Gertrude looked up from the paper. “Do you remember, during the war, when you were trying to sell the Smith Premier? You placed a petite annonce in the paper.”
“I remember.”
“What year was that?”
“Nineteen–seventeen. The year you bought the Ford.”
“I thought so. Who answered the ad?”
“Three people – two men and a woman.”
“Did either of the men have a beard?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I always remember a beard.”
“Then it wasn't Landru,” Gertrude said, laying her paper down. “That's a relief! But don't you see how close you came? That's the way Landru met his victims – through the petite annonce. Nineteen–seventeen was his busiest year – he met and murdered five of his victims then. Don't you see? Landru could have come to this very house! One of the things he bought from one of the women he murdered was a typewriter !”
Gertrude looked at me, and I looked at her, but neither of us said another word.
That was when I became interested in the Landru case. I am sure that if I had let her, Gertrude would have been content to spend the rest of her life in her chintz–covered chair by the fireplace, just thinking thoughts. I called her Sherlock Holmes on several occasions, but I could just as easily have called her Ralph Waldo Emerson or Sigmund Freud. For of all –things in the world, Gertrude loved to think most of all.
I once said this to Picasso, her closest friend for many years.
“No,” he said, “you're mistaken. Gertrude likes to move best of all. I think of Gertrude always in her car, driving through the countryside.”
“Don't let that fool you,” I said. “She moves in order to find things to think about.”
Picasso was not sure of that but I was. Of all the things in the world, Gertrude liked to think best of all. And her favorite kind of thinking was the kind I could not understand. I once read a book about some medieval monks who were called Scholastics and who spent their lives thinking about such things as how many angels could sit on the head of a pin or how many teeth a horse had. As for myself I have never been much interested in how many angels could sit on the head of a pin. And if I needed to know how many teeth a horse had, although I can't imagine why I would ever need to know such a thing, I certainly would not think about it. I would simply go find a horse, open its mouth, and count its teeth. But Gertrude was different. Gertrude liked to think about that horse, while sitting in her chintz–covered chair, and try to imagine how many teeth it had.
I once accused Gertrude of being a Scholastic, the last of the medieval monks, and she said, “That's not true. Thinking is essential to me, it is not an intellectual game. Every thought I have is another attempt for me to understand the world. I think so that I may live. I think so that I will know who I am and by knowing who I am know who others are too. I cannot exist without thoughts.”
And so Gertrude thought.
So whereas most people would have started right off with the problem at hand, the one Le Monde was offering 5000 francs for, the one the police had not yet been able to solve – how Landru had disposed of the bodies of his eleven victims, ten wives and the son of one of the wives – Gertrude started off with something else. What kind of crime it was.
“It's a French crime,” Gertrude said to me one night after dinner as we were sitting in the atelier. “French crimes are between men and their lovers and American crimes are between fathers and their children. Lizzie Borden is an American crime and Landru is a French crime. That's too bad. I understand American crimes much better. I must think about that.”
So Gertrude thought about it and then, several nights later, brought up the subject again. “Do you remember our discussion about French crimes and American crimes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I've written something. It's called An American Crime. I'd like to read it to you.”
Gertrude began.
“An American Crime
Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her Mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her Father forty–one
I have thought about it often, that rhyme. And who wrote it. Some say a man wrote it and some say a woman wrote it but no one knows for sure. It may be the most important part about the whole thing, that rhyme and who wrote it, surpassed only by the fact that Lizzie Borden was guilty but not in the eyes of a jury only in the eyes of God. There is guilt and there is guilt, big guilt and little guilt and the question becomes who does the big guilt belong to and who does the little guilt belong to. Some say the big guilt belongs to fathers and mothers but especially to fathers and I do not disagree. And some say the little guilt belongs to sons and daughters but most especially to daughters as they have fathers while sons mostly have mothers. And I do not disagree.
So there is big guilt and little guilt and fathers and daughters and mothers and sons but mostly fathers and daughters. And daughters. And daughters must be daughters until they marry or until their fathers die at which time they can become women. This in some respects is as difficult as being a daughter only not as difficult because you no longer have a father. Only some women even when they are women are still daughters so much did they have fathers.
So it is difficult being a woman but it is more difficult being a daughter.
I know.
And by now I also know something else.
About the rhyme.
Who wrote it.
Most certainly a daughter.”
Gertrude finished reading and then looked up. “Do you understand what I am saying?”
“You are writing about your father. And yourself. And, of course, the fact that Lizzie's father got one more whack than her mother. It's a nice piece, Gertrude, and I'm glad you wrote it. But I don't see what it has to do with the Landru case.”
“It has nothing to do with the Landru case,” Gertrude said, raising her voice. “But it was important for me to have that thought. Now I know about American crimes.”
Somewhere early in the case Gertrude began keeping a file on Landru. She would go out once a day, sometimes even more, when the events of the trial had been especially sensational, and buy the latest newspaper accounts. I also remember the cheap pamphlets that were sold on the street.
There was a biography of the one wife, Fernande Segret, who had somehow managed not to be murdered, although Landru had taken her out to the villa at Gambais where he had killed the others. She was only eighteen years old, and so the pamphlet was not very long. But it did, according to Gertrude, shed some light on the case. So bit by bit Gertrude began to put together a file on the Landru case.
“I've made a list,” Gertrude said one night, as we were sitting in the studio, “of some of the things I want to think about in the Landru case. I must see it in words – if I am going to solve it.”
Gertrude began reading from her list.
“Number One: the fact that Landru had 283 lovers.”
“He had ten wives, too, but he also had 283 lovers. That may be the most startling fact about the whole case. Can you imagine?”
“I would prefer not to try.”
“It would certainly take a lot of energy.”
“To say nothing of deception.”
“That's one way to look at it. Anther is to think that maybe he brought them some happiness, that but for him 283 women might possibly have never been loved.”
“Gertrude! But we are talking about murder.”
“Perhaps. But perhaps we are also talking about love.”
“I think not.”
“Maybe so.”
“Number Two: his name: Henri Désiré Landru.”
“His Christian name, Henri, which turned out not to be so Christian, after all. But Henri. Doesn't that bring to mind Henry VIII, who had six wives and murdered two of them? To this unfortunate name of Henri was added the even more difficult name Désir�
�. To desire. That explains the 283 lovers. You know my theory about names: to name is to claim, to name is to blame, to name is to determine. In this case it obviously determined.
“Number Three: Landru's appearance”
“He's fifty–two years old, short – only five feet, six inches – bald, has a sallow complexion, and a long pointed beard. How then do we explain the uncanny attraction that women felt for him? There were his eyes, several of his lovers mentioned his eyes. `Mesmerizing,` `serpent–like,` `charming.` But was that enough to cast such a spell? There is, of course, his car. Many of his women mention that. And there is no doubt that a car makes one more attractive to women. But does that car explain the whole attraction? Probably not.”
“What's his sign?” I interrupted.
“What?”
“His astrological sign.”
“Is that important?”
“It could be. It might even give us just the clue we need.”
“You know I don't believe in that. We've got to stick to the facts, Alice.” Gertrude looked back at her list.
“Number Four: the famous death carnet.”
“This notebook, of course, is the evidence that will finally send Landru to the guillotine. In it he lists the names of all his victims. The name is followed by a date, then by a time. For example: 27th December 1916, Madame Collomb, 4:30 a.m. 12th April 1917, Mademoiselle Babelay, at 4 a.m. 1st September, 1917, Madame Buisson, 10:15 p.m. 26th November, 1917, Madame Jaume, at 5 a.m.
“The time is the time he murdered them, but how strange to record it. There is also this inscription beside each name: `one single, one round–trip to Gambais.` He would buy himself a round–trip train ticket to Gambais, knowing that he would return to Paris. But as he also knew the woman who was with him would not return, he would buy her only a one–way ticket. How curious, and how curious to record it.”
“And how mindful of his memory,” I said.
“He is obviously not a wasteful man.”
“Number Five: the question of what Landru did with the bodies of his eleven victims.”
“This is, of course, the great mystery. The police speculate that he burned parts of the bodies – the most identifiable parts, heads and such – in the kitchen stove at Gambais. A pile of ashes, presumably some of the remains, was found in the shed in the back of his house. They also found teeth and bones belonging to three women in the shed. But where are the rest of the bodies, and how did he get rid of them? That is the question everyone would like to know.”
Gertrude looked up from her list.
“These are the things I would like to think about. But before I can do that, I must think about something else. The man himself. What kind of man is Henri Désiré Landru? And how does his mind work? If I can understand the way his mind works, I will know what he did with the bodies.”
“It's quite simple,” I said. “He's a husband.”
“A husband? I didn't think of that. But if so, a very peculiar one.”
“A perpetual one.”
Gertrude laughed.
“Is that a husband then? Or is that a contradiction in terms? One can be a husband once, but can one be a husband ten different times?”
“Eleven times. Landru had one legal wife. He didn't kill her.”
“Can one be a husband eleven different times? I need to know what a husband is. I think I know, but maybe I don't. I will ask Hemingway.”
Hemingway, of course, was the other perpetual husband in this adventure – he had four different wives before he was through, although at the time when Gertrude and I first knew him he had only one, his first, Hadley.
“There are two ways of looking at that,”
Gertrude used to say, referring to Hemingway's wives. “Either he liked marriage so much he wanted to keep experiencing it, only with a different wife each time. Or he didn't like marriage at all.”
I was inclined to believe the latter.
Gertrude had just met Hemingway when this adventure took place, through her friend Sherwood Anderson. Gertrude was immediately taken with Hemingway; I was not. From the first I didn't trust him.
Most people think of Hemingway as a great boisterous man who hunted lions in Africa and fought bulls in Spain and who was afraid of nothing. But the Hemingway I knew in his early twenties was anything but that. He was so shy, in fact, that sometimes he couldn't even look me in the eye. That is because I frightened him, Gertrude used to say. But if that is so then everyone must have frightened him. Because I never saw him look anyone in the eye. Except, of course, Gertrude.
Perhaps the problem with Hemingway – of course there were several problems with Hemingway – but perhaps the first one was his wife, Hadley. Not that there was anything wrong with her. She was lovely and sweet and adored Hemingway in spite of what he later did to her and was probably doing to her all along.
But the problem with Hadley was that Hemingway never brought her to the rue de Fleurus, as the other men brought their wives.
One of my jobs at the rue de Fleurus was to sit with the wives. This would free Gertrude to sit with the husbands and they would laugh and talk and have intellectual discussions while I would sit with the wives and talk about perfumes and hats and exchange recipes. I did not mind sitting with the wives. Sometimes they were interesting but most of the time they were not. But I did not mind. But the problem with Hemingway was that he never brought his wife and so I had no one to sit with. Hemingway would sit with Gertrude and they would laugh and talk, and all the time I would wonder what am I supposed to do? There is no one for me to sit with. So should I sit at all or should I just move around, pretending to sit, or should I just leave the room altogether?
There was no such problem with Picasso. When Picasso would come to visit Gertrude he would always bring Fernande and I would sit with Fernande and talk about hats and perfumes and exchange recipes, although Fernande was not much of a cook – rice was her specialty. And Gertrude would sit with Picasso and talk about art and artists. And then after a while Picasso would leave. But Hemingway never left.
So Hemingway was a husband although he didn't bring his wife and Gertrude wanted to know what that was like.
“What does it mean to be a husband?” she would ask Hemingway as they sat in the studio with their knees almost touching – although that was later, their knees almost touching. At first it was bottom on the floor, Hemingway sitting at Gertrude's feet, looking up. “I think I know, I almost know, but it is important for me to know. If I am to solve the Landru case.”
“Do you want me to be frank?” I remember Hemingway asking one day. Of course Gertrude did.
“Well, then, it means that I can have sex with Hadley. Before I was married, I couldn't do that. I could have, but I didn't.”
“That's quite interesting,” Gertrude said. “But let me ask you this. If I were to have sex with you, Hemingway, would that make me your wife?”
“Yes, you would be, as long as we had gone through a marriage ceremony. No, wait. Can't a marriage be annulled – if the two people haven't slept together?”
“I think it can. So we would have to have sex in order to be husband and wife.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that gets us somewhere. But aren't there other considerations besides the legal ones? If you were my husband, for example, wouldn't that mean that you would feel some kind of emotional commitment toward me?”
“I wouldn't have to be your husband to feel that. I could feel it before we were married.”
“Then we are back to the question of legality. All being a husband means is that one can, and must, have sex with one's wife.”
“It looks like it.”
I did not like to hear them talking this way, about what it meant to be a husband. Because I could hear the other conversation that was going on between them, the real one, and I disliked that one even more than the one they were saying out loud. That's when I started feeding Hemingway. I would go into the studio – because, of course, most
of the time Hemingway was there I was in the kitchen – and would say to him, would you like some homemade plum liqueur – Hemingway loved my homemade liqueurs – or would you like a fresh scone, I have just baked them. Although I knew that
I was feeding Hemingway and thus encouraging him to come again I also knew that I was keeping them from talking about what it meant to be a husband. Hemingway had that effect on some people. I have a faiblesse for Hemingway, a weakness, Gertrude would say. And while I most certainly did not have a faiblesse for Hemingway, I had to acknowledge him for Gertrude's sake. So I fed him scones and more scones until finally Gertrude said, “Thank you, Alice, but Hemingway has had quite enough scones.”
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