Although I knew nothing about chemistry, I listened with fascination.
Boris picked up an Easter lily that Geneviève had brought from Notre Dame that morning and dropped it into the basin.
At once, the perfectly clear liquid turned cloudy.
For a moment, the lily disappeared beneath a layer of milky-white foam. Then the foam vanished, leaving the liquid glowing with a strange, pearly sheen.
Orange and crimson colors rippled across the surface.
Then, from the bottom of the basin where the lily lay, a narrow beam of what looked exactly like sunlight suddenly shot upward.
At that instant, Boris plunged his hand into the basin and pulled out the flower.
“There’s no danger if you take it out at the right moment,” he explained. “That golden beam is the signal.”
He held the lily out to me.
I took it from him.
It had turned completely to stone.
Not ordinary stone, either. It was the purest, most beautiful white marble.
“You see?” Boris said. “Not a single flaw. What sculptor could ever reproduce something like that?”
The marble was as white as snow.
Yet deep inside it, the delicate veins of the lily were tinted the faintest blue, while a soft pink glow remained hidden in its heart.
“Don’t ask me why,” Boris said with a smile when he saw my amazement. “I have no idea why the veins and the center change color. They always do.”
“Always?”
“Always. I tried one of Geneviève’s goldfish yesterday. There it is.”
The fish looked as though it had been carved from marble.
But when I held it up to the light, I could see delicate blue veins running through the stone. Somewhere deep inside it was a rosy glow, like the color trapped inside an opal.
I looked back into the basin.
The liquid had become perfectly clear again.
“What would happen if I touched it now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Boris said.
“But you’d better not find out.”
“There’s something else I want to know.”
“What?”
“Where did that beam of sunlight come from?”
“It certainly looked like sunlight.”
“Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know. It appears every time I put a living thing into the liquid.”
He smiled.
“Perhaps it’s the creature’s life force escaping and returning to wherever it came from.”
I could tell he was making fun of me.
I threatened him with a mahl-stick, but he only laughed and changed the subject.
“Stay for lunch. Geneviève will be here soon.”
“I saw her going to early Mass,” I said. “She looked as fresh and lovely as that lily did before you turned it to stone.”
Boris gave me a serious look.
“Do you really think I destroyed it?”
“Destroyed it? Preserved it? Who can say?”
We settled into a corner of the studio beside his unfinished group, The Fates.
Boris leaned back on the sofa, turning a sculptor’s chisel between his fingers while studying his work.
“By the way,” he said, “I’ve finished the final details on that old academic piece, Ariadne. I suppose it will have to go to the Salon.”
“It’s all you have ready this year?”
“Yes. And after the success of the Madonna, I’m almost embarrassed to send something like this.”
The Madonna was the exquisite marble statue for which Geneviève had posed. It had been the sensation of last year’s Salon.
I looked at the Ariadne.
It was a magnificent piece of technical work, but I agreed with Boris. After the Madonna, everyone would expect something greater from him.
Unfortunately, there was no chance of finishing The Fates before the Salon.
The magnificent and terrifying figures were still half-hidden inside the great block of marble behind us.
That masterpiece would have to wait.
We were all proud of Boris Yvain.
We considered him one of us, and he considered himself one of us too. He had been born in America, although his father was French and his mother Russian.
Everyone at the Beaux-Arts called him simply Boris.
Yet there were only two people he treated with the same easy familiarity.
Jack Scott and me.
Perhaps my love for Geneviève had something to do with the affection he felt for me.
Of course, neither of us had ever spoken openly about it.
But when everything was settled, and Geneviève finally told me through her tears that Boris was the man she loved, I went to his house and congratulated him.
We behaved perfectly cordially toward each other.
But I never believed that either of us was fooled by that cordiality.
Still, I think the conversation was a comfort to at least one of us.
I doubt Boris and Geneviève ever discussed the matter together.
But Boris knew.
Geneviève was beautiful.
There was such purity in her face that she seemed like a figure inspired by the Sanctus from Gounod’s Mass.
Yet I was always relieved when she abandoned that peaceful expression and became what we called her “April Maneuvers.”
She could change as quickly as an April day.
In the morning she might be serious, graceful, and sweet.
By noon she could be laughing and unpredictable.
By evening she might become something no one had expected.
I preferred her that way.
Her calm, Madonna-like beauty stirred feelings in me that were almost too painful to bear.
I was thinking about Geneviève when Boris suddenly spoke again.
“What do you think of my discovery, Alec?”
“I think it’s extraordinary.”
“I’m not going to use it for anything.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing beyond satisfying my own curiosity. Whatever happens, the secret will die with me.”
“It could be a serious blow to sculpture, couldn’t it?”
Boris looked at me.
“We painters have already lost more than we’ve gained because of photography.”
He nodded and ran a finger along the edge of his chisel.
“This new discovery could corrupt the entire art world.”
He paused.
“No. I’ll never tell anyone the secret.”
I knew less about scientific phenomena than almost anyone could.
Still, I had heard of mineral springs so full of silica that leaves and twigs falling into them eventually became stone.
I vaguely understood the process.
The silica slowly replaced the organic material, atom by atom, until the original object remained as a perfect stone copy.
I had never found the process particularly interesting.
As for the ancient fossils created in this way, they actually disgusted me.
Boris, however, was fascinated rather than repelled.
He had studied the subject and somehow stumbled upon a solution that worked with unbelievable speed.
Instead of taking years to replace the material, his chemical solution attacked a living object with extraordinary force and transformed it in a matter of seconds.
That was about all I could understand from his strange story.
After a long silence, he spoke again.
“I’m almost frightened by what I’ve discovered.”
“Why?”
“Scientists would go crazy over it.”
He shook his head.
“And the strange thing is that it was so simple. I practically discovered it by accident.”
“What exactly did you discover?”
“The formula.”
He stared at the floor.
“And the new element it produces. It precipitates in metallic scales.”
“What new element?”
“Oh, I haven’t bothered to name it.”
He smiled.
“And I probably never will. There are already enough precious metals in the world for people to kill each other over.”
That caught my attention.
“Have you discovered gold, Boris?”
“No.”
He grinned.
“Something better.”
Then he suddenly stood up.
“But look at us, Alec!”
He laughed.
“You and I already have everything we need in this world.”
He studied my face.
“Look at you! You already look greedy.”
I laughed.
“I confess it. I’m consumed by the desire for gold.”
“Then we’d better talk about something else.”
So when Geneviève arrived a little later, we had already abandoned our discussion of alchemy.
Geneviève was dressed entirely in silver-gray.
The light caught the soft curves of her fair hair as she turned toward Boris.
Then she saw me and returned my greeting.
She had never once failed to blow me a kiss from her fingertips.
So when she forgot to do it that morning, I immediately complained.
She smiled and held out her hand.
It dropped almost as soon as it touched mine.
Then she turned to Boris.
“You must ask Alec to stay for lunch.”
That was strange too.
She had always invited me herself before.
“I already did,” Boris said shortly.
“And he said yes, I hope?”
She turned toward me with a polite, charming smile.
For a moment, I felt as though I were nothing more than some casual acquaintance she had met a few days earlier.
I gave her an exaggerated bow.
“J’avais bien l’honneur, madame.”
But she refused to fall into our usual playful banter.
She murmured a polite remark about lunch and disappeared.
Boris and I looked at each other.
“I suppose I’d better go home,” I said.
“Hanged if I know,” he replied honestly.
While we were debating whether I should leave, Geneviève appeared again in the doorway.
She had taken off her bonnet.
She looked wonderfully beautiful.
But her cheeks were too flushed, and her eyes were unnaturally bright.
She walked straight toward me and took my arm.
“Lunch is ready.”
Then she looked at me.
“Was I cross with you, Alec? I thought I had a headache, but I don’t.”
She turned toward Boris.
“Come here, Boris.”
She slipped her other arm through his.
“Alec knows that after you, there is no one in the world I like as much as him. So if I sometimes make him feel neglected, it won’t hurt him.”
“À la bonheur!” I cried.
“Who says there are no thunderstorms in April?”
“Are you ready?” Boris called.
“Aye ready!” I shouted.
Arm in arm, the three of us raced into the dining room, to the complete horror of the servants.
After all, perhaps we could be forgiven.
Geneviève was eighteen.
Boris was twenty-three.
And I was not yet twenty-one.