Celeste

by Roland Perry

  CHAPTER 3

  Saint-Lazare Prison

  Céleste kept running until she felt she was safe, ending up in the nearby 4th arrondissement. She didn’t dare return to the Boulevard du Temple, where she imagined Vincent would search for her. Céleste was desperate to reach her mother, but she did not have the address in Fontainebleau. It was the heart of winter and it wasn’t until dawn that she found a hayloft off Rue Saint-Antoine. Exhausted, she slept until noon, when she was disturbed by a farmer delivering hay. He chased her away, but Céleste thought it would be a useful place to return to. The tightly packed bales afforded some warmth if she buried herself deep in the hay. During the day she stole food from stalls in the nearby markets, but her amateurish efforts as a thief nearly caused her to be caught. On day three, numb with cold, she scavenged in bins but found little nourishment. Beggars and vagabonds in the area had already pillaged the offerings, especially those outside the better cafés.

  By the fourth night Céleste was starving and ill. She found a recess at the entrance to the Église Saint-Paul, prayed for salvation and curled up in a ball. A street prostitute, Thérèse, saw her there and took pity on her. The eighteen-year-old had run away from home at thirteen and could relate to Céleste’s plight. At sixteen, she had taken the only route she felt open to her, and that was to sell her body. She had registered as a prostitute, which had the flimsy benefit of not being harassed by police if she obeyed the laws of the city regarding her trade. Thérèse’s compassion wavered.

  ‘If I’m found with you,’ she told Céleste, ‘I’ll be charged with “corrupting a minor”.’

  ‘Why?’

  Thérèse pouted. ‘There’s a law to stop underage girls falling into my “trade of no return”. I would get a year in prison for it.’

  She observed Céleste, then made up her mind. ‘C’mon, let me find you some food and clothing.’

  The next day a policeman spotted them in a laneway, huddled against the biting wind. Céleste poured out her story about the predatory Vincent and Thérèse explained how she had found the destitute girl. The policeman was compassionate.

  ‘You should never have done this,’ he admonished Thérèse, ‘but under the circumstances I admire you for looking after this fallen angel.’

  He took the two girls to the local police station and made a report. Céleste wrote a letter, explaining where she was, and Thérèse promised to send it to Anne-Victoire.

  ‘But whatever you do, don’t mention what Vincent did,’ she advised Céleste. ‘Your mother may not believe you.’

  Céleste agreed that Vincent would already have put his version of events to Anne-Victoire and that it would be better to tell her face to face.

  Céleste was processed at the station. She was then pushed into an open cart, crowded with prostitutes, adulterers, child beggars, thieves, bar brawlers, those who had caused an affray, and those labelled insane. This was a shameful moment for Céleste. All in the cart were jeered at, abused and even targeted with rotten fruit along the route to the women’s prison of Saint-Lazare in the 10th arrondissement, a marshy area near the River Seine, on the road from Paris to Saint-Denis. Ever since the location had been a leprosarium in the twelfth century, it had held an air of foreboding. By the seventeenth century it had become a large fenced-off area, where young undesirables were sent so they could no longer embarrass their families. Witches, thieves, beggars, rapists, murderers, heretics and blasphemers were herded there. The ignoble nature of Saint-Lazare took on renewed vigour thirty years before Céleste’s forced visit when it was converted into a prison during the French Revolution and the so-called Reign of Terror, which had been precipitated by violence between political factions. Twenty years before Céleste’s arrival it became a women’s prison and the inmates since then had maintained its nefarious and odious reputation.

  The women were ushered into a long hall of wire cages. The adults, ranging up to the age of seventy, were separated from the juveniles. The latter included a ten-year-old beggar who had befriended Céleste at the police station. These two were the last to be sorted by an official. He asked if they had been in prison or arrested before. Both had not. This was Céleste’s last chance to tell somebody in authority that she had a home but had fled after nearly being raped by her mother’s partner. But she said nothing, preferring to take her chances in a tough system rather than face Vincent’s violent sexual abuse.

  Céleste was put in her cell. The next day she was ordered to dress in prison clothes, including a shirt emblazoned with ‘Prison of Saint-Lazare’, which was a frightening adornment for a fourteen-year-old, and one of many moments she would remember vividly for the rest of her life. The prison-issue garb offended her youthful fashion sensibilities. It included a thick woollen sack-like dress of grey; a blue-striped apron, which would stand out for the wrong reasons anywhere; a black wool bonnet, which coordinated with the dress, at least in its fabric; and a scarf decorated with roses of different hues, which may have been the prison’s modest concession to brightening the inmates’ lives. It did impress Céleste (as she later recorded) that the colour scheme was bizarre and more in keeping with circus clowns than anything else. But at least she was able to keep her smart and comfortable brown leather shoes.

  Things took an odd turn the next morning at 8 a.m. when Céleste was marched to the mess hall of long tables, that each seated twenty inmates. After a short prayer of thanks, she and the others not interned for misdemeanours and crimes were sent to a workroom for two hours of writing, arithmetic and singing. This was the first formal education she had had apart from the brief lessons in the embroidery factory. She felt intimidated, given her limited education in anything other than basic adding up. But she enjoyed the singing, which was of religious hymns of praise, rather than the popular and sometimes bawdy tunes she knew by heart from the shows on her much-loved and now yearned-for boulevard.

  The teacher, Mademoiselle Michelle Benard, twenty-five, was a kindly, timorous soul, who had no hope of controlling the unruly class. Céleste was keen to learn and especially enjoyed the writing exercises. She was praised for her efforts, which brought howls of derision from many of the other girls, who were delinquent in every respect and, given the era, without hope of rehabilitation. She referred to them as ‘Demons’ or ‘Devils, with a dog-eat-dog mentality that knew no boundaries’. They appeared to Céleste to be girls who might never have experienced real love. They depressed her and she appreciated the affection and spoiling she had received from Anne-Victoire. It made her pray that her mother would come for her soon.

  Céleste received a second reality check in the crowded prison yard in the afternoon of her second day. The fifteen-metre-high walls created a claustrophobic atmosphere and were constant reminders of being shut off from society.

  If she thought the younger internees were a problem, she was really put on edge during her first Sunday mass at Saint-Lazare, the big event of the week. It was held in a chapel, which reminded her of some of the tiered theatres on the Boulevard du Temple. The women serving sentences were in a gallery behind a wire fence. These were a mixed bunch. Céleste tried to avoid eye contact with the tougher ones and felt nervous even glancing at them. There were not many smiles or much softness in their faces, which were grim and defeated. They bore the consequences of a life of crime or incarceration. Gnarled ears, scarred cheeks and broken noses were prevalent.

  By contrast, wedged in with these worst cases were attractive young women, each with a telltale extra garment—a silk scarf, a cotton vest or camisole poking over the neck of the standard-issue shirt, a lace bonnet, or even in a couple of instances, white cotton socks. These extra garments indicated the women were prostitutes with a connection beyond the confines of Saint-Lazare, usually to brothels. The madams of these places wanted the girls back as soon as they were released. To keep them content with their temporary lot, the brothel keepers furnished them with everything from cash to food, wine and extravagant sweets. Linen, pillows and warm cove
rings in the cells, even books, were further signs that these women would return to their glamorous yet dangerous and dead-end employment in the brothels, which were a part of Parisian life and on the rise from the 1830s.

  Céleste was intrigued and painted this group in a good light in her later memoirs: ‘These were the aristocrats of the place. They employed old and uncared-for women prisoners to wait on them and do their work . . . on the whole they were generous and paid for everybody.’

  Some in this pampered group were also given money by their male clients, whom they would take up with again once they left Saint-Lazare.

  At that first mass, Céleste observed them, along with all her other new companions in detention. Below the upper galleries were the older internees. A handful of this group would die in the prison. Most were on light sentences, from a few months to a year. Some were on remand before being placed in less severe institutions. The older women saddened her. She vowed even then that if her mother never came for her, which she thought was unlikely, she would somehow escape from the stifling confines of Saint-Lazare.

  Another shocking feature of the prison emerged quickly. Céleste, a virgin, was astonished to see that the girls and women formed special bonds. This manifested during mass with blown kisses and notes passed. At night when the lights were doused the attachments became intimate. Movement on bunks, groans and the odd scream of delight made it clear that sex was the only real joy for the internees, to which the guards, teachers and nuns seemed to turn a blind eye.

  CHAPTER 4

  Denise the Dominant

  A fellow inmate named Denise (known also as Narelle), with the odd surname of ‘Onze’ (Eleven), made swift advances towards Céleste. Denise was the most overtly sexual inmate. She kept her hair clipped very short, and her looks were rather pretty. She was the tallest of the convicts. Her body was fit and strong. Her breasts were fully developed at sixteen years and her no-nonsense swagger seemed to fit her rustic background. Denise had grown up in France’s winegrowing region near Lyon, but when both her parents died from a mystery plague when she was twelve, she had drifted to Paris to be in the care of an uncle, who had taken the opportunity to abuse her physically. So she had turned to street prostitution, which led to four years in Saint-Lazare. No one picked on Denise. She had a reputation for being able to kick like a horse.

  Within a few days, Céleste was receiving gifts from her—a small, carved wooden elephant; the sketch of a horse; a ring. Then came a love letter.

  Dear Céleste,

  I loved you from the first sight of you in the salad basket [cart]. You are the most adorable, beautiful creature that God has ever created. I wish to know you so well, be your close friend; just be with you. All my senses are alerted by your presence . . .

  Céleste was flattered to have made such an impact, but she wanted it from a male, not a female. Denise’s alluring, somewhat androgynous appearance muddled her thinking. She was vulnerable and lonely. Her teacher saw the passing of the note and counselled her impressionable new charge.

  ‘Denise has at base a good heart,’ she told Céleste. ‘She’s not a depraved or bad person like some you’ve no doubt noticed. But she will lead you astray. She’s bold and afraid of nothing. Do not encourage her. She’ll smother you with affection.’

  Céleste was both intrigued and overwhelmed by this sudden, determined attention. The love letters continued until one asked for an assignation at night in the laundry. It meant that Céleste would have to hide after the evening meal and hope that she would not be missed in the dormitory. Denise was waiting for her, standing behind baskets of clothes, holding a small candle, which exposed an eager yet sympathetic smile on the older girl’s face. She had brought a bottle of wine and cheese with her.

  ‘How did you . . .?’ Céleste asked.

  ‘I still have good contacts with wine wholesalers in this city,’ she whispered, ‘and one of them is an admirer.’

  Denise poured the wine into wooden mess cups and toasted Céleste.

  ‘To the brightest flower at Saint-Lazare!’

  They sat on washed clothes that Denise had laid out and they chatted. Céleste unburdened her problem with Anne-Victoire and Vincent.

  ‘I’ve sent several letters to her,’ she moaned, ‘but I’m pained each day the mail arrives and there’s nothing for me. I cry every time. I don’t know if she’s still away or if she’s back in Paris.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have received the letters,’ Denise said with a shake of the head. ‘Your would-be rapist, Vincent, would’ve seen to that. He’d be fearful that you’d expose his attack. I had the same thing with my uncle. I had no one to turn to. I ended up on the streets.’ She sipped her wine. ‘And here I am.’ She leaned across, kissed Céleste gently on the cheek and filled her cup. After more sympathetic chat and a third cup of wine, Céleste felt heady.

  Denise, an expert seducer, moved closer and let Céleste pour out her fears, all the while comforting her and not coming on too strongly. Then came a kiss on the mouth, and Céleste fell for Denise’s seduction. Denise had spent an hour listening to Céleste’s complaints about the physical aggression of a drunken, insensitive male, who had attempted to rape her. By contrast she caressed Céleste into even enjoying her first experience of physical love.

  Sensing this seduction, the teacher, Michelle, saw Denise passing more letters to Céleste and reported her to warders. The letters were intercepted. Denise was sentenced to thirty days in solitary confinement. Instead of feeling sorry for herself, Denise sang her way through the extra incarceration and after her release asked Céleste for another assignation. The encounters continued more clandestinely and more intensely.

  Denise claimed that Céleste had special (unspecified) endowments that would be great assets for work in a brothel. The encounters left Céleste with a mix of emotions, including pleasure and guilt, and shame for having her first sexual experiences of consent, more or less, with a female. It was not how she had imagined or dreamed of it. Some of her confusion was due to the fact that she had enjoyed it. Céleste wondered if she should confess to anyone, even the prison chaplain, because there was a kind of unwritten taboo about lesbianism, although the sexual sophisticates of the era knew it went on and many indulged in it themselves. But the church would always condemn it if it were ever raised in public, which it never was. The godly argument would be that it was ‘against the natural order of things’. The United Kingdom lagged behind French social mores but followed them nonetheless. England’s Queen Victoria—two decades later—refused to allow the Parliament to legislate against lesbianism. When asked why by her prime minister, she said she had consulted the royal court physician and her husband, Prince Albert, who agreed with her that, ‘Lesbianism is not physically possible, so why legislate against it?’1

  Over time, Céleste found that the pleasure of it all seemed to override other feelings.

  She was comforted when Denise told her, ‘I’m bisexual. I like men as much as women. It’s just that women understand women’s emotions better.’ When Céleste expressed surprise, Denise added, ‘All my clients are men. You’ll meet some of them if you join me in the brothel I’m going to work in, when I’m out of here. Many of them are really nice, and most are rich. I plan to meet and marry one of the richer ones.’

  ‘I’ve seen them in plays on the boulevard. They’re always glamorous.’

  ‘Yes well, the theatre often reflects real life. What would you rather have? That or life in back alleys as a street girl?’

  ‘I love the glamour.’

  ‘And so you should. Someone with your looks should get the best out of life. Believe me, life on the streets is the worst. You’re prey to drunks and vagabonds and the mentally ill. The girls end up with some awful disease, or they die of starvation.’

  Céleste was cautious. ‘I must see how things are at home . . .’

  ‘With that brute Vincent? You know he’ll push himself on you every chance he gets. Predators like him never change, neve
r! Compare that with the well-to-do gentlemen you’ll meet. Some are from the aristocracy.’

  This touched Céleste. She dreamed of escaping her working-class life. Denise gave her the brothel’s address and urged her to go there when life at home became unbearable.

  Early in 1840, after a year in the stifling and oppressive Saint-Lazare, Céleste, now fifteen, awoke one morning to a premonition that her mother would come for her. In the early afternoon she heard the bell that heralded visitors. Céleste, in the classroom, insisted that her mother had come for her. To confirm or dispel her urgent feelings, the teacher let Céleste go to the visitors’ parlour, with Denise accompanying her. Along the way, Denise reminded her of the most likely scenario if Anne-Victoire was still with Vincent: ‘Don’t tell your mother about what Vincent did to you.’

  ‘Why not? She must learn the truth.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Céleste. If as you say, your mother loves this man, she’ll side with him, not with you. Love is blind. She’s not getting younger. She may see Vincent as her last chance at security. Your version of events may well see you left here.’

  The pressure mounted. Céleste felt faint. She had to pause to regain her composure. First among these conflicting thoughts was how her mother would react to her. This, she knew, would dictate her own reaction.

  They arrived at the reception room. Denise was ordered to let Céleste enter alone. She walked shakily into the white-tiled room, which was dominated by a large crucifix facing the entrance. Anne-Victoire was indeed there, sitting on a chair. Céleste’s first response was joy. Her prayers had been answered. But within a few seconds other emotions swept over her. Her mother sat stony-faced until Céleste was in front of her.

  Anne-Victoire had always doted on her daughter but without being overly physically affectionate. Now her body language registered estrangement. She remained seated and hissed at her, ‘You miserable girl! You ought to be ashamed to have made me come here!’