Yet right there in front of them, as each part of Oliå’s body crossed the threshold of the chamber, it regained its magical qualities and evaporated into thin air.
Oliå was vanishing.
The men looked at each other in astonishment, searching frantically for the captive. Iån had flown into a rage, swiping the air with his sword.
There was nobody.
“She’s still here!” Taåg screamed. “Don’t move. She has to be here.”
He knew that she didn’t have the powers to disappear completely. The archers were rooted to the floor, speechless.
Taåg focused his mind, and his eyes immediately darted towards the king’s sword. A fly had landed on the scarlet blade.
“There!” cried Taåg.
Before he had taken a step, a blue snake started slithering down Iån’s sword, which the king swirled round his head, flinging the serpent across the room; the next instant, everyone heard a sound like a small flag being unfurled. Two wings had just opened, and a bat was racing towards the exit.
Realizing what he had to do, Taåg squatted down on his haunches: a scab-ridden dog suddenly burst from his clothing and tore after Oliå.
Passing through the group of archers guarding the top of the stairway, the bat landed on the ground and swiftly rolled into a ball, emerging in the weasel form of her happiest memories. She ran between the soldiers’ legs and hurtled down the steps. The dog was gaining on her, but already he was panting hard, spittle slathering down his yellow coat. He crashed into anyone who tried to stop him, as a cry went up that there was a rabid dog on the loose. Out ahead, the brown-and-white spotted weasel slipped into the castle’s labyrinthine corridors.
Down in the lower chambers, the dog lost the scent and started howling in fury: the weasel had disappeared. The hound staggered through the shadows for a long time before collapsing in a heap.
Later, the archers picked up the old genie from the slopping-out area next to the kitchens, and brought him before the king.
Meanwhile, Oliå had come to a halt beneath a bench in a deserted room. She was on the alert, her muzzle to the ground, perfectly poised. She wasn’t thinking about her pursuers any more, nor about the mangy dog that had tried to trick her in that glass chamber. All her thoughts were on him. She had just felt his presence. He was very near her, somewhere within the castle walls. She knew it. He had come for her.
Up on the ramparts, among the men standing guard in the stormy night, Iliån was hearing rumours that a girl had escaped.
“A girl?”
“They say she’s a sorceress.”
The soldiers spoke to him as though he was one of their own. They had been sent to check the high bridges that led up to the towers, a perilously exposed part of the fortifications where none of them would dare to venture for fear of falling victim to the fugitive’s powers.
Iliån made his way up there, battling against the winds that howled through the black stone crenellations. He had to find her before anyone else did.
But she was the one who spotted him. She was creeping along a thin ledge, keeping perfect balance despite the battering wind. Suddenly she saw a shadow stealing across a bridge that led directly into the tower below her. The sound of the sea would have muffled her pitiful weasel’s cries, so she hurled herself into the void before he could disappear from sight.
“Oliå.”
Slowly, she got to her feet. She had just expelled the animal from her for the last time. Now she was standing before Iliån, numb with cold.
He took her in his arms and kissed her.
They were found intertwined in the grain store on the ramparts. The next thing she knew, she was torn from him.
“Who was the person they found with her?” asked the king, ready to strangle the messenger. “Who is he?”
In giving his answer, Taåg was saving his skin: this was his last chance of redemption. He had read Iliån’s face as though it were the page of an open book.
“He’s your brother, Majesty.”
Day was breaking and the young king was standing on the battlements. The breeze was warmer now, and it fanned his desire for revenge.
Oliå had been locked in a simple cell, since all of her powers had deserted her overnight. From now on, nothing of the fairy remained in her. She would just be ever so slightly more lost, more sensitive, more beautiful than any other girl her age. She was wearing the sling shot Iliån had given her, wrapped around her wrist.
Prince Iliån was entrusted to Taåg, who was to execute him in secret by the lightship. But the wicked old genie, afraid of being cursed as a king-slayer, did not kill the second in line to the throne.
So he banished Iliån instead, sending him into an exile from which he would never return. Oliå didn’t arrive in time to bring him back. And then she too disappeared. Long after the event, they found a cord hanging from her tower window. She had made it by tying clothes together, before escaping into the night.
In the bleak years that followed, legends abounded as to what had become of her. There was talk of a young girl at the bottom of the sea, or hiding somewhere else to prepare her revenge. The people, oppressed by the king’s madness, made her into their secret heroine. That is the way stories are born, when small mysteries meet dark times.
Only Taåg and the keeper of the lightship knew what had really happened in Oliå’s final moments in the Kingdoms.
Taåg had arrived on horseback by the beach, where he had found Oliå with the keeper. To save his own skin, the genie had banished her too. She begged him to let her go. And so it was that she had latched onto the spell that had taken Iliån away, grabbing hold of it as though it were the tail of a comet.
But in return she’d had to accept a terrible demand from Taåg, his sole condition for her living in the same world as Iliån: she was not to be seen by her beloved. If, at any point in his exile, the former prince discovered Oliå’s presence, she would disappear forever.
And so it was that a fifteen-year-old girl alighted in our world, amid the chaos of the same storm, on that same evening in September 1936. The midnight bells were sounding from church to church across the Paris rooftops.
Iliån had arrived a few hours before her.
Standing at the Pearls’ window, his red blanket clasped around his neck, he was already drinking rainwater from his cupped hands. How he would have loved to know that she was passing along the pavement just below, in her white shift, and trailing her hand against the walls as she gazed up towards him.
PART THREE
LOST FRAGMENTS FROM THE KINGDOMS
24
BASTILLE DAY BALL
IT HAPPENED TWO YEARS AGO.
I had returned to Paris in the middle of the summer to spend a couple of days doing some library research, leaving my wife and daughter behind in the torpor of the holidays, far from the city. When the time came for me to leave, I went along with their show of feeling sorry for me.
“Come back quickly.”
“Have fun, the pair of you.”
Both sides played their parts, in the knowledge that happiness is woven of such comings and goings: one train sloping off, another pulling in; headlights appearing at the end of the drive, or the sound of a tooting horn growing fainter in the distance; the hum of the engine as the coach pulls away on a school trip, leaving the parents staring at one another like idiots on the pavement (“Right, what now?”) in the knowledge that the children are already singing lustily inside the coach that smells of crisps and new anoraks.
Happiness is a dance where each step brings you closer together or further apart, but you never lose sight of one another. You could even say that it’s made from the tears of separations, safe in the knowledge that there will always be reunions.
In my case, I wasn’t going very far, or for very long, and if I hadn’t yet booked my return ticket for a couple of days’ time, it was just to savour the heady sense of freedom.
During the train journey, I had used up several pa
ges of my notebook listing all the research I intended to undertake. I was prepared, with my collection of library cards bulging in my pocket. I was embarking on a long writing project, and needed to visit a number of libraries. All being well, I’d have my answers in two days.
As it turned out, I never set foot inside a single library. They were all shut for three days. Going from closed-door to closed-door, I concluded my tour with a fruitless visit to the Mazarine Library, then I sat down on the steps in front of the Seine to take stock in the afternoon sunlight.
The truth was, I felt more ridiculous than desperate. I could hardly complain: it was a sunny day, Paris was overrun with strolling visitors, and the cars had deserted the city. I caught snatches in every language from the loudspeakers on the Bateaux-Mouches: the onboard tourist guides were holding forth about the Île de la Cité, the Academie Française and a queen who used to hurl her lovers from the top of a tower.
These snippets of stories, combined with those figures passing in front of me – the broken heel of a woman on the cobblestones; the little girl playing cup-and-ball with her scoop of ice cream; the man proclaiming “Versailles!” while pointing to the Louvre, as his beloved, in raptures over so much culture, took his face in her hands and kissed him – all this was worth the treasures of a library.
I don’t know how long I stayed there, dreaming on those steps.
Bells had just chimed on the other side of the Seine when three girls made their way towards me. One of them enquired whether I spoke any English. I confirmed that I did, with a modest “Yeees I dooo” straight out of my first English textbook.
This encouraged another of the girls to start gabbling so fast I couldn’t catch a word she said. But I carried on nodding, for the sake of appearances. It was only when a long silence followed that I deduced she must have asked me a question.
I stared as she waited for an answer, her blue eyes filled with hope. The other girl, who looked about eighteen, sensed my uncertainty. She uttered one word, which she pronounced clearly, and in a tone of voice that was unmistakably a question. This time, I immediately recognized the word pompier. She said it again.
“Pompier?”
No doubt about it: she had said the word “fireman” in French.
So I nodded even more energetically, like those little dogs with bobbing heads you see in the backs of cars. Yes, yes, yes, pompier, I’d heard her right. Fireman. Indeed. Absolutely. But although we were talking about the same thing, I still didn’t have the faintest idea why.
She repeated the word a third time, so insistently that I felt it necessary to defend myself.
“Me not fireman,” I said, thumping my chest. “Me not fireman.”
I was worried they might suddenly ask for my help in an emergency operation involving cardiac massage and a long ladder.
They managed not to laugh while I gesticulated wildly. But my alarm was only increased when two of them started performing a little dance on the spot, topped off with that word pompier again, pronounced with varying degrees of success.
I blushed, and the third girl discreetly advised them to give up, while smiling at me so pityingly that even I began to feel sorry for myself.
Just as they were about to give up and return to the Pont des Arts, I saw the No. 24 bus pass by, decked out with red, white and blue flags on the front. Everything suddenly became clear. I leapt to my feet.
“Pompier!” I shouted. “Fireman!”
They turned around. Now it was my turn to give a little sway of my hip, followed by a tango or waltz step.
Of course: they were trying to find the Firemen’s Ball. It was the eve of the Bastille Day celebrations, and they were looking for the Firemen’s Ball, which was an old tradition on the 14 of July. We fell into one another’s arms. Pompier!
I offered to lead them to the nearest fire station.
“Really?” one of them asked.
“What a gentleman!”
“Fantastic!”
The three girls expressed their gratitude by talking the whole way there. They each had a thousand interesting things to say, and all spoke over each other. When one of them did pause, it was to laugh very loudly, perform a little dance and point at me; I pretended to be in on the joke, as one of them slapped me on the back, while the others seemed to play out the scene we’d just experienced. Then they picked up the tangled threads of their conversations again.
For the quarter of an hour it took us to stroll up Rue de Seine, Rue de Buci and a few other streets, I didn’t understand a single word, but since they’d decided I was a French gentleman I didn’t want to let the side down.
I knew the fire station on Rue Madame because my older brother had celebrated his seventh birthday there. We didn’t live far away, and our school was in the same street. My brother had invited his friends to visit the fire station, and I was deemed too little to join them. But three or four is the age at which firemen are gods: I’ve never forgiven him for denying me that visit.
Thirty-five years later, and in the company of three female students, I arrived in front of the same fire station. It was heaving with people, and we could hear the music coming from inside. This was my moment of revenge on my brother.
My new friends tugged at my arm, begging me to go in with them. They seemed thrilled at having finally tracked down the kind of Frenchman – gallant, helpful and good-humoured – that had proved elusive throughout their trip. That said, there was a moment when I thought one of the girls might have mentioned Monsieur Hulot to her friend, while glancing at me; as if she’d spotted a vague resemblance to the French comic character who inspired Mr Bean. But I’d like to think I misheard.
The firemen’s ball filled the area at the back of the fire station, where perhaps a thousand people were dancing. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single fire engine in sight, and the few real firemen on the premises were manning the bar and not even wearing their helmets. I couldn’t conceal my disappointment.
My new friends instantly found an army of students who looked just like them. They tried to introduce me against a backdrop of deafening music. Some of them shook my hand respectfully, and I suddenly realized that although I was fulfilling the dream of a four-year-old boy, I was actually thirty-nine, and in their eyes this meant I was at least ninety years their senior.
I slipped away, pushing through the crowd and leaving them to the immortality of youth.
Around me, the swaying of the dance held me captive. I was trapped in a shoal of fish, at the mercy of the wave’s ebb and flow. Sometimes, the dancers raised their arms in the air, and I couldn’t even see the sky any more. I lifted my arms too, for camouflage. I made the most of the din by joining in the chorus like I was in the shower. The faces were spinning so fast they were a blur. The pace was making me feel dizzy. The ground was shuddering as if a herd of dinosaurs had just surrounded Paris.
Suddenly, in the midst of this throng, I froze. Everything else receded for a few seconds. For some curious reason, my thoughts turned to Joshua Pearl. I’d just had a flashback to running through the woods, aged fourteen, and waking up in Joshua Pearl’s home. All the energy drained from my body as I felt myself being swept along by the crowd.
When I came to my senses moments later, the noise was unbearable and there seemed to be fog everywhere. I glanced around to see what might have awakened this memory. I must have looked very dazed, because two firemen rose up out of the mist, grabbed hold of me and dragged me off the dance floor.
I should have been thrilled to see my heroes in action close-up, thrilled at the prospect of telling my family about my visit to the fire station and about taking a dizzy turn and being rescued, but none of this could have been further from my mind. I was thinking of Joshua Pearl, of heavy eiderdowns, and dogs, of the fire, our conversations, the suitcases, the treasure, the roasted starlings, and of that day when he had left me in the grass, close to my bike, having taken my camera and photos off me.
“Do you live far?” asked one of
the firemen.
“No.”
The truth was, I lived far enough, on the other side of the Seine, but my mother’s apartment was near by. It was the apartment where I was born and where I had grown up. Like a small boy, I showed the firemen my keys.
“Would you like us to accompany you?”
“No. I’m feeling better now.”
“Take it slowly on your way home.”
If he thought I was too old for these kinds of parties; what he didn’t realize was that, a few seconds earlier, frozen on the dance floor, I had reverted to being fourteen again.
I felt exhausted as I made my way back to my mother’s apartment block; still, I kept turning around to check whether a fire engine might perhaps be following me. I knew my mother was away for the month of July. After heading up to the third floor, I let myself in and flopped on her sofa.
For twenty-five years, the memory of the house with the suitcases had remained my big secret. A secret that had begun as an obsession: on returning home, after my stay with Pearl, I had pinned up Ordnance Survey maps on the walls in a bid to find the exact location of the house; I had calculated my speed through the forest; I had tried to work out the distance covered on foot from my bicycle to the river. My obsession turned to anger. In my notebooks, I kept lists of Joshua Pearl’s collection, or what I could remember of it; I drew maps.
The following summer, I’d spent two more days exploring, my excuse being that I was attending another course. Why did they let me set off again, when I had lost all of the family’s photographic equipment the previous year? Parents are sometimes hard to fathom.
I was only allowed to take a disposable camera with me. I scoured the forests for three days without finding the boat, the girl, Pearl’s house or my photographs.
Great secrets that go unshared begin to fade a little. Their shapes shift beyond recognition, as the secrets themselves become indistinguishable from dreams. When we try to re-awaken them, they only remind us of our solitude.