Spectacle

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  “Saint-Mathurin Asylum for the Insane” stood in relief over the entrance, gray stone letters outlined with black grime. She’d passed by it before but had never walked below those horrifying words. The intimidating arched doors led to a dungeon (or so she’d always imagined).

  Immediately the reception nurse questioned her. Nathalie stammered her way through a story claiming that she was with her parents visiting Brigitte Baudin but had gotten separated from them. It took some pleading, but eventually the nurse told her which floor her aunt was on. She ran up the imposing staircase two steps at a time.

  Moans, pierced by a scream she feared was otherworldly, led her up the last few steps to the landing. The door to the ward, a smaller version of the one at the entrance, creaked open a few centimeters as if it had been waiting for her. A smell like sour milk drifted through. Nathalie peered through the crack and saw a pale woman kneeling in a hallway barely wide enough for two people. A high rectangular window cast a sliver of light onto the woman’s face. She appeared to be in a trance, arms swaying at her sides, eyes rolled back.

  The woman jumped up and took off her hospital gown. Nathalie gawked at the misshapen, sagging body before her. She’d never seen another naked woman, not even Maman. “The sun! I’m burning!” the woman screamed as she began clawing at her doughy skin, raking her nails over her neck and breasts until she drew blood.

  Nathalie cried out. The woman turned toward the door and met her eyes. Save me, she mouthed, and not a sound came out.

  A jolt passed through Nathalie’s body. She took a step back, almost tripping as she turned around. She dashed down the stairs and out of the building, making it home long before her parents did.

  Papa knew. She couldn’t prove it, and she never asked, but something about the way he later inquired about her afternoon with Simone told her so.

  She could see that episode at the asylum in her mind’s eye as if it were yesterday, not five years ago.

  Nathalie trotted toward the tram stop, then broke into a run. Almost as soon as she got there, the steam tram arrived. She and a group of young boys squeezed on together, packing an already packed tram.

  The tram chugged along, and almost right away she glimpsed the back door of the morgue where she’d parted ways with M. Gagnon.

  He was standing there now, holding the door open and shaking his head. Two men opened the rear of a carriage and pulled out a sheet-covered body on a stretcher.

  The tram turned a corner, and a building slowly eclipsed her view of the morgue.

  Her heart thumped so intensely she was afraid one of the boys pressed up against her back would feel it.

  My God, Laurent. Already?

  Then M. Gagnon ended their meeting abruptly.

  A critical matter.

  The concern in his voice when she left.

  Be safe.

  Now she understood. What else could it be?

  Another victim.

  4

  Throughout the steam tram ride, as she caught elbows from the boys in breeches who surrounded her, Nathalie clutched her talisman for quelling nerves and instilling luck: a glass vial filled with dirt from Les Catacombes, the cavernous tomb beneath Paris.

  In fact, it was forbidden dirt, because you weren’t supposed to remove any. But she had, that time Papa brought her to the Catacombs when she was eight. She took some, both because it was forbidden and because she figured there had to be at least a little bit of dead person in there (which would be almost like carrying around a ghost). Days later she showed it off to her schoolmates, all of whom admired her bravery. Long after anyone cared, however, she kept the tube close. It held a strange, sentimental value she couldn’t quite explain.

  When she disembarked at Place de la République, almost tripping over the rails in her haste, she put the tube back into her satchel. Her article was due in a little over an hour. After she dropped it off, she’d go right back to the morgue to see the second victim.

  As she walked home, Nathalie pondered what, if anything, to tell Maman. Her mother was a good listener and offered advice from the heart. Yet that was also one of the reasons Nathalie didn’t feel comfortable telling her about the episode at the morgue. Maman had a way of making other people’s worries her own, and her moods had been especially erratic since the fire. Not to mention, Maman was repulsed by the public morgue to begin with and rarely went. She couldn’t confide this to her mother.

  Nathalie’s building was tucked away on a quiet avenue lined with gray sandstone apartment buildings. She walked with an even quicker pace than usual. The neighbor’s black-and-white cats spooked her by leaping onto a wall, one after the other. Embarrassed by her jumpiness, she glanced around. The street itself was empty, but a hundred glass rectangles watched her from behind grime-hewn balconies and decorative wrought-iron grates.

  As she approached the steps to her building, she noticed a familiar blonde with painted pink lips and a bright, pea-green pleated dress coming down the stairs.

  No one better to lift her spirits or talk her through this.

  “Just the person I wanted to see!” Nathalie said, hoping she sounded more cheerful than desperate. She wanted to ease into this conversation, because she wasn’t even sure how to have it.

  “Excusez-moi?” Simone turned to her with a grin. “Aren’t I always that person?”

  Nathalie folded her arms and pretended to think about it. “Eh, sometimes.”

  “You watch that sense of humor of yours. Or I’ll steal those flowers,” Simone said, wagging her finger. “I just stopped by your place. Your mother said you hadn’t even come home to change yet.”

  “Believe me, I’ll explain why. It’s going to take a while.” She trotted up the stairs and kissed Simone on both cheeks. Simone smelled of rose water, as always. “First, you and why you’re here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” said Nathalie. “Now let me guess: You’re moving back in with your parents because you miss me so.”

  “I love you dearly, my friend,” said Simone, taking her hands. “Just not enough to give up Le Chat Noir. Too much fun and too many boys.” She struck a theatrical hands-on-hips pose and giggled.

  Simone’s parents were more lenient than Nathalie’s, but they drew the line at cabaret performing. It had been almost four months since M. and Mme. Marchand gave Simone a choice: leave Le Chat Noir and work at the family market or live elsewhere. Within a week she’d moved into a small apartment near the club, several tram stops away.

  “Besides,” Simone added, “I know you enjoy visiting me.”

  “Only because you have grapes,” Nathalie teased. As the only two children in the apartment building for many years, they’d been playmates growing up. Between Nathalie’s imagination and Simone’s boldness, they were never bored—a trait that was as true for neighborhood adventures in childhood as it was for conversations now about dreams, worries, and all else life left on the doorstep. Visiting Simone across town rather than downstairs had been, to say the least, an adjustment. “So if it isn’t moving back home on my account, what brings you here today?”

  “Céleste isn’t feeling well. Again,” said Simone with a frown. Her sister was seven and had been ill on and off all summer. “I came by to look after her so my mother could work at the store for a few hours.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it, Simone. Happy to see you, but sorry to hear it.”

  Simone thanked her. “Enough about my day. What is it you wanted to explain?”

  The question, natural and straightforward, pressed a hundred thoughts into Nathalie’s head at once. So much to share, so much to say. She bit her lip as all the possible ways to begin competed for her voice. “Did you hear about the murder victim?”

  “Heard and saw. I stopped at the morgue on my way over.” Simone stroked her throat. “Terrifying.”

  “It was. Is. And—something happened to me in the viewing room this morning. It’s going to sound stranger than anything you’ve ever
heard. Promise me you’ll believe me,” Nathalie said, sitting on a step. She cradled the flowers in the lap of her dress.

  Simone sat beside her. “Believe you? Why wouldn’t I?”

  Nathalie sighed the sigh of someone who didn’t know where to begin, who could scarcely mount the incredulity of what she was about to say. And then she told Simone everything she could, and couldn’t, remember about the day so far.

  Simone asked question after question, even though Nathalie didn’t have many answers.

  “Silent and in reverse.” Simone tucked a curl behind her ear. “That makes it even more peculiar. And you’re sure it happened because you touched the glass?”

  “Either that or it’s some coincidence.”

  “I wonder,” said Simone, “if you have … I don’t know. Some connection to the killer?”

  Nathalie interlaced her fingers. “I never thought of that, but then again, who do I know that would do something like that?”

  “Who said you have to know him? Maybe you were the last person to walk by him on the sidewalk before he picked someone to kill.”

  “That’s like something out of a penny dreadful.” Nathalie fought off a shiver. “It was probably an illusion. From the heat, like a fever dream.” She said it hoping Simone would agree.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It could be a vision … and a gift. Perhaps you’re meant to do something, to help.”

  “I don’t know whether anything I experienced is to be trusted as real. And speaking in tongues and causing a minor scene doesn’t make it feel like much of a gift,” Nathalie said. The pit of her stomach moved like a sleeping dog as another thought occurred to her. “What if it’s the opposite? Some sort of … curse?”

  She searched her mind, wondering if she’d upset somebody enough to invite a curse. She didn’t think so, but people did get aggravated with her sometimes when she hurried to slide into a steam tram seat. And there was that woman at the market who’d muttered something in a foreign language and glared at her a few weeks ago. For no apparent reason other than a dispute over who got in line first.

  “Non,” said Simone with a definitive shake of the head. “Not a curse. You don’t have evil spirits nearby. I would feel it.”

  Simone considered herself attuned to the spirit world. Well, she’d believed it ever since becoming smitten with Louis, the “worldly and compassionate” poet who frequented Le Chat Noir. Nathalie had yet to meet Louis, but hardly a conversation had taken place in the last month in which Simone didn’t mention him. He believed in tarot cards. And hypnosis. And ghosts. A week or so ago he’d brought her to a séance, where she claimed to have communicated with her grandfather’s ghost. (Although Nathalie thought séances were nonsense, she still envied Simone a little for attending one.)

  Nathalie twirled a button at the top of her bodice. “Whatever it is, I want—as baffling as it sounds, I want to see if it happens again.”

  “I would, too.”

  “That had to be another murder victim they were bringing into the morgue,” said Nathalie. “I’ll ask Monsieur Patenaude. He knows everything.”

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t know how to read tarot cards like your good friend Simone. When you come over, we’re doing that.”

  Nathalie smiled, grazing her finger along the flower stems. “Will they tell me about this mystery bouquet?”

  “Ah, you don’t need cards for that. I think your mind is just foggy because of the vision,” Simone said, rising to her feet. “You bought them, like the police liaison said. I bet you’ll remember when you’ve had a chance to settle down.”

  “I suppose,” said Nathalie as she stood up. It certainly didn’t feel like her recollection of the flowers would come back. She’d tried to pull it from memory too many times already. “Anyway, I’ve got to go change and run my article over to Monsieur Patenaude. And you must have rehearsal soon?”

  Simone nodded and, before turning to go, blew her a kiss. “Until tomorrow evening, Nathanael.”

  With a playfully annoyed over-the-shoulder glare, Nathalie stepped inside the apartment building. Simone had taken to calling her Nathanael because of the clothes she had to wear to Le Petit Journal.

  Given that no women wrote for the newspaper, M. Patenaude had come up with an idea to which she’d reluctantly agreed. He thought it best if her fellow journalists didn’t know a young girl was behind the anonymous morgue report. The reporter who had the column before her, Maurice Kirouac, received a promotion; part of the arrangement was for him to keep up the ruse as if he were still writing it. As for Nathalie, M. Patenaude asked her to write her articles and submit them to his clerk, Arianne.

  He also suggested that she dress as a young man when coming to the newsroom. And pretend to be an errand boy.

  A boy.

  At first she loathed the idea. She wanted to be Nathalie and no one else. Besides, trousers looked hot and uncomfortable, and who would want fabric around their legs like that? She didn’t even like wearing pantaloons.

  Simone had told Nathalie to imagine she was on stage performing a role, because in a way, she was: Women who wore pants for employment had to get “official permission,” and M. Patenaude had obtained it in writing from the Prefect of Police.

  So Nathalie tailored some of Papa’s old clothes under Maman’s careful guidance, and they came out well enough. Wearing trousers was an unusual sensation, and she felt exposed because of the way the material hugged her scrawny legs. The buttons were big and bulky. Yet when she pinned her waves up, put on a cap, and slipped into the heavy leather shoes, the disguise felt almost natural.

  Almost.

  But she had to do what she had to do. Miss out on a summer in Normandy with Agnès. Work at the newspaper a year sooner than intended and in a bigger role than expected. Wear boy clothes. This was certainly the summer of unpredictable compromises and newfound responsibilities.

  * * *

  Nathalie bounded up the winding staircase to the third floor. She felt better after talking to Simone, but she knew it was only temporary. The vision was still there, a shadow behind a door, waiting to knock when the time was right.

  For now, she embraced her improved mood. It would help her put on a brave front for Maman.

  After pausing a moment to rearrange the flowers, she opened the apartment door and greeted her white cat, Stanley. (So named because he had a very British demeanor, and she considered Stanley to be a very British name. Both Simone and Agnès had agreed that it suited him well.)

  A plate clanged. Stanley led her to the kitchen, as if she didn’t know from where the sound came. Maman was cleaning up after lunch. “Please don’t, Maman. I’ll do it.”

  Nathalie took a plate out of her mother’s hands and placed the flowers in them instead, clasping her fingers over Maman’s scars. “Pretty flowers for my pretty Maman,” she said. “The sun was too much for them, as you can see.”

  “Water will wake them up. They’re lovely! Thank you.” Maman inhaled the scent, smiling. She reached behind a stack of plates for a vase. “From where?”

  “A—a woman selling them outside the morgue.” Nathalie felt guilty passing off a logical guess as a certainty. It felt like a lie.

  Maman poured water from a pitcher into the vase and set the flowers on the table. “And please eat. Lentil salad and some vegetables. You’re too skinny, ma bichette.”

  Although Nathalie was now quite a bit taller than her mother, she had been and always would be Maman’s “little doe.” She kissed her mother’s ruddy cheeks. “Only if you let me finish clearing the table.”

  Nathalie helped herself to the food and, despite her mother’s protests, cleaned up the kitchen afterward. Most every household task was a challenge for Maman since the fire in May. She was healing well enough but still getting used to this new, slower pace. She was restless now, not sure what to do with herself and especially her hands, which weren’t accustomed to stillness. Maman had been an apprentice at the House of Worth when she was Nathalie’s age
and a seamstress ever since. She worked at the tailor shop, creating everything from everyday frocks to magnificent costumes for the Opéra Comique. Nathalie was proud of her mother’s talent and felt fortunate to have an abundance of skirts and dresses. Maman bought fabric at a significant discount from the shop’s supplier, and Nathalie was often clothed in silks, cottons, muslins, and velvets that her family would never otherwise be able to afford.

  Maman had been helping out with costumes backstage at the Opéra Comique when it happened. One of the wings of the Salle Favart caught fire from a gas jet during a show, and life as her mother knew it was forever changed. Dozens of people died and many suffered burns; some people told Maman she was lucky to escape with burns only on her hands and arms. Maman always thanked them politely, as if she hadn’t heard it many times before. Nathalie, however, knew her mother was devastated by those very scarred, painful hands and the memory of how nimble they once had been.

  As much as Maman claimed she could still sew, her inefficiency frustrated her, and it was clear she wasn’t ready to return to the tailor shop. Even arranging her chignon, the color of nutmeg and always so tidy, was a struggle some days. She rejected the doctor’s assessment that she might never regain sufficient movement in her hands and fingers, and she made sure she kept her hands as active as possible.

  And so half-finished dresses with luscious fabrics and practical cottons and ornamental beads and sensible buttons hung throughout the apartment. Ghosts on dress forms, reminding Maman of loss and happier days. More than once Nathalie had suggested taking them down, but her mother refused.