Da Vinci's Bicycle - Guy Davenport (e novels to read TXT) 📗

with an ABC on it, you understand, and a wee stand with three pegs it stands on, and they touch this ever so lightly with their fingertips, and this thingumabob moves about and spells words, do you see?

— But of course they’re pushing it where they want it to go, I protested.

— On no! said Tabitha. Their eyes are shut tight. It’s her, the daughter, copies down what Shakespeare . . .

— Old Scratch, Polly corrected.

— Who are they? Tabitha said. I know they’re prominent people, and gentry as they have it in France, and that they’re in bad with their king over there. So oriental, the French, wouldn’t you say?

— They all have the same Christian names, Polly said, locating another scandal. The mother is Adèle, the daughter is Adèle; father and son are both Victor. But what’s that when they haven’t no more gumption than my hens and break the seventh commandment and eat snails.

— And was taken off Jersey by the Law and brought here, Tabitha said, because of something disrespectful of the Queen he put in a newspaper. I wonder that they don’t bundle the lot of them back to France.

— What, John, did he say in the newspaper? Was it that letter about Tapner?

— He tried to keep Tapner from being hanged, I explained. He has spoken against capital punishment for years. On the lines, as I understand it, that two wrongs don’t make a right. Says its makes a murderer of society.

Tabitha looked outrage from her eyes. Polly patted her foot.

— I wonder how he would have talked, I said, if he had known Tapner?

HE WORE HIS GREATCOAT, for the day was raw. We met, as agreed, before the prison, up the hill from the government buildings. I had told him how he could identify the plain granite building by the G cut in the arch of its gate, and over the G a crown. He was there when I arrived, a cunning look of amusement in his eyes.

— The G, he said, pointing up, and the crown.

I shook hands with him in the French manner, and pulled the bell that brought a warder to let us in. The jailor was on the lookout for us, and came forward bearing a ring of keys.

— Barbet, I said, this is Vicomte Hugo, the distinguished French writer who’s taking refuge on our shores because he doesn’t recognize Napoleon the Third as Emperor of his country. Vicomte, High Sheriff Barbet.

— Never Vicomte, he said, shaking a playful finger at me. Mister is all a man needs, or if you prefer, Citizen Hugo, unless, of course, one is a High Sheriff.

His bow to Barbet from the waist embarrassed us both. Barbet winked, as if to say that we had a slippery one on our hands.

— I want, Monsieur Hugo said, quite simply to see the cell of John Charles Tapner. And, if it is permitted, where he died.

He pronounced him Zhon Sharl Topnair.

— Well, Barbet said, you are welcome to Barbet House, as those adept at hamesucn and sneakbudging call my establishment.

I realized that Monsieur Hugo understood very little English. He and I spoke French, if you can call my schoolboy’s French French. When Barbet spoke, Hugo had that look in his eye which was part bluff and part hope that what was being said did not require comment or answer.

We passed through Barbet’s apartments and could see his wife and daughter peeling carrots and potatoes.

Tapner’s cell, when we reached it down a cold white corridor, had a black door. Long iron hinges traversed its width.

— It is occupied, you understand, Barbet explained as he found the key and unlocked the narrow black door with such a feeling of blankness about it, as if it had no right to any feature or ornament.

Inside there was a woman, shivering. Her dress was thin, her shoes worn out, and her only other garment, a kind of party coat, once pink, had been some grand lady’s wrap for summer wear. She sat huddled on a cot before a small brick fireplace that had nothing in it.

— She is a thief, Barbet said as if she were not there, an Irish thief.

Hugo looked at her with pity, but said nothing. I think he wanted to speak, but restrained himself. Instead, he looked carefully at the ferociously plain walls, at the little window with its two black bars.

— She has been arraigned? he asked in a soft, conversational tone.

— And is waiting for her sentence, Barbet said.

— What will it likely be?

— Australia, I suppose. These cells are way stations, you might call them. The prisoners go from here to another prison, to deportation, or to the gallows. Across the way you can see the Mill Bank block, where the prisoners are serving out time. There they may not speak, or sing, or whistle.

— Why, said Hugo, does that woman not have a fire to sit by?

— No fires ever, Barbet said, however cold it gets, except by doctor’s orders.

Barbet opened the cell next to Tapner’s. It was empty, and somehow looked less desolate than the other because it was empty. Some prisoner had decorated the whitewashed wall. He had written the words war, history, and Cain. And around these unarticulated words he had drawn a veritable navy of all sorts of ships, accurately but without any grace of line.

Monsieur Hugo stood on the bed and peered out the high window.

— One can see Sark, he said. And ships on the horizon. That woman back there, he said in the same tone of voice, is phthisical. I should also think that she is dying.

Barbet glanced at me. This Monsieur Hugo was already overstepping himself.

— She is not bright, Barbet offered. For days she has been asking if her grandmother is still alive. Not that she will tell us who her grandmother is, mind you. Just that, the everlasting question if her grandmother’s alive.

We were shown a cell for particular punishment, where the window was