FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Leyak

Ambrose Poussin was a heavyset man in his mid-fifties. He wore a dark suit that contrasted his thinning gray hair, and carried a faint smell of mothballs. He was also chief editor of the newly launched Paris Soir. We were both sweating. He from the April sun, I from the anticipation of landing a paying job. The year was 1926 and I had recently arrived in Paris to study journalism at Sorbonne. I was twenty one and broke, hence I applied for a job with the Soir as a freelance writer. The portfolio Mr Poussin was currently skimming through, was a collection of articles I'd written for our local newspaper back in Trilbardou. While he read, Poussin made a series of grunting noises whenever he found something he liked.

“So, how much of this is made up" he asked.

“It's… all made up," I replied quietly.

“Everything?"

My home town is a deafeningly quiet place of brown cows and green pastures, so when I was commissioned to write “anything of interest" for my weekly column, I relied only on what my imagination could conjure up.

I nodded. “Not a single word of truth."

For the first time that day, Monsieur Poussin broke into a smile. A warm smile that revealed a set of tobacco stained teeth

“Then, you're exactly what we need."

He shook my hand and hired me on the spot.

The salary afforded me to pay tuition, and to rent a room with a flowery curtain in Rue de Jardin. My landlady, Madame Lapetite, was a frail widow, who wore bright red lipstick, suffered from arthritis and kept an alsatian dog named Toto. Her late husband had been an army pilot, until he was shot down by a German fighter plane over Reins in 1917. I picked up my two suitcases and moved into the room that had once served as his study.

The lease came with two specific conditions:

One: I was to move out, should Monsieur Lapetite one day return alive.

And two: it was my duty to take Toto out for his nightly walk.

Mme Lapetitie was afraid to walk the streets at night. She was also scared of walking the streets by day, and terrified of staying alone in her house. The reason behind her unease was the recent and fatal stabbing of a tobacconist named Babinaux, with whom she once had a passionate affair. But he had since settled down on a quiet rue in the 18th arondissement. Every Thursday, Mme Lapetite walked across the seine to buy herself a weekly pack of cigarettes from his boutique. She gave up smoking exactly one month ago, after Babinaux was stabbed to death outside his own shop, just as he had stepped outside to relieve himself in the back alley. His murderer took neither money nor merchandise.

“Not as much as a pack of Gitanes," whispered Mme Lapetite.

“The Paris slasher murders his victims only for his personal plaisir, while they are at their most vulnerable."

Mme. Lapetite had since grown convinced, the murderer would cross the Seine to stalk every elderly widow in Paris. She was a well liked woman, who could think of no one who wished to cause her distress, but this only made her feel exceptionally vulnerable to the fleeting whims of the faceless killer.

I didn't mind taking Toto along for his nightly walk. In fact, I embraced the opportunity to explore this new and exciting city. Each night we walked north along Rue Rouelle, followed the river-bank towards the Place de Eiffel and walked east to Sorbonne. Then we walked back along Boulevard de la Tour-Marbourg. I reveled in the colorful sights and the scent of excotic spices in the Latin Quarter. I daydreamed about lounging outside a café, sipping wine and smoking Gitanes. Yet, such luxury would have to wait until I had established a name for myself. Some nights Toto and I walked for hours, taking in the sight of the winding streets, the smoking chimneys, and soot-stained trees along the boulevard. Prominent, black, and skeletal in their beautiful brutality. But the locals grow suspicious when you stop to stare at things. They wonder why you stop, why you stare, and why you don't hurry along like every other Parisién. But when they see you with a pedigree dog on a leash, they assume you make a living as a dog-walker, and they leave you alone.

One night, Toto decided to follow a black cat with yellow eyes down Rue de Theatre. It's a residential street with a small café where people drink coffee and speak metropolitan, but otherwise, this quiet rue offers little of interest. When Toto made a stop to do his business, I looked around idly, until my eyes found an unusual brass-knocker attached to a blue door with the paint flaking off. Every home in Paris has a door-knocker, and I must have seen them in thousands without paying them much notice. Most carry the faces of lions, or puffy-cheeked cherubs, but this one was unlike any other door-knocker I had seen. Not only was the craftmanship breathtaking in its detail, but the motif too was extraordinary. It resembled a macabre demonic figure, winged and complete from its head down to the torso. Yet, the lower half of its body was incomplete, with only a naked spine showing at that part of the figurine. Like the stone gargoyles at Montmartre, this abomination held its mouth wide open. A tongue of grotesque proportions lolled out, twisted around itself and reached out as if it were about to lick the hand of the visitor. The ring was kept firmly in place between incisors the size of daggers, protruding from the monster's lips. The ring itself hung so low, every stroke bounced off the brass tongue to produce a deep ringing sound. The figure was so lifelike, I dared not touch it, half expecting the beast to come alive and snap at my fingers. I so wanted to sound the knocker, but I stayed my hand. I did not know the people inside the house, and I had no business knocking on their door, save that of morbid curiosity.

Or maybe I feared the macabre outside mirrored an evil, hidden inside.

The image stayed with me for days. So much, I stopped taking the direct route to my lectures, but left my room half an hour early, so I could make a stop in Rue de Theatre. The next days, I spent minutes, marveling at the design and the smoothness of the odd figurine. On the third day, I mustered up the courage to knock. The large brass ring struck the tongue, making a hollow, low-pitched chime that sounded for as long as it took the congierge to walk the hall and open the door.

I don't know what I had expected. Something marvelous I was sure. But the illusion broke when a night-gowned woman in her late fifties opened the door to eye me over, with some bemusement.

“If you are here to sell something, then begone!" She said, waving a dusting cloth in my face. When asked about the door-knocker, she calmed down and explained how the landlord, Monsieur Routon had bought it from Le Marché aux Puces, because the old one was rusty, and made an off-putting sound that annoyed him at great length.

This simple answer left me devastated. The illusion of an object with strange or exotic origins had dissolved into mundanity.

“Is it a rare item, then?" I asked, hopefully.

But the woman just shook her head.

“The merchant keeps a whole box of them. They're two Francs a piece."

No piece of art had ever tugged at me like this ornament. To other people, the simple lump of brass was an object of utility, an amusing trinket worth a giggle and a head-shake. But to me, this was an object sculpted from pure inspiration. Someone made objects of art that stood out, unexpected and unnoticed by most.

In that moment, I knew I had to meet the artist.

The next morning I went straight to the flea-market the moment it opened. It took me hours, asking around and looking into every box of merchandise, before I finally found the sculpturer. He was a man in his early thirties, tall and skinny, with brown curly hair and a stubble growth of beard framing a long, almost horse-like face. He sat on a crate that had once contained rare oranges from Seville, skimming through a book and looking disinterested. He glanced me over, when he saw me ruffling through his wares. I guess he knew I was not going to steal his goods, so he turned his attention back to his book.

“Did you make these, yourself?" I asked.

The sculpturer gave me a brief look-over before nodding.

“They are five sous for the small ones, one franc for the large."

“They are brilliant," I said. “They are like nothing else in Paris."

The sculpturer rose from the orange crate and closed his book with a snap.

“Cocteau is overrated, don't you think?"

I admitted I was not much into theatre, and didn't have neither time nor money for going there.

“So, why the performance, then?"

“I'm a writer," I replied. “-or rather… I'd like to be one."

When the artist nodded and yawned unimpressed, I added

“ -very... very much!"

The sculpturer sighed. "I'll let you have that one for ten sous. That's as low as I can go."

“Wait! I don't WANT to buy a knocker. I…."

Words failed me. I didn't even know what I wanted.

Inspiration perhaps? Someone to look up to? A friend? I only knew I did not want to pursue my dreams on my own.

“Ah! Bien!," I conceded. “I don't know why I even came here in the first place."

“You really… like my work?" The sculpturer asked with evident surprise.

“It's different. I too, want to create something different."

“Passionate but clueless," the sculpturer laughed. “You must be a country boy."

He tore a page from his book and scribbled an address across the lines. “Robert Dubois," he said, tracing his handwritten line. “My studio is on Rue Saint Cergues, 37.“

“Drop by sometime… Only…"

Dubois hesitated a moment, clenching the torn page close to his chest. Maybe he re-considered his invitation, or maybe he didn't want visitors after all. I cursed my bad luck: I had been this close to making connections.

To my great relief, Dubois smiled and continued.

“… don't come around after dark. It's not safe."

---

Robert Dubois was ten years older than me. His studio was unfurnished, save for a mattress on the floor where he slept, a wood stove and a porcelain sink. The common outhouse was outside, in the back. Invisible nightmen emptied the latrines after dark, but still they stank. The stench in the poor banlieues of Paris is much worse than back home. In the countryside, the wind carries the stench of human sweat and animal refuse away, but in Paris, every malady hangs in the air like a waving curtain; an invisible fog that rises from the street until it reaches your chin.

Surprisingly, Dubois did not mind.

“I've smelled much worse in Indochine," he said. “Why are YOU here?"

“I want to be a famous writer."

“Then Paris is the wrong place," he said bluntly. “Rangoon gave me the spark to make smelted brass dance between my fingers," he said. “I turned steel into fairy tales.

Now that I've returned to Paris I make petitesses for a few sous a piece."

“But they are pretty," I objected.

“Pretty?" Dubois sniffed and reached into his crate of merchandise. He singled out a carved wood figurine of an elephant carrying a basket in its trunk. Then he threw the figurine into the burning fireplace, where it glowed for a moment, before bursting into flames.

“They are dying… All of them."

“Your sculptures - or the people?"

“My ideas!" He said. “The spark left me the day I set foot in this cursed place."

“We must give it time," I tried. “Once we've lived here for a while, we'll understand the dreams of the Parissiennes. They too, have fairy-tales."

“Time?"

Dubois sat down at his table and poured himself a mug of wine.

“Time is the one thing I don't have. I can't pay my rent for much longer." He stared into his mug and seemed to reconsider. Then he got up to fetch a second cup from the cabinet.

“Here," he said, handing me a mug of wine. “I'm no good at hosting a party."

Then, a wild idea struck me.

“Allow me to move in with you," I said. “We'll share rent and studio space. I'll write, while you sculpt. We can inspire one another."

“Never!" Dubois shouted.

While I did not expect Dubois to embrace my idea with open arms, his abrupt refusal sent me reeling back. I slammed into the wall, knocking some wooden ornament off its nail and sending it to the floor with a woody 'crack'.

The moment it landed, Dubois screamed like a man on fire. He dropped to his knees and cradled the ornament as if it were his firstborn.

“Sorry…" I aplogized. “It was never my intention to upset you."

“It's my… Leyak," Dubois said, returning the object to its place. He was panting, still short of breath from his outburst.

“It's the one thing I brought back with me from Indochina. You could call it a good-luck charm."

This Leyak was a carved piece of wood, about as wide as my hand and twice as tall. The design seemed simple at first, resembling a house with a very wide door, flanked by two pillars painted red-and white. The open door was a simple square painted black, which I initially dismissed as a lazily drawn detailing. But as I moved closer, I noticed it changing subtly under my gaze and breaking into varying shades of black, depending on where the light fell.

“Interesting painting technique," I commented, which worked to calm Dubois down. “You can almost see movement in the darkness of the doorway."

“Layak-making is a craft that goes back thousands of years." Dubois gently stroked the coat of paint with the back of his pinky finger. “They mix black laquer paint with ground quartz and mercury. This creates an illusion of movement."

Relieved his ornament had not been damaged by the fall, Dubois returned to the table and he raised his mug of wine.

“Salute to new aquaintances," he said.

“Still, I shall not share this studio with you - or with anyone else."

I took a pencil from the table and wrote down my address on a piece of scrap paper, in case Dubois had a change of heart. But he rejected the idea, flat out.

“The last time I shared my studio with anyone," he said.

“The outcome was… disastrous."

---

I did not see Dubois for several weeks after this initial visit. Instead, I turned my attention to my studies, and writing small articles for the Soir about the Paris nightlife. A new style in music called “Jazz" had recently make its way across the Atlantic, and Paris was embracing the new tones with much enthusiasm. By now, I was making enough of a living to frequent the cafés, but my time-off was cut in early June, when the midnight slasher struck again. This time, the victim was a grocer named Valjeux. The murderer had torn into the merchant in his own shop in the 14th arondissement, and left his decapitated head in a wooden crate among other heads of lettuce.

Monsieur Poussin dispatched his best photographer to take pictures of the gruesome scene. He returned with a photo of Valjeux's decapitated head, much to the pleasure of Poussin, who gave us all a five-sous raise. When I told Mme Lapetite about my sudden change of fortune, she grew mortified of ever leaving the house, and instructed me to take Toto for both his daily walks. A few days later, the postman delivered an unexpected, and quickly scribbled letter.

I'm in dire need of funds. Will share studio and rent with you.

Five franc a week.

Yours, Dubois.

---

I found Dubois working in his studio, smiling and looking much invigorated since the last time we met. He was busy modeling a new sculpture from clay, but he paused to wipe his hands in a dirty apron, the moment I entered the studio. He poured us both a generous mug of wine, as is he were greeting an old friend. The sculpture in progress was infinitely detailed, yet macabre. It portrayed three otherworldly beings with razor fangs and tongues the length of baguettes, but their bodies were complete only down to their waists. The figures looked as if torn in half, with their legs missing and their entrails spiraling out in gray garlands.

“This one is Louison," he said. “This is Ronda, and I call the last one Adolphe."

I now saw, the figure in the middle had larger eyes and longer hair than the two others. It was a female character, but intensely morbid, like its male companions.

“There's three of them?"

“Of course," Dubois said. “Disasters always happen in groups of three."

As I was getting ready to leave the workshop I noticed a splash of lacquer had left a crimson smear on my coat. I dipped a cloth in turpentine and began rubbing the paint off. But my attempts to remove the stain were in vain, and I only managed to smear the paint even worse. Annoyed with my failed attempt, I took the coat to a cleaners, further down the Rue. It was a tiny shop, called “Pierre et Colette," where I was greeted by a young woman of my own age.

“Your name, monsieur?"

“Duchamp… Francois Duchamp."

The girl wrote my name on a ticket, which she fastened to the lapel. She sniffed at the wet paint, and selected three bottles from the shelf.

“You're a painter, Monsieur Duchamp?" She asked, rubbing the stain with a clear liquid that stung the nose.

“Writer," I replied. “The paint got there by accident."

“I'm Colette." The girl smiled, but in a way that made me happy about the accident.

“I'm Francois," I said. And Pierre is…?"

“My father. But I tell him to stay at home. The streets are not safe anymore."

We chatted for a while, and agreed it would be unwise to traverse the streets of Paris, alone, while the Paris Slasher was at large. Later that day, I left the workshop early to walk Colette home. We talked about our dreams and future plans while we walked, and somehow we ended up at a café in the 14th, called Le Cette, where we had coffee and listened to Jazz pouring out from the café record player.

Each day, our walks grew a bit longer. Colette showed me places I would never have discovered on my own; secret little places of green among the grey. We kissed for the first time in the shade of a chestnut tree in the botanical gardens. Shared a bottle of wine by the banks of the Seine and got to know each other intimately, behind closed doors in in her room on Rue de Mallard.

---

One morning Colette asked if he could read some of my poetry. I guess she assumed all writers are poets, or romantics.

“I… don't write poems." I gave her a copy of yesterday's Paris Soir, and pointed to the piece I had written about Josephine Baker, a dancer from America who was on her way by boat, to perform at the annual exhibition later this year.

“Can I keep it?" Colette asked. “Business is slow today."

“Sure. I get them for free."

“Mais non!", Colette said suddenly. “What you have written is not true. Monsieur Philippe, was never stabbed by some criminal." Colette had turned to a page describing a recent attack on a local gendarme.

“He was torn to pieces," she said. “Like he was attacked by some wild béte."

“You… actually saw this?"

“When they carried his body away, I saw him from my window. His belly was open, everything hanging out like grey sausages, until Monsieur Ranon, picked them up and carried them in a large cloche hat." She pointed towards the hatter's shop. I had occasionally met M. Ranon on my way to the workshop. He's a short, grandfatherly type with a grey moustache, who walks with a limp he earned during the Franco-Preussian war. But I wasn't looking at his shop. I was looking past it, down the Rue towards the workshop I shared with Dubois. An evil was taking Paris.

And now that evil was moving into our street.

---