It was not the absence of someone she remembered that troubled her. It was the certainty that someone was absent whom she had never known.
Émilie discovered the additional place at dinner on the evening following her experiments with the clocks.
It was not immediately conspicuous.
The table had been laid with the usual care. There were plates of white porcelain, silver cutlery, linen napkins and glasses whose stems were sufficiently fine that she had initially been reluctant to handle them. A shallow arrangement of winter branches stood in the centre, its pale bark contrasting with the dark wood.
She counted eight places.
There were seven residents at the table.
This was not in itself remarkable. Someone might be expected later, or a place might have been prepared for a guest who had subsequently declined to attend.
She had observed both arrangements often enough.
What attracted her attention was that the empty place occupied a position between Madame Delorme and Henri, where the table was otherwise uninterrupted.
The chair had been drawn back slightly.
The napkin was folded.
There was wine in the glass.
She looked around the table.
Nobody appeared to notice anything unusual.
Madeleine was discussing the weather with Madame Sorel. Belloc had a book beside his plate, which he consulted occasionally without appearing to find the practice discourteous. Clara was listening to Lucien describe a difficulty he had encountered in the gardens.
Henri sat with his hands folded.
Émilie waited.
At the conclusion of the soup, no one had occupied the chair.
She turned to Madeleine.
“Are we expecting someone?”
The older woman looked up.
“Not that I'm aware.”
“There's an additional place.”
“Is there?”
Émilie indicated the chair.
Madeleine examined it.
“So there is.”
“Who is it for?”
“I don't know.”
The answer was familiar enough that Émilie felt an impulse to smile.
She restrained it.
“Did you set the table?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
Madeleine looked towards the others.
“Does anyone remember?”
There was a brief silence.
Clara shook her head.
Renaud said that he had arrived after the table was prepared.
Belloc appeared not to have noticed the extra place.
Henri looked at the chair with an expression of mild concentration.
“I thought someone was sitting there,” he said.
Émilie turned towards him.
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“When?”
Henri considered.
“Before you asked.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“No.”
“Then why did you think someone was there?”
He looked almost embarrassed.
“Because I was careful not to interrupt.”
Émilie waited.
Henri continued.
“I had the impression that someone was speaking. I didn't hear any words, but I thought it would be impolite to begin while they were still talking.”
“Did you know what they were saying?”
“No.”
“Then what made you think they were speaking?”
Henri looked at her with an expression of genuine uncertainty.
“I don't remember.”
He returned to his meal.
Émilie watched him for a moment.
Then she looked again at the empty place.
Nothing had changed.
The chair remained unoccupied.
The wine had not been touched.
She took out her notebook.
Madeleine observed the movement without comment.
Émilie recorded the number of diners, the arrangement of the table and Henri's statement.
She also recorded her own expectation that the place would be occupied.
It occurred to her that expectation was not an observation.
She placed it under a separate heading.
Then she resumed eating.
The evening proceeded with ordinary conversation.
This, more than the additional place, gradually began to trouble her.
At first she thought the residents were avoiding the subject. Their reluctance to discuss unusual events had occasionally seemed almost ritualised, although she had never found sufficient evidence to establish a deliberate policy.
But nobody appeared to be avoiding anything.
The conversation moved naturally between gardening, literature and the preparation of a meal that Renaud claimed to remember eating in Vienna.
Clara disagreed with his account of the restaurant.
She remembered the same establishment in Prague.
Renaud accepted the correction with some amusement.
Émilie made a note.
It was the kind of discrepancy she had begun to expect.
Then Lucien paused halfway through a sentence.
He looked towards the empty chair.
His expression was attentive.
After a moment he smiled faintly.
“No,” he said. “I don't think that follows.”
There was silence.
Émilie put down her fork.
“What doesn't follow?”
Lucien looked at her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said something didn't follow.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
He considered.
“I must have been thinking aloud.”
“About what?”
“I'm afraid I've forgotten.”
Émilie looked towards the empty chair.
“Were you responding to someone?”
Lucien followed her gaze.
“Not that I know of.”
“Then why did you look there?”
He seemed surprised.
“I don't remember looking anywhere in particular.”
Émilie examined the other residents.
Nobody appeared disturbed.
She returned to her meal.
A few minutes later Madame Sorel drew her chair closer to the table, leaving additional space behind her.
She did so with the unobtrusive care of someone accommodating another person passing through a narrow gap.
Nobody passed.
Émilie observed the movement directly.
She made another note.
Later, Belloc stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence.
His eyes moved briefly towards the empty place.
He waited.
Then he continued.
Émilie asked whether he had heard anything.
He said he had not.
She asked why he had stopped.
He replied that he had thought it appropriate.
“Appropriate to what?”
Belloc considered.
“I'm not sure.”
Émilie looked again at the chair.
She had begun the evening believing that one extra place had been prepared.
Now she was uncertain whether the various behaviours she had observed concerned the same absence.
Henri appeared to have refrained from interrupting someone.
Lucien had seemed to disagree with an unspoken argument.
Sorel had made room for a passing body.
Belloc had waited for an interruption.
These were different kinds of response.
They did not necessarily imply the same cause.
If the residents were participating in a deception, it was an extraordinarily subtle one.
If they were experiencing hallucinations, the hallucinations differed in content.
If they were responding to an actual presence inaccessible to Émilie, she had no evidence that the presence was a person.
She wrote:
The observed behaviours suggest expectations of interaction. They do not establish a common object of interaction.
She considered the sentence.
It was correct.
It was also beginning to feel inadequate.
After the main course, Émilie asked whether she might remove the unused setting.
Madeleine looked at her.
“Why would you wish to?”
“Because no one is using it.”
“That's true.”
“And it occupies space.”
“Very little.”
Émilie felt a brief irritation.
“Is there a reason it should remain?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then surely it makes sense to remove it.”
Madeleine considered.
“If you prefer.”
Émilie rose.
She crossed to the vacant chair and lifted the plate.
It was an ordinary dinner plate, clean and slightly warm from the room.
She picked up the cutlery and folded napkin, placing them upon the plate.
Nothing happened.
She had not expected anything to happen.
Nevertheless, she became acutely conscious of the silence.
She looked around.
Nobody was watching her.
Clara continued speaking to Renaud.
Belloc had returned to his book.
Madeleine was examining her wineglass.
Émilie carried the setting towards the sideboard.
Halfway across the room she stopped.
The sensation was sudden and extraordinarily unpleasant.
She felt that she had done something cruel.
Not merely inconsiderate or impolite.
Cruel.
The emotion possessed the immediate conviction of having deliberately humiliated someone who had offered no offence.
She could almost remember the expression upon the injured person's face.
Not the features.
Only the expression.
The surprise.
The effort to conceal distress.
The quiet acceptance of a slight that could not be publicly acknowledged without making it worse.
Émilie stood motionless.
She recognised the feeling.
She had experienced it years earlier after making an unnecessarily cutting remark to Julien during an argument. His response had been mild, which had made the memory more painful.
This was the same emotion.
Yet there was no one whom she had injured.
She looked down at the plate.
It remained perfectly ordinary.
She could find no reason to suppose that removing it had caused suffering.
The feeling persisted.
She returned to the table.
Carefully, she replaced the plate, the cutlery and the napkin.
She adjusted the chair.
Then she sat down.
The sensation of cruelty diminished.
She was distressed to discover that she felt relieved.
Madeleine watched her.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
Émilie considered.
“No.”
“Would you like to leave?”
“Not yet.”
Madeleine inclined her head.
“Very well.”
Émilie looked at the vacant place.
The wineglass stood exactly where it had stood before.
There was no visible sign of occupancy.
She took out her notebook.
Removal of an unused setting produced an intense affective response resembling guilt.
She paused.
The response diminished after the setting was restored.
She added:
Neither observation establishes that an injured party exists.
The sentence was necessary.
She read it twice.
It brought no comfort.
After dinner, Émilie asked Madeleine whether they might speak privately.
They went to the smaller drawing room overlooking the southern garden.
The curtains had not been drawn. Beyond the windows the trees were dark against a sky in which a few stars were visible.
Madeleine lit a lamp.
Émilie sat upon the sofa.
For some time she remained silent.
The older woman took a chair opposite and waited.
Émilie had begun to recognise that Madeleine's silences were not invitations to confession.
She simply allowed them.
This was increasingly difficult to resist.
“I behaved absurdly,” Émilie said.
“When?”
“At dinner.”
“In what respect?”
“I removed an unused plate and felt as though I'd injured someone.”
“That doesn't seem absurd.”
“It was an emotional response unsupported by the evidence.”
“Yes.”
Émilie looked at her.
“You agree?”
“Of course.”
“Then why doesn't it seem absurd?”
“Because the feeling occurred.”
“Feelings can be mistaken.”
“Certainly.”
“They can have imaginary objects.”
“Yes.”
“Then I don't understand your point.”
Madeleine considered.
“Perhaps there isn't one.”
Émilie smiled despite herself.
“You have an extraordinary talent for making conversation seem entirely unnecessary.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Don't be.”
She looked towards the garden.
“I've been thinking about the difference between experiencing affection and having someone to whom that affection is directed.”
Madeleine remained silent.
“One can love an imaginary person,” Émilie continued. “Or mourn someone who is still alive. The experience is genuine even if its object is misunderstood.”
“Yes.”
“But at dinner I wasn't imagining anyone. I wasn't remembering a lost friend. I had no image, no name, no history.”
“Only the feeling.”
“Yes.”
“And that troubles you.”
“Of course it does.”
“Why?”
Émilie considered.
“Because the emotion seems to imply a relation, and I can't identify the second term.”
Madeleine looked at her with interest.
“Must there be one?”
Émilie sighed.
“That's becoming a rather tiresome question.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
The older woman waited.
Émilie looked down at her hands.
“No,” she admitted. “Not necessarily.”
She remained silent for a moment.
“An experience of attachment needn't establish the existence of another conscious subject. I know that.”
“Yes.”
“But knowing it doesn't make the experience less compelling.”
“Why should it?”
Émilie looked up.
There was nothing challenging in Madeleine's expression.
She appeared genuinely interested in the answer.
“I suppose I expect understanding to alter the experience.”
“Does it usually?”
“Sometimes.”
“Always?”
“No.”
Madeleine nodded.
Émilie examined her.
“Do you ever experience the empty place?”
“Yes.”
“As someone being there?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then how?”
The older woman considered for some time.
“I sometimes experience the expectation of being answered.”
“By whom?”
“I don't know.”
“Does the answer come?”
“Not in the sense you mean.”
“What sense do I mean?”
“Words. Information. Something attributable to another mind.”
“And what do you experience instead?”
Madeleine looked towards the window.
“The expectation sometimes ceases to feel unanswered.”
Émilie remained still.
“That's a very peculiar distinction.”
“Yes.”
“Does it comfort you?”
“Occasionally.”
“Do you believe someone is listening?”
“No.”
“Then what comforts you?”
Madeleine turned towards her.
“Perhaps the absence of a need to be heard.”
Émilie felt something move within her.
Not a revelation.
Not understanding.
A recognition she could not yet place.
She looked away.
They remained together after the lamps in the other rooms had been extinguished.
Émilie had moved from the sofa to the chair beside Madeleine.
Their hands rested close together upon the upholstered arm.
There was no necessity for physical contact.
She was conscious of this.
She was also conscious of wanting it.
The desire had become familiar over the preceding days. It was not the confused attraction of a young woman encountering an unfamiliar form of intimacy. Émilie knew perfectly well what she wanted.
What unsettled her was the precision with which the desire seemed to involve an abdication of her ordinary insistence upon self-direction.
She wanted Madeleine to reach for her.
She wanted the decision to belong to the other woman.
She knew that this did not entail surrendering her right to accept or refuse the contact.
Nevertheless, she found the distinction emotionally insufficient.
At length she spoke.
“May I ask you something personal?”
“Of course.”
“Do you find me attractive?”
Madeleine looked at her.
“Yes.”
The answer was immediate.
Émilie felt herself blush.
It irritated her that she should still be susceptible to so elementary a reaction.
“Physically?”
“Yes.”
“And otherwise?”
“Very much.”
Émilie lowered her eyes.
“Thank you.”
Madeleine's expression softened.
“You asked.”
“I know.”
There was a pause.
“Do you?”
Émilie looked up.
“Do I what?”
“Find me attractive?”
Émilie smiled.
“Rather more than is convenient.”
Madeleine returned the smile.
“Convenient for whom?”
“For the person attempting to conduct a dispassionate investigation.”
“Ah.”
“Don't look so pleased.”
“I'm afraid I am pleased.”
Émilie laughed quietly.
It was the first entirely unguarded laughter she had experienced since arriving at the House.
Madeleine moved her hand.
Her fingers touched Émilie's.
The contact was slight.
Émilie turned her hand beneath it.
For a moment their fingers rested together.
The older woman did not attempt to draw her closer.
Émilie found this simultaneously considerate and maddening.
“I sometimes wish you'd tell me what you want,” she said.
“Would it help?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“With knowing whether I'm wanted.”
Madeleine looked at her for a long time.
“You are.”
Émilie felt the words with an intensity she had not expected.
“Then why are you so careful?”
“Because wanting someone does not entitle me to direct them.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Madeleine's thumb moved lightly across the back of her hand.
“Then perhaps you'll understand why I don't wish to make your choices for you.”
Émilie remained silent.
She was beginning to understand.
And she wished, with an almost painful clarity, that understanding were sufficient to quiet the desire.
After a while she said, “I think I want you to choose me.”
Madeleine's expression changed.
Not into alarm.
Into something gentler.
“That,” she said, “is a different request.”
“Yes.”
“And I can answer it.”
Émilie waited.
“I have.”
The words were spoken without emphasis.
Émilie closed her eyes.
For several seconds she remained perfectly still.
Then she leaned against Madeleine, resting her head upon the older woman's shoulder.
Madeleine put an arm around her.
Neither spoke.
Émilie was aware of the pressure of the embrace, the warmth of another body, and the faint fragrance of the older woman's hair.
She felt wanted.
It was a simple human pleasure.
Its simplicity made her suddenly, unexpectedly sad.
She thought of the empty place at dinner.
There she had experienced an intimacy more complete than anything she could remember.
But no hand had touched hers.
No one had chosen her.
Nothing had been offered.
The contrast seemed increasingly significant.
With Madeleine, there were two people.
Or at least two presently distinguishable centres of experience.
There was a choice.
There was a response.
There was the possibility of refusal.
And therefore the possibility of disappointment.
The House offered something different.
An experience of recognition without any identifiable act of recognition.
She found herself wondering which of the two intimacies she desired more.
The thought frightened her.
She did not speak of it.
Madeleine held her until the fear subsided.
The following morning Émilie began a systematic investigation of the additional place.
She photographed the table before breakfast.
She counted the chairs.
She measured their positions relative to the walls and recorded the number of settings.
There were eight.
The residents present numbered seven.
She asked Clara whether anyone had laid the extra place.
Clara said she did not remember doing so.
Renaud made the same reply.
Belloc suggested that Émilie might examine the dining room before the table was prepared.
“Would that help?” she asked.
“It might establish something about when the arrangement occurs.”
“Do you know?”
“No.”
“Have you ever investigated it?”
“Not systematically.”
“Why not?”
He considered.
“I suppose I became accustomed to it.”
Émilie found this answer more troubling than the others.
Habituation was understandable. Human beings could accommodate themselves to almost any sufficiently persistent condition.
But she had begun to suspect that the residents' tolerance of anomalous events was not merely psychological.
Something about the House seemed to alter the urgency with which explanations were required.
She recognised the possibility that her own growing tolerance was evidence of the same process.
She did not find that reassuring.
Before luncheon she returned to the dining room.
The table was bare.
There were eight chairs.
She photographed them.
She left the room and returned ten minutes later.
There were eight chairs.
At half past twelve, linen had appeared upon the table.
She had encountered nobody entering.
The cloth was smooth and uncreased.
She checked the camera she had positioned upon a sideboard.
It had recorded the room continuously.
For most of the interval the table was bare.
At one point the image became indistinct.
Not blurred.
The individual pixels remained sharp, but the arrangement of the room could not be interpreted consistently.
The table appeared to occupy several positions at once.
The chairs were neither present nor absent in any stable configuration.
The disturbance lasted less than two seconds.
When the image became ordinary again, the tablecloth was present.
Émilie examined the recording frame by frame.
There was no evidence of anyone laying it.
She considered equipment malfunction.
She repeated the experiment with a second camera.
The results were no more satisfactory.
The two recordings agreed about the general sequence of events, but not about the duration or precise character of the disturbance.
She recorded this carefully.
At luncheon the additional place was set again.
Nobody appeared to have prepared it.
She counted eight chairs.
Seven residents were present.
She photographed the arrangement.
Then she examined the image.
There were seven chairs.
She looked up.
There were eight.
She photographed the table again.
The second image showed eight.
She compared the two.
The empty place was absent from the first photograph.
Yet the surrounding chairs occupied positions consistent with its presence.
She measured the distances.
The discrepancy could not be resolved by assuming that one chair had been added between photographs.
The spatial arrangement itself appeared to differ.
She wrote:
The number of distinguishable places is not invariant under the recording procedure.
Then she crossed out places and substituted settings.
She was not prepared to assert that a place existed independently of the arrangement by which it was identified.
The correction pleased her.
The photograph did not.
The documents were discovered almost accidentally.
Émilie had been examining a cabinet of correspondence in the library when she encountered a folder containing personal letters written by former residents.
Their dates extended across several decades.
The paper varied in age and quality.
Some letters were handwritten. Others had been typed.
Several referred to someone whose name was omitted.
At first the omissions appeared ordinary.
A letter might describe a conversation with an unnamed companion or an evening spent in someone's company.
But the references became increasingly peculiar.
One woman wrote of a man she had loved for thirty years.
She described his habits, his appearance and his final illness.
She did not give his name.
Another correspondent remembered a daughter who had died in childhood.
The grief was described in language of extraordinary restraint.
Yet the daughter's age changed between letters, and the date of her death was inconsistent with the writer's account of her own life.
A third document described the departure of a woman whose absence had transformed the writer's existence.
The description was intimate.
The identity of the departed woman remained uncertain.
Émilie began comparing the accounts.
At first she supposed that the letters referred to different people.
That was the simplest explanation.
The possibility became less satisfactory as she examined the material.
Descriptions of the same events appeared in several letters, but the participants differed.
A conversation beside a garden window was remembered by one writer as an encounter with a husband, by another as an exchange with a sister, and by a third as the last occasion on which she had spoken to her child.
The physical setting was described with remarkable consistency.
The relationship was not.
Émilie found a photograph attached to one letter.
It showed the dining room.
The table was occupied.
The figures were indistinct, though not because the photograph was damaged.
There were six people whose faces she could identify sufficiently to distinguish them.
At the far end of the table stood a chair.
Its occupant was impossible to determine.
The image contained no visible person there.
Yet the arrangement of the other diners suggested a seventh participant.
Their attention converged upon the empty place.
One woman was smiling.
Another had raised a glass.
A man appeared to be speaking.
Émilie examined the photograph under magnification.
There was no evidence of deliberate erasure.
No damaged emulsion.
No alteration to the paper.
The empty chair was simply empty.
She placed the photograph beside the letters.
The same difficulty appeared repeatedly.
There were records of relationships.
There were records of grief.
There were records of affection, obligation, resentment and reconciliation.
But there was no stable person to whom the relationships could be attributed.
She thought of Henri.
His uncertainty concerning his daughter.
His conviction that someone had died.
His inability to say who.
For the first time she wondered whether these were not failures of memory in the conventional sense, but failures of the assumption that every remembered relationship must correspond to a distinct, identifiable individual.
She disliked the thought.
It appeared to explain too much.
An explanation capable of accommodating any possible observation was scarcely better than no explanation at all.
She wrote:
The documents may indicate ordinary errors, shared narratives, deliberate fabrication, or a failure of person-identification under the conditions present in the House.
She paused.
Then added:
No available evidence distinguishes these hypotheses decisively.
It was a disappointing conclusion.
She preferred it to an unjustified one.
That evening she spoke to Henri.
He was seated in the small conservatory, looking out towards the western garden.
A book lay open upon his lap.
Émilie approached.
“May I join you?”
“Of course.”
She sat beside him.
For a while they watched the trees.
The sky was overcast. The garden had acquired a peculiar stillness, as though the air itself were reluctant to move.
Eventually Émilie said, “You once mentioned someone you thought might have been your daughter.”
Henri looked at her.
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
He considered.
“I may have.”
“Do you remember her?”
“Sometimes.”
“Can you describe her?”
He was silent for a long time.
“She was kind.”
Émilie waited.
“I remember that particularly.”
“What was she like?”
“I don't know.”
“Was she young?”
“Sometimes.”
Émilie looked at him.
“Sometimes?”
Henri nodded.
“I remember her as a little girl. I also remember her as an older woman.”
“That would be quite ordinary if you knew her throughout her life.”
“Yes.”
“But?”
He smiled sadly.
“I also remember her as someone who had already died before I was born.”
Émilie said nothing.
Henri continued.
“I know how that sounds.”
“How does it feel?”
He considered.
“Like remembering someone I loved.”
“Does the contradiction distress you?”
“Not as much as it used to.”
“Why?”
“I suppose I've become less concerned with deciding which memory is correct.”
“That seems dangerous.”
“Perhaps.”
He looked towards the garden.
“But I found that I could spend all my time attempting to establish whether I had loved someone, and none of it attending to the fact that I did.”
Émilie considered.
“Those aren't necessarily alternatives.”
“No.”
“One can investigate the truth of a memory while acknowledging the emotion it produces.”
“Of course.”
Henri smiled.
“You're very young.”
Émilie almost laughed.
“Forty-three.”
“Yes.”
“That isn't particularly young.”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
Henri looked at her with unexpected clarity.
“On which forty-three years you remember.”
She was silent.
The old man returned his attention to the garden.
After a while he spoke again.
“I think I once loved someone who had no name.”
Émilie turned towards him.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I remember the love more clearly than I remember the person.”
“That happens.”
“Yes.”
“But ordinarily there was a person.”
“Ordinarily.”
He closed his book.
“Perhaps I should be grateful that I can remember loving at all.”
Émilie did not answer.
She had begun to suspect that the word grateful concealed another problem.
Gratitude, like love, ordinarily possessed an object.
One was grateful to someone, or grateful for something.
But gratitude to the House seemed to imply that the House had bestowed a benefit.
The residents were careful to avoid that implication.
Madeleine had specifically warned her not to thank it.
Émilie wondered whether Henri understood this.
She decided not to ask.
The experience occurred shortly after eleven.
Émilie had returned to the dining room to retrieve her notebook, which she believed she had left upon the sideboard.
The room was empty.
Only one lamp remained lit.
The windows reflected the interior, making the dark garden beyond almost invisible.
The additional place was still set.
The other plates had been removed.
The linen had been folded.
The chair remained slightly withdrawn from the table.
Émilie found her notebook where she had expected.
She picked it up.
Then she looked at the vacant chair.
For some time she stood motionless.
There was nothing to observe.
The place was empty.
She approached.
She drew out the chair opposite and sat down.
The polished table reflected the lamp.
She placed her notebook beside her.
She did not intend to perform an experiment.
This distinction seemed important.
She had already attempted to measure the anomaly. She had photographed it, counted the settings and examined the documentary record.
None of these investigations had established the presence of an additional person.
She wanted, for reasons she could not quite defend, simply to sit there.
She placed her hands upon the table.
The wood was cool.
She looked at the empty chair.
Nothing happened.
She remained seated.
After several minutes she became aware of an expectation.
It was faint at first.
She had the impression that someone was about to speak.
She waited.
No words came.
The expectation persisted.
It gradually acquired the quality of a familiar social anticipation: the moment before a companion completes a thought, when the listener knows that an answer is imminent but has not yet heard it.
Émilie felt herself attending.
She was not listening for a sound.
She was attending to the expectation itself.
She realised that she knew what she wanted to hear.
Not a particular sentence.
Not her name.
She wanted the confirmation that her presence had been recognised.
The desire was so ordinary that she almost dismissed it.
Then something altered.
The sensation of waiting ceased.
There was no voice.
No touch.
No movement in the room.
Yet the expectation no longer felt unanswered.
Émilie sat very still.
She experienced, with an immediacy that made interpretation almost impossible, the certainty of being understood.
Not understood in some particular respect.
Not recognised as a mathematician, a woman, a visitor or a person with a history.
Understood completely.
There was no part of her experience that required explanation.
No memory that needed to be narrated.
No contradiction that demanded reconciliation.
She felt that every hesitation, desire, error and private humiliation was already included in the completeness of the experience.
It was profoundly intimate.
More intimate than any conversation she had ever conducted.
More intimate, in some respects, than physical affection.
With another person, even the most attentive, there remained the labour of communication.
One explained.
One concealed.
One hoped to be understood.
Here there was no labour.
Nothing was concealed.
Nothing needed to be confessed.
Émilie closed her eyes.
The sensation deepened.
She was aware of the pressure of the chair beneath her, the coolness of the table and the movement of her own breathing.
Her body remained ordinary.
Yet the familiar distinction between possessing an experience and having that experience recognised seemed to have disappeared.
She felt no need to speak.
No desire to justify herself.
For a moment she understood why religious people might describe such an experience as union.
Then she recognised the danger of the comparison.
Union ordinarily implied something with which one was united.
She had observed no such thing.
The experience did not establish an external consciousness.
It did not establish that someone knew her.
It established only that she was undergoing an extraordinary condition in which the ordinary requirement for recognition had apparently ceased.
She opened her eyes.
The chair remained empty.
She looked at it with a tenderness that astonished her.
She wanted to say something.
Not because she believed anyone would hear.
Because the desire to respond had become almost irresistible.
At last she whispered:
“I know there is no one there.”
The words sounded small in the quiet room.
Nothing answered.
She felt no disappointment.
This was the most disturbing feature of the experience.
There was no disappointment because she had not expected a response.
Yet she felt as though a response had already been given.
She looked down at her hands.
They were trembling slightly.
She waited until the sensation diminished.
Then she began to cry.
The tears came without any corresponding grief.
She was not unhappy.
She was not relieved.
She could not identify the emotion with sufficient precision to name it.
She knew only that she had experienced an intimacy for which no other consciousness was required.
And that she had found it beautiful.
She did not know how long she remained there.
The clocks of the House had already taught her the limited usefulness of such questions.
Eventually she rose.
She examined the additional place.
The wineglass remained untouched.
The napkin was folded.
Nothing indicated that anyone had been present.
She considered removing the setting again.
She did not.
Instead she pushed the chair slightly closer to the table.
The gesture was ordinary.
It was also affectionate.
She recognised this.
She had adjusted Julien's chair in much the same way during the years they lived together, particularly when he had left it awkwardly positioned after working late.
She had done so without thinking.
An insignificant domestic courtesy.
The association brought an unexpected memory.
She remembered Julien laughing.
She remembered him telling her that she was incapable of leaving anything out of place.
She remembered answering that the universe provided sufficient disorder without their contributing unnecessarily.
The memory was genuine.
She had lived it.
She was certain.
Then, without warning, she remembered a different occasion.
A small child sat in the chair.
A girl with dark hair and a serious expression.
She was eating a pear.
Her feet did not reach the floor.
Émilie recognised her.
The recognition was immediate.
She remembered lifting the child from the chair.
She remembered the warmth of her body.
She remembered kissing her forehead.
The memory possessed the ordinary texture of domestic life.
There was no revelation, no dreamlike distortion.
Only a child.
A child she had loved.
Émilie stood motionless.
She had no daughter.
She had never had a daughter.
Yet the affection was overwhelming.
She could remember the child's name.
Anaïs.
The name came without effort.
She spoke it softly.
The dining room remained empty.
She sat down again.
The memory did not disappear.
She could recall the girl's face, the sound of her laughter and the peculiar seriousness with which she approached games.
She could remember arguing with Julien about her education.
She could remember the child's first day at school.
She could remember being annoyed when the girl refused to wear a coat.
Émilie closed her eyes.
These were not the sort of memories that could be accounted for by a single photograph or a fragment of overheard conversation.
They formed a coherent history.
A history she had never lived.
She opened her notebook.
She wrote the child's name.
Then she described the memories as carefully as she could.
She did not call them false.
She did not call them true.
She recorded them.
When she had finished, she looked once more at the empty place.
For the first time she wondered whether its absence was not the absence of another person.
Perhaps it was the absence of a stable relation between persons.
The thought was difficult.
It was also premature.
She had no evidence that the chair and the memories were causally connected.
She recognised the temptation to make them so.
The House had repeatedly presented her with experiences that seemed to invite interpretation.
She was determined not to mistake the invitation for an explanation.
Nevertheless, she left the child's name in her notebook.
She could not bring herself to cross it out.
Madeleine was waiting in the drawing room when Émilie returned.
She had a book upon her lap.
The lamp beside her cast a soft light upon her face.
Émilie stood in the doorway.
For a moment she experienced the extraordinary contrast between the two forms of intimacy she had encountered that evening.
The empty place had offered an experience of complete recognition without an identifiable other.
Madeleine offered something more limited.
A woman.
A body.
A mind whose contents remained inaccessible except through speech and action.
A person who could misunderstand her.
A person who might refuse her.
Émilie found, to her surprise, that she desired the second more urgently.
“May I come in?”
Madeleine looked up.
“Of course.”
Émilie crossed the room.
She sat beside her.
For a while she said nothing.
Madeleine closed her book.
“Has something happened?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to tell me?”
Émilie considered.
“I think I experienced something that people might call being loved.”
Madeleine remained attentive.
“By whom?”
“Nobody.”
The older woman did not appear surprised.
Émilie continued.
“That's not a metaphor. I mean that I experienced the complete absence of any need to explain myself, and interpreted it as a kind of recognition.”
“Did you believe someone was recognising you?”
“No.”
“Then what troubled you?”
“That the experience was more complete than anything I've known with another person.”
Madeleine looked down at her hands.
Émilie watched her.
“Does that hurt you?”
The question seemed to surprise the older woman.
“A little.”
Émilie felt an immediate tenderness.
“I'm sorry.”
“You needn't be.”
“But I am.”
Madeleine smiled faintly.
“Then I accept the apology.”
Émilie moved closer.
“I don't think it means what it seems to mean.”
“What does it seem to mean?”
“That I could dispense with everyone.”
“Could you?”
“I don't know.”
Madeleine considered.
“Would you wish to?”
Émilie looked at her.
“No.”
The answer came without hesitation.
She was grateful for its immediacy.
Madeleine reached for her hand.
Émilie took it.
For several moments they sat quietly.
Then Émilie spoke.
“I remembered a child.”
Madeleine turned towards her.
“A child?”
“A little girl. Her name was Anaïs.”
“Do you know her?”
“No.”
She hesitated.
“Yes.”
Madeleine waited.
“I have never had a daughter.”
“I understand.”
“But I remember raising her.”
The older woman's expression became very still.
Émilie continued.
“I remember Julien being her father. I remember her school, her clothes, the sound of her voice. I remember loving her.”
“That must be difficult.”
“It is.”
“Would you like to speak to Renaud?”
“Perhaps.”
“That might be wise.”
Émilie looked at her.
“You think I'm ill.”
“I think you are experiencing something that deserves careful examination.”
“That's a very diplomatic answer.”
“It's also the truth.”
Émilie smiled.
Then she became serious.
“Do you know what frightens me most?”
“No.”
“That I may begin to prefer these memories.”
Madeleine said nothing.
“My life has been perfectly satisfactory. I've had work I love, relationships that mattered, friends, a degree of freedom I've always valued. I've never felt that I was missing some essential purpose.”
She looked down.
“But now I remember a child.”
Her voice altered.
“And I miss her.”
Madeleine put an arm around her.
Émilie leaned against her.
“That isn't reasonable.”
“Perhaps not.”
“I know perfectly well that the feeling doesn't establish the child's existence.”
“Yes.”
“But I still miss her.”
For some time Madeleine held her without speaking.
Émilie thought of the empty place.
There had been no one to embrace.
Nothing to lose.
No possibility of being misunderstood.
No independent will that might withdraw its affection.
The intimacy had been complete because it had required nothing.
Here, in the drawing room, there was another woman who could choose to remain or leave.
The experience was less complete.
It was also more human.
Émilie rested her hand upon Madeleine's.
“Will you stay with me for a while?”
“Of course.”
The reply was simple.
Émilie felt its importance.
Madeleine had been asked.
Madeleine had answered.
Two people had participated in the exchange.
Whatever uncertainties the House had introduced into the persistence of personal identity, that difference remained intelligible to her.
For the present.
Later, Émilie returned alone to her room.
The House was silent.
Her notebooks lay upon the desk.
She opened the newest and examined the account of Anaïs.
The handwriting was hers.
The descriptions remained clear.
She could recall the child's face without difficulty.
She could also recall the empty chair.
She placed the two memories beside one another in her mind.
One concerned a relationship with an apparently absent person.
The other concerned an experience of relationship without any identifiable person at all.
The resemblance was obvious.
The difference was equally important.
She refused to treat them as interchangeable.
The child might have existed.
The empty place might correspond to no person whatsoever.
Both possibilities remained open.
She closed the notebook.
On the desk lay a small photograph.
She had not noticed it before.
It showed a girl of approximately seven years old, standing in a garden beside a low stone wall.
The girl had dark hair.
She wore a pale dress and held a wooden horse.
Émilie recognised her immediately.
Anaïs.
She picked up the photograph.
The paper was ordinary.
The image was slightly faded.
On the reverse someone had written a date.
Beneath it appeared a sentence.
She was very happy that day.
Émilie examined the handwriting.
It was hers.
She turned the photograph over.
The child was smiling.
There was no sign of anything extraordinary.
She was simply a little girl, pleased to have been photographed.
Émilie sat down.
She was aware that the appearance of the photograph did not establish the accuracy of her memories. It might have been manufactured. It might depict someone else. It might be another of the House's inexplicable arrangements.
She understood all this.
She also understood that the child in the photograph was someone she loved.
The certainty was emotional.
It was not evidential.
She made herself acknowledge the distinction.
Then she placed the photograph carefully inside her notebook.
She did not know whether she wished to preserve it as evidence or as a keepsake.
Perhaps both.
She looked towards the window.
The dark garden was scarcely visible.
Somewhere beyond it lay the western wing.
She remembered the corridor she had been warned not to enter carrying a mirror.
She remembered the strange numbering of the rooms.
She remembered Madeleine's expression when she had mentioned the woman who had once entered with a mirror and returned.
Émilie considered the possibility that the House contained more than one account of a human life.
She had already encountered discrepancies in her own chronology.
She had remembered events that had not yet occurred.
She had observed a woman indistinguishable from herself.
She had found manuscripts bearing her name and describing work she had not completed.
Perhaps the memories of Anaïs belonged to the same class of phenomena.
She could investigate.
There was no prohibition.
She had been told that she was free to enter the Western Corridor, provided she carried no mirror.
She could go tomorrow.
The decision brought an unexpected sense of relief.
She recognised the feeling.
It resembled the relief she had experienced during the first renunciation.
She had ceased demanding that every experience fit within the chronology she remembered.
Now she was beginning to relinquish a different requirement.
That every affection must possess a uniquely identifiable object.
She was not yet willing to abandon the distinction between real people and imagined ones.
Nor should she be.
But she had begun to understand that the emotional life of a person might exceed the boundaries of the history through which that person understood herself.
She returned the photograph to the notebook.
Then she prepared for bed.
Before extinguishing the lamp, she wrote one final observation.
The experience of relationship does not, by itself, establish the existence of another subject.
She paused.
Then added:
Its absence does not establish the unreality of the experience.
She considered the two sentences.
They were precise.
They were defensible.
They offered no consolation.
Émilie extinguished the lamp.
In the darkness she remembered the empty place at dinner.
She remembered the sensation of being entirely known.
She remembered saying that there was nobody there.
The words had brought neither relief nor disappointment.
She had spoken them with the tenderness ordinarily reserved for someone she loved.
That, more than any discrepancy in the clocks or contradiction in her memories, began to frighten her.
For she had discovered that the universe need not contain a lover for the experience of being loved to occur.
And she had found the experience beautiful.
She lay awake for some time.
Then, just before sleep, she remembered Anaïs again.
The little girl was standing in the doorway of an unfamiliar room.
She carried her wooden horse.
She looked at Émilie with the solemnity of a child preparing to ask an important question.
“Maman?”
Émilie remembered answering.
“Yes, darling?”
The girl hesitated.
“Where do people go when they aren't here?”
Émilie could not remember what she had said.
She remembered only that the child had appeared satisfied.
The recollection faded.
Then it returned.
The same doorway.
The same child.
The same question.
But this time Émilie remembered her answer.
They don't have to go anywhere.
She opened her eyes.
The room was dark.
She was alone.
The words remained with her.
She could not determine whether they were the memory of something she had once said, the anticipation of something she might yet say, or the construction of a mind attempting to reconcile incompatible experiences.
She did not attempt to decide.
She turned onto her side.
Somewhere in the House a door closed softly.
Émilie thought of the Western Corridor.
She would go there in the morning.
She would take her notebook.
She would take a watch.
She would leave her mirror behind.
And she would attempt to discover whether the child she remembered belonged to a life she had never lived.
For the present she closed her eyes.
The House remained silent.
There was no voice offering reassurance.
No unseen intelligence attending to her thoughts.
No assurance that the memories were true.
Only the extraordinary, intimate certainty that something she loved was absent.
And that the absence did not require anyone to have gone.
End of Movement V: The Empty Place