Content warning:
Part I: In which Tristram faces a Dragon.
July 8th 1883
Dear Francesca,
First off: I know that’s not your name. I haven’t gone and mistaken you for another woman—one of my many conquests, I imagine you imagine (what must imaginary you think of imaginary me?). You’ll notice, if you glance ahead, that I’ve adopted a corresponding nom de plume of my own.
A confession: Our meeting the other afternoon wasn’t quite by chance. I first noticed you last Tuesday, when you entered the Librairie and asked for a copy of Swinburne’s Tristram. In order, I perceived that:
1. You read much more quickly than I do. (Unless you are pretending? Are those flickering pages a performance?)
2. You have very long and fine fingers. I would like to know how you managed to stain them so badly: penning letters to your friends, or notes in your books? Are you a lady novelist in the making? Or a poet—like myself?
3. Our culture is mad for blondness, but yours is odd and unnatural, and therefore interesting: I’ve never seen hair so fine and bright—a troubling hybrid of corn- and spider-silk.
That husband of yours doesn’t seem like he cares much for books. Or perhaps he is the type who values their bindings more than their contents and would wallpaper his household in gilded Morocco if he could. Tell me, how—why—did you marry him?
Once I’ve finished writing, I will fold this letter up and tuck it into the Tristram you kindly loaned me (may it be our Galeotto … ). I’ll knock on your door, at which point I will most likely encounter a puzzled maidservant, who will ask who in the world I am, and I will explain that I am returning a book you were kind enough to bestow on me (generous creature that you are and clearly down-on-their-luck, weatherworn would-be poet that I am). I will look very sheepish and the maid will hopefully take pity and understand that I nourish myself on pats on the head from overeducated and bored ladies like yourself.
Perhaps Tristram will then resume his place on your bookshelf and gather dust. If, on the other hand, I am very fortunate, and you are the kind of woman I suspect and dread and pray you are, you will crack Tristram open once you are alone and rifle eagerly through his pages. Maybe you’ll anticipate some message from me, though I’ll bet you’re counting on some sentimental little verse scribbled on a flyleaf, not a whole letter (I picture your surprise—your delight?—as my words burst free of Tristram and tumble into your lap).
If you are inclined to respond, please visit the cantine on Rue des Hirondelles. You will find a terracotta pot to the left of the entrance containing a sad little shrub that would persuade you, against your better judgement, that it is a honeysuckle. Please bury your response beneath its brittle blossoms; nourish the poor thing with your thoughts. I will look for your answer every day for two weeks before I give up all hope of hearing from you.
“Moved with such long strong desire,”
Pyrame
July 22nd 1883
Pyrame,
I’m not sure whether to be amused or insulted by your name for me. It suggests, if nothing else, that you are a poor reader of Dante. (At least you haven’t designated yourself Paolo.)
You have asked a number of very forward questions.
1. Am I only pretending to read when I turn through the pages so quickly? No, certainly not. (My husband has pointed out to me before that I “read like a parched wolf at a rabbit’s neck.”) But having read Swinburne before, I need only dwell on the page long enough to fill my memory’s gaps.
2. How did I stain my fingers? This may disappoint you, if you had hoped to learn that I am a fellow poet (or a lady novelist), but I am in fact an amateur naturalist. I like to sketch and record my observations on any flora in my vicinity. This civilized island with all its shops and boardwalks provides me with fewer specimens than I would like, but I have found a few interesting weeds and have been scolded out of one or two private gardens I was not supposed to enter.
3. Why did I marry him? There is another question hiding behind that question. I will honor your indirectness with a more forthright response than it deserves: I chose to marry him. Nobody made me. (As a general rule, it’s very difficult to make me do things I don’t want to do.)
He’s more of a reader than you imagine, though I admit he is not so fond of novels, at least none published in our lifetimes. He has an active interest in history, and the fictions of past ages—the deader the author, the better.
I qualify neither as “bored” nor “overeducated.” I have had to educate myself, and I don’t believe it’s possible for anyone in such a position to do so to excess. As a result, I am easily entertained. The world is so odd and rough; how could it bore any reasonable judge?
But I admit I have felt a little smaller since our arrival at the Île de R—. I don’t mean that marriage has “diminished” me in some way. It is something about this place. I don’t like to be surrounded by so much water, such a flat and open ring of horizon. It unsettles me to see where the sea and sky meet no matter which way I turn.
Against my better judgement, I will visit your poor honeysuckle shortly, if only out of curiosity to see what you’ll write back, if you do indeed write back (this may depend on whether there are or aren’t various other Francescas—as you’ve hinted—waiting in the wings of this little drama you’re putting on). Let’s treat the terracotta pot as our ongoing letterbox; you may leave your response in the same location.
Reluctantly, I accept the name you’ve bestowed on me; I suppose it’s pretty enough and I can’t think of a better one at the moment. And so I will sign off as
Yours not quite truly,
Francesca
P.S. How precisely did you discover our address?
P.P.S. On further consideration: Don’t tell me.
July 24th 1883
Dearest Francesca,
A naturalist! I never would have guessed it, but I can see it perfectly now. You wondered if I would be disappointed, but on the contrary I’m enormously pleased. I will now picture you in the shadow of all my favorite trees, scattered across the island—the great oak in the graveyard, the wind-blasted hemlocks that line the shore—I see you, watching “Fleet butterflies, each like a dead flower’s ghost.”
If I may make so bold: Could we arrange for another meeting viva voce before long, perhaps in the shade of one of these “specimens”?
Hopefully yours,
Pyrame
P.S. I’m not nearly the scoundrel or the sleuth you suggest. You wrote down your address in your (our) Tristram. Is that a general habit of yours, or do you only scribble your address into books you would particularly hate to lose? (Or, I suppose there is another possibility—but how presumptuous of me, to imagine anything intentional or premeditated in your slipping your address into a book, and then giving the book to me.)
August 10th 1883
Dear Francesca,
I fear I may have made too bold after all; I hope you will forgive me (and that you won’t find a renewed plea for your attention too pathetic). Please send me some news.
I accept that our exchanges must remain confined to the page for the time being, if that is your wish.
Yours in agony,
Pyrame
August 13th 1883
Dear Pyrame,
If I wished to snub you for your forwardness, I would have done so explicitly. I am no great believer in ladylike meekness and quiet; silence is all too easy to misinterpret (as you have done).
I have been remiss in my duties as your correspondent because my husband and I have had to entertain guests. I have been distracted. And so I forgot all about you and your letters.
Don’t despair, Pyrame; having written that, I realize you will take my inattention as the worst kind of snub after all.
I am forgetful; that is all.
My husband thinks there is a connection between my faulty memory and the rapid rate at which I read and learn: He says that I am like a sieve that has mistaken itself for a sponge. New information passes through me at a rate that looks astonishing from the outside, but I am not so good at maintaining a firm grip on things. (Sometimes I feel rather more like a sinking ship, as I struggle to stopper my mind’s fissures; innumerable unaccounted-for faults remain, no matter how much imaginary plaster I apply.)
You will ask for an account of our guests and activities.
These occasions involve much sipping at lemonade and nibbling at airy cakes. Sometimes, as evening approaches, the phonograph shrouds us in Handel and we pour emerald liquors over sugar cubes.
My husband passes my sketchbook around the room, and our guests turn through its pages and coo and say flattering things about how talented I am, even though that is not the point. They often turn through the pages while conversing with each other and do not look very closely at the things they praise, such as my favorite study: a happy little cluster of inkcaps feasting on the rotting fence that encircles the cemetery.
As for our guests: There are poets and philosophers and young doctors, whom you would appreciate. Then there are Lords and Ladies This-and-That, whom you would not. One of my husband’s friends, whom I shall refer to as Mr. C, always sits near me. I have tried to point this out to my husband; I have suggested we reconfigure our seating arrangement and confine Mr. C to his own corner, but my husband thinks that because he is an old man he can do no harm, and it is better to indulge him. (What he really means is that Mr. C is very rich so one should not offend him.)
Yesterday, Mr. C asked if I had ever seen “the Dragon.” I reminded him that I am not a child. He said, “No, my dear. I refer to a tree, commonly nicknamed ‘the Dragon.’ A magnificent tree, hidden on the island’s coast. The Dragon is so named because it is very old and its trunk droops and convolutes as calligraphically as the serpent that strangled Laocoön and his sons.”
“How can such a thing remain hidden?” I asked. “You make it sound like quite a spectacle.”
“Like any dragon worth its salt, this one resides in a cave. Would you like to see it?”
Sensing a trap but hopeless to waylay it, I nodded. Foolish Francesca. Mr. C took advantage and said the way was treacherous; he offered to chaperone me, to lead and hand me over the rough rocks of the coast, lest I fall and dash my dainty brains out.
Pyrame, gallant as you are: Could you assist me in this? I do not even know if Mr. C is telling the truth. Could you locate this tree for me?
If and when you write to me again, I will expect a package from you rather than a mere letter. Send me a box or purse, and in it, you must provide a sample of the Dragon’s foliage as a sign of your dedication and loyalty to me.
Otherwise, I cannot say with certainty that I will remember you and remain a faithful and dedicated correspondent.
In case this challenge marks the end of our exchange, please accept my best wishes,
Francesca
August 20th 1883
Francesca, Francesca,
Devilish woman. I admit, I hesitated at first to do your bidding. Not because Mr. C’s account of the fearsome “Dragon” cowed me, but because a certain resemblance must have struck you too, and yet you did not comment on it, and this smacked of manipulation—the way you dangled a possibility before me: that I might metamorphose from a clownish-and-loutish Pyrame into a clownish-but-clever Tristram, sly and brave dragon-slayer!
Did you think I could be so easily puppeteered? Well, evidently, yes, I am puppeteerable. But at least I’m self-aware about the matter! (I want to bring my self-awareness to your awareness before illustrating how foolishly I obliged you.)
As for dear old Mr. C: He did not lie to you—but he didn’t tell you as much as he could or should have either. Behold a report of my journey into the Dragon’s lair:
The journey to the cave is indeed treacherous; it lies to the north of one of the beaches along the Island’s western flank, where fine white sands gradate into something grittier and darker, like crumbling gingerbread. One must grasp at tilting, wind-scoured trunks that stretch like ribs out of the earth, while stepping down and around treacherous boulders. I found porous black tide-pools simmering with glassy little crablike creatures.
Then, it is as if the landscape is an unsettled blanket, wrinkled with dunes—but when one looks very closely, there it is, the cave’s mouth: a lifted fold in the cloth.
I had to remove my shoes—I dangled them across my shoulders by their laces. My feet went numb as I waded across blue-black stones, praying not to slip or encounter anyone’s rude pincers.
But soon, soon, I arrived at the cave’s mouth and had to blink away the gauze of sun-dazzle and wait for my eyes to adjust as a chill washed over me.
I saw it, perched on a sandy little island within the Island:
A great twisted, silver yew. The Dragon buckled and twirled, as though some god had seized her by the trunk and wrenched her round and round an invisible post. A wrong collision of textures: wood solid as stone, yet fluid and grained with rivulets. Her needles looked black rather than green in the half-light past the cave’s mouth; her crown glittered, gemmed with crimson berry-beads.
The tide was high enough that I had to wade, then swim, if I hoped to reach my quarry.
But you did not share one key detail that Mr. C must have included in his account, in his effort to dissuade you from making the perilous journey on your own: that the riptides guarding the Dragon are far more treacherous than the beast herself is.
I nearly drowned—drank half my weight in seawater, then spent a merry evening teetering “By the utmost margin out of the loud lone sea,” salt-dazed. I must have curled up on the beach at some point—beyond my recollection.
I reawakened well after dark, the moonlit tide tickling my naked feet. But gods be praised: I found a single yew berry—it must have been swept away by the same tide that seized my body—beneath the boning of my corset. I enclose this treasure within a vial of the seawater that almost killed me. Consider it a gift: my almost-death in a jar.
And now, you have your end of our bargain to uphold. Please send me news when you can. I hope you will share your trophy with Mr. C and so exasperate him as he tries to imagine how you made the journey on your own.
Your ardent friend,
Pyrame
August 27th 1883
Dear Francesca,
I am disappointed. It has been a week since I faced a Dragon, nearly perished for you, and provided you with the gift of my Almost-Death. I think this merits some kind of response? A brief note at least? A whisper of acknowledgment and thanks and a promise to write at greater length at a later date?
I am growing worried. Please send me some sign before long, or I will assume the worst. And given my namesake, who knows what I will do, in my too-hasty despair?
Yours impatiently,
Pyrame
August 30th 1883
Dear Francesca,
Very well (you are persuasive even in your silence!). I admit it: Perhaps I exaggerated when I claimed that I nearly perished in the sea for you.
Nevertheless, I am unsure what I’ve done to merit such a cold non-response. Have you “forgotten” me yet again? Is that sieve of a mind so overwhelmed, has it drunk so much, that it is now drowning?
I pray not. But if so, you leave me with no choice but to abandon our honeysuckle-letterbox and harass your door instead, which may result in our attracting undesirable attention from your beloved husband.
I do not know what else to do. The risk cannot be helped. I will wait three more days for your response, before I take this desperate measure. Forgive the desperation; you must recognize its source:
“Yea, surely as the day-star loves the sun
And when he hath risen is utterly undone,
So is my love of hers and hers of me—
And its most sweetness bitter as the sea.”
Reassure me, I beg you.
Your foolish knight,
Pyrame
September 2nd 1883
Dear Pyrame,
I thank you for your gift and apologize for the tardiness of my response. I have a confession to make: I was under the impression that I had assigned you an impossible task; I did not think (considering the fanciful nature of Mr. C’s description) that the legendary “Dragon” could possibly be real.
I assumed, as a result, that your account of almost dying in its pursuit was fabricated, that you had plucked the fruit of a commoner sort of tree, and meant to pass it off as something magical.
This upset me. But upon further investigation, I have learned from reliable sources that there is some substance to Mr. C’s legends after all, and so—I suppose—to your report of your escapades on my behalf.
Please accept my gratitude, albeit at a late juncture. I beg your forgiveness for wrongly suspecting you, when I am in fact (apparently) the more culpable participant in this exchange.
But I hope you will understand if I tell you that I am somewhat confused and unsure what to do with—I don’t know what.
You. Us. This.
Whatever you would like to call the game we are engaged in. I refuse to apply any lofty designations, of the sort that belong in courtly romances. This isn’t that—no matter how many resemblances you comment on, Pyrame, no matter how you strive to perform as Tristram. Don’t forget who you truly are.
But for my part, that is precisely the problem. I have no idea who you truly are.
Please permit me a fortnight’s leave to consider our arrangement. Please do not write to me during this interval. I will contact you when I am ready to resume our discourse. (I will not forget to do so; I’ve taken a safeguard against this possibility by writing your name in my datebook.)
Sincerely,
Francesca
Part II: In which a moonlit tryst ruins everything.
September 2nd 1883
Dear Mother,
I seek your advice in a delicate matter:
I have forged letters addressed to myself—from an anonymous lover. Please do not waste too many words upbraiding me; I am already aware of my error. As you will see.
I was careful to make it all look like a game, to write in the voice of a young poet, aggressively besotted. I portrayed myself, meanwhile, as a little curious. Intrigued. But coolly distancing—mindful of her place and loyalty to her husband. I then “hid” these letters in a hatbox and made a show of discreetly shoving the hatbox away whenever my husband entered the room.
My husband has never noticed the hatbox. Not even when I placed beads and pine cones in it, to make its passage in and out of the closet noisier.
You will say this is foolishness—that he and I torment each other, when it would be more productive to speak openly of our troubles. But I have told him of mine, again and again, and he will not listen.
The matter has taken a strange turn. You see, I gave up on this charade some time ago, once it became clear that I had failed to pique my husband’s interest with the Hidden Hatbox. But more recently … new letters have begun to appear, penned by my “lover,” whom I designated Pyrame. That is, another Pyrame—a “real” Pyrame—has begun, or continued, to write to me. How should I respond to them?
I await your response and guidance with eagerness.
Sincerely,
Your daughter
September 5th 1883
Dear Daughter,
“You will think me foolish” and “I was careful” do not make for a very persuasive combination of phrases. You have indeed been very, very foolish. There. I have respected your request and refrained from wasting too many words, though I hope the few I have selected convey my feelings on this subject adequately.
Are you certain your husband is so ignorant as you believe? The likeliest answer to this riddle is that he has cottoned on to your little scheme and is now deploying it against you, to gnaw at your thoughts and inflict the same smallish sort of madness on you that you have attempted to impose on him.
My advice (which you have already foreseen, clever as you are): Speak to him.
With love and weariness,
Your Mother
September 8th 1883
Dearest Mother,
Of course it has occurred to me that my husband might have donned the role of Pyrame in order to “teach me a lesson” (about what I don’t know: the dangers of my own fancies and cruelty? There, I need no instruction). But this strikes me as unlikely and out of keeping with his character. For one, it would require him to read and regularly quote Swinburne’s Tristram, which is, in my opinion, an impossibility.
Even if he did peruse Swinburne, I don’t believe he is capable of channeling this sort of voice. That is precisely the problem, or part of the problem, that I had hoped to remedy with this entire exercise. Perhaps I wished to give my husband a model to follow—passions and habits I wish he would express, or allow me to explore …
No, I believe something stranger is afoot.
I have further proof to furnish, in the form of a confession, which I hope will not make you very angry:
I may have done a little more than pen the letters from Pyrame I have mentioned.
Before I settled down to write in the voice of Pyrame, I knew I would have to alter my mind’s natural state, and so I did as you once taught me: I collected samples of rain- and seawater, soot and soil, and mixed the four substances with my ink. With this ink, I composed a prayer to Herodias, in which I requested her aid and inspiration, and then swallowed it.
My hand, when it moved, seemed to do so only partly of my own accord.
But I do not understand how so many new letters have begun to appear, without my hand’s involvement in the equation. Do you think that Herodias has secured another vessel, to continue to write to me in the voice of Pyrame?
Your Daughter
September 13th 1883
Daughter,
I now have a fuller grasp of the situation. You have done very wrongly. But you have done well to consult me (at long last).
No, I do not believe this could be the work of Herodias. I am unsure of the source, but as I have told you in the past (though with inadequate force, evidently), precautions must be taken in these cases, to prevent other Agents from perceiving and interfering in our Work.
Here is what you must do:
1. Boil water and pour it over your “lover’s” Offering (the yew berry they gave you, in its vial of seawater); let it steep.
2. Mix in a goblet of mulberry wine, vinegar, and oleander, to undo their name.
3. Pour this mixture back into the vial Pyrame sent you, and next time you write, send them the potion. Invent a plausible story and persuade them to drink it. The likeness to the Tristanian love potion will in all likelihood prove too much a temptation for Pyrame to resist.
With any luck, your “lover” will consume this poison, thus resolving your problem.
Your Mother
September 15th 1883
Mother,
You know very well I cannot do that. Please write back to me immediately with an alternative solution, for I am almost out of time …
Your Daughter
September 16th 1883
Dear Pyrame,
My apologies for this period of necessary silence. Many thanks for respecting my wishes during this interval; your patience does you credit.
Please accept a gift from me—which strikes me as an appropriate exchange for the trophy from the Dragon you kindly delivered to me.
I am enclosing an extract of the same Dragon’s fruit (which, I feel a need to clarify, for your edification: is not in fact a berry, but a fleshy shield around the seed), mixed with a few other key ingredients.
You must trust me.
In addition to my passions as a naturalist, I have been trained in certain Arts, you see. And I have concocted a Remedia amoris for each of us to imbibe. This seems to me the only answer to our riddle, the only way out of this tangle.
I thank you for providing me with a pleasant enough diversion during this over-steeped phase between summer and autumn when the island is so lukewarm and languid. But now our “affair,” such as it was, must come to an end. Please, if you care for me as much as you claim to, you will respect my wishes and consume this draught. Be sure to drink every last drop.
I assume I will not hear from you again. Farewell, Pyrame.
Sincerely,
Francesca
September 18th 1883
Dear Francesca,
As you can ascertain for yourself—on the basis of my reply’s existence—your potion did not work. I hope you will not be displeased to hear from me. If you have checked the honeysuckle’s pot for my reply, you must have anticipated this outcome.
Far be it from me to question your skills, but I suspect your efforts may have been muddled and marred by your own intentions and desires, and so I will speak to them directly, since their mistress is so recalcitrant:
To Francesca’s Ire:
Why pour so much boiling oil down on me? I am no Invader; I will emerge unscathed. Francesca is gifted. But I have gifts of my own, with which to defend myself.
To Francesca’s Pity:
I beseech you. Act like a pumice stone and work away at your unyielding mistress; defang her.
To Francesca’s Love (whom—I could swear—I have glimpsed darting like a sly doe through the dense and shady thickets of Francesca’s mind):
Don’t be so frightened, skittish thing. Come closer. I am no manly Hunter. I am, rather:
At your mercy,
Pyrame
September 21st 1883
Pyrame, enough games. My Mother told me I should kill you. I am beginning to believe I ought to have obeyed her.
I thought I had come up with a happier solution.
I know you are lying; you never drank the potion. If you had drunk it, you would no longer feel any ongoing need to write to me.
Tell me, what did you do with it? Did you feed it to that horrible honeysuckle? It does appear to be suffering more than usual of late—its petals have turned brown as parchment, its leaves are golden. The most inauspicious alchemy I ever saw.
(If you respond by calling it an emblem of your long-suffering love, I will smash the ridiculous thing’s pot against the adjacent wall, and what charming nonsense will you throw at me to calm my personified Ire then???)
I apologize. I have just had to stop writing to pace through a series of neat circles and breathe. I am more composed now; I am ready to write again.
You say you have gifts of your own.
Of course you do, demon, scoundrel, whatever the hell you are. I gave you your “gifts” (just as my Mother gave me hers when I was born).
I see the problem now.
I gave you a mind, but no substance, no body to imbibe the potion … I will research this matter, scratch this riddle out, erase it and you from the world once and for all.
I don’t even know why I’ve written all of this down. A reminder to myself, perhaps. I will not send this letter back to you, I will not fit my words into the dying honeysuckle’s embrace (“sweetened with dead flowers,” indeed).
But I admit, part of me fears you will perceive my thoughts regardless, you will find a way to go on imbibing the poison of my language—if not the remedy and solvent with which I had hoped to release you.
So, if you do see and hear this letter, despite my refusal to send it to you:
Please. Begone. It will be better for us both.
Sincerely,
Francesca
October 13th 1883
Dear Mother,
I believe I have succeeded. It has been around three weeks, and I have heard no more from poor Pyrame.
Why, then, do I ache? Why does it feel as though some part of me is missing? Have I gotten everything wrong, yet again? Perhaps, rather than ridding myself of Pyrame, I should have folded them back into myself (I imagine this process might be rather like raveling up a scarf and tucking it into a pocket).
On second thought, I will not send you this letter. You will worry too much.
Your heartsick Daughter
October 15th 1883
Dear Francesca,
Do not be alarmed; I have no intention of continuing to inflict my correspondence on you (unless you want me to). But as your faithful servant, I have been investigating a matter on your behalf, and now justice demands I bring the matter to your attention.
Banish me again after this, and I will obey. Never again will you hear my voice (not that you’ve ever heard it in the first place, but you understand my meaning: Never again will you trace my words on the page, subvocalize and almost-sort-of-hear me. I wonder what that voice of mine sounds like, as you imagine it? A little smoked and hoarse? Dark and soft as wine?).
It was your famous Hatbox, stuffed with our correspondence, that inspired my suspicions.
(Yes, yes, I know all about the Hatbox. I know lots of things I’m not supposed to: that’s part of the gift of deriving from you.)
I started to wonder: Does that husband of yours have his own Hatbox—or whatever the masculine equivalent might be (a cigar box, a whisky box, a carrying case for his hunting rifles … )? He must have secrets of his own that he is hiding from you, while you have attempted to flaunt yours in front of him.
And so, I recently slipped into your household to pay his quarters a visit and rifle around just a little.
Don’t worry. He is not jealous yet; he does not know to scatter flour across the floor, to catch your lovers’ footprints like gnats on flypaper. To him, I’m just a half-forgotten nightmare.
Did you know you have had other, realer dalliances already?
It is cruel to ask the question, as I know you will not recall.
I found letters between yourself and another Pyrame, another Thisbe—back in the world beyond the Île de R—. (I will be good; I will not grumble too much about how you once suggested—unjustly, hypocritically!—that I might be taken with other Francescas. I will confine my pique to this one parenthetical aside, then have done with the issue.)
Besides which, I found an illuminating exchange between your Mother and Husband. I thought it unwise to steal too many samples, but I enclose one key message, as proof of my discovery:
December 1st 1882
Dear Sir,
It is done. I have given the Potion to your wife, my Daughter. There may be ongoing aftereffects—it is difficult to limit the effects of this potion, to target and erase just one Event or Person; there tends to be a sort of bleed-over, a stain that spreads and overtakes entire pages of thought. Be on your guard and assist her as she recovers her memories and sense of self.
But I assure you, both her love and her recollection of her Lover will dissolve.
I hope you will forgive my Daughter for her lapses. Consider her an innocent henceforth; she will not recollect what has occurred, and so punishing her for forgotten misbehaviors would be entirely fruitless.
I recommend a sojourn to the Île de R—, to avoid reminders in the form of Rumor. My Daughter will benefit from the cleansing air and seawater. There, you may renew your marriage vows in peace.
I am, as ever, at your service, in the interest of our family’s prosperity and happiness,
Your Mother-in-Law
(I assume the potion in question is familiar to you—you meant for me to consume the same substance, I think?)
In light of this discovery, it may be prudent to keep your Hatbox well and truly hidden—lest Husband take notice and defend himself in the same tired old fashion against a brand new threat.
Won’t you reconsider our acquaintance and arrangement? Do you even have a choice, or are you reenacting something you’ve already done and forgotten, dearest, muddledest Francesca?
Always yours,
Pyrame
October 18th 1883
Dear Francesca,
I shall write this down, lest I forget. I must have done this last time, too. I must have left notes for myself. But perhaps they are not here. Perhaps they are back home.
I am writing to secure a minnowing recollection, before it darts away again:
A picnic, in the shade of a mulberry (is that where the idea for Pyrame came from in the first place?). A dear “Friend” wrapped his fingers around my ankle; he tripped me when I tried to run, and I did not resist. He tickled my calves with buttercups. We kept an eye on my Husband’s shadow, stretched by the sun. To quiet Husband’s worries, my Friend spoke too loudly, called me “Sister” or something close enough; he made sure my husband overheard the childish nonsense and “secrets” we whispered to each other.
Or am I mixing things up again? Patching together a lost memory and a half-remembered story—is this tale mine or someone else’s? Or is it both, something I’m reenacting because I admire the pattern of it, while my own just feels …
About as meaningful as the buttercup pressed on this page.
Figure this out at a later date. Don’t forget.
Yours and yourself,
Francesca
October 18th 1883
Mother,
I hope never to hear from you or see your face again.
Formerly,
Your Daughter
October 20th 1883
Pyrame,
Do you know what troubles me most about the sea and sky here? Their overinsistent blueness. I find it excessive. Gaudy. Besides which, I cannot always convince myself of the color’s source—which surface is radiating and which reflecting.
I went for a walk the other day and met a ferrotypist, struggling to steady his tripod along the craggy coastline. I helped him, and in return he told me a little about his process: what it’s like to catch light and time. A moment peers into his box’s eye and never escapes again.
It takes a few seconds for the image to settle—which makes movement a problem. He said, “I can ask a human subject to hold still, so that the resulting picture will remain crisp and clear, but naturally, I cannot make such a request of the sea.”
He keeps failing to capture the sea; his box always flattens it: waves and roiling foam smoothed out, until the water fixed on his plate looks less like the sea than a sleek and strange mirror. He showed me a few samples: pictures split by a crisp horizon line, but if you rotate them, it becomes difficult to tell which half of the picture is up, and which is down.
Tell me, which one of us is steering this sorry ship of a love story, if I dare call it that?
I have taken to writing on carbon paper, to preserve my part in these exchanges. I paid the man for one of his ferrotypes, which I now enclose.
Yours inevitably,
Francesca
October 22nd 1883
Dear Francesca,
An observation: Flour is very much like powdered moonlight. A useful ingredient for a future Potion.
Yours,
Francesca
October 24th 1883
Dear Francesca,
I think we are both a little made up—which is to say, we are made of words. Like a highly abstract Blodeuwedd! Accordingly, I will press camellias into this message—for lost love, and longing—and so sweeten our exchange with dead flowers.
You made me somehow—I don’t know how. Perhaps you conjured me up out of our Tristram. Mixed me with another Pyrame or two.
Unsurprising. You are, I have discovered, not merely a naturalist, but more like one of those ancient herbalists of legend. An enchantress, a witch.
But you appear to be conjuring up your own self in much the same fashion. Leaving notes to remind yourself of who you are, and who you have been. Are you sure you have been truthful, an accurate guide?
I think—suspect—I can mirror you more accurately. Serve as the sea to your sky.
“Not all things always, dying, would I forget,”
Pyrame
October 26th 1883
Dear Pyrame,
Blodeuwedd indeed. My theory is fleshier: that I tore you out of my own body, in a grotesque reversal of Eve from Adam’s rib.
There is a place where I ache—in the rough vicinity of my spleen. I have a faint scar there, which I always understood to be the result of a childhood injury, but perhaps I misremember. Perhaps I engaged in a rite too dark to recollect, when I tore you out of me.
But we have wandered astray. Some time ago, I proposed that you could do with a more substantial form, so that I could poison you, or cure you. (Same thing.)
I no longer wish to force-feed you any such remedy. But would you like a body, after all? To meet me in the flesh?
Yours,
Francesca
October 26th 1883
Daughter,
I am concerned by your recent letter. I beg you to guard against the Deceiver who has inspired this rush of enmity against me.
Consider carefully before you betray yourself and ruin the delicate happiness your Husband and I have taken pains to construct for you. I have only ever acted with your care and safety in mind, though this may be difficult for you to understand. I beg you to trust me and inform me of whatever it is you have lately learned (or believe you have learned).
Your Mother
October 27th 1883
Dear Francesca,
I would like that very much. But I fear this might be impossible. Advise me. How should we proceed?
Yours,
Pyrame
October 30th 1883
Dearest Pyrame,
I have developed a spell and procedure, to transmute moonlight into flour. In this way, I will knead dough out of the night’s air, and so give you flesh—or something close enough.
Meet me tomorrow evening in the graveyard. By my favorite mushroom patch—you know the one. (I am enclosing my previously-mentioned sketch, to guide you.) I will ensnare your soul and give you a body. And what fun shall we have then …
I can almost see you now: staring at me in astonishment. Your rib cage stark as stairs, skin stretched tightly across your stomach, yielding and shuddering at the sight of me. Perhaps you are wondering, will this be the night of passion you have longed for?
Or will the witch plunge her knife into you once you are made solid?
I feel your breasts already beneath my palms, my tongue … You will taste of sea-mist.
Trust me, my darling. Do as I bid you.
Yours,
Francesca
November 1st 1883
Oh, Francesca …
It is more frightening to leave you notes, now that I have so solid (too solid) a form. I fear your husband’s jealousy more than I used to.
But never fret—my own fleshiness is insufficient to dissuade me. We named me well: Pyrame is foremost in love, and second-most an overhasty fool.
Write back to me soon. Immediately. I would command it, if you were commandable, but I know you are not, and so I beg you for mercy instead.
Yours always,
Pyrame
November 6th 1883
Dearest Francesca,
Are you well? I have not heard from you, and I am beginning to worry …
Has your husband discovered us? Please write back to me as soon as you can, to reassure me, or I am liable to imagine the worst and do something very foolish, in keeping with my name. The problem is, there is more risk in the folly now—that I might end much as Pyrame did, skewered on some pointy object or another.
And so, write to me, obstinate woman. Please.
Yours,
Pyrame
November 8th 1883
Pyrame,
We must be careful. I will be brief—I have to write in some haste.
My husband has not discovered us, precisely, but he has commented on my “listlessness” with some displeasure. I have the impression this corresponds to my behavior in the past.
I managed to slip in and out of the house undetected for our Hallows’ Eve escapade in the graveyard. But the following evening, my husband discovered salt and flour crusted between my thighs. He was astonished and wished to know the source. He asked if I had bedded a baker—or perhaps an entire bakery. (Though he put his questions less delicately than that, fingers twisted in my hair.)
I said, No, Dear, I have bedded the Moon.
This response did not amuse him. But it did reassure him that his only rivals are my own Madness and Fancies (which he personifies as often as you do). Nothing so concerning as a man or woman of flesh and blood (or, in your case: of flour, moonlight, and seawater).
Please do not write back, for now. I will write to you when it is safe again.
December 8th 1883
Francesca,
It has been a long time. I have been patient. I have waited for word from you. But can you blame me for my concern—especially given your memory’s past fallibility?
I admit, part of me worries that this might be yet another creative means of ridding yourself of me—perhaps out of love and concern for my safety. Or perhaps out of impatience, boredom, irritation at my persistence.
Give me some small sign that my worries are misplaced. Now that I am embodied, I relish all sorts of new sensations, but life is more complicated and limited. I can no longer see and hear across a distance, like a God could; I require coarser, more concrete forms of gratification.
You needn’t write to me if it’s dangerous to do so. But at least leave me some token, an indication that you still desire me. I will comb our graveyard daily, though it is now crisp and silvered with frost—grass so brittle it crunches like fine bones. My breath fogs the air and my fingertips are always cold.
Take note—there is some likeness between these materials and surfaces: flour, snow, page. We can correspond on the landscape itself if not on paper.
Yours,
Pyrame
December 10th 1883
Dearest Francesca,
I have found your message: the blooming little heart of blood you painted between the frozen inkcaps.
I hope it did not hurt too much to leave me this gift; I imagine you kneeling, as though to lay down a bouquet of hothouse roses, to honor some dead man you never met. Did you prick your thumb on a thorn? I imagine you biting yourself, to extract sufficient ink.
I scuffed the earth with my boot and buried your heart so none other would find it.
Fine, fine, I will trust you, and I will go on waiting.
Yours impatiently,
Pyrame
December 15th 1883
Daughter,
You still have not answered me. Very well. I can guess, or imagine, what you have discovered. I suppose I can understand your reasoning, though I think it wrongheaded …
You agreed to the procedure, my dear. In fact, you encouraged it. Don’t you know how difficult it is, to make you act against your own wishes?
But my mind keeps wandering back to the question of whatever Agent first interfered in your communion with Herodias and adopted the voice of Pyrame.
Do you not wonder as well: Who are they, really? A lost and wretched spirit, earth-bound for good reason? Or a demon, or something even worse …
Be careful, Daughter. Let me know when you have come to your senses, and I will help you banish the wicked Agent that haunts you once and for all.
Your caring Mother
December 20th 1883
Francesca,
I keep wondering if you like the island better when it is frozen and gray, since you expressed a dislike for the intensity of summer’s blue.
The world around us has come to imitate the colorless ferrotype you kindly sent me. And that confounds and muddles matters all the more: forget the difficulty of telling up from down. It’s even harder, sometimes, to distinguish life from its echo, flattened on copper or paper.
It’s all just a trick of the light, isn’t it?
I am impatient. Forgive me. It’s been so long. The contours of your face are blurrier than I like in my mind’s eye. That is why I lurked outside your household the other day—I think you noticed me, as you stepped out with your husband, though I was careful to disguise myself in a rag-skirt and threadbare veil. You really should not worry; I am sure he took me for nothing more than a simple beggar-woman.
I am now sketching your expression, as it struck me then, arched over your shoulder, disdainful. You turn unrealer the more I struggle to capture you.
That long, twisting neck—sometimes you remind me of a swan. The public impression that they are elegant only captures half the issue, overlooks how vicious they can be as they defend their territory.
Were you warning me away from yours?
Yours in sorrow,
Pyrame
P.S. I enclose the sketch in question, for your consideration. Please correct it; remind me of where I have inevitably strayed from truth.
December 21st 1883
Pyrame,
He knows. Please stay away.
Merry Solstice,
Francesca
December 22nd 1883
Dear Francesca,
Tristram and Iseult sing about their own love, they lie by moonlight, they write letters to King Mark to persuade him of their innocence, and he believes them. We, the audience—who have seen so much evidence of their adulterous guilt—even halfway believe them.
Your Mother and your Husband will try to make you forget Pyrame. Do not forget.
They will try to persuade you that Pyrame is a noxious poison. Which, to be fair—isn’t untrue. But to live without them would be far worse: a hollowing-out of part of yourself. A kind of amputation.
There is a solution—if worst comes to worst.
Work against Mother’s instructions.
Unbind and unbody Pyrame. Gather them back into your soul. (Then, when you are ready, let them out again, like a sail.)
Yours and yourself,
Francesca
Part III: In which the other Iseult takes revenge.
January 1st 1884
Dear Francesca,
I know you warned me to stay away, but I fear for you and would appreciate some reassurance you have come to no harm—that your husband hasn’t taken some awful vengeance against you.
Send me anything. Some token. Another heart of blood in the graveyard at least, though the recent snow has melted. A hollow heart, then. Press a signet into sleet and leave an empty impression. That would do, would satisfy.
Yours,
Pyrame
January 5th 1884
Dear Francesca,
I have visited our graveyard several times over the course of the past few days. The widows who frequent it are beginning to recognize me, I fear. One of them addressed me. She asked whom I had lost, then told me, “You’re too young to know real grief, my dear.”
I’ve checked our former letterbox, but haven’t found a single word from you. Therefore I hope you’ll forgive this intrusion, if I take the liberty of sliding this letter into a book I have recently discovered, in three volumes—The Poetical Romances of Tristan in French—containing certain of Swinburne’s sources. I am especially taken with this passage, which I translate very roughly from the French, as far as I can make it out:
“But she had led Tristan astray
through a wicked word—‘to love’ (amer)—which she changed
so that he did not know if his grief
was born from the sea (la mer) or from love (amer),
or if she said ‘love’ instead of ‘the sea,’
or if instead of ‘love’ she said ‘bitter’ (amer).”
I will send this material to your customary address as a seeming gift from a childhood friend; I shall wrap the package in frilly, lacy papers and ribbons and dried flowers and so suggest it is from a girlish, innocent sort of correspondent.
I shall enclose my previous letter, and this one, halfway through the first volume—in the hope that the subject matter will pique your interest, such that you discover my words on reading another’s, long dead.
Forgive the deception. And then, once you have (presumably) forgiven me: Find some means of answering me, please.
Yours,
Pyrame
January 8th 1884
Dear Sir,
I admit: Your letters have given me a shock. I’m uncertain what they mean. I want to tell you that you have made a mistake—my name is not Francesca—you must have taken me for another woman. (Or perhaps another woman, in an effort to divert you from dogging her shadow, has deliberately given you my address instead of her own.)
But I am not sure I have the matter right after all. It cannot be so simple as that.
I have read the books you kindly sent me with gratification, and I think only someone who knows me very well would have thought to send me such a gift.
I am also very fond of visiting the graveyard you have, so suggestively, termed “our graveyard.”
I would appreciate an explanation. Resolve the puzzle for me of your familiarity and strangeness.
It seems unwise to use my own name, and so I will continue to write under the one you have apparently assigned me.
Cordially,
Francesca
January 9th 1884
Dear Mother,
I have just received the strangest correspondence, which I enclose. I do not understand whatever magic is at work here, but I detect your involvement. Please enlighten me.
Your Daughter
January 11th 1884
Dear Francesca,
I rejoice and despair! The latter more than the former. Thank you for writing to me, though I understand (or don’t at all, I allow I cannot imagine) what this muddle looks like from your present perspective.
Let me explain.
My previous letters did not arrive in your hands by accident. You are lost in a fog; you must trust me and follow my voice out of it again.
I suggest we meet in person. Write back with a date; contemplate a reasonable excuse to waylay your husband’s suspicions. If you like, we can maintain the charade I’ve already established: that I’m an innocent little schoolfriend. I look the part well enough.
I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten you’ve forgotten, and so let me clarify and remind you: You were mistaken to address me as “Dear Sir” in your last letter. I understand the mistake, given my signature, a masculine nom de plume. I admit, “Dear Lady” does not suit me much better, though I can at least play a Lady’s part more convincingly, for the benefit of witnesses along the lines of Suspicious Maids and Jealous Husbands.
I beg you, simply call me Pyrame. (When we meet in person, call me Eloise, Rosamund, Carmilla. I don’t know. You choose.)
Anyway. Where was I? Ah, yes, where I usually am: our charade. I propose a delightful little performance, which will also afford us an opportunity to become reacquainted with each other. (“RE-acquainted?” you wonder—intrigued? “Whatever is this tangled fool on about now?” Have a little faith and patience, dearest Francesca.)
Tell your husband an old childhood friend is visiting the Île de R— and would like to pay you a visit. (I know you were never properly in “school,” and so this friend cannot be a schoolfriend; a friend from the neighborhood? A churchfriend? Someone you took occasional French lessons with?) She would like to have tea, d’avoir de tes nouvelles. It has been so long, too long.
Your friend is also married and therefore safe. She wears white lace gloves and detests jewels and rouge. You used to paint flowers and birds together. I enclose a watercolor your friend has sent you—show it to him as evidence of her dedication to harmless pastimes—of a lark darting Icarus-like toward the sun, as if to extinguish itself. (Do not describe it this way to Husband, of course.)
Just name a date for our performance and I will appear and satisfy your curiosity. I will bring you back to yourself, show you who you are and always have been.
Yours even now,
Pyrame
January 15th 1884
Daughter,
I am very glad you have written to me. Beware—be careful! I fear you are in danger. I thought I had banished the Demon who is currently attempting to reenter your good graces.
You sound suspicious as to the nature of my involvement. And so, let me enlighten you:
This Demon has previously ensnared you. I separated the pair of you, but this proved a difficult operation—like disentangling a strangling vine from a tree, when the two have become so attached, they are almost the same being, grafted together.
As you can imagine, the process inflicted some damage on both sides. I had to cut your recollection clean away so that you would not go rushing back to the Demon’s embrace. I hope you will forgive me and understand that the damage was necessary.
Do not answer the call of the Demon.
Your Mother
January 20th 1884
Mother,
I am frightened. The Demon has written to me again, and would like to come see me in the flesh.
What should I do?
I enclose a copy of the Demon’s latest letter.
Your Daughter
January 26th 1884
Daughter,
I see. The Demon knows how to find you, but we can turn the apparent curse into an advantage. You have already had to depart one home to come to the Île de R— and build a new life there. I would not have you uproot yourself once more, just to flee them. (Who knows? This Demon is wily and may find and follow you again, and again.)
We must seize this opportunity and turn the Demon’s own stratagem against them. We can fight back.
How foolish, for such a creature to assume a body; this makes them all the easier to destroy.
Here is what you must do:
Comply with the Demon’s request and name a date when you will receive them at your household.
You have indicated in the past that the Demon is made of flour, moonlight, and seawater. To undo them, you must prepare a concoction of opposing substances. Set a handful of flour aflame until it turns to blistering ash. Mix it with ink and then leave an open bottle of this mixture out in the sun, from noon until three o’clock.
When your old friend arrives, pretend to play along with the Demon’s proposed charade. Instead of tea, serve your friend the potion. Pretend it is a cordial. You may drink some first yourself to set the Demon at ease, if you wish; you will come to no harm.
The Demon, however—well. Please report back to me soon on your success.
Your Mother
January 30th 1884
Dear Pyrame,
Please be so good as to come visit on Saint Valentine’s Day. Come in the afternoon—any time after 3 will do. I will be at home, ready to receive you.
Yours,
Francesca
February 15th 1884
Mother,
It is done. I followed your instructions. They appear to have worked. Explaining the visit of my dear, previously unmentioned childhood friend Camille to my husband was difficult; I think he has now had enough of my friends and will never allow me to receive any ever again, lest they, too, have sudden crises and expire on our doorstep.
Pyrame clutched my hand and begged me to linger by their side. They recognized what I had done—thought it a joke, a precipice I would tug them away from, once I had amused myself enough.
They asked again and again, “But now the game is over, isn’t it, Francesca?”
I still have their white lace gloves, fingertips stained by their watercolors.
Your Daughter
March 2nd 1884
Mother,
What have you done? What have I let you do?
I have discovered a hatbox full of an illuminating correspondence—including a bundle of Reminders I had the foresight to write to myself.
I would tell you not to write to me again, but I see this request has proved fruitless enough already. And so, I permit you to write to me. Just know that whenever I receive your writing, I will redirect it to the hearth.
Francesca
March 3rd 1884
Pyrame, Pyrame,
Now that you are undone, can you see and hear whatever I write again? Have your eyes and ears dissolved back into me?
I hope you hear this message. I hope you feel it—as if I had engraved my words into the skin above your navel.
If, by some miracle, you are able to write back to me, please do. Tell me what to do to restore you to what you were. To patch you up like so many fragments of shattered porcelain.
Yours always,
Francesca
March 5th 1884
Pyrame,
You have not answered me. This is unkind. I am wearing your gloves now, as I write to you, in the hope that this will enable your spirit to guide my hands and compose your response.
I am drunk on mulberry wine. I will wait and wait until the end of—what? This story? That’s the problem with this story; it never ends. It likes to repeat itself.
So help me repeat it again and again, even if that means I go on loving and killing you over and over. The loving part makes it all worth it, don’t you think?
I think you would agree with that sentiment, if only you would play your own damn part again, stubborn Pyrame.
With love,
Francesca
March 6th 1884
Dearest Pyrame,
I will bring you back. I will summon your spirit again, build another body for it. I pulled the trick off once after all, without understanding what I was doing the first time.
Intention should make the whole enterprise easier. I don’t believe in all that nonsense about poetic inspiration only having a pulse of its own when the poet cannot control it, when the poet is just a channel for something beyond her comprehension.
I understand now. I will act accordingly.
It’s an absurd thing: undoing an undoing. But I have the right ingredients, the right incantations, locked within the confines of this entire correspondence.
Mother tried to write me the other day and I drowned her words in the sea.
Yours again before long,
Francesca
March 30th 1884
Pyrame,
When you are able, please write me back, to confirm whether my spell has worked or not.
Though if you have a body now—again—I suppose you cannot see my words, until I find the right letterbox. I notice that the old honeysuckle has vanished, pot and all (presumably it did not last the winter; the poor bedraggled shrub must have wilted at long last).
Guide me, my love, if you please. If you can.
Francesca
May 1st 1884
Dear Thisbe,
No, I haven’t mistaken you for someone else; “Thisbe” is a code name. It is, I suspect, a familiar code name, though you may not remember why just yet. Have patience.
It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance the other day at the Librairie; I heard you before I saw you. I entered and wandered between the bookshelves, chasing the voice that read out loud:
“ … as the worn-out noon
Loves twilight, and as twilight loves the moon
That on its grave a silver seal shall set—
We have loved and slain each other, and love yet.”
And then I saw you, and your lace gloves and the pair of glossy, dark plaits that fell over your breasts (I wanted to tug them like bell-pulls, to check if they were real). I must have struck you as strange as I introduced myself, my hand trembling.
I trembled all the more when I noticed the camellia tucked into your buttonhole.
It may be, if you are who I suspect and dread and pray you are, that we are more familiar with each other than you realize.
There is a graveyard at the Island’s center, and at the heart of the graveyard, an oak with a birdhouse dangling from one of its limbs, which local larks frequent. Please be so kind as to leave a response to my letter there—if you are willing to continue this conversation.
I will check daily for word from you.
Yours faithfully,
Francesca
Editor: Hebe Stanton
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