Fiend, page 13
part #3 of Voice of Blood Series
“You have given in to her too much in the past; she expects you to agree enthusiastically to any idea she has. This was bound to happen sooner or later.” She smoothed the front of my coat. “This is very handsome. The seams are all but invisible. Is it one of Mister Wembledowns’s, in Montparnasse?”
“Quite so. You have an eye for fashion,” I said, nodding.
Maria grinned. “I did the same thing as you last week—I went window-shopping. I also have new plumage that I am eager to display. But with both of you out this evening, I shall stay home in my nightgown and bonnet, do absolutely nothing, and thoroughly enjoy myself.” She brushed her cheek against mine in lieu of a kiss, then rubbed a minim of rouge on my cheekbones. “There. Now you look splendid. And remember, if you want to leave, you can—she doesn’t own you.”
I thought on this, swaying back and forth in Ollier’s carriage, my eyes fixed on the window and the rushing landscape outside. Georgina said nothing for a very long time; she was silent until we crossed the river. “Feo, what’s the matter?” she asked. When my reply was not instantaneous, she grasped my arm and rubbed it lovingly, then slumped back into the seat. “It’s all right. I know you’re cross. But it’s ridiculous! Let us be as we were. Let us be friends.”
“Were we friends?” I asked, not looking at her but at her reflection in the window.
She had not had time to dirty her face to make it look somewhat more masculine, and the sadness in her soft reflection tore at my heart. “Weren’t we?” she responded in a whisper.
I took her hands in mine. “Yes, yes; I apologize. I’m being terrible. I’m feeling sorry for myself so that I don’t have to feel sorry for you, which I am afraid would swamp me. Because I do love you so much. I want so much for your happiness—only your happiness, darling.”
We kissed for the first time in fifteen nights, and the sky was clear and pricked with stars, and how beautifully the lights of Paris shone! Ollier pulled the horses up, and we stopped and Ollier opened the door (but, as part of the charade, did not assist Georgina onto the street). As I joined her, she bent to the street, then straightened her back and rubbed her cheeks and forehead with her dirtied hands. Immediately, she became a grubby Bohemian youth, fresh-faced, intelligent, and restless, striding with head held high into the house of an independent newspaper publisher.
M. Lotte had come into some amount of money five years before, and immediately left his job at a prominent bourgeois business newspaper to start his own, republican publication. Unfortunately for M. Lotte, he was an extremely poor writer and had to acquire like-minded and talented men to serve as his staff. This process had taken two and a half years. Les lettres solidarité had managed to produce two issues in four months, with the help of the well-connected, zealously radical M. Villon and the prolific and equally zealous Pole, M. Soltan. But Lotte himself skirted the edge of bourgeoisie, with his medium-sized house, his eager smile and well-bred manners, and the kind of money necessary to hold soirees.
That kind of easy, unostentatious wealth must have come as a godsend to the dozens of artists, musicians, actors, pamphlet writers, spiritualists, and assorted eccentrics that crowded the foyer and the sitting room. I stared with fascination at a woman dressed in Oriental costume of sari and trousers, with her feet bare and her hands dyed orange; blond hair peeked from under a dazzling shawl of electric blue. Another carried a tiny, yelping dog in a small wicker basket with a lid, from which the dog occasionally popped its head to receive tidbits from the fingers of its mistress. Artists’ models leaned against walls next to the stacks of paintings they had inspired, there being more artworks than room on the walls.
There did not seem to be a table at which to sit (food was laid out on a long buffet table in the kitchen), nor a stage at which to stare (a poet expounded about mackerel and freedom from his post on a wooden chair, while no one listened), thus, pleasantly disoriented, I wandered slowly throughout the open wing of the house. George was nowhere to be seen. I stood at the back of the room farthest from the front door and waited for one of the guests to approach me. I had not yet satisfied my hunger, and my temper grew short.
I did not have to wait long; a little model, short enough to look up to me, walked up to me and said, “Excuse me, monsieur, but you look as though you need a glass of wine. I need one too—shall we go together?” She offered me her dainty arm.
Her name was Ondine. I led her outside, into a small copse of trees, and held her for a while. I allowed myself only a taste, but she swooned and flopped like a sturgeon in my arms. She did not get enough to eat, and her blood was thin and melancholy, flavored with hunger, frustrated love, and impossible romantic dreams. I settled her gently onto her backside in the short grass, rubbing her hands with mine and calling her name to ease her back to consciousness.
She recovered at once and blinked at me insensibly. “What am I doing out here? Who are you? I came with M. Nerval.”
“I suppose you should find him again, then,” I said starchily, and she collected herself and staggered back inside, convinced that she had drunk too much wine. I was pleased at my restraint, and restored through even a small sip of blood. It would not satisfy me all night, but I hoped it might last for long enough to pay my respects to M. Lotte, for Georgina’s sake. I had sent Ollier away to pick up other fares for the night, since if either of us needed him again, we could call to him, with our minds, anywhere he was.
I had been outdoors for longer than I had imagined; something in the atmosphere of the party had changed in my absence. I had some difficulty reentering the house through the side door I had so recently exited. Several clumps of guests had clotted into a single mass, all pointing toward the drawing room, two rooms away. I felt that where the attention focused, Georgina was at its center, and I slid and wormed my way swiftly through the mass of people. I feared that she was making a scene, or had been discovered through any of her disguises, but I sensed no anxiety from her, only delighted fascination.
I found George transfixed before the true focus of attention: a girl approximately eighteen years of age, wearing something of a ragtag Gypsy costume, all scarves, skirts, and tiny bells. She had skin of a tawny-brown color, like tea with milk, hair barely a shade darker, and pale-violet eyes. She sang a sprightly folk song with good voice, accompanied by a skillfully played piano, and swishing her skirts around her peeping ankles. It was a pretty sight; in October of that year, any illumination in the darkness was providential.
I applauded the end of one song, but slipped away again as another song began. There was dancing, and I wasn’t in the mood even to watch. I needed more blood, and Georgie wasn’t going anywhere. I needed to find Lotte (and avoid Ondine), and make my escape into the three miles of anonymous possibility between here and home.
Four more victims of a painless sip came to me easily. I learned a great deal more about Lotte’s guests than I could have gleaned by conversation. The newspaper was indeed much more well-known than I had assumed, and actually had some members of the government suspicious. But nothing had thus far happened, which made Lotte, Villon, and Soltan bold. Their plans for the next issue of the newspaper included many outrageous writings—calls for the dismantling and democratizing of the government, collectivism, and universal suffrage. It was madness, as implausible as a fairy story; tales to amuse hungry children to keep their minds off their growling bellies.
At last I managed to find Lotte, sneaking out of the servants’ quarters with his trousers fastened the wrong way and his chestnut hair mussed. “Ah? Ah, yes, M. Grise, thank you for attending. You do seem to have gained some color in your cheeks!”
I gave him a smile that showed my fangs. “Yes, I have been making the acquaintances of your— acquaintances.”
Lotte blinked and frowned for a moment, then his beaming social demeanor returned. “Ah? Ah! Yes, indeed, they are a mixed bag, are they not? I do know a great many talented people. Did you hear Mademoiselle Lefeu sing? She always charms everyone.”
“Who?” I asked politely.
“Oh, I simply must introduce you. Charming, charming girl! I think you may have a great deal in common, coming from more southern climes than these. . . .” Lotte ducked away into the other room, and I followed him curiously, wondering what attributes he imagined that I had.
In the room with the piano, someone else now played the third movement of Mozart’s Paris Symphony with all the delicacy of a blacksmith hammering steel, and the singing Gypsy girl sat on a couch with Georgina, deeply enmeshed in conversation. The blazing candlelight illuminated their proximal faces, one dark and the other radiant moonlight. Lotte bent over them and spoke under the ringing of the piano and the thunder of wine-heightened voices. “Rosy, I want you to meet M. Grise, a colleague of our friend Dolski. That’s him, standing right there.”
The dusky girl followed the indicated line of Lotte’s walking stick to me, with her strange pale eyes held wide open so that the whites could be seen under the irises. She looked hopelessly innocent, guileless as a kitten, the little bells of her bracelet tinkling as she brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. Georgina’s face spoke of a longing that I knew; it was probably the way that I looked at her.
The girls rose from the couch and walked with Lotte back to me. Lotte made a slight bow in my direction. “Grise, I would like you to meet Mme. Rosée Lefeu. Her father is Renaud Lefeu, the esteemed world traveler, who has been kind enough to write an essay for the next issue of the newspaper. Where is he?”
“He is here somewhere,” said the girl, looking around the room at the swaying mass of anarchically dancing people. When she was closer, I saw that her brownness was not caused by any sunburn, but was hers alone, her skin as smooth and delicate as the petals of an orchid. “I am called Rosy.”
“This is M. Orphée Grise. He is a partner of M. Dolski.”
I bowed and accepted her dimpled hand, with its attendant music. I wanted to lick her, to crush her delicacy to me and hear the snapping of young bones. She smelled strongly of clove and cinnamon—clove on her breath, cinnamon melting through the pores of her skin, due to a high level of those spices in her diet. She smelled of the Orient. She was like no woman I had ever before encountered; she did not seem entirely human, as I previously envisioned “humanity.” She seemed, instead, a figure from myth: Cleopatra, Cassiopeia, Chryseis the Golden.
Yet she was just a girl.
“Your costume is utterly charming,” I said. “Did you buy it entire from a Gypsy woman?”
Rosy frowned slightly. “I have collected and assembled it myself,” she said, “taking what I liked from every place I visited. I accompanied my father on most of his travels, you see. It would seem, from your tone of voice, that you have a low opinion of the Gypsies. Why the dislike?”
I was caught completely off guard. I saw one side of Georgie’s mouth smile. “I have none,” I said hastily. “I have never had much interaction with them . . .”
“You ought to reexamine your prejudice,” said Rosy Lefeu, “as a foreigner living in Paris.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely fair,” Georgie said mildly, and instantly Rosy turned to her with a tender expression. “We are all foreigners here.” Rosy blinked, and the entire argument had vanished from her mind, while I still stood, my mouth hanging open, as I struggled to think of something to say. Georgie turned back to me. “We were talking of her travels,” she said, “and their fascinating variety. Do you know that Mme. Lefeu has been down the very southernmost tip of Africa? And to Japan, and Persia . . . and America!”
“Marvelous,” I said, then awkwardly added, “You sing beautifully.” It was an exaggeration, and I am afraid it came out of me sounding extremely insincere. I saw a spark ignited in Rosy’s eyes, but then Georgie touched her arm and immediately Rosy gentled.
“Thank you, M. Grise. I am glad you enjoyed it. Singing is what I love most. I take lessons from one of your countrymen, Signor Orinelli.”
“I shall look him up,” I offered. “My voice would benefit from training. My mother was a coloratura, but I inherited little of her ability.”
Georgie stared at me. I felt strange; why had I felt compelled to tell her something personal about myself, exposing the Ricari underneath the gray cloak of obfuscation? I had been bewitched.
“Go away, M. Grise,” Georgie said, as light as tissue wrapped around a horseshoe. The smile in her voice did not reach her eyes. “I shall enjoy Mme. Lefeu’s company for as long as I am able. If you want to be helpful, go find M. Lefeu and make sure he’s good and drunk.”
Lotte laughed uncomfortably. Rosy continued to gaze up at Georgie’s dirty chin. I rubbed my gloved hands together slowly, repeating to myself, A gentleman does not strike another gentleman unless he seeks a duel. And I don’t think I would win. “Good evening, mademoiselle,” I said, taking as deep a bow as I dared. “Gentlemen.” I tapped my heels on the floor, turned ninety degrees, and stalked away, still rubbing my hands. I had suddenly gone very cold.
Revelation
That winter, Maria’s heart was heavy with memories. She went out less and less, and on her behalf, I wrote many notes of regret to the piles of invitations to holiday balls and banquets that she received. She stared at her wardrobes full of beautiful gowns, hats, and shoes, sighed, and then closed the doors without even touching the garments.
One of the few activities she continued regularly was attending Saturday-evening Mass with me. On Christmas night, she lit nine candles and knelt for a long time before the image of Holy Mother Mary, bent in silent prayer. I splashed holy water across my hands and touched it to my forehead, praying that her melancholy (and my headache) would be soothed.
“Nine candles?” I asked Maria afterward, walking home through drifts of fresh snow, gray from the coal smoke in the air. “May I ask who they are for?”
“They are for my children. The seven children I bore, and the two children that I made,” she replied.
I felt deeply touched. “Do you really see me as your child?”
“Of course I do. I made you with my body. Not my child alone, of course—Georgina helped me.”
“I thought it was you who helped Georgie.”
“No; I know better than she how it is done. I have watched it done incorrectly to someone else, and I could not bear the idea of letting that happen again. It is a most gruesome end. The body unravels, but knows not how to knit itself together again. But it tries a few things.” She grinned, with a grimace in it. “No, no, greyhound, that would never do.”
I had a flash of knowledge as she revisited the distasteful memory. “M. Chicot did that?” I said, aghast, nearly retching.
She laughed at my discomfiture. “He had to learn it from someone else; he had no idea. His initial experiments ended quite disastrously. Poor old Chicot; he is a scientist. But he has managed to get it right several times since. He takes care to ensure that his children do not remain too attached to him, otherwise he would run in a pack like a wild dog.” I had to stop and close my eyes; Maria’s memories had swamped me again, and I saw her, Chicot, and a half-dozen unnatural others, silent skulkers, decimating whole villages, flocking in trees like a murder of crows. Spoken communication was unnecessary. They fed from each other as much as they fed from humans, continually lost in each other’s thoughts, addicted to each other. The complex lattice of sexual relations between them dazzled me. “As pleasant as that experience can be for a short while, it always ends badly . . .”
I shuddered Maria’s memory off. “Have you noticed that George has stopped going to church entirely?” I said, opening my eyes and taking a long stride to catch up.
She moved a little farther in the snow before answering. The lace train of her mulberry-colored skirt had become thickly encrusted with soot and ice. “Yes,” she said. “As far as I’ve been able to determine, she considers it a waste of her time. I think she may be flirting with atheism.”
I wrinkled my nose. “She is still going about with Rosy Lefeu,” I mentioned. “That is where she spends her time. Anyone would think they were courting.”
“Perhaps they are,” said Maria.
I laughed and shook my head. “Your wit is surpassingly dry today, my mistress.”
But Maria was no longer even smiling. “There is something on the air,” she announced, holding her head up and dilating her delicate nostrils. “Do you smell it? It is like . . . dried anchovies.”
“They are not courting,” I pressed. “One woman cannot court another.”
“Oh, Orphée,” Maria sighed. “You are both so young.”
“But it is impossible. It is nonsensical. Georgie just has a mania, that’s all; it will pass. Remember when she was obsessed with beaver-pelt hats? She is a girl of quick passions.”
“As you say, Orphée. As you say.”
I felt cold again, but told myself that it was because of the snow. But the feeling did not dissipate when I stood before the great fireplace with my hands toward the crackling flames, steam rising from my rolled trouser cuffs. It was a feeling of helplessness, like Georgina’s Kaffir, sliding down a mountainside on an unstoppable wave, watching helplessly as I rushed away from her.
That part of her letter was my own invention.
“Feo, I need your imagination. You have to tell me how best to kill my husband,” she’d said.
I hardly saw Georgie for weeks. She did most of her writing in cafés, scowling a clay pipe into the corner of her mouth. She did not even come home to sleep each night, which, before, would have nearly paralyzed me with worry; but by the end of the year, I was grateful when I came home and she was not there.
Yet I missed her so terribly when she was absent. In fact, I missed her when she was there. To be specific, I missed Georgina; I was quite sick of Jerzy.
The next issue of Les L.S. (as they all liked to call it) featured three of her recent opinion pieces and my illustration of a penniless, skeletal flower-girl, which I had not intended as a political metaphor but, with Villon’s addition of the caption “Child of the Monarchy,” served that purpose. The newspaper still lost money, but that was not really the point, and all the staff celebrated their success.
