I don’t remember where I found the bag—I think it was in the basement, near all the cartons from your recent move. Were you, too, running from someone? We were both solitary souls. Me, running from the authorities, who would never understand why I had to do what I did. They’ll never catch me. I know well how to cover my tracks. But you—who were you running from? Or was it something you were running to? I don’t think even you knew. You had no friends, you said, no relatives. I felt sorry for you at first, before I realized that it would make you fill your life with only me. In the end, it turned out to be a fortuitous circumstance.
On the boat that night, I thought to bring an extra anchor as well as the bag, and I was pleased with my preparations. I had not expected to be able to think so rationally. Seeing you now, I question if I did.
What I did not expect was your untimely revival. You certainly surprised me, my dear, when your eyes fluttered open. It unsettled me to discover I had removed the scarf before it had completed its work. You tried to scream, but your poor voice was so hoarse, remember? And you were weak—you could hardly struggle at all when I slipped you in the bag and tied it closed, before attaching the anchor. I waved at you as I dropped you overboard—did you see me? It was such a dark night, it’s understandable if you didn’t; and you sank so fast you could’ve easily missed it anyway.
I pause in my visit, catching, from the corner of my eye, a massive form approaching. My fear has never been so bold before, and I am amazed, stunned in disbelief at its brash behavior. A small voice in my head screams at me to escape, that danger is near. But I am dizzy, and too late realize that it is from lack of air. My muscles fail to respond and I float weightlessly, next to Felicia.
Suddenly my fear is upon me, as quick as an intake of breath. It slices between my love and me, sending me tumbling away with its force. I spin in slow motion, whirling about like a black rubber top. My body trembles, feels boneless and all too mortal. It refuses to obey commands, and I cannot move.
It is not my fear that has so rudely separated me from Felicia, or perhaps it is. Death seizes my beloved, unaware she is already beyond its grip. For a selfish moment I am glad that she, and not I, has been chosen for its cold kiss.
A thought insinuates itself into my brain’s fuzziness, nibbling at the edge of my fading awareness. Can it be? Is death the specter that has haunted me all this time, only death, nothing more? Confusion blurs my physical and mental boundaries until they mesh with the scene before me. I do not know where I end and it begins. It is then, as I watch the specter stealing my darling, that I realize there is something worse, much worse by far, than the fear of death. How stupid I have been not to recognize it until now! It is something I have known since my first meeting with Felicia.
No, I scoff at my stupidity, death is not my albatross, my nemesis, the fear that now engulfs me. Death holds no terror. The greatest terror, my biggest, and only fear, is life! The thought of life without my Felicia plummets me into a heart-sinking despair. Loneliness has been the demon shadowing me as I move through the emptiness of my days, tormenting my every waking hour.
As I watch, Felicia is shaken about. She looks for all the world like an excited bride dancing with her energetic groom. Flecks of her skin swirl about, tiny snowflakes in a maelstrom. One leg floats lazily downward, tired from the dance, and its skin splits like the casing of an overstuffed sausage when it lands gently on the abrasive sand. It settles, a meal for the small fish who begin nibbling at the exposed muscles.
The intimate union continues in water so filtered with blood I can hardly see. My fear devours my dearest, engulfing, possessing her totally, as I never could. As the two slowly fuse into one entity, they are locked in a perpetual embrace which excludes me. Seeing their unity, my emotions roil like the churning, bloody water around my darling. I, who have loved so deeply and so faithfully, am soon to be left alone!
Jealousy catapults me toward the vicious lover that schemes to part Felicia and me. As I sensed from the first, we must always be one. I will not allow her to be taken from me, leaving me to live with only my fear for company. I will join Felicia and we three will bond in an unholy trinity of eternal love, if need be. Thereby will I thwart the marriage that should have been ours alone.
My fist punches through the water, and I cannot tell if it has hit anything solid. I hear a gurgling scream, and a great black hole punctuated with gleaming points of white fills my vision.
I welcome it rapturously, knowing that within its silent depths lies the demise of my fear. I have triumphed.
Oh, Felicia, I am coming.
Maurice Level
Blue Eyes
“Blue Eyes” is, in my opinion, one of the greatest “conte cruelles” ever written. The impact of its final line—do cover it so you wont inadvertently peek at it ahead of time—is psychologically devastating. Maurice Level (1875-1928), who, according to the Library of Congress card catalog, might have been a woman, Jeanne Mareteux-Level, was an important contributor to Paris‘ Grand Guignol theatre of cruelty.
WRAPPED in a loose hospital wrap that made her seem even thinner than she was, the sick girl was standing lost in thought at the foot of her bed.
Her childish face was wasted, and her blue eyes, sad, fathomless and circled with dark rings, were so unnaturally large they seemed to light up her whole face. Her cheeks burned with a hectic flush, and the deep lines that ran down to her mouth looked as if they had been worn there by the flow of unceasing tears.
She hung her head when the house-surgeon stopped beside her.
“Well, little No. 4, what’s this I hear? You want to go out?”
“Yes, sir...” The voice was hardly more than a whisper.
“But that’s very foolish.... You’ve only been up two or three days. In weather like this, too. You’d certainly fall ill again. Wait a day or two. You’re not unhappy here?... Has anyone been unkind to you?”
“No... oh, no, sir...”
“What is it, then?...”
There was more energy in her tone as she said:
“I must go out.”
And as if anticipating his question she continued quickly: “This is All Saints’ Day. I promised to take some flowers to my sweetheart’s grave... I promised... He has only me... If I don’t go, no one will... I promised...”
A tear shone under her eyelid. She wiped it away with a finger.
The house-surgeon was touched, and either out of curiosity, or so as not to seem awkward and leave her without some word of comfort, he asked:
“Is it long since he died?”
“Nearly a year...”
“What was the matter with him?”
She seemed to shrink, to become more frail, her chest more hollow, her hands thinner as, her eyes half closed, her lips trembling, she murmured:
“He was executed...”
The house-surgeon bit his lip and said in a low voice:
“Poor child... I’m very sorry. If you really must go out, go... But take care not to catch cold. You must come back tomorrow.”
Once outside the hospital gates, she began to shiver.
It was a dreary autumn morning. Moisture trickled down the walls. Everything was gray: the sky, the houses, the naked trees and the misty distance where people hurried along anxious to get out of the damp streets.
It had been the middle of summer when she had fallen ill, and her dress was a brightly hued one of thin cotton. The crumpled ribbon that encircled her wasted neck made her look even more pitiable. The skirt, blouse and neck-tie might have smiled back at the sunshine, but they seemed to droop in sadness in the chill gray setting.
She started off with an uncertain walk, stopping every now and then because she was out of breath and her head swimming.
The people she passed turned to look after her. She seemed to hesitate as if wishing to speak to them, then, afraid, walked on, glancing nervously from right to left. In this way she crossed half Paris. She stopped when she came to the Quais, standing to
watch the slow, muddy flow of the river. The piercing cold cut through her, and feeling she could not bear much more, she started off again.
When she got to Place Maubert and the Avenue des Gobelins she felt almost at home, for she was now in the neighborhood in which she had lived. Soon she began to see faces she knew, and she heard some one say as she passed:
“Surely that’s Vandat’s girl... How she has changed!”
“Which Vandat?”
“Vandat the murd...”
She quickened her steps, pressing her hands against her face so as not to hear the end of the word...
It was getting dark when she at last arrived at the wretched little hotel where she had lodged before she fell ill. She went in. Street girls and the men they kept were playing cards in the little café downstairs. When they saw her they called out:
“Hullo! Here’s Blue Eyes”—that used to be her nickname. “Come and have a drink, Blue Eyes. Here’s a seat... come along...”
Their welcome touched her, but the thick, rank smoke made her cough, and she could hardly breathe as she replied:
“No... I’ve no time now... Is Madame in?”
“Yes, there she is.”
She smiled timidly at the manageress.
“I wanted to ask you, Madame, if I could get at my things. The clothes I have on aren’t warm enough...”
“Any clothes you left were taken up to the attic; they’ll be there somewhere. I’ll send someone to look for them... Sit down by the stove and warm yourself.”
“No... I’ve no time now. I’ll come back presently.”
She went to the door. One of the men jeered:
“At the old business already? You aren’t wasting much time.”
She went out, and the short stay in the stifling room made the cold outside seem more piercing than ever. People were hurrying along laden with bead-wreaths and bouquets of flowers; others, dressed in their best clothes, talked and laughed, and one saw at a glance that they were carrying their offerings to the cemetery as a matter of habit, that time had taken the edge from their grief.
All along the side of the pavement barrows of flowers were drawn up. Chrysanthemums with curled petals drooped over clusters of roses; here and there mimosa shed its golden powder over bunches of violets. Nearer to the cemetery, in front of the shops of the marble masons, pots of flowers were arranged on the shelves of stands, insignificant, with neat foliage and restrained colors; further on were immortels and large bead-wreaths...
She looked at all this with eyes that glowed with envy. If only she could get some for him, just a little bunch... for him where he was lying at the far end of the cemetery in his poor, unconsecrated grave, a bare mound, without a single word to show that he was lying there.
“Murderer”... that meant nothing to her. He was the being she adored, her Man, the lover who had possessed not only her body but her whole soul... In a moment of madness he had killed someone... Had he not paid his horrible debt in full?
The day he had been arrested she had sworn never to have anything to do with any other man, never; to give up the life she had been leading, to work, to become an honest girl once more... to live in memories of him...
She kept on looking at the flowers. A seller held out a bunch of roses: “A bouquet? Some chrysanthemums then? Violets?”
She passed without replying, for she did not possess one farthing. Yet there was but one idea in her mind—flowers. She must have some flowers... she must get some flowers for him somehow... she had sworn she would.
She was nearly fainting with hunger and fatigue, but she was no longer aware of it. She was thinking only of the bare strip of earth in the cemetery, imagining it with some flowers brightening it up. But the money... how was she to get it’ What could she do?
The way that suggested itself was the obvious one, nor did it seem to clash with her vow to remain true to his memory.
Just as a good artisan returns to his factory, takes up his tools and starts on his work, she mechanically patted her hair into order, arranged her poor dress and began to walk the street as she used to in the old days when her man, sitting playing cards in the café, was the only thing in the world she cared about.
On she walked, her eye watchful, swaying her waist as she whispered between her teeth:
“Stop!... I want to speak to you...”
But she was too emaciated: one glance at her and the men hurried away. And indeed her face was no longer a face for pleasure; nor was her body, its sharp angles and deep hollows showing clearly under her thin cotton dress.
In bygone days when she was pretty, when she really was the “Blue Eyes” everyone admired, it was different. Now she was only an object of pity.
The daylight was fading. Suppose the cemetery was shut before she was able to buy the flowers...
A thin, misty rain was falling, silent, impalpable, and everything was becoming wrapped in gray shadows. You could see nothing of her thin face now except her eyes, two great eyes burning with fever.
A man was passing the corner of a quiet street, his coat-collar up, his hands in his pockets. She brushed up against him and said softly, her whole heart’s craving vibrating in her voice:
“Stop!... Won’t you come with me?...”
He looked at her for a moment. She had gone close up to him, her eyes penetrating his with the inspired expression of one conscious of a high mission.
He took her arm, and she guided him to the low hotel she had recently left. Through the half open door she said quickly:
“My key... A candle...”
The manageress replied in a low voice:
“No. 23, second floor, third door.”
The men and the girls in the café bent forward to see who was there, and as she went upstairs she heard exclamations and bursts of laughter.
... It was almost dark when she came down again. She threw a hasty good-bye at her companion and set off at a run. Stopping before the first flower-seller she came to, she seized the nearest bunch and threw down the two pieces of silver that clinked in her hands.
Quickly, quickly, she ran to the cemetery. People were coming away in little groups. She trembled. Would there still be time?
At the entrance the gate-keeper said:
“Too late! We’re closing now.”
“Oh! please, please. I only want to run in and out again. Just two minutes...”
“Very well. But—quick.”
Down the path she rushed, stumbling over the stones in the dark. It was a long way. She could hardly breathe, something was burning so painfully in her chest. She stopped by the wall where those who are executed are buried, and fell on her knees, scattering her flowers on the earth. Her tears streamed from her eyes, dripping between the hands she pressed against her face. She tried to pray, but she could not remember any of the proper words, and she just sobbed, her lips on the ground: “Oh! my man... my man...”
Then, so worn out she had lost all sensation in her limbs, but with a feeling of ease, almost of joy in her heart, she rose and hurried away. She even smiled at the gate-keeper as she said:
“You see I haven’t been long.”
But now that it was over, now she had kept her promise, had been near her man, she became aware again of the cold and her exhaustion. She could hardly drag herself along, her cough was so bad: every now and then she had to stop and lean against the wall...
At last she got back to the hotel and stumbled into the door. The girls and men were still playing cards in the overheated, smoke-filled room. A dead silence fell on them all when they saw her. She tried to laugh.
A woman at the far end of the room threw herself back on her chair and cried:
“You’ve made a fine start, Blue Eyes. Needed a bit of nerve, didn’t it?” She shrugged her shoulders. The other went on:
“Did you know who it was?”
“No...”
“Well, I’ll tell you. It was Le Bingue.”
Blue Eyes stammered:
; “What do you say? Le...”
Emptying her glass and taking up her cards again, the girl called back: “Yes, Le Bingue... You know, the Executioner!”
Jack Moffitt
The Lady and the Tiger
Thwarted love and green-eyed jealousy are the key ingredients in “The Lady or the Tiger?” the classic 1884 riddle story by Frank Richard Stockton (1834-1902), an American author-editor whose great poser has generally been deemed unsolvable. But in the mid-1940s, a Hollywood screenwriter, Jack Moffitt, astonished the editors of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM) by declaring that he planned to solve the dilemma. They didn’t think he could do it, but when Mr. Moffitt submitted his manuscript, they happily published it, declaring that “we are sure Frank R. Stockton himself, if he were alive, would be the first to applaud Mr. Moffitt’s ingenuity.”
“‘The Lady and the Tiger,” an ironic and deeply moving historical novella, culminates in a twist that indeed answers that maddening question, “Which came out of the opened door—the lady or the tiger?” But its stunning final paragraph contains an even greater shock.
(NOTE: At the outset of his story as it appeared in EQMM, the late Mr. Moffitt included an abridged version of Stocktons enigma, but I have elected, instead, to incorporate the entire text of “The Lady or the Tiger?”)
YOU MAY FIND IT faintly ridiculous that I, Charles Sevier, a stout and fortyish researcher working in Rome at the Vatican Library, should be in love with a woman who has been dead two thousand years.
This strange infatuation was brought about by the most prosaic of instruments—Frank R. Stockton’s short story, “The Lady or the Tiger?” which was published in 1884, sixteen years before my birth.
During the intervening years I doubt if there has been a single literate American who has not attempted to answer the riddle, which Mr. Stockton propounded:
The Lady or the Tiger?
Frank R. Stockton
Lovers and Other Monsters Page 53