A Curious Beginning

He handed back the bloodied handkerchief and I slipped it into my pocket with the bottle of calendula oil. “All finished. I will leave you to remove yourself from the trousers as best you can. On second thought, I had best leave the calendula oil with you.”


I gave him the oil and the handkerchief with a smile as I left.

? ? ?

Salome’s tent was almost precisely as I could have imagined—a sensuous bower of draped silks heavily perfumed with incense. But I had not pictured the stockings hung up to dry or the litter of dirty handkerchiefs and soiled chemises. A gilt pasteboard box of bonbons stood open on a little divan, the sofa scattered with the remnants of the confections, here a shred of coconut, there a scrap of candied peel. She motioned me to sit, and I brushed them aside to settle next to a heap of crumpled fashion magazines. I was not surprised she harbored a tendresse for Mr. Stoker, I reflected grimly. Their personal habits were frighteningly similar.

She began to rummage through her trunks. “So, how do you like the traveling life?” she asked. “It must make a change for you.”

“How can you tell?”

She shrugged one languid shoulder. “One can always tell a newcomer to this life.”

“It is interesting,” I told her.

She lifted her head to give me a scornful look. “I should have known butter would not melt in your mouth. You are not the sort of woman to speak her mind, to speak with passion,” she said, flinging her arms wide in a gesture that Bernhardt herself would have thought overdone.

I found her assessment of me amusing, but there was little point in disabusing her of it at this stage. I had discovered in my travels that people can seldom resist correcting those they believe to be less knowledgeable than themselves, and it occurred to me I might use this to my advantage to learn a little more about my erstwhile husband and his current predicament.

Salome was clearly relishing the role of tempestuous lover pitying the placid wife, and it seemed that pandering to her sense of self-importance would be a simple matter indeed.

“Oh, I beg you will not speak of passion,” I murmured. “I should hardly know what to think.”

For an instant I wondered if I had laid on the disingenuousness with too heavy a hand, but I was soon relieved upon that score. Salome flicked me another of her scornful glances and even managed to curl her lip. It was an impressive performance.

“That is because your blood is cold. I cannot believe Stoker has married a woman like you,” she burst out. “A man like that, with so much fire in him, he is like a bull when he is roused, so proud, so sensual.” Her eyes took on a nostalgic gleam, and I smothered a yawn. She was so utterly predictable, I found it impossible that Stoker had not tired of her histrionics within a fortnight.

But I merely dropped my gaze and darted an innocent glance up at her. “You have known him so much longer than I,” I began modestly. “You must understand him much better than I could hope to.”

“This is true,” she said, fairly exuding triumph as she bent to rummage in her trunks again.

“Then you must know what grudge Colosso bears against him,” I ventured, scarcely daring to hope she would take the bait.

But Salome could not resist the opportunity to flaunt her greater knowledge over me. She rose, one hand to her hip. “Of course I know! It is because of Baby Alice.”

“Baby Alice?”

She rolled her eyes heavenward. “Truly, does your husband tell you nothing?” She heaved a sigh. “Stoker was with the show when he was a boy. For half a year he traveled, learning the knives and conjuring. Then he went away for a long time, but always he comes back to see us, particularly me,” she said, giving me a lascivious grin. “The last time he came was four years ago. We had not seen him in a very long while, and when he came, he was so different, we almost did not know him. He was scarred from an accident in Brazil, and he did not know if he would keep his eye. And his spirit, it was broken. He did not even want to see me,” she said, curling her lip. “He kept to himself, juggling Indian clubs and rigging the ropes in exchange for his keep only. He talked to no one except Baby Alice.”

“Who was she?”

Salome flapped a hand in a dismissive gesture, a goddess brushing aside a flea. “She was a nobody—a freak born without legs from the knees down. The professor, he dresses her in infant’s clothes and puts her in a pram, and she is billed as ‘Baby Alice, the Adult Infant.’ But Alice does not like this, and she complains to Stoker. One day, when he is fishing in the river, he has an idea. It took him months, but he created for her a tail, like a fish—all silver and green and pink. With it she can swim, she is free, like a mermaid.”

“How intriguing. Did it work?”

“Of course it worked! Stoker has gifts in his hands,” she said a trifle dreamily. She was lost for a moment—no doubt in a haze of indecent memories, an impulse I understood only too well.