The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque (21 page)

screen. I took out my sketchbook, brought the charcoal pencil to bear, and she spoke.

"It is the last day of the second week, Piambo," she said.

"I'm aware of it," I told her. "I've begun your portrait."

"Am I coming together nicely?" she asked.

"I should say. At present I am fleshing out the details of your hands. Hands are important to a portrait; in their intrinsic physical character and their placement within the picture, they are second only to the face. A person holds the story of her life in her hands."

"You know I can't describe my hands to you," she said.

"Of course not. Please just continue with your story from where we left off," I said.

"I will tell you about that time, but allow me to focus on one particular incident as well. It has everything to do with hands."

"Perfect," I said as I drew the half-moon in a thumb-nail.

"After paying for my father's funeral and settling all his debts, I had a substantial amount of money left over. Enough, in fact, to allow me to subsist in a moderate fash-ion for two full years.

In that time, my days were like those of Thoreau at Walden Pond or Defoe's shipwrecked Crusoe before him. I remained isolated, seeking out no acquaintances, forming no bond with any other person. Sitting behind my screen, I read libraries of books in those years. As isolated as I was, the world flowed into me and reinforced my belief that I was its hub. The Twins were my only companions, and they whispered to me daily, showing me their prophetic imagery, solidifying our mutual trust.

"My nights, on the other hand, were quite different. When evening began to fall, I would put on a kerchief, pull a wide-brimmed hat down low to hide my looks, and sneak out of the building to buy my groceries before the markets all closed. I avoided people's glances as well as I could, but I went forth with the knowledge that no one knew me. Anonymity is its own form of invisibility.

After securing the few

things I needed for my meals and perus-ing the bookstalls that remained open, I liked to walk the streets for a few hours. Very often I would see enacted scenes and incidents that had been predicted by the

Twins. I returned home to the safety of the screen before it grew so late that the streets became dangerous.

"I was completely content with this life, but after two years had passed, Father's money began to run low, and I was forced to consider working. I knew all along that I would again return to my role as the

Sibyl. There was something about the performances that validated my sense of omniscience. I put an ad in the newspaper and interviewed applicants for the job of manager. The act needed a second, someone who could deal with the audi-ence so I could remain an enigma. I also required someone to book the shows, a task that required face-to-face contact with the owners of the different venues.

"Remember, Piambo, I was no more than fifteen or so at the time, yet I understood clearly what was required, and proceeded to arrange the situation. I interviewed quite a few people in my apartment. Of course, I remained behind the screen while I spoke to them. It had not been so many years since the

Sibyl was the talk of the town, and many of these applicants knew full well that procuring the position could eventually make them wealthy.

"The man I chose for the job was a gentleman who had worked for some years for P. T. Barnum and before that had a history in vaudeville. His name was Carwin Chute, and he had all the attributes I

was looking for—a sense of the melodramatic, a keen mind for organization, a will-ingness to perform his duties without ever actually seeing his employer. It was his idea to insert pure white
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theatri-cal prosthetics in his eyes and pretend to be blind. I had told him of my aversion to being seen and to the sight of eyes in general, so he thought that if I chanced to see him, the illusion that he was sightless would be a comfort to me. Also, in relation to the act, he had said, Think how appropriate, Luciere. A man who cannot see, bringing to the public a seer who cannot be viewed.' I knew my father would have loved the juxtaposition. It was, like the mon-key arm, another red herring."

"Chute, then, is Watkin," I said.

"Of course," said Mrs. Charbuque. "I have paid him very well through the years, but no matter how he has benefited monetarily, I owe him much more for his dedi-cation to service. The man has proved a godsend. I will tell you honestly that what motivates him, and his personal-ity, are as mysterious to me as

I must be to him. He has never laid eyes on me, yet he remains ever devoted."

"I will have to reassess my estimation of Watkin," I said.

"He booked us for the highest amount being paid in hotels, theaters, meeting halls, and at private parties given by the wealthy. Once again the Sibyl was voicing her visions to the populace and receiving praise and adulation. By the end of the first year, I was wealthy. And beyond mere money, I was able to influence the powerful, to coax from them whatever favors I needed. From that, Piambo, comes a wealth that exceeds any to be made by laboring for an hourly wage, no matter how grand.

"After two years of working the city, Watkin—as I had begun to call him, for by then Chute had completely dissolved and reformed as the blind person you now know—came to me and suggested that in order not to sat-urate the public's desire for the Sibyl, we should take our performance on the road. I

thought it was a wise move. We traveled anonymously by train, each of us at different times so that he would not know me. He would go ahead and set up a room for me in a particular city or town, and I

would arrive later, either under cover of night or in some disguise. Remaining hidden from view was a chore, but my desire to do so was so great that I managed the ingenuity necessary to make it happen. St.

Louis, Chicago, San Francisco—the Sibyl took all these cities by storm, and in the small towns of the prairie and the South, I believe I came to be revered in a manner bordering upon the religious. We never stayed too long in any given place, just long enough to satisfy the citizens'

appetite for the future, and then we moved on.

"It was somewhere in the Midwest—Missouri, Oklahoma, they all seemed the same to me; the people all asked the same questions, reacted in the same manner to my pronouncements—that I discovered I had become a Woman. I had recently turned seventeen, and when I caught sight of myself in a mirror one day, a practice I tried to avoid, for the sight of my own eyes disturbed me as much as anyone else's, it was evident that my body had changed drastically from that of the lonely little girl who

had spent her winters in the Catskill Mountains. The reality of it struck me all at once, more deeply than even the actuality of menstruation had two years earlier. Please excuse the candor of my language, Piambo."

"I am not easily offended," I said, but the charcoal left the paper with her declaration.

"The Twins began to show me imagery of a very graphic nature, so to speak. My reading had included romances as well as smutty dime novels, and all of this had been digested by my mind without my conscious acknowledgment. Now it all seemed to fall into place. I wanted to remain behind the barrier of the screen, but at the same time my body longed to explore the physicality of the world at large. Do you understand?"

"Sexuality?" I ventured, and felt a certain heat rising beneath my collar and elsewhere.

"I'm so pleased I can speak openly to you," she said. "At night, in my bed, after the shows, I would fantasize about the male voices from the audience that would offer a word or two of thanks after one of my predictions. From those few meager words, whole men sprang to life in my imagination. They were every bit as vivid as the images sent me by the voices of the Twins.

Their hands, Piambo, became mine.

Their fingers groped in the dark like those of the blind, and what thrilling discoveries were made."

I heard Mrs. Charbuque move in her chair behind the screen. Then came the rustling of material, and if I was not mistaken, the rhythm of her breathing changed from its usual measured pace to an almost inaudible panting.

Shouts and Murmurs

Long seconds passed in silence. There was then a soft sigh, and Mrs. Charbuque began speaking again in a dreamy voice, the emphasis of certain words falling in the wrong places, unforeseen pauses, more panting.

Good Lord, I thought, should I leave? But she contin-ued with her story despite all this breathy interference.

"One night in one of those wretched towns, I was giv-ing the first performance of our engagement, which was to last for a week. I thrust out the monkey arm and retrieved a green leaf on which was written the question 'Will she return?' I forget what my response was, but when I had given it, the gentleman who had obviously written the question said, 'Thank you so much, Madam Sibyl, you have forestalled my heart from breaking.' I was struck by the earnest tone of this man's voice, his ability to speak candidly about a private matter before a packed audience. I continued with the show but remembered his Words later and built a grand scenario that evening con-cerning lost love and a passionate reunion. I can still see ..." Her voice trailed off into heavy exhalations.

"Please go on," I said, leaning forward in my chair.

"The next night the same man asked the same question of me again. I conjured for him a reply that had more to do with my imagined scenario than with the imagery whispered to me by the Twins. He, in turn, said something equally enchanting, as on the first night, and this fired even more my interest in him.

What came of it was that I decided I had to see him. I could easily have asked Watkin for a description but felt my infatuation with this stranger was somehow illicit, and so instead devised another way.

"Excuse me for a moment," she said, and I heard her chair begin to squeal slightly as if she were rocking back and forth in it. "For the third night's show I dressed in black and carried a black shawl. I

also took a hat pin with me onstage. Before the event got under way, while the audience was taking their seats, the lights were usually very low..."

There came a noise something like wet kisses in rapid succession followed by a gasp. If there had been others in the room, I would have been the first to appear scandalized, but knowing we were alone made all the difference.

"That is when I reached forward from my chair and made a pinhole in the screen. This hole would never be detected by someone sitting only a few feet away, but if I leaned forward and put my eye to it, I

could view a wide field, taking in a goodly portion of the seats . . . and ..."

Frustrating seconds passed filled with brief murmurs of delight. When she spoke again, her voice had a slight edge of urgency. I looked over my shoulder and wiped the sweat from my brow. I shooed a disturbing image of the monkey arm from my thoughts.

"I was unusually nervous about the performance, hop-ing all the time that the fellow with the
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question 'Will she return?' would return. His was the very last leaf passed to me. I pronounced the imagery of his future just as the Twins had dictated it to me, and then leaned forward to see who would speak. I saw ... I... I saw a handsome young man in the second row with wavy hair and a trim mus-tache. I hoped it would be he who would speak. As reality would have it, though, it turned out to be a gentleman five seats away, somewhat older than myself, who stood up.

Impeccably dressed in a tweed suit, he had sandy-colored hair and a ruddy complexion and wore small glasses with circular lenses. He spoke, and ohh . .."

"Oh?" I said.

"Ohhh ..."

"Yes?"

"I knew what he looked like. As soon as the show was over, I left the theater before the patrons and went outside into the street. There, I ducked down an alley, wrapped the shawl around my head, and waited for him to pass by. He finally came walking past, and giving him plenty of dis-tance, I began to follow him. The walk was brief. He entered a small shop a few blocks away.

After he had gone in and locked the door behind him, I passed by it in order to mark the spot clearly. It was, of all places, a tiny museum of some kind. The ... Museum ... of Phoenician Antiquities, read the sign . .. above ..."

An unladylike grunt rose from behind the screen. Then it sounded as if she were beginning to weep until that crying quickly transformed itself back into her story. Her words now came forth with desperately increasing speed and volume. "The next day .. . yes ... I went there dressed in normal attire.

Made believe I was visiting from another nearby town. Staying only a few days. Interested in the contents of the museum. Involved in a conversa-tion. Told me he was .. . yes ... an amateur archaeologist. He'd been to Carthage on a dig and had . . . oh . . . these treasures. A golden mask

... a small, armless statue of a young woman with half its face broken off... stones with ancient writing ... a silver lamp with a long spout..."

She hit a crescendo, and I got to my feet. I swear, she let loose a groan that sounded to me as if she were expir-ing on the spot. The panels of the screen rattled. She spoke no more for a time, but her breathing was rapid and pro-nounced.

"Are you ill, Mrs. Charbuque?" I asked, fanning myself with the sketchbook.

Her answer did not come immediately, but eventually after catching her breath, she said, "I've rarely felt better." I heard her again shift her position in her chair and then the faint sound of material being maneuvered about. "Now where was I?" Her voice had returned to its normal tone.

"A lamp," I said, returning to the chair.

"Oh, yes. He was a charming fellow, very serious. While he spoke, he used his hands a good deal, especially to indicate a motion, like a boat sailing on the vast ocean, when explaining how the Phoenicians were the masters of the sea in the ancient world. He believed they had cir-cumnavigated the entire globe.

I listened with feigned interest to how they warred with Rome and eventually lost the city of Carthage.