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| Silent Yearning |
Chapter 11: Lost
Hesitantly, she entered the destroyed house. Window panes crunched under her footsteps -the only sound in an otherwise frightening silence. She reached the once brightly luminous entrance hall. The white marble floor was dirty and scratched by unknown intruders. The chandelier, which shining gloriously had always attracted a great deal of attention of visitors, now lay broken at her feet.
The single crystals had found a spot in all corners of the hall. Oscar wanted to take the path to her former room. Her way continued over creaky pieces of broken glass. But under the sound of broken crystals, she also perceived a noise from the rearmost rooms for a short moment. At first she had believed that it was imaginary, but then she detected explicit noises that resounded from the kitchen. Steps, slow, almost slurping. Oscar determinedly grabbed under her dress in order to pull out the dagger, which was wrapped around her shank with a leather tape. With the dagger in her hand, she crept to the frame of the torn out door and threw a glance at the interior of the kitchen.
Pots and pans were lying scattered on the floor. The big dining table and chairs were knocked over. Cabinet doors stood open and were partly torn off.
And amidst that chaos a small figure with grey hair was sitting in a crouched position. Her erstwhile nanny.
Numb, Oscar dropped the dagger. In front of her sat a Sophie that seemed to have aged a hundred years. Sophie had not noticed the figure behind her yet, until Oscar moved and she perceived her steps as she came closer to her.
Quickly, she grabbed a knife which lay on the floor, and then she turned around. It was an unbelievingly sad view. Sophie fluctuated from one side to the other and sniffed loudly, while the peppy move of the hand in which she held the knife was supposed to appear threatening to Oscar. The knife trembled in the decrepit hand.
�Who are you?� she asked tremulously, with a stertorous voice. Oscar woke from her numbness. She went down on her knees in front of Sophie so that she could see her face. Sophie eyes were blurry and pale. She still wore her horn-rimmed-glasses, which was scratched and partly slivered. Her skin was one large range of fold mountains, her clothes tattered and the few strands of hair were rumpled. Sophie stared at Oscar for a long time. Troublesome, she squinted her eyes in order to see a bit more of a clear picture. After endless seconds, the corners of her mouth formed a smile.
�Oscar?� she aspirated stunnedly. �Oscar? Oh, my beloved angel, is that you?� Her gaze wandered over the familiar face of her prot�g�e. She put forth her hand and fondled Oscar�s cheek. Big blue veins were shown under the with age spots littered hand.
�Yes, Sophie. It is me.�
�You are not dead? Oh, Oscar, thank Heavens! I thank God that you are still alive.� She burst into uncontrollable sobbing. Oscar hugged her nanny carefully. She seemed so fragile and weak.
�My dear Sophie,� she whispered in her ear and felt happy to see her alive.
Powerless, her old nanny sobbed in her arms. She pushed her away gently and put her hands on the haggard shoulders in order to speak more insistently.
�Sophie, tell me, what has happened here?� Oscar knew that her nanny lacked the strength to hold long speeches, thus she had to ask her questions quickly.
�Many people were here�� she began to tell and kept on seesawing.
�They broke the gate open and they broke the window, those savages, those barbarians! I could not do anything. They walked through your house and plundered. They took the jewelries, the food, the silk, even the golden cutlery, they just took about everything. In doing so they kept screaming: Death to the nobility! Deprivation of all privileges! Death! Death to the nobility!� Sophie cried even harder and repeated her words again and again. She still seemed to be under shock and Oscar feared that the people had harmed her. Suddenly Oscar realized the value of her words and she hoped that those people had not carried out their threats.
"Sophie...Sophie! Where are my parents?� Panic came over her. But Sophie kept on crying incessantly.
�What happened?� somebody behind her asked suddenly and Oscar turned around, startled. Due to the sobs of her nanny she did not notice Girodelle�s entrance.
Without any explanation she rose and walked past Girodelle �Please stay with her for a short while, Count.�
�OSCAR, don�t go. Stay here!� Fearfully the old woman put forth her hand, shaking. Oscar carefully took it between her warm hands.
�I will be back soon Sophie, I promise. Count de Girodelle will stay here. Everything is going to be fine!�
�Andr�? Where is Andr�? The boy was supposed to be at your side all the time.�
�He is, Sophie. Andr� is fine. Everything is going to be fine.� Oscar let go of her hand moved slowly.
�Yes, everything will be fine. You are back�� she muttered.
Walking briskly, she passed through the entrance hall and went to the staircase which led to the first floor. The smell of smut got more intense. Finally she reached her old room. People had been raging in there as well. With the accommodation, her memories seemed to have been battered. Embittered, she regarded the sad remains of the piano. She stopped short. Unlike in the rest of the castle, the raging here had been more systematically. The destruction of the other rooms attested to a ruthless raid, but here the furniture was destroyed thoroughly, almost pedantically. What did that mean? Reflectively she kept on looking. She quickly left her former chambers and passed through all rooms. Thereby it was enough to just look inside the rooms, because all of them offered the same picture of the raid. Oscar�s hope to find valuables or even to see her parents again was fading. She believed they had escaped�.she did not want to think about their death quite yet. Many nobles had escaped abroad. Maybe her parents had as well.
Oscar reached her mother�s chamber. A door actually still existed there, but it was loosely leaning. She carefully went in and walked across the room. Her mother�s room was in semidarkness. The huge canopy bed stood out as a silhouette.
Her heartbeat stopped. Seemingly lost, like a little child, her mother lay on the bed. Her emaciated body was resting between white sheets. She was pale and Oscar could perceive the smell of disease and death. Her legs felt heavy when she went over to her mother. She sat down at one edge of the bed and gazed at her mother�s face for a long time.
Sophie�s condition had startled her; her mother�s image horrified her. Life had faded away from the elegant, demure Lady de Jarjayes. Her red eyes lay deep in the eyeholes, shadowed by dark blue. The skin tautened around her skull, parchmenty. Veins crisscrossed across the temples. The hair lay on the pillow, unglamorous and weak. Oscar did not feel the tears which ceaselessly ran down her cheeks.
Her mother�s arms were a little stretched from her body. Oscar lowered her head and carefully put it on her mother�s hand.
�Ma m�re...� she whispered. �Maman.�
Her mother�s hand budged. Oscar looked up, surprised. The woman who was believed dead, had opened her eyes a little.
�My dear child.� It was more of a groan, but Oscar understood. Her mother was not dead, but death had already been waiting for her. The hand hardly rendered any warmth of life. She seemed to not have eaten anything for days or a disease had taken her body and now spread inside of her inexorably.
�Now I know why God had some time left for me,� she whispered, and Oscar asked herself where the strength to still form complete sentences came from. �I knew you were still alive�He allowed me to see you one last time so that I can ask you for forgiveness.�
Oscar shook her head, confused.
�Forgiveness for what?� She noticed that her voice was no more than a tremble. Her mother tried to take a deep breath and gather strength for her potentially last words.
�Forgiveness for my incompetence concerning your upbringing. I have never defied your father. Not when he sold all my daughters to husbands in the most remote provinces of France. Not when he forced you to lead an unnatural life. He led you into disaster�.I should have led you on to the right track. I should have supported you more�Live your life, Oscar�.and forgive me, please�!� Her breathing got faster and Oscar saw a single tear that had found its way out of the corner of the eye and now left behind a wet spot on the pillow.
�You never, never disappointed me, ma m�re. I love you.� Those were the last words that Madame Jarjayes perceived from her daughter before her eyes broke and her facial features flagged. The last bit of life had faded from her body. But Oscar�s mother glided into the twilight zone happily because she was allowed to ask her daughter for forgiveness. She did not hear the helpless scream at her death bed that she shall come back and she did not see how Oscar, under heartbreaking sobbing, collapsed over her lifeless body.
In trance Oscar left the room. In only such a short time she had lost so much. She could not tell whether she was breathing, she also did not know where she was at the moment. The shock and the sadness over the loss of her mother had reached her and took over. She had to bury her mother. She had to find a priest. In those times hardly any cleric was willing the leave the church or the monastery.
Without being conscious of it, she stood in front of Andr�s former room. There was not much to steal for the raiders in there. Andr� did not possess many valuables. Diffidently, she entered the room. Except for some overturned pieces of furniture the room was unchanged. Melancholically, Oscar let her gaze wander. She went to the bed and moved the blanket. From the many years of use Andr�s body had formed a hollow in the mattress. Oscar affectionately stroked over the sheet, then she squared her tense shoulders with a sigh and continued her peregrination. On her way through her father�s workroom she paused. Oscar looked up meditatively. Here, there once hung the only portrait ever drawn of her. Sadly, she looked at the naked wall. It hung opposite to her father�s desk. She looked down surprisedly. Across the floor were pieces of the portrait widespread like a puzzle. Everything indicated that someone tampered with it personally. The canvas had been chopped with a dagger or a sword.
She went to the pompous marble chimney and saw that pieces of the frame lay burnt in the cooled down ashes. Oscar did not know what to think of that, but strangely it touched her.
Suddenly she heard that someone had entered the room. She thought that Girodelle had followed her, but when she turned around she saw her father standing a couple of meters next to her. His face was like a stone. Oscar was scared by the hardness of his expression. She could see how her father eyeballed her. His look became condescending when he gazed over the dress. Oscar as well looked at her father closely. In front her still stood the proud man from before. Unlike her mother and Sophie his features had hardly changed. They had just become harder, relentless.
His clothing and strict periwig as well were appropriate for a general. Her father seemed to be the only one unharmed by the plunder.
�Every day�� he said unexpectedly, with his usual deep voice, but he stopped.
�What every day?� Oscar aspirated hardly audible. She did not know what she had to expect now, but she could not imagine a happy reunion with her father.
�Every day I destroy a little more of that blemish� he said and one could hear something similar to satisfaction in his voice. And instantly Oscar understood. Her own father, in a fit of rage, destroyed the portrait, and by �blemish� Oscar herself was meant.
�Mother is dead�� she murmured to reach him at his emotions, but he did not show either sadness nor any kind of impulse. He was silent. She could only see hate in him.
�She has to be buried adequately.�
He kept staring at her. �You shall not take an interest in that. This is not your family anymore. The Queen will arrange for an appropriate funeral.�
Without thinking she said �I love you, father��
After more seemingly endless seconds she heard his voice again.
�Get out of here! Or do you want me to lose my temper?!� He took a step towards her. �I no more have a daughter. You have betrayed our honour.�
�Honour? That is just a word. Goodbye, father!� Oscar could not say anything against that. And she did not want to, because she had suspected that she would not be welcomed with open arms by her father.
She knew that today was the last time she saw him. Her feeling told her so.
She walked out of the room, went down the stairs and back to the kitchen.
There she saw Girodelle who had managed to calm Sophie down. Girodelle saw her tear-filled face.
�What happened?�
�My mother is dead,� she only said monotonously and glanced at her nanny who sat on a left stool. Sophie again started lamenting and crying loudly. Tired, Oscar sighed.
�I forgot to look for notarized documents concerning my birth. It would not be of any use anyway. Without statements of my father I cannot get any of the deposited money. And he will not be in favour of giving them to me.�
�That would be of no use,� Sophie snuffled between two sobs.
�What do you mean?�
�Your father has withdrawn all money holdings of the family,� she said. �Your money, too. He probably was afraid that the people would storm the banks. But the mob found everything and took it all when they intruded here. We do not have one single Sou.�
Oscar laughed dryly. Then she worriedly turned to Girodelle who silently stood a little aside. �Count de Girodelle, would you accommodate Sophie and take care of her? I don�t possess the financial means to provide medical care. I�m begging you�!�
It was visibly unpleasant for her to have to ask him for this. Without hesitation, Girodelle agreed.
�Is there anything I can do for you?�
Oscar shook her head. It was time to return to Paris.
She did not look back.
Her old life therewith was buried irrevocably.
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