The Green Muse

by Jessie Prichard Hunter

  The Paris Morgue is all the rage, listed in all the guidebooks. Tout le monde goes there.

  “It is almost the dawn of a new century, Charles,” Leonard sometimes says to me. Chiding, perhaps. Sardonic. I am heartily tired of this new century that had not yet even arrived. It is an age of miracles. Travel is miraculous, and communication, and medicine, and science. We sped on wheels swifter than the gods’, and time annihilates space; we speak here and are heard elsewhere almost simultaneously, and once again space is leapt over, this time by thought. The body has become practically superfluous. We are in the midst of miracles, on the verge of great things. Perhaps one day we will even overcome death, and I will have nothing left to care about.

  I and my two companions share rooms and attend law-­school lectures. We live in the usual student dishabille: books, papers, plaster busts in the Renaissance style, an old female concierge who provides lukewarm café au lait and buttered bread for breakfast. Theo never attends lectures; he spends the money his mother sends on liquor and nights at unspeakable places. Leonard grew up on a farm in the Camargue. He worked for several years as a tailor to earn the money to come to Paris and study law. Theo smokes Turkish cigarettes for his asthma and makes insinuating remarks. Leonard has all the low cunning of a self-­made man. He likes to think that he is more sophisticated than the rest of us; but he is only older.

  We take our dinners on the boulevards. We take young ladies walking in the countryside. We visit the Morgue two or three times weekly. We are ordinary young men.

  Theo was lighting his pipe, an intricate ritual designed purely for show.

  “You can’t wear that cravat today,” I said to Leonard. “You wore it last time. If Theo’s got to drag us to that wretched place again, at least don’t disgrace yourself by your attire.”

  “Nor you by your attitude, Charles,” he said lightly, flicking his cravat at me before tossing it on the sofa. Leonard knew me rather better than I would have liked.

  “Tea, cousin?” I asked Theo, who could at least be counted on not to understand too much.

  “Don’t be disdainful,” Leonard said. “It does not cover your desire.”

  But at least he didn’t know what it was I desired.

  For young men with education and money, there are many things to do in Paris. Pleasant things. Cheap or posh clubs where women dance, diaphanous onstage before us, plump like partridges, and gleaming white. Offered up to us to touch with our eyes. Or perhaps more intimately, for a price: like partridges.

  I do not much care for what I can only touch. If one of them were mine, it would perhaps be different: if one that I possessed were to show her body to all Paris. But I have not had luck. They want roses. And trips to the country, and hats, and chocolate. From girls like that, I just want flesh.

  I can strike that kind of bargain too, of course. I don’t even have to see their faces. But then only they know, and what conquest is that? One can hardly say, She is mine; she does me no credit, she is any man’s.

  There are places to do other things. Eat, drink, talk politics, and play cards. Watch the shopgirls go by at lunchtime, clutching sausages from the cookshops, or radishes or shrimps; they wear paper flowers on their bosoms, wire and purple tissue paper and false green leaves that quiver slightly as they breathe.

  There is liquor everywhere, and the opera, and the Louvre, and the society of young men of good character. These things do interest me, but not enough. Young men of my class are all the same. Connoisseurs and dilettantes at once, experts at opinion only. We do study. We go to our lectures at the Panthéon. We sit in drafty large rooms and listen to old men talk. What I have learned most well is what kind of old man I do not want to be. I am supposed to crave excitement—­I am young—­well and good. But I want to leave behind me more than words in books, words in court records. I would have another kind of canvas.

  Liquor is more interesting. Or rather, absinthe. In too great quantities absinthe strangles the will; we have all seen the stupid clouded eyes of the habitual absinthe drinker. The soporific effects of the drug can be avoided, but there remains the risk of slavery: It tantalizes me to see those who have capitulated. Peace like chains around their necks, oblivion their heaven.

  I drink enough to quiet my nerves. They tighten and stretch, but I will not be ruled by them. Absinthe dampens some fires while stoking others. I feel I might do anything. Nerves are primarily what keep men moral, I think; which is to say, fear. When I drink absinthe I am no longer frightening to myself. Nor to others, because it made me gentle.

  Theo declined tea, and somebody brought out absinthe. A small glass for each of us, sugar and spoons. Absinthe is properly drunk with a cube of sugar balanced over the glass on a slotted spoon. First the green liquor is poured into the glass. Then ice-­cold water is dripped over the sugar, dissolving it into the vivid green liquor until it acquires a yellow-­ochre opalescence. Then the process is repeated twice more. The clank of the spoon and the granular sugar on the tongue are as much part of the experience as is the sudden hot calm when the fluid hits the stomach. I paid careful attention to my elaborate ritual; each man has his own way of doing things.

  The one glass was sufficient. Its effects helped soothe the horrible excitement building up in my stomach.

  The Morgue.

  The most extraordinary pleasures are to be had there. There is a wall made of glass. The living stand on one side, staring; the other side is occupied by the dead. Thousands of ­people come to the Morgue in a week’s time. Some of us come again and again. We recognize one another underneath the blank, artificial lights.

  Leonard is in love with the Morgue. The light; the uniformed policemen directing the crowd. The crowd! Forty thousand in one day: that was when they were showing La Femme Coupée en Morceaux. The Lady Cut in Pieces. Sliced in half, cleanly, they say. She lay on a slanted wooden board, her nakedness draped discreetly from neck to foot, and nobody knew her name. We came, Leonard and Theo and I, to do our civic duty. To give a name to the charming dead. And she was charming, the Lady Cut in Pieces. After three days went by without identification, a wax mold was made of her head. It reclined for many weeks atop a sheet-­draped dummy waiting for all Paris to do its civic duty.

  But the lady was never identified. The newspapers never did reveal the exact manner of her death. Leonard went to see her every day for two weeks. He had dark slashes under his eyes. I believe he dreamed about her.

  Perhaps the Morgue needs introduction. Since the early part of the last century the Paris Morgue has been open to the public. For a time it lay in the shadow of Nôtre Dame, with a small, meshed window through which to look, and room beyond for one corpse, which must have been lonely. (Theo leans over my shoulder to see what I am writing. Theo sees smut in the most innocent statement, and he eats too much red meat. It makes him bilious.) The corpse lay in a leather apron with a tap of cold water running over its head for as long as it took to be identified. But there was no allure to that.

  Then the Morgue was moved, for a time, to the Ile St. Louis. Anyone traveling there would likely end up a guest at the very place he sought. No one came to the Morgue when it was in that slum. Bodies went unclaimed. Is there a superstition that an unclaimed body means an unclaimed soul? Absinthe makes my eyes grow dim, and I become capable of believing anything. (Leonard has just tapped my wrist with his cane: It is time to go.)

  The Morgue is once again in the shadow of Our Lady, on the Quai Nôtre Dame. When a man or woman is found dead, by natural means or foul, and cannot be identified, the body is placed on display at the Morgue, and Paris is invited to come and stare.

  It is an effective ploy. There are many who cloak desire in virtue, many who sleep well at night after having done their civic duty. And there are those who simply love the dead. Leonard is one of those. Theo loves spectacle. I am merely an observer, of the living as well as the dead. Because the dead, however charmin
g, are without volition. It is the living who present a challenge. Vice is a challenge to me. I make my own rules, and I do not break them.

  The streets were crowded and wet when we left our apartments. We did not call for a carriage, preferring instead the jostle of the crowd. That was one of Leonard’s affectations, that he enjoyed contact with the common ­people. Theo merely liked variety. He was always ready for conquest. My thoughts were ahead of us, already searching the crowds for her face.

  The others didn’t know about her. The lines were long that day, three ­people deep and stretching three blocks down the river from the Morgue door. But I found her. I always found her. How beautiful she looked that morning! She wore a halo of mist outside the door. The Morgue was quite busy, for a Thursday. The weather was queer, with a low sky, and cold; the crooked streets behind the cathedral would be dusky by mid-­afternoon. She stood on the line, which snaked ahead of us some five hundred feet. She carried a newspaper and wore a hat that wasn’t suited to the weather. I was nine ­people behind her, trying to distance myself from Theo’s antics: He would cry out, and read Le Journal Illustré aloud, interrupting himself with vulgar asides.

  “The body of a fashionably dressed gentleman was found yesterday evening in the Bois de Boulogne”—­indeed, was he fashionably dressed? Let us know more. “The man was attired entirely in black and adorned with a red cravat. A green carnation was found next to the body!” Why, we know what that means, don’t we! Theo considered himself a member of the Green Carnation Society. His amours were of no interest to me, but he shouted his indiscretions where a whisper would more than suffice. I did not want her to see me, and if Theo did not stop his buffoonery she would turn.

  I grabbed his arm.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  Theo sulked, rubbing his arm. I looked at her. I could see only her cheek and the line of her jaw. She was excited, flushed, with stray dampened wisps of hair escaping her chignon. There would be fine white hairs at the base of her neck, fine hair on her arms. I hadn’t seen these things, of course; one benefit of these long queues was that they gave me time to dream.

  I resolved to speak to her that day. The newspapers spoke of regulars. I had heard gossip about the Morgue set. If it was shameful to be in her company, then I was a willing slave to shame.

  She was young, she was small, she had blonde hair. How little that means, what little justice it does her. She had in her eyes the look of a trapped and wild thing; that is more to the point. Or of passion constrained. If she took off her hat the simple wind at the nape of her neck might drive her to ecstasy.

  I would have liked another glass of absinthe, another wave of that heady voluptuousness that was at once familiar and unexpected. She turned around at looked at Theo, quite directly.

  He was telling Leonard a story: “—­entered the burial vault of his wife a year after her death, to view what remained of his great love.”

  She smiled; she was amused.

  Quite suddenly the queue began to move. Her smile flashed and disappeared, and I turned in anger and slapped Theo on the arm, hard. When I looked again she was gone.

  Leonard looked up from Le Journal Illustré he had taken from Theo to say, “Charles, have you—­?” She had only moved to one of the vendors lining the avenue: a slice of coconut. She could have chosen oranges or cookies, she could have been stepping to the street to check the length of the queue.

  “Your gentleman is here today, Theo,” Leonard drawled. “The newspaper says he was unidentified.”

  She stood back in her place with her head turned half toward me, delicately scraping her bottom teeth against the rough skin of her coconut. I could feel her teeth. She closed her mouth on the coarse sweet, and Theo said, “Did anyone think to bring along any liquors? Charles is looking positively spectral. Charles”—­with real consternation—­“you’ve made your lip bleed.”

  I found I’d bought a small paper sack of orange peel. Having stepped away from the crowd to see her more easily, although I had no pretext for doing so. I did not like orange peel, but I knew, inhaling the sweet, dry smell while I look at her, that for me the smell of orange peel would always be inextricably mixed with the way the wind and her hair look. I wanted to sprinkle orange water in her hair, across her face, her mouth.

  “The papers always say he looks to be of dubious reputation,” Leonard said.

  “Exactly how,” asked Theo, having forgotten me and my bloody mouth, “does a dead countenance of a dubious gentleman differ from that of an equally dead gentleman of quality?”

  She was listening, smiling, and the coconut had made her lips wet. They looked swollen.

  “Is this a philosophical question, dear Theo,” Leonard was asking, “or the setting up of some dreadful joke?”

  Theo amused her. But she’d not yet noticed me. I had been coming to the Morgue for six months, and she was always there. She preferred coconuts to oranges. She had two cloaks, a black and a burgundy. She was always alone. Sometimes she brought a sandwich of cucumber and sliced meat and butter. I never saw her speak to anyone. Twice she had caught my stare; twice I have bowed my head in greeting; twice her brows have twitched and her eyelids swept her gaze out of sight. If she recognized me now she gave no sign.

  I craved the bitter, almost unbearable taste of absinthe now, which rested unsugared in a silver flask in my inside coat pocket. But Theo was greedy, and I would have it for myself.

  There was a family of six in front of us, obviously up from the country, the Morgue being a standard listing in any Cook’s tour of Paris. Listed between the Tuilleries gardens and Nôtre Dame.

  Only the husband seemed to be embarrassed by his surroundings. He kept stepping away from the queue and back to it, too acutely aware of its destination. The wife’s eyes were shining, and the four children, two boys and two girls between the ages of six and fourteen, were wild with anticipation. The oldest boy whispered in the six-­year-­old’s ear, making her cry. The wife wore a long white apron and a white cap, and carried a basket filled with greens. The children carried cooked shrimps and sausage in greasy paper from the cookshop on the corner. The father gulped his beer and did not wipe the foam from his mouth. The older daughter caught my eye. She simpered, as if I would even hold her gaze. She flushed and took a furious bite of her sausage.

  And with a lurch the queue began to move. The women screamed coyly, and the men took the opportunity to clutch their arms, to touch their waists. But her expression did not change even as the press of the crowd grew. She was sure-­footed and walked as though she were the only one there. I followed her hat. I was tempted again by the warm green in my vest pocket; Leonard caught my eye, and we both began to laugh. When she turned again it was toward my wide smile.

  A flicker of amusement passed over her lips, and she walked into the Morgue smiling.

  Chapter 3

  Edouard

  IN MY DARKROOM I stood quiet and still for a moment, as I always do before developing photographs of the dead. It is one of my rituals; I do not pray. I do not know why, really, as I pray nightly and attend church regularly at Our Lady of the Fields. I suppose the process of development itself, the careful undertaking of each step in the process, is in a way my prayer for the dead. And I suppose my moment of stillness is also a putting on of armor against what I am about to see.

  My darkroom is nothing but the bathroom of my apartment. I cannot afford to rent a studio, but I am comfortable with the space I have. My needs are modest: running water, room for creating exposures, a dry place to put finished pictures, and just the right amount of darkness.

  If I owned my own home I would put red-­glazed glass in the bathroom window; but since the plates and papers involved in developing an exposure react only to ultraviolet, violet, and blue light, it is sufficient to cover any sources of natural light with a warm yellow, amber, or red hue. As it is I have covered the bathroom window with seve
ral sheets of different-­colored paper in reds, oranges, and yellows. But not so many layers that I cannot see; it is said, after all, that if you cannot read a newspaper in your darkroom, it is too dark. I cannot yet afford the cost of red or amber for the globe of an oil lamp, so when it was already dark outside, a simple candle suffices for my needs. And I had the requisite tray for the developing of the exposures, a wooden box lined with thin sheets of zinc. And as I have said, there is sufficient space on the counter to dry the developed prints.

  I love my darkroom. It is my refuge. There I escape the everyday while doing work that I consider important and satisfying. Here in the quiet of my darkroom, as I light my candle against the setting of the sun, I am alone with both my thoughts and the poor creature whose photographs I have come here to bring to life.

  I grew up wanting to be a doctor. I wanted to help my fellow man. But I dreamed over my studies; I read poetry instead of Hippocrates. I particularly loved to look at things. The way a certain drop of water hung upon a leaf, the way a certain shaft of sunlight lit the corner of the kitchen hearthstone. I didn’t seem to have an aptitude for anything. But I was lucky: My mother was kind and, although my father beat me for laziness, she saw in me an artist. I was ashamed; I was no artist. But I loved her so fiercely (and do so fiercely still) that I wanted to live up to what she saw in me.

  I just didn’t know how. All I really remember of my school years is the games I used to play with my friends, and staring out the classroom window when I should have been paying attention to the schoolmaster. I loved clouds and birds, and all the different colors a field could turn in the course of an autumn morning. I tried drawing and had no knack for it; I tried painting, and although I loved mixing the colors and preparing canvases, I had no talent for rendering nature, or fruit, or my little sister’s pretty head.

  My mother, however, never despaired. She seemed to be waiting for something, so much so that when I was thirteen and suffering an excess of nerves about my future I asked her about this feeling I got from her that she was always looking for something, but without fear or weariness.