Seduction

Five

SEPTEMBER 8, 1855

JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS, GREAT BRITAIN

For the last two years, it had become the habit of our household and closest friends to hold séances often, if not every night. We turned off the gas lamps and lit candles, two on the mantel and two on the sideboard. We sat around our card table, with one of us placing his or her fingers on the small stool in its center, and took turns asking questions while my son François-Victor kept track of the responses. Often the spirits who visited spoke so much, the sessions lasted long past midnight, but no one seemed to mind.

Whether we returned time and again to the table out of boredom or fascination, I cannot speak for anyone but myself. For me it became an obsession to talk to my Didine again. I wanted her to reassure me of her place in the light and of her peace. She rarely visited us. Only twice since the initial stop had she returned, and then only briefly.

I was bereft. Her teasing appearances had increased my sense of loss. She’d left us once in the flesh, and now as a spirit again. Instead of my mourning lessening, it had become sharper. My grief seemed rawer for the fleeting glimpses of her soul.

Apart from my desire to communicate with Didine, the séances were a huge success. More than that, they were shocking. Our little group had become the conduit for attracting the most amazing minds of all civilization, who all arrived in order to speak to me and impart their wisdom: Shakespeare, Dante, Mozart, Hannibal, Walter Scott, Joan of Arc, Moses, Judas, Galileo, Napoleon, and yes, as blasphemous as it sounds, even Jesus Christ visited with us. Over one hundred and fifteen different souls, some not even figures but abstract concepts with names like India, Metempsychosis, and Ocean.

But this journal is not about the talks we had with those great sages; I’ve done other writings regarding them. The purpose of this journal is to write of the one who snaked his way into my soul and almost destroyed me. And, my dearest friend, Fantine, almost destroyed you too.

On the night of the eighth, we were seated around our table trying to raise a spirit when I heard a barking dog. This wasn’t the sound of a typical country hound howling at a chicken. This was a ferocious and yet forlorn noise. After a few moments, other dogs joined in. An unholy cacophony befitting mythology’s hellhounds. You have heard of these creatures, have you not? They are described as supernaturally fast dogs with malevolent glowing red or yellow eyes. Their duties are said to include guarding the entrance to the world of the dead, hunting lost souls and protecting supernatural treasures. It is written that if you look into their eyes three times you most surely will die. To hear them howl is an omen of death or even worse.

We were all distracted and discussed the jarring howling, conjecturing what might have happened to set the dogs off. In the midst of our conversation, my wife rose from her chair. “This situation with the dogs has unnerved me,” she said, and told us she was retiring for the evening.

I was not eager to abandon the séance and asked the rest of our party if they would like to remain and see if we could indeed summon a spirit. They agreed, and Charles returned his fingers to the stool.

“I have the sense someone is waiting to speak with us,” he said. “Spirit, are you there?”

I hoped it was Didine. I always hoped it was Didine. In those moments before the spirit announced himself, I yearned for it to be my lovely daughter. But that night, it was not she who answered our pleas. Instead came a spirit very much unwanted.

The first sign was that the air in the room became colder. My daughter Adele left the table and added a log to the fire. But it did nothing to chase away the damp chill that had invaded the room. Outside the wind picked up and blew in through the open windows, extinguishing the candles on the mantel and sideboard. The only light left to illuminate our sad group came from the blazing fireplace. The black spaniel Ponto, who did not belong to us but had adopted us, began to growl, low and deep in her throat. Our cat Grise hissed and scampered up the stairs.

“Who is there?” Charles asked.

Finally the tapping began, and with it so did the voice I heard inside my head during the séances, the otherworldly voice whose words corresponded perfectly to the translations François-Victor would later provide.

A friend who can help.

“Help with what?” I asked.

Find Leopoldine.

The chill in the room entered into me. My blood’s temperature lowered. I felt as if I were being frozen from inside and my heart were turning to ice.

“You mean bring her to us here in these sessions?”

If that is all you wish.

“What else could I wish for?”

No answer.

“Is there another way you can bring her to me?”

Perhaps.

“What do I have to do?”

Prove you are worthy.

“Is it a quest? Are you giving me a test?”

Yes.

“Who are you to demand such a thing?”

We have met before. I’m insulted you do not recognize me.

“You play games with me, sir. Reveal yourself.”

You want your daughter. I can return her to you.

“In spirit?”

Your daughter again by your side.

“What does that mean?”

You will understand in time.

“Why not explain more?”

I cannot reveal more until you have proven.

“Who are you?”

You haven’t guessed?

“No, damn it. Who are you?”

Do you believe in evil?

“Yes.”

You have seen proof?

“Yes, of course. I have seen evil. I have seen men hanged at the gallows. I have seen innocent children beaten. I have seen women starve to death.”

And you believe in independence and intellectual freedom?

“Of course. For all men. For all time.”

Of all the archangels, who represents those?

I was almost afraid to say his name. In awe of the idea that was forming in my mind.

Who?

“Lucifer.”

Yes, he who is feared and revered. Like you, Hugo. Your intellect and insights both revered and feared, yet you are no devil, are you?

“No.”

For a man of letters you are quite monosyllabic.

I could not help myself, I laughed. The tapping did not abate, the voice in my mind did not pause.

Here is your test. I request a great poem, bard. To resurrect me and show me for what I am. To the spirit that is mine and that is yours. The spirit of man soaring, achieving, creating, not being beaten down by the hypocrisy of small-minded, power-hungry men. The title is up to you-but I think The End of Lucifer. Or perhaps you might use my other name. The one I prefer.

I did not have to ask. I knew the name he preferred and whispered it.

“The Shadow of the Sepulcher?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. In fact he chose that moment to leave. I knew because the room was no longer cold. My blood warmed too. I didn’t realize I had been shivering until I stopped.

Making my excuses, I went upstairs posthaste. I had developed the habit of transcribing the evening’s conversations immediately afterward, while they were still fresh in my mind.

Our house, as you know, Fantine, faces the ocean. Upstairs in my room, it is as if I am perched on the very tip of a precipice with the great foaming waves beneath my window. I wrote in a letter to Franz Stephens that “I inhabit this immense dream of the ocean; slowly I become a sleepwalker of the sea. Faced with these prodigious sights and that enormous living thought in which I lose myself, there is soon nothing left of me but a sort of witness to God.”

That night, as I usually do in these après-séance writing sessions, I flung open the windows and took in great gulps of the sea-washed air. I had smoked a bit of hashish before the event. Now I relit my pipe, stood at my desk and transcribed the words the Shadow had spoken to me.

With nothing to distract me but the ink flowing onto the paper, the walls of my resistance crumbled in these sessions. The rules of logic relaxed. I opened my mind to the possibilities of the night, to the magic of the dark, to unfathomable ideas that had been presented to me.

I am blind to everything but the scrawls of black moving across the paper when I write. I didn’t hear the house hum around me, or my own heart beat, or the waves pound on the rocks. I only hear the words that I set down. Though not my words, no. During those après-séance writing sessions I was no different from a scribe recording the words spoken by another. The spirits revisited me in my aerie, elaborating and elucidating to me as if the séances were but rehearsals and these communions the true ones.

After I transcribed the exchange above from the spirit who identified himself as the Shadow of the Sepulcher, I was bathed in sweat. My large room, even with the windows open, was suffocating. I needed to escape. To breathe the night air and find some comfort in the corporeal world. I would go to Juliette’s, I decided. The walk to my mistress’s home would revive me, and then I could climb into her bed and she would soothe me.

Even though the sky was strewn with storm clouds, I decided to walk on the beach instead of taking the main road. Always I am drawn to the unrelenting waves, the salty, briny air and the feel of the sand shifting beneath my feet.

Reaching the shore, I stood for some time just looking out on the rough sea and thought about the offer the spirit had made. I was filled with both wonder and dread, curiosity and chagrin. How could I believe such a thing? It was not possible to bring back my daughter. And the price? A piece of poetry? The whole exchange was ludicrous.

As I pondered these thoughts, I became aware of a presence nearby and turned. No one was there.

I looked up at the sky and wondered if Didine was one of the stars peeking through the clouds. Could she be looking down and watching over me at that moment?

I had always believed that if we cannot chart the geography of the heavens, if we cannot ride over heaven’s hills or sail over its seas, then we cannot know for sure who dwells there and how they interact.

But in the last two years, in over a hundred séances, I had been given glimpses of that geography. Hadn’t I?

That was the question on my mind as I walked the beach. After a time, I noticed someone up ahead. At first I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman from that distance. But when I came closer, in the light of the moon I recognized you, the comely servant girl whom my mistress had recently employed. Fantine, you were walking along the shore, staring out at the vast ocean. The sky had cleared and the moon glow shone on your white chemise, making it stand out like a beacon.

When I’d noticed you at her house, Juliette had told me you were another exile from Paris. I’d only seen you two or three times but had been acutely aware of your sadness. You wore it like a frock. It clouded your eyes, turning the blue sky to gray. Even the scent that lingered in a room after you’d left it reminded me of grief. It was the fragrance of flowers past bloom in their death throes.

As I approached, you became aware of me, and when you turned, I thought I saw the silvery track of tears on your cheek.

I was sorry I’d intruded, but it was too late for me to turn back without being rude. “Good evening, Fantine.”

“Monsieur Hugo, good evening.”

In Juliette’s abode, you were demure. Here you seemed less so. In her home you would have lowered your eyes and been slightly embarrassed in my presence. But you were none of these things on the beach. You were forthright, almost defiant. As if I had interrupted you. As if this were your beach and I were trespassing.

I fell into step beside you and must admit was still so absorbed by what had happened in my house that for the first few minutes of our stroll, I paid you little heed.

Lost in thoughts as dark as the sea, I tried to make sense of the evening’s revelations, tumbling the thoughts in my own head. Getting nowhere, I finally felt the need to discuss what had occurred with someone who hadn’t been in my house and exposed to the table tapping.

“Do you believe in spirits?” I asked.

“Do you mean ghosts?”

“Well yes, I suppose so. The spirits of those no longer alive. Do you think they are capable of communicating with us?”

You nodded, and your dark curls dancing on their own endowed the grave question with a certain ironic frivolity. “Oh yes. I’ve often felt my mother’s presence and smelled her perfume in the air when there’s no one nearby. It’s always very comforting.”

“Is she really communicating with you or are you just remembering her vividly? Do you actually believe some shade of her is here, watching over you, visiting you?”

The beach was rocky where we were walking, and as you started to answer, you tripped. I reached out to steady you. Closer, I marveled at your fragrance. The same I’d sniffed in Juliette’s house, but so near now I could smell other subtle scents mixed in with the roses. Night-blooming jasmine, lemon… I shut my eyes for a moment, to fix the curious smell. In Juliette’s house you wore your hair up, covered it with a cap, and donned a uniform that hid the ample bosom and small waist now apparent. Now your thick dark hair fell in waves around your face and down your back. In my mistress’s house you were an ordinary maid. Here you were a wanton, suffering woman.

“I believe she has truly communicated with me.”

“Tonight is the anniversary of my daughter’s death,” I said.

The words hung on the wind for a moment and reverberated like church bells until the sound of crashing waves overwhelmed them.

“I lost a child too,” you whispered. “She was stillborn.”

“But you are so young.”

“I’m twenty-five,” you said, as if it were very old indeed.

“What of your husband?”

Your gaze returned to the sea.

“Lost?” I asked. The sea claimed so many lives, as I knew all too well.

“He was not my husband. But yes, lost.”

“Did you lose them both together?”

You shook your head no. “But I can’t stop mourning either of them.”

“Would you, if you could, talk to your mother now? If she is in the netherworld, would you want to know how she was, what it is like? Find out if she is looking after your baby for you?”

“Of course.”

“What would you pay for such a privilege?”

“Anything asked of me.” And then you looked at me as if I were half mad. “You aren’t suggesting there’s a way, are you?”

“I might be,” I said, and then told you about the séances. I remember how at first you had to hold back from laughing at me. From the questions you asked, it seemed you found me foolish and absurd. But as we continued our walk and I told you more about the sessions and spirits, your initial skepticism turned to curiosity.

I fell in love with you a little then. I admire nothing so much as the willingness to suspend disbelief and open one’s mind to new ideas.

“What was your daughter’s name?”

“Leopoldine,” I said. “But I called her Didine.”

“So have you talked to your Didine?”

“I haven’t heard her voice, but I believe she is speaking to me.”

You turned your gaze upon me now. No longer as if I were daft but as if I might not be entirely human.

We continued walking for a few steps in silence. I was thinking about you now. Wondering about you. Clearly you were well educated. Out of place, being a lady’s maid in the Channel Islands.

“How long have you been in Jersey?” I asked.

“Two and a half years. I worked for another lady before Madame Drouet.”

“What happened?”

“She was elderly and passed away this summer.”

“And were you a lady’s maid in Paris too?” I asked.

“No, I worked with my father in his shop.”

“What kind of shop?”

“My father was a well-known perfumer.”

“He is no longer with us?”

You nodded.

The sound of the water crashing on the rocks was an ominous symphony to all this talk of death. I knew I was prying. Your short, compact answers suggested you weren’t comfortable talking about your past. And I did worry about offending you. But I am a storyteller; I wanted to know your story. I tried to go gently.

“And what happened to your father’s shop?”

“My uncle who worked there also took it over.”

“Have I heard of this shop?”

“Probably, it has been in business for a very long time.”

She named the family concern. I recognized it, in fact, knew it well. Often I’d bought gifts of fragrance for my wife, my daughters, even for Juliette at the establishment. I was lost for a few moments, thinking of Paris. It had been so long since I’d been home and I was nostalgic for my city.

We’d walked a long way, far past Juliette’s house. We were on a stretch of beach I didn’t know well, because except at low tide, like now, there was no beach to tread upon. This rocky section of shore was all cliffs. And where there were cliffs there were usually caves. Indeed, in the moonlight, I noticed many openings and was intrigued. The locals talked of cave walls covered with ancient drawings, rooms deep in the rocks that were used in older times as retreats, temples and burial grounds. I’d explored several caves, mostly on the other side of the island at Plemont Bay. They were majestic and mysterious, but I had yet to stumble upon a cavern I could be sure had any mystical significance.

“Have you been inside any of these caves?” you asked, as if reading my mind.

“Not here.”

“Oh, you must. Some of them are astonishing.”

“You’ve gone in? You weren’t afraid of being trapped? They say the tide in this section of beach can sneak up on you and suddenly your only exit is the sea itself.”

“I wouldn’t have minded.”

Such a simple way of declaring your suffering. You said it without pathos, not inviting my sympathy but simply stating the sad truth of your existence. You gave me this confidence, not knowing it would be like a seed that grew inside me. And what misery it would lead to.

I nodded then, bowed my head to your grief. Sorrow was something I understood. The temptation to seek relief from never-ending sadness was one I knew well.

“I too have…” I hesitated. I could not go on and speak of my own disconsolate heartache. To utter the words was to become lost in them.

In your way that I have come to know and appreciate, you did not say anything. You didn’t push me to say more. You waited. Your patience is a gift. You trusted our silence. Ah, Fantine. Thank you for that.

“What happened to you in Paris,” I asked after a time, “that made you flee?”

When you hesitated, I realized I had done exactly what you had not. So before you could answer I apologized. “I’m sorry. My wife says I am rude and Juliette agrees. She laughs at me and says I am too desperate for people’s stories. That I am too greedy to hear about the comedies and tragedies of their lives. She claims I listen so I can file away the twists and turns of their journeys and romances. That I collect people’s particulars, add spices to them, stir in other ingredients, cook them up and then present a book to the world. But I am only trying to offer up my interpretation of life as a mirror by which men may see themselves in another light.”

You remained staring out at the infinite black sea when I finished speaking. I noticed your shoulders were trembling slightly.

“Are you cold?” I asked. “Would you like my coat?”

“No. No, thank you.”

“Then what is it?”

You gestured to the churning water. “Sometimes I think I hear it calling to me. I wish I were brave enough to listen.”

“If you were, what would you do?”

I was afraid of your answer, but something in me demanded I listen to it.

“I would heed its call. I’d give myself to it.”

“You want to die that much?”

“No. It’s not that I want to die, it’s that I can’t bear to live. I can’t bear to miss someone so much. To long for him like this.”

And then you turned to me, and I could see you were shocked by what you’d said.

“You didn’t know that about yourself?” I asked.

You shook your head. “Please forgive me. I have no right to speak to you like this. To inflict my thoughts on you and lay my burdens at your feet.”

Indeed you looked mortified.

“Do not insult me, Fantine. All this time we have been talking and walking as equals. A man and a woman who share a common sadness that comes from loss. A man and a woman exchanging confidences under the night sky. If I had not wanted to hear what you had to say, you would have known it a long way back.”

You bowed your head. I took your chin in my hand and lifted up your face. Your skin was fine to my touch, and despite all our morose talk I felt the stirrings of pleasure. Such is my blessing and my curse. My passions run deep but are always close to the surface. Sexual enjoyment is my true escape in a way that none of my stories, my plays, my poems or my political writings are.

Those take me deeper inside myself. Only by indulging in my cravings, my lust, do I find the oblivion I seek.

I leaned forward slowly to signal what I was about to do-I am not an ogre or a letch and do not like taking kisses by force. You didn’t step back, didn’t hesitate. And so I kissed you gently. There was no response from you. Your expression in the moonlight did not change.

Ah, Fantine, you were already almost dead and you didn’t yet know it.

“Do you need any money?” I asked. “Does Madame Drouet pay you enough?”

“Yes, she does.” Now it was your turn to hesitate.

“What is it, Fantine?”

“I have heard about you, Monsieur Hugo.”

“Yes?”

“From some of the other servants…”

You left off. I smiled. “So tell me, do they say terrible things about me?”

“No, quite to the contrary. They say you are kind and generous, and if a girl needs money you are tender with her and ask for very little.”

“Would you like me to be generous with you?”

“If it would help you, monsieur. If you need me, I would be happy to give you what you’d like, but I wouldn’t want any money.”

“And why would you want to do that?”

“Because of the sadness.”

“In you?” I asked.

“No, monsieur, in you.”

I didn’t know what to say. It had been so long since anyone had had such insight into me. So I kissed you once more. And then we turned back, following our own footsteps now.

“I would like to pay you, though,” I repeated my offer.

“No, that won’t be necessary.”

“But if I don’t pay you…” I stopped myself. Why was I becoming angered at your stubborn refusal to take the coins in exchange for what I would ask of you? Why did I want to pay you so badly?

For the second time that night, you anticipated my thoughts. “I know what you were going to say. If you don’t pay me then you will have to care for me, and you don’t want to.”

You were like a night nymph standing before me. A wisp of a girl with wild hair and sparkling blue-gray eyes reflecting the phosphorescent waves and the moonlight.

“But you want me to?”

“No one has cared about me for a very, very long time,” you said. “I would like to know how it feels again. Even just a bit of caring. I would like to test it and see if it is enough to keep me alive.”

“What an astonishing creature you are. You are offering me a bargain.”

You smiled. “I suppose I am.”

I reached out and touched your beautiful hair, lifting one of the curls. As I did I breathed in your scent again. What a fine perfume. One more suited to a woman seated in front of a silver tea set under a crystal chandelier than to a servant girl walking on the beach in Jersey.

From my pocket I pulled out a handful of coins and opened my hand to you.

“You are sure you won’t take these?”

“There are others on the island who would gladly take your centimes, monsieur. But not I. If you want something from me, I will give it freely in exchange for what you might come to feel for me.”

Boldly you curled my fingers over the coins, closing up my hand. Rejecting the offer as completely as you could. And then, then you leaned forward and both gave a kiss and took one. My breath caught in my throat.

When you pulled back, you said two words, “Thank you.”

I was astonished. “What on earth for?”

“For making me wonder for the first time in a long time. Now I must go back.”

“Let me walk with you.”

“No, you have important things to think about-more important than me.”

But I didn’t want you to wander off into the inky black sky. I was afraid that you might venture into the sea instead of walking back to the house. I couldn’t bear to think of you in the water, with your dress soaking up the sea, pulling you down, swirling around you, sand and seaweed in your beautiful hair. I wanted to save you, Fantine. Save you, to make up for the other young woman whom I had not been able to save.

I saw you to the passageway where the road came down to the beach and then partway to Juliette’s house. I wouldn’t be going there after all. I craved solitude. So I returned to the beach and took the long way home, by the sea.

On my way back to Marine Terrace, I sensed someone walking behind me and thought I smelled a particular scent of smoke and incense, but when I turned to look all I saw were the rocks’ dark shadows and all I could smell was the sea’s salty, briny fragrance.

With only the roar of the waves there was little to distract me from my thoughts, until somewhere in the distance a dog began ferociously barking. Not alerting his master to a stranger approaching but quite the opposite. This dog was warning everyone who heard him that he was to be feared. Within moments other dogs were howling and the air was filled with their noise, just as had happened earlier that evening.

I was not usually worried about being accosted or assaulted by man or beast, but it had been such a strange night, I bent down and picked up a good-size rock. It was large enough to throw at a man. Or a dog if one approached. As I continued home, I held the stone in my grip, finding comfort in its craggy surface and heft.

Only when I was inside my own house with the door locked firmly behind me did I relax enough to gaze at the rock. In the candlelight I saw that it was almost a perfect oval of clear white quartz with a slightly fleshy pink tone to it. Actually very much shaped like a head. In fact the crevices and grooves, bumps and depressions even gave the appearance of a woman’s face. But not just any woman’s face. With wonder, I stared at the rock that could have been an unfinished portrait of my own daughter, my own Didine. It was as if Rodin himself were working the stone and had just begun to rough out her appearance, had chiseled just the essence of her.

I placed the rock on my mantel, continuing to appraise it, wondering if in the morning Didine’s sister or brothers or her mother would notice and see the resemblance.

Upstairs, I opened my windows and looked out at the sea as I stripped down and stepped out of my damp clothes. I poured myself some brandy and sipped it as I returned my gaze to the infinite blackness.

I remembered the feel of your soft cheek on my fingers, your yielding lips on my mouth, your scent of roses and lemons. I could hear your melancholy words ringing in my ears.

It had been a relief to talk to you without pretense, the way I must all too often with my wife, even with Juliette. I could allow you to see how my grief still consumes me without worrying the knowledge would affect you.

I walked to my writing table. Pen in hand, while the wind washed over me and the household slept on the floors below, I began to write the story of this strange night that began with a séance and ended with two ghosts meeting-yours, Fantine, and mine.