French Passion

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “Where are you going?” he asked drowsily.

  “To look in on CoCo.”

  “That,” he said, “is a duty of the nursemaid.”

  “I am the nursemaid. Izette’s brother is ill.”

  He raised up on his elbow. “What ails our crippled scholar?” The Comte, in his oddly random generosity, had given Joseph books from his own library.

  “The grippe,” I said. “Well, and some bedbug bites.” This last was a joke. Doesn’t everyone from time to time get the little red marks?

  But the Comte was out of bed, naked, gripping my arm. “Send for a doctor,” he ordered. “Immediately.”

  “It’s almost midnight. And he has the grippe—”

  “For once you’ll do as I say! It’s been a hot summer and God alone knows what diseases are breeding.”

  “Comte, the boy never goes anywhere. He must have sat in a draft or—”

  “Send for a doctor,” said the Comte in the icy commanding tone he used with recalcitrant lackeys.

  Old Lucien, in his gatehouse, was roused to get our doctor. The doctor sent him back with the message it was too late to visit a servant. The Comte dispatched one of his liveried coachmen. A few minutes later the doctor, a gray little man, was mouthing apologies as I led him up the narrow steep flight to the attic servants’ quarters.

  By the light of the flickering chamber stick, the doctor gave one look at the feverish boy.

  Turning pale, he whispered his diagnosis. “The smallpox.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Izette and I wound through the dawn streets on our way to the hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu. I’d insisted on coming with her, fearing she might need my help to get her brother admitted. Last night, when the Comte had laid down the law, saying Joseph must go to the hospital, I’d protested. “You know only the very poor and very ill go to a hospital.” “What else is he but very poor and very ill? First thing tomorrow I want him in Hôtel-Dieu!” So here I was, in a Paris that I’d never before seen, the early-morning city of want.

  Shawled women lined up outside the bakers’ doors to buy small, sour, expensive loaves of bread. Scarecrow children pumped water. Drowsy beggars raised beseeching hands while I looked the other way, for I’d long since exhausted my coin purse. Some men, their clogs thundering, trotted to work, but others, the unemployed, gathered at corners, aimless, hopeless, their red wool caps the sole color in the drab morning.

  Izette and I turned onto a broad avenue. Here everyone was heading in the same direction. Some pushed wheelbarrows with a form covered in thin blankets. Others helped a shawled, slow invalid. We stepped aside for a wagon driven by a man with a pale, frightened face. The wagon was closed.

  “There ain’t a face showing,” Izette said. “Ma’am, do you think they all got the smallpox?”

  “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “They say the smallpox is the same as the great pox,” Izette said.

  “That I know isn’t true. The great pox is the English disease. Syphilis.”

  After that we were quiet. A terrible, sweet-foul odor clung to everything. As we neared the gray prisonlike walls of the hospital, the odors were so thick that I held my handkerchief to my nose. Outside a large wooden door, invalids and their escorts waited. Nobody spoke, as if voices might spread contagion. Izette and I took our places in the line. The healthy man ahead eyed me with apathetic lust, and an orderly glanced hungrily first at me, then at Izette’s voluptuous bosom.

  After an hour in the slow-moving line, we were admitted into the stone hall. In a latticed wood enclosure a nun sat writing in a registry. She didn’t glance up. “Well?” she asked.

  “It’s my brother,” Izette said. “He’s took with the smallpox.”

  “No beds for charity cases.”

  Izette was reaching into her fichu, taking out a kerchief. In it coins were knotted separately for safekeeping, small coins, painfully hoarded for her dream of a country cottage. “I can pay,” she said.

  “Whatever the cost,” I added, “we want a bed.”

  At my well-bred accent, the nun looked up. She took in Izette, neat in her dark nursemaid’s clothing. Then she stared at me with open-eyed curiosity.

  “The patient is your servant?” she asked.

  “My friend,” I replied, lifting my chin.

  The nun had a pinched, weary look. “A few minutes ago a woman died in bed number four. Across there.”

  The odor in the courtyard was worse. I gagged. Freckles stood out on Izette’s face. Three women oblivious to the foulness, capered—they were dim-witted yet not mad enough to be locked in the lunatic dungeons below the hospital.

  A ward ran the length of the Hôtel-Dieu, and as we were admitted, Izette gasped. I fought not to vomit. The odors were overwhelming, human waste mingled with mortified flesh, sweat, unwashed bodies, and the hard, flat smell of death.

  But it was more than just the smells.

  The church-large floor was so tightly packed with bodies that you couldn’t see the straw. Bodies on the floor contorted into grotesqueries of suffering or death, with here and there a hand reaching up. Fat, lazy flies swarmed. A stout nun, her habit covered by a large apron, moved slowly down a line, picking her way to avoid bodies. Behind her, a pale novice raised up a patient’s blotched face to hold a water cup to cracked lips, then moved on to hold up another bespotted face.

  Every patient was a mass of eruptions.

  The beds ranged along the walls had magnificent tapestry curtains, but the linens were dark with pus. In beds meant for two, six men, women, or children were spooned together. In the nearest bed, a priest was administering the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, and over the disembodied groans, I heard, “Go forth from this world, O Christian soul.…”

  The stout nun came toward us. “Paris has an outbreak of the smallpox,” she said. “We’re meant to conceal how many have been stricken. Otherwise there would be riots. As it is, no doctor will come. The smallpox is worse than in seventy-three.” Her tone was despairing, yet with a hint of pride, as if an outbreak of pestilence enhanced the Hôtel-Dieu.

  There was a stir behind us, and loud groans. An orderly had set down a tiny bespotted old man on another body.

  A man tugged at my skirts. “Water. For the love of God, water.” Vermin ran over his pustules.

  Another tug, and a feeble girl’s voice pleading, “A chamber pot, please.”

  From the odors I knew chamber pots rarely arrived in time. “A minute,” I whispered, raising a hand to an orderly.

  Hôtel-Dieu, I thought bitterly. This is no mansion of God, it’s Hôtel-Diable, mansion of the devil. All who enter must abandon hope. They are doomed.

  Izette’s hand gripped mine. “Oh, ma’am,” she whispered, “ma’am, to bring him here …”

  A determination was hardening inside me.

  The gentle crippled boy had never harmed anyone in his life, but had he committed a monstrous crime, I couldn’t condemn him to this place.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  In the courtyard, where the three idiot women still danced in a circle, Izette and I drew long, deep breaths. Earlier this air had seemed foul, but now it smelled sweet.

  “He’s not coming here,” I said.

  “Ma’am?”

  “The toolshed’s dry,” I said. “And the weather’s still warm. We’ll clear out the tools and put in your cots. That is, if you’re willing to nurse Joseph.”

  “Willing?” she cried, her plain face alight with joy. Then her happiness was extinguished. “The Comte said—”

  “The shed is behind the coach house and stables. A safe distance from the house.”

  “The Comte’s a man. Still, he ain’t just being cruel. Anybody who brings us food could catch the smallpox.”

  “There’ll be no danger of that,” I said firmly. “We’ll just leave the food outside.”

  “So we’ve made the toolshed quite comfortable,” I ended. “I can’t send Joseph to that place. I can’t obey you,
Comte.”

  It was Friday night, and the Comte, Aunt Thérèse, and I were supping alone. I’d called off my salon. I’d sent a note to Jean-Pierre describing what I’d done, telling him not to hurry home for the canceled soirée. Jean-Pierre, by the same messenger, had returned a letter ordering me not to let Joseph remain on the grounds. He’d added that the unrest had worsened, and the Royal Guard was to remain on duty indefinitely at Versailles Palace.

  The Comte set down his fruit knife. “So, my pretty angel of mercy! Listen to me, my dear. This isn’t a matter of generosity. Or obedience. It’s plain, simple facts. Nobody knows how the smallpox travels. It might be a disease that flies through the air. It might travel in the body humors. Corpses may carry its taint. Touch may do it. Smell? It could come in our food. The one thing we do know is that the smallpox does travel. Are you listening? Good. Of every hundred people who get the smallpox, thirty-three die, thirty-three are horribly disfigured with the marks, and the other thirty-four recover with reasonably minor effects. Would even your brother, gambler that he is, take those odds? No. He has the brains to stay in Versailles. Now. Tell the wench to get her brother to that bed in Hôtel-Dieu.”

  Aunt Thérèse, who was sitting opposite me, held a hand to her heart.

  “Manon,” she said through pale, trembling lips, “you know I’ve never in my life turned out a servant, but in this case you have no choice.”

  “How can I send him to that hellhole to die!”

  “It’s a law of nature,” the Comte said. “From time to time the poor are winnowed out. I suggest you don’t mess with the natural order. It’s unprofitable. The lad probably will die anyway.”

  “You talk as if he’s an insect!”

  “We don’t nurse insects, and we don’t nurse peasants or servants,” said the Comte.

  Aunt Thérèse, still holding her hand to her large, soft bosom, said, “Manon. Think of CoCo.”

  What else had I been thinking of all day? My CoCo. Laughing, showing her seven milk-white teeth. Yet there was memory, indelible memory, of bodies contorted with beseeching arms thrust upward. Since I’d been in Hôtel-Dieu a dull horror had gripped me. I would have given all I possessed to forget. Having been there, I couldn’t forget.

  “CoCo’ll be in no more danger than before,” I said. “Comte, I’m not as ignorant as you think. A nun told me the smallpox is everywhere. In this house, at least, we know it will be far away, behind the stables, in the tool-shed.” I put more strength into my voice than I felt.

  “Ah, now your bravery!” His tone was mocking. “Let me tell you from my army days of fighting Prussians, useless bravery is the cruelest waste. You’re risking your life, your beauty. And your child’s, too. The prize, of course, is well worth it. A crippled peasant who’ll die anyway.”

  He used his napkin, rising. He was not spending the night. A matter of delicate diplomacy concerning England had arisen, and tomorrow morning, early, King Louis’ ministers would meet in Versailles Palace. We went into the hall. As I opened the front door, sconces flickered and one candle went out. All mockery had been wiped from the dark, clever face. He gazed at me with bewilderment, as if he’d never seen me before and wished to learn my features by heart.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said quietly. “The boy could be removed by force.”

  “But you won’t do that to me, Comte.”

  “Not if you promise one thing. Don’t decide until morning. Tonight, think over what I’ve told you.”

  “That place was awful.”

  “By tomorrow the memory’ll blur, and you’ll get up and tend the child. You love her too much. You’ll look at her and remember my words. A third die, a third are horribly disfigured. You’ll think of the danger to her.” He put his arms around my waist and shoulders, drawing me to him in a quick, hard kiss. There was the smell of brandy and perfume. “Promise to wait?”

  “All right,” I said.

  His lackeys handed him into the coach. Iron wheels struck bright sparks from cobbles. The sound of the carriage faded into the warm September night. One reason I could never understand the Comte was that he invariably behaved according to his station. Tonight was no exception. He’d thought only to protect me. As a member of his class, he looked down from a great height at the lower orders: he was remote from Joseph and Izette—but how could he not hear their cries or see their tears? How could he condemn a helpless crippled boy to the hell called Hôtel-Dieu?

  Sighing, I went back to take coffee with Aunt Thérèse. Old Lucien stood over her.

  “The serving wenches be afraid,” he was saying to my aunt. Old Lucien spoke to me only when it was absolutely unavoidable. “Madame Thérèse, none of them be willing to risk the smallpox to take that slut and her brother food.”

  “They’re to leave the tray a few feet outside the door,” I said.

  He repeated to Aunt Thérèse. “They be afraid.”

  “Then you must do it,” she said.

  The old man shrank in such fear that he tripped on the footstool.

  “I’ll do it,” I said, not thinking, certainly not remembering the promise I’d just made to the Comte.

  “Manon!” Aunt Thérèse gasped.

  “It’s just carrying a tray of food into the garden, Auntie.” The promise is broken, I thought without guilt. Tomorrow I’d’ve come to the same decision anyway.

  “But CoCo,” she said. “CoCo?”

  I closed my eyes. “As long as I’m doing this, I won’t be able to tend her.…” My voice trailed. My anguish was so great that physical pain filled my body. “I won’t be able to go near her.…”

  “Manon,” I heard Aunt Thérèse say, “Manon, are you all right? You’re dead white.”

  I opened my eyes. “I’m perfectly fine, Auntie. Old Lucien, tell them in the kitchen to have the tray ready. I’m going upstairs to the nursery.”

  I stayed almost an hour, kneeling by the brass cradle that CoCo had practically outgrown. Seeing me, someone might have imagined I was praying. I wasn’t. I was watching my daughter sleep.

  Rain fell, washing autumn dust from trees and bushes. The shawl protecting my head had slipped off, but there was nothing I could do about it. A loaf of bread was tucked under the arm that held the heavy iron soup kettle, and with my other hand I balanced clean linens topped with a phial of medicine.

  For two weeks now I’d been making this trip.

  The worst two weeks of my life. Other than my trips to the toolshed, I kept to my Chinese-wallpapered bedroom. I hadn’t talked to anyone, or been near anyone. I hadn’t gone near CoCo. My room was in front. Each afternoon Aunt Thérèse and one of the serving girls would take CoCo for a walk, and my day centered around the minute when my daughter stood in the courtyard waving her plump hand up at my window. Jean-Pierre remained at Versailles on duty, and the Comte had been dispatched by King Louis on a secret mission to King George III.

  I turned at the stables, calling along the path, “Here I am!”

  The windowless shed had a double door. Izette, who kept the upper part open, would close it when I called out to warn of my approach. Today the top was already shut. The rain, I decided.

  I moved closer. As I set down the kettle, soup sloshed inside. “Izette,” I called, setting the round loaf and the medicine phial atop the linens. “How is he?”

  “Ma’am?” she whispered. Her voice sounded weak.

  “I’ve left some unguent. The apothecary said to smooth it on morning and evening, to heal the scabs.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Izette?”

  Again no reply.

  “I’m leaving. Take the things right in. Otherwise, rain’ll soak the bread, and the linens, too.”

  There was only the hush of rain falling. Every other sound was absent. Normally the neighbors’ dogs barked when I rounded the stables. Today they hadn’t. The stable boy usually whistled off-key, and the horses whinnied and stamped. The stillness terrified me. What lay behind that warped door?

/>   I heard, or imagined I heard, a faint rustling murmur.

  “Izette, is Joseph … is he dead?”

  The only answer was that rainy hush.

  Cautiously I moved along the narrow dirt path, resting my hand on the door handle. Don’t, I thought, don’t. I withdrew my hand, pulling the shawl over my head. Rain plopped onto the woven wool. The Comte is right, I thought. I can’t risk CoCo’s life, Aunt Thérèse’s, the servants, my own life. Go back, run.

  Izette had sounded so weak. Izette, my other self. Izette, my friend, my only true friend.

  I grasped the handle, pulling. Hinges protested. The door swung open.

  Inside it was dark. I blinked several times before I could see, but just before my eyes became accustomed to the lack of light, I inhaled that flat, heavy odor.

  Death.

  Cots stood on either side of the shed. On the left the coverlet had been drawn neatly over the body and face. On the right, Izette tossed and mumbled wordlessly. From here her pocks were clearly visible. No small red dots like on Joseph’s face. These great, oozing blisters covered her face, her neck, and the magnificent breasts she’d bared in her delirium. She was shivering violently.

  “Water,” she mumbled.

  I moved to the table, pouring water from the stoneware pitcher, holding her up so she could drink.

  And then, in horror, I realized what I’d done. I’d condemned myself to become one of those statistics the Comte had given me. I had only one chance in three of emerging unscathed. Yet even as fear weakened my legs, I couldn’t keep back a thought: If I were Izette, someone would have been paid enough to risk nursing me. It is only the poor who die in pestholes, or alone and unattended. I took the mug from Izette’s cracked, oozing lips.

  “Aunt Thérèse,” I called up at her windows. “Aunt Thérèse!”

  A window was pushed open, and her linen cap poked out.

  I said, “Joseph is dead.”

  Aunt Thérèse crossed herself.

  “Izette has the smallpox, and I’ve been in there, so I’m staying to nurse her.”

  Aunt Thérèse, paling, held onto the window ledge. I expected her to faint, to topple onto the path near me.