Floats the Dark Shadow (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

BROODING, Theo watched Averill pour absinthe into the bottom of the wine glass, a layer of liquid peridot. Next he balanced the flat, perforated silver spoon across the top of the glass. He set a sugar cube atop the spoon, then took the carafe of chilled water and drizzled it over the sugar. Slowly, the chartreuse liqueur underwent its metamorphosis into a pale, opalescent green.

Theo wanted to sweep away the paraphernalia cluttering the table and pour the evil green liquor on the pavement. But that would be pointless. She did not even know if absinthe was the Devil she should fear. Or if Averill was the Page of Cups….

Averill lifted the spoon, lowered it into the glass, stirring until the rest of the sugar dissolved. He did it all far more carefully than usual, Theo noticed, giving each gesture his total concentration, presumably so no random thoughts of murder and mayhem might distract him. For days he’d talked compulsively of the charity bazaar fire and the murder in the cemetery. They haunted him, Theo knew, but still she wondered if they were a distraction from the deeper pain of his sister’s death a year ago.

Theo was haunted too. Tomorrow she was to meet Carmine at the École des Beaux Arts protest—but that was not a distraction. It would be for Mélanie’s sake and would keep the pain of her loss close and sharp. But that was tomorrow.

Today, Paul had summoned them to the Café des Capucines to talk about the next issue of
Le Revenant.
But their chief critic had yet to arrive. Besides Averill and herself, there were Casimir, Jules, and the Revenant they’d dubbed the student Hyphen. The others were all sipping their first absinthe. Averill was already on his second. Theo indulged in a
blanc-cassis
, the crème de cassis tinting the bubbling champagne a fuchsia that was a satisfying clash with the milky chartreuse of the absinthe.

“C’est l’heure verte,”
Averill lifted his glass in a toast.

The green hour. Creating absinthe was an act of alchemy, a ritual performed each afternoon. The interior of the
café
was perfumed with its scent, licorice sweet with a sharp herbal undercurrent. At first, Theo had loved the bittersweet perfume and found the elixir a quintessential part of the magic of Paris. It had become a darker sorcery since Averill could not or would not stop his indulgence. Did he now love absinthe even more than he loved his art?

“To Oscar Wilde,” Casimir added his own toast. He had told Theo that the extravagant
café
was Wilde’s favorite. The decadent oasis of plush garnet velvet and glowing stained glass ceilings was just across the street from where he had lived while writing
Salomé.

“Salomé,” Theo murmured, conjuring the memory. Not long after they attended Verlaine’s funeral, Casimir had invited them to see the play, which Wilde had written in French. An actress he was courting had a small part in the avant-garde production. It was Theo’s second outing into Averill’s Paris and her discovery of its living, beating, poetic heart. She had been dazzled as the penniless theatre company performed its own alchemy with only the magic of words and shifting light. A full moon hung above the stage, its pure pale color corrupted as the play unfolded its tale of obsession, seduction, and death. Pearl slowly clouded and turned to tarnished silver. Silver was slowly stained scarlet. By the end of the play, crimson light drenched the set and actors like flowing blood. Theo had been transfixed by the beauty and exquisite terror of the night.

“Wilde is still in prison, isn’t he?” The student peered from beneath the fringe of brown hair that all but covered his eyes.

“He’ll be released at the end of this month,” Casimir answered. “When he comes to France, I have vowed to visit him.”

“You believe he will return here?” Jules asked.

“Where else would he go?” Casimir asked in turn. “In London he’d be snubbed, in America he’d be shot. Wouldn’t he, Theo?”

“Snubbed and shot,” Theo admitted, though she might have secretly pointed him to the right bar. That last rough-and-tumble year working at The Louvre bar in Mill Valley, she had learned many things that nice society girls weren’t supposed to know. What mysteries remained, Averill had been willing to illuminate. From the beginning, he’d treated her as an equal. There were no forbidden topics. He’d told her it was common for schoolboys to experiment with each other. Most came to prefer women, some never did, and some desired both. He’d been amused to hear that some of the girls at finishing school were far more intrigued by each other than the muscular riding instructor she’d thought so alluring.

“What is Wilde like?” the student Hyphen asked.

“Oscar revels in his fame,” Casimir said. “He has to be the center of attention. He loves to delight and he loves to shock—if not to the extreme his trial brought about.”

“The judge called it the crime of the century,” Averill sneered. “You have to wonder what he thought of Jack the Ripper.”

Averill had said little, Theo realized. Neither for pleasure or from compulsion.

“The judge probably thought the Ripper performed a public service,” Casimir replied. “Wilde’s trial was a circus. He thought he could whip them with his wit, but they sledgehammered him with their morals. Two years at hard labor.”

“Two years does not seem so terrible,” Theo said.

“It was supposed to be a death sentence,” Averill replied, animated now. “Most prisoners die of exhaustion. Their health gives out. Or their sanity. He must be amazingly strong to have survived.”

“What happened to Wilde’s lover?” Theo asked, earning a shocked glance from Jules.

“Nothing happened to Lord Queensbury’s son.” Casimir’s voice dripped disdain. “Such creatures usually escape. Bosie is a rancid piglet. Vanity without talent. Utterly self-centered.”

“Did you ever see
Salomé
?” Theo asked the student, trying to draw him out again.

“No, I joined the Revenants after it had closed.”

“The words dripped color and glittered like jewels. It was like watching a painting by Gustav Moreau come to life.” Theo hoped the mention of Averill’s favorite painter might stir a response from him. He only swirled his absinthe, watching the color glow in the afternoon light.

“Truly magnificent—but it was almost a catastrophe,” Casimir added. “The only theatre they could afford was condemned, all but falling apart around them. There was a fire backstage the night of the first performance. The actors were beating out the blaze on costumes.”

Theo shut her eyes against the image of flaming clothes. No one had died during
Salomé
, except on stage.

“Topping that, they broke the wax head of John the Baptist they had borrowed from the Museé Grévin,” Averill added.

“So much for any profits—despite being sold out.” Casimir opened his fingers as if coins were falling through them.

The student Hyphen sighed regretfully. “I wish I had been there.”

“Casimir, Averill, and I met Paul and the others in
café
afterward, by accident. We pulled our tables together so we could all talk about the play.” Theo still had the program, designed by Toulouse-Lautrec, as a keepsake. “It was our inspiration.”

“We talked of how Salomé’s ghost would dance through Herod’s dreams. And how John the Baptist would have haunted Salomé.” Casimir smiled at Theo, urging her to continue.

“Casimir proclaimed that Salomé would only want a ghost with a body. Averill said that would be a revenant, a ghost you could touch.”

“Like a succubus,” Jules whispered. “A spirit that lusts.”

“We decided to do a magazine with poems touching on the theme and publish it for
La Toussaint
. So
Le Revenant
was born,” Casimir said, then looked up as Paul appeared with the missing Hyphens and settled at their table.

“The theme is our focus,” Paul said as if they were arguing with him. “
Le Revenant
does not proselytize a new movement in poetry. We welcome all superior work, be it from the Symbolists, the Decadents, the Parnassians, even from the naïve Romantics. We are artistic anarchists.” He looked around at them all and nodded with satisfaction.

“Garçon,”
Averill summoned a passing waiter and ordered another absinthe.

“Averill…” she started to ask some question to engage him, but he looked at her blankly, lost in some inner turmoil.

“For once we’re all here.” Dispensing with pleasantries, Paul pulled out a notebook and turned to Averill. “How many poems do you plan for the next issue?”

When Averill only stared bleakly at the street, Paul poked him with his pencil. “
Tu as le cafard
?”

Theo wondered how having a cockroach ever came to be equated with depression.

“Poems?” Paul repeated with another prod.

Averill frowned. “I have only two that seem right. Another two I am unhappy with but know will improve. Bits and pieces of others.”

“What two are finished?”

“Another Salomé poem. Cupid and Psyche.”

“Bluebeard?” Paul asked.
“You did promise me Gilles de Rais.”

Averill shook his head. “Something about Bluebeard is incomplete, imperfect.”

Bluebeard again. Theo frowned. Sometimes Gilles de Rais seemed like a revenant walking through Paris. Present but never quite in sight.

“I want Bluebeard,” Paul insisted. “I want that ultimate darkness.”

Averill gestured in frustration. “First I must finish the poem of my little Venus.”

“Venus? Greek myth?” Paul asked. “Erotic?”

“No. It’s about the girl I found in the cemetery,” he whispered, no louder than Jules.

Shaken, Theo wondered how Averill could bear to write about her. And yet, for the past week, she had been obsessed with the fire, with destruction, with death. Her scrawled sketches of the burning building, the charred wreckage, had not exorcized the most terrible image from her mind. Over and over, Mélanie came toward her in a white skirt circled with flame. It was too horrible. Theo had resisted making a drawing. Now she felt she would not be free until she did.

“Not fairy tale or myth, but your little Venus appears to be a revenant,” Casimir said.

Paul scribbled in his notebook. “Yes, that might work.”

“There is another Venus poem I began earlier. A pantoum.”

“Excellent.” Turning to Theo, Paul explained, “The second and third lines of the preceding stanza repeat in the next, repetition creating rhythm.”

“I want to make them a duet of sorts.
Grand et petit
…” Averill trailed off, staring into his absinthe. Theo didn’t know what was wrong. Suddenly, he lifted his head, looking round at them. “The poem is frozen!” he blurted out. “I must see her again, or I won’t be able to finish it.”

Paul’s eyebrows ascended. “I do not want to dig up a grave to raise your revenant.”

“No! The papers say she has not been identified. They have put her on display. I must go to the morgue.” Averill sounded desperate. He turned to Casimir. “Come with me.”

Casimir hesitated, but conceded. “Of course, if you wish it.”

Theo was appalled. How much death did Averill need to see? Did he only feel alive when it was close? The fire at the bazaar, the body in the cemetery, were cruel strokes of fate. But Verlaine’s funeral, the catacombs had been events he sought out. Of course it was Casimir who had invited them all to the catacombs, but Averill had been the most eager to attend.