A Lady in Shadows Read online

  “Difficult?” I asked, as if I could not imagine what he meant. “What should I find difficult?”

  “To cut into the living flesh.”

  “Of course not,” I lied, and reminded myself that I had after all taken part in operations on living people, even if they had most often been anesthetized. With a flowing and precise movement, I stuck the scalpel through the animal’s mantle and cut it open. This is not much different from gutting fish, I told myself.

  “You noticed, of course, the mantle’s change of color,” said Althauser. “How do you think it occurs, and what is its function?”

  I could feel small drops of sweat trickle forth along my hairline, and I had to make an effort to steady the faint trembling of my hands.

  “It could be connected to the animal’s blood circulation,” I said, at about the same moment that I discovered that the blood that colored the scalpel and my hands was not red but greenish. “I should think it functions as a signal in relation to the fellow members of its species. Villeneuve, we will need to take samples of that blood.”

  “Blood?” said Villeneuve. “Where?”

  Apparently he did not have the ability to imagine that a liquid that was not red could be blood. Perhaps he thought it was ink, just of another color.

  “Everywhere,” I said. “It is green.”

  At last he understood and filled a couple of small test tubes. Together we spread the mantle and pinned it to the board so the squid looked more or less like a living version of the poster Althauser had shown us earlier that morning.

  More or less, because these were no thin diagram-like lines on a white background. Everything glistened, undulated, trembled, contracted. The entrails were exposed now, the heart pumped, the flesh quivered. No matter how much I tried, I could not see the animal as anything but a living, suffering creature. I felt a faint crisp ringing in my ears and grabbed with one hand, discreetly, I thought, at the edge of the table. But Althauser had seen it.

  “Are you feeling unwell, Mademoiselle Karno?”

  “No,” I said curtly. To faint like the weak female creature he no doubt thought I was . . . not if I could help it!

  “Do you know Claude Bernard, mademoiselle?” asked Althauser.

  “Of course,” I said. Bernard was France’s leading physiologist. One could not be interested in the subject and not have heard of him.

  “Then perhaps you will recognize these words: ‘The physiologist is no ordinary man. He is a learned man, a man possessed and absorbed by a scientific idea. He does not hear the animals’ cries of pain. He is blind to the blood that flows. He sees nothing but his idea, and organisms which conceal from him the secrets he is resolved to discover.’ ”

  One could tell that it was far from the first time he had quoted Bernard’s words to a student—they had an almost liturgical ring. I nodded and tried to concentrate on what I wanted to know. Circulation. We were supposed to study the circulation. I focused on the heart and carefully removed the membranes that surrounded it. Why was the creature’s blood green? The difference was unlikely to be in the mechanical form and function of the heart.

  Behind me there was a loud crash and a sequence of softer bumps. Villeneuve had fainted, bringing a couple of steel trays down with him as he fell.

  I went directly to the laboratory when I got home. With me I had my drawings of the organs of the squid and a series of corresponding test notes, some vials of its various body fluids—including the ink—and last but by no means least, three test tubes full of the peculiar green blood. The assignment Althauser had eventually given us was precisely that—to determine why the blood had this color, and what function it might serve.

  I knew that human blood was red because of the oxygen bound by the iron molecules in the red blood cells. To examine whether the amount of iron in the cephalopod’s blood differed from that of humans and other red-blooded creatures seemed an obvious place to start, and I quickly determined that this was the case. But if oxygen wasn’t bound and transported by iron, what, then, did a squid do instead?

  It used copper, it transpired—multiple experiments and several hours later. For some reason, the squid found it practical to use copper rather than iron as a transporter of oxygen. And whereas iron became red—rust-red, to be specific—copper, when it oxidized, turned green. Verdigris, in fact, like the spires and copper-plated roofs of Varbourg’s churches. So simple. So beautiful.

  My new knowledge rested inside me like a pearl in an oyster. It had been won through suffering and discomfort—the suffering and death of the squid, my continued discomfort—but it was mine now, and I could not help but take pleasure in it.

  The experiment of the day involved a woman who, according to the case notes, was twenty-four years old and registered as a fille isolée. She was physically a fine specimen, 163 centimeters tall, weighing 62 kilograms, without any visible defects. Her diet had been good, there were no signs of either head lice or scabies, and she had an appealing head shape, domed and regular, with a high forehead. A lucky find, in other words.

  But they had not washed her.

  His nose registered the fact immediately—not so much because she had an unpleasant body odor, even though there was a certain amount of nervous sweat, but because he instantly caught the absence of the scent of soap.

  He tried to control himself, though it was difficult.

  “She has not been washed according to the protocol,” he stated.

  “But . . . she is not dirty,” said one of the policemen who accompanied her. He was new, and apparently the others had not warned him. A young whelp, probably no more than nineteen or twenty, still with signs of adolescent acne on his cheeks, and his attempt to combine mustache and sideburns had not been entirely successful—the sideburns frizzled and curled as luxuriously as his auburn hair, but his mustache was a pathetic affair that led one to think of the whiskers of a smaller mammal of the rodent variety, a mouse perhaps, or, at most, a rat.

  “Monsieur. Are you, or are you not, familiar with the instructions?”

  The young constable still had not grasped the gravity of the situation.

  “Yes, but . . . the baths were occupied, and—”

  “If you cannot follow a simple protocol such as this, we will have to transfer you to other work. Take her back to the custody cells.”

  “But . . .”

  “Did you not hear what I said?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Afterward, you may go to the duty officer to receive instructions on your future employment.”

  The enormity of his blunder finally sank in.

  “I’m sorry,” the youth stammered. “It will not happen again. I’m sorry, I did not know . . . Can’t you do it anyway? Or . . . can I bring her back later?”

  She was so suitable that he had to consider it. If he did not maintain the frequency, he would have to remove her entirely from this series, and he hated to do that. It was not easy to find suitable specimens with the material at his disposal. Perhaps he could still . . .

  A wave of nausea welled up from his stomach into his throat, and released a swallowing reflex he could not control. He had to remind himself how important this was, how much was at stake.

  “Spray the table with carbolic acid,” he said. Perhaps that comforting antibacterial odor would help him.

  He regarded the woman, first out of the corner of his eye, then more directly. She stood with her head bowed and her arms gathered protectively across her chest. According to the files, it was the eighth time she had been here, so she knew the procedure. There was neither protest nor true resignation in her, just a silent and passive resistance that he had seen in so many of them by now. It was preferable, at least, to the ones who yelled and screamed.

  “Lie down,” he said. “It will only take a moment.” The latter was said as much to calm his own anxieties as to soothe hers.

  The constable had to lead her to the examination table. She did not resist, not directly, but every
movement had to be initiated by others.

  He breathed deeply. It was a mistake, because once again his nose told him with unwanted clarity what was missing.

  She was lying on the table now, strapped down according to the regulations. At least the constable had mastered that part of the protocol. The whelp also readily—a bit too readily—pulled up the woman’s skirts. She would have been made to remove her undergarments in advance, and there was therefore now an unobstructed view of the area he needed to examine.

  He tried not to take in too many details. The blue veins that were visible under the skin on the inside of her thighs, the frizzy hair that suddenly reminded him of the constable’s ill-conceived facial hair, the folds and cavities of her sex.

  Had he been able to delegate this task to others, he would have. But he despised most of the people he was forced to work with. So few of them—if any at all—understood the overwhelming necessity of what they were doing. How many did not succumb to base thoughts and unhealthy fascination? He had noticed, for example, a marked change in the young constable’s breathing.

  No, it was no good.

  Unable to speak, he turned abruptly and left the room. He did not know how long they waited for him in there before they realized that he would not return, and he did not care. On his way out of the building, he made good his threat to fire the moronic young constable. One really could not hope to achieve anything in science surrounded by people so lacking in discipline and protocol.

  It was just as well, he thought, that Mademoiselle Karno—in addition to her other estimable qualities—possessed an excellent understanding of the importance of personal hygiene. He even thought he had caught, on several occasions, the scent of lavender soap.

  September 17, 1894

  My studies continued to be a source of both knowledge and discomfort. Professor Künzli had been correct when he warned me that Althauser was not a patient teacher—he relentlessly pushed us, and especially me, to perform new experiments, new assignments, new tests. Most of them involved vivisection, and I grew accustomed to fighting back nausea and tremors every time I stepped into the dissecting room. Althauser watched me as an owl watches a mouse: “Do you feel unwell, mademoiselle? Do say if you wish to break off the experiment.” My answer was always no, even though there were times when everything in me screamed yes—yes, I want to stop. Yes, this suffering has to end. I often wondered what kind of human being Claude Bernard must have been, that he had been able to stop seeing the animal’s pain. I could not. Was I betrayed by my femininity? This was clearly Althauser’s belief, and I fought not to prove him right. Once in a while I wished in my weakness that I could return to the anonymity of the first days, back when he had not yet wanted to look at me. Now I felt myself just as observed, and at times just as dissected, as the poor creatures we slit open and studied.

  I preferred theory—here there was no nausea, no shaky hands. I eagerly devoured all the knowledge Althauser gave me, and he was excellent. His insight was deep and without compromise, his intellect as sharp as a well-polished, sterile instrument. It was intoxicating to speak on an equal footing with the other students, to be challenged in the same way. During the questions hailed down on us—“On what do you base that assumption?” “Can you support that claim?” “Facts, mademoiselle, what are the facts?”—I discovered that I could not only hold my own in the thrust and parry of that duel, but also manage an offensive strike to win a point now and again. It was intoxicating, and this joy was the reward awaiting me when I had made it through yet another vivisection without fainting or fleeing.

  This battle between knowledge and nausea occupied me to such an extent that at times it threatened to exclude everything else. There were days when I felt distracted and forgetful in the work I still carried out for my father, days where I did not think once of my relationship with August. I had not entirely forgotten my promise to Fleur, but to my shame I have to confess that more than three weeks passed before I followed the only clue I had: the photograph itself.

  “You must have a very low opinion of me,” said Gilbert, slowly swirling the absinthe around in his glass, as if he were aerating the finest of cognacs. His deliberations on other sources of intoxication had apparently not yet borne fruit. “But I suppose that is understandable.”

  “So you did not take these pictures?”

  “No.” He looked up at me with an odd, calculating look. “May I ask how they came into your possession? Did Marot send you?”

  “No. Why on earth would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems as if . . . is that not the unfortunate woman from the coal merchant’s yard?”

  I nodded and could see why he thought it must be a police matter, however unlikely it was that Marot would choose me as a go-between. Perhaps I was more sensitive than usual, but it seemed to me that melancholy hung so heavily in that room that it was difficult to think anything but dismal thoughts. The potted palm looked, if possible, even sadder than last time. The windows facing the yard were so grimy that the light took on a fuzzy character, and Aristide Gilbert’s clothes looked as if he had slept in them.

  “Do you ever take photographs like that?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know of anyone who does?”

  He emptied his glass in a single gulp.

  “What could you possibly want in that world?” he asked. “Some of us are doomed to live in this darkness, in the land of shadows. But you . . . You who are young—engaged to be married, I hear—why don’t you stay in the light where you belong?”

  In the light. It was an enchanting thought. But I too was, in my own way, a creature of the shadows, raised as I was in a home where the dead were just as important as the living.

  “Please just answer me if you can,” I said. “As you will recall, you owe me a favor.”

  He sighed deeply and audibly. “As you wish. I cannot be completely sure, but . . . I think Gaston LaCour took them. The poodle belongs to his wife.”

  “Thank you!” I said, surprised at making such progress so soon. Perhaps it would be possible for me to keep my promise to Fleur after all. “Do you know where he lives?”

  It was growing dark when I reached Palais Blanc. It was quite windy, and for the first time one felt that fall was on its way, perhaps not today or tomorrow, but soon. I got off the omnibus at the main entrance to the estate, but Gilbert had instructed me to follow the wall around to the left until I reached a row of former workers’ cottages on tiny plots, all built as quarters for the farmhands and gardeners when the estate had still been run as a farm. Sure enough—the name LACOUR had been painted in a neat black script on a board nailed to the white picket fence. There was a deep sweet scent of ripe grapes in the air, and a smallish dog—a poodle, perhaps?—barked sharply and hysterically inside the gardener’s cottage. According to Gilbert, Gaston LaCour both lived and worked here, though he certainly did not support himself by gardening, and it did indeed look as if there was a light on behind the shutters.

  The garden gate shrieked hair-raisingly when I opened it, and the poodle barked even more shrilly. The gravel path leading up to the front door was damp. It seemed someone had just watered the low lavender hedges that bordered it.

  Although I was convinced that the inhabitants of the house must have noticed me the moment I walked up the garden path, it took quite a while for the door to be opened. To my surprise, a woman greeted me. Her hair was combed tightly back from a center parting into old-fashioned bunches of sausage curls on either side of her head, and she was dressed in a pearl-gray crinoline dress that had probably been the latest fashion when it was purchased. Unfortunately, that was more than forty years ago. Still, the woman was not as old as her hairstyle and couture suggested. In her late thirties, I thought, with a face that was more tired than actually wrinkled. The poodle, a thin little lapdog trimmed like a living topiary, sat in the crook of her arm and continued its monotonous yapping. It looked like the dog in the picture. />
  “Yes?” she snapped through the poodle racket.

  “Madame LaCour?”

  She nodded grimly.

  “I would like to speak with your husband,” I said. “My name is—”

  But apparently she did not care about such details.

  “Downstairs,” she said. “Be so kind as to use the back door when you leave.” Then she turned and yelled down the stairs: “Gaston! There’s another one!”

  The photographer himself sat hunched over some contact prints with a magnifying glass, and he did not look up when I came down the stairs. There was a strong camphor-like odor in the room, vaguely reminiscent of a pharmacy, but I knew that it was the celluloid. That same smell hung in the air at Gilbert’s when it was not overpowered by that of absinthe.

  “You may undress behind the screen,” said LaCour, still without looking up. “There is a robe you may use between sessions.”

  I cleared my throat in acute embarrassment. “Oh . . . no. I . . . That is not why I . . .”

  He looked up. His gaze swept across me, probably taking note of certain signals in my dress and posture. Then he shook his head.

  “If that is not why, mademoiselle, may I ask what on earth you are doing here?”

  I laid out the postcard photographs on the table, like a kind of bizarre solitaire.

  “Monsieur, you are the one who took these pictures, correct?”

  It was better to pretend that I knew rather than guessed, I had decided. And the poodle did provide convincing evidence.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “That is not important. I have no interest in what you do here except in this one matter: Who is the man in the mask?”