by Edward Carey
Jacques was waiting for me at the gates. I was glad to see him, but he had two black eyes and a cut on his forehead, and he was stiff and awkward with me. His fierce-looking boy was beside him, similarly bruised.
“Did they hurt you, Jacques? Oh Jacques, I’m very sorry if they hurt you.”
“Can’t hurt Jacques,” he said. “Can’t be done.”
As the coach began to move, I thought only of love. I had loved Edmond Picot before he was taken away from me. Now I had a heart in one pocket and in the other a spleen. And that was all the proof I needed. I had imposed myself upon the world. I had left little marks in wax. She will send for me, I thought, she is certain to send for me.
“My cupboard!” I called. “I want my cupboard!”
But my cupboard was locked from me, and I could never get it back.
BOOK FIVE
1789–1793
THE PALACE OF PEOPLE
When I was twenty-eight, until I was thirty-two.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
In and out.
Jacques stared at me as we journeyed back into Paris, likewise his crop-haired boy. If there was to be any conversation, I saw, I must be the one to make it.
“Who’s your friend, Jacques?”
“This is my boy. This is Emile.”
“Hello, Emile, I’m very happy to meet you. I’m Marie.”
Emile curled his lip.
“He’s just like you!” I exclaimed. “You used to do that!”
“He does copy me a bit. I don’t mind. He’s my boy, he’s paid to help me out.”
“He’s paid, is he?”
“We all are.”
“What changes there must be, and so many new people.”
“Oh yes, it’s much bigger than before, and I have my Emile, and we do get along wonderful well.”
Emile growled at me.
“She’s all right, Emile, she’s a friend. Been gone so long.”
“I’m here now.”
“Yes. There you are.”
I thought at first that Jacques Beauvisage had put on weight, but it was not fat he had accumulated, I think it was fondness. He had grown an attachment; parenthood had put a tiny touch of softness to his face. In my absence he had found somewhere else to put his love; it was only fitting, I suppose, but still it smarted.
Back into Paris we went, along the crooked, crowded streets, more dismal than I remembered, all the way unto the boulevard. And there it was.
The Monkey House, grown so large in my absence.
I was shy of it. It was like seeing an old friend after a decade, once slender but now gone over to corpulence. Once young, now middle-aged and thick with it.
There was not one but two great doors at the front, one labeled IN, the other OUT. Our old neighbor on the boulevard, the Little World Theater, had been pulled down and onto its land the Monkey House had spread. To the right, on the fallow ground where the chess café had once stood, more additions had been built. All this progress was protected by tall metal fencing and a large spiked gate, which Jacques ushered me through. High atop the gate was hung the old bell of Henri Picot. I walked toward the door marked IN, but before I climbed the steps Jacques took my arm.
“Back way, Little. Come through the back.”
I followed him to a side door and entered territory unfamiliar to me: plain walls, dirt floors, boys running back and forth deep in business. Near this back entrance were several stacked shop dummies. I knew these! They were the last remnants of dear Edmond Picot, gone over to the Ticre printworks. One of the mannequins had a mustache. I was shocked to see them. Jacques tugged me on.
“To come this way,” he said. “Now to come. Must not keep them waiting.”
There was Florence Biblot in the kitchen, still shiny and now with more folds and creases, and with a small, thin girl in an apron helping her.
“Hello, Florence!” I called. “Do you remember me? How I have missed your cooking!”
“Ddddd, dddd,” she said, giving her little laugh, just as before.
“Now, Little, come fast. Must not upset them.”
I was taken into a study. The floor was dotted with metal pails, many of them filled with cigar ash and stubs; the walls and the large desk in the center were covered with prints, portraits of different people. Jacques told me to wait there and was gone.
I’ve done this before, I thought; it’s like my first day at Versailles. Only what a different place this was, what a different room. A moment later, the heads on the papers seemed to shiver in terror as the door opened and the Widow Picot entered. She was massive and mole-ridden, proudly hairy, profligate of eyebrow and of lip, a great handsome toad in a pretty dress, indomitable, brutish, and bad-tempered. Her hair remained tied up, out of sight beneath her great lace bonnet, but her clothes, I noticed now, looked a little dirty and careworn.
“What a nerve to show your face,” she said. “Why should we have what the palace spurns?”
“I want to go back,” I said. “I’d rather not stay.”
“But you never can go back, spit, so buck up.”
The door opened once more, the heads on the pages shivered again, and here, done up in silk and powder, came the cadaverous form of my own dear master, quite wasted away, his clothes and jewelry new and shining but cloaking something old and hurting. The beauty spot, now migrated to his chin, did little to improve the spectacle.
“Dear Widow Picot,” he said.
“Doctor Curtius.” She nodded.
“Quite well?”
“Fit! Fit!”
“I prosper myself.”
“I am glad of it.”
From which I understood that the widow and my master did not see each other every day.
“She is come back.”
“I wish to return to Versailles,” I said.
“But they won’t have you, Marie,” my master said. “They sent you home.”
“I’ve told her already. She wouldn’t believe me.”
“Elisabeth will call for me,” I said.
“What trouble you have caused,” chimed in the widow. “It was Swiss Guards that hit Jacques. His head was bleeding. People from your country!”
“I am sorry for it.”
“I should think so!” she said.
“Am I to do the hairs, as before?” I asked.
“You shall do what you are told,” said the widow. “You may have come from a palace, but here’s another, one called the Great Monkey House. I don’t want to hear anything about any other.”
“No, madame.”
“I’m afraid you cannot have a key to the wax cupboard, Marie,” Curtius added.
“Certainly not,” confirmed the widow.
“There is still more for you to learn, Marie, but there are so many heads and hands to be made that you must be thrust into service.”
“I must?” I asked. “Thank you, sir. I do thank you for that.”
“Don’t get above yourself,” added the widow, “and don’t go where you’re not needed. The attic is dangerous, the rooms are not safe. Step up there and you’ll fall to your death. The architects of the Great Monkey House have advised us never to let anyone step up there.”
“No, madame. Please, sir, madame, may I ask something? Will you be showing the royal family at dinner?”
A silence before the widow muttered, “There must be some compensation for Jacques.”
“You will, then?” I whispered. “You will!”
“I don’t like her noise, I never did.”
“And I shall be paid like anyone else. Now I shall be paid?”
“I am done with this interview,” said the widow. “I was not looking forward to it, and it has put me in a foul temper. I’m stepping out. I’ll return this evening. It may not be until late. Send a boy if you need me. I’ll be with the better people.”
She left, taking words away with her. My master and I stood looking at each other, neither knowing what to say. At last my master, stroking his beauty
spot, muttered, “She’s gone to the Palais-Royal. She has rooms there. She is blessed by the Duc d’Orléans himself, who gave his permission.” I said nothing. He continued. “She’s mostly there these days, smoking her cigars. We keep all the best waxes there, all the good humans in polite society. It’s very grand, actually. Such an address and such rent! While here we have all the criminal and dreadful countenances. You see? Only the bad here, all the good there. She looks over the good people and I master the other tribe. It’s an accommodation, you see. It’s how we live these days: divided.”
“It has all grown very much since I left, sir.”
“Yes,” he said dolefully, “we do prosper.”
“Excuse me, sir, I can’t help noticing. There’s something on your chin.”
“Is there?’” he murmured, touching the dark circle. “Oh yes, I quite forget it’s there sometimes. It’s supposed to make me look more attractive.”
“And does it, sir?”
“I wear it for her. Do you know, Little, it cost me thirty-five livres? It’s the very best quality, you see, black taffeta. I’m never quite sure where to put it. Sometimes I have it on a cheek, at others upon my upper lip. Recently it has come to rest upon my chin, where I think it is happiest. But it’s scarcely worth the bother, Marie, for she never notices.”
He went silent again, then let out a long melancholy sigh, shaking himself a little. “Come with me, then.”
As we walked, not into the old Monkey House but through a part of that swollen building I had not known before, I asked him, “Did you like the heads? My heads? A little?”
“I am a collection of pains and twitches.”
“We’ve come a long way from Berne, sir.”
“Berne? I do remember it, Little. Yes, a long way—and yes! I have come so far.” He was walking faster now, as though we were being chased. “May I tell you something, Marie? I have been discovered. I am the great leveler. I equalize the people, you see. People have written about me—and I have read it!—and that is what they call me, Little, the great leveler.” Then his eyes fell back on me, and it was as though he were waking from a dream. “Oh! Dear Marie,” he said, looking me in the eyes and smiling at me for the first time, “I should not say it in front of her, she is so mighty, but I am happy you’re home.”
“I am glad to see you too, sir. But, also, I will say that I am sorry to leave the palace. I grew so fond of Elisabeth and she of me. I think I must go back again, very soon probably. You will spare me, won’t you?”
“Versailles is being emptied, Marie. The aristocrats are packing up.”
“Are they? Are you sure? Why would they? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know if anyone does, except the widow perhaps, she studies that world so. No one understands it better than she. Everything’s in chaos, Marie, haven’t you heard? People are being very argumentative. I wish they wouldn’t be, but they are. It upsets her so. Monsieur Mercier runs around as if he has the worms. Nothing is certain.”
“Was it for my own good, then, that I was sent away?”
Curtius didn’t seem to hear me. But then he asked: “Did she love you, your Elisabeth? How nice to be loved. Come along.”
Versailles, packed up? Could such a thing be possible?
I wondered if anything would ever be certain again.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
A new beginning.
There are heads, new heads to be thought about every day,” said my master. “The Monkey House has grown so big, we can’t stop it now, even should we want to. Through there, Marie, is your workshop.”
“My own workshop?”
“And with you, every day, will work Georges Offroy.”
A boy stepped forward.
“Hello, miss,” he said, bowing.
He was addressing me.
“Hello, Georges. I am very pleased to meet you.”
What a cheerful, healthy face, what crooked teeth. I liked him instantly. An ordinary thirteen-year-old boy. Since when did I know such creatures?
“I’m to do what you say,” he said. “I am at your service.”
“I’m very glad of it,” I said. “I didn’t know I was to have an assistant. I’ve never had one before.”
“I mean to do well by you, miss.”
“And I’m sure you shall.”
“I saw your royal heads before they went off to the Palais!” he exclaimed. “They’re famous, they are! What heads!”
“Thank you, Georges!” I cried. “And that’s where they are? At the Palais-Royal! My heads! May I see them?”
“You must get on, Little,” my master said. “You must be busy. So much to do!”
My workshop was a small room connected to my master’s on the ground floor of the new extension. A store cupboard that had been cleared and outfitted with a table and two chairs. It had no access of its own; it could be reached only by going through my master’s workspace. There was one window, high enough that I should have to get a chair to look through it. But it was my room, my workshop.
That first afternoon, my fingers touched all those tools and jars, even wax. Georges and I were to make some wax hands for a figure my master was finishing, while the heavy body was being assembled in a different workshop. Great spades of hands were our first charge, huge sausage fingers, and so a large baker from Charenton who fit the bill had been brought in to have his hands cast for a fee. The head for the fat hands was very pockmarked, with a huge, unkempt, clotted wig. He looked like a lion gone to seed. The Comte de Mirabeau was his name.
That first day, those fat hands so occupied me that after a while I almost forgot to think about Elisabeth in her corridor with her plasterman. My mind was on other things. As we worked, I turned to my assistant. “Excuse me, Georges. I don’t mean to pry, but are you paid for your work?”
“Certainly, miss, regular like clockwork. I shouldn’t stick around otherwise. I go to the counting room and am given my due. It’s good employment.”
“Do you think I shall be paid, Georges?”
“’Course you shall.”
“Do you think so! I wonder, Georges, if you would show me the counting room. It’s new since my day and I don’t know how to find it.”
“I’d be happy to. Right now? Certainly. Nothing simpler.”
We went along the corridor and turned a corner and suddenly we were in the old house I had known so well. As we climbed the stairs, we were greeted by the dummy of Henri Picot, now wearing a fine white shirt and a silk waistcoat of bold stripes.
In the place that was called the accounting room stood a tall metal strongbox. The body of this cold personality was filled with the Cabinet’s great fortune. There were three keys, I would learn: one for the widow, one for Curtius, and one for the bookkeeper. This very bookkeeper was perched upon his high stool when we arrived, a man in his middle twenties, prematurely balding, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a pasty face lacking warmth.
“This,” said Georges, “is Marie Grosholtz. And this, miss, is Martin Millot. He keeps the figures.”
Martin pointed at my spectacles and said, “Twenty livres.” Then, after a moment: “You lived at the palace.”
“Yes, I did.”
“For which there came fifty livres a month,” he said.
“Fifty livres!” I wondered at such a sum. It seemed to me a great deal.
“We make that in a few hours sometimes.”
“Is the money mine? That came from Versailles? May I have it?”
“Have it?”
“Since it was in payment for my services.”
“I have no authority to release such funds.”
“But it was for me, was it not? For my wages.”
“That may be, but I have no authority.”
“Excuse me—will I be paid now?” I said. “Now that I am back. Am I to have a wage?”
“I have had no word of it, either one way or the other.”
“The royal family at dinner—I made the heads. They we
re my work.”
“Were they? And what then?”
“Shall I not be paid?”
“What do you want me to say, miss? I’ve had no word of it, neither for nor against. Without word, the money does not migrate. How miserable you look. Don’t trouble yourself so much, I say, it’s not my doing. I add, I subtract. I cannot say what sort of figure you are. I ask you, please, to calm.”
“Shall we return to our work, miss?” asked Georges.
“I suppose we must, Georges,” I said.
“Do not be so down, miss.”
“No, Georges. I had just hoped.”
We had been working for several hours, and the evening had come on, when there came a growing humming in the building, followed by a shaking of the objects in the room.
“It’s the public,” explained Georges. “The doors have been opened, and they’ve come in. We generally get shaken around a little, tossed and turned, until they go. It’s a good noise really, the widow says so. She calls it prosperity.”
The whole building rattled with the life of people from beyond the gates. A little later, my master put on his coat and went out.
“He often goes out in the evenings,” Georges told me, “with Jacques and Emile.”
“Where do they go?”
“I couldn’t say exactly. Dark places, cock pits and such, dangerous drinking holes where there are fights, murderous places. But now that he’s gone, would you like to see them all? There’s a spy hole.”
Georges took me by the hand down the back stairs and along a dark corridor. Another new man passed us by.
“What are you doing, Georges?” he asked.
“Just showing Miss Grosholtz around.”
Did I need showing around my own old home? I did.
“Should you be doing it?” The other boy’s face came into view, half-sunk in his abundant collar. He had a severe squint, and his eyes were placed so far apart on his head that they seemed entirely unacquainted with each other. “I’m not sure you should.”