The Green Muse (27 page)

 

“
Y
O
U ARE .
 
.
 
.
going to . . . kill me.”

“Yes. I am going to kill you. But not now. I have only just acquired you, Augustine. You are going to serve as a wife to me.”

Seeing her distress—­her acute, uncomprehending distress, which clearly the laudanum I had forced her to drink had done nothing to alleviate—­was a potent aphrodisiac. Her eyes were wide and wild with dilated pupils. “You need a drink, my dear. I see you are frightened. There is no reason to be frightened, Augustine.” I realized I was talking to her as V did, softly, as though she were a small furred animal that might start and leap away. I busied myself with her drink.

“I used considerably more sugar than I usually do, my pet. I thought you would like it better that way.”

“It is vile. You are vile. My Edouard will come for me, you just wait and see. I know he will.”

“Yes, he will come. Here, now, just drink this. I cannot get V to drink with me. It's the only thing she refuses me—­” And I realized that I had not meant to say as much, and also that Augustine's distress was not quite so pleasurable as I had first thought. I saw Tabby's terrified eyes. I had wanted to kiss her. I had wanted those eyes to be full of desire, of pleasure. Now I longed for Augustine to look at me with the same frank lack of fear Tabby had at first evinced: before she found out what I was.

But Augustine had always known what I was.

I am not ashamed of what I am. Even before I murdered I had always reveled in gaining an innocent young girl's trust, and abusing that trust to get what I most desired: another conquest. And I had always liked best the reluctant conquest, the maiden who required gentle, or not so gentle, coercion. So what was different now? As I looked into Augustine's eyes, I realized that now that I had absolute power over life and death there were times when I would choose at least to delay it; perhaps not to exercise it at all. I wanted Augustine to trust me. I wanted her to desire me. I wanted to grant her all of her most romantic desires before I killed her.

“Come,” I said more gently. “If you are a good girl I may not have to kill you. Drink with me.”

She eyed me with repugnance and disdain. I hit her and she did not flinch. She did not raise her hand to her mouth to still the trickle of blood I had given her. And when she picked up her glass she did it in a manner that made it seem it was her own choice to do so.

She drank. This time she did not make a face as she had at the laudanum. But all the anger had gone out of me as quickly as it had risen. She had not been trying to provoke me. I disgusted her, and she had not the guile to hide that.

She surprised me by saying, “May I have a handkerchief? And a mirror? And then I will be happy to drink some more with you.” I took a small sadistic pleasure in choosing, from the cedar chest V kept at the apartment to hold her delicates, her finest handkerchief, knowing blood would ruin it. I wondered what was happening to me. I wanted to take this girl, and take her with her will, before V knew. It would not happen, of course, but how could I even be thinking such a thing? I fetched the handkerchief, of softest cloth with intricate lace V had tatted herself, but when I reached for the sinuous odalisque —­of the mirror, I hesitated. I knew now that Augustine would pretend no embarrassment at handling such an object, but I found myself wanting to give her something simple, something pure.

There was nothing pure in this place.

I brought her the items she had asked for, and she surprised me yet again by thanking me sweetly. I knew it was a lie, but what a convincing lie! She even let me daub the blood from her mouth and hold the mirror for her, and she accepted my blandishments about her beauty with grace, almost with aplomb. Where had this new woman come from? She had seemed, up until the moment I hit her, incapable of concealing one single thing she thought of me and of her situation. What had changed? Fear had not cowed her; quite the opposite.

Ah! It was the absinthe that was soothing her nerves, her mind, her soul. Perhaps I would receive my secret desires after all. Perhaps. But looking into her eyes, which now met mine with the guileless frankness I had longed for, I was not so sure.

At that moment the door opened, and V came in with a sweep of wild air that I could not imagine lasting up the four flights to the apartment. It was in her hair, it was part of her. She was carrying a small bag that she revealed to me without so much as looking at Augustine, let alone asking about her. Not for the first time I wondered what and how much V guessed about me when I was not with her.

“More laudanum,” she said with satisfaction, setting the cobalt bottle on the mantelpiece. “Rope. Candles. I want to drip candle wax onto her nipples. And look!” she said as though she were a child showing her mother a freshly picked flower. “Isn't it perfect?” I was foolish and slow; I stared at the black silk scarf she held. “A blindfold, Charles, you great goose.” She was merry and gay, and again I wondered what was the matter with me. Then she surprised me by saying, “Let us go out and take the afternoon air, Charles. Look,” she said as she gestured over at where Augustine had sunk asleep into the bed. “This girl will not wake for hours. You look as though you need sustenance before we play. Let's go to that café two blocks down, the one with the excellent fois gras.”

“She was awake a moment ago,” I said stupidly, though it was likely the combination of laudanum and absinthe would knock out a girl unaccustomed to such things.

V went over and shook her roughly. “She's not awake now,” she said with satisfaction. “We could go to another place if you'd rather.” She turned away from what had apparently become for her no more than a lifeless puppet for which she had no need as yet.

I went over and examined the girl for a moment. Her breath was shallow but steady, and her arm limp when I lifted it. I felt a delicious thrill at the way her arm simply fell when I let go of it.

“Yes,” V said behind me. “She is ours to command. I know the type—­I told you that. Oh! I picked up some cocaine balls on the way home, I almost forgot! I know a doctor.” She laughed, taking another bottle out of her purse. “Well, not really a doctor, he is an old reprobate who ministered to . . . but that does not matter. What does matter is that I know precisely the correct dosage of cocaine and laudanum to keep our young lady compliant. Perhaps even amenable. You would like that, wouldn't you, Charles?”

I realized I had been staring at Augustine's face. So young. So very young, and innocent. Young, innocent, and ours to do with as we wished. Smiling I turned to V and said, “You pick the restaurant, darling.”

 

D
IRECT
LY
I
LEFT
the courtyard I headed toward Dr. Charcot's office. Normally I would never have dreamed of bursting in on such an important person. But right now, Augustine was the most important person in the world.

On the way to his office I found a surprising amount of attendants about, and suspected why, and I tried speaking to each of them. But it was as Augustine said: They might as well be deaf as well as mute. Five different young men completely ignored me as they stood in front of their appointed rooms, or walked down the hall, or turned from where two of them were speaking to a doctor. That doctor knew nothing either, seeming almost to think me as mad as his patients for asking such a thing as who would be visiting Augustine. From his demeanor one would not even know that Augustine was at that moment missing from La Salpêtrière.

So I made my way to Dr. Charcot's office, which I had never entered. I found that I had not knocked, and I was simply standing in his office, and he was looking at me from behind his desk with no surprise whatsoever.

“Where is she?” I demanded.

“You know I do not know, Monsieur Mas.”

“Who were the ­people who were visiting her?”

“I am not at liberty to talk about anyone who visits with any of my patients.”

Looking at the doctor's deep-­set eyes, I could read nothing: concern, irritation, boredom? It did not help that the room was so dim.

“And that is all?”

“I have alerted the proper authorities.” He seemed to think that was enough. He seemed not to be afraid of what could befall Augustine at all.

“Aren't you even worried about her?”

Dr. Charcot looked, for the first time, discomfited. He took a pipe and tobacco out of his vest pocket and began to busy himself with them.

“You knew,” I said.

The doctor tapped tobacco into the pipe—­an expensive brand, by the smell.

“You knew!”

“Monsieur Mas, keep your voice down.”

I scarcely ever raise my voice, but I had just screamed at him.

“You let them do it,” I said flatly.

“Whom? There is no record of anyone visiting Mademoiselle Dechelette, not even,” he said pointedly, “you. And no one saw her leave the hospital. The most likely scenario is that she has secreted herself somewhere on the hospital grounds.”

“That is nonsense, and you know it.”

“She was deeply disturbed when her friend Mademoiselle Blanchot lost her reason. She has been unsettled since then. Surely you had noticed that?”

“It only happened two days ago,” I said dryly. “And my duties here do not permit me to spend as much time with Augustine as I would wish. I am grateful to you for this job, Dr. Charcot. But Augustine did send me a letter about Adelaide, and I think my reply was a comfort to her. And I told her news that I am certain would prevent her from leaving or hiding.”

“What news was that, Monsieur Mas?”

“Well,” I said, my accursed blush staining my cheeks. “I revealed to her my true feelings. I so much as asked her to be my wife.”

The doctor, who was in the process of lighting his pipe, laughed until his laughter turned to coughing. I moved to help him, but he held up his free hand.

When he could breathe again he was still smiling. “I wish you had informed me of your intentions first,” he said finally.

“Whatever for?”

But he had already launched into his explanation: “—­would have served to frighten a girl in her condition,” he was saying. I despised pipe smoke, but he was in a cloud of it. “That is the reason she has hidden herself.”

“She left the hospital,” I said, as calmly as I could.

“No one saw her leave.”

“Adelaide did.”

“Adelaide? That girl has lost her reason. You know you cannot believe what she tells you, Monsieur Mas.” He smiled again as he pulled on his pipe.

“Adelaide told me the truth. And I know Augustine would not hide at a declaration of love from me. I may not be a world-­famous doctor, but Augustine is gone, and I believe I know that she was coerced in some way. And I know she was being visited by a very fine ­couple, another thing Adelaide told me. Augustine is fragile, and it is not difficult to gain her trust. She responds to kindness.” My voice began to break. “Dr. Charcot, please help me. Please help Augustine.”

The doctor puffed impassively on his pipe, staring past me at the black door.

“Never mind,” I said bitterly. “I can see that you do not care enough to help. I suppose this ­couple who has been visiting Augustine has made generous contributions to your studies.” I stood, turning to leave.

“Edouard.”

I turned back from the now-­open door, surprised at hearing my Chris­tian name.

“Go do what you must, Edouard. And rest assured that your job will be waiting for you when you get back.”

It took every ounce of restraint that I had not to slam the door on the way out.

 

“
C
HARLES
, THERE IS
something I never told you.” We had not yet left the apartment; I had half undressed V and taken her instead, standing, and forcefully. Augustine still lay in a deathlike swoon, and we spoke as though she were not even there.

“A woman must keep some secrets,” she said coquettishly.

“Tell me,” I said, leaning forward. I suspected that I was about to hear a very good story.

“Would you like absinthe first?”

“You are a tease, V. No, I would not. I have a feeling that your story will more than suffice for enhancing my mood.”

“In that you are right,” she said with surprising solemnity. She busied herself for a moment with cutting the cap off a cigar for me, almost as though she were shy to start, she who was never shy.

“Do you know why I decided that we must put bodies in the Paris Morgue?”

“I thought you had long wanted to do that.”

“No, no,” she said seriously. “I have been enamored of death since I was a child. and I thought about the Empress's Children. “But I had never thought to create death.”

“Go on, darling.”

“Well, one morning I was staying at the apartment (this is before I met you). I was staying there alone.” She placed a pleasant emphasis on that word. “And I woke early. I don't know why. You know how I love to linger in bed!” And we laughed together, and I stroked her thigh through her yellow dressing gown.

“I woke before dawn. Perhaps there was a noise, I do not know. But I felt compelled to go downstairs and outside. And there she was.”

“Who?”

“Your cigar has gone out already.”

“Damn my cigar, I have to hear this! Who was there?”

“A lovely blonde corpse. I think she had just been left there. She did not belong on these streets, Charles. There was something pure—­in her expression, even in death. She was not a prostitute, nor a midinette. She lay in the courtyard with a certain dignity, and she had been posed; I think whoever had killed her had also loved her. I think she had been laid with reverence on that cold, dirty ground. And I fell in love with her.”

I hardly knew what to say. It was the last statement, oddly enough, that I found most strange.

“Not like that!” V said, laughing again. “You men really are all the same.” I felt a pinch of disappointment; I did not want in any way to be all men to her.

“Don't you see? I fell in love with the idea of purposeful death, Charles. Even as I was talking to you at the Morgue the first day I was thinking of her. Even as I was looking at her, I wanted to create something beautiful. Something the world has never seen. And we did it! I could not have fallen in love with you, you know, if I had not seen something similar in you.”

I thought about how I had wanted to see V displayed, dead, before all Paris, and she said, “And certainly I did not want to be your first experiment!”

“And yet you did not fight me.”

“I knew we were destined to be together, just as surely as I knew that I would meet you on that bridge that night. So no, I was not afraid. You only confirmed my suspicions. My knowledge. She stroked my thigh, higher and higher.

“I think it is time for some green,” I said. V's tinkling laugh echoed sweetly around the tiny apartment.

“Shh,” I cautioned. “You will wake the girl.”

“She will not wake,” V said confidently. “Not until we wake her.”

I liked the sound of that.

“But we are going out to dinner first, remember?” she called from the bidet.

“Then let me dress you,” I said.

“Of course, Charles. You know I will never deny you anything.”

“Nor I you, my love,” I said, rising to mix my suddenly necessary poison while thinking how to dress V.

“Charles, could you make sure that what you choose for me to wear will go with the red scarf I was wearing the night we met on the bridge?”

“Of course, V,” I said, but I wondered why, for she was never a sentimental woman.

“Would you like to know where I got that scarf?”

And suddenly I knew, but I wanted her to tell me.

“I took it from the corpse in the courtyard. It was so loosely tied about her hair. There was still blood on it that night?”

“Is there still blood on it now?”

“No, I am afraid there is not. You know I am attached to it, and the blood, once it had stiffened, would have ruined it.”

“That is all right,” I said cheerfully. “We can always find some more.”

I
WAS HE
SITANT
to leave the girl, but it seemed important to V, who had not been privy to my conversation with Augustine. And yet, perhaps she did know, and that is why she insisted we go out to dine early, knowing that my appetite, already whetted, would be raging by the time we got home.

“Are you certain she will sleep?” I asked again. V assured me again, and she let me dress her. I chose a yellow frock of satin and faille with wide red sleeves that captured the arm below the elbow and a twist of red satin about the waist. I put around her neck the red silk scarf. I shod her feet in pale brown ankle-­length boots with a French heel and fur inside and around the top; and I presented her with a golden velvet cape I had been saving for her birthday. She asked only to add a green hat I had bought her, of which she was particularly fond, and I was pleased to have her ask.

And we went out onto the disreputable boulevard.

“Do you feel like walking, my love?” she asked as we left the building; we had left by the secret stair, giddy in the light fog of the afternoon.

“I feel like having good fare for this dinner.”

“And you will need it.” She laughed. “I know I suggested the café two blocks down, but I know a much finer place, not too far but just far enough to give you time to dream.”

We walked for a while, talking of ordinary things. I did not much bother about which way we walked; even after all this time I did not know much more about this neighborhood than that it was even more of a den of thieves than Belleville, and more dangerous. But we never feared a thing when we walked here. Knowing that you have committed murders gives one an impenetrable aura of danger in itself, and a certain imperviousness to any threat.

I was proud to have V by my side, proud of the covert glances and obvious stares she garnered from both envious women and lustful men, and prouder still to be walking with our secret between us, held tightly in our hands where they clasped one another in my pocket. Several times she reached her fingers to stroke me, and always she found me ready.

Eventually we stopped at a surprisingly posh establishment with deep booths and fine wine. We ordered extravagantly, oysters and duck and curried rice. We talked a great deal, but we did not talk about the girl passed out back at our apartment. It was unnecessary. She was a constant companion at our table, and good company. We formulated our individual plans in delicious silence, knowing that to speak, now, of what was to come would only weaken the drug. It was easy to talk about what sorts of dresses V ought to have for the coming season, knowing that we would confide our secrets to each other later, when the moment for it was real. It was easy to discuss where we wanted to winter: Greece, perhaps, or Sicily. Someplace warm where V would wear a wide-­brimmed hat to preserve her perfect porcelain skin, and a delicate shawl for the same reason, while I would turn ruddy in our walks along the beach.

V drank wine without showing any effect at all. I drank absinthe but retained a clarity of mind that I knew came from an excess of adrenaline in my veins. But still the song that throbbed in my blood was sweet. I leaned across the table to kiss V; she reached again for me under the table and it tickled, quite inexplicably and for the first time, and we laughed and laughed. We were merry indeed.

When our meal was finished V insisted I take an extra two glasses of green; she could always gauge my moods, and even the extent of my inebriation, better than I could myself.

The walk home was translucent. I realized I had never truly thought, before, of our apartment as home. The newly risen full moon, full in the early-­evening sky, kept us company, playing hide-­and-­seek among the shredded clouds. V s hand was in my pocket again, but quieter; and we were quieter. Our minds and souls did not need words to communicate now. All of my thoughts were images that transmitted themselves directly to my lover's mind, and I knew that some of the images were hers, sent to me as surely as mine were sent to her. Occasionally I squeezed her hand, that was all.

As we neared home I began to rise out of my beautiful lassitude and become energized. I walked faster; V laughed, and asked that I slow my pace. “What is waiting will be waiting still, no matter how slowly or quickly our steps.” I knew she was right, and I slowed, relishing this delirium. The secret steps, when we entered them, seemed to move with the wind that had just kicked up, and seemed to be lit by the moon outside. There was a nimbus around V's hair as she led me up the stair, and her hair moved with the illusory breeze.

And I was happy. A man needs a task, work to do, to be truly happy, and I, who had thought I would forever be a dilettante, had found my life's work. And I had found, by the greatest good fortune, the muse to bring out the artist in me.

As we mounted the steps I was ready.