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June 24, 1900

Dear Jane,

In this dreary, never-ending fog of heartache, there is a tiny spark of light. Awash in my sorrow, I might have missed it, but it is here and it reminds me that Henri did not wish me to spend the rest of my days in utter grief. I have discovered that there is some measure of comfort for me in this world.

And you have your wish, dear Jane, because that comfort comes from Christian.

I do not understand how you, barely acquainted with either of us, could have known we would get on so well. Now I wish I had followed your advice and sought him out weeks ago.

My initial journey to the world beneath me was quite by accident. The repairs to our damaged rooms left much to be desired, and a few mornings ago, as I dragged myself from my bed and my melancholy dreams to the window to brood once more on the darkened hulk of the Moulin Rouge, and the floor literally gave way beneath my feet.

The incessant tap tapping ceased immediately, and a voice, hoarse but with of a lilt that reminded me of home, asked if I was all right. I could not respond in the positive, since I was buried to the waist in ragged floorboards and my flailing feet could find no purchase. Upward movement was prohibited by the sharp shards of wood, so downward I had to go.

I tumbled down awkwardly, half expecting that floor would give way under me as well, only to look up into the concerned and bloodshot, yet quite frankly beautiful, eyes of my downstairs neighbour.

I stuttered my apologies as he continued to stare, wide-eyed. He looked so much older, with his unkempt clothes and hair and a rather thick beard. At least he looked less deranged than did at the funeral. Different though he was, there was no mistaking the lovelorn writer of “Spectacular Spectacular”.

“The last time this happened, Toulouse burst through my door dressed as a nun!” he exclaimed.

Henri and his silly costumes! Henri had, of course, told me about his first meeting with Christian, of the rehearsal being interrupted by the Argentinean’s crash through the floor, and of how enamoured Henri had been of Christian’s obvious talent. He’d gone on to tell me about late nights, when Christian and Satine sought refuge in Henri’s rooms, and how, when talk of the play had died down, Henri would regale them with tales of my beauty and his love for me. Henri claimed that Christian had stolen some of the best lines in the play from him.

All this flooded back to me as I sat in a daze on the floor. Poor Christian was probably shocked when I burst into tears. I fear I may have traumatised him with my unseemly reaction. He helped me up and got me a drink. As soon as I had calmed myself enough to be able to speak, he urged me to tell him my story.

I balked at first. How could I reveal intimate details to a stranger? But he showed me what he had been writing. At first, I was dazzled. The floor and walls were covered with papers, filled with words, some typed, some scrawled. The handwritten ones described fantastical nightmares and dreams and visions that had come to him when the absinthe flowed too easily.

But he had, through discipline and force of will, been able to put down the story of his love for Satine. This is what he’s been working on all this time, since just after I returned here. Those are the typewritten pages, or at least some of them. There are also early drafts of Spectacular Spectacular still tacked to the walls. That story, the story of his forbidden love for Satine, is now joined by the story of her tragic death.

 He says he was terribly bitter when he began, mistrusting his feelings and even thinking unkindly of Satine, but the act of writing his story has helped him see it more clearly. He claims it helps, claims it eases the pain, to put it all into words.

I can understand that. Writing to you about Henri has helped me cope with his loss. But writing to an old friend of your lost beloved, and speaking face to face with an almost stranger are not the same.

It was too soon, I argued. He had spent months in silent or drunken contemplation. For me, the sorrow was too raw. I was in no way ready to share my story. He pressed his case, exhorted me to relieve myself of the burden.

I blame it on the drink. I had imbibed in no spirits at all since Henri passed, wanting to feel my grief fully, but for some reason I accepted the absinthe Christian offered. Bitter like tears, it warmed me to my toes. I had not known I was so cold.

I was lost in a whirl of emotions, at the mercy of the Green Fairy. Once the initial tumult died down, I was weakened, but I felt a strange sense of ease, as if my heart was opening up. I told Christian everything.

I was surprised by how good it felt to speak it aloud. Knowing the story of Christian’s doomed affair with Satine, I felt almost obliged to share. And seeing how our paths have not been so different has given me a strange hope for the future.

Surely we could not both suffer to such extremes and then be left to wallow in that misery forever. Surely we have found each other for some reason, if only to have someone next to us who truly understands.

Christian has filled in many missing parts of the story, things Henri never told me. Henri used to talk to Christian about the “beautiful boy I love with all my soul”. Christian says that whenever Henri was expounding on the revolution, he would speak of longing for love with every fibre of his being, and of a love so true and beautiful and free it could not be denied – not by the lovers, not by others, not by the entire world.

He was speaking of me.

I cried more, and Christian joined me, and we drank a bit more, until I could stop crying long enough to tell him about Henri’s last days. These were the first tears I had shed since I read Henri’s letters. I had been stoic, reserved, but as Christian says, there comes a time to put that aside and let out the pain.

The world, which had never been kind to Henri, took a particularly cruel turn after Satine’s death. The Moulin Rouge, which Henri held as dear to his heart as his own home, was in ruin; Henri’s dreams of the bohemian revolution seemed to be in tatters.

Of course, Henri had been a little bit in love with Satine. Why would he not be? She was a jewel. He had been infatuated with Christian as well; he has the purity of soul to which we wretched are always drawn, moths to the flame. Her death and his heartbreak were shattering to Henri, and it tainted our reunion with a bitterness almost impossible to overcome.

Henri clung to me for days, sobbed against my chest between fits of rage at the world. We made sad, desperate love and held each other close, but he could not let go his anguish.

He drank, oh, he drank. I poured out the absinthe, took away the wine, tried to shut out the world, but there was no stopping Henri. Eventually, I relented, hoping that one great, wild drunken night would purge him of his demons, but one night turned into days, and days turned into weeks. I was helpless to stop him, and his bohemian friends were of no use. They were too busy drowning their own fierce disappointments to care about Henri.

It was inevitable that word would reach Henri’s family. Cousin Gabriel was the first to arrive and admonish me for my lack of control over Henri. Then I had to go into hiding when his mother arrived, full of fire and brimstone. The narcoleptic Argentinean hid me when she arrived. “You must remain out of sight,” he told me. “Henri needs you too much. You cannot come to harm.”

I could not see that. I was full of guilt for letting the drinking become so riotous. I wanted to be harmed, to be punished for my failure. I had not kept Henri safe at all. In fact, I had allowed him to do the very worst thing for his health.

“Do not despair,” the Argentinean insisted. “Your time will come,” he told me, right before he fell asleep in my lap.

Honestly. How could I take such a ridiculous creature seriously?

I was frantic with worry about Henri. His family had whisked him away to a vile sanatorium, claiming he needed to ‘take the cure’. There was no cure for his condition; only love and patience could ease his pain. I had failed at both. By not responding to his letter, I had made him believe I had rejected him. As wonderful and healing as our reunion should have been, I had not been able to see him through the worst of his grief without relenting and letting him have his drink.

I wanted to blame no one but myself.

One day, Henri’s cousin Gabriel found me in the Argentinean’s hovel. He begged for my help, for the sake of Henri. He and Dr Bourges had devised a plan to secure Henri’s release from the clinic, and needed my assistance. It would be risky, and would require a difficult masquerade, but it was the only way to free Henri.

The Toulouse-Lautrec clan is large, and spread wide across the country. There is a distant cousin, a Paul Viaud from Bordeaux, whom none in the family but Henri had seen since he was much younger, when Paul had been on a holiday with Henri, during which Henri sketched and drank, while his cousin watched and drank. Monsieur Viaud suffers from a stomach ailment, which prevents him from drinking, or so family members believed. Mama Adéle chose this relative as the ideal companion for her son.

The truth was that Viaud suffers from a drinking ailment not unlike Henri’s. He was living above a tavern on the outskirts of Bordeaux, quite happy to have his family believe he was taking a cure at a spa. A visit from Gabriel and the payment of his tab, including an advance to cover his alcohol for the next few months, were enough to secure his silence in the matter.

I had grown an unruly beard and mop of hair since Henri had been torn away from me, not seeing any need to look my best when I felt so miserable. One of the girls from a nearby brothel took the scissors to me, and showed some skill with the task. She fashioned me a serious, respectable look, much older than my years, and even managed to give my features a look that was similar enough to the look of Henri’s family to make me believable as a relative.

Thus, I re-entered Henri’s life as his long-lost cousin Paul.

It was a huge gamble. If the ruse were discovered, the family would no doubt have me arrested and deported, and would send Henri back to the hell of the hospital. If successful, I would be hired as Henri’s nurse, to keep him from the drink and accompany him on a restful visit to the south, and in the spring we planned a trip up the coast.

I had never been so nervous in my life. When I boarded that boat to cross the channel, I had been in great personal peril, but there had not been nearly as much riding on the outcome. That seemed ages ago, when I had been a young, rash man, gambling his own freedom on the kindness of a stranger he desired. Now, I was jaded, tired, wishing I did not need to be so adventurous, yet I gladly risked everything, because the very life of one I loved with all my heart was at stake.

Gabriel spent some time tutoring me intensely, shaping my pathetic English accent into something approximating an accent from Bordeaux. Fortunately, this Paul was not much of a talker. I could mumble my replies and do a passable job of it. Shy but firm with Henri, quiet but unshakeable in his discipline, ‘Paul’ would be the perfect way for me to get close to Henri.

I was successful. The family not only welcomed me with open arms, they offered to pay me to care for Henri.

Henri said even he barely recognised me at first. At first he was delirious from the sedatives and despair of being locked up. Once his eyes and head cleared, and he appreciated that it was truly me, he almost gave away the ploy. He embraced me a little too fondly, a little too eagerly. I feigned shyness and retreated, attributing his over enthusiasm to his joy at being freed from the miserable prison the doctors like to call a cure.

After a week of rest, tense for me, and much needed for Henri, we embarked on our journey.

It was magnificent. Our first night alone, Henri spent hours just looking at my face, tracing the new lines etched in my skin, playing with the unfamiliar beard, turning me this way and that to look at my eyes. “You are older, and sadder, but infinitely more beautiful,” he proclaimed at last. We kissed delicately at first, then passionately. He was cautious. He would not allow my mouth near his cock, not allow me to pleasure him the way I wanted, but I did all I could with my hands and my body, with my voice.

He would rest against me, with his naked body plastered to mine, his heavy cock between my legs, his ear against my chest listening to the beating of my heart. Some nights he would sleep like that, erect until dawn, lacking the energy to reach his peak, but taking pleasure from the continued contact nonetheless. On those nights, I touched his hair and his shoulders and his face, and spoke to him softly of how much I loved him.

When he had the vigour, he would spread me out on the bed and feast on me, his mouth nimble, his fingers agile, his tongue wicked. He loved to position me just so, to make it comfortable for him, to make the light strike me in just the right manner, and to give me the most enjoyment. I would hold the pose until my limbs ached, but the soreness was always washed away by the joy when he brought me to completion.

On the days we ventured out, we went to the theatre and viewed art shows. We went to cafés and I monitored Henri’s intake of alcohol carefully. To deprive him of it altogether would be cruel, but allowing him to indulge fully would be madness. I maintained a careful balance, and kept him from the taverns at night, when he had a tendency to run wild.

During one of our last outings, as we made our way up the coast, we encountered none other than Mister Oscar Wilde, in Le Havre. Oscar was seated in the corner of a restaurant, with the barely picked at remains of a meal and a near empty flagon of wine on the table before him.

Prison had not been kind to Oscar. He was haggard, bloated and wasted. His wit was still with him, but he did not have the lively demeanour of before his downfall.

He did not, at first, recognise me, his old favourite. He did recognise Henri, and they talked for some time of the past and the present. Both of them were preoccupied with the Dreyfus case. Oscar claimed to be meeting regularly with the real spy, Captain Esterházy, the cause of the whole affair. He said this man was more interesting than Dreyfus. “It’s always a mistake to be innocent. To be a criminal takes imagination and courage.” The truth of that pained me under the polite laugh I gave.

Bosie, he told us, was waiting at their hotel, and I dreaded an encounter with him, so I encouraged Henri to move on. At the end of the meal, after Henri had been distracted by a gentleman actor he knew from the local production of Messaline, Oscar pulled me to one side.

“Young man, I hope you realise how precarious your situation is,” he said to me in a low voice.

I could not tell if he had recognised me, or if he had merely recognised my relationship with Henri for what it truly was. I feared exposure, or worse, but Oscar patted my arm absently and looked out the window off into the cloud-filled sky. To find love, he told me, at whatever cost, was not only admirable, but virtuous. And then he thanked me, and as we left he pressed something in my hand. I felt only a slight stab, as from a pin. I hastened to put the object in my pocket. I would peruse it later, in the privacy of our rooms.

Later, after I had put Henri to bed, I retrieved a strange, green brooch from my pocket. It glowed in the firelight with a mysterious aura. A gift thanking me, I am sure, for refusing to testify against him all those years ago.

I felt that I should be the one to thank him. I would not have been with Henri if I had not been forced to flee my old life.

I kept the pin, never showing it to Henri. He did not like the way any some men looked at me, and to know that Oscar, whom I had serviced in what I thought of as my previous life, had given me so precious a gift would have driven him mad with jealousy. Perhaps I will pass it on to someone who shows me a kindness in the future.

We continued to travel for a little while, and enjoy what we could of life. Henri asked me to pose for him numerous times, hoping, he claimed, to capture my beauty for all time. He was not happy with his experiments. He was working in a more traditional style than he had in the paintings and lithographs that brought him his fame.

I assumed the darkness of the paintings could be attributed to the more traditional style. Then I feared it was his mood. But soon, the horrible truth became clear to me.

His eyesight was fading, fallen victim to the syphilis.

In time, his mind fell prey to it as well. The bouts of anger and melancholy became more frequent. What might once have resulted in an hour of pouting caused seemingly endless periods of despondency. My light touches and tender kisses could only revive him for a short time.

At last, it was time for him to go home.

I dreaded the journey to the family estate. I feared exposure, but more so I feared harm would be done to Henri if his family ejected me. His mother eyed me with some suspicion when I delivered her son to the door, but she invited me in, and asked me to continue caring for him.

I took up residence in the room next to Henri’s. I attended his needs, kept him bathed and groomed, massaged his poor legs, gave him his medicines. When he was well enough, I tended his other needs discreetly. His family did not interfere. I think they were relieved that I was there to take care of what they considered unpleasant tasks. Their only chore was to tolerate Henri’s darker moods and watch him sink further into this pit of his own making.

One cannot say if his end would have been different without me. He might have drunk himself to his grave years earlier without my being there to lighten his days. But then, the despair of our separations caused as much damage as my presence. It is useless to fret over what might have been. I can only be grateful I was there at the end.

I held his hand through that last, horrible night, as he whispered of demons and terrors unimaginable. Between bouts of fever, he kissed my fingers and proclaimed undying love. I told him that the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

I do not know if he recognised the words, but he cried when I thanked him for loving me.

In the morning, I had no choice but to relinquish the room to his family. It was too late by then. I had been there for the best of him. As his family gathered around, I heard him make one, last biting remark. “Good Papa,” he said, “I knew you wouldn’t miss the kill.” That was the last thing I was allowed to hear him say.

His mother knew. After he passed, and the family was deep in mourning, she drew me aside and told me she had received a letter from the real Paul Viaud. She looked so tired and old at that moment. The anger I had long expected and dreaded did not appear, only a sad surrender.

“I cannot help what my son was,” she told me. “I did the best I could to shield him from himself, and I recognise that you tried to do the same. I must ask you to leave, but know that you leave with my gratitude for all you tried to do for him.” She gave me what is, for me, a rich sum, off which I have been living since then.

And so I have achieved a certain legitimacy, although it does Henri no good now. I am so very tired of this place and this life. I am thinking of going back to England. To stay here is only to be reminded of what was, what could have been, of what I wish could have been.

The only good left for me is Christian. He is proving to be a loyal and generous friend. We have exchanged our tales of grief and love, and have discovered we are not so different after all. He is a beautiful man, and deserves so much better than this cruel world has given him. Satine was right; he has so much to give. As, I now realise, do I.

Adieu, Jane. Please, take this story and do not let it fade in your memory. You and I are the only two who can keep Henri truly alive. Share my love for him, and he will always be with us.

With much love,
Orlando



Next: Nine - Truth

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