by Edward Carey
“Two Swiss,” the men said. “It has been noted.”
“They are loyal citizens of France,” the widow said, “both of them.”
“They are from Switzerland.”
“This is their home.”
“They are Swiss. Switzerland is their home.”
“They have done nothing wrong.”
“We shall see. Two Swiss. It is noted.”
When they left the widow was shaking. “You will be safe. I swear it. Even her.”
“Thank you!” I cried. I had expected no such promise from the widow.
“Enough. I don’t wish to hear it.”
“But I do thank you. These are the first kind words you have uttered to me.”
“The first? Well. Enough. You have been useful.”
I could not believe it. “Useful, am I?”
“And, Little,” the widow said, “one thing further, while I may: you’ll want to know. Your princess is safe. They’re all alive, kept in the temple. Prisoners, but all alive. This news came several hours ago. You’ll want to know.”
“Oh! Thank you!”
“Now, get out of my sight.”
“Yes, I shall, I shall.”
“Then do it.”
To my master she said, “I don’t know the rules anymore, they change so fast. I can’t guess. She does. She knows more than I! Only she can make anything from these days. Only a creature such as that.”
What had come upon her for her to crack open like this? What danger must we be in, for her wind to be so blown out? She must fear our extinction, I thought. She must fear it very much.
Our welcome on the boulevard, it seemed, was swiftly running out. Florence Biblot, our cook, left us that morning. She said she’d never work for any Swiss. The next day other men came and asked many questions, and wished to see around the building and made many notes, and called my master “Swiss Curtius from Berne,” and no longer patriot or citizen. It was only because Jacques vouched for him that he was not taken away instantly.
Agents returned to the Monkey House daily, searching our rooms, looking for evidence.
“We’ve done nothing wrong!” cried the widow.
“You harbor Swiss.”
The Great Monkey House was reopened. The louisette had become the favored mode of execution throughout the country; an entire factory on the Rue Mouffetard was devoted to producing the machine. By now its name had been changed: when louisette reminded too many of the disgraced king, it was renamed the guillotine, after a doctor who had sought for many years a humane device of death-entering for criminals.
To deflect suspicion, the widow and my master put the most reviled figures together in the same part of the hall. The royal family was relegated to the old cage that had once held Lazare the baboon.
My master, on notice with official Paris, still longed to be seen in the Monkey House. “She’ll come to me, Marie, very soon now. She shall come to me. She needs me. Charlotte. Any day now, just knock, here I am. The walls are coming down.”
“I’m pleased for you, sir. She is most changed indeed.”
Leaving my workshop one night to visit the people who lived silently in the hall, I surprised the widow, kneeling beside the dummy of her late husband, sewing him up. When she saw me she grew agitated, and cursed me for prying; as she got to her feet she jostled the dummy, and it seemed to me I heard him clink.
One morning, I saw André Valentin, the young man with the squinty eyes, back on the boulevard, talking to Martin Millot through the gate. When I approached them, Valentin slunk off.
“What did he want?” I asked.
“Money, of course,” Martin replied. “Always money.”
“Is he starving?”
“He is hungry.”
“It is best to leave him alone. He is not to be trusted.”
“He is a Frenchman, nevertheless.”
On August twenty-fifth we lost five of our staff. They all went off to war, my brave Georges among them, along with thirty thousand others summoned by the Provisional Executive Committee to join the army. We waved them off, so many young men marching out of Paris, drums throughout the city. They never came back.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
“Model me.”
They’re killing them in the prisons.” Mercier had come to give us the latest installment from the city of Paris. “This very evening. As I speak to you now, prisoners are being brought forward, and are butchered, without trial, without mercy. These bloodied shoes turned me about and sent me running to you. You will shortly no doubt have many heads, Little.” There was such bitterness in his voice. We were sitting together in the hall, all of us, even Edmond.
“And Princesse Elisabeth?” I asked.
“Not the royal family, no. Priests, mostly, it is.”
“Really?” I said. “Thank you. I had better make ready.”
Edmond looked at me. I could not tell what he was thinking.
“Sit down, Sébastien,” said my master. “Drink some wine. We are glad you are here. There has been, in truth, a reduction in visitors of late.”
“Let me tell you about one person in particular,” Mercier continued. “Upon his body are the bleedings of many men. I do not think even he could say the exact number. He’s pulling them apart, hacking into them. Priests and aristocrats. His arms are aching.”
“Mercier, you make no sense,” said the widow. “Who are you talking of?”
“Doctor Curtius and Widow Picot, may I ask you: Where is Jacques Beauvisage?”
“Guarding the district,” said the widow.
“No,” said Mercier. “I’m afraid not, Widow Picot. Beauvisage is murdering priests who won’t submit to the Civil Constitution. He’s cutting them open. The life comes pouring out!”
“You must be mistaken,” said my master.
“Your bloody Jacques. I saw him.”
“No, no, I don’t think so.”
“He drinks much wine,” he said, setting his own glass aside. “He’s so thirsty, you see. It is hard labor murdering men.”
“I don’t think it can be true,” said my master.
“This place,” said Mercier, observing the wax physiognomies, “is a school for murderers.”
My master blanched. “We show only what is beyond our gates,” he said.
“But you don’t have to show it, do you?”
“We do! We must. The people demand it!”
“These heads will bring on more heads. You must cover them up! Put them all away! You must not show them. You must change this new statuary.”
“They are only what has happened outside, in the city.”
“You cheer it!”
“We observe it.”
“You duplicate it! You hold up the worst and keep it there!”
“There’s nothing more honest than wax. Everyone knows that. It can’t lie.”
That is truth. Wax never lies—not like those oil portraits in gilt frames I had seen all about the palace. Wax was ever the most honest of substances.
“Cover them up, I beg you!”
“But that would be lying.”
Mercier let out a sorrowful groan. “This city shall explode.”
Noise outside. The bell rang. A clot of people again. A different clot, but mobs always look the same. Another head had been brought for me, set upon the table, standing upright upon its neck stump. Blond hair! White skin! Pale gray eyes!
“Oh!” I said in shock. “This is something else. I knew this head! I spoke to it when it was living!”
“Hush, Little. Marie. Girl,” said the widow as quietly as she could, “cast it. You don’t know it. They’ll kill you for knowing it.”
“Is it . . .” said my master, helping me with the plaster. “Is it Elisabeth?”
“At first I saw just the blond hair.”
“Is it?”
“And oh, sir, I thought it was.”
“It is?”
“No. This was—this is some of the Princesse de La
mballe.”
“Oh, it isn’t, then. I’m happy for that. That’s something surely.”
“Her skin is almost pure white.”
“Think of it then as marble, if that helps.”
“But to know a head, sir!”
“On we go.”
“I’ve never known a head before! As if we’re getting closer and closer to them.”
“Come now, Marie, lift up the head.”
“There’s the weight.”
“Good girl.”
Edmond watched us, busy with the head, and did not look away. His eyes were very wide but he was not crying. He was sitting very upright and holding on to his seat. When our work was done and they’d taken the head out from the Monkey House, I saw Mercier seated in the corner. He was the one weeping.
“I should have left you in Berne,” Mercier said.
“Then I should never have known such beauty,” replied Curtius, looking at the widow.
“Oh, Little,” Mercier said. “Little cruelty, little knife, little bloodstain. How your face suits the age. How you do come into yourself: little nightmare.”
“Why do you say those things?” I asked. “Why do you insult so? What have I done to merit it? I didn’t cut the heads, did I?”
“Good-bye,” said Mercier. “I do not think I shall be calling again.”
Mercier was let out through the gates. He stopped, turned back, and kicked the building before he went.
“Happy enough to drink our wine,” said the widow.
“In truth,” said my master, “I never much cared for his head.”
Later that night, while we sat in the hall, the widow beside my master, Henri Picot’s bell was rung again. Jacques Beauvisage was on the other side of the gate, a saber in one hand and a musket in the other, asking to be let in. The words that follow were spoken in whispers (inside), and in roars (outside).
“He’ll murder us all,” said the widow.
“No,” I said, “he would never hurt us.”
“There’s blood on him,” said Martin Millot. “I see it.”
“Shall we let him in?” asked Curtius.
“He’s not himself,” said the widow. “He’ll butcher us all and then weep about it in the morning.”
“Jacques,” I said. “Our own bloody Jacques.”
“Model me!’” Jacques shouted from the gates. “Model me!”
“It’s against the rules,” the widow whispered. “We don’t model ourselves. We ourselves are not for display. We do not take part.”
“I’ve been busy!” called Jacques.
“He’s very drunk,” I said. “No, he’s not himself.”
“Best let him sleep it off on some doorstep,” said Curtius.
“What sleep,” asked the widow, “can sleep that off?”
“Busy! Oh, busy!” he cried. “These hands!”
There was a long silence.
“Has he gone?” asked Martin.
“I think so.” But then:
“Oh, help!” Jacques called out at last. “Help Jacques! Who will help Jacques?”
“I cannot bear it,” said my master.
“Little, help! Little!”
“I want to go to him,” I said.
“Emile! Emile!” Jacques whimpered.
“He is a little quieter. He’s calming,” said the widow, “but we cannot let him in.”
“What to do?” he wailed. “What to do now?”
“He’ll go away soon enough,” said the widow. “He’ll quiet down.”
“Family!” Jacques cried. “Mother! Father! Sister! Brother!”
“Jacques Beauvisage,” I whispered, “hush now.”
“I! I! I! Help! Help me!”
He screamed, a long hideous animal howl. All was silent, he was gone.
“Tomorrow, sir,” I said, “we must look for him.”
“Yes, Marie, he’ll be calmer then. I shouldn’t be surprised if he comes back later and sleeps by the gates.”
Jacques Beauvisage did not come back that night, or the next morning. Streaked with blood, he had thrown away the softness of his bed, had shaken off warmth and comfort, had cast himself and his agony back upon the streets.
That night the city was a very new place, and the boulevard had lost all its noise. Where carriages and people once coursed up and down in their business, now all was silent. The gates of the city were locked. Patrols of pikemen were in every street, banging on the doors. On the river, boats were positioned at regular intervals, with armed men inside who shot at whatever moved.
In the morning, when the city gates opened again, Curtius and I went out to search for Jacques, calling his name, whistling, shouting. We stopped people in the streets. We offered a reward for news of him. But that day, and for many days thereafter, none came.
“My Jacques,” said Curtius in grief. “My child! What happens if there are thieves in the night? Who will guard us now?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
No feelings.
While the gates around the city and all the shutters and all the windows were closed by order of the Commune, while certain essential streets of the city were lined four deep with soldiers, Curtius, the widow, Edmond, and I were sitting in the Church of the Madeleine, on the Rue de la Madeleine, summoned early that morning on National Assembly business. Having received the written order to appear, we had been up early, had washed and dressed ourselves carefully. Martin Millot had looked us over, brushed us down, made all our tricolor cockades stand out proud, then stepped back to look us over again, and sent us off with a wave.
“You’ll do,” he said. “What a day. You have all deserved this.”
Off we went. I turned around to return his wave, but my eye was distracted by a solitary figure on the street nearby, his high collar turned against the wind.
We spent that long morning at the Madeleine church, so many hours waiting that I nearly forgot why we were there. At last I heard a roll of drums, then a silence, and then a noise that hit the church windows like a massive clap of thunder, an enormous and sudden burst of cheering. We adjusted ourselves a little, sat upright, brushed ourselves down again. Shan’t be long now. Any moment now. What butterflies. Curtius’ stomach groaning. The widow sweating despite the cold. Edmond holding Edmond in his lap. We kept looking at each other, Edmond and I. But we carried on waiting, just waiting. Not saying anything.
At about ten thirty the gates of the city were opened again, and the day’s business could begin. Then shutters throughout the city were pulled back and people appeared at windows, people went about their ordinary business and bought vegetables and meat from the late-opening markets or drank coffee, had a game of chess, went back to bed. At about that same time, just after half-past ten, our package arrived for us. We were led outside. The major part was in a barrow; a pit had been dug in the churchyard, and quicklime was ready in a bucket. We received the parcel in a basket, and were bidden hurry.
“It’s missing most of its hair,” Curtius noted.
“Sold in little bushels,” said one of the men with the barrow.
I had it in my lap, the weight.
“You should hurry,” the barrow man said.
“I think your woman is crying,” said the barrow man.
“I do not think so,” said my master. “Marie, are you? This is not like you at all.”
“She shouldn’t be crying. It isn’t right.”
“We are anonymous, Marie,” said my master. “And we have no feelings at all. We could never afford feelings; they are other people’s business. You should know this better than anyone. How many heads have we done? Why this fuss now? We are newspapers. We record only. We are privileged, Marie, to see what we have seen, and this is the pinnacle of that privilege. Kings die too, in all sorts of ways. History records it so. And now we record it too. Fact. Fact.”
“Thank you, sir. I am better now.”
“And now, this is not right,” said the barrow man. “The old woman is crying too.”
>
The Widow Picot, impregnable fortress, had a spot of the king’s blood on her lap. She poked at it with her finger. Her eyes, it is certain, were watery.
“The king,” she whispered. “Oh, the king. What have we done to come to this?”
It was such a head that even the widow was unmoored by it. Edmond, having already lost his breakfast, sat shivering beside his mother, the cloth Edmond in his mouth.
Curtius and I settled down to work. We passed the head between us so that it might be cleaned a little: the width of the severed neck, the slice of the meat, the clots in it, the splinters of bone. I applied the pomade to the face, taking care not to open the eyelids. There was not much expression. A little wrinkling on the brows; the lips had to be pushed into position and held there. Teeth grated down by so much sugary pastry—no, not that, do not think of that.
“Robinson Crusoe,” I said, “was his favorite book.”
“Oil,” said my master.
“If they can do this to him, I think they might do it to Elisabeth, mightn’t they?”
“Plaster,” said my master.
When we were done they put the two parts in the simplest wooden box and covered it with the quicklime. I placed the dried plaster molds in Curtius’ father’s case, pending further instruction from the National Assembly. Those empty molds were more palpable than anything else Curtius had ever made. Then we set off for home, taking turns carrying the heavy bag. I wondered, as we walked, what we would do now with the wax models of the king, the one sitting at table that I had modeled after so many drawings and the one standing that I had cast from life. They were complete models after all, each in one large piece. It was wrong of them to be in one piece still; they should have come apart automatically after the king’s execution.
The widow took the bag from me.
“I’ll have it now,” she said. “You’ve taken it far enough.”