The Green Muse (6 page)

 

T
HE NEXT DAY
I informed M. Bezier of all I had discovered, and later we talked again. I was as excited as a boy who has found a speckled egg in a hard-­to-­reach nest, and he treated me like one.

“Captain Bezier, I am no detective,” I told him. “I can only see what my camera lens shows me. I can learn only what my pictures tell me. The photographs I took of the woman we found told me, by her manner of dress, that she was not a prostitute, and that, ­coupled with other aspects of her appearance, it was highly unlikely that she belonged in that courtyard. The abandoned glove was too fine, and her hair was clean and well-­cared-­for.

“And the manner in which her body was placed—­because clearly it was placed, and not simply left to fall—­seemed to indicate that although she had not been killed there, she had been carefully placed after she died. There was no significant blood loss, and only in a puddle at the base of her neck.” I almost said,
her pretty neck
, and was appalled at myself. Were the dead becoming so familiar to me that I would have opinions on the prettiness of a corpse? Her pictures,” I hurried on, “showed me that she did not come from that tenement courtyard.”

“Lenore DuPrey worked in a club of the most dubious sort, Edouard. She was a dancer; that is, she showed her body off onstage to strange men.”

“But she had a child. How old is he?”

Capt. Bezier consulted his notes. “She had a small son. It seems her husband died during her pregnancy.”

I was silent a moment.

“She had to survive,” I said finally.

“There are plenty of widows with children who manage to survive while keeping their clothes on, Edouard,” he said dryly.

“But what do we know of her circumstances? Of her emotional state following her husband's death? A woman is fragile, Captain Bezier, fragile in her emotions but a mother mountain lion in what she will do for her offspring. Perhaps Madame DuPrey honestly felt that she was doing the best she could for her child.”

“And perhaps she was addicted to laudanum, have you thought of that?”

“Did she have someone to watch her child at night?”

“Yes, yes she did. A friend; she was very emotional. She said that Lenore was a wonderful mother.”

“A wonderful mother would work in such a place, Captain Bezier. I know you do not think so, but someone must work in these clubs, and it cannot only be those too debilitated by drink or drugs to do anything else. I mean, they wouldn't be able to do that sort of work either, would they? I imagine it takes a rather strong physical constitution.”

Capt. Bezier surprised me by starting to laugh. After he had finished he said, “Oh, Edouard, there has never been such a romantic as you. Do you really judge
no
one?”

“The killer of Lenore DuPrey. I judge him. I judge all those who take human life for their own gratification. There is now one more motherless child in the world.”

“Then I have news that will please you. This Monsieur Lunier—­it is more than apparent that he murdered Madame DuPrey. At his apartment we found a bloodied knife. He confessed. Frankly, this surprised me. A man of his stature—­he owns a shop on the rue St. Germain. But he cried. He said he loved Lenore. But there is no poetry here, Edouard. A simple, sordid lovers' quarrel.”

“But,” he said, “I believe he may have taken something from the body. She was not properly protected against the elements.”

“So you see that it is not that I am a detective in any sense, Captain Bezier. I merely observe the things my photographs show me.”

“You seem to find a great deal more in those photographs than others would, Edouard. I think it is your poetic soul. That you are sometimes correct in your assumptions-­-­well, there are crimes that go against the obvious. That is, they do not fit the mold. It is with these crimes that you have the most luck.”

I said nothing; the part of me that was small and petty wanted to say,
The cases you cannot solve, Captain Bezier
, but of course I ignored this impulse. Capt. Bezier was, after all, considered one of the finest in his field, and he listened to my opinions on his cases.

Yet who was I? A photographer, a recorder of death. Certainly he owed me no professional courtesy. And if my view of death helped him catch even one of those responsible for death . . . well, that was an honor. To help our fellow human beings is always an honor. I had scoured my mind to see if the irritation I sometimes felt at his hardheadedness was due in part to thwarted vanity: Did I really want credit for helping solve difficult cases?

The answer was no. Recognition within my own field I hungered for. Renown as a photographer has been a sweet secret dream since youth. But I was no Daguerre; I was no Nadar. I was only Edouard Mas.

“Lenore DuPrey is in the Morgue as we speak, is she not?” I asked.

“Of course. She was unidentified until this morning.”

“But she is identified now. Can she not be taken from the Morgue, Captain Bezier? Please?”

“Oh, Edouard. There you go again. You know she cannot. It will not hurt her immortal soul to have a few thousand ­people see her empty husk. The answer is no. But Edouard, you may not believe this, but I heartily respect your opinions. It is just that I have never met anyone with fewer prejudices.”

“That does not make me better than anybody else.”

“Oh, yes, it does. It does indeed. But the real beauty of you, Edouard, is that you will never see that.”

 

T
HE MOST HORRIBL
E
thing has happened. I was in my bed this morning, watching the gray light outside my window as it became suffused with blue day. I woke with a tactile image of Louis, of the feel of his lips as they grazed mine the last time we said good-­bye.

I woke with a familiar feeling between my legs. Voluptuousness is the word that comes to mind. A word out of novels. A sweetness and a burning at the same time. I have felt it before.

I lay as still as I could, trying to concentrate on the color of the sky. But there was nothing but the softness of Louis' mouth. I did not try to say my prayers. I knew it would be a blasphemy to say them when I felt this way. And I knew, besides, that they could not distract me.

I rolled over onto my stomach. My mother would not be in to wake me for at least fifteen minutes; I could read the sky as though it were a clock. I slipped my hands down between my legs. I knew what I was doing. I had done it before. I knew how wrong it was, what a risk I was taking with my bodily health, and with the health of my soul. And knew too that again I would not admit this sin in the confessional, as I did not admit my feelings for Louis. There is in me a whole world rotten with sin; but it does not feel like sin. It feels like love.

I closed my eyes and forgot the world. There was nothing now but Louis' mouth—­just that. The skin of his lips against the skin of my lips. There was a point of fire between my legs—­I could hardly touch it. I grasped the hood with the first fingers of each hand, I pressed, that is all. I thought of Louis' mouth.

And my mother walked in.

In an instant I was crouched on the bed, my blankets around my chin. My mother stood, porcelain-­white, her hand on the doorknob. She was entirely still except for her eyes, which roamed the room wildly; she did not seem to see me at all. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps she had seen nothing.

“Augustine,” she said, and I was damned then. I write this as I sit alone in my room. I look out at the sky and it is changed; everything is changed. My mother said nothing but my name, then she left the room. I can feel her talking to Papa now. Not hear: feel. Their voices are in the walls. Their voices are in the sky. My mother has said words to my father that I cannot bear even to think. My name trembles on the air in my room; I can see it. It will always be there, always; her voice was so cold. Not cold with hate—­cold with fear. And now her fear will inhabit this room forever.

I got dressed shortly after Maman left the room, as soon as I realized that she was not going to come back in, that she had really been there. Usually Maman ties my corset strings for me; I did it alone. I always complain that she ties them too tight, but this time I pulled as hard as I could with my hands behind my back, yanking at the cords until I stood perfectly straight and could breathe only shallowly. In Paris the women wear their corsets a good deal tighter than we in the provinces—­how could I be thinking such inanities? I pulled on my corset cover with some difficulty, but when it was on I could feel the smoothness of my silhouette along my hips. For a moment I felt as I always did when my corset is properly laced, strong and prepared for another day. But I crumbled inside when I turned and saw my unmade bed and the familiar view out the window behind it.

I put on my camisole, astonished at myself for admiring its lace as I always do. I slipped into four petticoats, marking that they were clean at the hems; when I lifted my skirt they would froth out like new cream rising in the cup of coffee. I had a black lisle stocking that needed mending rather badly. I had intended to do it this morning before chores, but my hand could not hold a needle now. I pulled them on, then went to the closet and found myself taking out my second-­best dress, the pink one with the large lavender tulle bow at the neck, the two rows of lavender ruffles at the waist, and the lavender satin ruffles all in a row above the lace ruff at the hem. Maman loves the way I look in pink. I cried as I put the dress on, but I stopped swiftly enough. I have no right to cry.

As I put on my boots I noted, as I always do, that the heel is not high enough for fashion. I checked the hem and train of the dress very carefully; I do not want to be a soiled dove. I am so dirty already.

I don't know how I can ever bear to have Maman look at me again. I will never forget her eyes, which could not find a place to rest because she could not bear to look her daughter in the face.

I wish I had Yvette's mirror. I touch the skin of my face, I run my fingers along my familiar cheekbones, the long, uptilted bone of my nose. It is someone else's face. I cannot be here, in this body, anymore. I look at the sky that cannot save me. I hear birdsong that I usually love, a cow lowing, children's voices. I feel so far away that it is as though I were dead. I find myself sitting on the bed and do not know how I got there. (I was still dressing a moment ago, looking in my dresser drawer for my buttonhook. Now all eighteen buttons on each boot are neatly latched.) I can only look at the sky. I cannot cry. Inside I am screaming, but I simply sit. My arms and legs are like lead. What have I done? The walls reverberate with my secret. My parents sit in the kitchen and speak in hushed tones about Augustine, and I do not even know who she is. Even Louis is just a shadow now. My name has seeped into the floorboards and even now spreads down the hallway and out the front stairway. When the Augustine who existed half an hour ago in the first faint morning light is gone now, is dead.

And a young woman I do not know writes in an unfamiliar journal as she sits waiting to hear what sentence is to be passed on her.

 

W
HEN
I
WALKED
out of our apartment that night, I was not looking for her. The streets were wet with rain, and clouds lay like shreds of velvet still beneath swift-­running cumulus. The buildings gleamed black and slick, and rain ran in the gutters.

I'd had only a small plate of fruit stewed in butter for dinner, but I was not hungry. I had drunk absinthe from a crystal cup. My limbs were heavy, making it difficult even to walk. I was engulfed in a strange melancholy and looked at everything with the same impatient dullness. I wanted some violent escape for my feelings.

The square in front of the Panthéon was deserted. The narrow, crooked streets leading toward the river were quiet. The Seine flowed slowly, like tar. I stood on the Pont Neuf and watched it. There was nothing for me in its depths.

When I saw her I was not surprised. She stood, her face turned away from me, looking at some grotesque insignificant stone monster set high in an ancient wall, eaten by time and protecting nothing with its fierce, vacant gaze.

There was no doubt that it was she. The line of her cape, her neck exposed to the needlelike rain––I spoke. I was defenseless against her.

“You came to meet me after all,” I said. She didn't seem surprised.

“No, I did not,” she said. But she did not move.

Her eyes were gray. My hands had gotten cold.

“Tell me what brings you here.”

“I often walk at night,” she said.

“Alone?”

“I am not afraid.”

She wore the burgundy cape; it was rich material, opulent with warmth. The air was cold; she had a scarlet scarf wound around her neck. She had antimony at the corners of her eyes.

“The water is heavy tonight, and slow,” she said finally. “I trust that you are not here with any dramatic intention.”

I smiled. I was curious.

“Your words this afternoon did not produce quite so intense an effect,” I said lightly.

“You mock me,” she said, but she smiled too.

“Will you meet me? Tomorrow, at the Morgue.” It was stupid and unsuitable; but I could hardly control myself.

She turned her head. “Sir,” she said coldly, “I do not know you.”

“But you do.” I took her arm, perhaps roughly.

“You will release me,” she said.

“What would you drink, I wonder?” Anything, to keep her from looking away. “Brandy, cut with a syrup of currants?”

“Rum,” she said abruptly, “hot, with butter.” I laughed to cover my discomfort.

Why was she not frightened?

At any rate she had not moved.

“Will you dine with me?” I ventured. She was on the verge of pulling away. Her eyes went catlike as she considered me. And we stood, in the rain, and I offered my arm.

“Will you consent to have a drink with me?”

“So long as you do not attempt to take my arm again,” she said without the slightest coquetry, “and you allow me to choose the bar.”

I was disappointed. I'd had in mind a little bistro with a certain genteel decadence, one where a woman's fragile morals might perhaps be weakened without her reputation being besmirched. But I said only, “Of course I will accompany you wherever you please, but the wind is strong, and the cobblestones uneven.”

“I have walked in the rain before,” she said lightly, “and I am familiar with the cobblestones of Paris.”

How sweet her voice was, how lilting! And yet how subtly insinuating that statement,
I am familiar with the cobblestones of Paris.

“I will not touch you,” I said. I knew that I was lying.

“How came you to this spot tonight?” she asked as we walked, I a clod-­footed mortal to her water sprite.

“I was looking for you.” And it was only then that I realized that it was, in fact, the truth.

Ah. She was silent a moment. It seemed I was capable of surprising her.

“I come to that spot on the river often,” she said, “to think. To dream, really, about my day. About all that I have seen and heard. As though I cannot feel it all as it is happening but must reflect upon it, once I am to myself, to understand all that I have seen and experienced.”

I did not know the neighborhood. The streets were well lit but almost empty.

“Do you experience so much during a single day?”

“Oh, yes!” How like a child she was; how wise. “There are infinite pleasures in the course of a day. I could think for an hour just on the expression on that dead girl's face at the Morgue today—­and I spent an hour contemplating the rain on the surface of the river while I awaited your arrival. Shall we have our drink and some dinner now?”

I was as surprised to find ourselves in front of a small eatery as I was by her statement about awaiting me. She spoke in such a carefree manner that she seemed almost not to be the girl from the Morgue at all. And yet I knew that this was a role that she had chosen for the night. Because she had known, I was certain of it, although how I cannot say. And perhaps I had really known how to find her. Destiny drawing itself to itself, it might have been that. Love drawing love. Death drawing death.

The café was not so brightly lit as it had seemed from the outside; that had been a trick of the night and the rain. We walked down ancient stone steps through a medieval door into a low-­ceilinged room whose front windows let in no outside light at all. The candles in the wall sconces were not fresh, and a few of them were guttering as though there were a wind. The café was so narrow that there was room only on the right side for booths, which were deep and a dark velvet green. The brick walls were old; the entire place had a feeling of floating somehow outside of ordinary time and space. The whole outside world fell away from me, and when I turned to my companion; she too looked changed: older, more sure of herself—­there was no more little girl. She turned to smile at me and for an instant I was afraid, then she was just a woman again, a potential conquest, the most prized of any I had ever known, it is true, but merely a woman nonetheless.

“Ah, V, how are you tonight?” The voice came from behind the vast mahogany bar. I had her name. A light name, a girl's name, a charade. I was instantly furious with this man who knew her name and used it so casually.

“I am well, Etiènne,” she said, also casually. She felt my jealousy, I knew. She smiled. “I would like my usual booth.” She was smiling at him on purpose, not for him but for me, to make me squirm. If every other smile she had ever given him had been genuine, this one was not. I tried to hide my annoyance as we walked down the narrow aisle. All the men's top hats glinted in the candlelight, moving like waves as we passed. ­People at the bar had to move aside to let us by; one woman let her calf slide along my thigh as I walked by her. The thrill of excitement I felt was not for her but for V; even my annoyance had felt like arousal. When we reached the booth, it was V who stood to let me sit first; when I would not, she laughed and sat where she could see the crowd, as if she knew that every time her eyes moved past me I would wonder whether she was exchanging glances with Etiènne.

When she slipped her cape from her shoulders I almost gasped; I had not before seen just how exquisite she was. She was wearing an evening dress totally unsuited to the weather: Her gown and sleeveless overjacket were of pale yellow striped with purple; her wipe, square lapels bore intricate patterns of lavender, and her sleeves, full and round, nevertheless left her arms bare far above the elbow. Her wide silk waist was of rich purple, but the blouse beneath the overjacket was of almost sheer black lace, tightly tatted, with the lace spilling down the yellow dress in an unexpected, flowing waterfall of black. When she removed her scarf I saw she wore a delicate black choker around her neck with a small cross affixed to it; it gave her the impression of being chained.

But as my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I noticed something that took my mind away from V. In the last booth against the wall, the only thing that I could see, really, from my vantage point opposite V, slouched an old, ill-­kempt man. His jacket sleeves were not long enough for his arms, and they were grubby at the ends; his shirtfront was shocking. His head nodded back and forth almost imperceptibly; I know that movement well, having both seen it and felt it. But this man was lost. He clearly saw nothing of the table before him, the last creamy, glinting drops in the glass, the shining slotted metal spoon. His chin was sunk almost to his chest. His eyes were almost closed. Whether he was in misery or in ecstasy I could not say. But I knew who he was.

I looked enquiringly at V, and she smiled and nodded.

“For the price of an absinthe he will recite his poetry for you,” she said. I hesitated. “Go to him,” she said. “I will have Etiènne bring him a glass.”

I slid out of the booth and moved quietly toward the man.

“Excuse me, Monsieur,” I said gently. I did not want to do this—­to be just another stranger with a handout, another face appearing to dispel the great man's absinthe dream to demand a memory.

Paul Verlaine, France's greatest living poet. And among her most notorious. Lover of Arthur Rimbaud, who came to Paris at seventeen and lived in the streets until one day he appeared at Verlaine's front door—­and the great poet fell in love with him in an instant and left his wife, his children, his home, to begin a life of scandal and madness. When he and Rimbaud went to the opera, the papers reported that Verlaine and Madame Verlaine had attended the opera; he and his lover fought in the streets, parted and came together, fought again; Verlaine shot Rimbaud in a jealous rage.

But that was all long over. Rimbaud, not seriously wounded, left Verlaine and France, traveling to Africa to become an adventurer. He died before he reached his thirty-­seventh birthday. Verlaine was only fifty-­one years old now, but he could have been seventy.

Slumped before me in this grotto bar, his bald pate catching the candlelight with pathetic comedy, his gray hair sticking straight out on the sides, he looked as though he had neither eaten nor truly slept in a long time. I do not know why he did not evoke any horror in me. He had done monstrous things.

“Excuse me, Monsieur,” I said again.

He did not speak, but his eyes opened and his head lurched up and he was staring at me in a half-­mad dream.

“It is all right,” I said, leaning forward to touch his arm. “There is nothing here to harm you.” He stared straight at me but did not see me; he whipped his head about, this way and that, as though dodging quick-­striking beasts; he looked down. The sight of the absinthe glass and spoon seemed to calm him. He breathed deeply and shook himself. He looked up at me and seemed, quite suddenly, to be perfectly all right.

“Good evening, Monsieur,” he said clearly. “Would you care to sit with me?

“I would be delighted,” I said. “I am having the bartender bring you something to drink.”

“Ah. And what would that something be, young man?”

“My personal vice is absinthe,” I said, “and so I thought that perhaps—­” I paused delicately, giving him a moment to abnegate his responsibility.

“Ah,” he said again. “If that is what you prefer.” He shrugged, ignoring the detritus in the glass in front of him, the knowledge of all Paris that he was a hopeless slave to the Green Muse. As we waited in silence,I had a chance to examine him further. It was said that for the price of a drink he would recite his own poetry for you. That he drank his way down the boulevards during the day and dozed in less reputable haunts at night. That sometimes he even spent his nights on the street.

But his eyes had a hard glint. He did not seem so far gone as I had heard. His poetry had stirred in me such passions! For romance, for danger, for passion itself. He wrote of suffering with the lyric intensity of one who has been purified by pain. He seemed created to suffer, this man before me now, once so noble and now so humbled. His love, although base, had been beautiful, and the world had seen its beauty. His suffering, although ignoble, had been graced with a purity of feeling that transcended its origins. I could not despise him; I could not even pity him. To have lived such a life as he had lived! To have drunk both the nectar and the poison of the soul and drained the cup! What did it matter if his ending was vile?

A waiter came, carrying an Oriental tray that glittered with a miniature city of glass. I saw the Absinthe Terminus label, the long neck of the bottle and the red oval seal at the curve of the neck. I felt a charge of longing almost erotic in its intensity; Verlaine's eyes were hungry; V's face, as she came and sat with us, was quite calm. She smiled at the waiter and I saw that she gave her smile to anyone, like a whore or a little child.

Verlaine had leaned forward in his seat. I mentally checked my bearing and was relieved that I had not done the same. I almost laughed. I caught V's eye, and she smiled. Was it a different smile for me? I was not sure; I was distracted by the light refracting off the glass.

V picked up the bottle and began to extract the cork. She waved away my gentle protestations; actually I wanted to see her do this, to watch her hands move. They had the hard, smooth allure of the hands of a storefront mannequin. There was nothing weak about them, as there was nothing weak about her. But her face possessed a great softness, a tenderness, belied by the deft, nearly mannish way in which her hands pulled at the corkscrew as she twisted the cork from the bottle. I knew that I was seeing something of a hidden self, and that not everyone would have been able to see it; she looked up and directly at me, and I knew that she had intended me to see it.

Then she turned to the poet, and it was as if a light had gone out.

“Here you are, Paul,” she said sweetly.

“Ah, V,” he said, caressing her name. Again jealousy bit, and I knew I had to possess her, to make her my own in such a way that the whole world would know, in such a way that we would never be parted.