No sabots now, but dusty leather-soled boots made for walking on cobbles. And we were alone on a precarious road. Our road. I saw the wizened old farmer from whom Stephan and I had gotten our milk. He stared—his eyes falling, briefly, to the infant in my arms—as though we were two ghosts. The sky had gone from purple to gray, and the moon was a pale, full circle against the horizon. And then, the gates of La Vrillette, the drive; the crunch of gravel underfoot. There it was, just as I had dreamed and remembered.
In the half-twilight, the long rectangle of the mirror pool was overgrown with a carpet of lily pads, their long stems invisibly trailing under water like tangled hair. Black-winged insects darted and skated over the waxy tops; dragonflies and wasps circled. The front gardens had gone to seed. The grasses looked as though they had not been cut back for a year; the drive was choked. La Vrillette looked as if it had not been inhabited since the day I left.
Winter, spring, summer, and nearly another fall; rain had beat down, the sun had shone, and the turrets still stood out in the soft dusk, lavender on slate. But the house had closed its eyes; its shutters were fastened; the front entrance padlocked with a chain. I lifted it and let it drop, with a heavy clank. Berthe was quiet; I shifted her to my other hip.
In the back gardens, the roses were still in bloom; a frowsy, gnawed-petal bloom. Only one bush appeared untouched: a miniature rosebush with partially opened flowers and tiny pink buds, clenched tight like Berthe’s little fists. As I moved closer, I could see that some of the petals were brown-edged, perhaps from the heat—but no. Each tiny rose, perfect from a distance, had a black, writhing center. Burrowed deeply in each flower was a black, shiny-winged, red-spotted beetle, a living toothed thing, head buried in the center of the flower, legs pushing inward, sucking at that rose-sweetness, working at every wilting bloom, destroying it from the heart.
The stone benches that framed the pool were covered with stiff lichen; rough to the touch, pale green against gray stone. I remembered wondering how this scabrous covering, like a disease of the stone, appeared so lifeless, yet was living still. Taking its nourishment, somehow, from sun and wind and stone. Berthe’s tiny hand reached up for me. Her tiny bow lips found their site, and sucked.
My thoughts drifted; the sun fell.
. . . Stirring our soup on the little coal stove in the hall on the rue Serpente, next to the stairs, with the stink of the latrine close by. Staring at the soot-blackened walls, waiting my turn to cook, while our neighbors, Madame Boudet, or the old monsieur to whom Jolie brought tobacco—boiled their cabbage or fried their onions in oil. And then, further back—that other part of my life, the part I held back—that stain, that beetle-gnawed blight on my soul.
. . . Ebony cane, silk waistcoat. The one who said “Relieve me of myself, mademoiselle,” before plunging. The ones who laughed, pulled me close, reached around my shoulders for a glass of champagne. And: playing to their moods; laughing at what I did not find amusing; keeping things moving until coin rang on marble, and the rubber bulb swooshed, everything trickling back down my thigh.
It was the same with him, a voice said. Her taunting contempt.
No—!
Where is your Stephan, then? Not in this bolted, abandoned place in which you find yourself, and a baby, and no one else?
Darkness fell, and Berthe’s mouth slipped. How she could give herself up to oblivion in my arms. I dipped a cloth in the pool, wrung it, and in the soft light, wiped her face, the muddy smudges of travel clinging to her. Her legs had filled out; her chest, when it moved, was a shade less fragile; her skin, touched with moonlight, was whiter, more opaque; the blue veins, which had been faint as though painted by a tiny brush, had receded behind milk-fed flesh. The umbilicus had begun, already, to heal. So small and perfect she was. Baptized now by the waters of La Vrillette and caught in a web of the past; her small life charged, already, with her mother’s burden. If she were a rose, the dark beetle already hummed and circled; it lit and waited, pulsing, hungry, for her center to open. I walked again through the detritus, through the tangled gardens. Berthe in my arms, as the moon rose high and bright.
. . . Better, then, if they were going to live so briefly, to weave their images into a shawl, paint them on canvas, carve their shapes into crystal. Inanimate, impregnable, frozen. Safe. Sain et sauf. Let’s have a picture and prefer not what breathes and dies. I slipped from the bench, made a blanket with my cloak, and took Berthe from her basket. And we slept that night under moonlight, my body cupped around hers. Peltless animals. Naked and shivering.
I dreamed I was on a sea journey. The waves were black and choppy; clouds massed in the sky. I stood at the side of the ship, my hands clenched around the iron rail. A woman, one of the passengers, had fallen ill. She had slipped past consciousness and had to be taken off the ship. Two seamen eased a small wooden rescue boat from the deck, on thick ropes; dropped it, dangling, toward the rocking waves, down to the water. I and another were to take her. We descended by a rope, into the boat, and the sleeping woman was lowered last.
The little boat’s planking was old, honey-colored wood. Deep grooves, tobacco-brown, worn between the boards. The sick woman lay in the center of the boat, stretched along its spine, her face to the sky. My companion was in the prow, oars dipping, down and up again. My own oars were light in my hands—too light, as if pushing back the waters with a feather. I didn’t want them to cut the ropes to the big ship—but they must, they must cut them; the ropes were already frayed.
“I am not strong enough!” I called up to the sailors.
“Let go!” the other rower shouted, her voice nearly lost on the wind. Gold-red hair blowing over her shoulders.
“Let go! Let go!” They were all shouting now, coiling the ropes back up onto the deck.
The wind whipped through my hair, blew my shawl, which was nothing against the cold—I pulled, pulled with all my strength, and the little boat moved into the waves.
I woke to the sun, with Berthe’s blanket wet with dew.
The morning light shone on two things. A stone garden statue of a woman: sinuous, rounded, nestled in a patch of weeds, riding a feline beast, like nothing to be seen in Paris. And it had not been there before, when Stephan and I had stayed at the chateau. The second was the face of a pale, obedient girl: the one who had laid our fires, brought our provisions. Léonie carried a basket over her arm and looked astonished.
“Mademoiselle—madame?” Berthe stirred in my arms, then screwed up her face to wail. Our former serving girl, arms folded, looked from me to my daughter.
“What is this statue?” I asked, as though Léonie had just brought the eggs, laid the fire.
“It was a present for the birth of his nephew. For the child of Madame Sophie, from Monsieur Stephan. My father put it in the roses.”
“This garden is crawling with beetles.”
“Yes, they came thickly this year. Is she—is she yours, madame? She is beautiful, just like a rose.”
“Where is Monsieur Stephan, Léonie, do you know?”
She looked up from under her lashes, her eyes flicked over me, frankly assessing. She backed away. “Why have you come here, madame?”
The third thing I saw that morning was a memory of green eyes and tangled red-gold hair; a pair of efficient hands, tying coins into a knotted handkerchief; spiriting the indigo dress out of a creaking armoire; defeating Françoise. Hands that had soothed my aching flesh; fingers that had knitted in anticipation of an infant, lips that had not betrayed their word. Jolie had held me when I cried, found a midwife, thrown a party, paid off the Brigade (I suspected) so I could stay with her on the rue Serpente, and jumped out of a window so Berthe could be born outside the walls of Saint-Lazare.
The road home was not easy. But it was our road. Mine, and Berthe’s.
14. Tour d’Abandon
BACK IN PARIS, the rue Hautefeuille was a bustle of evening, of women carrying loaves and packages, men with newspapers rolled under their arms. Hooves clop
ped on the cobbles, and the screeches of the oysterman mingled with cries of newsboys. A close damp saturated the air, a portent of evening rain. At the florist’s, tall stalks of red and purple flowers stood in buckets next to long-stemmed roses—red, pink, yellow—and small pots of tender-leafed ivy. Next door in the butcher’s window, plump, white chickens for roasting and stewing, nestled on beds of green. My reflection before them was swaybacked and pale, a wavering liquid in the glass; the bodice of my dress dark-stained from too many hours away from Berthe. My blood was weak and needed meat; I dug to the bottom of my purse and left the shop quickly with the bloody, soft parcel—cuttings of tripe and brains, the cheapest of the lot. Leaned against a street lamp. Nausea.
The first of the raindrops pelted against my packages, and pinkish liquid seeped through the parcel, mingling with the milk stains on my dress. Carriages passed; their wheels dipped into the ruts between the cobbles, spewing up muddy water. The kiosk on the corner of the rue Serpente had pulled its shutters but still allowed purchase of a copy of Le Boulevard for small change. Mathilde’s flutey voice carried all the way to the first landing, Berthe wailing in her arms. Mathilde was waving a sheet of paper, the birth certificate from the mairie. Our household was full up with fresh certifications; I’d gotten my own when I re-registered at the Préfecture. It wasn’t hard, once I located the right line and followed the girl in front of me, asking no questions. I was paid up, thanks to Vollard; and the Dab on duty at the Préfecture confirmed that I had recently given birth (so my lapse in adhering to the schedule for the visite sanitaire was accounted for). They required only a birth certificate for Berthe, for which Mathilde, as the midwife in attendance, could file. I was now, after a few weeks, within the law and in possession of the carte, which was how I was able to keep my key in the latch and tripe on the table at Jolie’s flat. It was remarkable what I could do—for Berthe.
“Mathilde, let me get up these stairs and I’ll take her—”
“The young woman may be père inconnu, but she’s legal tender; that’s a cause for celebration,” called a second voice from within. Odette sat on the divan, draped in a paisley cashmere shawl and pouring absinthe from a flask, her lovely oval face cool and smooth as alabaster. She took her drink almost neat, adding only enough water to make the green stuff drinkable. Odette’s luck, as Jolie said, always turned like a sunflower, and she’d escaped unscathed from the incident at the rue Jacob.
“You needn’t stay laced for us,” I said. “Relax and enjoy your poison.” But she was used to it now, she said. Liked her wormwood bitter.
“She’s not père inconnu,” said Mathilde.
I had taken the certificate and folded it, not without a glance at the facts and dates. “Mathilde!” I said. My hands shook as I took Berthe from her arms. I’d always have a vinegar bath, after my working evenings, but tonight it would have to wait. Damn these gossiping midwives.
“Nothing suits her today. Usually she’s such a quiet one, isn’t she?” said Mathilde.
Odette handed me a glass and was staring at me with something like concern. A weak, murky fatigue shadowed me, and the nausea. So much so that I had even wondered if I was sick or (worse) pregnant again, and douched out with Jeannel’s. On better days the fear ebbed back; on bad ones it seemed to represent something else, deeper, formless, shadowy, as though I was standing behind my own body, pushing it into the abyss.
“What’s this about the father’s name?” said Odette.
“It’s right on the line, on the birth certificate—de—what?”
. . . Pursued by my relentless roiling guts, keeping the roof over our heads, cosseting the neighbors, and appeasing the Brigade boys who patrolled the block. Mathilde came in the evening to look after Berthe, until I returned at the Regulation-dictated eleven o’clock. It was true, the night before in a mood of defiant rage, I seized a sputtering pen, filled its unreliable gutta-percha reservoir with ink—really, I needed to go back to the dip pen and inkwell, or just a goose quill, which had been good enough in the Gers. I had inscribed my own name, Eugénie Louise Rigault. And wrote his name on the line for the father: Stephan de Chaveignes. Bold as you please, managing to stave off a blot, and thrust it toward Mathilde to file.
“Well, a toast to your daughter, a citizen of Paris,” said Odette smoothly. We clinked glasses. I didn’t like to drink much before I nursed, but the bitter trickle of emerald offered a dose of respite. The little flat was a fortress of domesticity—mended furniture tied together with silk scarves, mismatched cutlery, and jars as wineglasses. Clio an orange coil on the divan.
I glanced down at the bloody package. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have gotten something better.”
“We can order in from that little brasserie around the corner. What’s it called? Chevet’s. Mathilde, will you go and fetch it? And join us as well; you look like you could use something. Roast chicken and salad and a bit of cheese. And coconut meringue. We can’t do without that. Here, give me a pen, I’ll write it down.”
When Mathilde was out the door, Odette said, “What are you doing to yourself, child? Planning an early grave?”
I tipped back my glass. “I’m all right. It was nice of you to come.”
“Well, that night I saw how things were.”
“Yes.” I remembered our conversation.
“Eugénie, did you really—name the father? You wrote it on the birth certificate?”
“I did.”
“The Code Civil prohibits it; it’s recherche de la paternité.”
“It’s the truth. What can they do about it?” I muttered.
“Whatever they please, I suppose. But you should be more careful. Your situation is precarious enough.” Odette sighed and kicked off her shoes, resettled herself on the divan.
I changed the subject. “We were interrupted, weren’t we? The other night when you’d started to tell me about how you met Jolie.”
“Yes, on the rue des Vertus—I first saw her at a little café, the only decent place down there. Holding court.”
“Yes, she took me to that place.”
“You know, I’d had my old man, who took care of me after my parents died. For six years—from when I’d just turned thirteen—life was perfect. Oh, he’s not the beast that you think, that people think—he didn’t touch me until I was sixteen, and I loved him by then . . . No one ever knew why that filly reared up and threw him. He was a cautious rider.” Odette took a tiny sip and continued.
“I was very young, and took up with a friend of his, much younger—handsome—a beautiful man, a wonderful lover. Four months of bliss, then catastrophe. He was the one who broke my heart. The father of Beatrice—if she’d lived.”
“Ah.”
“One day he just—disappeared. Didn’t come when we were supposed to meet, never turned up again.”
“Just like that? But why—” Futile question, my own question. All the same, it was my constant companion and slipped into the room like a restless child. Why, why, why?
Odette sighed. “Oh, they get in over their head. Think they can afford to keep a mistress like the rich ones do, or their fathers did. He’d known my old man, gone to the races with him—he was there on the day of the accident and I ran into his arms, a sobbing girl. He promised to take care of me, but he couldn’t afford where I was living then and put me up in a rat hole on Vertus. I didn’t care; I was grateful and fell in love with him immediately. Not like my old man—but in that mad, jealous way, always worried he would go off with someone else. He did care for me, I think—but he outpaced himself. He’d inherited some money and didn’t prefer to spend his time making more of it . . . But then, when he left—I was hard up. I saw how the women were living, but I wasn’t like them. I’d loved these men—I wasn’t selling my body, wouldn’t dream of it. But in the eyes of society it was the same. I was ruined goods. Of course.”
Odette tipped back her glass, rearranged her skirts. In my arms Berthe had quieted enough to let me listen, and I
unlaced my stays to try her at my breast.
“So, what did you do?”
“You mean, after I visited La Cacheuse and sent Beatrice back to the angels? I looked up my lover’s friends, met up with them if they’d speak to me. Most of them didn’t. When I could, I went to the old places—Vachette, Café Anglais—but Paris was a fishbowl. I kept seeing people who’d known my old man or my lover, and Vertus was a terrible place, filthy, and I couldn’t bear it, except for Jolie. She came and went, but she always circled back to see how I was doing. Her brother, Henri, was still around then, and he took care of some things for us even though he was barely more than a boy himself. He and his band kept us out of the hands of the worst of the brutes lurking around there—I’ll always be grateful to him for that. Then one night on the rue de la Grande Truanderie—I was eating tripes à la mode de Caen with probably the last upright citizen in Paris who’d be seen with me. He’d known my old man and I suppose he thought I needed comforting. After dinner he introduced me to the captain of a sailing ship, The Pharamond—named after the first king of France, and his favorite dining spot when he was in town. I liked him well enough; he seemed kind and knew the ways of the world. We kept drinking Calvados and it was the best night I’d had in a while. He told stories and I saw that nothing could shake him; he made his own rules for how to live. He asked me to sail with him, and my old man’s friend as much as told me to go, get out of Paris, and have an adventure. The first place we sailed to was Barbados, on a sugar run. That opened my eyes, I can tell you.
“But enough storytelling. I just stopped by to see how you were. And now I do see.” I shifted Berthe on my arm—she was already heavier, growing, moving in new ways. Tonight she was not sucking well, though. Her tiny lips fell off my breast as though she couldn’t remember what it was, as she had done when she was first born.
The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. Page 17