The Betrayals(125)
He looks up. The tower is still tilting. A high note rings in his ears.
‘Are you all right, Martin?’ Guez is at his elbow.
He nods. The Magister Domus crosses the courtyard again, a piece of paper flapping in his hand, a servant gesticulating at his elbow. There’s the sound of the old bus coughing up the hill; it’ll come and go all day to collect the visitors. How long will it take, for the school to empty itself? He doesn’t want to be here to see it.
He turns and strides towards the library. Guez says something, but he doesn’t look back. The great oak door is still open, and he makes his way down the central aisle, past two librarians talking in low voices. There is enough light coming through the slats of the shutters for him to grope his way up the staircase and along the landing to the Biblioteca Ludi, but when he opens the door the room is dazzling, like noon after dusk.
On Claire’s desk – is it his desk, now? – there’s a ledger, patterned like a riverbed, with an ink stain across its front. His old diary. So she had it, all this time. He flips it open. As he skims the page he can remember the feel of the pen, the ache in his neck from long hours of study, the burn of sleepless nights. What it was like to be young.
A page falls out. Dear Léo. His heart thuds; but the paper is old, yellowing, the ink faded.
Dear Léo, I’m dead. Dear Léo, I’m not dead …
I think you never stopped hating me.
He stands at the window. It’s blurred at the edges of the panes by cobwebs and dirt, but the sunlight makes the grime blaze like silver.
Soon Montverre will be closed. He shuts his eyes and tries to imagine it without Magisters and librarians, archivists, visitors, servants. It gives him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Even when he hated the thought of Montverre, and Carfax, and the grand jeu, he would never have wanted it to end like this. So much stone, so much hollow space, standing empty. There’s so much of the school he’s never seen, kitchens and broom cupboards and pantries, the rarely visited alcoves in the archive. And all of it will crumble, slowly. With a jolt he thinks again of Charpentier. Is he still here, in hiding? What can Léo do, if he is?
In his mind’s eye Léo sees all the Christians, the Communists and undesirables, the beggars and invalids: a long line, stretching into the distance, the last few turning to stare over their shoulders at him as they’re ushered away. Please let Chryse?s not be among them; please let Charpentier not. But that doesn’t mean that the others aren’t real. He can do something for Charpentier, even if it’s only leaving cash in his room, and hoping that it’ll be found – but there are too many to help, too many to fight for.
He clenches his fists. Nothing is safe. Montverre isn’t a sanctuary any more; maybe it never was. Even the grand jeu itself … More than anything he wants to feel the joy of it, the exhilaration of making something from nothing. But with those grey faces watching him, with the walls of Montverre crumbling and the Party looking over his shoulder …
He wants to be Magister Ludi: but here, not in the city. He wants to stand in the Great Hall with the ranks of watchers around him, playing his own Midsummer Game. He wants Claire to be there. He wants to pace the anteroom with her before he goes in, rehearsing the transitions, trying not to betray that he’s nervous. He wants to feel the moment of complete attention – like the stillness at the height of a parabola, the instant between up and down – when the game takes off, and everything is miraculous, needle-sharp and effortless.
But the Great Hall may never witness another game. And Claire has gone. If he plays a Midsummer Game, it will be in front of the stripped altar of the converted Cathedral, and swollen ranks of Party members who don’t know the first thing about the grand jeu. Watched by betrayed stained-glass saints and the ghosts of the people who used to worship there. Complicit.
He’s a politician. Has learnt to be a politician. The scruples are uncomfortable, like a stone in his shoe. He wants to shake them away. He could do some good as Magister Ludi. What did Claire say? Be a thorn in their sides. She gave him permission. She wouldn’t judge him for compromising. It’s only human.
But. But, but, but.
He remembers Carfax asking: ‘Shouldn’t the grand jeu make us better people?’ and then how he answered his own question. Her own question. Yes. What would it mean, to play a grand jeu with an atrocity at the heart of it?
He glances down at the desk. Her letter is lying in the sun. Already the words are well-known, like a text he’s planning to use for a motif. Write to me, to Claire. Send me a letter telling me how sorry you are, how much you loved Aimé. Then I’ll reply. That’s all you need to do. One letter, and I’ll come back from the dead. He thought it was all over, then; but if he had sent that letter …
He doesn’t make a conscious decision. It’s his body that takes over, swinging him into the middle of the room as though there is a tiny terra between the overloaded bookcases. He turns to face the sky. Then he lifts his arms, pauses and then dips them into a wide movement, the motion of farewell-and-welcome that forms the fermeture. And as if in response, the cloud that has dipped across the sun slides sideways and the light floods his eyes. It’s over. In a moment he’ll go to his room and collect overnight things; he’ll make his way down the road to the village, and the station. And Claire. If she’s still there, if an earlier train hasn’t swept her away, if … But some deep, irrational conviction tells him that he’ll find her, one way or another.