Two days later Jesse invited Ariane to tea.
“Tell her to come alone,” he said to me.
I was reluctant, but Jesse had told me nothing of my sister’s breakdown, so I uneasily acquiesced.
The light from the room’s only window tossed dusty phantoms to the black-tile floor. Ariane sat upon a threadbare couch, picking absently at escaping threads. Liberated, they quivered like black-and-blue leaves to the ground. Jesse gazed aimlessly through the glass, which was thick enough to make the wintry vista appear murky and indistinct.
Jesse thought of the almost-empty cupboard in the cold, bare kitchen. “Do you want a drink?”
His voice almost betrayed him as the words stained poison on his lips.
She shrugged. “Why not?”
He staggered woodenly to the kitchen sink and reached for a smutty glass. “Wine?” he called.
“Please,” her voice shivered in the silence.
The wine tumbled in scarlet folds from the bottle, luxurious velvet the colour of blood. Jesse thrust a furtive hand into his ragged pocket and resurfaced in a blur of dirty beige. His fist enclosed upon a tiny grey capsule.
The clink of glass upon glass startled the smothering air and he glanced quickly to where she sat. But she had not moved.
The goblet trembled in his hand as the whitish powder swooped and diminished.
Her fingers brushed his own as she received the drink, and inwardly he began to crumble. He watched in morbid fascination as rim met crimson lips, the tip of her tongue greeting the wine. She swallowed, and he turned away, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He had done it – the dreadful, necessary act.
The lids of her eyes fluttered as she savored the fruit of his offering. “Lovely,” she sighed.
She stood up and stretched, her slender arms glistening palely in the dimness of his apartment. Twilight had begun its descent. Ariane joined him beside the window. It was not large, but kept the suffocating darkness at a tolerable weight.
“Can you see the stars?” she whispered.
The square smear of ebony was pricked in several places by soft, glowing pinheads of light. But his throat had closed in upon itself; he wondered if soon he would not breathe. If he was eventually strangled, which of them would pass first?
Ariane drifted back to the sofa, and it soughed gently beneath her weight. Jesse listened for her breathing. Presently it softened and rustled evenly, and he knew that she slept. An arid sob of sorrow and relief rattled in his chest and broke like static from his tortured lips: he had been biting them, tearing and chomping them, as if to alleviate the burden on his heart.
Ariane was suddenly aware of the cold. Distant, tinny voices joined the orchestrated sounds of the room: the drip of water from a frozen faucet, wind moaning against a window pane. She furrowed her eyebrows, sending cold needles dancing across her cheeks. A metallic tang coated her tongue, and she grimaced painfully again. Where was Jesse?
Lifting one eyelid was an honorable conquest, but the room was too dark to see. Ariane curled her fingers, discovering splintery wood where she expected the worn fabric of Jesse’s couch. A low groan issued from her chapped lips, a horrible, raspy susurration. As she prepared herself for miserable apprehension, the far-off voices drew closer, preceded by the glowing yellow shaft of a lantern. Ariane closed her eye again, engulfed by the loathsome sense of being seen by someone invisible to you.
“In here?” came the first voice. There was no answer. Ariane heard the soft clatter of shoes on what must have been a cement floor. Whoever it was lit a gas lamp. A bit of its radiance invaded the barrier of flesh that covered her eyes.
“Ah, yes.” said the man. “Here we are.”
Ariane kept her eyes closed as if she’d never woken up.
“Listen, girl. I know you’re awake.”
Her lip trembled involuntarily and she opened her eyes.
“My name is Doctor Blair,” said the man. “Ariane Cardea, you are here because you are unfortunate enough to be insane –”
He kept talking, but Ariane could not listen.
“The world beyond these walls wants nothing to do with you, do you understand? You are an anomaly, a threat to society – a humiliation to your family. You will die here and the world will be grateful to be rid of you; you will die and go nowhere but to a shallow grave. But while you are here, you will be of some use to me. Am I understood?”
Ariane’s tongue seemed to have swelled until it curled back upon itself, clogging her throat so that she could hardly breathe.
“Splendid.” Blair moved aside so that from her cot Ariane could glimpse a rickety wooden wheelchair. “Kindly come with me.”
I do not know much of what happened at Earlswood. I have heard rumors of the goings-on behind those mouldering walls, of a spinning chair which they call a rotary to restore equilibrium to the brain, and chains to fetter the chaos of a diseased soul. I have heard tell of animal cages and scant food infested with dirt and filth.
Ariane remained incarcerated in the lunatic asylum for five years. Five years during which her already brittle mind was shattered and ground to fine dust. When they let her go, she returned to live with our parents, who hid her once again in an old guest bedroom with walls gowned in thick quilts for her safety.
As for myself, I rebelled against my parents’ suffocating sensibility in two ways. Firstly, I enrolled at a young ladies’ academy three hours from home. And secondly, I became Jesse’s lover. Because he was callow and impecunious, my opposite in every way. Because he represented the inverse of all I had ever known, all that had ever harmed my sister. Despite what he revealed to me regarding his connection with Ariane’s imprisonment, I found his affection indispensable.
Occasionally I visited my sister, and we sat in the old unkempt gardens of our youth – I reminiscing, she rocking slowly back and forth, gazing at a sparrow or a wasp or whatever attracted her wandering and aimless attention.
“How did she look?” asked Jesse one afternoon upon my return from visiting Ariane.
“Wretched.” I replied. “Of course, it’s not as if she understands. I think she is somehow happy with her life there. I do hope so.”
“I am glad to hear it,” he murmured.
I moved to where he stood beside the window, standing behind him and wrapping my arms about his waist. I lay my head against his shoulder and talked into his warm, tobacco-scented coat.
“She wore the most magnificent necklace.”
“Oh?”
“Indeed,” I said. “A little golden cross set with diamonds. It must have been the only one of its kind. I do wish I had remembered to inquire after it.”
Jesse tensed, curling his hands into fists and raking the desolate hillside with bright, tormented eyes.
The Earlswood Confession: Part One -- viewtopic.php?t=60228
