The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  ‘Yes … naturally, that is where it should be. How could I forget? – but the diary does not tell the whole truth. Lie still and do not hinder me with irrelevancies; I must confess all:

  I went back to Paon’s house the same evening, hungry for the baits he had dangled, the possibility of more money and more gifts of gold from both priests in return for what I was mistress and professor of!

  It was a beautiful evening – the two rivers were like ribbons of gold. I looked at Lyon and the Lyonnais enjoying the warm air and believed myself fortunate. As I crossed the footbridge over the Saône I noticed that the priest who crossed in front of me was talking to himself. I guessed he must be Father Renard and hurried to get as close to him as I dared.

  ‘I am Joseph Antoine Renard, Priest, Magician and Exorcist,’ he said, as the other people on the bridge stared after him. ‘I am potent tonight, filled with the majesty of the new gods I have abused and rejected and of the old gods who call out to me from the earth.’ He looked up at the church on the hill above him and at the huge statue of St Michael which tops it. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘You too are dressed in cloth-of-gold, but all that glisters … Is it fire, Michael? Do you burn in anger or because you know your god is false?’ He laughed. ‘Crush me if you dare!’ he shouted. ‘What are you but a leaden statue. Fly! Take wing!’

  He was a tall, severe-looking man, so I had no difficulty in following him in the crowd. He went into the Old Quarter. The way home took him past the house where the Mourguets made their Guignol puppets and old Guignol himself, the chief puppet, was staring down at him from the sign above the door. ‘Crush me then, cloth man,’ he cried. ‘You’ll find my body is steel!’

  He was either mad or what he said he was. His blaspheming did not upset me. I found it as thrilling as the taste of absinthe. The front door of the house was open and Renard walked straight in. I followed after and surprised him in the hall: my foot caught on a hole in the mat and I stumbled. He swung round and prevented me from falling by grasping me with both his long arms.

  ‘A little coquette, scarcely one-and-a-half metres tall, her hair up to add height, a silly hat pinned to it, a silk gown every bit as good as anything the divine Sarah might wear – and cut with style and dash,’ he said. ‘Who are you, my dear?’

  ‘Father Paon bade me come,’ I said. ‘And I am Lèni, called la Soie, Father – sir.’

  ‘A pretty lady,’ he said, half to himself. ‘And a true daughter of Lyon: are you interested in the history of your city?’ he asked me and bent to kiss my cheeks.

  ‘Yes, sir. I am very interested, especially after seeing the statue in the parlour.’

  ‘The Blessed Virgin?’

  ‘Another lady, sir – ready for her bath perhaps.’

  ‘Ah – she has a name of her own. It is Cyllène.’

  He smiled at me. (I was still in his embrace.)

  ‘Seelen?’ I echoed.

  ‘Indeed. A word from far away; long ago also. The lady has many names and was worshipped once – like Mary. She is far older of course, an antique goddess of Life and Death.’

  ‘I am a good Catholic.’

  ‘I am sure you are; but do you go to Mass?’

  ‘I went to Confession this afternoon. Father Paon absolved me of my sins.’

  ‘Then you are ready to hear Mass! I shall tell you a secret, my dear. We will celebrate Mass here this evening and you may attend if you so wish.’

  ‘I like adventure; I will stay, yes,’ I said. ‘But, surely, Monsieur,’ I looked directly at him. ‘Surely you are far too worldly a man to be a good priest?’

  ‘It will be a special Mass,’ said Renard.

  Father Paon came into the hall at that moment. He did not seem disturbed to find me in the arms of his brother-priest and after patting Renard affectionately on the shoulder, extracted me from his embrace and himself embraced me! Then they both led me into the parlour. I say ‘the parlour’ though it looked very different; in the afternoon it had been a poor, gloomy room but now it was hung with red draperies and the window-blinds were down. A single candle burned in front of the Black Lady – and she had been moved on to a little table covered with a black cloth. A woman knelt there praying. She was quite naked – without a stitch to cover her.

  Paon gripped my arm.

  ‘Our Lady on the altar is the key to Paradise,’ he said, ‘but if you wish to rid yourself of ignorance and understand what that is, you must dress like Olivia there.’

  ‘She is wearing nothing at all!’ I exclaimed.

  Renard began to laugh.

  ‘We have shocked the harlot,’ he said. ‘Come, Lèni, you are always taking off your drawers.’

  ‘Not in church.’

  The kneeling woman turned her head then and gave me such a look of love that I lost my fear and began to undress, dropping my garments where I stood – and Paon and Renard left the room! When I was undressed I only hesitated a moment; then I threw away all the virtue I had left and knelt down beside the other woman and the idol. She looked up again and whispered,

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘And who are you?’ I returned, staring at her. She was very young, much more than I.

  ‘I am Olivia des Mousseux,’ she said haughtily and spoiled her airs and graces by adding, ‘The Fathers’ housekeeper.’

  ‘Such a child as you?’

  ‘Father Paon brought me out of the orphanage to work here.’

  ‘Well, maybe you are better off,’ I said and fell quiet because the two of them had come back into the room – changed out of their black clothes into rich garments like you see in church on high days. Paon had on a golden stole and an embroidered mitre and nothing else and Renard wore a red and gold chasuble and, again, nothing else. He carried a chalice. They stood on either side of the altar and Renard, raising the cup, began to speak. Such mumbo-jumbo as you hear from a beggar in the gutter!

  It was Greek, Paon told me later, and Hebrew and Persian and the chalice too, another antique like the statue, that was from Persia and had belonged to a king. Such a beautiful thing, that cup, enamelled sky-blue and covered in engravings like tiny flames and the strange letters of an alphabet unknown to me.

  I found myself able to understand Renard after a while,

  ‘Come, Cyllène,’ he chanted, ‘Come Asmodeus and Babylon, Urthamma, Moloch Sinistrus and Bel. Come Abrahel! Come Lucifer!’

  He raised the cup in the air, lowered and drank from it. I heard a noise like the rush of wings and felt Paon pushing his body in between mine and Olivia’s. Renard leaned down and offered me the cup to drink. There was blood in it and I drank. Renard, high above me as it seemed, had grown leathery wings and I could feel the feathers which were growing from Paon’s back push against me. He drank next and then Olivia. We were all so young after that, younger than Olivia; like children at play, and with the energy of children except that we had the feelings, the organs and the appetites of grown men and woman. Renard grew a red tail, which pleased me mightily, and we played together all night long in that red-hung room – until the bells of St Michael’s reminded us of the good citizens of Lyon we must be by day.

  My life was yet my own, at that time. Paon’s ascendancy was not complete until the warp and weft of our secret desires were woven together into strong cloth. He knew nothing of what I did when I was away from him; when I carried on my two trades. One night, about a month after the first Black Mass, I brought him back to my rooms and we re-enacted some of that night’s rituals. Also, he took out his pocket-knife and made a small cut on my right breast. He licked the blood from it.

  ‘This is strong and spicy blood, Lèni,’ he said. ‘It is easy to understand how you found your true vocation.’

  Soon, he had my measure and asked me to give up other men and my sewing too. He rented this apartment from my father and furnished it as you see – to keep me in comfort and luxury. He divided himself and his time between his two lives and dressed accordingly in his black or in the latest fashion of the be
au monde. We lived quietly when he was here. We would lie on the couch, as you and I are doing (that is his opium pipe), or we would go out to dine and afterwards dance and drink. In bed he was ingenious and voracious and I worshipped him.

  We liked to drink our coffee together in the morning – just like a real, wedded couple. He would not touch stale bread, not even dipped in the coffee, and I had to go out for it before he was awake. He ate it with slices of liver – raw liver, you understand; I must always have some in the meat-safe. Knives too, a fine selection such as a good cook has – all to be laid out in proper order in the kitchen drawer. ‘In case of need,’ he said. And the best cognac. He would drink half a bottle of that after his breakfast. Then he would take me out walking on the fashionable streets, observe the women promenading there and make his selection. He was most particular.

  ‘No,’ he might say, as a group of girls walked past us. ‘Your smile is not so sweet; your skin is more like sacking than silk; you are no coquette – and you, mademoiselle, though your hair shines and your glance is bold, cannot be compared with Lèni. But you, pretty brunette with the exquisite profile –’

  An incorrigable womanizer, you think? All is not what it seems. Apart from me and the little Olivia, he would have no mistresses. Sometimes he stopped and persuaded a blonde, sometimes a brunette – he did not care as long as they were ‘ladies’, the daughters of the bourgeoisie, for such were certain to be virgins and he wanted their purity to mutilate, not to debauch. He lusted after their blood which, he often said, was sure to be better stuff than the horses’ blood he got for our Masses. It was not long before he made me play the bawd while he waited at home, impatient for what I would bring. Poor fools! They thought I was a go-between, an intermediary for some diplomat or visiting prince and they preened themselves to think they were so distinguished – the insatiable little nags! They expected to be ridden! Barbara, one was called, an Englishwoman, the daughter of a lord; and Berthe – she was a doctor’s daughter. God rest them. We drank their blood and poured offerings of it over the Black Cyllène.

  Soon Paon needed more than knives to enforce his will. He bought a butcher’s cleaver and one of the new guns, a Colt revolver. As for me, I was his sketch-book and model; after a few weeks of sitting to him, my neck and breasts were covered in a fine network of cuts and scabs. Opium is a wonderful sedative! And he was an artist, my Paon. In 1884 – soon after Easter when the park is full of daffodils – that spring, Paon noticed a newcomer at Mass in St. Michael’s, an elegant gentleman, the new Mexican consul. Next time he came there, he brought his daughter and when Paon told me of her beauty I feared he would conquer her in the same way he had me, and then desert me. He took me out to dine at La Mouette and then to the theatre where he pointed out la Mexicaine and praised her dusky skin, her clear eyes, her curls, her nose, her tiny hands and feet. (He had taken his opportunity to study her well from the confessional.) We went on to the celebrated Restaurant Phèdre for a late supper of oysters and champagne – he knew what pleased me. The consul’s party was seated at the next table and Paon made me drop an earring and so we fell into conversation with them. I complimented Madame on her hat and she admired mine.

  She asked me who was my milliner and I told her ‘Lèni la Soie!’

  The girl was wearing Paris fashions: a gown of ruched tussore, ostrich feathers in her hat – a picture. Her stole – white fox – hung over the back of her chair. I thought her good enough to supplant me and I admired Paon’s taste, and his ambition. They were easy prey. I offered to conduct Madame to view the paintings in the Musée des Beaux-Arts and made friends with her daughter. Soon we were meeting to drink coffee and eat pastries and I was trusted to chaperone Paloma, the pretty ingénue! I brought her home with me: she sat over there, on the Empire chair by the chimney, and ate bonbons from a lace-trimmed box. This place was not as it is now with a hundred and more years of grime and wear on it: everything was new, you understand, and the house itself was a fine and elegant building where a master silk-weaver carried on his trade and his daughter lived with her rich lover!

  I introduced Paloma to Paon. Though he had been morose for a week, he was instantly gay and cheerful; he opened a bottle of champagne and poured it into three shining glasses. We lifted our glasses for the toast.

  ‘To you, Paloma, my sweet, my dove,’ he said. ‘To the most beautiful of all!’

  The girl, whose French was indifferent, found no difficulty in understanding him and laughed and smiled at him with the eyes of a sheep. We got her drunk – it only took two glasses; and now, I thought, he will seduce her in our bed, beneath the cupids which have watched our play. Jealous Lèni! He did nothing of the kind, but put his arm round her waist and led her into the kitchen.

  ‘There is more champagne,’ he said.

  I followed them.

  ‘Tie up her hair. Quickly!’ he told me and I pulled a ribbon out of my sleeve and gathered all the black tresses in a great bunch. The girl only laughed and kept on laughing as we fastened her arms to her body with the rope he had used on the others. Then she began to scream. It was a work-day and the looms were busy in the ateliers below. No one could hear. In any case, I muffled her screams with a cushion. She hardly made a noise when he produced the knife and cut her throat.

  ‘Another angel for Paradise,’ he said. ‘Where shall we hide the body?’

  ‘The Rhône?’ I suggested.

  ‘Interment is better. A grave for each limb.’

  We had been able to dispose of the others, some to the water and some to the earth. Usually we had to carry their remains many kilometres out of town in a closed carriage. The head of the doctor’s daughter is buried in the wood behind the village presbytery in Coeurville where Paon had once been priest. I remember the place well, because the locals called it ‘Arcadie’ and it was a pretty little wood with foxgloves growing in it.

  Paon kissed the hands of the dead girl, left and right; right and left. He was like an automaton. He panted as he kissed the white fingers and talked to me,

  ‘She was a Mexican – the daughter of a powerful man – they make magic in Mexico – in Zacatecas – Oaxaca – in Tehuantepec. Her blood – will be – the best. Bring immortality – beauty.’

  He stopped worshipping the girl and told me to get the axe, while he untied her dead body and heaved it on to the table. He made the first cuts, through her clothing to the bone and then, saying ‘You will need the knife as well,’ left me to collect the blood and carve the meat. I had not needed to feel jealousy. Paon was faithful after his fashion.

  I heard him go into the salon and lie down on the bed. A loud gunshot startled me and my knife slipped as I was cutting open the front of the girl’s gown. There were several more shots. But nothing was amiss. Paon had simply fired his revolver into the canopy of the bed as he liked to do when he was tired or full of ennui. Then the telephone rang and I heard him speaking into it,

  ‘Paon here.’

  In the same moment there came a thundering on the apartment door. How could I answer? I jumped up on a chair and looked out of the window. The courtyard below was filled with a surging crowd of people and, on the other side when I ran there, the same. There were riders on horses and our men, the silkworkers, with staves and rifles; and police. I ran shouting into the salon,

  ‘Quickly, quickly. Help me with the girl. There are gendarmes in the street below.’

  Paon dropped the telephone.

  That is all. They took him away but, when the crowd saw me, they surged forward up the stairs and overwhelmed the police. I was hidden amongst them and passed from house to house along the traboules until I was safe. Like me, Renard was never discovered; he drowned himself, jumping from the footbridge where I first saw him, in the winter of 1906. The river was high and he was swept fifty kilometres downstream. As for Olivia, she died of the pox before she was twenty.

  ‘And Paon – he was condemned to death?’ said Guy, twisting his head to look up at Lèni.

  �
��Yes,’ she said. ‘After his trial. What other verdict could there be?’

  He thought he should be shocked into flight from her comfortable lap, or should in some way (but how, without hands?) attack her to punish her in kind for her weak and enthusiastic complicity in Paon’s crimes. He was too warm and relaxed to care. He counted the candles, seven on the mantelpiece and three on the little table, he thought. It was light enough to see how much her long life and the telling of her tale had hurt Lèni.

  ‘Are you sick, my friend? Will you drink?’ she said. ‘Turn yourself a little more: there is a cup of water for your thirst.’

  He turned his head again. It was true, he did feel queasy, like a man all at sea, floating … The cup, which had no handles, was more like a deep, footed bowl. It seemed to rest on nothing but a shaft of candle-light like a shadow or a phantom itself and its dark blue surface was glossy and covered in tongues of flame.

  ‘That is the chalice!’ he said. ‘The cup Renard used at the Black Masses. Let me see it!’

  ‘Will you drink?’

  Lèni held up the cup and he looked into it. He expected blood to make him whole once more, but there was only a little clear water which Lèni tipped into his mouth. She did not put the cup down only held it there, beneath his chin.

  ‘The King’s Cup. It shows What is Gone,’ said Lèni. ‘Look well.’ As in a deep pit, he saw the room he lay in; but the furniture and furnishings were new and dustless; brightly-coloured. His own reflection was superimposed on that of the room. It wavered in the drop of water which remained and he stared at it and mourned his ugliness, the long hair and beard, the frowning brow, the new lines etched –

  Another man was staring up, out of the bottom of the cup, directly at him; very close. He was thirty-five or forty maybe, his features strong and his coarse brown hair rumpled. Guy recognized him.

  ‘Georges!’ he exclaimed, the single word leaping from his lips.

  ‘Paon,’ corrected Lèni. ‘It is Father Paon.’

  ‘No, it is Helen’s lover, Georges Dinard. True, he looks younger but it is the same man.’