Another Faust (2 page)

Christian reached under his bedding — more old coats — and got out his journal. As he sat on the dirt floor, he tried to think of something beautiful to write. There was nothing beautiful in his world anymore. He wrote anyway. It was his escape, his mother’s one legacy. But Christian hadn’t seriously considered being a writer for a while now, because for the past few months, all he could think about was being rich and free. It was a louder desperation, and it was growing at a heart-stopping pace until it was too big and unwieldy for Christian to control. It was gargantuan now, a longing far more urgent than any other desire.
If you’re poor, you can’t afford to sit around dreaming up stories for your life. You follow the money.
First he would be a sports star, then he would write. First he would be rich, then he would have time for everything else.

Christian felt a sudden, searing pain across his chest. With every pump, his heart felt clenched. He put his hand inside his shirt and tried to ignore the pain. It would be better in the morning. As he squeezed his eyes closed, Christian wished for anything but this. He’d give anything not to be hungry all the time. But he didn’t have anything to give, and so it was useless to wish.

Belle ran into the bedroom and plopped on the bed so that Bicé couldn’t possibly ignore her. “Hey, Bicé. Would you rather be disgustingly fat all your life and go to heaven or thin and gorgeous and then go to hell?”

“What?” Bicé snorted with laughter.

“C’mon, c’mon, which would you choose? Seriously!” Belle nudged her twin sister and gave her a mischievous look.

“Belle, there is nothing serious about that question.”

Belle rolled her eyes at her sister’s righteous attitude. She wished Bicé would play along.

“You’d pick hell, wouldn’t you?” said Bicé, her head still in a book.

“You could wear a red dress!” said Belle, determined to distract her sister.

“I’m busy, Belle. Anyway, who cares what you look like in heaven?”

“It would be forever. And I could be gorgeous,” Belle said breathlessly, posing like one of the starlets she had seen on magazine covers.

“I think you’re gorgeous,” said Bicé with a smile.

“You think
you’re
gorgeous.”

“Same thing.”

Bicé and Belle were identical twins — two raven-haired little girls who had an entire Italian town mesmerized. A few paces outside the big city of Rome, Belle and Bicé lived in a pretty little town with hills and tree-lined trails and old-fashioned gelato shops — the kind of town where ancient ladies, the village
madres,
still wore vintage nylon stockings and talked about handsome soldiers sweeping through the town square.

“Do you realize that you’ve been reading for six hours?” said Belle.

“What else am I going to do? Sit around and think about fat people?” said Bicé without looking up.
“Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten,”
she practiced out loud. Apparently, she had moved on to German. The girls’ parents were linguistic scholars and travelers. They spoke seven languages. Belle only spoke two — barely.

“You don’t have to be such a show-off,” said Belle as she walked to the mirror. She picked up some tweezers and looked at herself in the mirror. “They already like you best.”

Belle thought about the lady from church, the one who had spoken to her mother for half an hour on Sunday. She was tall, blond, and the kind of beautiful that made Belle squirm with jealousy. “What a brilliant little girl!” she had said of Bicé. “I’ve never met one who speaks five languages.”

“Yes, well, she enjoys it, and we like to let our daughters do what they enjoy,” their mother had said. “Belle will find her niche soon too.”

“And so pious,” the lady had continued. “Is it true that she reads the Bible in Greek?”

Belle mumbled, “I hate being a twin,” and continued inspecting the curve of her brows.

“If it would make you feel better, I’ll dye my hair blue,” offered Bicé. Belle laughed, despite the pain she felt in her chest. It might not be so bad sharing a face if at least it was beautiful. If she were fantastically beautiful, no one would mind that she couldn’t blather out a few pleasantries in Mandarin. But Bicé had talent; there was no denying that. That was how she set herself apart from her twin. But what did Belle have?

Lost in thought, Belle stared at herself and then at her twin, her mirror image except for the tiny mole above Bicé’s lip.

“You know it’s not my fault,” said Belle.

“I know it’s not — wait — what are we talking about?”

“That you speak more languages than me.”

“Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time thinking about your cheekbones —”

“What’s wrong with my cheekbones?” Belle’s hand flew to her face.

“Don’t pout,” said Bicé. “It makes your face look swollen.”

“You mean it makes
your
face look swollen,” said Belle, pouting.

“Maybe if you didn’t try so hard to be the bad one, people would give you a break.”

Belle glared at Bicé for a second. Then she turned back around to the mirror. “No, they wouldn’t,” she said. “They’d never let me be different.” Belle looked at her sister in the mirror and saw that she was hurt. Deciding to drop the topic, she plopped herself onto the bed and rested her head on her sister’s lap. “Brush my hair, sis?” she said with a sweet pout. Belle could tell that Bicé wanted to say something, but for all her languages, Bicé just couldn’t communicate that well. Instead Bicé just grabbed the brush and began to stroke Belle’s hair, black and glossy, just like her own. It was Belle’s habit to let Bicé play the mother, pretending not to notice as she struggled to say the right thing. But even Bicé couldn’t give Belle what she wanted most. No one could.

Someone once said that “French is the language that turns dirt into romance.” Valentin knew this to be true because he lived in Paris, and when he wasn’t feeling romantic, he was feeling like dirt. Valentin’s parents were poets in Montmartre. They sat in cafés discussing love and the “tragedy of being” with other writers, sipping on deep red wine at all hours of the day. Somehow, they managed to make a good living, selling their work to journals and luring rich benefactors to their circle.

Valentin spent his time on his own. He was free to roam around the city, “learning from life,” as his father liked to say. He would walk through the streets of Paris, running errands for local shop owners, writing little poems for waitresses in exchange for cups of
chocolat,
and eavesdropping on conversations of cheery tourist families. As a result, he came to know something that most children should not have to realize until much later: that he was small and insignificant in this big world.

But as his father said, “Suffering is such sweet, stinging inspiration.”

“I’m going out,” said Valentin one afternoon. His father, who was already on his second bottle of wine, nodded and began to drift off to sleep. Valentin wondered why he had bothered to say anything. He walked out and thought that it was the perfect day to wheedle a few croissants out of Monsieur Genet’s barmaid or to read in the bookshops until they kicked him out or to visit the beautiful lady. The beautiful lady would never ask him to leave. She would only say the most reassuring things — that he was talented and bound for greatness. Valentin wanted to be a famous poet — not because he loved poetry but because he loved fame.

As he was getting up from an evening nap on the steps of the Sacré Coeur cathedral, something grabbed Valentin’s attention. In front of the massive church, in the crowd of tourists and worshippers, sat his own mother.
What’s Maman doing there?
thought Valentin.
She’s supposed to be meeting with her publisher.
It didn’t make sense. But that was definitely his mother, and the man with her was definitely not the priggish Monsieur Brottiere. This young man was wearing paint-covered jeans, with bits of paint in his wavy hair. Valentin’s first instinct was to approach them. But then he thought of his father, sitting alone, drinking himself into a stupor. He’d lost all hope in anything but the fact that his brilliant wife was going to “turn the brutish head of the world with the delicate yoke of her pen.” He was an awful poet but never stopped being proud of his wife.

Valentin crept a bit closer to listen. The pair began to walk. Valentin followed them. He crept among the crowds, close behind, all the way to a neighborhood in a wealthy district of Paris. He noticed the way his mother laughed; it was different from any laugh Valentin had ever heard from her.

“Have a good afternoon?” the man asked her.

“Boring. Nothing ever happens. I got no work done.”

“Well, everyone has dry spells,” he said, glancing at his paint-stained shoes. “Do you want to come up?” They were standing in front of a doorway. Valentin had ducked into an alcove just a few feet away.

“All right,” said Valentin’s mother with a smile. “Do I get first pick of your new paintings?”

“Only if you dedicate your next poem to me,” said the man playfully. He was childish, thought Valentin, not like a grown man.

“Don’t be silly! Everyone would know,” said his mother.

They went inside. Valentin ran dizzily into the street and waited for a light to turn on in one of the windows of the apartment building. From the dark street, he could see the walls inside. They were covered with beautiful landscape paintings of the French countryside. Valentin noticed that they were exactly like the ones his mother had given him and his father for Christmas. Night was falling over the city. Street lamps burst to life. Valentin stood there too long, watching their backlit silhouettes. Finally he picked up a rock from the gutter and sent it flying through the glass. He heard his mother scream from inside as shards fell to the ground. By the time the man’s naked torso appeared at the broken window to see who’d done it, Valentin was already down the street.

At home, he found his father asleep at the table.
I would teach her a lesson,
thought Valentin angrily,
instead of cowering at the kitchen table, hugging a bottle.

That night, when Valentin got into his bath, there was an unfamiliar spot on his chest. He tried to rub it off. But as his wet hand touched the small black dot, it only grew bigger. He lowered himself farther into the bath to wash it off. As the mark entered the water, it grew even darker and more pronounced.
What’s this?
Valentin thought.
What’s happening to me?
The mark was ugly, a black spot over his heart — as if his heart had exploded and spewed a black bile onto his skin. And no matter how hard he rubbed, it wouldn’t go away.

Victoria, Christian, Belle, and Valentin live far from each other and have never met. In fact, they are as different as four children can be . . . except for one thing.

Panic.
Wherever they were, they all sat up in their beds. It was the middle of the night.
What was that?
Their nightclothes clung to their backs. When they moved, the cold sweat made their spines shake.
Just a tree branch outside.
But it didn’t look like a tree branch. It looked like hair — wild, snaky hair slithering in the wind. It could be hair. It could be hallucinations. Or it could be shadows from the clouds. It could be suffering fingers, scaling the walls of their unhappy homes. It could just be the storm . . . or it could be someone outside.

No, it would seem that these children have nothing in common. But by the next morning, they all had disappeared.