The Painted Girls

by Cathy Marie Buchanan

  Two arrests have been made in the brutal slaying of Elisabeth Bazengeaud, the tavern owner stabbed to death three weeks ago in Montreuil. Nineteen-year-old Émile Abadie and sixteen-year-old Pierre Gille are being held at Mazas until their day in court.

  Chief Inspector Monsieur Macé sought out Émile Abadie for questioning after patrons of the tavern indicated the youth was once the woman Bazengeaud’s lover. He was discovered with Pierre Gille, his constant companion of recent months, in a storage shed belonging to Gille’s father where the pair had established sleeping quarters.

  Initially both youths vigorously denied being in the faubourg on the day of the murder. The claim proved to be their undoing when several witnesses were able to identify the youths as having entered the tavern. While Gille had thus far avoided trouble with the law, Abadie has a string of petty theft convictions. Monsieur Bazengeaud reported eighteen francs and a watch as stolen from the strongbox at the tavern.

  The tender ages of the criminals will no doubt fuel the growing public anxiety over the moral gangrene that appears to have infected the youth of Paris since our defeat by the Prussians.

  Marie

  Like he does every morning, Alphonse puts two baguettes on the wooden counter and says, “The best for you.” But today is Saturday, the day he counts out the twelve francs I am owed and puts them into my waiting hand, folding my fingers over the coins. And already, without paying my wages, he is back to arranging loaves on the cooling racks. Sometimes his gaze stays put, and more than once I have wondered if there is nothing he likes better than handing over to me two perfect baguettes. Today, though, his eyes were bashful, lowered to the baguettes on the counter. “The best for you,” he said, his voice gone shy.

  I gather them up. Golden. Even. Perfectly slashed. I clear my throat. “Alphonse?”

  “Yes.” He does not turn from the cooling racks.

  “It’s Saturday.”

  He moves to the counter, stands there, arms hanging at his sides. “The pork butcher wasn’t paid what he was owed.” His hands press against the wooden countertop. “He went to the washhouse to collect, but Monsieur Guiot said Antoinette cut short her hours all week. So Papa paid the pork butcher, on your behalf.” His eyes lifted up, meeting my own. “It was two francs more than you were owed.”

  I am beaten down by a week such as I have lived. And now I will fall short the six francs owed to Madame Théodore for the private lesson she will give me in the afternoon. I do not know the reason for the unpaid pork butcher and Antoinette cutting her hours short, but now that Émile Abadie has been put in jail, she is home in the evenings, pacing and sighing and shaking her head. And there is no chance of me broaching, with a boy as good-hearted as Alphonse, my sister’s attachment to an inmate of Mazas, one who was already sucking the joy from her even before he was locked up.

  Often Émile Abadie would come by before Antoinette was home from the washhouse and say to tell that sister of mine she would find him at the Rat-Mort, or some days it was the Brasserie des Martyrs. And when I did, in a split second she went from tired and gloomy to brimming with hope. Always, the scurrying began, the washing of her underarms, the sniffing away at each of her two blouses, the arranging of her hair, the sorrowful huffing in front of the looking glass. Some days he did not come at all, and those days Antoinette would grumble that I had not gone to fetch water or that Charlotte had ripped the hem of her skirt. Other times he would show up in the middle of the night, and I would hear him on the landing, tapping on our door, calling out for Antoinette, starting with a whisper, abandoning quiet when no one stirred. Maman did not wake up. No, it was me, clenching my fists upon the mattress, thinking whether to nudge Antoinette or leave him suffering upon the stairs. But the racket did not let up, and what if Madame Legat heard and reported us to Monsieur LeBlanc? I started poking Antoinette as soon as I heard that boy in the night. It did not mean sleep though. That was when the arguing would start up, about a dead dog, about him taking a smoke, about where he was yesterday or the day before that. Other times there were low voices and soft laughter and then moaning and the creaking of the planks of the landing in a steady beat. Oh, how I hated that boy, the way he snatched the lightheartedness from Antoinette, the way he left nothing more than a moping girl for Charlotte and me at home.

  I open my palms to the rafters over our heads, and Alphonse says, “All of us in the rue de Douai are thankful it wasn’t one of you girls killed instead.”

  I nod, and, weary as rain, I turn to the door. It is the same treatment Blanche got from me yesterday, climbing the stairs to the practice room. She came up from behind and swung an arm tight around my neck. “I’m growing again. Maman is sure as can be.” I did not put my arm around her neck and squeeze back. I only made the slightest nod and kept climbing, one foot in front of the other. She unwrapped her arm from my neck and said, “Scowling isn’t helping your monkey face,” unlike Alphonse, who does not say a single word.

  I cross the rue de Douai quickly, wishing to avoid the magnifying lens all the street is holding up to the van Goethem girls. But Madame Legat is waiting, gawking toward the bakery from the entrance of our lodging house. She puts herself in the doorway so that I cannot pass. “Antoinette was expected at the washhouse this morning,” she says and crosses her arms. “She told Monsieur Guiot that come Saturday he could count on her for a full day, an early start. That’s what I been told, and yet I seen head nor hide of that girl this morning, and already it is late.”

  All week I came in from the bakery to find Charlotte with her satchel slung over her shoulder, waiting to set out for the Opéra, and Antoinette already off to the washhouse, or so I thought. But now Madame Legat is telling me Antoinette is not at the washhouse this morning, and Alphonse said she cut her hours short all week. What is Antoinette keeping from me? What is this growing gulf where my own sister has a secret life? Why was the pork butcher not paid? With my wages gone and no money for Madame Théodore, Antoinette is putting in jeopardy my chance at the Opéra, my chance for grace upon the stage, and meat in all our bellies and cups that are not cracked and walls that are properly whitewashed instead of black with soot. A lump swells in my throat even as my fingers curl into tight fists. I choke out, “Antoinette is not my business,” but Madame Legat does not budge.

  She points, the claw of her fingernail almost touching my chin. “Someone needs to tell that girl mornings visiting with a boy about to meet the blade of a guillotine don’t put nothing toward the rent.”

  In an instant I know what she said is true, that Antoinette is carrying on with Émile Abadie, even with him jailed.

  “I got a right to speak,” Madame Legat says, “considering the rent is due.” She lifts her chin, showing her ropy neck. A neck ready to be wrung. But, no, it is not her throat I want my gripping fingers tightening around. A dozen times in recent days Antoinette said, “I know beyond a shadow of a doubt it wasn’t Émile.” What I know with the same firmness is that all week, mornings at the washhouse have been traded for mornings at Mazas. She pocketed the money meant for the pork butcher, money that was not hers. It is her fault I am made to stand here, forced to bear Madame Legat’s beady eyes, her prying ways. A strength I have not felt all week comes to my limbs. I shove past Madame Legat and take the stairs two at a time.

  I push open the door of our lodging room to a view of Antoinette, standing before the looking glass hung above Papa’s sideboard. She fusses with a lock of hair, twisting it around her finger, tucking it up behind her ear, inclining her head as she takes in the effect. Her blouse is fresh, her lips tinted, her neck pink from the scrubbing that has taken place. Charlotte hops up from the table. “No waiting for me,” she says. “Not once this week have you had to wait.” And my heart flutters that she knows to tread lightly on the floor giving away beneath her feet.

  “Monsieur Guiot is expecting you at the washhouse,” I say to Antoinette.

  “I got an errand to run first.”

  “You’re off to Mazas
. You’ve been going to Mazas all week.”

  Antoinette turns to me from the looking glass. She opens and closes her mouth, trying to decide, then opens it again. “Haven’t,” she says.

  One hundred times I heard her lie to Maman, about money, about what time she came in the night before, about anything at all. One hundred times more I heard her lie to Monsieur LeBlanc: There was a rat in the stairwell. She saw the health inspector poking around. She washed the landing herself because Madame Legat’s back was sore. She lied to the pork butcher, telling him Charlotte was meant to eat liver because she was low in iron. To the fruiterer she said Charlotte’s hair was falling out, that she would be cured by an orange every week. She told Madame Gagnon that Monsieur Pluque was waiting for Charlotte and me upstairs with such certainty that for a flash I believed it was true. Most of the time Maman stayed ignorant, like Monsieur LeBlanc and the pork butcher and the fruiterer and Madame Gagnon. And even if I never caught her lying to me, plenty of times I wondered. But always, I remembered she loved me. The only lies she could say to me were of no account, trifles like calling me “pretty as a peach” before I went to see Monsieur Pluque that first time, when it was not true. But that was different from now. That lie was told for my benefit, and this new lie is not. “All week you cut short your hours,” I say.

  I see her wince that I know, watch her shrink at being caught. She puts her hands together, like a prayer, like she needs me to hear. And she says she went to Mazas first on Monday because she got the news and then on Tuesday because an appointment is needed for visiting and then on Wednesday and Thursday because it is how you find out when your appointment is, and again on Friday, when she was finally told she could visit Émile Abadie on Saturday.

  “My wages from the bakery went to the pork butcher, who you never even bothered to pay.”

  “Those jailers at Mazas,” she says, “they want a bit of grease upon their palms.”

  My voice grows louder even as I step closer, my chest puffed out, my muscles tense. “I have nothing for Madame Théodore. My exam is six weeks away.”

  “It’s one lesson, Marie.”

  “You’re stealing from me to visit a murderer.”

  Her hands drop from their prayer. She gives a look of such defiance that I know the thing she wanted to keep to herself—she passed the money owed the pork butcher to a guard at Mazas, and in that moment put Émile Abadie ahead of Charlotte and me. My hands reach for her shoulders and shove with all my might.

  She stumbles, and I shove again. She shoves back, knocking me to the floor, and falls upon my chest, shrieking into my face, “He is no murderer. I know it for a fact.” She shifts herself up, so that her spread knees pin my shoulders to the floor. “Don’t you call him a murderer.” She raises her arm in a threat.

  “Murderer!” And there it is: the thousand pinpricks of a slap on my face.

  Her hand flies up a second time, and then, Charlotte’s arms wrap tight around Antoinette’s elbow.

  “He is going to the guillotine!”

  Antoinette breaks loose her arm, and in a flash Charlotte falls to her knees and rounds over me, the armor of her small shoulder blades covering my face.

  All is quiet, and then Charlotte sniffles. Her back heaves.

  Antoinette gets up from my chest. “Émile is innocent,” she says.

  I wrap my arms around Charlotte, stroking and rubbing, easing her up from my face, wondering that she put herself between Antoinette and me.

  Never before have the two of us screamed and shoved and come to blows. Never before has she told me such a lie. I push up onto an elbow, feeling alone and scared. Is this the end of Antoinette looking after Charlotte and me? And what is wrong with her that she is devoted to such a boy? Why is she undaunted, even with him put in jail for slitting a woman’s throat? Maybe, mixed up with feeling afraid, I feel sorry, too. As bad a week as I have lived, her week was worse. I hold Charlotte’s trembling body tight against my thumping chest and watch Antoinette wipe tears from her cheeks before she pulls open the door.

  Antoinette

  A jailer with breath like boiled onions clomps ahead of me, past a string of weighty doors opened up onto dingy cells the breadth of two arms spread wide. Each is bare plaster, except for the iron grate forming the far wall and the single chair just in front. “These cells are for those coming to visit?” I say, and his highness slows his clomping and bothers with a flicker of a nod. “Don’t see why I been made to wait.” For every cell with a caller sunk onto the chair, a dozen more are as empty as my week’s been long.

  The jailer halts, grunts, pointing the muzzle of his rifle, and I cross into the cell and hear the groan of the door closing behind my back. The cane seat of the chair has a gaping hole, a hole tearing wider when I plop down, not bothering to be light. I peer through the iron grate, across an intervening passageway, to a long row of cells, and guess Émile is to be put in the cell exactly facing my own. Another jailer, this one patrolling the length of the passageway, trudges by, his footsteps growing fainter as he retreats and then louder until he is again in front of my own cell. Three times more he passes by on his way to either end of the passageway, and I wait, feeling a breath away from my breakfast—fried potatoes nicked from a street vendor—rising up in my throat. It was Marie who started with the yelling, Marie who shoved first, Marie who screamed “murderer” when already my arm was raised. The hunched back of Charlotte, the bony rises of her ribs, were like the rolled-up shell of a pill bug awaiting a squashing fist. But I did not strike. I got up from Marie. Charlotte will forget. And Marie, she would have clobbered me worse than I did her if she had so much as a clue about how to fight. But still, the grease of the fried potatoes churns in my gut. I told a lie to Marie, a lie that was not white, and she knew it. I explained the rigmarole of getting an appointment, but already it was too late. Already I lied, saying I had not gone to Mazas. I only wanted to leave without a fuss, without Marie’s lip trembling and her eyes welling with tears, to hang on to the scrap of hopefulness that morning, finally arrived, had brought. But Marie yelled and shoved. The shoving back was a mistake. The hitting, too. I scared those two girls, and already they have more than enough to be fearful of in their lives.

  The patrolling jailer passes by yet again, and still the cell exactly facing my own stays empty of Émile. I swallow hard and curl my fingers around the iron bars and wonder about him getting delivered to the wrong cell. Such dopey jailers. Such callousness. I lean my face in close to the iron grate, but they have it rigged so a visitor’s only view is into the cell straight across the passageway from his own. “Émile,” I call out. I turn my face, calling out again, and then I call louder.

  The patrolling jailer is back, the brass buttons of his navy jacket winking in the light of the lamps. He pokes the bayonet of his rifle through the iron grate of my cell. “Shut your trap,” he says.

  “Maybe if you brought the boy I come to see.” How long have I been waiting? An hour? Twenty minutes? I cannot guess. The passage of time must be the same for each prisoner, for Émile, all locked up.

  “Another word and I’ll be arranging he don’t come at all.”

  I lean back in that feeble, broken chair and watch him turn from the most brutish glare I can muster, taking his time, like there is pride in moving slow.

  All the boys of Paris awaiting trial are jailed at Mazas, and I heard from more than one about the tedium of the place. They wake at six o’clock to the sound of a clanging bell, opening up their eyes to four white plaster walls and then rolling from the crammed hammocks where they spent the night. They wait for the door to creak open and the tray holding a paltry jug of bitter wine and a section of stale bread to be set down. The last of the drink sopped up, the last of the crumbs put into their mouths, there are six blank hours to fill with nothing more than folding up the hammocks and sweeping out the cells. At last the weariness is broken by the midday meal, the filling of the mess tins with soup swallowed so slow that always the last mouthfu
l is cold. In the afternoon each prisoner goes to what they call the promenade but is really nothing more than a span of long, narrow walks open to the sky and cordoned off, one from the next, by towering walls. At Mazas there is no chance of a boy scheming with another about what is to be said before a judge, no chance of the comfort of an old friend while waiting out the hours. Émile suffers the same tedium but with the way they have him holed up with Vera and Billet, I imagine always he is watching his back, fear turning his blood sluggish and dragging out the hours even worse than for the rest.

  I cling tighter to the iron grate, and next thing, there is the voice of Émile from beyond the cell facing mine. “No word of a lie,” he says, “those eyes of hers.” Passing into his cell now, he juts his chin in the direction of me, looks back to the escorting jailer. “Like I told you, chocolate pools.”

  On Monday, after getting the news and rushing from the washhouse to Mazas, I went to the Opéra and joined those knitting, gossiping mothers lining the back wall of the practice room where the youngest petits rats were taking class. Upon catching my eye, Charlotte wrinkled up her forehead. I waved away her bewilderment, blew a kiss, and after that her attention was back on the string of steps Madame Théodore was calling out, the music streaming from the violin. Other girls jumped higher. Two were lighter upon their feet. But I could see the music reaching deep inside her and for a minute, just watching, I was lifted up. It was not right that Charlotte, with her air of boldness and courage and heart, and her dingy practice skirt and grimy cheeks and uncombed hair, like a rooster tail springing from her head, was the most bedraggled of those skinny girls.

  Afterward I said, “You feel the music deeper than those other rats,” and that snippy girl, she said, “You’re supposed to be scrubbing linens with Maman.”

  I stroked her cheek, and she stood there, arms limp at her sides, eyes too weary for so young a face, and I felt a little pang that the child was taking on Marie’s habit of worrying. “I was delivered a message at the washhouse, and I told Maman you fainted at the Opéra, that you were asking for me. I can’t say more but just let on.”