There followed magnificent screams, and gasps from the audience, perverse yet familiar music to the carved angels leering overhead.
Jean-Baptiste had heard all this before.
The little troupe Le Théâtre des Horreurs performed two short Grand Guignol plays a night, interspersed with vaudeville acts, including a magician, sinister twin contortionists who doubled as actors in the plays, and a titillating burlesque dance. They were now performing the
concluding scene of violence in
The Final Kiss,
and soon the shocked audience would applaud, the curtains would close, and Jean-Baptiste’s lover would invite him back to her dressing room, for pleasure and carnal seduction, as she did most evenings. She was the troupe’s undisputed star,
Bijou—La Femme Assassinée,
billed as ‘the most assassinated woman since Paula Maxa’, the darling of the Grand Guignol’s heyday: variously attacked, tortured, shot, strangled, hanged, raped, devoured by a puma, electrocuted, poisoned with arsenic, whipped, stabbed, cut into pieces, executed by the guillotine, terrified by supernatural horrors or buried alive every night to the exquisite horror and morbid delight of her audience.
As Jean-Baptiste watched, the ex-lover she had disfigured was enacting his carefully planned revenge.
The final kiss.
Some in the crowd would be familiar with the gruesome 1912 play by Maurice Level, and those who were not would have sensed the nature of the horror to come. Every play in the Grand Guignol tradition promised violence; it was only a matter of
when
and
how.
Versions of the revenge tale had been performed countless times in the very same theatre back in its glory days as the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, but, a century after the play was written, the shock value of the genre had diminished. Gone were the days when royalty would brave the wrong side of town to sneak a glimpse of the shocking performances and experience a frisson of ghoulish terror. No longer could an enterprising promoter drive the press wild by claiming to need nurses on call during the show to care for the frequently fainting audience members. To Jean-Baptiste’s knowledge, no members of any royal family had snuck in to watch Bijou. No one in the audience had yet fainted.
Still, the plays retained their infamy and their power to unnerve and disturb. And most importantly for him, they were to provide his promised introduction to the stage.
Jean-Baptiste was twenty years old, and had dreamed of being an actor ever since, aged eleven, he’d attended a production of
Le Malade Imaginaire
with his parents. It had been the applause that had grabbed him—such exhilarating praise—and when the opportunity to be the one in the spotlight emerged, he had jumped at it. That it was his new lover who had encouraged him was all the more exciting. She had spotted him waiting tables at Chez Paul, and assured him he had ‘the look’. He was a handsome young man, with wavy blond hair and a classic nose, and was regularly in receipt of compliments on his beauty. The first role she had in mind for him was from the play
The Ultimate Torture,
where he would have the significant role of D’Hemelin’s colleague Gravier, but not many lines. Despite his dreams of fame, he had no acting experience, but his lover promised he would be eased into bigger parts, eventually taking over the lead roles, currently played by an actor named Michel, right now inhabiting the disfigured and less-than-magnanimous Henri. Michel had been a fixture with Le Théâtre des Horreurs for numerous years. Jean-Baptiste wondered if he and the rest of the troupe would accept his addition.
And so, with hopes of stardom, Jean-Baptiste waited patiently for his lover to be tortured for the pleasure of the audience, so that he might see her backstage when it was all over.
‘Do you honestly think I got you here for a cosy little chat?’ the disfigured Henri shouted. He had removed his bandages to reveal the full horror of his disfigurement to the
horrified audience, and his even more frightened former fiancée. The effect of a simple nylon stocking and painted sponge gave his wounds a lifelike quality, the horror of which was enhanced by sickly-green stage lighting.
‘…To say nice things to you? To beg you for a final kiss? You’ve lost all sense of reason if you think I could ever forgive you for what you did to me. I will take my revenge!’ he cried, and with this held Jeanne down, triumphantly pouring the liquid from his vial directly onto her beautiful face while she thrashed violently beneath him like a wounded snake. It was an eye-for-an-eye revenge he could never have enacted had she been incarcerated for life.
‘We’ll be the perfect lovers…we’ll be
made for each other!
You’re like me now…’ he declaimed maniacally.
‘Like me! Like me! Like me!’
Love, it seemed, was not always beautiful.
It was well past midnight, two hours after the curtain call.
Tipsy and spent, the aspiring actor Jean-Baptiste was sent out to the streets of Pigalle to make his way home, seen off by his lover with a lingering kiss and the promise of more lovemaking to come.
‘Bonne nuit, mon chéri…’
One foot in front of the other,
the young man thought as he slid out the theatre’s stage door into the narrow cobblestone street outside.
One foot in front of the other…
Cool night air shocked his warm cheeks. The crowds for Bijou’s show had long since dispersed, and the little cul-de-sac was still. There was the faint smell of perfume in the air, either hanging around his nostrils after his lover’s final embrace, or wafting down from a nearby open window. He could hear the
main strip still buzzing with revellers a few blocks away, near the Moulin Rouge: the rows of sex shops, brothels and the Musée de l’Érotisme. Pigalle would not settle just yet.
Jean-Baptiste’s feet traced a weaving, wandering path, and it took some measure of concentration for him to stay in motion across the uneven cobblestones. Such was his absorption that when he was approached in the alley beyond the theatre, he took some time to notice he was not alone. His footsteps in his stiff new leather shoes, already irregular, were joined by other, softer soles; a lighter, quicker step. He expected them to pass, but the footsteps stopped with his.
He turned just in time to see the outline of a figure haloed in a streetlight, thin and cloaked in black.
‘
Bonsoir
,’ he managed to say, feeling expansive and friendly to the world in his post-coital stupor, but nonetheless confused by this unexpected company.
Do I know you?
he thought to say, but did not utter. His brain and tongue felt sluggish. He stumbled and went over, letting out an animallike grunt of surprise, and it was some seconds after his elbows had jarred painfully against stone, breaking his fall, that he realised he had been pushed.
‘Hey!’ he began, but before the words left his lips, they were cut off by an excruciating burning, something like a liquid fire hitting his mouth. His instinct was to shield himself from the source of this fresh agony, but it was too late, the fire was everywhere: dark, acrid and smelling sharply of vinegar.
Choking.
Writhing on the ground, Jean-Baptiste clawed at his face and felt his palms burn as they too melted.
Acid! Just like in the play. Only this is real, this is happening.
Behind eyelids shut against a bright kaleidoscope of pain, he recalled vivid flashes
of Henri’s face in
The Final Kiss—
the primitive stage makeup with its appearance of festering death, layers of raw skin and exposed bone—and he knew in that moment that he was melting, his face was melting, he was becoming that thing on the stage, the creature stripped of humanity, the living monster. Screams reverberated through his body and into the alley, infinitely more jarring than the trained shrieks of his lover Bijou on her stage.
That famous scream seemed hollow now, unconvincing, a pale imitation of the shriek that emanated from the deepest part of him, shredding the passages along which it passed, from his burning lungs to the melting hole that had once been his beautiful mouth.
To Makedde Vanderwall, the clear asphalt curves of the Federal Highway were a most welcome sight.
With her slender, leather-gloved hand, she gripped the throttle of her motorcycle, the road opening before her unsullied by snarls of traffic. Despite being weighed down by more than the usual amount of supplies, woman and motorcycle cut briskly through the air as one creature, bringing with them a satisfyingly thunderous roar. Mak had fitted her motorcycle with aftermarket pipes, and their throaty tones still excited her, no matter how many times she turned the key. It was a clear February day for her ride; the blue Australian summer sky nearly cloudless. Mak hoped that was a good omen. She needed a good omen. She had ruminated on the implications of this particular ride for many long nights, and now that she was finally making the journey, she wished only for greater certainty about her decision, and for greater luck in her future.
With adrenaline pumping from the strong coffee she’d downed to counter lack of sleep, Makedde followed the
highway as it arced past Lake George, an ancient basin known by indigenous Australians as Werriwa, meaning ‘bad water’. It emptied and filled in cycles, and had taken many a life through drowning when its waters were full. But today it looked to be bone dry, and it again occurred to Mak that Australia was a place of extremes. Certainly her life in Australia had been consistent with the theme.
No more extremes. No more bad luck.
When Makedde rode her motorcycle there was little room for meandering thoughts, which was precisely why she favoured it. There was much she didn’t care to think about. She’d spent far too much time on painful debate, argument and the endless weighing of options. Now was a time for action.
Sharp corner, gear down, drift right, look through the turn, lean…
Makedde—or Mak, as her friends called her—executed the turn confidently, and anyone observing the young woman could not have guessed that she had not so long ago survived a stunning motorcycle crash. Her previous bike had been totalled. She was lucky to be alive. But her late mother had been fond of the old adage about ‘getting back on the horse’, and so Makedde had wasted no time. Her new horse was a 900cc Triumph Scrambler. At least she had given up riding twitchy sports bikes that did wheelies at intersections and required her to hunch over the petrol tank like a spider on a windshield. She now preferred what her father called ‘those handsome British bikes’. Her particular handsome bike was a retro model, with knobby tires, plenty of chrome, a long flat seat and upright handle bars. It had no shortage of guts or beauty, and when she had ordered new leathers—the old ones having practically
disintegrated in the crash—she had chosen black with an old-style sports stripe through the jacket, something Steve McQueen would have approved of. In fact, she would have looked just right burning down the Federal Highway wearing goggles and with a white scarf trailing behind her.
Mak’s thick dirty-blonde hair wrestled free of its ponytail and blew back into tangles at her shoulders, having escaped from her stiff jacket collar. Somewhere across her consciousness danced a brief thought for the wild mess of knots she could anticipate when she dismounted in Sydney. Within her helmet, a stiff current of air came through the vents, by turns refreshing and stinging. She squinted as a speeding truck passed her, turning the air momentarily gritty and foul. It pulled her into its wake before she hunkered down and steered back into position, a touch of moisture running from her eyes to sweep back across her temples.
Moisture. Not tears.
And then the road was clear again.
Big trucks like those had once frightened her. Now, very little did.
The addiction to riding was closely linked with the sensation of complete freedom, and that palpable liberation seemed appropriate as Canberra fell away behind her, along with another of her failed romances. Makedde rode with a few valuables, her toiletries and a couple of changes of clothes quite literally strapped to her back, the rest of her belongings packed in boxes and headed for storage. It was only a four-hour ride, but this particular four hours had been a long time coming, and her sense of direction was even clearer now that she could negotiate it, smell it, ride it.
New beginnings,
Makedde Vanderwall told herself, staying focused on the road.
New beginnings…
Hours later, with the sun low in the sky on a warm Sunday evening, Makedde was exhausted, dishevelled, and smiling.
She had arrived.
With a relaxed roll of the throttle she pulled into a suburban lane in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, an area of warehouse conversions, and rows of terraces and brick apartment buildings with wheelie bins lined up at the kerb. She flicked her visor up and geared down, looking left and right to pinpoint the address she sought.
Loulou’s place. Here it is.
Loulou was an eccentric makeup artist friend she had met in Sydney back when she was working as a fashion model. She was letting Mak stay in her apartment while she and her on-off muso boyfriend Drayson rocked out at a music festival in Byron Bay, and Mak planned to crash there for a couple of weeks while she looked for her own place. She hoped that finding a one-bedroom rental would not prove to be too tedious.
Mak pulled up to the kerb and cut the engine, flicked the stiff kickstand into position and set the heavy bike on its support. At over 180 centimetres, she swung her long limbs off the bike in one smooth and practised move, like a roundhouse kick. Grabbing hold of her full-face helmet with both hands, she tugged it off, leaving red imprints across her face in patterns like warrior paint. A mild breeze felt cool against her perspiring skin.
Mak could imagine her friend’s feverish dialogue—
Darling! Sweetie! It’s so good to see you!
But she was alone. Even without a welcoming party, Mak really was happy to be back. She had not
realised how isolated she had been without her girlfriends, and being back in familiar Sydney reminded her of the friendships she had put on hold. ‘I knew you wouldn’t last long in Canberra, sweetie,’ Loulou had announced on the phone when Mak told her. Perhaps she was right, but Mak had winced at her friend’s comment regardless, wondering if it had been so obvious that her relationship with Andy had run its course before she had even made the move. Before her arrival, Mak had not spent time in Canberra—an ordered and visually stunning city filled with sensibly dressed public servants, overwhelmed by the presence of Parliament. All people and things had seemed unnaturally tidy to Mak, as if it were a Utopian catalogue.