Chapter Text
Paris, October, 1954
“Martin.” Monsieur Bernard chose his next victim with visible relish, snapping the boy’s name from his thin mouth. “Describe the sirens encountered by Odysseus in today’s reading.”
So close. Claude Martin’s desk was right next to his. Claude, who had suddenly gone pale, probably also wished Will had been selected instead to answer the question. Will gritted his teeth and bounced his leg under the desk impatiently; his Classics teacher knew he knew all the answers, and thus never called on him. Of course not. Calling on a student and having them produce the correct response wasn't any fun .
“Tell me, Martin, what did the sirens encountered by Odysseus and his crew look like?”
Will had only been Monsieur Bernard’s student for a couple of months but could read him with a precision that would have surpassed even Granny G’s ability to know a man’s heart. Monsieur Bernard lived to watch his students squirm. He adored his role as the keeper of all knowledge, and, Will suspected, had become a teacher to enjoy a daily dose of superiority, a sugar pill swallowed to treat some long-suffered wound.
The past was like that. Folks couldn’t help but try to numb it, soothe it, placate it, cajole it. Ritualistically apply balm to the wound, even if it hurt others in turn. Some injuries festered and poisoned the rest of the body. Some healed over time, though the scars left behind varied in ugliness and visibility.
And Monsieur Bernard soothed his wound by gatekeeping knowledge and humiliating his students. Case in point.
Martin’s face went from pale to red as he hurriedly flipped pages in his book. The freckled boy with carroty orange hair flushed easier than Will did, and a much more livid color, almost purple in places. He traced his blunt finger down the verses in front of him. Will felt the stinging shame radiating off of him like a physical heat; the shift in point of view was nauseatingly sudden. His classmate’s shame and antipathy infected Will like a transmissible curse.
Will closed his eyes briefly, bowing his head as if looking at his own copy of The Odyssey.
“Sirens are… like… mermaids,” Martin tried, his voice cracking on the second half of the enchanted word. He cleared his throat and bumbled forward. “W-with a fish’s tail–”
To sever his own suffering by proxy, Will did what he’d learned to do since crossing the Atlantic and settling in Paris. He went to the memory palace.
The entrance he’d built was the old back door to Granny G’s house, with peeling white paint and a flimsy frame. That door only existed here, in his mind – he’d replaced it himself last summer. But he kept the dilapidated one alive in his mind. It was the door Hannibal had crept through the first night they’d met, slipping something between the side of the door and the off-kilter frame to lift the simple hook latch to sneak in. The mental door was unlocked for Will, though, and it was always twilight here, fireflies dancing through the velvet summer gloaming, the cicadas accompanying their blinking ballet with their bayou serenade.
Hannibal was there, stretched out on the thin twin mattress on the floor, nestled amongst the chipped wicker furniture. Petting Evinrude, who purred contentedly at his side. Hannibal now, not the mute, hollow-eyed thirteen-year-old he’d met in ‘49. Stripped to his briefs in the heat, his long, shapely dancer’s legs tan and muscled and stretched against the stark white sheets.
Will knelt, reaching out to pet the cat, then stroked Hannibal’s hair away from his smiling face. And just like that, he was himself again. He never knew himself as well as he knew himself when he was with Hannibal, even just the imago of him. Claude Martin’s shame bled away from Will, as did his empathy for his bitter, sharp-tongued teacher’s long-suffered inadequacies. It worked every time, even if Will worried that it wouldn’t. How could a miracle keep happening, over and over and over?
Thank God, Zeus, the Sirens, or whoever, because Will needed it here in Paris. He loved the city because Hannibal loved it, because Lady Murasaki loved it. Part of him adored it as well. But there were just so many people. He’d grown up in Granny’s isolated home a mile from a town of roughly a thousand people (and that was a good year). Even when he’d moved to Biloxi with his father and attended the large high school, he’d lived with Beau in a trailer in Latimer, surrounded by swamp and stretches of woodland. They had neighbors a quarter-mile down the road, but it was still country. At night he came home to the quiet again.
In Paris, there was no quiet. And he’d discovered that immersing himself in Parisian French, the constant strain of translation, listening carefully to pronunciation, and wracking his brain to remember idioms and slang made it difficult to control the pendulum in his mind. He was often at the mercy of those around him, losing his grip on himself and slipping into their point of view.
Hannibal was the only recourse. In person, or in the memory palace.
“Graham.” Chgraaahm was how everyone at Archambault Academy pronounced it, and even after a month of school, it still took him a second to recognize it as his name and respond.
He opened his eyes and looked up at Monsieur Bernard. “ Oui, Monsieur .”
“I see you find Martin’s floundering as dull as I do. But there is no sleeping in class.”
The other boys tittered as a courtesy, or of nervous delight that they hadn’t been chosen as prey.
“I’m sorry, Monsieur.”
“Why don’t you answer the question for us, if you aren’t too tired?” Monsieur Bernard said, tilting his balding head, his eyes gleaming behind his thick-framed glasses. When he folded his arms, the wide-sleeved professorial gown he wore flapping briefly like the wings of an irritated crow.
Will deployed the pendulum now, using it to match the accent and cadence of his teacher’s speech. The French felt stilted and dry on his tongue compared to the sweet flow of Cajun from back home as it danced in and out of English, but he soldiered on. “There are no physical descriptions of the Sirens in The Odyssey , Monsieur.”
The correct answer. But that wouldn’t do. “And where does Odysseus encounter these creatures?”
“An island in the western sea, between Circe’s and the rocks of Scylla.” Pronouncing Greek names amid the foreign French was another layer of complexity.
Correct again, though Monsieur Bernard only acknowledged it by asking another question. “How did Odysseus survive the encounter?”
“Circe warned him. So he had his crew plug their ears with wax and tie him to the mast of his ship. He wanted to hear the song.”
Correct again. Will kept his eyes open but clung to the image of the memory palace. Hannibal’s scent. Evinrude’s mighty purr. It shielded him from the growing antipathy coming from his teacher. He glanced at Claude Martin, whose face had returned to its normal shade. He had an encouraging half-smile on his lips.
“Etymology of the name ‘siren.’”
Not a question, and also not in the reading. And not in his best interest to answer correctly.
Claude’s orange brow twitched up and his smile quirked further.
“There are two possibilities. Beeks insists on, ah… a pre-Greek origin. Most say it’s connected to seirá , which means ‘rope’, and eírō , which means to tie o-or fasten. Could be a reference to Odysseus having his men tie him to the mast. But if you combine seirá and eírō , you get ‘binder’ or ‘entangler.’ Their voices are the rope. The song binds those who hear it.”
The classroom was as quiet as the moment before an execution, the bloodthirsty crowd filling the Place de la Concorde gone silent as the man in black reached for the lever to drop the guillotine blade.
Monsieur Bernard’s lip curled. “And who birthed the Sirens?” was the next question, yet another one that wasn’t in the reading.
“The river god Achelous, and Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy,” was Will’s answer.
Monsieur Bernard’s curled lip eased itself of disdain and became a triumphant smile. “Wrong,” he said. “While their origin is not explored by Homer, Servius names Achelous the father and the muse Calliope their mother. Calliope, Graham, muse of eloquence and epic poetry, whose name quite literally means ‘beautiful voiced.’” He spread his hands as if to say, do you understand the connection now, my dull child, or shall I have to spell it out for you word-for-word, letter-for-letter?
Don’t say it –
Will’s mouth cut off his mind. “And Melpomene means ‘to sing’ or ‘one who is melodious.’ Besides, Servius is one source. Should we ignore Lycophron, Apollodorus, Gaius Julius Hyginus, and John Tzetzes? They all name Melpomene as the mother of the Sirens.”
Monsieur Bernard launched into a tirade about translation errors and which sources could be trusted. It was his turn to be red in the face. Will just looked at him, seeing him and not seeing him, imagining Hannibal’s hand in his. The teacher’s clipped, angry French slowly sank like a leaking boat into the hum of bayou cicadas – dog day cicadas and tiny mesquite cicadas, the gorgeous golden reshes and hieroglyphics braiding their voices together in glorious harmony. Cicadettana calliope calliope.
Just above the insectile symphony, he heard the class bell ring. The students usually waited to be dismissed, but today they packed up their things while Monsieur Bernard was still laying into Will’s answer and ignored him when he snapped, “The bell doesn’t dismiss you, I do!”
Will politely waited until his teacher, at last, gave up, and banished him with a curse, something under his breath about Will’s ugly Cajun French, his breeding, and how he’d never get anywhere in life with his sassy mouth – the usual stuff. A dismissive wave of his hand freed Will from his presence and the academy itself. Day was done. He slipped his books into his brown leather messenger’s bag and slung it over his shoulder. Taking a page from Hannibal’s book, he politely wished his fuming teacher a good afternoon before leaving.
Other boys dressed in Archambault Academy uniforms – tan trousers and white shirts, goldenrod ties, and navy blue blazers with the school’s crest on the breast pocket – loitered on the front steps, smoking, posturing, laughing, bothering any girls who happened by. Claude Martin caught up with him to ask if Will wanted to join him and a few of his friends on a nearby pitch to kick around a football, then wander down to the riverbank later to share a bottle of cider. It was nice of them, and while Monsieur Bernard didn’t appreciate Will’s abilities, his classmates seemed to respect him for it, though some relentlessly teased him for his New World accent and his still-smooth face. If this was a mixed school, we could vote him the prettiest boy and prettiest girl! Hey Graham, I shaved last night. Saved you my whiskers. A little glue and the girls might actually fancy you.
Yet, the academy was heaven compared to the school in Bayou Bend or Biloxi. Private academy. Impressive library. And while Classics left some rigor to be desired, Will’s science and literature classes held his attention and his teachers made an effort to challenge him instead of pretending he wasn’t there.
Will thanked Claude for the invitation but declined. “I’m meeting someone,” he explained with a reluctant shrug.
“That’s what you said last time,” Claude grinned, showing off the gap in his front teeth. “What’s her name? What’s she look like?”
Will didn’t answer, just smiled down at his shoes, stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets. “See you Monday.”
With that, he turned down Rue Saint Placide and made a left onto Rue Vavin, then crossed the Rue d’Assas and entered the Luxembourg Gardens. The public park was an island of nature enclosed in the city, though it was nowhere near as wild as the natural landscape Will was used to. Luxembourg Palace was Marie de’ Medici’s home after the death of her husband, King Henry VI of France; the residence and gardens were designed with Marie’s beloved Florence in mind. It was filled with winding gravel paths, fountains and statues, and rows and rows of maples, oaks, ash trees, and a few ancient elms that may have been planted by the Medici queen herself. The lawns were manicured a far cry from wild, but it was still grass and earth. Will’s favorite spot was tucked behind a row of tall, thick weigela bushes, surrounded by foliage on three sides and sheltered by the gnarled branches of an old-growth sycamore.
The weather was glorious – warm with a cool breeze, the clouds fleecy and fast-moving. The gravel walks were busy with people and the benches and chairs were full, but Will’s spot was deserted, as usual. He settled on the grass, angling himself to have an unobstructed view of Harde de Cerf, a bronze statue depicting a stag, a doe, and a fawn huddled together as if being hunted. The stag stood proud and tall in defense of his family, metal horns raised, refusing to be cast as prey. Woe to anyone who might attempt harm; the tines of his horns jutted up like a phalanx of spear points ready to pierce flesh and rupture organs. Will always felt safe looking at it; proudly defiant, too, his point of view oscillating between the fawn and the stag protecting it.
After a moment of gazing at the bronze-frozen Cervidae, he opened his bag and fished out an aerogramme, using his copy of The Odyssey as a makeshift writing surface.
Oct. 1st
Dear Granny,
Quoi ca die? Comment ca va? I miss you!
Today’s the day. I’ve lived in Paris for exactly one month. It feels like a minute or two. Time is different here. I remember how slow a hot afternoon used to pass in Bayou Bend. It seemed like the summer days lasted forever. Paris just gets busier and busier. When I got here, most folks were still out of town on vacation. But now the city’s filling up again. Replenishing. People coming home after being at the seaside or the country. The roads here are jammed like you wouldn’t believe. Train and metro stations packed.
It’s not like it’s all rush-rush. Folks know how to slow down & enjoy a cup of coffee at a cafe & chew the fat. But instead of gossiping about who didn’t come to church last Sunday they talk about books – politics – philosophy. I love it. Hannibal and I go to coffee shops on the weekends all the time.
It was good to hear your voice last Sunday & mighty kind of the Fontenots to let you use their telephone. How’s the truck running? Don’t forget to tell Pete to check the oil every time you get her filled up at the service station.
You know how time works in funny ways in dreams? I feel like this is a dream. I’m seeing things I only ever read about. Too amazing to be real, too beautiful. Can a body get exhausted from dreaming about incredible things? At the same time I don’t want Paris to become mundane and stop taking my breath away. It’s the best dream I’ve ever had.
The academy is going good. I got a couple teachers don’t like me much but we’re used to that, aren’t we? But Mr. Chastain is the best. Did I tell you he went to the Amazon when he was in college and lived there for three months to study insects and bring home specimens? We’re raising moths in the classroom and last week he let me feed Boris (the ball python). My classmates pretend they’re perfectly comfortable with a snake but you know how I can tell things about folks. Mr. Chastain says I’m the only one who’s really at ease with all the creepy-crawly things he keeps. Unlike a lot of these boys, I grew up with bugs and snakes and all that. Bayou in the blood comes in handy even in Paris, I guess.
Out of space! These cards are so small. Real quick – Murasaki is well, Chiyoh is having a rough time with some folks in her classes on account of her being Japanese and a girl, but she has perfect grades, and Hannibal? Mais, he’s got some joie, him!
I love you much, Granny! Remember, I will call the Fontenot phone on Saturday, 8:00 am your time. – Love, Will