6.: The Lady and the Tiger Go To Hell
(Somewhere West of Denver, December 1956)
My Dearest Ruth,
I’m beginning this as the train pulls out of Union Station. The day is bright and sunny, though it snowed here last night, and I imagine it’s as fine a way to spend a Christmas Eve as any, being ferried on steel rails through the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. I’ll post the letter when we reach Grand Junction, and then I’ll be traveling on to Sacramento. I have quite a lot of work to do before the semester begins. I hope that you’re well, and I hope this holiday season finds you in all ways better than did the last.
When I spoke with Sarah Beringer in Chicago last week, she was emphatic that I write and tell you of my encounter with Marquardt and her woman, though I can’t imagine I have anything to say that will prove useful to anyone who’s had as much firsthand experience with those two as have you. I’m also not especially keen to revisit that autumn evening in Providence. It still, on occasion, gives me nightmares. I’ve awakened in a cold sweat from dreams of the gathering on Benefit Street. Regardless, I promised Sarah that I would write, and I do hope that I may be of some help to you, no matter how small. I trust, of course, your discretion in this matter, and I trust that what I write here will be kept strictly between the two of us.
As you know already, as Sarah has told you, I met Marquardt through an acquaintance, an anthropologist formerly on faculty in the Dept. of Archeology at Brown. He has asked that I please omit his name from any and all accounts I may write on the subject of Dr. Adelie Marquardt, and I am bound by our friendship to oblige him. It matters only that he knew of my interest in Dagon and in Semitic Mesopotamian fertility gods in general and that, through him, the fateful introduction was made, following a lecture at Manning Hall. That was on the afternoon of October 12th of last year, and it was there that I was invited to the gathering on Benefit Street. I admit that I found Marquardt personable enough on our initial meeting. Certainly, she’s striking, just shy of six feet tall; the sort of woman I do not hesitate to term handsome. I don’t mean in any way mannish, but handsome. The sort of woman for whom I’ve always had a weakness. From what I’ve gathered, she excels at making good first impressions, the same way, I think, that a pitcher plant excels at seducing hungry insects. Aggressive mimicry, as the evolutionists say. Her grey eyes, her easy smile, her immediate interest in whomever she’s speaking to, the authority in her voice, and yet, I also confess to feeling the faintest inkling of apprehension when we shook hands. I can’t say why. I mean, I don’t know why. The vestige of some primal survival instinct, perhaps, something meant to keep us safe that human beings have, to our detriment, forgotten how to recognize for what it is.
Her companion was not with her that day, and I gather that’s fairly unusual, seeing the two of them apart. I wouldn’t meet her until the evening of the gathering.
“I know your work,” Dr. Marquardt told me. “Your article in Acta Archaeologica on the Septuagint’s account of the destruction of the idol in the temple of Dagon in Ashdod. I read that. Fascinating stuff.”
Now, if you wish to flatter me, Ruth, and gain some measure of my trust, you have only to claim a passing familiarity with my research. I’m easy that way, as, I suspect, are most academics laboring in obscure and esoteric fields of study.
“I have something I’d very much like you to see,” she continued. “A piece I’m told was recovered from the ruins at Ras Shamra during Claude Schaeffer’s excavations there in 1929. It’s been hidden away in a private collection for decades, so you won’t find it in the literature anywhere.” She told me that no one seemed to know why the artifact in question hadn’t gone to Strasbourg with the rest of Schaeffer’s material.
“If it’s genuine,” said Marquardt, “it’s very important, indeed.”
I told her I looked forward to seeing it, thanked her for the invitation, and we parted ways. I spent most of the next week up at Harvard, at both the Semitic Museum and the Peabody. My department’s endowment is modest (some would say meager), and it isn’t often I have the opportunity to visit institutions back East. As is always the case when I can travel, I was determined to make my stay as productive as possible, wringing the most from every waking hour, even if it meant wearing myself down to a frazzle. Which I promptly did. By the evening of Dr. Marquardt’s gathering, which was Friday the 29th, I was exhausted, and I very nearly begged off. Of course, in hindsight, heeding the wishes of my exhausted mind and body would have proven the most fortunate course. I’d not now be writing you this letter, and my sleep would not be so frequently interrupted by bad dreams. My nerves would not be always on edge. Hindsight, though, is rarely more than a cruel voice, taunting us from the shadows.
I showered, got dressed, and walked from my room at Miller Hall to an old slatboard house at 135 Benefit. It’s built partway into the steep hill, with the basement opening out onto the street, and has been painted a ghastly shade of yellow. I’ve read it was constructed in 1763 by a Providence merchant named Stephen Harris, who fell on hard times almost as soon as the house was completed. Therefore, naturally, it has a reputation as a cursed house. I’d been told to arrive at 6 p.m. sharp, so the sun was well down by the time I reached the address. A housemaid greeted me at the door, and I found to my surprise that the gathering was already in full swing.
The maid took my coat and ushered me from the foyer down a narrow hallway to a spacious drawing room. The air was smoky and redolent with the commingled odors of cigarettes, cologne, and perfume. Adelie Marquardt spotted me almost at once, and I was immediately introduced to her companion, Ecaterina, for whom I never got more than a first name. She was a very pretty woman, dark-eyed and her hair black as coal, and I must confess that she and Marquardt made quite a dashing couple. She’s from Bucharest, the companion, and she spoke with a heavy Romanian accent.
“I trust you had no trouble finding the house?” asked Marquardt, and I assured her that I’d had no trouble whatsoever. “Good,” she said, “good. I don’t yet know Providence well myself, and I confess I still get turned around from time to time.”
“Am I late?” I asked, looking about the crowded room.
“No, no. You’re right on time,” she said. “You’re fine, my dear.”
Another servant arrived, this one with a silver tray of fluted glasses, and she offered me champagne. I took a glass, though I’ve never much cared for the taste.
Marquardt had begun explaining how she and Ecaterina had met in Paris, four years earlier, but I was, at best, only half listening. My attention had been drawn to the other guests, of whom there were at least fifteen or so. Ruth, when I say that they were an odd lot, I’m not exaggerating. I know that I have a reputation for being something of a prude; I’ve never kept company with Beatniks and Bohemians and whatnot, but I think even your beloved Kerouac and Ginsberg would have been taken aback by this outré bunch. Most were women, and there was a definite effeminacy about the few men in attendance, both in manner and appearance. I would say there was a conscious, purposeful outrageousness to the way these people dressed and carried themselves. They reminded me of a flock of some peculiar species of songbird, birds whose feathers are far too gaudy to be beautiful and whose bodies are so ungainly that one wonders how it is they manage ever to fly.