The Congo Venus

by Matthew Head

She glanced at me indifferently and said, “Clean and healthy. Got a plain piece of paper and an envelope in here?”

  “Plenty.”

  “I want some. Got another errand boy?”

  “Paper, envelope, and errand boy,” I said. “Another message?”

  “To Gollmer,” she said. I went to my desk and got some paper and an envelope and handed them to her, and she unclipped a pencil from her pocket and started writing. “No reflections on you as a reporter, Hoopsie,” she said, “but I’m going straight to the source to get some more stuff about this picture thing. I’m sure I can manage Gollmer without getting him suspicious, and if he does get suspicious I’m sure I can convince him he should shut up. Call the boy, will you?”

  “Do you want a clean starched uniform for this one too?” I asked.

  “This one can go buck naked for all I care,” Miss Finney said. I went to the door and called in the direction of the wash shed, and one of our boys named Alfonse came trotting up. When I turned back into the room, Miss Finney folded the piece of paper and handed it to me with the addressed envelope and said, “Read it before you seal it, if you want to.”

  It said:

  Dear Dr. Gollmer—

  I’ve been thinking over our talk of a couple of days ago and looking over the charts and so on you left with me. Have reached a decision and wonder if I can see you today. Since this is confidential and the walls at the ABC are thin, let’s make it at the American Economic Mission, where I am just now with my friend H. Tolliver. Let’s say 2 o’clock today unless you send a note by this boy saying no go, or unless you hear from me that something else has turned up, which isn’t likely.

  Yrs,

  M. Finney, M.D.

  “What might turn up?” I asked. I sealed the letter and gave it to the boy and told him what the address said.

  “Chance old Madame might make a conflicting date, but I don’t think so. Now I have something else to write while we’re waiting, Hoop, and I want to sit at the desk and write it. Entertain yourself some way.”

  She went to the desk and sat at it, scribbling, scratching out, and so on, apparently really composing something this time. She was hard at it when the first boy came back with a note from Madame de St. Nicaise. She had received Monsieur Tolliver’s charming note, hers said, and would be enchanted to be at home to him, and would receive him for morning coffee at eleven, or afternoon tea at five. She would expect a telephone call from him upon receipt of the note.

  I showed it to Miss Finney.

  “Eleven, of course,” she said, “which means practically right now. Go telephone, Hoop. I’m almost through here. Tell her that charming Dr. Finney and enchanting Miss Collins would appreciate the darling opportunity and la-de-da-da-da of paying their respects at the same time. I’ll be done with this when you get back.”

  I went over to the office and used the telephone, and when I got back, Miss Finney had collected Miss Collins, and they were both in my room waiting for me.

  I said, “Hello, Emily, how’d you enjoy that copy of Esquire?”

  “All right,” she said. “After I figured out the first cartoon, the rest were easy. They all seem to be based on the same general idea. Mary says we’re all going to call on Madame de St. Nicaise. Poor thing. I wonder if she’s heard yet about Mr. Morelli and that girl in Thysville?”

  “You’ll know,” I said, “the minute we step inside the door.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IT WAS APPARENT FROM the minute we stepped inside the door not only that Madame de St. Nicaise had received no bad news of any kind recently, but that she thought she had her own mean little world by the tail. Her faintly housekeeperish air had vanished. She smelled strongly of perfume—a fresh, pleasant scent but inappropriate for her and too generously applied—and she was beaming all over the place, a kind of professional beam, it’s true, but with some real beam back of it, not a beam of welcome so much as a beam of self-congratulation, and as she spread her lips at me I noticed that she had had some new dentures since that time I had talked to her about the E-string, and that they were a great improvement.

  She had been doing some other things to her face, however, which were no improvement at all. If she had ever used lipstick before, I had never noticed it, and she certainly was using it now. Lipstick is the biggest thing that ever happened for women, but somebody could have given Madame de St. Nicaise lessons in how to apply it and what color to use. She had a rather large, heavily muscled mouth, and she had made an awkward attempt to shape it and reduce its size, with a fuchsia-colored stick that brought out all the heavy sallow quality of her complexion. It was a color that would have been fine on Liliane, I thought—and then sickeningly I had a picture of Madame de St. Nicaise poking around in Liliane’s things, smelling her perfumes—of course that was Liliane’s scent—looking into jars of creams and lotions and sniffing at them, handling the brush and comb, unscrewing the lipsticks and sending their little fatty red ends in and out of their cases, and smearing them on her own lips.

  And yet you go on moving and talking within the conventions, and I followed the three women into the living room, but I sat as far from Madame de St. Nicaise as I could, and to avoid seeing her I began examining the room, object by object. Except for the absence of Mimette stalking and yowling around in it the room hadn’t changed a bit. I had certainly been right when I had thought that the position of every piece of furniture was rigidly determined. The chairs were still squatting sullenly in the same spots, and the photographs on the piano hadn’t been moved an inch. Not one object had been added, and since Liliane’s presence in the house had never been acknowledged by anything in that room, no object had been subtracted, either, but when I looked at Madame de St. Nicaise, and saw her purplish mouth moving in the opening pleasantries to Miss Finney and Miss Collins, it was as if the air were tainted with the odor of corruption. That’s when you feel really thankful for the conventions, when you go on moving and talking within them, hiding behind them, and when I saw Madame de St. Nicaise’s mouth moving at me, and saw it stop, waiting for me to move mine at her in the proper answer, I knew that I had been sitting there all the time with the proper expression, half smiling as if it were a pleasure to see Madame de St. Nicaise, and half solemn because of the occasion of the visit.

  I said, “I was so sorry to hear of your loss, Madame. Permit me to extend my most respectful condolences.”

  Madame de St. Nicaise produced a lace-edged handkerchief from nowhere, like a magician, but she wasn’t magician enough to produce a tear in her eye. She made a dry run, however, touching a corner of the handkerchief to the corner of one eye for a second, and then gently touching the bottom of her nose. She towered the handkerchief and said, “Thank you, Monsieur. Thank you so much. You are very kind.”

  “I have not had the occasion to see Monsieur Morelli,” I went on. “I hope that you will be kind enough to express to him my sincere sympathy in the loss of his wife.”

  “Ah, yes, Monsieur—yes. As soon as he returns.”

  “Is he away?” I said, surprised.

  “Oh, yes,” said Madame de St. Nicaise. “He is in Thysville.”

  “Thysville!” I blurted. I looked at Miss Collins, who had said Morelli had a girl in Thysville, and I looked at Miss Finney, who had said she might be leaving town on a little business, but both of them sat there behind their faces and didn’t show a thing.

  “Why, yes,” said Madame de St. Nicaise. “It is very restful there, and of course he has been under a great strain.”

  “Isn’t that where the mental hospital is?” asked Miss Finney, who knew damn well where everything in the Congo was, and certainly every hospital. Madame de St. Nicaise looked somewhat taken aback, and Miss Finney said, “Oh, I didn’t mean anything. I just mean it is restful.”

  I said, “It was very tragic for him. Such a sudden illness, and then—Madame Morelli had seemed so well. I had always thought of her as the epitome of good health. I found her a charming young w
oman, Madame.”

  Madame de St. Nicaise experienced a moment of facial paralysis labeled My Pleasant Expression for Use Under Unpleasant Circumstances. It was so painful to look at that I had to find something else to say, and I said, “How sad for Monsieur Morelli, to have lost two such charming wives.”

  It wasn’t very good, but Madame de St. Nicaise relaxed her facial muscles and said with some animation, “Ah, yes, I am sorry that you did not have the opportunity to know my sister Jeanne, Monsieur, his first wife, of course. Such a charming gentlewoman, so quiet, so—what shall I say—so, ah, discreet, the very soul of gentility, Monsieur, with no thought but her home and her husband. Yes. It was my great good fortune to replace her”—she caught herself quickly and stuck in—“partially, upon her death. I came out here, Monsieur, to this wilderness, to care for the little Jeanne. Oh, I was mother to her, yes, and I did my best to maintain the home for Monsieur Morelli, although the sacrifice—”

  She paused, and looked around at all three of us with what she used for a smile, and said, “But of course, for sacrifice one expects one’s reward in heaven, is that not so? One does one’s best,” she said, and waved the handkerchief in an elegant gesture of dismissing the subject, then let her hand fall in her lap, “and looks for no other reward.”

  Miss Finney coughed and said innocently, “I see. And so now you have come back to Léopoldville to help out again.”

  “Oh, no,” said Madame de St. Nicaise. “I stayed on after Monsieur Morelli’s—remarriage.”

  “Oh, excuse me,” said Miss Finney. “I’m a stranger here.”

  Madame de St. Nicaise said, “Liliane was so young and so inexperienced. Oh, yes, I stayed on, Madame, I stayed on and kept the house. The child Jeanne—I had become almost a mother to her, and it was for her of course the, ah, time in a young girl’s life when she needs the, ah, guidance of—shall we say a wise, experienced hand? Oh, yes, I”—she made a gesture entitled Cheerful Renunciation—“stayed on.”

  “Goodness,” said Miss Finney. “What a godsend for Mr. Morelli.”

  Madame de St. Nicaise smirked.

  “And so of course you’ll be staying on now, I guess,” Miss Finney said, “now that the second Madame Morelli has passed on. We have a phrase in English. We say ‘History repeats itself.’”

  “Dear me,” said little Emily, “you mean Mr. Morelli’s going to get married again?”

  Cripes! I thought, but I looked at her and she was playing it straight, all round-eyed. I looked at Miss Finney and she was sitting there looking sort of stupid and complacent, a manner she had assumed from the moment she entered Madame de St. Nicaise’s door.

  “Goodness, I wouldn’t know,” Miss Finney said. “Aren’t we awful, sitting here in Madame de St. Nicaise’s lovely living room and talking this way.”

  “Oh, but I understand perfectly,” said Madame de St. Nicaise. “It is the frankness American.”

  But the thing was, that instead of jumping out of the seat of her chair when Emily had mentioned Morelli’s marrying again, Madame de St. Nicaise had done nothing more than duck her head slightly, and then she began giving absolutely the best impersonation of the cat that had eaten the canary that I had ever seen. By God, I thought, she really does expect to be dealt in this time.

  She went on, “Yes, you Americans are very frank, and it is charming, extremely charming. And as for Monsieur Morelli”—and she smoothed the material of her dress carefully over her thigh with the palm of one hand—“he is of course a gentleman, and always he can be depended upon to do what is for a gentleman de rigeur, but he is essentially a family man, yes, a family man.” She sighed, and there was in it the quality of anticipation.

  “My,” said Miss Finney. “That’s nice.”

  “And being a family man, of course,” said Madame de St. Nicaise, encouraged by Miss Finney’s response, “it is to be expected of him that he will continue the habit of domesticity. The home, the daughter—”

  There was a hell of a blank moment in the room while nobody said “the wife,” and then Miss Finney said, “Well, from what you tell me, Madame, he certainly is a lucky man to have you around.”

  Little Emily said in a voice like sugar and water, “A nice middle-aged man like Monsieur Morelli needs a nice dependable lady, maybe past her first youth. But you never can tell. So many men are so funny about what they pick out. Don’t you think?”

  I said, “Emily, for crying out loud!”

  “Well, yes,” said Miss Finney, “I guess there’s such a thing as carrying the frankness American too far, but I certainly have enjoyed our congenial little chat, Madame. Well, I guess we’ll have to be going.” Everybody made a preliminary stir toward rising, except Miss Finney, and she caught me with my hind end half raised when she said, “Well, since Madame de St. Nicaise is so charming about Americans, I must admit I’d like to broach a subject, er, something special.” She was being American as all hell, all awkward charm, and it stuck in my craw, but Madame de St. Nicaise said, maybe a little uncomfortably, “Of course, if there is anything I can do for you, Madame Finney—”

  Miss Finney said abruptly, “Did you know I was a doctor? An M.D.?”

  Madame de St. Nicaise jumped, I think we all did, and said, “No, I did not, Madame. I—ah—congratulate you.”

  “Thanks,” said Miss Finney. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been gathering material on blackwater fever.”

  “Oh,” said Madame de St. Nicaise. “Yes. I see.”

  “If you don’t mind—” said Miss Finney.

  Madame de St. Nicaise produced the handkerchief again, and holding it lightly to her mouth she coughed a couple of times, very phony.

  “Pardon,” she said graciously, “a slight phlegm.”

  “I’d like to give you something for it,” said Miss Finney.

  So would I, I thought. Arsenic.

  “How kind,” said Madame de St. Nicaise. “But I have not much distress.”

  “I was saying,” said Miss Finney, “that if it isn’t too painful for you, if I could just learn some of the details, ask you a few questions—I know this must sound pretty heartless and so on, Madame, but you know scientists.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well—maybe I’d better just forget it. I can get it from the doctor anyway. Who was your doctor, Madame?”

  “No!” cried Madame de St. Nicaise. “To go to that man, Madame Finney—Docteur Finney—to go to that man, I would not wish that on any one. Now, Madame—Docteur—you are going to think it is I who am too frank. The frankness Belgian this time! This Dr. Gollmer—about Dr. Gollmer”—and now she was really breathing heavily—“about him I will tell you, gladly, yes, very gladly, Madame Finney. Oh, yes, I will tell you about Dr. Gollmer!”

  “Well, yes—but I don’t want to disturb you or anything.”

  “Disturb!” cried Madame de St. Nicaise. “You say disturb! But my dear Docteur Finney, you are not disturbing me! It is a pleasure, of that I can assure you! It is Gollmer who disturbs me! Disturbed! Yes, I am indeed disturbed, very disturbed, but about this Gollmer it is a pleasure to tell you, and I insist!”

  “I see,” said Miss Finney. “Well, in that case—” She turned to me and said in rapid English, “Hoop, you can sit back in your chair. It won’t bite you.” She turned back to Madame de St. Nicaise and spoke in French again: “Pardon, Madame. You were saying?”

  Madame de St. Nicaise cleared her throat and settled herself in her chair, by which I don’t mean that she settled back comfortably. She settled herself as she might settle herself in a saddle for an exhibition performance, and she began talking.

  “For you, Docteur Finney, I will begin at the first,” she said. “Now do not expect me to be tactful. Tactful I will not, I will not, be. In the first place I must tell you that long before this, I learned that Dr. Gollmer was a brute, yes, Madame, a veritable brute, who for the pleasure it afforded him—mark you, Madame, for the pleasure!—tortured animals. Oh, I could tell you a thing or two
about that,” she said, and as her glance fell on me and she began to recollect that after all I had known something about the Mimette controversy she looked for a moment uncertain, a little puzzled, as if even in her own ears the description of Dr. Gollmer as a man who tortured animals held the echo of an exaggeration which she had long since accepted as established fact.

  But she glanced away from me, and went on to Miss Finney: “But about his past sins, and I assure you, Madame, that they are many, and of the most horrid—of his past sins let me not speak, but of this affair. Well, Madame, when Liliane became ill, I of course recognized the symptoms of the malaria. Oh, I had done everything I could, understand that, Madame, to protect the members of this little household. I have the records for anyone to see, of the daily quinine. But Liliane was very careless, you understand. She was young and if I may say so, she had never developed a proper sense of discipline in these matters. But I always saw that she had her quinine pill—yes, every day, and I have the chart, with each day checked, which I can show, for all my little family. But of course there are things which I can not always control. I can not be certain that Liliane always lowered her mosquito net at night. And sometimes she stayed out very late, of course, going to the dear Lord knows what kinds of places infested with mosquitoes. If she were ever near the native village at night, Madame, it is ces indigènes, ugh, the dirty things, who carry around this malaria, and of course a mosquito who bites one of them and then one of us—but I need not tell you, Madame, who are a doctor. But the idea—faugh! the blood from the native, and then to us—no, really, it is too much to think about!”

  She paused for breath, and Miss Finney murmured, “Of course I see how you feel, but you could catch it just as bad from an infected white.”

  “It is too disgusting,” said Madame de St. Nicaise. “But in any case I did what I could, of that I can at least take comfort, and when Liliane complained of the headache and fever, I recognized immediately of course what it was. We shall have the doctor immediately, I said, and my dear Madame Finney, I was too horror stricken when Liliane said to me that I must call Dr. Gollmer.”