Page 81 of Vianne

There are some assaults for which not even the strongest spell can prepare.

This was one of them; an attack that sent my house of cards flying.

I felt my vision darken; my breath caught in my throat like a fishbone.

Suddenly I couldn’t breathe, and my little Anouk inside me was struggling for deliverance.

Once more I was in the confessional, with the choir like birds in the eaves, and the scent of smoke and candle wax, and my voice in the trembling darkness:

You’re not my mother! Get away!

Louis watched me with a look that combined hurt and satisfaction.

I could feel his bitter triumph behind the shades of his misery.

Behind him, I could see Emile, Marinette, Monsieur Georges watching in confused distress.

Lo?c, too, was watching me, his eyes as dark as the future.

I felt my throat tighten, my vision blur.

The room was spinning and sparkling like a Christmas bauble.

I took a step away from the bar, and found myself falling – down, down – into the vacuum of memory.

And it smells like Christmas; like gingerbread and sugar cakes and galette des rois; and it feels like the first gasp of winter, when the sky is only a moment from snow; and it sounds like a distant carillon, and the hush of a crowded cathedral, and I am still in the confessional, eight years old and already making the choices that lead me to this, this moment of discovery.

You’re not my mother! Get away!

No, I’m not your mother.

I look up from my place at the back of the church. The wood, dark oak, the cushions sewn from panels of midnight-blue velvet. It might be a box at the opera, except for the scent of incense smoke; and here she is in her red dress, her hair as white as Santa Claus.

‘Khamaseen.’

The sense of relief is powerful. All this must be a dream. I must have passed out at La Bonne Mère; somewhere in the church vaulting, I seem to hear their voices, like bats’ wings in the darkness.

‘If you like.’ Her voice is dry. ‘Names are a distraction. Your mother was Mother because of what she did , not because of who she was . The question is, who will you be? Will you be the woman who rides the wind, picks up hagstones, turns lives with a fork of the fingers? Or will you be the one who pays for your mother’s actions? Will you be Vianne, or Mother?’

And now, in the confessional, I understand the choice I must make.

Security, or the call of the wind. The chocolaterie, or the highway.

My little Anouk in a railway station, late at night, in some nameless town, or a kitchen with knives of my own, and polished copper pans on the wall?

And each decision comes at a price; freedom, or discovery.

‘Why must I choose?’ My voice is small, and I know that this is because I am eight years old; eight years old, and poised between two choices no eight-year-old should have to make.

‘Because we choose our family,’ she says, and I realize that she is not Khamaseen after all, but Maman, my own beloved Maman, with her curly hair bound in a scarf, and her eyes pinned with golden light. ‘We choose them, just as I chose you, and you must make your own choice.’

Choose?

Vianne or Mother. Mother, or Vianne.

‘It isn’t fair,’ I whisper, and now I can smell the paint fumes, see the blur of faces far above mine on the dusty floor. ‘It isn’t fair. This wasn’t my choice.’

And yet I realize, it was. I chose to be here, just as I chose to follow in the path of the wind.

Jeanne Rochas, of no fixed abode, who might be travelling with a child .

I chose to follow that path, that life. I chose to love her as she loved me.

And I chose to leave behind the things that had been dearest to me: Molfetta; my home; the people who were my family.

Why had I left them behind? Why had I chosen to follow the wind?

‘Vianne.’ The voice is not Khamaseen’s. It is a young voice, cracked with anxiety, and it comes from a long way away, from a place of paint fumes and plaster dust. ‘Vianne! Wake up!’

‘Lo?c.’

His round face was sleek with distress. Louis was standing behind him, and for the first time I saw the similarity between them both; the young face and the old juxtaposed, like phases of the same moon.

For a moment I thought of Maman, her strong features which were so different to mine; although we’d come to look alike in travelling together.

You’re not my real mother , I’d said: and yet, I’d never believed it.

We choose our family, she’d said. We lay our claim on those we love.

Anouk. I put my hands to the place where she slept, so soft and silent.

Jeanne Rochas, of no fixed abode . They must have been tracking us for years.

They must have had money. They wanted me.

To know, to love, to claim me. But to accept my new family, I must reject the old one.

And what then? How much scrutiny? How much attention from the press?

How many questions to answer; how many broken dreams to mend?

How much of me would be left, once they had all taken their piece?

And what if they found out I had a child? How soon would they claim her, too?

I tried to sit up.

‘Don’t move.’ It was Louis. His colours had shifted again, and he was no longer angry now; his face a miserable map of all the barren places. ‘Don’t move, Vianne.’

‘I have to go.’

‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ said Louis. His face was ashen now.

‘No ambulance. No doctor.’ A hospital leaves a paper trail: a written proof of existence.

So much harder to vanish then. My mother always understood.

I struggled dumbly to my feet. My throat was as tight as a clenched fist. I could see the faces of my friends in a circle around me, smell hot blood and chocolate.

‘I don’t need help. I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I just need to get back home.’