I was sick with apprehension as I tiptoed through the Jourdan’s dining room and antechamber, then down the long flight of stairs to the street. At that hour the Boulevard St-Michel was still busy and I had no trouble finding a cab, though I could ill afford the expense. I gave the driver the address of M. Gautier’s studio, and we set off for Montmartre.
I asked the cab to wait while I climbed the stairs to M. Gautier’s studio. The artist was a long while coming to the door, but I could see a light through the transom and heard him moving about. Presently the door swung open, and M. Gautier appeared in carpet slippers, with collar undone and shirt-tails out. Behind him on the table stood an empty wine bottle and a single glass.
“Mademoiselle, how may I be of service?” he inquired with drunken formality.
I stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. “Have you seen my friend, Mademoiselle David? By chance did she come here, asking after M’sieu Verlaine?”
“Ah yes . . . ” He gazed at me in cheerful befuddlement. “A pity, mademoiselle —I fear you have missed her. I offered her a glass of wine, but she would not stay. And true enough, she said she must find M’sieu Verlaine.” He made an effort to tuck in his shirt. “But you, mademoiselle . . . you will have a glass of wine? There is another bottle somewhere, I think.”
“Thank you, no . . . ” I could scarcely conceal my impatience. “I cannot stay, I must find my friend. Please tell me, did you give her M’sieu Verlaine’s address?”
“His address?” He laughed aloud at that. “Any cheap café in Paris — that is M’sieu Verlaine’s address, mademoiselle. But tonight I know where you may find him, and I think also your friend. There is a gathering of artists at an apartment in the Latin Quarter.” He fumbled for a pen and a scrap of paper, and scribbled down an address on the Boulevard du Montparnasse.
And so I had travelled across Paris, to learn that I might find Alexandra only a few steps from home, on the boulevard that crosses St-Michel. By now it was clearly too late for a respectable young woman to be out alone. My resolve was quickly fading. How easy it would be to retreat to the safety of my own room, with chez Jourdan close at hand. But I knew I must not turn back.
The concierge, seeming unsurprised by my arrival at this late hour, let me in to the building on the Boulevard du Montparnasse and directed me to the second floor. I walked up the carpeted stairs, thinking how foolish I would look if Alexandra were not here.
The servant who answered the door — if indeed he was a servant — was wearing a kind of Moorish costume with pantaloons and a sash. Glancing past him into the antechamber, I saw that it was surprisingly large and well appointed, with tapestries on the wall, and lamps in gilded sconces. I suppose I had expected another artist’s garret like M. Gautier’s, and now I felt even more uncertain. Summoning up what remained of my courage, I told him, “I have come to look for a friend.”
“But mademoiselle, you must have mistaken the address, this is a private meeting.” I was about to show him my scrap of paper with the address when a second man, still more exotically costumed, overheard and came to my rescue by inquiring the name of my friend..
“Ah yes, of course, Mademoiselle David. Please come in.” I followed him through the antechamber and into a large drawing room where a number of people were gathered. I had a quick impression of a great many candles alight on lacquered Chinese chests, oriental-patterned wallpaper, Indian rugs and Japanese screens, a divan covered with a tiger skin. An incense burner emitted a strong odour of sandalwood, which could not disguise the smell of hashish cigarettes.
There, to my vast relief, was Alexandra. There also was M. Paul Verlaine.
By now I was feeling almost as angry as I was relieved. After all my alarm on her behalf, after my anxious pursuit through the streets of Paris, here she was, engaged in nothing more dangerous than a costume soirée.
Alexandra, glancing up, had seen me arrive. She gave me a look halfway between puzzlement and chagrin, and gestured to the empty place beside her. “Jeanne, quelle surprise! Do sit down. Why do you look so distressed?”
“Why should I not be distressed?” Had I ever before spoken so sharply to Alexandra? “I woke and you were not there. Who knew where you might have gone, or why?” I felt my throat tighten, my eyes begin to sting.
“But chérie, you found me, did you not? As you see, I did not go far. And you have come at just the right time. The entertainment is about to begin.”
It was weeks since I had seen her in such high spirits. I should have been delighted. Instead I wanted to burst into tears.
Still, I was here and had accomplished my purpose. Alexandra was safe. As Alexandra was fond of saying, you should never refuse a chance for adventure. And so I drew some deep breaths, and felt a little better.
Looking around, I realized that nearly everyone was in costume. There were oriental potentates in long silk robes, Turkish pashas in embroidered vests, pale mediaeval ladies with mysterious smiles, and peacock feathers in their hair.
The man who presided over this peculiar gathering was dressed more austerely than the others, in a long white high-collared robe. Now, calling for everyone’s attention and holding up a staff with a curving top like a shepherd’s crook, he talked for a few minutes about the mystical artistic vision, and the magical power of words. After some persuasion M. Verlaine stood up and read one of his own poems, and one of M. Baudelaire’s called “Les Metamorphoses du Vampire”, from Les Fleurs du Mal. Afterwards we heard verses by Mallarme, Rimbaud and Mr. Edgar Allan Poe — all of whom seemed quite obsessed with dead flowers, drowned maidens, vampires and sarcophagi. Many of the poems were dark and disturbing. Some of them — in particular the one by the notorious Arthur Rimbaud (now said to be a gun-runner in Abyssinia) — were so shocking that I wondered if, with my still imperfect French, I had mistaken their meaning.
These people in their oriental finery, with their clever talk of art and literature and music, were surely no more odd than others I had met in Paris — the anarchists, the artists, the very peculiar M. d’Artois. And yet I felt a vague but growing unease.
“It is a little like Madame Blavatsky’s dinner parties, is it not,” I whispered to Alexandra.
“Except for the costumes, of course. And even HPB would have blushed at M’sieu Rimbaud’s poem.”
Alexandra smiled at that, but I could see that her mind was elsewhere. Her face was flushed; she had a feverish, over-excited look that I had seen before, and it made me anxious for her.
“Now,” said our host, “for the surprise of the evening. I have recently acquired a most remarkable painting, by a young artist possessing a unique and astonishing talent. His is a mystical art imbued with a dark and inexplicable magic; art that transcends all that we understand of everyday reality. Join me, if you will, in experiencing the unimagined.”
Obediently we followed him into an adjoining room, a sort of salon des artes, empty of furniture save for some tall oriental vases and, in one corner, an alcove upon which stood a carved Hindu deity.
On three of the walls were some Japanese prints, a painting of a woman in a field of poppies, and what Alexandra told me was a collection of Byzantine Madonnas. Most of the fourth wall was occupied by a large landscape painting.
It was in front of this work that everyone had gathered, with an air of excited curiosity.
C’est très mystérieux,” they murmured. “C’est très extraordinaire.”
It seemed to me an accomplished but unexceptional painting of wasteland, scattered shrubbery and distant mountains. Puzzled, I moved closer to examine it.
Then someone asked, “Who is the artist?” and someone else replied, “I believe it is the work of M’sieu Jacques Villemain.”
And all at once I understood.
Once, many months ago, Alexandra had spoken to me of just such a painting — at first glance an unremarkable landscape of deserted heath, and lake, and snowcapped peaks. And then with a shiver of fear she had described the phantom images she had seen glimmering at the edge of vision — the mocking, demonic faces that were part of the landscape and at the same time — something else.
Still haunted by that vision, Alexandra had cried out in her sleep, “la peinture. ”
Now, superimposed upon M. Villemain’s deceptively innocent painting, I saw for myself those same malevolent shapes that had frightened Alexandra: the things that might have been human, or animal, or something else.
Perhaps the other guests had sensed the danger in the painting: as though by agreement, they had moved back to view it from a safer distance.
All except for Alexandra.
I wanted to shout out to her M. Villemain’s warning: venture too close and the painting could take you captive. Step over the borders of the world into that perilous landscape, and there might be no escape.
Instead I moved to her side and whispered, “Alexandra, don’t do this, you know it is dangerous.”
But when had Alexandra ever turned away from danger? There at the very threshold of the Beyond, the Inconnu, she stood in a waking trance. Her breath had become so faint that I could scarcely detect any movement of her bosom. And then she put out a hand, and gently but deliberately, touched the surface of the painting.