Breath and Bones (61 page)

“That man was right,” she said aloud. “We have been victims of the Dynamite Gang.” She was aware that her voice sounded its most schoolmarmish, but to herself she admitted there was something exhilarating in the whole situation. She had met a man with a pen powerful enough to make him a target
for political desperadoes; she had been attacked by a band of criminals more famous than the James Gang; and she had survived. Two men had taken care of her, and she had slept in her own room in the most luxurious hotel she had ever seen. She could be—she
was
—the heroine of a thrilling narrative.

Viggo murmured politely, nursing a badly scraped cheek, but Edouard hardly heard her. He was reading another item.

The Methodist Women's Mission at long last succeeded in their crusade to close down San Francisco's Thalia Festival House, after a visit from police determined that the spectacle recently mounted there was indeed corrupt of morals and obscene of intent. This, noted one lady-errant, was accomplished despite the disappearance of the programme's chief star, the handsome redhead known as Ursie Summer, who did not perform on the night the police came calling. The other girls have registered a protest, clamoring that if they are arrested, the exotic Miss Summer must be as well; but few who witnessed her portrayals of masterworks such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace can truly regret that Ursie is to escape unscathed. We may hope that this bird has flown south to weather the storm. . . .

My God
, thought Edouard, wondering he could not have recognized her.
She is on her way to Hygeia
. He rang for a clerk and demanded to know when the track repairs would be finished.

“It is a matter of hours, they say, sir.” The clerk rushed away as soon as he could; that man in black had the light of madness in his eye.

Edouard tore out the page and folded it into his pocket, feeling it was somehow evidence that must be preserved. His nerves chafed until he remembered the bottle of laudanum, mercifully intact, in his trunk; then he summoned Wong and got a blessed measure of relief. In his suspended state, the clock hands did not move so slowly, or rather he did not heed them; and soon enough came the siren-call of a new train whistle.

The zebras were merely hoofbeats and an effect of broken moonbeams among the trees, running away as Famke and Albert took the trip over the high stone fence and into Edouard's sanctuary. The tiny exotic deer family
rustled in the undergrowth, and the same cool light gleamed on their tusks as they, too, fled.

The animals led the way up the riding-road. Famke and Albert trudged after them in silence; they needed all their strength to pull nourishment from the thin mountain air, and Famke, at least, needed some time in which to think. Of new paintings, perhaps, and even more of what she might expect to find at the great glass house on the hill. Of how she might explain her relationship with Albert to Edouard; a relationship for which she was hard pressed to find words. Her brother, lover, mentor—the man stumbling along beside her, plucking at her skirt so she might guide him.

“We should be able to see the house by now,” Famke said after a few hundred yards, but in the cloaking darkness it did not seem to exist. Perhaps Edouard's wish had been granted and the world immediately around him had become invisible.

In a few moments the Taj Mahal came into view; or rather, two Tajs, for it seemed the original had twinned itself in the moonlight. At first Famke was confused—the twin seemed to have replaced Edouard's glass house—but then she realized it was merely that the big house was dark, and its darkness had made it a looking-glass. Moonlight and alabaster showed in the shiny surface, and it was all but impossible to tell the difference between the actual mausoleum and its reflection.

But why
is
the house dark?
Famke wondered.
It has never been so before
.

“Is that Versailles's house?” asked Albert. He spoke like a sleepwalker, for the deeper they got into the woods, the stranger this place seemed to him. He even felt like a stranger to himself: The scene in the street had nearly convinced him that illness was the norm and good health a mysterious aberration; stepping into Edouard Versailles's private domain was like drifting into a collective fever dream.

“No, it is for Mr. Versailles's parents. They died of the lungs.” Famke found she was having trouble with her own breath. The hot tinny taste of blood sat on her tongue, but she thought that must be an illusion—as much an illusion as the reflected tomb. She had been cured. She wondered where the servants were, and if anyone would bring her a draught of the hissing water.

“And that sound?”

Famke stopped to listen; there was a half-roar, half-wail coming from the forest where Versailles kept his collection of big cats. “I think it must be a panther.”

Not knowing that the panther lived in a house, too, Albert drew even closer to her, as if he were nervous. “Hansel and Gretel,” he said, trying to laugh at himself. Then the moon drifted behind a cloud, and there was only one dim white fantasy on the hillside after all.

“Come,” said Famke, pulling briskly away from him, “I know the way inside.”

She walked toward the vanished reflection with her arms outstretched and soon found a glass wall slick with dew, then the cold iron-lace door with its countless panes. The moon came out again just long enough for her to see her own ghostly figure reflected in myriad before she turned the knob and entered.

“I don't suppose the man is at home,” Albert said, more and more unnerved.

“I am certain he is not.” Famke groped toward the gas controls.

To Albert it was as if a sudden sun rose within a primeval landscape—the green palms and tree ferns towering toward the ceiling, the ropes of white-flowered vines that poured forth scent as soon as light touched their petals. Famke merely saw that now the looking glass was reversed; the walls reflected what was inside the house, and that was as it should be.

“Perhaps we should go,” Albert suggested.

But now that she was here, Famke was no more willing to leave than she was to don a Mormon union suit and go to Catholic mass. A new determination seized her. “I do not know where Mr. Versailles is, or his servants. But somewhere in this house, there is a purple silk dress that belongs to me. There are some papers, too, that I would like to have, and the lucifer matches from the royal tinderbox.” That box was in her hand now, hot and hard, and she planned to fill it again with matches—if only to prevent it from being used like those other little metal boxes in patients' pockets.

“Darling,” Albert said with palpable unease—for he had just seen a specimen jar containing a rubbery seven-month fetus, floating over the warped hall table—“I am sure Mr. Versailles will return your property—if we don't anger him by poking around where we should not be. Let us come back in the morning. We have a nice room in the hotel . . .”

But Famke had already disappeared down the hallway toward Edouard's office.
There is something in this world that is mine
, she thought as she opened the sanctuary door; for although she'd so recently been glad to come away with Albert penniless and clad only in clay, she had since discovered that, in fact, there were reasons to claim what was once hers. One of the pigeonholes in Edouard's enormous desk had to hold the old yellow pocket, and she felt an urge to review its contents, to retrace, for herself, the path that had brought her here.

The first object her eyes fell on was the galvanic device, sitting by the bottled hand on Edouard's desk in its tailored leather case, solid and full of promise. She ignored it as she searched the overstuffed nooks and desk drawers, shoving aside charts, letters, and drawings that—even though medical in nature—neglected to depict the thatch Down There. No doubt a male artist, or perhaps a proper lady-artist like Miss Dart. Impatient, she balled one of the charts up and tossed it into the air.

“Darling!” Albert followed her inside, alarmed at seeing her worked into such a state. “We have no right to rifle through the man's belongings, even if you do think he has something of yours. We should go. I don't like the way this house lights up—if a guard comes along, he might take us for trespassers and shoot.”

“There are no guards or guns. And everyone on this land knows me.” But Famke stopped her search: She had found the tattered pocket, and now she reached in and opened it.

How pitiful they looked, these documents that had led her halfway across the world and over a continent. The Dragør sketch was just a dirty scrap of paper now, the words on the back faded until only memory could read them:
lovely
. . . The newspaper and magazine clippings were nearly as bad, and several of them had fallen into mere fragments. The matchheads were completely clean of phosphorus and would not light anything. The one item that retained any of its original clarity was one she had not put there: a large and much-mended paper, of a brighter yellow than the buttery cloth pocket, on which the enormous word WANTED stood out like an alarm.

“What is that?” Albert asked behind her, and Famke crumpled the poster convulsively. “Darling, is it supposed to be you?
What is that paper?”

Famke looked around, coughing distractedly. She stuffed all the pages into her bodice and glared at Albert.
Had we but world enough
. . . of course
there was world enough for her and Albert—there was more than enough world, really—and as to time, it had served only to rub away the last recognizable bits of the most important artwork he had ever done and to leave her with the feeling that, in fact, she had roamed all over the world just to end up . . . a mere blot on a limp page.

Albert was looking at her with a decidedly odd expression, one that at this moment she simply could not understand.

In fact, her gesture had reminded him of what he had seen the fair but frail do time and again while bidding good-bye their customers. It was vulgar . . . but not unpleasing. He slid his arms around Famke's waist and pulled her to him, savoring the rustle of paper in a woman's bosom. Famke was no winged angel, he thought as he bent to kiss her. She was a girl of the earth, and her body radiated heat. Her lips burned under his.
Darling, marry me
, he thought of saying; and the thought fanned his ardor.

At first Famke struggled a little, thinking he had grabbed her in order to retrieve the handbill. Soon, however, she realized that he was merely what the nuns would call prurient and the prostitutes would call gay, and she was in for another celebration of their reunion. At that thought, she really did break away.

As she backed into the desk, Albert gazed at her with wounded eyes as big as the towers of Hygeia Springs Institute. Then Famke felt guilty. Memories of the past years unfurled through her mind—her months as model, wife, patchwork painter, patient. Why had she done all that if it were not for love of Albert? Loving him had always meant acceding to his wishes . . . An image popped into her head: once again, her idea for
Eve's Judgment
, or
The Bride's Prelude
. Eve was making her choice.

As she thought about the picture—which she decided she would paint after all, but not for Albert; she would keep it to herself for a good long while—her heart began to pound against the thin tissue of her lungs, sending the blood reeling through her body. She was aware of days' worth of congestion Down There, where the rash still prickled. And as she looked up into Albert's round eyes, she thought that perhaps it was time to show him something that even the
Ludere
, apparently, had not. Yes, she would show him something; he would see. More than a gray graphite smudge. It was high time to let some fluids down.

Breathless, she picked up Edouard's heavy electrical machine, and the rush of blood increased. She coughed and spat, surreptitiously, into a palm tree.

“There is a better place than this room,” she said, and smiled a bedazzling smile of clean white teeth and red cheeks. “And there is also something special. Come with me.”

Surely if these scenes are beyond the powers of the artist, no discredit can follow when the writer's pen fails to attain to the full measure of their grandeur and beauty
.

S
TANLEY
W
OOD
,
O
VER THE
R
ANGE TO THE
G
OLDEN
G
ATE

Famke knew of nowhere but her old sickroom for tapping into the electrical current, and she was just as glad. As she and Albert climbed the shivering stair, the twining vines filtered the lamplight in Edouard's office to a dim oceanic glow. It all but vanished in that pristine room where bed and basins and bleached wood shone softly under the open sky, the full round moon and glittering stars. By their light Famke unpacked the machine and arranged it on the faded counterpane, the galvanic nodes and wires winding through Grandmother's Flower Garden.