Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know

by Samira Ahmed

  I force myself off the couch and grab my laptop and do what I should’ve done when I first “coincidentally” met Alexandre. How could I ever have believed it was an actual coincidence? What I should have realized, what I know, is that the probability of us meeting without outside intervention was actually infinitesimal. It’s math! Yet I bought it without question, without even bothering to check out Alexandre’s story. Celenia Mondego’s criticism about my “slipshod research” passes through my brain yet again. Point taken. I’m not the one on an Internet-free holiday. But I was too focused on the dead Dumas in history books to even bother Google-stalking the living Dumas I was making out with amongst the archives.

  I barely have to lean into my cross-referencing skills: Dumas. Family. Legacy. Estate. Save. And I unearth a treasure trove. Thank you, google.fr.

  There are newspaper articles, blog posts, photos of the old Dumas château, interviews with Alexandre’s mysterious, horrible uncle. Sure, I’ve been burned by fake Dumas news once already, but how could I not have even looked up the uncle? The one who probably has a Google Alert on me. The headlines jump out at me:

  And there she is again, Celenia Mondego, whispering in my ear: a catastrophic inability to grasp obvious facts. Fine, okay. I should’ve googled.

  I open up an article to check out an interview with Gérard Dumas, Alexandre’s uncle:

  Unfortunately, Alexandre Dumas died penniless, and his beautiful estate fell into disrepair after passing through many hands, eventually coming under the guardianship of the Foundation de Monte Cristo. Together we are working to preserve the legacy of one of France’s greatest artists. We believe the Dumas estate holds many treasures and must remain, forever, a French national institution.

  Treasures, he said. The estate holds many treasures. Cherchez la femme, trouvez le trésor.

  Damn. It’s like I have all the pieces of the puzzle, but I can’t fit them together. Leila. Byron. Delacroix. The treasure in Dumas’s note. But the Leila in The Giaour died in a sack death, killed by the Pasha, which is why the Giaour avenged her. That’s the whole inspiration for the Delacroix painting. How could she have survived being bound in a sack and drowned? What’s fiction, and what’s the truth?

  I run into my room to grab the book of Byron poems I bought right before my whole world became the Upside Down. I flip to the chronology of Byron’s life and run my finger down the years. There it is. 1810–1811: Byron’s Grand Tour—basically a gap year for wealthy nineteenth-century British dudes. A deeper Internet dive leads me to a map of his Tour that looks like it took him around the Mediterranean and to the Bosporus. The Giaour was published in 1813. So was “She Walks in Beauty.” I can feel my brain trying to fill in the blanks, but I can’t see the big picture.

  Maybe Alexandre and I left things . . . well, unspoken, and I will probably be eternally pissed at him for what he did, but I also need his help to put together all these pieces. I pick up my phone. Take a deep breath. And text him.

  Me: I’m still mad. But I need your help. I still want to find Leila.

  Alexandre: Do you hate me?

  Me: Like 40%

  Alexandre: So that still counts as a passing grade?

  Me: Not for Asians.

  Alexandre: I’ll take it. And of course, I’m going to help. I want to find her, too.

  I weigh whether or not I should say something to Alexandre about finding out about his family—about the bankruptcy of the Dumas estate. About understanding why he wants to save it—even if what he did was awful. But it doesn’t feel right to say it in a text. Too many words. Not enough space.

  Me: I have a theory—Byron and Leila are connected. She’s the Leila in THE GIAOUR and another poem, too. She’s real. Somehow.

  Alexandre: Didn’t you read the note???

  Me: What note?

  Alexandre: I slid a note under your door about half an hour after I left. I spoke to the Dumas archive collector in New Zealand and asked him to search his files. I got an email early this morning. It’s a note from Leila.

  I hurry to the door. In my wallowing, I must’ve dozed off or been totally out of it. There’s a white envelope with my name on it.

  Me: Found it.

  Alexandre: Read it. You have more than a theory.

  Alexandre: In case you need to hear it again, I’m sorry for everything.

  I put my phone down. I’m too distracted to judge the sincerity of Alexandre’s remorse. My hands tremble as I pull out a copy of the letter:

  November

  Cher Ami,

  Say not that your heart is broken. With all that I have seen and felt and known, I hold, even still, that the heart is the singular miracle God gave to each of us—an organ that heals itself. A wizened old hekime in the harem once told me that the human heart is the size of a fist. Yet the heart is much bigger on the inside, not bound by its physical form.

  And so, may I humbly advise you to do the thing I have tried to do all these long years since the night in the desert when I watched as my beloved was struck down by Pasha’s sword. Let this love you profess for me be enclosed in a small chamber in your heart. Seal it. Open the door to it no more. And there let it live, evergreen, but not consuming. Perhaps one day, it will fade from your memory entire when rosier cheeks and lips occupy your imagination and enter into your embrace.

  When the poet and I alighted on English shores, I knew I could not remain with him. Indeed, the very sight of him served as a cruel reminder of the last night I spent in the warmth of my land’s sun and the clear, devastating beauty of her starry nights. Though he offered himself to me, proposed a life where neither of us were bound to the other, and a comfortable life it might have been while he lived, I refused to accept it. I did not escape one gilded cage at so high a price to simply enter another.

  Begging his leave, I secured companionship with a kindly, older French woman of diminished noble birth, but wealthy enough to be a patron of the arts, a lover of the Orient. And thus I came to France all those years ago, not merely to forget, but to try and live without regret in my heart—to build a life on my own terms.

  In this, you have helped me, perhaps unknowingly. Your friendship, your encouragement, your amiable nature brought me a sense of comfort and returned a part of my own self to me. And for that I shall remain eternally grateful.

  Yet now I must ask that we sever our connection permanently for your own good. For I know myself. What you seek from me, I cannot give. I know what I ask of you. I do not ask it lightly.

  Forever yours in friendship,

  I let the letter fall to the table. In Byron’s poem, the Giaour kills the Pasha to avenge Leila’s sack death. That’s the story the Delacroix paintings tell, too.

  But if this is real, it’s all turned upside down. Leila survived. She had to watch helplessly while the Pasha killed her lover. Then she fled to England with Lord Byron. And then here to Paris to try and make a life for herself. Byron wrote a fantasy, an opium-induced fable because he thought his fiction was the better story.

  He was wrong.

  Leila

  Before I slip past this world, I am seized and tossed in a whirling tempest of water and air that leaves me gasping for breath as the ocean enters my lungs one moment and is wrenched out of me the next.

  It ends with a thud. Pain surges through my body.

  I am on land—the sack in tattered shreds around me, and my hands unbound, bleeding. I sit up, trembling, coughing, spitting out water. I unsheathe my yataghan, miraculously still at my waist, and cut through the ropes at my feet. I untie the gag from around my mouth. My lungs and nostrils burn. I turn back to a sea that is illuminated from below by a cerulean light. Si’la leans into the waves and whispers and drops an opal into the churning water that calms at her command. The blue light fades.

  I turn to look for Si’la, my mouth open to scream, but no sound comes out. A horse
gallops toward me. I squint into the darkness. I rise and hold my yataghan aloft. The rider stops short; his horse snorts and brays.

  The poet dismounts and reaches out his hand. “You need to come with me now.”

  “How did you find me?”

  The poet’s eyes are wild. “A blue light rose from the sea. And voices, whispers, led me this way. I . . . I can’t . . .” He takes a deep breath. “My valet and the other men have traveled forward and await us on the Salsette. We must hurry. There is no time. The janissaries have granted us safe leave, but I believe that promise would be rescinded if they see you alive. Which is—”

  “A story for another day. Do you have my satchel?” The poet hands me the bag that holds my entire life. “Please turn.” He doesn’t move. “Please. I can’t accompany you wet to the bone in these clothes.” He turns, and I quickly undress, slipping into the eunuch’s garments, tucking my hair into a simple turban.

  “I am ready,” I say and climb into the saddle, yataghan in hand.

  The poet looks me up and down and grins. “And I was under the mistaken assumption that it was I who was mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

  “I’m only dangerous to those who cross me.”

  He nods and mounts his horse. We dash toward the dock.

  I have no intention of boarding the ship.

  Khayyam

  Yesterday after reading the letter, I spent more time googling Byron. Turns out what I need to look at is a book in an actual library—my mom would be thrilled. I texted Alexandre late last night and asked him to meet me. And here he is, waiting outside the front door of the American Library in Paris, body inclined against the pale yellow-gray stone. Like always, he looks lean and relaxed, but as I approach, his nervous smile betrays him.

  He pushes his sunglasses to the top of his head, and that’s when I see his bloodshot eyes. “Salut,” he says as he bends to kiss my cheeks, but then stops himself.

  “Salut,” I respond, my shoulders stiffening.

  Clearly, neither of us has slept, and we have no idea what to say. This sucks.

  I shift my weight from one foot to the other. I spent most of last night waffling between rage and resignation, between hating Alexandre and seeing a piece of myself in what he’s dealing with. I don’t want to bring up his family’s financial situation, but it’s one of, like, five elephants in the room, and it’s so crowded I can barely breathe. “Alexandre, why didn’t you tell me?” I mutter.

  Alexandre looks stricken but also confused. There are so many things we hid from each other, why would he automatically know what I’m talking about?

  “I mean, about your family,” I say. “The back taxes and the Dumas estate being near foreclosure. That’s what you meant when you said you wanted to save your family, right?”

  Alexandre nods almost imperceptibly. “But how did you—”

  “You’re not the only one with cyberstalking skills,” I say. It’s petty, but it’s also true. And I feel at least a little entitled to this moment.

  Alexandre’s shoulders sag. “Khayyam, I’m sorry. I was an idiot for listening to my uncle. I should’ve been honest with you from the beginning. About everything.” A wave of anguish passes over his face.

  My body tenses. Yes, I feel sorry for him. But I still feel like a giant gaping wound of a person, and my sympathies are limited. I nod. “We both should have been.” A moment of silence passes so weighted with regret and longing and things unsaid that I practically have to yank my words out of my belly with a hook. “Look, we both want to find Leila. You want to find the treasure so your family can pay off the estate debts and save Dumas’s legacy, right?”

  “Yes. If it is a Delacroix that was gifted to Dumas, it would be worth much more than just the back taxes. We could preserve the estate. Rebuild it. Restore his name—our name.” Alexandre is matter-of-fact. Focused.

  I nod. “Well, maybe there’s a treasure I want to find, too.”

  “Yes, your paper. The prize—”

  “No. It’s not just that . . .” I wave my hand. It’s not. There’s more to it. More to me. I want to find Leila because she deserves to be found. “We both basically want the same thing, right?” If Alexandre can be businesslike, I can, too. “Here’s the deal. We put things behind us and pretend we’re normal people trying to solve a centuries-old literary mystery, okay?”

  I need to leave the near past in the past, so we can spend today searching for the long-ago past. Compartmentalize. Save my messy feelings for another day. It doesn’t feel logical, but somehow it makes sense to me.

  Alexandre grins, and the smile reaches his tired eyes. “Yes. D’accord. We are one-hundred-percent normal people. Okay, tell me why we’re here again?”

  I let out a breath. This is okay. This is going to work. I have to imagine that my ex-boyfriend isn’t wandering around Paris right now after what might have been our last goodbye. I have to pretend that the cryptic puzzle I’m trying to solve to find a missing nineteenth-century woman isn’t leading me on a treasure hunt with a descendant of Alexandre Dumas who Insta-stalked me and who I like making out with. Sure. No problem. People undersell the importance of denial as a coping mechanism.

  “Byron sailed from Lisbon to Constantinople on his Grand Tour—basically a gap year for rich British men in the nineteenth century,” I explain. “That’s when he could’ve met Leila. Byron was also a letter-writing fiend, and I’m betting he wrote to Leila. If she inspired two of his poems, she must have been important to him. Harvard published some volumes of his letters—he wrote over three thousand. They’re not digitized, but there’s a set of the books here.” I point to the doors.

  The American Library in Paris is exactly like any library in the States—except that it’s two blocks from the Eiffel Tower and a boulangerie with heavenly pain au chocolat. Everything is in English, and the furniture is utilitarian library chic. Even the air-conditioning is set at the normal American level of near-frigid—I feel like I’ve stepped through a portal and am suddenly back home, and that sensation is oddly comforting.

  I copied the call number from the website last night, so I head straight to the lower level. Alexandre follows.

  “It looks like you know your way around this place. You’ve been here before?” Alexandre asks as I search for the right shelf.

  “It’s a truth universally acknowledged that an American in Paris in possession of mediocre French reading skills must be in want of English books to read on vacation.”

  Alexandre wrinkles his forehead.

  “Oh, sorry. It’s a reference to Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice?”

  “Ahh, oui. A wildly popular book about repressed feelings. How British.”

  I laugh out loud, and it warrants a couple turned heads from studious library patrons. Maybe this denial thing can work. Sadly, it’s all too familiar. We slip between the stacks, and I run my finger across the spines, looking for Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals, 1788–1824. I’m focused, but not so determined that I don’t feel the nearness of Alexandre as he follows closely behind me. I can’t completely deny his existence. Or my attraction to him.

  Found it. I pull a worn blue book from the shelf. Its cover is encased in plastic, and it has that faint stale library smell. Judging from the creaseless spine, barely anyone has cracked it open.

  We find an empty table tucked into a corner in the back of the room. I open the book and flip to the index. All the letters are listed by name of recipient. I run my finger down each column—twenty pages, two columns on each page. No mention of a Leila. “Dammit. I thought there would be something.” I slam the cover shut. Dead end. Without a connection between Leila and Byron—a real, provable one, I have nothing but another hollow theory.

  “Let’s not give up yet. Weren’t you the one wearing a Nevertheless, She Persisted T-shirt the other day? Maybe we can still find a glimpse of Leila in some o
ther letter,” Alexandre says as he gently takes the book from my hands.

  He’s right. I can’t give up yet. Maybe I’m down, way down, but I’m not out. Besides, Leila is counting on me.

  Alexandre reopens the book to the title page. “1788 to 1824. He didn’t live long, did he?” he asks before turning to the index.

  I nod. “It’s sad. Imagine all the other things he could have done. But at least he’s not forgotten.”

  It’s kind of morbid to consider the upside of someone dying when they’re thirty-six. But it’s also true. Byron had the incredible good fortune of being born a titled British white man. Leila and countless others are forgotten or are only known because they happened to cross paths with famous men. That thought gives me pause.

  “Hey.” I nudge Alexandre. “Like your illustrious ancestor, Byron had a lot of lovers. Let’s look at some of the other women he wrote to.”

  A roguish grin sneaks across Alexandre’s face. I inadvertently lean my shoulder into his, and he pushes back ever so slightly. I reach for the book, and our hands meet. Alexandre turns to me and holds my gaze. “I meant what I told you before. Mes yeux ne brillent que pour toi.”

  “Stop it,” I whisper. “That’s not part of the deal.” My face flushes. I take the book without looking at him. I study the index, pretending I don’t feel the nearness of him.

  “Here’s a letter to a countess.” I point it out to Alexandre, who leans closer to me and reads over my shoulder, whispering Byron’s words in my ear: