by Klein, S. G.
XII
‘Napoleon visited it about forty years ago,’ said Mademoiselle Haussé as we walked along the Allée Verte towards the Palace of Laeken the following week. She was dressed from head to toe in a green and black cloak topped off by a hat that bore more than a passing resemblance to a pheasant so alarming were the feathers that struck out almost of their own accord and at the most peculiar of angles.
We were a small party of five – Mademoiselle Haussé, myself and three of our students. ‘It is far too cold for a walk today,’ continued Madame Hauseé, ‘but Madame Heger would insist I bring the students out for some fresh air. I myself cannot abide the cold, it is not good for the bones you know and autumn is nothing if not a harbinger of winter so that I grow quite fearful when the leaves start to turn – ’
‘That is indeed unfortunate,’ I replied looking around me at the trees that were all in the process of turning a hundred different shades of lemon & orange. Occasionally a leaf would drift down, slowly descend as if floating through honey.
In the early mornings, frosts had begun to rime the edges of everything and mists shrouded the streets. Even now – as we walked along the main thoroughfare – people loomed out of the mists as if the earth had been tipped upside down and we were walking through cloud. ‘I have always liked autumn,’ I said. ‘There is something romantic about it – it is gentle yet not without darkness – ’
‘Romantic? What on earth is romantic about influenza, answer me that? Or suffering from chapped hands? Thin blood runs in our family, I believe it is a sign of good health but I would rather have thick blood. Thick blood keeps one warm and one is less likely to bleed to death if one cuts oneself or so I have been informed although can anyone believe what the medics say these days? I myself have given up going to doctors – ’
‘Given up? Indeed, that is very interesting’, I said knowing full well that Mademoiselle Hauseé had done anything but given up for only last week she had cancelled a history class in order to visit a certain Doctor Kraussman.
‘Charlatans the lot of them – ’
I quickened my pace. Our students who were dawdling some way behind, didn’t seem to mind that I was abandoning them. To my left the river lay in a giant, blue loop. Willows guarded each bank, their long copper wands upright as spears. Occasionally a wild duck or moorhen skittered out across the water, its wings nipping the surface like scissors.
When I reached the palace gardens I sat down under a tree and closed my eyes. In contrast to the past few days everything was peaceful. Sunlight danced on my eyelids, I could hear birdsong – a bonfire had been lit and the air was suffused with the sweet smell of damp wood-smoke. It would not be demoralizing to stay on in Brussels. Not now that Monsieur Heger had demanded I do so. Wasn’t that enough to convince me? Or should I have insisted I go? My mind chopped and changed between the two positions. Perhaps I was being singularly dimwitted. In my letter to Ellen I had tried to explain what had happened but there was so much I had omitted to tell her. The pain contained in Monsieur Heger’s voice, the torment that lay behind his eyes. My weakness. His fury. When I had finally left the room my head span with all the words that had been exchanged. I was exhausted but also a little relieved that my resignation had caused such a reaction. I returned to the classrooms where I taught my students until late in the afternoon at which point, rather than remain in the Pensionat, I decided to take a walk to clear my mind.
One of the teachers at the Pensionat ran a small bookshop in the city which I headed towards as a place of refuge, somewhere I could sit and rest for a little whilst trying to take stock of all that had happened.
Sunlight dappled the streets, I turned down one road after another as if in a dream, a haze of half-formulated plans and unfinished sentences. At one point I stepped from the pavement into the road only to be scared half to death by an oncoming carriage which had to swerve to avoid me.
In the bookshop I was acknowledged with a peremptory nod by the owner. I told him I needed a copy of Chapman’s Homer and he pointed me towards the back of the premises, to a second much larger room stacked high with row upon row of leather-bound volumes. Several other customers milled to and fro but they did not disturb me. Instead I located the Homer and took it with me to a chair where I sat down to read. The words blurred on the page. I tried to regulate my breathing. I would have to return to the school and talk with Madame Heger – that much was clear for although Monsieur might mention the fact that he had persuaded me to change my mind, she would need to hear it from myself.
I gripped my book tighter. Any audience with Madame these days was uncomfortable, but this would be a particularly difficult conversation to negotiate as the only excuse I could fairly rely on for my behaviour was the vagary of my own mind.
Deceit upon deceit. I had never felt more indefinite in my life. I stared down at the page I held open in front of me but the words wavered like water.
‘There you are!’ Madame Haussé’s voice interrupted my reverie as she panted her way towards me. ‘We thought we had mislaid you, didn’t we girls!’
The three students giggled.
‘You were walking too fast. It is not good for the heart, never mind who might see you striding along like that. But there you go …who knows what you English consider appropriate, I certainly don’t,’ she added no doubt referring to what everyone had seemed to regard as my ill-advised resignation – news of which had travelled more swiftly around the school than an outbreak of chickenpox thanks to the auspices of Mademoiselle Blanche.
When – the day after taking sanctuary in the bookshop I had gone to inform Madame that I no longer wished to leave – I had found her sitting by herself in the small classroom where she had been instructing some of her students on the finer points of embroidery.
Madame had not looked up from her desk when I approached; instead she had left it to me to begin the conversation, which I did somewhat shakily.
‘Madame, you will recall I handed in my notice two days ago. At the time I was feeling homesick but I have since concluded I acted badly. I was hasty to do as I did. I should not like to leave Brussels nor your employ.’ Here I hesitated hoping that she might come to my aid or show some sign of kindness. After all she would no longer have to advertise or otherwise look for a new teacher, but Madame Heger said nothing preferring instead to continue her examination of the samplers, whilst every now and again picking at some of the stitching or turning the piece over to inspect the back panel. ‘I hope I have not inconvenienced you? I only wish to do what is right.’
‘Do you see here,’ Madame pointed to a small corner of a handkerchief decorated with tiny blue forget-me-nots, ‘this girl – Josephine Danier – she never seems able to keep the back of her stitching neat. It is a pity because otherwise her needlework is good.’
‘She sews very well,’ I agreed.
‘Josephine is not in any of your classes, is she?’
‘I have heard the other teachers speak well of her,’ I said choosing my words carefully because I did not want Madame to misinterpret what I said then report back to Monsieur that I had been uncivil.
‘So you are no longer homesick? Only two days ago you said it was a matter of some urgency that you leave us –’
‘It was unfair of me – at such short notice – ’
‘Neatness is so important, don’t you think?’
‘I am sorry? – ’
‘If things are kept neat, no one gets in a muddle. One must start one’s work correctly, employing the right tools, choosing the correct materials, the proper shade of thread, the right needle but one must also finish one’s work neatly, tie everything up in the right manner. She will have to start this piece again.’ Here Madame picked up a small pair of scissors and began snipping at the forget-me-nots, pulling out the threads with her fingers and dropping the strands onto her desk.
When she had finished she tossed Josephine’s work to one side and grabbed at another sampler.
‘Mada
me, have you found a replacement yet?’
‘Now this student – Clara Haussmann – her problem is that her stitching has strayed over the hemline, can you see? This running-stitch is far too close to the edge - ’
I leant in closer. ‘Yes, I see,’ I said although I was finding it difficult because the stitching was so delicate and my eyesight so poor.
‘The border has to run parallel to the hem not over it otherwise the piece ends up looking as if a three-year old has stitched it – ’ For a second time Madame Heger picked up her scissors and viciously began snipping away at the threads. ‘Never stray over the line. The same could be said of so many things, could it not?’
‘Never stray over the hemline?’
‘Precisely.’
‘But it seems such a shame to unpick what the girls have worked so hard to achieve –’
‘So tell me, how are they to learn otherwise? You ask your students to make clean copies of all their work don’t you, after you have corrected it? Sometimes it seems we could all do with a bit more of that – a clean page, a place for everything, a right and a wrong way of doing things – ’ Madame stabbed at the cloth with her scissors.
‘A right and wrong way of doing things?’
‘Precisely– ’
‘I think I understand – ’
‘Do you?’ she said the scissors continuing to work their small violences across the fabric. A small furrow formed between Madame’s eyes. I had seen this look before; it was as if she were concentrating very hard on something far off on the horizon yet not quite seeing it.
Emily had said as much the first time we set eyes on Madame – that she was both engaged yet curiously uninvolved in everything that surrounded her. At the time I could not see what Emily meant. Now it was clear. Madame took pleasure observing people, checking up on them, monitoring their every move yet she had no interest in the people themselves, only in what they did, how their actions affected the smooth running of her school.
She was the perfect headmistress.
Observing everything. Touched by nothing.
Madame Heger stood up and crossed the room towards the door where – with her back still towards me – she paused.
‘I understand that Mademoiselle Haussé is taking a few students out to the summer palace at Laeken on Thursday. You will find it interesting, I think.’
That was all she said. It was not a request; it was an order. Moments later Madame Heger had opened the door then quietly closed it behind her.
‘Brussels. Saturday Morning, Octbr 14th 1843,’ I scrawled inside the back cover of an old geography textbook. ‘First Class – I am very cold – there is no Fire – I wish I were at home with Papa – Branwell – Emily – Anne & Tabby – I am tired of being amongst foreigners it is a dreary life – especially as there is only one person in this house worthy of being liked – also another who seems a rosy sugar-plum but I know her to be coloured chalk.’
Coloured chalk. Did that best describe Madame Heger? She was desiccated and dry, I knew that much and if I am being honest it amused me to think that one day she might steal a look inside my books and read that inscription. What would she make of it? Would she guess I was referring to her?
I blew on my fingertips. All of us were suffering from the cold that morning despite the two large stoves in the centre of the room being lit. I looked out over the bent heads of my students. I had my own class with Monsieur Heger later that afternoon. I had thought of little else for the past several days. Would he refer to our last meeting? It was not in his character to dwell on what had been said or done in the past and yet I knew that my resignation had brought with it great pain and confusion.
We had not spoken since – instead I had channelled my efforts into the piece I was writing for him, which I had entitled ‘From a Poor Painter to a Great Lord’ – a not insignificant heading given how impoverished I currently felt. Impoverished and wrong-footed. Perhaps that was why I found the essay uncommonly easy to write – or perhaps it was because my grasp of the language had improved beyond expectation.
‘My Lord’ wrote I,
‘I could begin this letter in the form of an apology but, from what I know of your character, I think you would favour a straightforward account of facts to a thousand commonplace excuses. My intention in writing to you is to solicit your patronage […] I am My Lord, a twenty-five year old man who has chosen to become an artist, who has just completed his studies in Rome, who comes to this country without friends and without family, and who has no other fortune than his artist’s palette, his paintbrushes, his craftsmanship, and the love of his art. Such is my position; I know how dangerous, how suspect, even how distasteful it is in the eyes of certain people who regard as shameful everything that is hazardous and uncertain. Why then have I chosen a career whose pitfalls I know so well? […] My Lord, I believe I am gifted. Do not be offended at my presumption or say that I am conceited; I do not know that feeble feeling, the child of vanity; but I know only too well another feeling, Respect for myself, an emotion born of independence and truthfulness. My Lord, I believe I possess Genius.
That declaration offends you, you find it arrogant. My Lord, I lived for a long time with others without any thought of comparing myself with them, I believed it my job to follow the example set by the majority of my friends, an example endorsed by the consent of legitimate and prudent mediocrity, yet all the while I felt myself incapable of feeling and action as they felt and acted. People found me always inept, always boring. There was always excess in what I did; I was either too excitable or too cast down; without meaning to, I showed everything that was in my heart. And sometimes storms were passing through it. In vain I tried to imitate the joy, the serene and even temper, that I glimpsed in the faces of my companions and found so worthy of admiration; all my efforts were however came to naught. I could not restrain the ebb and flow of blood in my veins, and that ebb and flow left its mark upon my physiognomy and upon my harsh and ungainly features; I shed tears in secret. Finally, a day came (I was eighteen-years of age) when I opened my eyes and glimpsed a heaven in my own soul. Suddenly I realized that I had a force within me that could serve as a substitute for that dignified calm which I had so much admired: I discovered that the heart holds certain things called feelings; I felt that those feelings were alive and deep within my nature, and that they were soon to make me both slave and master of all that pleases, enlivens and touches us in this glorious Creation; slave, because I was subjected by it to the point of prostration, master because I knew how to draw inexhaustible joy from it at will.’
I laid my pen down on the desk and re-read the passage with quiet satisfaction. I will not lie to you, I was proud of what I had written, proud and excited to see what Monsieur Heger would make of it for when I had first entered his study all those many months before I was concerned that my teacher would find both myself and my sister wanting, that his superior knowledge would daunt us. He had been forceful, demanding, tyrannical.
But so much had changed since then. Not on the surface, you understand - for in this respect everything remained the same, I was still Monsieur’s pupil, he was still my teacher. I sat at my desk, he sat at his, but underneath these appearances something had shifted. Time had passed and with its passage we had done and said things no one else would bear witness to so that if they peeked into the room at that very moment all they would see were two people engaged in the study of language, one with her head bent over her books, the other standing by his desk watching and waiting.
‘But you have barely corrected it,’ I said leafing through my essay in search of his comments.
‘You sound disappointed – ’
‘I am surprised, that is all. I cannot imagine it was without fault – ’
‘Without fault, no, but your language and grammar have improved – ’
‘And the content?’
‘The content was concise. The style was also good although it seems rather your own than an imitation. You hav
e a definite way of putting things, a certain way of approaching a subject that is quite unique – ’
‘When I first arrived you would have condemned such a liberty – ’
‘I wanted you to learn from your peers, to see how they planned and constructed and worked at their art. Their craft has become your craft, that is pleasing – ’
‘I am flattered,’ I said although being in possession of a contrary nature, part of me missed my master’s corrections, the familiar mark of his pen scoring out unnecessary sentences, adding vigour to my phrasing. ‘I still require tutoring. I still have much to learn from my teacher – ’
Monsieur Heger was leaning against his desk, arms folded, eyes resting directly on mine. ‘You are glad that you remained then?’
‘I am glad you appear calmer – ’
‘Calmer? You have a peculiar way of describing what is in front of you, Mademoiselle. I would not wonder if you were presented with a scene of mass carnage that you would describe how blue the sky looked or how frail the flowers in the hedgerows appeared.’
‘You find me so shallow? – ’
‘Do I?’ he said and then in a more forgiving tone, ‘Mademoiselle we shall continue to study together as always however I have much that is occupying me at the Athenée at present.
Madame Heger is also, as you know, close to her confinement – ’ these last words were spoken slowly, deliberately, yet he could not look at me as he spoke them.
‘Our time together is limited.’
‘You are very pragmatic – ’
I cleared my throat, ‘In that arena I am well rehearsed, yes. I expect very little – ’
‘You think your life impossible, don’t you? You think you inhabit harsh territory?
Inhospitable lands. Don’t deny it, I can see it in your eyes. But do you ever wonder what lands I inhabit? How hard it is to live in one place yet covet another?’