The Tale-Teller Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I was thinking about your tale of life among the apes.”
    â€œSo you heard it?”
    â€œMonsieur Hocquart asked me to wait outside …” Marie-Thérèse was so mortified that she couldn’t complete the sentence.
    But it seemed Esther did not mean to embarrass her; on the contrary, she asked, “Did you like it?”
    â€œYes, very much. You are a wonderful storyteller.”
    â€œThank you.” A radiant smile lit up the girl’s face and in fact, at that moment, she looked quite pretty. “Now here is the important question: did you believe me?”
    â€œIf Monsieur Hocquart believes you, then I should too.”
    â€œWhy?” The girl sat down in the water with a thud, spraying the housekeeper, who shrieked involuntarily. Marie-Thérèse mopped her face with her apron, while Esther scrubbed her own skin so roughly it seemed she meant to rub it right off.
    â€œBecause I am nothing but a servant.”
    â€œYou are more than that, surely. Being a servant is what you do; it is not who you are. Nobody is just what other people say they are.”
    These words hit Marie-Thérèse with the force of a revelation. She thought at once of her father who, despite her tears and supplications, had sent her alone to this cold country because he had no dowry for her. She thought of the village boys jeering at the teeth that staggered through her mouth like broken fence posts. She remembered the priest who scolded her for being proud of her new bonnet and then put a sly hand on her bottom when she was weeping with shame. Nobody else had ever suggested that she might be more than a homely girl with no prospects. That a complete stranger might suspect she was — or could be — different than what she appeared to be was profoundly unsettling. That the person who thought this was completely naked made it all the more portentous. Clearly this girl’s spirit was much larger than her body, so couldn’t the same be true of anyone?
    Having no idea how to reply, Marie-Thérèse reverted to servant mode, despite herself. “Well, you may be right,” she conceded. “Now finish your bath while I find you some clean clothes.”
    ***
    ESTHER LAY IN THE bath, finally, ecstatically alone. She felt like she was exhaling for the first time since she ran away from home. And after three months of hiding her body from others, sleeping between huge stinking men and washing only sketchily and in secret, clean hot water was a luxury she was in no haste to relinquish. If only she could stay here, dreaming of where she’d been and where she might go next, rather than facing the challenges that awaited her. For as much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, a life of adventure was more fun to imagine than to experience.
    Her solitary childhood had given her ample time to imagine her escape; indeed, for years she’d dreamed of little else. She’d practically memorized
Le Télémaque, Le Solitaire Espagnol, Le Paysan Gentilhomme,
and many other works describing both real and fantastic voyages, including translations of
Gulliver’s Travels
and her favourite book of all:
The Strange and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner
. Most people insisted that Defoe’s book was a pack of lies but Esther didn’t care; as a role model, Crusoe was more meaningful to her than Marco Polo, Amerigo Vespucci, or Henry Hudson.
    The literature of travel gave her hope. If there were so many other worlds, maybe she could find a place where she belonged: a place without arbitrary divisions between people based on where they were from, who their parents were, whether they were male or female. As a last resort, she dreamed of finding a desert island like Crusoe’s, with fruit trees and friendly animals but without any visiting cannibals, where she would live happily on her own.
    So she’d copied maps, and memorized trade routes, and