The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque

by Jeffrey Ford

  “The house is empty, Shenz. The front door was left unlocked. I walked in and scoured the place for any clues to what had happened.”

  “And what did you find?” he asked.

  “In the attic, portraits of her by some of my favorite painters,” I said, and watched as his jaw went slack.

  He sat still for a minute and then took a cigarette off the small table next to his chair. Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he retrieved a box of matches. He lit up and exhaled a perfect ring of blue smoke. “So you know,” he said.

  “It’s a beautiful piece,” I said.

  “I hated it when I was done and had my meager recompense in my pocket,” he said. “I was at first so certain I had accomplished the inconceivable.”

  “Who is to say you didn’t? All we have to go on is the word of a disturbed woman,” I said.

  “No, Piambo, I knew I had missed the mark once she gave me her assessment. I could feel it, and that feeling continued to grow, like a void slowly consuming my desire to paint again.”

  I wanted to tell him that the commission had nothing to do with painting, but I was just beginning to know that feeling he had described. “Why did you let me enter upon this doomed escapade without warning me?” I said.

  “I regret that I did,” he said. “I had such faith in your abilities. I believed so wholeheartedly that you could actually succeed. When I went about it, I played it straight without trying to find any outside sources on which to base my portrait. All I used were my meetings with her and the contents of her wild stories. I thought if I helped you, coaxed you to roam outside the bounds of the game somewhat, and directed your progress as best I could, you would surely trap her.”

  “Shenz, I’m afraid your opinion of my abilities, though I appreciate the vote of confidence, may be a bit inflated.”

  “No,” he said. He shook his head, and I detected a note of anger in his voice. “It wasn’t just me. Sabott had that same faith in you, if not more. That day I met him in the Player’s Club, years ago, just before his death, he told me about the strange commission that had addled his mind. So when I was approached by the blind gentleman, I knew what I was getting into. Sabott had advised me to steer clear of the Sibyl, but when the opportunity arose I could not refuse, even though he had warned that it would destroy me. Do you know what else he told me?” asked Shenz.

  I said nothing.

  “He told me, ‘Leave that one to Piambo. He is capable of it.’ I thought nothing of it at the time. As a matter of fact, I thought it was just more of his lunacy. But as I said, when the commission was placed before me, it was at a juncture in my life when I wanted a test in order to know that I was not sliding. I wanted to prove to myself that I could accomplish what Sabott believed only you could do. Foolishness, I’ll admit.”

  “Forget it, Shenz,” I said. “Let it go, and you will be back on top in no time.”

  “Believe me, I have tried to forget it. I actively pursued the poppy in an attempt to smoke it out of my mind. What has happened, though, is that the opium has destroyed everything else and left that one haunting notion intact.” When he finished speaking, I could see tears welling in his eyes. He looked ancient. After tamping out his cigarette in the ashtray, he covered his face with his hands and gave in to his grief.

  “You are not allowed to give up, Shenz,” I said. “Pull yourself together. Here is what we will do. I will pay for your medical treatment. We will enlist professionals to rid your system of this cursed drug. There are sanatoriums for this kind of affliction. Then we will proceed from there.”

  “My God, I don’t think I’ve cried in years,” he said. “And now I don’t think I can stop.” He removed his hands from his face, and the palms were bright red.

  It happened at once, my realization that he was crying blood and my recognition of the cameo pinned to his lapel. “Where did you get that piece of jewelry?” I asked. “The cameo.”

  He tried to wipe his eyes clear but only smeared the gore across his face. “Some pleasant fellow simply gave it to me on the street today. Walked up with a smile and pinned it to my lapel. With my defeat at the Hatstells’ yesterday, I was receptive to this small un-warranted kindness.”

  “You’re crying blood,” I said, and rose from my chair.

  Shenz looked at his hands. “So I am,” he said. “Am I having a religious moment here, or have I blown a pipe? Oh, no, that’s right, I remember reading about this in the newspaper today. It’s all the rage.”

  I was already running for the door. “Sit still!” I called. “I’ll be back with help.” My leg was still bad from my beating the previous night, but I ignored its throbbing and raced down the steps and out into the street. Even as I ran, I knew he was going to die. If I reached a doctor, a police officer, what could they do? I knew very well there was no phone nearby in Hell’s Kitchen, so I headed for Seventh Avenue.

  Twenty minutes had passed before I found a saloon with a telephone and called police headquarters. I gave them Sills’s name and told them where Shenz was. When the officer on the desk heard that I was reporting an instance of the newly disclosed illness, he became very attentive and said they would send men to Shenz’s address immediately. Before hanging up, he told me not to return to the apartment but to stay where I was. I told him I had to go back, but he said, “If you do, we might very well have two more deaths. Stay put.” Then he took the address of the saloon I was calling from, and hung up.

  As it turned out, I did not return to Shenz’s place. I will regret my decision until the day I die, but the unmitigated truth of the matter was that I did not have the courage to watch my friend die. In the past two days, I had been forced to face the worst of my personal flaws. I had betrayed Samantha, and my betrayal of Sabott had been brought home rather pointedly by young Edward’s response to my plea for help when I lay in the street. I slunk over to a corner table and sat down, burying my face in my arms. Having heard my phone conversation and witnessing my tears, the bartender brought me a whiskey. I drank that and many more while waiting for Sills to show up. In my distress, I believed that the quicker I drank, the faster Shenz’s blood would flow, and the sooner the gruesome event would come to an end.

  Two hours later, Sills appeared in the doorway of the saloon. He walked over, took me by the back of the coat, and pulled me to my feet.

  “Come, Piambo, we must walk. You’ve got to tell me everything.”

  “Is it over?” I asked.

  He nodded. “It was over soon after we got there. At least I got to say good-bye to him.”

  We walked out of the place into the golden light of the setting sun and headed south. When my step faltered, Sills supported me. He stopped at a coffee stand and bought two cups of the black street swill. But it was hot and brought me around somewhat so that my speech was less slurred. When I was done with it, he bought me another and told me to finish it.

  “Now,” he said as we started to walk again. “Tell me everything, whatever you know about this Charbuque. I need every last detail.”

  I held nothing back. We walked down Seventh Avenue a long way, over to Fifth, and then back north. We walked into the night, and I told him the story of my acquaintance with Mrs. Charbuque. I even confessed to him what had happened with Samantha.

  I finished with the tale only two blocks from my house, and Sills walked with me to the front steps. We stood there silently for a few minutes, and each had a cigarette.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this, Piambo. But Shenz gave me a message to give to you. His last words.”

  “Why shouldn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “Because I want you out of this mess now.”

  “A dying man’s last request,” I said.

  Sills looked away for a moment as if deciding. “Very well,” he finally said. “Shenz told me to tell you, ‘Finish it.’”

  TEARS OF CARTHAGE

  AS A precaution, Shenz’s body was cremated the afternoon he expired. I don’t know where I found the stre
ngth to arrange it, but I organized and sponsored a small gathering in his honor at the Player’s Club two days later. News of his death traveled fast throughout the art world, and I tried to get word of the impromptu memorial affair to all who had known him.

  Shenz was one of those people who moved in many circles. In attendance the day of the gathering were fine artists, commercial artists, hansom cab drivers, bartenders, politicians, opium peddlers, ladies of both the drawing room and the night, thieves, and police officers. Quite a number of his wealthy patrons made the trip downtown, and all in all, metaphorically speaking, the lion lay down with the lamb in his honor. There were no speeches given, no prayers intoned. People merely mingled and conversed, and occasionally the crowd fell silent. Tears were shed, and there were many long hard stares into the distance before things would eventually wind themselves back up. There was a little food and a lot of alcohol. I spoke to a few of our closest and oldest colleagues out of respect, but for the most part I stayed to myself and remained silent. I had sent an invitation to Samantha, but she did not attend.

  The event lasted well into the evening and did not break up until near midnight. By that time I had stopped drinking and was sitting in a chair wrapped in a daze. Some of my friends said good night to me as they departed, and when I looked up from my trance, I saw a familiar face. Goren, the Man from the Equator, pulled up a chair and sat down across from me.

  “Thank you for sending word to me, Piambo,” he said.

  “Have you been here all along?” I asked.

  “For quite a while,” he told me. “I’ve been waiting to have a private word with you.”

  “Yes,” I said, and straightened up in my chair.

  “From what I picked up in conversation with others this evening, you were with Shenz when he died. Can you tell me, was it the illness in the newspapers that he succumbed to?”

  “Bleeding from the eyes, yes,” I said.

  “I know a few things about this horror,” he said. “Some years back, when I first opened my shop in the Village, I was visited by an odd fellow, pretending to be blind, who offered to pay me for any information I could supply him with concerning this ocular stigmata.”

  Now I came fully awake. “That would be Watkin,” I said. “What did you find?”

  “All I had to go on was a description of the symptoms, which I had never encountered mention of before. I told the fellow I would see what I could come up with and that I would get in touch with him if I discovered anything. He said he would return in a few months and that if I had something for him he would pay me well. The image of the disease was a striking one, and I kept it in the fore-front of my mind, turning my attention to it as often as possible. This is the manner in which I bring a subject closer to me. Since reality is two thirds a product of consciousness, I began to attract information like a magnet. I had opened myself to it, invited it—”

  I didn’t mean to be so impatient, but I said, “You can bypass the metaphysics for my sake, Goren. What was it you found?”

  He looked momentarily startled, then smiled and continued. “There are a number of references to this affliction in ancient texts. Pliny the Elder, Herodotus, Galen. It had a name in the ancient world, the Tears of Carthage. When that great Phoenician city was sacked by Rome, its fields sown with salt, some of the women who were spirited away by the attacking force carried with them small vials of what was thought to be a rare perfume. They anointed their new masters with it, and lo and behold, tears of blood ran until the men’s hearts had nothing left to pump. A parasitical Trojan horse, in so many words.

  “The Phoenicians had made deep inroads into the African continent, and my guess is that this was some kind of river parasite, for there are rare diseases that involve this type of drastic exsanguination which have been recorded by explorers of that mysterious continent. It is interesting that the Phoenicians used it as a weapon. The technique must have been learned from the native peoples who had first introduced them to it. From my own travels in Africa I learned a great deal from the shamans of various tribes, who possess a knowledge of natural phenomena that exceeds anything the Western cultures have accumulated. I believe it was the Tears of Carthage that took Shenz.”

  Goren’s disclosure excited me, and I told him in as truncated a manner as possible, not wanting to again recount the whole long saga of Mrs. Charbuque, about the lamp full of liquid that Luciere had stolen from the archaeologist. “Could the stuff still be potent after all these centuries?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t seem likely, but I suppose it depends on whatever the parasite was mixed with,” said Goren. “Perhaps the organism can lie dormant indefinitely and then awake when it comes in contact with the heat of a larger organism. Once it finds itself awake, it invariably moves toward the eyes. The lamp sounds Arabic and is probably much older than its contents. The Phoenicians also traded extensively in the Orient. As a matter of fact, they most likely circumnavigated the entire globe, though I doubt you would find a professor of antiquities who would agree with this statement. But here is a kernel of proof. Along with some of the later descriptions of the Tears, there was also mention of an antidote for it. The spice known to us as nutmeg, when made into a tincture and used to bathe the eyes, repels the vermin that feast on the soft ocular tissue. Specimens of this spice have been found in the ruins of Carthage and other Phoenician sites. The only place they could have procured this was in what we now call the Spice Islands, Zanzibar, in the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away from their cultural centers.”

  So much ran through my mind at the moment, I could not respond at first. Finally, “Did you give this information to the man who requested it?” I asked, remembering the small bottle Watkin had given me.

  “Yes,” said Goren. “He paid me well, as he had promised.”

  “Someone is using these Tears of Carthage as a murder weapon,” I said.

  “I suspected this when I read about it in the newspaper,” he said. “That is why I wanted to tell you. I was hoping you would relate this to the proper authorities. My personal philosophy prevents me from directly aiding the state.”

  “It’s almost too convoluted to be believed; there’s too much circumstance and such vast oceans of time involved,” I said.

  “An instant to the cosmos,” said Goren. “A last piece of information: There was one isolated case of this disease reported in the medical literature. About fifteen years ago, in London, a young woman who worked as a maid in a certain hotel. A mild panic ensued, but when no other cases emerged, the fear of it died, and it was written off as some kind of aberrant condition.”

  “I’m not sure if what you tell me is more astounding or disturbing,” I said.

  “It’s both,” said Goren. “By the way, have you been sticking to the prescription I gave you?”

  “Religiously,” I assured him.

  “Results?” he asked.

  “Absolutely explosive,” I said.

  “If you need anything else, you know where to find me,” he said, and rose from his chair. “I will miss Shenz. He was a devilishly fine man.”

  “I can hardly bear that he is dead,” I said.

  “Death is a relative term, Piambo. Think of it as a change. There is no death.” Goren leaned over and shook my hand, holding it tightly for an instant. Then he walked out into the dark.

  Later that night, I lay in bed thinking about Shenz’s final plea for me to “finish it.” That is precisely what I was determined to do. I would find Charbuque and avenge my friend’s death. I did not buy for an instant Goren’s belief that there was no death. His exacting equilibrium had left his mind anesthetized to the truth. Life was not about the perfection of balance. That kind of stasis was a death in itself. Life was the chaos that tipped the scales.

  What I wanted more than anything at that moment was Samantha next to me. As important as it was for me to find Charbuque, I also had to find a way to regain Samantha’s trust. Both these tasks would be at least as difficult as portray
ing Mrs. Charbuque from her mere words, if not more so. Nonetheless, the successful completion of both was essential for my future happiness. The commission was gone, and I wished it good riddance, pleased to have it cleared from my conscience so I could concentrate on what was now important. That night I slept little, so beset was I by a feeling of loneliness. I had experienced nothing like it since I was a child and my father was killed by his own creation.

  THEY ARE ALL HER

  IN THE days that followed the disappearance of Mrs. Charbuque and the death of Shenz, I roamed the city in the pretense of hunting down a murderer. I wandered on foot, uptown and down, keeping a lookout for anyone fitting his nebulous description. I stayed away from saloons and whiskey, for I knew that path would lead me pell-mell to ruination. As long as I kept moving, I did less thinking, felt less of the anguish that always hovered nearby, and that was all for the good. My daily sojourns also left me exhausted at night and facilitated the welcome oblivion of sleep.

  The stories in the newspapers did not cause the widespread panic expected by city officials. Much of the populace had lived through the conflict between North and South and its aftermath, in which the casualties were so monumental that, in comparison, the fewer than one dozen deaths caused by this strange disease hardly seemed something to get excited about. Every day there were hundreds more falling victim to murder, work accidents, consumption, and poverty, and the struggle to avoid those tragedies through the acquisition of wealth took precedence over all else and reinforced the importance of the usual routine. If anything, the tales of victims bleeding to death through their eyes were fascinating as well as horrifying.

  Sills was pleased with the information I had passed along from Goren, and the New York Police Department put a strain on the local nutmeg market. The tincture described by the Man from the Equator became regular issue for all men working the case. The police had checked with the Jewelers Association and found the fellow, a Mr. Gerenard, who had created the cameos for Charbuque. Apparently two dozen of the expensive pins had been purchased. They were described as being carved from angel skin coral with a royal blue painted background contrasting with the Medusa head in relief and set in fourteen-karat gold with a two-inch pin attached. These were probably exact replicas of the one Charbuque had given Luciere in London.