Josephine
Love, Beautiful
1874, England
It was a cold Spring night, perhaps early April. It was a night of strange occurances. I pulled my thin blue shawl over my shoulders to ward away the cold.
To look at me, one would never guess my profession. My dark red dress was from Paris, my ginger colored hair done up in the latest style. I had to look like I had come from a high class party maybe. Perhaps I was someone of high standing's wife walking.
But then the questions, on a second glance. Why would such a wife be walking so late at night? How late at night was it now? Two A.M? Three? What would such a woman be doing out so late at night?
These thoughts caused me to hustle faster and my boots clicked as I quickened my pace.
I was not someone of high standing. Knowing this, knowing my profession, hoping no one could see or guess, caused a blush to rush to my face.
Long ago was the time when I had been called upon to escort men to whatever function they needed to go to. A party, perhaps a woman friend to entertain with them while they took in a show, maybe even to a restaurant just to be seen by society as someone normal. It was not well respected or even dignified. No good woman would be seen in such a profession. All good women were trying to find a husband. But me. What was I?
It had descended into something else. Too many men with hands which wandered. Too many did not understand what my service was. And then the rest. I became known as something which disgusted me and made me nauseous.
Here I was now, walking and rushing home after a night of such misdeeds. But how else to survive? How else was one to survive when one can't be in society, only the edge?
Thinking about all of this, my tears began to come. But I could not let them come, for the red of them would cause passersby to really look. It was then as I tilted my head up, that I saw something which shocked me and caused me to stop in my tracks as if my legs had forgotten their ability to walk.
High above me, clearly in a window, was him. My brain drew images up quickly of him staring at me with certain, silvery glow of eyes earlier in our history. His small bird-like hands in mine. The slender woman-like finger over his plump Asian lips, quieting me silently as he glided into a dining room where he would murder twelve people at once.
Yet here he was, eight or nine years later, looking completely different to me. It was those silver glow of eyes only which caused me to recognize him immediately. If he had not possessed them, I would have walked right past. He was up there in a window, the room dark around him but for a candle he held while he stared down at the street below. But the most striking thing was this: he wore a long light purple dress, his shiny black hair done fashionably in long ringlets with quite a bit piled on top of his head in the back. He was dressed completely female. But for those eyes. Those eyes showed an intensity which was completely masculine. Mr. Crane. There he finally was, inexplicably.
In an instant, a man appeared behind him, and the one I knew as Mr. Crane looked up at the mystery man, his neck extending beautifully in a distinctly masculine way. I stood transfixed, watching them. The man behind Mr. Crane wrapped his arms around the feminine cinched waist and began feeling around. Mr. Crane's slim arm wrapped around to the back of the man's head as the man kissed his neck.
Then with a swiftness which made me jump and gasp, Mr. Crane had broken the man's neck. The man fell out of sight with a look of great love on his face but at such a distressing angle.
Mr. Crane just stared out at the street as if nothing had transpired. Calm as you please. I stood there with wide eyes. A million questions flooded into my head, and I thought not one would be answered. Mr. Crane was a man of very few words, and when he spoke it would be on his own terms. However, I knew this night was not over. Not by half.
Like a ghostly chilling figure, Mr. Crane's eyes made a slow turn which I knew they would. As they fell upon me, I could tell he felt it, too. This encounter tonight, it was not coincidence. A slow smile formed on his lips.
In a few seconds, I was fumbling with the door to the guest house which he occupied. It became apparent how it was a guest house, for in every room almost there laid someone else who's life was spent, slumped over a couch or a table. Each one had a content, staring smile. They looked almost like dead clowns. Just what had Mr. Crane done to these people? It was startling to discover each one in a new room.
One such person was fallen head first in a chocolate cake on the table in the kitchen, a young black woman. She smelled freshest dead of all. When I looked up from seeing her, there was Mr. Crane standing next to her. I jumped and my hand flew over my heart in surprise. He stood there silently and unmoving just as he always did, just as a ghost does.
The morbid elegance of the situation he had created was not lost on me. He extended a pretty little hand and lifted up a tiny morsel of chocolate mousse to his mouth and there his plump lips accepted it in a gorgeous slip of his slender finger. I could not help but stare in the pull of his graceful movement.
He motioned for me to follow, and follow I did, up the stairs and into a common area. It was furnished in a lavish Louis XIV style. He showed me to a couch and here I sat, but he preferred to stand. Washed in the glow of the moon, his skin shone and the pale light caught on the lavender silk of his dress. No wonder the man who laid on the floor of this room had been caught by Mr. Crane. Mr. Crane was truly beautiful.
However, immediately, I looked away, for Mr. Crane began to strip violently. I couldn't understand why at the time, but then I heard him muttering to himself, and I do believe now he wanted me to hear. Perhaps as a muttered declaration. It would become a moment which solidified what I had thought about him the first time we had met so many years before.
"Wretched clothes, disgusting corset, be gone."
As the corset fell away, I saw for the first time something which I would later learn was very shameful for Mr. Crane. Under a thin cotton slip which protected his body from the harsh corset were two small lumps of flesh on his chest. They were barely there but there all the same. In the light of the moon, I could see the slim hourglass outline of his body, the wide hips. It was not so defined as an Englishwoman's would be, but it was still unmistakable. Mr. Crane was a woman, and he wanted me to know it by doing this. And yet he was not a woman. Even so as undressed as this, I could still see how much of a man he is. The way he stood, the way he moved. It was all man.
He made his way to the couch and sat next to me. It was awkward silence for a while as I realized he was not going to speak first.
"What...is all this?" I asked cautiously.
He just looked forward as I stared at him. I knew he could feel my eyes on him and it was making him uncomfortable.
I had not asked the right question, so he did not answer. I tried again.
"What is the purpose of all this?" I asked. And here was the right question.
"It is not as it seems," he said in his curiously feminine voice. The voice was still a shock to me, as every time. He stopped speaking, and I recognized it was my turn to talk.
"Why are you here this night? Why England, this city?" I further prodded.
Here he turned to me, his silver eyes searching. I felt a slight chill as they met my form, a chill from where I don't know.
"My thoughts have been disturbing me," he told me in his slow, quiet way.
This was met with silence, as I could not think of anything further to say. But I felt somewhere in my core how he was not finished, and how I should stay silent even if I had something to say further.
He let out a long sigh. Then he looked away from me, and began to speak to the floor.
"He told me not to tell you, but I know how you wait for him," he said without any show of emotion. I gasped silently, for I knew exactly who he was speaking of.
My creator, my lover. The silky haired, beautiful creature whom I adored so much. The man I saw only once every few years, but it seemed enough at the time still. However, inbetween times, how I despaired. This man. Mr. Crane knew this man after all. My brain traveled a million miles a minute, but I realized suddenly how I was missing the things Mr. Crane was saying. I focused my attention on him immediately.
"You should know my name is not what I told you those many years ago. That is a pseudonym which I use sometimes. My name is Cheol. That is all I can tell you. But this man you love. I can not sit idly by and see how he leaves you this way any longer. As a lover, do you think he respects you this way? Letting you wait and wait, never knowing where he is? Is it exciting to you, maybe?" He looked at me again, his head tilted to the floor but still his silver eyes searched for an answer in what I would later learn was a special sort of timidness, just for me.
"...It is...he...well I..." I stuttered. My heart was stuttering. Just what was I supposed to say?
Cheol curled his body and rested his elbows on his knees, not looking at me again.
"You should know something," he said very quietly, almost as if he was scared to be heard. He looked towards the window, away from me as possible. "The man you love. He is in India. As far from here as it is possible to be."
My heart did a flip-flop. How weird to know where he was, but how far he was... My heart shrank two sizes as it let that strange information melt inside of it. But Cheol was not finished speaking.
"...Do you think you deserve to be treated this way?" he asked delicately, in what I would later recognize as his shy way, when he is scared to say something.
I realized my body was trembling for some reason, just slightly, but enough to transfer to the couch. I knew he could feel me trembling, too.
Like an unwelcome dark wave, the cold, sad realization washed over me. The familiar despair which I shoved down to my feet and tried to forget in order to survive surfaced and made my trembles into shakes. This despair was my love, abandoned and lonely. It was sad yet unwavering, no matter how many years went by, no matter how many times I cried. The want to feel my lover's warm arms around me, to feel his pink lips on my lips and see his brilliant green eyes looking lovingly only at me. My hands folded into tight fists in an effort to control my shaking body.
Suddenly I felt Cheol's small hand over my fist on my lap, gently there, comforting, nonthreatening. I looked up and saw his kind face, for the first time I could see his heart shaped face clearly, for I was allowed to look upon it in detail. His silver eyes glowed in the dark with a soft intensity as he gazed upon me in the same way. A slight, concerned crease formed between his eyebrows. "Tell me, how long has it been since you have seen your lover?"
I breathed a shaky breath. "It has been..." I said quietly. He stared calmly at me, not pushing. "It has been...ten years..." I whispered, not wanting to admit it.
He sighed sadly at this. There was something in his expression which told me he was disappointed.
He breathed in a sharp intake of air beside me. "You do not know," he said calmly in response. My expression turned searching, trying to understand his meaning. He looked down between us, not wanting to look at my face suddenly.
Then he said this curious thing which sent my heart to pinch and burn.
"Those years ago, at the party which you escorted me to. It was not coincidence. I was a last minute replacement. He was supposed to be there that night, but he sent me instead. I don't know why he would, and I could not figure it out. But when I saw you, after he had spoken of you for so many years, I..." He looked suddenly startled, like he had said something he had not meant to say. I did not have time to react to this.
He breathed in quickly and continued on a different track. "We were in it together, trying to figure out how to take away those people. I am ashamed to admit how he wanted you removed from those people. He said they were not good for you, it was not a good situation. Then he suggested you to be removed from it. He couldn't just let it be, just let you be happy. I was sad for it. I did not want that man to be taken away from you. By some twisted sense that night, your lover put me in his place to escort you to the party. Maybe he didn't want you to know he was a part of it, I'm not sure."
The truth was flooding out of Cheol quickly now, as if he was glad to be rid of it finally. It was the first time I would know how truthful he is. How such secrets pained him and wrecked him inside.
"I don't understand his logic. Why does he not want to be with you? Why would he leave you this way? Why would he wreck your chances at happiness, even? You don't deserve to be treated this way. Not all of us love and leave like he does." His striking eyes were staring at me now, focused. His hand was tight on my hand.
Then I recognized it clear as day, what was transpiring here. My eyes widened in the realization of the situation at hand. I knew then, as the pieces came together in my head.
Cheol was a friend of my lover, but not an equal. He was not supposed to be here, yet he strategized to be here. There was no other reason why he would be in this city, my city. He knew where I was. He wanted to tell me about my lover, all the misdeeds.
For Cheol was here entirely on purpose, for one reason only: to confess his love. A love which had accumulated for years, from the words my lover spoke of me in love to him.
I did not know what to do, and he could see my uncomfortableness.
"I'm sorry," he said, seeing I knew. He removed his hand from my hand and turned away slightly, an embarrassment signal which I would later learn.
"Cheol," I whispered.
"What I am doing is uncalled for and rude," he said in a forced calmness as he stood up. He began to walk towards the doorway.
Strangely and suddenly, I felt a pinch in my heart which did not want him to leave. I now know what the feeling was, but I didn't recognize it at the time. All I knew was this despairing feeling. The not wanting to wait but having to, the memories of those sad nights all alone, my tears. When my lover wasn't there for me, how I cried with no one there. Not all of us love and leave, rang in my head. Cheol's words of love. His love confession.
I wanted his love. I desired any love. This regretful and dreadful longing causing me to seek out love anywhere I could find it, and here was Cheol now caught in the crossfire.
As I stood and ran after him, holding him around the waist and hugging him from behind, feeling him relax in my arms, I felt tears come to my eyes and then fall down, but it was not from relief. It was not in romantic love, at least not for Cheol. I know that now.
It was desperation. But even if born of desperation from both of us equally, as he would later tell me, the love we shared, it was still love. Love between two people is still beautiful, no matter where it is born from. And we know this: all the years we were secret lovers, we took with us valuable things which we could only learn from each other. Neither would be the same without the other.
Isn't that in itself beautiful? Just that alone?