The Marriage of Opposites
Page 88
“You think I don’t see what Jestine sees, but I do,” my mother said. “I know you have talent. But you must put it aside. I want you to study hard. When you come back the business will be waiting for you. You were always the one I wanted to take over. Before you do, I’m sending you to Paris so you can have what I didn’t.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if she had told me she wasn’t my mother. Her black hair was loose and her eyes were wet and dark. I saw something new in her, the person Jestine had told me about.
“My father was like you,” she went me. “He saw no differences among people. He believed that every man had rights in this world. I know he believed that women had rights as well, for he treated me as he would have a son, until the rules we lived by made it impossible. Some things are impossible, it’s true.” My mother was weeping then. “But some things are not,” she said.
I realized what I would miss most about my home were the colors, the light, the flowers, the fields, the women at their work, carrying baskets of laundry. I would miss Jestine, and my sister Hannah, and if the nights were cold enough, and the snow was silver-white, I would likely miss my mother as well.
I COULD NOT SLEEP on the night before I left. I went walking in the dark and met Marianna on the beach. We sat there, hands intertwined. She cried when I told her I was leaving. “Yes, go,” she said to me, but she still held my hand. By the time I came back she would probably be married. She would sit on this beach with somebody else. But I would carry every detail about her with me.
When I packed in the morning I found a sachet of some herb in my luggage. I sniffed it. There was the scent of lavender. Pleasant enough. I meant to keep it with my belongings, but in my haste I left it on the bureau. I was late and had to race to catch the boat, and so I did not have time for proper good-byes. My mother ran after me and insisted on embracing me.
“Come back to me,” she said, as if it was a hex of some sort.
Her eyes were bright, and if she were anyone else I would have thought she shed tears. I kissed her three times, and then embraced my father and my brothers and sisters. I should have been afraid to leave my home and everything I had known. I was a boy and France was a long way off, but the journey didn’t unnerve me. I was ready for the seas and skies and storms.
The boat was a dream and the world at sea was a haze of life. Everyone spoke another language, and men twice my age offered me rum. I sketched whenever I could. The seabirds hovering, the lamps that burned at night, the men who worked so hard their arms were huge with muscles. The voyage seemed to take forever, and then, quite suddenly, we could see the shore. When I arrived in France, the twilight was gray, a shade I’d never seen before, and the silvery sky seemed within reach. I took note of chimneys and cobblestones as a pale green rain began to fall down. It was autumn, a season I had never known but fell in love with immediately. The air smelled like smoke. The leaves on the trees were yellow and copper. The clouds went on forever, banks of gray and blue and a shade of pink so fragile it was fading as I watched. All around me, for as far as the eye could see, were colors I had never observed before: the emerald lawns, the deep brown-green chestnut trees, the lime-colored vines, the rooftops smudged black and midnight blue. There were a thousand different blues all around me in the falling dusk. They shifted like waves in the sea. I took one breath of Paris and I knew. At last, at the age of twelve, four thousand miles away from home, I was free.
chapter eight
A Distant Planet
Paris
1847
LYDIA CASSIN RODRIGUES COHEN
It was raining and she was home alone. From the window she could see a chestnut tree, raindrops splattering against the black bark. In that tree was a nightingale, which was silent at this hour. Usually such birds began to migrate to West Africa at this time of year, but this one had stayed on in their garden. The air was luminous and damp. The children, ages four, two, and one, were out with the maid, dressed in boots and cloaks so they might collect leaves in the park. Her husband, Henri Cohen, was a partner in a small family banking company and often came home late for dinner. Sometimes she worried, for France was politically unstable, with demonstrations against the king where violence often erupted. Henri was the love of her life and always catered to her, but he was a logical person and would likely think she was mad if she told him she thought that her mother, who had died nearly five years earlier, had come back to her in the form of a nightingale, and that whenever she saw the bird in their garden, she felt a shiver go through her. When this happened, she would go to close the mauve silk curtains, because she’d have a breathless feeling, as if she were running through a field with the sun beating down on her, as if she were a million miles away, about to explode with light.
I couldn’t have been more surprised if she had told me she wasn’t my mother. Her black hair was loose and her eyes were wet and dark. I saw something new in her, the person Jestine had told me about.
“My father was like you,” she went me. “He saw no differences among people. He believed that every man had rights in this world. I know he believed that women had rights as well, for he treated me as he would have a son, until the rules we lived by made it impossible. Some things are impossible, it’s true.” My mother was weeping then. “But some things are not,” she said.
I realized what I would miss most about my home were the colors, the light, the flowers, the fields, the women at their work, carrying baskets of laundry. I would miss Jestine, and my sister Hannah, and if the nights were cold enough, and the snow was silver-white, I would likely miss my mother as well.
I COULD NOT SLEEP on the night before I left. I went walking in the dark and met Marianna on the beach. We sat there, hands intertwined. She cried when I told her I was leaving. “Yes, go,” she said to me, but she still held my hand. By the time I came back she would probably be married. She would sit on this beach with somebody else. But I would carry every detail about her with me.
When I packed in the morning I found a sachet of some herb in my luggage. I sniffed it. There was the scent of lavender. Pleasant enough. I meant to keep it with my belongings, but in my haste I left it on the bureau. I was late and had to race to catch the boat, and so I did not have time for proper good-byes. My mother ran after me and insisted on embracing me.
“Come back to me,” she said, as if it was a hex of some sort.
Her eyes were bright, and if she were anyone else I would have thought she shed tears. I kissed her three times, and then embraced my father and my brothers and sisters. I should have been afraid to leave my home and everything I had known. I was a boy and France was a long way off, but the journey didn’t unnerve me. I was ready for the seas and skies and storms.
The boat was a dream and the world at sea was a haze of life. Everyone spoke another language, and men twice my age offered me rum. I sketched whenever I could. The seabirds hovering, the lamps that burned at night, the men who worked so hard their arms were huge with muscles. The voyage seemed to take forever, and then, quite suddenly, we could see the shore. When I arrived in France, the twilight was gray, a shade I’d never seen before, and the silvery sky seemed within reach. I took note of chimneys and cobblestones as a pale green rain began to fall down. It was autumn, a season I had never known but fell in love with immediately. The air smelled like smoke. The leaves on the trees were yellow and copper. The clouds went on forever, banks of gray and blue and a shade of pink so fragile it was fading as I watched. All around me, for as far as the eye could see, were colors I had never observed before: the emerald lawns, the deep brown-green chestnut trees, the lime-colored vines, the rooftops smudged black and midnight blue. There were a thousand different blues all around me in the falling dusk. They shifted like waves in the sea. I took one breath of Paris and I knew. At last, at the age of twelve, four thousand miles away from home, I was free.
chapter eight
A Distant Planet
Paris
1847
LYDIA CASSIN RODRIGUES COHEN
It was raining and she was home alone. From the window she could see a chestnut tree, raindrops splattering against the black bark. In that tree was a nightingale, which was silent at this hour. Usually such birds began to migrate to West Africa at this time of year, but this one had stayed on in their garden. The air was luminous and damp. The children, ages four, two, and one, were out with the maid, dressed in boots and cloaks so they might collect leaves in the park. Her husband, Henri Cohen, was a partner in a small family banking company and often came home late for dinner. Sometimes she worried, for France was politically unstable, with demonstrations against the king where violence often erupted. Henri was the love of her life and always catered to her, but he was a logical person and would likely think she was mad if she told him she thought that her mother, who had died nearly five years earlier, had come back to her in the form of a nightingale, and that whenever she saw the bird in their garden, she felt a shiver go through her. When this happened, she would go to close the mauve silk curtains, because she’d have a breathless feeling, as if she were running through a field with the sun beating down on her, as if she were a million miles away, about to explode with light.
