Louis ran a bone-handled comb through his pomaded hair and then through the dog’s bushy coat. He applied some mustache wax to the animal’s chin and whiskers. “We must all be dressed for the occasion.” Another sonic boom of cannon fire. Louis and the dog walked out to stand on the balcony. There was smoke and a light dusting of snow but no proscenium of cloud yet, no naphtha flash or magnesium flare from above. It would come slowly. At the end of the street a band of men were erecting battlements with all manner of household items: ladder-backed chairs, divans, kitchen tables, an old pianoforte that emitted an off-kilter arpeggio as it rattled across the cobblestone. They were going to try to fight it, Louis realized with simultaneous delight and horror. Only a nineteenth-century Frenchman would attempt to bring down the angel assassins with a musket or a flintlock. A blockade of carriages formed at the other end of the street, and Louis was galvanized into action, for it was clear they intended not to let anyone in or out of the faubourg. He needed to escape with his portraits, stash them in the catacombs beneath the Paris Observatory, find Pigeon, and have her lead him to Isobel. The immediacy of the world’s decline would allow Louis to take Pigeon to her mother without argument or resistance. Everything would be revealed.
He came in from the balcony and, in a gesture of finality, closed the heavy curtains that hung from the doorway. In the relative dimness, he gathered his supplies and took down the framed daguerreotypes. He had completed all but two of the portraits on his list—Isobel and the king—and this would have to suffice as a final testimony. He wrapped the pictures in hessian and secured a length of twine around each mummified portrait. But then he found a dozen more daguerreotypes he believed worthy of leaving to history, and it took him nearly ten trips to load them into his carriage. Each time he reentered the gloomy staircase, he felt his pulse throb in his neck. He stopped and leaned against the banister railing, his legs cramped, the brine of daytime sleep still in his mouth.
He loaded the carriage with a few other incidentals—his brushes and inks, his accumulated funds stacked inside the carpetbag. He felt a little silly bringing money into the apocalypse, but here it was, enough to buy a Paris apartment. He looked up and down the street. The barricades had become a leaning metropolis of housewares and furniture. A makeshift flag—a man’s shirt dipped in red paint—hung from a broomstick at one end of his street, and at the other end a convoy of unhitched charabancs and buggies spanned from curb to curb. Perhaps an hour had passed, and a sulfurous storm had gathered in the distance. God’s fury would begin with the mineral balm of rain before the gutters flowed with blood. Louis set the dog on the seat, climbed into the carriage, and gave the reins a snap. The horses took off at a trot in the direction of the wagon blockade. When the men at the blockade saw him approach, they converged upon their weapons—rifles, hoes, machetes, a bedpost with a metal spike attached. The leader, a bearded peasant in a brown hood, took a few steps ahead of the rest and raised his hand to the trotting carriage. Louis could see there was no opening in the line, so he had no choice but to stop.
The man in the hood yelled loud enough so that all his fellows could hear. “Slow down, old man. Not so fast. We’re not letting anyone in or out.”
“We both know what day this is, and I cannot be denied my final errand.”
“Will you fight with us, citizen Daguerre?” a familiar voice called. It was the neighborhood stable boy.
Louis answered the crowd of militants. “It is futile to fight, but fight we must. Each in his own way. I have a battle to run on the other side, and time is running out. You see the storm approaching.”
There was a brief conference during which Louis heard himself accused of being part of the ancien régime. The hooded man ordered several of the men to move their carriages, and soon a gap formed through which Louis could drive.
“See you on the other side, gentlemen,” Louis called.
The men raised their weapons as he passed them by.
Louis could not gallop his horses on account of the glass-fronted plates, but he continued to trot through Montmartre and out towards the Paris Observatory. He wended past the old mansions of the Right Bank where scenes of terror and discord played out—bonfires of antique furniture and heirlooms burned in stone courtyards; favored pets, Abyssinian cats and green parrots, were being released by servants. He moved up a hill and heard the distinct and lonely sound of piano scales coming from an open Gothic window. He passed a looted department store, its windows smashed and all the mannequins broken apart in a scatter of white clay limbs. He saw a hospital with all its doors and windows flung open. Some of the gowned patients—men with the blue-white pallor of malaria and typhoid—wandered out into the street. Peasants hauled off wheels of cheese and pairs of leather boots. Bankers and merchants paced on their mansion rooftops with pistols. Bands of gypsies wandered out of ransacked churches with candles and incense. A priest’s white robe was slung over the back of a mule. Through all this Louis passed unhindered. He rode through the sinuous streets with the same authority that Pope Pius and Napoleon had possessed on coronation day forty-three years earlier. Out of certain doorways, Louis saw hunched women and old men. Those too scared or too old to fight God’s judgment gave him a solemn salute or the sign of the cross. For a moment he imagined himself a saint of the people.
The Paris Observatory stood in the gloom like a galley ship, its stone wings flanked by shadow. The looting had not come this far, and Louis was able to tie his horses and unload his portraits onto the stoop of the main entrance. The main door was closed and he knocked with the heavy brass ring. He feared for a moment that the observatory had been abandoned along with the grocer shops and wine cellars. Then he could see in his mind the image of Arago on the rooftop, watching the celestial scene unfold, and he was not at all surprised when France’s eminent astronomer came to the door himself.
“Daguerre.”
“I’ve come to stash my portraits. As we discussed.”
“What on earth has happened to you?” Arago looked him up and down.
Louis looked down at his clothing. “I’ve just ridden across the city. There is mud in the streets.”
“Quickly, come in, before the Municipal Guard sees us. There is an immediate curfew.”
“I suppose you know, then?” said Louis, entering.
“I think all of France knows by now.”
“We will all be dust soon enough.” Louis came close and pressed a hand against his waistcoat. “The key to the catacombs, François. Take me there.”
Arago reeled from Louis’s acrid breath before complying. They brought in the portraits from the stoop and bolted the door.
“Wait here and I will get the key from my study.” Arago climbed the spiral staircase to the landing above and returned in a moment with a silver key on a chain. “If we are caught, I know nothing of this. You stole the key, do you understand me?”
“Of course. I am eternally grateful,” Louis said absently.
“I must leave with my family in less than an hour. I will show you where it is, but you must take the portraits there by yourself.”
“Lead on.”
Arago turned on his heels and walked to a small iron door beneath the spiral staircase. He took the key and slid it into the barrel. The opening of the iron door unleashed a pestilential stench from the catacombs, a fetid smell that Louis imagined as the dead getting ready to rise. Arago lit a torch and handed it to Louis.
“At the bottom of the stairs is a small chamber and an informal crypt for our illustrious colleague. That would be a good place to store your pictures.”
“Thank you for this kindness, Arago.”
“I worry about you, Louis. I think perhaps you’re out of your head.”
Louis dusted off his coat sleeve and glanced up. “No matter.”
Arago kissed Louis’s cheek and they embraced.
“Long live the freedom of France,” said Arago. He turned and headed for the main entrance.
Louis made his
first trip into the bowels of the catacombs, passing down a long, winding staircase. He carried two portraits and a torch and took the steps two at a time. The air was thick with the chalky smell of lime powder. At the bottom of the stairs, he reached a kind of anteroom. There were entrances to stone tunnels in five directions, each with a Roman numeral inscribed above the portal. Between two of the entrances stood a small shrine to Cassini. Far from being an informal tribute, it was a gilded coffin with an observation window, so Louis could see that the dead man was wearing a shroud worthy of a medieval prophet. The body and the face had evidently been lacquered or varnished, because in places where more than bone was visible, the skin appeared chipped. Behind the coffin was another small alcove, and it was here that Louis leaned his portraits up against the relatively dry walls.
He made a dozen trips up and down the stairs until all his portraits were in the alcove. He stood before them. The edge of a plate poked out from a frayed corner of hessian. It was his rooftop portrait of Pigeon, and as he attempted to reseal it, he was overcome with a desire to keep it. He unwrapped it entirely and looked at it under the reddish light of the torch. The snow was a coppery vanilla, her pale shoulders and breasts the color and texture of bone shank. He wrapped the portrait and put it under his arm, certain that he would die holding it as a battle shield. He climbed the last flight of stairs and emerged breathless and heaving into the gun-smoke clamor of the street. Night was everywhere.
The section of Montmartre where Pigeon lived and worked had been spared the worst of the rioting. Louis brought his carriage into the head of her street and was surprised by the relative tranquility. The bells of Notre Dame rang incessantly like a storm warning, but the storm itself had come no closer. A branch of lightning appeared in the south. Louis pulled up in front of Pigeon’s apartment. He knocked on her door, but there was no answer. He looked over at the veranda of the brothel, where all manner of dandies and whores smoked in the first hour of darkness. Yellow paper lanterns swayed in the breeze, and every now and then a waft of cannon smoke blew up from the garrets. Louis called out to a man who was wearing nothing but a stocking cap. “Has anyone seen Pigeon?”
The man looked over blearily and shrugged. Louis was forced to take the stairs, and as soon as he reached the top, three ladies took his arms.
“Everything’s half price,” one of them whispered into his ear.
“Good God,” said Louis. “This is how Paris dies? At the feet of a whore?”
“No,” said another, “not the feet.”
“I’m looking for Pigeon. Have you seen her?”
One of the women pointed inside, and Louis walked through the double doors. He was in a sitting room of soft lighting, with sultry accordion music coming from an unknown source. Half a dozen men sat upright and stiff on a divan. Louis walked past them without eye contact and down a hallway of crimson velvet wallpaper. There was an unbroken line of closed doors on both sides of the hallway. He had not permitted his entry into Pigeon’s house of employment before, so he would tell himself various conceits and lies about what she did—she was a mere companion, someone to draw a bath for a weary man. Now, as he walked past each door and heard female panting, the delirious name calling, the catcalls and whistles, the shuddering wrought-iron beds, the grit-toothed noises of men on the verge, there was little room for doubt about what she really did to pay her rent. A blond woman in a brassiere emerged from a room at the end of the hall and saw Louis standing, hands across his chest, stupefied by the sexual cacophony.
“Have to see the madam first,” she said, ushering him back to the sitting room. “Go wait with the rest of them.”
“No, you don’t understand. I am here to see Pigeon.”
“You and half the men in Paris. Now, see the madam.”
“No. I am her friend. I am Louis Daguerre,” he said, sputtering slightly.
“I don’t care if you’re Louis the Fifteenth back from the fucking dead. Everyone’s got to see the lady of the house and wait in the sitting room.”
At that moment a voice called out from farther down the hallway: “It’s all right. He can talk to me.”
The woman in the brassiere huffed past Louis and into the sitting room to collect her next client. Louis turned around to see Pigeon peeking from a half-open doorway.
He took a few steps down the hallway. “Pigeon, we must leave at once. The day is here, and we have something of magnitude to perform. There isn’t much time.”
She continued to speak through the crack in the door. “What’s the point? I intend to cash in on the revolution this time. I’ll service both sides, the army and the rebels, and together they will buy me a little house in the country. I want a garden, Louis.”
“Stupid child, this is not a revolution. Have you not seen the warnings?”
“Call it what you will, but there is money to be made.”
Louis walked slowly towards the door. He stood a few feet away and could see part of a man’s figure lying on the bed. A sheet was draped in front of his lap, and he reclined against pillows.
“Who is it, for God’s sake?” called the man.
“Keep quiet,” Pigeon told him. She turned back to Louis. “I will be finished in a short time, and then we can talk.”
Louis pinched his eyes shut. “No, you don’t understand. We must leave now.”
The man’s voice came more strongly. “Come on, my little raspberry. I’m withering in here.” The word raspberry. Louis felt his back tighten and his hands curl into fists. He could see the whites of Pigeon’s eyes. She instinctively closed and locked the door, leaving Louis in the dim hallway by himself.
“I am sorry, Louis,” she called. “This is my business.”
“Please step away from the door,” Louis shouted.
“Jesus and Mary, is that Daguerre?” came Baudelaire’s voice.
“Don’t be rash,” called Pigeon.
Louis scanned the hallway for weapons. Nearby was a side table piled with postcards from America and Greece, the well wishes from wealthy clients abroad. Louis swept the postcards to the floor. He dragged the table in front of Pigeon’s door. He took a few steps back, reared the table, and made a fumbling assault. The table slid out of his hands and fell to the floor. Several of the men from the sitting room, roused from their prefornication vigil on the divan, gathered at the end of the hallway.
“What do you intend with that, brother?” called one of them.
Louis looked to his side but couldn’t make out any of their faces. “That is my daughter on the other side of this door. Will you boys help me?”
A rabble began down the hallway, three of them pounding walls with their fists. The idea of a man’s daughter in this place galvanized them into an evangelical thunder. A big man in a dun-colored coat took the side table from a shaking Louis and set it on its end. He then positioned himself in front of the door and shouldered it with one sudden movement. The door snapped open to reveal a half-dressed Baudelaire and a fully dressed Pigeon. Baudelaire looked at Louis and knew in an instant that his apocalypse had arrived. Baudelaire smiled faintly. “Louis, what a surprise.”
“If Pigeon stays here, I will instruct these men to help me murder you,” Louis said. He could feel his hands shake.
“For the love of God, calm yourself, Daguerre.”
“Louis, stop it,” said Pigeon.
“My carriage is outside. We have somewhere to go, Chloe,” said Louis.
The mention of Pigeon’s real name changed the atmosphere in the room. The men found this further proof of the familial relationship between father and daughter and assessed Baudelaire as a man in leg irons.
Louis said, “Baudelaire, I suggest you leave and go fight for your life with the devil.”
“Louis,” the poet said imploringly.
But Louis had already turned away.
“Please leave,” said Pigeon to Baudelaire.
“Very well. Good day, gentlemen.” Baudelaire, shirtless, a dragon-green cravat o
ver his shoulder, stepped gingerly through the rabble of men. Louis heard the sound of Baudelaire’s brogues in the hallway and folded his arms. The three men took this as their cue to exit. Louis regained composure and turned to face Pigeon.
“Don’t worry about packing a bag,” he said. “We must leave at once.”
“I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Your mother will be dead by morning.” He said it without any hint of melodrama. “I assume you would like to make peace with her before it is too late.”
Pigeon waited for further explanation. Her forehead gathered toward a single knot. Louis turned for the door and said, “I will wait for you outside.” As he passed through the sitting room, he noticed that the men who had helped him had quit the brothel, their lust no doubt killed by a display of righteousness.
When Pigeon plunked down into the carriage, she said only one word: “Orléans.” It made perfect sense—Isobel had returned to the countryside of her youth. Louis rode along the back roads south of Paris. The way was littered with small proofs that this was, in fact, the first day of another French revolution rather than the last day of man’s tenure on earth. If he’d had the eyes to see it, Louis might have noticed that the storm had evaporated into the cobalt night; that men were shooting at one another and not at the clouds; that the king’s soldiers were deserting not in celestial fear but in solidarity with their peasant brothers. They rode out past burning churches and boarded-up shopfronts. Every now and then the night came alive with the phosphor of pistol fire. Burning projectiles—lit rags in wine bottles—were hurled from windows. A dead quiet settled over the hamlets and villages. Candles glowed from basement windows; root cellars were nailed shut. Pigeon and Louis traveled along in silence, the carriage horses barreling them towards the Loire Valley.
The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre Page 19