Madame Tussaud
Madame Tussaud, no relation, is at the forefront of spiritual divinity. Her technique, her nuance, is a refreshing acceptance of everything, good and bad, not like the shysters or movie-themed-gypsy-attire-wearing-fakers that are all up and down Figaro streetselling you fortune and hope. The modestly lit gold neon in her window, on a low wattage setting, is simply spelt “clairvoyant” with a subtle lower case ‘c’, hopes to attract less of the ‘my mother just died and I am grieving, should I?’ or the ‘I am about to get married, should !?’ or the ‘I don’t know what to do with me life TELL ME!’ crowd and instead garner the more resolute, disbelieving and genuinely (as far as going to a ‘magical’ perhaps bullshit artist can be genuine) truth-in-death seeking individual. The reward is in the larger fee, Madame Tussaud reasons. (“I am not McDonalds” is one of her catch-phrases). If she could add in small neon italics underneath the sign it would read “not a mind reader” but that was apparently impossible to do for the neon manufacturer (they couldn’t elegantly join the separate words and letters and so quoted a ridiculous price so as to preclude them from possibly getting the gig, a project Madame Tussaud foresaw was technically possible). Never mind. More than thirty nine months of steady clients befitting the exact desired market kept her door open, her cat, bird, and bat fed and the landlord from telling her to stop burning all that stinky crap in the lounge room.
Simon Finkel was prospective client number 27 (and ominous number for numerologists; 9 times 3, or spookily, 3 times 3 times 3…”and by the power of 3 shall ye be bound”, “the curse shall return upon you three-fold”, the “holy trinity” and all that) who, this night walked down the steps towards Madame’s door casually, as in not overly deliberately, as in thinking himself quite smart and right-of-mind in choosing the most modest and undazzling premise on the street, finding in himself greater validity in discovering a hidden, secretive, more earnest seer. So not only does the sign work, it also fills the intended client with a certain sense of self aggrandizement. Madame Tussaud wanted that too, it helped her peer directly into the soul whilst the subject is dazed under a cloudy gauze of ego. It also helped of course make her fee, when she announced it fifteen minutes into the ceremony, that much more justified. She had been fearing receiving client number 27. She had had nightmares for 5 nights (another vexatious number, half of the sum of the total base ten decimal currency that ruled the earth, the devils simplicity to rule them all) and awoke startled at the face of a soft, youngish man with drawn cheeks, deep socketed dark rimmed eyes and a weak smile, perhaps the most horrific feature of the dream; a half thin-lipped semi-tooth-showing quivering smile that made her almost physically sick. Luckily for her when the door opened on a brisk August eve and a tanned, filling-out-his-shirt-in-all-the-right-places man walked in with a quaff of yellow-brown hair wind swept back from a sturdy brow over to the crown of his skull caused the little chimes she hangs nailed above the door to jingle ever so softly (the one cliché she allowed herself, sometimes clients want “the package they expect”) she was momentarily relieved. Relieved because it wasn’t the horrific man from her dreams, then instantly unrelieved because; wasn’t she supposed to be psychic? She calmed herself by recounting the Protection Spell of Ib-el-Rahim three times and reminded herself that it was client number 27 so all bets were off. She lit a red candle and laid one of her cut fingernails into the wax and went out to greet him. For the opening gambit, and a little trick she personally loves, she walks into the antechamber, extending a well ringed left hand and says
“Welcome Andreas, or is it, Simon you go by now?” and naturally there is that moment of shock-fear followed by an awkward and weird-feeling wrong-handed shake and a half step backward until she says
“Please, sit down first then we’ll talk” to reassure them that ‘yes, that was fucking weird but also yes, things can go on from here in the proper way you expect, say, from a Doctor’. Simon sits and hunches forward, matter of fact, hands clasped, came for business, didn’t the sign say clairvoyant? etc. Madame sits opposite. It’s a normal room. Two lounges on either side, a thin coffee table between them with a plain clean ashtray in the centre, a small bookcase with the usual books on it (nothing occult), a vase with dried flowers on top of that. The only give away that this is not your spinster Aunt’s house is that there is a painting of Mary (Jesus’ mother from the bible) hung upside down on the wall with a piece of burnt white cloth hung from one of the corners. That and the smell.
“So, Simon. What brings you in tonight?” Madame asks, lighting long clove cigarette.
“I can smoke in here?”
“You an have one of these” she replies, handing him her cigarettes, loose in a satin pouch.
“What are they?”
“Herbal, produced by hand at a small tribe in the Andes”
He takes one and lights it, the smoke is thicker than usual, feels like some sticky tar paints the inside of his lungs when he draws in.
“Thanks”
“You’re welcome. So, you were saying?”
“Yes, yes why I’m here. Well…well you know Falcon street, right!” he chuckles, expectantly, she waits. “Yeah Falcon street. I grew up around here, down a few blocks, on The Parade. So you know, I know, I know what you all do here and, I’ve known since I was a boy and I never really, you know I never believed in all this.”
“I know. There’s really nothing to believe in.”
“Right…right. Well, lately I’ve been, well I’ve been thinking you know and, I’m not a Christian or anything like that. I’ve been to church right for weddings and funerals and stuff, Italian friends, and it was like, like not real or anything to me. But my Grandfather…”
“Stop” Madame says, looking away and breathing in and out of her cigarette, “just smoke your cigarette for a minute, ok?”
And they sit and smoke. Madame Tussaud takes her rings off and lays them on the table, moves them around and ashes her cigarette. Simon ashes his too right after, smokes some more but starts to feel sick. They taste like bad pot and berries and burnt bark.
“You do not want to know about your Grandfather” she says finally, after half their cigarettes are gone and they have sat there for at least three minutes inhaling and exhaling in silence.
“What? Why not?” Simon asks.
“I just have to say that. I have seen what you want and I have to say that.”
“Okay…”
“So if you want to continue I must tell you how I work. Firstly, this session will be the only one you need, and it will cost you three hundred dollars. Secondly, I tell you the truth. I know this is what you want, but not everyone really wants the truth, if you understand me. They think they do, but they are usually much happier not knowing the truth. You can understand what I mean.”|
“Yes I do.”
“Good. And now then, do you want me to tell you the truth about your Grandfather, about why you came into my home to see me?”
“I do, yes.”
“Ok then. If I put these rings back on, we can start. We will go into the back room down that hallway there and begin. Do you have three hundred dollars?”
“No I…don’t have that on me…”
“That’s ok. Go and get three hundred dollars and come back, I will be ready for you then”
They put their cigarettes out and sit there for a moment, Simon looking Madame Tussaud up and down, or once over as you may call it. As he is leaving he knows he will not come back.
Three hundred dollars really! Not a chance. There are plenty of these women up and down this street, most charge fifty bucks for a…and then he stops, standing in front of a cash machine. Enters his card, punches in his code and withdraws three hundred dollars, then stands back from the machine, the cash in his hand. What am I doing? Flash in his mind of his kind Grandfather’s face, another deep menacing feeling in his gut: something is wrong. He knows something is wrong. He turns around and heads back to Madame Tussaud’s. When he returns the neon sign is out and the door is open. He walks down the stairs into a darkened lounge room, sees candle lights at the end of the hall and shuts the door behind himself.
“Madame?” he calls out (pronouncing it Mad-am instead of Ma-darm), no answer. He walk down the hallway, past things only his imagination can create hanging on the wall and along the floor, little ingots and creatures seemingly dancing in the flickering candle light. “Madame?” he calls again, hears a faint high-voiced whisper return to his ear. At the end of the hall a room opens up like a womb, open and lit, a round table in the centre with Madame Tussuad with her back to him presiding over an altar of sorts with bottles of alcohol, candles, trinkets, idols and statues. She is spreading a thin ash over the pieces and chanting something in a quiet deep breathy voice, every now and then spitting mouthfuls of alcohol out on one of the statues. Simon takes a seat and puts the money on the table.
“Pleassssse…put that money on the floorrrrrr” seethes Madame Tussuad, “get it offffff…the table” she slurs, exhaling deeply afterwards. Simon quickly picks up the bundle of twenty’s and puts it on the carpet.
“Sorry…” he whispers.
“Ssssimon listennnnn….” she releases, turning around to reveal her face. Simon instantly notices she has changed, her face, her posture, her hair, everything different. He waits, transfixed.
“Jack, jacky boy, your old jack issssss…wasssss in the great war, yes?”
“Uhm yeah, yeah he was in world war two actually”
“Aaaahhh yessss, hahaahahaaa, I can see him now…..wuh!” stopping as she lets out a throttled gasp.
“What is it?!”
“Simon…I…” Madame says, putting both hands on the table and lowering her head.
“Simon I told you…I told you…”
“What? What is it tell me?!” he says, quickly desperate, reacting to what he is seeing.
“Okay, okay that’s enough” she says, slowly walking over to the wall and flicking on a light switch. The room is instantly flooded with a bright light, a normal overhead bulb changing the entire feeling of the room to one of normality and now absurdity.
“Jesus what the hell?” Simon says, feeling tricked.
“Simon, Simon, it’s ok, it’s ok. I have just, just seen what you wanted to know. It came so fast, I didn’t, I didn’t get a chance to, tell you….I mean, I know that it was….something you…wanted but should not have…pick up that money and I’ll let you decide.”
Simon gets the twenties off the floor and puts them back on the table, pushing them over toward Madame Tussuad.
“Tell me!”
“Simon, in the war, your Grandfather…your Grandfather was a paedophile…a rapist…he raped so many young girls all across Europe, again and again, village after village. He was beaten repeatedly by his captain and fellow infantrymen. But he didn’t stop. He kept raping and laughing and killing children the whole war. Simon, this is what I tell you. This is why I am here. This is why you came to me”
“It can’t be…can’t…”
“Simon, this is the truth”
Simon, sick, stands up, looks at this half witch half alive woman and turns and walks to the front door, leaving the money, leaving the candles and that smell and opening the door rushing up the stairs into the world. Feeling better when he sees the street, pavement, lights, trees in their little dirt patches, parked cars and some other people walking around laughing and holding each other up and they walk home from a hotel singing together. Yes! This, this life. In his mind flashes young girls in dresses. NO! In his mind the flash of a young girl smiling then the flash of tits and shaved pussies he’d seen on the internet. NO! Not again nonono NO! Fuck. He starts walking, head down, gets a cigarette out, lights it and draws down hard, hard so it hurts the throat and lung, hard so he feels something going in and out, to focus on. Breathes out a thick plume into the night, flash on his cousin sitting on his lap and then some woman on screen bouncing up and down on a man’s dick going in and out of her ass. No!! Fuck shut up stop it. Too much porn he tells himself. That’s it too much porn. Can’t even go to his nephews party fuck fuck. Those six year old girls playing in the small inflatable pool and by reflex it is he was looking at their asses but he didn’t want to fuck them, god no! come on! but he did go home and toss off to asses, teenagers, he googled teenagers and tossed off into his own t-shirt. Fuck Christ! Should never have gone to Madame Tussaud’s tonight, no. NO! Simon walking home, mind racing, flashing, chain smoking.
