Styx (28 page)

“Tell me what you see,” Delacroix prompted.

“A young painter with a full beard and an odd feathered cap. I think it's Ensor.” He turned from the window as if to apologize for seeing the invisible.

“I'm not sure I believe you,” said Delacroix. “You could say Leopold the Second was in there, and how would I know any different?”

“No, I think he was at the train station. But you're right. What can I say to convince you? All you've got is my word.”

Suddenly, Styx's tone changed. “It's funny. I always used to tell Victor he was spending too much time staring at screens—television, computer, phone, Xbox. I think I actually said once he was turning into a zombie.” He remembered how to laugh. “Last night, I didn't just use my father-in-law's old computer to look up Paul Delvaux. I looked up my son too. He's on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—whatever the hell that is. He's got his own YouTube channel. And
I
was the zombie sitting there for hours, staring at him.”

“Styx, about your wife.”

But Styx continued. “I thought if I spent enough time looking at all his online shit, it would be like I was back in his life. But that's not the way it works. We're a million miles apart, and the distance grows every minute. He's changing so much. In some ways, even faster than I am. You know what? He posted a—what do the kids call it?—a selfie on Facebook, and he's got a wisp of a mustache!”

“Styx, don't do this to yourself.”

“I'm not doing anything to myself. It's just the truth. Maybe I can see into the past because that's all I have left.” He turned back to the window and watched the people moving to and fro in what looked like a perfectly re-created film set. “I wish you could see it, Delacroix. You'd love it: the style, the clothes, the flair. That's when you should have been around. Me, if I could have picked a time to live, I'd've picked the Wild West.”

“You should have been a writer,” said Delacroix. “The way you describe it all.”

“Maybe so. Who knows?”

Delacroix laid a gentle hand on Styx's shoulder and pulled him back to the present. “I have to tell you something,” he said.

“What?”

“I didn't leave your note for Isabelle.”

Styx nodded. “I figured.”

“I couldn't do it. I'm sorry, but I just couldn't. I'm not even sure why. You said it yourself, it wasn't going to help her. Was I wrong?”

“I'm not sure what ‘wrong'
means
anymore.”

“Really, Styx, I—”

“Let me ask you something.”

Delacroix took his hand from the zombie's shoulder.

“What do you think of her?” asked Styx.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You ever look in a mirror, Delacroix? You're the opposite of me. A real gentleman. A
ladies'
man.”

“Hey, you're the one who sent me over there.”

“Yeah, but you're the one who went.”

“Don't be ridiculous. I'm not—”

“I've seen the light in your eyes, these last couple days. It's her, isn't it?”

“I said don't—”

“You can't hide it, man.” He turned away. “And I don't blame you. She deserves better than me. I had my chance, and I fucked it up.”

“It's not what you think,” said Delacroix.

“I think it is. You just don't know it yet.”

In the café three women in bright-red dresses were on the small stage, high-kicking their ruffled skirts and petticoats in unison as, off to the side, a man in a striped shirt and sleeve garters banged on a piano. Someone spotted Styx looking in and came over to shut the heavy drapes.

“You think it over while I go in,” he said. “When I come out, maybe we'll both be a little wiser—you about her, and me about the Stuffer.”

Delacroix didn't argue. “What are you going to ask him?”

“Ensor?” Styx put a hand to the door. Where Delacroix had seen and felt a bank's modern metal handle, Styx saw and felt an old-fashioned glass knob. “That's the weird thing. I don't really need to ask him anything. The way it seems to work, he'll tell me what I need to know. They don't need any small talk. They just get straight to the point.”

“Good luck,” said Delacroix.

When Styx stepped into the
café the scene came fully to life. He could hear the music from the out-of-tune piano now, an energetic can-can.

He looked around for the enigmatic James Ensor, but couldn't see him. Was he too late? Had the painter left during his conversation with Delacroix?

He felt himself drawn to the table closest to the little stage and saw a figure concealed behind a mask, a caricature of a creature out of Hieronymus Bosch: an inhumanly ugly bald man with a sharply pointed chin, bulbous nose, and huge ears. Styx stared into the eyes behind the mask. They reminded him of those eyes he'd seen once before, on a lonely beach beneath a yellow sou'wester. The eyes of the Stuffer.

“Mr. Ensor?”

A gloved hand pulled the mask away, revealing the condescending face of James Ensor. His fame lay years in the future; at this time of his life, he was just on the verge of breaking through to success.

“I thought perhaps you recognized me,
cher ami
,” said Ensor. “I saw you glancing my way from the street.”

“I'm sorry to bother you, but—”

“No matter,” said the painter, laying the mask beside him on the table. “You're a journalist, desirous of an interview? If so, you can find me every day in my salon above the shop of
ma maman
. No appointment necessary. I often receive visitors and friends who wish to consult with me.”

“If you don't mind,” said Styx, “I'd like to consult you here and now on an urgent matter.”

“And who are you? A reporter, yes?”

“Something like that.”

At that moment Styx understood why Delvaux and Marvin Gaye and all the others he'd encountered in the Ostends of the past had failed to be horrified by the goatish, noisome wreck he had become.

In a mirror behind the painter, Styx saw himself. There sat not Raphael Styx the zombie, but Raphael Styx the man. The old Styx, with his smooth, healthy skin, his strong chin, intelligent eyes, and human energy. The deathly pallor, the sloughing of the skin, the bloodstained fluid that leaked from his mouth and nostrils, all that was gone.

“Are you quite all right?” asked Ensor with concern. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

The irony of that remark struck home. Styx's first thought was that he'd seen the very opposite of a ghost, but then he realized that the healthy, normal face in the mirror
was
in fact the ghost of a man who now existed only in the past.

“I'm fine,” he said, and turned his attention from the man in the mirror to the man across the table from him.

“Then what can I tell you, worthy sir?” Ensor snapped his fingers and murmured an order to the waiter who materialized by his side. “Beauty? Truth? The meaning of life?”

“I'm not interested in the meaning of life,” he said. “I want to know about death.”

“Interesting,” said Ensor. “Today, coincidentally, I began work on a new canvas. It's rather promising, I think, inspired by that old master Bosch's crucifixion of Christ.”

Two glasses of absinthe arrived. Ensor pushed one across the table toward Styx and took a sip of the other. “I'm thinking of calling it
Masks Mocking Death
,” he continued. “An
hommage
, perhaps, to Poe's ‘The Masque of the Red Death.' Have you read it?”

“No,” Styx admitted.

“Or perhaps
Masks Confronting Death
. I haven't decided yet if the maskers or Death himself will play the principal role.”

“What's your fascination with masks?” asked Styx, feeling that he was on the cusp of discovering something vital.

“Masks, my good man, are used for concealment. But I turn that convention on its head. I paint masks that reveal the hidden truths of those who wear them. The paradox appeals to me: my masks
un
mask the emotions that lie beneath our middle-class façades.”

“But what does that have to do with death?”

“It is only when we look Death in the eye that our masks fall away. What is it, after all, that we hide ourselves
from
, if not the inevitability of collapse, dissolution, and decay? When the masks are gone, what remains is the ultimate truth, our terrified plunge into the Abyss.”

“When we look Death in the eye,” said Styx, “what exactly do we see?”

The painter laughed enigmatically. “We see ourselves,” he said. “Death is a mirror, my friend. Oscar Wilde had it right in his
Picture of Dorian Gray.
Death cannot be cheated. Man wasn't made to be immortal. We age, we sicken, we die. We fight against it—think of the medical profession—but the battle has never, will never, can never be won.” Ensor sipped again from his glass. He cocked his head and examined Styx thoughtfully. “But I have the impression that my answer has not satisfied you.”

“I'd like to know more,” said Styx. “I'm looking for—”

He searched for the right word, and the painter tried to help him: “Inspiration?”

“A man. He sees himself as an artist. Not a painter, but a sculptor who wears the mask of Death.”

James Ensor stroked his beard. “Death, of course, is ineffable, but there
are
some who believe themselves capable of assisting Him in His work. They don the appearance of Death—but make no mistake, my friend, even Death's own appearance is just another mask.”

“But who are they?”

“The only advice I can give you is to take nothing at face value. The ultimate truth lies behind all the masks, beneath the surface. Truth is figurative, not literal. It is in the way the facts are presented, not the facts themselves. Why is it that some cannibalistic peoples wear wooden masks when they cook their prey? Partly to frighten their prisoners, surely, but also to hide their own primal fears.”

“So you're saying that those who do Death's work are scared?”

“Of course. And that explains why they mask themselves—as we all mask ourselves to conceal our terror. But you won't learn the true identity of the man you seek by tearing his mask from his face. You must see
through
the mask to the man who hides beneath it.”

Styx was still unsatisfied. He took a small sip of absinthe, which was strong and tasted of black licorice. He could see the café window from where he sat, but Delacroix wasn't there. Delacroix waited a hundred years in the future.

“I'm sorry to harp on this,” Styx said, “but the man I'm looking for
literally
wears a mask.”

“If he veils himself from the world's eyes, then he clearly has something to hide. A fear, a regret, a memory—who can say?”

For the first time, Styx considered the possibility that the Stuffer
might be operating not out of madness, but for some explainable reason. Perhaps the mask he'd chosen to wear was there to shroud some personal lack or weakness.

“I think I'm beginning to understand,” he said, and he raised his glass in a toast. He was celebrating not only a step taken in the direction of the truth, but also a glimpse of the old Styx.

“Who is this person you wish to find?” asked Ensor.

“A man without a conscience, a sacrificer of innocent lives. He not only kills his victims, but he removes their organs and fills their bodies with sand or clay.”

The painter considered this as if he thought he might try to capture such a scene on canvas.

“It sounds gruesome.”

“It is.”

“It makes me think of the ancient Egyptians, who buried their dead surrounded by their personal possessions. I have several Egyptian funeral masks in my studio. The high priests would wash a dead pharaoh's body and remove his organs—except for the heart, which would be needed in the afterlife. The body would be filled with herbs and spices, sawdust and salt, then sewn up and wrapped in linen for the journey to the Other Side.”

“Yes, I've read those stories,” said Styx.

“I hope you find your man,” said Ensor.

Styx stood and tossed off the rest of his absinthe.

In an earlier life, it would have dulled the pain that even now still radiated from his hip.

“One final piece of advice,” Ensor said. “Be careful. Watch your back. The next mask this man wears may so nearly resemble his true appearance that you won't even realize it
is
a mask.”

Styx wasn't quite sure what that meant, but he knew it would become clear to him in time. He thanked the painter in the feathered
cap and headed for the door. Before he left, he turned around for one last look and saw that Ensor's own mask was back in place.

He pushed open the door and stepped outside. When he clapped the pocket watch shut, he felt his hip break and his body gnarl and molder.