The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque Page 8

  “Excrement?” I asked.

  Shenz nodded, and we both howled with laughter.

  “I thought that was the devil’s end,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes.

  “You should read more of the Transcendentalists,” said Shenz, shaking his head. “The Oversoul is everywhere. Besides, we’re not going for a seminar. All we need do is find out if he ever saw your patron in the time he was with Ossiak. Even if she was only a child, he might be able to clue us to her hair color and some distinguishing features.”

  “Good God, man,” I said, and lit a cigarette. We rode the rest of the journey without speaking but occasionally bursting into fits of laughter.

  As we pulled off the road onto the grounds of the asylum, I caught sight of the main building, an impressive structure of brick and stone, partially hidden by old maples and oaks. As we drew closer, other buildings scattered here and there about the property came into view. It was a lovely setting, unindicative of the mental anguish and dysfunction it sheltered—much like many individuals one meets in the course of a day.

  Shenz gave the driver the fare for our journey and asked him to wait for us. We were only allowed an hour’s interview with Borne. My companion had set up the meeting by way of telephone, telling the attendant that we were old neighbors of Mr. Borne’s curious to see how he was getting on. We were met on the steps of the main building by a Mr. Calander, the fellow with whom Shenz had spoken earlier. He seemed affable enough, suspiciously cheerful, with a penchant for rapid speech.

  “Things are somewhat in turmoil,” Calander told us. “We are moving to a new location next year out in White Plains, and my people are doing an inventory just now. Since your friend Borne is not in the main building and is quite a docile patient, it should be no problem for you to see him for a brief time.”

  “Wonderful,” said Shenz. “And which structure does Francis reside in?”

  “Come, I’ll show you,” said Calander.

  As we walked across the grounds, the verbose attendant regaled us with the recent history of the asylum. He explained that although its location had been perfect when it was first built, as it was far removed from the rest of the city, now that the developers were encroaching, relocation was called for, since no one wanted to live in close proximity to the insane.

  “It’s too late,” Shenz said in response.

  Calander stopped speaking briefly and gave my friend a quizzical look before proceeding at breakneck speed. “Also, the land here with its beautiful view of the Hudson is choice real estate. I don’t think it would be saying too much to suggest that there are numerous powerful entities who would like to own the rights to it,” he said. “We admit nearly four hundred and fifty new patients a year. A veritable heaven compared to Wards Island, though.” There was more, and the man spoke so frantically fast, eventually just mouthing facts and figures interspersed with a quote or two from Hamlet, that I began to suspect him of being a patient himself.

  We passed a chapel topped by a stone bell tower, then crossed more lawn to a large house the attendant told us was named Macy Villa. “Here are housed those whose problems are not so pronounced but who suffer from certain fractured or illusory views of the world,” said Calander. We entered, and I saw that the place was peaceful and well kept. We ascended a set of steps to the second floor and then walked down a long hallway. As we went, Calander lightly touched each closed door, naming the residents of the apartments: “Mr. Scheffler, Mr. Cody, Mr. Varone…” Finally he landed upon the door of Mr. Borne.

  “A moment, gentlemen,” he said, and entered the room. A few minutes later Calander came out and told us, “Francis has been expecting you.”

  I glanced at Shenz, who had told me Borne had no idea we were coming. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged as if to say, “Well, the man is a prognosticator.”

  As we entered, Calander told us, “Only an hour, please, gentlemen,” and then he left. In the middle of a neatly ordered one-room apartment, light spilling in through two high barred windows with plants on the sills, there sat a very old man, fully dressed in a tuxedo whose style had gone out of fashion two decades earlier. He wore rather large spectacles with thick lenses that magnified the size of his eyes. His body was painfully thin, like a cornstalk in a suit of clothes, and his face appeared to be made of loose, well-broken wallet leather. Upon seeing us, he bowed his head and smiled in our direction. “I was wondering when you two would arrive,” he said.

  “You knew we were coming, then,” said Shenz.

  “I saw it,” he said.

  We moved close to him and sat down, myself on the divan and my companion on a bench that had obviously been drawn near to Borne for that very reason.

  “Where did you see it?” asked Shenz.

  “Two days ago, in the results of Monday’s lamb stew.”

  I winced, but Shenz kept a straight face. “Sounds like quite a repast,” he said.

  “I can’t imagine a more prophetic product,” said Borne, “unless the thing were to grow lips and speak to me.”

  “The Man from the Equator sends his greetings,” said Shenz.

  “Ah, Goren,” said Borne. “How is he?”

  “Getting on in years, but a wonderful advertisement for his merchandise,” said Shenz. “Still stirring his cauldron for the ailing.”

  “A knowledgeable man,” said Borne.

  I introduced myself, as did Shenz, and the old man lifted a skeletal hand and gave a meager handshake to each of us.

  “We were wondering if you could tell us something about your time working for Malcolm Ossiak,” I said.

  “Those were the days,” Borne said, and looked past us as if caught up in a memory of long ago. That memory must have been something, for he sat staring for whole minutes before finally speaking. “I had my own laboratory and over a hundred specimens at a time from which to discern the course of future events. Row upon row of glass jars, representing the movers and shakers of the time. I had a cobralike piece of President Lincoln in my possession that was a veritable Rosetta stone of political portent. As long as Ossiak’s money was behind me I had credibility, but the minute he met with financial ruin I was labeled insane, and someone sent the Department of Health after me. People fear the truth of the chamber pot. They have no idea how old and venerable a tradition divination through evacuants is…”

  A SOLILOQUY IN BROWN

  BORNE WENT on for a good half hour relating every kernel of the history of that odious science he was so obsessed with. From prehistoric coprolites to the Dalai Lama’s powdered good-luck droppings, he spoke sometimes like a Harvard professor, sometimes like a revivalist preacher, laying bare his excremental vision. When finally I feared we would run out of time with him, I rudely interrupted in the middle of a disquisition on Swift’s volume The Human Ordure, saying, “Do you remember, when you were with Ossiak, a man who made predictions based on the formations of snowflakes?”

  My question was like a wrench thrown into the gears of a talking machine; his verbal diligence grinding to a definitive halt. He retreated again to his silent reverie, staring at the wall.

  “Snowflakes,” said Shenz as a means of pulling him back to the present.

  “Ossiak called us two his bookends: heaven and earth,” said Borne. “He gave us more credence than the others. We both, at one and the same time, predicted his financial ruin. Grasp the profundity of this, if you will, gentlemen. In one of Ossiak’s own golden movements, I discovered two specimens of precisely the same weight and size, both shaped like goose eggs, exact twins in every feature and giving off the aroma of wild violets. This should be an impossibility, but there it was, right under my nose. And Londell, the yin to my yang, reader of the excrement of the skies, found something equally devastating, though I was never informed as to the details of what that was.”

  “Londell?” asked Shenz.

  “Benjamin Londell,” said Borne. “A very fine fellow. Some of those whom Ossiak employed in this capacity were charlatans, bu
t I can tell you Londell was serious. He worked very conscientiously and subjected his family to great hardship in order to see the future.”

  “What hardship would that be?” I asked.

  “They had to traipse up a mountain every year and stay in the most ungodly surroundings for six months or so to get the precise crystals he was after. At least in my discipline specimens were always readily at hand.”

  “He had children?” asked Shenz.

  “A daughter,” said Borne. “That, I believe, was all.”

  “Do you remember the girl?” I asked.

  “A sweet child,” he said.

  “What did she look like?” asked Shenz.

  The patient shook his head. “It’s difficult to remember, for soon after I began paying any attention to her at all she went incognito.”

  “She disappeared?” I asked.

  “No,” said Borne, “she had a sort of act she performed when they would come to the city to confer with Ossiak. She hid behind a screen and made predictions or something along those lines. Once she took to the screen, I don’t believe I ever saw her again. This was only a few years before Ossiak’s empire fell apart. As a matter of fact, the year she became the Sibyl was the same year both her father and I made our startling discoveries. By then, although we sensed only the first inklings of it, things had already begun to crumble.”

  “The Sibyl,” I said, hoping for more information.

  To this, Borne simply nodded and said, “Yes, that was what she was called.”

  “Her hair color?” asked Shenz.

  “Either chestnut or blond, perhaps strawberry,” said the old man. He slowly lifted his hand to play with one of the buttons on his threadbare jacket. “It’s all locked away now in the warehouse.”

  Borne looked sad, as if dredging up the past was a painful task. Sympathizing with him, I said, “It only remains in your memory, eh?”

  He turned and peered at me through those thick glasses. “No,” he said, “the warehouse. Ossiak, before committing suicide, began gathering what little of his wealth was left and bought warehouses in which to store the stuff. He didn’t want his creditors getting everything. At that point he had gone somewhat insane himself and dreamed of eventually rising from the ashes to rebuild his empire. All my instruments, specimens, notes, what have you, were confiscated and locked away. Londell, the poor man, had a stroke and died when they took his precious snowflake equipment and research from him. Those were grim days.”

  “I suppose these things have since been dispersed,” said Shenz.

  “No,” said Borne. “They are still there. I know where they are. I followed the men who took them. I know exactly where they are.”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Do you know the chemists on Fulton, the ones with the big building? The Fairchild Brothers, I believe. Fulton and Gold? I can’t imagine they’ve gone out of business. Around the corner, heading east toward the water, there sits an old one-story warehouse made of brick. On the front is an O painted in white. It must be quite faded by now. All of it is there; the detritus of the entire saga.”

  Calander, exhibiting a more irritating punctuality than even Watkin, appeared at that precise moment. I had a hundred more questions for Mr. Borne, but it wasn’t to be. The old man shook our hands again, and we were ushered out of his room. Before the door was closed, Borne shouted to us, “Remember, gentlemen, to move forward you must first look behind.”

  “Borne doesn’t seem like such a bad sort,” I told Shenz on the ride back downtown. Night had begun to blossom by then, and the temperature was dropping.

  “Reed lives a more illusory existence than that poor fellow,” said Shenz. “At least Borne understands what he is made of, but his predilection for the mysteries of shit is altogether repugnant to society at large. Can you imagine his neighbors’ horror when they realized he was collecting it? We live in an age in which everyone pretends to be an angel. Think of all the painters who have taken that winged theme as their subject.”

  “On the other hand,” I said, “he wasn’t simply analyzing it with an eye toward diagnosing one’s health; he was predicting the future with it. That seems somewhat deranged. Not a bad old man at all, though.”

  “Useful too,” said Shenz.

  “He at least corroborated much of Mrs. Charbuque’s story and gave us her maiden name, Londell,” I said.

  “A name we can trace,” said Shenz.

  “It also reminds me that at some point I must get around to asking her about her husband. Who, then, is Mr. Charbuque?”

  “Of course,” said Shenz, “but one thing we need to give some time to is that warehouse Borne told us about. The one on Fulton with the O painted on it. We need to get in there and have a look around.”

  “It doesn’t seem as if anyone would have the key at this point, though. Didn’t it sound as if Ossiak stocked the place and then died? I’ll wager no one knows who owns it, and they just assume someone does. There it sits, like an ancient tomb, guarding its treasures.”

  “I thought I was the Romantic,” said Shenz. “I have an acquaintance who can get us in there.”

  “The Man from the Equator?” I asked, smiling.

  “No, a man from West Thirty-second Street.”

  “One of the Kitchen’s dignitaries?” I asked.

  “An artisan in his own right,” said Shenz. “This man knows locks the way Borne knows what he had for dinner last week. He has crafted a ring of skeleton keys that is legendary in the underworld, on a par with the Holy Grail, and wields a hat pin with more finesse than Vermeer did a brush.”

  “Why should he help us?” I asked.

  Shenz laughed. He took out his cigarette case and drew forth one of his opiate specials. After lighting it, he blew a stream of smoke out the window and said, “Cash.”

  “You propose we break into that warehouse?”

  “Think of what we might find there, Piambo,” he said. “Besides, I’m curious to see Malcolm Ossiak’s golden eggs, not to mention that nugget of Abraham Lincoln’s. Now that’s historic.”

  “I had better call Bloomingdale’s asylum and reserve you a room. I’m not about to break into a warehouse. Come now, you’re more adamant about this commission of mine than I am. Get a hold on yourself.”

  He sat back in his seat, as if my words had wounded him. Turning his gaze out the window, he watched the passing lights of Broadway. When his cigarette was three quarters finished, he tossed the rest into the street and closed his eyes. In minutes, he was asleep. As I sat studying his features in the intermittent light from the boulevard, I felt remorse for having rebuked him.

  Shenz was somewhat older than I, his age in the middle ground between those of Sabott and myself. It was becoming increasingly obvious to me that the opium was beginning to erode his health. His skin tone had become more sallow in recent months, and he had lost a good deal of weight. When he was younger he had been quite muscular and had always exuded a great sense of energy. His exuberance now, though, had a frantic edge to it, more like the nervous excess resulting from the consumption of too much coffee. Also, his work had begun to decline in its precision and freshness, and the commissions he now drew were less than choice—the Hatstells’ children were a good example.

  I wondered if I was looking at a portrait of myself in another few years. I also wondered if perhaps Shenz, when looking at me, was seeing a portrait of himself a few years younger when he still had an opportunity to marshal his powers and, as my father had entreated me, “create something beautiful.” It came to me that perhaps that was the reason for his resolute insistence that I succeed in my bid to portray Mrs. Charbuque precisely.

  When the cab stopped at Shenz’s address, I woke him. He came to with a start and then smiled, his eyelids opening to mere slits. “I had a dream, Piambo,” he said.

  “Was it of that model of Hunt’s again, the girl sitting on that wag’s lap in The Awakening Conscience?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, and slo
wly shook his head. “I was trapped in a glass jar, and Borne was peering in at me. I tapped the glass with my walking stick, desiring to be let out. He paid no attention, though. I saw he was at work making a label. On it he wrote in large black letters LUNCH.”

  I saw my friend to his door. Before he passed over the threshold, I said to him, “Listen, Shenz, I do truly appreciate your help. I’ll consider going to the warehouse. But first let me see what else I can learn from Mrs. Charbuque.”

  He fixed me with a look of grave weariness. “I never told you this,” he said, “but before Sabott died, I had a conversation with him one day when he turned up at the Player’s Club. No one would acknowledge his presence, and they were watching him closely, prepared to eject him if he should get out of hand, but I went over and sat with him out of due respect. Luckily he was having a rare lucid moment. He bought me a drink and spoke brilliantly about the painting by Waterhouse of the Sirens depicted as birds of prey with women’s heads, surrounding Ulysses, who is bound to the mast of his ship. Before he left, he mentioned you, and said to me, ‘Shenz, keep an eye on that boy for me. I haven’t had the chance to tell him everything.’ Then he left. Two weeks later he was dead.”

  SUNDAY MORNING

  I WOKE VERY early Sunday morning to a suffused gray light and the patter of a driving rain against the window. Although it was cold out beyond the blankets and the counterpane, Samantha lay next to me, enveloping me in her warmth. There, on our intimate island of calm, I felt temporarily safe from the concerns that presently plagued me. Swarming just beyond the confines of the bed, I knew, was that flock of female images waiting to descend and peck at my consciousness, tear apart my reason. I thought I would remain where I was, lashed to the mast, so to speak, for a little while longer.

  I turned away from the world and watched Samantha breathe, wondering what dreams she moved through behind the screen of sleep. Her long dark hair swept over and around the pillow, wild in its configurations. There were curious minute angles at the corners of her closed lips—either a smile or a sign of consternation. Her eyelids fluttered slightly, and I could read her pulse by concentrating on her neck. Evident now also were the creases around her eyes and mouth, betraying her age. The blankets lay at a slant across her body exposing her right breast, and seeing her at that moment made me think what a perfect subject she would be for a portrait. I had to wonder whether in all the portraits I had done of her, most when we were younger, I had ever really captured her essence, or if what I had painted was, expanding upon Sabott’s dictum, only something of myself.