Chapter Paris Exposition Universelle, May 8, 1900
Paris Exposition Universelle,
Sylvie’s glad she had the sense to wear a black dress today.
The hems that dragged in the gore, the spurts of blood that soaked her—those don’t show, unless someone is looking closely.
But her hands are another matter. No one will believe Alphonse was murdered by thieves if she’s found with guilt staining her skin.
She hurries along the lamplit street, hands tucked under her armpits as though she’s chilled despite the balmy evening temperature. Another thing working against her. There are so many people out, off to visit the fair at night when the electric lights burn in defiance of nature.
Sylvie curses under her breath. The crowds mean another thing. She’s getting closer to the fair, not farther away. She got turned around.
There’s a bright, sharp sound beneath her heel.
She stoops to find a broken piece of glass on the cobblestones.
That will do nicely. Pretending to admire the darkened window of a jewelry shop, Sylvie nicks the side of her head right at her hairline, hissing at the pain.
Blood dribbles down her cheek and along her jaw.
She drops the shard and puts one now explicably blood-covered hand against her head.
In the distance she can see the Salamander, the grand entrance to the fair nicknamed for its bulbous similarities to Salamandre brand stoves.
Towering there is a beautiful, bold woman.
La Parisienne, a woman sculpted not as a classical ode to beauty but as a model of modern elegance.
That whore, Alphonse had said as they walked beneath the statue, squeezing Sylvie’s wrist so hard she could feel the bones rubbing against each other. Any relation?
One of those damned bicycle-riding patrolmen appears around the corner, heading her way.
“No, no, no,” she whispers. She needs somewhere quiet to clean up, where no one will ask too many questions.
There are dozens of shops and exhibitions along the streets around the official fair, trying to lure visitors without paying the exorbitant official fees.
This used to be an undesirable neighborhood.
How much is the rent now that the mud of the Seine has turned to gold?
And which shop does she choose? Who will believe her story of an accidental injury and leave it at that?
As though moved by her desperation, a door opens in front of her. A man steps out, wearing a flowing white shirt unbuttoned at his throat and trousers that end in bare feet, of all things. If she needs someone who won’t pass judgment, surely this man is her best bet.
“Excuse me,” Sylvie calls.
He takes her in, tilting his head to the side.
He doesn’t look kind, but he doesn’t look cruel.
He doesn’t look like much of anything, now that Sylvie thinks of it.
She has the feeling that if she were to blink, she wouldn’t be able to recall a single detail other than those bare feet.
How are they that clean if he’s keeping shop without shoes or stockings?
“Could you help me?” she asks. “I slipped and I cut my head. I can’t go home in this state. Mama faints at the sight of blood.” Mama died years ago, and never cared much about blood or anything else when it came to Sylvie. “Do you have a sink where I could wash up?”
The man is still frozen. Sylvie curses her choice of accents. She should have gone for something softer, more upper-class. She thought she’d be less memorable if she sounded working-class. But no one wants to help poor girls. She knows that well enough.
To her relief, he steps aside, giving her enough room to pass by. In bold, modern letters over the door, not unlike the new metro stations signs, she reads “House of Curiosity.”
Here’s hoping her savior sells curiosity only to others and experiences none of it himself.
“What do you do here?” Sylvie asks, but the answer is obvious as soon as she steps through.
It’s a dazzlingly lit gallery. Photographs hang on the walls, each illuminated by electric bulbs.
Here, a father, mother, and two children, all dressed in white.
Here, a man and woman, holding hands and pressing their heads together with lovesick smiles on their faces.
Here, a young man lying prone on a rug, gazing upward with a bemused expression.
Face after face, most appearing puzzled but happy.
She drifts along the portraits, knowing she ought to get cleaned up, but drawn in by the allure of the images.
Aren’t other people the greatest mystery of all? The impossibility of ever truly understanding them constantly surprises her. She thought she understood Alphonse, thought she could control him well enough to stay safe. She was wrong. She’s always wrong about that sort of thing.
The images shift as she goes deeper into the room, flitting from bulb to bulb like a hapless moth.
From happy candid, unposed shots to more somber and even alarming fare.
There, a handsome man with dimples and a scar through his eyebrow frowning in concern right at the viewer.
There, a woman with eyes squeezed shut in what could be pain, or…
Oh, dear. One of those houses. Curiosity indeed. Sylvie glances toward the end of the room. A single door waits, cracked ajar, leading to whatever isn’t appropriate to have in the main gallery.
It does explain the strange appearance of the man in charge.
Sylvie looks behind herself. He’s gone. At some point he must have walked through that other door.
Should she follow him, hoping for a sink and a mirror?
After all, what does she care what kind of images he has there?
She’s as far from an innocent as they come, and she is intrigued.
But also wary. He didn’t say he was going to get supplies to help her. He didn’t say anything, in fact. All he did was allow her in.
If this is the type of establishment she suspects it is, they’re unlikely to report anything she says or does to the authorities. Which means she’s about as safe as she can be, for now.
She heads to the door, pushes it open, and steps into the darkness.
“No!” a voice shouts, but it’s too late.
The door shuts behind her. With a crackling hum, the space blazes into light.
Sylvie’s faced with the last person she expected to see: herself, magnified and reflected, over and over again.
She whirls to open the door and flee, but the walls are spinning around her.
Actually spinning, on some sort of mechanism.
Before she can tell herself to keep track, she’s forgotten which mirror panel hides the entrance.
A young man is lying in the center of the floor, staring up with tears trailing along either side of his face.
His coat is abandoned next to him, revealing half a dozen secret pockets sewn into the lining.
He looks emaciated, his skin waxy and dull.
“Too late,” he whispers. “He has you now.”
Sylvie wants to kick the young man. She got away from Alphonse; she’s certainly not going to give up here.
She pulls out the knife she was planning on dropping into the Seine and jams it between mirrors.
The motion of the walls rips it out of her hands and sends it spinning, lodged in that seam.
With a scream of rage, Sylvie takes off a shoe and slams the heel against the nearest mirror.
It cracks. She attacks the next one as it spins by.
The room grinds to a halt. Whoever is playing this game doesn’t want their investment damaged. A room like this doesn’t come cheap, and Sylvie knows men stop enjoying games as soon as they’re the ones being harmed.
With a click, one of the panels swings slowly open.
Sylvie grabs her knife and charges through. The room has rotated around her and dumped her out in the back of the building, not into the gallery again. But instead of the debauchery she expected, she finds only a well-lit room.
No. She’s well-lit. The room isn’t.
There’s a camera facing her. Deep shadows hide whoever is standing behind the camera, watching her. At last, Sylvie is afraid.
“People will miss me,” she blurts, hating the wheedling tone of her voice.
“Will they?” His voice has a quality she can’t describe.
It’s like he’s smoke, and every time he speaks, she breathes in a lungful of him.
“For how long? How much will they miss you in a month? In a year? How long until it’s easy for them to smile again?
I think not as long as you would hope. But tell me, honestly: How much pain do you think your absence will cause? ”
No one will miss her. She’s going to disappear and no one will ever even know she was here. Not just here, in the House of Curiosity. But here on earth at all. Alphonse was right. She’s just a stupid whore.
No. She refuses to do Alphonse’s memory the dignity of conceding a single point to him.
Maybe no one will miss her, but she’s going to carve up this man on her way out.
He’ll think of her every time he looks in his mirror room.
Sylvie shifts the knife into her dominant hand and bares her teeth in a grin.
She almost makes it across the room to him. It’s farther than anyone else has gotten.