Evangelista's Fan by Rose Tremain Read Free Book Online Page A

in Corsica, the spring comes fast. The maquis starts to bloom. The mimosas come into flower.
    Mercedes was susceptible to the perfume of things. So much so that, this year, she didn’t want even to see the mimosa blossom. She wanted everything to stay walled up in its own particular winter. She wanted clouds to gather and envelop the town in a dark mist.
    She crept about the place like a thief. She had no conversations. She scuttled here and there, not looking, not noticing. In her apartment, she kept the shutters closed. She worked on the candles by the light of a single bulb.
    Honorine came down to see her. ‘You can’t go on like this, Mercedes,’ she said. ‘You can’t live this way.’
    â€˜Yes, I can,’ said Mercedes.
    â€˜He looks old,’ said Honorine, ‘his skin’s yellowy. He’s not the handsome person he used to be.’
    Mercedes said nothing. She thought, no one in this place, not even my sister, has ever understood what I feel.
    â€˜You ought to go and meet him,’ said Honorine. ‘Have a drink with him. It’s time you forgave him.’
    Mercedes busied herself with the wax she was melting in a saucepan. She turned her back towards Honorine.
    â€˜Did you hear what I said?’ asked Honorine.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Mercedes, ‘I heard.’
    After Honorine had left, Mercedes started to weep. Her tears fell into the wax and made it spit. Her cheeks were pricked with small burns. She picked up a kitchen cloth and buried her head in it. She thought, what no one understands is that this darkness isn’t new. I’ve been in it in my mind for twenty-seven years, ever since that February morning in the square when the mimosas were coming into flower. There were moments when it lifted – when those big sunsets came in at the laundry window, for instance – but it always returned, as night follows day; always and always.
    And then she thought, but Honorine is right, it is intolerable. I should have done what I dreamed of doing. I should have killed him. Why was I so cowardly? I should have cut off his future – all those days and months of his happy life in Paris that I kept seeing like a film in my head: the ballerina’s hair falling on his body; her feet touching his feet under the dainty patisserie table; their two summer shadows moving over the water of the Seine. I should have ended it as I planned, and then I would have been free of him and out of the darkness and I could have had a proper life.
    And now. She was in Leclos, in her own town that she’d never left, afraid to move from her flat, gliding to and from the church like a ghost, avoiding every face, sunk into a loneliness so deep and fast it resembled the grave. Was this how the remainder of her life was to be spent?
    She prised the buttons of wax from her cheeks with her fingernails. She took the saucepan off the gas flame and laid it aside, without pouring its contents into the candle moulds. It was a round-bottomed pan and Mercedes could imagine the smooth, rounded shape into which the wax would set.
    She ran cold water onto her face, drenching her hair, letting icy channels of water eddy down her neck and touch her breasts. Her mind had recovered from its futile weeping and had formulated a plan and she wanted to feel the chill of the plan somewhere near her heart.
    She lay awake all night. She had decided at last to kill Louis Cabrini.
    Not with her own hands, face to face. Not like that.
    She would do it slowly. From a distance. With all the power of the misery she’d held inside her for twenty-seven years.
    Morning came and she hadn’t slept. She stared at the meagre strips of light coming through the shutters. In this basement apartment, it was impossible to gauge what kind of day waited above. But she knew that what waited above, today, was the plan. It was a Friday. In Mercedes’ mind, the days of the week were different colours. Wednesday