On the Verge

by Garen Glazier

  Beldame was seated on one side of the low couch, looking at the blaze contemplatively. She turned her head slowly when Freya walked in, greeting her with a smile, her apple cheeks rosy from the heat. She gestured for Freya to have a seat, and she complied, perching tentatively on the opposite end of the formal settee.

  “Welcome, Freya,” Beldame said. “I’ve been most anxious to meet you. I’ve heard from our friend Ophidia that you are quite a promising recruit.”

  “Thank you,” Freya said. “I’m very flattered that you would even consider me for a position on your team.”

  “It has very little to do with flattery, my dear, and everything to do with collecting,” Beldame said through a smile.

  “I understand you need me to find some special colors you’d like to present at the opening night gala for the upcoming Frye exhibition.”

  “Indeed,” Beldame said. “That is the job I will be asking you to do. It’s simple enough, is it not? I have a list here of the colors I need,” she said, retrieving a business card from the side table and handing it to Freya.

  Freya looked at the front of the little card. Shiny black lettering on a velvety background of dark burgundy proclaimed Imogen Beldame the Proprietress of Constellation Art and Antiques. She flipped the card over where a list containing three names was neatly hand-printed over an embossed constellation of four stars, their sidereal skeleton fleshed out in old-timey sepia tones to illustrate a bird with a long neck and round body.

  “The constellation Apus,” Freya said, proud that she could actually name the configuration of astral bodies on Beldame’s card.

  “Very good,” Beldame said, impressed.

  Freya pressed her lips together in a modest grin. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m a bit of a collector myself. I’ve always been fascinated by the way humans, from our earliest origins, have tried to make the stars knowable, graspable objects by giving them names and stories. It struck me as great hubris, to claim the stars in this way.”

  “Eloquently said, Freya,” Beldame mused. “I, however, have a rather different take on the nature of collecting.”

  “I’d love to hear it,” Freya said.

  “I suppose you know the origin of the constellation emblazoned on my card,” said Beldame.

  Freya nodded but Beldame continued as though she hadn’t noticed.

  “As you rightly noted, its name is Apus, a word of Greek origin meaning no feet. The four stars in the constellation are meant to represent a bird of paradise, and hint at another venerable collecting tradition, taxidermy.

  “You see, when European explorers first reached New Guinea centuries ago they were fascinated by the wide variety of amazing creatures that inhabited the exotic locale. They caught these creatures and had them preserved so that their beauty might be appreciated back home. However, these early preparations often removed the feet, discarding them as unnecessary and even unsightly. This led to a wonderful mythology back home in Europe regarding these footless, beautiful birds. Stories abounded that they never touched the ground but remained always aloft. They became representatives of the celestial and the godly rather than the common and terrestrial.”

  Beldame paused for a moment and then stood and walked to the fireplace where she clasped her hands behind her back and gazed into the bright blaze.

  “So you might say,” she continued, “that the practice of collecting elevated the bird. By ridding the creatures of their unattractive parts, by bringing them someplace where they were no longer common but special, and by taking their short, earthly lives and granting them a new life as an object, they made them into little devotional objects, bodies of beauty and distinction, revered by a society that enshrined them in institutions devoted to the preservation of knowledge and wonder, where they persist to this day.”

  As she spoke, Freya couldn’t see her face, but she could see Beldame’s body stiffen, and she could hear the intensity that suffused her voice where there had been only calm restraint before. She wanted to believe that it was only the passion with which she regarded collecting that animated her in this way, but there was a starkness to her speech that made Freya’s pulse quicken and her nerves jangle.

  “It’s the same with all collecting, you see,” Beldame said, her back still turned. “When you take a piece for your collection, you give it a life it never would have had otherwise; you make it exceptional. You divest it of the ugly parts and all that’s left is the specimen, perfected. In that way, we humans can become gods, the ultimate creators of a collection of perfected things that will live forever in the glass worlds we have so carefully fashioned for them.”

  “I—I’ve never thought about it that way,” Freya said, feeling more uncomfortable as the conversation progressed.

  “Oh, but you have, haven’t you?” Imogen Beldame asked her, suddenly turning to face her. The petite woman’s kindly visage seemed to have melted away in the interim and a harsher version had taken its place. Freya shifted in her seat. She didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Freya replied.

  “I mean,” Beldame said, “that you are smart and resourceful and that will get you far. But you are also a collector yourself and all collectors know, deep down, the sweet feeling of possession and of dominion. Even if they deny it, it’s there in the dark recesses of their primitive brains. So you understand my motivations, even if it’s only on a visceral level.”

  “That’s not really how I look at collecting,” Freya said quietly, but Beldame’s sharp words had exposed an ugly truth hiding in Freya’s healthy self-concept of her collecting impulse. The uneasy connection that collecting shared with ownership and desire was ever present, even if it was repressed, and Beldame had unearthed those difficult truths from the depths of Freya’s subconscious and made the student feel as though she were looking at her once-familiar reflection in the crazy convex waves of a funhouse mirror.

  Beldame’s eyes sparkled with the cruel shine of a magpie tending its nest of treasures.

  “Come over here a moment,” she said as she crossed the room with short, frantic steps to where a series of brilliantly colored photographs hung on the wall.

  Freya stood reluctantly and followed Beldame to the pictures. At first all she could see were colors and lines, a visual bounty of perfect composition. But then as she stared at the mesmerizing photos, she began to realize they were actually portraits based on famous paintings.

  There was one that Freya noted was obviously inspired by Gustave Klimt’s portrait of Adele Block-Bauer. The photo’s subject wore a dazzling byzantine mosaic of a dress just like Adele’s, with little tesserae jewels scintillating against a sumptuous gold background such that it was difficult to tell the difference between body and wall. Emerging wraithlike from this opulence was the pale, aristocratic face of the new Adele, with limpid eyes and livid cheeks.

  The photographic reimagining of Klimt’s masterpiece was undeniably beautiful, but there was something off about the woman posed as the turn-of-the-century aristocrat. Freya stepped closer, hypnotized by the impressive detail of the photo. The obvious effort that had gone into painstakingly reproducing the intricate particulars of the original could not be denied, but the woman, whose face swam out of the resplendent background, seemed eerily static, and not only because she’d been captured for eternity in a single moment in time, but on a much more fundamental level, as though even after the camera clicked she would have remained motionless.

  With a sickening wave the realization crashed through Freya’s consciousness that the woman was not just uncannily still but dead, and newly so, based on the Snow White quality of her still perfectly preserved beauty. Freya felt queasy and swayed a bit on her feet. The other images swam in front of her face, refusing to be ignored. There were travesties of Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June, Gustave Moreau’s Goddess on the Rocks, and John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, among others. All told there were more than a dozen photographs, each
a faithful recreation of a masterwork from the period surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, and each a portrait of as yet uncorrupted death.

  The room started to swim in front of Freya’s eyes and she made a stumbling move for the door, but Beldame had anticipated her reaction and already stood in front of her only means of escape. She grasped Freya’s outstretched arm with a strength that she wouldn’t have believed possible for such a diminutive woman. Freya collapsed to the floor as her knees buckled beneath her, while Beldame’s sharp nails dug into the skin of her forearm.

  “Don’t leave just yet, dear,” Beldame said. “I’m not quite done with you.”

  She let go of Freya’s arm and readjusted her posture so that she was once again standing prim as a schoolmarm, no evidence of her unusual strength or aggression from only a few moments before.

  “I don’t show these pictures to many people for obvious reasons,” Beldame said, “but I thought you would find them particularly inspirational.”

  “Inspirational?” Freya sputtered. “They’re atrocities.”

  “No, no, nothing so brutal as that, Freya. No, these photos are my very favorite objects because they represent the height of my lifelong pursuit of collecting. You see, I have stripped away their unsightly lives, these whores and addicts, and I’ve given them everlasting beauty, I’ve made them into masterpieces. You must admit they are gorgeous and I spared no expense in recreating every single detail of the original work. I pared away their desecrated humanity and made them objects that can be enjoyed forever. I sit in my office sometimes and just stare at them, my prized collection. They are the ultimate expression of the incorruptibility of the art object and the divine power of the collector.”

  “You’re insane,” Freya whispered. She had pushed herself back up so that she was once again on her feet although leaning heavily against the wall.

  “Only those without the insight of the true collector would assign me such an epithet. I am an artist and a visionary, a giver of everlasting loveliness and grace. I’ve created masterpieces from filth.”

  “I only see death in these pictures,” said Freya.

  “That is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. As a fellow collector I thought you might recognize genius when you saw it. No matter, though. The real reason I showed you these photos of mine is to provide you with a bit of motivation. Money works for ordinary tasks, but, as you will soon find out, your task is no ordinary undertaking, so it requires a bit more inspiration.”

  Beldame paused and Freya felt her heartbeat quicken. She knew what the old woman was going to say. Abject fear and contempt lit up Freya’s brain replacing any wide-eyed sense of excitement she might have had at the beginning of her visit, but she remained rooted to the spot.

  “Part of the selection criteria I gave Ophidia included the provision that whoever she found should be competent and compliant but also a fair facsimile of the languorous vamp in John White Alexander’s Althea. As a Symbolist enthusiast, I’m sure you’re familiar with the painting: that sinuous creature in an opulent periwinkle gown.”

  Beldame didn’t wait for Freya’s confirmation, but the girl nodded despite herself. She was intimately familiar with the painting. It was one of her favorites, in fact, but the thought of actually becoming her in death made her stomach turn.

  “There are others, of course, who could become my Althea, but you would do most nicely. However, I’m willing to look elsewhere for my model if you deliver the colors I ask of you in a timely manner. The exhibition opens quite soon, you know.”

  “You’re threatening to kill me,” Freya said, indignation barely winning out over terror in the tenor of her voice.

  “No, my dear. Have you heard nothing I’ve said? Not kill you! I would memorialize you, make you an eternal object of wonder. When you look at it that way, it is more of a reward than a punishment. Unfortunately, most people don’t regard it that way.”

  Freya felt the room begin to spin again, but she fought to stay upright. She considered her options. The police would never believe her. She could run, but Beldame was a powerful woman with untold connections. She didn’t think she could outpace her influence.

  “I can see you are coming to the only sensible conclusion,” Beldame said, studying Freya’s face intently. “The list of colors and where to find them are on the back of my card.”

  Freya looked down at the card she still held clenched in her fist. The neat print slowly came into focus.

  Cobalt Blue – Rusty Berger, Stone Lodge Quarry

  Vermillion – Vasilisa Kuklachik, The Belfry

  Gamboge Yellow – Channary Im, House of Kour

  “I’ll be expecting delivery of the colors on the day of the gala,” Beldame said, “so you better get started.”

  She opened the door to her study and Freya wasted no time in escaping the suffocating confines of the office. She ran across the small antechamber with its remarkable cabinet of curiosities, through the narrow hallway, and past the grand stair before tearing open the front door and sprinting from the property. She never turned around but she could feel Beldame’s eyes on her the whole time. She didn’t stop until she was far away from the mad woman and her trove of beautiful, sinister things.

  Dakryma glowered. It was something he was particularly well suited to doing. It also seemed particularly appropriate given his present locale. He’d decided to come back to Lake View Cemetery.

  Last time he’d been there the girl had interrupted his luncheon but, he had to admit, it had been a rather fortuitous meeting. He’d had no luck locating Ophidia, so when Freya showed up stinking of the succubus he took it as a sign that his luck was about to change. He usually kept his supernatural side a secret, but her stumbling upon him while in koshmar was perhaps a blessing in disguise. He needed her help. It didn’t hurt to make a strong impression.

  He was pretty sure he had accomplished his goal and it had been rather more fun than he would have thought. She wasn’t really his type, but there was something there in her haughty demeanor, the shy indifference with which she approached even his unexpected appearance that appealed to his own studied aloofness. He’d always considered standoffishness a mark of refinement rather than arrogance, but that was most probably the former aristocrat in him. Old habits died hard. Or never die, in his case.

  He turned his attention back to the granite obelisk in front of him. It was the one that he had been standing in front of earlier when Freya had found him. It had just what he needed: plenty of mourning had gone into this passing, real sadness, not just a show put on for the benefit of the survivors. He put his hands on the gravestone, passing his fingers sensually over the smooth surface, the concave letters carved deep into the hard rock. Grief and sorrow radiated from the memorial even after the many years it had been since the heart buried six feet below had last pumped blood, and it was this misery that he needed right now.

  Few people understood his kind although the needs of an incubus were quite simple. The legends all made incubi out to be lascivious demons, lechers who came to women in their nightmares and ravished them indiscriminately. To a certain extent it was true, incubi were sensual creatures with the power to enter dreams when necessary to get the nourishment they needed. However while this was the most well-known and grandiose of their pastimes, they could be found anywhere where melancholy reigned.

  For Dakryma and others of his kind the pensive and heavyhearted and the wistfully disconsolate were the things that fed his eternal soul and stirred his passions. Nightmares, or at least the bad dreams of remorse, regret, and bittersweet nostalgia, certainly fit the bill, but places too could feed the heart and soul of an incubus. Few other locales were more fruitful in the incubus’s search for sustenance than a cemetery.

  Dakryma leaned his head down on the stone, breathing deeply, and felt the exquisite thrill of sadness and longing. The poignant chill of melancholy permeated his blood, muscles, and bones. He exhaled and let the stone go, his eyes aglow with the incande
scence of melancholy.

  It was raining, not an unusual occurrence in Seattle, and it suited Dakryma. This was his first time in the city but he could imagine being quite happy here. Seattle was young, only an infant in comparison to his beloved Sofia, but it seemed to have a depth of soul reserved for cities of much greater age. Maybe it was the romance of the scenery, the snowy mountains presiding over an island-dotted Sound, or the rain that didn’t so much fall out of the sky as float like a mist, settling like tiny crystals on the needles of the ubiquitous pines. Add to that an overall greyness, especially in late autumn, that was atmospheric and gloomy without being grim, and the place was like melancholy made manifest. Dakryma adored it. If only he could stay. Regretfully, his tenure here lasted only as long as his blasted painting remained in the exhibition, and he had important things to accomplish in the limited time he was in town.

  It was hard for Dakryma to believe it had been more than 120 years since Stuck had laid brush to canvas and painted the incubus. Dakryma’s portrait had become one of the German artist’s most famous works. The world had just entered the last decade of the nineteenth century and there was a kind of energy, a dynamism that the immortal incubus had never experienced before. In the big cities of Europe, culture was changing. The human experience of life itself was fundamentally altered by technological and medical advances, mass production, urbanization and rising secularism.

  While it was an exciting time, the shift from the certainties of a life lived under the iron thumb of tradition to one forged on the razor’s edge of modernism left generations of anxious urbanites adrift on a sea of uncertainty. In the space between the exhilaration of freedom and the many pitfalls of a system built on self-interest lay melancholy.