by Allyson Bird
In the storage room there was a wheeled, folded up cot: kept there for the nights you have a fight with the wife, Peter thought, patting the book in his jacket pocket, but really, he didn’t know why the cot was there. He and Marti never had sex on the cot, in spite of it actually harbouring a remarkably mildew free mattress. “A bag of 5-5-5 doesn’t have a mattress, it just emulates one. Sort of,” Peter remarked. “Since the cot is for cottagers too drunk to drive their boats back out to the islands after wandering back from the bar.”
He’d never asked for anyone’s keys, even the few times he should have. He’d been too intimidated to take keys away from drunks larger than himself, drunks deeply invested in their own competence. Pissed. Blasted. Wrecked. “Note descriptive words,” Peter said, “They’re very accurate.” Every winter they were hauling frozen snowmobilers out of the lake. The sober frozen snowmobilers were often still slightly alive, at least alive enough to be rushed off to the county hospital. But the frozen dead ones had always, without exception, been pissed, blasted, wrecked. And never once a drunk dead female snowmobiler. Home with the youngsters they were, knitting and purling lavender worsted booties. Much too sensible to take the snowmobile out after consuming half a bottle of vodka, complete with exclamations about how well it made her drive. If a man would let anyone take his keys away, it would be his wife. Peter knew, he’d seen it: the largest, drunkest, most obstreperous man giving his keys to the teeny, tiny, soft spoken, completely sober wife, wailing toddler in tow. Name was Josie. Got the kid out of bed, wrapped him in a blanket, and drove like hell just so she could snag hubby at the boat launch where Peter let him keep his ancient Snow Cat, said, “Give me the keys.” Why hadn’t she let him crash through the ice? He just drank the money anyway. Josie had been one hell of a driver, Peter remembered, used to race when she was young, and drive in demolition derbies. If anyone could drive the icy back roads to the marina in the dead of night on bald tires, with a screaming baby in the car seat, Josie could. If she wanted to have a couple of beers and take the snowmobile out on the ice, Peter was pretty sure she’d handle it. But Josie never felt quite safe enough to leave the baby home with dad, go out alone on the lake at night, get some air in her hair. Daddy might drink half a bottle of vodka and drop the iron on the baby’s head. And not enough money for sitters; besides, he’d be insulted, think she was out of her mind hiring someone when he was in the house.
Would Marti do any of those things? Not bloody likely. Marti, with her bravado and love of self-medication of all kinds, was, like the big, drunk, egotistical man in question, the type who’d tangle herself and the Snow Cat around an island pine. If it was sense that men were after when they looked for a wife, to compensate for their own lack of same, Marti would’ve been exactly the bad choice Peter had so often told himself she was.
Years younger, she’d been a summer employee. They’d had an affair, and Peter had surprised himself by falling in love. He’d wanted to know her then, had gotten to know her, too, much more than he’d ever known anyone. Had ever wanted to know.
It was March; soon time to open the marina. Or at least, start preparing to open it. Peter discovered he could care less. All the details of management and maintenance he used to obsess over, even enjoy, seemed as turbid today as the water coloured sky. “Even if I wanted to be like that again,” Peter said, “I no longer know how. That part of me is a lost shirt, gone overboard from an outboard, sunk to the bottom. Or gone with Marti, more likely.”
Marti’s liquid body, made out of stars, arching over him on the floor of the store room, the stars falling out of her body, a dark sea, stars floating in it, five pointed stars he could pick up and stick up on the walls of the bedroom to entertain the children when they came: luminous, glow-in-the-dark stars. They jumped out of his hand, sat beside he and Marti on the bed, watched them make love approvingly. Smiled and told jokes to the lovers, in fact.
How terrifying it had been, the surrender required, the hard bitten edges of himself he’d have to give up to say, yes, I want this. Except that he hadn’t. He’d pretended it wasn’t real. And now he couldn’t go back to sleep, no matter how much he wanted to. And he couldn’t have Marti, either, because she was gone. A goner.
Faced with the unknown, there was only one thing to do. Ask it what it wanted, feed it. “What d’you want then?” he asked the book, “How do I get my real life back?”
Maybe she’d seen the stars too; he’d never actually thought of that. She’d played the reckless babe for him, lying beneath him on the stony shore of an uninhabited island, her skin smelling of pine woods and salt and wind in spite of the vodka they’d been putting away. Maybe it wasn’t a choice; perhaps portals opened each time Marti made love, funnelling the lovers into more beautiful dimensions. And perhaps each and every one of her lovers, and he knew there had been quite a few, had closed his eyes to a beauty so much larger than he could fathom. I’d drink too much too, Peter thought, and remembered how, making love on their island, he’d briefly seen their future spread out before him, pretty and comforting as a star quilt. It was the last time, the time before she left without saying good-bye or even leaving a note. Leaving her few things behind. He’d thrown them away. Except for the book.
In his vision Marti had been leaving to go grocery shopping, Peter’s list in hand, getting into her rusty little yellow car, her blonde hair tied in two long pigtails. She wore silver dream catcher earrings, a plaid car coat she’d made out of the same material as the worst couches in existence, a knee-length red and white striped skirt, black tights, black ankle boots, a black rolled-brim hat. Somehow, on Marti, this didn’t look dreadful but fetching: a country punk chic that managed, impossibly, to be stylish as well as original. Smiling, sure of herself, as he’d never once seen her, she waved good-bye to Peter and Julian, who didn’t squall at his mother’s departure, solemnly sieving sand through a dented percolator coffee basket, knowing she’d be bringing home treats.
She reversed down the driveway, tires screeching, and Peter sat on the edge of the sandbox with Julian and played with percolator parts, until the real Marti interrupted, asking, “What are you thinking about?” And he hadn’t told her, had run his fingers through her hair and smiled. Maybe she’d been afraid to tell him about the little stars, afraid he’d say she was crazy. It had never even occurred to Peter, how his silences might have hurt her.
He’d closed his eyes again and watched as future-Marti hung laundry, drove Julian to daycare, started tomatoes in flats to grow and sell to the island cottage folk. She invented cookie recipes from scratch, mainly successful, although there was one problematic experiment containing canned pineapple which exploded in the oven. When they put it outside the back door, even the usually indiscriminate stray dogs didn’t touch it. Peter, who had taught himself how to cook over the years, perhaps also, like saving the aluminum percolator parts, in anticipation of the children, made most of the dinners.
He shuddered with longing. But what if it was her self destructiveness that he found seductive? The doomed Marti, the Marti who fucked everything in pants and then laughed at them. The one who was surprised as he was, to find herself loving Peter. The erstwhile coke head, the brilliant drunk? Maybe she didn’t share his vision of their lovely possible future at all. Maybe that had been his job, yet another he’d neglected, like taking the keys away from Josie’s husband himself, and growing tomatoes, and inviting Marti to stay in the house no matter what people said, and picking a smiling yellow five pointed star out of the crumpled sheet and putting it in her hand, saying, “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
Peter knew he’d never find her, not unless he gave something up, some preciously adhered to delusion or illusion, as much a part of him by now as his hair, which, truth to tell, was less a part of him than it used to be. For some reason this gave Peter hope. If he could lose his hair, perhaps he could lose his self-importance, his stubborn pride. Delusions could fall out each morning, come out in clumps in his c
omb. Marti had once said he looked cute balding, that he was lucky he had the right shape of skull for it. As she shared her peanut butter sandwich with him, told him the names of wild flowers he’d never learned.
LES FLEURS DU MAL
BY ALLYSON BIRD
Juliette. Mercury without wings. A time traveller—too. She stepped out of the black mirror. Her progress was slow and golden rose petals fell behind her where she walked. Dumas had the black tulip. She closed her eyes and the black held a hint of red—a tiny drop of blood seeping through the petals—near the base.
She wore a cloak. Feathers of peacock. Blue. Turquoise. Green. Ermine at the edge—cashmere lined. Over a black floor length gown. Too much she thought. A wave of her hand and the cloak disappeared leaving a small pendant around her neck—the eye of one peacock feather pressed almost into her pale skin. In Roman, Greek and Egyptian mythology the eye that sees all. It would not see the end of Juliette’s life. There would be no natural end to that.
‘To Paradise, the Arabs say,
Satan could never find the way
Until the peacock led him in.’
Dear Charles Leyland, educated at the Sorbonne in 1848, and then a captain at the barricades later on the RIGHT side. What a revolutionary. Was she related to all the revolutionaries? And his Italian witches. Aradia who walked amongst the down trodden and taught them to rise up against their masters.
Paris. July 1938. Fritz Henle would be here now taking his photographs, some in Montmartre, memories of a wonderful city before the occupation. The Woman and the God. Mademoiselle Niska. Housewives. All developed in the tiny bathroom by a small green light. Never used until Mme. Lazareff of The New York Times Magazine cried over them and published many in 1947. How could a city give up so easily? The Seinne would flow faster with the tears during the war, too.
Juliette’s first destination—an old farmhouse in Avignon. Saint-Martin d’Ardeche where her friend was living at the moment. It was surrounded by chestnut trees—surreal statues of birds and horses in the garden. She would go and see Leonora. She would be here about now, too. Spring.
Leonora. Painting. Naked. A smear of red paint on her stomach where she had wiped her hand aggressively—forgetting the rag close by. She had been working from notes given to her by Juliette. A Dog and his Man. There would have to be a black bull, a not to be pitied writer with his head in his hands in a lonely garret with a cross on a wall, a larger than life woman with borrowed armour from Fini’s paintings towering over him, a dog—well half dog half man—its head being the head of another writer licking the shoes of the other man, a devil playing a fiddle in the background, the requisite witches’ broom, a pan of sausages nobody wanted to eat cooked by someone who had no culinary skills whatsoever.
The painting would be lost only to be discovered in 2015 in a second hand shop in New Zealand frequented by a writer of the weird who on reflection did the right thing—found the woman who had owned it for years not knowing the value, was the overseer of the sale of the now cherished work, and gave the money to the previous owner. That owner promptly gave her half back which was a good thing. It sold for $3 million N.Z. dollars. The Cradle also by Leonora, painted in 1948 was offered in a sale in 2014 for $1.5 to $2.5 million U.S. dollars. Juliette smiled again. I wonder how it ended up in New Zealand to be found. Naughty Juliette—she thought to herself.
‘Ah—you. I wondered when you would turn up again,’ said Leonora as she looked over her shoulder. She wasn’t surprised.
‘I said I would come back.’
‘And you haven’t changed a bit once more.’
Juliette shrugged and the peacock eye caught the light. Iridescent.
Leonora turned back to the canvas and stabbed with the paintbrush at the image of the dog with the man’s head.
‘Come with me.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I belong here.’
‘You would not say that if you knew what was coming.’
Juliette wandered around the studio, and ignoring any paintings, was drawn to the bookshelves. She pulled one book in particular down from a shelf. She laid down on the chaises lounge, took off her shoes, and placed her feet on a red velvet cushion.
Leonora sighed. She always did when Juliette visited her. ‘Which book?’
‘Baudelaire.’
‘You are obsessed with him.’
‘Absorbed. Leonora. Absorbed.’
Juliette read from the book.
‘Leonardo, dark, unfathomable mirror,
In which charming angels, with sweet smiles
Full of mystery, appear in the shadow
Of the glaciers and pines that enclose their country.’
She hesitated and smiled mischievously.
‘Leonora, known to me,
Who lies with devils, with wandering fingers
Full of mischief, hidden in the dark
In the depths of Carcosa. Gloom lit.’
‘I will be no muse.’
‘But I will. Won’t I.’ A coy smile from Juliette. ‘Remedios will use me. My armour—too. But she won’t come with me to Carcosa either. None of you will. I don’t understand it.’
‘Have you ever contemplated the fact that I consider that if I’m with you, really with you, my madness will completely shut me down. Carcosa. Why would I live in a world created by someone else—it could turn out to be hell and I have enough of that already. I don’t even know if you really exist.’
‘And your world is created by?’
Silence from Leonora.
‘Ask Remedios. She knows. If you don’t come with me, well—you can’t say I didn’t give you the opportunity.’
Leonora looked puzzled but shook it off. ‘If all the artists went what would be left here? Nothing. What would the women here have then?’
‘So the very thing you paint about, freedom, you deny yourself?’
‘This is my world Juliette—not yours. That is your reality now. Not mine. True enough we could paint other worlds into existence perhaps. One day. But this isn’t your world now, Juliette. One day I won’t be left out. The women will have a voice eventually. I’ll be recognized one day.’
‘Indeed Leonora but I thought I’d try to spare you the cost before that. Fini might…’ Began Juliette.
‘Enough! And I don’t know if bringing me back anything from the future is a good thing.’
‘Did you enjoy the book?’ Asked Juliette.
‘Yes.’
‘Then it is a good thing.’
‘In it are surely things I should not know?’
‘It is fiction,’ replied Juliette.
‘But fiction is a product of the individual relating to the time they live in. Isn’t that a sort of taboo – reading that?’
‘I’m careful what I give you to read. Well reasonably so. It isn’t like I’ve given you a biography of your life or anything.’
‘You have one?’
A long look from Juliette. And a smile.
Leonora thought about the book. It was The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Published 1969.
‘Fini read it. She got a lot out of it.’ Juliette said quickly before Leonora could stop her. And another look this time one of—are you not interested in what I’m saying—came from her.
‘Is that so. Then good for her.’
What Juliette didn’t tell Leonora was that Bulgakov had read certain biographies, some time ago, and had access to the paintings by Leonora and Fini—also Remedios. He had his coven. Or rather Juliette’s.
Leonora turned around, her brush full of yellow paint, and finally smiled. So did Juliette. Leonora stood above her and Juliette gently brushed her hand against the white thigh. Leonora knelt down, pulled the top of Juliette’s black gown down below the breast, and painted the yellow sign upon it. Then she kissed her. They both laughed.
‘Why are you really here?’
‘I’m here early for a death. Not yours.’ Juliette quickly changed the su
bject. ‘The night we met Bulgakov. The Spring Ball at Spaso House. Moscow. The baby bear the ambassador ordered along with the zebra finches and the mountain goats. And we led the goats into the dining room and they knocked over the tables with the black tulips on, and ate them.’
‘We drank too much champagne, Juliette. Bulgakov thought it amusing but the U.S. ambassador didn’t. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to outdo other ambassadors.’
‘Anyone who goes to that much trouble to be outré deserves it.’
‘Says she who has never gone over the top.’
‘Name one time.’
‘Just the one? Okay the party at the gallery—where you got so drunk you decided that the paintings of Manuel needed a little more to them than the artist wanted. That business with the paintings.’
Juliette laughed again. ‘Ah. He’d insulted me once a very long time ago so I thought I’d do that. Not my greatest hour but funny at the time.’
‘The bejowled little man. Arrogant. A misogynist and a Catholic to boot?’
Juliette nodded. Jealousy within groups of artists. She knew all too well about that. The Schadenfreude factor.
‘You actually had the nerve to paint over the work. You couldn’t decide whether to make it a goat or a donkey. Manuel had said that Pope Innocent VIII was right to instigate the persecution of witches—well the female ones. So you painted a donkey in every one of his paintings. In the one where a great poet is reading from a manuscript. The one with the cardinal in it—actually you did more in that one—didn’t you—repainted the bottom half depicting the cardinal lifting his red cassock over his head. Didn’t you? Then that other one—how did you get away with all that? Was that it? All of it?’
‘There was poison in the ear.’
‘Metaphorically speaking?’
