made his way to the bar and ordered a straight gin and lime with ice. Three men sipped their drinks at a nearby table. Toward the rear of the small room, he spotted the French physician who raised his glass and beckoned. Frederick returned the toast, decided to join the man and perhaps, indirectly, lead the conversation to Easter’s bizarre behavior.
In the end they spoke about the weather.
Chapter 5
In her dreams, Easter spoke French. She purchased quaint items in quaint shops, ordered exotic dishes at restaurants, conversed with people she met on the streets who assumed she was Parisian. In her dreams, her French was flawless. In her waking hours, she recited the phrases taught her by Mademoiselle Yvonne Février, the seamstress of her wedding dress. Mademoiselle, only in America two years, had an amusing accent, both guttural and sibilant, but was an excellent instructress.
Mademoiselle had lived in Paris prior to immigrating to Chicago, and, though only in her mid-20s, could lay claim to making acquaintances with Scandinavian novelists and poets, attending artists’ bals costumés, and (this she only whispered) having an affair with a married man who arranged for her apprenticeship in a popular maison de couture. She mentioned artists who asked her to model, and why she had not done so—her hips and waist were not correctly proportioned, she said. Easter did not know if all these tales were true, but it didn’t matter. Mademoiselle Février had supplied her young American friend with several names to look up once the couple got to Paris.
*****
Aboard La Savoie, Tuesday, April 8, 1919
Only six more days. The storm is past. I am still queasy and rarely venture from our cabin. Frederick says I should be feeling better. He has had the good grace to not refer to that night.
I have no explanation for it. Some unholy spirit took me, discarded my common sense and good upbringing, and substituted instead the soul of a harlot, for that is how I behaved with Frederick. I used words that never before crossed my tongue, employed my body in ways never even contemplated. Those realities make me blush.
I wonder what Frederick thinks? I don’t know how deeply I shock him. I know he has had some experiences, but I am certain he never thought his wife capable of such ardor. We almost fell off the bunk twice!
*****
Easter tried to suppress a smile, then laughed. Her writing hand shook so that drops of ink spotted the page. She blotted them, continued.
*****
Should I be more ashamed of my behavior than I am? The truth is, I find a certain gratification in it. Though I cannot explain my actions (it’s well known that some people react adversely to the full moon; perhaps my weakness is storms at sea), I did, for some moments, relish the power so inexplicably vested in me. When Frederick lay beneath, as I straddled him and made him do as I wished, I sensed something overwhelming occur. I frightened Frederick and enjoyed doing so. The look in his wide, pale eyes was one I had never witnessed before in another human. I kept moving even when he had stopped, even when I knew he had finished. I hadn’t. I had several orgasms, I think, though of course I can’t be sure since I’ve never, to my knowledge, had one before.
Will my new husband expect such a performance every time we lie together? If so, he will be sadly disappointed. I have felt neither need nor desire for his physical company in the days since the storm.
Frederick bears an expression of anticipation. I have caught him looking at me when he thought I was occupied, and the furrow in his brow is as readable as any book. He is unsure; he may even hope and secretly pray for inclement weather. I am unsure as well.
Chapter 6
“They look like everybody else,” Easter said. “Except worse.”
“And they don’t even speak English,” Frederick added with a smile. Easter looked up at him, saw he was gently reprimanding her.
“Well, I had expected they would look different somehow. They’re French. It was understandable that everyone looks like us in England, but this is a different continent entirely.”
Frederick couldn’t tell if she was being serious. Her sense of humor routinely eluded him. Easter often said things he had difficulty interpreting.
La Savoie had berthed in its designated slip in the center of Le Havre’s harbor. It was an overcast, chilly morning, and they stood with other passengers at the rail of the lowest deck watching the activity below them. It would be at least three hours before they could disembark, and stewards had set out tables of coffee, tea, cakes and wines on the deck. On the pier below, hundreds of workers manned cranes, unloaded the passengers’ baggage from the holds and transported it by horse-drawn cart to a cavernous warehouse where customs officers waited.
On the next pier, workers blew whistles and shouted commands. Frederick saw that three cranes almost twice as high as the ones servicing La Savoie were working in concert to lift what looked like a railroad car. He nudged Easter, pointed. “Look at that!”
At first, only the roof of the wagon was visible. It looked to be some 80 feet long and shone whitely, and very slowly rose from the steamer’s hold. Even the stewards stopped working to look. One, a young man with a pencil-thin mustache said, “That’s Mr. West’s car. You’ve seen him, I’m sure. Very tall man, dressed like someone from the Buffalo Bill traveling show? He suffered an unfortunate accident during the storm.”
Frederick remembered seeing a big man being pushed about the sundeck in a wheelchair, clad in an overlarge Stetson hat, chaps and boots with pointed toes. “One of the wealthiest men in the world,” the steward continued. “He has his own ship, but I heard his cook vanished at the last minute and so he decided to travel with us.”
The wagon, now free of the ship and held aloft by the three cranes, hung in the air. “Unbelievable,” said Frederick. “That’s a giant flag of Texas!”
And it was. Though the wagon’s roof was white, its sides showed the star and colors of the 28th state. “That man must own a railroad,” Frederick exclaimed. The steward corrected him. “No sir. Mr. West made his fortune prospecting gold.”
The wagon was slowly lowered to the quay, and a hundred dockworkers pushed and pulled so that its 64 iron wheels fit perfectly on a spur line of rails that ran along the warehouses. They disengaged the cranes’ iron cables and Frederick noticed men buffing the sides of the car with their shirt sleeves. With the wagon safely on the rails, the men stepped back and enjoyed the momentary silence that follows great labor.
“My God,” said Easter. “We are an ostentatious lot, aren’t we?”
The wagon they rode on the train from Le Havre to Paris was far less opulent. Frederick had reserved a private compartment for the four-hour ride and pursed his lips at the unkempt state of their cubicle and its odor: it was a mélange of stale tobacco, sweat and coal fumes. The floor was littered with cigarette butts. A used newspaper was haphazardly folded and wedged under their seat. He pulled it out gingerly. Easter took it from his hands, scanned the page. “This is almost a month old…”
A giant headline read “Un Monstre Est Arrêté!”
It says, ‘A Monster Has Been Stopped.’ Some sort of criminal, I presume.” She read on, frowned. “Heavens! It’s a man accused of murdering women and then burning them in his oven! My God! It says he lured them with advertisements in the newspapers, promised marriage, took their money and killed them!”
Frederick
