor kind,” I said. “If I can help, I must.”

Yes, it all started with helping. That was what I had come to Paris to do. Or so I thought. I now know it was more selfish than that. Offering comfort to strangers, I tried to assuage the guilt I lived with. Timur had died without any hope. That was the real reason I forced myself to help these mothers and wives, sisters and lovers. As physically ill as it made me, as frightening as it seemed, it was my penance for what I'd done to one boy who'd gone off to the war and died without the comfort I could have given but withheld.

Chapter 3

“The tsar has been shot,” Monsieur Orloff said, looking up from the newspaper trembling in his hands like leaves buffeted by the wind. “The reports we've received since June twenty-fourth are all true.”

“What exactly does the article say, Pavel?” Anna asked.

Twice he tried to read it out loud, but his voice shook worse than his fingers. Anna put her hand on his shoulder.

“Let Alexi read it,” she said, taking it from her husband and giving it to their friend and fellow expatriate Alexi Vanya.

Often during the week I joined the Orloffs for dinner, as did an assortment of Russian émigrés. In Paris, there were thousands of tsarists, Russian refugees who despised the Bolsheviks and their actions against Mother Russia. Most White Émigrés, as they were known, had arrived in 1917. But others who were more insightful and less stubborn started to see what the future held as early as 1905. Every day still more escaped. And many of them found their way to a secret political opposition group called the Two-Headed Eagles, founded by Monsieur.

Named after the Romanov dynasty's symbol, the group aimed to overthrow the Bolsheviks and restore the imperial family to the throne so they might all be able to return home. Fearful that Bolshevik spies would somehow infiltrate the group, the Two-Headed
Eagles met clandestinely in one of the labyrinthine underground chambers here beneath the Palais Royal.

Vanya began to read. “ ‘At the first session of the Central Executive Committee' . . .” His voice cracked. He fished in his jacket for a handkerchief, wiped at his eyes, tried to read again, and then gave up. He handed the newspaper to Grigori, Monsieur Orloff's eldest son from a previous marriage. After three years of fighting, an injury had ended Grigori's career as a soldier and he'd moved back home, taking an apartment on the other side of the complex and opening an antiques shop next door to La Fantaisie Russe.

“ ‘At the first session of the Central Executive Committee elected by the fifth Congress of the Councils, a message was made public. Received by direct wire from the Ural Regional Council, it concerned the shooting of the ex-tsar, Nicholas Romanov' . . .” Grigori's husky voice did not break, but he did hesitate.

“Go on,” Monsieur Orloff ordered.

Making an effort to control his emotions, Grigori continued. The story detailed how Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Red Urals, had been seriously threatened by the approach of Czechoslovak bands and a counterrevolutionary conspiracy was found. When its objective—to wrest the ex-tsar from the hands of the council's ­authority—was discovered, the president of the Ural Regional Council decided to shoot the former tsar. The assassination had been carried out on July 16.

“ ‘The wife and the son of Nicholas Romanov have been sent to a place of security.' ” Grigori's voice came to a halt. I saw the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheek. He took a breath and then continued.

“ ‘The Central Executive Committee has now at its disposal extremely important documents concerning the affairs of Nicholas Romanov—his diaries, which he kept almost up to his last days; the diaries of his wife and his children; and his correspondence, among which are the letters of Rasputin to the Romanov family. These materials will be examined and published in the near future.' ”

Monsieur Orloff took the newspaper from his son and looked down at it as if searching for other words. Then he put his head in his hands. The sound of his anguished sobs broke our silence. Anna went to her husband's side. Vanya began to pace.

Grigori walked to the window and stared out into the black night.

I watched him, thinking I should go to him but not quite sure I knew how to ease his suffering or that my ministrations were wanted. We had a complicated relationship.

We'd only met a little over six months before, in January, when he had been sent home from the front after shrapnel had shattered his left leg, leaving him severely lame. He'd gone to war a strong, able-bodied man and come back a cripple. He didn't understand that despite his injury he was handsome. Especially when his thick brown hair fell over his broad forehead. When his smile, when I could get him to smile, dimpled his cheeks. When his sleepy eyes, the uncommon color of brown diamonds, sparkled as he forgot about the war and talked to me about his passions.

Like his father and his half brother Timur, Grigori had a keen appreciation for beautiful things. It was what I enjoyed about him the most. On a walk, he was quick to point out a fine architectural detail or a particularly beautiful shade of blue in the sky. In a gallery of mediocre paintings, he could always spot the one hidden masterpiece, and in the workshop he always gravitated to the finest stones among those I was considering.

And yet he was full of bitterness about his handicap. He was angry he wasn't at the front with the rest of his company; jealous that Leo, his younger brother, remained, proving himself a hero. Grigori could also be irascible and prone to long fits of depression. Never having met him before the war, I couldn't know how drastically the war had changed him. But occasionally, I heard Anna or Monsieur remark on a cynicism creeping into his conversation that hadn't been there before he'd gone away, and a new darkness that had seemed to alter his soul.

To some, that would make him unlikable, but his moodiness and tendency to isolate himself endeared him to me almost as much as his exquisite taste. His faults and the secrets beyond his shine made him unique and roused my sympathies, just as my secrets and scars roused his. Knowing that sometimes, even after a wound heals, it can still cause pain, Grigori was surprisingly sensitive about how my relationship with Timur continued to haunt and trouble me, and it strengthened the bond between us.

Sometimes I believed we might have a future. Other times I sensed we were like inmates who turned to each other in desperation rather than desire.

Watching him at the window, his shoulders rounded, his head down, my pity got the better of me and I went to him.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered as I took one of his hands.

His long fingers intertwined with mine.

“It's very difficult to believe our tsar is truly dead,” Grigori said without turning to me, but his fingers gripped mine with a force that surprised me. He was usually more gentle.

Behind us, I heard Monsieur Orloff's voice, weaker than its usual growl. “We need to call a meeting. We do not have the luxury of mourning.” His tone strengthened, his resolve already overtaking his pain. “Our goal has not changed. We still must restore Russia to its rightful rulers, even if that means its next generation of rulers. We need to do this so we can return to our homeland. This news of the tsar's death only makes our imperative that much more urgent.”

Pushing himself up from his chair, Monsieur went to the telephone, which held a place of honor on a small table at the end of the couch. He didn't sit but remained standing, almost at attention, as he picked up the receiver and waited for the operator.

Because of his fear of Bolshevik spies, organizing a meeting had become a clandestine operation. Monsieur's former countrymen were now as much the enemy as the Germans.

Suddenly, static split the silence and then we all heard the opera
tor's voice booming out of the earpiece. Monsieur gave her the exchange for Tatania Tichtelew. I knew her as a woman in her seventies who frequently came to the shop in the late afternoon to gossip with Anna over a cup of tea from the silver samovar. They both drank it the way so many Russians do, in a glass cup with a cube of sugar between their teeth. Often, Tatania would order a new string of pearls. I never counted, but in the time I'd been working for Monsieur Orloff, I must have strung at least thirty strands for her, in subtly diverse colors, from dark green-black to pure star-shine white.

“Madame, forgive me for calling you at this hour,” Monsieur Orloff spoke loudly into the telephone. “But I know you are anxious to get your pearls and the stringer has finished.”

The cryptic message sent and received, we sat down at the table, beautifully set with a cream tablecloth, sparkling crystal, and fine china. The heavy and ornate silverware, decorated like the plates with the tsar's imperial insignia, took on a greater poignancy.

Our conversation continued to revolve around the tragedy, and no one had much of an appetite, even for the cook's tempting food. Only the wine was consumed with any relish.

“This is the kind of night when I could drown in a bottle, but will stop at two glasses,” Vanya said when Monsieur Orloff attempted to refill his wine goblet for a third time. “We have work to do and plans to make.”

After the plates were cleared, Monsieur Orloff and Vanya went to the library to prepare for the meeting. Anna went to the kitchen to speak to the cook.

“Can I see you to your rooms?” Grigori asked. “I'd appreciate some brandy if you don't mind. This has been a trying night.”

I'd come to Paris expecting to live at my great-grandmother's fine mansion on rue des Saints-Pères. But with the city under siege and without the light from street lamps, the half-hour walk was far too dangerous for me to undertake alone at night. And so, Monday through Saturday, I lived beneath Monsieur's shop. The Orloffs had
created a warren of rooms in their large basement, including a stock room, with enough tools and workbenches to serve as a second workshop, as well as three bedrooms. Two of them were often used by new émigrés during their first few nights in Paris. The third room, actually a suite with a bedchamber and sitting room, belonged to me. The walls had been covered in pale aquamarine blue with dark sapphire trim and matching upholstery. This tiny enclave was my sanctuary in a way my room at my great-grandmother's house wasn't. Her mansion offered no solitude. Open to soldiers on leave from the war who craved excitement, titillation, and escape, her salons and “fantasy bedrooms,” as she called them, had never been busier. In the old days, only rich men had been able to afford the many pleasures found in them. But now, this was Grand-mère's gift to the soldiers fighting. Whatever the desire, there was a room to match. One recalled the mirrored palace of Marie Antoinette; another resembled a monk's chamber with a narrow bed, straw rug, and religious frescoes on the wall. There was an Egyptian room, as well as a Chinese pagoda and a Persian garden room with fanciful walls painted with trees and flowering bushes against a midnight blue sky complete with stars, a perfect crescent moon, and the onion-shaped minarets of Persepolis in the distance.

When I visited, I made a habit of hiding from the forced gaiety as soldiers overindulged in food, wine, and sex in order to forget. My great-grandmother provided a great service, but for me, being at Maison de la Lune, as her house is called, was like attending theater and suffering through a desperate, debauched, and sometimes depressing play.

As Grigori and I descended the staircase leading to my room, both of us were all too aware of the uneven cadence of his steps as he struggled with his damaged leg. I hated the sound for his sake.

At my door, I invited him in, as was our ritual. Whenever he dined with Anna and Monsieur, or whenever he surfaced from his melancholy and asked me to the theater or dinner, an art show or
opera, at the end of the evening I would always invite him in and he would always accept my invitation.

He made himself comfortable on the couch while I poured us both brandies and sat down next to him. Usually we talked for a while, but that night he seemed unable to wait and reached out—­almost as if it was causing him pain—and pulled me to him.

His hands and his lips were, as usual, insistent, hungry. As if he were capable of devouring me. He slid his hand up my skirt. The feel of his fingers on my stocking leg sent shivers farther up. He moved from calf to knee to thigh. I heard my breath catch. Grigori's lips moved against mine, and I returned his kiss. His hand moved farther, finding my cleft, tickling me, making me buck. He unbuttoned my blouse, exposing my skin to the cool air. The oblivion his passion promised excited me. I thrust my breasts up toward him, and he pulled down my brassiere to kiss my nipples, holding first one then the other between his teeth. I ran my fingers through his soft hair. He moaned, and I felt him, hard against my thigh, ready for more, ready for me.

But we didn't reach a pleasured place because that night, as Grigori always did, he suddenly stopped, turned from me, and stood, leaving me on the couch, gasping and waiting, ready.

I felt sympathy, despite my frustration. As long as he eschewed that ultimate intimacy, as long as he continued to be ashamed to be with a woman because of his mangled body, we would never move past the awkward stage of undressing. But I didn't know what to do or what to say. I wasn't an experienced enough lover to know how to coax a man into relaxing. I'd lost my virginity to Timur, but we'd only been together a few times. I remained naïve in bed. One of my great-grandmother's courtesans would have been of more use to him.

I longed for the connection women whispered about, the desire to be one with your lover, the willingness to give up your body, especially in a time of war, when romance had been swept away and replaced with fear, when most eligible men my age were off fighting. But my shyness and his embarrassment kept us apart.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

He spun around, his brown-diamond eyes flashing. “For what? I stopped because I cannot take advantage of you. Not in my father's house, not under his roof. And not when I have a meeting to attend.” He pulled out an elaborate ruby-studded gold pocket watch. “And not when my meeting starts in fifteen minutes.”

Grigori left my suite abruptly to collect his father and Vanya for the meeting. For a few moments, I contemplated getting into bed with a book. Far too restless, I straightened out my clothes and returned to the shop.