“What?”
“I like this little tunic. It’s quite comfortable without a long skirt.” She crossed and uncrossed her legs with brazen abandon, demonstrating.
“Don’t joke! Nathalie took you back like a cat who deserves her cream, and it was a death sentence. We should have done something—”
She gave a short laugh. “What? I was under arrest, beholden, in debt—what do you think you could have done? Or I? You’ve always lived in a dream world, chouette. You, Eugénie—are young, and well. But you can’t run after the past. Your lover is right about that. The clocks in Paris will start ticking again, one day or another. And what then? He is not sentimental; anyone can see that.”
“Maybe not.”
“If you can’t, you’re half blind. Who is that boy, anyway?”
I glanced over at Mitra, who was giggling in a corner, now, with Finette.
“Mitra? He’s taught me to make a bread from ground rice and dried peas, much better than pain de Ferry. We should send him over to the Academy of Sciences. And he tells the most amazing stories. So—what about you, Jolie? Are you a Communard or subscribing for Henri’s sake? Or Louise’s? She’s not happy unless she’s fighting someone and dragging half of Paris along behind her.”
“Louise’s is the name they’ll remember long after we’re gone. What the Commune stands for may be the best that comes out of all of this. Someone has got to remind the world that we are human. I’d rather go down shooting than have my nose fall off with the pox. And if the Commune prevails—well! That will be a whole new day. All of us just—walking around Paris like we live here. Can you imagine?”
Jolie had one ear cocked to the other conversation and now interrupted it, nursing her jelly jar of rum. “Henri, are you going on again about the Americans? Eugénie is known to be fond of the occasional American.” I looked over. Henri’s chiseled profile was not shadowed by the unmistakable siege pallor. Even Stephan had it now.
“Nothing new is to be learned from the Americans. They have not solved the fundamental problem, which is orderly use and distribution of resources. They are gobbling as fast as they can, hand over fist, and once they run out over there, they’ll be in the same pickle as the rest of us.”
“I’ve brought the tarot deck; let’s tell our fortunes,” said Jolie. “Find out what pickle we’ll each be in for the New Year.”
“‘Fortune is on the side of the big guns,’” said Stephan, wandering over.
“Thank you, Napoleon . . . Watch out for the monk with the stiletto, then,” said Jolie. She gave him a look of certain, keen loathing.
“Pardon me?” said Stephan.
“I mean that destiny is an individual matter, monsieur. Even on the battlefield. Eugénie, shuffle the cards and we’ll have a prediction for the year of our Lord 1871.”
“That’s playing with fire,” said Amélie. She liked card games in any form.
“I’m not afraid,” I said, shuffling the deck and dividing it into three stacks. I turned over the Two of Discs, the Ten of Wands, and the woman closing the lion’s mouth with her hands. Jolie looked over my shoulder and said, “You have been juggling opposing forces and in danger of losing your balance. Now you are coming to the end of an endeavor that has been a great burden. The outcome may either be successful or bring further blindness. The card is reversed. For the future: strength.”
“How about you, monsieur le comte? . . . Le Pendu, the Hanged Man. The Six of Discs reversed indicates that you have a debt to repay, or that the way you are paying is no longer good, or that there is a gap between wanting and having—”
“Who is monsieur le comte?” said Henri, pouring himself a glass of water.
“Mademoiselle Rigault’s lover in the proletarian costume; you have been speaking to him all night.” said Jolie. Henri snorted, uncrossed his legs. “And Mitra’s father, if I had to guess.” She glared at Stephan. “What kind of man has a ten-year-old slave?”
Stephan leaned back and blew smoke from both his nostrils. Poured another drink and looked the slightest bit ruffled. I glanced over to find Mitra but he wasn’t there. Nor was Finette.
“What is your argument with me, mademoiselle? Aside from the fact that you don’t understand India?” said Stephan. Then to Henri he said, “Now, that is the place for a real revolution.”
“A man divided, in a time of absolutes. A doubter where there is no room for doubt. The future depends on how you pay your debt, monsieur.”
“You are enigmatic, mademoiselle, and your reward is that I do not understand a word.”
“Which is it to be? Once you have recognized what needs to be done, there are—oh—so many ways to do it.”
Stephan stretched and put down his glass, glanced over at me. I looked away. Mitra—could he be Stephan’s blood son?
“Ah. Well. I’ll be off to the Jockey Club, then.” He was being ironic, but the assembled guests didn’t quite grasp it. Stephan hated the Jockey Club. Although he remained a member.
“I heard they are serving that little brown bear from the zoo—that used to go up and down his pole, do you remember?” said La Morte.
“Do you think it’ll be possible to get a rickshaw? Mitra!”
“He’s right at home, isn’t he?” growled Henri.
“Eugénie?” Stephan turned toward me. I sighed.
“I’m not feeling like bear, really. You go on.”
It was more than a headache from La Liberté’s singing, or Henri’s long, blackened fingers wrapped around the water glass balanced on his thigh. He had not stopped staring at me since asking, Who is monsieur le comte? Jolie took my hand in her cooler one, then pressed the back of hers, still holding mine, against my brow. “Eugénie, you are pale, and burning up. Did you eat the osseine?”
“Eugénie, the sans-culotte wants his pistol,” said La Morte.
“All of the guns are locked in the first-floor armoire,” said Jolie.
“I’ve just been ill. I believe I’ll lie down.”
“Take her downstairs.”
“I’m going, anyway,” said Henri. “Allow me.”
The dark hall; a draft, cold, from below. Frigid; the very air could crack. Nymph ghosts of the mural, golden toes and dimpled knees, painted chains of ivy. Scuffling from the street, three floors down, shouts. Gunshots. Shuffling feet of the National Guard. I was hot, dizzy, even though the stairwell was cold. It was fever again; I felt it now, watery blood, hollow bones. Henri and I stood together in front of the armoire by tallow light.
“You have the key; open it,” he said.
“I won’t help you steal from my guests.”
“A bunch of natterers and idiots. But if there is a decent pistol, I’ll take it.”
Henri struck a match, kneeled. A cigarette, unlit, dangling from his lips. He took out a thin metal rod, quick as a draft through a keyhole. Before I could draw a breath, he had rifled the armoire’s contents.
“Oh, I remember. You were a thief.” His lips hot, rough, broken. One of his hands, twisting my arm behind.
“Monsieur le comte can’t kiss you like this—can he?”
. . . No. Not like this. I wrenched myself away. The man made me nervous.
“You deserve better. And I thank you for taking care of my sister.” My eyes filled with tears. In the end, I had done so little.
“Go,” I said. “Go, now.”
“I’ll be back,” he said, lower than a growl.
Back in my own rooms, I double-locked the door. No one, that night. Not anyone. Not Henri. Not Stephan.
From the balcony I watched the snow begin to fall; soft and light; the sky pale and moonlit as the fine starry dust filtered down through bare-branched trees. Around midnight it thickened, laying a soft blanket over the scarred walls and piles of refuse and upturned carts . . . All of it bandaged, forgiven; blessedly white. A solemn, sovereign whiteness. When the sky quieted, a high, still moon rose, and beyond it glimmered the Milky Way; I remembered the aurora borealis. For the fi
rst time in days, the cannonade had ceased, and down the rue Montmartre from the rue du Mail, unlit by lamps, the snow seemed to emit its own incandescence. And I was light-limbed—unburdened of flesh by fever and famine. It seemed, for a moment, that the rest of the troubles should evanesce as well, dissipate into the cold sky. That we could—simply—forgive one another and begin again.
Horridas nostrae mentis purga tenebras.
Cleanse us of the horrible darknesses of our minds.
26. Bombardment
WE HAD BECOME USED to the cannonade, the low rumble of fire and dull thunk of Prussian shells beyond the fortifications as we drifted into a disturbed sleep. It was the occasional, sudden stretches of quiet that were truly terrifying: during these lulls, mattresses were hauled down into cellars, pails filled with water, and sandbags propped next to doors, if one had the luxury of sandbags. News rations were as short as those of meat, by then. We survived on speculation, tidbits ballooned in by compatriots outside, pigeon-intelligence word-of-mouthed. Bismarck was said to be suffering from varicose veins as he had been eating and drinking to excess; gorging on food stocks ransacked from villages, guzzling champagne and wine with German sausages and French charcuterie—the list of Bismarck’s pillaged meals could go on at length. We heard that he was bewildered that Paris held out; that his soldiers munched ham in the streets of Versailles and exercised their horses on the palace lawns. That Europe was appalled at such arrogance; and not unaffected by Paris’s suffering. A pigeon-letter signed by a roster of supporters hailed besieged Parisians as heroes—but Europe did not reprovision its former playground nor come to its aid; and that was a bitter truth.
Beyond Prussian-occupied Versailles, our remaining armies were frostbitten and foundering on the mismanagement between Paris and Tours. We well believed that the Germans were debating as to whether to starve us out, attack us with infantry, or use their Krupps to bombard us to death. That they could not decide; and the Prussian crown prince had qualms about bombarding Paris. He did not wish to murder children, they murmured. Wrongly, as it turned out.
Hunger narrows vision, but finally the barriers of appetite fall. The body learns to fast, conserve, consume itself, and return with harrowing vigor. Once the New Year had passed, Parisians collectively understood that our days of food hoarding, the hovering shadows of suspicion of one another, would soon be done. Any day now, we would be under direct fire. The weeks of anticipation were more fatiguing than the moment itself; once on the brink, we straitened to the task. On every street, we took measurements between known gun positions determined by telescope or spyglass, and our front doors, as though we could predict the damage. Sandbags and pails were arranged and rearranged. Doors left unlocked, in case a passerby needed to take sudden shelter. A new camaraderie arose among us and it was something of a relief.
I had not seen Stephan since Noël. However, a cold and silent day early in January took me to his apartments across town, in the sixteenth arrondissement. In anticipation of the bombardment, the city-installed ambulance on the first floor of my own building was well-stocked with bandages, alcohol, and charpie—shredded linen infused with alcohol and carbolic acid. We had had for some time plenty of supplies but few wounded; in fact—Francisque was always looking for a stray colonel with some embedded shrapnel. I found Mitra alone; Stephan gone out to collect useless newspapers.
Mitra was stacking sandbags at the head and foot of Stephan’s bed. He worked with care; each of the bags nearly as heavy as he was—but he placed them in such a way that they could not topple. Apparently he did not wish his master to be shelled in his sleep, a catastrophe that Stephan was convinced would befall him. Such a still, silent boy; always watching. But Mitra could speak and read French; once I had found him cross-legged, turban unwound and hair ruffled around his small ears, in front of my bookshelf, with The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
“Mitra.”
He came and stood, as he always did.
“You are so young to be away from home for such a long time, in a strange place with a war going on. Your mother and father must worry.”
Mitra did not touch meat at all and so did not miss it. Rice was now the capital’s only available staple, and we French hesitated before it; however, the boy—among other startling accomplishments—cooked it over the fire with spices, roots, and dried leaves he had brought with him. From Mitra I learned that wheat was not essential, nor was meat; and milk and cheese could be done without. Once we invented a dish of rice, rum, cocoa, and cardamom that could have passed in better times. While the dried peas held on, Mitra made curried soups and griddle bread. Between the three of us, the siege had broken down certain barriers. Over the course of these strange evenings, lit by the dull flare of the cannonade, an affinity developed between the boy and myself.
Now he dropped to his haunches. He looked up, and there was a hint of confirmation in the clear planes of his face, despite his café au lait skin. His eyes. I slipped off the chair and dropped to the floor beside him. The boy looked at me steadily, and I took a deep breath. “You must miss your parents, though?”
Mitra’s eyes darted involuntarily to the door; he dipped his chin and shook his head. “I do not miss him,” he said softly. He ducked his head again, this time more deeply.
“Your mother? Tell me about your mother, Mitra?”
The boy hesitated. “Le dictionnaire?”
“But you speak French perfectly well.” The angles of his face rearranged.
“She teaches the Bengali language to English and French men who come,” Mitra said gently, and suddenly seemed older than his years. “In Chandannagar she is called ‘dictionary of the bed.’ She does not know that I know that name.”
“Ah.”
“My mother says my blood runs from two different rivers, the Hooghly and the Seine, and that I will live the first half of my life as Bengali, the second half as French.”
I paused. “Maybe life was not meant to be lived by halves.”
“But I do not want to be French, ever,” said Mitra.
I would have asked why not, but perhaps we French were not at our best, just then. Maybe his words made sense.
“What do you want to be, then?”
“A writer of the Bengali language,” the boy said, without hesitation. “Like the name my mother gave me, after Dinabandhu Mitra. The great writer of Nil Darpan.”
“What is Nil Darpan?”
“A drama that shows others the unfairness of indigo.”
“I would like to read it, then. Is it available in France?”
“I will be the one to make it become available down at the bookselling place by the Seine. After I go to school.” Mitra looked at me steadily; I looked away.
“I should like to hear more about your mother someday. She gave you an interesting name.”
“Dinabandhu Mitra said, ‘A poor man’s words bear fruit only after a lapse of years.’ Please do not say anything about my plans.”
I pressed a finger to my lips.
“I have bandages and brandy and ship’s biscuit for you. And then I shall be on my way and we will say nothing of this again.”
“You are going to the hospice?”
“Yes.”
My twice-weekly deliveries to the hospice had carried on in the face of all; now, those of us on this particular mission waited at the garden gate of an adjacent mansion, amid the shrubbery—and we were called (by anyone in on the secret) the “friends of the widow Chateaubriand” because the house had been his and was now occupied by his ancient widow. The nourrices who cared for the infants stayed on the hospice’s first floor—the older children were above, and they watched for us. We could see their pale faces in the windows.
“Thank you, madame.” Mitra took a small allotment of what I had brought. “Give the rest to the children.”
“It is silent from the forts today, Mitra. The cannonade is quite intermittent.”
“Yes. I must finish the sandbags, madame.”
Tha
t night, Paris was soft and moonlit and starry, solemn and quiet, eerily so, lit by snow and stars. The only sound was shuffling footsteps, usually unheard beneath the city’s clamor. The next day, January 5, the bombardment of Paris began. The first shells hit the rue Lalande and the rue d’Enfer, near the hospice and the widow’s garden, where I had just delivered my package to the grateful hand of a starving nurse. Thus far, this emissary told me, not a child had been lost.
It went on for three weeks. Hundreds of shells every night, starting at about ten o’clock. The cannon were fired at such an angle from the Châtillon heights that the charges penetrated the heart of the capital, pounding the hospitals and churches, the Panthéon, les Invalides. The Odéon; orchids under glass at the Jardin des Plantes. In shop windows stood dusty tricolores and the merchandise of another era, but nothing but a tangle of iron and glass where the ceiling over them had been. What was once a glass-enclosed arcade was now open sky, clouds scudding, swept by careless January winds. Explosions everywhere. Fires.
A fiery mass of metal drops five paces away, and you run, forward or back, realizing foggily that the direction to safety is unknown, and nowhere. Vision narrows; streams with images. A well-dressed man stands motionless as stone in the Galerie de l’Horloge—pale as a root, jerked from the earth with glass shattered around him, covering his shoulders and lapels. Gasping through the smoke and grabbing my skirts up to save them from fires, ignoring all but the narrowest square doorframe into which to take the next step—an open door, a nod, a sip of water.
Amid all of it, during the days when the shelling was quiet I made my way to and from the hospice, situated in the target zone. On the Right Bank, we were still sheltered.
The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. Page 33