At last, he began to whisper the story of my return from the dead, even—alas—to whisper the name of the Flowers of Sin. He thought to do them the honour of thanking them; for in returning me to him, they had returned him to life. But they brook no indiscretion. He received a visit from Mr Broody’s jackals, who can be heavy-handed, as you know.
* * *
If I say that Felix was gentler than I had imagined, will you take my meaning? I had been warned that, sold off and signed away, I should no more expect the Flowers’ protection. We must negotiate our own rules.
If I say Felix was less thrilling than I had imagined—how unkind of me—you will think me shallow. I am ungrateful, I’m sure. Life with him was not as I had imagined, for the Flowers trained us in the arts of love. I could never get used to it, however he loved me.
If I say he was strange, poor man, well, such strange things had befallen him. I made him tell me, over and over, so I would know the story better than he. I was a good student that way. Yet I tired of the deception, or perhaps, if I am honest, simply of him. I had everything; I risked everything.
I wanted to niggle him. That, I suppose, is what good daughters do. He always insisted I go out without make-up and finery, and if I had learnt one thing from the Flowers, it was that a woman must use all her weapons, and invisibly. As our story went, I’d survived this long with no father to chide me, so I snuck a little rouge in my bag and applied lipstick in the dark of the theatre. Though I was his darling long-lost daughter whom he would forgive anything, I found the one thing he could not forgive: infidelity.
How I had feared at the first to be found out. Now the role required me to play up. If he forbade me to go out and make friends, that was fatherly. Any daughter worth her salt would disobey such dictatorship. He began to look at me more closely. His wonderment turned to criticism.
Let me say nothing of the opera, the young gent in the box, and Felix’s raging outburst which disturbed La traviata. I had never seen his eyes so dark. He wasn’t to blame. Dear Felix. The fault was mine. We were taught this in the Flowers. It was always our fault, and I must improve.
When he came back, after our estrangement, he was bristling. He apologised, but the way he looked at me—I could see—he knew. Maybe he had known all along. He’s an artist, a visionary dreamer, but he isn’t a fool. The truth he’d denied, in his anger, became obvious.
You know his public persona. Everyone thinks him such an angel, and he is; but he is good after long struggles. He has endured things you can’t imagine.
I used the only defences I had. Our time was almost done. He was disabused of that fanciful mystery: my reappearance. If I wished to keep him, I must resort to more feminine wiles, lessons learnt with the Flowers.
In France, poets revere the prosperous courtesan. In Turkey, harem ladies have respect and power. Japanese geishas are admired for knowledge of music and refinement in the arts of love-making. The purchase price does not include the right to make love; to earn this is out of reach except for the most expert lovers.
This is how I envisaged Miss Skittles. Now I fancied myself her equal.
I saw in his eyes something I had not seen before. I realised he was still a man, with a bellyful of life. He’d been badly used as a boy, in the army; and then there was what the soldiers did to his wife. Now he would use me badly.
I feared I would be cast from his heart, and cast from the Flowers. He was beside himself. He took me home and punished me. He grabbed me, as he had never done before, and threw me to the ground: I was no daughter of his. I had no choice; I used the only defences I knew. If I could no longer hold him by being his daughter, then it was time to be his wife.
After the seduction, he was like a little boy. Delighted. Disgusted. He must have known I was no maid. The Flowers of Sin were trained in that, too; Mr Broody’s vision, to rival Paris bawd houses, where no wickedness is too much, everything is indulged and gratified to the point of perfection. I was out of practice, after my months of celibacy. But it did not take long to recall the art of so-far-and-no-further.
He fell to me. Once he knew himself to be consigned to hell, he behaved like the devil, and we enjoyed rapture undreamt of. He clung to my bosom, wept tears of lust and shame when he went too far, and stormed off in disgust—but I knew he would return. No one can abandon the pleasures we shared.
The final end came quickly. The opera box: déshabillée again. I knew he was spying. I did it to rile. He no longer believed my protestations. He marched me home, a strange light in his eyes. I saw what nobody else sees in him: that all his art and refinement and kindness was held in place by the merest threads, taut and ready to snap after years of pain. This charitable hero, money all spent, with his silky hair and endearing old jacket.
Give in to it, I told him, for we’ll soon be dust, all of us. When I finally persuaded him to give in to lust, he was a beast, worse than I foresaw, because he knew what he was doing. Oh, yes. Felix struggled to be good. He used me as badly as he had been used. He had me as a girl and as a boy, if you’ll pardon my saying. Artful make-up I needed, and I was so sore I couldn’t sit down. Sodom and Gomorrah, and every heresy in the good book. This was how Broody sold us: we would admire our gents, love them, refuse them nothing, not even if they used us as the filthiest whore or a sailor boy.
His lusts redoubled. What did I care? I was dead to normal love. With each abuse, he loved me more, and where’s the harm in that? I was my own enslaver, and he my salvation. I harboured the hope he’d marry me, or somebody should, one day. Laugh all you want. Many Flowers have managed it. Too late for me now.
When he left me for dead one day, they called the doctor, I suppose. I don’t recall. I didn’t feel anything. The landlady gave me dirty looks. But I recovered. Only, when he didn’t return, I became afraid. The money stopped. I was flung out. I couldn’t sell my wares on that patch. I was bruised, and the local girls beat me.
When I knocked at Quarterhouse to enquire of my beloved, I was told Felix was in the hospital, all but dead. I went to go and visit him, but I collapsed, I’d had so little to eat, and never got there. I woke up here, a Lansdowne Gardener, God forbid; and old Queenie, she isn’t so kind, blaming her troubles on us.
It’s fast I’ve been brought low, and nobody’s fault but my own. I don’t feel it too deep. I’m used to it. I did once, especially when I heard my brother William had died. My sister Sookie, who I never cared for, visited Quartern Mews to tell me, and beg money off me. I did cry, but why? I get enough gin and victuals; the gin’s my preference. I won’t live long. I don’t have regrets. I feel less than some do, perhaps.
If you have any regard for me, give Felix my fond wishes, now that I’m dying or dead. Tell him I bless him despite it all. If you think I’m still playing my role, oh, think what you will. I’ve had it hard enough. I have had a harder life than you can know, until my months with Felix. He was my one place of peace.
PART VIII
TO PUT OUR GRIEFS TO SLEEP
FELIX SONNABEND, 1801–1864
For hearts to which the frost is so long tethered,
Nothing more sweet for hearts of deathly grace,
O sombre seasons, queens of our weather,
Than your pale shadows’ immutable face,
—Except, on moonless eves, we two, just we,
On a bed so wild to put our grief to sleep.
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal
MUSIC AND RAPTURE (FELIX’S TESTAMENT, RECOUNTED BY BEDE)
I was born in Vienna in 1801. My mother moved in society circles. I never knew who was my father, but many men attended her and paid court to her. I believed myself an Austrian, though I often heard men admire my mother’s Hungarian cheekbones.
She being busy with her work, I was brought up by Nanny, whom I loved. Mother was beautiful, but Nanny was warm and wifely, though she had no children, and I sometimes wonder if she loved me too much.
When I showed an aptitude for violin at a tender a
ge, I was wrenched away from Nanny and sent to the conservatory school. The day I had to leave her, I threw a sort of a fit, banging my fists upon the ground and gnashing my teeth; I remember, my mother thought I was wilful, ruining my best clothes to shame her. The passion that overwhelmed me then I do not understand. Only I remember that the thought of a day without Nanny seemed an everlasting winter, and even though I returned to her every afternoon, it was never the same as those first paradisiacal years. When, later, I realised it was the violin that had taken me from her, I felt it as a pain, like pinpricks in my heart, for I loved her dearly.
I made progress at the conservatory. In the vibration of the strings I rediscovered the first magic of my life: in the half notes and breves, dominant sevenths and flat fourths. This made school tolerable. Though I was not sociable, I got on with my fellows. I was astonished, thinking them my equals, to be singled out at the age of twelve to go on to the Musikschule, that became the Konservatorium.
My mother strutted with pride into the principal’s offices. I was pleased to have pleased her. She now started to pay me more attention, even attending some concerts, often with the same man, whom she introduced as my uncle, whereupon teachers and friends would catch each other’s eyes significantly.
Of course, the greater world changed utterly in those first years of my life, but I remember nothing of Napoleon’s arrival or departures. I first learned about the army when a general spoke of the fine Austrian music our troops needed to inspire them. He brought the conductor of the military orchestra, who listened to our St Matthew Passion. He invited me to join the military band, at the age of thirteen.
The principal was sorry to lose such a talent as mine, but the chance to contribute to Boney’s downfall was too glorious to miss, and I should not regret it. That is how I came to entertain the troops on the way to Waterloo.
I found myself in the clutches of that savage beast, the conductor, who thought his military status gave him complete power, as if we were a tribe of marauding apes. I became the butt of jokes about soft skin and dimples, along with more ribald comments. The shared accommodation where we young musicians were bundled alongside the veterans gave me some protection. But the conductor had his own tent and liked to summon me, as he put it, to play him to sleep.
I will not say what happened after the serenade, except that I did not return straight to my berth; candles were extinguished, my cries were dampened with a resin wrapped in cloth while he did what he pleased. Sometimes, the conductor, shamed by his actions, would throw me in the cart with the instruments to be pulled by the horses. That is what I was to him, I suppose: another instrument that sounded sweetly enough to soothe his blackguard heart.
Of life after the wars, in Habsburg society, from Vienna to Verona, and finally Milan, I will say nothing, for the history books shall record those shining eras—for even Garibaldi’s nationalist tomfoolery will not eclipse that glittering era. I prospered. I played in the best orchestras, the finest operas and ballets, in such concert halls and amphitheatres as you cannot dream of. I was feted as a musician, and feted in society as a bohemian. Finally—though I had never thought of marriage, still less of love—I fell for a wonderful Italian lass.
We were quickly blessed with a daughter, and I thought that the sun could never shine more brightly than upon me and my happy clan. I was at the height of my powers, leader of the finest orchestra in Milan, when the storm clouds gathered.
There had been political agitations before. The year 1848 was different. Italian patriots managed to throw the mighty Habsburgs out of the city. As a mixed couple, we were anxious, but the Italians treated us well enough. Musicians are loved and considered honorary rebels.
When the Austrians returned, they showed no mercy. Buildings were razed, families executed. At one baker’s house, when his bread was not ready for the troops, they murdered his wife and put his daughter into the oven. In this climate, I began to fear. I knew people on both sides, but my associations with artistic Italians weighed against me. Early one morning, we were packing our bags for the safety of our countryside. Then came the dreadful knock.
My wife pleaded with me not to open the door. She was distraught. They would kill us, she said; and perhaps her family were with the rebel brotherhoods, Young Italy or the Carbonari. I never knew about that.
I opened the door and was manhandled into chains. My wife threw herself at them, wailing and weeping about our little child. She beat the commander’s chest with her hands. They ran her through. At that moment, all my love for my wife exploded in my heart.
I heard myself telling them, in a voice void of music, that our daughter was upstairs. Would they give her to the neighbour? Their hands stained with blood, they fetched her down. A soldier carried my little Angelina down the road, and that was the last I saw of her. Where she was taken, nobody could say. Later, I made every enquiry possible. So many were killed and lost, nobody knew what became of these wretches. Some survived, some died, some were exiled.
In the square fortress of Mantua, I lay four days without eating or drinking. Such a fury arose within me that I was ready to cut the throat of every soldier I saw. In my delirium, I found a kind of perspicuity. I must be stronger. Their brute strength, so ill-directed, had destroyed my world. If I wished to fight such evil, it was fruitless to kill one or two; I must tell the world.
Accordingly, I ate, I drank. I slept, I planned. I sawed through the bars at night, knotted the sheets and made my escape. Then the serendipitous fisherman—but all that you may read in my book.
I was lucky. Even after my escape, my story could have stayed untold. But I had friends. Italy had friends, and eloquent ones. Ruskin, Carlyle, Tennyson, Swinburne. Music is like that: it leaps boundaries. When I reached London and began, fearfully, to tell my tale, the disbelief subsided. Public opinion was swayed. When the Italians rose to take their nation, none applauded more than the British.
I settled quickly; I was invited to join a prestigious orchestra, the London Exiles. My enquiries of Angelina got nowhere.
Friends showed me London’s darker side. In those months of grief, I gave vent to the darker passions. Sometimes I barely knew myself. Careless of my life, I volunteered for the musical corps entertaining the Crimean troops. A rash fit of fervour. Of my accident I cannot speak. Whoever was at fault—whether the Austrians stooped so low in revenge for my revelations—it sounded the knell for my career as a violinist.
On my way home, still hobbling, I chanced to pass through Milan. My enquiries were fruitless. Every child I saw, I thought it was my Angelina. I dreamt she had found a better life, but I knew she was more likely dead or sold. My friends sent me away. It would never be safe for me there. Italian bigwigs never vanish, they transform themselves like chameleons to the political colour required of them.
In London, I could no longer support the life I had been living. The Quarterhouse Brotherhood welcomed me among their faded luminaries. I put my woes behind me, thinking to live out this shadow life without pain.
At least, I thought I had put my woes behind me. The Brotherhood are wont to discuss weighty topics at dinner. I learned more of the Great Social Evil. Fellow Brothers speak of it as a fact of life. Men naturally desire women. Men being powerful and women being poor, commercial transactions are inevitable, for the benefit of both. This, I do not doubt, is sometimes the case. But often, that wretch collapsed in an inglenook, why, she might be as pure as your daughter—or mine—wronged by life and with no recourse but to sell herself.
This injustice struck me so hard that I was persuaded out of my torpor. Last autumn, I got on my high horse. My friends converted my musical reputation into charitable capital. Lo, the Phoenix Foundation for the Fallen. Nobody need know, but it was a way for me to commemorate my lost daughter.
Walter Brodie was one of those who offered his support. A man of strange insight, he accosted me in the quadrangle, that night of the Quarterhouse party, with the oddest of questions.
“Tell
me, Felix, who are you trying to save?” he said in that Atlantic twang of his. “Did you ever look for that daughter of yours?”
It is a peculiar thing to report, when you are bereaved, that people avoid speaking of that loss. When the pain subsides, which you thought would last forever, you do not have to strive to keep from weeping, because nobody ever mentions it.
When Brodie asked me, I said nothing. I supposed he had read my book or had his people read it—for I am convinced the man has no interest in words or politics or the ideas his papers espouse.
I felt unmanned. I could not speak.
Brodie was kind. “I’m sorry, my friend,” he said, though we were by no means friends. His understanding moved me. It unseated my judgement. I was too ready to believe the hope he held out. Impossible hope. “I know people who find missing persons. Let’s say they find what has happened to missing persons. But, often, they find the persons. Come and see me.”
Later that evening, the little mute played her fiddle. I was overcome, remembering the little fiddle I had bought for Angelina. She threw a tantrum on her third birthday because her fingers were small. All these details I recall: her fingers, so tiny, so perfect, when she was born, on the feast of St Sebastian; her little elbow, her shoulder, her toes.
The next day, I went to see him. Brodie told me about the Flowers, a detective concern he acquired from that fellow Pinkerton. Their rate of detection was remarkable. The police were useless, claiming that missing persons may have gone voluntarily.
I objected that his sleuths could not know Milan and the world beyond. Who could say where my little angel had been taken?
He laughed. “Perhaps. Do you know how many Italian children were shipped into London in the 1850s? Enough that they made a law against it. How old would she be now? Seventeen? Children from Naples are sold around the world. But they especially come to London. They work as dockers, sweeps, printers’ runners, clowns, beggars and…” He did not spell out all the possibilities. “Shall I send a man?”
Lawless and the Flowers of Sin Page 30