THE CASE OF MARCEL
Short story from the series
AT THE CROSSROADS
by Andrzej Galicki
THE CASE OF MARCEL
Andrzej Galicki
© Copyright 2013 Andrzej Galicki
all rights reserved
The Case of Marcel
Marcel lit a candle fixed on the neck of a bottle sitting on the table in front of him. Although he had a brass candlestick engraved with an eagle, an emblem of the Duchy of Warsaw, on his bookshelf, he never used it; it was just a decoration. The bottle, with leaking wax that looked like icicles around the neck reminded him of his youth, particularly his days as a student living in a dormitory, when he would read volumes of classical literature at night without turning on the light so as not to disturb sleeping fellow students.
He liked to read. It was his passion. Actually, he read everything he could get his hands on, but his mind was most absorbed with classic novels, especially by French, Spanish and Italian authors. After reading all that was available at the public library in Warsaw, he plunged into the dark rooms and halls of antique shops where he searched for antique pre-war editions of lesser-known authors – the old, forgotten books with the pages yellowed and the covers damaged, with sometimes jagged edges as a result of the passing of time, and where countless fingers had left their mark. It did not bother him. The aesthetic condition of the book was of little consequence to Marcel. The most important was that the book was complete, from the first page to the last, without a smallest fragment of text missing. The lack of a single page, or even part of it made the publication useless in the eyes of Marcel, because it always seemed to him that exactly there, right in the missing fragment was hidden the essence of that masterpiece, the secret key infused by the author with care, without which getting to the heart of the work is absolutely impossible.
He picked up one of those books, a booklet rather than a real book, in a paperback edition published by one of the now extinct publishing houses specializing in literature "for the plebes". The author's name, Marquis de Saphire, meant nothing to him, probably a pen name for the French aristocrat who wrote for his own amusement and entertainment mostly, and kept his own works a secret from his family and friends. The booklet was titled "La Noirette", a strange name which could be freely translated from French as "Blackie" or "Brunette", though either way, it did not attract the attention of Marcel when he laid eyes on it in one of the private antique shops on Koszykowa street in Warsaw. The main reason for his interest was the picture posted on the front page of this book.
It depicted a young girl with dark hair, her blouse shamelessly open, resting half-swooned in the arms of a man, whose appearance at first sight seemed to Marcel very suspect. He had a goatee and a thin, black mustache, and was dressed in the Spanish fashion with a white ruff around his neck. Mostly, though, it was his eyes that betrayed him – narrow, treacherous and dishonest. If Marcel had ever conjured an image of the devil in his imagination, that man was the exact image.
For a long time, the strange book rested among the others in the library of Marcel, waiting for Marcel to adjudge the proper time to read it. Now, thinking that maybe that time had finally come, maybe, just maybe now was the right time, he flipped the pages in the candlelight. His eyes rested by chance on the backs of his hands; thin, emaciated, covered with the skin as thin as parchment.
They were not the hands of someone who had a long time left to indulge in the pleasures of the world. On the contrary, that pair of hands belonged to someone whose days were numbered and counted back again, just to make sure there was no mistake.
Marcel was dying. He knew it well. He could feel it through the skin of his pale, gaunt cheeks and with eyes that grew increasingly watery by the day, he saw his impending end. Let Teresa say and repeat again and again whatever she wanted to comfort him, and let Dr. Sawicki do as much research as he wanted, but he, Marcel, knew very well that his time was coming and that the last blood test would only confirm that unwavering certainty.
Marcel was dying, but he did not want to die like any ordinary mortal, as he did not consider himself to be an average man. He did not want to die in a hospital, surrounded by moans and groans of other dying men. He wanted to go in a different way, lofty and dignified, and it was with that goal, the quest for such an epilogue, in mind, that he spent the last few days of his existence.
He began to read even more, and in a very special manner. Only some extremely passionate bookworms knew such an art of reading, wherein one does not simply move through the text with his eyes in a hurry, trying to get as soon as possible to the end of the work. That kind of casual reading was not real, not profound at all, because the reader simply looks at the story, seldom discovering the true secret of the book, the very message of the author.
Marcel was one such a bookworm, one such an expert on the art of reading. When reading a book, he always dug into the content of the work without rest. He read carefully, word by word, isolated from the world around him, and taken completely into the story, which until the completion of it, was the only and real home for his body and his soul. He had mastered this art so well that the mere contents of the book were not so important for him; he could equally be in the royal court as among beggars; he could also become a hungry wolf rushing after deer fleeing in terror, or the same deer when it was the main character of the book. This kind of reading consumed his life, his boring everyday life full of stupid repetitive activities like eating, drinking, washing dishes or other unnecessary nonsense. After all, is it not more fascinating to break away from the mundane and become a pirate on the high seas somewhere in the Caribbean? Or an eagle soaring high over the clouds?
Most of us had a chance to master this art of reading once upon a time, when as boys we read in the bed and with a flashlight under the covers, the adventures of d'Artagnan, or as girls, the musings of Anne of Green Gables while taking a break from chores, though most of us lost that chance as we grew up. Marcel did not lose it. On the contrary, with the every book he read, the deeper his awareness became of this ability, until he came to perfected it to an enviable degree.
The content of “ La Noirette”, as many other pre-war books, did not show too much originality. Rather, it was the typical literature for annoyed maids and housewives – a handsome nobleman from somewhere in Spain plays a guest in the palace of a French aristocrat and seduces one of the maids, which all together was not such an outstanding achievement, as most maids willingly allowed themselves to be seduced, and their pride among the others was the greater if the seducer came from a better family, and the more generous was the gift she received from him in return. The unique thing was that in the particular story he was reading, the gentleman was gone from the house the next day, leaving without so much as a word of goodbye, and Noirette disappeared just as suddenly as he did, as if she had vanished into thin air, both dispelled by the wind into the morning fog, after which no one heard of either of them for a long time. It was not a big problem for the palace, as serving there was an honor and work was not hard – a dream come true for local girls – and so the missing girl was replaced without a problem. What started a sensation, however, after some time, was that one of the well-born dandies boasted to his colleagues that he had just met Noirette and the night he had spent with her was entrancing, and she was even more beautiful than he imagined, and the art of love she performed completely outstanding. This gentleman named Pierre, from well known family, had a popular opinion of a scamp, so the others did not attach too much importance to his bragging, didn’t believe him even, but then, other men soon started boasting in a similar fashion, one after anot
her, and so the people started to smell a scandal. It was an immoral case, a rapidly growing tale of a beautiful girl whom not one of the local nobles could resist.
This kind of story did not undermine the reputation of the village; on the contrary, both residents and visitors loved nothing more than juicy gossip. It only created a fertile ground for whispers and rumors, and speculations about Noirette only grew. One theory was that she hid somewhere in the palace, in a secret chamber, showing herself only to the lonely bachelors in the evening, as only the single gentlemen came across her during their evening walks on foot or on horseback. At the same time, another claimed that Noirette’s shelter was in the neighboring county, where she leads a virtuous life, and comes to the palace in her carriage on some evenings only, just to meet the desires of her flesh. A great scandal ensued, however, when Pierre was found dead in his own bedroom. He was strangled with a use of velvet ribbon during his sleep and it didn’t seem likely that he shared a bed with anyone that night. The black ribbon was tied tightly around his neck and his purple face had become livid and swollen, so that no one had the slightest doubt about the way in which the young man has finished his life.
In succession after him, in a very similar way, all those young men who were fortunate enough to see the beautiful Noirette and be endowed with her uncommon charms died one after the other so that dark fame began to cover the area, and with every new case, it became increasingly darker.
The case of Marcel - Mystery short story Page 1
