by Robert Levy
I am a very closed person, and indeed you are the only soul of late who has so much as glimpsed behind the heavy veil that obscures my defective heart. Since early in life, I have associated pleasure and pain, and it is this truth that has brought me to the place I am today. The games of doctor and patient as a little girl, in which my flesh would be pierced with needles as we played at inoculation? The summer trip into the mountains that culminated in the loss of my innocence, by means of a brutal attack by the young man I had called my closest friend? It was only natural that I would eventually find my way to the sinister side, called to worship by the midnight muse himself. He who walks at night, who traverses the lamplit streets of this city, under cover of darkness and always on the prowl for his next conquest. Is he not the very same phantom rumored to haunt the Palais Garner, the one who inspired Leroux’s novel?
The demon lover is no fiction, however. He is as real as we are, a creature of supernatural attraction that beckons to women who are lonely and artistic and most of all passionate, women who radiate the energy he feeds upon until glutted. Woman like ourselves. While I myself am a lost cause, you still have a chance to find your way free, and I pray that you will choose a different path, and allow yourself to feel worthy. You, who have so many admirers, none of whom will ever fill the void within. I recognized the emptiness inside you, the way only someone with the very same absence could see it. Only you can fill that void, Anaïs. It took me much too long to understand this truth. I cannot deny I see myself in you as well. We are parallel souls, rooted in a sensuous attraction to the forbidden. You have kept your urges largely hidden, however, from yourself as much as anyone. Do not forget, I am able to pull back the veil that obscures your private desires, just as readily as I can remove an evening glove. And what I see in you is a past rooted in perversion and degeneracy, regardless of how much of it you mask in the trappings of polite society.
The absent friend you glimpsed in my face that night at the Guignol, the woman who holds your heart in her hand? The father who came to you as a child, the one whose attentions you still crave, no matter how far you go to bury it beneath the hard and cracked ground of denial? You need to be possessed by another, in order to feel anything whatsoever. That, and more.
I had hoped to take comfort in your welcoming arms, but instead I must entreat that you never think of me again. To dwell upon the darkness is to open a door through which it can enter at any time. Eradicate me from your memory, lest you meet a danger you are unprepared to face. And should you ever cross paths with my tormentor, make certain that he never learns your name. Names have great power, in our world as well as his. You must remember this above all else.
Now I must bid you farewell, sweet Anaïs. Thank you for your kindness, and know that I will hold you in my heart as Persephone did Orpheus, no matter my moonless destination. Light a candle for me, and pray to all that you hold holy.
I remain yours,
Maxa
I read the letter once more before I refold the pages and tuck them inside my diary, smooth the creased paper until it is sharp enough to draw blood. Maxa is done with me. Regardless of the circumstance, I cannot help but sense an echo, a recurrence, as if June is abandoning me all over again. My father as well, as Dr. Allendy would no doubt remind me had I returned to him for further analysis. My life, it is a wide spiral, made up of alluring figures that emerge from the darkness to penetrate my orbit before they are flung out to distant shores, distant dreams. The same story told over and again, until the spiral completes another circuit and a new face emerges from the gloom.
The brightness of the noonday sun bears down upon Les Puces, where Hugo and I walk through the marketplace’s labyrinthine assortment of stalls, the smell of fresh lavender and saffron threaded through the air. Porte de Clignancourt and the surrounding neighborhood is swollen with shoppers, and I wait in the shade beneath a canvas awning while Hugo tries on carnival masks for a masquerade his supervisor is throwing in a few days’ time. Attendance, unfortunately, is compulsory.
Weeks past now since the disturbing events at Maxa’s apartment, and though I have heeded her appeal to leave her be I cannot help but feel a coward, unable to put any of it out of my mind as she asked. How can I rid myself of the image of those cruel eyes as they stared down at me through the darkness? The same yellow eyes from Allendy’s box, and the taxi outside the Guignol, watching with hunger as a hawk watches for quarry. The eyes of a demon.
Worst of all is when I look into the mirror, where I am terrified I will find those slick yellow orbs staring back at me in place of my own. Perhaps this inscrutable creature has been watching me all along and it is only now that I am aware, its gaze penetrating me to my hidden recesses, the core of me. Or perhaps the truth is something more alarming altogether.
“Anaïs? Darling?” Hugo waves me over to the booth, the beaked white mask of a plague doctor held to his face. “What do you think of this one? Is it too garish?”
“If anything, too respectable.” I scan the rest of the mask-maker’s offerings and select a more colorful option, that of a damask joker done in flamboyant points of gilded crimson and gold. I help Hugo fasten it behind his head. “Now, you look fit for a proper night on the town. Still elegant, yes, but not so dour.”
“You mean, I no longer appear quite such a bore.” He returns the plague doctor mask to its peg. “Would that I had the ease you seem to have, the ability to travel between worlds. You have a keen talent for moving freely through various social milieus, and seemingly without care.”
“Is that how you see me, as a chameleon? Someone who changes their face in order to adapt?” I cannot help but feel as if he is mincing words. That he means to call me Janus-faced, willing to alter myself to meet the expectations of others.
“Do not take umbrage, my love. I was trying to pay you a compliment.” He smiles and takes me by the hand, and we continue to wend our way through the market. “I was speaking of your generosity of spirit, and the interest you show in those you encounter. I see it in the way you make conversation, as readily with street performers as you do with the wives of my colleagues.”
“The wives of bankers bore me, though. Never mind the fact that I am one myself.”
“But you never let your boredom show. Through it all, the essential Anaïs is ever-present, thrilling and excitable and attentive. That is why others are drawn to you, no matter their circumstance. You are independent, and alive. Another reason why I am so proud to call myself your husband, why I love you and you alone.”
He pulls me into his arms, and we kiss. “And I love only you, Hugo.”
And now I have told the lie. However much I admire my husband, there is always someone else. Always.
Hugo wears a wide smile upon his face, and I attempt to mimic his aura of insouciance as we near the far side of the market. A strange niggling sensation pricks at me, however, and I feel as if I have forgotten something, or someone. I glance behind me, back toward the mask-maker’s booth and the canopied stalls beyond. Someone is out there, watching.
From some distance away, a dark-haired woman gazes at me through the bustling throng, and I slow my pace. Dressed in black and awash in radium sunlight on the periphery of the market, pale and thin and birdlike in her delicate pose, my first thought is that she appears lost, and perhaps afraid, a solitary figure beside a meat vendor’s display. It is only when I cease walking altogether that I realize I am looking upon myself. Into a standing mirror, of which there are many set out for trying on items of clothing or jewelry. But no. The woman that is me reaches a slow hand to her brow, long pale fingers raking through her corona of black hair. Yet here I am, holding Hugo’s arm with one hand and my market bag in the other. There is no mirror there after all.
“Anaïs?” Hugo peers over at me in concern. “Is something wrong?”
“That woman,” I sputter. I take my hand from his arm and point in her direction. “Do you see her? There. Just past the meat counter.”
&nb
sp; “What woman?”
“Her! Right there!” I gesture all the more frantically. “The one there, in the black dress.”
“I don’t see her,” he says, and shields his eyes from the sun as he scans the crowd. “Who are you talking about?”
“For God’s sake, Hugo.” I drop the market bag, a cascade of oranges toppling out and across the dirt. “She looks just like me.”
The woman turns, and I follow. I push my way through the throng and past the mask maker’s booth, where in my haste I knock a red leather harlequin mask from its peg. Hugo calls out to me but I don’t stop, hurtling forward as I struggle to keep my eyes upon her, the woman in black that is myself.
Only yards away now and just outside the main thoroughfare of Les Puces, and she returns my gaze once more. Now I see her for what she is: her flesh a pallid and mottled blue, lips black and bruised, skin brined with deep ocean water, the dregs of the abyss. She is a drowned woman, this other Anaïs. She is still myself, yes, only after the sea has swallowed me.
My likeness—ma semblable, ma soeur!—moves quickly along the meat counter. She rounds the far side, and I hurry around the stall, only to find that she has vanished. The space where she should be standing is now dense with the sticky sweet smell of kief, as well as an incongruous scent of the seaside.
“Maxa?” I whisper. Is this some conjuration of hers, an attempt of hers to communicate with me? What then of her entreaty that we cease all contact? The vision has evaporated, and left me standing in the drowned woman’s place.
“Darling?” Hugo, out of breath, places a gentle hand on my shoulder as I scan my surroundings in vain. “What is it? Is everything all right?”
“It is nothing.” I shake my head furiously, as if trying to shake away the incident itself, wipe it clean from my mind’s uneven slate. I tell myself it was an aftereffect of the opium, but I know it was something else, something inexplicable. It has left me with a lingering and disturbing anxiety. Perhaps I have had a premonition of my own death.
I calm myself as the butcher’s wares swing above me, gruesome hunks of pork ribs and pettitoes lashed to wires like sacrificial offerings to a bloodthirsty god. Everywhere I look is carnage. All I am able to do is hold myself, and I stare up at the overcast sky. “I thought I saw someone I knew.”
“You gave me quite a fright.” He hoists the market bag beneath his arm. “Shall we be on our way, then? Emilia is preparing pheasant, and I offered to deliver the oranges to her.”
“That sounds lovely.” The words are distant and foreign, spoken in a stranger’s voice, as if through another’s lips. “Let’s go.”
I take Hugo’s arm, and we reenter the market through the crowded stalls. When I look back, there is no one watching, and we continue on our way.
We arrive at the masquerade in darkness. Fairy lights are strung across the property, lending the evening an otherworldly feel, as, of course, do all the many disguises worn by the guests. Hugo is costumed as the sea king Neptune, bare-chested and adorned with glittering scales affixed to his sides that run up his neck and across his eyes in their own kind of mask. I am Venus arisen from the ocean deep, my breasts covered by two large clamshells, smaller shells woven into the hair pieces that obscure my bare shoulders in golden waves. We are, as they say, of a pair.
Trident in hand, Hugo ushers me through the lush garden, the air warm from a flickering bonfire and reverberating with animated conversation. Blood-rhythmed music echoes across paving stones and through the gnarled crepe myrtles as a band performs atop a raised platform, masked couples swaying on the temporary dance floor laid out across the packed grass. Our hosts, dressed as a monk and a nun, come down from the patio to greet us. A passing waiter offers champagne from a lacquered tray, and though I take a flute I am already made drunk due to the raucous surroundings, the dizzying whirl of light and sound and carefree revelry. As Hugo and our hosts make small talk, I scan the garden, take in the many costumes: the satyrs and nymphs, ballerinas and chained prisoners, an impressive Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette in their own gilded masks. The mood is giddy, the guests shielded and hence emboldened by their chosen disguises.
Across the dance floor, a solitary figure watches me. A man, tall and broad-shouldered and dressed in old-fashioned naval fare, his tricorne hat pointed cowl-like like a bird of prey’s savage bill. Dark paint upon his face glistens beneath the lights in an iridescent wave, narrow eyes barely perceptible but for a silvery yellow flicker upon them, cast from the fairy lights overhead. A frisson of excitement spreads across my arms and bared stomach, my thighs beneath my diaphanous skirt, commingled with an unnerving charge of fear. He nods, and tips his hat in my direction.
I take a tentative step back, and look away, over to where Hugo and our hosts should be. Except they seem to have vanished farther into the garden, somewhere past the wide nettle of trees that ring the impressive grounds. I return my attention to the naval captain, who departs across the dance floor through the swirling sea of dancers, silent and unseen as a wraith as he makes his way toward the main house.
I follow in pursuit. Slowly at first, but then I hurry to keep up, my sandals slapping loud against the stone steps as I reach the patio. A cluster of guests chat near the open doorway to the house, a waiter returning from the kitchen with a tray of food, and as I enter the foyer I glimpse a pair of black-booted feet ascending the staircase. I trail after him, and take the steps two at a time, only to find the hallway empty. I pass from room to room, the whole of the house filled with the aroma of boiling coffee and steamed milk. Another scent as well, the burnt spice fragrance of Maxa’s flat. Another set of stairs, and by the time I reach the top I am in near darkness. The party below is a quieted lull, and I think of the seaside and the susurrus of waves, rolling in, out, in.
I feel my way along the hall for a light switch, and though the way forward is cast in shadow it is free from impediment. At the end of the corridor is a dim and narrow room, lit only by moonlight from a small round window, the roof bowed like the ribbed hull of a ship. I am reminded of being a little girl, and of leaving France to sail across the ocean to America. Indeed, the scent of the sea is unmistakable, the air thick with a wild and salty tang.
Across the room, a figure emerges from the shadow, and what little light from the window is obscured. My breath catches, and I try to reach for the doorknob, only to find myself unable to move. The stranger approaches, his tricorne hat indistinguishable from his face, his head, his body, so that he is at once a man and a being of irregular angles, his true dimensions difficult to discern. He towers over me, a wall of darkness born out of a larger darkness more impenetrable, vast and unknowable. In a flash, he is at my side, the rough fabric of his suit jacket abrading my bare arm as he reaches to close the door with a soft click.
“What is your name?” It is him, the man from Maxa’s flat, the beast disguised in human flesh. His voice fathomless and yet mellifluous, an alluring combination of softness and steeliness, of pleasure and pain commingled. I shudder, and for a moment I cannot answer.
“My name?” I say, and swallow hard. “My name is... Maxa.”
“You are not Maxa, no.” A heavy sigh, rattling and luxuriant, and above all laced with hunger. “I know Maxa. You are someone else altogether. Your own creature.”
“What…what do you want with her?” I begin to say, but “Shhhh,” he whispers. I am silenced. A gloved hand caresses my cheek, and I pull away. I imagine myself leaving, backing through the door and down the stairs, out of the house and across the garden and through the city streets until I am safe at home in Louveciennes. I do no such thing, however, for I am already entranced. The time for leave-taking has passed.
“Tonight is a masquerade,” he says. “And so you can be whomever it is you choose.” He uses a single finger to guide my face toward his. The leather is supple against my skin, and the tip of the finger parts my lips and slides across my teeth before he removes it. “Tell me, then. Is it Maxa that you truly wish to be?�
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“I would never wish to be her,” I manage to say, my mouth dry. “Not when she is enslaved, captive to forces beyond her control. Not when you are her soul’s tormentor.” I want to run but cannot, legs trembling and unsteady like those of a newly birthed fawn.
“Tormentor? Hardly.” He chuckles, low and hoarse. “You insult me, and yet it is you who invited me this evening.” He touches one of the shells affixed my chest, his finger tracing its scalloped edge. “Even now, you adorn yourself with the very tokens of my realm.”
“That is not true,” I whisper. But of course it was my suggestion that Hugo and I wear these costumes inspired by the sea, incited by my waking dream in Allendy’s box, the sifted-through contents of my own conflicted mind. I had sought to negotiate with my enduring pain, and in doing so I unknowingly invited danger to my door.
“I only grant that which is desired,” the stranger says, his tone the low thrum of a wind instrument, the prayer of a parched desert landscape for the salvation of rain. “Do you know what it is that you desire?”
His finger presses against my cracked lips. I swallow hard, and snake the tip of my parched tongue over the leather, which tastes of rare and exotic spice.
“I do know,” I say, my open hand against his midsection, hard muscle beneath starched wool. “I do.”
“Yes.” He places his hand over mine, fingers inter-lacing with my own. “I know what you want as well.”
