Spectacle(58)

Several patients have gone mad, and many say their magical abilities were temporary, some lasting as little as two months.

Has Henard refined his formula or procedure? Or, as one distraught former patient says, is it simply that “there are always people imprudent enough to ignore the lessons learned by others”?



She folded the newspaper and filed it back into the drawer.

“Nathalie? What are you doing?”

She jumped. M. Patenaude stood at the end of the row, hands behind his back, a modest smile on his lips. He rocked slightly on his heels.

“I—I was waiting to talk to you,” she said, leaning against the drawer.

“Yes, Arianne told me.” He pointed to the cabinet. “I meant what are you researching?”

“Dr. Henard.”

M. Patenaude’s caterpillar eyebrows arched. He took slow, deliberate steps toward her. “Why so?”

“Well, that’s why I wanted to talk to you, too. Monsieur Gagnon said you knew a lot about Henard. And, um, Insightfuls.”

“Insightfuls. That’s quite a topic.” He removed his glasses and pinched the top of his nose. “Let’s … continue this conversation in my office.”

Nathalie closed the drawer gently, tucking away the people and events of everyday Paris, preserved in ink. She followed M. Patenaude to his office in silence. When she stepped in, he held up his finger and stepped back into the hall.

He sent Arianne away on an errand and entered his office, closing the door behind him. “Monsieur Gagnon told me you’d want to talk.”

The heat rose to her cheeks as she settled into a chair. “Did he?” How much did he tell you?

M. Patenaude put his hands in his pockets and walked over to the window. He stared through it for so long Nathalie thought he’d forgotten about her. She glanced at the closed door, uncomfortable with his prolonged silence.

“He didn’t offer many details, only that you found out that your aunt was one of Dr. Henard’s patients and that you had some questions he couldn’t answer.” M. Patenaude turned away from the window and faced her. “Also, he didn’t send you to me because of any newspaper stories. He sent you because I’m an Insightful.”

The words coming out of M. Patenaude’s mouth didn’t match Nathalie’s understanding of the man, the editor-in-chief of Le Petit Journal who was prone to restive gestures and always in a hurry. He had a magical power?

“I—I never would have guessed.” Her entire perception of him had changed with one sentence. Might she have an ally? She bubbled with excitement. This was it, her first chance to talk to someone who lived this experience and wasn’t insane. She appreciated that unlike Maman, he was direct. He wasn’t afraid to talk about it.

“We’re everywhere,” he said, spreading his palms out. “Men, women, all classes, religions, professions. You don’t often know it, not anymore. The rest of society has … varying opinions about it. Some of us boast about our abilities, others hide them, and most are somewhere in between, I think. Whether or not they still have their powers.”

“What’s your gift?” She leaned forward. “Do you still have it?”

“Yes. I can tell whether or not someone is telling the truth.”

She hesitated, halted in surprise, as if he had cast a spell. “You … can read minds?”

“No,” he said. “It’s more subtle than that. I can understand the intentions behind what people say and write. I hear words and voices in a way similar to music. Truth is melodious; lies are full of wrong notes, a blatant mistake in a symphonic piece. The bigger the lie, the more off-key it sounds to me.”

The admission sounded ridiculous yet plausible. As with her own mysterious ability. “Would you show me?”

“I’ll ask you some questions,” he said, tenting his fingers. “Lie in response to some, be truthful in reply to others.”

“Go on.”

“What’s your middle name?”

“Frances.” Truth. It was her grandmother’s name. Although she didn’t love it, she had loved Mamie very much.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Pink.” Lie. She disliked pink.

“What is the last novel you read?”

“Frankenstein.” No, she’d yet to finish it, in fact.

He gazed out the window once again. “You told the truth, lied, and told a half-truth. You haven’t read the book in its entirety, I’m guessing.”

“All correct.” Nathalie paused, crossing and uncrossing her legs. She could trust him. “Monsieur, I have to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“I have a special ability, too.”

He whipped his head around. “You do? I thought you were asking because … well.” He adjusted his glasses. “What do you mean, exactly?”

So Christophe truly hadn’t told M. Patenaude, just as he hadn’t told Nathalie about M. Patenaude’s gift. Until this moment, she hadn’t been able to tell if M. Patenaude already knew and was just waiting for her to come out with it; his reaction was too sudden, too honest to be an act. Christophe earned even more of her respect by not telling her secret or M. Patenaude’s and for merely setting a conversation in motion.