by Rose, M. J.
“I don’t want you to become entangled in that dark mess. So many of Dujols’s disciples start off like you, merely interested, but . . .”
“What?”
“It’s dangerous, Sandrine. That’s all. It just is.”
I wanted to argue but sensed that it wasn’t the right time. No one—not my grandmother and not Julien—could convince me that what was happening to me was something to be afraid of. I was painting. I was alive in a way I had never known before. Yes, I was terribly sad about my grandmother, but she was simply frightened. She’d come to understand that I was flourishing, not being taken over. And Julien? I smiled at him. He was just being caring and protective.
We walked back to the house, and he came inside with me. We sat on the sofa in the parlor.
“I have a favor to ask. Monsieur Dujols thinks we should have a séance and see if we can talk to La Lune. Find out what it is she wants. I need you to come with me. I need you to say yes.”
He opened his mouth to say no, but before he could answer, I put my finger across his lips. “Don’t answer yet. Just think about it. We don’t have to speak of it now.” I leaned into him and inhaled the scent of his skin mixed with his cologne. I smiled up at him. He seemed to relax a bit. What had I stirred? What secret did he hold so close and tight? “I have to go to class in a little while. We don’t have that much time together today to waste it arguing.”
“No? What should we waste our time doing?”
Since moving in, I examined the house and all of its rooms. And so I took him to my favorite of the “fantasy bedrooms,” as my grandmother called them. Each one uniquely decorated to evoke its own dream.
There was a boudoir that recalled a room in the palace of Marie Antoinette, in which all walls were mirrors; there was a monk’s chamber with a narrow bed and straw rug and religious frescoes on the wall; there was an Egyptian room as well as a Chinese pagoda; and there was a Persian garden room.
I chose the last, with its fanciful walls painted with trees and flowering bushes against a midnight blue sky, with stars and a perfect crescent moon and the onion-shaped minarets of the city in the distance. Expensive rugs in deep blues, reds, and greens were piled on one another. Tall vases of peacock feathers filled the corners. Red, turquoise, and gold silken curtains hung around the bed.
I pulled him onto the bed and then knelt before him.
“I’m your servant girl, your slave.” I shivered with excitement. I’d never been this bold before, and it was thrilling. “Here to do your bidding, to fulfill your desire. Would you like me to undress you and draw your bath?”
Not waiting for a response, I began, first taking off one boot and then another. His pants. His shirt. His stockings. I never took my eyes off of his, and in them I could see not only my own reflection but also his enjoyment.
“I never knew a man could be beautiful before, but you are. Because of how your collarbones come together here.” I touched the spot. “Because of these muscles in your arm.” I put my hand on his biceps. “When you finally let me paint you, this will be my favorite part to paint.” I put my hand on his broad chest. “Or maybe this will be.” I ran my fingers across his shoulders.
He closed his eyes. I felt a clench of intense pleasure inside me.
“When I paint you, this is one place where my brush will dwell.” I ran my finger down the thin line of dark hair that traveled from his belly button to his groin. “And here.” I moved my hand across his hip bone. “And here.” I put one hand on each of his thighs. “And here.” I continued down his calves and then back up them, up his hips, his chest, and found his hands pressing down on the bed, clenched.
“When I paint you,” I said, “you will be naked and hard and wanting like you are now . . .” I ran a single finger inside and out of each of his fingers, making his hand as sensitive to my touch as the rest of him. “And it will be so difficult for me to keep painting without stopping to touch you.”
He arched his back. I wanted to watch his pleasure and know I was causing it. I wanted him to know what he did to me. “When I paint you,” I said, “when I get here . . .” I bent to kiss between his legs and inhaled. I could smell the deepest part of the forest. Pleasure throbbed inside of me. This was where I wanted to be, here with Julien. With him unable to look away from me. With him willing to be swallowed up by me.
“When I get here . . . ,” I whispered into his flesh, “I will have to stop so I can do this . . .” And then I took him into my mouth. His head was thrown back. He was lost to me. Lost in the pleasure. All around me was the dark scent of him. The air was ripe with it.
I raised myself off the rug. I would give him his pleasure, but first, I would do something I had never done before. I would claim my own. I pulled up my skirt and swayed above him.
“Hold back for me, Julien. Yes?” I whispered. “I promise you more than you’ve ever felt if you can just hold back.” I reached down, in between his legs, and squeezed him in a way sure to prevent release. How had I known? My husband had surely never told me. Before that moment I’d never even wondered at such a thing.
I lowered myself down on him slowly. All of the world centered on that one amazing sensation. It was all colors and sounds and smells, all that had been denied me for so very long. It didn’t matter if Julien was betrothed to someone else; it would only be a matter of time before he would be mine and I would be his. The feelings coursing through me were the ones I was due. This was where I belonged. On the tip of him, on the edge of this exquisite madness.
He moaned.
“Not yet,” I whispered as I rode him.
The pleasure . . . how could I ever give up this pleasure? I was supposed to be here, to have this. Supposed to be with this man beneath me, in me, giving and taking and taking and giving.
I lifted myself up so we were no longer touching. He was panting and ready. “Don’t stop,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
But still I held back, swaying above him.
“Will you come with me?” I asked him the same question I had asked before all this began. “Yes?” I was offering what he wanted in exchange for what I wanted. “Yes?” I lowered myself just enough so that we were touching, but barely. Enough so that I could feel the heat of him.
“Please,” he begged as he tried to push up, but I held back.
“Yes?”
“Yes, Sandrine, yes,” he said, and I wasn’t sure in that moment what pleased me more, the physical explosion or knowing that he was going to go with me to Dujols’s.
Chapter 22
Dr. Blanche, the alienist, had a private asylum in Passy. It was quite a ride from the house on rue des Saints-Pères. As I traveled there the next morning, I was apprehensive. Even though my grandmother’s doctor had assured me otherwise, I anticipated a home for the insane: disgusting and dirty and frightening. Especially since the building was the domicile of the Princess de Lamballe during the revolution and the scene of her gruesome end. Certainly it had been renovated since then. After all, Guy de Maupassant had spent the last two years of his life at Dr. Blanche’s. Others like Theo van Gogh, the artist’s brother, and the writer Gérard de Nerval had also been residents for a time. And yet I was still nervous.
As we got closer, the fashionable neighborhood suggested the clinic was not the horror I’d imagined, and when we pulled up to a beautiful eighteenth-century mansion surrounded by gardens, I was quite surprised.
I entered through grand front doors and was led from the elegant front hall to the doctor’s office, I was pleased. Lined with book-filled shelves, it was a warm, welcoming room with tall windows looking out onto the park. Despite the chilly air, the parade of nurses strolling past with patients soothed me.
The doctor introduced himself. He was a man of about seventy-two or -three. Robust and quite healthy-looking, with intelligent eyes and a wide forehead.
“I’m sorry to
have to tell you, but your grandmother is not as well as I had hoped she would be by now,” the doctor said, shattering my becalmed state. “She is not yet showing any signs of improving. I wouldn’t allow the visit except I’m hoping that if she sees you are all right, it might help us in our effort. You are all right, aren’t you?”
For a moment he examined me as if it might be possible to see my mental health on my face.
“I most certainly am. Except for worrying about her, that is.”
“Is there any reason at all that you know of that would cause your grandmother to believe you are in mortal danger?”
“No, nothing that I can think of.”
“Well, she told me quite a tale about you and why she believes you are in danger.”
I didn’t realize I was clenching and unclenching my hands until I saw the doctor staring at my actions. What was I frightened of? What could Grand-mère have told him? About my husband bankrupting my father? About Papa’s suicide? About my running away from Benjamin and taking an assumed name so he couldn’t find me? Taking art lessons? Even wearing comfortable clothes to paint in?
“Your grandmother told me that you are possessed by a demon.”
I laughed, but from the expression on the doctor’s face I grasped that had been a mistake. He appeared disturbed by my response.
“Do you find that funny?”
“I find it absurd, don’t you?”
“She believes it. And she told me her cousin Rabbi Jacob Richter believed it, too. She said she took you to him, and he performed an exorcism on you in a mikvah, and that he not only saw the ghost who haunts you but that the ghost killed him on the spot. She also believes she saw the ghost in your bedroom.”
“Yes, she believes those things. But more to the point, do you believe in ghosts, Doctor? I cannot allow her to reside in any asylum run by someone who would fuel her deranged fantasies.”
“No, Mademoiselle Verlaine, I don’t, but at the same time I do very much believe the mind needs a seed to grow a story like this. I would venture a guess that something very real is in fact wrong and that your grandmother has lost perspective on it. Can you tell me more about the days leading up to her breakdown as well as the inciting incident?”
“I’d like to see her first,” I said. Tired of the conversation, I wanted to bring it to a close.
“And you will. But in order to treat her, it’s imperative that I understand the patient’s frame of mind before the onset of the episode. Can you indulge me and fill me in a bit on what happened in the days leading up to her hysteria?”
“There were three deaths close together. Too much death. Too much talk of dying. First there was my father, then her uncle the doctor, and then Cousin Jacob. It left my grandmother emotionally distraught.”
“And that day? What happened that day?”
“It was very strange. We were going to go to Cousin Jacob’s funeral together, but then Grand-mère had a fit about my hat, insisting I change it to a more sedate one. While I was doing that, she locked me in my bedroom, like a child, and went to the funeral without me.”
“Do you know why she did that?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“She didn’t explain?”
“She didn’t.”
“And when she returned?”
“She came upstairs to see me.”
“What were you doing when she entered your room?”
“Reading,” I lied.
“What book?”
I searched for a title and came up with that one book, the only book I had read in the last month. The Picture of Dorian Gray.
“She told me you were painting on the walls and that the mural was pornographic.”
“She is a courtesan well-versed in the ways of the world and she used that word?” I asked.
“I believe she did.”
I tried to picture those paintings on the pale yellow walls . . . to see them as someone would if they were to enter the room unprepared. Even someone as comfortable with sexual conduct and sexual pleasures as my grandmother. The sexual liaisons between the painter and his muse were erotic and arousing, but pornographic? I shook my head.
“What is it?” the doctor asked.
“I . . . I’m afraid I don’t paint. Oh, the occasional watercolor when I was in finishing school. But murals?” I laughed.
“You don’t dress up in gentleman’s clothes and study painting at Les Beaux-Arts?”
“Monsieur le Docteur, my grandmother is clearly not only hysterical, she is also delusional. Might I see her now?”
“Do you know who La Lune is?” he asked.
I shivered and tried to keep my voice steady. “Yes, an ancestor of ours. A courtesan who became a legend and started a legacy. Our family home is named after her.”
“Your grandmother is convinced that her ghost is taking you over. I’m afraid it’s a most disturbing story that she’s concocted and is quite obsessed by.”
I leaned across the desk toward the doctor, aware that I’d learned the seductive movement from none other than the woman we were discussing. “What would cause such a thing?” I asked, laden with concern.
“There are many possible causes. That’s why I was asking you what happened before the doctor was called.”
“Deaths . . . wouldn’t they make her think of ghosts? Her son. Then her uncle. Then her cousin. Isn’t that enough to explain her preoccupation?”
“I don’t think so.” He stood. “Let us go see your grandmother.”
I followed him down a long hallway, past well-lit offices, and then into the living quarters. I glimpsed a simple combination bedroom/sitting room where a woman in a dressing gown sat in a rocking chair by the window. A few doors down, a nurse exited another such room, and I saw two men sitting on a couch, sipping what appeared to be coffee or tea.
“It’s very nice here. I’m afraid I was picturing something quite different.”
“Thank you. We have the funds needed to ensure we can keep the clinic up to the highest standards. Nothing like the city madhouses.”
We’d reached the end of the hall. The doctor pointed to the door on the left.
“This is your grandmother’s room. She doesn’t yet have all her privileges, so she is restrained. I want you to be prepared.”
He opened the door and gestured for me to walk in.
Despite his warning, I gasped.
My beautiful Grand-mère was lying on top of a bed, her arms tied to the bedposts. Her hair was stringy and dull. Her naked face looked drawn and ravaged. Her eyes went wide when she saw me, and something wild filled them. My lovely Grand-mère, who never had looked her age, who entertained some of the wealthiest men in Europe, whose jewels rivaled those of princesses, was wearing a white shift stained with something red—not blood, I hoped—looked right at me and started to scream.
“La Lune, La Lune!” she cried. “Save Sandrine from La Lune!” She began to sob. Then gagged. Then vomited.
The nurse, whom I hadn’t even noticed, rose from her chair in the corner and attended to her.
I stood, shocked, disgusted, and saddened. The doctor helped the nurse, then spoke soothing words to my grandmother that seemed to actually quiet her.
He turned to me. “Why don’t you try to talk to her and tell her you’re all right? As you can see, she’s quite worried about you.”
“Can she hear me?”
“Yes.”
I walked toward the bed and stepped into my grandmother’s line of sight.
“Grand-mère, please, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I love you. I want you to get better.”
“I didn’t think you loved your husband,” she said.
I hadn’t known what to expect her to say . . . but that certainly wasn’t it.
“I don’t. I never have.”
; “When you first came to Paris, you weren’t in love. I was so happy. You were safe. But you’ve met someone, haven’t you?”
“No,” I lied. “Why are you asking me this?”
“This is what she does, waits for a woman in love and then inhabits her. Have you taken a lover? You mustn’t. She’s why I never wanted you to come back to Paris. She waits in her house for someone to fall in love . . . and then she drives our women mad.”
This sounded like a version of the legend that my father had alluded to so many years ago. Surely no one could believe this? A woman dead for more than two hundred and fifty years could not somehow live on in Verlaine daughters, sisters, and nieces.
My grandmother turned to the doctor.
“Sandrine is beautiful, isn’t she? So strong. So like her father. But she’s too curious. Curiosity is dangerous for Verlaines, and—oh! No!” My grandmother screamed and pointed. “Doctor, do you see her? Look behind Sandrine. See the shadow tied to her? That’s the witch. That’s La Lune.”
“Now, now, Madame Verlaine,” the doctor began to soothe.
“Don’t try to placate me. Look at Sandrine. The witch is right behind her. Do you see the shadow? She’s desperate for love.” She turned her head to me. “Sandrine, you have to cast her out. Are you listening? Cast her out!”
I turned and run from the room and was soon careening down the corridor. At the end of the hall, out of breath, I stopped. I put my hand on the windowsill and looked out into the garden. Watching a robin picking at a twig, probably about to steal it away for nest building, I tried to stifle my sobs, but I was crying too hard.
A few moments later, the doctor joined me by the window.
“Are you all right, Mademoiselle?”
“My grandmother is really very ill, isn’t she?”
He handed me a handkerchief. “She’s had a severe break from reality. And it is serious, but I have seen far more serious situations resolve in time. If you would indulge me, though, I’d like to ask you to help me so I can help treat her.”
“Of course,” I said.