Breath and Bones (46 page)

Famke, meanwhile, had begun to think of herself as trapped; a queen she might be, but among the bees even queens were confined to their cells. She was not allowed outside, her hours in the studio were limited, and now that she had new glasses, she had nothing worth reading. She found she missed newspapers the way she had once missed
The Thrilling Narrative of an Indian Captivity
; she wondered what the Dynamite Gang had done lately and whether Harry Noble had written anything interesting. There might even be news of Albert somewhere. For all she knew, he had sailed back to England.

As she repainted Hygeia's waist, she began to think of leaving; by the time she reached the breasts, her departure became certain. She was still weak, yes, but stronger than she had been when she arrived in Hygiene months before; if she'd been able to travel then, she could do it now. With the painting, fine new muscles had stretched themselves over the bones of her hands. She had breasts and hips again, and although Edouard forbade her mirrors, at night she saw herself reflected in the dark windows and knew she had regained a good measure of her bloom, the gleaming hair and rich complexion she was painting into Hygeia.

“I am beautiful,” she whispered to herself. With each stroke of the brush, it seemed to become more true. She fell in love with the woman she was remaking—growing into a far, far better likeness than that horrible yellow handbill—and wondered if Edouard would let her take the canvas with her when she left. She refused to allow him in the studio, planning to surprise him with her achievements once she'd finished.

Mercifully, the three maids who came to fetch her at the end of each day, who helped her uncurl her stiff body, walked her down the hallway, and laid her in bed—these singsong sisters were her accomplices. They kept her confidence and did not tell Edouard how tired and cramped she was after working. In their gray costumes, with their expressionless faces, and on their tiny, pained feet, the girls hobbled along, supporting her and themselves on odd tables and outcroppings of iron. They laid her in bed and cleaned her fingers with turpentine. They said nothing, either, to describe the painting, knowing that he longed to hear about it and would never ask. Had Famke thought about it, she would have seen that they were pleased to keep a small secret from him.

“Missy ready for 'lectricity,” they would report merely, and their smooth faces gave no hint of either what Famke was doing or the disapproval they felt for Edouard's device. They did not understand the nature of the crisis that it brought about in Famke, never having felt one induced in themselves, so they thought the procedure was for Edouard's pleasure. If such instruments had been known in the cribs where they used to work as hundred-men's-wives, customers might have paid for the right to use them on the girls; these girls thought it unfair that Famke underwent the treatments without pay. Thus they saw her privacy as her compensation, and if she had asked them to carry letters outside or even sneak her a few dollars, they might have done it—never mind what they thought of the picture itself, which to them was no better than Edouard's anatomical charts and drawings.

If the four of them had been friends, Famke might have told them that with her work, she had begun to relish galvanic electricity even more than before, because she felt it planted the seeds of artistic inspiration in her. When her body started to pulse in the crisis, she saw Nimue, then the brushstrokes she'd have to make to bring Hygeia to look like that long-ago nymph. With those visions, she felt her physical strength grow; and it was a
real struggle to bide her time until the next session in the studio. If she could only spend a few uninterrupted days in there, she thought, she might quickly finish and bear the results proudly toward San Francisco.

“I think I feel strong enough to travel soon,” she hinted to Edouard one night.

He slammed a heavy book shut, his face as white as her dressing-gown. “By no means, Miss Summerfield!” he said with uncharacteristic force. “You are far below the ideal weight for a woman of your height—you should gain at least twenty more pounds—and you are so easily tired—and you must take care with the air that you breathe, or your lungs might collapse entirely—”

Famke sighed and ignored him, gazing instead at the red-stained edges of his ornate
Collected Patmore
. So he would not let her go; and now she felt she could not breathe. But she had recently learned both patience and prudence, so she forced her lungs to inflate and deflate as normal. She bit down on her tongue for strength and to prevent it from speaking.

There was no telling what Edouard might do if she pressed him; the man who had cut the description of Christ's death out of a Bible would think nothing of locking a door upon a recalcitrant patient or even tying her to her bed. He read aloud for at least an hour while Famke seethed inwardly.

The next morning she felt the old heaviness in her limbs, and it was nearly impossible to drag herself from bed and dress for her hours in the studio. As it was, she arrived late, and stood half-slumbering before the canvas.

He has drugged me
, she thought, but she felt too languid to react much. There was no anger, only a mild surprise. She began coughing, too, and lay down on the studio floor—just for a few minutes, she told herself as she sank into velvety darkness. When the maids came to collect her at the end of her allotted time, the filigree floor had imprinted itself on her cheek and arms. All three of them had to carry her to bed.

Edouard appeared to be all concern, particularly when a half hour's electrical treatment failed to produce a crisis. He listened to her lungs with his stethoscope and frowned. “Your system has been strained with overwork and excitement,” he said, coiling up his tubes. He hardly dared to look at her as Miss Pym pulled the gown back over her chest. “The bacilli have formed
new colonies inside. Or perhaps,” he hypothesized, “there are some memories making you ill? An excess of emotion, even when recollected in tranquility, can be very dangerous. It is best to speak them aloud and despatch them.”

“I like excitement,” Famke interrupted drowsily. It was as if a thick blanket were wrapped around her, cocooning her from the rest of the world and restricting the flow of air to her lungs. Still, she knew she should give away no more secrets, admit to no more illness. “But could you stand a little farther away?”

He did, and he opened a window, which helped her breathe somewhat more easily. His movements were slow, as if he were depressed. “It is a medical fact,” he said, “that tuberculosis comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. It is like the pulse of blood through a heart, at times full of strength rushing forward, at times seeping back to rest and renourish itself. You must take rest, too. At least a week, perhaps six, with abundant sleep—”

“No more laudanum,” she said, drifting away on a surge of exhaustion.

“You haven't had any in a month,” she heard him say from a great distance. His voice sounded so sincere that with the last ounce of her strength she opened her eyes. Mr. Versailles, she thought as she relaxed again, was looking at her almost the way Albert had done.

Viggo woke with a throbbing headache that nearly eclipsed the aches in the rest of his body. When he moved, the pain felt especially strong where the night before the animal part of his body had throbbed even more strongly than his head did now; and not just once, but four times.

How could he write to Sister Birgit now? And how could he look Famke in the face when at last he found her?

The girl in the bed woke briefly as he struggled into his trousers.

“It's forty dollars for the night,” she mumbled sleepily. “Plus the two for taking off my corset. You can leave it all on the dresser.”

Forty-two dollars, and Viggo's left boot held only thirty-nine. He had to take the rest from the right boot, and when he did it he felt he had sunk to his lowest point. Now not only had he betrayed his love with another woman, he had stolen from Famke as well.

“Come back and visit me again,” the girl called with an obvious attempt to be charming, before she leaked a little wind and fell asleep again. On her door he read the name Mag: nothing to do with springtime after all. Clumsy
glem-mig-ik'
s—what Americans called forget-me-nots—clustered around the letters, and Viggo felt ashamed. For a moment, he had forgotten what he should most have remembered.

He walked through the muddy streets feeling dirty, sinful, repugnant. It seemed right that a donkey should kick him or a stray dog take a bite from his leg; and yet neither of these things happened. He met only one other creature, a tall man with big funereal eyes, carrying a carpetbag and clearly bound for the depot. He was as lost in his own thoughts as Viggo was, and neither acknowledged the other.

Unmolested, Viggo made his way back to the modest hotel where he had stored his own bag—experience having taught him not to leave expensive chemicals unattended under a flophouse cot—and answered the Spanish proprietor's greeting with a glumly polite “Good morning.”

And then came a surprise. “There is someone waiting to see you, Mr. Hart.”

Viggo frowned. Looking around the shabby hallway that served as the hotel lounge, he had some difficulty imagining who it could be. There had to have been some mistake.

He said as much to Señor Garcia, who made an elaborate ceremony of checking the register. So the visitor must be a guest at the hotel . . .

“Ah,
aquí
.” Garcia's thick finger underscored a name written in what, even from a distance, Viggo could see was careful textbook script. “Her name is Mrs. Goodhouse. Shall I send my wife to see if she is awake?”

Find a place [in California] that seems as isolated as a mid-ocean island, with neither lightning nor steam, and the dwellers are not prisoners
.

B
ENJ
. F. T
AYLOR
,
B
ETWEEN THE
G
ATES

As she regained her strength after the third and certainly final collapse, Famke rediscovered her restlessness and resentment, and with them a plan. So Edouard wanted to keep her captive, like a princess in a tower, like a saint in a cell—well then, she would escape. As she unlocked her studio door for her first day back, she determined that the very moment she finished
Hygeia
, she would find money somewhere in the house and buy a ticket to San Francisco—and wherever else it was necessary to go—and then she would catch up to Albert.

Albert. The very thought of him stilled the blood in her veins, and she nearly dropped to the floor again. She reminded herself yet again that once they were reunited, he wouldn't need the fair but frail anymore; she herself would again pose as Calafia, Salome, even Nimue. European painters were fashionable in America; with the right model, Albert would have a great career here. She reminded herself yet again that once he had established himself, she would be more than a muse. Someday he could paint her portrait.

In a rush of anticipation, Famke slid the drape from
Hygeia
. The joy of rediscovering her own work—the bright colors, the slim lines, the energy—was surprisingly intense;
Hygeia
was becoming beautiful, and that transformation made Famke more than usually thoughtful. As she gazed on what she had done to the body before her, and assessed what remained to do, she reflected that she was coming to understand Albert and what had gone amiss with this work—perhaps with all the other pictures he'd
painted on American shores. There was a slapdash rhythm to the brush-strokes in the central figure that reminded her of his mad flights through the streets. He must have painted
Hygeia
under pressure, and quickly; he had perhaps done the background first and taken care with it, but by the time he reached the woman's figure he was feeling a need to escape, and he had dashed her off. No, he had not succumbed to the careless principles of French painting after all; it was merely the duress of the marketplace that had caused him to sacrifice what he held most dear.