Spectacle(81)

“I can only speak of my own experience and those I know,” he offered, steepling his fingers, “but I don’t think your ability is fading. Sometimes our power shifts slightly as we grow into it, like how your visions aren’t taking place in reverse anymore.”

“And how they’ve gotten longer.” When she said it, something else occurred to her. “Did that have to do with—with Agnès? Did my closeness with her change this?”

M. Patenaude adjusted his glasses, which were thinner than they’d been in a while. “I don’t know.”

“Or maybe my encounter with the Dark Artist himself? Did being in proximity to him—to his power—affect mine? Since my ability is connected to his murders?”

“Again, I don’t know. It shouldn’t, not from what I understand. But who can say? That was part of the controversy about Henard’s experiments; the results weren’t as predictable as everyone hoped.” M. Patenaude put his elbows on his desk. “Magic and science together became something else that was neither magic nor science. That’s why I want to give you this, to help deepen your knowledge.”

He opened up his desk drawer and reached inside.

“My wife found it at the bottom of a box of books,” he said, handing her a booklet. “It’s from 1866. I forgot this existed, or I’d have told you about it. It’s yours to keep.”

Enchanted Science or Science Enchanted? by Dr. Pierre Henard.

Nathalie gasped. She felt like she’d just been handed a map to a buried treasure.

“Merci beaucoup!” She held the thin little book gingerly, as if holding on too tightly would squeeze the secrets out and scatter them onto the floor. Something was familiar about this, so much so that she could have sworn she’d seen it before. Or maybe she’d heard someone mention the title once?

“It’s a somewhat dry read,” M. Patenaude said, “but you may find some answers there. What’s interesting to me is that, despite all the controversy, the facts are truthful. That is, the truth as he understood it at the time. To that I can attest, thanks to my gift.”

Nathalie slipped the booklet into her satchel and pressed her back against the chair, her gaze drifting outside the window and back to him. “You told me once before that the way the abilities manifest says something about the individual.”

M. Patenaude opened his cigarette case and tapped one onto his palm. “Without fail,” he said, striking a match. He lit the cigarette. “And sometimes not what we expect.”

“I think I know,” Nathalie began, “what the visions say about me. I have an appetite for the macabre, as you might have guessed, so I’m sure that’s part of it.” She took a breath and let it out as a sigh. “I also think I’m the kind of person who wants to see life for what it is. And death, too. No matter how brutal or ugly.”

“All of which make you a superb journalist, I should note.” M. Patenaude smiled as he took a drag.

“Thank you,” she said. She watched him exhale, transfixed by the ephemeral quality of the smoke. Existing and then not, in a blink.

“Also,” he added, “little moments of truth, particularly those about yourself and who you are, are worth celebrating. Remember that.”

Those words provoked something in her memory, like a string bringing a puppet to life. The last thing the hypnotist had said to her: Remember who you are, then you’ll know why you can’t forget.

Then it came to her. M. Lebeau, the hypnotist. He’d had stacks and stacks of books, and she’d glimpsed some of the titles. That’s where she’d seen Henard’s work before. Enchanted Science or Science Enchanted? A booklet with a title that reminded her of a riddle.

When she’d gone to M. Lebeau, she hadn’t known who she was, so to speak. Even after she’d come to understand her gift, she hadn’t fully known. She probably still didn’t. But this, this was enough.

This and, of course, Henard’s own words.



* * *



The last thing Nathalie did before going to bed that night was to reread the sections of Enchanted Science or Science Enchanted? that she’d underlined. She had read through the booklet twice that evening. The first time on her own, and the second time she’d read parts of it out loud to Maman, who’d never read it. Nathalie was glad about that; for the first time since she’d told Maman about the visions, they were learning something about Insightfuls together.

The booklet was twenty-one pages, some of it mired in scholarly language that Nathalie did not find to be all that interesting. The parts that did appeal to her were riveting.

She turned to the beginning of the booklet.

The idea for these experiments did not present itself to me at a single hour on a single day. Instead it was, I believe, the accumulation of years of observation (I shall return to that below) together with my great affection for Greek mythology and what one might call the magical elements of the Christian faith. The aftermath of an age where our greatest thinkers (Descartes, Voltaire, Locke) relied solely on reason cried for something less stark, to my mind. The spirit of mankind needed adornment.

Regarding that which I found worthy of observation, it was not the commonplace. It was the unusual, the elements of this world that were of nature but somehow deviated from it, that seized my attention most. Those who possessed musical, literary, and artistic genius as well as the cat with extra toes; Chang, the kind Chinese giant of two-and-a-half meters who appeared in London last year; a tulip exceedingly brighter than the others in a garden. I wondered if it was possible to harness in science the greatest possibilities of human nature and add to them the essence of one’s distinct self.