Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know

by Samira Ahmed

  He takes a swig of his coffee. “Apparently, there’s a legend that a mysterious Middle Eastern woman might’ve inspired the sack death in The Count of Monte Cristo.”

  “The Giaour sack death? Leila being thrown into the sea by the Pasha? But Byron made that up; I mean, she’s alive. Was. The poem was a fiction. You saw her letter.”

  “That’s exactly it.” Alexandre runs his hand over his face. “Dumas would obviously have known about the Byron poem but also the truth of Leila’s story. My uncle says there are stories of cryptic journal entries Dumas left when writing Monte Cristo—maybe about the sack death—but he’s never seen the originals. Could be rumors.”

  I chuckle. “Oh, so I guess it’s up to us meddling kids to do the grunt work to find them, right?”

  Alexandre gives me this blank look. Apparently Scooby references don’t translate, and I don’t take the time to explain. “It feels like Dumas’s ghost has masterminded this whole mystery, because we have the makings of a classic Dumas novel—intrigue, family secrets, hidden treasure, duels—”

  “Don’t forget hope and romance.” Alexandre looks at me with expectant eyes.

  “Don’t forget jealousy, deception, and revenge,” I counter.

  Alexandre sucks in his breath. “I could never forget. But Dumas also wrote about the strength of friendship and finding a way to carry on after everything feels lost.”

  I put a hand on his arm, directing our attentions back to his phone. “What exactly am I looking at?”

  “My uncle has a letter to the lady of the raven tresses. A copy, anyway.”

  “What!” I yell. “And he’s been sitting on it? I thought he was the one who orchestrated this whole thing.” I wave my hand in the space between us. “Unpaid labor to find the missing treasure that’s going to benefit your family that he couldn’t find himself. Now you tell me he’s been holding out?”

  “Uncle Gérard didn’t even remember it until I told him about the letters we found and how Baudelaire’s name came up in one of the Revue articles.”

  “And?” I cross my arms and raise my eyebrows.

  “Dumas died at his son’s house in 1870. Supposedly, there was a copy of Baudelaire’s poems, Paris Spleen, by his deathbed. It was packed away with his things, and decades later, some archivist found a letter tucked between the pages. The letter is at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The book is at the Château.”

  “Unbelievable. It’s literally filed away in the archives here in Paris? And he never gave the letter a second thought. No one was curious about the woman? Until now, I guess, when she could be worth money.” I shake my head. This is how stories are lost.

  “You have to understand that there are literally thousands of letters and journal entries and unfinished stories and essays, unpublished novels. I guess he disregarded it because Dumas had dozens of known affairs—”

  “Oh. Of course. How could he possibly have thought it was important—it was just a note to some insignificant woman, right? Another notch in Dumas’s belt.”

  “I’m sorry. The men in my family, well, I guess we haven’t exactly been chivalrous or easy to forgive.” Alexandre bites his lip. “Maybe we don’t deserve it.”

  “What’s in the letter?” I demand.

  June 15, 1870

  Chère Madame aux cheveux raven,

  By now, perhaps, you are long gone, reunited at last, I hope, with the one love that lay claim to your heart when you were young.

  I am old now and near my own end. Time and fate, as is their wont, have proven recalcitrant. I am resigned; there is always an end to every story, and so, soon, there shall be one to mine. And it is thus, in the reminiscences of an old man, that I find my mind returning to you again and again. To the time you were known to me. To those brief years you graced my life. To the stories you told and entrusted me with.

  Fear not, fickle and inconstant though I may have been, too easily swayed by the fairer sex, it is certain, but as to my word to you, I have remained true. I have sheltered your secrets and the treasures of your heart. How I longed to share your words with the world to rectify what your poet misrepresented, but neither he nor the world were ready for your truth, nor did I have your permission, and so I curbed my temptation that it would heel to your desire—that your story and your secret be concealed. Though I believed your fantastical tale should find its place amongst the great love stories of our time, of all time, I tried desperately to understand that in a life with little privacy and little freedom, you longed for this to be yours. Did the writing of it grant you some peace at last? Were the words on the page a balm for your heart? If, as your letter, now surely turned to ash, was to be believed, and neither I nor the world have reason to consider your word to be less than truthful, then I am content that, having writ the words on the page, you at last knew the freedom—the agency—you longed for, dare I say, lived for. But who amongst us knows what the future may hold? Whose lives and tales will be remembered and whose lost?

  These are questions that trouble the mind of this old man, long past his vigor but still keen in spirit. These thirty years have I wondered what happened to you. I have been tormented that in some final desperation you may have died by your own hand. At first, I feared this, leaving me as you did, abruptly without proper goodbye, and yet, guardian of these last vestiges of your beloved. Were we not friends, at least, in the end? Did I not deserve a final glance at your beauty? Was our ardor not worth a kiss at the close? I searched for you and searched in vain. Had our friend Delacroix not stayed my hand, I might be searching for you still, would my health allow it. Our dear, loyal friend produced a likeness of you for me. I confess, I needed it not—though my memory fades, your raven hair, your piercing eyes, your lips the color of damask rose are preserved in the amber of my mind. Have I myself not written that the body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever?

  All my treasures now have I laid to rest, hidden from the world’s eyes, perhaps never to be found, where my love is evergreen and Paradise blooms eternally for you, my beautiful spirit. That should please you, does it not?

  How my own words, now connected forever to you, come back to me again and again, as I have thought of you and what you searched for and the gift you left me: happiness is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach.

  It was Delacroix, too, who reminded me of what I am as I sat brooding at the loss of you—neither the mirth nor the ego—but rather, simply, that I am a storyteller. So, my dear, I choose to imagine you in a life content and quiet. Far from the reminders of the past at long last, breathing deeply. How often did you speak of a life by the sea—closer to your own beloved—where you saw him fall, so would you now go that he may rise and rise with you. I see you there, on water’s edge, the soft sound of the waves upon the shore, as the poet captured so perfectly, “a heart whose love is innocent.”

  Imagining you in this place, your monsters at last slain, I must confess, pleases me. For what in the end are we but stories?

  Ever yours,

  Alexandre looks up from his phone and whispers, “Khayyam. What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He reaches across the bar toward me, but I pull away.

  I rub my tired eyes. “I don’t . . . It’s . . . private and sad. No one gets a happily ever after in this story, do they? It’s what Dumas said, it’s all turned to ash.”

  “But it hasn’t.” Alexandre shakes his head. “Don’t you see? Here we are, talking about them, reading their words. Breathing life into their stories. They live through us.”

  I understand what Alexandre is saying, feel it, even, because the proof that the past lives through us is standing right in front of me.

  He continues, the strength of his convictions rising. “If we can find the painting and save Dumas’s home and legacy, we can help the story li
ve forever. That’s why we have to go to the Château de Monte-Cristo. My uncle thinks if the treasure—the painting—still exists, it could be hidden there.”

  “We can’t,” I say, almost catching myself by surprise.

  Alexandre furrows his brow. “What do you mean? Don’t you see? You were right all along. There is a missing Delacroix.”

  I step farther into the kitchen, away from Alexandre, and shake my head. Anger courses through me—I’m ready to explode and I can’t figure out why. I choose my next words carefully, cautiously. “We can’t go to the Château—”

  “We have to go,” Alexandre insists. I can tell he’s trying not to yell. “It’s not even a question. Do you have any idea what this could mean? For both of us? Finding that painting—”

  I lash out with words that mean to cut him: “It means you’ll use Leila like everyone else did. If there is a Delacroix, your family will sell it for millions more than what you owe in back taxes and get rich off it. Off her.”

  Alexandre scowls. “And what about you? It’s not like you decided to pursue this purely because of your love for art history. You want to use this story—my family’s story—to win some stupid contest, hoping it will gain you entrance to your dream university.”

  Ugh. Gut punch. I realize that by not taking Leila’s story public, I might destroy my only chance for academic redemption. Maybe that’s why Alexandre’s words hurt so much—because they’re the truth.

  I take a deep breath. Then another. And struggle to calm my voice. “Don’t you see? It’s not about the essay for me. Not anymore. Somewhere along this wild journey, a part of me changed because of Leila. The treasure is her story. And maybe it needs to stay buried. Maybe that’s what Leila wanted for herself.”

  “What are you talking about?” Alexandre seems totally confused. And I admit, I’m a little confused myself. I can’t decipher what I truly want. Or what’s right.

  I sigh and rub my face. “I’m saying you’re right. We’re both invested in this treasure hunt. We both have things to lose. But please take a step back and think about it. Say the treasure is the painting, and that’s part of your family’s story. I know why you need to tell it. But you don’t get to own Leila’s story, too. To me, that’s the real treasure. And she didn’t want it told. Dumas says as much in that letter. Whatever story she might have given Dumas, whatever he might have hidden, it’s personal. It’s none of our business. Even Dumas wouldn’t break her trust. Do you think it’s right for us to dredge up the past they both kept silent about?”

  “This is absurd. The stories are connected. Delacroix. Dumas. Leila. Byron. Us.” Alexandre turns his back to me. I guess my attempt at reasoning with him isn’t working. “Have you forgotten the note Dumas left for his son? ‘Look for the woman, find the treasure’?” He spins back around to face me, his shoulders tense. “Dumas wanted his son to find it. He knew it was important to our family. It’s not just a story. It’s our legacy.” He throws his hands up and shouts, “It could be a missing Delacroix!”

  I don’t yell back at Alexandre. Strangely, as his anger rises, I feel calmer, more assured. “Maybe you have the right to the Delacroix. But your family has no claim on Leila’s story. Everything was taken from her. Don’t you get that? She can’t just be a means to an end.”

  Alexandre steps closer to me, his eyes softening. “I understand what it means to lose something important. I know how much Leila’s story means to you. That’s even more reason why we have to be the ones who find it—then you can control Leila’s story.”

  I let out an ironic laugh. If I’ve learned anything this summer, it’s that if you believe you can control the story, you’re only fooling yourself.

  “What’s funny?” Alexandre asks.

  I shake my head. “Not a single thing. There is no one left to defend Leila. No one except me. And I can’t let her down. It would be a betrayal.”

  “And so what? My family should lose everything—our legacy, our future—because you don’t want to share a story that doesn’t belong to you? It never belonged to you. Your essay—that’s my family’s story you were writing about. You want to protect a dead woman. I’m trying to save my actual, living family.”

  I clench my fists. “And Leila was nothing? Is that it? A forgotten footnote in the history of the mighty Dumas family?” I seethe. “You’re as bad as your uncle. Worse.”

  Alexandre blanches. He opens his mouth, then snaps it shut and stares at the ground. Finally he looks back up at me. “I’m taking the next train to the Château.” He doesn’t yell. He speaks matter-of-factly, his voice dry as sawdust. “Come with me or not. If there is a clue to finding the Delacroix—maybe even the painting itself—I am going to find it. I’m going to discover the end of this story. The world has to know.” He pauses. “I have to know.”

  “And it won’t hurt if you get rich off the painting, if you find it,” I spit.

  “I only want to save the Château and Dumas’s legacy. I’m not expecting to get rich off it. Of course, being an American, you think everything comes down to money.”

  “And I guess being a man, you think you can steal a woman’s story and make it your own.” The words roll off my tongue, filling up the empty, shocked space between us. If I’d had any inkling that stepping in a pile of dog crap was going to lead to this shit show, I would’ve stayed in the apartment this entire trip.

  Alexandre grabs his book and tosses it into his backpack, anger and confusion in his eyes. He stops halfway to the door, and his shoulders relax. It seems like he’s going to turn to me and say something. But he doesn’t. He walks out without looking back.

  Leila

  There is a great scurrying about on the ship, but the action moves around me in muffled silence. My rose in hand, I stand at the rail watching my homeland slip away, my eyes focused far in the distance at the blood-soaked earth where my Giaour fell. The dark sky above his body gives way to a halo of light that softens the gritty air.

  “What is that?” The poet walks up behind me. His voice incredulous, eyes filled with wonder and despair on my behalf.

  I raise the rose to my lips and breathe it in. “It is the last promise of love.”

  “Perhaps you are the poet.”

  “I am no poet. I am nothing but an orphan and a concubine.”

  The poet clasps my arms and turns me to him. “You are all that is beautiful of this night sky—the brightness of the stars, the deep stillness of the dark. And all that’s best of those meet in your aspect and your eyes.

  “My God, what your eyes have seen. What they have shown me. I hope you may find it in your heart to explain to me what I witnessed, though I fear it lies beyond words.”

  I smile at him, but there is no promise in it. For what could he understand of this? Of what I have witnessed? As all men, he sees truth as his own creation, a clay figure he can bend to his will.

  “I’ll leave you to your remembrance.” He takes two steps away from me but turns back, touching my shoulder. “Though your heart may be broken, yet brokenly can you live on. And the privilege of being a poet is the ability to make beautiful that which the world has distorted.”

  I don’t turn when he walks away. I don’t mock his lyrical, naïve words. What he does not see, what he cannot see, is that the only privilege, the only freedom in my life, was the secret I kept in my heart. The secret that lies bleeding on the sands of my home as I drift away to another world.

  Khayyam

  Lying in my bed, I watch the bright stars fade into the liquid rose gold of dawn. I spent the night staring at my cracked ceiling, pondering the million tiny white veins and arteries in the centuries-old plaster that no one has bothered to cover up. A crisscrossed tangle of paths that lead nowhere. The birds are singing, but after hours of no sleep, their joy feels like an affront. Their symphony, a cacophony. But the truth is, they don’t know I exist. They only sing for themse
lves.

  I grab my phone off the nightstand. Julie hasn’t responded to my earlier email; she’s still cloistered with no Internet. No texts from Alexandre, either. No surprise there, but my hope deflates. Maybe I should apologize for some things I said yesterday, but so should he. I’m exhausted—tired of doing the wrong thing, stumbling over obstacles I’ve laid in my own way, believing in people who take me for granted. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. My path is a circle with no way forward, and every well-worn step is a little soul crushing.

  That line Leila wrote keeps haunting me: The heart is the singular miracle God gave to each of us—an organ that heals itself. I wonder what she would say about my predicament—two guys I can’t seem to communicate with, two countries that don’t always feel like home, and an uncertain future I can’t seem to control. I chuckle out loud at the irony. She actually might have good advice. A Muslim woman alone finding her way in the Paris of the 1840s. Brokenhearted, but not broken. Knowing that fate dealt her a crappy hand, but not ready to fold, fighting every day to survive.

  Leila wrote the Giaour a letter knowing he would never receive it. She wrote a letter to find her truth. To find some answers for herself.

  Without thinking too much about it, I open a blank email.

  To: Leila @ ???

  From: Khayyam Maquet

  Subject: What would you do?

  Dear Leila,

  I don’t believe much in fate, but I’ve been feeling all along like I was the one meant to find you. That maybe your words were meant for me to unearth over 150 years after you wrote them.

  You couldn’t have known that your story would reach through time to speak to me. And maybe I’m not the only one they’re supposed to speak to? Did you want your story untold because while you were alive it was too much to bear—the loss, the scrutiny it would bring, the notoriety? Were you afraid? My first instinct was to find you, then defend you, to fight for what you wanted—for your secret to be kept.