Clem’s Next Narration

Clem's narration I had ahead of me, for it went without saying that Clem should tell me about his trip, before we went to bed.

Telling him about the accident at the dance party I didn't mention my talk with the mysterious and magically attractive stranger – was there any use? oh well… Now, his report.

The carryall took him to Padrik, where Clem asked about Mlle Delamarche's house, but nobody could help him, and he told the coachman to drive at random, along the railway where there were cottages of the railway-men and a good road.

The air got cooler and cooler, because the big white clouds covered the sun. The row of the cottages ended; a quarter of a mile more and he saw two human figures fidgeting about a hillock and big yellowish shrub. Reaching the place, Clem saw it was two old women. He told to stop the carriage. "How do you do, grannies?"

The old women neither said a word in reply nor turned to look at him. Clem got out of the carriage, and presently he saw only one of the "grannies" was an old woman. Another figure was sooner a gentleman of the cloth, a monk in drab from top to toe, since his head was hooded.

The monk's haggish face smiled seen only partly underneath his hood. At the second glance, the monk's habit was both truly unremarkable and slightly unusual, because it was rather old-fashioned, du temps du roi Dagobert, as it were. His figure looked as old and short as the old woman's, but the old woman looked accurate and nice like a milkmaid, with her basket in hand. Without paying much attention to the old man and woman, Clem looked over their shoulders and saw a human figure on the ground.

The human's elegant clothes suggested a lady. Sitting with her shoulders hunched up, hands round her knees and her face buried in her knees, the lady was motionless. The skirt of her deep-blue Scottish mixture suit looked tight-fitting being wrapped round her long and fine legs and slender hips; her shapely feet wearing violet silk stockings and patent leather shoes were on view. Something familiar was in the henna-coloured hair seen underneath her dark hat with white plume and in her white hand clutching the violet and silvery dolly-bag. Clem pushed the old woman away, carefully but with determination, knelt before the sitting lady and took her hand in his to look at her face. The lady was Mlle Delamarche. Seeing Clem's face, she moved and began rising from the ground, with the aid of his hands.

("Judging by your detailed description of her clothing," I said to him, "you care about female clothing or the manner she dresses, for some reason, or you merely think of her too much."

Clem stared at me, and then he said, "I'd argue..."

"No matter. Go on!" I said.)

Her tailored suit of matching jacket and skirt was perfect, merely soiled over the hem. While straightening her jacket and the fur scarf on her neck, she looked at his face narrowly, apparently seeking to remember him.

Clem said, "Anything wrong with you?"

"No… nothing. Don't worry, sir."

"My name is Clement-Theophile Lisnyak. We happened to see each other... in St Benedict Street. Do you remember?"

"Clement-Theophile? I see. Please, take me home!" her hand with the clutched bag pointed somewhere.

She took his arm -- he gestured to the carriage to stay awaiting -- and they walked on a narrow pathway.

On the way, she never looked at him, but he glanced at her, from time to time, seeking to see her better. She had not changed, with the same impressive amount of jewellery, unless a finger-ring, worn in the way, which he didn't see last time. The way of fiancées. The pathway bent a grove, and there, at a distance, Clem saw either a big cottage or a small mansion was set on a mildly sloping hill.

The gate-posts of gray stone were broad; the gray stone gatehouse seemed empty.

"Are you all right, Mlle?" Clem said when they paused at the tall porch of the cottage.

"Yes, I am…" Mlle Delamarche smiled leaving his arm.

"Are you sure?" Clem said.

"Yes, I am…" she said nervously, "Nothing serious… Merely too much Laudanum before going out, nothing more." Running upstairs lightly, she said, "I thank you… Au revoir!" She shut the door with a bang behind her.

"Au revoir?" Clem went upstairs and knocked at the door. Silence. He knocked at the door again. Silence.

Looking round the peaceful landscape, he saw the cottage was rather bowery in the rear; the autumn tints seemed more distinct in this garden than elsewhere, and only this made think that there might be something dreary about the house... or there was anything else, funnier and less harmful, as Clem thought when he saw the familiar milkmaid-like old woman appearing in the gateway. As the old woman walked towards the cottage, Clem noticed another motion, on the left, at a distance, where there was a stable or barn, which seemed silent and empty. The door of the empty stable opened and the familiar figure of the old monk in drab came out and walked to meet the old woman. However, it was most probably another monk, for really, the first monk was left at the handsome distance from the gate. Leaving the two without his attention, Clem turned to the door and knocked again.

The door opened, and Mlle Delamarche appeared in the doorway, with no hat and jacket now. Her graceful watch pendant and long thick chain of yellow gold heavily rested on the red silk of her stand-up collared blouse. "Forgive my clumsiness, sir... Come in, please!" she said and gave him the way.

Following her, he came in and found himself in a spacious hall or drawing-room, in the British style. But all the rest in the house was not ever so much in the British. Taking off his hat, Clem turned to look at Mlle Delamarche and saw her picking something from the carpet at the divan. Quickly walking to the doorway at the staircase, apparently, in order to take something away, she paused to look at Clem and say "Just a moment…" Alone, Clem looked round the hall.

Nothing outstanding or extraordinary in the furniture. The damask walls of the hall in tones of purple and pearl were graced with several etchings. The light lusterware of the stove in the corner. Velvet-draperied doorways. Bras and chandeliers. Windows' velvet curtains. No potted plants or flowers in vases. The walnut fortepiano looming in the corner at the window looked small, unlike the divan which was the sort of the gigantic constructions of solid dark wood with a big rectangular mirror as the upper part of its back and shelves with two or three yellow metal candlesticks and small glittering vases as a part of the mirror's frame. On the small rectangular table, with red and white napery, the coppery-red samovar seemed heated, steaming, with a silver teapot on top, that is, in the ring-shaped attachment around the chimney. Several white china cups, a milk jug with thick yellowish cream, golden teaspoons and tea-strainer, a crystal decanter with rum, and a silver cup with damascened Russian medals, all this was on the big oval tray of yellow metal. The large silver basket was full of muffins with raisins. The tea was served for more than one person. Approaching to the cupboard, which looked like a tall and broad shining china cabinet, he noticed some suggestive things. Beside a big silver basket of oranges, a bottle of absinth and colourful flat boxes of chocolate Triumph, Marianne, and The Merry Widow, from George Borman, there was a vial of Laudanum, the tincture of opium from the German drug company Bayer, a vial of Bayer Morphine, an opened bottle of absinthe and a glass.

("Someone muddled cocktail," I said.

"Cocktail?" Clem said.

"Drops of Laudanum to a glass of absinth."

"Aha…"

"It's not faint. Vin Mariani is not enough for someone."

"I see. And someone's a chocolate addict there."

"Everybody loves chocolate."

Clem nodded assent. Absentmindedly, as though he didn't know the worldly wisdom: "Not in a mood? Eat up chocolate. It was unhelpful? Wash it down with cognac." Aloud I said, "Anyway, quick eye, my boy. Good for you. Go on!")

The stove was cold; Clem opened the stove's door and looked inside. Some papers had been obviously burnt there. He had time to extract a piece of paper and he could see a flourish, a moment before the paper crumbled in his fingers. The stove's door had been closed and Clem touched the lusterware as though trying how warm it was, when Mlle Delamarche appeared in the hall again. She gestured to him to follow her, and in another, smaller room, Clem was asked to be seated in an easy chair in the corner of the room.

"You know who I am, don't you?" Clem said subsiding on the edge of the chair, "That is… you know my name and you remember our… our first meeting on the day when… when I came in the apartment in St Benedict Street."

"St Benedict Street?.. Maybe," sitting in the French chair, close to his, Mlle Delamarche shrugged her thin shoulders. He drew up seeing her advantaged predominant position. She arched her light-brown eyebrows, and he involuntary admired her shapely white hands with long fingers, which looked so bright against the red silk blouse. She said, "Have a cup of tea… Mr Lisnyak. A glass of absinthe, maybe?"

"No thanks but no." He frowned, collecting thoughts anew. "I am on business here. I came in search of you, and having some reason to think that you know my mother, and all about her, much more than I do."

She thought a little before replying, "Mme Lisnyak?.. In person, I never saw her. Although I know some neighbours of yours... via Doctor Talvik."

Her presence seemed so elusive that Clem hastened to reach for one document in his pocket lest it's too late, because she seemed to be ready for rising and leaving any minute. "Look at this message, please. Your name may be mentioned in the text…" Clem held out the "Note from Mr S."

Reading the note, she returned it to Clem and said, "I don't see my name there and the hand is unknown to me. Why don't you ask your mother?"

"I found the note in my mother's cabinet…"

"So, you rummaged in your mother's papers?! What a shame!"

"My mother got lost, one day, in the past summer!"

"Lost?"

"That's it."

"Wait a minute or two, I shall return, and we'll see what I can do for you." With that she lightly rose and quickly left the room. It's not so difficult to suppose that Ckem narrowed his eyelids smelling the whiff of her perfume.

More than two minutes passed. The thick walls, which were so supportive to the silence, unpleasantly affected on his mind. Two minutes more and he began pacing the floor. Then he put on his hat, for some reason, and tried to find the hall.

Strangely, he went astray, finding himself in a corridor instead of the hall. Later, after he looked at the cottage once again, he saw the building had a newer wing that went from the centre of the back side. Long, the wing made the cottage look like the overturned T. Now, in the shady passage, at a distance of several yards, he saw a large chest, and he went there, because ir seemed to him that on the chest, a figure of a sitting human dimly loomed, and Clem recognized the shorter in drab brown.

One of the monks, who he happened to see today, or the third, or it was the same monk every time... Taking the first step, he took off his hat at the same time, apparently doing it too rapidly since his elbow's motion brushed off several candles of a tall girandole standing on his right. Stunned by the sudden noise, caused by him, Clem bent to see a result of his own doing. When he eventually took the next step, he pushed a human figure on his left, accidentally yet violently, making the figure sawy and fall into his arms.

"Oh!.. I'm so sorry!.." he said, seeking to hold the figure's shoulders, but the figure's head alone got in his hands, and... it remained in his hands after the figure fell down.

The figure fell without the head!

The head had a hair with a tuppee but it was surprisingly light and dry to the feel. It took him a moment to realize that a head of a mannequin was in his hands, and not a human's head -- but what a moment it was!

("Oh!.." I said.)

A dressmaker's mannequin in a costume, motionless on the floor -- he never tried to restore the figure in the shade and dropped the head from his hands. When he looked at the chest again, none sitting figure was there. He straightened his hat on his head and moved forward.

The chest on lion's paws, lavishly carved and gilt which made the rich framework for some paintings on three sides... Some time he spent contemplating the carving, gilt and paintings of the chest.

(He paused, because I interjected by saying, "It looks like a Florentine cassone. A chest, old, perhaps from the Late Middle Ages, when cassone contained personal goods of the bride. Cassone -- marriage chest. Or it's a cassapanca -- chest-bench. Even more immovable than window casements."

"I'd say that both definitions are right to the big chest," Clem said, and proceeded with his narration.)

The painted scenes might be called bucolic and mythological. Leaving the place, he went through some doorway and found himself in the hall, where he nearly bumped into Mlle Delamarche.

"You know, Mr Lisnyak," she said, looking at his face, "I've found some tracks…"

"Really?" Clem said, seeing her brown eyes and thinking to himself, "I must leave this house as soon as possible."

"Mr Aboleo maybe knows of your mother."

"Mr Aboleo?" Clem remembered of his hat on his head and he took it off.

"Yes. Why do you get surprised?"

"Not at all. Merely I'd like to know where I can find that… Mr Aboleo…"

"In Brumburg."

"In Brumburg?"

"That's it. Through the Address Bureau. Inquire them about Aboleo the merchant of London."

"I see, but why could Mr Aboleo know more or anything of my mother?"

"Why?" her eyes got shifty, "Ahh…" she touched her forehead with the tips of her fingers, "…the story is too long to be told, and I… I feel unfit to talk longer, today."

"I thank you." Clem found the exit with his eyes.

"Au revoir!" she said, stand-offish.

"À bientôt!"

Outside, on the porch, Clem paused placing his face under the sunshine; then he saw the old woman, alone, with the monk nowhere about. Clem put his hat on, jumped off the porch and walked to the old woman.

Her basket had some grass. "Apparently, a local herbalist," Clem thought, and aloud he said, "Granny… Tel me please whose is the house?"

"Mr Talvik's, sir."

"Do you mean the doctor?"

"Yes, the doctor."

"Mr Raymundus-Joachim Talvik-Aschersleben the doctor?"

"Just so, sir. The Talvik Estate."

Mr Talvik was the owner of the house. Apparently, it's the retired doctor's recent acquisition... or not so recent. Clem asked, "Is he frequent here?"

"Mr Talvik comes... every week."

"Nice. Thank you, granny."

The old woman took something out of her basket: it was a pair of violet gloves. The old woman said the lady lost the gloves on the ground, underneath the shrub, and she came to return the gloves.

Clem said, "Tell me, what's Mlle Delamarche to Mr Talvik?"

In reply, he was told that Mlle Delamarche was the doctor's fiancée.

Without saying a word, Clem left the old woman and the precinct. He never described his feelings to me, he merely told all the superfluous details and said in conclusion that coming out of the gate, he looked round and saw the small dark signboard on the right gate-post which he failed noticing before. The white-enamelled inscription over the black glass plate said: SALON ALMODIS.

He quickly walked to the carryall. His shadow came along, following him, at first, and then sprawling in front of him, unnaturally long, quickly snaking over puddles and hillocks. The shadow's hat looked like an enormous top hat. "What a ridiculous hat!" he took off his own hat and went on, bareheaded. His blood throbbed in his temples causing an inner voice, which repeated, "Witch, witch, witch…" with his meaning far from the old herbalist.