Wild Talent (20 page)

“What was your impression of that last singer, Mademoiselle Guthrie? An interesting performance, was it not?”

“His voice is pleasant enough,” I agreed. “But did you find the song a little . . . ” I hesitated over the right word — “a little morbid, perhaps?”

“Morbid!
Précisément!
That is exactly what I should have said — a delicious morbidity! The perverse beauty of the fevered imagination!” (“Perverse”, I do believe, is M.

d'Artois's favourite word.)

Summoning our waiter, he asked “Is this your first visit to Montmartre, mademoiselle?”

I nodded.

“And you are drinking coffee?
Non, non
, that will simply not do.” And over our faint protests, he ordered absinthe.

“
Voila
,
mesdemoiselles
,” said M. d'Artois, “Elixir of wormwood — the green fairy!” The waiter had brought us three tall footed glasses, each with a portion of pale green oily liqueur, along with three long slotted spoons, a bowl of sugar cubes and a jug of ice water.

M. d'Artois led us through the ritual, resting the spoon over the glass and placing a sugar cube in its bowl, then pouring cold water over the sugar, until the liquid in the glass turned cloudy.

I did not much like the sound of “elixir of wormwood”, and besides, I have read that absinthe drinking can drive you mad, but I took a cautious sip for politeness' sake. Tasting of anise and bitter herbs, it was not as unpleasant as I had feared, but there is little danger that I will become addicted to it.

“Now,” said M. d'Artois, the absinthe ritual completed, “since Montmartre is a new experience for you, allow me to tell you a little of its history, which is delightfully bizarre.”

Alexandra, sipping her absinthe, listened with an air of tolerant amusement.

“You must understand that Montmartre has always been a place of magical power, a refuge in every age for mystics and visionaries. Once, Montmartre was a sacred site for the Druids, and under Rue La Vieuville there are temples dedicated to the Roman gods. Saint Denis, the Bishop of Paris, was beheaded here, and according to legend, far from being discouraged by this, he picked up his head and carried it with him for several miles, while continuing to preach a sermon.”

Alexandra caught my eye; the corners of her mouth twitched.

M. d'Artois forged on: “And then during the great uprising, the Commune of 1871, hundreds of revolutionists hid in the chalk mines of Montmartre and were forever entombed there, when the Army of the Republic dynamited the exits.”

It's true, I had smiled at the absurdity of the headless bishop. But “delightfully bizarre”? Is this how M. d' Artois thought of those hundred of dying citizens, trapped by a cruel army in a place with neither light nor air? Was all wickedness, all human suffering, mere entertainment?

I had no wish to hear more. I turned away, on the pretext of examining a group of Paris street scenes on the wall behind us.

“You admire the Impressionists, mademoiselle?” Alas, M. d'Artois's attentions were persistent.

“They are new to me,” I said, but yes, I find them interesting.”

“But nonetheless, they appeal to a bourgeois sensibility. They are all surface — the play of light and colour. These are not artists who penetrate to the mysterious centre of the human soul. We must introduce you to the S
ymbolistes
, mademoiselle — to the art of dreams, of visions, of the imagination
fantastique
.” When M. d'Artois speaks, I always feel that he is quoting someone. He does not strike me as a gentleman with a great many original ideas. And though I did not say so, I am well content with paintings full of light and colour. There are things that lurk in the shadows that I do not care to discover.

He turned to Alexandra. “Mademoiselle David, have you by chance had an opportunity to view that private showing that I mentioned?”

“Oh yes, the Decadents,” said Alexandra. “You were kind enough to give me the address . . . one day soon, perhaps.”

“But what better opportunity than tonight? The studio is only one street away.”

“But the hour is late,” said Alexandra.

“
Mais non
, it is not a salon, it is the artist's studio, and like all true artists, he never sleeps at night.”

I looked across the table.
Alexandra, please say no
. It was not merely the late hour that prompted that wordless plea. More and more, I found M. d'Artois's company unsettling; and some instinct made me fear where this adventure might be leading us.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

July 29

T
his morning both of us slept late. Last night, as M. d'Artois led us out into the dark streets of Montmartre, sleep seemed the furthest thing from Alexandra's mind.

The studio of the artist Jacques Gautier occupies the topmost floor of a tall, thin, ivy-covered house. We followed M. d'Artois up the stairs in single file and finding the artist's door flung open, stepped through into a long narrow room. On this close summer evening it was horribly hot and airless. The smell that greeted us seemed compounded of coffee, candlewax , cigarettes, turpentine, and unwashed clothes; to which was added, now, the musky sweetness of M. d'Artois's perfume.

There was another visitor in the studio when we arrived — a gentleman who appeared to have been seized by a painful fit of coughing. I could not see much of his face, as he was bent over in his chair with a handkerchief pressed to his mouth. The artist, who hovered anxiously nearby, was a pale, lean young man with luminous dark eyes and an earnest look. He acknowledged us in an offhand way, gestured to the bottle of wine on the table, and left us to our own devices.

The studio was much as I had imagined it would be, from my long-ago reading of
Vie de Bohème
. There was a single narrow window behind a length of black velour, a velvet
chaise longue
that was ripped across the back with the horsehair stuffing spilling out; a bench covered with an elaborately embroidered altar cloth; some oddly shaped candlesticks like twining serpents; a carved ebony mask —A frican, I think — and a stained and fraying India rug over bare floorboards. A folding screen in one corner likely concealed the artist's bed. In the centre of the room was a table splashed here and there with dried paint and littered with what looked like the evening's unwashed supper dishes. Elsewhere, hanging on the walls or propped against them, on easels or leaning against a chair, were dozens of paintings for which the only possible word was macabre.

No cheerful Paris street scenes here — instead there were crumbling pillars wound about with creeping plants and hothouse flowers; a wild-eyed Salome, reduced to a single veil, holding up the gory head of John the Baptist; dragons and skeletons and sphinxes; exploding suns; and beautiful drowned women, their long pale hair adrift like strands of weed.

M. d'Artois stepped aside to allow me a better view of spectral figures dancing on a row of coffins. “
C'est
intéressant, n'est-ce pas
?” he said approvingly. “The art of melancholy slipping into madness” — which struck me as an apt enough description.

Behind me, the hacking cough continued. The unfortunate gentleman seemed in some distress. I turned to see M. Gautier offer him a glass of wine, which he drained in a single gulp.

On one wall, half in shadow was a large untinted photographic reproduction. My gaze distracted by M. Gautier's acid greens and saffrons, his aubergines and brassy reds, I'd failed to notice it at first. Now I went to examine it more closely. In the background I could see the pinnacles and archways of a gothic palace or cathedral; mysterious towers half-hidden in vegetation; and on the far horizon, rocky crags. In the foreground, fantastic images were layered one upon another, bewildering to the eye: naked goddesses mounted on bulls and hippogryphs, a queen in the crown of Charlemagne stroking a unicorn's head, a serpent-headed goat; as well as fairies, angels, witches, and all manner of fabulous birds and beasts. I could have spent an hour examining it and still found more details to discover. Our host's own canvases by comparison seemed garish and inexpert.

“I see you are admiring M'sieu Gustave Moreau's famous picture,” said M. d'Artois. “
Les Chimères
— a masterpiece of artifice and invention. He never finished it, you know. To portray all of myth, all of history, all of religion — what artist is equal to such a task?”

And I, who know so little of art, could only murmur, “It's beautiful, and very strange, and I think quite frightening.”

“Just so. A journey through the haunted forests of the imagination. The reflection of our dreams, our terrors and our innermost desires.”

Even in black and white, the picture had the power to mesmerize. If one looked too long, one had to tear one's gaze away. I could well imagine that beyond the distant mountains of that never-to-be- finished painting lay a still more marvellous and seductive country existing only in the artist's mind.

I was raised to believe that in this life, at least, there is only one reality, and that is the world of ordinary experience, that has no place for unicorns and hippogryphs. But all that has happened these past months has tested that belief. If we believe in Heaven, is it so impossible to believe, as spiritualists do, that other worlds exist above and beyond our own? At that moment I remembered a long-ago moment in a London bookshop, seeing through an artist's eyes a marvelous tropical world I had never visited, and likely never would. I had accepted those drawings not merely as vivid works of the imagination, but as a true record of the artist's travels. How much harder, then, to imagine that in some world invisible to the untrained eye, M. Moreau's chimeras were real?

“A world of nightmares,” remarked Alexandra, coming to join us.

M. d'Artois looked a little affronted. “I take it, mademoiselle, you are not an admirer of M'sieu Moreau's work?”

“It reeks of romanticized despair,” said Alexandra. “And besides, it is far too cluttered. I am not surprised M'sieu Moreau did not manage to complete it. Your author M'sieu Huysmans, of whom you think highly, has described it well: “A soul exhausted by secret thoughts . . . I nsidious appeals to sacrilege and debauchery . . . ”

“Why, mademoiselle,
quelle surprise
! I did not imagine you were so familiar with M'sieu Huysman's books!”

“And who in Paris is not?” said Alexandra.

It is unlike Alexandra to be so critical, even in the presence of the frequently annoying M. d'Artois. I wondered if something in M. Moreau's dreamworld affected her more than she cared to admit.

Just then the coughing gentleman put away his handkerchief, and M. d'Artois gave a cry of happy recognition.

“
Mon Dieu!
Can it be?”

The gentleman glanced up with a somewhat absent expression.

“Mademoiselle David, Mademoiselle Guthrie, allow me the great honour of introducing you to the most famous poet in France, M'sieu Paul Verlaine.”

Alas, the most famous poet in France, on close inspection, appeared to have fallen on hard times. His graying beard was shaggy and untrimmed. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face had an unhealthy yellowish tinge. The high dome of his forehead was slick with perspiration. There were stains on his jacket, a button was missing, and a shoulder seam had given way.

“M'sieu Verlaine,” M. d'Artois addressed the poet in his rather affected French, “Do you remember when we met one night at Le Chat Noir, and you read from your
Poèmes
saturniens
?

In a palace of silk and gold in Echbatan
Beautiful demons, youthful Satans,
To the sound of Mohammedan music
Dedicate their five senses to the seven sins.

M. Verlaine dismissed this intrusion with an irritable shrug. “A young man's fantasizing. In fact, a piece of derivative garbage . . . ” And waving away M. d'Artois's protests, he added, “It is true, I was once a genius. But now I am old and sick, and there will be no more poems.”

“Indeed,” cried M. d'Artois, “you are not at all old; you are in your prime!”

“But let us not pretend for courtesy's sake, M'sieu, that I am not ill. You see the evidence before you. I am a drunk, and in consequence have destroyed both liver and stomach.” He held out his glass for more wine, obligingly poured by M. Gautier. “Let us add to the list, diabetes, and also a shrunken heart, which you will agree is a tragic condition for a poet. And from sleeping rough in Paris slums, I have developed rheumatism.”

M. d'Artois was clearly at a loss for a reply. Alexandra, adroitly rescuing the conversation, said, “I possess a volume of your poetry, M'sieu Verlaine, I read it often, with the greatest pleasure. M'sieu d'Artois has his favourite among your lines —I have mine:

In a street, in the heart of a city of dreams,
that seems like a place where you have already been,
an instant at once very vague and very clear . . .

For a moment M. Verlaine's haggard, dissipated features softened. “You do me honour, mademoiselle — but tell me, have you ever travelled to that city of dreams?”

What a curious question, I thought. But Alexandra replied, in all seriousness, “Not I, M'sieu. Not yet. But I have known those who have found themselves, that is, a part of themselves, in a place they had not meant to go, which was unknown to them: a place they could only say was ‘elsewhere'.”

“Ah yes, I have done that,” said M. Gautier. “Many times.”

“But we are not speaking of drugs,” said M. Verlaine. “Is that not so, Mademoiselle David?”

“No, nor of sleep, in the ordinary way,” said Alexandra. “I once spoke to a woman who had made this kind of spirit voyage. All the while she was sitting in her chair, in a Paris drawing room, in the presence of two friends. She was not asleep, she had taken no drugs. Yet she slipped into an unconscious state, as though she had been given anaesthetic. All her senses were muffled, she could not move. And then she saw in the distance her other self, her spirit double, attached to her body by a thin, hazy cord.”