CH 15
One of the secretaries for the Opera Populaire met me in the lobby and stated that the meeting, unfortunately, had to be postponed as there was another emergency at hand.
"Then I walked here for nothing," I said under my breath, aggravated that I had walked halfway across the city, emergency or not. Quite frankly, the theater seemed to be experiencing one disaster after another.
The young woman blushed. "Monsieur Firmin asked to reschedule next week, at your convenience," she said.
I looked from her to one of the posters advertising an upcoming show. "Since I'm here, how does one place an ad in the programs?"
She stared at me briefly. "How large of an ad?"
"What are my choices?"
She went through the different options ranging from an eighth of a page to an entire layout.
"Is there anything still available for Juan?" I asked.
"The new production? Don Juan Triumphant?"
"Yes, by the composer…."
I furrowed my brow, realizing there was no name associated with the production. All of the posters and banners said the name of the opera, but not the composer.
"Who has written the opera?" I asked.
Her face went white. "I'm afraid I can't speak of it," she quickly said as she shuffled through several papers on her desk. "But we do have an opening for advertisements if you'd like to purchase space in the program. I have an eighth of a page or full."
"Full," I said.
"The amount is due by tomorrow."
"Shall I bring my checkbook?" I asked.
"Certainly. I'll have you fill out the form. Take a seat."
I followed her to her desk behind the ticket counter and looked over the form, noting before I began jotting down any information at all that the full page ad was fifteen thousand francs.
"Is this price for the year?" I asked.
The woman shook her head. "For the duration of this opera."
"I see."
"The eighth of a page is four thousand," she offered.
Finding my brother was priceless, but spending fifteen thousand on a single ad was impractical, especially if it didn't run for a year. I checked the box for the smaller of the two and handed back the form.
She looked at the paper, then at me. "My apologies, but this doesn't appear to be an advertisement for a business."
"It's not," I answered. "I'm looking for a missing person."
She pursed her lips. "I see."
"Is there a problem?"
"Unfortunately can't approve this without the managers present."
Quite frankly I didn't see what it mattered. There was nothing that seemed inappropriate or lewd about my ad–unlike the banners in front of the theater with a woman's hand clutching a wine stem with her lips to the rim.
"If I pay you half today, will you run it?" I asked.
"It's not a matter of money…"
Everything was a matter of money, I wanted to tell her. After living half of my life destitute, existing with the means to support myself comfortably had made one hell of a difference.
"Please understand, Monsieur Kimmer, we've never run anything like this," she said.
"Good," I said as I stood. "Then perhaps people will actually read it."
"I will speak to Monsieur Andre as soon as he returns."
"Why don't you just ask the ghost? After all, he's the one running the theater, isn't he?"
Her eyes widened, color draining from her complexion.
"To hell with your damned theater, your ridiculous phantom, and his disaster of an opera," I snarled before I walked out of the office and slammed the door behind me.
I returned home and ripped the month of March out of my calendar, realizing that my attempt at not thinking of my brother for two weeks was impossible.
OoO
Thursday evening came around. I waited at Cortez for a full half hour before I assumed Hugo had forgotten our plans for supper.
It wasn't unlike Hugo to be absent-minded. My first day of class with what would have been his second year students, they had been amazed when I was twenty minutes early to the studio with the door unlocked, windows open for fresh air, and their first day assignment already prepared. They were accustomed to their professor arriving fifteen minutes late–or not at all when he overslept.
But for all of his less than desirable qualities, I was fond of Hugo. He had been stern yet fair when he disagreed with me over art and life.
When I was much more quarrelsome in my late teens and early twenties, he would sit back and listen until my agitation passed. It wasn't until I was nearly thirty that I realized he intentionally kept me talking to prevent me storming off in search of a fight.
If you want to make something of yourself, do it.
I thought of the words he had said to me at our lone meeting before I was banned from the Salon de Vive critique group. I thought of how much I had hated him in that moment before I walked out, how much I thought that he hated me.
Several weeks in a row I walked past the salon and peered into the windows. The first week I had loathed all of them, but Hugo in particular. The next week I was overcome with deep sorrow for being forced out from the only night of the week I looked forward to leaving my apartment. By the third week, I wanted to walk in once the meeting came to an end and beg Hugo to allow me back in.
Six long months later and many nights walking past the salon, I worked up the courage to approach him. It felt as though I asked for a pardon when I'd been issued a death sentence.
"I want to make something of myself," I had told him.
"Good," he had replied. "I will see you next Thursday."
I stood dumbfounded as he walked away, scarcely able to believe that Hugo had taken me back without question, without forcing me to beg and grovel.
He had not raised his voice and he had not struck me. He had simply forgiven me, an idea that was foreign to me. The relief I had felt garnering his acceptance meant more to me than I doubted he ever realized.
oOo
Once I finally asked for the check, the waiter gave me a forlorn look as if I'd been stood up by a woman. I compensated the restaurant for my glass of wine and decided to walk to Hugo's home and give him a piece of my mind. The old fool certainly needed to hear how disappointed I was in him forgetting our appointment for supper.
Hugo lived in a house that was much bigger than I would have expected for an art professor. As far as I knew, he had never married and had no children. His parents were both long dead and had split their meager fortune between their two children. I assumed the house had belonged to his parents and that his sister wasn't interested in living there, thus giving it to her brother.
Hugo hosted parties frequently, inviting dozens of younger women who accepted his offer for what I imagined was an attempt to find a wealthy husband. From what Hugo had told me, his guests drank far too much, gorged themselves on food, and stayed up until dawn.
It was enough to dissuade me from attending, especially since I was usually asleep before the festivities started.
I jogged up the stairs and knocked twice on the door before his maid, Dorthea, greeted me. Her complexion was ashen, her full face somewhat drawn. Rather than speak, she shook her head.
"Hugo has taken ill," she whispered.
"I beg your pardon?"
"He had a wound," Dorthea said. She ran her hand over her hair. "Never told a soul."
"Since when?" I asked.
"It burst open yesterday afternoon."
My heart stuttered. "Is…is he accepting visitors?" I asked.
She started to shake her head, but I insisted that she allow me in to see him. With a sigh, she finally nodded and I followed her into the butter yellow hallway, up the stairs paneled in rich mahogany, and toward the first bedroom.
"I must warn you, Monsieur, it's…not good," Dorthea whispered. "He turned rather quickly last night. The poison is in his blood."
"What does that mean?" I asked. "Amputation?"
Dorthea merely looked away.
When I peered into the bedroom, I realized there was no need for words. The smell was putrid, so much so that I fought the urge to gag. It was the distinct odor of infection, and as I stood in the doorway, I saw Hugo laid out in his bed, his left foot propped up and wrapped in stiff, blackened bandages.
"Hugo," I whispered.
He didn't respond to my voice. I walked sideways past the stack of boxes and towers of unwashed clothes and painting supplies that crowded the bedroom and made my way to his bedside. In silence I looked him over, filled with both panic and dread at the sight of him.
The smell was definitely coming from his rotting foot and I held my breath, feeling sick to my stomach.
"Hugo, it's me," I said at last, feeling as though I spoke at his coffin laid out in a funeral parlor. I touched my palm to his brow and he snorted, the sound like a gurgling as if he were filled with fluid. His forehead was alarmingly fevered and face swollen.
"Oh," he said once his eyes opened. "Oh, Phelan. Is it time for supper? Forgive me, I must have forgotten."
I swallowed back the growing lump in my throat. Days earlier Hugo had walked to the park where he fell asleep on the bench. I hadn't bothered to notice his foot and wondered if I had taken more interest in his ailments if it would have been treated rather than festering.
"You left me waiting for thirty minutes," I replied.
"How rude of me."
"Indeed. You know how I dislike tardiness."
"Yes, yes, I do recall. My apologies. Please, sit if you would like."
My palms felt slick, my heart racing, but I moved a stack of books off the chair and sat beside him. A long moment of silence settled between us like an uncomfortable wedge. All of the words racing through my head felt forced and unnecessary and the words I knew I should have said felt far too intimate to say to another man.
"Are you working on anything?" I asked.
Hugo had closed his eyes. His complexion was bloodless, his lips tinged blue and breaths shallow.
"No," he answered at last. "I haven't completed anything in years."
"You were painting at the park two weeks ago," I pointed out.
He made a sound of agreement. "Moving the brush back and forth." He forced a breath past his lips, then rattled it back out. "I've lost my inspiration, Phelan. I start, but…but I don't have it in me to continue."
My heart became exceedingly heavy. "Sometimes we need to force ourselves," I said, my voice barely over a whisper. "For our own sake as well as others."
Hugo made no reply and I wasn't certain if he had fallen asleep again. I studied him, noting the way his legs twitched and his lungs continued to gurgle.
"Do you want another pillow?" I offered.
His eyes slit open and he took a sharp, deep breath. I took the pillow beside him and put it behind his head, alarmed that he would drown in front of me in his own saliva. "How are you, Phelan?" he asked.
I was shocked, I wanted to tell him. Shocked and angry and devastated by his condition. But I knew if I spoke in that moment, it would be nothing more than a sob and he deserved more from me, more than I could possibly offer.
"Are you still with me?" he asked without looking at me. His hand reached out and I offered mine.
"Of course I'm still with you," I answered, surprised that the words came out at all.
"What did you want to tell me?"
I took a deep breath, blinking back the emotion that had flooded me. Everything I wished to tell him felt inconsequential.
"Well…I sold two paintings," I answered.
He smiled, his hand squeezing mine. "Wonderful. What else do you have to tell me?"
"The gallery owner asked me for more," I continued.
His eyes opened wider and he looked directly at me through a haze of illness and infection. He was genuinely pleased for me, his smile one of pride. "And did you bring him more?"
"I did. He introduced me to a broker."
Hugo gave the slightest nod of his head. "Two paintings sold, more hanging in a gallery, and a broker? My, my, who is this man who claims he's my friend Phelan Kimmer? Surely an imposter."
I chuckled and sniffed. "Then surely if you are already amazed you will never believe this broker is the manager for Goupil and Cie."
Hugo squeezed my hand harder."You don't say?"
"He's barely cut teeth," I replied. "He looks like he should be starting at the university next fall."
"They seem younger every year, don't they?"
"And more foolish," I added, finding the conversation came easier at last, as though we were seated at the salon or visiting in the park as we had done for years instead of in his cramped bedroom where he was slowly succumbing to an infected wound.
"We shall celebrate next week, my treat, once I get this damned foot healed."
"I told you, Hugo, it was my treat," I firmly said. "I will not argue with you."
"No, no, I will not allow it, Phelan. You will give me the pleasure of celebrating you. And then we will meet at the salon with the others and you can tell them the news."
I nodded. "If you insist."
"Will you promise me something, Phelan?"
"It depends on what you ask."
He grunted. "Tenacious as ever."
"Would you like me to simply agree with you, my friend?"
"It would be nice for once," he said. He licked his cracked lips before he continued. "Find a nice woman," he said. His thumb stroked over my knuckles. "Marry her and have a dozen children."
"A dozen children? On my salary from the university?"
Hugo chuckled. "Half a dozen."
I felt a tear slip down my cheek and I hoped he didn't take notice. "Would you settle for one?"
Hugo turned his head. His eyes were glassy, his stare distant, but he smiled back at me.
"One is a start."
I wiped my eyes with my free hand. "At the risk of disappointing you, he is seventeen and his name is Marco."
"Marco," Hugo fondly said. "You've never mentioned him before to me."
"You're the first person I've told, actually."
"I am honored, Phelan. Tell me, is this boy of yours an artist like his father?"
"He shows interest," I answered. "And his mother would like him to attend the university."
"But?"
"But he has no portfolio. And you know the university–"
"Yes, I certainly do. Tell Cecil I approved Marco."
I gave an appreciative grunt. "Indeed."
"I am being serious, Phelan. Take my stationary, type whatever you wish and tell Cecil I give my endorsement. My stamp is in my study in the top drawer."
"Do you want the dean knocking on your door?"
"He could walk in here right now and I will confirm every word. The bastard doesn't scare me. "
"Nor should he frighten you. You are Hugo Duarte, for God's sake."
"Yes," he agreed. "Yes, I am. Cecil will approve the admission for your son. I know he will."
"I cannot ask it of you."
"I didn't hear you ask me at all," he rasped. "But I am offering it to you and to your son, and I dare say you had better accept. I will be disappointed if you do not."
"I'm afraid I've disappointed you far too many times over the years as it is," I said. My heart grew heavier, aching in a way that was intolerable.
"Why are you speaking like this?" he questioned.
I shook my head, unable to give a voice to all of the reasons I had compiled.
Hugo's strength for conversation waned and his grip loosened. Lips parted, he breathed in short, shallow breaths that still sounded as though he had fluid in his lungs. I said his name several times, but he no longer responded aside from the occasional jerk of his body or twitch of his hands or feet.
"My friend," I whispered. "I have no idea where I would be without you, Hugo. "If I hadn't met you in the park by chance, if you hadn't convinced me to attend one of the salon meetings…
I couldn't help but think someone needed to run a comb through his hair and properly trim his beard. He needed someone to tidy him up, especially if he wished to dine at a place like Cortez.
"I cannot allow you to pay for supper, Hugo. I apologize, but you must give me the pleasure. I insist."
His sleep deepend, his mouth wide open as he struggled for the next breath. I held my own as if somehow me taking in less air would be of assistance. When I looked up, Dorthea stood in the doorway with her hands clasped.
"Next week then," I said to Hugo. "I trust you will not be late again." I stood and Dorthea turned to leave, allowing me one more moment of privacy. With one trembling hand, I pushed his graying hair back from his forehead and gently kissed his fevered brow.
"I have made something of myself, just as you told me to do." I paused, inhaling sharply. "I love you, my friend."
His eyes slit open. I couldn't tell if he recognized me or knew where he was, but he smiled one last time and drifted back to sleep.
oOo
Bjorn Kimmer was the first person I had watched die.
He smelled like sickness, both from being bed-ridden and lying in his own filth and the smell of decay from the inside of his rotting, alcohol-filled organs.
I had spent the train ride to Calais and the carriage ride to Conforeit not only rehearsing what I would say to him, but what I intended to do to him.
The last time I had seen him before he did the world a favor and took his last breath, I'd been sixteen or seventeen.
Fueled by hatred, I had made my way through the woods and the weeds to the home my parents shared on the very edge of a village with a population of less than one hundred people. It had rained for days, the mud slick as oil, and I'd fallen a half-dozen times, ruining my already well-worn travel clothes.
I was filthy and livid, a terrible combination.
It was approaching dusk when the house came into view. There was smoke from the chimney and a light on in what I was fairly certain was the kitchen.
Like a criminal, I crouched behind the bushes and waited, my hand on a large, carved piece of stone. Squinting in the dark, I ran my hand over the four capital letters and felt sick to my stomach: ERIK.
On hands and knees, I forced my eyes wide as I could and searched for a date, realizing that the stone was old and covered in moss. At the bottom the year read eighteen fifty. Erik would have been three.
The year I had killed him, I thought to myself.
Filthy, livid and with a renewed sense of mourning was an even worse combination.
The back door opened and Bjorn emerged, practically falling out of the house. He stumbled down the wooden stairs–the place where he had abandoned Erik when he was only hours old, and I stalked toward him, fueled by an overwhelming sense of rage.
"Where is he?" I demanded.
Bjorn startled at the sound of my voice. He stumbled back, hands splayed against the wooden exterior of the house, and cursed me.
Rage took over all rational thought, and I couldn't recall the exact words in our exchange, but I grabbed Bjorn by the collar and demanded an answer, ramming the back of his head against the house.
It took him a moment to realize who I was, but he still didn't know of whom I inquired. He took a swing at me and I stepped aside, watching him collapse in the mud. While he attempted to recover, I stormed into the house, walked directly to what would have been our old bedroom, and looked around.
Nothing had changed, aside from that children no longer lived there. I knew Erik had left Conforeit at the age of twelve, yet the room looked untouched for much longer.
From the edge of my vision I caught sight of Gyda in her rocking chair. She was gaunt, her hair a tangled mess and face unwashed. Her green eyes were haunted—exactly as I had always remembered her–but she said nothing to me. In hindsight, I was fairly certain she couldn't discern me from whatever demons and visions plagued her and I had no desire to disrupt her life.
She stared at the cellar door and my breath stilled. I stalked toward the cellar, pulled the door open, and peered into the darkness.
"Erik?" I called. "Erik, are you here? It's me. It's Phelan."
I felt a sense of overwhelming desperation. I'd traveled for two days back to Conforteit, exhausting the meager funds it had taken me over six months to earn and steal.
There was no indication that my brother was confined to the cellar, but there was a leather strap at the top of the stairs, hanging from a rusted nail bent at an angle. Bjorn continued to curse me, and with no sign of Erik, I turned, seeing Bjorn in the doorway and the lone headstone far behind him.
I yanked the strap off the nail and stalked toward Bjorn. Mud was splattered on his face and covered his clothes. His features were twisted, his hair a wild, muddy mess, and he muttered a string of curses.
I knew we looked the same in that moment, mirror images of apathy. His was fueled by drink and mine by despair.
"Where is Erik?" I demanded.
He provided no answer that I found suitable, his words slurred as he said he didn't know. With his hands in fists, he came for me, same as he had when I was much younger, when I stood no chance of defending myself. He swung wildly, in precisely the same fashion that had been committed to my memory.
I knocked him to the ground with ease, but in the process nearly lost my balance and wrenched my back. When I had Bjorn beneath me, gawking with his wide-eyed stare and a look of horror, I hoped he saw the malice in my eyes that I had seen in his. I hoped in that split second before I held the strap over his prone form that he looked at me and wished he had restrained himself, that he had lowered his hand and curbed his temper all those years before.
I wanted to hear him plead for my forgiveness in a quivering tone. I wanted to hear him beg me to reconsider, reduced to a blubbering mess.
Why should I? I wanted to ask him in return.
He was afraid, I knew. I could see it in him, the look of fear, and all I could think of was good. Fear me, the way I had once feared you. The way you made my brother fear you as well.
I struck him as hard as I could, purposely whipping him in the face and neck and his outstretched hand when he said nothing at all. I took no pleasure in the sounds he made or the way he pleaded, but I didn't regret it.
I asked him again where my brother was, and he swore Erik had not returned.
Please, he said at last.
My stomach churned.
He was at my mercy, and it was not nearly as satisfying as I had hoped. I could have killed him quite easily. I could have beaten him to death and left him in the rain, but I didn't want him dead. I thought I wanted him to suffer, but when I looked at him again, I wasn't as sure.
I had come for Erik, for my little brother. And he was not in Conforeit. I knew I had simply wasted my time and funds on a fruitless endeavor.
I tossed the strap down and walked away, waiting until I was well into the darkness and deep into the trees before the anger subsided and the emptiness returned. I fell again in the mud, trembling violently from the cold and the encounter. Twice I attempted to vomit, but I hadn't eaten since leaving Paris and my stomach had nothing but acid that burned my throat.
"Please, Erik," I whispered, taking one last look at the house in the distance and the headstone lost to the weeds. "Please help me find you."
oOo
When I returned to the home on the outskirts of Conforeit thirteen years later, I wondered if Bjorn recalled that incident or if he regretted the miserable years of illness that followed and wished I had killed him.
"He has been dying for a long time," the physician told me when I met him at his home in town in the middle of the afternoon on a fall day.
Good, I wanted to say. Serves him right, the bastard.
"Unfortunately," the doctor continued. "He has run out of funds."
"Sell his belongings," I suggested.
"Everything of value has been sold."
I was exhausted from the train and the carriage ride and rubbed my gritty eyes. "You are telling me he owes money?"
"Thirteen thousand francs," the physician said.
I was fairly certain I gasped. "For what?"
"There is a list nailed to the door naming all of his debts."
"Does he owe you?"
"Forty-three francs," the doctor sheepishly requested. "It should be more, but since it is you…"
He eyed me with a frown. I knew what he thought as I thought the same thing when I looked in the mirror.
"You're a good man, Monsieur, a good son."
I felt like neither.
I paid the village doctor what he was owed, crumpled up the note on the door when I arrived, and walked into the home where I had been born, unsure of what to expect.
There was a small mirror in the kitchen, cracked at the edges and speckled with dirt beneath a thin layer of dust. I took a step back, ran my hand over my hair, smoothed my collar, and used my thumb and forefinger to make certain my beard was neat. The travel was arduous, but it didn't mean I needed to look unkempt.
My mother no longer resided within the house, as far as I could tell, and there was no food anywhere to be found. The fireplace was unlit, the entire house completely void of furnishings, aside from the bed where Bjorn lay moaning and a wooden chair with a small table beside it. Clutched in his bony, yellowed hand was a half-empty bottle of whiskey.
My words had been well-rehearsed, but the moment I saw him again, I had no desire to say anything at all.
His bedding was soiled through to the mattress, attracting flies. He looked like a skeleton confined to filth, his cheeks sunken in, his eyes little more than pits, and his beard a scraggly, graying mess of spit and dried sickness.
At last, I had thought. We no longer look alike.
I placed my belongings near the door and roughly sat him upright like an oversized doll.
"You need to stand," I ordered, jostling him about. "Get out of this disgusting bed and change the sheets, you filthy excuse of an–."
I drew back the sheet and saw the sores on his legs and immediately allowed the threadbare fabric to fall back into place. Swallowing, I took a step back and stared out the window, attempting to replace the sight of trees and wildflowers with the grotesque appearance of his open wounds.
It would have been easy to put the pillow over his face and suffocate him. In hindsight I wondered if that would have been merciful, not that he had ever deserved an ounce of mercy from anyone.
But I couldn't bring myself to do it, not without first giving him the opportunity to apologize for what he had done to me and to Erik.
And so I sat at his bedside for four days, painting in between moments of offering him sips of tea and bites of food, which he declined. He finished the rest of his whiskey and clung to the bottle as if he adored the liquor more than anything else in the world.
While my father wordlessly stared at me, I painted the suffering I had felt for as long as I could recall, the mourning and darkness that had taken me hostage as a child and never relented.
I painted a dying man that I despised, but also pitied as I knew, on his deathbed, he would never experience another moment of joy, if he'd ever experienced joy in his life.
"Why?" I asked without looking at him on the fourth day, when I was certain he would be dead by nightfall.
It angered me that he had not offered a word of gratitude for me being at his side or regret for the atrocities that I would forever associate with him.
He owed me an apology, the bastard. He owed me a great deal more, but I wanted to hear that he was deeply sorry for everything he had done. "Why did you…?"
I wasn't sure what I intended to ask as it could have been anything. Why did you burn me, why did you beat me, why did you keep Erik when he went missing, why did you blacken his eyes when he was only three? Why didn't you take me instead of him? I would have taken his place. I would have gone without question. I would not have protested or fought you if you wanted to take out your belligerent on me.
When Bjorn finally took his last breath many long hours later, when his heart stopped beating and his skin took on the color of death, I folded my hands and wept. Not for him, exactly, but for all of the answers he kept from me, for the explanations he denied me, including the whereabouts of my missing brother.
Death was not a relief for those left behind, no matter the circumstances. It was agony for the living.