by M. J. Rose
Two soldiers hunched over a table played dominoes, glasses of wine and a plate of chocolates nearby. Another soldier, his back to me, sat in an armchair by a window, sipping something hot and reading one of the many newspapers spread out on a coffee table.
Much like at the workshop at La Fantaisie Russe, there were stations for the sculptors. I counted six. At a seventh, an artist, paintbrush and palette in hand, sat in front of a soldier, touching up the mask on his face.
“It’s the best way to match the skin tone,” Madame Alouette said.
I’d been so engrossed I hadn’t heard her approach. I turned to greet her. “This is amazing.”
She looked around, as if seeing it through fresh eyes. “Even so, it’s not enough. These soldiers suffer so much before they get here. From the terrible battles where they were wounded, to overcrowded field hospitals, then traveling in ambulances on stretchers or with crutches, all to come home to doctors who operate on them, often several times, often to no avail. Finally, when there’s nothing the doctors can do to restore their shot-off jaws or empty eye sockets, they come here. We’re their last resort. With copper and foil and paint we create an illusion so each of them has a way to face the future. They won’t ever be handsome. Most of them won’t even be ordinary looking again. But at least they can go out into the world and back to their families and not suffer stares and grimaces.”
She was quiet for a moment. “I hope you don’t find it too disturbing—some people do. I appreciate you coming to meet me here.”
Remembering what I was there to do, I became nervous again. I’d never deceived a client and was beginning to regret my decision.
“Would you like some tea or coffee?” she asked. “Or a glass of wine? We try to make it as pleasant as possible for them.”
“If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like a cup of coffee.”
“Good, so would I. As you can see, we work long hours, and I have a long night ahead of me. So many boys need masks, but each takes weeks to make. There’s never enough time. Eloise,” she called to another young girl wearing a white smock. “Can you bring two coffees, please?” She turned back to me. “Let me show you around.”
The studio’s slanted ceiling was fitted with skylights separated by wooden beams functioning as a design element to section off the big space into stations. As we went from one to the next, the artists stopped what they were doing to explain their process.
“After we meet with the soldiers, we bring them here.” Madame Alouette indicated a small room off the main space with a comfortable chair, several cameras on tripods, and a table with various pencils, paper, and calibration instruments. “In addition to photographing the subjects, we need measurements of their features.”
She opened one of the folders on the table. Inside were four photographs of the same man. The front view showed a missing chunk of his right cheek, a scarred crater where there should have been bone. Then a right profile shot, a left profile shot, and a photo of the back of his head.
Pointing to the red notations I’d noticed on the photos, Madame Alouette said: “In addition to making a plaster mask of the soldier’s face, we also measure everything by hand—the length of his nose, if it’s all there, the distance from ear to ear, the space between the eyes.”
“What a difficult job.”
“Yes. Our measurer is Madame Sisley. She is very gentle and knows how to put the soldiers at ease.”
Next Madame showed me the stations where the models were made. There were twelve in progress. Looking at the heads, each deformed in a terrible way, I shrunk back. The right side of one boy’s face was blown off, and only part of his right ear remained intact. Another was missing his chin. Each immobile white head was mangled in a unique way.
I thought of Timur and couldn’t help wondering if the bomb that killed him had damaged his face too. And what of Madame Alouette’s son? Jean Luc had become such a vivid presence in my mind, and yet I had never even seen a picture of him. If he looked anything like his voice sounded, he must have been handsome. When the end came for him, had he been disfigured, his beauty destroyed?
Following Madame Alouette, we arrived at the station where the masks were painted. Next, she showed me the wall of spectacles, where dozens and dozens of pairs of glasses stared out at me.
“Why are there so many?” I asked. “Does something happen to the soldiers’ eyesight?”
“No, we attach the masks to glasses as an anchor. Sometimes we need to paint an eye onto one of the lenses, other times we just use unmagnified glass. If the soldier has lost his ear, it’s more complicated. There is an elastic that attaches—”
The young woman arrived carrying the tray of coffee. Madame Alouette took it from her and thanked her.
“We can visit in the consultation room, Mademoiselle Duplessi, it’s this way.”
We sat down in a small, comfortable room set up much like a sitting room in someone’s home. There were two couches, a card table with four chairs, a vase of roses on the fireplace mantel, landscape paintings on the walls, and decorative carpets on the floor. Suddenly, it occurred to me there were no mirrors anywhere.
Everything about the studio had been designed with the soldiers in mind. The first part of their journey back to life started here, and clearly great pains had been taken to lessen their anxiety about being stared at and prodded and measured.
“It’s quite a lot to take in the first time you see it, isn’t it?” Madame Alouette asked, as she poured the coffee.
“Yes. It is . . .” I searched for the word. “It is heartbreaking.”
“Do you take milk?” she asked.
I asked for a little, and she poured it in.
“Sugar?”
We all knew how hard it was during the war to get sugar, and I’d learned to drink my coffee unsweetened. “No, thank you.”
“It is heartbreaking,” she said as she handed me the cup, “but at the same time positive and hopeful. You need to see it that way too or you won’t be able to bear it.” She sounded desperate for me to understand. And I did.
“You give them back dignity.”
“Yes.” She nodded vigorously. “The masks aren’t the same as faces. People still sometimes stare, but with curiosity, not disgust, not horror. The boys can meet women, court them, or go home to their wives and make love to them. They can hold their children, they can get jobs.”
But in the dark, I thought, in the dark they are still wounded.
“Did you bring the charm?” she asked.
I pulled the leather pouch out of my pocketbook and slid it across the table. She reached for it, opened it, and took out the talisman. Letting the silk cord hang from her fingers, she studied the jewel. The crystal egg swung in the soft light, glowing a little with energy.
“How does this work?” she asked.
“You put it on . . .”
She slipped it over her head.
“And hold it between your hands.” I showed her how to clasp the talisman between her hands as if she were in prayer—not because of religious significance, I explained, but because, enclosed, the talisman contained its energy. “Now, I put my hands over yours,” which I did. “And in a moment or two . . .” I stopped talking, closed my eyes, and waited.
Normally the scent of apples would overpower me right away. Nausea would follow seconds later along with a terrible pounding in my head. And then, in the midst of the discomfort, the messaging would begin. The dead soldier’s voice would flood into my awareness.
I didn’t expect any of those effects. The hair in the locket wasn’t Jean Luc’s, but rather from the little boy who lived in the Palais upstairs from our shop.
Except, within seconds of putting my hands over Madame Alou-ette’s, the distress began. The scent, the headache, the nausea all descended on me, and the voice was the same one I’d heard at the workshop,
in the shelter, and in my bedroom.
But of course, I thought. I’d performed so many sessions, my body anticipated the reactions and delivered them. And I’d manufactured the voice before—why not again?
Often the messages I pulled from the ether contained information too personal for me to understand, but sometimes they were generic enough to be clear even to me. I’d planned on giving Madame Alouette one of the more comprehensible communiqués I’d heard over the years. I knew them all, those sorrowful farewells were lodged in my heart.
But I didn’t require some other soldier’s thoughts; I heard Jean Luc’s.
No pain. Tell her there is no more pain.
“He’s not in pain anymore,” I whispered.
“Jean Luc? Is he here?”
I nodded.
She is worried about the pain because of the accident I had when I was little.
“He knows how much you always worried about him being in pain, since the accident when he was a little boy, and he wants you to know he’s not in pain anymore and you can stop worrying.”
I could see it in Madame Alouette’s eyes, in the set of her mouth. She would never stop mourning her son, she would never miss him less, but with just that one sentence, she gave up her fear. Silent tears fell in silvery tracks down her smooth cheeks as she smiled. Even though I’d witnessed similar transformations before, they always stunned me. How little and at the same time how much it takes to give succor.
“He grew so fast, he was always too thin and so always cold. He gravitated to warmth, playing too close to the fireplace, despite my warnings. One day an ember sparked and flew out. Jean Luc didn’t understand—he was only about four—he just felt its warmth and thought it was a toy—and so picked it up and put it on his palm. He only suffered minor damage to his fingertips, but his palm was severely burned and he was in pain, terrible pain, for days . . .” She paused. “Do you have children?” she asked.
“I don’t, no,” I answered, astonished at the coincidence. I already associated Jean Luc with warmth and fire, and fire and warmth were the nucleus of the story his mother had recounted.
“Watching my child in pain and not being able to take it away was excruciating. Worrying he died in pain has been agonizing. I can bear my own suffering. But his? Knowing I could not make it better, could not take it away? Torture.”
I let go of her hands, and she let go of the talisman. It fell against her white smock.
“Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t believe you would really be able to channel him . . . but I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “Don’t apologize. I’m just glad if it helps, even a little.”
“It will.”
Eager to leave, I stood. My heart raced. I was perspiring. I didn’t understand what had happened and didn’t wish to think about it while there.
Madame Alouette escorted me to the door. I extended my hand to shake hers, but she grabbed me by the shoulders and held me to her. At first I recoiled, in fear she’d feel the talisman hanging around my neck, hidden under my dress. Then I realized that, even if she did, she wouldn’t question it. There was nothing suspicious about me wearing one of my own pieces. As she held me, I experienced a sudden longing to talk to her about Jean Luc. About the sound of his voice. How special he seemed. About how he was the only soldier who had ever spoken directly to me, not just through me. I wanted to know what he looked like and how he dressed and what pleased him and what didn’t.
But I couldn’t, of course. She had what she wanted. Even though I hadn’t used Jean Luc’s hair in the talisman I made for his mother, he’d sent her the message she needed to hear. And as I crossed the courtyard, peopled with cold marble statues, I wondered how any of it was possible. How indeed?
Chapter 9
The next day, I put down my tools as soon as the shop’s ornate silver clock struck noon and the lyrical bells rang out the hour. “I’m going out,” I announced to Monsieur Orloff, who looked up from his enamel work.
“I have an errand on rue Drouot. Is there anything you need me to pick up on the way back?”
“The newspaper office?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Why are you going there, Opaline?”
It sounded like a simple question, but he would never take a simple answer. Monsieur examined, thought, angled, delved. He reminded me of my friend Lucille’s father. When I was younger, I was jealous at how he inquired about her every move, thinking he must love her more than my father or mother loved me for they gave me so much freedom and questioned me so little.
“I want to see some back copies of Le Figaro.”
Of course the answer didn’t satisfy him.
“Which back copies?”
I took my hat off the rack and put it on, adjusting it in the mirror.
“One of our clients told me her son was a columnist who used to write for the paper, and to please her I thought I should read some of his work.”
He liked my answer—anything to ensure a sale.
“You might keep your ears open in case anyone is talking about the royals.”
In the Orloff home, as in every Russian émigré’s home, endless hours were spent pondering the fate of Tsarina Alexandra and her five children. No news at all had emerged from Russia since the announcement of the tsar’s assassination, and everyone was tense and anxious.
“I will.”
“And don’t talk to anyone about anything we discuss here. Remember, there are spies everywhere.”
At least several times a week, Monsieur Orloff had warned me and Grigori and Anna there could be Bolsheviks lurking around any corner.
“Why would they be watching you, Monsieur? You’re a jeweler who has been in Paris for over ten years. What would Bolsheviks want with you?” I’d asked the same questions before, but was never given a satisfying answer.
That day was no different.
“Anyone close to the royal family is suspect, Opaline. All sympathizers are threats, I’ve told you that. Don’t forget, don’t say anything about the shop, about our inventory, about the vaults. Not a word about our business to anyone.”
The same warning. As annoying as it was, it also made me sympathize with the stern man who was teaching me to become an artist. How frightening to watch your country thrown into a revolt and your way of life despised by your fellow countrymen. Even though the Orloffs had already been in Paris during the revolution, the émigrés who’d arrived in the last year, the community they all formed, were a constant reminder of what was now and what was no more.
I opened my umbrella as soon as I stepped out of the shop. The morning’s light drizzle was becoming a heavy rain. The dreary weather exacerbated the malaise hanging over the city. Every day was bad, but that day was worse. Morning news reported the threat of more bombs, and the air hummed with anxiety. Parisians tried to remember before the war, and the wonders of that past grew in our minds. We yearned to take off the mantle of mourning. We wanted our beautiful women to dress up again, to wear too much perfume, throw parties that were too lavish, that went on too late. We wanted the food restrictions lifted and to gorge on gastronomical delights. Our city no longer shone, never glittered. It was drowning. In so much rain. In so much sadness.
I reached the newspaper’s office in fifteen minutes. A receptionist asked how she could help me and, after I explained, directed me to a second-floor office. The nameplate on the door identified the occupant as Marie Lund.
I stepped inside, introduced myself, and asked if I could buy some Le Figaro back copies.
“Can you tell me the dates?”
“I’m not sure actually.”
She was young, probably about my age. Another woman in a job that had belonged to a man four years prior. There were so few men of a certain age left in Paris, and many were either too infirm to begin with or were soldiers who�
�d come home. Men like Madame Alouette’s clients or Grigori, somehow damaged.
“We’ve published a paper every day for over ninety-two years.” She smiled. “You’ll need some dates.”
“I wanted to read Jean Luc Forêt’s columns.”
Mademoiselle Lund gave me a knowing smile, which I didn’t understand. And then, her face fell as she remembered what she’d forgotten for a moment. “It’s so sad, isn’t it?” she said, assuming I knew his fate. And since I did, I nodded.
“Women have been writing us condolences since we announced his death. Hundreds of letters arrived. It’s as if they knew him.”
“Does every columnist for the paper engender such admiration?”
“Admiration? It’s not admiration. Half the women in Paris were in love with him.”
When I didn’t say anything, she cocked her head and gave me an appraising once-over.
“Have you ever read any of the columns?”
“Not the Ma chère columns, no. I met his mother recently and she told me about him . . . She made me curious.”
“Ah, I see. Well, he’s been writing this column since he went off to war. It’s called Ma chère because each column is written like a letter home to his lover, you see. He never uses her name, and so we can all imagine we’re her. And we all want to be her because we all want him to be in love with us. Oh dear, I can’t get used to the idea he’s gone. We published his last column just three weeks ago, with a note from the editor at the end.”
“Did you know him?”
“I met him twice,” Mademoiselle Lund said. “When he came home on leave, he would come to the offices.”
“What did he—” I stopped myself. I didn’t want to hear this woman’s description of him. I wanted to keep my own impression of him intact without anyone sullying it. Jean Luc was a glimmer in the darkness, a deep voice with a musical undertone like a cello playing a solo on an otherwise empty stage.
“Can I buy some of the papers with his columns?”
“We keep copies of the paper for our records, of course, but we only sell copies going back a month.”