Normally it would be impossible for a man to accompany four young ladies without a female escort. But nothing was normal about the Boits.
Iza Boit seemed happy when I suggested that a drive and some fresh air might be good for her children.
Her response, “If the governess agrees,” was all the permission I needed.
The footman found the tools I’d asked for—a pick and a shovel— without lifting an eyebrow. I summoned a cab, and the six of us— Florence, Jane, Mary, Julia, Popau, and myself—set out for Pére Lachaise.
“Why are we going to the cemetery, Uncle Sargent?” Mary asked me, as we rumbled over the cobbles. She had to shout to be heard. “Is it to see Miss Joseph?”
“No,” I said. “But we are going to a funeral.”
“We aren’t dressed for mourning,” Jane protested.
“No warning, no mourning,” Florence said.
The noise of the cab made talking difficult enough so that we stopped speaking. I was grateful for that. I didn’t want to say what I had to say next too soon.
When we arrived at the cemetery, I paid the cabman and told him to wait. Then the six of us trouped through the gates.
“May I carry Popau?” I asked Julia.
She handed him over.
He was surprisingly heavy, heavier than the other time I had touched him. He hung like lead under my left arm. On my right shoulder I balanced my shovel and pick.
“There are many famous people buried here,” I said, as we turned off Avenue Principale in the direction I had gone last night. “It is quite the place to be buried in Paris.”
“But why are we here, Uncle Sargent?” Mary asked.
I turned and faced them.
“To bury Popau.”
“I was hoping so,” said Mary.
“Oh,” said Jane. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Yes.”
“P-paul?” said Julia.
“No!” said Florence.
Popau stayed inert. I had expected him to struggle, but nothing happened.
“Yes, Popau, P-paul,” I said. “We have to do this, not because Popau is bad or because the Lady of Love uses him to do her work in this world, but because we must. We must break the link that binds us to her or become her slaves. She is full of Popau’s power. Do you see? If we put Popau underground, then she cannot touch us in this life. Only if we go to her. And we must never do that anymore. Then we can be—”
Be what? What could I promise them in exchange for destroying their madness?
“Be happy?” Jane said.
“Be free,” I said. “Free to be ourselves.”
“No,” Florence said again.
“Yes, I said. “For you, Florence dear, more than for anyone else.”
I put the damned doll down, took off my coat, and began to swing the pick. The iron soil cracked but did not break up into clods. I swung again, and again, until cold sweat ran down my face and hardened in my beard.
“It’s cold,” Julia said. “Let’s go home now.”
Mary put her arms around her sister to warm her.
“It’s all right, Ya-Ya,” she said. “Uncle Sargent will take us all back soon and we’ll have cocoa.”
“Wicked cold,” Julia repeated.
Jane came a few steps closer, fascinated to see the shallow hole finally begin to appear.
Florence stalked circles around me. I thought of the witches in Macbeth circling the kettle of evil they had brewed.
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,” I chanted to myself in time with the strokes of my pick. "Eye of newt and toe of frog.”
As I raised my pick for another swing, Florence darted in beside me and snatched up Popau. She ran off through the cemetery howling, howling as her mother howled.
I ran after her, with Jane at my heels.
Past tombstones and monuments I chased her, with Jane calling after her, “Mumumumum! Mumumumumum!”
I caught up to her beside a towering angel waving a sword. But the sword was broken. The angel would be a weak reed to whatever it tried to defend.
Florence turned and faced me, snarling and grimacing, her back to the grave. She clutched Popau to her like a child she was trying to protect.
I did not speak. I simply held out my hand. When she would not hand over Popau, I took it from her roughly, dragging her down to her knees as she clutched at the thing. She cried, moaned, whimpered all at once.
But once I had the doll, she did not try to get it back. She crouched on all fours like an animal and wept.
Jane knelt beside her and murmured, “Mumumumumum, mumumumum.”
I turned away. The cemetery would be closed soon, and I had work to finish.
“Come if you want to,” I said.
Under my arm, Popau began to move. He pushed against me so hard that I almost dropped him.
It was obscene, his twisting, his jerking. I could not bear any more of it.
“That’s enough out of you,” I said, and swung him against a tombstone.
There was no sound but the crack of his china skull on granite, but he struggled harder.
I swung again, and again. Finally I heard his miserable head shatter.
As it did, I felt a surge of energy run up my arms and through all my body. It was the same nervous energy I’d felt at the Janus Gate and on my walk around Pére Lachaise, but stronger, a transforming surge that carried me back to where Mary and Julia huddled in the dark that was almost night now.
“It’s cold,” Julia said. “I want to go home.”
“Just a few more minutes, dear, I promise,” I said. And I attacked the ground with all the mad strength that the doll had released into me. The frozen earth parted for my pick, and the shovel gouged out a hole below the frost line. Not very deep, but deep enough, I hoped.
I tossed the headless doll into the little pit and covered it, stamping on the earth and beating it flat with my shovel.
I looked up.
Florence and Jane had come back. They were standing apart from Mary and Julia. They were standing apart from each other. On Jane’s face was a look of fascination. On Florence’s was a deep, inward despair.
“P-paul is all gone?” Julia said.
“Yes, Ya-Ya,” I said. “Popau is all gone forever.”
I looked down at the torn earth and hoped to God what I had said was true. I felt the mad energy draining out of me and knew that I would never feel it again. I knew the creature, whatever she had been, whatever she might have become, was gone as well. I knew it as I knew I had two hands, for I felt as though I had cut off one and thrown it into the grave with Popau.
I was free, whatever that means.
A whiff of ambergris came into my cold nose and blew away on the rising wind.
I looked up. The clouds were coming thickly. There would be snow tonight. Snow to cover the deed I’d done.
I picked up my tools.
“Come along, girls,” I said. “Chocolate and rolls for all hands.” We left the cemetery just ahead of the closing of the gates.