Little

by Edward Carey

  “I should have left you in Berne,” Mercier said.

  “Then I should never have known such beauty,” replied Curtius, looking at the widow.

  “Oh, Little,” Mercier said. “Little cruelty, little knife, little bloodstain. How your face suits the age. How you do come into yourself: little nightmare.”

  “Why do you say those things?” I asked. “Why do you insult so? What have I done to merit it? I didn’t cut the heads, did I?”

  “Good-bye,” said Mercier. “I do not think I shall be calling again.”

  Mercier was let out through the gates. He stopped, turned back, and kicked the building before he went.

  “Happy enough to drink our wine,” said the widow.

  “In truth,” said my master, “I never much cared for his head.”

  Later that night, while we sat in the hall, the widow beside my master, Henri Picot’s bell was rung again. Jacques Beauvisage was on the other side of the gate, a saber in one hand and a musket in the other, asking to be let in. The words that follow were spoken in whispers (inside), and in roars (outside).

  “He’ll murder us all,” said the widow.

  “No,” I said, “he would never hurt us.”

  “There’s blood on him,” said Martin Millot. “I see it.”

  “Shall we let him in?” asked Curtius.

  “He’s not himself,” said the widow. “He’ll butcher us all and then weep about it in the morning.”

  “Jacques,” I said. “Our own bloody Jacques.”

  “Model me!’” Jacques shouted from the gates. “Model me!”

  “It’s against the rules,” the widow whispered. “We don’t model ourselves. We ourselves are not for display. We do not take part.”

  “I’ve been busy!” called Jacques.

  “He’s very drunk,” I said. “No, he’s not himself.”

  “Best let him sleep it off on some doorstep,” said Curtius.

  “What sleep,” asked the widow, “can sleep that off?”

  “Busy! Oh, busy!” he cried. “These hands!”

  There was a long silence.

  “Has he gone?” asked Martin.

  “I think so.” But then:

  “Oh, help!” Jacques called out at last. “Help Jacques! Who will help Jacques?”

  “I cannot bear it,” said my master.

  “Little, help! Little!”

  “I want to go to him,” I said.

  “Emile! Emile!” Jacques whimpered.

  “He is a little quieter. He’s calming,” said the widow, “but we cannot let him in.”

  “What to do?” he wailed. “What to do now?”

  “He’ll go away soon enough,” said the widow. “He’ll quiet down.”

  “Family!” Jacques cried. “Mother! Father! Sister! Brother!”

  “Jacques Beauvisage,” I whispered, “hush now.”

  “I! I! I! Help! Help me!”

  He screamed, a long hideous animal howl. All was silent, he was gone.

  “Tomorrow, sir,” I said, “we must look for him.”

  “Yes, Marie, he’ll be calmer then. I shouldn’t be surprised if he comes back later and sleeps by the gates.”

  Jacques Beauvisage did not come back that night, or the next morning. Streaked with blood, he had thrown away the softness of his bed, had shaken off warmth and comfort, had cast himself and his agony back upon the streets.

  That night the city was a very new place, and the boulevard had lost all its noise. Where carriages and people once coursed up and down in their business, now all was silent. The gates of the city were locked. Patrols of pikemen were in every street, banging on the doors. On the river, boats were positioned at regular intervals, with armed men inside who shot at whatever moved.

  In the morning, when the city gates opened again, Curtius and I went out to search for Jacques, calling his name, whistling, shouting. We stopped people in the streets. We offered a reward for news of him. But that day, and for many days thereafter, none came.

  “My Jacques,” said Curtius in grief. “My child! What happens if there are thieves in the night? Who will guard us now?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  No feelings.

  While the gates around the city and all the shutters and all the windows were closed by order of the Commune, while certain essential streets of the city were lined four deep with soldiers, Curtius, the widow, Edmond, and I were sitting in the Church of the Madeleine, on the Rue de la Madeleine, summoned early that morning on National Assembly business. Having received the written order to appear, we had been up early, had washed and dressed ourselves carefully. Martin Millot had looked us over, brushed us down, made all our tricolor cockades stand out proud, then stepped back to look us over again, and sent us off with a wave.

  “You’ll do,” he said. “What a day. You have all deserved this.”

  Off we went. I turned around to return his wave, but my eye was distracted by a solitary figure on the street nearby, his high collar turned against the wind.

  We spent that long morning at the Madeleine church, so many hours waiting that I nearly forgot why we were there. At last I heard a roll of drums, then a silence, and then a noise that hit the church windows like a massive clap of thunder, an enormous and sudden burst of cheering. We adjusted ourselves a little, sat upright, brushed ourselves down again. Shan’t be long now. Any moment now. What butterflies. Curtius’ stomach groaning. The widow sweating despite the cold. Edmond holding Edmond in his lap. We kept looking at each other, Edmond and I. But we carried on waiting, just waiting. Not saying anything.

  At about ten thirty the gates of the city were opened again, and the day’s business could begin. Then shutters throughout the city were pulled back and people appeared at windows, people went about their ordinary business and bought vegetables and meat from the late-opening markets or drank coffee, had a game of chess, went back to bed. At about that same time, just after half-past ten, our package arrived for us. We were led outside. The major part was in a barrow; a pit had been dug in the churchyard, and quicklime was ready in a bucket. We received the parcel in a basket, and were bidden hurry.

  “It’s missing most of its hair,” Curtius noted.

  “Sold in little bushels,” said one of the men with the barrow.

  I had it in my lap, the weight.

  “You should hurry,” the barrow man said.

  “I think your woman is crying,” said the barrow man.

  “I do not think so,” said my master. “Marie, are you? This is not like you at all.”

  “She shouldn’t be crying. It isn’t right.”

  “We are anonymous, Marie,” said my master. “And we have no feelings at all. We could never afford feelings; they are other people’s business. You should know this better than anyone. How many heads have we done? Why this fuss now? We are newspapers. We record only. We are privileged, Marie, to see what we have seen, and this is the pinnacle of that privilege. Kings die too, in all sorts of ways. History records it so. And now we record it too. Fact. Fact.”

  “Thank you, sir. I am better now.”

  “And now, this is not right,” said the barrow man. “The old woman is crying too.”

  The Widow Picot, impregnable fortress, had a spot of the king’s blood on her lap. She poked at it with her finger. Her eyes, it is certain, were watery.

  “The king,” she whispered. “Oh, the king. What have we done to come to this?”

  It was such a head that even the widow was unmoored by it. Edmond, having already lost his breakfast, sat shivering beside his mother, the cloth Edmond in his mouth.

  Curtius and I settled down to work. We passed the head between us so that it might be cleaned a little: the width of the severed neck, the slice of the meat, the clots in it, the splinters of bone. I applied the pomade to t
he face, taking care not to open the eyelids. There was not much expression. A little wrinkling on the brows; the lips had to be pushed into position and held there. Teeth grated down by so much sugary pastry—no, not that, do not think of that.

  “Robinson Crusoe,” I said, “was his favorite book.”

  “Oil,” said my master.

  “If they can do this to him, I think they might do it to Elisabeth, mightn’t they?”

  “Plaster,” said my master.

  When we were done they put the two parts in the simplest wooden box and covered it with the quicklime. I placed the dried plaster molds in Curtius’ father’s case, pending further instruction from the National Assembly. Those empty molds were more palpable than anything else Curtius had ever made. Then we set off for home, taking turns carrying the heavy bag. I wondered, as we walked, what we would do now with the wax models of the king, the one sitting at table that I had modeled after so many drawings and the one standing that I had cast from life. They were complete models after all, each in one large piece. It was wrong of them to be in one piece still; they should have come apart automatically after the king’s execution.

  The widow took the bag from me.

  “I’ll have it now,” she said. “You’ve taken it far enough.”

  I was part of the family, you see.

  When we reached home, I saw that the door marked OUT and one of the gates were open. Martin Millot, I considered, must have left them open for us. I called out to him, but he didn’t come. Inside, all was just as before: those heads on sticks, all those personalities thrown over. Curtius put the bag down on the floor, but that didn’t seem right; the widow put it on a table. I took the molds out of the bag and left them on the table with the order from the National Assembly so that everything would be in its place when they were called for. Curtius’ bag must always be prepared: I went into the workshop, replaced the plaster supply and the pomade, and left it by the back door so it would be ready for the next time.

  When I returned to the great hall, Martin still hadn’t come down, so I went to fetch him. He wasn’t at his tall stool in the counting room, the desk was empty. I saw that the door of the strongbox was slightly open. That’s unlike Martin, I thought, to keep it open; he’s usually so strict on such things. I was just going to push it closed when I looked in and saw that the strongbox was empty. There was nothing on the shelves except a single piece of paper.

  Which I took, and ran back downstairs, screaming as I ran. I screamed as I thrust the paper in the widow’s hands. I was still screaming as she took it.

  She was seated with Curtius on the bench in the great hall, lottery winner Cyprien Bouchard between them. Her head bent down to read it:

  I have taken 17,675 assignats.

  I have taken 12,364 Louis d’or.

  I have taken the 9,000 livres the Widow Picot keeps in her husband.

  This dirty business is over. I finish it.

  By the time you return home the gates will be open long since and I will be gone.

  In signature, Martin Millot

  The widow’s head stayed down, reading the note. It stayed down, but I knew it would come rising up again. She always knew what to do. The widow’s head stayed down, but any moment now, any moment, it should come up. This was a hard blow, certainly, but she’d fix it. She always knew what to do. We relied on her. The widow’s head stayed down. Any moment now, any moment.

  The widow’s head stayed down.

  It stayed down.

  It did not come up again.

  BOOK SIX

  1793–1794

  QUIET HOUSE

  My years thirty-two and thirty-three.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Quiet House on Quiet Street.

  Where were the people arriving in their droves after the end of work? They were not here. They were not coming. Who had money to spend on entertainment, now that bread and candles and cloth had tripled in price? The boulevard entertainers had moved on, packed up, taking entertainment elsewhere. Doctor Graham’s establishment had a sign tacked across its door: TO LET. All gone, all gone. What a tumble, what a loss. Not a firework. Not a spark. The Boulevard du Temple had gone out, renamed Quiet Street.

  The Great Monkey House appeared abandoned; the front gate Martin Millot had left open, never closed since, now slouched toward the ground. Had Martin robbed us on his own, or did he have help? It seemed so unlike him. Someone surely must have assisted. Weeds grew through the cracks in the yard; children played upon the flagstones and no one shooed them away. The rusted bell on the twisted gate was mute. When the widow couldn’t raise her head, the Cabinet had simply stopped. It had lost its head.

  Not that the house was empty. You shouldn’t know it, but there were people inside. Four hearts still beating. One faintly perhaps, but another speeding up, as if in compensation.

  “I am a doctor,” Curtius said, “and you, Edmond, are the son, and you, Marie, are—well, you are Little. Now there shall be nothing but facts, only facts. Nothing but truth, Charlotte. Dear Charlotte: apoplexy.”

  Edmond and I gathered straws from the workshop, the same ones that had been used to help people breathe as they were cast. Now they went into the widow’s twisted mouth, to help her feed.

  “Apoplexy, I’d almost swear to it,” Curtius said. “Ligature around the neck, perhaps, a congestion of the brain. Hemiplegia, a fifty percent palsy. Or an aneurysm? Are you sensible, Charlotte? Are you understanding what is going on? Will you make a sign? If I could see inside,” he said, lightly stroking her mobcap with the tips of his fingers, “I’d know instantly. If I could just have a look. Is there clotting? Is there swelling? A crack somewhere? I mustn’t look in, though you’re keeping the secret from us. Have you had an accident in your head? Help me. I don’t know what to do. Charlotte, don’t stop. Please, I beg you, do not stop.”

  She would only stare at the ceiling. She drank and that was good, though Curtius had to persuade her by holding her nose. She breathed on, and that, he said, was the essential point.

  “I’ll always be here,” he told her, patting her hand.

  A little dribble fell from her mouth down her chin. He dried it.

  “Do you need changing?” he said with a sniff. “You do. I shall change you. Now, Marie, Edmond, off you go, please, this is my business. I must shift your mother, Edmond. I must move this great lady, Marie, who has been so much to you. Come back in a little while. I can manage on my own. I’m growing muscles for you, Charlotte. I’m growing very strong. No, Charlotte, I do not miss those other heads. No, I don’t care for them at all. I’ve all I need here. And am much the richer for it.”

  Doctor Curtius’ new days were days of love. He loved the labor, he loved her sweat and spittle, he loved whatever her body made. Even her groans were not unlovely to his ears, for they were hers. Feeling brave, he would whisper:

  “Oh, I love you, I love you. I love you. Did I never say?”

  And since no one stopped him, he no longer whispered it, but announced it quite loudly to the right side of her and to the left, so that she might hear. He declared it as often as he could. Sometimes he sat at the broken side of her, looking with sorrow at her drooped face, at the arm and leg that never moved, the slug-shaped portion of the mouth, the eye with the sagging lid.

  “Let me tell you about yourself,” he said. “You’re big and moley and hairy, yes, you are. There’s Charlotte the director of business with her cigar; what a success she is, how proud we are of her. You’re many shades of wonder. There’s Charlotte the mother; what a fine boy. There’s Charlotte the head of household; what attentions you give. There’s Charlotte the widow too; we must not forget her, a smaller Charlotte than the others. That one can go, perhaps, that one’s Charlotte the past. There’s Charlotte the present too, isn’t there? After all, here she is in her bed. One side leans backward, the other, I think, still hold
s on, doesn’t it? A little forward? Yes! There she is, Charlotte the future. Perhaps the best of all possible Charlottes.”

  IN and OUT were closed. The plaster mold of the head of the executed monarch awaited its summons from the National Assembly. It never came. No one seemed to want it. There it lay, two halves of a mold tied together. In that hollow space inside the plaster shell was a space that represented enormous history. We were its guardian.

  In those days, Edmond and I were suddenly together. There was no one to stop us. And being together after so long, at first we had no words for each other. We just stood near each other, never leaving each other’s side but not knowing quite what to do in this strange freedom. Sometimes we left the Great Monkey House, going out upon Quiet Street for small rations: hours in the bread queue, our former neighbors looking at us, not without pleasure to see us so disheveled now. Sometimes, when we were nearly at the front of the queue, we were sent to the back; sometimes, when we got to the front again, there was nothing left. One day, it was a young man with fishlike eyes who pulled us out, dressed in new clothes, a fine saber at his side.

  “Dead yet?” he asked.

  “No, André Valentin,” I said, for it was he. “She seems a little better today.”

  “So much the worse. Where are your papers? I’ll see them again.”

  “We’ve already shown them.” In those days, our papers were always with us.

  “I’ll see them again—I’ll see them whenever I choose. Swiss! Do you know what we do with Swiss? We arrest Swiss. And we cut off their heads. I wonder how many Swiss there are remaining in Paris these days. The number must be very small, ever shrinking.”

  “How did you get your sword, citizen?”

  “I earned it. Tell me, how’s business?”