The Wicked Pavilion

Macabre Short Story - For Dawn Powell (1896-1965)

Paris, 1951

 1 Red

The red bulb lights in the circular movement out the feteres, within the void, entertain the eyes with their play in convexity; but it is the violet and cynosure gas lamps inside, where the ears feel everything, that explain all of the movements of the senses. The clashing of the cleats is a preludes to the thrashing of the sheets on the verlan ouf. Ellenore leaned back from the balcony and surveyed the gentleman in tails and the ladies of the night in rails – in, out, next, please! She knew that this decade Pari was going to belong to the octogenarian old wheezers. But then in her reckoning, that was the way: spend the old man's youth doing illegal activities and then spend their old age as a zigoto making those same ones immoral. And bang the girls on the side as his time goes out to midnight and the spasms take over his virility.

Welcome to, Moulin Rouge, but not in La Belle Époque but at the beginning of Les Trente Glorieuses – The Thirty Glorious years. In short, Paris was dismal on top of despair. While the cacophony of history proclaims the La libération de Paris and takes shots of the Arc de Triumph, be reality of the city was of broken ruin and shabby smoke blackened façades in every small rue de ville. It was as much an asylum for the damned as a city of light. One walks down every brick-lined street, and one sees ghosts in dark garb with hollow cheeks beginning for bread and le java. The only two games in town that turns a profit on every roll of the dice: Marché Noir and l’executions gouvernementales, where sometimes cut off you head first rather than verlan. Some men took bets on this metathesis as their grandmothers starved in le Grenier.

This is why inside the Moulin Rouge a new management had been installed just this very year to make wholesome the degraded wants of the clientele. It is also why Ellenore had gravitated to this place because the heads many of the exquisite details of a woman whom men think that they love. She preferred beaux quartiers to other districts.

But hush, there comes a hand on my shoulder telling me that an eminence gris does not care for la volaille but la poisson avec la poison et le venin. She turned around to see the old fat la mêmé de la mer – the women who herded the chickens and the fish.

La Mer: “There is an elderly gentleman with such revolting dispassion for you that it transposes into passion a heartbeat. He was insistent and so I came to tell you that you must entertain him whatever he desires you shall give.”

“I am of course at the Moulin Rouge’s disposal.”

She said they more because she knew the signs of the pronouncement of une vue sur la mer.

La Mer handed a picture of the man and handed it to Ellenore, confident that all was in order. “He is one of our chat.” A big spender.

For Ellenore’s part, she nearly glanced at the front but was eager to find out when the picture had been taken. She saw that it was from the time of the occupation, and therefore, the gentleman worked with the other side and now worked for the West. Such things are not uncommon. His name called up an all-powerful baron.

The light had gotten dim and the few who braved the first few who braved the week before la rentrée.

While the Can-can girls were swaying with that ken-ken vibe and the working girls delectably spilling out their can’t-can’t swagger, Ellenore was in her own bebop solo, with the drums all a-waiting. She stole up on the target. Her first impression of him was the swirling round steam about him and the lingering scent of cranberry vodka. She only saw his backshadow and then the glass toasted high in the air for a toast. It was like a dream. She had drawn the lines for a sniper shot. There was no way he was going to escape but not that he wanted to even try: the poison that she was tangled in was what he needed and was the destrangement that he desired.

She nudged into his view and glistened a radiance that she knew he would falter for.

And thus began the dance macabre, where she enticed him to make the first response, and he wanted her to be in the corner so that he would have her full attention. And when this was accomplished, it was, he who spoke:

“I knew that there was an angel here and she has arrived.” He almost leered, but not quite because that would be too déclassé. And he would not deign to be relegated.

“Send me an Angel was heard in the upper reaches.” And she, not too subtly, inched her hand in its black glove up his chest. The code of course felt the play of her fingertips, but his eyes were taking in the look of her and the smell of Chanel No. 5. It was a standard working with, but it conjured up a distinct scent when placed on her neck and skin. And the music played on.

“So, I can thank La Mer for your arrival.” He grinned. Again, the almost leer colored everything on his face.

“Mais non. It is you over desire which called me. The rest is near details.”

“Shall we dance?” And they did. It was well within her art to begin seducing this gentleman while the foxtrot was in season.

He had her by the wrist as if in handcuffs. She did not mind but continued to smoothly pirouette. Anyone else would have thought she was in his power.

And she noticed that he had her a card, with the address that she knew to be the place where he next wanted to see her. It was a restaurant, and she knew it well. But before she parted, she gazed into his face and said: “That this meeting will be like a death in the afternoon: sweet and tempting but with the la fée verte having her bite.”

“I certainly hope so, because the old man that is under these clothes once to feel the sting.”

2 White

The scene is a restaurant in Paris. Or should I say one of the restaurants that make Paris one of the most exclusive places in the world for the gourmet to rest his late that fate cannot harm him for he has dined today. La Tour d’Argent is not merely “a restaurant” but the Epicurean center for all that is holy in Paris. One gentleman said that the gold standard must be in Lyon because that is the only way that the silver standard of this restaurant can be bettered. It is also a place that is so expensive that few who have dined there can afford it. But any cosmopolites who went there one rather die than not have the chance to repast there every chance he gets. But truthfully, while the blue and gold carpet is spectacular and the white tablecloths are immaculate, to reality of the cuisine is substandard compared to its past. So, the wicker back chairs look out into the Notre Dame Cathedral and all that is most central to the city, but it is a place to be seen rather than be seen eating.

She noted that he produced a letter to the maître d’ - which meant that he had been notified on the canard au sang some days ago. Which meant he was one to be here with someone and that someone was in this case her.

The foreplay of the conversation was for her to ask him about what it was that he did when he was not in the demimonde of the cabaret.

“I have done what I’ve always done.”

“I noticed that you worked with the foreign government while Paris was under occupation.”

“My services are always needed by whichever government is in power at the time.”

“And what are they?”

“Every government needs the raw materials provided at the cheapest possible cost. It is the way of capitalism, and I supply that need.”

“You will have to be more specific; I am dense on matters of finance.”

“Oh, I very much doubt that. But I will explain my situation: in the southern part of the Mediterranean, there are factories which are staved by workers too young to the employed here and in France, making small parts for a variety of machines. I speak and I know various people in these places therefore I get their workers to stamp out the various kinds of things that governments want. It does not matter where the nation’s government comes from. Whether it is Paris, or Berlin because at the top level, it is only the lucre that matters. I just supplied the hands which it comes from.”

“It must be hard.”

“From time to time I must make clear that the hand which feeds also has other facilities. Sometimes the whip must be employed on all owner and worker to make greater strides in efficiency and delicacy of movement.”

There was a brief pause, but then she continued:

“I can see why you have enough money to acquire all of the diverse entertainments when you are not slaving away at your position.”

One of the reasons that waiters in France, but especially in Paris, leave couples alone is because quite often the subject will turn to the state of their relationship in all possible ways.

She poured another glass of Absinthe and then looked up when the wormwood had almost sapped the bottle dry. “I think you should have another. You know in Switzerland they call this not la blanche but la bleue?”

“I was aware. There is in Geneva a small brothel where I get my needs met. One of them is Absinthe. But let us leave le blueu for later.”

“Very well. Now tell of other ones.”

“Pour me another glass and I will tell you.”

His face looked open and inviting and he shook his head up and down. She opened another bottle and went through the ritual of the French method which involved a slotted spoon, and which came out milky white in the special glass.

He hesitated. She waited and he then said something with his face looking into her eyes:

“I know I have been a truly wicked boy. And for that, I too need to be punished.”

“Tell me more, because you know that I am Céfran and am therefore very welcoming to whatever sense of pleasure you desire.”

“Any man want the subtle distinct touch.”

“Yes, and you?” her words were soft and flowing in and out, backwards to front.”

“I need something more abrupt and violent.”

“What is it?” the words are blocked but he needs a sense that everything is accepted here. Just as the orgy of the Moulin Rouge is the entrance, this is the climax.

“Of course, this is not unusual at all.” Her lips became smooth. For his part, he knew that he had found a friend. She continued: “Here is the card for where such things can be done. Meet me at 22 and I will have all of the equipment.”

Is phase had gone placid and he took the card recognizing it as one of the tall apartment buildings in the Empire Français. Back when the buildings were still called by the name of the architect: Haussmannian. He looked at her in the face and she could see that he would be there.

After this, she went to the Moulin Rouge and asked Le Mer to gather a few things in a purple bag. Both knew the secret for which she was hired. This is why Moulin Rouge came with a view to the Cathedral of Sin and sand: the rough parts of Paris needed to be sanded down.

3 Blue

It is on the second highest level of an old apartment in France. Of course, Ellenore did not live here, this was the place where Couchez took their clients more than the agreed-upon session. She was in her black dress with an indigo minaudiere. But she had arranged a few items in the room. The gentleman soon arrived from the small elevator and looked left and saw nothing and then right and saw Ellenore who was stunning in the briefest of black skirts imaginable. She could see that he was melting.

“Mademoiselle.”

“Monsieur Alarie. Are you ready for our exercise?”

“Bien sûr.”

And they went in.

“Have you ever done this before?”

She drew up and replied: “Some questions a lady never answers.” Eyes flutter.

And then she sat to work laying him in reverse on the white bed with blue pillowcases. She brought out a cricket bat from the desk, where it was hidden in the wide drawer. She tested it against her hand to ensure that it would be sound. He wept with joy.

She tested the paddle on the bed. He made a gurgling noise and mewed. They were just below the attic where even the old ones could hear it.

She pulled down his trousers and then the undergarment to reveal a red stripe derriere, just waiting, wanting, and willing to be taken. The rear guard was surrendering.

But she did not spank him but reached under the cushion and pulled out the manacles to his wrists. He then immediately started to struggle and opened his mouth.

For an utter instant, the ramifications of what she was about to do scroll in her eyelids. She was going to be disposed: she would never be in the in the beaux quartiers. She would never be admired by any man who needed money to squeeze his juice. She would never be gazed upon by those who desperately wanted her. Instead, she would have to live a life as a vagabond constantly begging for a small morsel and water to drink down. And she did not care.

She eased her way until she could smell the stench of his odor. Her hands slipped through and grasped his furry chest. All the while she could feel the accoutrements that she had so quickly gathered for what she was about to do.

Then she popped the cork: the wad of gauze went in the open mouth. With that done he could scream as loud as he liked in his undergarments. Then she slipped the manacles, from under need the bed, onto his wrists.

She was efficient to the last: she then hid his legs at the ankle and then at the knee. It was only then that she turned him over and looked at his face.

The eyes were screaming, and his neck pulsed with the arteries pumping blood. She looked at his face, and she could apprehend that in his mind he thought she was going to kill him. Perish the thought!

She took the scalpel out of her brassiere and held it up to his face. A blood vessel on his ear shattered and underneath a willing-up of blue emerged. But then she went down with the scalpel to his groin. This shook him even more and he tried to bury himself in the covers of the bed. And once it was down where the zizi made its mark she left the scalpel to rest on the center of the world and brutally snipped his zob. Zizzob Zizizob Zizzob. Snip snip snip.

There was, without saying, blood. She was focused on disposing of it in two a bag. She would of course dispose of it, but she knew that medical attention might be able to save what clinical detachment had criminal estrangement made asunder. And she did not want that. At all. Non non non non.

He did not die for two years but was ruined almost immediately. The incident was covered up and spent his last days in a convent being cared for by nuns. Their frock was blue as the sea.

Really, there is nothing more to tell about this story, she manages to slip down the outside back stairs to the small alleyway behind the apartment building only with a purple bag in her toe. When she came to the Seine, she tossed a small sack into the river. It sank. To the bottom. Never to come up again.

There she took a long circuitous route by walking, boat, train, and even horseback. South to Marseille and over the sea to parts unknown. All underneath the watch of Antares. Perhaps the red bulb knew in his guiding principle where she was going, but I doubt any other soul would, even in play.