Linhart's Beautiful Beast

Chapter 1-3

“Here.” Joe pulled a piece of bread out of his sweater sleeve and put it on Dubois’s pillow, in front of his face. He stood back and waited. Food in cells was strictly forbidden. Joe watched for Dubois’s reaction, waiting for a clue to his character.

“For me?” Dubois asked, sitting up with the bread in his hand. His hair was darker red in this light. Shadows cut up his delicate face.

Joe still couldn’t figure out why, but in the mess hall tonight, he’d been sitting at his usual table, talking with Novak and Levin, when suddenly, he’d decided he’d bring Dubois his share of bread.

“And you’re giving it to me?”

“Hurry up and eat it before one of the bulls sees it in here.”

Dubois tore into it, and within a few seconds the bread was gone. He’d done what Joe had hoped he’d do. He’d accepted the offering without making a fuss and disposed of it quickly.

Sitting back, Dubois brushed the crumbs off his wool sweater. He patted himself down, probably for a cigarette, but then his features tensed as he must have realized those little treasures were gone now. Joe would have saved his cigarettes. He’d have rationed them. But Dubois had probably never had to ration anything in his life, not even after the crash of twenty-nine.

Joe realized the evening was getting late and he had work to do. He found his paper and a pencil and opened his tin box which still smelled of tea. In there, he kept the pictures of the inmates’ wives and girlfriends. Using a wooden plank as a writing board, he settled in for an hour of writing. The first letter would be for Mila, Tobias’s girl, a dark haired woman with a crooked nose and very big lips. She didn’t look happy on her portrait, but then again, she was married to Tobias the Butcher.

Joe started. With his right hand in a bandage, it would be difficult, but he managed it after a while.

My dearest Mia,

There’s an aching in my heart. An aching as long and sharp as the icicle hanging in the window I don’t have. I think of you. I think of the sun.

Joe realized he’d written her name wrong and squeezed an l in there.

The nights remind me of every mistake I’ve ever made, but the blacker and colder they are, the closer I feel to real penance.

Dubois stood and paced again.

Joe tried to ignore him.

I remember the scent of your hair. I remember the sweetness of your mouth. These memories keep me alive in here. They make me want to fight to stay sane and healthy.

Dubois was looking down at him. “I suppose that’s the chamber pot there.” He pointed to the corner, at the two buckets.

“Yeah…the one on the left is for the paper only, and you get five sheets a day. They pick up the waste in the morning.” Joe stared down at the letter in progress, hoping Dubois wouldn’t notice he was embarrassed. “If you need…privacy, pull that sheet around the corner there.”

Dubois looked at the corner, but didn’t move. He’d get used to it. They all got used to it. After a moment, Dubois sat down again. Joe guessed he didn’t have to go that bad.

He put his pencil to the paper.

Mila, your name is like a warm wind through these barren halls, and in the heart of the night, between the hours of the dead and the living―

But he was getting carried away. This was Tobias after all.

“Oh, to hell with it!” Dubois jumped to his feet and dashed for the corner.

When Joe heard the rush of Dubois’s urine hitting the bottom of the pale, he set his jaw and stared down at the words on the page. He knew if he looked up, he might see Dubois’s c**k.

He wouldn’t be able to hold back.

Sweat pooled under his arms and Joe tore the letter up. He wanted Dubois to go. He had to leave the cell.

“It was so terrible that you had to crumple it like that?” Dubois sat on his cot and tipped his head, questioning him with clear candid eyes.

Joe needed to take his sweater off, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do anything with Dubois watching him so earnestly.

“Is that letter for your wife?”

Joe pulled his sweater off. The back of his shirt was wet with sweat. “No,” he said, after a long pause. “I write letters for the other inmates.” He unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off. The cold air blew him out like a match. He was in his under shirt.

Dubois’s eyes roamed all over his shoulders and arms. “You were in a fire,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, but I was a little kid. I don’t remember it.” The burn scars on Joe’s shoulders, back, and upper arms, were the only proof he’d once felt something else than this cold.

“Your house burned.”

Joe noticed Dubois didn’t ask questions, but only stated facts, as if he were reading his life story on Joe’s face.

“They got me out before the fire melted the blanket to my back.”

Dubois didn’t look away. “Your family survived.”

Joe picked up his board, paper, and pencil. “Yeah, my mother and me got out all right. Well, I need to work now.”

“Of course. Is this fresh water?” Dubois stood by the pot filled with what was left of Joe’s daily drinking water. “May I have a drink of it?”

“Whenever you need it.”

Dubois unhooked the cup off the wall and filled it up. “There’s no sink in this cell. No toilet. It’s awful.’’

“Nowhere to hook the pipes. And they’d freeze anyway.’

Dubois drank greedily and Joe wondered why he’d waited so long to ask him for water.

“You write letters for them? Why?” Dubois sat down again, leaning forward on his knees, closer to Joe’s bunk.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember how it started.”

“To their wives?”

“Sometimes their mothers.”

“I see.” Again, Dubois looked panicked, the fear getting the best of him. Joe knew the young man was scared. Scared of the night. The first night was always the cruelest, but he couldn’t help him, so he went back to his letter. But he wasn’t himself tonight. Joe crumpled the letter again. This would have to be the last effort tonight.

Dubois’s hands were shaking now. His face was deathly pale. He stared wildly at the darkening hall.

Joe had to say something. Had to give this man some kind of peace. “He’ll come for you,” he said. “Your father.”

Dubois quickly turned away from him, lying down again. He hugged his knees and faced the wall.

The night was coming.

“What is that?” Dubois turned to him. “Did you hear that?”

Joe had gotten used to them and hardly heard them at all. “The hole is just beneath us. You hear the men hollering sometimes.”

“Solitary confinement.”

“It won’t happen to you, all right?”

“Joe.” Dubois said his name like it was something special.

“What?”

“How do you stand it?”

“I don’t stand it.”

“But you hear them, screaming down there.”

Joe shrugged and stuffed his papers under the cot. “Maybe I’m screaming louder inside.”

Dubois ran both his hands over his ginger hair and widened his eyes, as though trying to wake from a nightmare. “I’ll never sleep again.”

But later, Dubois was moaning in his sleep.

* * * *

Joe opened his eyes.

He never slept through the night. There was a grenade inside his body that blew up every night, precise as a clock, merciless as a soldier throwing a gas bomb over enemy lines.

In the earlier days, Joe had tossed and turned, trying to find sleep again, but nowadays, he just waited.

Waiting was breathing.

Breathing was waiting.

Tonight, the cell was different. He wasn’t alone. Joe could hear Dubois’s slow, rhythmic breaths, and turning to his side, Joe watched the ginger-head. Covered by darkness, Joe didn’t have to try anymore. For the next hour, he belonged to himself. For sixty minutes in the night, he was a man again.

He hadn’t been able to study Dubois’s face until now, because he’d trained himself not to study beautiful things. Even in the woods out there, Joe never let his eyes stray up to the black-blue sky. If he heard the first notes of a bird’s song, he’d chop harder and faster. Beauty was a promise of better days. Beauty was elevation, but elevation supposed a fall.

The men were quiet down in the hole. He remembered he’d been down there last winter.

Joe blinked. Shut the terrible memory out.

In his bunk, Dubois made a sound and his body jumped. The wolves had made it into his dreams. Joe knew Dubois was running now, through the forest, through the vast white, with the branches snapping at his face. He stared at the curve of Dubois’s shoulder, giving him strength, until soon, Dubois resumed his deep sleep.

What a beautiful face the man had. If only Joe could touch it.

Tomorrow, he’d ask to meet with Warden Cooke. Tomorrow, Dubois had to be transferred to another cell.

Joe thought of his mother. Of her sad, frantic face as they’d dragged him out of her home in shackles. He wouldn’t debase himself in here. He’d marry Claudine.

Get out of here and marry Claudine.

“Victor?” Dubois was sitting up, looking around at the darkness. “Victor?” His voice was too loud.

“Hey, be quiet,” Joe whispered.

“What―”

“Lie down. Just lie down. You’re dreaming.”

“Why is it so cold? Why is it so dreadfully cold?’’

“The butler forgot to stoke the fire. Lie down.”

Dubois wrapped the blankets around his shoulders and sat up against the wall. His shivers were turning into spasms. The fever was overtaking him. It would last all night.

Joe got out of his covers and gathered the heaviest of them. He offered it to him. “Put this on.”

“Yes,” Dubois said, taking the blanket. But he couldn’t manage it. He was shaking too violently.

Joe pulled the blanket out of his hands and dropped it over Dubois’s shoulders. For a moment, his hand touched his hair.

Dubois peered up at him. “My goodness, your head nearly grazes the ceiling.” He clutched the blanket around his neck, his tremors subsiding a little. “How tall are you, Joe?”

“I don’t know.” Joe sat on his cot again.

“I’m missing half of a finger. Did you notice it?” Dubois’s voice shook from the cold. “See.”

Joe looked at Dubois’s left hand. He could barely make it out in the dark. But the ring finger was cut at the middle joint. “What happened to it?”

“I cut it off myself.”

Dubois had Joe’s full attention. “Yeah?’’

“You see, I was mad with love and desperate to make a point. The knife was within my reach, and before I knew it, I’d sliced my finger off. The ring went flying.” He laughed morbidly. “Sliced my finger off like a carrot.”

“What was the point you were trying to make?”

Dubois shrugged. “I suppose I wanted to prove the ring didn’t matter to me. It was my grandfather’s. It was worth a thousand dollars.”

A thousand dollars could buy Joe’s mother a life.

“So why not throw the ring in the St. Lawrence or something?”

Dubois held his eyes to his. “Because there’s no river deep enough to hold my shame.”

The admonition made Joe look away.

“Oh, what I’d give for a cup of tea,” Dubois said, after a while.

“We used to have a fire pit and boil our water. Too many men set their beds on fire.”

“And you?”

“I just drank tea.”

Dubois laughed and pulled the blanket over his head. Only his eyes were visible in the dark. Eyes as vivid and piercing as a child’s. “Will you work tomorrow?”

“No, not with my hand like this.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“But you have a fiancée.”

“Yeah.” Joe remembered Claudine’s capable hands. Her cool smile. Would she wait for him? He wished she wouldn’t. He wished she’d stop writing. She should marry a man with a future ahead of him.

“What’s her name?”

“Claudine.” Joe rubbed his hands together for heat. “She’s a nurse. She’s good to my mother.”

Dubois changed positions, stretching his legs out. “My mother died when I was a boy.”

“I’m sorry…she was sick?”

“No, she died delivering me.’’

Silence slipped in between them again and Joe was thankful for it.

But then Dubois spoke again. “Joe,” he called out softly. “The truth is, my father despises me. He loved my mother. He couldn’t possibly love her murderer. And that’s what I am. He’s not going to come for me. You see, he’s disowned me. All I have of my mother’s now, is her maiden name.”

“What’s your father’s name?”

“Henri Cardinal,” Dubois breathed.

“The name rings a bell.”

“Of course it does. As it should. My father is an affluent man and favorite candidate for the liberal party.”

“And you’re in here, in the Icebox?”

“Oh yes, I am.’’

“You say he’s a liberal. Why? I thought all eminent French guys were fervent nationalists, working hard with the clergy to keep us all on our farms and knees.”

“My father is much too ambitious to consider language or culture. He goes where the money goes.”

“So, you’re the son of our future prime minister?”

“No. I’m no one’s son.”

There were steps in the hall. A guard was making his rounds. “Be quiet now,” Joe whispered.

The glow of a lantern passed their cell and Joe shut his eyes. He heard Dubois pretending to snore. Then the guard was gone, his steps echoing through the silence.

“The guards here, what are they like?”

“Just follow the rules and you’ll be all right.”

“When I first saw you, I thought you were a brute.”

“I am.”

“Good night, Joe.”

Joe finally closed his eyes and sleep rolled over him like an avalanche.