How can I tell Maman what is wrong with me? She and Father whisper; I hear the word chlorosis. Green disease. I am vigorous and well, but I will sigh, or stare at the intricate pattern on the dining-room wallpaper, for the longest time.
My mother says I have a greenish pallor to my skin. She plans on sending me to Dr. Ronde next week. My womanly sickness came upon me last month, and although I am neither too young nor too old, she is concerned. I laugh when she thinks I should not laugh. I cry, she thinks without reason.
But I have a reason to cry, as I have a reason to laugh. I have my dreams, but it is my reality that encompasses me, suffocates and frightens me, sustains me.
I am in love with Louis. He gives me books to read, Madame Bovary and Against Nature. I read them because he has touched them. I read them because I know that as he hands one to me, perhaps our hands will touch.
I go to the bookshop on Wednesdays. But she is becoming suspicious of my Tuesday-night face, of my sulks, as she calls them, which are not sulks at all but the effects of a kind of romantic terror.
I borrow my language from romance novels, but the feelings are real. I do not even know whether I want to see the realization of my fantasies. What I would do if Louis were actually to kiss me!
And what a cruel insistence of Fate to have Louis married! I have even thought of becoming his mistress. It would ruin me; I do not believe he would allow it. (Nor that I could actually do it.) Oh, if only I could escape this place! In Paris I would ride the omnibus and be nobody at all, a girl with a shopping basket. Perhaps I could work in the Bon Marché. I could forget that I was ever Augustine. Augustine who had dreams she could not make come true: the stage, a man. Such trite dreams, so schoolgirlish; I know it even at seventeen. The stage is perhaps an attainable dream; perhaps. My parents will never approve it, for how can they? They would rather have a whore for a daughter. I do not know why: The great ladies of the stage are widely respected, widely imitated. They are the feast of Paris; what they wear today is seen everywhere in six weeks’ time; what they say is quoted in all the newspapers the next day.
But I fool myself. Think of Maman, altering her dress to resemble Sarah Bernhardt’s! And although Papa reads her the paper assiduously each night, he is quite careful to leave out the ladies’ pages, believing as he does that such nonsense corrupts the already fragile female morality. It is all I can do to get the horoscope! I am a Sagittarius. The Archer. The arrow that forever wants to fly.
I INSISTED LOUIS lend me Against Nature. He did not want to do it, but this book is the talk of Paris. I pouted, I cajoled; and he lent it to me. And when I read it! Oh, my, will he ever speak to me again? What have I done? The obscenity of such a book sickens as it excites: It seemed to the hero that a dreadful grandeur must result from a crime carried out, within the very walls of the church, by a believer who, filled with horrible delight and sadistic joy, was desperately determined to blaspheme, to commit outrages upon revered objects . . .
I cannot imagine what Maman would do if she were to discover that I had read such a book. I have heard of girls sent to the madhouse for less.
I sometimes think the madhouse is all there will be for me anyway. No man here has any dream bigger than he can see from his front doorstep. Cows, chickens, a wife, children. In that order. Last week Gérard told me that he loves me. I cannot imagine why. I sat next to him at the theater two months ago, and when I went walking with a group of young people after church three weeks ago I ended up walking next to him. What has been nothing to me, things I never thought of, words I forgot the instant I said them, glances that meant nothing to me, must have meant everything to Gérard. Of course he planned to walk next to me. Perhaps he thought about it for the whole week before: Maybe the weather on Sunday will be fine, and I shall suggest a walk. In the meadow behind Gerthe’s farm, next to the river. Augustine will be there. Maybe she will wear her white dress. Her calfskin gloves. The soft boot that shows her small foot when she lifts her dress to descend the steps after church. Oh, Gérard, is that an image you live with, as I live with the image of Louis’ hands on the spine of a book? I have known Gérard since I was three, he is the greatest blockhead in the village. All the girls blush to see him because he is going to inherit his father’s big farm and manor house one day. He looks like a mule. He asked to speak to my father, enacting who knows what cherished fantasy? Oh, Gérard, you would not recognize my heart even if you were to see it. It is perverse, it has been corrupted by love; it is not worthy of a simpleton like you!
Of course I told Gérard he could absolutely not speak to my father. My goodness, my parents would have me married off within the week! And I would spend the rest of my life a glorified servant in the house of Gérard Theirry. Oh, I would be the lady of the house, of course. I shouldn’t do a speck of work. But what would I do? I could spend my mornings giving the servants their orders, writing letters, sewing, playing the piano. I could spend my afternoons playing with my children. I could spend my evenings with the biggest blockhead in the village. I could have an easy life. I would never even have to get my hands dirty.
But I don’t want an easy life. I want to wear the most elegant dress, and have the most magnificent hair, and perform on the stage, in front of all Paris. I want to suffer. In my love for Louis I suffer. Only then do I really feel that I am living, when I go stand outside the door to his shop with every nerve pulled taut, with a fever in my heart. Sometimes I cannot breathe, just for a moment, sometimes I cannot see clearly. My nerves sing a strange song, and I know that the only thing that can calm me will be the touch of Louis’ hand; his skin against my skin; his eyes looking into my eyes. Why must I be a schoolgirl, and stupid, and slow? I want to burst in upon him like a sudden rain, and I stutter and blush. I want to act the coquette, and I stand there looking at the floor. But then he reaches out and his fingers touch my arm, and I am the girl I want to be.
We are wrong always when we think too much of what we think or are. I want to concentrate on the beauty of the words; I see nothing at all but his slender fingers, and I feel his cheek near mine, although I do not turn to see it; I smell something wonderful, something that reminds me of Papa but isn’t anything I’ve ever smelled around Papa. I am suddenly frightened by the force of his masculinity. His hands look strong as well as supple, and I have a sudden urge to turn and bury my face in his neck. Sometimes a lock of his long dark hair almost brushes against my cheek. I am overwhelmed, I feel faint. It is a delicious faintness; I want to swoon into his arms, I want to be just like the girls I see in the magazines Papa doesn’t want me ever to see; Louis lends me the magazines, the stories. Where maidens swoon into their lovers’ arms. If I were to listen to the tracts my mother gives me to read although she cannot read herself, I would believe that even to desire such things guarantees my eternal damnation, and the damnation of the entire not-yet-born generation of French children it is my duty to help produce. Oh, I do want children. But I want other things, too. Romance, and adventure, and evening walks on the Paris boulevards, the chance to lose myself in a poet’s words, and speak them so that my audience is transported. I am such a country goose that I am not even sure it is where I want to transport them: maybe just to where they can feel what I feel when Louis’ cheek is close to mine: That might be enough.
Chapter 5
Edouard
AFTER I DEVELOPED the photographs of my poor murdered lady, I hurried to the courtyard, which lay now in complete darkness. I looked toward the door I had remembered and thought of the drops of blood that led toward it. The tenants had been questioned. Of course no one had seen anything. But it was not the blood I was interested in but the object I had captured with my lens. I walked across the courtyard, stepping carefully around where the body had lain, certain even in the darkness of the exact spot. And there, in the direction my lady’s pretty face had seemed to look, was something small and rectangular. It proved to be a silver matchbox holder of simp
le design, with an etched border; the matches inside were damp. But the box, when I slid it out, read “Le Bouchon.” The words formed an arc. There was a picture of a bottle just opened, a spray of liquid and a jaunty cork. A sophisticated name, implying sophisticated people seated at fine tables watching finely dressed garçons working stoppers loose from expensive bottles of wine. I recognized the street name, but did not know where it was and stood, a fool in the dark; and suddenly before me was my lady.
No, it was not she. But the hair, pale and full, the lovely figure, the black bolero jacket; no, this woman was older, coarser; she smiled, and there was no pleasure there.
She spoke, and her voice was a rasp.
“You look lost, Monsieur.”
“I am,” I said eagerly. I reached forward to show her the matchbox, the address, but she took my arm and pulled me toward her almost roughly.
“What shall you have this lovely evening?” she asked, too loudly. There must have been a man nearby that she was signaling.
“I ask only that you tell me the way to Le Bouchon,” I said gently.
“I can show you a much better time than the girls at Le Bouchon.”
“No, really, I am not looking for company. I need to speak to someone at Le Bouchon.”
She looked annoyed, but tried to keep sweetness in her coarse voice as she gave me directions; I was grateful to her for that, that she would attempt even the pretense of kindness in a place like this. I found myself giving her a few silver francs for her trouble, and when we said good-bye, her smile was genuine.
I went there directly from the courtyard and found it to be a rough place featuring showgirls and a rowdy clientele.
“Excuse me,” I said to the first man I saw. “I am looking for the owner of this establishment.” There was smoke in the air, and a strange sweet smell I could not identify. There were women on a raised stage, dancing a routine in a desultory manner. They wore short lace petticoats, corsets, and the sheerest of chemises, but their movements were more mechanical than erotic. It was easy to ignore them except that I felt very sorry for them.
The man surprised me by simply pointing. I had expected a rough remark, a challenge, mockery. But he was drinking milky liquid from an ornate glass; I recognized the paraphernalia of absinthe on the table next to him. I looked to thank him, but he had forgotten me.
M. Desquiers was easy to spot, a big man with big gestures.
I thought I would have to go to some lengths to convince him even to speak to me. But sometimes a nonthreatening aspect can be an asset, especially in my line of work. M. Desquiers was willing to talk, and he had a lot to say. I described my lady and he said, immediately, “Lenore DuPrey. She worked here six nights a week; she held a coveted spot on Saturday nights, late, when the clientele was thoroughly drunk and the tips were good. She was a good employee, a woman who worked hard on her routines As if that really mattered!” M. Desquiers said, apparently unmoved in any way by Lenore’s death. “She got more tips than most. Pretty girl. How’d you say she died?”
“I didn’t,” I said evenly. I heartily disliked this man. He was exactly what I had expected him to be: finely dressed, oiled and powdered and scented, with a good cigar and gold lighter and no morals whatsoever. And yet I was convinced he had not taken advantage of Lenore, or, indeed, any of the other girls. It was what he did, what he represented, that repulsed me. If I had met him anywhere else I might have taken him for a banker; here I took him for a trader in human flesh, and I was ashamed I had to shake his hand.
I asked about Lenore’s whereabouts the night before: Had she been to work?
“She never missed a day, Sir. Never missed a day. And she brought in more tips than the other girls. Pity about Lenore.”
I could have hit his face.
“Did she have any family?” I asked quietly.
“She has a little boy,” he said absently. He was watching the girls with a professional eye, and he seemed displeased. “Excuse me, I have to see to something.”
“Please,” I said, but he was already turning away. “It is all right, Monsieur,” I said easily. “The police will be here later, and they can continue questioning.”
M. Desquiers spun around as though he were a top.
“Anything I can do to assist you, Monsieur . . .” Clearly he had forgotten my name, and had also forgotten, apparently, that I had no authority whatsoever.
“Just a few questions,” I said easily; I could be whatever he now thought I was. “Was Lenore DuPrey married?”
He laughed. “None of my girls are married.” Marriage and this sort of work seldom mix.
I shrugged, perhaps looking like a man of the world; I do not know. I could only hope so.
“Did you see her leave last night?”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, taking out a small jade snuff bottle, “I did. She was with M. Lunier. He’s a regular here, a fine fellow.” The bottle was beautiful, a rich green veined with white, with intricate silver overlays featuring four climbing jaguars, one on each side of the bottle, which was only a few inches high yet so opulent. I knew it had cost quite a bit of money, and that part of the reason he had brought it out at all was to show me that. He took the pyramid top off the bottle and held it up to smell its contents.
“Tell me about Monsieur Lunier.”
“There’s nothing to tell, really. He acts as patron to several of the girls; Lenore is—was his favorite.”
“Patron?”
M. Desquiers laughed. “Surely I don’t have to spell it out for you.”
“Did he live with Mademoiselle DuPrey?”
“Oh, no. Monsieur Lunier is married, and happily at that. Lenore was more important to him than the other girls, but she was still just one of the girls. In fact, you should have seen how they argued! Lenore was foolish enough to think he would leave his wife for her.” M. Desquiers chuckled while wrapping his index finger around the end of his thumb. He gently tapped snuff into the space between the thumbnail and index finger, and as he held his hand us to his nose I heard the gentle snuff sound as he tipped the stuff into the front of his nostril; apparently the tobacco is most effective there in its rejuvenating effects. I have heard that some put opium in with the snuff.
He closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling lightly.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “they had such a fight last night! Of course, it was all because of Lenore. She did not have a right to her dreams.”
I was very quiet. I wanted him to keep talking, almost as though I had disappeared. I also wanted to smash his face with my fist, I who rarely angered at all. Lenore had no right to her dreams!
The worst thing was that it was true.
For a moment M. Desquiers was lost to me, and I noticed the girls scattering from the stage like little mice set free from a trap, probably to take their break. There were at least thirty men sitting watching them and drinking. How could they do that, I thought, just sit there watching obscenity, all of a company, without shame? Everyone in the neighborhood must know what this place is, and yet they would walk in, walk out, without embarrassment, time and again.
I waited. Finally M. Desquiers said, “They fought. He slapped her, silly woman, but she would not let him be. They were still fighting when they left. Just like any other night. M. Lunier always took Lenore home.”
“Did they walk, or did he hire a conveyance, or perhaps have a carriage of his own?”
“On pleasant nights they walked. Why pay for a conveyance when the lady lives so close by?”
The men in the audience stared at the stage like empty husks awaiting reanimation. The proprietor was taking himself away with the opium in his snuff; he was not present to me or anyone else at all.
“Thank you,” I said abruptly. I had what I needed, and I had to get out of there. So I turned and walked away, wanting to forget this place myself.
Chapter 6
Charles
I HAVE BEEN to this Morgue a dozen times, no, more, and with each visit I am charmed anew. The salle d’exposition is large and bright, with an airy feel. The voices of the crowd strike the tall glass windows and ricochet up and around the large dome of the ceiling and become one wordless, anonymous voice that drowns all senses but sight.
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