LITMIR.BIZ

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shiny white knobs of bone. He too has become doubly naked.

      He too has become beautiful.

      Louis stares out of the window. But now he turns, his head leading his body. Charles sees his ruined face. Louis smiles, though of course it is not easy to tell that he is smiling because his lips and skin are gone and so has most of his facial tissue.

      Louis holds out his right hand towards Charles. The gesture is unmistakably friendly. Charles tries to smile in return. That is, he thinks a smile, but he knows that he too lacks lips and skin so the smile may not be obvious.

      He raises his right hand. It looks webbed, like a duck’s foot or the ribbed leaf of a cabbage.

      ‘Hello, Louis,’ he says.

      Day by day, the house in the Rue du Bac empties itself of people and things. It also empties itself of its invisible contents, its rules, its habits, its regime. Charles does almost as he pleases now. He is under no restraint as long as he does not try to leave.

      The servants are slipping away, despite the guards at the gates and doors leading to the outer world. They leave their tasks half-done – a mop standing in a pail of dirty water in a corner of the grand staircase; a drawing room with only a third of the furniture covered up and the pictures and ornaments ranged along one wall on the floor with the packing materials beside them.

      The house is sliding into an unknown, unpredictable future, just as Charles is. He wanders from room to room, from salon to hall, from attic to cellar, frequently losing his way. The old woman who was meant to be looking after him is hardly ever there. He realizes after a while that he has not seen her for days. Perhaps she is dead.

      Time itself loses its familiar markers, the hours of the day, the days of the week. There are many clocks in this house but no one troubles to wind them now or to set their hands. So time disintegrates into a variety of smaller times: and soon there will be no time at all.

      Now that the old woman no longer brings him food, he is obliged to forage for it himself. He finds his way to the vaulted kitchens whose cellars run under the street.

      In the city outside, people are starving. Here there is more food than anyone could ever eat. There are vegetables rotting down to brown mush; joints of meat turning grey and breeding maggots; and bins of flour that feed a shifting population of insects and small animals.

      There are still people who cook and serve food, however, and their leftovers lie around the kitchens. There is water from the pump that serves the scullery tap. On one occasion he drinks a pot of cold coffee. On another he finds a bottle of wine nearly half full. The wine is golden and silky sweet. It cloys in his mouth. He drinks it all. It makes him sick and then sends him to sleep: he has a bad dream in which blood drips on him from a black sky streaked with flickering yellow; and he wakes with a headache.

      He spends hours watching the Rue du Bac through the cracks in the shutters in what used to be the steward’s room. He stares down at the hats and heads bobbing to and fro and listens to the grinding roar of wheels and the shouting. Sometimes he hears a popping sound in the distance which he thinks is musketry.

      Charles encounters the Abbé Viré. The old man wanders restlessly about the halls and stairs, his slippers shuffling like falling plaster on the marble and the stone. His cassock is stained with old food.

      In the old days, Maman would take him to the Abbé for instruction in religion and tuition in mathematics and the classical authors. When Charles was very young, he believed Father Viré to be the earthly form of God.

      All this makes the priest’s present conduct unsettling in the extreme. The Abbé does not appear to recognize Charles. He usually ignores him completely. He carries a breviary as he walks and reads from it, muttering to himself.

      Once, Father Viré comes across Charles trying to read a ten-day-old newspaper in a disused powder-closet. The old priest raises his hand and sketches a blessing over Charles’s head, murmuring the familiar words into the dusty air.

      As for the Count de Quillon, he stays in his suite of private apartments beyond the grand salon. Monsieur Fournier comes and goes. When he sees Charles, he often stops to ask how he does and whether he needs anything. Charles does not answer.

      ‘All will be well soon,’ he says one morning. ‘You’ll see.’

      But Charles knows that nothing will ever be well and that the only thing he will see is more of what he sees now. Still, it is good of Monsieur Fournier to tell kind lies.

      Sometimes they ask him the questions again – Fournier, the Count and Dr Gohlis. Always the same ones. What happened on the night your mother died? Did you see who was there? What was said?

       Say nothing. Not a word to anyone.

      One day, a wagon comes into the main courtyard, where the weeds are advancing in ragged green lines along the cracks between the flagstones. Men bring packing cases and begin to put things in them – pictures, statues, clocks and carpets. Some of the clocks are still ticking. They are nailed up alive in their coffins.

      The remaining servants, working in relays, bring trunks and valises from the attics. They fill them with books, papers and clothes. Two more wagons come down the lane at the back of the house with a guard of armed men. They are loaded with the heavier items. They go away during the night. So do more of the servants, and then the house is emptier than ever.

      As the people and the objects seep away from the Hotel de Quillon, Charles notices how shabby everything is – the damp patches on the plaster in the grand salon where the old tapestries used to hang; the cracks that snake across the ornate ceiling of the ladies’ withdrawing room; the leak in the roof of the room next to his which, one rainy night, brings down the whole ceiling.

      Charles does not like the nighttimes because sometimes he wets the bed. This often happens on the nights after they have asked him the questions.

      When he wets the bed, he is beaten the following morning. He understands this. He has done wrong. Since the old woman disappeared, no one notices if he wets the bed so it no longer matters.

      One night, Dr Gohlis comes into Charles’s room and wakes him from a deep sleep. He squeezes the boy’s chin between finger and thumb. He holds the candle so Charles can see his face, orange and gold in the light of the flame.

      ‘Remember my écorché boy?’ he says. ‘Are you going to be like him one day?’

      Charles knows that the écorché boy is called Louis. He is kept in the sitting room that has been set aside for the doctor’s use at the Hotel de Quillon. The door is locked when the doctor is not there.

      One morning, Charles watches the doctor leave. He sees him hide the key on the ledge of the lintel above the door. Now Charles can visit Louis.

      Often he chooses the very early morning when few people are stirring and the doctor is unlikely to be there. The écorché boy stands beside the doctor’s desk. Charles examines him carefully and presses his own body to see if he is the same underneath, under all that skin. He thinks of conversations they might have and games they might play. He likes to touch Louis and wishes that Louis could touch him. Once he kisses Louis’s cheek and he has the impression that Louis’s face is slightly wet, as if he has been crying.

      One day the key is not on the lintel. The door is locked. Dr Gohlis is not there.

      Who is left? Charles thinks there are perhaps half a dozen servants, the old abbé and himself. He cannot remember when he last saw the Count or Monsieur Fournier or Louis.

      What will happen to me, Charles wonders. Will they leave me quite alone?

      Then comes the night when everything changes. Just before dawn, Dr Gohlis wakes Charles, makes him dress and takes him downstairs. An old servant waits with two small valises in the hall.

      Charles wants to say: ‘Where are we going?’ He also wants to ask Dr Gohlis what has happened to Louis.

      But of course he cannot speak. He must not speak.

      

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