The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque (25 page)

I tried. Eventually Watkin came to me and sug-gested we head to Europe. 'Madam,’ he said,

'your abilities of conquest can only be done justice by a fresh continent.'

"And so we went. Madrid-Rome-Munich-Paris-London was to be our itinerary. We began with those cities that were not English-speaking. It was our plan to end with the easiest, London, because we knew we would be exhausted by that point in the tour. We hired translators, who stood in front of the

audience along with Watkin and let my words be known in the local tongue. America has not cornered the market on enjoying being hoodwinked, Although I denied the authenticity of the Twins' whis-pered prophetic imagery, believing that it was merely my own mind playing tricks on itself, the snowflakes did not fail me even once. The phenomenon continued as it always had with great ease, no matter what the surround-ings, no matter how fatigued I was by travel."

"If you had not experienced their illusory messages, would you have continued?" I asked.

"It would have been impossible," she said. "When you have a quiet moment, try to conjure up a list of random images that hint at portending the future. Perhaps you could do it once, or maybe even twice. I

doubt it. But to do it again and again, night after night, without repeating yourself, now that would be something. I had enough money. If I were forced to consciously formulate driveling strings of mind-pictures, I would have immediately retired."

"And you were popular in Europe, I take it?"

"The Spanish viewed me mainly as an oracle of romance. The Italians couldn't have made my job easier, wanting first and foremost to learn about the fate of their relatives in the afterlife. The
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French saw the entire thing as a brilliant, complex entertainment with metaphorical significance for life itself. I rather think the Germans were frightened of me and therefore were the most adoring. Was I popular? Look around you, Piambo. This house and my estate on Long Island were both built on the gullibil-ity of

Europe. Had I the mind to go to China, I would most likely now be an empress presiding over my own province."

I laughed, but she did not. "What of London, though? You did not mention the British," I said.

"London, the city we thought would be our simplest engagement, early on threatened to be colder than the mutton they served. The British are not easily frightened or amused. I thought, from the initial meager audiences, that we would have to fold up and return to the States. Then one night a pronouncement of mine in response to a woman's question could have been construed, I suppose, as hinting at her husband's infidelity. Her husband hap-pened to be a member of Parliament. What the

British love is a scandal, and as it turned out, my words prompted the woman to dig into her husband's affairs. Alas, she found not one mistress but three, and in an attempt to ruin him, she went to the

Times with the story. Had I dis-tributed a million broadsides announcing the show, it couldn't have been better advertised. Another monumen-tal success was on the brink of dawning, and then I fell in love."

His Little Cocoon

"It may be true that the sun never sets on the British Empire, but while in London I wondered when it was going to rise. We arrived there in autumn, and the weather was perpetually cold and damp—miserable fogs and drenching rains. Because of having to exit swiftly from the heat of whatever theater we were performing in into the chill night air, I had developed a bad cold by the end of the month.

I did my best to ignore its effects, but it remained with me and became serious. Eventually I found I could not draw a decent breath, and my voice could not penetrate the thin boundary of the screen to reach the audience. We had two weeks of shows remaining when I finally told Watkin to reschedule them.

"I was now shipwrecked, so to speak, in my hotel rooms, so absolutely drained I barely had the energy to crawl out of bed to a chair to watch the goings-on in the street below. I tried the usual assortment of home reme-dies—steam, herbals, compresses—but nothing seemed to alleviate my symptoms. Watkin was frantic, fearing that something might be seriously wrong with me, and insisted that

I see a doctor. I told him I was seeing no one and no one was seeing me. But he persisted, and eventu-ally I gave in to his demands—only on my own terms, of course.

"Careful to protect my anonymity, he found an American physician who was visiting London at the time. This young man had recently graduated from medical school and was on the grand tour of Europe and places beyond. He had been at one of my shows a few nights earlier and had chatted with Watkin, merely by way of wishing to speak to someone who had been more recently in the States. My manager assured me that the young fel-low was in need of cash and that we could buy his silence if it proved

necessary for him to have a direct audience with me. I told Watkin that a direct audience was out of the question but to bring him to me.

"He arrived at my hotel suite on a night when I was at my lowest. I had slept straight through for two days in a row. My spirits were as drained as my body, for with all that inactive time on my hands, now adding up to two weeks of static maundering, I had far too much opportu-nity to reconsider my life.

Memories of my father and mother, my almost fairy-tale existence on the top of the mountain,
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came back to me both nostalgically and stripped down to reality. What was left was a dark and twisted mess. I wept profusely at never having experi-enced true love, at my utter loneliness, the curse of the Twins, the murder of my mother, the designs of my father to trap me in this foolish sideshow existence. For all it mattered, I could very well have been a hairy she-ape of a Prophet and it wouldn't have made a whit of difference.

" 'Hello, Madam Sibyl,' came a voice from outside my bedroom. I swear, the mere sound of that phrase did some-thing to me. There was a light innocence in the voice accompanied by a real sense of concern. I answered imme-diately before I even knew what I was doing, not in my trumped-up stage voice but in my real one. The doctor introduced himself and gave his name, telling me that he was a native of Boston and that his family had originally emigrated there from France. I remember telling him that he had a lovely name. And do you know, Piambo, I was certain I could hear him blush.

"He insisted that I allow him to see me. 'Your secrets are safe with me, Madam Sibyl,' he said. 'I have taken an oath of confidentiality concerning my patients.' We bar-gained back and forth, and he won. I opened my bedroom door the width of a dime and strode quickly back and forth in front of it three times. When I was finished, he asked me if that was to be the extent of it. 'Of course,' I said, and this drew a peal of laughter from him. He then went on to inquire as to what my exact symptoms were and what my schedule had been like of late.

" 'You are more than likely simply run-down,' he said. 'I believe you have a bad cold and that your body is requiring you to rest both physically and mentally. You are exhausted.' His words made me realize how hard I had been pushing myself and how the strange surroundings had contributed to my weakened nerves. 'You may call me Luciere,’ I told him. 'That is my true name. I am a real woman and not an ancient creature.'

" 'Yes, Luciere,' he said, 'I quite suspected that. I want you to stay as warm as you possibly can.

Cover up so that you can sweat. Drink hot tea and soup. Tomorrow I will bring you some medicine and check on you.' I thanked him, and he told me how miraculous he thought my per-formance was. He returned the following day bearing his medicine, which was a kind of hot soup made of cabbage, carrots, and garlic. I had already begun feeling a bit better by then, but I did not let on, because I wanted him to con-tinue to visit. This he did, and on the third day I had Watkin set up the screen for me in the parlor of my hotel suite. I held an audience with him there, thus allowing me to peer through the pinhole and view him. I liked very much what I saw.

He was neither large nor small but of perfect stature. He wore his dark hair long, had a mus-tache, and was dressed casually in a maroon jacket. He wore neither tie nor hat.

"On that day we talked of things other than my health. He told me of his childhood and of his medical studies. I inquired as to his age and found that we shared the same birth year. His favorite pastime was reading, as was mine, and we soon discovered that we had read many of the same works.

Our conversation veered into a discus-sion of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and he concurred with me about how wrongly Hester had been treated by society. All the time we spoke at this meeting, Watkin sat nearby as both an interested party concerning my health and a kind of chaperon.

"On the following day, when Charbuque was due to call, I sent Watkin out on an errand that I knew would last quite a few hours. It was when he realized that Watkin would not be present that Moret began to press me about my relationships, as a means, no doubt, of determining whether I was engaged or married or had a sweetheart. I let it be known that I was altogether unattached, and this pleased him very much. Then he told me he had brought something for me. I reached out the monkey arm, and he slipped beneath the grip of the thumb a small box deco-rated with colored paper and a pale yellow ribbon.

Struck dumb by this gesture, not knowing whether it was too forward or simply an act of kindness, I

opened the gift. It turned out to be a cameo; somewhat odd.

"He told me that when he saw it in a shop, he knew it should belong to me. In white relief on a royal blue back-ground was the image of a handsome woman whose hair consisted of writhing snakes emanating from her scalp like a sunburst. 'The Gorgon Medusa,’ he said. At first I was shocked, knowing that the Medusa had been a mon-ster in ancient legend. 'And like Perseus,' I said, 'do you plan to cut my head off ?' 'Never, Luciere, but I long to be immobilized by your gaze,' he said. 'If you remember the tale, her blood gives birth to the winged horse Pegasus .. . as your voice has given wings to my heart.'

"Utterly trite, I know, Piambo, but when you are a young woman as isolated as I was, such poetry can be the loaves and fishes of your days. This was all it took to win me over. From then on, after only a few days of knowing each other, I was committed to Mr. Charbuque. Watkin never interfered. I think he hoped that the young man would draw me out from behind the screen. He had always told me that I did not need to be a recluse for the act to work and that he thought it unhealthy that I should be forever hidden.

"Our relationship advanced and, if I may speak plainly, as before, reached a point of physical union.

It was not that I had decided to reveal myself—that I felt I could not do—but methods for intercourse were devised. Where there is a will, there is a way, you know. I would not allow him to put his hands upon me, but he wore a blindfold, and with me giving directions, I would allow him to approach me from behind. I wrapped myself in a large blanket with a perfectly placed hole cut in it. He called me his little cocoon. We practiced these unusual connections and others yet more exotic with a good deal of frequency

"The shows that had been canceled owing to my ill-ness were never rescheduled, but I stayed on in

London, my time consumed by my new relationship. Two short months following our meeting, we were married in my hotel suite. I sat behind the screen and spoke my vows. Watkin was the witness. It was a joyous day, and we three drank champagne along with the public official who mar-ried us. Charbuque had promised me before the ceremony that he would respect my wishes not to be seen and that he thought our lives together, though not run-of-the-mill, could be very happy.

"By the end of the first week together, though, he began demanding that I show myself to him.

He told me that when we were together intimately he needed to touch me. Believe me, I considered it. In fact, I wanted it, but my ways were too ingrained by then. There was too much fear, too much, I thought, at stake. My husband's mood then began to grow very dark indeed.

He became increasingly belligerent until one afternoon as I sat behind the screen in the parlor arguing this very issue with him for the hundredth time in two days, he dashed the screen aside and lunged for me. The instant he saw me, his eyes seemed to tear right through me. As a reaction to that pain, I lifted the monkey arm, which sat nearby, and batted him across the side of the head. He went down upon the floor, which gave me a chance to retreat to the bedroom and lock the door.

When he rose from my blow, he spent a long time showering me with the most horrible curses.

He called me a ghost whore, a succubus.

He finally left, but not without stealing from me—a large sum of money, my ancient lamp, and some expensive jewelry that I had received from the mayor of Paris for a personal performance I had done for his family and friends. I was distraught and could easily have fallen again into depression, but I too desperately wanted to return to New York. I had Watkin arrange things.

"Charbuque never left me alone. He stalked our every move. At any time of the day or night I could look out my window and see him standing in the street below my win-dow. Daily he sent me letters filled with the most depraved descriptions of sexual violation, mayhem, and murder.

One night, while we were awaiting the day of our departure, he attacked Watkin in the lobby of
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the hotel. The staff managed to subdue him and toss him into the street.

"On the day we were to leave, ever-resourceful Watkin hired some local toughs to, shall we say, detain Moret. Still, he followed as soon as he was able. Luckily we had enough of a lead to elude him, and our ship sailed leaving him behind. He took the very next ship headed for New York, which left port two days after ours. That vessel, the

Janus, met the storm we had barely missed in our own crossing, and was lost at sea.

"You are sure he was on board?" I asked.

"Positive," she said.