Breath and Bones

by Susann Cokal

  In the fading light, it was hard to make out anything but the vague dark shape of a rider and horse fused together, like the mythological men-horses Albert had occasionally sketched. They stopped in front of her without any sound beyond the hoofsteps and a final chuff of the horse’s breath.

  Famke was too tired to be anything but blunt. “I am here about your painting,” she announced without preamble. “The one you bought for your hospital. I am the model.”

  The man was silent a long time, until Famke became almost afraid. The horse danced nervously beneath him, but she held her ground.

  “You have made a mistake,” he said at last.

  “This is no mistake.” She drew herself up as tall as she could, despite the stiffness in her limbs. “I am the model for Nimue—for Vivien—and I am looking for the painter. He is my brother.” She felt the sun’s last warmth on her face, and she pulled off Mag’s hat and let the red light blaze in her hair. She held her shoulders back and her chin up, just like Nimue’s, but nevertheless she heard the man say,

  “My picture does not look like you.”

  The blood drained from Famke’s head. Her ears buzzed, and she knew she might faint. In desperation, she admitted, “My—looks may have somewhat changed in the last year.”

  The black figure glanced up toward his house, the glass panes of which were making it into a giant lamp, magnifying the light inside and casting a net of illumination over the trees and grass that surrounded it. She saw the outline of a long, straight nose and rather full lips.

  When he spoke he seemed to voice the words that came first to his mind. “The figure in the painting has yellow hair and a Grecian nose. She is nothing like you. And I don’t know where your brother is, either,” he added as an afterthought.

  Famke coughed a little but didn’t need a handkerchief. Unconsciously, her hand groped for the man’s stirrup. “May I see it?” she asked. “I have come so far . . .”

  “But it is not a remarkable picture,” he said.

  Famke’s hand dropped. This was almost the worst thing he could have told her.

  He explained, “An agent bought it for me at auction, and I don’t much like it. It shows no sense for nuance.”

  Famke thought of the hours in the Nyhavn studio, how they had stretched into weeks and months as Albert painted each little square with his hair-thin brush. She said, miserably and by reflex, “If you want the picture changed, I can do it. For a reasonable fee.”

  “Still,” the dark man concluded, as if he had not heard her, “I suppose there is no harm in letting you look.” With a sudden gesture of gallantry, he climbed down from the horse and offered his arm to Famke.

  As Famke ascended the hill for the second time that day, she was aware that her host was adjusting his gait to hers, that he walked slowly and restrained the impatient horse in order to accommodate her. She was grateful, however, that he did not expect her to make conversation; she didn’t have the strength to offer an excuse for her lethargy, to mention the altitude or her long journey and guide his attention away from that troublesome cough that punctuated every third step or so.

  For his part, Edouard Versailles was glad that the woman did not require him to speak, either. He was not accustomed to genteel female company, or indeed to company of any sort; it made him nervous, and he hoped that the stranger could not tell that his arm trembled as it supported her, that his feet stumbled even as he guided her steps. He was wretchedly aware that what he’d said to her had sounded rude, and yet he could not think how he might have expressed himself any better.

  It had been a long day in “Hygiene”—so called locally because the inhabitants had butchered the name Hygeia Springs much as they had done his own. This trip down the mountain had been a necessary exception to Edouard’s usual rules of solitude and silence, and it had exhausted him. In fact, he had begun to wonder if perhaps he had been rash in founding this hospital—but then again, to reserve the secrets of his cure to himself would have been avaricious. Thus he had resolved to keep private only the house and the grounds with their menagerie, and he had made these bounds clear to his servants, who had always been so obedient in the past.

  He would, of course, ask them how this red-haired wraith had managed to enter his sanctuary; and yet he could not even find the words to pose her the same question, let alone to send her away. He could scarcely admit to himself that he was eager to let her inside, to see how she looked in the light, to put a visual diagnosis to her pronounced chest-rattle.

  This desire to look at another person was unusual; Edouard Versailles rarely even saw his servants, the men he’d saved from slavery on the railroads, the girls he’d rescued from the dreadful cribs of prostitution in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He valued them all precisely for their ability to make themselves invisible. So when he tied the horse to its hitching post, he knew a ghostly groom would lead it to the stable; and as he came up the steps with this mysterious woman, the front door swung open silently. He stepped into an empty foyer, just as he wished. The butler, Wong, was standing behind the door, ready to close it and collect his hat and coat from the hall table; but Edouard did not think of Wong any more than he thought of the palm trees and passion vines, the faded sofas and cracked sideboards, or even the maids Precious Flower, Ancient Jade, and Life’s Importance, as he followed the trail of gas globes they’d lit in the hallway and entered the one room large enough for the painting he was so reluctantly housing. His office, the most private room of all, where the linen-swathed canvas was propped against two palms so tall that the fronds brushed the filigree iron ceiling.

  The strange woman followed him in. She looked even thinner in the light; but that light also emphasized her ethereal quality. Her skin was bone white, her cheeks blood red, her hair a startling dark orange. As she advanced through the potted palms and jasmine vines, she seemed to shimmer, and her image was reflected in the night-darkened walls all around. One or two spectral visitors followed where the fleshly one went.

  Tongue-tied, Edouard followed her over to the swathed painting. She put one spidery hand on the drape and plucked feebly; so, feeling he could do nothing else, Edouard pulled the thing free. He remembered, then, the social delicacies of introductions and offers to take a visitor’s coat and give her a seat, but it felt too late for them.

  Famke was thinking neither of him nor of etiquette, and if he had taken her coat she would have protested, for she was still grave-cold. She stared at the revealed picture and saw that he was right: This painting was not of her.

  The composition bore some similarity to The Revenge of Nimue; there was a tall woman with her arms splayed, gesturing at a vast cave of reddened ice in which the traces of frozen flowers could be seen. But the face, the form, the character of the model were unfamiliar, and there was no evidence of Famke anywhere. As she searched, she realized this was in fact the picture she’d seen reproduced in Frank Leslie’s. The whole picture began to swim. She blinked, many times and rapidly, but she could not clear her vision. She put a hand to the glass to steady herself and asked, “Is there a castle made of the letters A and C in the lower right corner?” Edouard Versailles confirmed that there was.

  That at least was something.

  “The goddess Hygeia,” Versailles explained, trying to pretend he could not see her crying. “Thawing the winter of ill health, freeing the afflicted from their suffering. It is to hang in the entry of the hospital I am building in the village.” He paused to chide himself mentally: Of course she knew about the hospital already; that was why she’d come here. His hand crept to his woven watch fob and worried away at it. “I have a programme in mind for a general cure of the diseases that afflict the lungs. I cured myself,” he ended, weak where he had intended to sound forceful.

  Famke burst into paroxysms of coughing and tears at the same time. It seemed that even here, even now, when she most wanted the solace of her own thoughts, she was not to be spared some man’s passionate description of his vocation.

>   “A number of sufferers have already arrived, even before the hospital can be finished, to take the cure in the village. I have great hopes—you see, the cure is based on the principles of water and elec—”

  “Where is Albert?” Famke wailed, cutting Edouard short.

  As if struck by a sudden inspiration, he pulled a black-bordered cloth from his vest and pressed it into her hand. Through the veil of her tears, she saw then that he was dressed entirely in black, as if mourning, though his skin was like the belly of a creature that never saw sunlight. So he, too, had lost someone.

  “If I were you,” he said, not unkindly but most uncomfortably, “I would go to San Francisco. Every artist in the West ends there eventually. Your brother is probably there now, making more paintings such as this one.”

  Famke blew her nose, which started her coughing again more violently.

  Edouard hesitated, watching her. Now that he’d broken his silence, he could not prevent himself from speaking further: “But you should really think of staying on here, in Hygeia Springs. You clearly suffer from phthisis yourself. The Institute is not open officially yet, but—”

  “I have no money,” Famke said, stuffing the sodden handkerchief into her tasseled purse without asking him to explain that strange word. “And no time. I must find Albert—everything will be right when I find him.”

  “You cannot find him if you are dead,” Edouard pointed out.

  Dead. The word shot through Famke’s brain and seemed to explode there. For a minute she couldn’t think, could barely keep balanced on legs that suddenly seemed made of water.

  Edouard, seeing this, poised to catch her. His arms anticipated that frail weight . . . But what would he do with her once he had her? He began looking around for a sofa he knew was not there.

  “You are wrong about me,” Famke said when she could speak again. “I am perfectly well.” He thought she appeared to derive strength from the words themselves; perhaps that was how she had managed to come so far.

  Edouard’s arms dropped. “I did not mean—”

  “You said what you meant. And I shall go to San Francisco, as you suggest.”

  Edouard scarcely heard her. His eye had been caught by the reflection in the glass wall: There he saw his own white face and shirt collar, floating above the black suit; and behind him a blur of purple and red and white that was this woman, all gleaming in the wet glow of two blue eyes. He imagined those eyes closed and himself bent over her, administering his cure, watching the healthy color flow back into the waxen skin . . .

  Famke thought her answer had struck him speechless: All to the good. While her host’s head was turned, she staggered out into the hall and followed the gaslit path to the door and the crisp, clear air outside. By holding her breath, she even managed not to cough until she’d put the walls of glass and iron behind her.

  Chapter 37

  Santa Fé [ . . . ] is one of the most comfortable residence cities in the world, as witness its growing popularity both as a summer residence for people from the South, and as a winter residence for people from the North, and as an all-the-year-round residence and sanitarium for people variously in search of health, comfort, pleasure and business.

  STANLEY WOOD,

  OVER THE RANGE TO THE GOLDEN GATE

  Harry Noble cursed himself for a slack-twisted fool. After waiting in the station until the 8:12 to Phoenix was long gone, followed by the 9:13 to Denver and the 10:46 to Las Cruces, he finally presented himself at Opal Cinque’s salon, only to hear from Cracklin’ Mag that the patient had disappeared early the night before. Then he knew exactly what Famke had done and where she’d gone, and he knew he should have thought better than to give her a purseful of money and leave her alone to spend it. He had no one to blame but himself; it was hardly worthwhile even to be angry with Famke.

  The ingrained habit of the longtime correspondent made him ask, almost without thinking, “What was she wearing when she left?”

  Perched on a slippery chair in Opal Cinque’s parlor, where Spanish workers were adjusting the electric lights, Mag dabbed at swollen eyes. “My new silk dress, the one I was saving to visit my parents in. And my winter coat, my dark parasol—though what she’ll do with that in December, I don’t know—my tortoiseshell combs, a silk purse one of the girls netted me—”

  “And you thought she was a sister to you,” Mrs. Cinque said in a scolding tone, from her pink plush throne. Already two bulbs had broken, and the Spanish workers had sworn colorfully, but she was as calm as a queen overseeing a ball. “More than a sister and less than a friend, I’d say.”

  Even as sulky Mag spoke, Harry had transcribed her description into newspaper prose: The fair but feverish damsel absconded in a frock of lustrous silk, a Venetian lace parasol shading her visage from importunous stares. . . “What color was the frock?” he asked now.

  The question produced another angry swab at the eyes. “Purple. The loveliest plum color you ever saw—not puce—just what a lady would wear. All Chinese silk. There was ruffles round the hem and the hands, and the sleeves were lined with lace.”

  Her raiment was the hue of amethyst, and its flounces fluttered in the breeze like so many moths . . . no, like butterfl—like so many. . . “It sounds very pretty.”

  “It was brilliant!” Mag wailed, falling prey to another spate of tears.

  “What are you going to do, Mr. Noble?” Opal Cinque asked practically.

  Noble pulled himself out of his picturesque thoughts and considered the facts. Ursula Summerfield, fugitive and thief. The sturdy little prostitute probably was lying about some of it, but he did not want the bother of an argument. “There is not much for me to do,” he said. “I am a mere acquaintance of Miss Summerfield; I had heard she was to be in town and, concerned about the state of health I knew to be hers, I went searching for her. She rejected my offers of help, and the results are as you see.” The last thing he wanted was to be held responsible for that dress, which sounded expensive—not to mention the other feminine accoutrements, which he did not pretend to understand.

  “She left a twenty-piece on the bureau,” Mag reported, with a swelling of rage. “She didn’t have that kind of money before you came.”

  Noble spread his hands as wide as they would go. “My dear young lady, I myself have been robbed. It seems Miss Summerfield was not what I believed and hoped her to be, and now we have both suffered by it. We must move on to the rest of our lives.”

  “Are you moving on, then, Mr. Noble?” Opal asked impassively, as a stout workman positioned his ladder directly behind her. “To chase the Dynamite Gang?”

  Without knowing it, Harry sighed. Pursuing Famke had won him no rewards, and he was suddenly as disgusted with her, for being so elusive and unforthcoming, as he was with himself for chasing her. Damn her for leading him so far and telling him nothing. He felt tired, and the luxury that Famke had enjoyed in a Chinese cook’s bed, with the ministrations of a houseful of tender doves, appealed to him mightily. He knew they were not for him, but he saw no harm in having a rest. He made a decision on the spot.

  “No, I shall stay in Santa Fé for some weeks,” he said, with a tug of the side-whiskers. He felt a tingle in his fingers, as if he were about to start writing. “I have lately been much on the road, and I need some tranquility in which to work. I have a new kind of project in mind,” he added with a dawning sense that such a project had sprung full-fledged in his mind, “something that will require a deal of concentration to produce. Your capital city suits me as well as anyplace.”

  “I hope we shall see something of you, then,” said Opal, with the same impersonal hospitality she offered all her guests.

  Harry opened his lips to reply, but Mag burst into another storm of weeping, and instead he produced a bit of hard bright candy from his pocket and handed it to her. He gave Opal the cheroot from his vest just as the third light bulb shattered.

  “Corruption!” Opal shrieked at last, rounding on the workman. Her chignon
glittered with slivers of broken glass. “Are you trying to kill us all?”

  Mag popped the candy into her mouth and smiled at Harry, dewy but radiant, as if all were peaceful around them.

  Chapter 38

  We all discovered that it took a great deal of air to do a little breathing with.

  BENJ. F. TAYLOR,

  BETWEEN THE GATES

  There was an icy fog all around, uniform and black and heavy. It coiled around the body and chilled the bones; it sat on the chest like a panther and sucked out the breath.

  But it was not altogether a bad fog, for out of it there emerged a woman of astonishing beauty. She had hair the color of sunrise and eyes like a bright winter afternoon, and her skin seemed made of white cloud—until she touched the dreamer with hands that felt like ice itself. It was then that one knew this was a woman of ice, who had created that black fog. It seeped from her nostrils as she breathed; it plumed from the cauldron she was stirring, stirring, stirring.

  And then she thrust her hands into the cauldron and brought them out scalded a leathery pink. Burning hot, she laid those hands about the helpless dreamer’s body, on neck and wrists and breasts. She did this for hours, every day. Sometimes she treated the dreamer savagely, breaking bones so they’d fit in a narrow black box. Once the body was inside, she sealed the box with a plate of thin ice, under which one watched oneself slowly freezing white, only to be resurrected with another brush of those scorching hands.

  But the strange woman could be gentle as well. She might squeeze a tube of liniment until a fat blue or green snake slithered out onto the dreamer’s breasts and began tickling its way down her stomach to the notch of her legs, painting her like a meadow. Or she might bend over until one could smell her soapy breath and feel it, sometimes warm, sometimes cold, upon one’s lips. Her icy dark eyes stared until one could see nothing else; and then the eyes did not seem so icy anymore. At those moments the dreamer knew everything was going to turn out well, because she saw herself reflected in those eyes and knew that she looked just like the ice woman; and that woman was lovely. She knew also that her strange nurse was going to kiss her . . . But at that moment, invariably, the woman vanished.