City of Darkness, City of Light

by Marge Piercy

  A tribunal met in the next town. They set out to march him there, but he could not walk. A peasant took pity and lent a donkey for him to ride to prison. The innkeeper’s wife gave him a heel of bread and some onions and sausage, which he ate on the donkey. He had little doubt he would be sent to Paris, if not in the morning, then after a hasty examination here. In Paris he would be recognized. He would follow Hébert and Danton to the guillotine.

  They turned him over to the local guards, who marched him to a freezing dank cell. It was late and they did not bother to search him. He considered writing a note to Sophie, but why compromise her? They had said their goodbyes. He was spent. Every part of his body ached. If he were tried, the question of where he had been hiding would arise, condemning Mme Vernet, implicating Sophie. He could not risk a trial for the sake of Mme Vernet, Sophie and Eliza. Here they would have trouble finding out who he was. He checked that he had nothing on him that might establish his identity or involve anyone else.

  He pried open his ring and drank the poison. Then he shoved the hideous ring into a crack in the wall, where it might never be found. He felt little as he slid into heaviness. Sophie had the manuscript. She would survive him. He saw her before him, beckoning in her negligee, smiling invitation. She was here with him, with him again as his wife. He reached out, murmuring her name. She gathered him in her warm strong arms, and he slept.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Pauline

  (February-April 1794)

  PAULINE and Théo lived in her shop. The bed at the back that had been her parents’ became theirs. They ate at the table where she ground the beans and packaged the chocolate. Business had fallen way off, but she was trying to build it up again. Many old customers had gone into exile; others remained, living quietly. There was new money. Many suppliers, industrialists, middlemen, financiers, bankers had grown rich on the war. She despised them, but she wanted to sell them chocolate; she had to, to survive.

  She saw her friends in the neighborhood, but she did not see Claire as often. Claire was less ebullient. Being arrested had frightened her, even though she was released a week later. She kept talking about the suicide of Jacques Roux. He had been in prison for months, sometimes briefly released. Finally in despair and sure they were going to guillotine him, he had killed himself. It had not been a tidy job. It had taken him days to die. Pauline could not help feeling responsible for Claire’s unhappiness, because she had married Théo. They were still learning to live with each other. She was astonished how little Claire had taken him in hand and taught him anything. He explained, “We didn’t so much live together as share a room and a bed.”

  He was not as untidy as Henri, perhaps because he was a soldier. Soon he must return to his regiment, now in the Vendée. The leave he had been granted to carry their grievances to the Convention had been extended, but no more. He did not think she should accompany him. “From all I hear, Pauline, the war in the Vendée is a dirty war. There’s no real front line. I wouldn’t feel you were safe. You stay here, tend your business, and I’ll get back as soon as the Vendée is cleaned up. They say it’s finally going well.”

  They ate sometimes in the tavern and sometimes she cooked on her stove. With price controls Robespierre had put in, people had enough bread. A strange passive depression pooled in the neighborhood, not unlike Claire’s mood. People had not recovered from the execution of so many leaders, all in two weeks. It shocked and confused them. Yet the Jacobin government was not unpopular, because they brought the grain in and kept prices steady. Everybody ate well.

  People whispered against the measures taken to restrain the sections, forbidding some groups like the women from meeting at all, trying to cut back the role of others. Ordinary men and women missed the sense of making things happen, of being vitally involved. Still, they could not fault the government for winning the inner and outer wars, and they had food. Once upon a time, not many years back, that had seemed everything, before they had tasted a little power, a sense they could make things happen, before they counted.

  “Women are afraid to speak out. Babette’s mother was arrested for complaining about the quality of meat.” Pauline clutched Théo’s hand. “Now everyone’s going to vouch for her and we hope they release her. But she could go to the guillotine. When we demanded the Terror, we never meant for ordinary people to die. We just wanted aristos cleared out and the fat people who were standing on our bellies.”

  “Nobody called louder for the Terror than I did,” Théo said. “Now it’s the answer to any criticism, any opposition. Disagree with Robespierre and your head flies off.”

  No one in the tavern used pet names for the guillotine any longer. It had been turned against them. Nobody she knew had attended an execution in weeks. They kept their heads down and their noses clean. They feared police spies. You never knew who was working for the committees of vigilance, for Security, who might turn you in for a careless word, who might denounce you because of some fancied wrong you had done them and long since forgotten—but they had not.

  Théo was her husband. She still could not believe that. She woke in the middle of the night to lean over him, his longish hair tousled on the pillow, the fine sweet bones of his face. His hands in spite of calluses and old abrasions were the hands of a gentleman. What did she mean by that? They were shapely and long fingered. They touched her with magic. It could not be natural to feel so open to him. It could not be natural that her heart began drumming as soon as he touched her arm.

  She was used to the way things were in the neighborhood. A husband and a wife might be enemies, they might be allies, but they were not close in the sense that women friends were close. A husband was a necessity. You came together for sex, you had children and you stuck up for each other, mostly. But you relaxed and played and drank and politicked with women. They were the ones you turned to when you had troubles. Your husband might blame you, might even beat you.

  Théo seemed to expect a kind of closeness he had not achieved with Claire. He wanted them to share their feelings and he wanted them to talk to each other. It felt almost indecent at times, what he wanted to talk about. He asked questions about intimate things that made her blush and hide her face in his shoulder. “How does it feel when I touch you there? Is it better if I do it harder?” But in many ways he was a man not unlike her father or Henri. He wanted his food when he wanted it; he wanted certain foods and not others, whether they were available or not. He thought his opinions on all subjects cast in gold and expected hers to be written in water. He could grow icily sarcastic or furious if she displeased him by getting distracted and burning a stew. On the whole, though, she had acquired a husband she could reasonably count on. When he returned from the Vendée, he said, she would meet his family.

  After he left for his regiment, she scarcely knew what to do with herself. In spite of having lived alone for years, she had quickly grown used to Théo’s presence. He had been gone two days and she was still weeping into the chocolate, when two of the Tribunal police marched in. “Pauline Léon, wife to Leclerc, I have a warrant for your arrest on charges of conspiring with the Hébertists to overthrow the revolutionary government.”

  She was terrified. She spilled the chocolate and burnt her arm. Then she was carried off, hustled between guards while her neighbors sullenly watched. As she was pushed past the tavern she called out, “Tell my husband I’ve been taken! Please send him word.”

  “He’ll know soon enough,” one guard said, grinning.

  It was the new Law of Suspects. The prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal could arrest anyone denounced by the authorities or even by a single citizen. A lot of men had grudges against the RRW. One of the market women she had fought in the streets near Saint Eustache might have denounced her. She had made plenty of enemies. She was taken to the Luxembourg, a piece of luck as it was one of the better prisons. There she saw Théo almost immediately. He was wearing a bloody head bandage. They embraced. “They jumped me on the road. So here we are.
What are we charged with?”

  “You haven’t been charged with anything yet,” the jailer said. “Come on. We’ll put you lovebirds upstairs.”

  They had a room larger than at home, an old double bed with nothing but a worn mattress and a greasy wool blanket on it. Pauline sent word out to Babette and Claire to bring them bed linens, clothes and food. There was no difficulty sending messages out from the prison. Visitors came every day. The Luxembourg had been a palace, and while little remained of the furnishings, the rooms were large and airy and the corridors, decently lit. In the garden men and women gathered. An elaborate social life went on, much of it among aristocrats with whom they would have nothing to do, and who would not acknowledge them. They had set up a miniature ancien régime, addressing each other by their old titles, having tea, gossiping and gambling and playing cards, staging theatricals, dressing up elaborately in the afternoon and flirting.

  Babette arrived the next day with a basket of food from the tavern. “Claire has been arrested too. She’s in that awful dump Port Libre, in a cell about six by six. You two really have a pleasant niche compared to her.”

  It became clear they were not being formally charged. The longer it went, the better, because to be charged was the preliminary to being tried, which was the doorway to execution. Sometimes people in prison were forgotten. Théo and she kept quiet and made a little home. Some prisoners had started a garden. Théo was happy to dig in it. The aristocrats were disgusted, but the commoners were enthusiastic about growing lettuce and other greens.

  They were issued bread and wine and beans. If they wanted more, it was their problem. All jails had people, sometimes staff, sometimes prisoners, who acted as caterers for those with money to spend. Théo and Pauline had enough friends so that they had fresh food brought. She told Babette where to find money, under the loose floorboard.

  Some rooms in the Luxembourg were luxurious again, as if it were still a palace. Wealthy inmates brought in inlaid furniture, carpets, hangings, secretaries and chaise longues. Their own room remained spartan, but most of the day they were out in the garden or taking part in the social life of the commoners and the patriots. Newspapers were smuggled in, people shared news from letters. Théo and Pauline both read aloud from journals and popular novels and tracts passed around. Théo began teaching reading and math. She wondered who was responsible for them being put in the Luxembourg. Danton and his crew had been here. Tom Paine was still here. Aside from the aristocrats, it was a friendly society. People shared. But always the list was read out, the names were checked off. Suspects were called to trial and never came back. Death waited just through the door.

  She wished she would get pregnant. If she was pregnant, she could not be executed. Who knew what would happen if they could hang on a few months? Affairs started easily in prison. Most of the women wouldn’t mind getting pregnant. The scandal was nothing to fear if it kept them alive. This was a world apart. The common people played cards and gambled too, set up a little guingette under a grapevine and put tables there. They had singing and dancing almost every night. They told jokes and acted out little plays. One man did imitations of animals. Another did a Robespierre that broke them all up, but not when the warders could see.

  The warders weren’t bad. They watched the governments come and go and did their job. Those inside might be dead tomorrow or they might be in power. They took a few bribes, looked the other way when they could. Pauline taught the children of the prisoners and took care of a baby or two as needed. She hoped they could live to have children. Lately she had been dreaming of that, not just to save her life, but because she needed something to dream about. She could not imagine that she would again be a leader of women. She made no fuss and stuck close to Théo. Maybe she would abandon the attempt to run her business, which would be lost by the time she got out. Any empty store would be looted. She could go off with Théo as an army wife. At least he would be an officer. This time nothing would separate them. A few months ago, the Convention had decreed that women could no longer fight in the army, not even the women soldiers who had been decorated. But women followed the armies: wives, laundresses, prostitutes. She was a good wife now, and she would go.

  EIGHTY

  Claire

  (April 2-July 27, 1794)

  CLAIRE was sure when they came to get her, that she would be taken straight to the Conciergerie to go on trial with a mixed lot of forgers, swindlers and royalists and then within twelve hours, to the guillotine. Instead she was in what had been a convent, Port Royale, now renamed Port Libre after the expulsion of the nuns. It wasn’t far from where she had taken Hélène for her abortion. Claire was thrust into a dark cell with two other women and a bare trestle bed. Victoire found her quickly, bringing food, linens, a blanket, clothing, dish and spoon. Prisoners were not allowed to have forks or knives. Victoire hugged her. “They took your pistol and a bunch of papers. Also the sketch of Jacques Roux you had by the bed. Everybody thinks you were his mistress.”

  “People think what they like, Victoire. Jacques was celibate. He still had more respect for women than any man I’ve ever known.”

  “I miss you already. I had to let the room go. The landlady wanted me out, she was scared. I’ve taken another room for us just a block away.”

  “Did you talk to anyone? Am I going to be tried?”

  “If you’ve fallen through a crack, we don’t want them to suddenly remember they meant to try you.” Victoire sat on the rough hard bed. They were alone, as Claire’s cellmates were out in the courtyard. The only light came from a slit of window. The low ceiling was black with old tallow smoke.

  “I know you’ll be careful.” She kissed Victoire and they held each other hard. She felt Victoire’s tears on her shoulder.

  The prison was relaxed inside. The cells were not even locked, although the high wall and the guards with dogs made it unlikely anyone could escape without armed help. The prisoners shared food. They were a mixed lot, from beggars to ex-noblemen and ex-clergy, men and women in equal numbers, but no children. They had a cure who played the harp skillfully, a fiddler and two women who sang. Every evening in the old chapel, they improvised entertainment or discussion. They called it the Salon of the Rejected. Someone had painted above the chapel door, “Man cherishes freedom even when he is in prison.” Woman too, she thought. They had three poets, who recited their verses. One wrote a play, in which he asked Claire to play the Goddess of Fortune. He had seen her as Marat’s wife. Another lady had performed in the plays of the mistress of the duc d’Orléans, in his private theater. He cast her as Juno.

  It was a highly rhetorical play, poorly conceived, but better than nothing. She offered to put on a drama by Corneille. That infuriated the literary men. “How could a woman stage a play? That’s absurd.”

  The other poet said, “It’s like that illiterate woman, Olympe de Gouges, who pretended to write plays.”

  “Olympe was not illiterate. I knew her,” Claire said. “She had an extremely tiny handwriting, from when she was forbidden by her husband to write. No one could read it, so she had to dictate her plays to a copyist. That’s where the nonsense about her being illiterate got started.”

  They had prisoners who could whittle, who could embroider, who could make clothes or repair them, do fine calligraphy, paint portraits or do sketches or silhouettes, sing and dance and juggle. Except when the guards appeared to call out the names of prisoners who were going to trial, usually to death, it was less stressful inside prison than it had been outside. Everybody here treated each other as an equal, except for the war between the sexes. They did not use titles. Lisette, who had been the mistress of a British viscount, rattled off to Claire all the prisons she had been in. “This is one of the friendliest,” she said. “There’s a tone to each of them. In some, the rich hang together. I was just a commoner who bedded a British lord. I didn’t have any political opinions, just a few good pieces of jewelry. Some prisons the political people run, or the old nobles. Here e
verybody pitches in to make it livable—while we live.” So said Lisette.

  Claire ran into Momoro’s wife Marie the fifth week. Marie had been sick in bed after losing a baby. Her husband had been executed with Hébert. She was delighted to see Claire. They went off into a corner and compared notes. Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon were running things, as near as the women could figure out. The Committees were all-powerful. The Convention was cowed. Delegates were convinced if they raised any objections, they would follow Hébert and Danton and Desmoulins. Marie was lucky she had not been guillotined with Lucile Desmoulins and Mme Hébert. Like Claire, Marie was sure every time the guards came in with a list, she would be on it. “Sometimes I think you and I are the only women in here who are not in love or in lust with someone. The nearness of death does it. Why not have a last fling? I just can’t imagine bothering at a time like this. Death does not excite me.”

  One prisoner kept a public calendar so everyone would know what day it was. When someone had a saint’s day, they celebrated. Any excuse for a party. Nights were warm now. They wanted to sleep in the courtyard, but that idea made the warden nervous. The men and women could consort during the day, but they must sleep separately. “We can’t have a scandal,” the warden said. “Robespierre wants a Republic of Virtue, and we’re supposed to be abiding by a high moral code. It’s said affairs and dalliances are a rotten vestige of the aristocrats.”

  This caused a great deal of mirth, afterwards. Even in prison, no one laughed publicly at Robespierre. By the end of Prairial she had been in Port Libre for three months. That day, when the guards read the list, her name was called. The list of death. She had time to kiss Marie Momoro goodbye and ask her to send a message to Victoire, who came almost daily. The guards stuffed her into a carriage with five other women. They rattled across Paris jolting on the cobblestones. Two of the women were crying. One was saying a rosary. A fourth took snuff and sneezed into her kerchief. The last appeared in a stupor. They ranged in age from eighteen (she decided the weepers were mother and daughter) to a woman of sixty, the one saying the rosary. They arrived at the gates of the Conciergerie. This was it. She would be dead soon enough. She clutched her arms and breathed carefully, to calm herself. She had already lived better and longer than she had been fated to. She hoped Victoire could find her, so that they could say goodbye. She had never told Victoire she loved her, but she did. She trusted her even more than she had trusted Pauline. Since Pauline’s marriage, she had disappeared into Théo’s side, like Adam’s rib restored. But Victoire was her support in every circumstance. Victoire was loyalty itself; they saw the world through the same eyes and they saw each other.