Fata Morgana (16 page)

“You’re from the Prefecture? Count Cherubini will speak with you. Please follow me.” Picard trailed the butler down the towering hallway. Upon the ceiling painted nymphs sported with goat-legged men bearing grapes. The Count was standing at the entranceway to the main ballroom, dressed as a rooster; he nodded his comb to Picard as the butler whispered that it was another of the Prefect’s men.

“May I point out certain objects I’d like you to watch closely, Inspector?” The brightly feathered cock directed his beak toward Mademoiselle Tardivel, dressed as Juno, a brilliant necklace sparkling above her celebrated bosom. “Half a million francs,” said the rooster softly.

Picard swept his eyes further along, to where the great cock winked: Mademoiselle Bourque as Aphrodite, jewels sewn in strategic places on her transparent costume. “Three hundred thousand francs,” sighed the rooster. “Many of them mine. Well, then, enjoy yourself, Inspector. None but I know your identity.”

The grand ballroom was lined with mirrors; the costumed figures seemed reflected down an endless hallway. Picard stared into its depths, finding himself among the other masqueraders, his mask of night repeated to infinity.

“Mademoiselle Chessie, as ‘The Nymph’ of Ingres, a living portrait.”

He turned toward the door, where the butler’s announcement had ushered in a completely naked young woman. The excited rooster was walking beside her, his comb quivering from side to side.

Picard made his way through horns, feathers, ribbons, swords, past a man bound from head to feet with butcher’s twine. At the buffet table were two popes, eyeing each other’s cassocks contemptuously. Picard took a plate of food and turned back toward the center of the room.

“Miss Carter, of America, as the Southern Belle.”

The butler at the doorway stepped aside, admitting a young lady, who entered the room in a hammock carried by two half-naked Negroes.

The room sparkled with jewelry and the mirrors echoed the glittering arms and throats and gesturing fingers. Picard sought out his colleagues, found Inspector Turcotte, who like himself wore a simple black mask.

“Salud”
said Turcotte, raising a champagne glass.

“Who else of us is here?”

“Lescadre is circulating upstairs at the moment,” said Turcotte with a smile. “Circulating?”

“Checking doors and windows. The maids are showing him around.”

“We might not see him for a while.”

“And when we do, his knees will be trembling.” Turcotte placed his glass on the tray of the passing waiter, and took two more, handing one to Picard. “To the Count.”

“To the Count.” They clicked their glasses toward the dazzling rooster, who was attempting to climb into the hammock with Miss Carter.

“A wonderful man,” said Turcotte. “You know his fortune is gone. This house is all that’s left of it.”

“If that were all that were left of my fortune...”

“But he started with millions. Lost it all on horses and whores. I understand he pimps for the Emperor now.” Turcotte turned with his wine glass, lifting it toward a large portrait of Louis Napoleon that commanded the high central wall over the door. The Emperor looked out of the canvas with unblinking eye, staring over the sea of masqueraders, his gaze going deep into the realm of the mirrors, where he too was repeated, again and again, in an endless succession of Napoleons.

“Ernest Duval—’A Humble Priest.’“

The lean young confidence man entered the room, his monk’s robe trailing on the floor. Music had begun, played by three men clad in brief togas, their heads wreathed in leaves, their fingers moving over double-reed pipes and a lyre. The Humble Priest, the star women, the goddesses, the birds of paradise, the rooster himself—all began to dance.

“Drink!” crowed the rooster to his guests. “Drink to drunkenness!”

Picard parted from Turcotte, went along the precipitous depths of the mirror, where gods and goddesses moved in their infinite dance. Again he saw himself in the enchanted glass, suddenly felt the secret of the labyrinth and sought to break through the mirror’s soul, but it retreated, becoming more subtle and more dangerous, its feathers and its winking jewels calling him still deeper.

He turned from the dizzying embrace and exited from the ballroom, toward the kitchen. The servants were coming and going through the doorway, bearing trays laden with food and drink. The chef and his assistants were clad in white, working steadily, but lightheartedly, having obviously sampled much of the wine.

Picard approached one of the staff, a young man dreaming idly by a large coffee urn. “I’m from the Prefecture,” said Picard. “Does this area give access to the courtyard?”

The young coffee brewer led him through the gesticulating ranks of the chefs, to an outer hall, and a locked door. “Are you expecting trouble?”

“One never knows,” said Picard. “There’s a lot of ice floating in the ballroom.”

“The Great Whores,” said the young man, opening the door. “I wonder if they’re any better than the rest.”

“Save your money and find out.” Picard stepped into the rear courtyard.

It was long and narrow, and he went through it slowly, in the shadows. The windows were all high, and locked. He sat on a stone bench and watched for an hour, alone. No one came or went in the garden, except for the cats of St. Honoré, who prowled quietly along the walls and fences.

Bare trees whispered in the garden, creaking coldly, gently, and he watched for another hour, pacing slowly along the winding lanes of the yard. The arbor was dry, rattled in the wind; the busts of the Cherubini family stood in the garden, listening to the squandering of the ancestral fortune. Picard went along the side of the house, and entered the front courtyard once again.

The carriage men were standing together, talking, laughing, and the horses waited patiently, covered by rough blankets. He crossed the cobblestones, going toward the main door. The butlers, both slightly drunk, were flirting with the cloakroom maids and took no notice of him as he entered. He walked to the ballroom, found Turcotte and Lescadre, who were also beginning to sway in their tracks.

“They’re giving it away,” said Lescadre. “Upstairs in a solid-gold bathtub.” He drained his champagne glass and reached for another. “The Great Whores are giving it away free tonight.”

“Except for La Païva,” said Turcotte, pointing with his glass. Picard saw a voluptuous creature, dressed as a strawberry ice, her body covered with jewels.

“You know the saying,” continued Turcotte. “Nothing for free from La Païva. But she’ll fuck a miner for a nugget.”

Picard stared at the millionairess, who was dancing with a lizard.

“The lizard is a woman,” said Lescadre. “I encountered her in the bath.”

The lithe green lizard was held in the jeweled arms of the Queen of Whores, and they spun gracefully to the music. Picard followed them with his eyes as they danced past Duval, the Humble Priest, who was speaking to a toad. He had produced a business portfolio from within his robe, and the toad was peering into the workings of Eldorado Investments.

“Give me sixteen cups of wine!” crowed the rooster from the center of the room. “For I love drunkenness!”

The passing waiter stopped beside the inspectors. “Gentlemen, some refreshment?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Turcotte, taking more champagne, and serving Picard and Lescadre. He turned toward the full-length portrait of the Empress which commanded the other side of the room, high over the south-central door.

“To the Empress.”

“To Eugénie.”

“Cheers.”

Picard stared at the portrait of the beautiful Spaniard, whose long red hair flowed down over her milk-white bosom. Turcotte laid his hand on Picard’s shoulder. “Save your dreaming, she’s a cold fish.”

Lescadre reached for another glass of champagne. “I find that hard to believe.”

Turcotte turned toward Louis’s portrait. “The Emperor also found it hard to believe. He was expecting Spanish blood and got an icicle in his bed.”

“She should try the Count’s golden bathtub,” said Lescadre. “Warm waters to relax her. Skilled hands to... what is it, Picard, what do you see?”

“If you gentlemen will excuse me...”

“Certainly. Enjoy yourself, Picard. Turcotte and I will protect the realm.”

Picard moved through the dancers, drawn to a linen-clad, moon-masked girl. She might be ugly as a turkey; such are the chances one takes at costume balls, where certain half-blessed, half-cursed women take advantage of the night of masks.

He followed the linen-clad body, as she danced by with an ancient Roman statesman in a long toga. His paunch is worse than mine; and he’s lost his hair. When the music ends...

He waited close by, following their dance. It’s the linen, the way her hips move within it, impossible to resist them. Therefore, noble senator...

The music ceased. He stepped forward. “May I bring you some refreshment?”

The moon-mask turned toward him, the silver lips smiling.

The Roman senator arched his eyebrow, his bald head reflecting the light of the chandelier. “Am I to understand the next dance is taken?”

“You understand correctly,” said Picard, taking the girl’s hand and leading her among the fairy-tale couples who were again moving to the weird Pan-like music of the leaf-crowned musicians.

He tried to keep his bootheels off her sandaled feet. She met his body with her breasts, her thighs, her instep. He drew her closer against him, lowering his hand to her hip, resting it there, feeling its movement as she circled with him, the other dancers pressing them still closer together. Their movements had almost ceased, their bodies locked below the waist, she undulating against him, and he burning against her thigh. The mirror was just behind her; he stared over her shoulder, enjoying the shape of her backside, and letting himself reel out into the mirror’s depths, now that he had a partner on the dazzling vertiginous glide toward infinity. They turned inside the glass, a thousand Picards, a thousand moon-maids, with thousands more beyond them, ever diminishing Picard and his soft moon-partner in the cavern of mirrors, the vertigo increasing until he could stand the mirror’s madness no longer, its dazzling avenues somehow threatening, reminding him too much of Lazare and crystal balls, of an evil thousand-eyed sorcery that makes a man see depths which are not there, see avenues of light that are mere reflection, see people who don’t exist.

He turned the moon-girl slowly, to the music, caught a glimpse of Louis’s portrait, then the Empress’s, reflected in the depths, and they too have been caught in Lazare’s glass. He has the big fish in his bowl now, Picard. Can you doubt for a moment that he means to rub you out, now that he stands to gain so much, and you have threatened his game?

“Have you forgotten me?” asked the moon-girl softly, through her mask.

“The mirror—” He opened his hand toward it. “I followed you into it.”

“Beware of mirrors, then,” she said. “They make you forget what’s real.” She moved her thighs, so that her own warmest part came against his, its soft contours making a suggestion he took at once, dancing her toward the staircase.

* * *

There was but one piece of furniture in the tiny upstairs pleasure grotto—a soft velvet couch on which she lay. “Don’t be so gentle,” said the moon-maid, as he fumbled with her shoulder strap.

The walls of the room were papered in muted reds, and the couch was framed by two large crystal bowls in which small candles floated, illuminating her white mask, her clinging gown. Picard knelt beside her, his fingers finally succeeding with the strap. The cloth fell away from her breast. He bent his head and kissed the nipple, tasting oil of lilies on his tongue.

The moon-girl breathed heavily, her eyes closing within the dark craters of her mask. He unbuttoned the other linen band, rolling his face in the cleavage of her breasts as she pulled her thin dress down and slipped it off her ankles. He reached for her mask, lifting it from her face.

“Why do you draw back?” she asked, her eyes shining with the same unnatural brightness as her husband’s. “You should enjoy yourself while you can.” Madame Lazare smiled, unbuttoning the top button of his jacket. “Because tomorrow you die.”

He stood, chilled, even as her magnificent body filled him with lust. To ride those thighs, to plunge into her curling black hair, to ravish her, to roll with her in insane abandon—he was pounding with desire for one devastating tumble with the angel of Paris—but some instinct of self-preservation held him back, for the look in her gleaming eyes was inhuman, the look of a devouring angel whom it would be death to love, who would carry him still deeper into the already powerful net of his enemy. And he touched her anyway, wanting to lose himself, risk the greater depths, go mad with her on the couch—and again he drew back, sensing an entanglement of arms and legs and glittering eyes from which he could never extricate himself. He stepped away, with the nightmarish sensation that he was already completely entangled, that there was no way to escape her. But that’s every woman’s game, Picard, wake up, you idiot, and get out of here before she puts a knife to your throat.

“You should kiss the amulet of renewal,” she said, raising her hips toward him.