The Green Muse (9 page)

 

T
HE
CLOCK AT
the train station, which runs on Parisian time, runs a full twenty-­eight minutes faster than the clock in the old church steeple. My father could not stop looking at it. I stood, my handkerchief soaked with tears, in my best dress, going to Paris at last. My father had placed us some twenty feet down the station platform from the clock, but he kept walking over to it, his hands folded behind his back, his neck thrust forward and tensed, as though the clock might in fact be alive, and strike.

My best dress: rose-­colored, with an ivory overskirt. Ivory lace at the neck and sleeves that my mother had tatted for me. Wine-­colored ribbons in the shape of roses hitching up the overskirt, which hung in lazy arcs that swirled gently around my legs as I walked. The same ribbons all up the front of the bodice. Just the right puff at the shoulders of the sleeves. I had been so proud of this dress. My six petticoats frothed out at the bottom like new milk. I had thought of how I would feel standing in this dress on the train platform the day I left for Paris.

I had a brand-­new travel bag at my feet, calf's leather with a pocket for my journal. The pocket was empty. I write now on a journal that has been given to me, out of kindness or routine I do not know.

My mother took my diaries, and I have not seen them since. Are they burned, with the dried poppy Louis gave me in the meadow that day, the postcard of the Eiffel Tower on which he wrote those sweet words? I hope it is all burned, after my mother defiled it with her eyes. I burn with shame at the thought of her reading what was meant only for my eyes; I have some consolation in knowing that she will never know which passages of my journal I read aloud to Louis; which fragments of poetry I wrote down that he read back to me, one hand in my hair as I sat at his feet in the room behind the store. These things remain for me unsullied. Unlike paper and ink, they can never be destroyed.

My father paced, eyeing the clock, which stood on a cement pedestal. My mother stood near me, making small awkward movements with her hands. She wanted to comfort me but did not dare; I had become a stranger to her. They would not tell me why we were going to Paris. I did not care. Everything that had meant anything to me had been taken away: I held my few pitiful jewels in my hands and protested that my treasure was still intact, but my jewels only sparkle in the dark; my mother had dragged them out into her harsh drawing-­room light, where they looked cheap, plaster and sequins only, with nothing precious about them, things a trollop would wear.

The train was due in at 12:10. By 11:50 my father was in a kind of hypnotic agitation. He could not keep his eyes from the station clock; my mother picked up my bag and suggested we go to him. There were other ­people on the platform, and I could not help but feel that they must see my shame surrounding me like a shadow. In my good dress I felt conspicuously unclean, although my mother had fussed endlessly to get every detail just right, ironing for an hour before putting the dress on me and examining it from every angle while I stood like a wooden doll.

I had had nothing to say for a week. I had had little to eat or drink. I had cried upon awakening, lay in my bed and cried through the day, and gone to bed weeping. My mother had tried to speak to me but I could not bear it, I screamed at her and threw a book.

And then two days ago she told me that today we were to go to Paris, and that I must ready myself. I did not know what to think. I had thought almost nothing for the entire week, except that my Louis was gone from me forever and that I had done nothing wrong. What I do with my body is supposed to mean so much—­only what he did to my body ever meant anything. A kiss, a touch only: a heaven.

But my thoughts, my dreams! To be defiled that way was like an undressing, was like being touched with a stranger's dirty hands. The pain was physical, it still was, on the station platform, an ache in the hollow under my ribs, a pain that ran straight through my body like the trail left by a knife.

This was to be my dream, then. Waiting for a train to take my to my fairy-­tale city as a captive, with no idea why or where, and no right to ask. Clearly I had forfeited my rights as a person when my mother walked into my room. I know I committed a sin, but it did not feel like a sin; it felt like the only way I could touch Louis' flesh.

My mother looked at me with fear and contempt, as she had been looking at me for a week, and the train came.

I hardly glanced out the window. I remember nothing of the scenery. Father talked about clocks until my teeth were on edge. Mother looked at me until I said something snappish, then I was sorry. That is all I remember.

And then we were there. Here. A long, long row of trees, an imposing tall façade. I did not understand. The Hôpital Salpêtrière.

I had heard of it, of course. A place for madwomen. The very finest, I heard my mother telling me. I wanted to run away, but I could not stop my feet from walking obediently beside my mother's. She held my arm and I hated her; but I knew that from now on to show anger would be to show madness. I have effaced myself in order to survive.

I felt dwarfed by my surroundings; I felt myself shrinking. Once inside, I could not adjust my eyes to the light. I could not accept the laughter I heard echoing around the great empty front lobby. Perfectly ordinary laughter, no doubt from the throat of someone insane.

Somebody came. We were ushered into a room. I looked out the window, which gave onto a back garden. It was empty. Somebody came. He asked questions of my parents and ignored me completely.

The entire time, I heard that laughter. Eventually it seemed to be coming from inside my own head; I wanted to ask if anyone else heard it, to scream. And then it was gone, as if it had never been.

Suddenly everyone was on his feet. My mother was crying. My father held me awkwardly. My mother held me fiercely and whispered something that sounded absurdly like toiletry advice in my ear, something about flesh worms; I recoiled. And then they were gone.

“I am Dr. Duret,” said the man who remained. He stood up at his desk. I stood and curtsied; momentarily I did feel as though I was insane because this could not be happening to me, I could not have been abandoned here.

“Sit down,” the man said. He did not say my name. I could not think of his. I sat. I was trembling, my hands, my knees. I was afraid he would see it. I knew he would see it. I looked him straight in the eye.

“You are suffering from green disease,” he said authoritatively. He started to go through the symptoms quite thoroughly, noting down the ones I apparently have: Yellowish, green, or blue hue to the skin. Hmmm. I would say there is a definite green pallor; now, let me see, open your mouth, yes, it is quite visible in the gums, although not so much in the lips. Now”—­quite suddenly pulling down my lower eyelid—­ “yes, there is a white here rather than a healthy pink tone.

“Have you lassitude? Your father says you do.”

“My father? What else does he say?”

“He had not noticed any weakness in the legs; he says you walk a great deal.”

“Yes.” I was terrified that the doctor was just waiting to confront me with my self-­abuse.

“You are somewhat slim for a farm girl,” he continued.

“I am not a—­ ”

“And you have complained of pains in the head.”

“Yes.” I could feel myself getting smaller in my chair. “I have a—­a sound in my head sometimes.”

“What sort of sound?” He seemed unsurprised.

“A wheezing sound.”

“Ah.”

I knew I had pleased him.

“I hear it in the silence of the night; I think it is the strangled beating of my heart.”

“Have you any feelings of oppression?”

Oh, I almost laughed then. As I sat in that chair getting smaller and smaller I could feel the entire oppressive weight of the hospital on my poor aching head. Quite soon I would be the size of a mouse!

“Since my arrival here,” I said.

He wrote again in his notebook, and then we sat in silence for another little while.

“Your father,” he said finally, as though surfacing from some great depth, “says that your disposition for intellectual work is very good.”

“Well,” I said, not knowing the correct answer to this, “we like to talk in the evenings.”

“It will be good for you that all such discussions will be suspended while you are here.

“Dr. Charcot has authorized me to give this to you.” He pushed a small journal toward me across his desk. I had noticed it the moment I sat down: a black journal with hard cardboard for front and back. I had been eyeing it with something like lust the entire interview! I could not believe that it was now mine.

I burst out, “Why?”

“The doctor feels it will be beneficial,” was all he said, and I found myself thinking,
To whom?

“I have called for an orderly,” he said. “He will familiarize you with the routines of your rehabilitation.”

He turned and looked out the window. I did not know what to do. I had thought I was going to be given a chance to defend myself. Instead I heard footsteps coming. They started as a far-­off rhythm, then became a tapping that turned loud as a drumbeat in my head. Somewhere the laughing started again. I wanted to throw myself on the mercy of the man in front of me, but I still could not remember his name. I felt like the condemned listening to the executioner's footsteps. Then another man was standing in the doorway, and I said to the doctor, “Is that all you have to say to me?”

“Guillaume will tell you all you need to know.”

“Am I to have nothing to say for myself, then?”

When the orderly took my arm I dared not shake it off.

“Young woman,” said the doctor, turning around, “I am familiar with the particulars of your case. If you follow the excellent regimen Dr. Charcot has set up for his patients, you will almost certainly make a full recovery. It is not too late for you to be made fit for your future duties as mother and wife.” With that he turned back toward the window, and the orderly took a more firm grip on my arm. There was a noise in the hall. As we came out the door I saw an older woman, perhaps thirty, being walked down the hall by a male attendant. The woman was talking to the attendant; she smiled quite naturally at me as she passed. Was this the woman who had been laughing? It felt wrong to have a strange man holding my arm. He hadn't said anything but to greet the other attendant, though not, I had noticed, his patient.

The halls were an interminable labyrinth. Again it became difficult not to laugh at myself, waiting for the Minotaur.

But of course there was no monster, just empty halls, then an empty room. The orderly left me standing by a naked white bed, looking out a window without seeing a thing, and I heard a timid voice ask for some ink and a pen and realized it was I who spoke.

The orderly paused; that was all. And then I was alone, and I gave way to despair, and threw myself upon the bed and cried, feeling all the time like an actress in a bad play: The young woman threw herself upon the cold hard bed and wept disconsolately.

After a long while there were footsteps, but I did not sit up or look around. I simply did not care. Now they were going to take me somewhere else and do something to me, I knew not what; I had heard of the water cure but did not know what it was, had heard something about electric shock being applied to the insane but had not wanted to know more. I was a thing now among other things, with no more volition than the single chair that sat by my new window, the empty desk against the wall, and ­people I did not know were going to decide what was to be done to my body and my mind.

The footsteps stopped near the bed. A shadow fell across my face. I hardly dared look up. When I did, the same orderly Guillaume, I supposed—­stood, a queer expression on his face. I could not read it: Envy? Curiosity? And something feral and almost rapacious.

“Dr. Duret says you will surely be of use to Dr. Charcot,” he said without expression.

I buried my face in my pillow again, I was so frightened. After what seemed an eternity the footsteps receded. Once I could no longer hear them, I dared look up and saw an inkpot on the little table by the single chair, and a pen.

And I was weeping again, this time for joy, for the clear bright joy of seeing the pot of brown ink, the old black pen made of scarred wood. Suddenly there was something that was mine, something that Augustine knew and loved. And suddenly, for the first time in these endless blighted weeks, I was Augustine, a brown-­haired girl with an upturned nose, a seventeen-­year-­old girl full of the romance of the theater, the country bumpkin who had somehow become the heroine in her own phantastical play. And I sat up and wiped my face and looked out the window, where there was a wall and a patch of grass and an ancient, tangled rosebush. I walked to the chair and sat in it, and it became my chair, Augustine's chair, the chair where I will sit and write about everything that happens here. This is not the end of Augustine's story. This is the beginning of Augustine's Great and Terrible Adventure.

 

T
HE NEWS IN
the
Journal Illustré
was in my favor, although the weather was not. The rain of last night had begun again. Last week Leonard had arranged for a carriage this morning, and a country ride—­there was a lady he wished to impress. Theo was disappointed in the rain because he wanted some diversion instead of his Friday law lecture.

So we breakfasted at a tabac, and read that there was a new
plat du jour
today.
Apparent Suicide Proves Murder Victim.
A young woman, nicely dressed. Clearly not a prostitute.

“Charles, where were you last night?” Leonard asked, and I laughed. Nothing could spoil my good mood.

“I was with a lady,” I told him. Rain was pouring from the gutters and down the street. The sky was black. I suggested we go to see the plat du jour, Leonard's outing being impossible, and Theo leapt to his feet and capered like a puppy. I was sick of them both. Leonard felt bound, with the failure of his plans, to attend our lecture; I believe he was just avoiding the rain. We parted at the Panthéon.

“You are morbid,” said Leonard.

“And you are jealous,” I said. “We will memorize every feature of the
plat du jour
and bring our portrait home to you.”

“Charles is in a singularly good humor this morning,” Theo had observed as I ate bread and butter and drank the bitter coffee our landlady provides.

“He came in late,” said Leonard. They spoke of me as though I were insensate.

“I took a walk,” I said.

“He took a walk.”

“He has worn down the streets of Paris, by the look of his shoes.”

“And his cape is muddy.”

“I noticed that. As though it had provided––let us say––a refuge.”

“A moment of safe passage for a delicate foot?”

I heard it all, dismissed it all. Like the chattering of birds. I did not care. My love. I was going to see my love. As I pulled my boots on I was certain of her: She would be there.

It took only a few minutes to walk from our apartments near the Panthéon to the Morgue. On the way Theo asked me indiscreet questions about the lady I had spoken to yesterday afternoon and of the lady I had seen last night. Were they one and the same? Were her morals as supple as her young body? I answered nothing. I told Theo that I did not even know the lady's name.

But I was thinking about her.

The crowd was tremendous, and feverish with excitement. The same country family from the day before was once again in front of me. The father now shared the shining eyes and flushed cheeks of his wife and children. The wife carried what seemed to be the same basket of greens. I bought Theo some cookies to fill his mouth, and some warm wine for my own. I craned my neck without subtlety; I knew I would not see her but that she was there, and she was waiting.

And quite suddenly the huge entry doors opened and we were all swept inside.

There was only one figure behind the beckoning glass. Voices rose in pity and admiration; I heard the broken echoes as they swept up and around the vast hall. The crush to see her was three and four deep; but I was in no hurry. Even Theo's sharp exclamation meant nothing to me. I waited my turn, I stepped up to the glass and beheld the lovely corpse.

And for an instant I possessed her, naked under the lights in view of all Paris. I heard them speaking about her:
Oh, but she has such lovely hair.

Oh horrible pity, she is so young.

“It doesn't seem decent,” the country boy said. “Shouldn't there be a crucifix on her cheek, and holy water, and a sprig of box to sprinkle it with?”

“There'll be all that when the police find out who she is.”

“Do you see, Father? She looks as if she were talking to angels.”

I turned my head: a little girl, no more than nine or ten; a pretty girl. She held her father's hand.

“She is smiling,” said the girl. “I wonder what she was thinking when she died.”

“That is morbid, Nicolette. I did not bring you here to think morbid thoughts, merely to lose your young fear of death.”

“Perhaps,” I said suddenly and to my own surprise, “she was thinking of this place.”

The girl turned to face me. Her father put his hand on her shoulder.

“Perhaps,” I said to the young girl's unafraid, wide-­open eyes, “perhaps she was thinking that today would be the happiest day of her life. Because today she would be coming to the Morgue to meet her lover.”

And the man hurried the little girl away.

I heard my name and turned. And it was her, with her light wild eyes. In spite of my bravado, I had been so afraid she would not be there.

She wore a suit of the type so popular at the time, with a tight-­fitting bodice, a wide skirt, and exaggeratedly wide sleeves above the elbow that made a most satisfying rustling sound as she moved. The suit was of sea-­foam green with turned-­back ivory cuffs, revers, and vest, and the blouse that showed beneath was purest white. At the neck the blouse sported a rose-­red bow that matched the silk roses on her hat, of felt decked with false sprigs of green, which, although they were certainly not even meant to be rose leaves, set off the roses to perfection. Her shoes, which barely showed beneath the dress, were black kid, as were the buttons on her suit.

“You did not expect to see me.” That was true. I had told myself I was certain of her, but I was not certain.

“She is not so beautiful as you,” I said, gesturing toward the figure behind the glass.

She smiled. “She is me.”

“I walked all night,” I said, “thinking of you.” The first lie I told her; after we dined I had walked, but after two hours I had gone into an absinthe bar to still my nerves, and slept, seated in a booth with the candle guttered out. My nerves had not been stilled.

But here in the Morgue, she among the living was the most alive, and I knew that from that moment I must have her always by my side.