At noon the next day, when I went to see Boris, I found him pacing restlessly around his studio.
“Geneviève is asleep right now,” he said. “The sprain is nothing. But why does she have such a high fever? The doctor can’t explain it—or perhaps he simply won’t,” he muttered.
“Geneviève has a fever?” I asked.
“I should say she does. She’s been delirious from time to time all night. Imagine it! Our cheerful little Geneviève, who never had a care in the world—and now she keeps saying that her heart is broken and that she wants to die.”
My heart seemed to stop.
Boris stood against the studio door, staring at the floor with his hands in his pockets. His usually bright, intelligent eyes were clouded with worry, and a new line of pain had appeared around his mouth.
He had told the maid to call him the instant Geneviève woke.
We waited.
And waited.
Unable to sit still, Boris wandered around the studio, picking up pieces of modeling wax and red clay, then putting them down again.
Suddenly he turned toward the next room.
“Come and look at my rose-colored bath full of death!” he exclaimed.
“Is it really death?” I asked, trying to play along with him.
“You’re not ready to call it life, I suppose.”
As he spoke, he caught a single goldfish that was twisting desperately inside its glass bowl.
“We’ll send this one after the others—wherever they’ve gone,” he said.
There was a feverish excitement in his voice.
I followed him to the beautiful crystal pool, its sides glowing with a soft pink tint. My own body and mind felt heavy with fever.
Boris dropped the fish into the liquid.
As it fell, its scales flashed orange in the light as it twisted and fought.
The instant it touched the liquid, it stiffened and sank heavily to the bottom.
Then came the white foam.
Brilliant colors spread across the surface.
And then a shaft of pure, calm light seemed to rise from unfathomable depths.
Boris plunged his hand into the pool and pulled out something that looked like an exquisite marble sculpture, veined with blue, touched with rose, and covered with shining drops of iridescent moisture.
“Child’s play,” he muttered.
He looked at me with exhausted, almost pleading eyes, as though I could possibly give him an answer.
Then Jack Scott came in.
He immediately threw himself into the experiment, calling it a “game.”
Nothing would satisfy him except trying it on the white rabbit right then and there.
I was glad Boris had found something to occupy his mind, but I could not bear to watch another living creature die.
“I’m not staying for this,” I said.
I picked up a book at random and went back into the studio.
Unfortunately, the book was The King in Yellow.
After only a few moments, though they seemed like hours, I closed it with a nervous shudder.
Just then Boris and Jack returned, carrying their marble rabbit.
At the same instant, the bell rang upstairs.
A cry came from the sickroom.
Boris disappeared like a flash.
A moment later I heard him shout:
“Jack! Run for the doctor! Bring him back with you. Alec, come here!”
I hurried upstairs and stopped outside Geneviève’s door.
A frightened maid rushed out and ran for some medicine.
Inside, Geneviève was sitting straight up in bed. Her cheeks were burning red, her eyes glittered with fever, and she was talking constantly while struggling against Boris’s gentle attempts to hold her still.
He called me in to help.
The moment I touched her, she sighed and sank back onto the pillows.
Her eyes closed.
Then, as Boris and I leaned over her, she opened them again.
She looked directly into Boris’s face.
Poor girl. She was completely lost in her fever.
And then she revealed her secret.
At that instant, the course of all three of our lives changed.
The bond that had held the three of us together for so long was broken forever, and another bond was formed in its place.
She had spoken my name.
As the fever tormented her, everything she had kept hidden in her heart came pouring out.
I was stunned.
I lowered my head, unable to speak.
My face burned like fire, and the blood roared in my ears until I could hardly think.
I could not move.
I could not speak.
I could not stop her.
And I could not bring myself to look at Boris.
Then I felt his arm on my shoulder.
When I finally looked up, his face was white.
“It isn’t your fault, Alec,” he said. “Don’t grieve like this. If she loves you—”
He could not finish.
The doctor hurried into the room.
“Ah,” he said, “the fever!”
I seized Jack Scott by the arm and hurried him outside.
“Boris would rather be alone,” I told him.
We crossed the street to our own apartments.
That night, when Jack realized that I was becoming sick as well, he went for the doctor again.
The last thing I remember clearly was hearing Jack say:
“For Heaven’s sake, doctor, what’s wrong with him? Why does he look like that?”
And I thought of The King in Yellow.
I thought of the Pallid Mask.
I became very ill.
The strain of the past two years had finally broken me.
It had all begun on that fatal morning in May, when Geneviève had whispered:
“I love you, but I think I love Boris best.”
Until then, I had never believed that my sorrow could become more than I could bear.
Outwardly, I had remained calm.
I had even deceived myself.
Every night, alone in my room, I fought a terrible battle inside myself. I cursed my own thoughts because they seemed disloyal to Boris and unworthy of Geneviève.
But each morning brought peace.
I would return to Geneviève and my dear Boris with a heart that seemed cleansed by the storms of the night.
Never, in anything I said, did, or even consciously thought while I was with them, had I allowed my sorrow to show.
The mask of self-deception had become part of me.
At night, it was torn away, exposing the truth I had buried.
But no one saw it except me.
When morning came, the mask slipped back into place by itself.
These thoughts passed through my feverish mind as I lay sick.
But they were tangled together with terrible visions.
I saw white creatures, heavy as stone, crawling around in Boris’s pool.
I saw the wolf’s head on the rug, foaming and snapping at Geneviève while she lay beside it, smiling.
I saw the King in Yellow wrapped in the strange colors of his torn, filthy cloak.
I heard Cassilda’s bitter cry:
“Not upon us, oh King, not upon us!”
I fought desperately to drive the vision away.
But I saw the lake of Hali, flat and empty, without a ripple or breath of wind.
I saw the towers of Carcosa standing behind the moon.
Aldebaran.
The Hyades.
Alar.
Hastur.
They drifted through the broken clouds, which fluttered around them like the torn edges of the King in Yellow’s cloak.
Yet through all these feverish visions, one clear thought remained.
It never changed.
No matter how confused my mind became, I knew that the main reason I existed was to fulfill some duty toward Boris and Geneviève.
I never understood exactly what that duty was.
Sometimes it seemed to be protecting them.
Sometimes it seemed to mean helping them through some terrible crisis.
Whatever it meant at any particular moment, I felt the responsibility resting entirely on me.
And no matter how sick or weak I became, I always answered that call with everything I had.
There were always crowds of faces around me.
Most were strangers.
A few I recognized.
Boris was among them.
Later, they told me that this could not have happened.
But I know what I saw.
At least once, Boris stood beside me and bent over me.
It was only a touch.
Only the faint sound of his voice.
Then the clouds closed over my mind again, and I lost him.
But he was there.
He really was.
At least once.
Finally, one morning I woke to find sunlight falling across my bed.
Jack Scott was sitting beside me, reading.
I was too weak to speak.
I could barely think, and I could remember almost nothing.
But when Jack looked at me, I managed a faint smile.
He jumped up.
“Do you want anything?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Boris.”
Jack moved to the head of my bed and bent down to arrange my pillow.
I could not see his face.
“You must wait, Alec,” he said warmly. “You’re too weak to see even Boris.”
So I waited.
And I grew stronger.
Within a few days, I was strong enough to see anyone I wanted.
But during that time, my memory returned.
Once I remembered everything, I knew exactly what I would do when the time came.
I was certain Boris would make the same decision for himself.
And as for what concerned me alone, I knew he would understand and agree with me.
I stopped asking for anyone.
I never asked why no message had come from them.
I never asked why, during the entire week I lay there recovering, I never heard either of their names mentioned.
I was too busy searching my own heart for the right thing to do and fighting my weak but stubborn battle against despair.
I accepted Jack’s silence.
I assumed he was afraid that speaking about Boris and Geneviève would upset me and make me insist on seeing them.
Meanwhile, I kept asking myself the same question.
What would happen when life began again for all of us?
We would simply return to the way things had been before Geneviève became ill.
Boris and I would look into each other’s eyes.
There would be no anger.
No cowardice.
No suspicion.
I would return to their home and spend a little more time in that old, precious intimacy.
Then, without an excuse or explanation, I would disappear from their lives forever.
Boris would understand.
Geneviève would not.
That was my only comfort.
She would never know why I left.
The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I had finally understood the strange sense of duty that had followed me throughout my delirium.
I had found the only answer that made sense.
So, when I was finally strong enough, I beckoned Jack over one day.
“Jack, I want Boris at once.”
I paused.
“And give Geneviève my dearest greetings.”
Only then did Jack make me understand.
They were both dead.
I lost control completely.
The shock sent me into a wild rage that destroyed what little strength I had recovered.
I raved.
I cursed myself.
I fell into another relapse.
Weeks later, I finally dragged myself out of it.
I felt like a twenty-one-year-old boy whose youth had already ended.
It seemed as though I had suffered everything a human being could possibly suffer.
Then one day Jack handed me a letter and the keys to Boris’s house.
I took them without trembling.
“Tell me everything,” I said.
It was cruel to ask him.
But I needed to know.
Jack leaned his tired head against his thin hands.
He was about to tear open a wound that would never completely heal.
Finally, he began quietly.
“Alec, unless you know something I don’t, you won’t be able to explain what happened any better than I can.”
“I suspect you’d rather not hear all the details.”
“But you have to know them.”
“If I could spare you this, I would.”
“God knows I wish I could spare myself from telling it.”
“I’ll keep it short.”
“That day, when I left you with the doctor and returned to Boris, I found him working on the Fates.”
“He told me Geneviève was asleep under the influence of drugs.”
“He said she had been completely out of her mind.”
“He kept working.”
“He said nothing more.”
“I watched him.”
“After a while, I realized something.”
“The third figure in the group—the one staring straight ahead, looking out over the world—had Boris’s face.”
“Not the face you or I had ever known.”
“It was the face he had that day.”
“The face he kept until the end.”
“That is one thing I wish I could explain.”
“But I never will.”
Jack fell silent for a moment.
“He worked.”
“I watched.”
“We remained that way until almost midnight.”
“Then we heard the door open and slam shut.”
“There was a sudden rush of movement in the next room.”
“Boris sprang through the doorway.”
“I followed him.”
“But we were too late.”
“She was lying at the bottom of the pool.”
“Her hands were crossed over her breast.”
“Then Boris shot himself through the heart.”
Jack stopped.
Sweat stood beneath his eyes, and the muscles in his thin cheeks trembled.
“I carried Boris to his room.”
“Then I went back and drained that hellish liquid from the pool.”
“I turned on every faucet and washed every trace of it from the marble.”
“Finally, when I dared to go down the steps, I found her lying there.”
“She was as white as snow.”
“Once I had decided what had to be done, I went into the laboratory.”
“I emptied the solution from the basin into the drain.”
“Then I poured every other jar and bottle into it as well.”
“There was wood in the fireplace.”
“So I built a fire.”
“I broke open Boris’s cabinet and burned every paper, notebook, and letter I could find.”
“Then I took a mallet from the studio and smashed every empty bottle.”
“I loaded the broken pieces into a coal scuttle.”
“I carried them down to the cellar and threw them into the red-hot furnace.”
“I made the trip six times.”
“When I was finished, not a single trace remained of anything that could ever help someone discover the formula Boris had found.”
“Only then did I dare call the doctor.”
“He is a good man.”
“Together, we managed to keep the whole thing from becoming public.”
“I could never have done it without him.”
“We paid the servants and sent them away to the country.”
“Old Rosier is keeping them quiet with stories that Boris and Geneviève have traveled to distant lands and will not return for years.”
“We buried Boris in the little cemetery at Sèvres.”
“The doctor is a good man.”
“He knows when someone has suffered enough.”
“He wrote that Boris had died of heart disease.”
“And he asked me no questions.”
Jack lifted his head from his hands.
“Open the letter, Alec.”
“It’s for both of us.”
I tore it open.
It was Boris’s will, dated a year earlier.
He had left everything to Geneviève.
If she died without children, I was to take control of the house on Rue Sainte-Cécile.
Jack Scott was to take charge of the estate at Ept.
After our deaths, the property would return to his mother’s family in Russia.
There was only one exception.
The marble sculptures Boris himself had created.
Those he had left to me.
The words on the page blurred before my eyes.
Jack stood and walked to the window.
After a while, he came back and sat down.
I dreaded whatever he was about to say.
But he spoke with the same quiet gentleness.
“Geneviève is lying before the Madonna in the marble room.”
“The Madonna bends tenderly over her.”
“And Geneviève is smiling back at that peaceful face.”
His voice broke.
He reached for my hand.
“Courage, Alec.”
The next morning, Jack left for Ept to carry out the trust Boris had placed in him.