The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R.

by Carole DeSanti

  “We can knock something together,” said Jolie. “Go look now, if you’d like.”

  “No, not your bits and pieces, Jolie. I mean Eugénie must be dressed.”

  Clio made a leap to the tabletop. Reached up her paw and batted Odette’s bright feather earring. Odette laughed and gathered Clio onto her lap. “You want to bag a peacock, do you?” She passed me a fresh sheet of paper and a bottle of ink.

  “Yes, put the ink pot to good use, for a change,” said Jolie, helpfully.

  Odette said, “If you play your cards right, you’ll be better off than you are now.”

  “All right,” I said slowly, testing the nib. “All right.”

  Jolie clapped her hands, once. Clio jumped down and stretched, since it was time for the mice to start scratching in the walls.

  “But I need a new nib. No scratches or blots.” I knew what letters should look like; I’d checked my mother’s, often enough. I had a good writing hand. Even the nuns at school said so, though I doubted they would say it now.

  16. The Marchande

  FOR A SPREAD OF days, then, in the dying November light, while students settled down to their books, artists to their ateliers; as my nearest of kin, leagues distant, hurried to prepare foie gras for market, and Jolie painted perfume labels and read Rousseau, The Social Contract propped up on boxes of envelopes, I was remade before the cracked mirror on the rue Serpente.

  Odette enrolled the marchande d’habits, a kind of traveling wardrobe bank. Madame Récit looked you over with a practiced eye and then lent, at a stiff tariff, what had been culled from Europe’s bankruptcies and its best boudoirs, once she ascertained what a girl could pay off, given the requisite ambition and the right clientele. Once she set your price, no shot silk or Indian cashmere would be too expensive; no gilded button, soft kid, ribboned linen, or faked-up Valenciennes lace. From her boxes came giddy clutches of rhinestones, knots of tiny beads; hats ticklish with marabou and ostrich; silks in magenta, sunlight, and silver; crinolines of a fashionable cut and breadth. She had embroidered dance slippers and silk stockings wittily striped or delicately worked, lacy and gossamer-fine. Lorgnettes and opera glasses. Umbrellas with carved handles; tiny confections of evening bags. Everything gone first to the frippery tailor or rebouiseur, who brushed up a dulled nap with thistles, pasted over tears, stitched new linings, and ran an inked quill over faded seams. Récit knew the sleight of hand and how her troves could effect marvels of fortune turning. She was a sort of rebouiseur herself: making over her clients, women of the better classes whose reputation had undergone wear and tear, those who had entirely fallen off the social ladder and lived now by their appointment books. The balance was made up of those like myself. Aspirants.

  Jolie watched and smoked and painted and the rue Serpente garret became a bazaar. Clio dove and hid among the valises and folds of fabric as whalebone tightened around my ribcage. “Enough, enough,” I gasped, fearing for my fragile, newly reknit bones; but Madame said that a cracked rib would be the better for it, and her pearl-gray silk floated and settled over the cage of an undergarment like redemption. Next was a ball dress of chiffon and lemon-colored satin; then a high-cut creation in aniline violet that hitched up to show a bit of boot and a good deal of six layered petticoats. As I rotated in front of the mirror, the feeling of silk and other fine stuff felt like blood returning to my veins. Jolie turned a page and licked her brush. “‘Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.’”

  “Poor bastard,” said Odette. “Got rid of five children at the tour, never laced a corset in his life, and he still died a madman . . . The boots need some color; use the embroidered ones. Gloves too pale, black is better with the ivory umbrella. No lace, take it off the collar, and the Comtesse Dash herself could scarcely make any improvements. No jewelry. And the handbag is atrocious. Find another.”

  “If you have to go to the trouble to carry a handbag, you’d better be sure it’s stuffed to the gills. I’d rather a skirt with a dozen pockets, myself,” said Jolie.

  “Aren’t we just talking about one evening?” I ventured, as Madame Récit’s fingers twitched and fussed.

  “I am growing ambitious; what do you think, madame?” said Odette.

  “She’s a glory, demure with a touch of the wild, rustic but decorous.”

  “Or decorated,” said Jolie.

  “Perfect as a picture!” said Madame, clasping her hands, although I failed to see how violet silk was demure. But the view in the mirror was felicitous, we all had to admit.

  “Now, these half-corsets precede the full. You won’t ever want to appear unlaced, even in your own boudoir.”

  “Clio won’t mind,” said Jolie.

  Odette intoned sonorously, as if reading from a cocotte’s instruction manual: “To cultivate a clientele, you’ll have to start reading the society papers and the financial news. If the money is in rail, go to Legrand. If it’s in textiles, to the rue Saint-Marc at midday, to Lyonnais. When it’s in art, the rue Drouot. When the Bourse goes up, the courtes go up. And when the Comte de Whomever is marrying Mademoiselle de Something-Else, you’ll find out where he buys jewelry and luggage. In which case the odds are better than roulette.”

  “Not by so much,” said Jolie.

  “You’re just lazy, minouche.”

  “No, I don’t want the trouble of some old muffe falling in love with me.”

  “Love is your trump in the commerce department, my dear,” said Madame Récit. “Now, with you, I could perform miracles.” She dove once again into her bags. “Might I tempt you?”

  “No, but thank you anyway,” said Jolie, as though declining teacakes from a gracious hostess. I suppressed a laugh.

  Madame Récit fostered the notion, soft as a whisper, that whatever the difficulty, she alone provided the remedy: the armor against the world’s troubles and the ill-deserved feminine plight. Murmurs about Mademoiselle So-and-So’s bad luck, or the Baroness-of-That, all over the society columns but no baroness at all and poorer than she looked. She barbed and placated; scolded and persuaded; soothed and remonstrated; dripped like laudanum. Plucked and tacked as though fine dress was a privilege she alone could grant. Only at the very end, after I had signed the promissory note, did she fall into a plaintive tone, that of the old woman past her talent days, and wouldn’t we know it ourselves, in time! . . . Ah, well: the very seam of grief, the stitches that held in place the injuries of the past; it was the thread leading to the future, was it not?

  When the marchande had gone, Jolie said, “If you’re not careful, between that old ragpicker and what you let the michés walk off with, you’ll be the one whose pockets get picked.”

  “But maybe not pickled,” said Odette.

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Oh, you,” said Odette. “Even you wanted off the rue des Vertus when I met you, and what song are you singing now?”

  “I’ll take my own chances. I have since I was twelve.”

  “It’s easier when you’re twelve, minouche. After that you have to work.”

  I groped behind me for a chair. “Can I be unlaced now? I feel dizzy.”

  “It’s just the vertigo of a sharp rise,” said Odette.

  Later, we were alone and Jolie stared at the pile Récit had left, a taunt of luxury against the pitted floorboards, atop the slant-legged table—a jumble of pilfered mismatches. Jolie, lovely as always in plain French calico, was languid and ominously quiet. Knitting again, with wool from an old shawl I’d found at the Temple market, unraveled and smoothed. I fingered the fabrics, lined up pairs of shoes; exhaled into the stony silence.

  “Now you think this is a mistake,” I said. “There are so many silly girls out there; can I possibly do worse?”

  “Silly girls have dumb luck, something you haven’t stumbled on, if I have to point it out, chouette.”

  “You can’t afford to jump out any more windows for me, Jolie.”

  “Oh, it was nothing, chouette.” She’d taken a turn for
the better over the past two weeks and was almost her jaunty old self again.

  I sighed. Picked up the promissory note with my name on it, whose terms and amounts seemed direr than they had earlier. “Odette does well enough for herself,” I said.

  “Sure. She wants to see the world, she finds a ship to take her there. Or for a certain flat, she locates some miché who owns the building. But you don’t know what it is you want—do you? And now you’re in hock up to your eyebrows.” Jolie looked up sharply over her knitting needles.

  “What is it?”

  “Are you—still waiting for that other one—the child’s father?”

  Did it matter to her, then? This girl that Louise wanted to teach, and Madame Récit yearned to dress—a girl who had made love to me and made my heart ache and broken her legs on my account, even though she shrugged it off. Jolie’s guess was alarming; it rattled me. Stephan had left me high and dry in Paris, and now I felt the rustle of silk (another flag of the country to which he belonged) lying, soft and sinuous, against my skin—was this just another steep and costly betrayal I was engineering for myself?

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  “Who is he, anyway, The Unknown Man? . . . Père Inconnu? Paint me a picture, chouette.”

  But I could not, not for her. I did not know which Stephan to paint—the man I had loved, or the one I hated . . . And besides, I loved her too.

  It was nearly eight, and dark with lowering clouds as the cab rattled to the quai des Grands Augustins. The wind picked up toward the Seine and chilly gusts whipped at my skirts—the pearl-gray—as I stepped down, full of dread. I shuttered my qualms—I owed them nothing now, I reminded myself—took shallow breaths into my narrowed lungs as I stared into the black river lapping quietly at its banks. Madame Récit’s knotted-silk reticule dangled on its chain from my wrist. Ridiculous. Jolie was right about that.

  The maitre d’hôtel threaded through a honeycomb of corridors, stopping before a panel, which opened with a tiny key.

  It was warm and close. Suffocating even, inside the velvet-covered walls of a private dining room. A white-clothed table was set for two; banquettes flanked the walls and a palm frond arced above the furnishings, brushing my cheek as I seated myself. A giant bouquet of thick-petaled flowers exhaled a dense perfume. For all its grandness, yet another lock-and-key room in which to wait for this woman. From the corridor, a murmur of voices, a quick burst of laughter; the rustle of a crinoline. Then Nathalie Jouffroy entered, a blaze of white-blonde hair combed back into a chignon; her cold eyes gray or blue, gray or violet. Her skin was powdered to opalescence; emeralds sparkled on her fingers and at her throat. Naples silk the color of old, soft gold. If you were to sculpt her, it would be in heavy metal. Bronze.

  “Remember you have help from every newspaper in Paris,” Odette had said. I felt for the little reticule, my pouchful of clippings. My future in my hands, if only I could spin straw into gold. I was far from confident.

  Bowls of steamy bouillon appeared, clear and golden, and the panel clicked shut. We stared at each other briefly, in silence.

  “Have you been well, madame?” I said finally, in a low voice.

  “The Bourse is up. International trade is fine, rail brings in the tourists, which quiets my investors. Marriages seem to be more unsatisfactory than ever and the example for gallantry comes from the highest seat in Paris. As for us, you’d think there was not another tolerated house in the city. We hardly complain.”

  The bouillon was removed and silver domed plates put in its place; a small fortress covering pungent flesh with a sweet glaze. Under Madame Jouffroy’s dome rested pale curves of shrimp; commas against a creamy, saffron-colored sauce.

  I swallowed a bit of pheasant that under other circumstances might have been delicious, although it was not as tender as it might have been. Nathalie Jouffroy’s speech was slow and imperious; a sharp reminder of the business at hand and by what means it would be conducted. I remembered her tone, its certainty; the shadow of resistance that I felt in response. I wanted to dislike her, but feared her more—we all had at Deux Soeurs, feared and played up to the madames. Except maybe Jolie.

  Madame continued. “I appreciate your taking care of our Jolie until she can come back to us. So many of our guests value her.” Light glanced off her like moonlight over a lake; its loveliness shielding the eye, the mind, from the ravaged shore behind, and I knew, suddenly, that I was already in her debt; it was more than likely that we owed her for more than laudanum and the doctor.

  “Jolie never lacks for admirers,” I murmured.

  “And you, have you done well for yourself? You do look lovely, the gray becomes you.”

  A waiter changed the dishes again; now a wrinkled fruit lay in a pool of caramelized sauce. I stared at the plate.

  “Thank you, madame. I wrote to you,” I began.

  She smiled drily. Her face was parchment, finely lined under the powder.

  “Because our first meeting was such an . . . unqualified success? . . . Perhaps since then you have gained some control over events?”

  “I was quite ignorant, madame.” And you used your advantage over me.

  “Ah. So you fault us for your situation,” she said, reading my thoughts.

  “No. Only myself.”

  “Still, you do not appear to be awash in self-pity.”

  I cut into the fruit; it was a prune stuffed with foie d’oie, specialty of my own province, where, far away, a goose’s throat had been tickled by a goose-girl or an old woman. I tasted it and swallowed and it seemed to stay as a lump in my throat, like undissolved tears. The past—my own past of fruits untasted, just ferried to market and sold. Now I was tasting them.

  “I think you are angry,” she continued. “It’s reasonable that you are looking for a scapegoat. It gives you a bit of color but enmity will not serve you well, my dear. It is a relinquishing of self-control. So you have lost the first round of your battle with life; you must find satisfaction in the rematch. Your revanche must be in the marketplace . . . Capital is the great equalizer, and we women can be glad, at least, for that, yes?” Nathalie Jouffroy smiled slightly and fitted a thin cigarette into an ivory holder. A silver pot was set on the table, with teacups, and cakes on a salver. A waiter appeared; lit Nathalie’s cigarette and went away. The very walls were a sweating greasy velvet nap. I knew that she had agreed to this meeting for her own entertainment, like Clio’s sport with a mouse. Yet her eyes, her smoke, held me captive.

  Wordlessly, I opened my tiny reticule, passed my clippings across the table. The letter Odette dictated had outlined the proposal; now I had brought the evidence.

  “Ah yes, Monsieur Vollard,” she murmured, briefly absorbed. “So the notion is to trade on your—infamous status—one that we shall have to recall to the mind of the press? But if it was so easy, all the little fishes in the sea would swim in champagne.”

  “Water will do for me, madame.”

  “As hard as he tries, Monsieur Haussmann cannot seem to bring good water to Paris. So it is champagne or the gutter for us . . . The senior Chasseloup is well known in our circles. I don’t know the son.”

  I leaned in; for a moment, taken by a grudging curiosity about this woman who had bargained with the devil, caught him by the tail; and now, for her, doors opened. Swung shut, when she desired them to—the doors of her parlor countinghouse, behind which she disappeared while the world ferried to her exactly what she wanted. A look passed between us: hers implacable, mine curious, despite myself. I hesitated.

  Jouffroy reached up and pulled the bell rope; a waiter appeared so quickly, he must have been stationed outside; and left and returned, with pen and ink pot, a stiff-spined ledger, and a tray of chocolates. The flowers breathed out perfume.

  “So you are looking for a backer, and why should I object, after all? I have had a good year; I can afford a few experiments. And you have done me a favor by taking care of my girl. If you succeed it is good for us all. If you do
not, I am sure we can find other ways of making use of you.”

  The panel swung open; I glimpsed a domino-clad woman; a man in a dark, fine-cut suit with snowy linen and a silk cravat, waiting there. Nathalie stood and extended a gloved hand; clasped mine, briefly. Then she turned and passed through the narrow opening; a check fluttered on the salver in her wake.

  Of course, I could not imagine all the ways in which this new debt would have to be repaid. But I would learn.

  17. Contraband

  “‘AND WHAT A CURIOUS collection of souls it was, last night at La Palette in the auction-house district, assembled from a mysterious social register to toast Pierre Chasseloup’s An Unknown Girl and meet her flesh-and-blood counterpart. The young woman in question, Mademoiselle Eugénie R—, lately of the province of d’Artagnan, was forced, due to circumstances, to abjure the glare of publicity during this year’s Salon. Gossip would have it that Artist and Model became estranged over the course of creation; the painter finally secreting himself at Croisset to put finishing touches to his canvas. Last night the young belle, dressed in a gown apparently made of spun honey and silver cloth, accepted a bouquet from her painter.’

  “There,” said Odette. “Sweet, isn’t it? Chasseloup would rather have eaten those camellias than hand them over, but Vollard was on hand, with sharp toes on his boots.” She reached for the coffeepot from the divan, where she was stretched out in a velvet morning coat. Jolie was curled up asleep on Odette’s brass-inlaid sleigh bed.

  “Here’s another, from the generous and kind-hearted Duport: ‘A Pandora’s box of infamy opened last night just north of the rue Drouot (appropriately positioned between the art district and the municipal slaughterhouse), an evening of pandering celebration of a medal-winning Salon artist and the much-touted “reunion” of painter and subject. Ill-considered appearances by Paris intelligentsia set against the whirligig antics of imperial hangers-on . . . the sight of the chief of police adjacent to Madame Nathalie Jouffroy of Strasbourg and Biarritz was one much to be regretted. Not present was the painting’s actual purchaser—Maillard, of Maillard et Cie, nor, of course, the painting itself. As for the demoiselle’s Paris itinerary, it lists such notable stations as the Préfecture de Police, a tolérance in the rue du Temple, the maternity hospital for indigents—altogether a history more to be pitied than celebrated (which may explain the absence of the estimable Maillard). Prince Victor’s attendance was this morning denied by an aide who insisted that he had been asleep by nine.’