Mama and I entered the cavernous foyer with its bright paintings, mostly of American landscapes and heroes: a view of Niagara Falls; large, flag-bedecked portraits of George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Lafayette. A butler directed us past the leather-walled library, the pastel salons, and the gilt-mirrored ballroom to French doors opening onto a clipped green lawn. At the center stood a huge white tent with an American flag waving from a pole on top.
We ducked under the flaps and entered. The air was close, oppressive with perfume and sweat. Dr. Evans, tall and middle-aged with copious brown side whiskers, stood on a chair, a champagne flute in his right hand lifted to the canvas ceiling, as he toasted the country of his birth: “And so I say to you, the flag of our fathers is never so beautiful or so glorious as when raised on foreign soil!” Polite clapping rippled through the tent.
I scanned the room. Most of the guests looked French, and I recognized a few, including Etincelle. Dressed in blue silk, notebook and pen in hand, she strode toward Mama and me, trailed by an emaciated young man with pocked, dough-colored skin and a nose like a purple gourd.
“Here comes Etincelle,” Mama whispered. Crinkling her eyes, she studied the young man. “Why, that’s the duc de Cheverny!”
“Who’s he?”
“Only the scion of one of the oldest and richest families in France!”
A moment later, Etincelle and the young man were standing in front of us.
“Madame Avegno! Mademoiselle Avegno!” Etincelle cried. “Please let me present you to Monsieur le duc de Cheverny.”
The gangly duke, his heavily oiled brown hair combed over his narrow skull, bowed dramatically. He took Mama’s hand in his and touched it with his thin lips. Then he turned to me.
“Why, it’s Pauline Bonaparte, back from the dead!” he cried, referring to Napoléon’s favorite sister, who was revered as the most beautiful woman of the First Empire.
“Mademoiselle Avegno is much more beautiful than any of the Bonapartes,” Etincelle said brightly. “Look at these lines.” The well-dressed columnist reached out and took me by the chin, turning my head to present the duke with my profile. “Pauline’s ears were so ugly they confounded Canova. Mademoiselle Avegno’s ears are perfect.”
“Indeed, they are,” enthused the duke. “And so is her skin. So smooth, like a rose petal.”
Why were they discussing me as if I were a statue, as if I weren’t there? And what made this ugly man an authority on beauty? I felt my face grow hot.
The orchestra burst into a Strauss waltz, and a few couples twirled onto the dance floor.
“Would you care to dance, Mademoiselle Avegno?” the duke said.
“Thank you, sir. But I’m not feeling too well. I was on my way outside for some fresh air.”
His narrow countenance registered a slight hardening. “Perhaps another time, then.” The duke bowed, even more dramatically now. He took Etincelle by the arm and led her away.
When they were out of earshot, Mama hissed, “Why wouldn’t you dance with him? He’s worth thirty million francs!”
“What good are thirty million francs if you look like a corpse?”
“He doesn’t look like a corpse. He’s young. Well, maybe not young, but no older than Pierre Gautreau.”
“Do you really want me to start a friendship with the duc de Cheverny?”
“I just want you to know the best people.”
“If the duc de Cheverny is the best people, I hate to see what the worst people look like.”
Mama scowled into her champagne. I fled the tent and took one of the gravel paths that meandered past the rose gardens to a little pond full of gliding swans. Faint strains of Strauss’s waltz wafted through the trees. Regarding my wobbly reflection in the gray pools of water, I imagined myself dancing with Dr. Pozzi. He held my waist and stared into my eyes with an expression of dazed adoration.
“Mimi!” Mama’s voice broke my reverie. I couldn’t see her, but I heard her leather shoes scrunching the gravel. She appeared from behind the hedges at the edge of the pond.
“I just ran into Fanny Reed,” she said, fluttering her white lace fan. “You remember her. She’s from Boston and operates a boarding school for American girls.”
“I’ve never met her, Mama.”
“Well, anyway, she’s just charming. She’s having a young people’s luncheon tomorrow to introduce her girls to some Frenchmen. She’s invited you. Isn’t that nice?”
“What Frenchmen? The duc de Cheverny, I suppose.”
“Probably. But other young men will be there, too.”
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
“Well, at least you could try to enjoy this party.” Mama turned irritably and headed up the path to the house. A buffet supper of fried chicken and corn on the cob was set out on the terrace. Mama and I sat at a white iron table with Etincelle and the duc de Cheverny. The horrid aristocrat stared at me throughout the meal. Etincelle, meanwhile, nattered on about a new category of English women called PB’s, or “professional beauties.” “The Whitehall Review has been writing about them. These are the women who are received in the best society but have no other occupation, no other ambition than to be beautiful,” she said, holding a corncob in her long fingers. She looked at me with glittering eyes. “Now, Mimi,” she said. “You keep up your music, so you don’t end up a dull, dumb PB.”
Etincelle placed her corncob on her plate and shifted her gaze beyond the terrace. “Maybe I should do a story on PB’s. I’ve got to write something for tomorrow’s column.”
She reached in her purse, pulled out her pen and notebook, and started scribbling. Mama and I excused ourselves, called for our carriage, and returned home.
The next morning, Etincelle’s column appeared on the front page of Le Figaro. The last line read, “Mademoiselle Virginie Amélie Avegno, the young American dazzler who lives with her charming mother near the Madeleine, is more beautiful than any PB I’ve seen here or abroad.”
I imagined Dr. Pozzi reading Etincelle’s words and, being reminded of my beauty and charm, realizing he needed to see me. That fantasy put me in a sociable mood, so I decided to go to Fanny Reed’s luncheon after all.
It was a beautiful day, clear and sunny but not too warm. I walked to the rue de Rivoli and hailed a cab. We followed a route to Miss Reed’s house on the rue de Nancy that took us past the place du Châtelet and the boulevard Sébastopol, the wide, straight east-west axis of the Grande Croisée that stretches to the Gare de l’Est through a bustling business district.
At the corner of the rue Réaumur, the street was blocked to traffic, and a crowd of hatless men and parasol-toting women lined the pavement. All eyes watched a strange cavalcade moving up the boulevard.
At first, I thought it was a military parade. Then I noticed the men were not soldiers; they were medical orderlies in white coats with red armbands and caps emblazoned with red crosses. They were carrying stretchers full of medical instruments—knives, bottles, scalpels, and steel clamps. Two men at the end carried a wood operating table with four leather straps for immobilizing a patient’s arms and legs.
“What’s going on here?” I asked the driver.
“One of the surgeons of the Central Bureau of Consultations is on his way to a hospital in the First Arrondissement to perform an operation. This happens several times a week.”
Suddenly, in the third row, I saw the erect form of Dr. Pozzi. Marching with a loose-jointed athleticism between two short orderlies with jutting paunches, he held his head high and stared straight ahead.
Quickly, I paid the driver and stepped to the street. As the procession passed, I followed it up the pavement. The men walked slowly, and it was easy to keep up with them despite the layers of petticoats I wore in those days. Forty minutes later, the curious parade reached its destination, the Lariboisière Hospital, where they stopped outside the iron gate to speak to a guard.
I walked toward them, as if on my way to an appointment, as if j
ust by coincidence I was on the street at the same moment as these medical men. My heart beat faster as I passed the white-coated group. I shot a glance at Dr. Pozzi. He was talking to his colleagues, his hands thrust in his pockets. I had gone halfway up the block when I heard my name.
“Mademoiselle Avegno!” Dr. Pozzi jogged toward me.
“Dr. Pozzi!” I tried to sound surprised.
“What are you doing all the way up here?” He stood with his hands folded across his chest, smiling broadly.
“I’m paying a call on a friend of Mama’s.”
I worried that he’d ask me who, and I planned to invent a name. Instead he said, “I’ve been meaning to write to you. But I’ve been terribly busy. And I’ve moved.” He pulled a silver case from his coat pocket, removed a card, and handed it to me. He looked over his shoulder at the hospital entrance. His colleagues had gone inside.
“Listen, I must dash. Can you meet me in two hours at my apartment for a late lunch? I don’t have time to go to restaurants anymore. My housekeeper is a wonderful cook.”
“Well…”
“Please. You must give me a chance to explain why I haven’t been in touch.”
“All right. But I can’t stay long.”
“Wonderful!” Dr. Pozzi bowed slightly, then ran toward the hospital entrance.
I looked at his card: DR. SAMUEL-JEAN POZZI. 131, BOULEVARD SAINT-GERMAIN. FIFTH FLOOR. I took a cab to the carrefour de Buci, bought copies of L’Illustration and La Mode illustrée at a newspaper kiosk, and settled into a wicker chair on the terrace of a café. I flipped through the magazines but couldn’t concentrate on any of the articles or pictures. I fantasized that Dr. Pozzi would beg my forgiveness and declare his love for me. I would treat him with icy contempt, wounding him as he had wounded me.
At two o’clock, I paid the bill and walked toward the exit. “Un sou pour le garçon!” the waiter shouted after me. In my self-absorption, I had forgotten to leave a tip. Flushed with embarrassment, I went back and left a few coins on the table. Then I exited the restaurant and headed north. As I reached the rue de Seine, thunderclaps pierced the air, and a moment later a hard rain showered the neighborhood.
I’m insane to visit him in his rooms, I thought as I covered my head with La Mode illustrée and ran past the stone facades and iron balconies of the tall new buildings. I’m only going to talk to him for a few minutes and then be on my way.
By the time I reached Number 131, I was dripping wet. I was about to ring the bell, when Dr. Pozzi appeared at my side under an enormous black umbrella.
“Hello, Mademoiselle,” he said softly. “Don’t you believe in umbrellas?” His smile looked slightly sinister. But he was so beautiful, I felt my heart soften.
“This is a bad idea,” I said. “I should leave.”
“Don’t be a little fool. At least come up until it stops raining.”
Dr. Pozzi took a key from his pocket and opened the door. We entered a small dark foyer. “I’m afraid it’s a long way to the top,” he said, nodding toward a narrow staircase.
We said nothing to each other as we climbed the creaking stairs. On the fifth floor, Dr. Pozzi pulled another key from his pocket and opened the door.
I stepped into a small salon. The burgundy brocaded walls were hung with colorful paintings in beautiful gilt frames. Sophie Tranchevent’s portrait of a young woman bathing had pride of place over the mantel. A small landscape by Filomena Seguette hung on the opposite wall over a table displaying a collection of Greek coins.
My bodice was soaked through to the skin, and I shuddered from chill and nervousness.
“I’ll get you a wrap,” Dr. Pozzi said. He disappeared into the bedroom and returned a minute later with a black wool shawl. “I want to explain why I haven’t written to you,” he said, draping the shawl across my shoulders. My heart quickened at his touch.
He took me by the hand and pulled me toward the settee. “You can’t imagine how busy I’ve been. I’m a slave to the Central Bureau. All the young surgeons are. We must wait until someone dies or retires before we can get regular posts at one of the hospitals. Until then, we’re on call to go wherever and whenever someone needs an operation. And for some reason I get the most difficult cases. Today I removed a fibroid tumor the size of a pumpkin from a woman’s uterus.” He searched my eyes for a reaction.
I was filled with longing for him but tried to fix my face in a blank mask. I’ve always been good at hiding my emotions—my daughter, Louise, would later call me le visage impassible, the poker face, and I was succeeding now with Dr. Pozzi.
He leaned over and stared deeply into my eyes. “My God, you are beautiful,” he whispered. “The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.” The next thing I knew, his mouth was crushing mine. He undid the buttons of my bodice and his hands moved over my breasts. Lifting my skirts over my hips, he lay me on my back and moved on top of me.
After we had made love, Dr. Pozzi stepped out to the balcony to smoke a cigar. I sat up on the settee and began buttoning my bodice. I considered removing it completely and retying my corset—one of the stays was pinching my skin—but just then I heard a key in the lock. The door creaked open, and a stout middle-aged woman walked in carrying several parcels—the maid.
“Good afternoon, Mademoiselle,” she said. If she was surprised to see me, she didn’t show it.
“Good day,” I answered. I smoothed my skirts, and when the maid passed to the kitchen, I ran to the balcony. The rain had stopped, and a shimmering rainbow rose in the sky. Dr. Pozzi puffed on his cigar and looked out over the carrefour de Buci with its bustling arcaded shops beneath eighteenth-century apartments.
“Your maid is here,” I said.
“Oh, good. Did she bring lunch?” He turned and, leaning against the rain-slicked iron railing, smiled at me. His calm manner was infuriating.
“If she’d arrived five minutes earlier, she’d have walked in on us!”
“But she didn’t, darling.” Dr. Pozzi blew a ring of blue smoke into the clean air. “Now, my love, let’s have something to eat.”
“I really should go.” I wanted to stay, but I was too embarrassed to face the maid.
“Will you come back on Thursday, same time?”
“Perhaps.” I ran through the apartment, not giving the maid a chance to speak to me, and out the door.
I did return the following Thursday, and every Tuesday and Thursday after that, for ten months. Soon I was no longer self-conscious around Dr. Pozzi’s maid, a kind, sturdy Breton woman who always behaved toward me with motherly concern. Indeed, she sometimes helped me lace my corset, and once she mended a skirt I had torn getting out of a cab in front of Dr. Pozzi’s building.
Dr. Pozzi always treated me tenderly, but looking back on that time, I see he wasn’t very interested in me when we weren’t making love. He chattered as much as an old peasant woman—I rarely got a chance to say anything—but the talk was all about himself.
He told me a great deal about his childhood. The eldest of two sons of a minister and his fragile wife, Dr. Pozzi had grown up in bourgeois comfort in a large house in Bordeaux. He lost his mother at ten, a tragedy which was one of the few things he didn’t want to talk about. He had three sisters, but Dr. Pozzi was the beauty of the family, tall and slender with creamy olive skin, delicate, even features, and masses of wavy dark hair. His friends called him la Sirène.
He was as brilliant as he was gorgeous, and at eighteen he moved to Paris to begin medical studies at the Hôpital de la Pitié. For a while, he lived with his wealthy cousin, a doctor who treated many of the Napoleonic royalty. The cousin introduced Dr. Pozzi to Princess Mathilde, his prize patient. She was charmed by the handsome young man, and he quickly became part of her inner circle.
When I met Dr. Pozzi in 1870, he was only twenty-five but was already known for his surgical prowess. He specialized in treating female maladies, and if you thought that his ardor for women would be squelched by looking all day at female private parts,
you’d be wrong. Dr. Pozzi was as famous for romance as he was for his looks and brilliance. Among his rumored conquests were several married noblewomen and Sarah Bernhardt, who called him Doctor Dieu.
Dr. Pozzi never mentioned his other women, and though it’s hard to believe I was once so naive, I assumed he had given up everyone else for me. I actually believed that we’d be married when I was older and he had received his surgeon’s title. He gave me a gold ring with six small diamonds, which I didn’t dare wear, fearing the questions it would raise with Mama and Julie. During the day, I kept it under my pillows. I wore it only while I slept. Though Dr. Pozzi didn’t speak of marriage, I regarded the ring as a sign of his honorable intentions. In return, I gave him a copy of Baudelaire’s poems bound in embroidered blue silk from a chemise of mine he had once ripped in a moment of passion.
Mama and Julie were never home when I left for Dr. Pozzi’s apartment at midday, or when I returned in late afternoon. Julie went to her studio every morning before eight. Mama usually left the house at nine, carrying a large case of calling cards. After paying a few visits, she’d have lunch at Bignon’s or Tortoni’s, followed by a little browsing in the shops. Typically, she returned at five. I always beat her home by at least an hour. Julie never returned before six.
That spring, my aunt had a painting accepted for the first time at the annual Salon. Her portrait of a young woman brushing her hair in front of a light-filled window was a superb example of Julie’s talent for color and composition, and she had high hopes it would win a first-, second-, or third-class medal—the top prize, the Salon Medal of Honor, was reserved for French artists.
On varnishing day, Julie left the house early to join her friends for breakfast in the restaurant adjoining the Palais de l’Industrie. Mama and I followed two hours later. It was a beautiful spring day, fresh and clear. A warm breeze swirled the air, and white puffs of clouds drifted in the sky. We arrived at the Champs-Elysées as hundreds of men and women streamed under the Palais’s massive arcade. The cavernous entrance hall was mobbed, and a great symphony of footsteps echoed on the cold flagstone floor. Mama and I pushed our way through the crowd to the fourth gallery on the left, where the program told us we’d find the “T’s”—the artists’ pictures were grouped alphabetically. Thousands of paintings, stacked row upon row, reached up twenty feet to the ceiling. White cotton had been stretched under the skylights to block the sun’s glare, and a diffused light filtered in, bathing the canvases in a soft, dusty glow.
I Am Madame X Page 14