'No. No, it is merely being reflected. The girl functions as a mirror. You, that waiter, the chiffonnier in the next empty street she turns into: whoever happens to be standing in front of the mirror in the place of that wretched man. You will see the reflection of a ghost.'
'M. Itague, your late readings may have convinced you -'
'I said ghost,' Itague answered softly. 'Its name is not l'Heuremaudit, or l'Heuremaudit is only one of its names. That ghost fills the walls of this cafe and the streets of this district, perhaps every one of the world's arrondissements breathes its substance. Cast in the image of what? Not God. Whatever potent spirit can mesmerize the gift of irreversible flight into a grown man and the gift of self-arousal into the eyes of a young girl, his name is unknown. Or if known, then he is Yahweh and we are all Jews, for no one will ever speak it.' Which was strong talk for M. Itague. He read La Libre Parole, had stood among the crowds to spit at Captain Dreyfus.
The woman stood at their table, not waiting for them to rise, merely standing and looking as if she'd never waited for anything.
'Will you join us,' said Satin eagerly. Itague looked far to the south, at the hanging yellow cloud which hadn't changed its shape.
She owned a dress shop in the rue du Quatre-Septembre. Wore tonight a Poiret-inspired evening dress of crepe Georgette the color of a Negro's head, beaded all over, covered with a cerise tunic which was drawn in under her breasts, Empire style. A harem veil covered the lower part of her face and fastened behind to a tiny hat riotous with the plumage of equatorial birds. Fan with amber stick, ostrich feathers, silk tassel. Sand-colored stockings, clocked exquisitely on the calf. Two brilliant-studded tortoise-shell pins through her hair; silver mesh bag, high-buttoned kid shoes with patent leather at the toe, and French heels.
Who knew her 'soul,' Itague wondered, glancing sideways at the Russian. It was her clothes, her accessories, which determined her, fixed her among the mobs of tourist ladies and putains that filled the street.
'Our prima ballerina has arrived today,' said Itague. He was always nervous around patrons. As bartender he'd seen no need to be diplomatic.
'Melanie l'Heuremaudit,' his patroness smiled. 'When shall I meet her?'
'Any time,' Satin muttered, shifting glasses, keeping his eyes on the table.
'Was there objection from the mother?' she asked.
The mother did not care, the girl herself, he suspected, did not care. The father's flight had affected her in some curious way. Last year she'd been eager to learn, inventive, creative. Satin would have his hands full this year. They would end up screaming at each other. No: the girl wouldn't scream.
The woman sat, lost in watching the night, which enveloped them like a velvet teaser-curtain. Itague, for all his time in Montmartre, had never seen behind it to the bare wall of the night. But had this one? He scrutinized her, looking for some such betrayal. He'd observed the face some dozen times. It had always gone through conventional grimaces, smiles, expressions of what passed for emotion. The German could build another, Itague thought, and no one could tell them apart.
The tango still played: or perhaps a different one, he hadn't been listening. A new dance, and popular. The head and body had to be kept erect, the steps had to be precise, sweeping, graceful. It wasn't like the waltz. In that dance was room for an indiscreet billow of crinolines, a naughty word whispered through mustaches into an ear all ready to blush. But here no words, no deviating: simply the wide spiral, turning about the dancing floor, gradually narrowing, tighter, until there was no motion except for the steps, which led nowhere. A dance for automata.
The curtain hung in total stillness. If Itague could have found its pulleys or linkage, he might make it stir. Might penetrate to the wall of the night's theater. Feeling suddenly alone in the wheeling, mechanical darkness of la Ville-Lumiere, he wanted to cry, Strike! Strike the set of night and let us all see . . .
The woman had been watching him, expressionless, poised like one of her own mannequins. Blank eyes something to hang a Poiret dress on. Porcepic, drunk and singing, approached their table.
The song was in Latin. He'd just composed it for a Black Mass to be held tonight at his home in Les Batignolles. The woman wanted to come. Itague saw this immediately: a film seemed to drop from her eyes. He sat forlorn, feeling as if that most feared enemy of sleep had entered silently on a busy night, the one person whom you must come face to face with someday, who asks you, in the earshot of your oldest customers, to mix a cocktail whose name you have never heard.
They left Satin shuffling empty wine-glasses, looking as if tonight, in some tenantless street, he would murder.
Melanie dreamed. The lay figure hung half off the bed, its arms stretched out, crucified, one stump touching her breast. It was the sort of dream in which, possibly, the eyes are open: or the last vision of the room is so reproduced in memory that all details are perfect, and the dreamer is unclear whether he is asleep or awake. The German stood over the bed watching her. He was Papa, but also a German.
'You must turn over,' he repeated insistently. She was too embarrassed to ask why. Her eyes - which somehow she was able to see, as if she were disembodied and floating above the bed, perhaps somewhere behind the quicksilver of the mirror – her eyes were slanted Oriental: long lashes, spangled on the upper lids with tiny fragments of gold leaf. She glanced sideways at the lay figure. It had grown a head, she thought. The face was turned away. 'To reach between your shoulderblades,' said the German. What does he look for there, she wondered.
'Between my thighs,' she whispered, moving on the bed. The silk there was dotted with the same gold, like sequins. He placed his hand under her shoulder, turned her. The skirt twisted on her thighs: she saw their two inner edges blond and set off by the muskrat skin on the slit of the skirt. The Melanie in the mirror watched sure fingers move to the center of her back, search, find a small key, which he began to wind.
'I got you in time,' he breathed. 'You would have stopped, had I not. . .'
The face of the lay figure had, been turned toward her, all the time. There was no face.
She woke up, not screaming, but moaning as if sexually aroused.
