Liberty's Fire

by Lydia Syson

  Gran’mère had wanted to warn her, to protect her. She was worried it would happen again. But shame was part of Zéphyrine’s inheritance. What was the point now of pretending she didn’t know shame already?

  She tugged off her cap to reveal her hair, combing out the tangles with her fingers. She let her shawl fall a little from her shoulders, and pulled open her blouse to show some flesh. Then she ducked her head and raised her arm and had a quick sniff. Could be worse. Don’t think about it, she told herself, not quite believing what she was about to do, reaching inside herself for a bit of the old bravado, the spirit that made her grandmother shake her head and tut. It was hard to find. She felt so numb.

  Nothing mattered now except the money. Up ahead she saw a church, its curved back turned towards her: the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. It’s too late for you, the building seemed to say. Too late. You’re falling already. You’ve got nothing, and nothing to lose. Three more prostitutes passed, red petticoats flashing, ribbons at their necks. They stared right through Zéphyrine. They didn’t even see her as competition.

  On she walked, her footsteps mechanical, without direction. She barely knew she was moving her legs. They took her towards the vast cross so recently carved from the city’s ancient alleyways, towards its axis, its meeting point. Its stomach. Without realising it, she made for the biggest marketplace in France, to put herself up for sale.

  3.

  Anatole was heading in the very same direction. He strode along pavements so clean and well swept that in this part of town you’d never guess there was no government in Paris. He hurried past gilded restaurants whose tables were all but vacant, and food shops spilling out delicacies that no one was buying, where shopkeepers stood ready to pull down the shutters at the slightest alarm. Anatole was not far behind Zéphyrine, though neither knew this.

  Quietly, under his breath, he whistled the dancing violin theme of the overture, and his step became lighter. If I Were King was a perfect choice for the reopening: the opera had always been one of their most popular shows. Everyone loved the elaborate jewels, that exotic scenery. After so many months of freezing candlelit concerts in front of a lowered curtain, breath frozen on singers’ lips and audiences huddled in greatcoats, how glorious it would be to have all the costumes out again, the stage itself open at last! Soon they would set the theatre ablaze again with light and colour and warmth and song. Thawed at last, Anatole’s fingers wouldn’t let him down. He allowed himself to look forward to the distant buzz and chatter of an audience taking its seats as the orchestra tuned up, feeling the heat of the lights, and breathing in the mingled drift of scent and tobacco. He couldn’t wait to hear again the imperfect silence that always fell when the conductor made his appearance and prepared to raise his baton.

  Anatole glanced around, suddenly unnerved. An equally bewitching, waiting quality hung over these near empty streets right now. You’d think a wicked fairy had enchanted Paris and nobody had discovered how to break the spell.

  When he passed Zéphyrine a few minutes later, close to the gothic buttresses of Saint-Eustache, Anatole didn’t look at her twice. There wasn’t much to notice to be honest. Just another grisette plying her trade, and rather early in the day. What exactly was it that made him turn and look back? A sudden change in atmosphere perhaps, a tightening in air already taut with expectation. Something about to turn nasty.

  Two men, dapper in dark frock coats and top hats, jostled each other on the pavement.

  ‘What do you mean, you scoundrel? You did not see her first. We had just agreed a price, hadn’t we, my dear?’

  The taller gentleman tried to kiss the girl’s hand, but she stood as still as a statue. She wasn’t making a very good fist of it, thought Anatole. Why didn’t she say something? You have to be decisive in life. Make your mind up quickly or you’ll lose them both, he urged her in his head. But her eyes just kept darting from one man to the other.

  She was a skinny little thing. When Anatole looked more closely though, it was clear she’d have more to offer, if she’d had more to eat. She seemed to be pouting, but this was deceptive too: she had closed her mouth into a tight fake smile, and her lower lip was so full it stuck out despite itself. She stood half-turned, hand on tilted hip, skirt lifted to reveal a pretty ankle, yet there was nothing seductive in her clothes or her posture. A kind of horror was gathering in her gaunt face. Anatole wondered if she was about to make a run for it.

  Luckily for her, neither of her customers seemed to notice. They were staring at each other instead, aggressively brushing their lapels and rolling up their sleeves. They began to prance a little on the pavement. Tap, tap went their boots, echoing more loudly than they should in this strange new Paris, so free of its usual hustle and bustle. Shoulder to shoulder they circled, eyes smouldering and waxed whiskers quivering. One knocked roughly against Zéphyrine, and she let out a cry of alarm.

  She’s frightened, Anatole saw. She’s not used to this. He slowed his pace almost to a standstill, and went on watching.

  ‘Stop!’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘Stop, I’ll … I’ll …’

  And before he could think twice about whether it was wise to intervene in a dispute between strangers, Anatole was in the middle of them all, grabbing the girl’s wrist. He marched her out of reach of the fists about to flail, talking loudly and familiarly all the while. ‘Ah, there you are at last! And about time too. We have an appointment, I believe. Hurry up, now!’ And he muttered under his breath, ‘Don’t for God’s sake turn round, and please could you walk quickly, as I’m a little late. They can do what they like to each other, but I see no reason for you to get involved. Do you think I’m overdoing it?’

  Zéphyrine was too taken aback to reply or resist. He had swooped her away so quickly. Then she recovered herself, and promptly tried to pull away from his grip. ‘Oh for God’s sake let me go! What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m rescuing you of course. What does it look like?’

  ‘Well, don’t! What even makes you think I need rescuing?’ she spat at him, still struggling.

  Anatole glanced behind him. The two men were staring after them in fury.

  ‘The look on your face,’ he whispered. ‘And now the look on theirs. Quickly. Walk faster. Look up into my eyes, and laugh prettily.’

  ‘Laugh?!’ She glared at him, though kept hold of his arm. ‘What the hell have I got to laugh about?’

  He kept them both going at a brisk pace. ‘Surely you can act better than that. And if you can’t, well …’ No need to finish the sentence. He felt her shiver. He slowed down a little.

  ‘But I need the money,’ she protested. ‘The second gentleman had promised me five francs.’

  ‘I’ll give you six,’ Anatole assured her, silently cursing himself. Now he’d have to borrow again from Jules.

  ‘You’d bloody better,’ she said. ‘You owe me now. I’d been walking for nearly an hour, and then along you come and I lose two customers at once. How dare you?’

  It was Anatole’s turn to be lost for words. Such ingratitude. She was probably one of those Belleville girls, just the type his mother had warned him against. Not that – far enough away in Limoges – she had ever exchanged a word with anyone from Belleville of course. She probably didn’t even know where it was. Somewhere on the outskirts, she’d once said vaguely. One of the new arrondissements. And his mother called them ‘scum’, not girls. Thanks to the newspapers, everyone knew that type. Anatole would have abandoned this one then and there if she hadn’t looked back across the square one more time, and let out a whimper. ‘Hurry! They’re still following us.’

  An even bigger building loomed ahead: the vast glass cathedral of the marketplace, Les Halles.

  ‘In here.’

  Anatole whisked Zéphyrine in through the elegant opening ahead of them, and everything changed. The air was different in here. The light was different. Voices sounded different. It was another world, made by some magnificent god of order who had put a d
ome over the streets and caught up all the little creatures running around below to watch at leisure. The stallholders were close to packing up. Shouts and bangs and the crash of trolleys rang around the high glass covering. An hour later and the huge gates would be firmly closed.

  Zéphyrine stopped.

  ‘Where now?’ said Anatole, but she didn’t hear him.

  She was staring up at the roof, which didn’t block the sky but let it through. Cast-iron pillars rose almost forever, blossoming into garlands.

  ‘This way.’ Anatole dragged her along a passageway to the butchery area, and then into the first small alleyway leading off that. For a few minutes, they didn’t stop moving. Fast past displays of entire beasts: whole pigs and flayed lambs. A right turn down another walkway. More slowly past stalls hung with yellow-skinned plucked chickens, and geese suspended by outstretched necks, naked but for tail and wing feathers. Rabbits and hares up-ended, ears drooping, still in their furs; coils of sausage and blood pudding; glistening steaks; gleaming kidneys. Hearts and lungs darkest of all. Red against white aprons. Sawdust, but not enough, and knives flashing silver as they sliced through flesh. Carcass blood ran along the gutters, trickled into the drains. The smell of it here was overwhelming, its odour too rank this late in the day for Zéphyrine’s empty stomach to bear. Holding the back of her hand across her mouth, unable to speak, she pulled Anatole to another halt.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  She shook her head. If she’d been blindfolded and spun round, she couldn’t have been less certain which way to stagger next.

  He was beginning to get annoyed, at himself as much as her. Then he looked at her closely for the first time. Such dark circles. And red swollen rims. She looked as if she’d been crying for days.

  ‘You’re hungry,’ he said bluntly. ‘And when did you last shut your eyes?’

  ‘None of your business,’ Zéphyrine snapped back, when her breath had returned and she’d pushed back the bile. ‘And it’s not what you think.’

  She hoicked up her shawl, holding it tightly round her neck.

  Raising his eyebrows, he replied, ‘You don’t know what I think.’

  Neither did he exactly. She’d be hard to shake off now, in this state. He should never have picked her up. He didn’t know what had come over him. But she had seemed so lost. And look at her now, shivering as though she’d never stop. He’d better feed her at least, and get her warm, before he sent her packing.

  ‘I need something to eat myself …’ He turned away, and she followed.

  Anatole knew his way around the market like a stallholder and often took this shortcut to the theatre. Before long he’d picked up bread and cheese and a bottle of wine, and they were weaving their way between fruit and vegetable stalls, out in the open on the other side.

  Anatole looked around one last time to be sure they hadn’t been pursued. ‘Come on. This way.’

  ‘Where are we going now?’ Zéphyrine asked. ‘And what’s that? What’s going on?’

  She pointed towards the Hôtel de Ville. You could only see its grey slate roof from here, but right at the top of the City Hall, just where the three-coloured flag of the Republic usually flew, a bright red banner was streaming in the March breeze.

  He laughed. ‘Very funny.’

  She frowned.

  ‘You don’t know?’ Anatole shook his head, disbelieving. ‘Where on earth have you been?’

  Zéphyrine couldn’t tell him. ‘I – I –’

  But it didn’t matter. The news was so remarkable that Anatole rushed on. ‘The Central Committee has taken over the Hôtel de Ville.’

  ‘The National Guard? In charge of the whole of Paris?’ said Zéphyrine. She looked dizzy. Ordinary working men had only been recruited to the Paris militia, as fédérés, since the war with Prussia. They served in neighbourhood units for thirty sous a day, and the radical battalions, of which there were many, even elected their officers. These were the men now running the City Hall?

  ‘That’s right. For the time being anyway. And keeping things in remarkably good order, for the most part, as it happens. The government abandoned the place without a fight. Completely scarpered! And the army with it. If that’s not cowardly …’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Oh not far … to Versailles.’ Barely twenty kilometres away, south-west of the city.

  ‘They just went? Just like that?’ Maybe she wouldn’t have to pay the rent backlog after all.

  ‘The Central Committee has announced elections of course. And then we’ll see. Paris will decide. As it should do. If I’m honest, anything’s got to be better than that bunch of tyrants.’

  ‘And are you honest?’ she asked, suddenly suspicious, hanging back. Zéphyrine was on the very edge of flight.

  ‘As the day is long. Come on, this way.’

  ‘Can’t you just tell me where we are going?’

  The street opened onto another broad square: two wide grand buildings with golden arches mirroring each other, a fountain in the middle and, on the far side, a bridge over the river.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever been inside a theatre?’ he said.

  4.

  Zéphyrine drew herself up with every last morsel of dignity, and made for the main entrance of the Théâtre Lyrique. Then she felt a pull on her arm.

  ‘Not that way, I’m afraid. It’s the stage door for us.’ Anatole raised his violin case in explanation.

  She would never have noticed the unassuming wooden door at the side of the building. It led into a small lobby, where a scattering of cane-seated chairs bore the imprint of a great many waiting bottoms. Some vases of long dead flowers. An actual bottom, clad in black, waggled back and forth in slow, steady rhythm: a woman on her knees scrubbing the floor, ready for the new season. The doorkeeper, asleep under a newspaper, didn’t so much as grunt as they dashed past.

  Anatole wiped his brow theatrically, and flicked his wrist as if to show what a narrow escape they’d had, and then tiptoed exaggeratedly up the stairs.

  How odd that this man could almost make her laugh at a time like this. For a moment, Zéphyrine felt a kind of reprieve. His charm made her feel less of a whore. Even when he wasn’t smiling, you could see that was where his face wanted to go. And there was something so healthy about him: his skin seemed to glow.

  ‘We got away with it,’ he said, smiling again. ‘Come on.’

  And then the hollow drag in the pit of Zéphyrine’s stomach quickly returned. It wasn’t just hunger now, but fear. She had no idea what she’d got herself into, and no idea how to get out of it. He had promised to pay her though, and the thought of her grandmother – cold, still, waiting, not even a candle for company – kept her going.

  The inside of the theatre was disappointing. Zéphyrine thought the whole place could do with a good clean. A dirty streak curved up the wall of the winding staircase, smeared by a thousand nervous and sweaty hands. By the time they reached the top, her face was hot and glowing, toasted by gaslights. They plunged into a warren of dark and dusty passages and shadowy doorways. Distant, slightly alarming sounds came from all sides: the squawk of a clarinet, a burst of laughter behind a thin wall, a warbling high-pitched song going relentlessly up and down the same five notes of a scale.

  It would be easy to get lost here. Concentrate, Zéphyrine told herself: you might need to know your own way out. On they wound, up some flights of wooden stairs, and down others, and finally up some more. The corridor twisted through one door, and then another. The tantalising smell of the freshly baked baguette tucked under Anatole’s arm made her salivate.

  The dressing-room doors were numbered like a furnished boarding house. One, half-open, let out a stale, greasy odour, but revealed racks of gorgeously shiny clothing, glittering and bright. Zéphyrine glimpsed a hare’s paw, white-powdered, lying abandoned on a dressing table. Behind another door, an argument was raging.

  Anatole looked round to see if she was keeping up. Her hunger looked a lot like
wide-eyed wonder. It flattered him. ‘I could show you the stage from the wings, if you like. They’ve probably finished setting it up now.’ Sun-drenched beach scenery and waving palm fronds. He pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket and checked the time. ‘Hmm. Maybe later. Come on.’

  A cloth-covered door ahead marked the limit of backstage life. All at once, bare wooden floorboards gave way to carpets, and yellowing paint to green silk wallpaper. Zéphyrine couldn’t keep herself from stroking it as they passed. She had barely begun to take in the sudden change when Anatole peeped through a frosted-glass window, round like a porthole, and led her through yet another numbered door. They emerged into eye-watering gaslit brilliance.

  Zéphyrine gasped. It was another world again, this time made of crimson velvet and gold brocade, illuminated by glittering crystal chandeliers. They were in a box, a luxurious loge set high in the elaborate gilt-covered arch that framed the curtained stage, and which looked out into the vast expanse of the auditorium.

  ‘Well?’ said Anatole proudly. ‘It’s usually brighter than this of course. At least it always used to be. I’m sure they’ll turn the gas back on full when the season starts again. Not long now!’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No – we open on the sixth of April. And, even now, it’s not as bad as it was during the war. Of course the theatres were shut for quite a while, and then we were down to candles and oil lamps – very dreary – and you can’t imagine how cold it was. Well, perhaps you can …’ He looked away.

  All this luxury, thought Zéphyrine as she stepped forward, yet you’d struggle to see much more than half the show. She had a better view of the seating than the stage. Steadying herself on the soft velvet-covered balustrade, she looked out into the auditorium. It was vast, its circling balconies rising layer upon layer to an airy cloud-painted dome of a ceiling. So many empty seats below, all tipped up – waves in a crimson sea. You could pack thousands in here. Pairs of golden angels flew around the main arch, garlands of flowers looped between them. If Gran’mère saw this, she’d think she’d arrived in heaven.