Little

by Edward Carey

  At first, she couldn’t see who it was in all those heads. How could she? She never saw Edmond as I had. In her eyes he was someone else entirely. My master, though, great knower of humans, he knew.

  “Is it? Are they? Edmond? I think they are. Why so many Edmonds, Marie?”

  “Who? Who!” came the widow.

  She knocked my head very hard with a small wax bust of Edmond.

  From wax I went to coal, I was put in the coal room.

  I sat there for very long hours. Jacques came to visit.

  “What are they doing?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

  “The widow’s breaking it all, smashing the heads.”

  “That’s her own son she’s smashing. I’m to be beaten, I suppose, am I?”

  “You’re to have no food, widow’s orders.”

  “That’s like her. For how long?”

  “Doesn’t say. The widow wants you gone.”

  My master came to the door of the coal room.

  “I am trying to keep you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Or find somewhere else for you to go.”

  “No! I must stay with you.”

  “I fear what the widow would do if you did stay. She is so energetic. I honestly fear she may hurt you. She particularly does never like you thinking of her son. I tremble over the punishment.”

  “Please, sir, I cannot stop.”

  “Oh, Marie, I am trying to do everything right. I have had an idea, I have written a letter.”

  “I have to stay. This is my home.”

  “Nothing is decided yet, Marie. It might go this way, it might go that.”

  But it was decided very soon. A man came, on official business. The first I knew of it was Jacques saying I must brush myself down and hurry to the workshop. Curtius and the widow were sat next to each other at one end of the worktable, a stranger at the other.

  “You are,” the stranger said, “Anne Marie Grosholtz, ward of this house?”

  “Ward, sir?”

  “Yes, Marie,” said the widow, “you are to say yes.”

  “Marie?” I replied. I had never heard her call me that. To the man I said, “I am a servant here. I do the hairs.”

  “I am to offer you a position, on a trial basis. Sculptor tutor to Her Majesty Madame Elisabeth of France. Would it be acceptable to you?”

  I said nothing, no words, no words would come.

  “It would not be acceptable to you?” the man asked.

  I could not breathe. I could only, after a time, nod.

  “I should think so indeed,” the man continued. “Your guardians shall be paid for your services by the month.”

  “Yes, sir. But is it my money?”

  “You must take it up with your guardians here.”

  “I think it must be my money. You see, sir, I have never been paid.”

  “That is not my business, mademoiselle. Please may we conclude: I have set the date of your arrival at a week hence. I trust that too is acceptable.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All accommodation and meals will of course be provided.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said, beginning to understand. “I would have to live there, would I?”

  “You would indeed. That is necessary to the position. It is on a trial basis, you understand,” the man said to my master and the widow. “Your ward may be gone only a week, perhaps merely a day. But, should she prove favorable, she may stay as Madame Elisabeth’s household decides and in agreement with you as her guardians.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Your papers shall remain here,” he told me, “at your guardians’ request.”

  “She belongs to us,” said the widow, all charm.

  “Since Berne,” added my master.

  “It is agreed,” concluded the man. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The widow was rather quiet afterward, a sourness upon her face. Once or twice I saw her watching me. Jacques kept his distance, but could be heard in the kitchen whining, scratching on the floor.

  “I don’t want to go,” I told my master.

  “It is for the best. Until things are calm again.”

  “Was it you who wrote to the palace?”

  “The little princess was clearly so eager. The man came so quickly.” But he gave a slight nod; I might not have seen it without my glasses. He had tried to help, that much was certain, but the effect of any letter from my master to Versailles was impossible to fathom. I liked to think it was essential.

  “Sir! How can I ever leave?”

  “Marie, be good.”

  In the evening, in the kitchen, the widow.

  “There are royal people,” she said, “at the palace. The queen, for example, she lives there, and is much adored by all.”

  “I suppose so, madame.”

  “You may come upon them, such people, from time to time.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “You must behave well in all situations. You must not make us in any way ashamed of you. You must say only the best things about our work.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “And something more: You must gain an appointment for Doctor Curtius to cast the queen’s face. We should like to have the queen from life. And all other essential people. But the queen most of all, she who is all fashion.”

  “Yes, madame, I shall try. Madame, may I ask a question?”

  “You may.”

  “How is Edmond?”

  A reddening on the great mass of face, a rumbling of the mountain, the chin twitching, but the flame was quickly put out as she spoke.

  “My son is with his wife.”

  “Madame,” I said, choking suddenly, “I wanted to marry him. Could you not tell?”

  “You! You!”

  “How I wish that I had!”

  “Your wishes—what are they? They are nothing. Edmond did not wish to be with you. How could he? Who ever should? How could my son be with a foreign servant! Do you have no idea how the world works?”

  “I am going to the palace,” I said. “I have been invited.”

  “You shall ever be our kitchen rat, Marie.”

  I loathed her utterly, then and always, without end. Can I describe my hatred for her? It would poison these pages. I shall leave it out.

  The night before I left, Jacques, like the old monkeys, began to hit the Monkey House. He smashed its walls with his fists, he smashed the fake wooden furnishings, smashing in one direction, then another, kicking his legs and moaning in pain. He screamed as he did it; his riot dance could not be controlled. He moaned like a tortured animal. With my leaving, his fragile world was being upturned. Nothing would convince him that he wasn’t being abandoned.

  My master nervously let the storm exhaust itself; the widow went upstairs to calculate the damage costs. When his anger was spent at last, we put the house back in order. I swept up the broken pieces.

  “Jacques,” I said, stroking his great head, “it is just for a little while. But I do thank you, very much, for your tears.”

  The next morning I set out with Mercier, a little more threadbare those days, with Curtius, and with Jacques limping behind, carrying the trunk containing my clothes and Marta and Father’s jawplate and my drawings, which being kept in a kitchen drawer had survived the widow’s tempest. People stopped when my master walked past them on the boulevard, taking off their hats and bowing, as was usual then: “Good morning, Doctor Curtius.” “What wonderful weather, Doctor Curtius.” We made for the Place Louis-le-Grand, where Doctor Mesmer had once worked—what a vast space it was, it made me rather fearful, I wanted to cling to the sides of it—but Mercier gently tugged me on. I was bought a ticket for the carrabas, the eight-horse Versailles coach, which p
eople called the chamber pot.

  As he lifted me into the coach, Jacques whispered to me through clenched teeth: “Don’t let anyone hurt you. Tell Jacques if they do.”

  “It’s nothing but a colossal servants’ hall,” Mercier said. “Don’t tarry long there; it never does anyone good to tarry there. But, Little, even I must admit: a great adventure.”

  “Dear Little,” my master said, “my own girl, you shall be so much missed. I shall call you Marie today. Marie, who shall do the hairs now? Who will sit beside me? Who shall I tell of my progress?”

  “Good-bye, sir,” I said, “thank you.”

  And then the chamber pot was off.

  Holding Marta in my lap, I watched Paris going nonchalantly about its business. The coach went far away from the Boulevard du Temple and the Monkey House, from Ticre’s printworks, to the Porte de Versailles, out into the fields, and everything I saw was new to me and I was alone. I was to be teacher to Princesse Elisabeth. Versailles beckoned.

  On Paris I turned my back.

  BOOK FOUR

  1778–1789

  A CUPBOARD IN VERSAILLES

  It begins when I am seventeen, it ends when I am twenty-eight.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  In which I have a brief interview with my new employer, and am shown to my lodgings.

  I saw it some time before I reached it, and as we advanced in the coach it grew bigger and bigger and then still bigger and bigger yet, taking the sky away. So strange, when we finally did stop, to see ordinary humans there, of the size I was used to. It was a whole city made of a single building. How to navigate such a thing? It rearranges everything you’ve previously understood about size. I felt like poor Jonah, one of Mother’s people, only this whale before me was golden. Was ever such a place possible? And how could I be coming to live inside it? Mother, I wanted to call. Look, look where I am! I am at the palace. I have been invited inside.

  A footman in blue livery came for me. My trunk, he said, would be delivered separately. I was to follow him. He guided me over cobbles (the size of great tombstones, where people might lie down in the gap between them and never be seen again), through gates (taller I think than any building in Paris), through a servants’ entrance (an opening as of some vast sphincter), along corridors (guts), past rooms and people (food being digested). The valet advanced at great speed. I trembled at the vastness of it all; everything loomed upon me, all the people and all the space. For a moment, distracted by a group of loud people, I lost the valet entirely, but he found me and told me, with a strict clipped voice, that I must cease to delay him further.

  Look up: painted ceilings. Look down: wooden floors with patterns. Look ahead: the back of a valet dressed in blue, getting farther away. Look about: people, people everywhere. Finally, in a quieter passageway, I saw that one of the windows was cracked. I was so glad to have seen that; I felt like I had a chance then. The valet opened a door. “You’re to wait here,” he told me. “Do not touch anything.” Then he closed the door and left.

  I looked about. I was somewhere on the ground floor, a room filled with expensive, distinguished, furious objects. I had never before considered that carriage clocks could be disapproving, nor had I supposed a candelabra might resent lighting me. I had never stepped upon a carpet that did not wish me there, nor felt the enmity of a marble mantelpiece. Nor had I come upon a gold-braided stool whose fat little feet seemed aimed at my ankles. Not before I entered this room.

  In the Monkey House, I had lived on a theater stage. Now before me was a real carriage clock, not a piece of wood clock-shaped, but one that clicked away genuine seconds. Here was an actual marble fireplace, not wood got up in paint to give the impression of marble. Here real people lived, not imitations of people contrived from wax. But I felt then, and do still now, that I was much more at home among hastily contrived theater props than with functioning objects built by masters. I stood in the center of the room, stared at by these objects for a full half hour, until at last another servant entered: a pale young woman who began to busy herself about the room. She did not look at me, as if I were not there at all.

  “Am I to wait here?” I asked.

  But the servant said nothing.

  “Will she be coming soon?”

  Still nothing.

  “What’s your name?”

  Now she shook her head.

  “Might I sit down?”

  “Please,” she said, her look very troubled. “I’m not to talk. It’s not allowed.”

  “Who can I talk to?”

  “I’m only a bit-maid. You mustn’t ask me anything.”

  The door opened; the servant stood frozen. The voice of an old, imperious lady came from the doorway.

  “Have you been talking, Pallier? Don’t ever let me catch you.” And the servant was instantly gone.

  Slowly the old woman walked around me and lowered herself onto one of the sofas. “Why you are here,” she said—and it took me a moment to understand that she was not addressing the sofa—“I cannot conceive. With luck it shall last only this day, and then we need never share the same room again. Madame has her little whims from time to time; the only consolation is that Madame is certain to find something else that interests her more than you, for you don’t look very interesting at all. She will be here shortly. You are to bow, to call her ‘Your Majesty’ or ‘Madame Elisabeth.’ You are to carry out her instructions precisely, whatever she asks. But do not touch her, you must never touch, that is not permitted.”

  I heard the noise of running. A moment later, in came red-faced fourteen-year-old Elisabeth.

  “Ah! There you are at last!” said Elisabeth. “How lovely!”

  “Your Majesty,” said the old woman, prompting.

  “Your Majesty,” I said, bowing.

  “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve thought of nothing else since I saw you! Of all the things we shall do together. My own person, my very own body, that’s what you are! My sister Clotilde—married now, to Charles Emmanuel of Sardinia; oh, and I’m to be married soon too—she never had her own person, not like you anyway. But here you are! I shall write to Clotilde and tell her. They tell me she’s grown very fat. How I miss her! Well then, what shall we do? Shall we draw? Shall we hide and seek? Shall we go on a visit? I must tell you about my visits.”

  “Your Majesty,” I whispered, “I thought we were to—”

  The evil carriage clock chimed and the little princess went very white. Her round face twitched; her gray eyes began to moisten.

  “The time, Madame Elisabeth,” said the old woman with great severity.

  “Oh no, no, no,” whispered Elisabeth.

  “Your aunts, Madame Elisabeth,” came the old woman again.

  “I have to go now. I’ve got to go, my dear person,” Elisabeth told me. “My aunts must not be kept waiting at all, they hate that more than anything, Grandfather always kept them waiting and they abhorred it. I’m so glad you’re here. You’re very precious to me. I’ll see you later. How wonderful that you’re here! Show her to her room, will you, dear Mackau?”

  With that, the little princess was gone and I was left with Madame Mackau. “No doubt she’ll fail again,” she muttered as soon as the door was closed. “I won’t show you,” the old woman said without looking at me. “Don’t think for an instant that I will show you. Wait here.”

  The old woman left and a few moments later a different servant appeared.

  “Follow me, please.”

  We went outside the room a little way and stopped before a very tall and wide double-doored cupboard fixed into the wall. My trunk had been placed beside it.

  “You may open a door.”

  I opened one.

  “It is a cupboard,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, “so please you, it is your cupboard.”

  “I’m to leave my things
here?”

  “You’re to live here.”

  “In a cupboard?”

  “You sleep here. You spend your time here. When she wants you you’re nearby. You sleep on that shelf, and leave your things on the one above. You’ll find it is plenty deep enough.”

  “A cupboard?”

  “Yes indeed. A cupboard.”

  A cupboard is the resting place of objects; a bed is the thing upon which humans lay themselves down. I thought this was understood. But there were contrary ways in Versailles and I must learn them; my master had taught me this when we first came to Paris. It is necessary to learn the rules of new places. Perhaps this was not so very different from the windowless room I inhabited in the dead tailor’s house. I wondered if people were kept in all the cupboards of the palace, if their drawers were pulled open only when they were required. What happened, I wondered, if your cupboard drawer was never opened and you just lay there starving, hoping you might soon be required again? Would you live on flies or spiders? Later I would come to learn that servants throughout the great houses of Europe were often billeted in cupboards, for convenience’s sake, to be close to their employers. George III of England stacked his servants in a chest of drawers outside his bedchamber; the Duke of Urbino kept a servant in a desk; the Barons of Bavaria suspended their servants on custom-built coat hooks; it is said that the Duchess of Blois had a beloved maidservant who lived for forty years in an empty water closet.

  I felt such a sympathy for objects that day as I lay down upon a cupboard floor. How dark it was in there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  My little bit of palace.

  My cupboard doors could be opened from both the inside and out; there was a handle on both sides. Still, shut up there on my bed-shelf, I felt I might as well be in a coffin. Waking after a short slumber, I hammered on the doors in a terror that I’d been buried alive. I dreamed I was dead deep in the boulevard ditch. Even after I remembered where I was, I kept checking the handles to make sure I could get out. What a miserable night.