Floats the Dark Shadow

by Yves Fey

  Averill lifted the spoon, lowered it into the glass, stirring until the rest of the sugar dissolved. He did it all far more carefully than usual, Theo noticed, giving each gesture his total concentration, presumably so no random thoughts of murder and mayhem might distract him. For days he’d talked compulsively of the charity bazaar fire and the murder in the cemetery. They haunted him, Theo knew, but still she wondered if they were a distraction from the deeper pain of his sister’s death a year ago.

  Theo was haunted too. Tomorrow she was to meet Carmine at the École des Beaux Arts protest—but that was not a distraction. It would be for Mélanie’s sake and would keep the pain of her loss close and sharp. But that was tomorrow.

  Today, Paul had summoned them to the Café des Capucines to talk about the next issue of Le Revenant. But their chief critic had yet to arrive. Besides Averill and herself, there were Casimir, Jules, and the Revenant they’d dubbed the student Hyphen. The others were all sipping their first absinthe. Averill was already on his second. Theo indulged in a blanc-cassis, the crème de cassis tinting the bubbling champagne a fuchsia that was a satisfying clash with the milky chartreuse of the absinthe.

  “C’est l’heure verte,” Averill lifted his glass in a toast.

  The green hour. Creating absinthe was an act of alchemy, a ritual performed each afternoon. The interior of the café was perfumed with its scent, licorice sweet with a sharp herbal undercurrent. At first, Theo had loved the bittersweet perfume and found the elixir a quintessential part of the magic of Paris. It had become a darker sorcery since Averill could not or would not stop his indulgence. Did he now love absinthe even more than he loved his art?

  “To Oscar Wilde,” Casimir added his own toast. He had told Theo that the extravagant café was Wilde’s favorite. The decadent oasis of plush garnet velvet and glowing stained glass ceilings was just across the street from where he had lived while writing Salomé.

  “Salomé,” Theo murmured, conjuring the memory. Not long after they attended Verlaine’s funeral, Casimir had invited them to see the play, which Wilde had written in French. An actress he was courting had a small part in the avant-garde production. It was Theo’s second outing into Averill’s Paris and her discovery of its living, beating, poetic heart. She had been dazzled as the penniless theatre company performed its own alchemy with only the magic of words and shifting light. A full moon hung above the stage, its pure pale color corrupted as the play unfolded its tale of obsession, seduction, and death. Pearl slowly clouded and turned to tarnished silver. Silver was slowly stained scarlet. By the end of the play, crimson light drenched the set and actors like flowing blood. Theo had been transfixed by the beauty and exquisite terror of the night.

  “Wilde is still in prison, isn’t he?” The student peered from beneath the fringe of brown hair that all but covered his eyes.

  “He’ll be released at the end of this month,” Casimir answered. “When he comes to France, I have vowed to visit him.”

  “You believe he will return here?” Jules asked.

  “Where else would he go?” Casimir asked in turn. “In London he’d be snubbed, in America he’d be shot. Wouldn’t he, Theo?”

  “Snubbed and shot,” Theo admitted, though she might have secretly pointed him to the right bar. That last rough-and-tumble year working at The Louvre bar in Mill Valley, she had learned many things that nice society girls weren’t supposed to know. What mysteries remained, Averill had been willing to illuminate. From the beginning, he’d treated her as an equal. There were no forbidden topics. He’d told her it was common for schoolboys to experiment with each other. Most came to prefer women, some never did, and some desired both. He’d been amused to hear that some of the girls at finishing school were far more intrigued by each other than the muscular riding instructor she’d thought so alluring.

  “What is Wilde like?” the student Hyphen asked.

  “Oscar revels in his fame,” Casimir said. “He has to be the center of attention. He loves to delight and he loves to shock—if not to the extreme his trial brought about.”

  “The judge called it the crime of the century,” Averill sneered. “You have to wonder what he thought of Jack the Ripper.”

  Averill had said little, Theo realized. Neither for pleasure or from compulsion.

  “The judge probably thought the Ripper performed a public service,” Casimir replied. “Wilde’s trial was a circus. He thought he could whip them with his wit, but they sledgehammered him with their morals. Two years at hard labor.”

  “Two years does not seem so terrible,” Theo said.

  “It was supposed to be a death sentence,” Averill replied, animated now. “Most prisoners die of exhaustion. Their health gives out. Or their sanity. He must be amazingly strong to have survived.”

  “What happened to Wilde’s lover?” Theo asked, earning a shocked glance from Jules.

  “Nothing happened to Lord Queensbury’s son.” Casimir’s voice dripped disdain. “Such creatures usually escape. Bosie is a rancid piglet. Vanity without talent. Utterly self-centered.”

  “Did you ever see Salomé?” Theo asked the student, trying to draw him out again.

  “No, I joined the Revenants after it had closed.”

  “The words dripped color and glittered like jewels. It was like watching a painting by Gustav Moreau come to life.” Theo hoped the mention of Averill’s favorite painter might stir a response from him. He only swirled his absinthe, watching the color glow in the afternoon light.

  “Truly magnificent—but it was almost a catastrophe,” Casimir added. “The only theatre they could afford was condemned, all but falling apart around them. There was a fire backstage the night of the first performance. The actors were beating out the blaze on costumes.”

  Theo shut her eyes against the image of flaming clothes. No one had died during Salomé, except on stage.

  “Topping that, they broke the wax head of John the Baptist they had borrowed from the Museé Grévin,” Averill added.

  “So much for any profits—despite being sold out.” Casimir opened his fingers as if coins were falling through them.

  The student Hyphen sighed regretfully. “I wish I had been there.”

  “Casimir, Averill, and I met Paul and the others in café afterward, by accident. We pulled our tables together so we could all talk about the play.” Theo still had the program, designed by Toulouse-Lautrec, as a keepsake. “It was our inspiration.”

  “We talked of how Salomé’s ghost would dance through Herod’s dreams. And how John the Baptist would have haunted Salomé.” Casimir smiled at Theo, urging her to continue.

  “Casimir proclaimed that Salomé would only want a ghost with a body. Averill said that would be a revenant, a ghost you could touch.”

  “Like a succubus,” Jules whispered. “A spirit that lusts.”

  “We decided to do a magazine with poems touching on the theme and publish it for La Toussaint. So Le Revenant was born,” Casimir said, then looked up as Paul appeared with the missing Hyphens and settled at their table.

  “The theme is our focus,” Paul said as if they were arguing with him. “Le Revenant does not proselytize a new movement in poetry. We welcome all superior work, be it from the Symbolists, the Decadents, the Parnassians, even from the naïve Romantics. We are artistic anarchists.” He looked around at them all and nodded with satisfaction.

  “Garçon,” Averill summoned a passing waiter and ordered another absinthe.

  “Averill…” she started to ask some question to engage him, but he looked at her blankly, lost in some inner turmoil.

  “For once we’re all here.” Dispensing with pleasantries, Paul pulled out a notebook and turned to Averill. “How many poems do you plan for the next issue?”

  When Averill only stared bleakly at the street, Paul poked him with his pencil. “Tu as le cafard?”

  Theo wondered how having a cockroach ever came to be equated with depression.

  “Poems?” Paul repea
ted with another prod.

  Averill frowned. “I have only two that seem right. Another two I am unhappy with but know will improve. Bits and pieces of others.”

  “What two are finished?”

  “Another Salomé poem. Cupid and Psyche.”

  “Bluebeard?” Paul asked. “You did promise me Gilles de Rais.”

  Averill shook his head. “Something about Bluebeard is incomplete, imperfect.”

  Bluebeard again. Theo frowned. Sometimes Gilles de Rais seemed like a revenant walking through Paris. Present but never quite in sight.

  “I want Bluebeard,” Paul insisted. “I want that ultimate darkness.”

  Averill gestured in frustration. “First I must finish the poem of my little Venus.”

  “Venus? Greek myth?” Paul asked. “Erotic?”

  “No. It’s about the girl I found in the cemetery,” he whispered, no louder than Jules.

  Shaken, Theo wondered how Averill could bear to write about her. And yet, for the past week, she had been obsessed with the fire, with destruction, with death. Her scrawled sketches of the burning building, the charred wreckage, had not exorcized the most terrible image from her mind. Over and over, Mélanie came toward her in a white skirt circled with flame. It was too horrible. Theo had resisted making a drawing. Now she felt she would not be free until she did.

  “Not fairy tale or myth, but your little Venus appears to be a revenant,” Casimir said.

  Paul scribbled in his notebook. “Yes, that might work.”

  “There is another Venus poem I began earlier. A pantoum.”

  “Excellent.” Turning to Theo, Paul explained, “The second and third lines of the preceding stanza repeat in the next, repetition creating rhythm.”

  “I want to make them a duet of sorts. Grand et petit…” Averill trailed off, staring into his absinthe. Theo didn’t know what was wrong. Suddenly, he lifted his head, looking round at them. “The poem is frozen!” he blurted out. “I must see her again, or I won’t be able to finish it.”

  Paul’s eyebrows ascended. “I do not want to dig up a grave to raise your revenant.”

  “No! The papers say she has not been identified. They have put her on display. I must go to the morgue.” Averill sounded desperate. He turned to Casimir. “Come with me.”

  Casimir hesitated, but conceded. “Of course, if you wish it.”

  Theo was appalled. How much death did Averill need to see? Did he only feel alive when it was close? The fire at the bazaar, the body in the cemetery, were cruel strokes of fate. But Verlaine’s funeral, the catacombs had been events he sought out. Of course it was Casimir who had invited them all to the catacombs, but Averill had been the most eager to attend.

  A hollow ache filled her stomach. Theo had to admit that she did understand Averill. She understood what it was to be haunted, to be possessed. Mélanie was her revenant, begging to exist if only as a painted image.

  “I will go with you too,” Theo said quietly, though she hated the thought of the morgue. She had discovered it by mistake after exploring Notre Dame. It stood at the eastern tip of the Île de la Cité, where bodies found in the Seine could easily be brought by boat. Theo had approached cheerfully, mistaking the colorful crowd for something festive. Rich and poor, young and old were gathered outside. There was even a puppet show. All sorts of pastries and drinks were being hawked. Then she heard one of the many vendors promoting his curative ointment, his “pâté de morgue.” Realizing where she was, Theo watched, stunned, as parents hustled their children inside, a family outing to view the corpses on display. Ever since, Theo had avoided the somber building. Until today.

  “I too would like to see this little Venus of yours,” Paul said. “The Revenants should all go, especially those who avoided the catacombs or did not witness the fire.”

  Theo wanted to clobber Paul. “Must everything be an aesthetic show? Misery, grief, horror?”

  Paul sat back and surveyed her. “Anger is much improved with aesthetics.”

  Before she could respond to that back-handed compliment, Casimir whispered in her ear. “Paul is clever, chère Amazone. Our Averill must go. Will not a little human padding protect him?”

  “Perhaps,” Theo said reluctantly.

  “An artist must have courage,” Paul asserted. “No one escapes their fears, but the artist must face them, conquer them.”

  “The artist must gaze deep into the abyss,” Jules agreed fervently. “You must search out your demons—even stir them.”

  “Maybe demons should be treated with more respect,” Theo ventured, feeling a coward as she did. She had completely believed what they said—until she had a Devil to beware.

  “Demons make better muses than angels,” Paul replied. “They spend more time communing with mortals. They infest reality.”

  “I’ve had more than enough reality,” Theo said. More than enough hellfire.

  “You are more real than the rest of us,” Averill murmured to his absinthe. “You are sunlight. We are shadow.”

  For a moment, no one spoke. Theo heard nothing but her own clamoring heartbeat. Averill had never given her such an extravagant compliment. But it wasn’t just his words, it was the catch in his voice as he said them. It was almost as if he’d said he loved her. Almost.

  “You underestimate us, Averill,” Casimir said. “We are more substantial than shadow. We are dense as night.”

  “Shadow. Night. Wolves baying at a blood red moon,” Jules intoned.

  Theo felt like she was staring into the depths of the Tarot card, seeing the Moon’s reflected light quivering in the oily waters of the fetid pool. She felt a sudden chill.

  “To the theatre of the people.” Paul gave a feral grin. “To the morgue!”

  ~

  “The theatre of the people?” Theo looked at the long line gathered to enter the morgue. Despite her doubting tone, she knew Paul was right. Parisians considered the whole of their city a stage to enact the drama of their daily lives. Yet why would anyone choose to play out a scene here, unless they had to? At least the catacombs possessed a morbid glamour.

  “The show is free and changes frequently,” Paul said, glancing down the line waiting outside the sober building. “Of course, you must provide your own dialogue.”

  “The only problem is when the actors are absent.” Casimir gestured to the crowd. “When there are no corpses to provide entertainment, the people riot.”

  Theo looked about, fighting uneasiness. The carnival atmosphere she had witnessed before was gone. Parents kept their children close and shushed them if they became loud. The line was dominated by women with fervid eyes and tear-streaked faces. They sighed vastly to draw attention, then squeezed out another tear so they could dab at their eyes and display the expensive lace on their handkerchiefs. Some obviously imagined themselves the next Sarah Bernhardt, but a few wrenched Theo’s heart. They looked so haunted, so fearful of discovering the child within was their own.

  Paul pointed to one. “Le Fausset comes often.”

  The faucet. Theo winced. “All that grief is just for show?”

  “If it’s not for amusement, then she’s crazed.” As usual, Paul adopted a scornful pose. A little ahead of her, Averill looked agitated and Casimir concerned. Jules appeared oddly peaceful. His lips moved as if whispering a prayer. The Hyphens clearly wished they were elsewhere but had not dared refuse Paul’s challenge.

  Theo struggled to maintain her poise as they approached the door. The feverish atmosphere infected her. She felt like ants were crawling all over her skin. Only a week ago, she had stood in just such a snail-paced line with Mélanie and Carmine to see the cinema. Closing her eyes against that memory, Theo saw instead the black train rushing off the screen, drowning them in darkness.

  “Soon now,” Casimir whispered. Theo opened her eyes. He was speaking softly to Averill, who stared fixedly at the door ahead.

  Finally, they entered the public viewing room in the center of the building. It was cold inside.
Ahead of them stretched an enormous window with green curtains. Inside la salle d’exposition, framed like a department store display, were a dozen black marble slabs in two rows. Today three bodies were laid out in the front, naked except for a cloth draped across their hips. Their clothes were hung nearby to help with identification. They were adults, a man and two women. No children. Then Theo glimpsed a small figure at the far end, almost out of sight, seated on a cloth-draped chair. Did they do that to make the children seem more alive? It seemed even creepier. Some sort of fabric draped the body, but no clothes hung beside her. Averill must have found the little girl naked. The small body posed on the chair was pathetic and disturbing. There was no way the morgue could create any feel of normal life. Theo felt even queasier than before.

  The crowd thickened around the last window, blocking the little girl from sight. The bodies before her were given only cursory attention as everyone waited for their vision of pathos.

  Suddenly, Jules laughed loud enough to be hushed. He twitched nervously then looked abashed. “Forgive me.”

  The line moved until they stood directly in front of the window. A muscular old man lay on the first black marble slab. He had a jutting nose, a strong jaw, and a mane of grey hair almost to his shoulders. He reminded Theo enough of the uncle who raised her to sadden her. Her eyes stung with tears but she blinked them back. The present was sad enough. Pushing old grief aside, she looked at the man again. The clothes hanging beside him looked like a farmhand’s Sunday best. Theo guessed he had come into Paris seeking adventure. Had he been robbed? There was a mark on his head. Was it a killing blow, or had he only fallen? She moved on past two women lying on the next slabs. One looked bloated by the river, her clothes little more than rags. The other had slashed her wrists. Beside her was a garish dress and clashing feather boa.

  Averill had already moved on, his gaze fixed on the little girl’s body in the chair. Theo stopped, looking down, letting him have his moment with her. She glanced behind her. Casimir was hanging back as well. All the Revenants were ready to offer succor but only if Averill needed it. Theo heard the crowd muttering, urging them to move forward. A flash of anger warmed the cold gloom that had settled on her. Averill looked wretched yet utterly rapt. Deciding he’d spent long enough alone, Theo came to stand beside him. She tried not to look into the window, studying her feet instead. The old man, the sad women, had been awful enough. Then her own cowardice angered her. An artist must look at grief, at ugliness, as well as joy and beauty.