A Lady in Shadows

  “Beyond my grandmother’s incomparable campaign? Yes. Please.”

  I told him about Althauser and the Pro Patria lecture. I even somehow managed to describe my embarrassing selection as the “foremother of the nation’s future elite.” I tried to present as concisely as possible what I had found in the commission’s archives and what Estelle Audran had said. He listened with interest.

  “Do you think they have developed a new way of treating syphilis?” he asked.

  “No,” I said simply. “Althauser is not even a doctor of medicine. He is not particularly interested in curing diseases.”

  “Then what is your thesis?”

  I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t know if this is completely mad. But . . . I am fairly confident that Althauser, with the support of Pro Patria, is trying to develop techniques that can increase the birthrate.”

  “He did say that himself,” August pointed out. “These new incubators—was that not what they were to be used for? To ensure that more children survive?”

  “Yes, but that is still only a small number. I think they are attacking the problem in more drastic ways, or at least that they are preparing to do so.”

  “How so?”

  “I think Althauser is experimenting with human insemination. Syphilis treatments do not make you pregnant.”

  He was six years old when he realized that his mother was not his mother.

  They had recently moved into the house on Boulevard Saint-Augustine. His father had his practice on the ground floor in the early years, and Adrian was not allowed there. He had his own room in the nursery on the third floor, with Grandmama and Emmeline, who took care of him. He usually came down to the salons on the second floor for only a few hours in the afternoon if Mama was well enough and did not have visitors, and for a half hour in the evening before bedtime.

  He loved Mama and Papa, of course, but he worshipped Emmeline. She was the one who dressed him in the morning, gave him his breakfast, accompanied him to his lessons at Maître Robert—he was not yet “mature” enough to go to the Benedictine brothers, said Mama—played with him in the park, bathed him before dinner; she was the one who said his evening prayers with him and put him to bed. Mama’s health was delicate, and so was his, he was told. He was not quite sure what it meant, except that he was not allowed to play with the other boys in the park because they were “too wild,” and that it also, in some way, meant that Maître Robert was a more suitable teacher than the brothers. That, and the monthly examinations with Papa.

  They always took place in the evening, in the surgery, once all the patients had gone home. Papa’s patients were mostly ladies. And that was a bit odd, really, since Papa’s specialty was “pulmonary and respiratory complaints,” and Adrian knew that was about breathing, and didn’t men do that too? Rarely in Papa’s surgery, it would seem.

  First, Emmeline gave him his bath. That was his favorite thing in the world, because when she was bathing him, she took off her black blouse before tying her apron back on over her chemise so that you could see her soft white arms and the top of her round breasts. They were so fine, her breasts. Much better than Mama’s. Or he imagined so. He had never seen Mama’s. Perhaps she did not have any. In any case, it was Emmeline who had nursed him when he was a baby, she had told him that herself. “You lay right here,” she said, taking him into her arms and rocking him playfully, “when you were a tiny little bébé.” She always made sure the water was exactly the right temperature—steaming hot but not scalding. Sometimes, when she was in an especially good mood, they splashed each other, and she ended up getting almost as wet as he did. He loved her scent, the heat of the water, the sensation of being safe and clean and loved, because he was completely sure that Emmeline loved him. She said it herself, at least eight times a day. But when he was going down to Papa, she was serious, and then there was no splashing. He was dressed in his nightshirt, but no underwear or stockings. When he was younger, Emmeline had carried him downstairs; now he was old enough to put on his green felt slippers and go downstairs on his own.

  Papa would be waiting below. Two lamps were lit, the one by the desk and the one above the examination couch.

  “Good evening, my boy,” Papa always said. “Let us see how you are doing.”

  Then he had to take off his shirt and lie down on the clean, soap-scented sheet on the couch. With his thumb and index finger, Papa opened wide first Adrian’s left eye and then the right. He looked in his ears. Adrian had to open his mouth so that Papa could depress his tongue and look into his throat. Papa felt his neck and tapped his chest, squeezed his stomach, lifted up his little pee-pee and examined it, listened to his lungs both in front and in the back, and when it was all over, Adrian was given a caramel.

  Adrian liked the examinations. There was something solemn and important about them, and they proved that Papa too cared for him and was concerned about his well-being. And afterward they would go upstairs to Mama, who was waiting in the salon.

  “Well?” she said, and looked at Papa with an anxious gaze.

  “He is a big, fine, healthy boy,” Papa would say, and then Mama was happy.

  But then one day. One evening. A few weeks before he turned seven. Emmeline had said he should wait, but he was a big boy now, he did not have to wait for her to give him permission. He could do it himself. So he crept down the servants’ stairs to the surgery. The door was ajar, and Papa was in there, but he was not alone. The angry voices reached Adrian as he was making his way down the last steps and made him stop at the door.

  “Here,” Papa snarled in a tone of voice Adrian had never heard him use before, “you may have some mercury tablets. But this is the last time, is that clear? You’ll have to go to the pharmacy like other people. I cannot help you anymore.”

  Papa stood behind his desk, and on the other side of it sat a woman Adrian did not know. She was wearing a very fancy shiny red dress, with a black cape on top, and her dark hair was piled under a black hat with a veil and black ostrich feathers. Her clothes were much fancier than Mama’s and the ladies who visited her, thought Adrian. And you could see her breasts, or quite a lot of them, anyway.

  “You don’t care,” said the lady. “I’m rotting up, and you don’t care.”

  “What do you want me to do? If you want more money, then—”

  “Money! You think everything can be bought. Do you know what you are? You’re a bigger whore than I am!”

  “Suzette! That’s enough!”

  There was something odd about the way the lady was speaking, Adrian noted. The words were thick and strange, as if she was drooling and bubbling like the snotty-nosed little bébés in perambulators that Emmeline insisted on admiring in the park.

  At this point, Adrian was still more curious than afraid, so he took a step forward in order to see better.

  Papa had his back turned, but the lady noticed him at once. She rose and came over to him.

  “There we have him,” she said. “What a fine boy he is!”

  Adrian smiled uncertainly.

  His father turned abruptly. “Adrian. Go upstairs. Now!”

  But the lady had already reached him. She grabbed him around the waist with her gloved hands—the scarlet gloves were really quite dirty, Adrian noticed—and pulled him up into her arms. He caught a glimpse of her breasts quite close up—they were not nearly as nice as Emmeline’s, but strangely wrinkled and covered with brown spots under the layer of powder—and then she hugged him so tightly to her that he could not see anything except her hair and one ear.

  The stench hit him like a fist. Nasty. Rotten. Sickly sweet. It was made up of several things, of sweat and perfume and something that smelled a little like a mixture of onion and pee but wasn’t either. But the stench of rotten meat was the worst and most overpowering. He had once found a dead blackbird in the park and picked it up, and it was not until afterward that he discovered that it was full of maggots and smelled really nasty. Emmeline had scolded him and said
he was never to touch dead animals, and when they got home, she washed his hands with an ugly green soap that stung and was not nearly as pleasant as the one she usually used. The lady smelled just like the blackbird, only worse.

  “Put him down!” yelled Papa. “Suzette, in God’s name. Put him down!”

  “Why?” The lady was almost as loud. “Isn’t he my flesh and blood? I should never have let you take him. Every single day I have regretted it.” And then the lady began to cry, with hoarse, thick snuffles, while Adrian squirmed to get free and wondered what it meant, that part about flesh and blood.

  There was a crack like a branch breaking. Adrian fell because the lady fell. Papa had hit her with his cane. He was still waving it.

  “Get out of here,” he hissed. “If I ever see you here again, I’ll sic the police on you. You are to have nothing to do with us anymore, don’t you understand that?”

  Adrian rolled to the side a bit to get away from the lady. His mouth hurt, and when he spat there were tiny droplets of blood in his saliva. Later, he discovered that his first baby tooth had been knocked out.

  The lady sat up. The blow had dislodged her hat and veil, and for the first time, he could see her face. She had no nose. Her mouth was no mouth but just a hole, and the rest of her skin was a bubbling cratered wasteland of oozing black, pink, and yellow sores. One eye was completely closed by a boil, the other glinted at him, dark and wet and almost more frightening because it could see.

  She was no lady. She was a monster.

  And the monster opened its black maw and said, “How can you say that? I’m his mother!”

  The next day, Emmeline packed her things. She cried and cried and said she would come and visit him very often, but she never did. The last he saw of her was the back of her jacket and bonnet on the seat next to the coachman. She turned around only once, and though he waved, he did not think she saw him, because she did not wave back.

  It was hard to say his evening prayers without Emmeline. All he could think to ask the Lord was to please give him Emmeline back, but apparently the Lord wouldn’t, not even though Adrian promised to be good for the rest of his life.

  The following weeks he became aware of several things. Emmeline had been fired because of him—because he had gone down the stairs by himself even though she had said to wait. He also discovered that the monster had told the truth. His new nurse told him so. Her name was Nanette, and she was nothing like Emmeline. In all the places where Emmeline had been soft, she was hard. She had hard hands and thick nails and eyes that saw everything. She pushed and probed and dug out every secret, big or small. It did not take long for everyone in the house to be more or less afraid of her—even his father. She said she collected truths. And one of the truths Nanette quickly had seized on was this: The monster lady with the black maw was Adrian’s mother. Adrian’s father was Adrian’s father, even if he was married to Mama and not to the monster lady. The monster lady was sick. And perhaps Adrian was as well, and that was why Papa examined him so often. The monster lady had infected him while he lived inside her belly.

  No one outside the house must know any of this. Adrian wasn’t actually supposed to know either.

  He had lost his first baby tooth, and he no longer believed that the Lord was merciful and just, or that He was the God of Light and Truth. Nanette taught him something new about truths. They were usually horrible and dark, but they were valuable, and they were everywhere. If you listened at the doors, if you hid under a table, if you found a letter or heard a rumor . . . She rewarded him every time he brought her something she did not already know. He still missed Emmeline, but in time he got used to doing without her. And once he himself had found an amazing little black pearl of truth about Nanette, she more or less let him do as he wanted. He was no longer anyone’s little boy.

  Nothing, thought Adrian, was so black that one could not turn it to one’s purpose. It was better to know the awful truth and walk through the world with wide-open, seeing eyes than to live blind and deaf, like a dolt and a fool.

  October 2, 1894

  Althauser lived in a fashionable new apartment building on Rue Faubourg within comfortable walking distance of the university. His housekeeper let us in and asked us to wait in what she called the study. Others might have used the room as a salon, but “others” would probably not have been able to fill quite so many bookshelves.

  Inspector Marot had noted the immaculate exterior, the black wrought-iron fence, the shiny brass door knocker, the elegant hallway. Now he looked around at the wealth of primarily professional and academic works arranged carefully and systematically on the mahogany shelves around us.

  “Madeleine, are you sure?” he asked, and patted down one of his spit curls with an unconscious gesture I knew to be a nervous tic.

  “We’re not here to arrest him,” I said. “Just to ask him a few polite questions.”

  At that moment, the door opened, and Althauser entered the room. He seemed entirely himself as I knew him from the university—correctly and carefully dressed without being conspicuously elegant, his face arranged in a dispassionate expression devoid of any trace of unease or curiosity. I could not even claim that the bulldog gaze rested on me with greater acidity than usual.

  “Inspector. Mademoiselle Karno. To what do I owe the honor?”

  “Thank you for seeing us,” said Marot. “We are hopeful that you will be able to help us clarify certain aspects of a case we are currently investigating.”

  “We, Mr. Inspector? Should I interpret this to mean that Mademoiselle Karno is now working for the police forces of Varbourg? The young lady demonstrates an alarming versatility.”

  “Mademoiselle Karno is here in a . . . consultant capacity,” said Marot. He himself had insisted that I should come. If I really wished to have a respected university lecturer questioned about “such things”—by this he meant the inseminations—then I had to be there to present the details. He certainly wasn’t going to.

  “I see. Well, with such excellent help”—a definite rise in acidity levels at last—“how is it you think I may be of service?”

  Inspector Marot’s left hand crept up to slick down an already perfectly positioned curl. But he stuck to his guns.

  “On the thirteenth of January this year, a young woman by the name of Rosalba Lombardi was arrested and taken into custodial quarantine.”

  I was observing Althauser’s expression minutely when Rosalba’s name was mentioned. He did not bat an eyelid.

  “That is as it may be. It is hardly my concern.”

  “You signed both the Public Health and Decency report that was the basis of the custodial sentence and the release papers three months later. How did that come about, monsieur? Is that not normally done by one of the commission’s own doctors?”

  Althauser did not alter his expression by a hair.

  “I would imagine so. You probably know that better than I. The commission has generously permitted me to use these routine health examinations as a part of my research. If you say that this Mademoiselle Lombardi was one of the women examined, no doubt you are right.”

  “So you admit that Mademoiselle Lombardi was a part of this . . . research project?” Marot pressed his advantage.

  “I believe I have just said as much.”

  “What was the object of this experiment?”

  “To develop a better and more effective way of treating syphilis.”

  “Can you describe the experimental treatment?”

  “If it really interests you. I assume you know that syphilis in its first stage presents itself as nonirritant eczema lesions in the genital region?”

  Marot grunted something that was construable as a yes.

  “In women, such lesions often occur in the actual vagina and thus go undetected. Since they are neither painful nor itchy, the patient is completely unaware that she has them, but their existence is a source of infection for everyone who has intimate contact with her. The commission insists on regul
ar examinations in order to ensure that prostitutes do not spread the disease, but at the moment we have no truly effective treatment. Mercury has been tried for several hundred years, with very limited results and several unpleasant side effects. However, I have developed a preparation that I hope will change that situation.”

  “And how . . . do you make use of this preparation?”

  “It is applied to the infected areas. In women, this is accomplished by means of a vaginal spray that I have also developed.”

  “What are the . . . er, ingredients of this new wonder drug?”

  “Mr. Inspector, that hardly has any bearing on your investigation. Let it be my little secret for the time being. The preparation has not yet been patented.”

  Marot sent a pleading gaze in my direction. I took a deep breath and placed Rosalba’s file on the table. Althauser visibly started—the first reaction he had shown until now.

  “As far as I can see,” I said, “the result you were waiting for when you wrote this was not a cure for syphilis—a disease that we know from the autopsy that Rosalba Lombardi did not even have—but a quite different condition, noted here as gravida. The fluid you so carefully introduced into her vagina every other day for an entire month was not a preparation against syphilis, patented or otherwise, but something much more ordinary: male semen. Do you deny that?”

  He raised a cushioning hand to his cheek, as if he had suddenly developed a toothache. Then he shook his head.

  “You might have become a useful research assistant, mademoiselle, if you only had managed to liberate yourself from certain female weaknesses. You are right. It was not syphilis treatment we were experimenting with. But you also know the ultimate goal of our efforts—to save the nation from a threatening crisis. Inspector, this is an effort that is supported directly by the French state and by several prominent men from Varonne’s more visionary elite. But the project is extremely confidential, and I myself have been sworn to secrecy. I hope I can rely on your discretion?”