The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque

by Jeffrey Ford

  “With my mother no longer casting her doubting glances, frowning those grimaces of disdain, there was no impediment for my father and me. We rushed headlong into belief. The Twins were our new religion. Firmly convinced that they conferred the power of second sight upon me, we looked everywhere for proof of prophecy and found it. The most insignificant happenstance was fraught with multiple layers of meaning, and all the connections formed a spider’s web of paranoia we were ecstatic to be snared in. I know how ridiculous this all must sound, but when you are a child, and the one adult you are in close contact with, a parent you love, tells you again and again that every dream you have, every imagining, every word you pronounce is a valuable prophecy, this then becomes your truth.

  “I’m not sure how it works, but I swear to you that there is something about this process of thought that once embarked upon propagates happy accident, quirky twists of fate, and eventually leaves one believing that she is at the very center of creation. Perhaps the truth was that my father and I were searching so diligently for these coincidences that in actuality we were willfully projecting them at every turn. Be that as it may, I became a magnet for felicitous circumstance.”

  “You need not convince me, Mrs. Charbuque,” I interjected. “I am a recent student of the phenomenon.”

  “Every morning he would ask me what my dreams of the night had been. On one occasion I told him, ‘I dreamed of a horse swimming in the ocean,’ and I had. The day went on as usual, and then after lunch, he called me into his study to join him at the window. ‘Look there, Lu,’ he said, and pointed toward the sky. I looked but saw nothing. ‘At what?’ I asked. ‘Look, girl,’ he said. I looked harder, expecting to see a hawk or a buzzard, but there was nothing. ‘I’m sorry, Father. What am I looking at?’ ‘Dear God, girl, do you not see that large cloud? It is in the perfect shape of a horse. Don’t you see its streaming mane, its galloping hooves, the blasts of steam coming from its nostrils?’ ‘I see a ship,’ I said. ‘No, no, please look more closely.’ Then I stared hard for a full five minutes, and all of a sudden the airy white frigate revealed itself to be a running horse. I clapped my hands. ‘I see it, I see it,’ I said. He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned down to kiss me. ‘Your dream, you see,’ said my father. ‘A horse swims in the vast blue ocean.’

  “At other times, he would stop what he was doing and turn to me and say, ‘Get a piece of paper and a pencil and jot down a number between one and a hundred.’ Of course, I did as I was told. In the evening, while we read in the sitting room, he would say, ‘I will now think of a number,’ and close his eyes. Sometimes he would lift his reading glasses and pinch the bridge of his nose. ‘Very well, I have it,’ he would say. This was my signal to go and fetch the piece of paper with the number I had scrawled earlier. ‘Go ahead, read it to me,’ he would say. I would read, say, the number thirty-five. ‘Incredible,’ he would exclaim, and then shake his head in wonder.

  “In the final weeks before spring of the year my mother was taken by the wolf, my father devised the stage act that would eventually become my life and subsequently my cage. Even in my youthful excitement owing to all the attention he was lavishing upon me, I was overwhelmed by the fact that this previously unassuming man, a scientist who had been content to quietly study snowflakes his entire life, should exhibit such an intuitive facility for, not to mention interest in, the art of showmanship. Maybe he had his own premonition about how important the act would be to my survival and knew that before too long he would no longer be able to help me.

  “His plan was that the audience members would ask questions of me, and I would then concentrate upon the Twins and offer up whatever images I was shown through their voices. ‘Tell them nothing but what you actually see,’ he said, for when he introduced me, he would let them know that I would merely give clues to the future and it was the individual’s job to understand the message or to keep a watchful eye open for its realization in the near future.”

  “In other words,” I said, “there was no chance of your being wrong. The onus for the prophecy would be on the inquirer.”

  “Precisely,” she said. “And that was the beauty of it. They loved it because they were given the opportunity to participate in the prophecy. No matter what question was asked and what images I divulged, there was always a way to reconcile the two, given time and a modicum of imagination.

  “When we finally returned to the city, it was my father’s plan that we should test out my act at one of Ossiak’s dinner parties. What was missing, though, in his estimation, was a certain air of mystery. After again taking up our summer residence on Fourth Avenue, we had a few days before the night of the gala. One afternoon after Ossiak had sent over my father’s yearly salary, we were out shopping for a dress for me, and we walked into a store that sold all manner of exotic objects from around the world. There were ostrich eggs, African masks, Eskimo harpoons. It was in that shop that he found this screen imported from Japan. No sooner did he see it and its design of falling leaves than he conceived the idea of the Sibyl. Are you familiar with this character of ancient lore, Piambo?”

  “Only by name,” I said.

  “There were a number of sibyls in ancient Greece and Rome. A sibyl was a woman who foretold the future. The most famous was the Cumaean Sibyl, who lived in a cave, unseen by the populace. If someone desired to know the future, he would go to the mouth of the cave and speak his question. The sibyl would then write her answer on leaves and place them at the mouth of the cave. In our version of the legend, we reversed the procedure. The participants wrote their questions on paper leaves, and I answered from my hiding place.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “So the screen has a meaning.”

  “Everything has a meaning, Piambo,” she said. “That day in the shop, we also bought another object of mystery to use in the act, something from Zanzibar.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  She did not answer, but I heard her chair move again behind the screen. Brusquely enough to make me jump, the monkey hand appeared at the top of the middle frame, its fingers curling around the cherrywood. I pushed my own chair back at the sight of it. The ugly paw did not rest there long but continued to rise up all the way to the elbow. Then abruptly, it fell forward over the screen and landed on the floor in front of me. I jumped out of my chair and gave a short scream. I blinked four times, my heart racing, before I realized that the appendage was the work of a taxidermist. At the shoulder end was a wooden pole with which to hold it.

  Mrs. Charbuque was in a fit of hysterics. She laughed so hard she choked slightly and gasped for air. “What about a monkey?” I heard her barely get out before exploding into another paroxysm of mirth.

  I stood frozen for the longest time, trying to comprehend this woman. Then I stamped my foot angrily like a spoiled child. Folding over my sketchbook, I prepared to leave, but when I put my pencil in my coat pocket, I felt there the dry snow from the warehouse. I grabbed a mere pinch between my thumb and first two fingers, walked up to the screen, and threw it high over the top so that it would shower slowly down upon her. This done, I turned away. Just as I was closing the door behind me, Mrs. Charbuque suddenly went silent. When I was halfway down the hall, she screamed my name, and I smiled.

  HAPPY ACCIDENT

  I TELL YOU, I think she is mad,” I said to Shenz. We sat at a streetside table in a café on the corner of Park Avenue and Sixty-fourth Street. The sun was beginning its late-afternoon descent, and although there was little wind, the air was quite cold. The waiter had looked at us oddly when we said we would like to be served out-of-doors, but we needed privacy from the other customers who crowded the place.

  “Piambo, you are a regular Auguste Dupin. Insane, you say? Heavens, how did you chance upon such a remarkable notion?” he asked.

  “Everyone is abusing me today,” I said, lifting my coffee cup.

  “We have a woman who hides behind a screen and asks to have her portrait painted—a woman, no less, who is
in possession of a mummified monkey arm. I don’t think it takes an assiduous application of ratiocination to determine that her reason has gone fishing.”

  “True enough,” I said.

  “But,” said Shenz, closing his eyes as if to concentrate, “this sibyl thing is interesting in more ways than one.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “The Cumaean Sibyl lived a very long time. It seems that when she was young, she made herself very attractive to the sun god, Apollo. Overwhelmed by her beauty, he offered her anything in exchange for spending a single night with him. Her plan all along had been to gain a kind of immortality, so her wish was to have as many years as the grains of sand she could hold in her hand. The sun god acquiesced, but once the sibyl had her prize, she spurned his advances. In turn Apollo, not to be trifled with by a mortal, did not grant her as many years of youth, so as the years swept by she aged and shriveled but remained alive.”

  “There’s an inconvenience,” I said.

  “Quite,” said Shenz. “She withered to nothing but a small lump of dried-out flesh, but the pulse of life still beat within her. Her remaining form was placed in a hollow gourd and hung from the branch of a tree. Children would come to her tree and ask her what she wished, and she would whisper that she wished only to die. In one story, she petitions Charon, the oarsman who rows the recently deceased across the river Styx from the shores of life to the land of the dead. Charon, though, could not take those who were either still alive or not properly buried. These poor souls remained on the banks of the river forever, flitting aimlessly about, unable to pass to the underworld. At this point in the story there is a part I forget, but as it turns out, the only time a person who is not truly dead or not properly buried can cross the flood to the underworld is when he is granted a golden bough by the sibyl. Charon honors this bough like a ticket on the el and takes them over.”

  “Shenz, I don’t know who traffics in more of it, you or Borne. What does this have to do with anything?” I asked.

  He laughed. “It has to do with you. You have gone to Mrs. Charbuque for the golden bough so that you can make the passage to a new land.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of cash,” I said. “Let’s not rush the Styx crossing.”

  “In mythology, Death is not always death. Very often it is symbolic of a great change. You seek freedom from this life of portraiture you are now trapped in.”

  “At times you amaze me,” I said with true admiration.

  Shenz waved off my compliment and said, “I checked the papers, and there was no news of our break-in. It seems we have pulled off the perfect crime.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but there is a new wrinkle.” I proceeded to apprise him of the involvement of Charbuque, his message to me and my fearful meeting with him at Palmer’s the previous night.

  Shenz sat forward, a look of excitement in his eyes. “We must find out who he is, where he is. He could very well be the key to discovering what his wife looks like.”

  “No doubt,” I told him, “but I’m afraid that will be impossible.”

  “Impossible, but why?” asked my friend.

  “Mrs. Charbuque told me only this afternoon that he is dead. A shipwreck, I believe.”

  “A razor-wielding spirit?” said Shenz. “Interesting. Listen, find out what ship it was that he was on. I’ll look into it.”

  I nodded. “If he doesn’t kill me first.”

  “You might want to start carrying a weapon,” he said. “This is getting dangerous. A pistol wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “No, Shenz, a pistol would be a very bad idea,” I said. “Thank you, but I’ll keep my toes.”

  “Where are you with the painting?” he asked.

  “Absolutely nowhere.”

  “You are in your second week. You’ve a mere two and a half weeks left,” he said. “I’d better arrange a visit to the Man from the Equator.”

  “What will he do for me?” I asked.

  “Focus your vision, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, and finished my coffee.

  “You said you are meeting Samantha?” asked Shenz.

  “She has been spying on Mrs. Charbuque’s house for me today,” I told him. “I’m to meet her at five on the steps of Saint James Church up at Madison and Seventy-first.”

  “There’s a woman ready for canonization,” said Shenz.

  “By the way, how are the Hatstells?” I asked, circumventing one of my colleague’s lectures on why I should marry Samantha.

  “Walking, breathing endorsements for the childless life. I’ll be finished with them in another week or so. I’ve probably spent my entire commission already on cakes and candy. The little one calls me Uncle Satan, the older one, Grandfather Time. My opium consumption has doubled.”

  We each had another cup of coffee, and before we parted I reminded Shenz of the yearly show Sills had mentioned at the Academy of Design the following evening. We agreed to meet there.

  Night had fallen by the time I reached the steps of Saint James Episcopal Church. The sidewalks had emptied somewhat, since it was the dinner hour, and the traffic in the streets had thinned. A wind had come up since I had left the café, and with it the temperature had dropped yet a few more degrees.

  The church itself seemed deserted, and I sat down on the bottom marble step and lit a cigarette. One of my favorite pastimes when roaming the city at night was to stare at the lighted windows lining the streets and wonder what dramas, comedies or tragedies, were playing just beyond those bright rectangles. At times, given the architecture of a certain building, its neighborhood, a hint of something within visible from the street, I could even imagine the characters and their lives. My God, I could see their faces and what they were wearing. Here a nude, there a man in shirtsleeves bouncing a child on his knee, a fellow drinking his pail of beer, a gray-haired grandmother in a rocking chair saying her rosary. If these people, completely unknown to me, could show me their faces and forms, if I could readily see the nuanced figures of the characters I merely read about in novels, then why did Mrs. Charbuque remain such a tantalizing blank?

  I was interrupted in my reverie by the approach of a woman. She was of the same height and figure as Samantha, and I was about to rise and greet her, but at the last moment I saw a lock of blond hair showing from beneath her hat. She nodded to me and said, “Good evening,” and I touched my fingers to my hat brim. “Hello,” I said, and she passed down the street. As her figure disappeared into the dark, I thought to myself that it could very well have been Mrs. Charbuque spying on me, and concentrated on remembering her face.

  A few gentlemen passed by and another woman, too short. Then I saw a familiar figure approaching from the north. I had only to think for a second before realizing how I knew this person. A big, burly woman in a large dark overcoat, she wore a kerchief tied around her head, and as she drew closer, I made out the thick crude features of her face. When she drew even with me where I sat on the step, I said, “Wolfe, is that you?”

  “Piambo,” she said, “who is Wolfe?”

  I stood then and peered more closely. Finally the voice registered at the precise moment I realized her face was devoid of Wolfe’s facial hair. “Samantha?” I said.

  “How do you like my look?” she said. “Duenna of the night.”

  I was giddy with what Mrs. Charbuque had earlier that day called happy accident. Leaning forward, I kissed the wrinkled face and came away with greasepaint on my lips.

  AN APOLOGY

  IN THE hansom cab on the ride downtown to my house, Samantha used the kerchief to wipe the makeup from her face. Seeing this paint removed gave me a great appreciation of the artistic flair with which it was applied, for mere strokes of the darker shades gave convincing indications of thickness and weight to the flesh, prominence to the bone structure, and a frightening depth to the eyes. One minute she could have been Wolfe’s sister, and the next she was her own beautiful self, her eyes sparkling with a kind of c
hildish joy at the theatrics of having played a spy.

  She then removed the overcoat to reveal a set of small couch pillows secured with twine, one to each shoulder. Around her middle, fastened with a belt, was a larger bed pillow. Once she was free of all her prosthetics, and the ugly old woman lay in a heap on the seat beside her, she reached back, gathered her hair together, and flipped it into a simple knot.

  “A command performance,” I said, and we laughed.

  “That was fun, but I wouldn’t want to be that poor woman every day. The coat and pillows kept me warm, but round about four o’clock I really started to feel the extra weight. I’m exhausted, and my feet are killing me,” she said.

  “When did you get there?” I asked.

  “A little after noon,” she said. “I saw you arrive and leave the house. You didn’t stay long.”

  “Mrs. Charbuque and I had a bit of a falling-out. I’ll tell you about it later, but first, did you see anything?”

  “As far as I witnessed, no one came or went until you arrived. I slowly made my way up and down the block, trying not to seem too conspicuous. Occasionally I sat down on the steps across the street. Aimless Old Wretch was the character I portrayed.”

  “And after I departed?” I asked.

  “You passed directly by me on your way down the street and appeared to be having a heated argument with yourself under your breath,” she said. “But a half hour after that, a bald fellow with a walking stick left the house, and I followed him.”

  “Did you see that he was blind? He’s remarkable, wouldn’t you say? Mr. Watkin is his name.”