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Eloquent assassin? Erudite murderer? Cultured killer?
Inquiring minds want to know…
BALAFER DE VIE
by
Lida Broadhurst
As in a dream, slippers alighting on the wood like twin butterflies,
did she appear dancing around false graves, mounded in grass shredded from
ribbons. Again, burdened with gauzy
moth like wings, she drifted over waves of blue paper. Then did I sink into
ecstasy with a thousand other earthbound creatures, thighs despairing of
finding comfort from tapestried seats, like one vast animal yearning to ravish
its prey.
Her name, created as was common from harsh syllables,
escapes me, as her body escaped me. Stupid, stupid, I should have known her for
that eternal desire, half glimpsed beyond our grasping fingers. And I, unlike her other admirers, a febrile
hive yearning for its queen, did not swarm the streets, to glimpse her as she
ate or shopped.
Still even now, although I could offer proof of her
beauty from the discarded crumpled posters I ripped from damp pavement, I do
not wish her, old with bent bones, to shuffle to this room. All I wish is to bestow this gift, a chance
to dance again in memory at least.
Just as in the past, I gave whatever I could offer her
from my treasures. Thus I name them, although no one would raise a ringed hand
or nod at auction to grasp them... For,
despite my name, coins never spilled from my hands. Hands which perforce-coiled in dirt and dust.
But once, those hands clasped her close. For at some gathering, an angel or perhaps a
demon, bent to whisper, that she, fevered by the pace of dance or life itself,
lay in her room, too weary to speak, even to favored guests. Only her maid was
in attendance. Solitude, solitude, such
as surrounded her so often on the stage, had been decreed by her
physician. I remembered her, curled
beneath a thousand velvet curtains watched by the accustomed devouring eyes.
Except, I gloated, on this occasion, it would be only for mine.
From a friend who postured on other stages, I begged the
loan of a dress suit, something to cover my shabby clothes. The garments he provided fit me ill, but
then darkness cloaked me round and I departed for the cream townhouse, rumored
to be a gift from a deposed monarch.
All about me loomed like petrified monsters, the city’s bulk of stone,
softened by mist and the glow of sidewalk lamps. Almost I could believe the dribble of filth through the gutter
echoed the burbling of the purest river.
And I, I inhabited a landscape of a jeweled and fabled land.
Arriving at my destination, I rapped with my cane at the
gilded door. The maid who flung it open
frowned. I do not resemble in the least
the more notorious members of my family.
“You cannot enter,” she proclaimed.
“Madame is too ill for visitors, not even.”
But my need or greed forced my tongue into long unused
insolence. “My good woman.” I paused
gazing down my thin nose as if her words were a mortal insult. The maid turned pale, and I smiled when her
fingers almost clutched her skirts for a curtsey. My voice rang with the stern
tones of that evil magician. I was a
little ashamed to so frighten her, but the pleading gestures of that weak
prince would not have gained me entrance.
“She will receive me. And I promise
not to mention your discourtesy.”
Thus I set my foot shod in tight patent leather on the
first rung of my ascension. The
staircase up which she led me was carpeted in rose wool, which swallowed our
footsteps. My unwilling Cerebus spoke no word, until at last she stopped before
a much-carved door. “She is
fatigued. Do not stay long.” Then perhaps remembering who I might be, she
said, “Of your love, I ask this. “ More
prosaically she added, “ And the doctor has said this also.” Again the carpeting on the stairs swallowed
the sound of her departure, almost as if she had been transformed to
nothingness.
I pushed the door back bit-by-bit and peered
inside. The scent of unfamiliar fruit
or leaves rose to choke me. A coverlet
twisted with crimson velvet threads caught my eye, and then rising from this
cocoon, was a white neck and fair curls framing that serenity of face. No longer could I stand without. Entranced I
entered and gazed down at her, tangled for once in her own dreams.
I still remember how her skin shone almost as white as
her silken slippers. My fingers clawed, each in turn, as if they drew separate
breaths, and brushed her cheek, gently, gently...
“I don’t know you.
Leave me”. Yes, those lips would
form easily this command were she to awaken.
At the thought of those dark eyes actually linking with my own, a
curious spasm of heat and trembling wracked my body. I gasped and choked, until my breathing slowed. I murmured, and hated the stupidity of my
words. “Adieu, adieu, my darling, my angel, my adored one.” Still, did she lie as one enshrined in
marble, or some other stone, for she was not yet dead.
Even were she to awaken, she would view me as some fool
who paid for a scrap of paper to watch her feet embroider the pirouette across
the famous first act. Truly, this did
not anger me. I had breathed a moment
in this room, seen a glimpse of her true life, one not overlaid with clouds and
lakes and curses.
Already my thoughts urged me toward the door, but like
Orpheus I could not resist one final glance backward. Now I saw a rose, its petals barely shadowed by a film of
decay. I thought who dared to give her
such a banal gift. She who should have
clutched only blossoms from the first Garden, Alas she, must suffer even as I,
the commonality of life.
Thus, even had she ever consented to lie in my arms, we
would only speak the words that slip from all loving lips, like the thousands
of raindrops sliding down windows, slick as damp skin. How much better to cherish this memory of
glory, like a sunset seen once and never again, or like, more tragically, the
chord the pianist stretches for in vain.
But one thing I would possess. Even if she were angry
upon discovering it gone, she would never know the thief. Already I longed for that moment when I
could, safe in my lodging shred the petals and lose myself in the lingering
fragrance of both her and the flower.
But as I grasped the crimson blossom, oddly a white dust
seemed to drift upon it from my fingers.
The tips looked dulled as if rubbed in chalk. Horrified at what filth I
might have stroked upon that skin, I knelt beside her couch. Still heedless of how rapidly my time alone
with her might be vanishing; I brushed my fingers more firmly once again down
that ivory swath.
Oh how to
relate, that now appeared a pinkness, no a redness, as if I were an artist
imposing one image on another. Down her
cheeks my fingers pressed, sweeping across her brows, even into the curves and
crevice of her nose. I even rubbed my
fingers against her neck. Oh angels
weep, as her skin reddened, and my hands turned white and her pale flesh
vanished as if indeed some monstrous dragon’s tongue licked its fill.
Powder, powder, fool, all pretense and powder. I knelt and wept and the dampness only hastened
the work of my fingers. But still she
slept, and no one came, and now I caught the bitter scent. This was not the sleep bestowed by the ivory
gate of Morpheus, but the despairing slumber granted by other kinds of powder.
Now, as if I were in truth her lover, I peeled back the
quilt and saw the body, almost skeletal.
Gone were the gentle curves like a small violin. Padding in the dress,
idiot, my mind screamed and see the feet, those birds fluttering to enchant us,
Their muscles were taut as harp strings, with veins blue as lakes in sunshine.
But the toes
were bruised with purple coloration and twisted as if trolls had carved
them. To me, they resembled misshapen
mice you would send a cat to kill. But
no cat purred nearby, like the first fatal whisper of the drums.
I lifted her shoulders and she lolled, misshapen doll,
head to one side. As I raised her chin,
her hair streamed across the pillow, then collapsed into a pale pile of
straw. Her head shone brightly like the
moon and as bare. Sweet saints, this
homunculus—for she resembled no woman—had been set out like rotten cheese to
trap me. Let the others keep their
illusions; I only wanted this thing, undeserving of any place in my world, to
be gone.
As if striking
out words with a pen, I slid my knife across her throat. I rejoiced to see blood flow crimson. “I wish you would awaken, my monster, so you
could see at last some semblance of reality,”
For an instant I watched the blood drip down and down, a
red scarf covering her skin and then soaking into the coverlet. I did not touch her after that one cut and
I threw my knife across the room. Let
my two treasures be lost to me forever.
I opened the door slowly and as slowly descended the
stairs. Again the stout maid appeared
and I nodded my thanks and tossed her a coin.
“Madame sleeps,” I whispered.
She nodded and turned away.
But I dared not linger. Any moment the maid might force her weary legs once more up that
narrow staircase and her screams would split the night like the shrill notes of
a flute.
I ran and ran until my body pulsed as if I had been
dancing lost in the embrace of wings.
Then, shadowed by leaves, I ripped off coat and shirt, leaving my torso
covered only by a dark coarse tunic.
The trousers I had borrowed would pass for workman’s garments. At least in the dark. I tousled my hair into a bird’s nest and
smeared dirt on my face and hands. I
walked, teetering from side to side.
Everyone would smile at me now, recognizing a laborer
solaced by drink. They might call a
greeting. I would grin and wave my
arms. Suddenly a policeman grasped my
shoulder. My mind hummed the melody of chords that vibrate doom. Thankfully, he said only, “A bitter night and you would be more
comfortable at your own fireside.”
Stupid, stupid batarde.
For I can never again recline anywhere in comfort, especially in the
cold air of the theater swarming with the fumes of the diseased mouths and
bodies, the cheap perfumes. Never see those arms shimmering like pearls above
the legs of glory, and over all the crown of golden hair waiting to be unbound
by love. Soaring across the cheap
wood, above the raucous melodies of the pit itself, she was my dream’s sweet
haven. Lost, all lost, as if an
incompetent hack had written my life.
Except, except, under my eyelids again her white arms flutter, wings that too soon faint into stillness. Now as candles shape weird patterns on the wall of my room, narrow as a coffin, ah then do I sink into ecstasy as she, swan creature, sinks slowly, slowly in widening circles to death.