The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R.

by Carole DeSanti

  “She’ll need me for a while longer. Could I stay with you for a bit?” I remembered Jolie’s lecture, that two inscrits could not share lodgings, although I didn’t understand why not. “I know we have to be careful.”

  “Mmmm. I’m glad you’re here, anyway. It was lonely before.”

  Jolie did not lounge under street lamps, kohl-eyed and spotted with rouge, but made herself into an indescribable sort of person. Her dresses had theatrical touches but were still demure. Plum-red silk rustled over colored petticoats and jet-buttoned boots. Her hat, veil-less, was trimmed in black velvet; her hair swept up and scented with men’s cologne that she kept in small stoppered bottles. She carried a knife in a soft leather casing in her boot; never wore a shawl or a cloak in any weather or carried a handbag; yet she glittered like a soft, shimmering jewel. Before going out she poured two neat brandies into thin-stemmed glasses; drank one and then the other. If it was raining, she took a large black umbrella.

  Down the stairs, Jolie greeted all the neighbors with a Good afternoon, madame, or How are you today, monsieur? She took soup to the old ones; sometimes brought in flowers or tobacco, laughing at her little bribes to old Madame Boudet, who, she said, would happily march down to the Préfecture herself, were it not for Jolie’s bits of shopping. When she reached the street she tipped her nose up, as if to see how the wind blew, and when she came home, she hitched up her skirts and dumped out the contents of her pockets—dozens of them, sewn into her seams and a sash around her waist. She divided the money into piles: bills and coins in orderly stacks. Jolie had a circle of regulars, and the odd one out; she didn’t seem to be partial to any one of them. On the rue Jacob, around the corner from Galopin Vins Fins et Ordinaires, was a room—I wasn’t sure from whom it was rented. Jolie joked about the “poor Brigade boys,” by which she meant the gray coats of whom I’d been so afraid, and I assumed someone had to be paying them off.

  When she rattled the key in the lock, Clio made a graceful leap off the chaise and abandoned my lap for the door. Jolie looked flushed and sparkling, vivid with her hair and her colors. She’d had a reading lesson with Louise; she always looked happier on those nights.

  “So, what have you been doing all evening?” she asked.

  “Writing.” My usual scatter of nibs and ink pots on the table.

  “To that Chasseloup? He’s your ticket, probably lonely and drinking himself to death. All along, he enjoys your services, makes a fortune off your face, and suddenly he’s high and mighty? And you let him off the hook. Anyone would say he owes you.”

  “No, they wouldn’t, Jolie. No one would say it.”

  Tears welled up and spilled over. The evenings were long, too long, with thoughts circling and jostling, contending like fighters in a ring. And also, my sittings with Mademoiselle C had taught me what I knew, but half-denied. My defiance, my careless-seeming courage was not, in fact, true acknowledgment of my situation, but partly an inability to accept it—and to plan for it. I had refused the ergot and the angel maker to defy Françoise; to cling to some vestige of the past. Now life was calling me from childishness to womanhood and I wanted to shirk, shrug it off. My divided Selves, somehow, had navigated my path thus far—and even now, I could not speak with a single unified voice.

  Jolie came around the chaise and sat, lit a cigarette. Dumped Clio into my lap to stretch out her neck and start a rumbling purr, from deep in her creamy orange belly. A velvet sleeve brushed my cheek, a hint of men’s cologne.

  “Well, I say it.”

  “I wasn’t writing to Chasseloup.”

  “What, then?”

  “Just—a sort of diary. I feel like I’ve been—split down the middle, drawn and quartered and divided up until there’s nothing left. Ever since I came here, really. And now—soon—this baby.”

  La Maternité was the place poor women went when their time came. Peak-roofed, high-gabled, overgrown with shrubbery; I had even seen a young woman cross its wide, dark threshold. I took some comfort from its looming presence, its very existence a testimony to my situation. To read the papers, one would think only women with christening-cup collections gave birth, but La Maternité put the lie to that.

  “I’ve been thinking about it. Remember my friend Victorine? She was turned away there and at Hôtel Dieu, and ended up having hers on the Pont Neuf. To get into the hospital you need two character witnesses, a certificate of morals, proof of residency—and then they do their best to kill you. The place is so filthy, even Françoise has given up on it.”

  “Really?” I closed my eyes and Jolie rested her arm around my shoulders. My back ached, and I couldn’t breathe. These days I could not sit, or stand, or lie down—could do nothing, it seemed, but wait to burst like a rotten melon—and I tasted salt again; it couldn’t be helped.

  “Come lie down, you are in a terrible state.” Jolie scooped Clio under one arm and took my hand. I sank the bulk of my poor body into her mattress while she unbuttoned the back of my dress. “You should be sleeping here. I’ll take the chaise. No—really.” She put a drop of oil and cologne on her palms and began to rub my back, then the stretched, hot skin of my swollen belly, with her cool hands. The tears came like a flood, in great gulping sobs.

  “When my brother, Henri, left to join the army, I felt as bad as you do. And not just any army—he was just a thief from the Paris slums but he wanted to join the Turcos and go to Africa, and he did. I never believed he’d go, but one morning he was gone, just as he’d said. He left, and then I had to learn to be strong. I thought I knew all the tricks, but I just had to learn them all again. Thought I’d die for sure. For a while I wanted to.”

  “What did you do, Jolie?”

  She was silent for a moment, considering.

  “Well, figured out who my friends were, to start. Real friends, not just those with their own interests at heart. I had to learn to tell the difference. Make the best of both.” Jolie had a talent for it. At Deux Soeurs and outside—I could see that much through my haze of misery.

  “All right, let Chasseloup go hang for now,” she said finally. “I’m not going to forget what’s due. But I’m not going to leave you sobbing by the side of the road, either.” She sat up. “Now, where are my knitting needles? Clio, let go!” She laughed and tugged the ball of yarn from the cat’s claws. Jolie had been knitting an infant’s blanket in the small hours before she slept.

  12. An Arrival

  ALL SUMMER, THEN, we stocked up. Champagne and absinthe, mismatched bottles one at a time, and opium—soft granules wrapped in paper, nested in pocket bottoms. Jolie was crossing off the days and planning an impromptu party at the rue Jacob, as the hour neared; she put everyone she knew on notice. The plan was that after I’d returned to the rue Serpente with the midwife, the guests would stay and put bets. A send-off, with the money going for a layette.

  “An apprentice midwife,” the young woman offered, holding out her hand. “I work with La Cacheuse on the rue Monge.” Mathilde twisted her blonde curls up into a knot, secured them with a comb, and opened her black bag to show the stack of clean white linen. La Cacheuse was an abortionist; angel making paid the rent at her mistress’s outfit, Mathilde said, but she was happier delivering babies when she could.

  “La Cacheuse helped out with Odette,” Jolie said. “Did the job for her with ergot of rue and a porcupine quill.”

  “No, with mistletoe,” said Mathilde. The tea had come from mistletoe that grew on an old oak in the center of the village where La Cacheuse had grown up, Mathilde explained. The villagers never allowed the road builders to cut it down, so the old oak had stayed and the road divided around it. The tinctures made from its mistletoe now supported half the population, and it was shipped to Paris by the crate.

  “Kiss under it at Noël, swallow it at Lent, is that it?” said Jolie.

  “Something like that,” agreed Mathilde, giggling. “Oh, it’s so lovely here! What a nice room, but no stove at all?

  “We dine out,” said Joli
e.

  It was just the three of us at the rue Jacob flat, one large room with broad floorboards, old wood beams, and mahogany wainscoting. The place was furnished with a wide bed and a yellow satin divan. Layers of drapery shielded the windows; thick brocade and tulle and lace. On a sideboard was a full set of glasses and decanters. The flat was funded by Jolie’s “regulars,” Jacques and Jean-Paul and a third whose name I didn’t know. When she wasn’t there, she rented it out by the hour, an entirely risky setup.

  Mathilde rubbed my back while Jolie cooked the opium over a small brazier, stirring it with honey and pistachio nuts until it was a viscous-looking, sticky mass. “You’ll need it,” she said. “And so will we, once the creature starts wailing.”

  “Be careful of those coals, Jolie. Take that thing over by the window or you’ll asphyxiate us.” Perspiration beaded my forehead, trickled down my neck.

  “I’m not opening a window,” said Jolie. She was on edge because there had been raids the past few nights and a few of her pals had been arrested and gone down to Saint-Lazare.

  Mathilde soaked a flannel rag in cold water and passed it to me; Jolie set out her cache of bottles on the sideboard. She dipped a spoon into the opium mixture, and I rolled the sticky mass onto my tongue. The paste’s bitterness penetrated the sweetness of the honey and was barely masked by the crunch of green nuts.

  “You know, m’amselle, when the baby is born I can take it to the hospice for you. That way the nuns will take care of it. Depending on the time of day, the guards might ask questions, but I’ve done it a few times for La Cacheuse so I know my way around.” Her voice faltered. I stared at her. “Well, it is what’s done.”

  “Certainly not,” I said. “Never.”

  “Think it over, m’amselle. It’s quite usual, you know.”

  “Don’t bother, Mathilde,” said Jolie, bending over us.

  Champagne, more champagne, as the door opened and closed. Odette, Jacques, Jean-Paul, others I didn’t recognize. Jolie had asked if I wanted to invite Mademoiselle C, but I couldn’t imagine the sculptor mingling on the rue Jacob with abortionists, opium eaters, and Jolie’s gentlemen, who had money, but in a shadowy way that brought pickpockets to mind, even if they wore good boots and starched linen.

  . . . Babble of voices, laughter.

  Jolie lit candles, small ones that dotted the room, and a big, flaring candelabra for the center. From my corner of pillows I watched them flicker as the perfumed smoke of opium—what hadn’t been made into sweets—rose up in coils. The room was not large, but more and more people came, sat on cushions on the floor. Lips were pressed against my cheeks, fingers tousled my hair, hands rubbed my back, my neck; someone unfolded a fan, brushed me with a breeze. There were ribbons for luck, a silver filigree baby spoon, a tiny blanket edged with lace. I got up and then lay down; another glass was pressed into my hand.

  “Put up your bets,” Jolie called out.“Boy or girl, and the time of birth. Boy or girl . . . winner takes half and the rest is for Eugénie and the baby—a girl, then, at midnight; a boy at 12:45 . . .” Voices rose, a laughing babble, smoke and chaos. A colored scarf lay on the floor, amid more wrapped packages and ribbons, the chink of coins added to coins.

  I was beginning to feel dizzily outside of my body. Pain eddied in and away; I could imagine it going on and on, never getting worse, or better. Someone put the cool ivory tip of a pipe between my lips; I sucked it and filled my chest with deep, sweet smoke.

  “You’ll like Odette,” Jolie had said. We had something in common, she pointed out, as Odette had tried modeling for artists, or “taken a walk down the rue Bonaparte,” as Jolie put it. From across the room I caught a silvery glimmer, a flask tipped to her lips. Odette was a generous woman, with beautiful round bare arms, tonight dressed in a salmon-colored gown that crossed over her breasts. And peacock-feather earrings brushed her shoulders. She looked a little like a painting—maybe one of the nine muses. The one who played the flute.

  Odette settled down next to me, tipping absinthe into a glass from her flask, an embossed oval. She drank it neat, la purée, as stylish women did, omitting the water so they could keep their lacings tight. Odette leaned in and murmured, “You’re a braver woman than I, Eugénie . . . I always knew she would have been a girl, Beatrice.” She pronounced it French-Italian, Beh-AH-tri-cheh, her tongue caressing the syllables. “Beautiful, blessed. I talk to her now. Tell her everything.” She paused. “She’d be eight years old . . . But I was young and could never have kept her.” Odette gave a shudder and her feathers shimmered. “In France a woman can politely decline by way of mistletoe, and there’s no shame in it. But you are a brave young thing, and I salute you.”

  A pain, huger now, tore through me and I gasped, but then it passed.

  Odette, Jolie had said, was orphaned at thirteen, the only child of elderly parents. She had no other family and was taken in by an older man who had been an associate of her father’s. He was married, a wealthy gambler who loved the races, and kept her. It was a pampered life, full and extravagant. Odette had enjoyed a private flat, all of the clothing and jewelry she could want; evenings out and as much admiration as a beautiful young girl could receive. She had books; time on her hands to read. But then her protector lost his fortune and died soon after, in a riding accident. He’d made no will. At eighteen, Odette was left on her own.

  “Jolie and I met up when my situation wasn’t so different from yours,” Odette was saying now, helping herself to an opium pistachio that floated by on a tray. Then she held up an absinthe spoon from Jolie’s collection. “One of Henri’s finds, no doubt. He knew every dodge, that boy. False-bottomed boxes, coats with double pockets, packs of cards. Faire la souris, faire la tire, tricks with knives and cards, le rendémi, a trick done with a gold coin, la morlingue, a way to steal a purse . . . coupe de fourchette, a two-fingered pocket picking; or his vol à l’Américaine, which I believe involved a buckskin jacket. Henri could clear a restaurant of its cutlery in under a week. A magician. Of the lower sort, I mean. You should have seen them, and this one”—she waved the spoon at Jolie, across the room—“they called her ‘the little nurse.’” Odette’s voice eddied and retreated as a new pain, sharper, doubled me over.

  “Mathilde . . .” I gasped, and wobbled to my feet.

  “Oh, you have plenty of time,” a woman’s voice said. Not Mathilde’s. Arms eased around me, settling me back among the pillows. Laughter.

  The scarf on the floor was full of baubles and coins. The blanket Jolie had knitted held a place of honor on the bed. Remember to breathe. I could not breathe; and suddenly, sick and terrified, confused by the opium—another pain, this more quick coming on than the last.

  “I must go,” I said, pulling myself up again by the edge of a chair, my legs unsteady. “Now. Mathilde, it’s time.” I spotted her sunny curls across the room, head lolled to the side like a rag doll. A bolt went through me; my palms were damp. “Mathilde,” I cried out, and struggled to my feet.

  Jacques’s arm was twined around Jolie’s neck, an empty glass dangling from two fingers. On her other side was Jean-Paul, who lived at the Bourse and was, I thought, in love with Jolie, though she couldn’t care less. “Jacques and Jean-Paul have made very nice pledges,” drawled Jolie. She pulled me down toward her, kissed me on the mouth. “We had seven girls and six boys,” she said. She reached down into her boot. “Jean-Paul, tell Eugénie what you just told me.”

  “Mathilde is enjoying the party too much,” I said. “Is someone here? At the door?”

  BANG BANG BANG.

  “I’m not expecting anyone,” Jolie said blearily, “but you never know.”

  BANG BANG BANG.

  My insides collapsed, then gave way like a child’s water balloon. Warm liquid gushed down my thighs as though I’d been holding it back with all my strength. Panic hissed and flittered through me, my knees buckled, and another pain moved through me, flash fire and flood, all at once, and I started to sob. “Jolie,” I said, �
��Mathilde—you’ve got to help me—”

  “We’re all going to be arrested,” groaned Jacques, struggling to his feet. “Merde.”

  “Oh no, we won’t,” said Jolie. She reached down to her boot and drew out her knife, folded it into my palm. “Take this,” she said. She lunged to her feet, half-falling against Jacques. Pulled a bottle of absinthe out of the crate and pushed it into my arms. “And this!”

  “Jolie, Mathilde is—”

  “I see her. Jacques, you’ll have to go with her—get her out of this room.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I’ll send Mathilde right after you—! I love you, chouette, I love you—!”

  BANG BANG BANG, went the door again, then the loud thump of a boot heel, outside.

  “I love you!”

  “Jolie, what are you doing, what should I—”

  “The back stairs! GO.”

  “We love you!” sang out a clutch of pistachio eaters from a corner, looking up from their spoons. Jolie lifted the guttering candelabra high into the air, streams of sooty smoke rising from each wick, and memory slithered back, back—to the shimmer of crystal-ensconced flames when I was in Stephan’s arms at the chateau, his face before me now, clear and full of laughter. Boot heels crashed against the wood, crack of the door, pain doubled me over, and Jacques caught me before I fell.