I Am Madame X

by Gioia Diliberto

  “That boy over there needs some attention. He’s from Belgium, a boarding student at the Lycée Condorcet. He was hit by a shell near the Parc Monceau this morning.”

  Dr. Pozzi pointed to the cot of the boy he had just been examining. The thin brown-haired child lay under several blankets, his chest and right arm wrapped in blood-stained bandages.

  As I approached his cot, the boy’s face brightened. “Hello. I’m Georges Bourdin,” he said.

  “I’m Virginie Avegno.”

  “Enchanted, Mademoiselle.” He spoke with the odd formality children often adopt when speaking to their elders.

  I pulled a chair to his bedside. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “I’d be very grateful if you would take down a letter to my mother. I saw some paper and pens over there.” He nodded toward a table across the room.

  When I had retrieved the writing materials, Georges began dictating:

  Dear Mama,

  Please don’t worry when you read this, but I wanted you to know before the headmaster told you that I got hit yesterday by a shell. I was walking to the park to play ball with my friends when it happened.

  At first it hurt a lot, and I was very scared. But now I’m better, and they are taking good care of me. The doctor says I’ll be well soon. Please give my love to Papa and all inquiring friends. And kiss Yoicks for me—a big kiss. I know you don’t like to kiss dogs, but just this once, please, Mama, for me.

  Love,

  Your son Georges

  When he had finished dictating, Georges dropped his head onto his pillow in exhaustion.

  “Yoicks is my dog,” he said feebly.

  “So I assumed.”

  “He’s an English spaniel. That’s why we call him Yoicks. It’s an English word. Well, it’s not really a word. It’s what hunters say when they spot birds in the sky. They go, ‘Yoicks, yoicks,’ and their dogs run after the birds. My Yoicks isn’t a hunting dog, but I like the name.”

  “We had lots of dogs on the plantation where I grew up, in Louisiana.”

  “You’re American?”

  “I am.”

  “Do you know any Indians?”

  “Never met one. Now, Georges, you must rest. We can talk more tomorrow.”

  I spent the rest of the day in a corner of the entry hall helping several women sort through the boxes of blankets and pajamas that had been donated to the ambulance. I think Dr. Pozzi was looking for excuses to talk to me, because he came by several times and asked us how we were getting on.

  I returned to the ambulance the next day and every day for two weeks afterward. Though Georges continued to be weak and pale, his fever went down, and his brown eyes became clearer. One morning, I brought La Belle histoire de Leuk-le-Lièvre, and read a chapter of it to him every day. It had been Valentine’s favorite book, one of several possessions of hers I had brought to Paris from Louisiana to remember her by.

  Georges was nine, the age my sister would have been had she lived, and every time I saw him I thought of her. Like Valentine, he was sweet-tempered and bright, and when he looked at me I imagined I saw Valentine’s spirit in his eyes. Ordinarily I’m not a superstitious person, or even very religious. Still, I became obsessed with the idea that Valentine was somehow alive in Georges. I began fantasizing that Mama, Julie, and I would adopt him. Of course, it was absurd. He had parents who adored him and would be horrified by the idea.

  A few days after I met Georges, French troops marched into Paris and violent street fighting broke out between the Communards and the Republic’s official army. At the same time, French troops continued shelling the Left Bank from the forts surrounding the city. The Prussians, meanwhile, waited on their side of the Rhine, ready to move in and support the Versailles troops if the need arose.

  One evening, Mama, Julie, Pierre, and I watched through the windows of the maids’ garret as a band of Communards dug up the cobbles on the rue des Capucines and carted them away in barrels to a barricade they were building at the corner of our street.

  “Civil war in the streets of Paris. I never thought I’d see the day,” said Pierre, shaking his head.

  “What if they start fighting outside our door? We’ll all be killed,” Mama moaned.

  “Now, Virginie, that’s not going to happen.” Pierre slid his arm around Mama’s shoulder and patted it consolingly. Then Mama turned to me. “Virginie, you mustn’t go to the Palais anymore. It’s just too dangerous to go out.”

  As we made our way back down the narrow servants’ stairs to the parlor, Julie whispered to me, “Promise me, chérie, you won’t leave the house again. Your mother is right. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I won’t. I’ll stay home,” I said.

  I went to bed that night fully intending to keep my promise. But before dawn, I was awakened by thundering cannons—so loud I felt the reverberations in my stomach—and couldn’t go back to sleep. I got out of bed and dressed quickly, standing by the window in shards of light floating through the shutter slats from the street lamps outside. Then I wrote a note to Mama, telling her that I had gone to the ambulance at the Palais and not to worry.

  Grasping the banister, I made my way down the steps to the hall. I left the note on the table, then crossed the parquet through the vestibule and went into the night.

  Burned-out omnibuses and dead horses lay in the streets. The rue Saint-Honoré was a wall of flame, so I turned around and took the rue Duphot, past the Madeleine. I ducked under the ropes that had been stretched across the street to stop the French army, just as a shell whirred above my head. Had I been standing, I would have been hit.

  Now I regretted having left the house. I thought of going back, but I was frightened by a group of men who were running up the street behind me, waving rifles. Just as I was crossing the rue de Rivoli, the stone facade of the Marine Ministry collapsed from a bomb, and huge chunks of its arcades crumbled and scattered into the street. I ran as fast as I could to the Palais and dashed under the immense archway and into the main exhibition hall.

  Dr. Pozzi was examining a patient in the farthest row of cots. I saw that two screens had been drawn around Georges’s bed. I knew what that meant. During the night, his fever had worsened, and his body had succumbed to infection. Georges was dead.

  My knees buckled, and dropping to the floor, I began to sob. Dr. Pozzi saw me and ran to my side. Taking my elbows, he pulled me up and held me to his chest. Then he led me out to the hall and sat with me on a red velvet bench. I couldn’t stop crying.

  “Mimi, I’m going to get something to calm you down,” he said. He walked back to the ward and returned a few minutes later with a syringe. A few tendrils of hair had escaped from the hastily arranged roll at the back of my head, and Dr. Pozzi tenderly brushed them away from my face. Pushing my ruffled sleeve to my shoulder, he jabbed the syringe into my arm and held it there for a moment. Then he removed it and wiped my skin with a cloth. “Now, you lie down, dear,” he said.

  I slept the entire day. When I awoke, it was dark outside, and Dr. Pozzi was standing over me. “Mimi, the Communards have burned down the Tuileries Palace, and the entire quarter is in flames. You can’t possibly go home. You’ll have to spend the night here.”

  “What time is it?” I said, sitting up. My head felt as heavy as a steel ball.

  “Ten o’clock. You slept for fifteen hours.”

  Taking my hand, Dr. Pozzi led me through a tunnel of empty galleries as long and as wide as tracks in a train station, then up a service stairwell to a dark paneled room—an administrative office that had been turned into his bedroom. Dr. Pozzi’s black medical bag sat on the floor next to a mahogany table stacked with books. A skeleton hung on a hook from the wardrobe. In an alcove by the window, a bed had been made up with pillows and blue satin sheets.

  The skeleton intrigued me, and I started to walk toward it, but Dr. Pozzi placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. Looking at me with melting eyes, he kissed me. I felt the soft br
istles of his mustache, and a current of excitement spread through my legs and arms. Wordlessly, confidently, he began unfastening the buttons of my bodice. When he had it unhooked, he yanked it off my shoulders and arms and threw it aside. Then he pulled my skirt over my head and started unlacing my corset. That came off, too, followed by petticoats, chemise, and drawers. I was naked except for my silk stockings. Kneeling on the floor, Dr. Pozzi took my right stocking in his hands and gently slid it over my leg as he kissed my inner thigh. Ripples of desire shot to my ears. When he had my left stocking off, he carried me to the bed and placed me on the satin sheets. In a moment, he had torn off his own clothes and was lying beside me.

  The night was a thrilling discovery. I didn’t think of Mama or Julie or poor Georges Bourdin. I thought only of this new intimacy. At dawn, Dr. Pozzi fell asleep, and I lay close to him, listening to the soft rattle of his breathing.

  He awoke a few hours later, sat up, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. In the fan of sunlight slanting through the window, he looked white and luminous, like a painting of a medieval saint.

  “Mimi, I think I should send you home,” he said as he pulled on his trousers. “Your family must be very worried. And I have work to do.”

  “I want to stay here with you.” I sat up, letting the sheets fall from my breasts, and placed my hand on Dr. Pozzi’s sleeve. He leaned out of the light and, losing his ethereal glow, bent over to kiss my right nipple.

  “You have to go, darling.”

  “Sam, please, let me stay.”

  His face tightened, and he looked at me severely. “You must never call me Sam,” he said, his voice tinged with annoyance. “And you must never tutoyer me.” During the night, I had addressed him with “tu,” the familiar form of “you.”

  “But we’re lovers. Lovers always tutoyer.”

  “Not always, darling. It’s better to keep the vous.”

  “Even in bed?”

  “Yes. That way you won’t slip when we’re around other people.”

  He walked to his armoire and retrieved a fresh white shirt.

  “When will I see you again? Tomorrow?”

  “I’m not sure about tomorrow. But soon.”

  After Dr. Pozzi left, I dressed and took a look at myself in the mirrored armoire. My cheeks were blotched and roughened, and tiny red bumps had erupted around my mouth—the result of Dr. Pozzi’s bearded kisses. I splashed water on my face from the basin and arranged my hair. Then I made my way through the empty halls to the staircase and the first floor.

  Pierre Gautreau, his face gray and drawn, his fine black jacket creased with wrinkles, stood talking to one of the nurses in the doorway of the main exhibition hall.

  “Mimi!” he cried as I entered the gallery. His smile lifted the ends of his mustache and crinkled his tired eyes.

  I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck.

  “Are Mama and Julie all right?”

  “They’re fine, except they’re frantic about you. But you did the right thing spending the night here. The quarter was an inferno.” Pierre looked at me with concern glimmering across his brow.

  “What happened to your face, dear?”

  “I slept on a horsehair blanket in one of the offices upstairs,” I lied. “It must have caused an irritation.”

  “Well, I’m just glad you’re safe.” Pierre cupped my elbow and led me toward the door. Looking back over my shoulder, I searched for Dr. Pozzi among the white-coated doctors milling about the cots. Finally I spotted him in a corner talking to a pretty blond woman who was sorting medicine bottles. Dr. Pozzi’s arms were crossed against his chest, and he chuckled at something the pretty woman said. My body tensed with jealousy.

  “Mimi, let’s go,” said Pierre softly.

  I stopped in my tracks to watch Dr. Pozzi, and Pierre began exerting pressure on my elbow. I took a few steps, still looking over my shoulder until Pierre and I had walked through the door and Dr. Pozzi had dropped from sight.

  Six

  Outside, the air smelled of burning plaster, and smoke filled the cloudless blue sky. Pierre and I followed the yellow sanded pathways past the long row of plane trees and the place de la Concorde, to the Tuileries Palace, which was now a smoldering, blackened ruin. Dodging an army of rubber-coated workers who trained hose pipes on the immense roofless shell, we crossed the rue de Rivoli and turned onto rue de Luxembourg. A few houses opposite ours had been damaged by fire, but our hôtel was untouched. Pierre and I entered the courtyard through the iron gate and pulled the bell. From within, we heard feminine voices and rustling skirts. A moment later, Mama and Julie opened the door.

  “Oh, Mimi, thank God you’re safe!” Mama wailed. She clasped me in her arms and hugged me tightly.

  “I’d have died if anything had happened to you, chérie,” said Julie. She knuckled tears from the corners of her eyes and reached over to kiss me hard on the cheek.

  Both women seemed to have aged overnight. The lines running from the sides of Mama’s nose to the corners of her mouth looked deeper than I had remembered them, and dark circles rimmed her eyes. Julie’s hair sprouted a trail of gray across the top of her head that I had never noticed before. Bent slightly over her horn-tipped cane, she looked stiff and arthritic.

  With our arms encircling each other’s waists, and with Pierre following, we moved to the main parlor. One of the maids had set a tea service on a table in front of the fireplace, and Mama and Julie sat on chairs facing each other across the table. Pierre stood by Mama, his right arm resting on the mantel, while I hung back at the front of the room near the piano. Mama poured tea into a rose-patterned china cup and held it out to me. “Come here, Mimi, this will do you good,” she said.

  I shook my head. “I’m exhausted. Would you mind if I went to bed?”

  “Please, dear, have one cup.”

  “Let her go, Virginie,” said Pierre. “The child had a long night.”

  “Very well,” sighed Mama. She set the cup and saucer on the table. “Try to sleep.”

  Wearily, I climbed the curving staircase to my suite. Sitting at my writing table, I pulled a sheet of blue stationery from a lacquered box and wrote, “Dear Dr. Pozzi.” I couldn’t go further. I wanted to tell him that I loved him and hoped that he loved me, but I couldn’t think of how to express myself without sounding hopelessly schoolgirlish. I chewed on my pen and stared out the window. Three starlings perched in the chestnut tree outside, their chirping drowned by the hissing hose pipes from the Tuileries. Suddenly a unit of cuirassiers charged down the street on horseback and turned into their barracks on the Place Vendôme. A moment later, a young couple strolled by, arm in arm. They stopped directly under my window, and as if to mock me, the man lifted his sweetheart’s veil and kissed her lips. I crushed the paper in my hands, ran to the next room, and hurled myself on my bed. I lay there and slept fitfully for the rest of the day.

  Over the next week, in a burst of brutal fighting, the French army won Paris back from the Communards. By June, the last of the insurgents had been struck down and either executed by the soldiers or imprisoned. The city began to recover.

  My pain, however, had only begun. I wish I could say I forgot Dr. Pozzi, that my normal life resumed once I returned to the safe haven of home. But that did not happen. As the months wore on and I heard nothing from him, I grew listless, cried easily, and had trouble eating and sleeping. Mama and Julie misread my malaise as boredom and loneliness for friends my own age. Sometimes they invited young men and women—the children of their acquaintances—to dinner, but I had no interest in these strangers and never started friendships with them.

  Music was my only solace. I spent most of my time shut up in my sitting room, practicing the piano. By now I had mastered most of Beethoven’s and Mozart’s sonatas, and usually I performed a few pieces at Mama’s Mondays.

  Her salon, like countless others across the city, resumed in June with the season’s normal round of receptions, dinners, theater openings, and bal
ls. It was amazing how quickly gaiety returned to Paris. Emperor Napoléon may have been gone, but the rich were still rich, and Parisians were as fond of pleasure as before the Prussian siege. Restaurants, shops, theaters, and designers’ ateliers overflowed with patrons, and construction of a grand new opera house was underway. The city’s devastation was even turned into a source for fresh amusement. A guidebook, Ruines de Paris, was rushed into print, and tourists flocked to the city to see the burnt-out shells of the Tuileries, the Palais de Justice, the Prefecture of Police, and the Hôtel de Ville.

  The monarchy’s demise had loosened social barriers, however, and Mama saw a golden chance for our advancement. She accepted every invitation that arrived at the house, and she insisted I join her in the social whirl. “You can’t just sit around the house, Mimi,” Mama said whenever I balked at attending some dull minister’s reception or old dowager’s dinner party. “You’ll feel better if you start going out and meeting new people.”

  That summer, we were invited for the first time to the annual Fourth of July fête at the home of Dr. Thomas Evans, an American dentist who had been an intimate of the Emperor and Empress, both of whom had bad teeth and suffered from agonizing toothaches. After the Empire collapsed, Dr. Evans saved Eugénie from prison (and possibly the guillotine) by smuggling her out of the Tuileries and escorting her to safety in England, where she now lived with the ex-Emperor. Dr. Evans was the chief link between the expatriate community and what was left of Napoleonic royalty in France. Mama had met Dr. Evans at the Marine Ministry’s “Four Continents” ball, and she had recently seen him again at the funeral of Mathilde Slidell, who had suffered a fatal heart attack while on vacation in Brighton. Mama was eager to become part of his coterie.

  On July Fourth, Mama and I arrived in midafternoon at Bella Rosa, Dr. Evans’s estate at the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. Named for its fragrant rose gardens, Bella Rosa sat in a lovely park with ponds, stables, a greenhouse, and an aviary for exotic birds. Carriages lined the circular drive in front of the lozenge-shaped stone mansion, the first home in Paris to have central heating, while a gaggle of drivers smoked under the hickory and walnut trees imported from Pennsylvania.