The Museum of Extraordinary Things(80)

“You don’t know me,” Coralie insisted. “I’m not an angel. I sometimes doubt if I am even human.”

Eddie laughed, not at all understanding her meaning, so she begged him to light the lantern. If he wanted to know who she was, then she would reveal herself, though she wept as she did. She showed him her hands, what she considered her deformity, the flesh that separated her and made her different, but also made her herself, the woman he didn’t want to let go of, not even after hours had passed with her in his arms and the liveryman shouted up that it was time for her to leave. She left behind the blue wool coat, neatly folded, on the chair, and the handkerchief containing Hannah’s belongings on the table. He examined the tokens, holding them tenderly. Two black buttons, a comb, hairpins, a golden locket on a chain, and two keys that he held in the palm of his hand.





EIGHT



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THE BLUE THREAD


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I HAD ALWAYS been a good student. Even in the art of rebellion, I looked for those who might instruct me. I listened not to the rabbis but to my employer, Hochman, who seemed wiser in the ways of the world, an expert in the arena of human nature. Hochman suggested that each person had the option to remake the past as he or she remembered it. In this way, an individual who had betrayed someone dear to him could escape the pangs of guilt and remorse. One who had suffered great loss could manage to go on, despite the burdens of his life. He could forget certain details and focus on others, and in doing so could take strength from the past, despite the hardships he had encountered.

I saw that my father did not possess this capacity. He was caught in his love for my mother, a fish in a net. He could not remake the fire, or the ashes, or the cold dark night when we ran away from our village. The past clung to him, as it was and always would be, a shroud, a sorrow, a loss that was never-ending.

He had loved my mother, and the present and the future could not exist without her. I saw his struggle, but from a distance. I stood on the other side of the riverbank, a fisherman with a cold, clear eye. I had witnessed what such emotions could do to a person, how they could rule his life, and ruin it by doing so. I learned my lesson in watching his grief.

Love, for me, did not exist.

I’d had a series of encounters over the years. Lust was a story I knew. There were many women I took to bed for the night. I yearned for them in the moment, but in the morning, any lover I’d had was already claimed by the past, even if she was still calling my name.

I’d forgotten each woman before I left her room.

Now I thought of nothing but Coralie. I wondered what had filled my thoughts before. I dreamed of the trout I’d once caught. I begged him to tell me what I must do to win her. But my begging went unanswered, for even in my dreams he was a fish and I was a man, and all he knew remained a secret.

I had asked to take Coralie’s portrait on the day she came to me, but she’d refused. You need to want the person that I am, she told me, not the one you capture. But I felt as though I was the one who had been captured. This was why I dreamed of the trout, imagining that he might hold the cure for what I felt, the piercing of my heart.

I hadn’t grasped why my father always brought my mother’s photograph to his workplace or why he propped it up on our table so that he might dine with her each night. Now I understood. She was his everything, and she was gone. This was the kind of love that overtook a man’s daily life, wrapping him in knots.

Desire was too churlish and stupid a word for what I felt. I longed for Coralie. No wonder I had closed myself off. Love like this was all consuming. I found that I was jealous of the strangest things—sunlight, streets, curtains, even her clothing, anything that was close to her. The month of May was slipping away, and I didn’t even notice it. Days and weeks meant nothing to me. I lived within my own hurt feelings, in a cave that was too dark to see the outline of the trees that filled with green leaves.

I took my dog and walked for miles. I thought that by doing so I might break the spell I was under. Walking had always been a tonic to me, steadying my spirit and my mind. But now as I went onward, I grew worse, as if I’d been enchanted. Somehow I had lost myself in my longings. Then I remembered what Hochman had told me when he read my palm. I had the river inside me. I followed alongside the river that was as much a part of me as anything in my life. In the grasp of my passion, I felt I was a madman, and perhaps I was looking for the same in a companion, for I began to think that the hermit might help me understand the intoxication that had befallen me. I’d heard that failed love had driven him into the woods, away from human company.

I didn’t need a psychic talent to find him. He was at one of his favorite fishing spots.

“Did you come to see if I was dead yet?” He handed me the bottle of whiskey he carried with him, and I took a gulp. “You’re the one that looks like hell. What happened to your hand?”

“Some fellows broke it.”

I’d been to a doctor who’d set and bound it, warning that although I would regain some use of it, it might well be weakened and misshapen. I was fortunate that the police assumed every man was right-handed, which I was not. I readied my line with my left hand, and the hermit was impressed with my ability to get things done so neatly. Perhaps my art would not be completely undermined if one of my hands was functional. Still, I hadn’t yet found the nerve to work my camera, just in case what little talent I had left had been broken along with my bones.