Beauty & Sadness

by André Alexis

  You looked into her eyes, to see if, beneath or beyond the good clothes and personable mien, there was a hint of madness.

  — You think I’m lying, she said.

  — No, not at all, you answered. It’s just I don’t know what this has to do with me. Would you like me to wear a soutane when we make love?

  She held up her hand and laughed. Then, as if finally remembering that you were indoors, she took off her beret and undid the belt of her raincoat.

  — No, no, she said. You’ve misunderstood. The priest managed to drive out all of the spirits except one. But the one that stayed is the worst. He won’t leave because his only desire is to have sex with me.

  — Ahh . . . I see.

  — No, you don’t see. I’ve tried everything. I’ve been exorcized by three different priests. I’ve tried sleeping in a church. Nothing works. I sleep a few hours, here and there, in the day, but at night he comes in and I can’t stop him. It’s revolting, unbearable. I think he comes because I don’t have a man, someone to stay the night with me. But it’s impossible for me to find a man with this being around. If I could have someone spend the night with me, I’m sure it would drive him away.

  — It sounds like a good idea. Why haven’t you tried this before?

  — I have tried it. Often. But no man or woman has managed to stay the night. They’ve all been frightened away. One of them had a heart attack. I thought I had killed him. I know you don’t believe what I’m saying, but it’s all true. I haven’t had a night’s sleep in years. I’m afraid I never will again. You see my predicament?

  You must have laughed, though you don’t remember laughing. What you do remember is the early morning smell of La Havane, the soap used to clean the zinc, the smell of coffee, the weight of a cube of sugar between your fingers. You also remember Mylène’s face: an expression anticipating bad news. She had told this story before, often. In fact, she’d told it so well, you wondered if she believed her own words and then wondered when, during your night together, she would drop the fantasy and become herself: while you were engaged, or afterwards, as she sank into sleep? It didn’t matter to you, though, because you found the situation amusing. You were to be paid to spend the night with a woman, not for her pleasure or yours but for the sake of a spirit who wished (as you wished, frankly) to molest her. There was something in her “gentle madness” you found irresistible.

  — I’ll stay with you, you said, but we’ll have to agree on a price. I’ll sleep with you for four thousand francs a night.

  — I’ve given you a thousand, she answered. Tomorrow morning I’ll give you the rest.

  You spent the rest of the day together.

  You should remember more than you do, but, honestly, you were bored. You had no idea the day would be a prelude to anything more interesting than the night. You do remember the house in Neuilly. It was on a side street. Its windows looked out onto a stone-paved courtyard in which, that day, there was a child’s tricycle. Or they looked down onto a narrow street, across which was an identical house front. The house had no window curtains and should have been brighter than it was. But it was November. The days were wet and grey and the light was as dull as if it had been passed through a teabag. The furniture, what little there was, was disposed in the centres of the rooms. There were no pieces against the walls. The chairs, lamps, divans, and tables (all brightly painted or brightly upholstered) were in the middle of the rooms. While the middle of her rooms were clean, the edges were dusty and unkempt. Also, the house smelled of almonds, a scent Mylène found soothing. Whenever she was distracted, she would rub almond essence in the wood or on her belongings. This was pleasant, at first, but after a while it was as if the place were made of marzipan and you found the smell cloying.

  Mylène bought lunch and a bottle of Pastis, your favourite drink, and you spent the afternoon eating and drinking and talking about your lives. The men and women who wanted you were almost never interested in your biography, but with her you shared any number of details: your parents’ hopes for you (Medicine), your dissatisfaction with life in Ottawa, your fondness for raspberries. Neither did she avoid speaking of herself. She told you everything you wanted to know, so that, as evening approached, you were at ease in each other’s company. She seemed to you a slightly unfortunate, middle-aged woman (34), too superstitious for her own good.

  — Do you believe in God? you asked.

  — Of course, she answered.

  — Well, that’s your problem right there, you said. Atheists aren’t bothered by ghosts.

  — Don’t make fun. Spirits take the bodies they please. I didn’t believe in God, until all this started.

  As the day waned and it grew colder outside, Mylène turned up the heat. The house was, by late afternoon, so warm you were both sweating. She noticed your discomfort and said, as if in apology

  — Neuilly is so cold, it’s like a suburb made of marble.

  Perhaps the most remarkable thing, when you recall the hours leading to her bed, was the feeling of camaraderie that stole over you. You were not, in those days, as fond of women as you are now, but you felt the stirrings of a sympathy. This was, in part, because you didn’t believe a word about her “spirit,” and also because you did not believe that her reasons for inventing him could be malicious. You thought: this is some game they play in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in order to have memorable sex.

  — What’s your spirit’s name? you asked.

  — Georges, she answered.

  And the two of you laughed; you at what you took to be the absurdity of her invention, she at the drabness of her tormentor’s name.

  There was an awkwardness between you when you finally decided to go to bed. You were at ease, but she became visibly upset at the thought of how you should go about this business. Was it best for “Georges” to find you both naked in bed? One dressed, one naked? Should you make love before the apparition? After? During? (You did not think you could perform for a phantom who was waiting his turn.) Should you make love at all? It might anger “Georges,” and then there was no telling what would happen. The thought that you might be hurt, as some of the others had been, seemed to upset her.

  — How have you gone about this in the past? you asked.

  Oh, she had tried every variation she could think of, writing in a leather-bound diary the procedure she’d followed with each of the men who’d attempted to spend the night. None had lasted the whole night, but each was commemorated by his or her own variation, as you would be whether you lasted the night or not. You lay on the bedsheets, clothed, while Mylène lay naked beneath them.

  As with the other rooms, the furniture (the bed, a cabinet) was in the centre of the room. The bedroom, however, was the one room with images hanging on the walls. There were some thirty or forty small crucifixions, thirty or forty reproductions of the same painting, hanging on three of the four walls. Above and beneath each reproduction was a tiny, gold crucifix. In the fourth wall was a French window leading out onto a balcony that looked out on the courtyard below.

  You were uncomfortable, lying on top of the bedsheets, warm because the heat had been turned up to thirty degrees. You were uncomfortable beside Mylène, who, true to her plans, did not touch you but rather turned away and tried to sleep, although, for some time, you could feel her wakeful presence.

  Eventually, slightly annoyed, you fell asleep.

  And you woke as a church bell in the distance struck faintly. You began to feel cold. Actually, you must have awakened before the bell rang, because you heard each of its eleven clangs, though they were faint. If you had not been awakened by the cold or the bells, you would certainly have been by the sound of Mylène speaking in her sleep. She spoke clearly and slowly, though you’ve long forgotten her words. When you opened your eyes there was only the darkness and Mylène’s voice. And then the cold went straight to your lungs and core. The
hair on the back of your head stood up. You felt as if you’d been plunged into ice water and your heart could not take it.

  All at once, beside you, beside the bed, looking down at you, was a man, solid as far as you could tell, his eyes wide open, as if in surprise or outrage. Whatever he might have felt, you were terrified. You tried to push him away, but as you did your hand passed through his chest and you fell to the bedroom floor. Admit it, this is when you thought of abandoning ship, and the fact that Mylène had not lied to you was, strangely, like a betrayal. Why did you not run? You stood up, groped for the light switch against the wall and turned on the light, convinced the light would change things, which it did. It made them more frightening.

  The man was not dissolved by light. He now sat on Mylène’s side of the bed, looking at you while fondling Mylène, who was still asleep, her mouth open, eyes closed, damp hair covering her face like netting. Now, too, you might have run, but it was at this point that (for no good reason) fear turned to anger in you.

  — Leave her alone, you said.

  He looked over at you, continued to touch her, and spoke through her. He spoke, you saw his lips move, but every word came from Mylène’s mouth, in her voice.

  — Fuck off, he said.

  But you said you would not. You lay down on the bed and began to touch Mylène yourself: her hair, her breasts.

  — Go bother someone else, you said.

  Where you got the nerve to say anything of the sort is a mystery. Apart from the occasional moment of madness, you had been a staunch coward all of your young life. At that moment, beside Mylène, you were terrified, but it was as if terror were a drug that hadn’t quite taken over, like an anaesthetic that dulls your limbs but leaves the mind clear. You were frightened but lucid, looking dispassionately at the scene. The man sitting on the bed looking at you was tall. He had dark skin. His hair was cut so short you thought him bald, and he was of a much bigger build than you. The only advantage you had over him was life, and you would not have called it an advantage at that moment. Again speaking through Mylène, he said

  — The woman is mine. If you don’t leave now, I will kill you.

  — Go away, you said.

  That was the full extent of your eloquence. “Georges” rose and went to the foot of the bed, looking down at you and at Mylène as if he were speechlessly angry. He put his hand out, as if to take hold of you, and you could feel your heart race. But then, suddenly indecisive, “Georges” turned away, walked to the bedroom door, opened it and went out. When he had been gone for what seemed a while, he again spoke through Mylène.

  — If you are here tomorrow, he said, you’ll regret it.

  And with that, night returned to itself, as if it had awakened from a dream. The darkness was only darkness. The heat was again unbearable and Mylène Saint-Brieuc lay beside you sleeping. You lay back on the bed, away from her, but you did not sleep. The incident had taken all of five minutes. It was not eleven fifteen, but you lay awake for the rest of the night, frightened and unsettled.

  The following day began at five in the morning, the hour at which Mylène stretched out her body and, seeing you beside her on the bed, sat up.

  — You’re still here!

  You told her everything: what you’d seen and heard, how “Georges” had appeared and spoken through her and threatened you. When you finished, Mylène rose from the bed and tried to hide her tears. She had been moved not by your words but by the sheer fact that you had stayed. The night had been, she said ecstatically, the first of your life together. You were, she said, “married.” You mentioned that your marriage was almost certain to be short. Your life was in danger.

  — As long as you’re here, she answered, Georges will never be back. I’m sure of it. That was the best sleep I’ve had in ten years. I can’t do enough for you.

  What she did, immediately, was go to the cabinet, and from one of its top drawers she took three thousand francs.

  — This is for you, she said, though maybe you don’t want it anymore?

  — You’re wrong, you answered. I still need money for Formentera.

  She took your hand and kissed your fingers.

  — I’ll take you to Formentera, she said. You don’t have to think about that.

  But something in her rapturous tone annoyed you. You had survived a terrifying night, had stayed in the room with a ghost because you had promised you would, but she acted as if you owed her something more. Also, there was the presumption, the conviction that you would welcome her company or that your friend would welcome her to Formentera. (He would not. He despised women.) Perhaps sensing your annoyance, Mylène changed the subject at once. She helped you undress and left you in the bedroom to sleep undisturbed.

  Most of that second day is lost to you. You were exhausted, so you slept until afternoon. And when you woke, still alone in the bedroom, daylight slanting in through the French windows, you allowed yourself to admire the drawer full of franc notes. It was all thousand-franc bills, but there were over a hundred of them. You counted them and then stole five thousand francs.

  The change in Mylène was the most striking aspect of the day. She began to treat you with familiarity and reverence, touching you as if you were lovers (which you would soon be) but bending to whatever whim you happened to express. And then, too, there was Mylène’s body. The heat in the house had been left up, so you sat around without much clothing. Her breasts were fuller than you had imagined when you’d met at Place Winston Churchill. Her skin was pale, as if she hadn’t seen the sun for months. The hair on her pudendum was light brown at its edges, dark and untrimmed in the centre. This you particularly remember, because she apologized for it.

  Also, there was her look of anguish at the thought that you might not stay a second night. Afraid to insult you by offering money, but knowing that money was among the things you wanted, she said

  — I’ll give you twice as much if you stay.

  Now, as to money: your parents were wealthy. Your father had given you ten thousand dollars for this trip to Europe. He had also warned you not to ask for more. So, yes, the offer of more money was important. At the time, you would have said that money was the only thing that kept you. But now? Now you’re not sure what was behind your inexplicable bouts of courage. There must have been something deeper than money, something you would have loathed to admit at the time: idealism, maybe, the same instinct that brought revulsion at the thought that your pleasure should supersede hers. Whatever it was, you committed a further act of heroism that bound you to a woman for whom, otherwise, you didn’t have strong feelings.

  — Yes, okay. I’ll stay.

  None of this “courage” kept you from terror.

  In fact, the second night was worse than the first. On the first night, you’d had no solid reason to believe in “Georges.” But on the second, you knew he was actual, whatever he actually was. You and Mylène

  slept together beneath the sheets of the bed. She laid her arm across your chest and fell asleep facing you. You did not sleep. You waited for eleven o’clock, and heard the bells faintly ring, and then twelve, and then one. The hours of the night passed easily until three in the morning. Then the room grew cold, the hair on your head stood up, and you could feel such malevolence it was as if you were implicated in a terrible crime. Rising from the bed, you got up in time to catch “Georges” beside Mylène, his hand beneath the covers, near her midsection. Seeing you, however, he stood back, closed his eyes, and disappeared. Mylène woke, asked if it were morning, and, on being told it was not, pulled the covers up to her neck, turned away, and fell asleep.

  For three more days, this, with slight variations, was how your nights passed. Mylène slept peacefully while you tried to sleep around the visitations: sleep . . . terror . . . sleep.

  For years now, you’ve wondered about two aspects of that November: yourself and M
ylène Saint-Brieuc. You’re still slightly baffled by your courage but, in a sense, it was a version of your stubbornness, wasn’t it? In your twenties, you hated doing whatever was expected of you. The thought that you would run out, as all the others before you had done, must have nettled. You stayed, despite your terror, so that no one could say you had fled. Perhaps this is true, but it is only a guess. At the time, you were in that odd state that characterized your twenties: you knew yourself both well and not at all. You thought about yourself constantly, obsessively, but you could not understand what or who you were. For a while, what you knew best and what you knew least were one and the same.

  Mylène, of course, is still a mystery.

  In 1980, you were too self-involved to care deeply about anything that didn’t involve you directly. You were attentive, but not attentive enough. You thought all of Mylène’s behaviour was motivated by her fear of being left with “Georges.” But by her own account, she had, when you met, been living with “Georges” for years. She had been in constant search of escape and constant terror of night, it’s true, but she must have had strong resources. She had lived a life, before she met you. Her house was itself a testament to that life. No curtains: so there might be light in every room and relief from an interior she found oppressive. Furniture in the centre of a room: to give her things to run behind or around. Almonds: a smell she associated with North Africa, a place she imagined boundless and uninhabited by ghosts. Though she said she had spent years looking for a man like you, she had managed on her own. In fact, she was a much stronger woman than you realized.