by Lori Baker
• • •
My grandmother, Marie-Louise Girard, has already left my grandfather by now. By ’41 she’s returned to her father’s house in Paris. Very soon she will remarry. This, perhaps, explains the state of my grandfather’s lodgings. Or does the state of his lodgings explain her departure? And anyway, the house doesn’t belong to my grandfather; it belongs to the one downstairs, him with the cutting eye and edge, Petrook. My grandfather is a kind of employee, a procurer, who, by supplying Petrook with antiquities and curiosities from foreign lands, obtains a favorable deal on the rent.
• • •
I imagine the two of them, Petrook and my grandfather, as two vultures sitting side by side on a single branch, each guarding his pile of decaying treasure, pecking and squabbling, biting and squawking, eating, shitting, shedding, scratching, as vultures will do.
Really, though, it’s more complicated than that. The households Girard and Petrook are intimately entwined in a cheerless roundelay all their own, one that will prove unfortunate for my grandfather (and my mother) in the long run.
Little wonder my grandmother left this place. Who could blame her?
• • •
To think I’ve put my father in here.
• • •
It’s all right. I’ll let him out soon. And anyway, he feels at home. He’s in the study, safe and warm. Like part of the collection.
It’s hard to see him really, it’s so dark, the room so crowded, with books (both on shelves and in stacks, rising up like stalagmites from the floor and from the surfaces, nearly submerged, of a drowning desk and a few weary armchairs, paddling for their lives among the debris), as well as with rolled-up carpets smelling of incense and cloves, with grimacing carved stone heads of Central American origin, and with the ubiquitous specimens, swimming in their bottles of murk.
Not one to be deterred, my father is poking among these objects, ferreting, sorting, examining things in the very dim light provided by the room’s single window, narrow, dirty, and distant.
Bit of a collector himself, my da. Crumpling something soft into his pocket, left pocket, something that doesn’t belong to him. I can’t quite see what it is. But the sly, shamefaced expression, that I can see. Even in this lousy light.
He starts then, gives a sudden, sharp little quiver, surreptitious creature that he is, all alert, scenting the air, listening, ears and whiskers turning like pinwheels because he’s heard, from somewhere within the softly swaddled chambers of the burrow, a reedy distant susurrus that might or might not have been a Hallo—
• • •
Yes. There it is again. Hallo from the next room, rattle of hand on doorknob, minor rupture followed by inward collapse, a geometry of light and dust containing a figure, unfamiliar. Round glint of glasses, sharp spade of beard, tweedy sleeve, inserted. And a voice. Hallo! Is somebody there?
This will be Harry Owen. He’s been waiting, too, in another part of the burrow. Drawn by my father’s scrabbling. Something else alive in here! It’s not just me! Or so it seems.
My father comes toward him eagerly, emerges from the shadows, hastily checking his pockets, gasping slightly, as if rising in a very great hurry from a very great depth.
Yes, yes, it’s me, he says, I’m here. Leo Dell’oro—ship’s artist.
Harry Owen is startled by this. It shows. Slight retraction of the beard. We aren’t on a ship, we’re in a burrow. But being impeccable in manners, introduces himself nonetheless.
Yes, says my father. I’ve heard all about you. And unhelpfully adds, Felix Girard is out. Would you like to see my pictures?
Oh my dear my father I miss him so. Such a child, scampering off into the warren in search of a sketch pad with which to impress the tweedy stranger. Where has he gone? I don’t know; I can’t see that part of my grandfather’s kingdom. And anyway, he’s back now, already, panting, sketch pad in paw. The stranger, encompassing this, draws book and boy both out into the passage, where the light, such as it is (an aqueous matter no matter where, in this house), is somewhat better for looking.
The sketch pad is a ragged, well-thumbed thing, thickened by interpolation into it of other matter—pages torn out of books and periodicals, letters heavily annotated in the margins, daguerreotypes, restaurant menus, old postcards, tickets, pieces of carpet, a swatch of wallpaper—no wonder my father feels at home in Felix Girard’s house, and will soon possess an impulse to make the collecting a family matter. Nasty, unhygienic stuff. But in among it—the drawings. These are very good, precociously good. Pencil sketches mainly, flora and fauna, North Yorkshire coast, moors. And bones. These are his drawings of the Whitby ichthyosaur, which was excised from the cliff called Black Cap by my grandfather, Felix Girard, several years ago.
The ichthyosaur was and is my grandfather’s most famous find, crowning achievement of his career as a bone monger, the career for which he left his other, previous, more respectable career, that of surgeon, in Paris, at l’Hôtel-Dieu.
• • •
Charnel house on the Seine. All those infected linens hanging out on metal clotheslines on terraces above the river. Bloated monster, breathing sickness on the city of light.
• • •
He had to leave it. So much death, that’s what he said. Ah, the stink, Marie! Without irony. And so my grandmother left him.
I can’t blame her. There’s an issue here of contracts, as well as of expectations.
• • •
So this is how my father met my grandfather: by sketching his ichthyosaur. The drawings, amazingly exact and to scale, accompanied Felix Girard’s paper on the find, and were published, along with it, in the Proceedings of that year. My father was very young then, just a boy. That is why, now, the drawings look familiar to Harry Owen, a man of science himself. He saw them in the Proceedings. But he doesn’t remember that he did.
My father received no credit for this work, nor any money either.
Nor did the cliff Black Cap receive any money, though it very conveniently collapsed, exposing the ichthyosaur to my grandfather’s opportunity-seeking eye.
Which just goes to show that success really does consist, first and foremost, in being there.
• • •
Why, says Harry Owen, evidently surprised, these are very good! You have an amazing quality of—of—tact—with your living creatures especially—they really look alive—
This is excruciating to my father, this praise. He never could accept a compliment. He blushes painfully, begins rubbing his left wrist rapidly against the heel of his right hand, cannot look Harry Owen in the eye. Unbearable, unbearable. Now he has to run off—run off!—with his sketch pad, back into the warren, and disappear. Gone to ground. Leaving Harry Owen alone.
Or not exactly alone.
Many eyes, in that place.
• • •
I don’t know where my father’s gone. Some parts of the burrow lie too deep even for me to excavate. Nor do I desire to dig there. I’ll remain with Harry Owen instead.
Here he is, left alone in the hallway with my grandfather’s jars of pickled fish and a number of those grinning Mayan heads Felix Girard trades to Petrook in lieu of rent. Clearly, he’s as taken aback by my father’s abrupt departure as he was by his unexpected appearance. At a loss, he stands in his tweeds (it isn’t just my father: they all wear too many clothes in this August heat, sweat trickling down behind the very proper collar and cuffs, soaking the starched shirtfront beneath the tightly buttoned waistcoat, dampening the worsted trousers, pooling around the garters at the stocking tops, such a way to live, so very, for lack of a better word, Victorian); he flashes his spectacles this way and that, intelligently pointing his spade of a beard, patting down his smooth, fine hairs, looking around, looking around, looking around at all the stuffed, pickled, and preserved. Then, finally and suddenly giving up on my father (now classified: Homo enigmaticus, form juvenilis), retreating back into the study, removing a stack of books from one of those poo
r groaning easy chairs, sitting down, and lighting a cigar.
• • •
I can see the red spark of cigar ash wavering in there, in the semidark.
It is very rude of my grandfather, is it not, to leave his guests sitting around like this?
Poor Harry Owen, sitting around in the semidark with his cigar in that oppressive room. I can see now that he’s noticed the smell, the sour-sweet smell of death, not quite disguised by the pungency of the cigar. He’s running his finger around inside his collar, shifting uncomfortably on his hams. There’s a large, poorly stuffed, mottle-coated, buck-toothed South American rodent on the low table by his elbow, this for company, such lousy conversation. Mrs. S—, is that you? No. No. Though it looks quite like her, it flirts less well. All communication is by other means, other channels. Harry Owen sniffing slightly, there, in the dark.
• • •
Honestly, I don’t know why he waits. He lacks my father’s aptitude for snooping, he’s far too proper, this is all just tedium to him. And he doesn’t even know my grandfather. When the summons came to him at the house on Half Moon Street, he hesitated, even, over whether he ought to come. Debated, pro and contra.
• • •
My grandfather has something of a reputation, hardly any of it good. Though his books are quite good. Felix Girard’s Ghosts of Bain Dzak in particular. That’s the one about Mongolia. I like it very well, myself. But Harry Owen hasn’t read it, not yet.
It must have been very dull, that summer of 1841, to keep Harry Owen waiting in that study.
And my father, where has he gone? Honestly, I don’t know. He’s still there somewhere, in Felix Girard’s lodgings. I can hear him, the soft little rustlings. Keeping himself busy among the collection. If only Harry Owen had that knack.
But he lacks it, and having waited half an hour, is just pulling himself together to leave—first shifting in the hams, a tensing of the knees—when, with great tumult, my grandfather, Felix Girard, arrives.
There’s always tumult when Felix Girard arrives. He’s a large man, coarse and broad, with a fierce feral thicket of red whiskers interspersed with sparse tendrils of grey; often he’s loud, sometimes drunk, usually dirty, and peculiarly dressed—bombachas, bolas, a moleskin coat, all stuff he’s picked up in his travels, affectations in anybody else but in my grandfather unself-conscious, worn to suit the weather; no moleskin today, because of the heat probably, but still remarkable enough, in his unraveling yellowed shirtsleeves, all unbuttoned and awry, and exuding an unmistakable sweaty musk.
There are two people with him. One is a man, wiry, thin lipped, upright, with steel-grey hair and a cool, severe, unblinking predator’s eye—this is Hugh Blackstone, captain of a small ship for hire, Narcissus, at anchor in the Thames. The other is a young woman, pale as a flame is pale, white gloved, elegantly muslined, with a cunning, sharp-toed boot and a pert yellow flounce. Seeing Harry Owen sitting there in the murk with his rodent companion, she immediately lets forth three melodious trills of laughter, crying, Oh, Papa, it’s a new specimen! Did you stuff it yourself? Oh, no, of course not—that’s Johnny Twomey’s rotten handiwork—I’d recognize it anyplace!—pointing at the pendulous ash clinging to the tip of Owen’s cigar—You can tell by that funny little fringe left hanging loose there!
Laughter then, among the three. Even Hugh Blackstone’s stony visage contorts in that muscular rictus meant, by him, to signify a smile.
• • •
Hilarious, isn’t she, my mother?
• • •
And irresistible as well, for not a moment after she’s insulted him she’s offering Harry Owen her hand, saying, with a charming absence of guile, You must excuse me, Dr. Owen. I’m afraid my father’s new assistant, Johnny Twomey, isn’t working out very well, and I can’t seem to stop myself making jokes at his expense! Please forgive my very poor manners. I am Clotilde Girard.
Then she touches his hand, just barely; or rather, she does not quite touch it, creating, instead, by her motion, a small, warm current of air, suggestive of a touch, at the same time looking steadily into Harry Owen’s eyes with her own, those distinctive eyes, pale greyblue, like a sea held close beneath cloud, as if to say, There, this is just between us!
Oh, she’s expert, my mother; expert at making it all disappear. Harry Owen will forgive her anything in that moment, and he does, taking her hand, squeezing it, pleased to meet her, my dear, despite her quick, small, triumphant smile; or maybe he doesn’t see that, so speedily is it replaced by another of such sincere friendliness and cordiality as to belie the first.
Dr. Owen, I am so glad you have come.
She leans very close when she says it, her breath warm on his cheek, her skin with its sweet, soft scent—she’s fresh pastry, my mother, warm croissants, meringues, Bath buns with orange icing.
• • •
She’s irresistible all right, delectable, oh mother mine. What chance will poor Leo have, scrabbling creature that he is, with all his antennas twirling, confronted with such as she?
None. None whatever.
It attracts sometimes, that which ought repel.
• • •
Awright now, Tildy, leave Dr. Owen alone. Don’t let her tease you, doctor. She gets the best of us all with that stuff. Tildy, you go out for our supper. I gave you the list, remember?
Yes, Papa.
And make sure the bread’s fresh this time—none o’ that moldy stuff.
Naturally, Papa.
And keep away from the cat’s-meat man today, eh, Tildy darling?
He winks, my grandfather, the bear, and presses a coin into her small, gloved hand.
Oh, Papa! says she, with a blush. Now it is you who are teasing!
Ah, Tildy! cries Felix Girard, gripping her arm, holding it tight in a sudden, fond, yet melancholy rapture, what won’t you do, my dear, to add another penny to your pretty little bank, toward that pretty little hat you are wanting? You see, your Papa knows you truly, my dear, no matter what these gentlemen might think! Only the best for our guests this time, petite!
Yes, Papa.
Now off with you.
Yes, Papa.
And obediently she hurries away, the flounce of her skirt sliding demurely down the stairwell behind her, like the lowered tail of an exotic bird.
She is a naughty girl, but good, says Felix Girard, gazing affectionately after. Where does she get it from, gentlemen? From her mother, of course! Don’t they all, eh? You have already met Dell’oro? Gone back down his rabbit hole, has he? We shall ferret him out quick enough. Dell’oro! Show yourself! Now then, gentlemen, this way. We will talk.
• • •
He leads them then down the hallway, past all those mute reproachful gazes, into the room he calls his workroom.
• • •
I like this best of all the rooms in my grandfather’s lair.
Here a dim and sultry daylight filters down through three stingy windows set high up in the wall; some enterprising person has propped these open, just barely, with broken shards of renegade terra-cotta—casualties, no doubt, and rejects, from Petrook’s shop—so that the sashes rest heavily upon the cracked foreheads of the gods. Slack, battered window shades hang limply up there, stirring, with an eerie, papyrus rustle, in the infrequent and unrelieving hot zephyrs of air. Just beneath—arranged along the wall, for maximal light, I suppose, in this vague and dusty place—stand Felix Girard’s worktables, with his many incomplete projects spread out upon them: the rusty, red skull of some small reptile, who knows which, its teeth bared in a perpetual impolite snarl, vertebrae laid out beneath, like broken links in a lady’s necklace; a bowl of water in which brightly colored snails are crawling; nearby, empty shells, recently denuded of their occupants and stuffed with white, antiseptic tufts of cotton wool; beetles and butterflies and dragonflies, recently treated with prussic acid, pinned in their setting boxes, the sparkling wings fastened down with little cardboard braces; and plants as well, not
hing escapes him, laid out flat to dry on sheets of coarse brown paper. In a long, low cage on the floor, pea doves bow and coo; in another, jewel-bright lizards cling to the mesh, lazily expanding and deflating their red and yellow throats, like gentlemen about to utter unwise remarks of which they have suddenly thought better. Orchids growing on clumps of wood hang from pegs in the walls, some displaying dreamlike, colorful blossoms, others the roots alone, tangled and knotted, with spidery, delicate filaments reaching out for props to cling to, finding only each other or themselves, intertwining to form weird webs, miniature dangling forests. Lines have been strung from the walls and run in various directions just above the guests’ heads; from these hang innumerable cones of paper, bobbing gently, with an aura of muted festivity, like small, enigmatic Japanese lanterns. Inside are the skins of birds, hung up to dry, safe beyond the reach of pests. A pronounced and disturbing buzzing, like the buzzing of bees, fills this peculiar, junglelike space; these are my grandfather’s hummingbirds, battering themselves cheerfully against the window shades, hovering in the high, hot corners of the room. Felix Girard has placed a cup of sugar water on the edge of the table for them; every now and then, one darts down, drinks, sits for a moment on the edge of the cup before once again taking flight, with a flash, ruby red, emerald green.
