The Heart of Siva
“IS THERE A DOCTOR in the house?” Sharp-toned, almost breathless, the query cut through the sussuration of comment following the second divertissement offered by the Issatakko Ballet Russe. The gay, chattering buzz-buzz of conversation which characterizes every audience during the entr’acte was hushed to a barely audible, curious murmur which rippled from lip to lip: “What is it? What’s happened? Is it a—”
“Here, Monsieur le Directeur!” Jules de Grandin announced, rising in his chair and seizing me by the shoulder. “Here are two of us; we come at once.
“Your pardon, Mesdames, Messieurs,” he added to our neighbors as, regardless, of the toes he trampled and the shins he kicked, he forced his way to the aisle, dragging me behind him, and made swiftly for the passageway leading backstage from the rear of the lower tier of boxes.
“And now, Monsieur, what is it, if you please?” he asked as the iron-sheathed fire-door clanged shut behind us and we found ourselves in the dim-lit, mysterious space behind the wings.
“One of our girls, Mam’selle Niki,” the perspiring manager half gulped, half gasped, mopping a dew of glistening, oily moisture from the top of his pink and hairless head with a crumpled white-silk handkerchief. “She was due to go on in the next number—Flora, who shares her room, had already come down and was waiting, but Niki didn’t answer the bell, and when we sent for her we found she hadn’t even begun to change. She’s had a seizure of some sort, I’m afraid. If you’ll come with me, please, gentlemen—”
He turned toward a winding spiral of iron stairs, his bald head gleaming in the subdued rays of a cage-protected electric light, the breath wheezing with oily sibilance between fat lips.
De Grandin and I followed as best we could, picking our path between masses of scenery, across coiling, serpent-like electric cables, winding our way up the twisting stairs, and finally coming to pause before a narrow metal door on which our guide knocked sharply. No answer being received, he thrust the portal open and stood aside to let us enter.
The cubicle into which we stepped was reminiscent in shape, size and general appearance of a cell in one of our more modern jails. Cement walls dressed with rough-cast plaster bore penciled sketches of girls’ heads, with occasional more intimate details of anatomy, accompanied here and there by snatches of decidedly un-Tennysonian verse. A cluster of electric lights set in the ceiling gave brilliant illumination to a narrow, unpainted table with two make-up boxes on it.
Crumpled on the floor before the second make-up box lay a girl. As nearly as I could determine at first glance, she was clothed in a sleazy rayon kimono figured with atrocious caricatures of green flamingos feeding from a purple pool. For the rest, bracelets, bell-hung anklets and breast-boxes of imitation silver set with glass jewels and ear- and nose-rings of pinchbeck seemed to complete her costume. Her slim, bare body was smeared with umber grease-paint in simulation of a Hindoo woman’s sunburnt skin, and a small, red caste mark set between her eyes completed the illusion, but where the coarse-haired wig of black had slipped from her forehead there showed a thin line of pallid scalp and a straying tendril of fine, light hair, proclaiming her a natural blond.
Flaccid as a cast-off rag doll she lay, one arm grotesquely doubled underneath her, the other, laden with its loops of imitation jewelry, extended toward us, slender, dark-stained fingers with strawberry-tinted nails clutched into a little, rounded fist on which the cheap rings glittered fulgently.
De Grandin crossed the little room in two quick strides, dropped to one knee and took the girl’s thin wrist between a practised thumb and finger. A moment he knelt thus, then, putting out his hand, raised her left eyelid.
“Ah-ha,” the nasal, non-committal ejaculation which held no hint of laughter, yet somehow conveyed an implication of grim humor that told me he had found something; something wholly unexpected.
He bent again to look at her clenched hand, gently prizing the stiff fingers open, and from his waistcoat pocket produced a small lens, fitted with a collapsible tube, like a jeweler’s loop, set it in his eye and raised the little, brown-stained hand, regarding it intently. His elbows moved, but since his back was to me I could not tell what he was doing as he bent still closer to the inert form. At length:
“Monsieur, this poor one doubtless has a doublure—an understudy?” he asked the manager.
“Why, yes, but—”
“Très bon; you would be advised to call her to the stage. Mademoiselle will not be able to appear again tonight—or ever. Elle est morte.”
“You—you don’t mean she’s—”
“Perfectly, Monsieur; she is dead.”
“But what are we to do?—this will ruin us!” Tears of terror and self-pity welled up in the manager’s rather prominent blue eyes. “This mustn’t reach the papers, sir! That threat—that note—”
“Ah-ha!” again that nasal, enigmatic sound, half query, half challenge. “There was a note, hein? What did it say?”
A look of panic swept across the manager’s broad face. “Note?” he repeated. “Oh, no, Doctor, you misunderstood; I was referring to a promissory note which falls due on the first. If this death becomes public we shan’t be able to meet it!”
“U’m?”
“Poor Niki,” the manager hurried on, obviously intent on changing the subject as quickly as might be. “She seemed so well just a few minutes ago. She must have had a seizure of some sort.”
“Seizure is the word, Monsieur,” de Grandin agreed grimly, fixing the other with a level stare. Then:
“Allez; get on, begin your show. Me, I have work to do!” He fairly pushed the other from the room; then, to me:
“’Phone for the coroner, Friend Trowbridge,” he commanded. “Bid him come quickly for this poor one’s body, if you please. Do you await him here, and ask him to withhold the autopsy until he hears from me. I shall be in the rear of the auditorium, awaiting you when you have done with him.”
“Couldn’t you determine the cause of death?” I asked curiously as he turned to leave.
“Truly, my friend; only too well.”
“Why, then, can’t you sign the death certificate and save Mr. Martin the bother—”
“Mais non, the law forbids it. This so unfortunate young woman was murdered.”
“Murdered?”
“Précisément; most foully done to death, or I misread the signs.”
I FOUND HIM LOUNGING AT the rear of the theater, with the studied boredom of a seasoned boulevardier when, the girl’s body entrusted to Coroner Martin’s custody, I quit my lonely vigil with the dead.
The third presentment of the Issatakko Ballet was in progress, depicting one of those never-ending conflicts between gods and men with which the elder religions teem. Seated beneath the outstretched branches of a tree was a young ascetic, thighs doubled under him; feet, soles up, resting on his crossed calves. His head sunk low upon his breast, hands lying flat; palms up, upon his knees, he sat stone still in silent contemplation whereby he sought to acquire mastery of the secrets of the universe and share the power of the gods.
Far away, faint as the whisper of a lilting summer zephyr, a wind arose, stirring the foliage of the tree under which the youthful yogi sat, scattering a gay cascade of ruby-tinted blossoms over him. The crouching figure sat immobile.
Now the wind lifted and the great trees bowed their heads in terror as the Storm King drove his chariot across the sky. Black clouds piled menacingly, bank on bank, obscuring every shaft of light which shot down through the forest, and spears of vivid lightning stabbed the darkness while the thunder roared a fierce, continuous cannonade. Still the yogi sat in moveless contemplation.
Then suddenly a blaze of light effaced the gathering shadows and upon a dais we saw the seated form of Siva, the Destroyer. Cross-legged sat the god, feet doubled under him; the lithe body, gleaming like burnished bronze, bare from soles to brow, save where great bands of gold encircled ankles, waist and wrists, and where a heavy collar of
dull gold, thick-set with carven coral, rested round the neck. Upon the head was reared a coronet of seven leaping flames, and between the eyes was set the caste-mark of the followers of Siva. Plainly, it was a girl who impersonated the dread third person of the Indian Trimutri, but by ingenious use of lights and draperies perspective was so altered that a second girl behind the first was totally invisible, save where her arms were thrust to right and left beneath the other’s, giving a perfect illusion of a human form with four pectoral limbs. Each hand of the four arms was held identically, thumbs and forefingers pressed daintily together, as though about to lift a pinch of snuff. For a moment the six-limbed form sat motionless; then as the orchestra began a soft andante, the arms began to move, rippling bonelessly from shoulder down to wrist, supple as twining serpents, fascinating as the movements of a reptile when it would put a spell upon its prey.
Some moments this endured; then, as though summoned by the eery beckoning of those reptilian hands, a bevy of girls drew near, the light reflected from the brooding deity’s throne shining on their rings and belts and tinkling silver anklets. These were, I knew, the Apsaras or Houris from the Hindoo paradise, and as they neared the throne of Siva and groveled to the earth before the squatting god, their mission was made clear; for with a final gesture of its fourfold hands the deity commanded that they exercise their wiles upon the brooding yogi who took no note of storm or hurricane or the threatening bolts of lightning sent to drive him from his meditation.
The figure of the god dissolved in darkness, and with subdued gurgles off laughter the Houris formed themselves into a ring and danced about the seated mystic entreating him with every artifice of Eastern love to look upon their charm and forget his contemplation in the pleasures of the flesh. Still no response from the brooding, seated figure.
Now, covered with chagrin at failing to arouse the young man’s passion, the Apsaras drew off, their arms across their faces to hide the tears of shame which started to their eyes; and suddenly the music changed. No longer was it light and gay and frolicsome, a fitting tune for little, silver-bangled feet to dance to; it was a sort of sensuous largo, a creeping, reptant, slowly moving thing instinct with subtle menace as the sinuous turnings of a snake, redolent with the sort of awful blasphemy which might attend the unclean secret worship of some band of obscene ophiolatrists.
By a clever bit of stage mechanics a shadow-spot was thrown upon the scene. That is, as a shaft of light might strike upon a darkened stage, picking out the figure of the actor upon which it rested there was now centered a spot of shadow in the midst of light, and in this, slowly, with a sinuousness which raised the hair upon my head with the age-old, atavistic fear of all warm-blooded creatures for the snake, there danced—or rather writhed—a figure.
She was not nude. Had she been so, the lewd obscenity of her would have been less repulsive. Instead she wore a skin-tight costume of fine net transparent as air across the front; save where patches of black, green, or yellow-blue sequins were sewn upon it at breast and waist and thigh. Across the back, from waist to heels, the net was set with gleaming snake-scales, and a trailing train of the material swept upon the floor behind her. Upon each great and little toe of her feet there gleamed an emerald-studded ring, so that each step she took was like the forward-darting of a green-eyed snake, while on her arms were flesh-tight sleeves of shining scales and on her hands were mittens fashioned like the wedge-shaped heads of cobras-de-capello. Upon her head, obscuring hair and face, save for her vivid, scarlet-painted mouth, was drawn a hood of flashing emerald scales.
She was the daughter of Kadru, the snake-goddess, sent from the realm of Takshaka, the serpent-king, to do the work at which the Apsaras failed.
And well she did it!
Each movement was enticement and repulsion rolled in one; the fascinating glinting of her scales was beauty wed to horrifying menace. The slow, mesmeric movement of her hands beckoned with inducement which combined the promise of god-forbidden joys with the pledge of sure destruction. I understood, as I watched breathlessly, how it was that mankind held the serpent in a detestation bordering on loathing, yet in the days before the old gods lost their right to worship, reared altars to the snake and paid him honor with blood-sacrifice.
The young ascetic raised his eyes as the serpent-daughter circled round and round his seat of meditation. At first stark horror shone upon his face; then, slowly, came a look of wondering curiosity; at length a fascinated ecstasy of longing and desire. Her scale-clad hands danced forth to touch his cheeks, her hooded head bent toward him, and straight into his eyes she looked, red mouth provocatively parted, low laughter which was half a hiss inviting him to—what?
The strain was past endurance. With a wild cry of renunciation the youth sprang up, all thought of contemplation cast aside. He had looked into the eyes of the snake-woman, and looking, cast off his hope of Nirvana in favor of the promise she held out to him.
Her laughter, hard and clear as any note of silver clapper striking on a silver bell, sank lower, softened to a sibilating hiss; her scale-sheathed arms went round his quivering shoulders; her gleaming, supple body seemed to melt and merge with his, her hooded head sank forward; her flaming, blood-red mouth found his and sucked his soul away. He stiffened like a nerveless body shocked with electricity, held taut as a violin string stretched until the breaking-point is reached; then suddenly, as though the breath she drew forth from his lips were all that held him upright, he wilted. Like a candle in a superheated room, like a doll from which the sawdust has been let, like a toy balloon when punctured with a pin he wilted, dropping flaccid and lifeless in the serpent-witch’s cruel embrace. And as she let his limp form sink down to the moss beneath the tree the daughter of the snake-king bent above him and laughed a low and hissing laugh, a laugh of sated cruelty and triumph blended into one, but a laugh which split and broke upon a sob as she gazed down on what had been a man.
Then the purple curtains clashed together and the lights went up. The final act of Issatakko’s Ballet Russe was done.
For a long moment silence reigned within the auditorium. A program dropped, and its rustle sounded like the scuttering of frost-dried leaves across a country churchyard in midwinter. A woman tittered half hysterically, and checked herself abruptly, as though she’d been at vespers, or at a funeral service. Then, wave on crashing wave, like breakers surging on a boulder-studded shore, applause broke forth, and for fully five minutes the theater rang with the impact of wildly clapping hands.
De Grandin struck his hands together gently, but there was no enthusiasm in his gaze as the curtains swung apart, revealing the entire Issatakko troupe lined up in acknowledgment of the ovation. Rather, it seemed to me, his eyes roved questingly about the auditorium, seeking something other than a farewell glimpse of the performers whom the audience applauded to the echo. At length:
“Do you observe them, too, my friend?” he asked, nudging me in the side with the sharp angle of a bent elbow as he nodded toward the center aisle.
I followed the direction of his nod with my glance. A party of three dark men, immaculate in faultless evening dress, correct in every detail, even to the waxen-leaved gardenias in their lapels, was walking toward the exit. The foremost man was rather under middle height and surprizingly broad across the shoulders. His arms were long, hanging nearly to his knees, and there was something simian in his rolling gait. Although his face was dark as any negro’s, there was nothing negroid in his features or the straight black hair plastered smoothly to his head. Behind him walked a slightly taller man, lighter in skin, slenderer in build, and as he turned his face toward me a moment I caught a fleeting glimpse of his eyes, odd, opaque-looking eyes devoid of either luster or expression. The third man of the party was younger, thin to the point of emaciation, hairless as a mummy, despite his youth. Without quite knowing why, I was unpleasantly impressed by them.
“Now, by the nightcaps of the seven Ephesian Sleepers, one wonders,” de Grandin muttered to himself.
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“Wonders what?” I asked.
“Where the fourth one went, parbleu!” he answered. “Five minutes—maybe six—ago, another one, almost the counterpart of that sacré singe who leads, left his seat and the theater. I should greatly like to know—”
“They seem men of refinement,” I cut in. “Possibly they’re from New York’s negro colony and—”
“And perhaps they come from hell, with the taint of brimstone on their breath, which is more likely,” he retorted. “Those are no negro-men, my friend; no, they are Asiatics, and Hindoos in the bargain.”
“Well?” I countered, hardly knowing whether to be more exasperated than amused. “What of it?”
“Exactement—what?” he answered. “Come, let us go and see.”
Instead of leaving by the front, he led me down the farther aisle, fumbled for a moment at the leaves of a fire-door, finally let us out into the alley leading to the stage entrance. Hastening down this narrow, tunnel-like passage he came to an angle of the wall, halted momentarily, then:
“Ah-ha? Ah-ha-ha?” he exclaimed sharply. “Behold, observe, my friend! I feared as much!”
Lying in a heap, her clothing disarranged, her straw-braid hat some distance from her, was a girl, motionless as an artist’s lay-figure cast aside when its usefulness is done.
De Grandin dropped beside her, pressed an ear against her breast, then rising quickly stripped off his dinner coat and folded it into a pad over which he laid the girl face-down, the folded garment forming a pillow under the lower part of her chest. Kneeling across her, he pressed his hands firmly on each side of her back beneath the scapulæ, bearing steadily while he counted slowly: “Un—deux—trois,” swinging back, releasing the pressure, then leaning forward, applying it again.
“Whatever are you doing?” I demanded. That he was applying the Schäfer method of resuscitation was obvious, but why he did it was a mystery to me. In nearly half a century of practise I had yet to see such treatment for a case of fainting.
The Dark Angel Page 44