Fiction by Anagha Putrevu
The prisoner was very handsome; someone had sent the jailor a copy of an old photograph of him, and the jailor’s daughter crept into the kitchen late at night and snatched it off the table. She kept it carefully pressed in a copy of Tristan and Iseult, determined that no one else should ever see it. She memorized the sweep of dark hair over his brow, and his easy, arrogant grin. She filled colors into the black and white of the picture, imagining him into pink skin and green eyes.
The girl’s mother was long dead, and her father was bowed low by grief and time; he had not always been lazy, but it had been over a decade since the prison in Nantes had an occupant. Still, the jailor and his daughter were fed and housed for nothing but sweeping, mopping the unoccupied cells, and replacing the old locks. The jailor’s daughter was a strange, quiet girl who spent much of her time reading fairy tales. She had not left the cottage to go into Nantes since her school days.
The jailor’s daughter had only a distant idea of her father’s responsibilities, having been barely seven years old the last time he’d had to perform them. In the weeks before the prisoner arrived, the jailor grumbled softly about resources, time, and an irreparable toll. And so, the jailor’s daughter assumed that the food the prisoner would eat would be taken from their own, that the clothes he’d wear would be castoffs belonging to the jailor himself, and that the State had given enough when they’d given the jailor a house and a vegetable garden.
It was barely a week until the prisoner’s arrival that the girl spoke her mind. “Father,” she said, tongue hot and clumsy from disuse. “Let me help you. I will bring the prisoner his food and drink every day. Such work is too onerous for you to bother with, and I am old enough now to help.”
“Ah,” said the jailor. “You and every other young woman in Nantes become fascinated whenever there is a new prisoner. You all want to feed him, nurse him, reform him.” As though the prisoner were a stray dog who could be lured in and tamed.
The daughter flushed. She hadn’t considered that other young women might have considered the prisoner. And many people came to Nantes to sit on the banks of the Loire River: it was very close. They could visit both the river and the man, unless her father locked the prison doors. Or she did.
The jailor said, “You must feed the prisoner at least twice a day; you must do it, child, even if he is not so handsome as his photograph. Do not ask him where he came from or where he is going, for you know that Nantes is only a halfway point between one prison and the next, and you cannot follow him in either direction.”
—
The story of Tristan and Iseult is an old one, retold in many variations, a different version for every new set of lovers.
Tristan was the orphaned nephew of King Marc of Cornouailles. He was doted on by his uncle, and soon became a knight of the royal order. In Ireland, although Tristan ultimately led King Marc’s armies to victory, he was brutally injured in the course of battle.
The king’s lieutenant said to him, “We can attempt to bring you home with us, but I fear you will die on the voyage. If you stay here, however, we can find a healer to attend to you.”
Tristan assented, and was led to the house of Iseult—teasingly called Iseult of the Blonde Hair. Iseult and her mother were brilliant healers, and Tristan recovered quickly. When he returned to Cornouailles, he brought with him a lock of Iseult’s hair.
King Marc welcomed his beloved nephew joyously, and soon called him into confidence. “My boy,” Marc said, “I am growing old, and I desire a wife. Moreover, the people of Ireland have not all been acquiescent to my rule, and I wish to unite the kingdom without violence.”
“You desire an Irish wife, Uncle?” Tristan produced his curl of Iseult’s golden hair. “Iseult, who attended me in my illness, was as fine a healer as any I have known. She would be a fine queen for the kingdom, and a good wife for you.”
The king bade Tristan return to Ireland and bring Iseult back with him. Meanwhile, having received word of the king’s intentions, Iseult’s mother prepared a potion for her daughter. The philtre, as it was called, guaranteed passionate, everlasting love for its drinkers.
Perhaps Iseult was not told what the philtre would do, or perhaps she wasn’t thinking. Perhaps she and Tristan were simply thirsty. Regardless, on the journey from Ireland to Cornouailles, Tristan and Iseult drank the love potion, and began an affair almost immediately.
For months, the aged king remained ignorant. When he was finally told about the affair—by a courtier who was either loyal or treacherous, depending on the point of view—he decided not to punish Iseult. Rather, he banished the nephew who had betrayed his trust. Tristan went to Nantes, where he met another Iseult, Iseult of the White Hands, and married her.
Many years later, Tristan was fatally injured by a poisoned lance. Knowing that the only person who could heal him was his lost love, he sent for Iseult of the Blonde Hair. Knowing that he was likely to be bedridden within weeks, Tristan told his servant that if he was successful in convincing Iseult to see him, the boat he sailed back in should have white sails. Else, the sails should be black.
True enough, by the time the ship returned, Tristan was too weak to sit up, much less stand. His wife, Iseult of the White Hands, stood by the window to wait for the ship for him. Her heart was pinched; she did not think she could bear to see him with the former Iseult.
Finally, a ship approached. “My love,” said Iseult of the White Hands, “the ship has come back!”
Tristan let out a soft gasp. “And does it have white sails or black?”
A wave of rage came over her. “Black!” she cried. “The sails are black! Iseult of the Blonde Hair has betrayed you!”
Tristan lost all hope. He let out his last breath before the ship reached the port. Iseult could do naught but weep over his corpse.
—
The prisoner was not as handsome as his photograph; perhaps he was no longer handsome at all, except that the jailor’s daughter could trace his old face onto the new. He was very thin. He was not wearing a shirt, and she could see that his stomach was already a little distended from the bread and soup she’d brought him. His hair was greasy and hung past his shoulders. She hadn’t needed to imagine colors into the photograph: he almost matched it, his skin a sallow grey. The cell was small, and there was no bed and no chair. The floor was swept dirt. There was a tiny toilet in the corner, and the prisoner was chained to its base. Only one arm was free so he could eat.
The jailor’s daughter sat happily outside his cell to watch him.
“Hello,” he said, a little uncertainly.
“Hello,” she said. “Was the food all right?”
“The soup was very good, thank you.”
“Not the bread?”
“I don’t want to be rude, when you’ve gone to all the trouble—”
“I won’t be offended. I have no grand plans to be a chef.”
“I can’t eat bread very well.” He parted his mouth carefully to show her: dark gums, only two or three teeth.
“Oh,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
He closed his mouth. “No need to be sorry.”
“How did you lose them?”
“I tripped and fell on a rock, my dear girl,” he said, with emphasis on no particular word. It was too dark for her to see his eyes. She wondered if he really wanted to shield her from the truth or whether he was making fun of her naiveté. She knew that he was older than her, and probably used to more sophisticated conversationalists. She reasoned that he had no choice but her now. She had locked the prison doors after her, but it seemed to be of little consequence. Her father had been wrong. She was the only young woman in Nantes who dreamed about the prisoner.
“I will bring you only more soup from now on,” she promised. “Is there anything else?”
“I would not inconvenience you—”
“No one else is.”
“Could you bring beer, as well?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And some new clothes. A shirt, if you could manage it.”
She hesitated, and saw him duck his head. “I can manage,” she said firmly. A bright, white shirt, last worn when her father was young. It didn’t fit him anymore, but it couldn’t possibly be too small for the prisoner. “Shall I do anything else for you?”
He took a long time to speak. “I have not been allowed to wash in many weeks.”
She sprang to her feet, cheeks red. “I don’t like dirty jokes.”
He tried to call after her, but she had already run off, back to the light.
—
She returned that evening, with a steaming bowl of soup and a tankard of beer. She strained to watch him drink: the dark concealed him almost entirely. There was only one window in the corridor, and it was not in his cell.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she asked. “It was I who—I misunderstood you. My father says you really have not been allowed to wash, and he isn’t about to let you either. Why?”
He stared at the floor. “I should not have asked it of a young woman.”
She said softly, “You do not have occasion to ask anyone else.” She waited for him to reply, and after several minutes had passed, she came to her decision.
She rose to unlock the cell door. “If you come with me now there will be hot water, and soap, and new clothes, and my father, fast asleep, will not know.” She carefully released his hands and feet from the shackles, and helped him stand. His skin was very cold.
The corridor they walked down was long and twisted. She took him to a washroom at its end; if he remembered his considerably better-guarded trek to his cell, he would know it was very close to the door, the only exit in the entire prison. She could not tell whether this was a reasonable thing to expect.
It occurred to her, as she turned her back to let him wash, that he might come up behind her, put his cold hands around her neck, and squeeze until she died. Her father would find her eventually, but not soon. He truly was asleep, and there had never been occasion to worry about her before. The trek from their cottage to the prison required almost an hour from her, and her father would need at least twice as long. The prisoner would be far away by the time morning light touched the horizon. She had not considered keeping his hands shackled together and washing him herself. It would have been too bold a step.
If he were too kind a prisoner to kill her, he might knock her unconscious and run off. Or he might take her with him, insisting on pain of death that she help him escape and stay with him as he ran from the authorities. She thought it probable that people would trust him if he was with her, but not on his own.
He did none of these things. He simply washed himself for about twenty minutes, wore the simple white shirt and black pants she’d acquired for him, and said, with some awkwardness, “I am ready to return.”
—
The jailor’s daughter returned home late one night, humming to herself. Her father peered at her from across the cottage’s little table. He did not speak until she had eaten her soup and put the dishes away.
“Child,” said the jailor. “The prisoner is not going to be here long.”
He watched her face tighten.
“It occurs to me,” he continued, with some embarrassment, “that you do not quite understand what our prison is. You do not understand what it is that I do.”
She snorted. What was it that he did? He hadn’t even stepped into the prison in a week. He had done nothing, nothing at all for her prisoner. She did not see that she had just hurt her father terribly.
“I am going back to the prison,” she announced, putting her cloak back around her shoulders. “I have left a glove behind. There is no need to wait for me before you go to bed.”
The jailor thought about stopping her; he had not finished thinking before she left. “Go then,” he said to himself. “If you are truly determined to suffer, go on.”
—
Most of the letters between Héloïse and Abélard have been lost, but several remain, and a love story can be pieced together from them.
In broad strokes, Héloïse was the intellectually gifted niece of a canon, Fulbert. She became the student of one of Paris’s most renowned teachers and philosophers, Peter Abélard, who was twenty years older than herself. Abélard had taken holy orders, and he was committed to a vow of chastity. Heedlessly, he and his pupil began an affair.
Soon enough, Héloïse fell pregnant. In a panic, she and Abélard were secretly married. However, it was impossible to conceal her condition, and the person who had caused it, from her uncle. Héloïse was sent to a convent in Argenteuil, and friends of Fulbert attacked and castrated Abélard for his insolence.
Héloïse and Abélard never met again in their lifetimes, but they sent letters; hers from the convent where she was now a nun, and his from the Parisian monastery where he lived out the remainder of his days. In Héloïse’s account, she remained devoted to the pure love she felt for Abélard, but he continued to blame himself for corrupting her. He insisted that their relationship was a sin against God, and was horrified that they had both succumbed to lust.
Nothing is known of the fate of their child, who is never mentioned in the surviving letters.
—
After several weeks, the jailor’s daughter thought perhaps the prisoner might expect her to bring up the matter of his escape. After all, she had already given him what no other prison would, and he might not think he had the right to expect more.
She had never left Nantes. She had hardly ever left her own home, the prison and the little cottage on its outskirts. She wondered what he would expect from her if she went with him. She wondered what she would expect from herself. She decided she was not quite brave enough to suggest that they run away together.
“I must not be a very interesting conversationalist for you, who are so well traveled.”
His face turned towards her. She wished, not for the first time, that there were a window in his cell so that his expression could be clearly lit. All she could see was the vague outline of his face. When the sun was low in the sky he could have been anyone at all.
“Prisons do not tend to encourage conversation,” he told her. “I am not one to evaluate, but your talk has never bored me.”
“Who did you talk to before you only traveled through prisons?”
“You wish to know how I came here?” For the first time, he let her hear the anger in his voice. She almost shrank back, but she remembered that he was still shackled to the ground with iron bars between them. It was not her who need be afraid.
“No,” she said. “What did you do before you did the thing that made you come here?”
He said, “I didn’t do much of anything. I came from Angers, and I didn’t move until I was moved. I drank beer and smoked cigarettes.” He’d never asked her for a cigarette, not that she’d have been able to get one—her father didn’t smoke. She hadn’t ever liked to go into town, but she thought she wouldn’t mind it now. She knew an old schoolmate of hers worked in a shop; she wanted to visit her, and buy an armful of cigarettes. If the other girl asked her when she’d started smoking, she’d lean in and whisper that she was buying them for a prisoner in her father’s keep. “I chased girls,” the prisoner added.
“Girls like me?”
He looked at the ground. She couldn’t tell whether it would hurt more to hear him say yes or no. She would have liked to hear him say he’d never met a girl like her before. “Girls of all kinds,” he said, “but I’d rather listen to you than talk myself.”
So she told him about Semele, who demanded so much of her lover that she burned up from the wanting, or perhaps the receiving.
And the Nantes bells began to clang, and she left him to sleep in her own warm bed.
—
Semele was an ordinary girl. Quite pretty, fairly charming, and not obviously distinguishable from any other. As is generally the case, she grew up and men began to sniff around her. No one in her family thought much about this. Semele had three older sisters, and much the same had occurred with them. Semele wasn’t seen to encourage anyone in particular.
But they must not have been paying enough attention, because before she turned twenty Semele’s belly was swollen with child. She began to demand honey cakes at every meal and grew visibly smug. Her sisters wondered what man’s lust would result in pride rather than shame.
Ino brought Semele flowers from the grape vine, her favorites. “Semele,” Ino asked, “whose child do you bear?”
But Semele only laughed and waved her away.
A few weeks later, Autonoë made her attempt. She brought Semele a lovely necklace made of coral and pearl. “Semele,” she asked, “won’t you tell me who is the father of your child?”
Semele was now irritated. She had been quite spoiled with affection, and was tired of keeping secrets. “Won’t you leave me alone?” she cried. She threw the necklace back at her sister.
Finally, Agave, the favorite, made her strike. Cleverer than her sisters, she didn’t bring any gifts to cajole. She only lay next to her in bed, and whispered in her ear, “Wouldn’t it be nice, Semele darling, to tell someone? Men aren’t any fun unless you get to talk about them.”
Semele waited a long moment. Finally, she said with great feeling, “Zeus! Agave, Zeus himself has chosen to bless me with his child.”
Agave let out a long stream of laughter. “Zeus!” She called the other sisters into the room. “This little fool thinks that Zeus is the father of her child!” The sisters’ mirth rocked the room.
“It’s true!” Semele said. “It’s true; it was Zeus, he swore to me. He warned me it was better to keep silent, and now I see he was right.” The sisters saw that she truly did believe that Zeus was her lover, and they pitied her even as their amusement increased. Zeus, really! There was an available girl for every lie a man could come up with.
“Semele,” Ino said, “we want only to protect you.”
Autonoë said, “We are older than you. We know what men are.”
“If he truly is Zeus, he must prove it to you,” said Agave.
“How could he prove it to me?” How easy it was to break the girl’s faith.
The three older sisters exchanged a significant look. Agave said, “You must ask him to show you his true face. All gods have faces that are only for each other, hidden from mortals. But you—you who carry his child—surely you are worth the honor.”
Semele went to her god the next day. Her sisters hid out of sight to watch. Semele had insisted that they position themselves to see only her face and not his. They cheerfully obliged.
In vain, Semele’s Zeus protested.
“You told me you would give me anything I asked for.”
“But you will burn if you see it. It is not meant for mortal eyes.”
Agave had to cover Ino’s mouth; she had begun to laugh uncontrollably.
“I carry your child. I will be protected.”
“That is not certain. No one has asked before.”
“I am asking,” she said, low and assured.
And Zeus saw that Semele would leave him either way, so he showed her his true from. She burned at her first glimpse of him, and it was all he could do to save the baby.
—
“My girl,” the prisoner said the next day. She had brought both his meals at once so she could sit the whole day outside his cell, talking to him. She had started to bring him truly enormous amounts of soup, and would only eat herself once she saw that he’d finished an entire tureen. Sometimes he couldn’t finish, no matter how he tried. She had become very thin in imagined solidarity.
“Would you bring me something to read?” he asked. “Anything you have. I used to love books, and it has been a very long time since I have read a story.”
There was never, even at high noon, enough light to make out words on a page. “I would have to bring a candle,” she said.
He didn’t reply. Finally she nodded. “I will bring a candle and a book with me tomorrow, only don’t send me back now, because my father will have noticed I already gave you both your meals and will question my returning to see you.”
The prisoner asked if her father didn’t notice she was gone the whole day regardless.
“Well, he must know where I am, but even though we live on the prison grounds it takes nearly an hour to walk from the cottage to the front door, so it’s too much bother for him to come get me. He was very old to have had a child, and he finds certain things difficult about the practice.”
For reasons she was not yet willing to articulate, she preferred to avoid her father’s company nowadays.
—
The next morning, the jailor’s daughter brought the prisoner Tristan et Iseult, a candle, a pot of stew, and a bottle of beer. She balanced them all on a teeming tray, and hesitated outside the cell door. “I know I always set the food down and then sit outside the cell—”
“Come in and sit, dear girl, if you’d like.”
She sat very close to him. “Would you like me to read to you while you eat?” At his nod, she began: Orphelin, Tristan est chevalier au royaume de son oncle… But within a minute the prisoner had drained the soup, and he wanted to read it himself.
His voice was unaffected by the missing teeth. It was lovely, smooth and low, and when the jailor’s daughter closed her eyes she thought she could hear the prisoner before he’d been the prisoner, when he’d just been handsome and carefree, and could have had the attention of any girl in Nantes. By and by, she dared to lay her head on his shoulder. He kept reading, and she thought she could hear a smile in his voice.
She fell asleep imagining a fire, a rug, and a happy ending.
—
One day, weeks later, the prisoner noticed that the jailor’s daughter had not arrived by the time the first bells rang. He usually had been fed by that time. He assumed that she’d found something more interesting than a prisoner at least a decade older than herself. It surprised him that it had taken her such a long time to grow tired of him. For months and months it had been the two of them, insulated from the world.
An hour later, she burst into his cell with tears in her eyes. “I went into town today, to buy cigarettes.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“I wanted them for you.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t want any.”
She sat in front of him. “I wanted to buy them from a particular shop girl, a girl I went to school with.”
She could see his face very clearly now, and still could not tell what his expression meant. She went on, “I spoke to her about you.”
He flinched, almost imperceptibly. “And what did you learn about me, dear girl?”
“She says that Nantes is not a halfway point between two prisons, but the end point. She says my father is not a jailor, but an executioner. She says—” Her voice broke. She could not continue.
“She says I must die tomorrow, dear girl.”
She looked at him for a very long moment, moved closer to him, and kneeled. It was very clean; she had taken over the sweeping of his cell. He put his free arm around her, and she buried her head in his shoulder.
“If I truly must die tomorrow, darling,” he whispered, “won’t you unshackle me and take me to see the sun one last time, as though I were free?” She was not fooled. She allowed him to see she was not fooled, and reached into her pockets for the key.
The sun was almost blinding; it had been a very long time since she’d spent daylight hours outside of the prison. They moved closer to the river bank, a lush, green place. It had never quite looked so lovely.
The prisoner hugged her very tightly. She waited for him to tell her how they were going to escape, and where they were going to go. He kissed the top of her head and buried his face in her hair.
—
The bells of Nantes clanged incessantly. Townspeople gathered behind closed doors and locked windows to discuss the events of the day. The jailor was summoned and disciplined, for the prisoner of Nantes had jumped into the Loire River to drown, and the jailor’s daughter was sitting on the bank, whispering a name no one was close enough to hear.
