Faces of the Dead

by Suzanne Weyn

  Mademoiselle Grosholtz is sympathetic. She doesn’t reprimand me when I wander away from my duties at the foot of the guillotine. Each day I walk the streets, going this way and that, with no particular plan. Or so I tell myself. But I always seem to end up standing outside the Palace du Temple, where they’ve moved my family, feeling tiny in its monstrous shadow.

  Crowds gather outside the ancient, dank palace, hoping to catch a look at the imprisoned royals. I see that some of them carry rotted cabbages to hurl and others wield signs calling for my entire family to die — even little Louis-Charles. Animals! No wonder my family doesn’t come out.

  A newsboy comes hawking his papers. “Louis Capet stands trial today!”

  Louis Capet! The nerve! They won’t give Papa the dignity of his proper title. Capet isn’t even his name, but refers to a branch of the Bourbon family. Idiots!

  A man buys a paper, peruses the headlines, and then tosses it in the trash. Despite my growing hatred of these papers, the desire to know what’s going on with Papa overpowers me. I quickly fish it out and read the story.

  The news couldn’t be worse. There’s a quote from a revolutionary named Danton calling for the execution of my entire family. In the past, Danton has been considered moderate in his views. If one such as he is against us, what hope can there be?

  “You know how to read?” I look up at a man standing watching me.

  “No, Citizen,” I lie quickly. “I’m looking at the drawings.”

  He takes the paper from me. “Ah, yes,” he comments. “They’re finally getting around to killing the king. It’s about time.”

  “I don’t see why they don’t simply exile him,” I say. “Why does he have to die?”

  “Because he’d just come back with an Austrian army and retake the country. And where would the French people be then?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Where would they be?”

  “Right back where we started from, that’s where — with the royals sucking up whatever’s left of the nation’s wealth with their lavish ways while the rest of us starve!”

  “What if they changed that, stopped living so well?”

  The man laughs uproariously. “Small chance of that happening! Those selfish monsters! Believe me, Citizen, you’ll be much better off when freedom and liberty ring across this country, and it won’t happen until every last one of the royals is beheaded.”

  “Even the little boy?” I challenge, the blood rising in my cheeks. “He’s only a child, you know.”

  “Even him,” the man insists. “Little boys grow up to be men who carry grudges. What’s to stop him from rallying foreign kings to help him? They’d be glad to. They must all be scared for their own necks right about now. The sacred truth of liberty is spreading. The fire of freedom has been lit. Better days are coming, Citizen. Mark my words.” He nods toward the paper. “Mind if I keep this?”

  “No, go ahead,” I reply.

  Henri appears. He knows by now where to find me. “We’re done,” he says.

  I nod, still looking at the Temple prison.

  “Why do you torture yourself?” he asks.

  “I’m trying to figure out how to get inside.”

  Henri sighs deeply and grabs my hand. “Come on. Mademoiselle wants you to come right away. She has work for us.”

  On the way back, I suddenly stop, gripping Henri’s arm. “Look, there!” I say, pointing. A man in a toga strolls across the street. His hair is thinning and he wears a crown of olive leaves.

  It’s Julius Caesar, just as he appears in the exhibit.

  It’s a cold December day and the man’s thin toga flaps around his knobby knees, but he seems not to notice. With an upswept arm, he shields his face from the blustery wind and turns in a circle as though he’s lost.

  “It can’t be,” Henri murmurs.

  I’m so glad Henri is with me, or I’d think I’m going mad.

  “Perhaps he’s come from a costume party or a play,” I say. I hurry forward to address him. “Excuse me, Citizen, can I direct you somewhere?”

  “The river?” he asks.

  “The Seine is that way,” I tell him, pointing.

  Henri steps forward. “We can walk with you if you’d —” He doesn’t even get to finish his sentence before Julius Caesar rushes past him in the direction of the Seine at the center of Paris.

  Henri and I shift on our feet, not sure if we should pursue him or not. “Mademoiselle will be angry if we don’t come back,” Henri says.

  Nodding in agreement, I fall into step with Henri and return to the exhibit. It’s quiet with no one else around, and Henri and I enter the ancient Rome exhibit. I gasp at what I see — or rather, don’t see.

  The wax figure of Julius Caesar is gone!

  Mademoiselle Grosholtz enters and there’s an expression of panic on her face. It seems the figure’s disappearance is also a shock to her. She tries to conceal her anxiety by turning away from us.

  “What happened to the Roman emperor?” Henri asks.

  When Mademoiselle Grosholtz turns back toward us, her face is once again set in the emotionless visage of neutrality so common to her. “Dr. Curtius is working on it at the other exhibit,” she says. “It’s in need of repair.”

  “It couldn’t be alive and walking the streets of Paris, could it?” Henri dares to suggest.

  “You saw him?!” she cries, dropping her mask of calm.

  “He was walking out on the street just now,” I confirm.

  “Where? Tell me!”

  “Rue de Gare,” Henri says. “He was headed toward the Seine.”

  Mademoiselle Grosholtz plucks her cloak off the hook by the front door and throws it around her shoulders. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Has the figure come to life?” I ask.

  “I’m afraid that’s quite impossible,” Mademoiselle Grosholtz says as she hurries toward the front door. “These figures are nothing but wax and wire. What a ridiculous thing to say!”

  “But then what —” My words are cut off by the slamming of the front door as Mademoiselle goes out.

  “Should we follow?” I ask Henri.

  With a nod, Henri heads for the door after her, and I’m right behind. We trail her to rue de Gare and keep on toward the river.

  At the stone wall bordering the Seine — where they sell newspapers, paintings, and all sorts of trinkets — Mademoiselle Grosholtz peers down at the river that flows through Paris. Seeming to find what she’s searching for, she heads down the steps toward the water.

  “She might see us if we follow her down there,” I point out to Henri as we rush to the wall.

  “Look!” Henri says.

  Mademoiselle Grosholtz sits on a bench by the river and beside her is Julius Caesar. Her arm is around his shoulders, and Mademoiselle seems to be comforting him as he sobs into his hands.

  Henri and I exchange a look of utter bewilderment.

  After a while they get up and head for the stairs leading back to the street. I follow Henri as he scrambles behind a newspaper stand by the wall, crouching low so as not to be seen when Mademoiselle comes up with her companion.

  Arm in arm, they walk through the street. Mademoiselle pays no attention to the perplexed and amused glances she and Julius Caesar are attracting. She is very tender with her strange friend, leaning in attentively as he speaks softly, his head down.

  We follow them until they arrive at Rose’s apartment on rue du Temple, not far from where my family is imprisoned. They enter together.

  “Maybe he’s a lunatic from the asylum,” Henri speculates.

  “Could he have stolen the Caesar costume from the exhibit?”

  Henri shrugs. “Come on,” he says. “I know a shortcut back to the exhibit. We’ll get there before she ever knows we were gone.”

  We turn in the opposite direction, about to cut across the street, but our path is blocked as a tumbrel full of prisoners turns the corner. How I hate these carts that take the prisoners to the gui
llotine!

  “It’s the girl and boy who collect the heads!” a woman on the cart shouts, pointing at us.

  The woman beside her twists her face grotesquely and crosses her eyes. “How do you like my head?” she calls. “I’ll be sure to stick my tongue out for you before they drop the blade.” The two women keep up the jeers, adding rude gestures until the tumbrel pulls out of sight.

  I stand there, ashamed of what we do and embarrassed.

  “Would you rather that Mademoiselle goes to the guillotine?” Henri asks, reading the discomfort on my face.

  “No,” I say. Despite Mademoiselle’s standoffish ways, she’s been good to me, and I’ve grown to respect her talent and appreciate her kindness.

  “Then it’s what has to be done,” Henri assures me. “The people are dead. We’re not the ones who’ve killed them.”

  Henri is always able to make me feel better. Holding hands, we head back toward the exhibit, moving through the web of back alleys Henri knows so well.

  There’s not much celebration on my birthday, but Henri takes me to the woman who makes powdered sugar crêpes on the corner and buys me one of them drizzled in chocolate. It’s wonderful, and makes me think how foolish I was to once take treats such as these for granted.

  “I’m sure your birthday would be a lot grander if you were home,” he says.

  I give him a bite of my crêpe. He only had money for one. “This is the best birthday present I’ve ever received,” I assure him. Maybe that’s not exactly true, but I haven’t had a dessert treat in so long. Henri must have saved for it for many weeks, and that means a lot to me.

  Henri smiles at me. “I’m glad you like it. This woman is the best crêpe maker in all Paris. At least I think so.” Turning, I look back at her, so ragged, standing there by her big homemade griddle. She was thrilled when we asked for a crêpe, and now she has no other customers.

  We return to the exhibit, and inside we’re amazed to see Julius Caesar has returned to the ancient Rome exhibit, once more inanimate and made of wax. To be honest, he looks a bit worse for wear, stooped but with a wild-eyed expression. Somehow he appears to be more human than before he disappeared. I poke him, just to be sure. His smooth waxiness comes off on my fingers.

  It feels as though seeing him alive was a dream.

  “He was real,” Henri says, reading my mind. “We both saw him.”

  “I know,” I agree with a nod. The world has become so grotesque, it seems to me that almost anything can be real. What is the difference between having one’s head cut off for no reason other than not wearing a tricolored ribbon and having a wax figure of Julius Caesar come to life and then return to its original state? Which reality is more bizarre? I think it’s pretty hard to say.

  “Cleopatra’s gone now,” Henri notices. And sure enough, she is.

  Mademoiselle Grosholtz comes in, and I see how tired she seems. She notices us staring at the place where Cleopatra once stood. “It’s being cleaned,” she says.

  I meet her gaze and my expression is full of skepticism. She has to know we don’t believe her.

  “Dr. Curtius is also making repairs,” she adds as she moves on into the workroom.

  “She goes out at night lately,” Henri tells me when she’s gone.

  “Maybe her suitor is in town,” I suggest, “Monsieur Tussaud.”

  “If that’s so, he must live in a mudhole. I saw the clothing she piled up to be laundered. It’s filthy, caked in dirt.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. And look at her hands. They’ve suddenly become calloused.” Mademoiselle’s hands have always seemed nearly porcelain to me, smooth and delicate. What can she be doing?

  * * *

  It is early on a dark, gray January morning when I come in upon Mademoiselle Grosholtz and Rose talking. Henri smiles up at me as he files the rough edges from the wax face of a soldier who’d been beheaded yesterday afternoon.

  “We have to work very fast now,” Mademoiselle says to Rose. Their backs are to me and they don’t know I’m there. “Just this afternoon, the National Convention reversed their original decision and voted to behead the king.”

  To behead the king.

  To behead …

  Her words ring through my mind. My blood is ice, my brain frozen. It will not allow this information in.

  I stand, stupefied. There’s a screaming inside me but it’s still very far away.

  “Ernestine!” Henri cries out, putting down his work and hurrying to my side.

  Rose gasps as she turns toward me. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know you were there!”

  The room is spinning. I slide to the floor.

  There are great black openings in the universe that swirl around my head, cavernous mouths threatening to engulf me, and then one succeeds, sucking me into its blackness. I am floating there beyond the reach of light or sound or hunger or pain — untouchable, safe from the world, a hideous world where words can slice like razor blades with words like …

  … voted to behead the king.

  Papa! Oh, my sweet, dear Papa! It can’t be true. It can’t be.

  I come back to consciousness as Henri lifts me into his arms. I lean heavily on him while he guides me back to the bedroom. I’m too numb to even speak, but he sits beside me in my bed and strokes my hair. Once he kisses me on the top of my head, I start to cry, burying my face in his chest.

  “They’re going to kill my father, Henri,” I say softly. Will we carry his head home in a basket? How can I bear it?

  * * *

  I’m now more determined than ever to get into the prison to see Papa. My plan is to dress as a royal and let myself be captured sneaking out. The guards will throw me back inside the prison, and then I’ll be with my family.

  To this end I borrow a dress from myself. At least, from the wax figure of me from the dismantled dinner exhibit in the wax museum’s basement. When the frenzied crowd grabbed the heads of my parents to parade around on spikes, Dr. Curtius decided that the exhibit was putting the entire museum at risk. He took it down, but the figures of Louis-Charles and me are still intact.

  Struggling into the dress my wax figure wears reveals how much I’ve grown in this time. It’s much too tight, so I take pieces from other discarded figures, like Madame de Pompadour’s bodice, and a shawl from Anne Boleyn. I take a blonde wig from a wax figure I can’t identify.

  Dressed like this, I hurry to the front door while Mademoiselle and Henri are in the workroom. Before going out, I hesitate, realizing I may never see either of them again. I hurry back into the bedroom and quickly write Henri a note on the blank back of an advertising card someone handed me in the street.

  Henri, I must go to my papa. If I don’t come back, know that I will never forget you. You are forever in my heart.

  I know he can’t read it, but someone will do that for him. I couldn’t stand to go away without leaving even a word for him.

  Would I be heartbroken if Henri ran out on me like I’m doing to him? Yes.

  Do I have any choice? No.

  If I tell him what I intend to do, he will surely stop me, using whatever means possible.

  It’s very cold, and I shiver in my thin shawl. As I loiter near the gate of the Palace du Temple, I peer in at the guards hoping they’ll notice me soon.

  I’m about to give up hope when a horse-drawn cart approaches. The driver calls to be let in. As the guard approaches, I scramble around back and climb up, hiding under the canvas-covered food supplies being delivered.

  The gates clank and squeal as the guard draws them back.

  In minutes I’m rocked by the cart moving forward.

  I’m inside!

  The moment the cart stops, I intend to come out and run for the door, but the tarp over the food is abruptly yanked off. “Trying to escape, are you?” the guard shouts at me. “How did you get out here?”

  Easier than I expected. I look at him wide-eyed but don’t speak, only cower. And this fear is not entirely put o
n. There is no amusement in his expression. He’s red-faced yet triumphant in his discovery of me. I’m his captive, and even though I’ve deliberately thrown myself into his path, my captivity suddenly scares me. What have I done?

  The guard grips my arm with painful force as he yanks me out of the cart.

  “You’re hurting me!” I cry.

  “You should have thought of that before you tried to escape,” the guard snaps, bustling me into the palace. I cough in the dank, closed air of the interior, barely warmer than that outside.

  The change from what I remember of the place is immense. There is not a painting on the wall, nor a piece of furniture anywhere — not a rug, nor a chandelier, not even curtains on the windows. The shuttered windows add greatly to the feeling of gloom within. The stones emanate cold.

  “This way, Citizen,” the guard barks, yanking my arm roughly. He moves so quickly that he’s almost dragging me as he hurries down a long shadowy hall and then up a winding staircase. Another hallway takes us to a tower.

  Although it was cold in the palace, this tower is almost as frigid as being outdoors. The shuttered windows are narrow, allowing in the barest shards of light. I tremble as I gaze at my surroundings. The thought of being trapped here is awful, much worse than I have ever imagined it would be.

  The guard opens a door and shoves me inside. “Keep a better eye on your daughter,” he shouts as my family looks at him, stunned. “None of you will eat today to remind you to cooperate.”

  He slams the door behind him as he leaves, and we hear the bolt clank.

  Everyone stares in disbelief, but my family’s faces are the only ones I can see: Papa, Mama, Louis-Charles, and Ernestine. In his outrage, the guard didn’t even notice that there were two Princess Marie-Thérèse-Charlottes!

  Thank goodness!

  Mama is the first to speak. “Marie-Thérèse! What have you done?”