A Drop of Night(9)

He’s just being friendly, Anouk. He’s just a nice person. It’s possible. But this is where Exhibit B comes into play. I don’t believe in the whole “‘people are basically good deep down”‘ notion. I think deep down is where people are the worst.

“And so for our social sculpting class this one guy got a bunch of horse manure and mixed it with plasticine until it was this really glossy brown, almost like chocolate, and he put it in a bear-shaped mold and called it ‘Poo Bear,’ get it? It was, like, a commentary on how culture is packaged to look appealing but is basically crap. It was brilliant.” He raises his eyebrows in admiration and looks out the window.

“Except Winnie-the-Pooh is not crap,” I say. “Winnie-the-Pooh is transcendent.”

“What? It’s not about Winnie-the-Pooh, it’s—You’re missing the point.”

“He was making a pun on ‘Pooh Bear’. So that’s inevitably part of the point. And I think it’s a stupid one. ‘People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day’? That’s brilliant. If Mr. Social Sculptor wanted to be all clever and subversive he should have made a shampoo bottle out of crap, called it ‘ShamPoo,’ and it could have been a commentary on all the toxic chemicals in commercial shampoo. Then he could pretend he’s a crusader against multinational cosmetic corporations instead of just skewering children’s books he’s probably never read.” I click my tongue. “Missed opportunity there.”

“Don’t you study art history?”

“Is that a legitimate question, or are you trying to shut me up?”

Jules laughs. I know he’s doing that inquisitive little sideways look right now.

I keep my gaze fixed on the landscape outside. We landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport about 10 A.M. Paris time and were whisked straight from the tarmac to our waiting motor-cade. We didn’t even have to go through Immigration.

I get a quick blur of kebab restaurants, bright signs, and concrete-block houses as we pass through a town. Jules starts talking about bands I’ve never heard of. I wonder if he’s just trying out subjects until I latch on to something. Sorry, my life consists of reading Tolstoy in original Cyrillic and watching foreign-dubbed Hollywood movies on repeat until I understand the dialogue through context. Also dreaming up Machiavellian revenge. I don’t think we have anything in common.

I slip the blue folder out of my bag and page through it. Jules starts talking about a book, still staring at the ceiling. (“It’s called The Beauty of Chartreuse on the River Styx, and it’s about quirky teens who fall in love and die.”)

I see Lilly’s one-sheet:

Lilly Watts—skill set: audio and visual sensitivities.

What does that even mean? That she can see and hear?

I flip further. I really want be sleeping right now. I didn’t even doze on the flight over. I changed out of my pointy witch shoes at the Paris airport in favor of some sensible-looking crepe-soled brogues, but my toes still hurt, and all I want to do is stretch out on the black leather seat and conk out.

Very few records of the Marquis du Bessancourt and his family have survived. Much of their papers were no doubt destroyed to avoid capture and the widespread repercussions against aristocrats during the Reign of Terror. Surviving documents show that Frédéric du Bessancourt was born in 1734 as the only legitimate child of a local nobleman, later rising to prominence as a banker and businessman under Louis XV of France. He also gained a reputation as a scientist, natural philosopher, and a frequent lender to the king and his successor, Louis XVI, financing much of the monarchs’ lavish lifestyle. In 1774, the marquis married Célestine Gauthier. They had several children.

All records of the Bessancourt family cease after 1789. They are never mentioned again, either in revolutionary propaganda or in prison registries in and around the city of Paris. It is at this time that we assume he and his family fled underground, escaping France shortly afterward and reestablishing themselves under other names in England or Germany. Construction on a below-surface palace may have begun as early as 1760 in the vast caverns below the ancestral chateau. The palace, known at the time for unknown reasons as the Palais du Papillon (Palace of the Butterfly), has sat untouched for two hundred years. It lies below the water table, in bedrock, inviting the possibility that some areas are partially or entirely submerged. We have no definite idea how large the palace is, how structurally sound, how safe. Regardless of its current state, it will be a treasure trove of Revolutionary Era detail and perhaps the most significant discovery from eighteenth-century Europe in history.

We are pleased to have you with us on this momentous expedition and hope that this project will be a rewarding and enlightening experience to every one of you.

It’s signed with an illegible scribble. Underneath is written, helpfully:

The Sapani Family

“Hey?” Jules is looking right at me. I wonder how long I’ve been ignoring him. “You okay?”

I drop my head against the window again and make some indeterminable noise against the glass. For some reason he takes that as a no.

“You know,” he says, as if pondering some major philosophical revelation. “You’re a weird one. Normal people would be like, ‘Yayyy, going to France with an awesome person named Jules and also exploring a two-hundred-year-old site, yayyy!’” He waves his hands with each yay. “I can’t figure you out.”