The General's Mistress

by Jo Graham

I reeled as though he had hit me. “Victor, I haven’t slept with Ney. I’ve never even spoken with him in private.”

  “Ney!” Victor threw the letter on the table. He stood with his back to me but his shoulders were shaking with fury. “I should have thought you had better taste, my dear. He’s as thick as a slab of Alsatian beef, but I suppose he’s well hung. I wouldn’t have thought he had the discretion to go meeting you behind my back.”

  “I’ve never met with him behind your back,” I said. “I told you, Victor. I’ve never even spoken to him in private.” My eyes were smarting, and I stilled my shaking hands.

  “‘But I don’t know how to fight the irresistible demands of my heart,’” Victor quoted. “Very passionate for a man you’ve never even talked to. You shall have to do better than that, my dear.” He turned and looked at me, loathing in every line of his face. “I am done with you. You are a treacherous little snake, like all of your kind.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Victor, you must believe me! I have never lied to you about this.”

  He slapped me across the face. It wasn’t very hard, but it was the first time he had ever struck me, even in play. “Lying cunt! Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I am so entranced by your beauty that I will be your dog? A laughingstock while you give it to that stupid yokel? While you give him what I am paying for?”

  I burst into tears, more from shock than pain. “Victor, please—”

  He seized me by the shoulders. “Out! Out of my house, bitch!” He hauled me bodily toward the door.

  “Victor, please listen to me. . . .” I was crying and grabbing at him.

  The astonished footman stuck his head in.

  “Your mistress is a lying whore,” Victor said. “This is my house, and she is leaving now. You are not to allow her to set foot in here again for any reason whatsoever. Nor are you to bring her anything or obey her in any way.” He shoved me at the door.

  I fell, grabbing at his boots. “Victor, please, darling, listen.” I pressed my face against his leg.

  He shook me off as though I were something slimy. “This is not a game. I am done with you, Madame.”

  “Victor, I should not have written that letter, but I have never slept with him! I’ve never even—”

  He shoved me and I fell outside, onto my side against the brick steps. “I am done with you. Done!” He slammed the door.

  “Victor!” I screamed. I got to my knees and began pounding on the door. “Victor, you ass! Come back here and listen to me!” I pounded and pounded and pounded. “Victor, please! I wasn’t unfaithful! I wasn’t!”

  I sank down on the step, shaking with every breath. My hands hurt. I looked down and saw with an odd sense of detachment that my knuckles were bloody. There were streaks of blood on my front door. And still it didn’t open.

  I stood up. “I hate you!” I screamed. No curtain moved, no window cracked. “I hate you, Victor Moreau! I wish I’d slept with every man in the French army! I wish I’d let every private in your command bugger me! Do you hear me, Victor?”

  There was no reply.

  “You’re a miserable, pathetic excuse for a man!” I yelled, tears running down my face, but it was fury that possessed me now. “You impotent aesthete!”

  The door did not open. Nothing happened.

  Night was falling. The stars were beginning to appear.

  “If you think I’m going to sit here and beg for you, you’re mistaken!” I screamed. “Open the door now, or forget about it!” I picked myself up and dusted off my skirts. Deliberately I walked out the gate and down the street.

  Several blocks away, I hailed a hired carriage.

  “Where to, Madame?” the driver asked.

  And I realized that I did not have my reticule, or any money, or anything except the afternoon dress I stood up in. “Madame Tallien’s house,” I said, giving him the address. Thérèse would be good for the cab fare.

  And she was. Thérèse was dressing to go out for dinner, but she stopped all her preparations when she saw me. “Darling! What happened to you?”

  “Victor and I had a terrible fight,” I said. “Thérèse, I’m so upset. I can’t bear to talk about it.”

  Thérèse put her arm around me. “My poor dear! How awful! Did he do that to your poor hands?”

  I sniffled. My hands did look terrible. “No,” I said. “I hit the door when I couldn’t get my hands on Victor.”

  Thérèse laughed. “That’s probably good luck for Victor. What were you fighting about?”

  “It’s so stupid, Thérèse.” I felt the tears beginning again, spurred by her kindness. “He thinks I have a secret lover. I don’t. I’ve never been unfaithful to him. I kept telling him that, but he wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Men can be awfully jealous,” Thérèse said.

  I took her hand. “Thérèse, can I stay here tonight? So that Victor has time to cool off?”

  “Of course,” Thérèse said warmly. “You’re always welcome. I’m afraid I have to go out. Constant will be waiting for me right now, pacing up and down at the restaurant, or else I would stay with you.”

  “I don’t want to spoil your plans,” I said. “Thérèse, if I can just make use of one of your guest rooms . . .”

  “Anything you need,” Thérèse said. “I’ll have my maid draw you a bath, and you can just relax and let Victor cool his heels! It’s all the game of love, Ida.”

  I managed a smile for her, though I didn’t feel it. “Thank you.”

  Thérèse went out, and I took a long bath. At first I lay there enumerating Victor’s sins. God, he was so stupid! And so was I, I thought. How could I have misaddressed the letters? That must have been what happened.

  I rubbed my face with my wet hands. And what had Ney thought when he got the letter for Moreau? I tried to remember what the letter had said. Nothing important, just routine household things, I thought.

  My eyes felt swollen with crying. I got out of the bath and put on one of Thérèse’s night-robes. It was short on me and ended halfway between my knees and my ankles, but it was clean and fresh. I went and lay down on the soft bed in her guest room. Tomorrow I would go talk to Victor and make him see reason. Tomorrow.

  I had not expected to fall asleep, but I did.

  In the morning, I breakfasted before Thérèse was awake. I felt much better for some sleep, and my dress had been brushed out. Her footman fetched me a hired carriage and I had it take me to my house.

  In the carriage I composed myself. Victor would be reasonable. He was a very reasonable person. I should admit my fault in writing the letter and promise never to do it again.

  As we turned into my street, I caught my breath. On the curb was a huge mound of goods. I leapt from the carriage. All my clothes, my books, my letters and papers, my shoes, everything was heaped in a huge pile for the garbage.

  I stood there dumbstruck, wanting to simply scream.

  In the gutter were all my tulips, each one pulled up by the roots, a pile of wilting greenery. I sank down beside them, crying. Each beautiful flower was torn out, bulb and all, simply because I had loved it.

  The footman came out, carefully not looking at me. He threw a box of my toiletries on the pile. A bottle of perfume rolled off and broke on the sidewalk, spilling over my underclothing, my crumpled houri costume, my sandals.

  I stood up and shrieked at him, “Marcel! What—”

  He flinched, but went back to the house for another load.

  “You bastard,” I swore through my tears, gathering up my white lawn wrapper, the book I had been reading yesterday, my shredded tulips, and clutching them to my bosom. “I hate you till my dying day.”

  The footman came back. It was my bath oil and cosmetics that he tossed on the sidewalk.

  I ran after him, planting myself in front of him, the trailing edges of my nightclothes in my arms. “Marcel, stop this now. Stop it, I say!”

  “Please, Madame,” he whispered, not meeting my eyes.

  I do
dged and stayed in front of him. “Marcel, why are you doing this? I was never unkind to you.”

  “He pays me, Madame,” the footman whispered. “The general pays me. He says it all belongs to him.”

  “I’m going to give him a thing or two about that,” I snapped, trying to push around him toward the house.

  “The general’s not here, Madame,” Marcel pleaded. “He left hours ago.”

  “After he destroyed my flowers,” I said.

  Marcel could hardly look at me. “Please, Madame. I can’t afford to lose my position. I have a family. He said he would dismiss anyone who disobeyed him. And I’ve never seen a man in such a temper before. I can’t imagine calling any woman the things he called you.”

  “Marcel, please let me in.”

  “I can’t, Madame!” His voice was frightened. “I can’t afford for him to let me go! I have four children, Madame!”

  I stepped back. There was no more pain. It was just a dullness.

  “I understand,” I said. “Of course you can’t risk your livelihood. The general will get what he wants.”

  Marcel looked down at the ground, his broader accent betraying his distress. “Madame, you was always decent to me. He told me to pile your things on the curb. But he don’t care what happens then. If you was to take some things away with you, how’d he know the difference from if some scrounger took them?”

  I nodded. “Thank you. Thank you so very much. . . .”

  I started bundling things together, all the ruins of my life. Bottles and one gilded sandal. The pins from my blue reception dress. The black corset I had worn when he got home last year. A new fan I hadn’t used yet with the sticks broken. I tied things up in my skirts. Books. Notes. My riding pants. Charles’s cravat, the letters from my cousin Louisa.

  I know I looked like a madwoman. I made the carriage stay and I piled things inside.

  “Hope you’ve got money for this, Madame,” the driver said.

  My reticule was on the bottom of the pile, the velvet ruined by the damp. But there was money in it. Not as much as I had hoped, but enough for the carriage.

  And I had a bank account. Not for the first time, I was glad of the Revolution. Women could open their own bank accounts that were their own property. Victor couldn’t touch my money in the bank.

  The money he had paid me.

  I ground my teeth. Paid me to be his whore. And despite all his protestations, that’s what it was. He was throwing me out like an overpriced whore.

  I couldn’t get it all. And it would serve him right if our play clothes rotted on the sidewalk.

  “Madame Tallien’s house again,” I told the driver.

  If Victor didn’t like that, it wasn’t his problem anymore.

  By the time I got back to Thérèse’s house, the sun was high and I was hot and sweaty. I got down from the carriage with my arms full of glass bottles and ran up the walk. Thérèse was just coming down the front stairs in a morning dress.

  “Can I borrow a footman to help me get things in?” I asked her.

  Thérèse did not smile. Instead, her brow puckered.

  “What?”

  “Victor is furious,” she said. “And I can’t risk it politically. It would be better if you stayed somewhere else.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. My heart was suddenly pounding. “What?”

  “Ida, you can’t stay here,” she said. “It just won’t work.”

  “Won’t work? I thought you were my friend!” I said. “Now you’re throwing me out when I have no place to go?”

  She frowned. “It’s just not a good idea. Victor is a hard man to have for an enemy.”

  “But you were my friend.” I just stood there dumbly.

  Thérèse almost shrugged. “Victor is the one with the power, Ida. Without him, you’re nobody. Don’t you understand that?”

  “I see,” I said. My jaw clinched, but I would never cry in front of her again. “It’s been nice knowing you, then.” I stalked back to the carriage.

  “No hard feelings,” Thérèse said. “You understand. It’s politics.”

  “Yes,” I said, and slammed the door.

  Thérèse shrugged and went inside.

  The driver leaned back. “Where to?”

  I gave him Lisette’s address.

  I had never been to Lisette’s house before. She had never wanted to meet me there, despite the fact I knew she didn’t live with a man. When I saw it, I understood why. It was a fourth-floor walk-up in a run-down building near Porte de Clichy, a neighborhood full of workingmen and Jews.

  I went up and knocked while the carriage waited. It took a long time for her to answer the door.

  “Hmm?” she said. Her hair was mussed and she was wearing a robe in the early afternoon. “Ida?”

  “Can I come in?” I asked, my voice breaking a little.

  Lisette took a longer look at me and her eyes opened wide. “Ida? What happened to you?”

  “Moreau threw me out,” I said bitterly. “Literally. With the clothes on my back. And then threw my things after me. They’re downstairs in a hired carriage, and, Lisette, I swear I wouldn’t have come here and I would never have presumed, but I don’t have anywhere to go and Thérèse . . .”

  I started crying again as she put her arms around me. “Oh, Ida! Of course it’s all right! Come in. Or hold on a minute—I’ll dress and help you bring your things up. Things like this happen!”

  I returned her hug. She was little and round, unwashed and smelling of last night’s perfume and last night’s sex. “I can’t even start to thank you. . . .”

  Lisette patted me on the back. “There’s plenty of room. I used to have a roommate, but she moved out with her man. Are you flat or do you have a little put by?”

  “I have some money in the bank,” I said. “I can split costs with you. I promise I wouldn’t take advantage of you that way.” There were two bedrooms and a sitting room between, with a fireplace in the sitting room. In the winter, the bedrooms must be freezing. Her furniture was newish, but obviously inexpensive. The gilt was gold paint.

  Lisette bustled around helping me bring in my things and hang my clothes. Some of them were ruined, but most were salvageable. “One option is to go on the stage. That’s what most women do. There are some bit-part trials at the Théâtre de la République next week. But they aren’t going to pay much.”

  “I still have some money,” I said. “I can make it stretch. Not a lot, but for a little while.”

  Lisette looked me up and down. “You might do for one of the Greek extras. And you don’t have to have experience for that.” She met my eyes. “And I always have a friend of a friend. There are always plenty of people willing to pay for an introduction to a woman with your looks.”

  “For an introduction?” I said cynically.

  “That’s what you call it,” she said. “After that, you work out your own terms. But you don’t mind kink. There’s a lot of demand for girls like that.”

  I nodded. “If I need to. But I’ll try the stage first. I’m sure I can get parts, once I get a chance.”

  Lisette smiled gently. “That’s what everyone says.”

  Auditions

  I wrote to Victor two days later.

  Dear Victor,

  You have been very unjust to me. You know perfectly well from the letter you received by accident that I have never slept with Ney, nor indeed kissed him or been alone with him or exchanged any tender words. You can see perfectly well that I have never been unfaithful to you with him.

  Your reaction is completely out of proportion to my supposed crime.

  Yes, I should not have written to him. And I will humbly apologize to you for that. But for you to act as though I have been unfaithful is beyond reason.

  Ida

  He did not reply.

  I went for the trials at the Théâtre de la République the next week. There were nearly a hundred young women there for six parts—six lovely Greek slaves who were supposed t
o fill out the background and go about pretending to serve at the couches in the symposium scene.

  I did my recitation from Phèdre, the seduction of Hippolyte. Three other girls did the same piece. I sat in the hot theater watching them. The youngest must have been about fourteen, the oldest well over forty. They wore everything from schoolgirl frocks to pseudo-Greek drapery. There were blondes and brunettes, one stunning redhead with a thick Breton accent and skin like cream, a dark girl with gypsy looks, and one girl who was actually African with tightly curling black hair, who spoke her lines (Ismene, from Antigone) with the very best Parisian accent. She must have been brought here as some aristocratic woman’s pretty slave years ago. The Revolution had freed her but given her no livelihood.

  She came and sat in the row ahead of me when she was done. I leaned forward and whispered to her, “You were very good.”

  She looked back and smiled at me. “Thank you. I didn’t hear you. I’m sure you were good too.”

  I shrugged. “I’m Ida.”

  “Dorée,” she said. We might have whispered more, but the manager turned and shushed us. Not wanting to make a bad impression, we were very quiet.

  In the end, she was chosen. So was the redheaded Breton, and four other girls. I wasn’t. By that point in the day, I had not expected to be. I was a very ordinary blonde, with a very ordinary dress and a very ordinary recitation.

  I wrote to Victor again.

  Dear Victor,

  I am sorry for my fault. I should not have written to Ney. It was foolishness, the kind of childish infatuation that I should have resisted. Please forgive me.

  We were very happy together, weren’t we?

  Ida

  He did not reply.

  I did trials at the Théâtre Populaire the next week. Summer had come, and the theater was stifling during the day. I had learned a new piece, a comic one this time in anticipation of the Molière they planned to produce. I knew I hadn’t gotten it when I left the stage. I was stiff and my comic delivery was poor. In short, I wasn’t funny. And it seemed that the more I tried to be funny, the more I was only frenetic and desperate.