Rue des Beaux-Arts
Dale Tudge
Arthur and Moore went to find Shaw at the Pavillon de l’Alma. Rodin’s work held no mystery for me that afternoon. I had somewhere else to be.
The Hotel d’Alsace. 13 Rue des Beaux-Arts—a finer address than the hotel merited. Ossie was in his room on the second floor, thinner than I had prepared myself for, wearing a dressing gown that had once been magnificent. The wallpaper was, as he had already informed several visitors, “winning”.
He said Ross had brought flowers again, as though flowers were what was needed.
There were other things in the room. Slim shadows that kept to the corners. Crooked shapes that did not quite resolve into furnishings. Each evil sprite that walks by night.* The phantoms keeping their tryst. “Of course you’d see them.” He almost smiled. “My dear observer,” he said, and closed his eyes.
I told him about the Exposition. The telescope. Arthur’s extremely hot peppers. A heat, I said, that introduces itself politely, excuses itself, and reminds you again shortly thereafter.
He looked at me for a long time. “You have described,” he said, “to the letter, my entire reputation.”
The #sprites,
the crooked shapes of Terror,
the damned grotesques—
making arabesques.
They came from his phantasmagoria.
They lived in his wallpaper.
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