The Green Muse

by Tristan ap Rheinnalt

For Marcel, the ritual was almost as important as the act of drinking. He picked up the glass and placed it directly in front of him, then extracted a small slotted spoon from the inside pocket of his jacket. It was his lucky spoon and he would never dream of using another. After balancing it on the rim of the glass, he took a lump of sugar from the saucer and placed it carefully on the spoon. Then, with even more care, he poured a trickle of iced water from the carafe so that it soaked the sugar and then dripped into the glass.

This was what he loved most: the moment when the water combined with the absinthe in the glass to create swirls and eddies of emerald green, which just as quickly faded away as the mixture turned cloudy. This, he felt, was beauty in its purest, simplest form, and all the more poignant because it was so transient. Where else could be hope to encounter such beauty?

He drank and waited calmly for inspiration to come. It was not assured, of course, and when he later looked at his notebook, there might be nothing of value there. But on certain occasions, provided he had been lucid and receptive, he would find jewels nestling within the pages; not yet revealed in their full glory, perhaps, but needing only some judicious cutting and polishing.

He had seen a painting once that depicted a young man, better-dressed than him but otherwise much the same, with the green muse at his shoulder, whispering into his ear. If she could come to him, Marcel, what did it matter that Héloïse had left him for some ignorant bumpkin from the Auvergne? Or that the sleeves of his jacket were frayed? Or that he had insufficient money to take advantage of the upstairs room and so must ignore the teasing smiles of the filles de joie?  

At another table, someone was noisily proposing a toast to Pernod Fils. For Marcel, it was never Pernod Fils: he could not afford it. But there was no shortage of alternatives to suit his pocket, and they were quite satisfactory.

Something had changed since his last visit, he realised: something to do with the monkey in the corner. The creature was chattering away to itself, perhaps sensing that it would soon be let out of its cage to run around and cause havoc among the customers, who would not mind in the slightest and would feed it titbits if it perched on their shoulders.

As far as Marcel could see, the monkey was the same as ever, but his gaze kept returning to the same corner of the room. Suddenly he understood what it was: the monkey’s cage had been painted. He could not remember what colour it had been originally – grey perhaps, or even black – but now it was bright green. It might even be a different cage; he did not know or care. But the change upset him. It disturbed his peace of mind.

When Marcel woke up the next morning, he reached down for his notebook. That was always his priority. He would inspect it before doing anything else, even before preparing coffee. But his scrabbling fingers made contact only with rough wooden boards, and when he peered over the side of the bed, all he saw was dust and cigarette-ends.

Suddenly he was seized with panic. What if he had lost it? What if it had fallen out of his pocket on the way home? He had made fair copies of only a few of his poems; the remainder were still in the notebook. Ignoring his aching head, he leapt out of bed and picked up his jacket from the floor. Relief washed over him as he felt hard edges within the folds of worn fabric. With the notebook firmly in his grasp, he dived back under the covers. The air in the room was bitterly cold but the fire could wait until later and, in any case, he needed to economise on coal.

Disappointment took over when he saw how meagre his output had been. The little he had written was barely legible:
I am that monkey
The green fairy at my shoulder -- muse or succubus?
A silver spoon tap-tap-tapping against the bars
I cannot get out

If that was meant to be poetry, it was a poor effort, but perhaps he had simply been making notes. Either way, he could tell straight away that little could be done with those few scribbled lines.

Sighing, Marcel let the notebook fall to the floor and wondered how he could pass the hours until evening.