Have you ever tasted Absinthe? It’s
strange, beautiful stuff and something of an acquired taste. Straight from the
bottle it’s an earthy golden-green similar in hue to high quality olive oil.
When mixed with water it becomes an enchanted, cloudy shade of pale opalescent
jade. The mysterious green transformation is where the legend of La Fée Verte,
the green fairy begins. In cafés of the 19th century a patron would
be served a fluted, parfait style glass, a small pitcher of water, a filigree spade-shaped
spoon that often was a work of art in itself, and a tiny dish of chunky oblong
sugar cubes.
The patron would balance the spoon across
the top of the glass, place the sugar cubes atop the spoon and very slowly
drizzle the absinthe over the sugar cubes, saturating them. Then a small amount
of water would be trickled over the sugar cubes and allowed to dissolve them.
The final step after the last bits of green sugar had slipped through the spoon
is to stir the mixture until it becomes opaque. At that moment it’s time to ask
La Fée Verte to be kind with you and grant you a beautiful vision.
The first impression that might leap to
mind while tasting modern commercial absinthe might be “Dear god that’s strong”,
or it might be, “Wow this is just weird black licorice and a lot of booze.”
Taste it again and the other subtle
flavors begin to come forward. Taste it again and you’ll notice there are a lot
of layers to this stuff, multiple ingredients that are familiar yet very hard
to name. Anise is right at the top, screaming licorice!, but there are other quietly seductive flavors as well as
the possibly of a few sinister properties. Absinthe as it was made in the 19th
century contained wormwood as one of the principle ingredients, which is said
to induce hallucinations and eventually madness.
Madness? Wormwood? You might think that
sounds a little unsetting but it didn’t stop the French from guzzling the
stuff. Until World War I Absinthe was the most popular alcoholic beverage in France.
French veterans returning from the Crimean War came home with a taste for
exotic herbed alcoholic beverages. Absinthe’s astonishingly high alcohol
content and notorious ability to intoxicate added to its popularity among the
poor and serious café drinkers alike. Absinthe’s
allure crossed all social boundaries in 19th century France.
Intellectuals, artists and well-to-do middle class matrons all enjoyed and
often overindulged in La Fée Verte’s warming and yet numbing embrace.
For professional purposes only I drank a
little absinthe while editing Fairy In The Flesh. I called on La Fée Verte to
bring me a beautiful vision as I asked the question, “What if your soul mate
was born a century before you?” Fairy In The Flesh explores that question big
time.
In this excerpt at the end of a long, luckless
day of wandering through Avignon France searching for André Bosco’s art studio,
Maya stubbles into a Bohemian bistro run by a strange lady who claims to be a
“time-twisting” enchantress.
…Maya’s gaze wandered toward the far wall
and fixated on a framed pencil sketch of a handsome man with a proud,
compelling face. The sketch was framed beneath glass and the paper had yellowed
at the corners and crumbled with age. She studied the man’s face and guessed he
was in his mid-thirties. He had a thick head of wavy dark hair and a rugged
face with square, noble features, chevron brows and luminous eyes that
glanced sideways from the portrait and seemed to follow the viewer around the
room.
Maya found herself unable to look away.
The man had a magnetic quality she seldom saw in contemporary faces. It was a
look that could only belong to someone who possessed the self-confidence and
perhaps a touch of arrogance not to care what the world thought. The generous
arch of the man’s lips was so sensuous her thoughts wandered toward what it
must have felt like to be kissed by him.
“You like Bosco, don’t you?” Miss Ruby
leaned close. “He has a interesting face, doesn’t he? He can appear both
compassionate and feral in turn. I’ve heard many differing opinions about the
portrait over the years.”
Maya started. “Is that a portrait of André
Bosco, the Fauvist painter?” she gasped. “I’m a great admirer of Bosco! I had
no idea a portrait existed.” Her heart fluttered. “Did he really look like
that?”
“You know of Bosco?” Miss Ruby looked
elated. “So few do. History has all but overlooked him, which is a shame
because those familiar with his small body of work have hailed him as one of
the most innovative painters of his time. Some say Bosco inspired his more
famous peers and set the example for the Fauvist moment by showing the world
how to paint like a wild beast. Of course, a few of his nastiest critics called
him a ‘paint waster’, but it’s clear Bosco had vision.”
Miss Ruby waved her hands through the air
in an expansive gesture. “A few art historians have credited Bosco with being
the original wild beast, in part because of his physical intensity and unruly
head of hair, but also because he had a habit of tossing his paintbrushes aside
and smearing the brightest colors across the canvas with his fingertips, with
passion. It was said by those who watched him work that he ravished his
canvases like a ferocious lover.” She giggled.
“He sounds exciting.” Maya drew a sharp
breath. “Years ago, I saw an original Bosco in a traveling museum show of
modernist work. Bosco’s painting was the most expressive piece of art in the
entire show. I kept wandering back to look at it again and again. The painting
was of a white stallion but the colors were vivid—every hue of the rainbow was
hidden in the lines and shadows. Before I left the museum I bought a postcard
of the painting and carried it around in a battered sketchbook for years. Bosco
was my greatest inspiration. I heard a rumor he had a studio somewhere in
Avignon?”
“He did.” Miss Ruby pointed upward. “His
studio is a corner room on the third floor. The landlord of the building has
preserved it.”
“Bosco’s studio is here?” Maya tensed.
“Can I see it?”
“No.” Miss Ruby shook her head. “I don’t
have permission to open the room, but the landlord will return on Sunday. You
can ask him then.”
“I won’t be here on Sunday.” A note of
desolation crept into her voice. “This is my last full day in France. I have to
start making my way back to Paris tomorrow for my flight home. I’ll miss my
only chance to see Bosco’s studio.” Maya leaned across the bar, feeling
absolutely desperate to get a look at Bosco actual living space. “Please
reconsider—I promise not to touch a thing.”
“I’m sorry.” Miss Ruby nodded toward the
top of the bar, where an ornate brass skeleton key dangled from a green satin
ribbon. “The landlord is the only one allowed to use that key to open the
studio.”
“Damn.” Maya swallowed the last of her
iced coffee and set the empty glass on the counter. She now felt torn about
getting up and leaving when something as interesting as André Bosco’s studio
was so near. “What’s inside the studio?”
“Everything.” Miss Ruby sounded glib. “The
room is exactly as Bosco left it in 1903. He abandoned his paints, brushes,
unfinished canvases, clothing—even a small amount of money. It’s a real
mystery—no one knows what happened to him.”
A chill shivered up Maya’s spine. “No one
knows?”
“There are romantic tales that claim Bosco
fell in love with a model. She left him and he simply walked away one day never
to be heard from again. What happened after that is an unknown. No doubt that
is the reason he hasn’t enjoyed the same success as of some of his peers. Bosco
abandoned his art, or perhaps changed his name and drifted. Even his legal name
is in dispute, but no one really knows who he was or what became of him.
“The only thing that’s certain is Bosco
disappeared from this hotel on the eve of having his work shown at an
influential art salon. Wealth and success were headed his way and he chose to
chase after a woman instead. Beyond that, history never heard from him again.
Even the paintings destined for the salon showing in Paris disappeared and no
surviving Bosco paintings have been authenticated after 1903, so you see, his
career as an early Fauvist was fleeting but intense.”
Maya’s gaze fixated on the portrait. “It’s
sad. He showed such promise.” She studied André Bosco’s commanding face. The
depth of his eyes in contrast to his dark brows fascinated her. As she
carefully examined the sweeping graphite lines of the sketch an odd thing
happened—Bosco’s gaze seemed to sharpen and for the briefest moment she felt as
if a living man confronted her.
“That portrait is uncanny.” Maya swayed
from side to side, changing her angle of view. “When I move, Bosco’s gaze
shifts too.”
“He’s watching you as intensely as you’re
watching him.” Miss Ruby chuckled. “I think he likes you.” She turned and
opened a locked cabinet built into the wall, opened the cabinet and removed an
emerald green, liter-tall apothecary bottle stopped with a wax-dipped cork.
The sides of the bottle were smeared with
colorful paint-stained handprints. A yellowed label that had begun to separate
from the glass featured a voluptuous winged fairy cloaked in a wisp of green
silk. The dreamy-eyed fairy basked beneath ornate golden lettering identifying
her as La Fée Verte, the fabled and sometimes fickle green fairy who
lurked within absinthe’s golden-green depths, waiting to inspire or destroy
those who partook of her.
Miss Ruby proudly presented the bottle to
Maya. “This bottle of absinthe belonged to Bosco.” She pointed to the flecks of
dried paint on the label and bottle. “This was the paint palette Bosco was
using when he disappeared. Look at the vibrancy of the lime greens, sorbet
orange and warm pinks. The colors are gorgeous. This is just one of the many
personal items he left behind. Being a high-level enchantress from New Orleans,
the landlord entrusted me to take possession of the absinthe. I put my own
protective mojo on it.”
Maya reached out to touch Bosco’s broad
handprint on the bottle with reverence. His palm print dwarfed hers and she
immediately saw that he must have been a man of large build. The intimate act
of tracing her fingertips against the same spot where Bosco’s had once rested
made her hand tingle. Touching Bosco’s handprint seemed to forge a galvanizing
link to a past she would have loved to be part of.
Bosco had lived at a time when the world
had just begun to awaken to its true potential. Queen Victoria had recently
died, marking an official end to the Victorian era. Albert Einstein’s first
important papers on thermodynamics had just been published and few outside his
rarefied circle of peers knew his name. The Wright brothers were still
perfecting their first fragile aircraft. The Eiffel Tower was a newly completed
wonder and Europe and the rest of the world had yet to go to war.
Over a century ago, at the moment Bosco
had picked up the bottle with paint- stained fingers and left his handprint on
the glass, most people had seen a gleaming future on the rise but few had
glimpsed its looming shadow.
“You’re touching that bottle as if you
were stroking a lover’s thigh,” Miss Ruby said softly. “I can see by your
faraway expression that you’re a bit enamored with Bosco. I understand. I’ve
been smitten with the past too. It can be so enthralling.”
“I wouldn’t say I was smitten.”
“Is seduced a better word?” Miss Ruby
reached behind the bar and retrieved a fluted parfait glass that stood on a
delicate pedestal, a spade-shaped filigree spoon and a tiny silver dish filled
with sugar cubes. “I can’t allow you to enter Bosco’s studio, but I can offer
you a small taste of his absinthe.” Her hand poised above the cork, she said,
“Would you like to try it?”
Maya stared at the tempting but slightly
forbidding bottle. “Isn’t absinthe dangerous?” She squirmed on the barstool.
“I‘ve heard it can cause madness.”
Miss Ruby’s posture stiffened. “I’m not
going to let you consume that much. I’m only offering a taste so you can say
you shared a drink with André Bosco. But if you’re not interested...” She
started to put the bottle back into the cabinet.
“Wait!” Maya lurched forward. “I’d be
honored to sample Bosco’s absinthe.” Her head spun from this crazy but
thrilling offer.
“There’s a ritual that goes along with this.”
Miss Ruby pointed toward the green fairy on the label. “If you want La Fée
Verte to bring you a beautiful vision, you must offer her a gift.”
“What kind of a gift?”
Miss Ruby reached over the counter and,
with a bold gesture, removed one of Maya’s tiny, gold hoop earrings from her
lobe. Before Maya could protest the earring was plopped into the bottom of the
fluted glass.
“Why did you do that?” Maya gasped in
surprise.
“You can have it back later. La Fée
Verte will bring you a lovelier vision if you offer her a personal item
with your essence on it.” Miss Ruby lifted a pitcher of water and poured it
into the glass until it was half full. She then balanced a lacy silver spoon
across the top. “Pick up two sugar cubes,” she commanded. “Kiss each, make a wish
and set them on the spoon.”
Maya picked up the sugar cubes and kissed
both. The kisses left a sweet grainy texture embedded in her lipstick. She
licked her lips and set the stained sugar cubes on the spoon. When set
side-by-side the lipstick marks on the two sugar cubes formed a perfect pink
heart. She almost pointed out the coincidence to Miss Ruby but decided to keep
the thought to herself.
Miss Ruby uncorked the bottle of absinthe
and poured a drizzle of golden-green liquid over the sugar cubes. A piquant and
slightly bitter herbal scent filled the air. The cubes absorbed the soft-green
color as they dissolved and washed through the tiny slots in the spoon. As the
absinthe mixed with the cool water it formed delicate whorls that sank in the
glass like exhausted dancers gracefully melting to the floor. A moment later
the liquid turned a cloudy, opalescent shade of pale-jade.
Miss Ruby glanced at Maya. “Did you make a
wish?”
Maya nodded. She’d wished she could meet a
man as exciting as André Bosco but didn’t believe for a moment that it could
actually happen.
“La Fée Verte can transport you for
a brief time to another reality, but remember you belong in the present and no
matter the temptation to remain in her realm, you will have to return. Your
fate lies in the present.” Miss Ruby dipped the spoon into the glass and
stirred. The golden earring twirled at the bottom of the glass, making soft
tinkling sounds before settling. She withdrew the spoon and pushed the fluted
glass toward Maya. “Your magic potion is ready. Enjoy.”
(Maya drinks the absinthe and gets left alone in
the building. Things get strange fast. La Fée Verte appears and tempts her to
steal the key)Fairy In The flesh is available now!
http://www.ellorascave.com/fairy-in-the-flesh.html
Love book boards? Visit me on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/katalinaleon/fairy-in-the-flesh-elloras-cave/
XXOO Kat
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