A TRIBUTE TO WOMEN(Charles E.J. Moulton) A collection of scenes from short stories and pieces of mine with interesting female characters.

******************

1

It all came back to me. Our hot night in the hotel room, the Martini, the chloroform.
“I think Monsieur Rosseau means that Mishka stole from relatively unknown galleries in order to sell the unknown works for a horrendous price to criminal buyers” Olinka said in her sultry voice.
I stood up and walked over to her.
We stood face to face.
“Why did you knock me unconscious twice?” I said.
She looked down. “To save you.”
“You put me to sleep, precious,” I said. “We had the most glorious night of our lives and then you thank me by doing that.”
Olinka sighed and shrugged. “We were not going to take the chance and have you suspect us. We could’ve told the entire story and asked you to play unconscious for us and then smuggle you out of the hotel, but chances were that you would’ve protested and then the shit would’ve really hit the fan.”
It was fun to hear her speak English in this white Russian dialect of hers. ‘Ooii kood haaaf tahld iiou thii inaiähr stoohree …”
“So, you mean I didn’t really trust you in the first place.”
“William, no,” she answered, “I really had a bad conscience about putting that stuff in the Martini, but we had to work quick and we paid the bill and left in that ambulance. Then the war started between us and Mishka’s people. That you are safe and sound here is a wonder. Now there is just a question: how do we get Gerald back?”
I turned to Mr. Rosseau and asked him:
“Monsieur, do you have an idea how to go about this?”
Rosseau had been standing all this time eyeing a reproduction of Salvador Dali’s Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumblebee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. I knew the title of that painting because Gerald had actually been raving about it for years. He wanted to write a piece of music about it and it would actually use snip bits of Rimsky – Korsakov’s musical piece Flight of the bumblebee. He did write something for cello and flute, but it never got performed.
Be that as it may, while and my buxom and twain slumber creating lady got reacquainted, Rosseau was studying this surreal work with great care. A pomegranate was painted in the left hand corner. Out of that came a fish that spat out two tigers that was throwing a rifle at a naked lady sleeping on a stone or ice surface on a big ocean.
He turned around and smiled at us. Then he walked over and kissed Olinka on the cheek. He spoke as she blushed.
“If you follow me to the sitting room, I will show you something very special. Something that Mishka has wanted for years and years. We might just be able to use that as bait.”
Rosseau went over to the big door that was positioned close to the couch I had been sleeping on a while ago and opened it. What met my eyes was what must’ve been a remodelled dance hall that now was used as a combined music and art room. There was even a huge TV that most certainly measured six by four feet next to an alcove with a glass case of maybe 400 films. The alcove opened up to a long terrace overlooking the countryside.
White curtains with pink flowers line the room followed by red satin drapes. A big chandelier hung in the middle of the room and satin couches were positioned around the room. A large table with silver candle holders stood in front of painting of Francois Boucher’s The Birth of Venus.
There was a big space where a grand piano stood next to a whole line of instruments in another glass case: lutes, flutes, bongo drums, even electric guitars and such unusual instruments as rebec, aulos and psalterium. If I saw this correctly, there was a baritone euphonium.
“Sit down, my friends,” Rosseau began. We sat down on a green satin couch and he began speaking about a painting that was right behind the grand piano. “This is a Swedish painting called The Lady with the Veil by a Malmö painter named Alexander Roslin. He was chosen to join the French Art Academy during the Enlightenment and painted for the Swedish King Gustav III. This,” he pointed out, “is a painting that hangs at the National Museum of Stockholm. It displays the painter’s wife Marie-Suzanne Giroust, who was also a painter, dressed a la Bolognaise. Not like the spaghetti, but like the women of Bologna. Now, the special thing about this work is that it is sex without being explicit. We see the woman peaking from behind a veil covering herself with a fan. Be that as it may, the reproduction was done by a French colleague of mine named Pierre André, probably the best reproduction artist in France. When Mishka saw the original he wanted it so bad that he said he would even steal it, so Pierre offered to make a copy. This one. He even put in two diamonds in it just for fun. Come and I will show you where they are.”
He waved for us to come closer to work of art and look at the diamonds. We stood up and walked over. As certainly as I was standing and watching this painting, there were also two diamonds on this woman’s fan. Rosseau pointed out that these two small diamonds were worth $ 50000 each and had belonged to a Polish prince. He had ordered the reproduction and then kept it in his Krakow palace.
The painting was soon lost, because it was sold to the Spanish crown for a ridiculously low sum of money. An aristocratic buyer took it with to Denmark and from there on the reproduction went on a tour of palaces until Mishka found it in a vernissage in Moscow.
Unfortunately, he never retrieved it. Someone else bought it before him. Rosseau bought years later and found out that Mishka really wanted it, although he did not know he had it. Mishka was a passionate collector of antiquities and unusual art. This one could give him lots of cash to a mafia art collector in Italy or Chicago and he had been speaking about this reproduction for years and years.
Now, Rosseau had a plan and it seemed that he wanted me to be bait. I took a long look at him and shook my head.
“However do you expect me to pass through customs?”
Rosseau smiled.
“We are dealing with art thieves here,” he mused. “International art thieves. We have on numerous occasions dealt with this people by appearing in disguise.”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Who are we now? Ethan Hunt?” I was, of course, referring to the TV series Mission Impossible and his antics among the spy underworld. I imitated the recorded voice from the self destructing tape recorded in the series. “This tape will self destruct in five seconds.”
To my great surprise, neither Olinka nor Rosseau reacted at all.
“You are kidding me, Rosseau,” I said rather cockily. “The reality is not as simple as that, is it?”
Rosseau looked down and shrugged.
“I had no idea that IMF displayed an easy lifestyle,” he whispered.
Olinka then spoke and when she did I was immediately taken back to the hotel room. She spoke with her Russian bedroom voice and when she did, she smiled in a way that made me melt. I forgot about the sleeping pills in the martini and the chloroform and all I could remember was her arching her back and pushing her bosom in my face.
“William,” she cooed. “I have appeared in many disguises in my battle against Mishka. He has not recognized me once.”
My gaze shifted from Rosseau to Olinka and then back to Rosseau. “What are we talking here? I Spy? James Bond?”
Rosseau stood up and walked to the bar. He poured himself a brandy. I realized that this guy drank quite a bit.
He then reached into a miniature freezer and took out a few ice cubes. As he did, he spoke in a cool and calm voice.
“We are no secret agents” he began. “We are only rich people who have made it a point to fight against an international criminal. We use all means necessary in order to find and track him down. I did see those old spy movies. I was inspired by the masks and the disguises. I felt that if I wanted to beat this man I had to do it by pretence.”
“Pretence?”
Rosseau took a long look at me and smiled.
“You with me on this?”
I had no choice. I really did feel that this was the only way to get back Gerald. I could actually trust the feds or the agents, but there was no telling if their plans would work.
I nodded.
“Good.”
Both Olinka and Rosseau seemed very happy that I was willing to help them.
Rosseau started explaining to me about the painting and how he wanted to set it up for auction at Southby’s.


**********************

2

It all came back to me. Our hot night in the hotel room, the Martini, the chloroform.
“I think Monsieur Rosseau means that Mishka stole from relatively unknown galleries in order to sell the unknown works for a horrendous price to criminal buyers” Olinka said in her sultry voice.
I stood up and walked over to her.
We stood face to face.
“Why did you knock me unconscious twice?” I said.
She looked down. “To save you.”
“You put me to sleep, precious,” I said. “We had the most glorious night of our lives and then you thank me by doing that.”
Olinka sighed and shrugged. “We were not going to take the chance and have you suspect us. We could’ve told the entire story and asked you to play unconscious for us and then smuggle you out of the hotel, but chances were that you would’ve protested and then the shit would’ve really hit the fan.”
It was fun to hear her speak English in this white Russian dialect of hers. ‘Ooii kood haaaf tahld iiou thii inaiähr stoohree …”
“So, you mean I didn’t really trust you in the first place.”
“William, no,” she answered, “I really had a bad conscience about putting that stuff in the Martini, but we had to work quick and we paid the bill and left in that ambulance. Then the war started between us and Mishka’s people. That you are safe and sound here is a wonder. Now there is just a question: how do we get Gerald back?”
I turned to Mr. Rosseau and asked him:
“Monsieur, do you have an idea how to go about this?”
Rosseau had been standing all this time eyeing a reproduction of Salvador Dali’s Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumblebee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. I knew the title of that painting because Gerald had actually been raving about it for years. He wanted to write a piece of music about it and it would actually use snip bits of Rimsky – Korsakov’s musical piece Flight of the bumblebee. He did write something for cello and flute, but it never got performed.
Be that as it may, while and my buxom and twain slumber creating lady got reacquainted, Rosseau was studying this surreal work with great care. A pomegranate was painted in the left hand corner. Out of that came a fish that spat out two tigers that was throwing a rifle at a naked lady sleeping on a stone or ice surface on a big ocean.
He turned around and smiled at us. Then he walked over and kissed Olinka on the cheek. He spoke as she blushed.
“If you follow me to the sitting room, I will show you something very special. Something that Mishka has wanted for years and years. We might just be able to use that as bait.”
Rosseau went over to the big door that was positioned close to the couch I had been sleeping on a while ago and opened it. What met my eyes was what must’ve been a remodelled dance hall that now was used as a combined music and art room. There was even a huge TV that most certainly measured six by four feet next to an alcove with a glass case of maybe 400 films. The alcove opened up to a long terrace overlooking the countryside.
White curtains with pink flowers line the room followed by red satin drapes. A big chandelier hung in the middle of the room and satin couches were positioned around the room. A large table with silver candle holders stood in front of painting of Francois Boucher’s The Birth of Venus.
There was a big space where a grand piano stood next to a whole line of instruments in another glass case: lutes, flutes, bongo drums, even electric guitars and such unusual instruments as rebec, aulos and psalterium. If I saw this correctly, there was a baritone euphonium.
“Sit down, my friends,” Rosseau began. We sat down on a green satin couch and he began speaking about a painting that was right behind the grand piano. “This is a Swedish painting called The Lady with the Veil by a Malmö painter named Alexander Roslin. He was chosen to join the French Art Academy during the Enlightenment and painted for the Swedish King Gustav III. This,” he pointed out, “is a painting that hangs at the National Museum of Stockholm. It displays the painter’s wife Marie-Suzanne Giroust, who was also a painter, dressed a la Bolognaise. Not like the spaghetti, but like the women of Bologna. Now, the special thing about this work is that it is sex without being explicit. We see the woman peaking from behind a veil covering herself with a fan. Be that as it may, the reproduction was done by a French colleague of mine named Pierre André, probably the best reproduction artist in France. When Mishka saw the original he wanted it so bad that he said he would even steal it, so Pierre offered to make a copy. This one. He even put in two diamonds in it just for fun. Come and I will show you where they are.”
He waved for us to come closer to work of art and look at the diamonds. We stood up and walked over. As certainly as I was standing and watching this painting, there were also two diamonds on this woman’s fan. Rosseau pointed out that these two small diamonds were worth $ 50000 each and had belonged to a Polish prince. He had ordered the reproduction and then kept it in his Krakow palace.
The painting was soon lost, because it was sold to the Spanish crown for a ridiculously low sum of money. An aristocratic buyer took it with to Denmark and from there on the reproduction went on a tour of palaces until Mishka found it in a vernissage in Moscow.
Unfortunately, he never retrieved it. Someone else bought it before him. Rosseau bought years later and found out that Mishka really wanted it, although he did not know he had it. Mishka was a passionate collector of antiquities and unusual art. This one could give him lots of cash to a mafia art collector in Italy or Chicago and he had been speaking about this reproduction for years and years.
Now, Rosseau had a plan and it seemed that he wanted me to be bait. I took a long look at him and shook my head.
“However do you expect me to pass through customs?”
Rosseau smiled.
“We are dealing with art thieves here,” he mused. “International art thieves. We have on numerous occasions dealt with this people by appearing in disguise.”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Who are we now? Ethan Hunt?” I was, of course, referring to the TV series Mission Impossible and his antics among the spy underworld. I imitated the recorded voice from the self destructing tape recorded in the series. “This tape will self destruct in five seconds.”
To my great surprise, neither Olinka nor Rosseau reacted at all.
“You are kidding me, Rosseau,” I said rather cockily. “The reality is not as simple as that, is it?”
Rosseau looked down and shrugged.
“I had no idea that IMF displayed an easy lifestyle,” he whispered.
Olinka then spoke and when she did I was immediately taken back to the hotel room. She spoke with her Russian bedroom voice and when she did, she smiled in a way that made me melt. I forgot about the sleeping pills in the martini and the chloroform and all I could remember was her arching her back and pushing her bosom in my face.
“William,” she cooed. “I have appeared in many disguises in my battle against Mishka. He has not recognized me once.”
My gaze shifted from Rosseau to Olinka and then back to Rosseau. “What are we talking here? I Spy? James Bond?”
Rosseau stood up and walked to the bar. He poured himself a brandy. I realized that this guy drank quite a bit.
He then reached into a miniature freezer and took out a few ice cubes. As he did, he spoke in a cool and calm voice.
“We are no secret agents” he began. “We are only rich people who have made it a point to fight against an international criminal. We use all means necessary in order to find and track him down. I did see those old spy movies. I was inspired by the masks and the disguises. I felt that if I wanted to beat this man I had to do it by pretence.”
“Pretence?”
Rosseau took a long look at me and smiled.
“You with me on this?”
I had no choice. I really did feel that this was the only way to get back Gerald. I could actually trust the feds or the agents, but there was no telling if their plans would work.
I nodded.
“Good.”
Both Olinka and Rosseau seemed very happy that I was willing to help them.
Rosseau started explaining to me about the painting and how he wanted to set it up for auction at Southby’s.


*******************

3

“Good morning, dear!”
Raphael looked up from his newspaper and nodded at Patricia. The rustling of the newspaper pages gave the domestic scene its adequate cosiness. The couple kissed.
“Hi, love,” he chirped. “How are you?”
“Good. What are you reading?” Patricia said and sat down opposite her husband by the table.
“The art section. There’s an interesting article about a colleague of mine. He now has his own gallery downtown. He promised to visit mine.”
Raphael put down his newspaper and smiled.
“What’s up?” Raphael raised his eyebrows. “You look like you wanted to tell me something.”
Patricia looked down.
“I have a job,” she said. “I got a letter today from a company. I start next month.”
Raphael folded his newpaper together and open his eyes wide.
“Congratulations.”
He stood up and embraced his girlfriend. She embraced him back, but there was a lot of tension there. Raphael noticed this and let her go.
“The job is in Atlanta.”
“Huh? You wrote an application to a job in Atlanta? I thought that we agreed to ...”
“I didn’t ask for this job, Raphael. I got it without asking for it.”
Raphael put the newspaper on the table.
“Who gave you a job without you asking for it?”
Raphael went to the fridge and got a can of beer.
The beer made a fizzing sound as he opened the can.
Patricia pursed her lips, made a very tense expression.
“Yeah, I got to know this guy at during one of my freelance gigs. He was the executive of a company in Atlanta and I was translating for his colleagues from Japan. The guy was so impressed by the fact that I spoke Japanese. He kept on raving about me to everyone. You know how frustrated I have been lately only doing odd-jobs. This was one job that really worked well. He wants me as a personal assistant.”
“Great. What kind of a firm is this?”
“It’s an architecture firm. He wants me to organize his work, his dates, his schedules, everything. Geez, he said he wants me to join him on reception, for Chrissake. He said that I was his dream employee.”
“Wow.” Raphael sighed. “What’s the money like?”
“Well paid.” Patricia laughed. “I would be the richest personal assistant in Georgia.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Those were his words.”
There was a painful silence. That interesting elephant sat in the middle of the kitchen and waited for someone to take him back to the zoo. It was obvious. There were two choices. Patricia decline and regret it for the rest of her life. Or she move to Georgia and become filthy rich.
“But where does that leave me? I have my gallery here.”
“With the kind of money I will be earning now, you could be actually commuting every week. I could probably get you some really good contacts in Atlanta. What if I put you though to the most expensive gallery in Georgia.”
“I live on my wife’s name. Great.”
“Come on. You wouldn’t be living off my name.”
“What else would it be?”
“Nepotism.”
“That’s different?”
“I love you. Come with me.”

*********************

4

I slowly looked up from my newspaper. The kitchen door opened and remained ajar. My eyes met Barbara, who was wiping her hands on her apron.
Her empty gaze revealed that she really wanted to smile. In actual fact, her mind had already left the building.
“Darling?” she mused or tried to muse.
I nodded, smiling.
“Could you come in here,” she asked. “There’s something you should know.”

That tone of voice, I recognized it.
Something in me awoke, old feelings of misunderstandings turned awry. It felt like a dagger in my heart. For one moment, I gazed at my wife, trying to find out if she meant harm? Meant harm? Did I really think that she could actually mean harm? Well, she did get very angry at times. That made me wonder if those old wives tales about women being the gentle sex were true, after all.
The fact that I had not done anything for her to be angry about should have made me feel secure.
But it didn’t.
“Sure.”
I threw down The Times on the glass table and stood up.
I felt as if my head waited for itself to be cut off.
I could be wrong, though.
I pointed at the kids.
“Let the smurf and the cowboy play together.”
Donald and Roger looked up at me, then silently waddled their heads.
It looked like a strange mixture between a yes and a no. Donald waved his head in a circle. I really had to analyze that movement to understand it. It looked like his face followed the movement of a fly.
“They’re too different.”
A metaphore. God, this thing seemed like a metaphore.
For what? Barbara’s anger?
I looked over at my wife. She smiled.
Okay. It might be okay.
The smurf and the cowboy began walking in circles around each other. Somehow, that made me chuckle.
I strode after Barbara, who closed the kitchen door.
She walked up to her food and picked up her knife.
While she cut the cucumbers, she began.
“Dierdre just called.”
I leaned against the kitchen cupboard.
“What did she want?”
Barbara chuckled nervously, carefully cutting her vegetables.
A slow cut. A calm cut.
That inner feeling of pain disappeared.
Someone else lingered in her mind.
It felt like a warm breeze.
Barbara looked up at me, giving me a long and quite disturbed look.
“What?”
Barbara looked as if she didn’t know how to say this.
“Peter assaulted her.”
My hands dropped to my sides.
Barbara lay down her knife, wiping a drop of sweat from her brow. She gave me a serious look, smiling sadly. “Well, apparantly Peter had asked Dierdre for months to inquire if I had the number to this child psychologist in Oxford. You know, their daughter?
I nodded.
“The girl badly needs therapy. Peter didn’t want to ask me, so he asked Dierdre to do it.”
Barbara gave me another nervous grin.
“My contacts as a nurse led Peter to think that any shrink that I recommended would be the best. He kept asking her and asking her and she was just too ashamed to ask me about it.”
I breathed in deeply. “Why would she be ashamed to ask us?”
Barbara shrugged. “Peter really worried himself sick about Charlotte’s problems at school. Both of them were too apprehensive, kept putting it off all the time. Peter returned from a company bash. When she told him, he called her bad names, ‘stupid crumpet’ and what not. When she yelled and tried to stop him from storming out, he pushed her away. She bumped her head on a chair and bruised her arm. He excused himself and kept telling her he hadn’t meant to hurt her. But Dierdre took the kids and stayed in a motel last night. Now, she’s on her way here. I am making food for seven people. I couldn’t just desert her. She needs us.”
I exhaled nervously. “Obviously, they can stay here for as long as they want. There’s no problem. I’m just wondering how they can patch this up. Peter obviously didn’t mean it.”
Barbara threw me a nasty look, her eyes stinging with anger.
“Geoffrey, he badly hurt her. She probably tore a muscle.”
“Peter is quick on the trigger. It is his biggest problem.”
Barbara scanned me. Had I been a carton of milk at Sainsbury’s, there would’ve been a red light shining out of my wife’s eyes. I kept wondering why women started doubting men after ten years of wedlock. One false word made them insecure if they knew them at all. I never doubted my wife. She doubted me. I could see it now. She doubted if she knew me at all.
“Don’t defend him.”
“Not at all, sweetie,” I said. “He has a big problem with his anger.”
She shrugged. “There’s more, though.”
I’d been let off the hook. As my shivers disappeared, I responded.
“More of what?”
The cucumbers now received their proper beating.
Barbara gave the veggies a small torture break and then looked at me. She gazed at me for so long I thought I had something on my nose.

*************

5

Sylvia stopped for one instant, waiting, trying to deciphre from what area the scent came. Her nostrils flared, the pumping blood in her veins causing small, subtle changes in her tinge of her eyes. As her heart sped up, time seemed to slowed down. As if her increased pulse filled up the minutes, her blood pumped the moments full of concentration. The fabric of every second expanded indefinately, the heightened sensuality of her every step causing the woman to be more alert than every before.
She could tell from the whiff of human flesh that Randolph had escaped into the saloon. This time.
Wounded, hurt, hiding, scared. Human? Sylvia battled that question constantly. He had been her lover and yet ... And yet, he kept a secret from her. His murdering of werewolves
must give her a hint that he was all human. And yet, she didn’t know for sure.
The creaking of the floorboards under her feet reverberated out into the empty saloon, where the dust of eons lay piled layer upon layer. Ghost towns in the old west always proved a fascinating forum for time-travelling werewolves. And yet in this town time had stopped, the clocks ticking backwards, the booze pouring back into the bottles, the women unsung or dead. Out upon the dusty street twelve werewolves in human form lay dead, murdered by her former lover moments before Sylvia arrived back in time. She arrived one moment too late.
Sylvia’s whisper crooned, barely audible to the human ear hiding in the corner.
“I must have my vengence!”
Another old and creaking floorboard revealed her presence and a mouse, ever so small, sped from under the bar and out onto the open floor. Sylvia’s head snapped to the right, looking at it, concentrating on its movement, its little feet scuttering across the floor, hoping it wouldn’t slip away. With one swift jump, her legs arching and knees giving way, she jumped up and out across the floor, flying over the saloon tables. The rushing wind in her face, caused by the jump, made her flash a smile. The thought of again tasting blood still gave her a rush. Time now stopped entirely, her face leaning forward toward the running mouse. She could see it turn around, running past a shiny object two feet from the bar, painted blood red. An object lay there that she at the time did not, but should have, recognized.
Too concentrated on the mouse, she could see the fear in its excited face. This rush made Sylvia tingle. The attraction of the chase became a dance of death.

******************

6

ACTOR I: Women are right, but thanks to God we live in a time where women have votes and women have something to say. What did Moliere say? The grand ambition of women is to inspire love. There was another woman, whose great fate it was to inspire not only love. She wanted to inspire women to think for themselves.
You believe in reincarnation? In that case, you will know that you have probably been a woman in a life or two, but only when you have been a man enough in your first life. You have heard the expressions, haven’t you? “The woman had more balls than her husband” or “The gentle sex is the strong one”. Well, the next woman was born as early as 1363 and yet she was more feminist than most women are today. Take that hotel-heiress, you know who I mean? Would she stand up and speak for women’s rights? Or any modern day fashion queen? What would she say to the woman who is about to appear?
(ACTRESS reappears again, now her hair let down. She is wearing a dress that looks decidedly 14th century. The ACTRESS is now called CHRISTINE DE PIZAN.)
CHRISTINE DE PIZAN: I was Europe’s first female, professional writer. Not easy if you ask me. I had a lot of nasty men to work against.
My father worked for King Charles V’s as a physician, astrologer and councillor of the Republic of Venice. I had that going for me. Therefore, I was given full access to the royal archives. I read and learned and listened. I learned most of what I knew by just listening. Soon enough I knew more than the old men did. But it was exactly those old men who married me away to a dashing secretary to the court named Etienne du Castel. Ten years later he was dead of an epidemic and I was left with three kids to feed. One of my children was sent away to study in a convent, but my niece and mother joined the parade to be fed by me. In that precarious situation, I was faced with a lawsuit as to prohibiting me from collecting my husband’s estate. I was a prolific writer and began using my skills, contrary to what all those male peacocks believed to be true. In order to feed my family, I composed over three hundred love ballads and the court loved them. It was quite unique: a successful female writer. I didn’t even know that I was part of a movement that would turn into the Italian renaissance.
But a storm was brewing. By coincidence, I picked up a book by Jean de Meun named Roman de la Rose. It was widely accepted in all schools, but I started campaigning against it. Many of us women thought it was quite misogynous. He claimed that women were deceitful creatures intent on trapping men. That is women-hating to you machos. We were seducers and men were getting tips on how to overcome us. There are a few of those in your time how say that about us, as well.

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