The Green Muse (26 page)

“V.” I started. I wanted to ask,
What is happening?
But instead I said hesitantly, “V, do you really have a full-­length mirror at home?”

V laughed and laughed while I tried not to cry. I thought about wearing the finest dress I had seen, the grandest hat. I thought about wearing rouge and kohl as though it were the war paint I had seen on pictures of African tribesmen.

“I want you to teach me to wear makeup!” I blurted.

V stopped laughing. She considered me; she said, “You are not so simple as I thought.”

“Enough,” said M. Soulavie. “I am tired of hearing her talk.”

Good
, I thought savagely, tears starting again in my eyes. I turned my head so that V could not see my face and stared where a moment ago the entire world had been going by, and I had been free.

And now I have no choice but to trust her.

 

I
WAS NOT
frightened, at first. I had gone to the hospital with a light heart and a lightheaded step. I had never before declared myself to a girl: I had never before been in love. I had been too in love with photography to busy myself with the girls in my hometown, and here in Paris all is impersonal although Richet has told me several times that young women have been making eyes at me, flirting at the fruit stand or the Opera, when I have not noticed it at all.

The halls were quiet except for the occasional echoing laugh or scream. There were, as usual, no attendants about. But I did not want to be seen going into Augustine's room, although I had no illusions about my visits being secret. I had learned, from Augustine herself, what it meant to be the most favored hysteric at the Saltpêtrière.

It felt like an eternity since I had seen her last.

When I reached her door I knocked, twice, as I always did, and waited for the soft footsteps I had not realized till that minute that I would recognize anywhere, on any flooring.

But they did not come. Augustine did not nap during the day; she had excellent health, and the regimen of cold baths and brisk walks had been good for her constitution, I suspected, even as it had done nothing to dispel symptoms of a disease with which she was not afflicted. Here was a girl, after all, used to the country life. As I gave her a few moments more to answer the door—­perhaps she was brushing her hair, or pinching her cheeks to give herself a bloom she did not need, as I had seen Natalie do—­I wondered if she would like Paris as much as she thought she would, would in fact love it as I did. I had just come to the conclusion that she most certainly would when I realized I had been standing far too long, and knocked again.

Again I waited; again I knocked. Finally I could stand it no more and simply turned the knob of the door, which came unexpectedly open beneath my hand.

The room was empty. I had never been in her room when it was empty, and all I did was ascertain with certainty that she was not ill in bed before I hurried out. In the hallway I began to call for the attendants. Surely she had an unscheduled visit with Dr. Charcot, I told myself. Surely, she had a surprise treatment to go to.

But even as I began to hurry down the hall toward the courtyard I knew these things were not true. I do not know why I chose that way; I was not thinking with my head but with my heart.
Adelaide will know,
I found myself thinking, and then,
But Adelaide is mad.
But somehow I was convinced that the answer to Augustine's disappearance would be found in the courtyard.

It was only later that I realized that from the first I thought of it as a disappearance.

On my way through the labyrinth of the hospital I passed the rooms where Augustine took her water treatments, and I paused to sprint into the outer room and enquire about her. The nurses there assured me she had no treatments scheduled, which I already knew, but as I said, I was thinking only with my heart: Augustine had never scheduled a meeting with me that would have conflicted with her rigid schedule. I ran out of the rooms with a thank-­you thrown over my shoulder and almost collided with one of the burly attendants. I thought I recognized him, remembering with a pang how Augustine always laughed and claimed they were all the same young man, magically able to be in many places at once. I asked him if she had been summoned to Dr. Charcot's office and he said no, then immediately seemed to think better of having answered my question. I asked if he was aware that her room was empty, and he tried to disguise his surprise with no success, and in fact excused himself hurriedly and set off down the hall toward her room.

My heart was threatening to beat out of my chest.
She is in the courtyard,
I told myself sternly, but my heart's beating told me it was not true. And when I reached the courtyard she was not there.

 

I
AWAKE AND
I do not awake. I am at La Salpêtrière, but this is not a familiar bed, that is certain. And what window is this? I start upward and realize that I am no longer wearing my man's disguise but a very light shift without even a chemise.

As I pull the thin covers up over my neck I hear the tinkle of laugher. I don't want to look at her, so I watch the way the patch of sky out the window changes moment to moment from gray to blue and back to gray. Suddenly I am horribly cold.

“The fire is dying,” she says in the same sweet, melodic voice that she always used at the hospital. “Here, take my shawl.” I cannot seem to move, cannot even imagine moving. As she comes close and gently drapes the soft rose shawl around my shoulders with easy familiarity, I notice that she smells as nice as ever, the orange-­peel tartness mixed with lavender water and white, clean talc.

As I feel her gentle hands I start to speak, but all that comes out is an anguished cry, a cry not unlike Lucille's.

And for a moment I was in between worlds, smelling the grass, the dandelions of the hospital courtyard, and happy, happy because I am helping Lucille and because Edouard is with me.

And at the same instant in time I am entirely in this room, which is ugly and ill-­lit and has no air. There is dust on the windowsill and ash on the hearth; the walls are cracked and in need of painting. The only clean thing, the only thing lovely, is her.

“Get away from me,” I say.

She laughs again, the same pure flutelike laugh she used at La Salpêtrière. “The only one here who wants to get away is you.” There was an edge, a shiny knife's edge, to her voice now that I had never heard before.

“You are vile,” I said. “You are monstrous.”

“And you are insane”—­she smiled—­“and not likely to be missed for too long. And here”—­she reached to rearrange the shawl, which had fallen from one shoulder—­“you will pose only for Charles and me. He is out getting absinthe right now.”

I flinched away from her gentle fingers and burst out sobbing.

“Would it comfort you to have your journal? Because you will not be leaving us for a long while.”

She held out my journal, the one she had given me in red Moroccan calf because, she said, red sat so well against my hair.

“No? Well, then, I'll just leave it here while I make you some tea. Oh, and you will drink this.” She walked over to the mantelpiece and picked up a blue glass bottle. I knew what it was. Once my mother had given me a tablespoon of laudanum for a headache. It was garnet in the spoon, like port; it smelled acrid and tasted bitter. Maman had told me there was honey in it, along with wine and saffron and cinnamon, but the bitterness inherent to opium overwhelmed these gentler flavors.

“He already made me drink that,” I said. I had an unreal and uncomfortable memory, more like a dream, of Charles forcing my head back by the chin. My body began to shake, my hands, my head, my breath staggered in my lungs.

“Take this,” she said peremptorily, her voice iron now. “And then write. I will be going out for supplies.”

I was a big-­boned country girl. She was much slighter than I, but I was weak—­weak in bone, body, and heart. I had been drugged, and she was going to drug me again. And I realized I was terrified of what she might do should I resist.
Supplies.
Who knew what other supplies were already on hand in this place besides laudanum? As I obediently allowed her to spoon the bitter liquid into my schoolgirl mouth, she said, “You cannot get out, and you can scream,” she said gently, with a steel smile, “out the window or through the door, for hour upon hour, and no one who hears you will care. Augustine, listen to me.” Already I felt as if my body were beginning to float up toward the beckoning evening sky. “They do not care. No one cares about you except Charles and I.”

“Edouard,” I managed faintly.

“No, Augustine, not Edouard. He knows about this. He has been playing with your childish heart the whole time. Oh, you didn't realize that? Poor girl. But you will see your dear Edouard again. He has promised to come in a few days to join us in our play.”

I picked up the journal from where it lay beside me on the bed, looked down, and started to write.

Yes
, I wrote,
Edouard will come. I don't know how or when, but my Edouard will come and rescue me.

Augustine'
s
Great and Terrible Adventure. One of the stray sheets I had written on when I first came to La Salpêtrière had fallen from the journal and lay face-­up on the mattress next to me.

And suddenly I was laughing and crying at once, and for the first time truly felt myself insane.

 

I
STOOD FOR
a moment at the entrance to the courtyard; indeed Augustine was not there.

But Adelaide was, and I hurried over to where she sat in seeming meditation on the crumbling steps to the ancient door that led to nowhere. She was singing softly to herself, as was usual, I had been told: “The head is dead, the head is dead, I heard the words the dead head said . . .”

I said her name. She did not respond. I touched her shoulder. She screamed.

“Adelaide,” I said her name again, softly, softly.

“No! No! The head! The head! Where is her body, Dr. Charcot? Where is her—­Edouard!” Her eyes cleared, and she grabbed my sleeve. “Will it ever stop?” As though I knew the answer.

“Yes,” I said. “It will.” We sat in silence until her hand on my arm relaxed.

“She's gone,” she said finally.

“I know.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.” I was in an agony to ask her if she knew anything of the manner and reason for Augustine's leaving; I waited.

Adelaide turned her big brown eyes to me. “Do you think you could love me, Edouard, now that Augustine is gone?”

“No,” I said gently. “Although you are beautiful and charming, I can love no one but Augustine.”

“Ah!” She smiled and pulled her knees toward her chest, as though protecting her heart.

“But she has left you.”

“Has she? Is that why she went?”

Adelaide busied herself watching a ladybug walking across a dandelion leaf. It suddenly flew away.

“Do you think that is what Augustine did?” I asked, as the ladybug flew up and disappeared into the glare of the sun.

Adelaide said nothing for so long that I thought that she was lost to herself.

“Did she escape?” I asked gently.

“No.” She had picked the leaf and was busy tearing it into tiny pieces. I picked a leaf myself and did the same; feelings of violent helplessness overtook my fingers, and I ripped at the innocent green.

“Did you kill Rosalie?” Adelaide asked.; I whipped my head around to see that her face was calm, her fingers not so ferocious as mine.

“No.”

“Good. Do you know how to get her head attached to her body again?” Her fingers having briskly finished their destruction, she reached for another leaf.

“Rosalie is dead, Adelaide. She died of old age, that is all. Her soul is in heaven.”

This made Adelaide laugh for so long that I began to worry that an attendant might come. But finally her laughter died away, and she sat impassive. Finally she said, “She didn't want to go. It was a fine suit, though.”

“Suit?” I could not tell whether Adelaide was speaking truth or nonsense. Not nonsense: her truth. When she spoke again her voice was bitter.

“It is the talk of the hospital: Their star has gone missing. She put on a suit of men's clothing and walked out the door. I am not sure how this can be known; no one saw her. But everyone is quite certain.” She picked up another leaf. “A fine thing it would be, to see a fine suit of men's clothing walking about without a head! I would like to know what the great Charcot would make of that, eh?”

“Augustine was wearing a suit of men's clothing?”

“A fine suit,” Adelaide corrected me. Suddenly she asked, “Do you think I could be the star of La Saltpêtrière now, now that she is gone?”

“Perhaps.”

“You think I am evil.”

“I do not think you are evil.”

“I loved her!” Adelaide cried suddenly, and she threw herself on my shoulder. This was not part of her madness; her love for her friend was genuine. “And I saw her. But I told no one. I was lurking outside my room. I saw a man coming down the hall and sent my clod-­footed attendant into the room because, I told him, there were demons inside.” She laughed, again for too long. “I always want to see a new man. I get so little chance to practice for the day I must find a husband. Or a poet.”

I thought of Odette, the web-­spinner, the man-­eater. I looked at this lovely young girl and could have cried. I almost did.

“Help me, Adelaide. I want to bring her back to us.”

“To you,” she said angrily, shoving me as she moved away from my shoulder.

“I would free you from here if I could, Adelaide,” I said, and I meant it. “But right now, you need to be here.”

She regarded me, looking suddenly tired, and older. “I will always need to be here,” she said without rancor. “Even before, I knew. I am going now.” And she stood and kissed the top of my head, which startled me. But I thought to ask, “How did you know it was Augustine?”

“She had a head,” Adelaide said reasonably. “I thought she was dressed for her next performance. I thought she was performing for them.”

I waited for more. “Them?” I ventured.

“I don't think they love her,” Adelaide said pensively. “ I don't think they want her to be free.”

“Why not?”

“Because if she were free, she would choose to be with you.”

“Then why do you think they helped her leave?”

“I think,” she said, “that they want her to perform for them.”

“Who, Adelaide? Please. Who?”

“The fine lady and gentleman, of course.”

“What fine lady and gentleman?”

“Are you jealous of him?” Her look was sly and hopeful.

“No. I just want to find Augustine.”

Adelaide started to sing softly. “Rosalie, Rosalie, she lost her eyes and cannot see. She lost her mouth and cannot lie. She lost her head and cannot be, Mary Magdalene to thee.”

I waited.

“The lady is very fair,” she said at last. “Very fair. Her name is . . .”

I waited.

“You will never love me?” she asked.

“Not in the way you wish, Adelaide. But you are dear to me.”

Adelaide considered this. “I do not know her name. She is small and fair, and she gave Augustine a mirror. But you know that.”

“I did not know that.”

“She does not love you. She cannot: She has not told you everything.”

“I don't care whether she loves me,” I said fiercely. Nothing mattered but to bring her back. She was in danger. Adelaide was mad, but she was not lying, and the things she was telling me had nothing to do with her madness. “ I just want her safe.”

“Good. Then we want the same thing. Augustine with her head on. But I do not know the name. You must find out for yourself.”

“You do know, Adelaide. You do. Please tell me.”

“I will tell you for a kiss.”

Why were women always asking me to kiss them? “I cannot,” I said. “ I respect you too much.” This was a lie: I had respected the prostitute as well. But I could not kiss Augustine's friend. And, more to the point, I knew that kissing her would not get me what I needed but would only lead to more favors, more tokens of feelings I did not have.

“Please, Adelaide.”

“I have forgotten.” And then she did forget, suddenly I was not there any longer and she was singing again, singing nonsense and loss to the dandelions and the ladybugs.

And she was utterly lost to me, lost to herself, present only as a voice as light and tender as a will-­o'-­the-­wisp's.

Had I made a mistake not to kiss Adelaide? No. I would ask the attendants who it was who came to see Augustine. I would ask Dr. Charcot. Why had Augustine not told me? I was suddenly colder than the afternoon warranted. Cold in my heart. I stood. I looked at Adelaide for a moment, then turned and walked away.