Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know

by Samira Ahmed

  Alexandre is quiet.

  I am, too.

  I’ve never met this woman, but I feel like she deserves this moment of silence because I can’t give her anything else. God. I can’t imagine how inexplicably awful life must have been for her. Humans can be horrifically evil to one other. I blink away a few tears. It’s not at all the same, but I can’t help but think of my own family in India and the stories Mom and Nani told me; we lost touch with some of our family during Partition—the crappy British mandate that divided India in 1947. We think some of them were killed. I have distant cousins somewhere in Pakistan that I’ll probably never know. It’s infuriating how few people get to take center stage—mostly men in power, who hog the spotlight while billions more live life in the darkness of the wings. Maybe I can help change that.

  Alexandre grazes the back of my hand with his thumb. “You want to hear something ridiculous? I let myself believe that taking the Dumas name instead of de la Pailleterie was a small, rebellious way Dumas and his father kept Marie-Cessette’s spirit alive. She was the legacy they chose. And the one they gave me.”

  A lump wells in my throat. “It’s sad that she never knew the Dumas impact on French history and culture. Even American culture. I mean, hello, the Three Musketeers. And when I say that, I’m specifically referring to the candy bar.”

  His face lights up with a smile. “I’m happy my family could make this important contribution to your life.”

  I laugh. “Hey, it was my favorite Halloween score from second through sixth grade. My friend Julie used to help me hoard them when we trick-or-treated, and she even got me a bag of minis for the plane ride over here. My love endures.”

  “Good to know you’re not fickle.” Alexandre tosses a few euros onto the table before standing up and reaching for my hand, an impish glint in his eye. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

  It doesn’t escape me that those are the exact words I said to him that led us to this moment. I don’t think it escapes him, either. Show-and-tell is how every relationship starts. My mind drifts to Zaid and all the things hidden and revealed even though we’re not speaking at all. I guess that’s how Instagram works—you only choose to show certain parts of yourself, but sometimes you end up telling more than you realized or intended. And people say social media isn’t the real world.

  We hurry up Rue Bonaparte and onto Rue de l’Abbaye. A quick left, and we find ourselves in an adorable, barely trafficked little square. I love these little hidden nooks you can discover in Paris. You can be smack-dab in the midst of a throng of people, and you take a turn and then another, and boom, you have a small corner of Paris all to yourself. Alexandre grabs my hand and pulls me across the street. He doesn’t let go. I’m pretending it’s no big deal while secretly pleading with my palms not to get clammy.

  “Where are you dragging me to?” I ask.

  “We’re here,” he says and stops in front of an unassuming set of brown wooden doors. He finally lets go of my hand and points to a plaque above the door: le musée national eugène delacroix.

  I know of this museum—it was Delacroix’s home and studio once. I wanted to visit when I was working on my essay, but my parents weren’t about to let me make a special trip to Paris by myself at their expense, even for research. I tried to talk to the archivist on the phone, but it was like smashing my head against the brick wall of French bureaucracy: a lot of no, it’s not possible and sorry, the archive is not yet fully digitized, and why can’t you do your research here during our ridiculously limited hours? Please let there be some treasure trove.

  At the entry kiosk, Alexandre flashes an ID, and the woman at the desk gives him a tight-lipped smile and nods us through.

  “What’s that, your all-access Paris badge?” I ask.

  “I wish,” he says. “It’s my school ID. I’ve been doing some archival research here.”

  “What school do you go to?” It occurs to me now that I haven’t bothered to ask where he goes to school or even how old he is. I’m not sure if it’s my weak attempt at keeping my distance, if I’m desperately focused on how to salvage my potential post–high school academic life, or if my brain has been too wrapped up in the Zaid situation to gather intel about the guy who’s actually available and whom I’m feeling a little bit fluttery about. Probably all those things.

  “I’m starting my second year at university in September. École du Louvre. I want to specialize in nineteenth-century French art.”

  He’s older. That is a bit unexpected. I was thinking maybe last year at lycée, the French equivalent of high school. But he’s probably at least nineteen. Does he know I’m only seventeen—almost eighteen? He must know. I told him I was starting senior year. I guess he doesn’t mind hanging with someone younger, because it’s not like I’m forcing him to do banal high school things like . . . prom. French kids don’t even have prom. But I let myself imagine them dancing along the banks of the Seine as the magic light of summer descends on a Paris night, the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the background. I may be Franco-American, but the American part of me still indulges in the occasional romantic, filmic Franco-fantasies.

  It is summer in Paris, after all.

  The museum’s library is empty except for a pale-faced woman sitting at a desk, ash-blonde hair pulled into a tight bun. She’s wearing a turtleneck. In August. From the looks of her nearly translucent skin, I don’t think she’s seen daylight for some time. She raises her eyes from her book to take us in. She’s probably the one who couldn’t be bothered to help me and chided me for making too many demands on her time. The Archival Knight, sworn to protect dusty piles of paper and old books from the unworthy, sacrificing her social life and access to vitamin D.

  Alexandre marches up to her and flashes a smile. They exchange a few hushed words. She nods—grins, even—pushes her creaky chair away from her desk, and breezes past the wall of packed shelves that reach to the top of the high ceilings, disappearing into a back room. If she’s the same archivist who blew me off, and I’m sure she is, she seems far more agreeable to Alexandre’s requests than mine. Gee, wonder why.

  While we’re waiting for her to return, I snap a photo of the library for Instagram—it’s not a perfectly color-coordinated shelfie, but I could explore this place for hours. There are probably endless secrets hidden between the pages of these forgotten books. And I love that you need one of those old-timey rolling ladders to reach the highest shelves. Even with my back to him, I can feel the weight of Alexandre’s stare as he watches me. I turn to catch his eye and smile as the woman reemerges and silently hands him an archival box before returning to her work.

  Alexandre motions for me to join him at a small table next to the only window in the room, overlooking a perfect little garden in full bloom. He gingerly takes the lid off the box. I know he’s been digging through these archives, but judging from some of the dust that remains undisturbed, he’s likely the only person who’s touched this box in ages. Alexandre sucks in his breath as he carefully draws out a thin, manila file folder, which I’m assuming is lignin- and acid-free. Wow. I’m standing close to a cute guy and my mind immediately goes to safe storage for archival documents. Hot. He opens the folder that contains a single sheet of paper—aged, yellowed at its edges, written in grayish-black ink. A fountain pen, judging from the blots.

  I squint at the date scrawled at the top: August 18, 1844. “A letter to Dumas? That’s pretty cool.”

  Alexandre nods but doesn’t lift his eyes from the page. He’s obviously seen it before, but he’s staring so intently, it’s like he’s hoping for a new clue to magically appear. I understand the feeling.

  “I discovered this and a couple other letters when I began to focus on my specialization,” he says, nodding at the letter. “My uncle nearly lost his mind when I showed him. This is where I learned about the Hash Eaters Club. Here and the archives we still have at home and my uncle’s resea
rch. It’s amazing to hold this in my hands.”

  He’s nerding out over history. It’s kind of adorable.

  “You have letters like this between Dumas and Delacroix and—”

  “Other Hash Eaters, too. Baudelaire. Hugo. Balzac.”

  My heart stops for a moment at this revelation. At these names. They’re a who’s who of nineteenth-century artists. Our world is so small, interconnected. Tangled, even. On a road trip once, my mom tried to get us to play this game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. She fake-cried when I admitted I had no idea who that was. But then she explained it was a Hollywood riff on this old idea that any two people can be connected by six links or fewer. I was terrible at the game because apparently the pre-phone ancient rules say you can’t google anyone. But the theory stuck with me. It’s comforting in a way. We don’t have to rely on something as arbitrary as destiny in life. We’re connected. It’s like Alexandre and I would cross paths eventually. And now I’m one degree away from Dumas’s family. It’s math, but it doesn’t make it any less wild.

  Alexandre whistles to get my attention. “Khayyam? Where’d you go?”

  “Oh, sorry. Just mind blown that these dudes had a hashish coffee klatch. Total reality show.” I look up at Alexandre and smile. I don’t feel like a dilettante right now at all; I feel like a bona fide art history sleuthing badass.

  He laughs. “I think this is one of three documents that you’ll find interesting. At least, I hope you do.”

  My ears perk up. My stomach somersaults. I’m trying not to appear too eager. Breathe. “Let me see.”

  He points to the slightly slanted, curled French cursive of Delacroix. “Right here he says, ‘Tonight you shall meet the lady with the raven tresses. And see the dream of the poet come to life.’”

  “The lady with raven braids? Or does he mean hair? Is it the French or English? And a dream of a poet? What poet?”

  “That’s what’s strange about it—it’s Franglais. And he’s using it with the English construction, the adjective before the noun. Then it’s the English, I guess? Hair? And as for the poet, I have no idea. I was thinking it was like a metaphor—a woman so beautiful she was like the dream of a poet, maybe?”

  Alexandre pauses and locks eyes with me. I think this is for dramatic effect. It totally works. “But the lady, I think she’s real. Important. Dumas was notorious for affairs, but this lady intrigues me. My uncle says that this is one of the only references to a woman that we’ve found in Dumas’s letters—”

  “But if he had all those affairs, there must be love letters somewhere.”

  “Probably New Zealand or Texas. If letters like that even exist.”

  My eyebrows knit together. “What?” It’s fair to say that New Zealand and Texas were the last places I thought Alexandre would mention.

  “Ridiculous, right? A collector from New Zealand owns the largest private collection of Dumas archives. We don’t have direct access to them. Some are at a university in Texas—they’re not even all properly catalogued or available.” Alexandre sighs and runs his hands through his wavy hair.

  “That sucks.”

  “Tell me about it. We’ve been terrible stewards of the Dumas archives. Even his own children sold off whatever they could after his death.”

  “Damn. Gold diggers.”

  “In their defense, Dumas made a fortune in his life but wasted it all on lavish parties. Plus, he totally had a weakness for the ladies and showed his interest with extravagant gifts.” Alexandre sighs at this.

  “So, um, does the apple fall far from the tree?” Oh God. Did I actually say that?

  “What does that mean?” Alexandre asks, and it’s hard to tell if he’s annoyed or genuinely confused.

  And now I have to explain myself. Idioms never translate well. Dammit. “I mean, perhaps you take after your ancestor?”

  Without missing a beat, he looks into my eyes and says, “If you mean do I find beautiful, clever, dark-haired women irresistible, then yes, I am like my grand-père. But I believe there will be only one woman for me.”

  Ugh. So perfect. So French. I ignore him, which I’m learning is the best way to deal with a charming Frenchman. “Tell me more about the raven-haired lady.”

  “Look at this.” Alexandre begins leafing through the other folders. He delicately draws out a plastic sleeve that protects a few torn scraps of thick paper the size of Post-its with doodles of faces. No, it’s a single face. I look closer at the woman in profile with long, dark hair accented with a few scattered flowers. There are two drawings of this woman on these roughly hewn slips of paper—one sketch the size of a quarter, the other a bit bigger. The ink is a little smudged, but, especially in the larger one, I can clearly make out the pen strokes of the woman’s hair, curled lines that start wide and thin out past her undrawn shoulders as she looks off somewhere in the distance.

  With our heads bent over the table, I steal a glance at Alexandre and realize how close we are. A slight warmth creeps from my chest up my neck to my cheeks. “Is that her?” I whisper. “The raven-tressed lady? And are these Delacroix doodles?”

  Alexandre leans in closer still. “I think so, but there’s no signature. I have . . . What’s that word you Americans use? A hunch?”

  “The pencil strokes, the look on her face . . .”

  Alexandre’s eyes widen. “There’s something else.”

  He straightens and removes another file folder with no particular flourish. But I find myself holding my breath, waiting for the fireworks to explode from a humble paper sleeve. Another letter. This time to Dumas’s son—Alexandre Dumas, fils. The edges are ripped, whole paragraphs are unreadable, dried traces of ink stain the page, and there’s a tear through the center that someone seemed to have tried to fix years ago with tape. Tape. An archivist’s nightmare. But some sentences remain, traveling through time to find us here.

  It’s dated 1870. The year Dumas died.

  “Holy crap,” I say, too loudly. The archivist shushes me. We’re the only other ones in here, and she shushes me. No wonder she didn’t want to help me.

  Alexandre flashes her a warm smile in apology before he answers me. “The words in the letter, cherchez la femme. It’s one of his most famous lines, part of it anyway, from Les Mohicans de Paris. Cherchez la femme. Seek the woman. But the treasure line isn’t from the book, so what does it mean?”

  My heart skips a beat. What if the treasure is the lost Delacroix? What if it’s something even bigger? What could be bigger than that? This could be everything. “And that’s your directive? Seek the woman, find the treasure?”

  “I want the truth. There are so many family rumors about Dumas and his various affairs, but this . . . Even his use of that phrase, cherchez la femme. Did this mystery woman inspire the phrase or even the story itself? It rouses my curiosity, you know?”

  Yes, so aroused, I think. Wow. At least I didn’t say that out loud. I nod but try not to look at him—it’s the only way to calm my rapid breathing. “Where are the instructions? And why is a letter from Dumas to his son in a Delacroix archive?”

  “My questions exactly. I asked her”—Alexandre nods toward the archivist—“and she suggested that the Dumas family sold some of the letters between Dumas and Delacroix to the Delacroix estate. This letter got mixed up in the files.”

  “But maybe it wasn’t a mistake? Maybe the treasure is related to Delacroix after all? But then the instructions would have to be here, too, right?” I can’t disguise the urgency in my voice, the panic.

  Alexandre shakes his head. “I’ve looked in every Delacroix file they have from those years, and . . . nothing. My uncle couldn’t find anything even remotely resembling directions to any possible treasure in any other archive, either. He’d never even heard of it. That note was sitting here, ignored, all this time.”

  “Another dead end.” I bury my face in my ha
nds. I’m scared to be hopeful, maybe even afraid to try. I don’t know if I can take slamming into a brick wall again.

  Alexandre places a hand on my shoulder. “Khayyam, finding this treasure would mean a lot to my family—more than I can say. I’m not giving up. I’m taking it as a challenge, not a dead end. Would you like to join me in my quest?”

  I bite my lower lip. I’m getting ahead of myself. There are almost no actual facts or clues to go on. But this could be a chance to fix everything I’ve screwed up in my life this last year. I imagine myself walking into the head judge’s office, throwing my paper onto her desk after I’ve discovered a missing Delacroix. I’ll be the toast of the art world. And Zaid—the beautiful boy, my problematic fave, whose ghost simply refuses to stay locked in the remembering closet of my mind—will fade away into the past instead of floating around us, all afternoon, every time I look into Alexandre’s sparkling sienna eyes. Maybe I’ll be able to leave Zaid in the dust like the artifacts in these archives. Maybe Dumas has unwittingly reached forward into the future to give me this directive so I can save myself from myself. I don’t believe in fate or things happening for a reason, and I’m trying hard to not view everything through romantic rose-colored lenses.

  But none of that matters because I’m here right now. And I have nothing left to lose.

  I nod at Alexandre. “Cherchez la femme.”

  Leila

  The door to the Room of Ablution creaks open. Valide steps in, clacking her carved ebony cane against the tile, the single ruby in its center shining a beam of purple-red as the morning light streams and bends through it.

  She scowls at me. “What are you doing at this hour?”

  I turn to her, naked. “As you see, I am preparing myself for the Pasha. He has summoned me.”

  Valide harrumphs. “God knows what he sees in you, feckless girl. Girl who has failed to bear him an heir.”