When Alexandra spoke of the Beyond, that other plane of existence so dangerously near our own — when she talked of astral counterparts and the Immaterial Realm —I had listened, and thought I understood. And yet I had not truly believed. Those experiences must be waking dreams, I thought, or opium-induced hallucinations. For better or worse, I could no longer deny my own wild talent; but this talk of astral travel put me too much in mind of Madame Rulenska’s fraudulent spirits, or the Theosophists’ fanciful beliefs.
Alexandra’s hand had fallen limply to her side. Her eyes were open, but when I spoke to her she did not answer; nor did she seem aware of anything around her. After a moment someone brought a chair and when I placed a hand on her shoulder, she not so much sat down as subsided into it. It seemed she was sinking ever more deeply into unconsciousness.
Earlier, I had seen her drinking wine, and smoking a hashish cigarette. Surely, I told myself, this was the explanation: there was no magic here; she had merely fallen into a faint.
But then I glanced up at the painting, and my breath caught in my throat. There at the very edge of the canvas — where a moment before there had been nothing, only an empty stretch of wasteland — a small dark-clad figure had suddenly appeared, as though painted by an invisible hand.
The Alexandra of this world slept on, oblivious to that other self now setting out into uncharted country. But where was M. Verlaine, who should have accompanied her? I turned to see him staring at the painting. On his ravaged face was a look of anguish, and I guessed that in the end his courage, like his disease-ridden flesh, had failed him. His city of dreams, that he had sought so long to discover, must remain beyond his reach. He could only watch in despair as Alexandra went alone into the Inconnu.
But who would be her companion on that strange and hazardous journey? Who would bring her safely back? I could not abandon her, as Verlaine had done.
I stretched out my hand and felt the rough texture of M. Villemain’s painting beneath my palm. Like the woman in the Paris drawing room who had found herself in the place she called “Elsewhere”, like the woman who had wandered into an African landscape and left her handkerchief under a palm, I discovered how terrifyingly easy it can be to stumble over the edge of the known world.
Was it the “superabundance of psychic energy” that Alexandra had once told me I possessed, the same energy that had cursed me with my wild talent? Was it my frantic state of mind as I sought Alexandra through the dark Paris streets; or was it only the effect of hashish smoke and incense and overexcitement in that close hot room?
It took no more than a moment. I felt my vision blurring, my hearing muffled as though my ears were stuffed with cotton wool. I could not move. And then I felt a steady, insistent pull, that I knew was beyond my power to resist. So must a swimmer feel, caught up in an undertow and drawn helplessly out to sea. For an instant I saw myself — my other self, my spirit twin — as a vague shape rapidly fading into distance, and between us, thinning as it lengthened, a silvery, hazy cord.