Visions of Isabelle (21 page)

"Oh, my lovelies, they are awful hard mattresses," she was saying, as Isabelle found herself a place to lean against the wall.

"Their decorated canes and dashing uniforms cannot disguise their savage barbed cheeks, their primordial hairiness. And, as we know too well, their sentiments are as crude as their hideous pudenda. Who, if she had a choice, would prefer to lay her head on one of their roughened chests, when the world is filled with soft-breasted odalisques? Ignore them, I say. We have each other, thank goodness. We are all daughters of Gomorrah here!"

Séverine stamped her foot. More silvery laughter, hands clasped together in glee. The young ladies began to look about, some, their gray eyes all devouring, upon Isabelle in her robe. As they searched her face for favor she sweated in her boots.

At dinner Séverine seated herself and Isabelle at opposite ends of a long baronial table, alternating girls in "smokings" and girls in dresses along the sides.

Looking toward her hostess, framed by these rows of "ladies and gentlemen," Isabelle was appalled. The charade was ridiculous, and there was also something vaguely sinister that she struggled to understand.

Staring at the girls again she found her eyes drawn to the finely chiseled Grecian features of Lucie Buffet. The high-cheeked girl caught and held her gaze. Isabelle in reply practiced, for the first time, one of those slatternly but devastating smiles.

Later, as they sipped Armagnac in the grand salon, the creature nestled herself by Isabelle's feet like a spaniel angling for a pat.

"How brilliant of you to wear hazel eyes," she whispered, holding up a match to light Isabelle's cigarette. "They go so well with my sash."

Lucie's hauteur melted in her laugh, and Isabelle, struck dumb for a reply, turned to face Séverine's steely eyes.

"Come, Si Mahmoud," she said, "let us stroll together outside. There are some delicate points to be explained."

Lucie was still smiling when Isabelle looked back, a moment before Séverine pushed her gently through the terrace doors.

The garden air was clogged with the aromas of night-blooming plants. Three-quarters of a moon gilded the edges of clouds, skimmed the waves that flowed behind the paddling swans. Séverine took Isabelle's arm, led her gently across the grass.

"I'm so happy you've come, my pet. You seem to belong with us. Such an Amazon you are, too–you have the hearts of all my lovelies going pitter-pat. Little Lucie is thinking you're a goddess–I can tell! She gets hot for anything in boots, loves leather and the bite of the whip..."

Séverine slashed at her own boots again, then stuck her crop into her belt.

"Look back at the house," she commanded, and when Isabelle did she saw through the drawing-room windows that the girls were beginning a graceful dance.

Séverine clasped her hands.

"Oh, such angels! Who can resist them when they dance like that?"

She turned back to Isabelle.

"I just want to say again how delighted I am to have you here. I adore it that you don't wear scent. Better to let the natural odor seep forth to enflame the senses. You have a sturdy figure, Si Mahmoud, a lot sturdier, I would say, than your hothouse prose. There's a delightful suppleness about your body. Truly, you bridge the gap between a boy and a girl, with just enough of the finest qualities of both, I think, and, thank goodness, none of the revolting qualities of a man."

She reached over, drew Isabelle to her and planted a long deep kiss upon her lips.

Isabelle gently wrestled herself away.

"Ah, Séverine–you said you were going to clarify some `delicate points'."

"Just so, my pet. In fact I was hoping that you would clarify some points for me."

"`Points'?"

"You seemed troubled at dinner, disturbed when we met earlier for drinks. Just now I felt your body tremble. I could not be certain whether out of passion or of fear."

"Surprise more than anything else."

"But surely you know my reputation."

"Only that you are a brilliant editor who has stood by Dreyfus from the start."

"You flatter me, Si Mahmoud. And pretend to be ignorant of my well-known vice. I'm sorry to say that I'm now finding you dishonest, or," and she smiled, "most engagingly naive."

Isabelle let out her breath.

"I think there has been a misunderstanding, Séverine."

"Not possible, my pet. Your clothes! Your flirtations! All the signals are clear. It's no use pretending you're not a daughter of Sappho–not, at any rate, with me."

"I've dressed this way all my life."

"And your masculine name?"

"A means to an end. In the Arab world a European woman does well to assume a disguise. I use the name `Si Mahmoud' to signal the equality I expect from my lovers–who, it so happens, have always been men."

Séverine searched her face.

"Evidently," she said, "there has been a misunderstanding. Very well. I'm glad we've had this little chat. Your feelings will be respected, of course. I can only say that I feel sorry for you, for tonight you shall certainly sleep alone!"

They returned to the house, Séverine severe and cool, Isabelle still wondering how the situation had gotten so far out of hand.

S
he stood, smoking a cigar, watching the ladies dressed as gentlemen and the ladies dressed as ladies perform a perfect minuet. Every so often a couple would desert the salon. She saw Séverine whisper to Lucie Buffet who immediately departed with downcast eyes. Then, a few minutes later, Séverine followed her out.

The dancing continued, and when Isabelle became bored she excused herself and went upstairs. On the way to her bedroom she paused before a door, heard slaps and whimpers, reprimands and tears.
Poor Lucie!
she thought, as she made her way to sleep.

Lying in bed, she thought her feelings through. It was not that sexual inversion frightened her in any way. What she resented was the falsity, the notion that one could dress up in a costume and act out a fantasy as if it were real. It was the same thing that had struck her when she'd watched the events on the Champs de Mars and prowled the lines outside the theater where
Cyrano de Bergerac
was playing. Paris, it seemed, was a theater, a great stage where people dressed up, assumed roles and acted out dramas to satisfy their whims. The whole city seemed based on the notion that one could cut oneself a piece of experience from a great available bolt of adventure without having to pay for it in any way.

It meant nothing to visit the Tunisian souk erected out of papier-mâché. If one wanted to experience North Africa, it was necessary to cross the sea, make the trek, suffer the heat, endure the fevers and the thirst, just as she had done on the route to El Oued.

No
, she thought,
it isn't lesbianism that's sinister, but the false posturing in this house. They call me 'Si Mahmoud,' but they don't understand what being 'Si Mahmoud' really means. They think it means I want to pretend that I'm a man!

For a moment she felt indignant. Then she shrugged, penned a gracious farewell, packed up her bags and left.

B
y the beginning of June the "City of Light" which had mocked the hopes of countless other youths now began to mock her own. She was short of money, had barely enough to survive another month, and Paris was not paying her the slightest attention, although her little scandal with Séverine had been the rage of the salons for a day.

Then one night, tired of brooding, she dropped in at the salon of La Ratazzi, and there, by some miraculous stroke, which she later took to be the will of God, good fortune gently smiled.

She was introduced to a sour and yellowish woman who bore the name Marquise de Morès. She had a hideous pinched-up face, wore spectacular diamonds and spoke with an ugly flat accent which Isabelle easily placed. An American heiress who's exchanged money for a title–that was her immediate impression. But the creature had a personality of her own. She waved her arms about in the air to disperse the foul fumes of a giant Bavarian meerschaum clenched between her teeth, and when she laughed, which was often, she threw back her head, thrust out one arm with the pipe and regaled the ceiling with hysterical mirth.

She observed Isabelle shrewdly as she was describing her lonely trek to El Oued. Then, after a few sharp questions by which she extracted the fact that Isabelle was fluent in Maghrebi Arabic, she asked to speak to her alone.

They found a small room. Here, lit by candelabra fashioned by Osiris, the marquise opened up her heart. Her husband, the explorer Antoine de Vallambrosa, had been brutally murdered on the night of June 8, 1896. The place was a tiny settlement not far from El Oued, a crossroads called Bir-El-Ouadia. For nearly four years the marquise had been waiting for justice, but the Arab Bureau had given her no help at all, the government was indifferent, and the murderers, she knew perfectly well, were free and laughing behind her back.

"Do you think, Si Mahmoud," she asked, as tears began to stream from her eyes, "that you could help an old lady like me? I need a proper investigation. You know the territory. And I have unlimited funds."

"I shall certainly try to help," said Isabelle, as the precious words "unlimited funds" rebounded in her ears.

The marquise gave a pathetic flourish with her pipe, then hardened her face.

"It's a matter of honor," she said, "that I not rest until I've had these hoodlums tracked down. When I finally discover who they are, I shall take immense satisfaction in having them killed. I can do no less to avenge my dear Antoine. Then my greatest satisfaction will be to spend an afternoon kicking their severed heads about, or, if that's not possible, at least to possess an album of photographs that documents the agony of their final hours."

Isabelle was amazed by the marquise's combination of sentiment and violence, venom and tears, but not so stunned as to hesitate in contriving a means of squeezing her dry.

Then, just as she was beginning to feel guilty about taking advantage of such a pathetic old thing, the marquise launched into a description of her "dear departed Antoine" that only redoubled Isabelle's resolve.

"He was the most splendid duelist," she began. "He practiced every day, then arranged things so that people he despised were forced to offer him a challenge. He killed one sniveling Jew lieutenant just before he left France for the last time. I was there and it was marvelous–the mists at dawn, the stern seconds, the little Semite trembling in his boots. He needed a good lesson and Antoine gave it to him. The field of honor was more than he deserved."

"Indeed!" Isabelle replied, incredulous at the lady's savagery.

"I remember," she continued, "going with him once to the slums. He had this brilliant idea, you see, that the workers wanted a restoration as much as the noble class. We rode in on a splendid carriage just as the butchers of La Villette were leaving work. We stopped among the slaughterhouses, and these great strong men, their aprons stiff with blood, stood about and cheered. 'France must cleanse itself,' Antoine told them,
 
'must wipe away the venomous snot that drips from the grotesque noses of her banker-Jews. Help me restore the throne and together we'll eat Dreyfusards off gold platters at the Palais Rothschild!' The workers were moved and yelled back, 'Long live Morès!"

"What an amazing man!"

"Oh, Si Mahmoud, he was. Naturally I miss him as a husband, but when I think of all he might have done, I feel ever so keenly his loss for France."

As she continued with more endearing anecdotes, Isabelle could barely restrain herself from slapping the old lady across the mouth. Still she listened, calculating all the while, and not an hour had passed before she'd mock-reluctantly agreed to help.

"I had not planned to return to the desert for at least a year," she lied, "but I'm so outraged by the murder of such a splendid man that I gladly offer you my services at once. I have excellent informants among the local population, and shall surely be able to come up with some productive leads. Of course I shall need something to work with, some money on account, but since you tell me your heart is set..."

"Stop, Si Mahmoud! Not another word! Name your figure–I shall write you out a check at once!" And as the old marquise reached for a pen, she inadvertently dropped her fuming pipe.

Watching it shatter to a hundred pieces on the marble floor, Isabelle was seized by a surge of enormous power. She would take this hideous old moth for all she was worth, send her fantastic reports, and, when the woman demanded results, she would be told that the "murderers" (whom, in her mind, Isabelle had converted into Arab saints) had already met ghastly deaths.

Power was what she felt then, sheer power, the power to take, to dissimulate without remorse, to fool and then laugh at those poor idiots who preferred the moist, plush hothouse of the salon to the dry, crumbling gulley ruined by the sun. In short what she enjoyed at that moment was the pleasure of being ruthless, which was the most important thing any person could learn in Paris at that time. And, feeling this, the broken shards of the marquise's meerschaum became transformed into a symbol of the fragility of this same civilization which she despised, and upon which she was now determined to turn her back, once and for all.