Spider Dance (48 page)

“Yes, we ourselves have contributed to the phenomenon.”

“But I think we are the only searchers to take something away. I doubt the disruptions will stop until something has been found, so we must see to it that something is.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That we unplug the hole in the walled-up fireplace we exposed and ‘salt’ something provocative in the hidden niche. Then we can watch to see who comes to discover it.”

“We can hardly ask to see the room again.”

“The landlady had decided to move the occupant.”

“We can hardly march in again and take it apart.”

“Not by daylight, no.”

“By night?”

“The better to observe unobserved.”

“And what item will you put the place of Lola’s diary?”

“Why, some clever, coded forgery of your own devising, Nell. If you are not going to knit something useful for poor enamored Father Edmonds, you could at least put your skills to excellent use concocting a wonderfully confusing diary for Lola Montez.”

“That’s fraud, Irene.”

“Did poor, dying Lola Montez deserve all the vultures gathering around her then? And now? I doubt it. Who would most appreciate the skill and audacity of a faux diary designed to ‘smoke out,’ as the dime Western novels say, the tormenters of her loyal and martyred priestly advocate?”

“Somehow you’ve made deception seem like a noble ploy in a holy war, Irene.”

“Exactly.”

Whatever disapproval I might have mustered vanished before the challenge of the handiwork in question: forging Lola Montez’s diary. What boundless invention was in store. . . .

We returned to the Astor House, where Irene pampered me as if I were da Vinci working on the
Last Supper
. I’d always relished the intricacies of the ladylike domestic arts. Now my small helpful sketches had evolved into a masterwork. Studying the worn papers from the actual hand of Lola Montez, I set about fashioning a facsimile that was as authentic looking, but even less readable.

The passages in the actual document I could translate were religious quotes from the New Testament, especially those relating to Mary Magdalen and forgiveness. “I wish to have my terrible and fearful experience given as an awful warning to such natures as my own.” I meditated on this passage,
wondering what “terrible and fearful experience” she referred to. This seemed more dire than mere illness. I envisioned a deathbed visit from someone more unwelcome than her long-unseen mother . . . the same Ultramontanes she accused of pursuing her everywhere she went, including America, and who were pursuing her after death, older but no less intent, or vicious, as poor Father Hawks would testify. I must mislead them, discourage them from our own trail by dropping feverish hints in this document to convince them that Lola knew and hid nothing in her last days. In her own hand, Lola would possibly help save her own daughter! I began work on my project of deception.

Irene was at my service for once, dashing out to gather what I required as soon as I realized it.

“Paper. Thick, creamy paper,” I ordered.

She returned in one hour with four samples, three of which I rejected out of hand. “This one might do.”

She was gone to buy more. And black ink.

I rolled up the paper in an apron and crinkled it. By the time she returned, I was in an artistic snit.

“I’ve tried pressing this paper with your curling iron, I have beaten it with your glove stretcher, and it will not crinkle suitably. This project is not only insane but impossible. I wash my hands of it.”

Irene studied the single, abused sheet. It looked decidedly abused, but not aged.

She gazed at me, my haggard expression, my disheveled hairdressing. With one releasing gesture, she let go of the result of two hours’ worth of labor. The paper dropped to the carpeted floor.

Her expression became both haughty and commanding. “I believe, Nell,” she said, “you need a demonstration of Lola Montez’s spider dance, of which we both have read so much.”

I admit I was confused.

Irene caught her skirt up on one side and anchored it with her hand on her hip.

Her other hand lifted above her head at a graceful but
rather distorted angle.

Her high-heeled embroidered walking boots assumed a balletic position.

“In Spain,” she declaimed,”in New York City, spiders are everywhere. Small, unseen, spinning webs. Deadly.” She shook her head in a rebellious gesture. Her posture grew instantly vigilant and tempestuous. “I stamp upon them. I shake them loose from their mooring in my petticoats. I crush them beneath my heels.”

And thus she began stamping at a furious pace upon my poor paper, twitching her skirts from left to right, her feet thundering until the carpet must have cried out for mercy.

“Irene, what is this madness?”

It’s the Spanish tarantella, Nell, so named after the large and fearsome tarantula spider. I see that my skirts and petticoats are infested with these deadly crawlers, and won’t stop shaking them loose until every last spider is . . . as still as death.”

I recalled with a shudder the false spiders of cork, rubber, and whalebone Lola would shake from her skirts on occasion.

By now a sea of petticoats and skirt were frothing about Irene’s knees. Her toes and heels were hitting carpet in such a thundering rhythm that I feared for the folk below, whose ceiling was our floor.

Stamp, stamp, stamp.
”Estampa, estampa!”
Irene called out “So Lola Montez would serve the floral bouquets tossed to stage in her honor, stamping them into crushed petals and scent . . . Andalusia. Barcelona! Carmen!
Ole!”

Irene stopped, hands akimbo on hips, her hems hiked as high as Lotta Crabtree’s, and gazed at the ruin beneath her neat boots. “Is the paper sufficiently aged yet?” she inquired.

I gingerly plucked it out from under her bootheels.

“Thirty years’ aged,” I said. “Quite impressively scored and torn. I suppose you shall have to subdue every page I manufacture in this way. Wherever, whenever did you learn such a savage dance?”

“Carmen,” she said shortly. “An opera by Bizet that’s well
suited to my dark soprano, which I never had the opportunity to sing. But I learned the dance.”

“Perhaps you
are
indeed the bastard daughter of Lola Montez!”

Irene laughed. “This storm of motion was worth it to hear that word from your lips, Nell. And, yes, I understand Lola’s art. You see how it must have shocked the Europe of her time, but it is only a folk dance of Spain, that’s all.”

“It’s a fine aging agent for paper,” I said, admiring her footwork. “Now I must water down the ink just enough to mimic old age. I’ll be sure to request my needed sheets of paper during the midday hours tomorrow, when the guests below are likely to be out and about.”

Irene’s heels and toes beat a last, scorching drum roll on the floor.

I want to wear boys’ domes, and will as soon as
I can get other women to join me
.
—OLIVE SCHREINER, 1884

By now both Irene and I had read enough about, and by, Lola Montez that I had no difficulty producing many mock pages in her hand and style of expression.

“Wonderful, Nell!” Irene slouched in the chair in her walking-out clothes to study my pages, and hers. When dressed as a man, she quickly assumed the less precise posture
of one. “You could have quite a future in the forgery way. Such a shame to thrust these away for inconsiderate villains to find.”

“If there are any,” I answered. “How can you be sure anyone will find anything?”

“I’ll leave a faint trail of soot. Those bricks are still filthy with ashes.” She glanced quickly at me. “You needn’t come in while I ‘salt’ our paper mine, but you must wear men’s garb while you wait in the street for me to rejoin you.”

“You have just your own.”

“Not anymore.” Irene grinned like a newsboy. Something about men’s clothing made even a smile bigger, broader, cruder. “I stopped at a flea market during one of your requests for paper. If you’ll take that parcel into your room, you’ll soon be ready to go.”

I had seen the string-wrapped brown paper bundle, but had hesitated to inquire about it.

Irene laughed, lighting up a small cigar, sans holder. “You regard that package as if it were a sack full of spiders! We are done spider dancing around Lola’s diary. Tonight we place it, and then stand back to spring the trap!”

I would have begged off, but half suspected that such a move would please Irene. I picked up the parcel and retreated to my bedchamber.

Although she would have been happy to help me dress, as I had often helped her, I was too annoyed to rely on her at the moment. I released my corset by the speedy method of pushing the stays together so the front hooks separated. Ah! How did Pink breathe with such rigorous lacing? I’m ashamed to say that I had worn gentleman’s garb on one or two occasions previously, so was able to dress myself in trousers, shirt, and jacket quite quickly. Irene had purchased a billed, checked cap large enough to swallow up my hair like a boa constrictor a rabbit, and had provided a dingy white silk scarf to conceal my feminine throat, especially once I turned up my coat collar.

I had to roll up the trouser legs once, but the area we visited housed laborers, so my dark serge suit was almost too
formal for the location. Impromptu cuffs added a nice touch, I thought. My own black walking boots would merely peep out from the long trouser legs and suffice, since we planned our larcenous expedition for the dark of evening.

“Very nice, Nell!” Irene greeted me, rising to adjust the lay of my collar and scarf and cap, nevertheless. “A pity you don’t smoke. A pipe would abet the masquerade. But you have quite the jaunty look of a former newsboy about you, so we shall let you play the young gentleman.”

We slunk out the back servants’ stairs of the hotel, as usual when up to no good.

The alley reeked as badly behind the Astor House as it did on the Lower East Side.

Irene quickly relit her cigar. For once I welcomed the pungent scent of the sulphur on the lucifer, what the Americans call “matches,” and the tobacco.

“We’d better walk, but it’s only a dozen ‘blocks,’” Irene said blithely, and off we set.

My gait was not as practiced as hers, but the trousers pulling at every step forced me to extend my stride. No one gave us a second glance as dusk darkened the city and street lamps came out like large, falling stars someone had stopped only three yards from earth.

Actually, to be abroad at such an hour, ignored, was most refreshing. I almost felt invisible. I almost felt that our bizarre enterprise had a hope of success.

As we turned down Seventeenth Street, the lights became fewer, and I felt an uneasy recall of Whitechapel and what had happened in the dark and murk there less than a year ago.

And yet! We knew the Ripper as no others did, and we knew him to be safely harnessed. He was not here, though others as heartless and vile as he might roam.

I hastened to keep up with Irene by lengthening my stride. And it was odd, these long, loping steps increased my confidence. I felt almost a hound upon a trail, a horse reaching for the end of a race. I had never been one to move at more than a stroll, but suddenly the cooler night air was an intoxicant and I rushed to meet it.