Femme Fatale (55 page)

“Unfortunately, the twins were quickly becoming what was known as ‘fast’ women. I blame their mother, so you are very fortunate to have escaped such a malign influence in your own life, however much you may have missed knowing who your mother and father were, believe that.”

Irene was far too canny and in control of herself to interrupt
the fountain’s flow now that it had come unstopped, but I saw several unnameable emotions cross her face at this speech.

“One girl, the self-named ‘Pet,’ it was determined later, had found herself irrevocably compromised. It pains me to speak these ugly truths to a woman I had known as a sweet and innocent girl, but you insisted. She had discovered she had been left with child, and that is the sort of condition that becomes less inescapable with every week and day.

“She had retired to the water closet, drawn a bath, laid herself down in it and slit her wrists and throat.

“When you knocked and called, as the boarders always did, there was no answer; no occupant, you thought. The door was unlocked. You entered. You saw a sea of blood and your young performing compatriot floating in it like Ophelia. I understand the bath water had run crimson, and overflowed the tub, that she was as pale as porcelain.

“You screamed, as who would not? But . . . my dear little Irene, you had a Voice. You screamed and screamed, an operatic aria of screams that woke the entire house, the neighborhood, sent people sitting up in their beds for blocks around with chills running down their spines.

“You would not stop. It was as if only Song could express your horror. And when you finally did stop, you would Sing no more.

“That is how they brought you to me, days after Pet’s funeral.

“You spoke only in a whisper, when spoken to. No one could do anything with you. I was . . . at my wit’s and wisdom’s end. I knew that only your Voice would cure you, but how to bring it back to life? Then I remembered Adler and his mesmerism technique.

“I applied it. Slowly, surely, you recovered. You would whisper a scale. Then speak it, And finally hum it. It took patience, it took months and months, my dear. And sometimes you would stop and stare out the second-story window overlooking Union Square. . . . I finally realized that it was not enough to mesmerize
you for the vocalizations alone. I instructed you to forget. To forget that awful moment you found the dead girl, to forget anything in your past that might trouble you, to forget your past and go on to a carefree and productive, and very vocal future. It worked.”

He stopped like an automaton whose winding had run down, and drained a full glass of wine at one swallow. I saw a diadem of sweat beads circling his wrinkle-seamed forehead.

The telling had been as arduous as the acts he recounted.

This time when the wine waiter came around, Irene nodded, her face as pale and stiff as parchment.

My glass was refilled, the maestro’s, and her own, which was only half consumed.

We none of us spoke. Later, we left together and parted ways outside, Irene seeing the old man into a cab, and taking my arm to walk the long way back to our hotel.

Not one glass at the table we left behind was anything but empty, including my own, yet I have never been so sober, and so sorry for it, in my entire life.

And I was not even in France.

42.

A Mesmerizing Experiment

With one wave of his hand over her—with one look of his
eye—with a word—Svengali could turn her into the other
Trilby, his Trilby—and make her do whatever he liked . . .
you might have run a red-hot needle into her and she would
not have felt it. . . . He had but to say “Dors!” and she
suddenly became an unconscious Trilby of marble, who could
produce wonderful sounds
.

—GECKO,
TRILBY
, 1894,
GEORGE DU MAURIER

After pretending to sleep, I arose the next morning to find Irene still semi-sitting in our parlor, still dressed.

“What does one do, Nell,” she asked, “when the people who mean you the most good have done you the worst damage?”

Well, I would obviously have to be one of those “people who mean you the most good,” and hope that I did no more damage.

I sat down in an opposite chair. Irene was slumping in her seat in an inexcusable fashion, like one who had been up all night . . . or like a careless schoolgirl . . . or like Sarah Bernhardt during one of her interminable death scenes.

“You claim to have come to America to trace your origins,” I said. “I suspect you came to America purely to drag me away from the Old Country and the shocks to my system its ancient evils administered. You are always thinking of others, Irene, and it has to stop.”

“I? I am a prima donna!”

“You are theatrical, certainly, and have a certain flair at arranging events, but you are far too dedicated to spare your friends the heartache and shocks of . . . whatever Shakespeare said, so apparently notably. I do not see it.”

“Shakespeare or my situation?”

“Either. You came here, purportedly, because you had no family, no parents, no brothers or sisters. Since we have been in New York, I have met no one but people who cared about you. You have had a multitude of mothers and fathers, Irene, and you don’t need Pink to show you that.”

“They smothered my past.”

“They are Americans! They do not value pasts. Goodness, most of them do not go back as far as one of Buffalo Bill’s Indian trackers. This is an utterly new land. I have seen that. I may not like it, but I have seen it. You have managed to leave footprints in both New World and Old. That will be the future. Forget your past. I have ancestors going back to medieval pig thieves, and I can assure you that such ties are overrated. What you have as a past is people who care for you, and that is worth any pedigree.”

“But they are dead, and dying.”

This I couldn’t answer.

“Because of me.”

“Again the prima donna!”

“Because of me. Because of something I don’t know, but should have,” she said quite humbly. “Because of something that was kept from me. For my own good.”

“Perhaps. I’ve found myself quite liking these strange theatrical folk. They remind me of honest Shropshire villagers, that no
one gave much accounting to, but who remain foremost in my memory when I think back to my childhood.”

“I can’t do that, Nell. I have a muddled memory.” She rose and pressed the small smooth sun of a gold watch into my palm, as one would feed a Gypsy fortune teller coins. “I want you to mesmerize me.”

“Mesmerize? I can’t!”

“I am, apparently, an able subject. You have seen me work with this method. All you must do is swing the watch before my eyes until they blur, and encourage me to be peaceful in my soul. You are a parson’s daughter. Such counsel should come naturally.”

“I can’t take that responsibility.”

“There is no one else here who can.”

“The maestro—”

“Has proven himself biased. He meant well. I can never blame him for that. I need someone stronger, though.”

“Me?”

“Someone I truly trust.”

“Irene, please!”

“Nell, please!”

And thus, at the age of two-and-thirty, an Anglican became a Mesmerist.

How foolish I felt! Rather like a woman who made a living belching cheesecloth. Yet she was dead, that woman, and I was tired of tracing the people from Irene’s past, only to find them dead.

I swung the watch, back and forth. I watched her face, feeling foolish. She fixed her gaze upon that swinging watch as if it were a passing bell, tolling.

She was determined to be mesmerized. I was determined to mesmerize. This was an enterprise too much dependent on necessity.

“Irene,” I said. Intoned like a church choir.

“Yes, Nell.”

“I want you to watch . . . the watch.”

“Yes, Nell.”

“I want you to think . . . or rather, to
not
think. Imagine the . . . the . . . the mongoose Messalina.”

“Yes, Nell?”

“Such a supple, smooth creature, all fur and muscle. Bright eyes and flashing teeth, like a Spanish dancer.”

“A Spanish dancer?”

“Such grace and . . . passion. Like a metronome. You have heard, seen a metronome. That is the rhythm of music. Left, right, like this watch. Left, right, regular like a pendulum. Stamp, step. Dance, sing. Left, right. Like time.

“Like . . . the past.”

“Like the past. Your past. Left, right.”

Her eyes fixed on the watch and grew filmy. I couldn’t believe my effectiveness. Then, on the brink of success, I desperately wanted to break the rhythm, deny this power, wake us both up.

Except it was working. I wracked my brain for what was needed here. Irene was suddenly at my mercy. She had put herself into my hands. I must conduct this orchestra. I must understand what mysteries needed to be unveiled.

I was both the shepherd and sheep.

“Irene.”

“Yes, Nell.”

How pleasant this was. “Yes, Nell” had never sounded so sweet, although, now that I heard it so easily, I realized that I much preferred “No, Nell.”

I smiled. I was indeed ready to do something for another’s good, because I no longer needed to cater to my own lesser needs.

“Irene, I want you to remember.”

“Yes, Nell.”

“It may be painful to both of us, but we will be the better for it.”

“Yes, Nell.”

“And first and foremost, I wish that when you wake, you will never say ‘Yes, Nell’ again.”

“No, Nell.”

“I must ask this. You have always astounded me because you have never used your beauty to win roles or men. Is that because you witnessed Pet’s awful end, and saw that the wages of sin is death?”

“Not sin, but senselessness. I can condemn no one, but I can mourn those who condemn themselves. She was lovely and so uncertain. She sought false regard, and destroyed her own regard. She was doomed, for being human, and vain, and for letting someone else’s regard destroy her own. So she destroyed another with herself. I see no way out of it. Was I one of these burdens worth dying for, rather than acknowledging?”

“We are none of us worth dying for, except on stage or in Scriptures. Now. You wish to remember. What happened after Pet’s dreadful end? Did the police declare her death a suicide, or could it have been murder?”

“I was not told. We all wished to forget Pet and what happened to her. All those who knew me wished me to forget her fate. It was as if I had glimpsed the terrible end that awaited a girl of my history and looks and talent. Until then I had felt these gifts to be an asset. Once Pet was dead, I saw them to be liabilities. I was too easily like her, save I did not have a mother to introduce me to the circle of wealthy men in which such women seek salvation and so often find doom.”

“The opera was an elevated art form. Such singers need not compromise themselves.”