Little

by Edward Carey

  There stood Curtius and the widow. Through my glasses, they both appeared shrunken. There was a dripping noise that seemed to come from inside my master.

  “You are mistaken,” he responded at last. “Philip Wilhelm Mathias Curtius. Or Doctor Curtius. Only yesterday Philippe. Never darling, it is true, not dear one. Plain Curtius is acceptable. Nothing else.”

  “Captain Curtius,” they insisted. “No one would be more fitting.”

  “His place is here,” the widow said, “among wax people.”

  “Yes, yes indeed,” they said, “and to protect such a distinguished populace, this district must first be protected.”

  “No,” said the widow. “No, this is not right.”

  “Captain Curtius,” they said. “It is a great honor to be elected captain.”

  “He does not need this honor,” the widow said to the two men, “or your cowardice.”

  “His name is already written down at the Hôtel de Ville.”

  “Forgive me, Curtius, for what I am about to say,” she said very quietly before turning back to the men. “Does he look capable? He couldn’t do it. He has no understanding of such things.”

  “Advance to your duty, Captain Curtius.”

  “Captain Curtius?” said my master.

  “Captain Curtius, they are waiting for you at the hôtel.”

  “No,” the widow said. “He shall not go.”

  “There is a possibility then,” said Doctor Graham, “that he shall be arrested.”

  “There is a possibility then,” said beanpole Nicolet, “that your property will be raided. We couldn’t stop it.”

  My master stood up, silent.

  “Someone must go in his stead,” the widow announced. “I shall go!”

  “No,” they said. “No, not at all. Dress. Skirt. No, no.”

  Then my master spoke.

  “Captain Curtius,” he declared. Statement. No longer question.

  “Philippe, stop!”

  “Thank you very much,” the men said. “We salute you.”

  My master actually saluted them. No army should employ such a salute: it was the vaguest impersonation, the briefest wave across the face, as if to shoo a fly.

  Even in defeat, the widow always knew what to do. “Jacques, you shall go with him. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  “Yes, I will!” yelled Jacques.

  “Let no one touch him.”

  “No, I won’t!”

  “Widow Picot,” my master said, “I’m a captain. What would you say to a captain? Shall I get a uniform? I should like one. I shall go away to the people. They all know me. They shall say, ‘There goes Doctor Captain Curtius.’” He took the beauty spot from his chin and placed it in the front of his tricorn hat, as if it were a military decoration.

  “Today,” said my master to the widow, “I shall call you Charlotte.”

  “Please, Philippe, you must not go!”

  “Charlotte, oh Charlotte, I’m going out.” He threw up his hands, the wingspan of a pelican. “Keep the doors bolted, let nobody in—that sort of thing. Bye-bye, Charlotte.”

  “Sir!” I called.

  “Philippe!” The widow was in tears!

  I wondered if I should ever see him again.

  They set out, Curtius with his old guard dog before him, limping, leading the way. Toward the Hôtel de Ville, along the boulevard toward the old Saint-Antoine gate—long pulled down—where he and I had first entered Paris. At the end of the boulevard they would turn right at the Rue Saint-Antoine, at the fortress there. On that fourteenth of July.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Unholy child.

  The noises reached their height a little after five. There had been cannon fire before, but now there was an almost constant roar of voices. When I could no longer concentrate on my work, I went to the back rooms, then up the old Monkey House stairs, past the tailor’s dummy of old Henri Picot. I had not heard Edmond for some time and wanted to check on him. He wasn’t in the attic; he wasn’t anywhere. I looked out the window, hoping to see the source of the noise, but all I could see was a shaft of empty boulevard. Then I heard a clamoring bellowing of people, growing louder. The crowd must be coming closer; if I stayed there in my attic post I should witness it firsthand.

  Only then did I notice Edmond. He was down below in the yard, within the Monkey House gates, walking back and forth and waving his hands. His mouth was wide open—was Edmond screaming? It was impossible to hear anything above the crowd. As loudly as I could, I called out:

  “Edmond! Edmond, come back in!”

  But I do not think he could hear me. He went up to the fence and put his head to it. He banged his head against the railings. And then he banged so hard that his head went right through—and stayed there. Edmond’s body was on one side of the railings, the Great Monkey House side. His head was on the other. And a great crowd was coming on.

  “Bring your head in, Edmond! Bring it in!” I called.

  But he just crouched there, with his shoulders against the railings and his head stuck out onto the boulevard. I rushed down the stairs, out the back door, and into the yard. It was very different outside. The people were gathered like a darkening storm, and growing thicker; the buildings rattling with echoed noises. And there was Edmond, his head through the railings, and the crowd coming on.

  “Are you stuck, Edmond? Are you stuck?”

  “Lemon vinegar lozenges!” he said.

  “Edmond, I shall try to pull you out!”

  It was no use.

  “Edmond, you won’t come free!”

  “Potato cakes from Savoy!”

  The crowd was in sight by then, such a great mass, a vast organ of people. A great, loud, many-mouthed beast it was, a king rat, stumbling forward on several hundred limbs. Some of the crowd were dancing, some held old pieces of cages above their heads; they were agitated and excited and I wished they’d be gone. When I got to the gates, they were packed close against them, so close that they took my breath. What new creature was this?

  “Here’s another head,” someone yelled, and then there was laughter.

  “No, no, everything is all right,” I said. “Please, do pass along now.”

  “Has he got his head stuck?”

  “Help! Help!” I cried back toward the Monkey House. “Help me!”

  “It’s true! Another head!” someone yelled.

  “Look at that head, would it like to meet our others?”

  Then, with some cheering, they hoisted their trophy objects above the fray. Heads. Two heads, on sticks. Very well made, I thought for the smallest instant; perhaps Curtius had made them? Were these the heads the widow was missing? Only then the truth became suddenly clear: These were not wax heads, not at all. These were flesh heads, made by their parents. Real heads. One was shoved now level with Edmond’s, as if for comparison, as if they might converse. Edmond screamed, his body bucked and rode, but his head would not come free.

  One of the boys from the Monkey House came out.

  Left: {The elongated neck of the Marquis de Launay.}

  Right: {His traveling companion, de Flesselles.}

  “Wax,” I shouted at him. “Bring wax, as fast as you can!”

  Wax, I thought: wax would do it. Only wax, rubbed along the bars, would release Edmond in full. Wax is a lubricant; it stops doors and windows from sticking; it works on metal as well as wood. It can be used on humans as well as metal. It stops a hinge from screaming. It might stop Edmond too.

  Now the widow was outside. “Edmond!” she cried. “Edmond, come in at once.” She pushed me away and tried to pull him back, but even her command wouldn’t move him.

  “Come away,” the widow ordered me, white and shaking. “Let them pass along.”

  “Bring wax!” I cried. “Wax to
loosen his head.”

  “Wax! Wax!” bellowed the widow, Monkey House boys rushing.

  “It’s the house of wax—I been there,” said some voice in the crowd.

  “Seen all the famous bodies!”

  “What about ours, then? What about these famous heads? Not bodies, certain, but heads. Heads everyone should know.”

  “De Launay, governor of the Bastille.”

  “Ex-governor.”

  “He shot at us!”

  “Won’t anymore.”

  Boys came running, carrying wax. I cut some off and started rubbing it along the bars, around Edmond’s ears. The widow pushed me out of the way.

  “I’m here, Edmond! I’m here,” she cried.

  “And this here’s de Flesselles—he made the people starve.”

  The crowd dangled the other head before Edmond. How he recoiled.

  “There’ll be no more starving!”

  “Fat merchant!”

  “We tugged out his stuffing.”

  I’d never seen a murder before, never in my life. I’d never even seen the heads before they were cast. But now here we were, of a sudden, so close to them. So close to some new truth. I couldn’t bear to look, but then I couldn’t bear to look away. And still, poor howling Edmond, in such dismal company, would not come free.

  Wax will do it, I prayed. Wax will. Wax must.

  “You should have our heads in wax,” some voice shouted at the widow.

  “Go, please go along, leave us in peace,” she groaned.

  “Not yet. Not until you’ve done the heads. Take these heads. Do them. In wax.”

  “No! No, please go!”

  “Don’t tell us what to do.”

  “We’ll not stop. Not unless you want us to have three heads on pikes.”

  “Cut it! Cut it! Slit his throat.”

  Edmond screamed again, now with new reason. What a sound he made.

  “Marie!” he said. “MARIE! MARIE!” Real words! His own words, again and again—my name, over and over! “MARIE! MARIE!”

  “I’m here,” said the widow. “Right here, Edmond, your mother.”

  “MARIE! MARIE!”

  There was nothing else to be done. “I’ll cast the heads for you,” I said at last. “Follow me down the railing, come along, bring the heads to me.”

  “MARIE!”

  “Run, boys, get Curtius’ case. Run!”

  “How long will it take?” someone asked.

  “Minutes,” I said, “a few minutes, just time for the plaster to dry. I shall be very quick and then you may be on your way.”

  “Better had, or we’ll add to our collection.”

  “No need,” I said. “No need for that.”

  My master’s bag, always packed by the side door, was hurried out.

  “I am ready,” I said.

  A man clambered onto the shoulders of a companion and passed a head, still on its pike, over the gate to my side. I was so surprised by the weight that I nearly dropped it. I must cover this item with plaster. Just the face.

  “It will not take as long to cast these two heads as usual,” I said. “They need no straws in their nostrils to breathe through the plaster, and if handled roughly they can be guaranteed not to complain.”

  Right there in the Monkey House yard, I set about my work. Martin Millot helped me, his hands shaking.

  “Some soft soap,” I said.

  The head in my lap was the merchant de Flesselles. He seemed to look at me with foggy eyes. I knew I should not be holding this head, that I should probably hurl it from me. Was it rubbish, was it filth? How could it be filth when only a moment ago it was the thinking, seeing, hearing, tasting, chewing ball on top of a human body? Are we instantly filth, then, as soon as we die? The unhappy object so missed what so recently was beneath it. How striking we are when fractioned, how odd-looking. And—oh!—the horrible sad heft of a human head. A weight that should never be learned. Poor sphere. I was not cruel to it. For Edmond’s sake, for its own.

  The second head was that of the Marquis de Launay, governor of the Bastille. This was not in such good condition as the last, though it was the more recently acquired. My lap was soon very damp. Order, I told myself, order. Say it like your master would. Don’t miss a thing. Like when you were in Berne. Show your training, boast of it.

  “The Marquis de Launay’s neck,” I said out loud as the widow applied more wax around her son’s neck and head, “is cut in jagged lines. There is a rent across his right temporal fascia; the muscles around the inferior maxillary region are badly slashed. The cartilaginous framework of his nose is very collapsed; the whole of that organ is bloody and pushed over to one side; a shard of shattered cartilage is peeking out from the left nostril. The point of the pike has been driven right through the hole, the foramen magnum, at the base of the skull, and has progressed considerably into the skull case until it could go no farther. The very tip of the pike now rests on the very interior apex of the parietal bones, that is to say at the superior sagittal suture—this fact confirmed by a little cracking I feel just now, on the exterior of the skull, through the marquis’ scalp.”

  Thus I sat upon a stool just outside the Great Monkey House, casting two bodiless heavy heads for a wild audience just beyond the gates, while above me the sky grew grayer and grayer. And as I completed my work Edmond came free at last, and all of him was back within the gates of the Great Monkey House, exhausted in the panting widow’s great lap. The widow was sobbing. I’d seen a grouping like that before, it’s called a pietà.

  Saved, saved by wax.

  When the plaster was dry, Martin passed the two heads back over the gate and the crowd marched away at last, their excitement on the wane. My dress was covered in blood and gore and plaster; I turned aside and was suddenly sick upon the paving stones. I wish it hadn’t happened. I should have done better. They’re only bodies, after all; it’s perfectly natural. But my thoughts were slowing.

  “Edmond, Edmond!” I said. “You called me!” But he was already inside.

  It was beginning to rain. I was glad of it. I stayed there, being rained upon. What a thing to have done, I thought. Before long everyone else drifted inside, but I was happy to be alone awhile.

  When at last I returned to the Monkey House, all three doors were locked.

  “You’re not to come in,” the widow called. “I shan’t have you inside. Stay out! Unholy child!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Fleabite.

  For three hours I stayed in the courtyard in the rain. I shivered upon the doorstep until at last Doctor Curtius and Jacques returned. My master rang the bell and Millot came out, the widow standing behind him at the door.

  “She’s not to come in!” she bellowed. “I won’t have such a person in here. Disgusting! Unholy!”

  My master heard what had happened.

  “You cast these severed heads?”

  “She did! She did!” called the widow from the door.

  “To get the crowd away from Edmond. I thought it was right,” I said.

  “How could it be right?” she called.

  “It’s not right, Marie,” he said.

  “I had to give the crowd what it wanted,” I said. “What else could I do?”

  “That was a matter for me,” he said.

  It took a moment for me to understand him.

  “You were not here,” I said.

  “I should have been sent for.”

  “No one knew where you were.”

  “I could have been found.”

  “You were with the National Guard. You were needed there!”

  “Well . . . I am most upset,” my master said.

  “I am more upset,” the widow insisted. “She kept the murderers here at our gate, while Edmond’s own head was caught betwee
n the railings.”

  “I would never do anything to hurt Edmond,” I said. “I was trying—”

  “Filth! Vermin! Who do you think you are?” she cried.

  “A sculptor’s assistant.”

  “Vile, disgusting, dirty!” she spat.

  And I shouted back, “You do not frighten me, old woman.”

  “Both of you, please. Calm,” said my master.

  “How can I be calm,” cried the widow, “with that abomination before me?”

  “Come inside,” said Curtius quietly. “Come inside and get dry.”

  “She must not!” screamed the widow. Then she came at me, slapping me about the face, with the front of her hand, with the back.

  I wouldn’t have that. Not after everything else. I swung my little fist around and struck back at the flesh of her face. That stopped the slapping. And then, in my sudden anger, I struck again. A jab of fist thrust in her face. I did it. I.

  I thought I must have pulverized my hand.

  What work! Blood on her lips. The shock of that. I did it. How good it was, the cut upon her lip, the cut on my knuckles from contact with her teeth.

  “Murder!” she screamed.

  “I could murder you,” I shouted, for there was no calming me then. “I’ve thought of it often enough. How I’ve imagined it!”

  “Marie! Little!” said my master. “Have a care! Poor Charlotte!”

  “I’ve taken as much from her as ever I’m going to. Maybe I will have her head on a stick. How many years have I listened to her small words? I shan’t anymore. I’ll be paid—oh, heavens, I’ll be paid now. This very day!”

  “Little, you must apologize. You know you must.”

  The widow had turned scarlet. “It’s just as Nicolet said: anarchy!” she yelled. “This is how it spreads, law turned upside down, rebellion in the home.”

  “You have a fat lip, madame!”

  “You must beg the widow’s forgiveness.”

  And then all my hurt over all the years boiled over and came vomiting forth. Those heads had done it: cannonballs of anger, of pain.