The Green Muse (16 page)

 

T
HE
PHOTOGRAPHS SHONE
wet; Augustine hesitated. If she were to reach out and touch that supplicant hand, would her own fingers dip, and disappear into that luminescent flesh? “It's quite all right, Augustine,” I said gently.

She laughed, to cover her nervousness; she succeeded only in showing it more clearly. But then she seemed to realize something obvious and somehow grotesque. “This is Adelaide!” she cried. Frozen in a gesture of helpless rage, her face contorted in pain or ecstasy, she seemed both more and less than the Adelaide we knew. I knew that Augustine was seeing her face as a stranger might, and was ashamed, as a stranger might be ashamed who happened upon a woman in the midst of her toilette. The intimacy of the shots was shocking: Adelaide was lying on an untidy bed, dressed only in a coarse shift. Her back was arched at such an angle that only her head and feet touched the bedsheets. Her eyes were half closed, and both hands were clawed into fists bent back against the wrists at an unnatural angle. Her arms looked as if she were struggling against the air, as if the air were dirt and threatening to smother her; she seemed to be desperately digging her way out of some invisible grave. Her shift was hiked up high above the knee, and her feet were bare. Her mouth was contorted, her lips half-­snarling. She looked both completely mad and completely ordinary. Mad if you did not know her.

“Why do they make her do that?” Augustine asked me.

“Well,” I said slowly, “it is difficult to explain.” I did not want to go on.

“But what is she doing?” She seemed almost afraid of the picture; it might move.

“She is evincing the
arc-­en-­ciel
aspect of an hysterical attack. It has been explained to me. You see, the hand held so is an indication of what is termed tonic immobility. This contracture is unpredictable, I am told, and may sometimes be held for so long that the condition becomes permanent.”

“But that's Adelaide! She isn't the least bit ill!”

I was startled. “But of course she is, or she would not be here.”

“So you think I am like that, too?” I could see by her face that she really did. “But she speaks with Dr. Charcot,” she went on. “She has told me. He demonstrates for her what she should best be doing on the stage. I mean”—­seeing my face—­“not that he does so on purpose, but that she holds her hands this way and that, and waits to see what pleases him.”

“Augustine,” I said gently, “Dr. Charcot is the foremost authority on hysteria in the world. Certainly he is able to tell a true contracture from a false one indeed! Surely he would not need to coach a poor sick girl to obtain the results he desires.”

“Adelaide is not ill,” she said again. “Her parents could not control her. She was in love.”

“Augustine, we are not talking about you. We are talking about an hysteric, a woman who is being treated here for a serious illness. Dr. Charcot's revelations have changed the face of neurology. He has opened a gateway into the mind of insanity. These subjects—­”

“I was one of ‘these subjects' just two weeks ago! Why do you visit me, Edouard? Is it because you feel pity for me?”

I blushed beet.

“No, Augustine. I do not feel pity for you. For your situation, but not for you. Please forgive me. I did not realize how upsetting this would be for you. I will put the pictures away.”

“No. No.” She seemed suddenly desperate that I not leave, as if I might never come back. “I have another appointment with Dr. Charcot this afternoon.” She thought I must think her mad.

I regarded her with a smile. “But that is good, is it not, to be seen by one of the finest doctors in the world?”

“I—­I don't know. Edouard, I am so afraid! I swear to you that I am not insane.” She had tears on her cheeks, on her hands, and I could tell she was ashamed. “My parents say they have told the doctors here—­”

“Shh. Augustine, all you have to do is trust Dr. Charcot. Surely you could not be in better hands.”

“When I think about the Amphitheatre, when I think about Dr. Charcot and his black office, I see his eyes looking into my eyes, and that is enough almost to put me into a trance once more. Thought becomes image only: I have no words to describe what had been done to me, and I become once again that terrified and helpless girl; the word
prey
comes to mind.

“Dr. Charcot is the Master of Sleep. He not only induces the trance, he decides exactly what the subject will do during the trance. In the Amphitheatre, I was deprived of my own will. And I could not resist his will. I was an automaton onstage. And yet it is so strange, Edouard! There is a connection between the Master and me—­he forces me to give up my will, and yet as I do so it feels as if I am the one giving to him. I have some awareness during a trance not of being controlled but of giving. Oh, you cannot understand it!”

“Augustine, you are not mad,” I said fiercely. “But.” I reached out to touch her hand, then checked myself. “Dr. Charcot can be of help to you even so. Surely he will see how sane you are, and surely he will intervene with your parents on your behalf. He is a great man, Augustine. You need only have faith in him.”

Then I busied myself with my pictures and reached to stroke my camera, and I felt a tug at my heart.

“I think I will choose, just for now, to believe you,” she said charmingly, although her cheeks were still wet with tears. “Not that I should trust Dr. Charcot! No, I will believe that you do not think me mad. Because it is bearable thus, if you believe in me. I will do my best; it is all I can do.”

If only she knew what I saw when I looked into her eyes!

And I will ignore the persistent tugging at my heart, and the empty feeling it carried, after I left, all the rest of the day.

 

I
SAT IN
a black wooden chair across the black desk from Dr. Charcot and found him no less frightening than I had before. I tell myself I will not be afraid, but his eyes are so deep that I can hardly see them, and yet it is as though a gleam shoots out from their depths, and I am as helpless as a deer before a gun.

“At the root of each case of hysteria there is a trauma,” he said, “every time.”

I said nothing. I knew what Adelaide would have me do, but I could not do it.

“Augustine, in order for me to know how to properly handle your case, I have to know what the trauma was. I know this is difficult for you, but it is necessary. It is the whole crux of the matter.”

I took a deep breath and steeled myself to speak.

“I fell in love.”

I dared look up; Dr. Charcot was simply regarding me. Clearly this was not going to be good enough.

“It is true. He was a married man. Nothing happened,” I added hastily, and I swear I saw a look of disappointment cross the doctor's face. “But he did not love me back.” And as I said it I knew it was true. I was nothing to him, and I cried a great deal at home because I think I knew it even then. I would neglect my work and dream, looking at the pattern of the paper on the dining-­room wall.”

The doctor waited. Clearly he did not believe I had told him all.

“I have a broken heart,” I said finally. “That is what is wrong with me.”

The doctor considered this. Surely a broken heart is not enough to cause green disease. And just as surely my parents had told him that I had self-­polluted, and oh, did he know it even now? Were his attendants peeking through the sliding panel when I did not know it?

But his next words reassured me.

“Your mother was very circumspect. She said that you became not simply recalcitrant but obstreperous, and that that is not in your usual nature. She was concerned at the amount of time you spent with a certain friend . . .” He checked his notes. “Yvette. But I imagine that at least part of that time was spent with your lover.”

“He was not my lover!” I burst out, and when I started to cry I thought I would never stop. The doctor did nothing, proving himself human after all, and I cried and cried until I could not breathe, and he handed me a black handkerchief and I started to laugh. Now he certainly thought me insane, and I had not had to resort to stories of seduction and absinthe at all!

“I'm sorry,” I said, when the handkerchief was so wet I dared not cry anymore.

“You need not be,” he said shortly. “We have come to the root of your trauma. Unrequited love in a young woman can lead to a great deal of damage, stopping up, as it were, the natural channels through which a woman expresses her femininity.”

I really did not know what he was talking about. But I was too concerned with my appearance to notice.

“I am shallow,” I said suddenly, “because I am not listening. I only care how awful I must look.”

I swear he almost smiled. “You need not worry about that. We will arrange for some simple toiletries for you. I know you brought a brush, and a journal as well. The journal has been restored to you already, and the brush you brought will be restored as well. And there was a book.”

Cousin Bette.
“Yes,” I breathed.

“That shall be returned as well, and when you feel the need to read another you need only notify one of the attendants. Certainly I cannot let you read whatever you choose. I strongly suspect that you have been reading books most unsuitable to a young girl.”

I blushed to the roots of my hair.

“I thought as much. Well, after dinner you will find your belongings restored to you in your room. But you must not speak of this to any of the other girls. And we will meet again, Augustine, every few days. There are aspects of your hysterical attacks I want you to learn to understand. Thoroughly understand.”

And that was all. When I left, the doctor was staring at one of the black walls. I suppose they helped him think. I prefer to dream into a meadow view, but of course Dr. Charcot does not dream. But I knew I had done something right and that Adelaide had been quite correct. I did not know exactly what I was headed for, and I was afraid, but at the same time there was an agitation in my belly that did not feel like a symptom of anything but excitement.

 

V
HAS ACQUIRED
the most peculiar houseguest. I had no warning. One day Odette was simply there, like furniture. She settled herself so quickly into our home and routine that I was astonished; but then, Odette was quite simply astonishing.

She was very tall. She was as dark as V was fair, rich of breast and hip. Her eyes were dark blue, large and searching, and a great many things made her laugh. She had a hideous laugh. V said she was a childhood friend; Odette said she was the Countess Odette Alexandrovna, but that her husband had died; and she laughed.

She lounged around the apartment all day in Chinese dishabille: silk dresses in the Chinese style without so much as a corset underneath, soft Chinese slippers on her feet; and I had seen her go out dressed like this with only a shawl to cover herself. I didn't know where she went at night; often she came back as late as next morning, kohl smudged below her eyes and her hair wild, as if she'd spent time in a storm.

One afternoon when V had gone to her dressmaker's I sat and watched Odette put on her makeup as I prepared myself a glass of absinthe. She had draped V's red silk scarf over the shade of the lamp that sat on the vanity; I took secret pleasure that just days ago I had held that scarf tight around V's neck in my fist while taking my pleasure with her. Odette was applying ambergris around her eyes as she smoked one of her small Egyptian cigarettes, which she always put in a long ivory holder. She spoke with a drawl acquired, V had told me, from time spent in New Orleans. Apparently she had gone to school in Switzerland with V and traveled a great deal. Since she spoke of nothing but herself it was difficult to gauge her education.

“Charles,” she said, looking at me in the mirror with smoky eyes, “you know I live for pleasure. I choose to live without restraint, giving my whole heart and soul without thought of consequences.” Odette was given to such soliloquies when she had been smoking her cigarettes, which, laced with opium, left a pleasant smell in the blue smoke that lay in layers about the vanity. “I have spoken of my Drago.”

And indeed she had, in exhaustive detail: I was thoroughly tired of hearing about him.

“That I love Drago in this way is proof of my superiority.” She laughed. “You will not say it, and V will not say it, but I have pledges to drink to the dregs of my carnal soul.”

I handled the familiar, soothing items of my ritual, the slotted odalisque spoon, my sugar tongs.

“This Italian of yours, Drago, when does he arrive?”

“Oh,” she said casually, “he does as he pleases.” She reached to take the silver tongs from my hand, and the ruby locket she wore dangling from her bracelet made a pretty sound against the metal. I resisted her fingers and took the sugar cubes from the pot, busying myself with the ancient, almost animal motions of preparing my drink. When I am readying a glass of absinthe I do not think of anything else.

“I do not know when he will come,” she said; she was not rebuffed. “You will appreciate him, Charles. He is a man much like yourself. He has promised to send me a grand piano. He told me that as a gesture of his feelings for me, he could think of no more appropriate gesture.”

I was thoroughly tired of Drago and his piano. How was he to get a grand piano from Italy to France? Before I could say anything, however, Odette laughed and said, “It will be here soon. Perhaps I will have it sent to V's apartment.” The sugar tumbled into the lap of the spoon. Odette's locket swung without a sound.

She knew about the apartment.

Her eyelids had already begun to droop, the ambergris had already begun to run. She applied more with fingers made clumsy by the opium in her cigarette, and I saw dirt under the fingernails of her mannish hands. I watched the absinthe fall out of its bottle; I poured somewhat more than my usual measure. The sick-­sweet smell of opium clung to her hair, as full and lustrous as the hair itself, which hung in a dark cloud around her shoulders. Her blue eyes were sunken and fevered, and the smudge of her makeup made her white skin even whiter; already it was beginning to be mapped by tiny lines: Someday she would be parchment.

Her lips were almost bloodless. She roused herself and dipped a finger into her china rouge pot, she smoothed red enamel across her bottom lip. She casually picked up a small red-­leather book and opened to a well-­worn page:

I am the wound and the knife!

I am the slap and the cheek!

I am the limbs and the rack,

And the victim and the executioner!

I am the vampire of my own heart.

“Isn't that how you feel about V, Charles? You want to mingle your blood with hers, you want to be her.”

“We are man and wife,” I answered softly. “We are commingled already.”

“Oh, Charles.” She laughed, turning her face away and revealing her white, white throat. She put down her book and picked up a sinuous nude mirror from the table at her side. “It is by others' blood that you are linked. Tell me, have you ever tasted blood?”

So V had told her of our killings after all. But I was not discomfited; I was proud that Odette knew. Had I ever tasted blood? I thought of boyhood scratches, a cut finger put in my mouth, a sudden scratch from a wayward branch soothed with my own saliva; I thought of the rivulets of blood streaming down V's arms as she lay in our bed, and how they had seemed to be rose petals drifting from the bed to the floor.

“Yes,” I said shortly. “V's blood.”

“What a clever girl V is. Did she pinch the same spot on her throat she pricked for the marquis, I wonder.” She laughed again.

The tiny pucker of white on V's neck, the one she said she had no memory of:
I suppose I was wounded climbing a tree as a child, or some other foolish thing
. And I remember being unable to envision V doing anything so mundane as climbing a tree, even as a child. Surely,servants would have carried her, fairies would have lifted her, preventing any injury.

“You are lying,” I said coldly. I hated my hands for shaking as I mixed my drink.

Odette could not stop laughing. “You're as much a fool as any of the others,” she said, and went back to admiring herself in the glass. I drank. This time the green did not soothe: It excited.

“V has loved no one but me,” I said fiercely.

“V,” Odette said serenely, “does not love. You're convenient, Charles, so very convenient! The lifestyle to which she has accustomed herself, sexual pleasures of the most degraded sort. Don't think she hasn't told me about those. And”—­casually picking up her cigarette pipe and and fitting it carefully into its long ivory holder—­“V likes to kill. Surely that is not so difficult for you to understand.

“There was a game we played at school,” she went on, apparently unconcerned at how quickly I mixed my next drink, by my now-­ragged breathing. “The Empress's Children. It was a silly game. One of us was chosen by lots to be the Empress. There was a hill, and a big rock, a boulder, really, sitting atop that hill. It served as the Empress's throne. And all the others had to obey the Empress for the entire afternoon. We tended her flocks, we brushed her hair and did her toilette, we gave her fantastical gifts of frankincense and cloth of gold, which we found as berries and stones and hay at the bottom of the hill.

“And then one day a girl, a shy little thing, took a twig and pretended to stab the Empress in the back and proclaimed,
Now I am the Empress
. And so we obeyed her. It went on that way for a few weeks: One day a girl served the Empress a tea of leaves and berries and declared that she had poisoned her and would take her place. The Empress died a sufficiently dramatic and horrible death, and it became our goal to kill each Empress. Quite often we were found out: I will not use this pen! one would cry out, flinging a twig away from her. The ink is acid! We did all sorts of silly things, of course, and it was innocent. But V had always hated the game. When she was a servant there was one girl in particular who would humiliate her with chores: Muck out the stables, she would declare, and would not be content until V had muddied her own skirt. Serve me my supper, and be quick about it! and the dish of nuts and berries would be thrown at her feet lest it be poisoned. And yet V would never have resorted to poisoning.

“And then one day this girl, this Empress, threw a brush toward V, demanding she dress her hair. It was just a twig, but it hit V on the cheek. She stood still; the twig had left an angry mark. She did not bring her hand to her face. The Empress smiled; V said, You will die for that. Immediately she was ordered out of the Empress's sight. She stood a moment longer, then walked right up to the girl and shoved her, hard, off her boulder throne ; the girl fell with a sickening sound, rolled down the hill, and lay still. V looked at her a long time, then walked over and knelt to feel her pulse. The rest of us were frozen with fear. But V simply stood up, shook out her skirts, and said, I am Empress now.”

My hands had stopped shaking. The lovely, imperious child who would take her right to be Empress, that was without doubt my V.

“Do you know what happened after that, Charles?” Odette did not wait for me to answer. “After that, every day we continued to play the game. And every day V was the Empress, and we were her children.”

Odette took a long drag on her pipe. I took another green drink.

“She is still the Empress,” Odette said eventually. Her voice was faint, her eyes already halfway to a dream. “V is still the Empress, and we are all nothing but her children.”