The Unknown Woman of the Seine by Brooks Hansen

Author:Brooks Hansen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delphinium Books
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Pennyroyal

The ride over was a matter of ten or so blocks—a mile, if that, along Montmarte and then the Boulevard des Italiens—but the incident at the maison had left her even more exhausted than before, and the inside of the carriage had felt oddly comforting, and warm, like a potbelly stove almost. There was even a wool blanket for her knees.

Add to this the dancing glare of the lantern just outside the window. The smeariness of the glass gave the light a flashing and prismatic quality, so much so she closed her eyes, though she knew that she should not have. She felt the rhythm of the wheels on the cobblestone, heard the hollow clopping of the horse hooves out front, flecking the dirt and the pebbles against the folding knee-high door. A faint swerve and the darkness took hold, sweeping her away like a great black river—one bend and then another, then down into an even deeper, stiller, and more quiet place, a suspended realm in the distant elsewhere in which muffled voices could be heard, of children coming near, running up and laughing, setting their hands upon the soft, surrounding globe—and their ears and red round cheeks.

“Kick,” the younger voice was saying. Coup, coup.”

She wants to reply, but feeling herself unable, she wells with an unbearable sadness. She doesn’t know why, only that it seems to rise from the same black reservoir inside her (Allez, petit. Allez!) higher and higher until, with a sudden cold smothering, it takes her breath. She thrashes. Her foot thuds against the carriage door. (The children laugh. “I felt it! I felt it!” Je l’ai senti!) Then a sudden blast sounds—the first of the shots—and a heartbeat starts thumping all around as if she were trapped inside a giant drum—

ba-dum ba-DUM BA-DUM!

She tries twisting free, but the river takes hold again and pulls her away so fast she can barely hear the second shot in the distance. Another voice enters instead—much lower and closer. “Comenium,” it says, and the river slows again to listen because it’s him, sitting directly across from her, pulling the oars, slurring words she doesn’t understand, to passengers she cannot see. “She keeps trying,” he mutters, shaking his head. “Calumny and Runaway and Fornicant—she denies and it’s on both our hands.” He’s talking about her, and the bodies. They’re all surrounding them like lily pads, floating facedown, faceup. A little girl, she can’t be more than three—forever now—dark-haired and moon-white. It’s about to come to her, who, when the third shot shocks the air so loud and so near that everything shatters into a mist, a gray-brown fog suffused with all the matter of the prior moment, but no shape, no motion. No memory …

… except for one more maybe.

Deep inside the stagnant gloom there can be heard the faintest piping of a shore bird—or two—bringing one last image to light. Their back-and-forth burns through the haze, clearing the air until it’s like polished glass, and she is there again, sitting on the stoop of the wagon.

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