The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R.

by Carole DeSanti

  Two days after her admittance, the record had been marked, “Fever abated. Taking nourishment.” On the fifteenth Berthe was transferred to Avallon, in Yonne, and again the recording hand had noted that she had survived the two-day journey by train and post wagon, “despite rains.”

  So there it was. But of course it was; this was France, and this keeping of records had been in place since Napoleon I. I myself had set the system in motion on Berthe’s behalf. Still, it was a revelation to see the document in black and white.

  Yonne was one of the better places; the area’s wet nurses, even the poorest ones who worked for the state, were better fed and healthier than most. I did not have time to linger over this scant record, however. If I had any hope of learning more, I must confront other files.

  The hospice records dated back to 1801, and though they represented a valiant attempt to catalogue more than half a century of abandoned children, they showed signs of age and entropy. The files were sticky; massive piles of “undetermineds” were stained with grease and water; caches of documents had been left unfiled by some harried or lazy clerk. I began with a warped wooden drawer marked 1860; it squeaked under the weight of its contents. I culled through small abandoned lives, file upon file of them. But I was hundreds of lives too early; then another thousand too late. I sifted through the mess, records with cross-filed papers, missing documents, half-lives. Beginnings with no endings, middles with no start or finish—the scars and gaps on these pages not even beginning to tell the tales to which they referred: histories of children scattered to the winds as the force of administration marched on. Mildew tickled my nose, and I began to feel overwhelmed by the gloom and sadness of the place; the hopelessness of this quest. My time here was short; the Commune had imposed a curfew for the general safety of the citizenry; very soon it would be unwise to travel the streets.

  Once, idly at cards on the rue du Mail, Lili had explained the principles of clairvoyance, the trade she had briefly and unsuccessfully practiced—or too successfully, as she said wryly, because the information she conveyed, while accurate, had often discomfited her clients.

  “In addition to the clairvoyant information, one must accurately read the human nature and communicate with it, and that was the difficulty,” she had said, shaking her head. “Teeth are easier.”

  “But the information, Lili, how did you obtain it?”

  “Follow a thread,” she had said. “Use your mind like a dart; focus as though an invisible filament exists between you and what you want to know. Pass by everything else—all distractions.” As a game, we had practiced on hidden objects—rings and cards and teaspoons (with limited success). Lacking any better method now, I closed my eyes and thought of Berthe, of the umbilicus that had bound her to my womb; surely a stronger connection than a mere teaspoon. I allowed my mind to gather in the many steps taken and the invincible desire that had brought me, despite every obstacle, to this mortuary of information, where some fragment of my daughter and of my former self surely lay. Some clue to the present; some stitch to the future.

  “Become idle,” said Lili’s voice, in my mind. “Fool your thoughts, as though you are blindfolding them, and use only your senses.” When I opened my eyes, I felt very tired and realized that my mind had drifted to the letter from my Uncle Charles, as yet unanswered; to Berthe, my mother. Something painful, like the dart Lili had wanted my thoughts to become, stung my chest. With effort, I returned to the drawer for 1861. Perhaps I had missed something.

  And then—it was there. Intact between two sets of files in disarray—a jewel in the rubble. Marked in old, faded ink: case number 3568.

  Opening it, a mild scent—what? Absinthe, ashes, rain, tears? In front of my eyes was a mold-speckled sheet, creased and torn; in fact, several sheets of records, stuck together with age and grit.

  Her name is Berthe Sophia Louise. She is my only star in a dark sky. And I simply sat on the floor, in my going-away coat in mourning black, and wept.

  Berthe’s first wardrobe consisted of six diapers; four sets of swaddling clothes, two in wool and two in cotton; undershirts in wool and cotton; four béquins, or hoods, and two bonnets, calico; two shawls. For bedding she was given a wool blanket, two pillowcases, two straw mattresses, and a cradle cover. Provided at the end of her first year, in addition to reinvestments of swaddling and shirts, were two dresses and two pairs of stockings, one each in cotton and wool, and a pair of shoes. Her Yonne nourrice had received the administration’s one-year bonus, disbursed to those who had managed to keep their foundlings alive for the first twelve months. It was rare enough and I thanked this nourrice, whose name I would never know.

  None of the other common fates I had so often imagined and feared had befallen Berthe, either. For six years, meticulously noted allotments of clothing and regular payments had been disbursed. On the health record, no illness or infirmity was mentioned—no gibbosity, scrofula, rickets, or incontinence; no maladies of the eyes or the lungs, nor any other of the numerous disorders of the abandoned. In these pages, if they were accurate, my daughter’s early history was an advertisement for the orderliness of the system of state care. What was not noted could not be known. But what struck me most was that my worry and guilt, and even the dire statistics that I had learned, had not been indicators of the truth in Berthe’s case. Though her odds of surviving were fifty-fifty at best—in fact, my decision (if you could call it a decision) to entrust Berthe to the state’s care had improved her situation materially.

  At age six, she was transferred out of Avallon, to Aveyron. In the company of a sub-inspector and—I surmised—a group of other children, she had traveled south from the forests and abéqueuses of the Marne to a region of thinner soil, a harsh climate, and stubborn, independent people. To a place of tripe eating and wild rivers. Her foster parents were identified as agricultural laborers. With them she would have heard a patois similar to the one I had grown up with. For her care they received six francs a month. My thumb flew down these records, month by month, though the entries ran fewer as the years went on, often skipping one entirely. Lost years. The last entry was for a disbursement for school fees in 1869. Then a document from the department of Aveyron, dated in July of that same year, indicated that she was to be transferred again.

  This appeared to be the end of her record.

  Behind this page in the file was a sheet that gave a sobering account of the dates I had appeared at the hospice. In a spidery hand, the word inscrit, a knife edge of blame and insufficiency cutting me off from Berthe, appeared after each entry. Every date permitted, for almost nine years, I visited but had not managed to shake off that inscrit. Nine years in that dank, vitriol-washed, nun-tended corridor; years of useless pleas. My actual written petitions, if they had ever been placed in this file, were now absent, as was any mention of the legal proceedings plaguing my case.

  Many records of the abandoned, I knew, fell off as the children became older. State payments decreased (it was assumed that by then, the orphans were able to work and contribute to their own support), and inspection and supervision lagged. Boys were placed in workshops, worked in factories or the fields; girls went into domestic service or factories as well. But unless the file went on to document court records and delinquency, or, in happier situations, marriage (a dowry of one hundred francs might be provided by L’Assistance Publique, at its discretion), often a child’s life simply seemed to fall off the edge of the world. That seemed to be the case here. Until I found, clipped to the back of the file, one final note, written in the director’s hand.

  Received: [florin]300 for transport and other reimbursements re No. 3568; July 15, 1870. Age: 8 yrs 11 mos. Health: Good.

  Transferred at rqt of S. de Chaveignes.

  Terminé

  I stared hard; startled, jarred. At the notation; then at the date. Just this past July—before the siege. And before I had seen him at the dinner at Giulia’s. His hooded, speculative, questioning glance at Giulietta. (Ah! He must have be
en flummoxed indeed.) Tears welled up—anger, confusion, bewilderment, the echo of Stephan’s voice. Perhaps I do want the girl! And with the stroke of a pen—one stroke—

  . . . But what did Stephan intend? To take her into his own care? Had he seen her, met her in July before arriving in Paris? What had happened during the siege—was his family involved, was his threat of prosecution a lie, or—was he deceiving them as well, and why? Did he actually have a plan? And where was Berthe now? And then, by the fading light, numbly staring at the documents, I turned over the paper and read, from its reverse side, the final note by some fact-loving, documenting hand, one demanding accuracy in a file, the end of the hospice’s story.

  Transfer to Lourdes convent, Aug. 8, 1870.

  Hours had passed. Outside the grimy windows, it was near dusk. I must hurry, lock up this place, and leave it as a thief. So I took the brittle, stained pages, including my original letter on behalf of Berthe. Slipped them between my bodice and my stays. Who would notice now—who would care? With the barricade so near, and Lisbonne dashing about on his horse, the entire place could go up in flames.

  The door of the archive swung closed behind me. After a few turns to the central corridor, the hall led once and for all to those big hospice doors, which brushed closed as well. As always, the cries of infants from the Green Room, where the little blind ones with infected eyes stayed behind dull shades, a treatment based on the latest medical thinking. Were they too to be evacuated? At least my fruitless visits were now finished. I passed through the courtyard, now empty of wagons, and finally to the barricade at the place d’Enfer, in front of which a single old woman sat in a dark cloak and bonnet with folded hands, as if she personally would stave off the encroaching Versaillais. The mother of a guardsman, sitting at his post while he ate his supper, probably. She allowed me passage without a murmur; I moved toward a taxi stand, and questionable safety.

  Stephan’s address—near l’Étoile in the sixteenth arrondissement. I ordered the driver to go there. And quickly! . . . Impossible, he said. There was no traveling to the west because of the barricades in that direction; and hadn’t I heard about the shelling already, over there? I climbed in regardless; needing to close any door, however flimsy, between the hospice and me.

  Should I attempt a possibly futile chase across the barricaded city, which was armed to the teeth, about to flare up? Stephan might have found a way to depart the capital, even with the Commune ready to slap a gun on him and march him to the fortifications. And what if I did find him? Perhaps I should leave, myself. From here, I might be able to board a train at the Embarcadero near the place d’Enfer, exit the capital to the south. Though you didn’t see much evidence of it in Paris, it was Holy Week; certainly conveyance to Lourdes could be found. To Lourdes! Without even a change of clothes? Well, others were doing with even less.

  The driver was taking up the horses, now nervously pawing the ground. These new horses were not used to Paris driving; they went badly in traffic and shied at the barricades. I tapped the roof of the cab with the handle of my black umbrella.

  “To the Embarcadero, then. Sceaux Railway.”

  “You’ll get nowhere from there, madame. Had a passenger just tried this morning. Eager to go south, he was, the fine gentleman, but threw himself right back on me. Only way to leave is the Gare du Nord to Saint-Denis, or the Saint-Lazare.”

  “What kind of gentleman?” I asked wildly. “Did he have a boy with him? An Indian boy, wearing a turban? You’d remember.”

  “Not that I recall. Fifty thousand passengers a day leaving Paris, madame! Where is it you want to go?”

  “To Lourdes. Do you have any idea what route I could take out?”

  “Lourdes? Why, my wife and I went just last year, Holy Week. Kept us alive, she did—our Lady and Saint Bernadette. Right down through the siege. Don’t get me wrong, I’m for the Commune. But a man needs something other than bread and guns to keep him alive. I’m sorry to say it, seeing you’re a widow. Well, I’ll show you how you might go . . .” The man thrust his pipe-stained, leathery fingers through the window, explaining, and drew a map in the air.

  “But I’d have to go north to go south!”

  “Exactly what I told the gent earlier. North to go south. If this poor nag can hurry her legs, I might get you to the Nord. You’ll have to be ready to face up to the Prussians, though—they are holding on to it for Versailles, you know.”

  He peered in, his face not unkind; cracked like the leather of his cushions. He waited for me to speak, but I was not ready. Not prepared to face the Prussians or anyone else. Still weak from the siege; and the revelations in the hospice archive still lay on the surface of my mind, unabsorbed. I felt as if I needed to go to bed for about three weeks. And I wanted to see Henri, if possible. God only knew what would happen to him, once it all began in earnest.

  As if he read my mind, the cab driver said, “But if I were you, madame—widow like yourself—I wouldn’t go traveling anywhere tonight. It’s a bad moon up there, a pull-down moon, my grandmother would call it. Wait for a better one; build up your strength meanwhile . . . A bad business today, madame, for these young hotheads.”

  “It went badly for the Commune, did it?”

  “Versailles took a load of prisoners to the west and south, where you want to pass. Bad fighting out of Issy and Vanves, and Courbevoie we know was a disaster. This Cluseret’s reorganizing the whole army now. Put out the call for every able man below forty. I’ve dodged that one by a few years.” He chuckled.

  “But—do I have time?”

  “Oh, it’ll hold on for a bit, madame. We’re besieged but not invested; these Versaillais boys don’t half know what they’re about. Plenty of them have brothers and sisters and cousins with the Commune; they don’t want to fight hard. Versailles is still waiting for the prisoners of war to be released, to put them back into battle; and the Commune is fiddling with words. I’ve heard old Badinguet himself is plotting . . . Where to then, madame? We’ll have a few humps and bumps to cross no matter what, that I promise.” He winked.

  What makes the moment in a woman’s life when her story breaks, splits down the middle? When nothing is retrievable, to hand? What then does she do? To whom does she turn? And if she tires of turning, always turning? I did not, in fact, travel that night, but returned to the rue du Mail. I had no more will for headlong journeys.

  Later I was glad not to have left, because there was, in fact, a reprieve in the hostilities. Again, we did not know—but hoped—it meant reconciliation, even though huge earthworks were being thrown up in the rue Royale and the place de la Concorde; and it was rumored that trenches of gunpowder had been laid on either side of many of the barricades. It was said that the Commune would ignite them rather than concede.

  Henri—and Jolie—came by the rue du Mail that night, and I threw my arms around them both. Two powder-stained, tensile warriors in high spirits; their mood of tuned exuberance. We had a picnic on the floor and talked over the news of the day: a guillotine chopped apart and symbolically burned at the feet of Voltaire. The Commune Is for Order. Henri spoke of Blanqui, still a prisoner, as though his return was imminent; he hinted that the police chief, Rigault, had a foolproof plot to spring the Old Man at last—to swap him for the Commune’s highest-value prisoner, the archbishop of Paris. We cut into saucissons and cheese and pulled purple grapes from their stems, relishing every luxurious bite while we could, and Jolie said that she’d walked down the rue du Temple, and Deux Soeurs was boarded up and padlocked.

  “Is there anywhere for the girls to work besides the avenue Rapp?” I said. The Commune’s ammunition factory was a firetrap and it hardly seemed better to send them there.

  Jolie rolled her eyes and lit a cigarette. I asked Henri about the powder trenches and why there had been a standoff with Versailles. He shook his head.

  “This fight is about who is allowed to live and why we live at all. Where are the Commune’s compromises to be made?”

 
“Perhaps on the ground of pragmatism? Even Blanqui is only one man; Thiers keeps him under lock and key. A cabman today told me that 400,000 prisoners of war are returning to fortify the Versaillais.” Henri’s jaw set; he rose abruptly and went to the window to roll a cigarette. He did not, just now, look like a man to be kissed—though I had done so, and recently.

  “I hope you have become good at target practice,” I said to Jolie.

  “I have aced the tabatière. If I run into any of my old friends, I’ll show them what I really think!”

  These two did not know doubt; neither ever had. Doubt was my province. So I uncorked the wine and while Henri was moodily staring out at the street, told Jolie about the hospice archives and finding Berthe’s records. Stephan having transferred Berthe to Lourdes. And even she gasped in incredulity.

  “Oh, Eugénie! It would have to be something with that man—but this trumps it.”

  “I want to go and find her, but perhaps that is what he intends as well—or maybe he just felt guilty and transferred her to a convent,” I said in a low voice. “But it seems he has had something in mind since July.”

  “He let on nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think you should—confront him directly?”

  “Jolie, he was my lover for three months—”

  “Wartime lover, oldest trick in the book.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Henri turned back to us, saying that he needed to go on patrol. Jolie said, “Henri, do you think an able-bodied aristocrat of thirty-two can leave the capital? Get past the checkpoints, onto a train? Monsieur le comte is up to his old tricks. Maybe you could battalion the man.”

  “I’d be delighted to. I shall head over to the sixteenth and conscript him myself. But what now is the crime?”