Aurélie thought of the stories that had nourished her childhood: their glorious ancestor who had followed Joan of Arc, her father dashing into battle against the Prussians. But those were only the bits they sewed into the tapestries, sanitized and edited.
“Was it ever otherwise, do you think?”
Max let out a long sigh, folding his tall body onto the bench beside her. “Probably not. Not if you believe Voltaire, at any rate. Candide asks if men have always massacred each other, if they have ‘always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels’ and so forth. His friend replies, ‘Have hawks always eaten pigeons?’”
“Your commanding officer has banned pigeons,” Aurélie pointed out. “So the hawks might be out of luck.”
Max choked on a laugh. “This is a metaphorical pigeon.”
“I don’t believe that makes a difference,” said Aurélie. “It’s contraband, all the same. You’d best get rid of it.”
Max stifled a yawn, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. “Shall I put it in the book? Item: one pigeon, metaphorical, executed. Of course, that raises the question of how one executes a metaphorical pigeon.”
It was the sort of debate they used to carry on by the hour in her mother’s salon. Aurélie had never been part of those discussions; no one had ever thought her worth having them with. And, to be fair, she had thought it all nonsense, pointless nothings. Now there was something strangely bittersweet about it. It felt like a luxury to sit here, in the dark, in the cold, and talk nonsense. “How does one execute a metaphorical pigeon?”
Max stretched his long legs out in front of him. Aurélie could see the mist of his breath in the cold air, the rise and fall of the silver buttons on his coat. “By removing all irony,” he said at last. “Killing all thought. Draining dry wit. Reducing the world to the imposition of blind obedience, with no sense or justice in it. No kindness. No mercy.”
Aurélie glanced up at him sideways. “How did we get from pigeons to this?”
He grimaced. “How did we get from anything to this?”
“I keep wondering that, too,” Aurélie admitted. “I had thought, at the beginning, that it would be a few weeks, and then everything could go back to normal. But now . . . I don’t even remember what normal was anymore.”
“Rainy days at the Louvre,” Max said softly. “Cakes at Angelina.”
“You left. You left after that. I looked for you at my mother’s salon . . . to return your umbrella,” she added hastily. “But you never came back.”
“No.” He looked down at his hands. “I was called back to Berlin.”
“And it was only an umbrella.” Aurélie rather wished she hadn’t said anything. She wasn’t sure why she had. But it was Christmas Eve and the shelling had stopped and everything was strange and edged with ice. “Not the least bit important. One can find a new umbrella anywhere.”
“Not anywhere. There are some umbrellas—there are some umbrellas that matter more than others.” Max leaned forward, his eyes pale in the moonlight. “I ought to have written . . . I meant to write . . . I would have written . . . but it was too hard. It was my sister, you see. Elisabeth . . .”
“You mentioned her.” At the Louvre. He had shown Aurélie the picture he kept in his watch.
“She was the heart of our family, our good angel. For the longest time, it was only me. My mother—she lost child after child. I wasn’t meant to know, you understand. But . . .”
“Nursemaids talk,” Aurélie provided for him. She knew it well. It was how she had learned of the peculiarities of her own position, that “Uncle Hercule,” who lived in the suite with them, was, in fact, her father’s cousin and her mother’s lover.
“Yes,” said Max gratefully. “And when Elisabeth was born . . . she was such a little thing, so delicate. They’d had the mourning bands ready, but she lived. She lived and everything was bright again. My mother had headaches; she had kept the curtains drawn and I was meant to be quiet and not disturb her, but once Elisabeth arrived, it didn’t matter anymore. Suddenly, everything was light and we could run and laugh as much as we liked and there were flowers in all the rooms. I was nine already when Elisabeth was born. But it was like living in a whole new house, as though my life started again with Elisabeth. Does that sound strange?”