The manuscript was due to the publisher in eleven weeks, on the first of September, but Theo was only a third of the way through the translation, just at the point where Muybridge murders his wife’s lover in a rage of jealousy. Muybridge had learned from their housekeeper that she had gone off to a cabin with her lover, so he loaded a pistol, left his offices in San Francisco, and raced to board the very last ferry north where he caught a train. From the end of the line, he hired a wagon to take him to the cabin far out in the country, goading the poor driver to whip the horses through the darkness. He knew his young wife was there with Harry Larkyns. When his wife’s lover answered the door, Muybridge shot him through the heart. Amour fou. Theo considered the possibilities in English: love insane, fit of passion, fatal desire. What would drive a man to such an extreme act? Since the murder had been planned, could his behavior reasonably be called temporary insanity? If so, would not that be an equal madness guided by the same base emotion, the wayfaring heart, the obsessed mind? Crazy love, he decided, and satisfied with his choice, that was what he wrote: “He was moved by a crazy love for her. He would have done anything.”
Theo well understood how love could sway reason. Kay was just impetuous enough to have raised a doubt or two before they were married, her secret life he could not know, her sudden flights. But she made him crazy for her in the end.
A boat’s horn sounded on the Saint Lawrence just outside his window, and he used the distraction to rise from the desk and check out the scene below. Flying both the maple leaf flag and the provincial fleur-de-lis, the tour boat chugged to the dock, back from Tadoussac he was sure, where the travelers had gone in search of the whales that came down the seaway every summer—the humpbacks and fins, the minkes and even, it is said, the occasional enormous blue whale, to feed on the abundant schools of fishes and krill. He and Kay had made the trip on a rare day off, and she had been entranced by the white belugas moving like ghosts in the water. Settled in by the window, he watched the crew hop out and tie off the boat and then the passengers disembark, little windup dolls finding their legs as they struggled to the gangway. Framed in a Muybridge sequence, a study of the motion of landlubbers. One by one the people down below steadied themselves, and then they escaped the edge of the picture until they were all gone, and he felt uneasy like a god above whose world had been deserted.
In the heart of the Vieux-Québec, church bells rang evensong, and Theo looked at his wristwatch, surprised by how much time had elapsed since he wrote those last sentences. The work on his desk grumbled for attention, but he could not give it any. Maybe after dinner, once he cleared his head. He shoved his papers and books into his briefcase and shouldered it before stepping outside into the twilight. He loved the lonesomeness of the dusky hour when everything changed from brightness into darkness. Along the streets of the lower part of the old city, the Basse-Ville, the cars zipped by on their way home, and the Musée de la Civilisation had closed its doors for the evening. The street was emptied of pedestrians. They were out looking for a place for dinner perhaps, or headed for a drink and a show, and he envied the patterns of their typical days and the standard routine of their hours. Taking a shortcut to his favorite café on rue Saint-Paul, Theo followed the path Kay had just taken, past her favorite shops, slowing his pace to look in their windows, wondering what she might enjoy, calculating how much money he would have to earn to afford such treasures for her.
Across the street, a light snapped on at the Quatre Mains, throwing a rectangle on the sidewalk. He was surprised by the sign of life in the little toy shop. Shrugging the strap on his bag higher on his shoulder, Theo headed across the narrow street to investigate. The dolls and puppets in the display stood out more sharply in the artificial glow, and he could make out the shelves of toys and the marionettes dangling from wires hung in the ceiling and a mélange of hand puppets propped on the hooks of a coatrack. He pressed his nose against the glass, fascinated by what had long been enshadowed. The room seemed alive with promise, and he tore himself away from the window to try the door, only to find it locked as ever. He knocked loudly.
“Hello, hello, anyone there?”
No reply. He banged on the glass and tried in French. “Il y a quelqu’un? Allo.”
Nothing stirred inside. He listened for footsteps, made binoculars of his hands, and pressed close but saw nothing. Perhaps there was a back entrance off the alleyway. While he debated whether to check, he rattled the doorknob twice and called out again, his voice echoing off the storefront, embarrassingly strange in the street. A family of five passed by, parents of three small children, turning their heads in unison to the disturbance he was making. The lights inside the store went out suddenly, and he found himself in the dark, pondering his next move. Backing into the street, he looked up to the second story of the building, but the windows were as bare and dusty as ever. There must be a rear door, he concluded, and gathering his wits, he crossed the street again, rueful over the missed opportunity for the gifts he might have bought for her. When he stepped inside the café, the boisterous crowd and sensuous aromas from the kitchen made him forget all else.