I’d had only a small plate of fruit stewed in butter for dinner, but I was not hungry. I had drunk absinthe from a crystal cup. My limbs were heavy, making it difficult even to walk. I was engulfed in a strange melancholy and looked at everything with the same impatient dullness. I wanted some violent escape for my feelings.
The square in front of the Panthéon was deserted. The narrow, crooked streets leading toward the river were quiet. The Seine flowed slowly, like tar. I stood on the Pont Neuf and watched it. There was nothing for me in its depths.
When I saw her I was not surprised. She stood, her face turned away from me, looking at some grotesque insignificant stone monster set high in an ancient wall, eaten by time and protecting nothing with its fierce, vacant gaze.
There was no doubt that it was she. The line of her cape, her neck exposed to the needlelike rain––I spoke. I was defenseless against her.
“You came to meet me after all,” I said. She didn’t seem surprised.
“No, I did not,” she said. But she did not move.
Her eyes were gray. My hands had gotten cold.
“Tell me what brings you here.”
“I often walk at night,” she said.
“Alone?”
“I am not afraid.”
She wore the burgundy cape; it was rich material, opulent with warmth. The air was cold; she had a scarlet scarf wound around her neck. She had antimony at the corners of her eyes.
“The water is heavy tonight, and slow,” she said finally. “I trust that you are not here with any dramatic intention.”
I smiled. I was curious.
“Your words this afternoon did not produce quite so intense an effect,” I said lightly.
“You mock me,” she said, but she smiled too.
“Will you meet me? Tomorrow, at the Morgue.” It was stupid and unsuitable; but I could hardly control myself.
She turned her head. “Sir,” she said coldly, “I do not know you.”
“But you do.” I took her arm, perhaps roughly.
“You will release me,” she said.
“What would you drink, I wonder?” Anything, to keep her from looking away. “Brandy, cut with a syrup of currants?”
“Rum,” she said abruptly, “hot, with butter.” I laughed to cover my discomfort.
Why was she not frightened?
At any rate she had not moved.
“Will you dine with me?” I ventured. She was on the verge of pulling away. Her eyes went catlike as she considered me. And we stood, in the rain, and I offered my arm.
“Will you consent to have a drink with me?”
“So long as you do not attempt to take my arm again,” she said without the slightest coquetry, “and you allow me to choose the bar.”
I was disappointed. I’d had in mind a little bistro with a certain genteel decadence, one where a woman’s fragile morals might perhaps be weakened without her reputation being besmirched. But I said only, “Of course I will accompany you wherever you please, but the wind is strong, and the cobblestones uneven.”
“I have walked in the rain before,” she said lightly, “and I am familiar with the cobblestones of Paris.”
How sweet her voice was, how lilting! And yet how subtly insinuating that statement, I am familiar with the cobblestones of Paris.
“I will not touch you,” I said. I knew that I was lying.
“How came you to this spot tonight?” she asked as we walked, I a clod-footed mortal to her water sprite.
“I was looking for you.” And it was only then that I realized that it was, in fact, the truth.
Ah. She was silent a moment. It seemed I was capable of surprising her.
“I come to that spot on the river often,” she said, “to think. To dream, really, about my day. About all that I have seen and heard. As though I cannot feel it all as it is happening but must reflect upon it, once I am to myself, to understand all that I have seen and experienced.”
I did not know the neighborhood. The streets were well lit but almost empty.
“Do you experience so much during a single day?”
“Oh, yes!” How like a child she was; how wise. “There are infinite pleasures in the course of a day. I could think for an hour just on the expression on that dead girl’s face at the Morgue today—and I spent an hour contemplating the rain on the surface of the river while I awaited your arrival. Shall we have our drink and some dinner now?”
I was as surprised to find ourselves in front of a small eatery as I was by her statement about awaiting me. She spoke in such a carefree manner that she seemed almost not to be the girl from the Morgue at all. And yet I knew that this was a role that she had chosen for the night. Because she had known, I was certain of it, although how I cannot say. And perhaps I had really known how to find her. Destiny drawing itself to itself, it might have been that. Love drawing love. Death drawing death.
The café was not so brightly lit as it had seemed from the outside; that had been a trick of the night and the rain. We walked down ancient stone steps through a medieval door into a low-ceilinged room whose front windows let in no outside light at all. The candles in the wall sconces were not fresh, and a few of them were guttering as though there were a wind. The café was so narrow that there was room only on the right side for booths, which were deep and a dark velvet green. The brick walls were old; the entire place had a feeling of floating somehow outside of ordinary time and space. The whole outside world fell away from me, and when I turned to my companion; she too looked changed: older, more sure of herself—there was no more little girl. She turned to smile at me and for an instant I was afraid, then she was just a woman again, a potential conquest, the most prized of any I had ever known, it is true, but merely a woman nonetheless.
“Ah, V, how are you tonight?” The voice came from behind the vast mahogany bar. I had her name. A light name, a girl’s name, a charade. I was instantly furious with this man who knew her name and used it so casually.
“I am well, Etiènne,” she said, also casually. She felt my jealousy, I knew. She smiled. “I would like my usual booth.” She was smiling at him on purpose, not for him but for me, to make me squirm. If every other smile she had ever given him had been genuine, this one was not. I tried to hide my annoyance as we walked down the narrow aisle. All the men’s top hats glinted in the candlelight, moving like waves as we passed. People at the bar had to move aside to let us by; one woman let her calf slide along my thigh as I walked by her. The thrill of excitement I felt was not for her but for V; even my annoyance had felt like arousal. When we reached the booth, it was V who stood to let me sit first; when I would not, she laughed and sat where she could see the crowd, as if she knew that every time her eyes moved past me I would wonder whether she was exchanging glances with Etiènne.
When she slipped her cape from her shoulders I almost gasped; I had not before seen just how exquisite she was. She was wearing an evening dress totally unsuited to the weather: Her gown and sleeveless overjacket were of pale yellow striped with purple; her wipe, square lapels bore intricate patterns of lavender, and her sleeves, full and round, nevertheless left her arms bare far above the elbow. Her wide silk waist was of rich purple, but the blouse beneath the overjacket was of almost sheer black lace, tightly tatted, with the lace spilling down the yellow dress in an unexpected, flowing waterfall of black. When she removed her scarf I saw she wore a delicate black choker around her neck with a small cross affixed to it; it gave her the impression of being chained.
But as my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I noticed something that took my mind away from V. In the last booth against the wall, the only thing that I could see, really, from my vantage point opposite V, slouched an old, ill-kempt man. His jacket sleeves were not long enough for his arms, and they were grubby at the ends; his shirtfront was shocking. His head nodded back and forth almos
t imperceptibly; I know that movement well, having both seen it and felt it. But this man was lost. He clearly saw nothing of the table before him, the last creamy, glinting drops in the glass, the shining slotted metal spoon. His chin was sunk almost to his chest. His eyes were almost closed. Whether he was in misery or in ecstasy I could not say. But I knew who he was.
I looked enquiringly at V, and she smiled and nodded.
“For the price of an absinthe he will recite his poetry for you,” she said. I hesitated. “Go to him,” she said. “I will have Etiènne bring him a glass.”
I slid out of the booth and moved quietly toward the man.
“Excuse me, Monsieur,” I said gently. I did not want to do this—to be just another stranger with a handout, another face appearing to dispel the great man’s absinthe dream to demand a memory.
Paul Verlaine, France’s greatest living poet. And among her most notorious. Lover of Arthur Rimbaud, who came to Paris at seventeen and lived in the streets until one day he appeared at Verlaine’s front door—and the great poet fell in love with him in an instant and left his wife, his children, his home, to begin a life of scandal and madness. When he and Rimbaud went to the opera, the papers reported that Verlaine and Madame Verlaine had attended the opera; he and his lover fought in the streets, parted and came together, fought again; Verlaine shot Rimbaud in a jealous rage.
But that was all long over. Rimbaud, not seriously wounded, left Verlaine and France, traveling to Africa to become an adventurer. He died before he reached his thirty-seventh birthday. Verlaine was only fifty-one years old now, but he could have been seventy.
Slumped before me in this grotto bar, his bald pate catching the candlelight with pathetic comedy, his gray hair sticking straight out on the sides, he looked as though he had neither eaten nor truly slept in a long time. I do not know why he did not evoke any horror in me. He had done monstrous things.
“Excuse me, Monsieur,” I said again.
He did not speak, but his eyes opened and his head lurched up and he was staring at me in a half-mad dream.
“It is all right,” I said, leaning forward to touch his arm. “There is nothing here to harm you.” He stared straight at me but did not see me; he whipped his head about, this way and that, as though dodging quick-striking beasts; he looked down. The sight of the absinthe glass and spoon seemed to calm him. He breathed deeply and shook himself. He looked up at me and seemed, quite suddenly, to be perfectly all right.
“Good evening, Monsieur,” he said clearly. “Would you care to sit with me?
“I would be delighted,” I said. “I am having the bartender bring you something to drink.”
“Ah. And what would that something be, young man?”
“My personal vice is absinthe,” I said, “and so I thought that perhaps—” I paused delicately, giving him a moment to abnegate his responsibility.
“Ah,” he said again. “If that is what you prefer.” He shrugged, ignoring the detritus in the glass in front of him, the knowledge of all Paris that he was a hopeless slave to the Green Muse. As we waited in silence,I had a chance to examine him further. It was said that for the price of a drink he would recite his own poetry for you. That he drank his way down the boulevards during the day and dozed in less reputable haunts at night. That sometimes he even spent his nights on the street.
But his eyes had a hard glint. He did not seem so far gone as I had heard. His poetry had stirred in me such passions! For romance, for danger, for passion itself. He wrote of suffering with the lyric intensity of one who has been purified by pain. He seemed created to suffer, this man before me now, once so noble and now so humbled. His love, although base, had been beautiful, and the world had seen its beauty. His suffering, although ignoble, had been graced with a purity of feeling that transcended its origins. I could not despise him; I could not even pity him. To have lived such a life as he had lived! To have drunk both the nectar and the poison of the soul and drained the cup! What did it matter if his ending was vile?
A waiter came, carrying an Oriental tray that glittered with a miniature city of glass. I saw the Absinthe Terminus label, the long neck of the bottle and the red oval seal at the curve of the neck. I felt a charge of longing almost erotic in its intensity; Verlaine’s eyes were hungry; V’s face, as she came and sat with us, was quite calm. She smiled at the waiter and I saw that she gave her smile to anyone, like a whore or a little child.
Verlaine had leaned forward in his seat. I mentally checked my bearing and was relieved that I had not done the same. I almost laughed. I caught V’s eye, and she smiled. Was it a different smile for me? I was not sure; I was distracted by the light refracting off the glass.
V picked up the bottle and began to extract the cork. She waved away my gentle protestations; actually I wanted to see her do this, to watch her hands move. They had the hard, smooth allure of the hands of a storefront mannequin. There was nothing weak about them, as there was nothing weak about her. But her face possessed a great softness, a tenderness, belied by the deft, nearly mannish way in which her hands pulled at the corkscrew as she twisted the cork from the bottle. I knew that I was seeing something of a hidden self, and that not everyone would have been able to see it; she looked up and directly at me, and I knew that she had intended me to see it.
Then she turned to the poet, and it was as if a light had gone out.
“Here you are, Paul,” she said sweetly.
“Ah, V,” he said, caressing her name. Again jealousy bit, and I knew I had to possess her, to make her my own in such a way that the whole world would know, in such a way that we would never be parted.
“She is an angel,” Verlaine said to me. “An angel indeed,” I said. She could be no ordinary mortal. But she was looking tenderly at the poet, and my jealousy evaporated, forever, because I saw in that moment a way that she could be mine. I saw that indeed we need never part.
“Drink, Paul,” she said, “and say for me my favorite poem.”
“Which one is that?” I asked her. “I know them all.” I did. In moments of weakness I recite poetry to myself, slaking a thirst for energy or wisdom with other men’s words. Poetry is a better drink, almost, than absinthe. Almost.
“Shh,” said V, because Verlaine had begun his ritual. Each absinthe drinker has his own way with the liquor, the sugar, and the spoon. The ritual is almost as important as the effects of the drink itself.
The waiter had presented the poet with a fresh glass, a new carafe of water, and a full small plate of sugar cubes. Apparently Verlaine liked to start afresh after a certain amount of time, or liquor; that is one way. The waiter also replaced the volcano-shaped plate that held upright wooden matches. Perhaps the poet must start out with a completely clear table each time, a tabula rasa of marble and glass. I was leaning over the table in anticipation; V touched my arm and I found myself looking with sadness at Verlaine’s disheveled hair and dirty cravat. He had been publicly repenting his actions with the poet Rimbaud for twenty years. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to regret anything I’d done. But I was young; I had not yet reached the age of regret.
He picked up one of several slotted spoons the waiter had brought and turned it about in his hands. “Too narrow,” he said dismissively. He held up the next with a mischievous look: “What do you think, my dear?” It was an odalisque, a sinuous nude form in silver.
“I think it’s lovely,” said V. “May I see it?” It glinted as he passed it across the table. I was acutely aware of her next to me, the faint smell of green rice powder and rosewater, the musk of her hair. She took the spoon in her fingers and it became for a moment a living thing.
“Isn’t it lovely?” she asked me, and her eye flashed deep into mine, and I felt she knew every trivial and base thing I was thinking.
“Yes,” I said without thinking. “It looks like you.”
Verlaine burst
out laughing.
She was biting her lip to keep from laughing as well. Verlaine turned to the next spoon and chose it, a simple one shaped like a slotted poplar leaf.
He placed two cubes of sugar on the spoon, after first examining them in his fingers. He lifted the carafe of water and slowly poured, a shiver of water, over the sugar and into the glass. I watched the tiny green whirlpool, and felt again the pull of my own desires. When I looked up, the poet was watching me. The liquor, the woman: He knew. He knew everything, and for a moment I was afraid. Then he looked back to his potion, and his eyes went soft, as for a lover, and I knew that I was safe, that he did not really know. The liquor, the woman: He only thought he knew.
“Too little water spoils the freshness of the taste, does it not?” he asked, and I nodded. I did often drink absinthe undiluted, out of the flask I kept in my pocket. This practice was rare because the taste was bitter indeed. Normally I used only one sugar cube at a time. But this was not the place to argue the fine points of the ritual, although I could see that Verlaine wanted to, wanted to discuss at length his love. That he had seen instantly in me another lover and known him.
The poet removed the spoon and tipped the cubes over into the glass. He then used the pointed tip of the spoon to crush the sugar; I could hear it. The liquor went paler, to a pleasing creamy green, then to an opalescent cloud. Verlaine took a long time about this, delicately seeking out and tapping down stray crystals while V and I watched.
“Surely you would like a glass,” he said at length, darting a keen eye toward me. “I have enough here for two.”
There was no point in denying my desire. For V, for the green drink, for Verlaine’s poetry. Although she had told me she did not drink absinthe, I asked her. “That is not one of my vices,” she told me lightly, and I resolved to make it one, before the night was out.
I filled the cup. As I watched the river of green I heard the poet speak: “In the old park’s lonely grass two dark shadows lately passed.” It was his “Sentimental Conversation.” It was my favorite poem.
The Green Muse Page 6