“I’d like that,” said Alice.
Daldry said good night and turned to leave. For a man who normally carried himself with pride, he seemed slumped and hesitant. He changed his mind and turned around to take the bottle of gin before leaving for good. Alice was exhausted and went to bed as soon as Daldry was gone. She fell asleep almost immediately.
“Come with me,” a voice whispered. “We have to leave.”
A door opened into the night. There was no light in the street outside and the houses’ shutters were closed and latched. A woman took her by the hand. They crept down the street together as quietly as possible, staying in the shadows cast by the moonlight. They carried lightly packed bags. Alice had a little black suitcase with a few things in it. When they came to the top of the long flight of steps, they could see the entire city spread out before them. In the distance, flames licked the sky, staining it a violent crimson. “The entire neighborhood is on fire,” said a voice. “They’ve gone mad! But you’ll be safe over there. They’ll protect us. I’m sure of it. Come along. Follow me, my love.”
Alice had never been so afraid. Her bare feet were sore. It had been impossible to find shoes in the chaos that reigned over the city. An old man emerged from a coach-house door that opened onto the street. He signaled for them to turn back, gesturing toward a barricade farther down the street where a group of armed young men stood in wait.
The woman hesitated a moment. She carried a baby wound up in a scarf against her breast and stroked its head to keep it quiet. Their course through the night continued in the opposite direction.
A narrow path led to the top of an embankment. They passed a silent fountain—there was something reassuring about the stillness of the water in its basin. To their right there was an opening in the long fortified wall. The woman seemed to know the place, and Alice followed her. They crossed an abandoned garden. The tall grass stood still in the windless night, and thistles pricked Alice’s legs as though they were trying to hold her back. She opened her mouth to complain but knew she must keep silent.
In the depths of a sleepy orchard, they came upon a ruined church. They crossed the rubble of the crumbling apse. The pews lay overturned, charred from a fire. Alice lifted her head and saw the remnants of centuries-old mosaics on the vaulted ceiling overhead. The faded face of Christ, or perhaps an apostle, seemed to watch over her. A door opened, and Alice passed into the second apse. In the center of the room stood a tomb covered in porcelain tiles, immense and monolithic. They went past the tomb and into an antechamber, where the bitter smell of charred stone mingled with the familiar scents of thyme and caraway—herbs that grew in the empty field behind her house. Even though they were mixed with the acrid smoke, she managed to make out their familiar smells.
The burnt church was now nothing but a distant memory. The woman took her through a gate, and they ran down another narrow street. Alice was exhausted, and her legs began to give way. The hand holding hers let go, abandoning her. She sat down on the paving stones. The woman continued without turning back.
Rain began to fall. Alice called for help, but the rain was too heavy. Soon the woman’s outline disappeared in the distance. Alice sat alone in the street, chilled and wet. She cried out, the long, bellowing cry of a wounded animal.
Hail ricocheted off the skylight. Gasping for breath, Alice sat up in bed, searching for the switch on the lamp beside her bed. With the light on, she looked around the room, taking in the familiar objects one by one.
She pounded the mattress with her fists in frustration, furious to have fallen victim to the same exhausting nightmare that kept returning night after night. She got up and went to her worktable, opened the window that looked out onto the rear of the house, and took a deep breath of the cold night air. The lights were on in Daldry’s flat. His invisible presence was strangely reassuring. In the morning, she would ask Carol for advice. There must be some remedy to calm her sleep. Alice just wanted to make it through the night—one long, gentle night, free from the horror of being pursued like an animal through unfamiliar streets.
Alice spent the following days hard at work. Every evening she put off going to bed, fighting the urge to sleep and battling the fear that took hold of her as darkness fell. And every night she had the same dreams that ended with her crouched on the pavement and soaked by the rain.
She went to see Carol at lunchtime. After asking for her at the hospital reception desk, she waited a good thirty minutes in the lobby among the gurneys and stretchers, watching the ambulancemen unload patients from their vehicles, which arrived with jangling bells. A woman begged the nurses on duty to take care of her sick child. A raving old man wandered among the benches where the other patients waited their turn. A pale young fellow smiled at Alice. The arch of his left eyebrow had been cut open, and a thick trickle of blood flowed down his cheek. Another man, of about fifty, held his side, racked by what seemed like dreadful pain. Sitting in the middle of so much suffering, Alice felt guilty realizing that her nights might be full of horror, but poor Carol’s days weren’t much better. Just as she was thinking about this, Carol appeared, pushing a gurney whose wheels squeaked as they rolled across the linoleum.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, surprised to see Alice. “Are you sick again?”
“No, I just came to take you to lunch.”
“What a nice surprise. Let me park this one here and I’ll be right back,” she said, nodding to her patient. “They could have at least told me you were here. Have you been waiting long?”
Carol pushed the gurney over to a colleague, and left briefly to get her coat and scarf. She hurried back to Alice and led her out of the hospital.
“Come on,” Carol said. “There’s a café around the corner that’s not too terrible. Practically the Ritz compared to our cafeteria.”
“What about your patients?”
“This place is always full of people. If I’m going to be able to do anything about it, I have to eat from time to time. Let’s go.”
The café was packed with customers waiting for a seat when they arrived. Carol smiled and caught the attention of the owner, who nodded to a free table at the back of the room from his position behind the counter.
“Who do you have to bribe to get service like that?” asked Alice as she settled into the chair.
Carol chuckled. “I lanced a boil on his backside last summer. He’s been eating out of my hand ever since.”
“I never realized . . .”
“What a glamorous life I lead?” teased Carol.
“How hard your work is.”
“Oh, I like what I do, even if it isn’t easy every day. I used to bandage up my dolls when I was a little girl. I remember it worried my mother. Anyway, what brings you to this part of town? I don’t suppose you came to the hospital in search of inspiration for one of your perfumes.”
“I just came to have lunch with you. Do I need another reason?”
“You know, a good nurse doesn’t just dress her patients’ wounds. She can also tell when something isn’t right in their heads.”
“But I’m not one of your patients, Carol.”
“You certainly looked like one when I found you in the lobby. You can tell me if something is wrong.”
“Is there a menu?”
“Forget the menu,” said Carol. “I don’t have much time, so we’ll just have the special.”
A waiter brought them two plates of mutton stew.
“I know it doesn’t look like much, but you’ll see, it’s not half bad.”