Chapter 7
As a boy at the age of seven, a faire of gypsies came to Milcotte. The usual attractions diverted the eye and emptied the purse; from performing animals and two penny games to outlandish characters including an impossibly obese man and a bearded tavern wench. For children there were candied nuts and sugar plums and a curious, geared contraption called a carousel. One stepped onto a platform shaped like an enormous wheel turned on its side. Affixed to it were small, stationary horses, diminutive chariots and wagons. For sixpence one took his seat of choice and rode round and round as large clockworks contained in the center turned—by what witchery my infant brain could not then fathom—and piping music accompanied the rider.
My parents indulged Roland and my desire to ride it, and while in motion we waved to them with each turn, enacting races on our steeds and shouting. Roland soon tired of this, and in a single turn of the carousel he tied my boot lacings to the pole whereon my white pony was stationed. The ride ended, and laughing children departed—I could not untie the knot, and as our station on the ride stopped opposite from where my parents stood I could not signal to them for help. I cried for my mother, but she did not come. The ride soon began again, and when it came 'round to the point where my parents had stood waiting for us, they and my brother were gone. I searched for them in the crowd, all while trying to no avail to untie the knot in my lacings.
One half hour later my mother finally returned and rushed to me—I was sick and crying, my suit jacket messed and my wits distraught. Having untied my boot from the pole, my mother gathered me into her arms and held me, crying as I cried, for she had been very worried. Apparently Roland had told her and my father that I'd been a naughty child and run off in the opposite direction. My father laughed as though it were a joke, and chided me for my unmanly tears, but my mother comforted me gently and intimated how worried she had been. My father laughed, but my mother loved.
That was my last memory of my mother before she died, and I recalled it now, in the present. Following Celine, a decade of searching became my unending carousel, and my depraved and spiraling soul the knotted boot lacings that entrapped me in this farcical ride. Something in me, the little boy who'd been ill-used by brother and father, cried from within for my mother, but no one rescued me.
Convinced that I was free and ought to marry; I was equally convinced that I ought to wait and try the steed, as it were, before purchase. A subsequent horrendous marital relationship being the bane of my existence I would do anything but fall into that trap again. Did not one consider the house to let and its situation before making an offer? Justifying that the taking of a mistress was in every way different from true sensual promiscuity, I looked on the problem with the eyes of a scholar and conducted my experiments with detachment, even when in bed with the subject. I recorded my findings point for point with a list I had created, certain "musts" in the bride of my choosing. It took only two women to cause me to see my folly: Giacinta and Clara. One had wide-set eyes, while the other had not an ounce of wit. One too tall, one too stout. But such faults might be overlooked had not the one crucial defect glared as bright as the sun at midday.
They, and I, were not pure.
Pardon the seeming paradox, I mean those words. The women's very inability to overcome temptation was their downfall. From the first thrills of pleasure I knew that the relationships were due to fail. I knew of my own sinfulness, and needed a woman of stronger moral conviction than I had. Even in the throws of sensuality while calling to the heavens in my spending, disappointment crept in. Because neither woman could say no to me or to temptation, they were not worthy of me. The hypocrisy of my situation I did not then consider, for I was the experimenter, the great scientist who hypothesized with objectivity; the constant in the equation. I believed then that, had I encountered a woman of great moral conviction, my own study over I would return to an angelic state as white as snow. I did not then know how depraved I had become.
Giacinta and Clara alike did not stumble, but flung themselves headlong into sin's abyss, and I relinquished each to the proverbial bin like so many rats of Bedlam's laboratories. I would not whore through the towns or take a different woman each night, though my youthful vigor might have been equal to such a task. I would not leave s string of lovers and bastards in my wake. Something held me back; perhaps the hope to find HER, my goddess. Once found, I would detest confessing my sins in such a way, and such fear kept me relatively celibate from the female form, save the two mentioned above.
One concession to debauchery I made, in the study of the female form and nervous system. I wished to be a faithful, attentive, and generous husband once I found her. Such books I read and houses of ill repute I visited as I traveled the continent in that decade of dissipation. All in the name of scientific searching. Though I did no further deed with womankind, the deeds of my mind were dark indeed—though I convinced myself that I was readying for my eventual wife. I would not be mocked again for my ignorance as I had been by Bertha. Never again.
It was in the early winter of my 38th year that, finally sated and sickened with my search. I longed for peace, and perhaps redemption. No such wife of perfection was I to find, and even if such a one existed-what kind of husband would I make, wretched and profligate as I had become? In a haze of opiates and an illustrated translation of the Sanskrit instruction in Kama I had had enough. I removed the hookah piece from my mouth, discarded the book, washed, dressed, and methodically packed my things for home.
Tragedy, ill fortune and sin had tainted my life before the age of 40. As such I sank into pensive reflection and melancholy that uncannily resembled that of soldiers returning from battle, or from a stint in India. I'd seen no friend killed nor had I done the killing of an innocent myself, save my own purity. I'd begun to see the world other pawns in this game, easily sacrificed for some greater good, and lost too soon. I did not turn to drink as many men do, but that admission is not to prompt praise: such was simply not my temptation. I enjoyed spirits to warm the blood or enjoy an evening, but beyond that I partook seldom, and so it was no great means of sin.
My vice came as accident, and yet it seemed to sooth and e'en redeem me in some measure. I was snipping the tip of a cigar and noticed that the rounded blade of the diminutive guillotine had dulled somewhat. Taking a small, diamond sharpener and carefully honing the edges, my finger slipped and sliced neatly. "Damnation!" came my utterance, though not from pain, only shock. Withdrawing the digit from the cutter and sucking at the blood I sensed multiple things in that salty taste. Shock had eventually given way to slight pain; a pain which thrilled me and quickened my heart, at once soothing my guilt and bordering on arousal. It lasted only a moment, but so heady was the sensation that I nearly jumped from my chair to conduct a subsequent experiment. I bound the cut finger with a bit of cloth and sought my boot knife. Removing my cufflinks and rolling my sleeves up to the elbows I examined my forearms. Each powerfully muscled and strong, the black hair as soft as down, I considered a location. An ephemeral thought regarding the veins in my wrist I discarded immediately. Were I to take my life I had already decided that a bullet would do the job, not this foolish assassin's or women's way of letting the blood.
Turning my arm over and examining the skin on the back I decided to pass the knife quickly over it, not too deeply, but enough to feel the sting and see red. It was simple and fast, I was amazed at how easily the flesh gave way. Pain once more gave way to thrill and something more, like penance and absolution in that thin line of blood.
I looked down and realized a knock at the door that could only be the carriage which would convey me to the ship crossing the channel; the last leg of my journey homeward. From the English port only a day's ride was wanting and I would be home for the first time in a year.
I bound my arm and smiled and shamed at the thought of something so juvenile giving me release from guilt and shame as cutting my own flesh. I sensed a greater despair settling in, and knew I would have to fight against it, but perhaps for now it was simply the relief I needed. Once home there were sure to be other demons with which to wrestle.