"I will marry you," Perdita Halley said to Alexander von Reisden at eighteen, "but not until I study music." Now, at twenty-one, she has come to Paris, his city--but music still stands between them. She is pursuing her dream of becoming a concert pianist; he is trying for the less likely one of becoming an ordinary, unhaunted man. They are drawn into an all-consuming passion that seems destined for tragedy. Perdita cannot marry and attend the Conservatoire; Alexander, still haunted by his past, fears to marry at all. As incessant rain dims the City of Lights, an intricate network of plots and counterplots swirls around the couple. And an elegant game of art and life turns deadly, as a madman follows them, threatening to destroy them both in retribution for a murder they know nothing about-- Or do they?
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
"I will marry you," Perdita Halley said to Alexander von Reisden at eighteen, "but not until I study music." Now, at twenty-one, she has come to Paris, his city--but music still stands between them. She is pursuing her dream of becoming a concert pianist; he is trying for the less likely one of becoming an ordinary, unhaunted man. They are drawn into an all-consuming passion that seems destined for tragedy. Perdita cannot marry and attend the Conservatoire; Alexander, still haunted by his past, fears to marry at all. As incessant rain dims the City of Lights, an intricate network of plots and counterplots swirls around the couple. And an elegant game of art and life turns deadly, as a madman follows them, threatening to destroy them both in retribution for a murder they know nothing about-- Or do they?
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORE
Your local store may have stock of this item.
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
"I will marry you," Perdita Halley said to Alexander von Reisden at eighteen, "but not until I study music." Now, at twenty-one, she has come to Paris, his city--but music still stands between them. She is pursuing her dream of becoming a concert pianist; he is trying for the less likely one of becoming an ordinary, unhaunted man. They are drawn into an all-consuming passion that seems destined for tragedy. Perdita cannot marry and attend the Conservatoire; Alexander, still haunted by his past, fears to marry at all. As incessant rain dims the City of Lights, an intricate network of plots and counterplots swirls around the couple. And an elegant game of art and life turns deadly, as a madman follows them, threatening to destroy them both in retribution for a murder they know nothing about-- Or do they?
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781951636012 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Max Light Books |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2020 |
| Series: | A Reisden and Perdita Mystery , #2 |
| Pages: | 432 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.96(d) |
About the Author
Sarah Smith has lived in Japan, London, and Paris. A Harvard Ph.D., she has taught film and eighteenth-century literature, and she now writes and designs documentation for advanced computer products. She is also the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Vanished Child and A Citizen of the Country, her newest novel. Ms. Smith lives near Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband and children, and their twenty-two-pound Maine coon cat.
Read an Excerpt
Ballantine Reader's Circle: The Knowledge of Water (Excerpt)
Chapter 1
It takes a second to shoot a man. Thinking about it takes the rest of one's life.
At eight years old, Alexander von Reisden got away with murder. He was not called Reisden then; he ran, he changed his country, his name; as far as he could, he changed his memories. He was admirably thorough, for a child of that age. For years he did not know what he had done, or at least believed he didn't. He was careful not to notice that he didn't remember any of his childhood.
He didn't have an easy life. What one forgets does not go away.
He was caught, finally. The crime had been essentially self-defense and he had been very young; there was no question of prosecution. The three people who knew his story kept silent; no one else would ever find out, they all hoped. It was finished.
But Reisden had found himself out. He could no longer avoid thinking about murder, or wondering what sort of person would commit it.
He was wondering now.
The public viewing room of the Paris Morgue looked oddly like a theater. The walls were grimy plaster, furred with mineral deposits; the gaslit stage was marble, a white cheesy slab stained brown, separated from the audience by a glass pane running with moisture. Six corpses lay on it, dressed in the clothes in which they had been found, the bodies frozen and glistening. Seine water trickled under the slab, keeping them cold. Under the freezing chill and the smell of menthol and disinfectant, the air was unbreathable with the flowery whore's-talc of decay.
She was the colorful corpse, still drawing the eye: purplesatin skirt spreading around her, red satin jacket, and several waterlogged postcards and parts of postcards, recognizable as Leonardo's painting, still pinned to her clothes. Over her heart her murderer's knife had ripped her jacket to pieces. Reisden remembered her on the steps by the Orsay, a wrecked beauty of a woman, standing with her eyes closed, singing in the ruin of a voice, kiss me, kill me, oh how I suffer, shuffling and swaying and holding out her hand for centimes. She had looked like trouble, and now, to someone, she was.
I wonder why he killed her, Reisden thought; I wonder how he came to it.
"How did you know her?" Inspector Langelais stood in the shadows at the side of the stage.
"She begged near the Gare d'Orsay, near where I work. She was the local colorful beggar. I gave her money."
"Jeanne Cavessi was her name," the inspector said. "A stage-performer once, back in the last Napoleon's time; in these last years, a woman of the streets. She had your card—?"
"I gave it to her once," Reisden said. "To put in the mirror of her grand salon. In her palace."
"Her palace?"
"Her imaginary palace." The Mona Lisa had described it to him: the tall wrought-iron fence around the park, the gardens; the rose salon, the grande salle with the mirrors, the withdrawing salon where no one but Victor Hugo had ever been, and the fourth salon: which will be a surprise to me, it has been so long, I forget it. "I collect hallucinations; I rather liked hers."
Langelais pursed his lips. "And this Artist, Her Artist, did you collect his hallucinations too? Is that why he wrote you?"
"I have no idea why he wrote me."
Limping, the inspector led the way out of the viewing room to one of the interrogation rooms, a bare cell painted the greenish ocher favored by French bureaucracy. Through the walls Reisden heard the rumble of the Seine. The two men sat on either side of a scarred deal table. Langelais leaned his cane against the table, took off his bowler hat. The ends of the inspector's white mustache were waxed and twisted, a style military men affected, and in his buttonhole he wore a service ribbon from the campaign of 1870, forty years ago. War hero, Reisden thought; entered the police force when the Prefecture had been virtually a branch of the army; now waiting to re- tire. The murder of "Mona Lisa," street beggar, was not being handled by the Prefecture's best.
Inspector Langelais took out a handkerchief and wiped his hands, then his nose.
"Do you remember when she disappeared, Monsieur le Baron?" he asked.
"About a week ago." The Mona Lisa had been singing Aida's farewell on the steps of the railroad station: O terra addio, wringing her hands and rolling her eyes in theatrical despair. He hadn't been in the mood and had gone round by the quai rather than spend five minutes listening.
And then she hadn't been there.
"Today you received this letter?"
"Yes, by the early post."
The inspector laid the photographic copy of the letter on the scarred table, then the original beside it, in a glassine envelope. It was written on the cheap greenish notepaper that is sold by the sheet in any post office, in purple ink and an uneducated scrawl.
Cher mseur le Baron de Reisden,
You like me you have lovd a Womn of Knidness Greace & Beauty She us Not Recthd the End of the Rivr war She ws Mnt t Go It is not Rit tht Mona Lisa shd be in That Plasc like any Comun Folk Ples Help
Hr Rtis
"'The end of the river—'"
"Her palace was there," Reisden said. "At the end of the Seine."
"Her imaginary palace.—You knew her very well."
"Not at all."
"You knew this man, Her Artist? She had spoken of him to you?"
"No."
"Why should he write you?" Langelais asked.
Because I know what he's thinking, Reisden thought without wanting to; because I can know. "I have no idea." Painfully, with a sputtering unfamiliar pen, son Rtis had copied the engraved letters of Reisden's calling-card. "He had my card. He may have taken it when he killed her."
"'You like me, you have loved ...,'" the inspector pointed out. "He believes you knew her well enough to 'help' her. That indicates he knows you."
Reisden shrugged.
"Perhaps someone you added to your collection. Like her."
"I don't collect people."
The inspector pulled at his mustache-points. "What does he expect you to
do?"
"It sounds as though he expects me to bury her."
"Why?"
"I have no idea."
The inspector tented his fingertips doubtfully, rubbing the ends together.
"She had been in the Seine for several days," Reisden said, "but her body was discovered yesterday morning and the story was in the afternoon papers. The letter came from," he picked it up and looked at the cancellation, a slightly smeared RDULOUV over a red ten-centime stamp. "From the Hôtel des Postes on the rue du Louvre. From the time-stamp, he mailed it at ten last night. Louvre is the only all-night post office. Yesterday afternoon or evening he read that her body had been found and taken to the Morgue; he had my card, which he took from her body; he immediately wrote me. The Morgue disturbs him."
"But why did he write to you, Monsieur le Baron?"
"I really have no idea."
"Perhaps you had a—particular relationship with the lady?"
He was asking if Reisden had been her client. Reisden gave him two seconds of the look one gives to an absurd inquiry, if one is Monsieur le Baron and the inquirer is only a Prefecture policeman.
"Someone must have seen this man when he bought the notepaper," Reisden said.
"How do you know he bought the notepaper when he wrote to you, Monsieur le Baron?"
"A man who writes like this is unlikely to own any."
The inspector said nothing, a tactic designed to make the interrogatee say something. Rather to his surprise, Reisden said something. "Perhaps he simply needed to talk to anyone, and my name was the first to hand. He would want to talk."
He had wanted to talk.
Langelais blew his nose again, then folded his handkerchief elaborately. "Monsieur," he said, "I am afraid I must ask you one delicate question. In the investigation of a murder, one sometimes touches on—other events. Is it true that you," he hesitated, "killed your wife?"
Reisden said nothing for a long moment. "If you mean 'killed' but not 'murdered,' yes, it is true. My wife died in an automobile accident some years ago; I was driving the car."
"But you said at the time you had murdered her?"
"At the time I felt so."
The Inspector said nothing. Reisden said nothing. Everyone wants to know why; no one will ask. Just as well.
"You were in an asylum."
"Briefly."
The two men looked at each other. Shall I show him that it bothers me, Reisden thought; shall I pretend it does not; what would the normal man do? He tried to look neither defensive nor angry, the look of a man answering a question about his tailor or glovemaker; but that was not normal either, of course.
"You understand," the inspector said finally, "one must ask."
"I understand. But I don't know who killed this woman," Reisden said. "I don't know why he wrote to me."
"Perhaps he was an acquaintance in the asylum?"
Reisden smiled wintrily. "No."
"Or a patient at Jouvet?" The inspector examined Reisden's card. Dr. the Baron Alexander von Reisden, Jouvet Medical Analyses. The card did not say that Jouvet specialized in mental disturbances; it didn't have to. Jouvet was well known.
"I own Jouvet but I don't see patients. And as far as we can tell from our files, he isn't one of ours."
"Patients see you," the inspector pointed out.
"That may be; I don't know him."
"I think you do know him," the inspector said.
The inspector let the silence go on; Reisden looked back at him with the clear steady gaze of years of practice. You think I am guilty of something, Reisden thought; and I am. But don't look at me, look for this one.
"He's committed murder," Reisden said. "He wants never to do it again but he knows what he can do and he's afraid of it. He may write again: to you, me, the papers. He will write, he will try to explain himself," he said, "because he is a mystery to himself. He isn't ordinary, he isn't normal, he doesn't know what he is. —Catch him."
Reading Group Guide
1. Why do you think the author chose the Great Paris Flood of 1910 as the historical reference point for The Knowledge of Water? What important part does water play in this story?
2. We recently suffered though a disastrous series of floods here in the United States. Keeping the video and photographic images from those floods in mind, how do you think Paris changed after the great flood of 1910?
3. One of the underlying themes of this book is the mystery of identity--determining what is real and what is forgery. Which do you think is most real with Perdita--love, art, or both? And who is the deceptive artist? Do you believe that people create forgeries of themselves and their relationships?
4. Characters in The Knowledge of Water have some secret they can't tell. They don't have the words; they don't know what it is or are ashamed to tell it; Leonard can neither write nor speak clearly. What's the relationship between learning to speak, finding the right words, and solving a crime? Can not speaking, or speaking what is not factually true, ever be as true as finding the right words and saying them?
5. Family histories connect with identity in The Knowledge of Water. For example, Reisden says he is Dotty's cousin. To what extent can one use or create family to create one's self? How can families hurt or help one's search for identity?
6. Another majortheme in The Knowledge of Water is the notion that women can't have it all--love, family, and a profession. Perdita says, "the best possible way of life" would be "to have love and music both, " and her friend Florrie tells her, "The best possible way of life--isn't possible" (p. 38). Who do you think is right? Can women have it all--and is that what women want?
7. "I accept my difficulties, " Armand Inslay-Hochstein says about the swindle he perpetrated, "and [my son] will have Mallais" (p. 453). Madame Mallais asks her husband, "Was it really worth it, for them paintings?" (p. 308). Do you think their crime was worth it? Of the various solutions to the Mallaises' problem given at the end of the book, which one do you prefer? How would you solve the problem?
8. At the end of the book, George Vittal declares, "I have come to free you from the tyranny of Art!" (p. 463). Mallais believes, "Art's to fail at ... it changes you ... makes anything possible; and then you ... try the impossible ..." (p. 436). What is art? What's the difference between art and forgery?
9. Perdita thinks, "Even if you can't live up to your destiny, you can at least have one" (p. 456). What do you think she means by this?
10. Perdita accuses herself of wanting to be married rather than loving Reisden; he accuses himself of wanting companionship, and sex, but not truly wanting her. At the end of the book, we can foresee that their love won't run smoothly. Is this a friendship that has turned awkward? Why do you think the author chose to make the question of their love so ambiguous?
11. Leonard says, "The more trouble a man has in loving [a woman], the more worthy he is of her" (p. 48). Leonard is the romantic in an anti-romance, a book that's been accused of having a deeply pessimistic view of love. Is he right? Is there a value in sacrificing for love, even love of the wrong kind?
12. Madame Mallais tells Perdita to "take yourself back" (p. 245). Did she ever give herself away?
13. "All love is selfish, " says Milly Xico, the cynical French ex-writer; love, she says, is a male want, a trick men play on women--and on themselves (p. 57). Why do Reisden and Perdita fall in love? In what ways is that love selfish? Can one be in love for selfish reasons?
14. Reisden criticizes Perdita when she defends the forged reviews and Madame Mallais's forgery (pp. 363-365), but himself sees the value of forgery (pp. 236, 310). Does forgery have a value--sentimental, artistic, or monetary? Is art, as Mark Jones suggests in the epigraph, "mainly fashioned to be appreciated and acquired by others"? Can forgery be an "art" of deception?
15. In the classic mystery, there are three roles: victim, murderer, and detective. There is a crime, a process of discovery, and a solution. The Knowledge of Water has all these, but is it really a mystery?
16. Some readers think that the book should end with Perdita's decision to play the piano and Reisden's to let her tour (pp. 455-456). But it ends nine pages later, after Milly's description of the flood ("On this night we have become history") and Milly's decision to write again, when she throws her own art into the Seine. Why do you think the author did this? (The author has said she doesn't completely know why this ending is the right one but feels strongly that it is.)
17. Some reviewers have said the book has too many story lines and characters. Do you think it loses impact because of them?
18. Secondary characters add to the impact and tone of a book. How do characters like Dotty and Barry Bullard change the tone of The Knowledge of Water?
19. Writing by actual people appears throughout The Knowledge of Water, and characters are based on real people. (Among the well-known substitutions are Esther Cohen for Gertrude Stein; Milly and Henry for Colette and Willy; George Vittal for Guillaume Apollinaire; and Gastedon for Picasso.) But everything is changed, renamed, and misquoted. Does this mean that all historical fiction is essentially a forgery, a collage, or an "impression" (p. 465)? Is this a bad thing?