The Secret Book of Paradys (85 page)

Days not like any others, and nights without sleep. She saw them waiting. The vista was like that of a cathedral, a place of anguish.

She did not even doze until dawn. At midday she started up from a pit of nothingness. Remembered: Yshtar – Michael – would not be with her anymore.

At four o’clock three strong men appeared in the doorway where Yshtar had gone in and out as a nymph of rain.

They took away the portrait. They were like warders, jailors.

Valmé tore the sheet from the Dionysos and began to polish its cold dead limbs. She knew the great madness that this god was able to inflict – drunkenness, hate, religious mania, or love.

There would be omens. There began to be. (She had longed for them.) A sudden shaft of sunlight through the forward window, over the canal, so clearly wrought twice, outside and in the tilted mirror. A boat passing down to the river with a shadow sail at twilight, in the glass a barque upon the Styx. And a crack in the skylight through which the rain had commenced to infiltrate, a single tear dropped over and over on the worktable.
He will be mine again. No, he never will be mine
.

Days not like any others. And nights without sleep. But the days grew slumberous, as if impregnated by opium – easy to sleep then, deathlike, and to go back in dreams. To see him. At night there were the confines of her marvelous prison cell which she might not leave, and where she could summon up no wish to labor. Waking dreams, hallucinations, omens, in every corner. He had said this to her, and that. She was full of hunger, the greed for pain, and
almost
knew it. She rubbed herself against the razor’s edge. She reveled in her wounds. She had loved him. She loved him now. It was always to be so. She drew his face over and over. She depicted him as a knight, a priest, a king, as one who had died. She sketched the lines of his body, blushing.

When she must go out, how sharp as broken glass the intervals of sun. The knives of the rain entered the mirror of the canal a million times over. On the street, returning with her meager provisions, she would weep. (She had wept before the laundress, who had not known what to make of it, had asked if she was bereaved. And Valmé recalled her mother like a stranger.)

Yshtar had all of him now.

Valmé dreamed of Yshtar. She sailed on a mirror of water, dressed in white, the white sail of the boat above her and copied out below, a swan. In the dream Valmé yearned and became Yshtar. Yshtar-Valmé raised her white arms and Michael Zwarian lay down in them.

Waking, she wept her rain into the pillow.

Her clothes were all too big for her. She was growing thin, and in the darkness of her hair had come all at once a strand of white, Yshtar’s hair brought on by grief.

Valmé went one night to the
Goddess of Tragedy
, where Yshtar’s latest play had been put on. To her astonishment, in the foyer, an exquisite painting was displayed, Yshtar as Antigone. Valmé’s portrait.
(He will have seen it, he will have understood that I painted it. He will recognize how I have captured her, a butterfly on a pin. But no, of course he will see her quite differently, imagining I have fashioned wrongly.)
The fee for the portrait had long since been sent to Valmé, who had scrupulously placed the money where it would do most good, old teachings of her thrifty mother – but without being quite aware of what she did. Yshtar’s small note of praise and gratitude she had had too. She had kept the note. The hand that penned it traced the flesh of their lover.

At the theater, a woman alone, she was somewhat insulted. She watched Yshtar from a great way off. Could Yshtar, after all, act? It seemed so. She had something of the quality of a vacuum, elements and passions, powers and perhaps angels flowed in, and filled her. Her stasis expressed more than the ranting of the best of her accomplices upon the stage.

Valmé remained through the several acts of the play – in which no songs occurred. At the end, a standing ovation bore up Yshtar like a lily.

Valmé pictured Zwarian among the audience, alight with applause. Now he would go behind the scenery, up into the cliff behind the proscenium. Aloft, he would take her to him.

The artist walked through the night, twice accosted, on the northern bank, as a whore. In the gutters peelings and papers. In windows miles high the sweet dull lamps of love.

Never in her life had she known such hurt. Nor lived so, from the gut of the heart.

Those very few who had believed themselves to be intimates of Valmé discussed her briefly. She had become thin and peculiarly graceful. She had the qualities of an actress immersed in a serious and probably classical role. It must end in her death, whatever it was: She walked in the rain, ate nothing, drank too much wine or that odd liqueur of hers. She would fall prey to a consumption. She would be consumed. A pretty, a fearful death. Who would have thought her legitimate for it? She had always been so practical. And her work suffered. But there, she had
become
her work. She had become one of her own pictures, an exquisite witch bereft and languishing after some deed of terror. She was almost lovely, now.

Those who had known of Zwarian did not guess that he might be the cause. No, this was some other swift affair that had sunk its teeth in her.

And some of them mentioned the glass dagger they had located in her studio. It had recently been hidden behind a pile of books – they glimpsed the locked box. Had she not said, despite the information given her on its uses, that she still asked herself its proper purpose – for there was more to a dagger of glass than mere butchery, mere murder.

It was as if the glass dagger chiseled away at her, as her own implements had down at the stone, finding out the thing within. Whittled, pared, polished fine by an agony of crystal. Down, down, to the bone of the soul’s soul.

Michael Zwarian had been away on business in the north. It was winter when he returned to the City, everything set in a pre-frost waiting whiteness. He had had letters every fifth or seventh day from Yshtar, during the weeks of his absence. She was clever, the actress. He was intrigued by the network of spies she had amalgamated – what a criminal she would have made. He had never fathomed her fully, or maybe it was only that he had not felt the driving need to sound her depths. Or again, probably she was quite straightforward, by her own lights simple nearly in her dealings, her cunning only learned through the rule of survival, put to his service with the selfless, careless largesse he had formerly associated only with saints.

The building, the stair, were adorable to Zwarian. He could not stop himself running up the steps like a boy. He was anxious too, and behind him the man was already toiling with the hamper and the wine. “Wait a moment,” said Zwarian. The man halted thankfully a flight below. Zwarian knocked. His circulation was sparkling in him. He was conscious of not wanting to shock, and of wanting to shock, that she might scream or shout, slam the door at once, drop in a faint, and he would be ready to catch her. He was remorseful. He was half frightened by what he had achieved – or what Yshtar and he had achieved between them. He longed for this to be over. He desired these moments stretched to infinity. Like Valmé, although he did not consider it, he had found true feeling, its colossal rush like wild horses, winds, chariots, blood.

The door opened. The artist stood at the entry of her cave, the irritating and beloved L-shaped room. He did not see it. He saw her, haggard, demented, and voiceless before him, her eyes glazed, her hair lank and unwashed, her lips colorless and dry. Love churned in him. He was the master magician who had produced this awful wreck. He gloried in her ruin, for he could repair it. Yet he was stunned, despite all that Yshtar, through her own observation, her web of gossips, had relayed to him. Valmé was his, could not exist entire without him. It was so cruel what he had done, what he had allowed Yshtar,
clever Yshtar, who had thought of the scheme of the portrait, to do. And he loathed Yshtar at that second, and himself, naturally.

“Don’t speak,” he said softly. “Let me come in.”

“Why?” Valmé said. She was like a dumb thing given the ability to talk by accident.

“What you’ve thought of me – you were mistaken. I love you, Valmé. Always and only you. Let me come in.”

“No,” she said, but vaguely. “This is some joke.”

“Don’t make me offer my confession here, on the landing.”

“What confession?”

“Valmé,” he said, and laughed at her and guided her gently into the room, and closed the door to shut them inside. They were before the mirror. He noticed how they reflected in it, upon the misty gleam of the canal and the passing boats, the boatmen and their passengers visible, these irrelevancies superimposed backward upon the reality of the chamber and its two lovers.

There, innocently enough, he told her, he confessed what he had arranged, and why. The trap to take her. And if he did not confess that he had once possessed Yshtar, that was kindness, not cowardice. Valmé need never suffer that sting. He could now atone for it for the rest of their lives together.

“But you’re saying to me,” she eventually murmured, after he had repeated, in various forms, the truth of the bargain and the charade, over and over, conceivably twenty ways, “that you and she are nothing to each other?”

“I owe her my happiness, if she’s brought you to a revelation of need for me. I’ll be in debt to her forever. But nothing else. It was all for you. A wicked game, concocted in desperation. My darling, how I’ve hurt you. Can you forgive me?”

“Oh,” she said, “yes.”

He held her then before the mirror. He took joy in her thinness, her sad hair. He knew that he was their balm; an infallible healer, his touch could cure all.

When she pushed at him a little he let her go, and led her to a chair. She sat down and said, “This is a surprise to me,” as if nothing much had happened. Truly a shock, how terribly he had shocked her – he saw it like a physician.

“Allow me,” he said.

“Please,” she said, so muffled it was inaudible, he thought he read her lips, “I must be alone. I must – will you go now, Michael?”

He did not know for a moment what he should do. Then he saw, beneath the flimsy wrack of wires and tatters she had become, the vestige of her strength, which he had loved and respected, and which had so discommoded him, returning. And he was glad, for now he had brought it on, was its fount,
and need be averse to it no longer. Alone – yes. She would want to enhance herself as best she could for him. She would need time for her recovery, for the lessening smart of happiness burning like a warm fire after snow.

“Then, I’ll leave you. Allow my man to put in some things I brought – a few savories, some good wine. I’ll come back at six.”

“Yes,” she said. “At six.”

He went down the stairs, only slightly put out. He had expected something else, but given the circumstances, anything had been likely. In seven hours he would be with her again. He was a villain. He deserved to be kept waiting.

If startled by an apparition, Yshtar did not show it. Valmé had gained access to the actress’s dressing room during the late-morning rehearsal. There they had placed a chair for her – the room itself was locked in the maid’s absence. Now she sat on the chair, a figment of darkness, and stared at Yshtar in a detached yet feverish way. “Did you suspect the porter is susceptible to bribery?” asked Valmé. “You’d better know he is.”

“But he would understand,” said Yshtar, “that you painted my portrait, and might therefore be permitted to seek me. How can I be of service, mademoiselle?”

Valmé rose. There in the corridor, at the ends of which other doors were now opening and shutting, young women darting to and fro, Valmé blurted, “He came to me with a lie. He assured me that you and he are no longer anything to each other. What do you say?”

“One moment,” said Yshtar mildly. She unlocked her door, and beckoned Valmé inside. A huge vase dominated the room, bursting with flowers. Amid the paraphernalia of drama there had begun to be the symbols of wealth.

“Michael Zwarian,” said Valmé.

“Yes,” said Yshtar. “Do please sit down again. I’ll tell you without delay. As he will doubtless have stressed, Monsieur Zwarian and I have only been allies. He was kind enough to extend to me some patronage. Our arrangement was of a business nature. In regard to you, mademoiselle, I’m afraid he was so determined to acquire you, he played the oldest trick. He made you jealous. And I was the accomplice, a piece of acting I performed for a good friend.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Valmé.

“Of course not. You love him, mademoiselle, and suppose all women must do the same. This is the common mistake of the lover. But I’m a businesswoman, mademoiselle. I daren’t let my heart rule my head. It was a naughty game. But if it’s brought you to your senses – then excellent! I apologize most sincerely for any pain or anger I had to cause you. But Monsieur Zwarian is charming, virtuous, and estimable. You’ve been very fortunate in winning the
regard of such a man. One who would go to such lengths to have you.”

Valmé stood on the floor of the dressing room like a lost child.

“No,” she said, “it’s absurd.”

“I can,” said Yshtar, “offer you proof that I’ve no connection in the romantic way to monsieur.”

Valmé looked at her. Valmé’s eyelids fluttered convulsively as if she might faint or be overcome by nausea. She said thickly, “What proof?”

“Tomorrow afternoon I shall be in the company of Monsieur de Villendorf. You’ve heard of him, I expect, a great patron of the arts. He’s at his City house for the winter. He and I … I needn’t, I think, offer particulars.”

“So you’ve taken another lover.”

“No, mademoiselle. He and I have been intimate some while. And tomorrow there’s an excursion in the delightful boat he has had built, in the classical mode, and frivolously called
Antigone
. We’ll pass your very window, mademoiselle. You may see for yourself.”

Valmé said, “You never loved Michael Zwarian.”

“Never. And for him – though he was never so indecorous or unkind as to speak to me at length on your peerlessness, you alone are of interest to him.” Yshtar smiled. “You were liberal enough to call me beautiful. But there are many other qualities that inspire passion. He has his own beauty, and doesn’t need mine.”