“Tough crowd today?” Bonmot would almost always say, making me smile.
“I’m not a comedian or a juggler, Bonmot. I don’t have to entertain. I just have to lead them around to interesting places.”
“You are such a kind tour guide,” Bonmot would say, trying not to laugh. “To teach them the responsibility of finding their own entertainment.”
“Why not? That’s what I have to do.”
I wish I could say my lunches with Bonmot felt the same as before, but they did not. Yes, a similar sense of contentment, of ease, lingered over those conversations, but it became a more fleeting thing; it did not last as long or affect me as powerfully. Our discussions had limits; we had acquired scars. Bonmot never discussed Duncan, and I, not wishing to give up even the faded pleasure of those lunches, never pressed the point.
If the situation had changed, so had Bonmot. The war had changed him.
“You’re hesitant sometimes now,” I said to him once, during an uncomfortable silence. “You halt on the verge of saying things.”
Bonmot nodded. “You’re right. I halt because I am not certain anymore. The things I thought I knew do not always seem right when I say them, so I say them first in my head, and then speak. Otherwise, it’s as if I were mouthing sawdust. And I miss people who have died, and sometimes when I speak, I see them, because this priest or that priest who has passed on had taught me the truism I was about to say.”
He stared at me with a knowing sadness. “I liked it better when I knew everything.”
A barking laugh. And an echo from Sybel, standing in the willow tree, whispering to me: “I liked it better when I knew nothing.”
For my part, I found it odd to sit there watching the current crop of fresh-faced students make their way across the courtyard—lithe, flushed with success, seemingly innocent—and know that it was just a few years ago that Mary and Duncan and Bonmot had played out their appointed roles of lust, love, secrecy, and discovery. The war lay like an insurmountable black wall between then and now.
I should have mentioned before that the beads of Mary’s flesh necklace actually did have faces and names. As I stood at the base of the stairs, the scarlet imprint of my hand still warm on Mary’s face, about to respond to her hateful words, I remember turning away from her for a moment to stare at them. Let me identify them for you as they come into focus in my memory, that you may know them if you see them: John Batte, Vice-Royal under Bonmot, rose to the post of Royal following Bonmot’s death, and is a staunch supporter of Sabon’s work, even going so far as allowing her access to previously closed Truffidian archives. Sarah Cryller, currently the ambassador to Ambergris from the House of Frankwrithe & Lewden, is a newly risen star still bright-burning who at one time hoped Sabon might defect to her publishing company. The oft-mentioned Merrimount provided Sabon’s “in” to the creative community at large and appeared at many of her book release parties. Jessica Hoegbotton, scion of the House of Hoegbotton, main liaison between the public and Sabon’s words, is the one who laughed loudest at Mary’s joke about Duncan. Daniel Griswald, Antechamber of the Truffidian Church, has teeth that glint like fangs when he grins, which is more often than a stone gargoyle, and who, in his infinite wisdom, has failed to ban any of Sabon’s books, instead embracing them and recommending them to his congregation. And, finally, Mathew Daffed, one of Duncan’s colleagues at Blythe Academy, is now among his most outspoken critics.
And others, still others, whose faces blur even as I conjure up their names. Why did I invite them? Because I had to—Lake demanded it. Even as I condemned them with my gaze, I found that I was surprised—surprised that they should have so disliked my brother, surprised at the fear rising from their faces like steam. {Some of them have been scoundrels at times, but most of the rest of them have caused me no harm, even as they continue to send Mary to her triumph.}
At first, I received updates on Mary’s progress through Bonmot.
“Mary has sold her second book,” Bonmot told me one fall, the willow trees impervious to the change of seasons even as, across the street, oaks became an indignant red-and-orange, and then bald, and a strange whisper of flame spread through the city.
“Her second book,” I said.
It was almost unbearable to receive such information from Bonmot, when every day I could hear the creak and shift of timber above me as Sirin walked between his desk and his precious butterflies. {Worse, worse—I found she had taken up with another man, her own age, the son of her father’s best friend, someone she had known for years. Someone comfortable. Someone safe. Someone with a “III” in his name. I could tolerate the books, because I knew they contained a little piece of me in them, but I could not tolerate that relationship.}
“Yes. It’s called The Inflammation of Aan Tribal Wars. I’ve had a look at it, and it’s excellent. Very well researched. She’s a credit to the school.”
As Duncan was not, went the tired old, silent old refrain. {Bonmot never forgave me, not even at the end. I couldn’t understand that. I’d have forgiven him had our situations been reversed, but, then, I am not a priest. I did see him sometimes, in the last few years before he passed on. When I took walks in Trillian Park, I would discover him sitting on a bench as I turned a corner. He would look up, and our eyes would meet before he could turn away. Those few times, I would see a peace within him that faded as he recognized me. I wouldn’t stop to talk—it was too painful, too maddening, to understand that he could not move past my lapse of judgment. Later, back in my apartment overlooking Trillian Square, I would sit on my balcony drinking wine, analyzing the moment in the park, searching my memory of our brief encounter for some hint of recognition on his part that did not include bitterness or rancor. Sometimes I convinced myself, sometimes I did not.}
Bonmot—to his credit, or perhaps not to his credit—never realized that I might prefer not to hear such details, such confirmation of Mary’s success. Later, when he better understood the humiliation of having to stand outside of her various residences and tell tourists about her, Bonmot stopped telling me. He must have realized by then that her ascent was self-evident.
“That’s nice,” I mumbled. “I am sure it is a very interesting book she has written.” Through a mouthful of my chicken sandwich, looking out of the corner of my eye for my bumbling tourist charges, to make sure they had not gotten into too much trouble.