The girl Pauline sat at one of the tables closest to the accordion player and the violin. She was not alone. A young man in waistcoat and shirtsleeves sat with his arm around her waist, occasionally pinching her side so that she shrieked and wriggled and slapped his arm lightly. As she sat there, leaning against his chest, she did not look like the desperate young woman who had yelled at Madame Palantine. How am I supposed to live? I could not tell from her demeanor whether her distress had been less deep-rooted than it had first seemed, or if it still lurked somewhere beneath this wholehearted attempt to forget about tomorrow.
“Pauline?”
She sat up a bit straighter.
“Oh, there you are,” she said. “Where are my two francs?”
One of the gentlemen at the table had apparently picked up a few manners at some point; he rose unsteadily to his feet and offered me his place. Repressing an urge to wipe the seat first, I sat down.
“Thank you.”
He touched the brim of his hat with two fingers and mumbled something about “a call of nature” before he disappeared.
I took the requested sum from my purse and placed the coins on the table between the wine puddles and glasses, but kept my hand on them for now.
“Tell me how you came into contact with the institute,” I said.
She glared at me—whether her hostility was due to my question or to my unwillingness to pay in advance I could not tell.
“What do you think?” she said.
“You were expecting a child?”
“Of course. Otherwise the dairy don’t work, now, does it?”
“And then you went to see Madame Palantine?”
She nodded. “Mean old vulture. But at the beginning she didn’t seem that bad. She was ever so concerned, asked if I was engaged—she could see I wasn’t married, but I said yes, I was engaged . . .”
She looked up at her companion. He gave her a squeeze and a kiss on the neck.
“ ’Course,” he said. “And you are, aren’t you?”
“His mother doesn’t like me,” Pauline said bitterly. “But we’re going to get married anyway, right? Soon!”
“ ’Course.”
“But I worked at the cotton mill, and they don’t let you have kids running around, so . . .”
“What precisely does the institute offer?”
“If they take you,” she corrected me. “They examine you from top to . . . well, all over. The vulture and the professor. You have to be ever so healthy and strong and proper. If they take you, then they let you have it at their hospital, and that’s a damn sight better than lying in Ma’s filthy old bed, screaming my head off, I can tell you. There’s a midwife and doctor and everything, and it’s all really clean and nice. Then they take the little one. You don’t know which one it is, even though you go there every day and let them nurse until you’re about to keel over. But I thought, five solid meals a day and a clean bed to sleep in, plus four francs a week . . . that’s got to be better than coughing cotton dust for twelve hours and then staggering home to try and sleep with eight snotty brats underfoot and constantly howling, and all Ma ever does anymore is bitch and complain. So I gave notice at the factory and told Ma that she’d need to find someone else to help with the brats. They aren’t even all hers, two of them are my sister’s, and then there are the three she takes care of for next door ’cause she cleans at the factory at night.”
“Did you ever see this woman at the institute?” I took one of the tinted photographs from my bag and placed it on the table. It was the close-up with the grapes, which I had carefully masked with cardboard so no nudity was on display. Rosalba’s expression was still unbelievably coquettish, and the way she was nibbling at the grapes was anything but decent, but it was the picture that showed her face most clearly.
Pauline looked at the photograph for a while. “Who is she?” she asked.
I did not answer.
“Have you seen her?” I repeated.
“I might have.”
“Do you remember when?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. It must have been a few months ago.”
“When did you yourself give birth?”
She made a face. “In May. The twentieth.”
“Had you just given birth when you saw her?”
“No. It was four or five weeks after that, I’m pretty sure.”
That would make it the week before Rosalba was killed, which again might mean that Pauline had merely seen her during the visit with Fleur that I already knew about.
“Was she alone?”
“No,” Pauline said without hesitation. “She was talking to the professor. And she was crying. That was why I noticed her, because that’s something we are all told—he does not care for what Madame Palantine calls ‘emotional displays,’ so we are supposed to ‘comport ourselves with dignity’ when he is examining us.”
“What were they talking about?”
“I couldn’t hear them.”
“And when you say the professor, you mean . . .”
“That man Althauser. Who else?”
She reached for the two francs, and this time I let her take them.
I may have been a little too eager to leave Le Crapaud. In any case, I was returning the photograph to my bag while heading for the door, and noticed too late that a man sitting at the table closest to the door chose that same moment to rise. We did not quite knock each other over, but there was a significant and most unwelcome moment of bodily contact.
“Mademoiselle Karno! You do get around.”
Felt hat, red paisley scarf worn casually with a velvet-collared jacket in a somewhat foppish style. It was my tabloid nemesis, the semi-nameless Monsieur Christophe.
“Are you following me?” I asked indignantly.
“Not at all. I am merely observing the nightlife of our fair city. I am quite astonished to find that you are part of it.”
When did one grow out of blushing? Soon, I hoped.
“May I ask what you are doing here, mademoiselle?”
“Charity,” I snapped, which was probably stupid, but it was the only excuse I could think of.
“I see,” he said. “Of what kind?”
“That is really none of your business. Good evening, m’sieur.”
He stepped aside and let me pass. But about halfway down Rue Vanasse, I realized I was no longer holding the envelope with Rosalba’s picture in my left hand. It was not in the bag either. I must have dropped it in our collision.
I turned to go back, only to find that Christophe was heading my way, with the envelope in one hand and the masked photograph in the other.
“You dropped something,” he said.
“Thank you,” I felt obliged to say.
“Are you really still pursuing the case?” he asked.
“What case?”
“That poor girl. Months ago now.” There was a casual indifference in his tone of voice that provoked me unreasonably.
“I truly regret that we were not able to solve the killing before your deadline,” I said. “But not all victims are thoughtful enough to write ‘X did it’ with their last remaining strength.”
“Now you are being sarcastic.”
“Oh, really?”
I reached out for the picture, but he withheld it in a way that reminded me unpleasantly of my own strategy with Pauline.
“Do you know something I don’t?” he asked.
“Undoubtedly quite a lot,” I said. “But nothing that is relevant to your readers.”
“If there was a new development,” he said, “then there might be another article in it.”
“There isn’t,” I answered shortly. “Give me that picture. You cannot print it anyway.” The mask had slipped and the erotic nature of the photograph could no longer be denied. He smiled crookedly.
“No,” he said. “We probably cannot. But if you discover anything I may print, mademoiselle . . . then come to me. I will make sure you do not regret it.”
The conceit of the man was monumental. Did he really imagine I would ever seek him out voluntarily, after what he had written before?
September 26, 1894
When I came down the next morning to head for the university, Erich Falchenberg was standing in a doorway on the other side of the street, somewhat stooped, and trying to look as if he belonged there. He did not succeed. A whole passel of kids had surrounded him, discussing loudly in French how you might get money out of the “foreign gentleman.” I considered ignoring both him and the scene but decided to confront him instead. I did not want him to think I was afraid.
“How may I be of assistance?” I said coolly.
He sighed and straightened up to his normal height.
“You can’t. Fräulein.” There was a noticeable pause between the first and second part of his statement, as if he had had to remind himself to be polite.
“Why then are you standing here watching my front door?”
He looked as if he had been there for a while. His eyes were bloodshot, and his flaxen hair stuck greasily to his skull. He did not look at all well.
“I . . . just wanted to speak with August,” he mumbled.
“He isn’t here.”
“Perhaps not. But he will come.”
I shook my head. “Not until Saturday night. I hope you are not planning on remaining here until then?” There was something about his demeanor that prevented the use of more forceful expressions, such as “Go away!” or “Keep your hands off my fiancé!” He was simply too . . . sorry looking. Though he was technically still upright, it would be too much like kicking a man when he was down. “Why don’t you go home?” I suggested mildly.
He looked at the ground.
“I cannot,” he said. “And neither can he.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
He looked at me for less than a second before lowering his head once more.
“I’m sorry. It . . . it was not supposed to turn out this way.” Then he abruptly tore himself away from the doorway and down the street, rapidly but with uncertain steps. His urchin tormentors followed suit, at least until I yelled at them.
“Hey! Philippe. Roland. Luc-Luc. Find someone else to tease.”
“Oh, Maddiiieee . . . ,” Luc-Luc protested.
“Do it, or you won’t see so much as a cracker next time I go to the bakery!”
They stopped and let their prey escape. He rounded the corner at Rue Perrault and disappeared from sight, and I noted with surprise that I felt a tiny spark of compassion.
Docent Althauser had to mark Erich Falchenberg absent that day. It did not really surprise me—he had not looked like a conscientious student, eagerly hastening toward the halls of learning—but it was distracting all the same because it made me wonder what was wrong with the man.
“Are you bored, mademoiselle?” Althauser asked pointedly.
“No, Monsieur le Professeur,” I said quickly. Apparently it wasn’t possible to show even the tiniest lack of focus without him noticing. There was something decidedly unnatural about the scrutiny to which he subjected his students.
In truth, today’s exercise was not the most interesting he had asked us to complete. Armed with several large tubs of various kinds of mussel specimens—the smell of brackish water and half-rotten seaweed was pronounced—our task was to determine which were hermaphrodites and which were single sex. Since I knew at least a part of the answer already—fingernail clams and scallops were hermaphrodites—it was not quite as exciting to search for the mollusks’ sexual characteristics as it might otherwise have been.
“What on earth is this?” asked Villeneuve with disgust, pointing at a wobbling, slimy, pale red creature that looked most of all like a long oblong balloon with two openings. “That must have fallen in accidentally . . .”
“It is definitely not a mussel,” I said.
“Excellent observation,” said Althauser right behind us. Villeneuve jumped at least ten centimeters, and I was hardly less startled. “It is a sea squirt. Now, see if you can determine the sex of that.”
Sea squirt . . . Something emerged from the most distant regions of my cerebral cortex. Spurred on by Althauser’s predilection for the dissection of marine life-forms, I had recently acquired several handbooks on the subject—among them was a somewhat ragged edition of Louis Agassiz’s Études critiques sur les mollusques fossiles.
“It can assume both masculine and feminine sexual characteristics,” I said. “Simultaneously or sequentially. And like sea anemones, it reproduces through gemmation. A highly versatile species.” I looked down at the tunicate with renewed interest. It looked no more beautiful than before, but definitely more fascinating.
“You’ve done the reading, Karno, I’ll give you that,” said Althauser. “But we are not here to repeat the knowledge others have recorded. Experiment. Examine. Control.”
But I never had the chance to personally observe the sea squirt’s sexual versatility. One of the university porters had entered the room.
“Is there a”—he had to look down at his note an extra time—“a Mademoiselle Karno present? A gentleman wishes to speak with you. He says it is important.”
August stood in the middle of the room, as if he did not want to risk touching the walls. His back was so straight that it approached rigidity, and he held his hands behind his back in an extremely controlled manner. There would be no gesticulating, emotional outbursts were banned.
“I have come to tell you that I have resigned my position in Heidelberg, effective immediately,” he said, “and that I completely understand if you wish to break off our engagement.”
I was still wearing my laboratory gown, and my hands stank of fish or, rather, of mollusks and brine and a lone sea squirt. Althauser, not normally a man to tolerate interruptions, had shown himself to be surprisingly considerate and had offered us his office.
“You are going to have to explain yourself a bit more clearly,” I said carefully, and tried to calm the twisting feeling of dread in my stomach. “What has happened?”
He considered me for several long moments.
“I came as quickly as I could,” he said. “I thought you would have heard. But apparently not even this kind of smut spreads that quickly. Thank goodness the railroad is still faster than the gossip.”
“August . . .”
“I had been warned, but I thought—”
“August!”
“Yes. To be brief, I was given a summons by the city court in Heidelberg this morning for having violated the German Criminal Code’s paragraph 175. Naturally, the university could not countenance my continued tenure, and they had heard—someone made sure that they heard very quickly—but I would have turned in my resignation anyway. The zeal of the tattler was entirely unnecessary.”
“Paragraph . . .”
“My beloved Madeleine. What you and Krafft-Ebing call brain damage is a crime in the empire of the German Kaiser.”
I felt slow and stupid. Even now the message was only gradually penetrating my thick brain. August had been fired. No, worse than that, he had been given a summons . . . charged with . . .
“Are you planning to show up in court?” I asked.
He looked at me with a wounded gaze that made him seem younger, almost as if we were the same age.
“They have Erich’s testimony. The dean told me. How can I stand in front of a judge and deny it? But if I don’t appear . . . Madeleine, that is the same as a confession. I would never be able to return to Germany.”
“But here . . . ?”
“Here it is not illegal. But my name, my reputation . . . I would be a marked man. I do not know if I would be able to obtain an academic position again, or indeed any position. I have no idea what sort of life I can offer you.”
Some nights ago, I had dreamed that I was on the streetcar on the way to the university, making hurried notations in my notebook. Right across from me sat Docent Althauser. His gaze rested sternly on me.
“Mademoiselle,” he said after some minutes of observation, “would you be kind enough to get off. You are improperly dressed!” Only when he said it did I discover that I was naked.
The feeling from the dream was creeping into me again, despite the fact that I was as properly dressed as one could reasonably expect of a woman who had just spent most of an hour dissecting mollusks. I should undoubtedly have thrown myself into August’s arms with an “All of that means nothing—I love you.” But I hesitated. It was weak, it was despicable, but I could not help thinking about what other people would say. What my father would say when he heard. It was one thing that I had accepted August’s nature when I decided to become engaged to him—more or less, anyway. It was a private matter, I felt, something that was now in the past and did not concern anyone but the two of us. But this private matter had now become a very public court case, or would become one, whether August appeared or not.
My body had quickly formed its own opinion—it was shortsightedly and selfishly rejoicing in the fact that August was here and would have to stay here. No longer those hasty meetings every two weeks, no, every day, and who knows, before long perhaps even every night as well. Perhaps I would then be able to rid myself of that terrible black sense of loss and longing that seized me even when he was still present?
“Say something,” he begged. “Madeleine, I . . .”
I did not say a word, not then. I let my body make the decision and clung to him so tightly that it would be difficult to insert a scalpel between us, kissing him on the neck, on an earlobe, on the chin, on the mouth.
“We’ll get married,” I said. “As soon as possible. That should silence some of the gossip.”
A Lady in Shadows Page 16