Wild Talent (22 page)

And so it is arranged that tonight I will move into Alexandra's room.

August 22

My sleep last night, in Alexandra's narrow bed, was broken and uneasy. For a long time I lay in a half-doze while she tossed and turned beside me. Eventually I must have slept, but some time after midnight Alexandra suddenly cried out, startling me awake. She sat up in bed and began to talk in such a rambling, disconnected way that I guessed she must still be dreaming. There were words in French —
démon,
forêt
— and others that might have been some eastern language, Sanskrit, or Tibetan perhaps, all jumbled together and spoken in a frightened murmur.

I seized her by the arms and tried, as gently as I could, to shake her awake. Slowly the dazed, blank look in her eyes gave way to consciousness. Though the room was uncomfortably warm, her teeth began to chatter. When I put my arms around her shoulders to quiet her trembling, I was shocked to feel how thin she had become.

“Alexandra, you're awake now, it's all right, you've had a nightmare.”

“
C'est la peinture,
” she whispered. Still seeming half in delirium, she spoke those words with a strange fascination, and wonderment, and dread.
“C'est la peinture
. . . ” A long shudder ran through her, and then she lay back on the pillow with an exhausted sigh.

August — ?

I am sure of nothing: neither of the date, nor of the season, nor of the natural laws that govern the world, which I once thought immutable. But I have promised myself that I would make this journal an honest record, even of events that are impossible for me to comprehend, and still less possible to explain. I have delayed too long, trying to find words to describe the indescribable.

On the night of which I write, Alexandra was still running a slight fever and seemed in no better spirits; and so, as had been our habit for a while, we stayed in and retired early. I had been asleep for perhaps an hour or two, when I woke to find myself alone in the bed.

Seized with a fearful suspicion, I called out, “Alexandra!”

There was no answer. I got up, fumbled for matches, lit the bedside lamp. The room was empty.

And then — guided, perhaps, by some instinct arising out of panic—I noticed the book that Alexandra had left on her nightstand with a folded paper marking her place. I picked it up.
Sagesse,
it was called — Wisdom. A book of poems by Paul Verlaine. I opened it to the page she had been reading. Verlaine's despairing verses filled me with such foreboding that I can still see every word as though inscribed in the air.

A deep black sleep

falls upon my life:

sleep, all hope,

sleep, all desire . . .

and then the final stanzas
:

I see nothing,

I have lost the memory

of evil and of good . . .

Oh, sad history!

I am a cradle

which a hand balances

in the hollow of a sepulchre.

Silence, silence
.

Surely it was no accident, I thought, that she had left that poem for me to find. But what message did she intend? My heart raced with fear and a terrible confusion.

A deep black sleep falls upon my life . . . Silence, silence
. “If I knew,” Alexandra had said, “that with one bullet I could scatter the atoms of my body . . . ”

I went to the chest, pulled out the drawer where I had found the pistol. To my immense relief it was still there, along with the box of bullets.

But suddenly I imagined Alexandra standing on a Paris bridge, about to throw herself into the waters of the Seine. I knew that somehow I must find her, must prevent whatever disastrous and misguided plan she had conceived — but where, in all this dark, sleeping city, should I begin to look?

Then I unfolded the sheet of paper that served for a bookmark and I read what was written there, in Alexandra's small, neat hand:

In a street, in the heart of a city of dreams,

that seems like a place where you have already
been . . .

Her favourite lines of all Verlaine's work — so Alexandra had said, that night in the artist Gautier's studio. The city of dreams. The
Inconnu.
That place, both familiar and unknown, called “Elsewhere”.

It was not death she would seek. Not Alexandra, who had valued life so dearly; who feared what terrible judgment might follow if like a faithless soldier she deserted her post. But to reach out for the mysterious, the unknowable — to venture on the dangerous road not yet explored . . . I remembered the words that Paul Verlaine had called after us, as we left M. Gautier's studio. “You and I, we could search together, Mademoiselle David. My good friend Gautier will know where to find me.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

I
was sick with apprehension as I tiptoed through the Jourdan's dining room and antechamber, then down the long flight of stairs to the street. At that hour the Boulevard St-Michel was still busy and I had no trouble finding a cab, though I could ill afford the expense. I gave the driver the address of M. Gautier's studio, and we set off for Montmartre.

I asked the cab to wait while I climbed the stairs to M. Gautier's studio. The artist was a long while coming to the door, but I could see a light through the transom and heard him moving about. Presently the door swung open, and M. Gautier appeared in carpet slippers, with collar undone and shirt-tails out. Behind him on the table stood an empty wine bottle and a single glass.

“Mademoiselle, how may I be of service?” he inquired with drunken formality.

I stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. “Have you seen my friend, Mademoiselle David? By chance did she come here, asking after M'sieu Verlaine?”

“Ah yes . . . ” He gazed at me in cheerful befuddlement. “A pity, mademoiselle —I fear you have missed her. I offered her a glass of wine, but she would not stay. And true enough, she said she must find M'sieu Verlaine.” He made an effort to tuck in his shirt. “But you, mademoiselle . . . you will have a glass of wine? There is another bottle somewhere, I think.”

“Thank you, no . . . ” I could scarcely conceal my impatience. “I cannot stay, I must find my friend. Please tell me, did you give her M'sieu Verlaine's address?”

“His address?” He laughed aloud at that. “Any cheap café in Paris — that is M'sieu Verlaine's address, mademoiselle. But tonight I know where you may find him, and I think also your friend. There is a gathering of artists at an apartment in the Latin Quarter.” He fumbled for a pen and a scrap of paper, and scribbled down an address on the Boulevard du Montparnasse.

And so I had travelled across Paris, to learn that I might find Alexandra only a few steps from home, on the boulevard that crosses St-Michel. By now it was clearly too late for a respectable young woman to be out alone. My resolve was quickly fading. How easy it would be to retreat to the safety of my own room, with
chez Jourdan
close at hand. But I knew I must not turn back.

The concierge, seeming unsurprised by my arrival at this late hour, let me in to the building on the Boulevard du Montparnasse and directed me to the second floor. I walked up the carpeted stairs, thinking how foolish I would look if Alexandra were not here.

The servant who answered the door — if indeed he was a servant — was wearing a kind of Moorish costume with pantaloons and a sash. Glancing past him into the antechamber, I saw that it was surprisingly large and well appointed, with tapestries on the wall, and lamps in gilded sconces. I suppose I had expected another artist's garret like M. Gautier's, and now I felt even more uncertain. Summoning up what remained of my courage, I told him, “I have come to look for a friend.”

“But mademoiselle, you must have mistaken the address, this is a private meeting.” I was about to show him my scrap of paper with the address when a second man, still more exotically costumed, overheard and came to my rescue by inquiring the name of my friend..

“Ah yes, of course, Mademoiselle David. Please come in.” I followed him through the antechamber and into a large drawing room where a number of people were gathered. I had a quick impression of a great many candles alight on lacquered Chinese chests, oriental-patterned wallpaper, Indian rugs and Japanese screens, a divan covered with a tiger skin. An incense burner emitted a strong odour of sandalwood, which could not disguise the smell of hashish cigarettes.

There, to my vast relief, was Alexandra. There also was M. Paul Verlaine.

By now I was feeling almost as angry as I was relieved. After all my alarm on her behalf, after my anxious pursuit through the streets of Paris, here she was, engaged in nothing more dangerous than a costume soirée.

Alexandra, glancing up, had seen me arrive. She gave me a look halfway between puzzlement and chagrin, and gestured to the empty place beside her. “Jeanne,
quelle
surprise!
Do sit down. Why do you look so distressed?”

“Why should I not be distressed?” Had I ever before spoken so sharply to Alexandra? “I woke and you were not there. Who knew where you might have gone, or why?” I felt my throat tighten, my eyes begin to sting.

“But chérie, you found me, did you not? As you see, I did not go far. And you have come at just the right time. The entertainment is about to begin.”

It was weeks since I had seen her in such high spirits. I should have been delighted. Instead I wanted to burst into tears.

Still, I was here and had accomplished my purpose. Alexandra was safe. As Alexandra was fond of saying, you should never refuse a chance for adventure. And so I drew some deep breaths, and felt a little better.

Looking around, I realized that nearly everyone was in costume. There were oriental potentates in long silk robes, Turkish pashas in embroidered vests, pale mediaeval ladies with mysterious smiles, and peacock feathers in their hair.

The man who presided over this peculiar gathering was dressed more austerely than the others, in a long white high-collared robe. Now, calling for everyone's attention and holding up a staff with a curving top like a shepherd's crook, he talked for a few minutes about the mystical artistic vision, and the magical power of words. After some persuasion M. Verlaine stood up and read one of his own poems, and one of M. Baudelaire's called “Les Metamorphoses du Vampire”, from
Les Fleurs du Mal
. Afterwards we heard verses by Mallarme, Rimbaud and Mr. Edgar Allan Poe — all of whom seemed quite obsessed with dead flowers, drowned maidens, vampires and sarcophagi. Many of the poems were dark and disturbing. Some of them — in particular the one by the notorious Arthur Rimbaud (now said to be a gun-runner in Abyssinia) — were so shocking that I wondered if, with my still imperfect French, I had mistaken their meaning.

These people in their oriental finery, with their clever talk of art and literature and music, were surely no more odd than others I had met in Paris — the anarchists, the artists, the very peculiar M. d'Artois. And yet I felt a vague but growing unease.

“It is a little like Madame Blavatsky's dinner parties, is it not,” I whispered to Alexandra.

“Except for the costumes, of course. And even HPB would have blushed at M'sieu Rimbaud's poem.”

Alexandra smiled at that, but I could see that her mind was elsewhere. Her face was flushed; she had a feverish, over-excited look that I had seen before, and it made me anxious for her.

“Now,” said our host, “for the surprise of the evening. I have recently acquired a most remarkable painting, by a young artist possessing a unique and astonishing talent. His is a mystical art imbued with a dark and inexplicable magic; art that transcends all that we understand of everyday reality. Join me, if you will, in experiencing the unimagined.”

Obediently we followed him into an adjoining room, a sort of
salon des artes
, empty of furniture save for some tall oriental vases and, in one corner, an alcove upon which stood a carved Hindu deity.

On three of the walls were some Japanese prints, a painting of a woman in a field of poppies, and what Alexandra told me was a collection of Byzantine Madonnas. Most of the fourth wall was occupied by a large landscape painting.

It was in front of this work that everyone had gathered, with an air of excited curiosity.

C'est très mystérieux,
” they murmured.
“C'est très
extraordinaire
.”

It seemed to me an accomplished but unexceptional painting of wasteland, scattered shrubbery and distant mountains. Puzzled, I moved closer to examine it.

Then someone asked, “Who is the artist?” and someone else replied, “I believe it is the work of M'sieu Jacques Villemain.”

And all at once I understood.

Once, many months ago, Alexandra had spoken to me of just such a painting — at first glance an unremarkable landscape of deserted heath, and lake, and snowcapped peaks. And then with a shiver of fear she had described the phantom images she had seen glimmering at the edge of vision — the mocking, demonic faces that were part of the landscape and at the same time —
something else.

Still haunted by that vision, Alexandra had cried out in her sleep, “
la peinture.
”

Now, superimposed upon M. Villemain's deceptively innocent painting, I saw for myself those same malevolent shapes that had frightened Alexandra: the things that might have been human, or animal,
or something else
.

Perhaps the other guests had sensed the danger in the painting: as though by agreement, they had moved back to view it from a safer distance.

All except for Alexandra.

I wanted to shout out to her M. Villemain's warning: venture too close and the painting could take you captive. Step over the borders of the world into that perilous landscape, and there might be no escape.