Visions of Isabelle Read online

  VISIONS OF ISABELLE

  William Bayer

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2012 / William Bayer

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

  Background Painting by Jeff Cornell

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  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  This book is not a biography. It is a novel, a fantasy, based on the life of Isabelle Eberhardt. Though it contains distortions and inventions devised to serve the telling of a story, many of the events took place, and many of the characters lived. The names have not been changed, except in a few cases.

  PROLOGUE

  December 14, 1914

  To Major édouard De Susbielle

  Sir:

  It has come to my attention that after a memorial service organized under the auspices of the Resident-General, Commander in Chief, General Lyautey, in honor of the memory of my late friend, Isabelle Eberhardt, also known as Si Mahmoud, you were overheard to make certain disparaging remarks in the officers' mess at the garrison in Fez.

  In particular it has been reported that you made reference to certain erotic episodes in her life of which you could have no first-hand knowledge, and made other vicious slanders, among them that my late friend was a "drunkard, an addict, and a syphilitic" and that "she slept with most of the Foreign Legion."

  I find such statements insupportable. Mademoiselle Eberhardt was a person of the highest moral character, she was a devout Moslem, and her activities during the time of the border war in the Sud-Oranais were of inestimable value to France. She was one of the great personages of her time, and any imputation to the contrary, by you or anyone else, must be considered an intolerable lie.

  It is possible that the reports to me of your comments have been incorrect. I sincerely request, sir, that you affirm this in writing, or else be prepared to meet me on the field of honor.

  With my most distinguished sentiments,

  Major Eugène Letord

  PART ONE

  "Everything in my childhood and adolescence prepared me for the fact that peace and good fortune would have no place in my life–that I would be doomed to a maddening struggle, and would become, if you like, a scapegoat, bearing the burden of all the injustices and misfortunes that hurled my family to ruin."

  Isabelle Eberhardt

  Mes Journaliers,

  January 18, 1900

  THE CRACKED PIANO

  Nathalie De Moerder was the illegitimate daughter of a German Lutheran named Eberhardt and a Russian Jew named Korff–a fact unsuspected by her husband, General Paul De Moerder of the Imperial Russian army, until several years after they were married. In the early 1870s, Madame De Moerder ran away from her home in St. Petersburg with her three children–Nicolas, Nathalie and Vladimir–and their tutor, a former parish priest named Alexandre Trophimovsky. A fourth child, Augustin, was born in 1872, and he, too, bore the De Moerder name. In Geneva, on February 17, 1877, a fifth child was born–sired by Trophimovsky...or perhaps by someone else. She was named Isabelle Eberhardt.

  Spring of 1888 in Meyrin–a town outside Geneva. The sun shines brightly upon the tropical plants, the cacti and bamboo, rubber trees and miniature palms that grow, bloom and perfume the air in the garden of the Villa Neuve. Two children, a teen-age boy and a girl eleven years old, wield axes against a pile of logs. They chop for a while, then sit down together to rest. A dog barks, another answers from far away, and then a distant scream rends the air.

  In the villa, a vast, high-ceilinged, noble-looking house, sobs and cruel laughter echo through the rooms. Vladimir, a boy of twenty, lies upstairs on his unmade bed, his arms rigid by his sides, his bare feet extended between the brass rods of the baseboard, and turned so that his legs are locked in place. He stares at the ceiling with crossed eyes and listens to the sounds below. At each scream he winces; at each sob moisture gathers in his eyes; at each trail of laughter he curves his mouth into a sarcastic smile.

  After a while these contortions take on a pattern of their own. He begins to twitch, to vibrate his head, and then to arch it back so that the tendons made hard in his neck pulse with his rapidly beating heart. When he can stand this no longer, when perspiration has risen upon his whole body and matted his long blond hair to his forehead so that it nearly covers his eyes, he springs up, grasps a violin off the floor, and begins to play rapid, high-pitched scales. He swoons with his music, presses down his bow as hard as he can, bends back and forth like a Slavic gypsy. Still, no matter how rapidly or piercingly he plays, he cannot blot out the cries and wails that fill the house, and have filled it for as long as he can remember.

  In the garden Augustin and Isabelle hear Vladimir's fiddling, try to find his rhythm so that they may fit their chopping to his beat. They cannot succeed; their axes become embedded in the wood and must be wrenched free. Still chips fly about, and after a quarter of an hour Isabelle has produced more firewood than her brother.

  The scene in the drawing room has only begun. The black and white squares of the marble floor provide an arena for the combatants who pace about. The room is spacious, luxurious, flooded with light that pours in through a row of glass doors on one side, but it is furnished with junk: a table made of a single unfinished plank supported by wooden packing crates and covered with stains of food and paint, the cheapest overstuffed chairs bought in secondhand shops from the estates of retired British civil servants, an old black and green Turkish samovar set upon a battered steamer trunk. Everywhere there are piles of mildewed books. A legless piano crouches in a cobwebbed corner. Gardening tools, hoes, rakes, picks, shears and ceramic pots clutter a section of the floor, and a paint-spattered ladder leans against a wall where may be seen an extraordinary sight.

  This is a vast disjointed mural, crudely but passionately painted–the work of a lunatic perhaps, or a child in a rage. Figures are superimposed, perspective is distorted, limbs turn the wrong way at vital joints. Colors clash and run together. Mistakes have been stricken out rather than erased. The mural depicts a grotesque crucifixion in which a diabolic Christ wails in ecstasy upon a bejeweled cross, surrounded by sneering saints and wild dogs with lascivious tongues who look up at Jesus or else out of the mural and into the room.

  Various monetary symbols–signs for dollars, rubles, sterling, francs–are emblazoned upon the foreheads of popes whose villainies are listed in angrily painted slogans that curl about their heads: "CHRIST THE DEVIL"; "PETER THE BETRAYER"; "OPPRESSOR POPES IN LEAGUE WITH ROYAL DOGS"; "THE GREEDY CHURCH STEALS FROM THE HUNGRY POOR." To one side, covering part of two walls, is a gigantic woman with a beatific face who holds a saw-toothed sickle and threatens to sweep away all th
ese villains with a single swipe. This avenger is labeled The Revolution.

  If anything is more bizarre than the contents of the painting, it is the anger impacted within–an anger that shows in the way it spills off its wall, turns corners, makes no distinction between wall and ceiling, wall and floor, extends onto the marble mantelpiece, is smeared across several panes of window glass, attacks mirrors and even the nearby furniture, running across the velvet of the chairs, incorporating an ancient Russian icon that leans against a trunk, then spills out of the fireplace and onto the hearth where, one can imagine on a winter day, flaming logs would provide a blazing inferno, which in league with the avenging revolution in the corner, would threaten all organized religion with an enormous auto-da-fe.

  Alexandre Trophimovsky, affectionately known as "Vava," a huge, bear-like man with mercilessly piercing eyes, a thick black beard, wild locks of graying hair, is the author of this stupendous mural and also of the violent scenes that take place in this room. His stepdaughter, Nathalie De Moerder, has just announced to him her intention of marrying an apprentice watchmaker in Geneva. These two move around the room–Vava with the swagger of a village priest, young Nathalie, like a trapped and flustered bird, awkward, alighting here and there, placing all her weight on one foot, then on the other. Madame Nathalie Eberhardt De Moerder, or "Old Nathalie" as she is sometimes called, sits watching her daughter and her lover from a filthy brown velvet chair, her sweet-natured eyes pouring parallel rivers of tears. Young Nathalie and Vava have been hurling insults at a tempo that exceeds the feverish fiddling of Vladimir. All three ignore his music: it is merely background, part of the blend of barking dogs and twittering birds that fills in the spaces between their cries.

  "Disgusting pig!"

  "Bitch in heat!"

  "Monster!"

  "Whore!"

  "Drunken goat!"

  "Shrew! Witch!"

  To Isabelle and Augustin the exchange in the drawing room which wafts to them garbled, in the garden below the house is but the prelude to a climax which they know, in time, will be punctuated by flung bottles, kicked vases, even threats of suicide and murder in the form of frozen gestures with rakes and shears.

  Augustin flings his ax away, Isabelle sets hers down, and together they creep toward the house to share the drama–the only thing that relieves the boredom of life at Villa Neuve.

  "You want to keep me here–locked up! You'll do anything to ruin my life!"

  The children see Young Nathalie standing in front of the broken piano, feet apart, hands on her hips, her head extended so far back that they wonder how she can keep her balance.

  "On the contrary," bellows Vava, "I have ruined my own life for you."

  Now he, too, steps into sight so that from where they spy in the garden Isabelle and Augustin can see the combatants framed in separate windows like portraits on a wall. There is another window between–here sits their mother, twisting her head abruptly from Vava to Young Nathalie and back again like a spectator at a game of tennis. Isabelle barely listens to the argument–she is more fascinated by this trio of living paintings, framed and glassed.

  "Yes! By making us slaves! Insulting everyone we bring home! Destroying our friendships! Filling our heads with hate!" Spittle shoots out of Young Nathalie's mouth as if she is pumping venom from a reservoir within.

  "Ungrateful! Bitch! I taught you everything you know. You and your brothers were nothing but cold-assed little snot-noses until I–"

  "Drove us insane!"

  "Taught you what the world is! Taught you languages, mathematics, history, science, sketching, how to live!"

  "I'd do anything to get out of this asylum."

  "Anything? Fine. Pack your bags and get out. You'll be the laughingstock of whores. The daughter of General Paul De Moerder married to some tradesman scum! Your brothers will die of shame. Your mother will be snickered at by bakers. And I shall be defeated, too. So be it. But," and as he says this Vava leers at Young Nathalie with withering scorn, "you shall suffer the most–saving thread and pennies, skimping on soap, buying cheaper and cheaper cuts of meat. I can see your dinner table–pieces of bread mixed up with watch springs. I can see your body widening as your children take over your life, puking and crying and demanding this and that. I can see you mending their ghastly middle-class clothes, vulgar dresses garnished with disgusting frills, and I can hear the endless arguments over money–Christ, how I know these people!–money, money, money. 'We must cut down here, dear; mustn't spend too much there, dear.' Sickening! You won't last a year. And one winter day you'll come around here with a sniffling baby in your arms and say, `Vava, Vava, let me in, you were right. I've come home.' But I won't let you in. I won't look at you. You'll have to go back to your stinking life and that'll be my sweet revenge. Because, I promise you, if you go off with this idiot, you'll never enter this house again!"

  "Oh! The slimy way you twist everything! We're already the laughingstock of whores! My brothers are already dying of shame. To think that the wife of General Paul De Moerder is living with a flabby old drunk, a defrocked priest who squanders our inheritance on some half-brained scheme to raise cacti in Switzerland and turn them into perfume! We must be mad to put up with you and your drunken fits. Mother–get rid of him. Listen to me–look at me when I talk to you–"

  Old Nathalie now is staring straight ahead, as if she were looking into the eyes of Isabelle and Augustin crouched side by side by the hedge outside. They are shivering, trembling in each other's arms. Terrible things have been said inside the house–they have heard many fights before; have screamed, too, at times; have stood up to one another and to Vava; have shouted out words that later they wished they hadn't said; but never, at any time, has any one of them implied that it is their mother who gives Vava the power by which he holds them in thrall, that it is because of her weakness that they have become his slaves.

  In the window on the left, Isabelle can see her sister pleading with Old Nathalie to send Trophimovsky away. In the window on the right she can see Vava, certain that this ploy of Young Nathalie will fail. And in the center window she can see her mother who stares with the look of a person who refuses to listen to things she does not wish to hear.

  For a moment the tableau freezes, the characters held against the swirling scenery of the mural that riots across the background wall. But a moment later it all comes apart, the combatants hurl themselves against one another in a frenzy of slaps and screams. Vladimir is playing wild and dissonant arpeggios as Young Nathalie purses up her lips and lets fly with an enormous glop of spit that sails across the three windows and lands on Vava's leg. He gathers up his own spittle and lets fly at her, hitting her squarely between the breasts. Young Nathalie rushes at Vava with a scream. They meet, eclipsing Old Nathalie in the center window. Here Vava grabs Young Nathalie by the hair and with his other hand begins to slap her face. She kicks at his ankles until he falls upon his knees. The fiddling upstairs has become a screech.

  "I'm leaving, I'm leaving," Young Nathalie screams at him, and Vava screams back, "Get out, get out!"

  "I'll never come back!" she yells, yanking herself free.

  "Never come back!" yells Vava, and turns away.

  Augustin has fled. But Isabelle remains crouched by the hedge–she hates Young Nathalie, adores Vava and her mother, cannot understand how her sister can do such a terrible thing. To marry a watchmaker's apprentice–it is madness. She has seen the young man, and then listened to Vava dissect his middle-class values to bits. "Make love to anyone anytime you want," Vava has said, "but never renounce your dignity nor give up your soul." Young Nathalie, upstairs now packing her bags, is throwing her life away. I should speak to her, Isabelle thinks, and then, If she won't listen to Vava she won't listen to me.

  Vava is pouring Old Nathalie vodka from a flask. He pours one for himself, swallows it in a single gulp, dashes the glass against the floor. Isabelle's mother does not even quiver at the sound. Seeing that peace has fallen again upon V
illa Neuve, Isabelle wanders back into the garden to look for Augustin. She finds him sobbing behind the woodpile. To comfort him, she kisses his cheek.

  The evening comes and with it chaos. Nicolas arrives back from Geneva. When informed of Young Nathalie's departure he says, "Good riddance," and retires to his room. No dinner is served. The children wander into the kitchen, grab what bread and vegetables they can find, devour them on the spot, leaving a mess. Old Nathalie sits cross-legged on the floor, playing polonaises on the ruined piano. Vladimir has long since put down his violin and disappeared to a secret part of the garden where he sits, arms curled about his legs, staring tearfully at the moon.

  Playing hide-and-seek with Augustin among the hedges near the house, Isabelle hears the perfume of Chopin give way to Tchaikovsky's "Marche Slav." She peers through the drawing-room window, watches Vava dance around, vodka flask in hand, jumping and twirling like an Armenian peasant. "Faster, faster!" he yells, but Old Nathalie cannot meet his demand. He jumps upon the piano and dances there; Nathalie becomes stuck on a chord. Vava, angry, pounds his foot on the piano top and the musicale ends with the sound of splintering wood.

  While Isabelle has been watching, Augustin has crept behind her and placed his hands over her eyes.

  "Guess who?" he whispers.

  "Vladimir Petrovitch."

  "Yes, Zinaida."

  A week before they stole off to an obscure corner of the garden and there Augustin read Turgenev's First Love aloud. Both of them loved the story and decided to take its characters' names. Now Isabelle laughs in Augustin's face as she imagines what Zinaida would have done to Vladimir Petrovitch. Together they run off around the corner of the house to peer in another window and spy on Nicolas. They find him posing in a tight pair of riding pants and nothing else, his hand resting on his shoulder, holding an imaginary revolver. He makes several paces across the room, pauses, then turns and lowers his arm so that the weapon is pointing directly at his image in the mirror.