A Sharpness on the Neck

Chapter Eighteen

Sensing a great opportunity in the fact of Radcliffe's sentencing, though not yet sure just how to take advantage of it, the younger Dracula began a personal search of all the prisons within several miles of Paris, trying to locate the American. In this task he proceeded warily, wanting to locate Vlad also, but afraid of being seen by him. In Radu's recent few years aboveground, it had become his habit, when things were dull, to cruise prisons and asylums in search of amusement. There was such a nice variety of such places now to choose from.

Anyway, the exquisite sufferings of… what had been the name of that last peasant girl?… of dear little Marguerite had put Radu in mind of a certain breathing prisoner he'd met, a year or two ago, in one of the asylums.

Radu, having identified the general character of the place from the outside, was not immediately certain whether he was entering an asylum or a prison; the clientele overlapped a great deal between the two kinds of institutions. Many of them were not really surprised to observe a man entering their rooms, despite locked doors and apparently solid walls, then later taking his departure by the same mysterious means. Nor would the authorities pay much attention when some inmates told them this had happened.

If Radu wanted to know about prisons, the former Marquis de Sade was the one to talk to—the man seemed to have spent most of his adult life in them.

Radu did not particularly wish to know more about prisons and asylums—only about certain of their clientele. Looking around him now, Radu noted that this place had the look of a converted convent. Religious images had been scrupulously torn down, in pursuit of Revolutionary orthodoxy. What had once been a well-tended garden was rapidly running to seed and ruin.

The man in the cell was of average height, about five and a half feet, and was now past fifty years of age. A rather jolly fellow, by all appearances. His light chestnut hair was thinning and going gray. His body was comfortably stout, his fair face marked by comparatively few smallpox scars. At the moment his pale blue eyes were wide with surprise under a high forehead.

Obviously the prisoner had been startled by the silent intrusion of an unexpected visitor. But he needed only a moment to recover.

"Welcome, Prince Dracula! Or is it Citizen Dracula now? It is more than a year since you have visited me."

Radu made himself comfortable, choosing the softest-looking of two available chairs. "Suit yourself as to the form of address; I am indifferent as to which my true friends use—and I certainly hope to count the Marquis de Sade among my friends. Or do you now prefer to be called citizen, along with everyone else?"

The Marquis was undoubtedly glad to see his mysterious visitor. At Radu's entrance to his neatly furnished cell, Sade had been seated (in his third chair) at a table, playing with a set of half a dozen little toys on the tabletop. Radu, looking at them with curiosity, observed that they were tiny waxen representations of human bodies, male and female, all naked, in various attitudes of fear, or menace. The two male figures, one a mere beardless youth, were both in a prominent state of sexual arousal. It was not the subject matter so much which interested the vampire—he thought that pretty tame—but the artist's skill at modeling on such a small scale. The whole body of each figure was no longer than a man's hand, and yet all the fine anatomical details were exquisitely rendered. Real, fine human hair had been affixed in little tufts in the appropriate places.

"You are interested in my little toys, prince? Ah, I yearn for the full collection I had with me when I was in the Bastille. There was a prison for you!"

"Not for me, thanks."

"They are frightfully expensive. But what is one to do? One must have amusement."

Radu observed him fondling the figures ardently. The pale fingers of the Marquis threatened to crush the wax, and must be heating it to slipperiness.

Radu raised an eyebrow. "I admit I am surprised that a man of your character must now content himself with wax images. Surely some of your fellow inmates here are women?"

"Ahh…"

"Or at least some of the visitors. And the men here must have sisters and daughters and wives. It would be easy to induce some of these fair ones to make themselves available for your enjoyment."

"Ah, one would think so! But no, prince, it is not that easy. Besides, as I am sure you would agree, one needs to be sequestered with the women to derive the utmost of pleasure from them—and nothing short of the uttermost in delight is worthy of a gentleman's devoted efforts. Do you agree, Prince?"

"The Marquis speaks wisdom, as always."

Radu's gaze returned to the little waxen figures.

"And who made these, my friend?" he asked. "They show great skill."

"Ah, yes." The former marquis gazed at the images fondly. "At the Cabinet du Cire, number twenty, Boulevard du Temple. You do not know the establishment? A man named Curtius is in charge—he runs it with a woman who is supposed to be his niece. Who models these miniatures I am not sure. Most of the waxen figures Curtius makes himself are lifesize, and, alas, fully clothed."

"I see. Yes, perhaps I have heard something." He suppressed a yawn; an affectation, now grown to be an unconscious habit, in one who was not required to breathe. In fact fits of yawning came upon him periodically. He supposed it had something to do with boredom; or possibly with his long sleeps and nightmares. Another thing he must remember to thank his brother for, as soon as the opportunity arose.

"Prince Radu?"

"Yes?"

The Marquis urgently, stumblingly, began to plead with the prince to arrange an escape for him. Radu smiled and nodded, and promised to see what he could do; but actually he had plenty of other things to think about just now, and foresaw that he would let the matter slide.

From the subject of escape and its difficulties, the conversation easily slid on to that of prisons. Radu was honestly curious. "But you have been in so many prisons! Are you able to keep track of them all?"

"Each has a different smell about it… It is totally unjust, of course, that I should be here at all!"

Ah, but I have heard something about the case. The young woman did die, did she not, after you and your valet were through with her?"

"Which young woman?" Sade seemed affronted. "Not all of them died, by any means!"

Radu was ready to change the subject. "Comfortable quarters," he observed, looking about the room. "Of course it does not really compare to those you enjoyed in the Bastille, as a prisoner of the ancien regime. If memory serves me right, you had a desk there, and a wardrobe. Silk breeches, many shirts, coats, shoes, and boots… you had a fireplace, as I recall? Family portraits on your plastered walls, velvet pillows on your bed."

"Three kinds of perfume," Sade himself murmured in a husky voice. Eyes gleaming, he was caught up in memory. "All the lamps and candles that I wanted… but that was long ago. In 1784."

"Is it really ten years since you were first locked up in the Bastille? How time flies! For some of us, at least." Radu pretended to suppress a yawn.

Sade was staring at him, with a delightfully perfect expression of hatred and envy.

Radu went on: "You had quite a library there, too. More than a hundred volumes, wasn't it? And your poor, dear wife was allowed to visit you almost every week. Walking privileges in the garden… except that you would keep shouting your obscenities." Radu shook his head, chided his companion with a mock tut-tut. "Then they let you out. Then they locked you up again. That time—let me see—they put you in Charenton? The asylum."

"But they realized I was not at all mad, and they eventually let me go."

"And then—?

de Sade's voice had grown tightly controlled. His best courtroom voice. "Last year I was arrested again. As a former aristocrat, of course. Bah!"

"So, political reasons this time. Even you… now that you mention it, I seem to remember hearing that you were accused of 'moderatism'… one of the most unlikely charges that the Revolution has ever brought against any of its enemies—or do you count yourself among its friends? Has anyone ever died of 'moderatism,' I wonder?"

"Only when Doctor Sanson treats the disease! Ah, hah, hah hah!" A huge coarse laugh.

But de Sade was not minded to discuss that subject at any length. Instead, he began to talk of his present accommodations: "What more could I have wanted here? It was like a paradise; beautiful house, superb garden, exclusive society, wonderful women—when suddenly the execution grounds were placed absolutely under our windows and the cemetery for those guillotined put in the very middle of our garden."

Doubtless, Radu mused, Paris now produced too many headless ones for any one cemetery to accommodate.

His companion was becoming unreasonably excited. "I tell you, prince, there have been eighteen hundred executions under my window in the last thirty-five days. A third of them have been taken from this very building!"

"Eighteen hundred!" That really seemed an excessive estimate to Radu; he reminded himself that he was, after all, talking to a certified madman. Of course there might really be some auxiliary mechanique somewhere in the neighborhood. They were scattered all over France, after all.

Radu had not observed any such facility on his way in, or scented any nearby tract of blood-soaked earth. Now he went to the window and looked out, seeing only a garden. He concluded that his old associate was very likely genuinely deranged.

Meanwhile de Sade had let his outrage slide away and begun fantasizing about the young nuns who must have occupied this room before the Revolution.

"How many novices do you suppose slept in this little chamber?" Actually the room was generously sized indeed, compared to the vast majority of the prison cells Radu had seen. de Sade seemed totally caught up in his speculations. "Three or four, at the very least. Maybe five or six. Do you suppose that it was necessary for them to share beds?"

Radu shook his head. "I too have slept in convents from time to time; but none of them were organized in any such fashion as that. But do go on. There is no reason why you should give up your daydreams."

"Daydreams, are they? Only daydreams?" de Sade's eyes flashed. "I should think that maintaining discipline in a convent would be one of the chief concerns of the authorities in charge."

"No doubt. You might have done well, I should think, as Mother Superior."

"Why do you say that? Women are more inclined to cruelty than we men are, and that is because they have a more delicate nervous system."

Suddenly the man sat back on his haunches and bellowed, a long, quavering note. Perhaps he thinks he is a werewolf now, thought his visitor, intrigued.

Then the crouching figure shouted: "Hear me, world! It is the Marquis de Sade, cavalry colonel, who is being subjected to such abominable treatment! Deprived of air and light! Rally round, my friends! To rescue me will be in the interest of all!"

Then abruptly de Sade fell silent, and went back to staring at his wax dolls on the table.

Already Radu was bored by the little figures. He picked one up, the blond girl-doll he thought the madman had been particularly admiring, and crushed it in his hand, reducing it to a smear of pink wax oozing between his fingers. de Sade made a sound like that of a victim under some probing stab by a torturer. Radu could derive faint amusement from the expression on de Sade's face.