by Susan Daitch
He looked extremely startled; clearly he believed I would burn my papers before he could get his hands on them. Would I have to sleep with a knife in the future? In that moment I indulged in another garish but in its own way realistic and threatening picture: in the middle of the night while moths flew into my reading light, might he put a gun to my head, forcing me to betray their location? Sylvie served dinner, a deaf and dumb machine. She carried plates, rattled knives and glasses, brushed past his chair while he drank noisily. Delphine was let in the back door and ran up to him. I felt besieged in my own house. I held back from telling him his time was up. (Leave after dinner. Leave now.) In my discomfort I decided to take a new approach, even if that meant being as cordial to him as possible, in order to see what he would do. I followed your example. Look at Lille, I used to be told, more flies are caught with honey than with vinegar. My smile muscles hurt. He was still paying.
Wasserbaum pulls Sylvie close to him, pushes her hair away from her ear and whispers into it. She turns her head so he has to hold her jaw in order to finish whatever it is he’s saying. She’s laughing, hiding her face in a cupboard so he won’t see her tremors of hysteria. But behind the cupboard door there’s a frayed bag of something white, flour or some kind of powder. It’s on the shelf that is level with her face, and the bag bursts when she accidentally shoves her nose into it. Whitened and sneezing, she looks like a snot-faced clown. Wasserbaum hands her a handkerchief and, embarrassed, turns to go. In the next room he bumps into me pretending to have a conversation with Delphine.
He pulled his chair closer to mine and began to describe a necklace of diamonds that were reported to have been as big as doorknobs. He made a circle, thumb touching index finger. Since the necklace had been broken up the original 647 stones were now scattered all over Europe.
“Marie Antoinette, accused of every kind of excessive passion, declined to buy the necklace, but through a great con, her name became linked to it. The diamonds grew to symbolize her twin addictions: sexuality and expense. In one cold strand, here was a symbol of avarice and degradation.” He rubbed his eyes for a few seconds while pronouncing her name. This gesture, like a tic, made me nervous.
He briefly put his arm around the back of my chair, posing and answering his own question, a condescending and annoying habit.
“Jeanne de la Motte, originally a barefoot girl who claimed descent from the Valois, managed in a few short years to climb up a society ladder, with one foot finally in the court at Versailles but the other toe weighted toward the poorhouse. Jeanne contrived a scheme to acquire the necklace. She found a milliner in the Palais Royale, blond and blue eyed, who resembled the queen. Un sosie, to quote Moliere.” He looked at Delphine, held her jaw in his hand. “A double, a second self.” He dropped the dog’s jaw and demonstrated by holding up two identical spoons symbolizing the queen and her double. A dented third with a differently scrolled handle served as Jeanne de la Motte.
“Jeanne dressed her as the queen; she only needed to pose in a garden for a few minutes during which time a man would approach her as if she was in fact the queen, and she would ask him to obtain the necklace for her. This man was de Rohan, the gullible cardinal who desperately wanted favor with the queen. Entirely taken in by Jeanne’s hoax, he believed he was doing Marie Antoinette a service by dealing with the jeweler. The queen wanted the necklace. He would get it for her. She would owe him a favor. The jeweler was only too happy to finally get the white elephant of a necklace off his hands.” The cardinal was a fork, the jeweler a butter knife.
“What did the double who would later claim complete innocence, think she was up to in the garden?”
I shrugged, although I knew how it would end.
“No one knows. The milliner disappeared.”
One of the spoons clattered to the floor.
“Jeanne destroyed the dress le sosie had worn in the garden, and in a few days the necklace was delivered to an accomplice. It was shortly broken up and sold all over Paris and London, never to be seen in its entirety again. The jeweler, wanting to be paid, approached the cardinal who still believed the diamonds had been delivered to the real queen. Months went by and no payment was made to the jeweler. Meanwhile Jeanne and her accomplice began spending the money indiscriminately, leaving a trail of consumption from a large estate in the Loire to pairs of silver asparagus tongs.” He pressed his fingers together as if they were pincers, opening and shutting, grabbing at the air, then reached over and pinched my fingers as they lay on the table. What am I? I’m asparagus.
“Sooner rather than later the scam was brought to light, and the con artists themselves seemed to sense that this was inevitable. Jeanne de la Motte, branded with a V, escaped to London where she wrote vindictive tracts against the queen, claiming she had indeed wanted the necklace all along. Revolutionary sympathies were stirred up.” He made a broad stirring gesture with his arm, knocking into my elbow, so that our elbows fit together like a set of quotation marks.
“The queen was accused of having sexual designs on all the participants in the scheme, and when they refused her advances, Marie Antoinette allegedly invented the necklace plot as an act of revenge. What a story. The queen was innocent, but made guilty by reputation. She was portrayed as a harpy, une orgiaste.” The knife, no longer identified as the jeweler, turned into the guillotine. He made a cutting gesture, not across the Marie Antoinette spoon, symbol of cupidity, but across his own throat.
“Blame landed on the queen and stuck there; her appetites gave the scandal a reason to be born. Remember, she’d not even been a party to it. Her name and interests encouraged the plausibility of the hoax and overshadowed the bold fact of its undertaking. Everyone knew she was surrounded by corrupt yes-men, but con artists were less on trial than the ancienne regime, and as we know, Versailles would soon be reduced to a prison cell memory.” He leaned back in his chair, balancing on the back legs. He’s not a big man, but I was afraid the wood would break under him, and so I pushed him forward. It was an old chair. He looked annoyed, but only paused for a moment.
“The queen provided an inexhaustible subject for court pornography.” Sylvie appeared suddenly, and he removed his arm from the back of my chair. Standing just as abruptly, he walked toward her while continuing to speak to me. “Were these libelous representations, or can we say that given the power to procure any man or woman she desired, she did so with a smile? Was she a devoted mother, wrongfully represented and much maligned? Or was she a woman whose actual life had little to do with the symbolism she acquired? Jeanne de la Motte was branded with a V, but perhaps it was Marie Antoinette who was more indelibly smeared. Perhaps not.”
I could imagine them laughing at me, an inexhaustible subject of ridicule and parody, and this might inadvertently flatter Sylvie, so patient and unassuming, even more. Able to procure anyone, I kept thinking. She knocked a cup off the table, and it smashed to the floor, spilling cold coffee. They bent over the mess, mopping at the spot on the rug.
“It’s my fault.”
“Let me, sir.”
I left the room quite piqued, I can tell you.
Why did he choose to tell me this story? Forks and dull knives aren’t the actors here. Which part was really meant to represent me? Cardinal de Rohan, easily tricked, or the queen, easily tarred? Which represented my beryl-eyed alloy of a houseguest? Clever Jeanne and the sosie are all the roles that remain to be meted out. I turned to the mineral section of a nature atlas and in distraction looked up the definition of beryl.
Emeralds are formed from beryl, a silicate of beryllium and aluminum, when chromium oxide is introduced. Beryl is found in granite. Crystallized in the hexagonal system, it is sometimes found in huge crystals; one as big as two tons was discovered in America. The alloy produced when beryl is combined with aluminum and copper is uncommonly strong.
From my window out over the steamy garden I could see Wasserbaum wandering through Star Films, picking up a glass star or a rusted saw. He was the
rocket in the moon’s eye, Méliès’s most well-known image, but unlike the moon, I’m incapable of tears.
He asked to see the attic.
“It’s hot up there. There’s nothing to see.”
“When I was standing in the drive I thought I saw a man’s face up in the window.”
“I’ve been upstairs. I heard nothing.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to look.”
I shook my head. “That part of the house,” I pointed to the ceiling, “is private.” He walked around me as if I weren’t there.
“I could check. The thieves might have come back.”
“Hunting traps are stored in the attic, and hornets’ nests grow from the eaves.”
He ignored me, and I had no choice but to follow him It grew hotter as we climbed, old lamps and cracked dishes lined the top steps; what would he think when we finally reached the top floor, the space directly under the roof? She’s a pack rat, a squirrel. Or let me describe the rooms another way: objects are so piled up in the corners of her house that you feel you’ve stumbled into a space which, though engineered by humans, resembles North American beaver dams. Boxes of things lay scattered around, my clothes folded on top of some of them.
There was no place else to sit but the unmade bed, and we both moved awkwardly like jointed shadow puppets. I tried to look as if I often had men up to the attic, always expecting them to sit close by, but my efforts at flirtation and seduction are drawn from an arid plane, a lack of experience, from memories so dim and rooted in another time as to be worthless. Feeling something hard under me, I shifted so I was really sitting on the thing. Wasserbaum moved closer, so I inched back as best I could in the few feet of space, knocking into a bedpost. The ceiling slanted close overhead. There was so little space to move around in. If he had kissed me I’d want to advertise that kiss so all scopophiliacs with eyes glued to binoculars or noses stuck to windows would be jealous, but the only view from the attic lunette is the ruin of Star Films. And no one can see in. As I squirmed around a leather case slipped out from under the mattress. I heard the thud and hoped he hadn’t recognized the noise. I said, It’s only Delphine. Somehow the thing did produce a doglike sound in its fall. He looked down, and I felt as if an accordion-shaped photoroman had unfolded in a fall from a chair. Each frame of this imaginary object represented a moment of personal embarrassment, yet I know a photoroman is a constructed thing, a montage made of drawings and colored-in photographs; a few images may be factual in some way, confirming an agreed-upon truth (gravity pulls downward, arms and legs grow in place) but other images confound me at every turning. I swiftly reached down to pick up the package of papers, but he kicked the thing with his foot so it flew out of my reach and into his corner of the universe. I grabbed at the papers, clutching an edge or two, but his grasp was firm, and he easily knocked me aside as if I were nothing more than a mosquito. He tried to pull up his pants with one hand; I hadn’t even noticed he’d undone them.
“It wasn’t my fault. Everyone agreed on that. Many still believe in Z’s innocence, it’s true, but I hadn’t spied for the German embassy or committed any crimes.” I tried to sound as if I were reciting facts, keeping my grip on the papers. “Everyone knows. It’s public record.”
“You stayed with Z and protected him long after he was found guilty.” This was a fact, too, and it seemed to matter to him although he didn’t sound particularly accusatory. His voice was distant, which made me feel even worse. It was as if my corporeal self were no more tangible than a voice at the end of a phone line ringing from Rouen or Marseilles.
I pulled at the case, but he held onto it, pants around his ankles. With one hand he pulled up his pants and yanked the case away from me completely. I reached out, and he pushed my dry hands away.
“I only served as a shadow who had no choice as to who I followed, I was of no real importance.”
“I don’t believe you. Everyone,” he said, “insisted it was someone else and not himself who was involved.”
“The generals were the most guilty of all,” I shrieked. “You’re making me into the Marie Antoinette wives of despots and criminals, rich men and presidents always are. I spent those nights in Saint Lazare prison. Can you imagine what that was like?”
“Others paid more dearly.”
“You should know, Wasserbaum.”
“How did you find out my name?”
“You shouldn’t leave your papers lying around.”
“You snooped.”
“You did a bit of looking around yourself. We’ll see what the next ten years have in store for you, Wasserbaum. At the time of the affair, some wanted you people burned in glass furnaces. Glass, so they could watch and be sure the job was done properly.”
In a few long steps he was out the door. There was a dressmaker’s dummy in the corner, moth eaten and fly specked. I’d left a hat on its head, and as I slept up here I’d come to think of it as a companion. Now it looked derelict and lewd.
Don’t write to me of betrayal and exposure. The construction of my life based on those letters will be hideous, she stayed with the miserable Z until the end, but you would have done me in much the same way. You often asked me why I kept the papers, but I couldn’t destroy them. They point the finger at me and away from me at the same time. What I mean is this: as long as no one read the papers, few remembered me very much. As long as I held onto them I disappeared, and time stood still.
The furniture, bed, desk, small bronze elephants, and looking glasses have been moved back to their proper places, and I’ve insisted Delphine be returned to her master. Let thieves steal what’s left. Tripping over damp bones is no way to end one’s life. Wasserbaum left his final payment on a table by the door, one of the spoons and the guillotine knife weighting the bundles of francs. I don’t know if he left the money under those things intentionally, hastily searching drawers for those particular pieces, or if Sylvie had left the silverware there by accident — the bell rings, she’s polishing, she drops the spoons on the nearest table without realizing the contents of the envelope they fall on top of. It makes all the difference in the world, but I haven’t been able to ask her. I’m sending half of this amount to you, and you will find the sum enclosed.
Claire
January 23, 1935
Inspector F. X. Barque
1, rue Jules-Cousin
Lyons
Dear Saturnin,
We were all distressed to hear of your mother’s accident and hope she recovers very soon. Zazie especially sends her regards and wants to let you know that she will post a duplicate of last week’s reports since you haven’t yet received the original. The city moves slowly. It has rained six days out of seven. You’re lucky to be away this time of year.
I have been working on the Francoeur/Charpin case, and find the track of stolen papers not so much a dead end as a street that may go absolutely nowhere anyone would want to tread. You smelled a rat from the moment you unwrapped the post, but I don’t think we’re so much knocking at rat holes as chasing paper ghosts and invisible ink.
First, after examining Claire Francoeur’s bundle of letters I decided to retrace some of the prominent footsteps. The way was clear: locate Claire’s house and those who knew her, call on neighbors — inquire whether they observed anything suspicious — then attempt to gain entry to her former dwelling. I took a morning train out to Montreuil, using this opportunity to review some of the evidence. A few questions pull insistently at my coattails. One, knowing that Wasserbaum was in pursuit of her papers (which meant her reputation) and could have little interest in herself, why did she let him into her house? Is vanity the only explanation? She didn’t appear a gullible or tolerant woman.
Second, why did she hide the papers in such an easily discovered spot? Was she tempting fate, thinking he couldn’t possibly find her desirable, however much she wished it, and so her bed was the last place he would look? If the description in the letter dated August 15 is accurate, the folio was lying ju
st beneath a sheet, not even under the mattress. Perhaps she had been reading them in bed the previous night and the incident occurred as she described it. Or was she lying to her sister in order to save face? Perhaps the letters were a lure that would turn out to backfire. For all but this last moment of his tenancy Wasserbaum was always only a few floors below. She took an inordinate number of chances with documents that meant so much to her. The papers were her black silk stockings, her backless dress.
Third, her sister must have a thin skin or want the papers so much that exposure takes a backseat. Claire’s picture of her is hardly flattering. Aspersions cast in her direction are quite damning.
With these questions needling me I was, at the same time, looking forward to taking a peek at what was left of Star Films Studios. As a child I had always wanted to watch a film in production, and if such a tour had been possible I imagined exactly what I would see: Méliès’s tricks occurring literally before my eyes. I dreamed of being selected for a part. He would pick me out of a crowd full of perfectly well-behaved, starched children. I want you, little boy, the slob, the one dripping a cherry ice down his front. I would step forward to be launched into a cardboard galaxy or a chemistry lab whose beakers and rubber tubing would give me the capability to pierce anyone who made my life difficult. I particularly recollect being mesmerized and frightened by The Diabolical Tenant. A man entered an empty room with a small valise from which furniture, possessions, family, and finally dinner flew out, settling gently into place only to be sucked back into the satchel a few minutes later when the landlord threatened. The films were frightening because of what was left out: logic, gravity, naturalism; yet they weren’t dreams. The physical tricks had actually occurred somewhere in the studio. Méliès made this film when he was about to be evicted himself. Have you ever wanted to disappear into a wall? It’s often occurred to me that if I could slip between particles of plaster and come out intact on the other side, many problems would be solved.