The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque Page 6

  I was no more than two blocks from my home when I looked up and saw some commotion beneath a street lamp across the way. From their uniforms and their hats, I could identify two of the three men as officers of the law. Even in the poor light, I recognized the man in civilian clothes—a derby and topcoat—as John Sills, a Sunday painter, a miniaturist, whom I had been on friendly terms with for a number of years. In addition to being an artist, he was also a detective on the New York City police force. They were gathered around what appeared to be a body on the sidewalk.

  I crossed the street and came up behind the trio. As I drew closer, one of the men moved slightly to the side and I had a brief glimpse of a horrific sight. With the light from the lamp above, I was now able to see that they were all standing in a pool of blood. The young woman was not lying horizontally on the curb but was propped up against the base of the streetlight. The bodice of her white dress was soaked bright red; crimson red streaked down her even whiter face. It gathered on her lips and dripped off her chin. I thought at first that she must be dead, but then I saw her move her head slightly from side to side. She was trying to whisper something, and the thick liquid at her mouth bubbled. As the officer who had initially moved aside and given me my view turned and noticed I was there, I realized that the stream of gore was issuing from her eyes as if she were weeping her own blood.

  “Mind your business,” said the man, and he raised his club with all intention of striking me.

  By that time John had turned and, seeing it was me, caught the other fellow’s arm in midswing. “I’ll take care of this, Hark,” he said. He came forward quickly, put his arm around my shoulders, and turned me away from the scene. Pushing me along, he herded me back across the street.

  “Get out of here, Piambo, or we will have to arrest you,” he said. “Go and don’t tell anyone what you saw.” He shoved me on my way. Before turning back to the incredible scene beneath the street lamp, he warned me again, his voice loud, “Not a word.”

  I said nothing, thought nothing, but broke into a run. When I reached my home, I was winded and nauseated. I drank whiskey until I regained my normal pulse. Then I stumbled into my studio, sat down, and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. All I could picture was that poor woman’s bloody eyes, and through some twisted association with the day’s events, I thought of them as the Twins.

  GOD IS FALLIBLE

  MY FATHER put them in an old silver locket that had been his sister’s and latched its chain around my neck. He told me I must never open it but always to remember that they were there, hiding. Then he swore me to secrecy, telling me the Twins were a secret that must never be revealed. When I asked him why, he shook his head and got down on one knee to face me. ‘Because it proves that God is fallible,’ he said, ‘and the world neither needs nor wants to know that.’

  “I was not sure what the word fallible meant, but what I was certain of was a growing sense of pride at being chosen to bear this important talisman. Because he had told me never to mention them, they became an increasing obsession for me. I felt as if they were alive inside that tiny silver chamber, like the germ of life inside a seed. There seemed to be a thrum of energy pulsating through my breast at the point where the pendant touched my flesh. The chain tingled against the skin of my neck. Not too long afterward I began to have strange dreams at night, colors and vibrations in my skull, wild images so abundant it was as if I were dreaming for three. The nights were not long enough to give vent to them, and they began to seep into my waking hours. I did not tell my father, fearing that he would take back the locket.

  “Then one day, when the snows had abated for an entire week, and I was out in the forest of tall pines playing at being an adventurer to the North Pole, I heard them whisper to me. It was an odd communication because, although I knew they were speaking words, I registered their message as an image in my mind. What I saw was a shooting star moving through the heavens, throwing off sparks like a July Fourth rocket. This vision lasted only seconds, but in the time I beheld it, it was crystal clear.

  “The experience was both frightening and exciting, and when it was over I stood still among the trees for a long while. Of course, as a child I had no way of defining the feeling this experience gave me, but now, thinking back on it, I believe it can best be described as a sense that Nature and, beyond that, the very cosmos was alive. God was watching me, so I ran back to the house to hide.

  “By that afternoon, after playing with my dolls and helping my mother with the laundry, I had forgotten about the incident. When I was finished with my chores, I went to visit my father in his study. He was at his desk with the magnifying glass, studying a specimen and jotting notes in his journal. I sat on the couch, and when he heard the broken springs shift, he turned around and smiled at me. A few minutes later, he asked me to fetch him a book from the bookcase. He turned in his chair and pointed to a large blue-bound volume on the second shelf. ‘That one there, Lu,’ he said. ‘The Crystal Will by Scarfinati.’

  “As I pulled the book off the shelf, the one beside it shifted and fell open on the floor. After carrying the volume he wanted to my father, I returned to pick up the one that had fallen. I saw that the book had opened to a full-page illustration of a shooting star, much like the one the Twins had whispered to me that morning.”

  “Mrs. Charbuque—” I said, but she interrupted me.

  “Please, Mr. Piambo, allow me to finish,” she said.

  “Very well,” I told her, sketching madly. The day was bright, and the sun coming in the windows was projecting a faint but somewhat definable shadow on the screen. I had been filling pages with quick, crude drawings, my hand moving over the paper as I kept my eye trained on the scene of falling leaves.

  “I did not mention the remarkable happenstance to my father but kept it inside me and, whenever I turned my attention to the thought of it, felt a genuine thrill. It was as if God were sending me a secret message, for me alone to see. I was filled with a strange sense of expectation for the remainder of the day. That is why I nearly leaped out of my skin when, that night as we sat by the fire, my mother and father reading in the glow of the gas lamps, there came a pounding on our door.

  “Naturally my parents exchanged worried looks, for who would be calling so late at night at the top of a mountain? Warily my father got up and went to see who it was. His look of concern alarmed me, and I followed him to make sure he would be all right. There on the doorstep stood a large man, wearing a fur coat and a broad-brimmed hat, carrying a large pack and a rifle. My father seemed to know him. The man also worked for Ossiak as a tracker. He had come to search for the body of one of the fellows from the supply team. On the way down the mountain in the storm, one of the men had lagged behind and apparently lost his way. He was believed to have succumbed to the storm and died of exposure. My father stepped aside and let him in. As he showed the man to a seat by the fireplace, he called back to me, ‘Lu, close the door, please.’ The three-quarter moon drew my attention as I swung the door, and then something suddenly streaked across the star-filled sky, leaving sparks in its path.

  “The visitor’s name was Amory, and he told us that he had come up the mountain that day looking for the corpse but had not found it. He asked to stay the night. He planned to leave early in the morning and descend the mountain, giving the dead man one more chance to be found. My father said he felt somewhat responsible for the tragedy, and told Mr. Amory that he would accompany him halfway. Then mother and father questioned Amory about what was going on in the world down the mountain. Soon afterward I was sent to bed.

  “I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of a whispered gasp. At first I thought it was the Twins trying to tell me something, but then realized that it was coming from the parlor. I don’t know what time it was, but it felt very late, like those bleak hours of the very early morning. It was cold, but I crept out of bed and tiptoed down the hall to the parlor entrance. Since the moon was shining that night, there was a very dim glow coming
through the parlor window. I heard another gasp like the one that had awoken me, and I saw my mother, sitting astride the tracker with her nightgown pulled up, revealing her bare legs. His large hands were rubbing her breasts through the thin material.

  “I apologize for being so forthright about this, Mr. Piambo, but I am trying to be accurate. My mother was rocking forward and back, her eyes closed, breathing heavily. I was astounded at this strange display and had no idea what was happening, but something in the back of my mind told me I should not be witnessing it. I was about to turn and go back to my room when my mother suddenly opened her eyes and saw me. She did not stop, nor did she say a word, but just stared at me with a look of great hatred. I ran back to my room and climbed into bed, shutting tight my eyes and putting my hands over my ears.

  “The next morning I awoke worried that I would be in trouble, but nothing was said when I set to helping my mother in the kitchen. As my father and Mr. Amory ate breakfast, the Twins spoke to me again. I saw their words as a picture in my mind, and what they showed me this time was horrible—a man, stiff as a statue, covered in frost. His mouth was gaping, a round dark hole, and his eyes staring so fiercely I knew he must be dead. It was the corpse of the man from the supply team, and I saw where he was. He lay in a meadow off the main trail about a quarter of the way down the mountain. I knew the spot because we stopped there each year for a picnic at our end-of-summer ascent.

  “This vision, again, only lasted moments, but as I came to, I saw that my father and Amory were making ready to leave. I was torn between revealing my knowledge and keeping it and the power of the Twins a secret. When they opened the door to take their leave, I sprang forward and begged my father for a kiss. When he leaned down, I whispered in his ear, ‘In the picnic meadow.’ I wasn’t sure if he had heard me. He simply patted me on the head and said, ‘Yes, Lu.’ Then they were gone.

  “The second they were out of sight, my mother was at me, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. ‘What did you tell your father?’ she yelled. ‘What did you whisper in his ear?’ I told her I had said nothing, but she knew that was a lie, for she had seen me. She shook me again, and her face was red with anger. I relented and said, ‘I told him where to find the dead man.’ ‘What kind of nonsense is that?’ she screamed. ‘It’s the truth,’ I said, and began to cry. ‘You’d do well to keep your mouth shut if you don’t want me to take you away from him,’ she said. Then she brought the back of her hand around and smacked me across the face with such force I fell to the floor. When the blow struck me, I saw in my mind the shooting star.”

  “Mrs. Charbuque,” I said, closing my notebook, “I must say—” Here she interrupted me again.

  “One more thing, Mr. Piambo,” she said, and her voice fluttered nervously. “One more thing.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “My father informed me upon his return that they had found the body at the spot I had described. My mother overheard him say this and was delighted, not by my unusual premonition but with relief that I hadn’t divulged her tryst.”

  “But, Mrs. Charbuque,” I said, this time determined not to be put off, “this story you are building, it is rather fantastical, wouldn’t you say? I am having a hard time believing that this is all real. Please don’t take this as an accusation, but please, explain to me how I am supposed to take all this.”

  “What piece of it disturbs you?” she asked.

  “I can follow all of it, but the fact that these two identical snowflakes are communicating with you in some psychic way seems, well, if I may be so bold, a good deal of rubbish.”

  “The story is true, I swear, but as you say, the idea that the Twins conferred supernatural abilities was rubbish. It was the worst, most destructive rubbish, because I believed with all my heart that they did. So did my father. That childhood delusion would shape and eventually poison the rest of my life, Mr. Piambo.”

  “So you agree with me?” I asked.

  “Even God is fallible,” she said. Her laughter was prolonged and piercing, and that dim shadow I had been trying to capture on paper now moved wildly, changing shape, calling into question whether there had ever been anything there to draw at all.

  THE SIBYL

  IMAGINE,” SHE said, “a friendless child with a mother who does not love her or her father and a father who spends his time reading the will of God in the formations of snowflakes. How could I possibly have been anything else but a believer? I needed power and importance, and I desperately wanted to be noticed for more than my ability to spray the specimens as my father held them up on toothpicks. He was my hero, and I wanted to be, like him, a conduit of the divine message.”

  “So you fantasized the voice of the Twins,” I said.

  “Not consciously, Mr. Piambo, but yes, I swear to you, I could hear them. Loneliness can make magicians of us, not to mention prophets.”

  “What of the shooting star, though?” I asked. “What of the corpse of the man from the supply team? You actually did know where he was.”

  “Undoubtedly coincidence. The picture was in the book that had fallen open, but my father had many books with pictures of the heavens. I know from my extensive travels in Europe that there is an entire theory of the psyche being conceived of in Austria now which makes the case that there are no accidents. We are supposedly sentient on many levels, and those desires we do not choose to be aware of manifest themselves through what we think of as mishaps. The other two instances of my seeing the shooting star, when I closed the door and when my mother struck me, might have been more wishful thinking than anything else. As to the corpse, there were very few places on the mountain trail where it would have been as easy to wander from the beaten track in a storm. The path into that meadow forked off the main trail and then died at our picnic spot. Maybe somehow I unconsciously surmised that that was the most likely place for the poor man to have lost his way.”

  “But you continued with this notion of the Twins as the years progressed?” I asked.

  “I became ‘the Sibyl,”’ she said, “and eventually it twisted my heart.”

  “The Sibyl?”

  Upon voicing my question, the door opened and Watkin announced that my time was up. I remembered that it was Friday, so I wished Mrs. Charbuque a pleasant weekend and took my leave. As Watkin led me to the front door, I said to him, “You have the most uncanny sense of bad timing.”

  “Thank you, sir. It is my specialty,” he said as I passed him and stepped outside.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” I said, and he slammed shut the door.

  I was thoroughly exhausted from not having slept at all the previous night. The macabre image of that woman on the street, losing her life through her eyes, had done something to me. It was as if, after witnessing that horror, I had to take in through my eyes all that she was losing through hers, and therefore dared not close them.

  As it was, I barely made it to the Sixth Avenue streetcar for the trip downtown. Once aboard and seated, I stared out the window at the multiplicity of faces and figures on the street. People came and went, well dressed and ragged, beautiful and homely, no two alike, all existing together as atoms of the monster known as New York, and yet each unique, each alone with his own, her own, secret self and past, isolated within on distant mountaintops. God may have been fallible, but was there ever a painter who worked with a more varied palette, a writer who struck an irony more perfect than the two-headed racehorse of life and death, a musician who could weave the threads of so many diverse tunes into such an all-encompassing symphony?

  God was also a raucous vaudevillian, and I was obviously his foil at the moment. The joke had to do with eyes—Watkin’s, the bleeding woman’s, my own unable to see Mrs. Charbuque, her confabulatory supernatural sight. Were I to read an account of something similar, even in a novel by a writer of arabesques, I could not help but scoff and close the cover.

  The ultimate punch line was that my eyes finally closed somewhere in that morass of contemplation, and I pa
ssed my stop by two blocks. I woke suddenly when we halted at Twenty-third Street, and I leaped off just before the car began to move again. My notebook, as light as it was in actuality, seemed as heavy as a rock as I staggered back to my house, half dreaming, thinking only of taking to my bed. Consider my utter disappointment when I saw a visitor sitting on my steps. I tell you, I nearly wept.

  As I drew closer, the person waiting stood, having noticed my approach. From his height and wiry frame, the drooping handle-bar mustache and wave of raven-black hair, I knew it was John Sills, the police detective who had saved me from a beating the previous night. During his off-hours he dressed rather informally—an old army jacket and the flat lid of a day laborer.

  “Johnny,” I said, “thank you for intervening on my behalf last night. I have a definite aversion to being clubbed.”

  I knew him to be a very affable fellow, and now he proved it by breaking into a wide smile and laughing. “Merely fulfilling my duty as a public servant,” he said.

  “I suppose you are here to explain what the hell was going on with that wretched woman last night,” I said.

  “No, Piambo, I’m here to remind you that, for the time being, that incident never happened.”

  “Come now, John,” I said. “You can easily buy my silence with an explanation.”

  He looked over his shoulder and up and down the length of the block. Then he moved closer to me and whispered, “You’ve got to swear that you will tell no one. I’ll lose my job if you do.”

  “You have my word,” I said.

  “That woman is the third we’ve found like that. The coroner thinks she was suffering from some kind of exotic disease brought in on one of the ships from Arabia or the Caribbean, perhaps China. Listen, I’m just a cop, so don’t ask for anything scientific, but I understand that the fellows at the Department of Health have discovered a kind of parasite; something they’ve never come across before. It eats the soft tissue of the eye and leaves the wound unable to heal. It happens very rapidly. At first the victim weeps blood, and then the eyes are gone, becoming two spigots that cannot be turned off.”