by M. J. Rose
Of course her maid would have come to visit—she was devoted to my grandmother.
“I miss you less there. I even miss Papa less when I am there.” All that was true. It was also true that I felt more welcomed there than anywhere I’d ever lived.
“But you can’t live in that house. You’re in danger there.”
“No, no, I’m not. There’s nothing wrong with your beautiful house. The pipes and the plumbing are all fine.”
She shook her head impatiently. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Don’t try to fool me. Something has changed, hasn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know exactly. But I can see it in your eyes. Something terrible has transpired since the last time you were here. What is it, Sandrine, what is it?” She had become highly agitated.
What to tell her? Some version of the truth? “I was at la Tour Eiffel yesterday and saw an accident.”
“You saw the opera singer fall?”
I nodded.
“I know her fiancé,” my grandmother said. “He has been doing work for me, and when I read about the accident in the newspaper, I was so upset for him. It’s very tragic. They had a photograph of her . . . so young and lovely. And you were there? It must have been horrible. But what were you doing there?”
“I hadn’t been to see the tower. All this time in Paris and I hadn’t yet gone up.” Too late, I remembered that was the wrong lie.
“No, not so,” Grand-mère said. “We visited the tower your first week. We had a lovely luncheon there. Surely you have not forgotten that. Why are you lying to me about this, too?”
I didn’t know what else to say. “Yes, you’re right, we did.”
“So then why were you there?” She was examining my face and thinking out loud. “The article said she was there with a German businessman who is building a department store in the 5th and her fiancé and . . .” She put it all together and let out a small scream. “Oh no! It was La Lune. She caused the accident? This is how it begins.”
Fall, fire. Fall, fire. I could not hear what my grandmother was saying anymore. I was seeing my burnt gloves, the blackened pearls. Hearing Charlotte’s laugh as she sailed over the balcony railing. I put my head in my hands. Dug my fingers into my forehead. Wanted to feel pain. Searing stings. Anything to stop thinking what I was thinking. Accepting this horrible reality. Fire, fall.
I heard a noise. Glass breaking. My grandmother was reaching across the table. She’d knocked over one china cup, now was knocking over the teapot, which spilled onto the cloth and her dress, grabbed my hands and pulled them to her. She was holding them so tightly I worried she might break my bones, and then how would I paint?
“This is what she does. She wants her passions fulfilled, Sandrine. At any price. She craves it. And she uses us to do it.”
“Tell me,” I whispered, needing to hear the story. I had seen a woman die. I had felt the push at my back, and it hadn’t been the wind.
My grandmother leaned forward conspiratorially, as if she were afraid for anyone but me to hear. “She incubates in a host in order to relive her past. That is what my mother told me. What I told your father. She incubates. Always trying to re-create her time in Paris when she was painting, when she was with Cherubino, being in love and being loved back, before her jealousy cost her lover his life. None of the women she’s infested have been strong enough to withstand La Lune’s spirit and stay sane or talented enough to become the artist she was. Marguerite, Camille, Eugenie, Clothilde, Simone . . .”
My grandmother was naming all the women in the portraits on the stairs.
“Marguerite claimed that within days of becoming betrothed to her lover, she began to see La Lune when she looked in the mirror. A month later, she threw herself off of the Pont Neuf in the dead of winter and froze to death in the swirling, black waters.
“Under La Lune’s influence, Simone became so passionate, so hungry for her lover, that she drove him away. Her beau was so frightened by her appetite that he left her the night before they were to announce their betrothal. She painted over a hundred portraits of him—all terrible—and, when she completed the last, took poison and died.”
And then my grandmother’s voice changed and became a hoarse whisper with a heavier accent. Completely and totally unrecognizable.
“Don’t be afraid, Sandrine. I’ve learned from my mistakes. From each woman I learned a little bit more. I know better how to control my appetites. I won’t force all my desperation onto you. I won’t overwhelm you with my appetites. I will just show you the life that you can have and you will want it enough . . . want it so much . . . that you will invite me to stay. And then we will both have what we want. What we need.”
“Grand-mère? Grand-mère?”
She didn’t say anything more, just sat frozen like one of Rodin’s marbles, sightless eyes staring straight ahead, not speaking, not acknowledging that she could even hear me.
“Grand-mère? Grand-mère?”
Finally she blinked, and then her eyes widened in horror. She knew, as did I, what had happened.
My grandmother rose, came around the table to me. Reaching out, she grabbed the neck of my dress and jerked it open. Buttons flew. Fabric ripped. I pushed her hand away. She stumbled and fell against the bed.
My grandmother looked so helpless then, sprawled half on and half off, clutching at the comforter for balance. She was breathing heavily, sweat on her forehead, her eyes glazed.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“She got inside me. She made me talk to you for her.” She lunged at me again. “You have to take her necklace off,” she yelled as she pulled at the rubies around my neck. “Off . . . off . . .”
Alerted by the noise, the nurse ran into the room. “Madame Verlaine, please, please. It’s not good for you to become overexcited.”
The nurse tried to disengage my grandmother from me, but she resisted.
“Let go of your granddaughter, Madame, or you will not be able to see her again.”
My grandmother pushed her off. The nurse fell. Grabbing hold of me, my grandmother gripped my arms. Her fingers dug, like talons, into my skin. Her hair had come undone, and tears had melted her mascara. The charming coquette had disappeared. My grandmother was gone, and once again I was facing a madwoman I did not know.
The nurse, who’d gone out to get help, returned now with two orderlies who rushed in and dragged my grandmother off me, but not before she’d ripped the sleeve of my gown and scratched the skin beneath the fabric.
I backed up, away from her, and stood against the wall, watching the scene.
“She’s a succubus . . . She sucks us dry like a whore sucking a cock . . . like a bitch in heat . . .”
While my grandmother continued ranting, the two orderlies held her down and the nurse administered the sedative. That done, the male helpers tied my grandmother to her bed, first her wrists and then her ankles.
My grandmother, who wore the most expensive silks and satins, who slept on the finest Egyptian cotton, was bound by coarse hemp, fabric too rough for her skin.
And all I could do was watch in terror.
“If you keep this up, Madame, the doctor isn’t going to let you go home. And you want to go home, don’t you?” the nurse said soothingly, trying to calm my grandmother.
“La Lune needs a host, Sandrine. You think I’m mad, but I’m not. I’m as sane as anyone around me. You need to believe me. Go home. Look at the portraits . . .” She was slowing down. The sedative was taking effect. “They are all wearing the rubies . . . Look at the women . . .” She was falling asleep as she spoke. Now her voice was just a whisper, and I had to move forward to hear what she was saying.
“Look at the women . . . in their eyes . . . the same . . .”
And then she was asleep.
At rest
, she looked once again like my grandmother. I reached out and touched her cheek, wanting so much to relieve her suffering.
The nurse put her arm around me. “I know it’s very hard to see her like this, but it’s just a little setback. She didn’t have an incident all week. She’s been just wonderful.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything. Would it do any good to tell the nurse that it was me? That my grandmother couldn’t be around me for any length of time without becoming deranged and spouting lunatic theories that were all ridiculous?
My fingers moved up to my neck, and I touched the rubies. I’d been careful to wear a dress that would cover the carved stones lest she see them and try to take them off me again. I wouldn’t allow that to happen. No one would ever remove them from my throat but me. They’d been hidden in the house for me to find, and I had. Good things had happened since I’d put them on. Hadn’t Julien become my lover since I’d found them? Hadn’t I begun painting? Wasn’t I becoming exactly who I was meant to be?
Chapter 29
I returned to Maison de la Lune with a purpose. I told Alice that no, I didn’t want coffee or chocolat chaud, and yes, I’d call her later if I changed my mind.
“Do you want the telegram that arrived?” she asked, holding out a silver tray with a single slim envelope in its center.
I took it with trepidation. Mr. Lissauer’s communiqués never contained good news.
The lawyer wrote that the longer the search to find me continued, the more Benjamin became convinced I was in hiding because I had information that could destroy him. In addition, rumors were now circulating in the business community that my husband had become so obsessed with the fruitless efforts, he was becoming unhinged.
Benjamin believing I was dangerous to him was the worst possible news I could have received. I ripped the offending correspondence in half and then in quarters, and finally ripped each of those sections to shreds. When I couldn’t rip them into any smaller pieces, I left the mound of paper on the silver tray.
I was halfway up the stairs when I realized I’d come home with a purpose and that I could not allow Benjamin to deter me. That would be giving him power and I was determined never to do that again.
Starting from the bottom of the staircase once more, I walked up slowly, taking the time to examine each of the portraits. A deep-red-and-midnight-blue Persian runner covered the center of the steps. If I kept to the rug, I’d be too far from the paintings to examine them carefully, so I walked on the marble, aware of every footfall ringing out on the stone, like solemn chimes marking time.
I’d been painting at the École for more than two months and knew so much more than I had when I first arrived in Paris, and yet for all this time I’d paid almost no attention to these remarkable paintings that were right here in my own home. They were masterful and evocative, but familiarity, or something more dangerous, had prevented me from really studying them as I did now.
There were six life-size portraits climbing up the stairs, each of a woman sitting in the same room, a room in this very house. My grandmother called the small square room that protruded out into the courtyard the jewel chapel because three of its walls were stained glass. All day long sunlight streamed in and illuminated the glass masterpieces. While it did have the feel of a chapel, there was no religious iconography in the window’s illustrations—rather, all the symbolism celebrated the secret and the sensual. If it was a temple, it was a temple to the senses.
The windows were bordered with mother-of-pearl frames painted with runes, numbers, mystical symbols, and signs that I’d recognized in Dujols’s store. Each of the three distinct panels illustrated a different scene. On the left a sun set over a stone circle, the sky suffused with the violets of twilight. In the middle, a midnight-blue night sky shone with stars, the full moon magical and heavy, glowing silver-white. On the far right panel, the sun rose over an idyllic lake, a rustic waterfall in the distance. The pastel rose and peach colors of early morning reflected on the water.
A chandelier of amethyst and ruby glass teardrops hung down over an altar in the center of the room. Instead of a religious icon in its center, there was a row of bronze sculptures of lithe, naked women in suggestive poses. Beside them, silver censers used to burn incense.
There was a divan covered with a chinchilla fur against the far wall. Next to it an Indian hookah sat on the floor, exotic and strange. Deep plush chairs upholstered in violet mohair were scattered on a thick carpet of black and purple flowers on green verdant stems heavy with leaves.
Each portrait had been painted in that room, the light streaming in from the windows creating an aura of incandescent color behind the women. Mysterious studies, all of them were truly masterpieces. And puzzles.
Puzzles that I now knew also contained clues.
After examining all of them for their similarities, I began to study each one for its differences. Every painting had a painted trompe l’oeil scroll on the lower arm of the frame. Only one did not have an end date next to her name.
Lunette
1580
Eugenie
1664–1694
Marguerite
1705–1728
Simone
1734–1777
Camille
1782–1814
Clothilde
1800–1832
It appeared the hand that had painted the names and dates was the same.
When I’d stayed here the summer I was fifteen, I’d asked my grandmother about these women who didn’t have last names and stared out at me as if trying to tell me a secret.
Grand-mère had told me they were all my ancestors, women who had lived in this house during the last three centuries.
And there was a family resemblance. They all had fiery red in their hair—some extreme like my grandmother’s, others subtle like mine. They all had almond-shaped topaz eyes, too, some with more golden-orange flecks than others. Haunting eyes, I thought as I considered them. They all had hands like mine with very long fingers and tapering nails. Piano fingers, my father used to call them.
But there were other things to notice now that I was really scrutinizing them. Odd things.
Since they each stood at a different angle in the little temple, the focus was on different symbols in the stained glass behind them. I wondered if the symbols appeared in some kind of specific order? Was there a message here? The choice of where to place the woman couldn’t have been an accident. I’d need to get a piece of paper and make some notes.
Each woman was wearing the same beautiful burnt-orange silk robe, embroidered with russet and cream flowers and green dragons. The dark coral was the color of embers burning in a grate. Of fall leaves when they are at their most colorful. A sensual, suggestive color—too strong and too powerful for it to be anything but a promise. Each woman held a rose, not in full bloom but just a day past, when its lush scent was at its most provocative. Beautiful, but too heavy. When the scent wasn’t any longer a perfume but a drug.
I could smell it so strongly that I looked around for a vase of the flowers, but there was none there. When I turned back to the portraits, I noticed something I’d certainly been aware of but had never thought much about. None of the women’s full, almost pouting lips were finished. The color wasn’t quite filled in, and the shading hadn’t been completed. Unlike the gowns, the roses, the stained glass, the hair, the fingers, and the evocative eyes . . . the mouths were still in progress. I’d told Julien I used to think they’d been kissed too many times.
Now, it seemed to me that the artist had somehow, magically, let the viewer know that each woman had a story to tell, but the time had not yet come for her to tell it.
I studied the color of their lips. I could mix that specific red on my palette. Use a tiny bit of cobalt with cadmium to create that color . . . t
he color of blood. The same red in the stained glass behind each women and in the stones of the ruby necklace that each wore. The identical necklace that hung around my neck.
I heard my father’s voice telling me about the ring he had given my husband to use as my engagement ring.
“Inside of every ruby is a drop of blood, suspended, petrified, and if we could but learn how to release it, it would lead us to the secret of immortality,” my father had said.
I walked back down the stairs, found my sketchbook in my reticule, returned to the portraits, and copied down the strange letters and symbols. It was time to go back to the Librairie du Merveilleux and ask Dujols for another favor.
Chapter 30
I walked the short distance to rue de Rennes and, as I approached number 76, felt my stomach begin to flutter. Every time I’d gone to the mysterious shop, I’d grown apprehensive. But fear wouldn’t help me work through my puzzle. I pulled open the door. As I touched the twisting vine handle, I thought of Julien. The burial service would be over by now. Julien and Charlotte’s father would have returned to their apartment house. Was Julien all right? How badly was he suffering? Was he taking care of himself?
It was wrong of me, but even as I worried about him, I was jealous, jealous that even dead Charlotte could keep him away from me.
The store, which was often crowded with men and women searching for information about the psychic and spiritual worlds, was empty, and that pleased me. I preferred privacy for the questions I’d brought. Monsieur Dujols was inside, seated at a round table, marking up what appeared to be a manuscript.
“Monsieur Dujols,” I said, “I’m hope you’re not busy, but—”
“Of course not, Mademoiselle Verlaine,” he interrupted as he capped his bottle of ink and rose to greet me. “I was so upset about how the séance ended and hoped you would return. The art of influencing events and using hidden forces is a temperamental one. I asked Julien if he would bring you back, and he said he would, but . . .” He shrugged and then gestured for me to have a seat in one of the alcoves. He sat down also.
