Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) (32 page)

It is already light in the streets of Lutèce. There are some who look askance at Niki, in his formal red dress, running along the pavements, making no effort to avoid the refuse in the streets. His feet are filthy and sticky by the time he labors up the hill of Montmartre, drawing more and more curious looks. The clothing worn by those around him is no longer neat and once-fashionable: it is untidy and never-fashionable, stained cotton shirts, thrice-patched trousers worn without a hint of self-consciousness, cloth caps over splayed ears that keep the light rain from the eyes. Sometimes an ear sticks out from one side or the other, but nobody corrects the wearer. Everyone is greeted with a smile and a wave, though both falter when the greeter takes a closer look at Niki. I belong here, Niki wants to tell them as they clear a path for him, but he is not certain that is true, not anymore.

The quarter feels strange, different. Maybe it is that people are seeing him as a lady out here in the open, that the disguise he wore in the cabaret has broken out to the real world. Perhaps it is the hour; he is unused to walking the streets after the sun has risen. The smells are different, bread and coffee diluted with the smells of the people, the wood of the houses and the rain-moistened refuse in the streets.

The alley behind the Moulin Rouge is empty. Niki knows there is no wolf lying in a heap against the brick wall of the restaurant opposite, but he can not make himself look in that direction. At the back door to the cabaret, the fox works the old lock on the door the way Cireil taught him to, and slips inside without anyone seeing. He eases the door shut behind him; the creak of old wood and rusted hinges is louder in the quiet of the empty club. He walks on the balls of his feet, keeping his claws elevated, first to M. Oller’s office, then to the dressing room, which is as empty and silent as the rest of the club. There he throws down the small purse of paper he has been carrying onto a bench, closes his eyes, and breathes the air.

It is full of the scents of the other dancers. Even Cireil’s has not had time to fade, not yet. But though Niki’s scent here is as strong as any other, he still feels out of place. He trails a paw down his side, snags the red fabric with one claw. The dress is probably ruined by the rain. Niki can feel the moisture soaking through it to his fur, and he does not look down; he knows what water-damaged silk looks like. He has no time to care for the dress, and he will not be returning it to Jean in any case. He strips the thing off him, tearing at its laces and impossible knots that took so long to fasten. He holds it in front of himself, looks at the dark streams and spots where rain has warped the silk and bled the dye. Then he lets it fall to the floor.

He stands naked for a moment, brushing black fingers down his red-and-white side. There is room, here, with the other dancers away, to recall the steps of his childhood: he lifts his left leg in front of him,
attitude devant
, though his toes are not strong enough for him to perform
en pointe
any longer, even if he had the proper foot-caps. He rises to
demi-pointe
, does two
chaînés
turns into a small side leap, his tail flowing out behind him. Closing his eyes, for a moment he is eleven again, in his father’s barn, imitating the movements he has seen at the ballet so many times. Smells of straw and manure replace the smells of incense and dancers, even when he opens his eyes again.

Simple steps flow easily into patterns. His body knows the bends and the pushes, the leaps and the twists, and follows their music in the silent room. He hears the words of his teacher telling him that he can be a great dancer. Every movement brings him closer to his bright future, to attending the Imperial School, to performing with the Imperial Ballet. The joy he feels in his movement is echoed in the audience, in the wonder of the people watching the heart and passion he pours into every gesture, every step. He moves as he has not in years; he performs turns,
arabesques, jétés.
The pains in his wrists and muzzle and back vanish, and Niki dances.

A single pair of paws clapping stops him. He opens his eyes to see M. Oller leaning against the doorway watching him. “Very nice,” the polecat says. “Should I ever open a ballet, I will know who to sign. In the meantime, you should take your things and go, before the employed dancers arrive.”

Niki drops his paws to his sides. He walks stiffly back to the small locker that holds a pair of trousers and a plain shirt, and rubs the sore spot on his muzzle. “I suppose you would not be in need of another dancer, so soon.”

M. Oller straightens his narrow bowtie, then slides his paw down his side, into the pocket of his sleek black suit. “I am already interviewing several lovely young things.”

“Do they have experience?” Being naked would be an advantage for Niki were he negotiating with Jean, but M. Oller does not look at his naked body with the same hunger. The fox pulls on trousers, and the polecat’s expression remains the same.

“Experience is overrated.” M. Oller examines the claws of his other paw.

Niki pulls his plain shirt over his head, shakes his ears and head. “I can bring several more paintings to the club.”

“Paintings.” The polecat scoffs. “I might walk out into the street and return with several paintings stuck to the soles of my feet.”

“Not such as these. The one I brought you two days ago, you remember? He will be a great master.”

M. Oller feigns, or perhaps genuinely feels, indifference. “Well, bring the paintings to an interview tomorrow,” he says. “You may dance with some of the other applicants and we shall see.”

“Thank you, sir.” Niki holds up the purse. “I wonder if I might exchange these notes.”

The polecat frowns, reaches out a paw. Niki hands him the purse, but looking at the notes does not erase his confusion. “What is this? You have been hoarding tips?”

Niki shakes his head. “My…patron paid me in those notes. I believe he must have purchased them, been saving them…” It had been quite a shock to see that the purse of francs Jean had promised Niki was filled with the currency of the Moulin Rouge, an artless reminder of Niki’s standing in the world. Still, there were fifty of the one-franc notes there, and although it is not what they had agreed upon, it is close. It will be enough for him and Henri to live for several months, when added to the previous tips Niki has received from Jean.

“Well.” M. Oller weighs the purse, then nods curtly. He reaches into the pocket of his pants and takes out two twenty-franc notes and a five. He hands them to Niki, with narrowed eyes. “Your patron is a curious one. I hope you have found what you sought.”

“Do any of us?” Niki takes the money, and then gathers up the dress. He imagines Henri’s face upon hearing that an unknown benefactor has purchased five of his paintings for the Moulin Rouge. Perhaps he will have to change the number to four, since the amount is somewhat less than he’d anticipated. He will describe the benefactor as a mysterious mouse, in honor of the servant who took pity on him that morning and loosened his bonds.

M. Oller holds the door to the dressing room for him. “I saw that you left the harness in my office. Thank you.” For the first time, the polecat shows the trace of a smile. “It is always delightful to come to one’s work and find a pair of tits on the desk.”

Niki smiles, too, stepping out of the hall. “You have been very kind to me. I hope to be able to repay the favor in time.”

“For future reference,” M. Oller says, “I prefer the tits to be attached to a live body. No matter the species.”

“Yes, sir.” Niki swishes his tail, which also has a painful kink in it, but the pain is less. When he leaves the club, his step, like the air, has more spring in it.

The rain feels cleansing, nicely cool on his muzzle. He stops at the bakery and gets a loaf of bread, and next door buys a small round of a Camembert cheese and a bottle of wine to accompany it, a celebration for Henri’s sale and for his return to the dance, whenever that might happen. When he emerges from the small grocer, the rain is coming down harder, so that even in the short half-block before Niki reaches his apartment, his tail is soaked through and water flows from his ears in streams.

He sets his bag of groceries down to shake himself, picks it up again, and climbs the stairs.
“Henri,” he says cheerfully as he pushes the door open, “you were right,
dorogoï
—”

The smell is what he notices first, the wrongness of it; even though the window is partly open and the rain is coming through, it cannot completely clear out the smell. Niki knows it from his childhood in western Siberia, from the time the plague ran through their town and everyone remained indoors, but there is no plague here, no plague save for the thin cord knotted at one end around a rafter in the ceiling and at the other around the neck of the black rat.

He spins very slowly, back and forth, eyes bulging. His protruding tongue is now purple, or perhaps blue; Niki cannot bear to look at it very long. The fox drops his bag with a thump (the wine bottle is solid; it does not break) and walks over to the body of his friend, so slowly. There is no rush.

The rain lashes harder at the closed half of the window and sprays the bed through the open half. The air feels colder than when he was outside. Niki runs a paw along his friend’s arm. Beneath the fur, the skin is cold. Henri has been dead for a day at least. The fox steadies him with a paw on the paint-stained cotton, to stop the horrible spinning, and then searches the apartment for a knife. He knows there is one here, but it is nowhere he looks, and he is sobbing now, and everywhere he looks, Henri’s dead eyes watch him and tell him it is the wrong place.

Finally, Niki climbs up on the bed and takes the rope in his paws and gnaws through it. It is possibly the worst thing he can ever remember doing in his life. The smell is terrible and the rope is thick and tastes of dirt and Henri’s body swings gently against him. And when the rope finally parts, it slips through his paws and Henri lands with a stiff, undignified crash on the floor.

Only then can Niki clamber down and pull the stiff body of his friend into his arms; only then can he let out all the tears that have been leaking from his eyes, the howls of anguish that bring curious neighbors to the door and send them away, shaking their heads sadly.

When his sobs subside, he just sits, holding the emptiness like a precious thing inside him. Beneath the death and rain, he can still smell the acerbic rat, and he imagines what Henri would say, if his dead lips could still form words.

Silly fox, to cradle this lifeless husk. You abandon your muse and your friend and yet cannot abandon this empty shell? Do you so require the reminder of what you have left behind?

“You were wrong,” Niki says. “You were wrong. I came back.”

But did you come back for your art, or because your chamois strikes you? Because you cannot bear to be shackled, or because the shackles were more confining than you had imagined?

“I came back for you,” Niki says.

In his mind, the rat laughs dryly.
Liar
, he says.

Niki lifts the rat to the bed easily; he weighs nearly nothing. It is only then, lifting his eyes to the room, that Niki notices the white cloth covering the easel. It is the robe he wore from Jean’s, the one he left here, and it is covering a painting.

The fox walks slowly to the easel. He knows what lies below the cloth. His fingers grasp the edge, black on white, rough pads on soft cotton, and he lifts it away. On the canvas below, against an autumn background of red and yellow, sits Niki, tail curled demurely around his side with the white tip curved just away from him, one paw supporting some of his weight on the bench, his one visible eye focused somewhere far away. Henri has captured the pose perfectly, the fox on a stone bench in a park poised to stand, about to get up, but forever caught in the moment before he leaves. Niki touches the canvas, half-expecting to feel his own fur beneath his fingertips, but it is only the rough brushstrokes and the oily texture of paint. He stands there staring at the image, wanting the painted fox to turn around and meet his eyes.

The hazy leaves in the background seem to shift in his peripheral vision, but the fox remains static. His coat shimmers, like a reflection of the leaves around him, all oranges and yellows and browns with red highlights, and even the black of his paws and the white of his muzzle and chest are luminous. The painting is bright and awake, a marvelous memorial not only of Niki, but of Henri himself. And yet, Niki cannot look at the picture for long without his eyes filling with tears.