What good times we had, going to the Cafe Lestrigal (now refurbished and enlarged, with a stage and a Russian band) and the Elysee National to hear Black Julien’s Band, dancing on the tombstones at the Zephyr’s Ball in the cemetery of Saint-Sulpice, paying our compliments to the Altar of Love at Wenzell’s where the subscription parties were so crowded we had to dance out in the street. The theaters were full, and the tickets exorbitant, though most of the theaters, it must be said, were little more than brothels then because the foyers were full of bare-breasted prostitutes and all the balcony seats were bought by expensive courtesans soliciting rich clients. At the Varietes, it was rumored, a man could hire a different woman every night for a year, there were so many inviting companions for sale.
We indulged in fads and went mad over silly things like wearing green wigs and purple wigs, men’s trousers, and coachman’s hats. We invented foolish ways of talking, leaving the r’s out of our words or babbling like babies. We called each other extravagant names: I was Puff Pastry because of my ample breasts, my friend Therese Tallien was Eclair, Julie Recamier was Profiterole. We were often seen in the park driving herds of goats, or riding ponies, or feeding the tame gazelle Scipion brought me from Africa.
It was in those days, right after my release from prison, that I learned to drive a phaeton and often rode through the park in the afternoon, stopping to call on friends or visit my dressmaker and milliner and corsetier. I bought lavishly and ran up huge debts. Beyond the cost of my rented house and Eugene’s military school tuition, Hortense’s school fees and little Coco’s governess, there were servants to pay and food and fuel to buy. Everything was expensive, but like many other survivors I felt that nothing was too good for me. I deserved it all.
And besides, I had someone to pay for it. I had Paul Barras.
“You know what they say about him,” Scipion commented to me on the night we met at the Carmelite Dance Hall (the former Carmelite prison, where I had been so wretched and ill and had thought of ending my life). “They say he is the richest man in Paris.”
“The richest in France,” I corrected him. “You should see his mansion. He lives as grandly as a prince.” Barras not only lived like a prince, he looked like one, with his dark, somewhat overripe handsomeness, his charm and easy grace of manner, his unruffled demeanor, his abundance of magnificent rings and subtly elegant dress. In actuality he was a minor Gascon nobleman. I guessed his age at forty-eight or nine.
“He was in the army, you know,” Scipion was saying. “Long before the Revolution. They threw him out for perversion. No scandal, just a quiet exit.”
“What sort of perversion?”
“It seems he enjoys both men and women in bed.” “At the same time?”
Scipion laughed. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
Paul and I had become lovers late one night after a ball given by the former Duc de Lorgne, an old acquaintance of mine from my days at Fontainebleau, in the rue Saint-Germain. I had been introduced to Paul earlier in the evening and we had danced together—the new fashionable dance, the German waltz. At the end of the evening we found ourselves going out the door at the same time, and he offered to drive me home in his large carriage.
The carriage, I soon discovered, was a vehicle made for seduction. The seats folded out to make a soft bed, there were scented pillows and a blanket in a small cabinet next to the door. The driver, who had undoubtedly been given instructions beforehand, knew to go slowly and the horses clip-clopped at a walking pace. I yielded eagerly to Paul’s searching hands, accustomed as I was, after my time in prison, to lovemaking with strangers. I was not disappointed.
Paul was generous. From his extravagantly large fortune, made from selling sour wine and rotting grain and rusty muskets as a provisioner to the army, he sent me large bank drafts and bought me my charming phaeton decorated in gold leaf, and the two black Hungarian horses that pulled it. In a short time I became part of his inner circle, the inner circle of a powerful man. For Paul Barras was not only my protector and defender, he was the leading figure in the current government.
“You should be wary of him,” Scipion said brusquely. “He’s corrupt. And cynical.”
“Aren’t we all corrupt and cynical these days?” I was goading Scipion, who I knew to be decent and upstanding. Though what I said was very largely true; government, business, the military were all riddled with dishonesty and everywhere one turned there was graft and bribery, cheating and petty crime.
Scipion took my face between his hands, and looked at me with genuine tenderness. “We’ve known each other such a long time, Yeyette,” he said, using my old girlhood name. “I would hate to see you go down that road.”
But of course I did not heed Scipion’s words. I put on the pleasureseeking, indolent life into which Paul led me as easily as I had once slipped into the loose-fitting, body-draping gowns of Martinique. Growing more and more heedless of responsibility, and leaving the oversight of the children to Euphemia and the other servants, I slept until noon each day, had a late breakfast and then devoted my afternoons to pleasure. Paul visited me at five each evening, we spent several lazy hours in bed, dined late and then whiled away the long, wine-sodden night in Paul’s private grotto in the garden of his mansion.
Night after night I danced there in the grotto, in the nude, behind a gauze curtain, while Paul and his wealthy men friends watched. My dance was only one of many attractions: hermaphrodites, men of prodigious size and even more prodigious virility deflowering young girls, raconteurs who told ribald stories. Young men and women of exceptional beauty were hired to decorate the grotto and provide diversion; long before the night was over all the clothes had come off and an orgy had begun.
I slept in the grotto on many an inebriated evening, and wakened, bleary-eyed and hung over, to face the unwelcome noon. The louche admiration of the men flattered my vanity, for I was by then past thirty, and proud that my voluptuous figure was still attractive. It amused Barras to watch other men make love to me, and I was complaisant. Some of the things that went on in the grotto were distasteful to me, and I soon discovered that Scipion had been right about Paul: he did take both men and women into his bed, and he did mix pleasure and pain in ways I found perverse and repulsive. But I was always free to leave if I did not like what was going on. Paul had other mistresses to turn to, and a harem of beautiful boys.
It was a season of excess, of daring, of hardly knowing right from wrong, up from down. We danced, drank, indulged. We had lived for so long under the shadow of the Red Lady that we hardly remembered what normal life was like. We were survivors—for the moment at least. How long our continued survival would last, we could not have said.
26
THE TRUTH WAS, I suppose, that I had been thinking about marriage.
The life I was leading was excessive, and I knew it. Besides, I was getting on in years. It was not seemly for me to parade myself naked behind gauze curtains, or to be one of Paul’s mistresses but not the principal one.
I liked the money and things Paul gave me—especially the money— but I had learned the importance of being able to support myself. While spending many hours there in Paul’s grotto each night I had done more than dance; I had made the acquaintance of other rich men: bankers, financiers, men of business. And inspired by Paul’s great success, I had gone into the provisioning business myself in a small way, supplying goods to the army. I was no Paul Barras, of course, I was under no illusions about that. But I learned from him, and I was beginning to make a success of my newfound trade.
I used my network of contacts to find out, as best I could, what each of the regiments needed, and then used my wits (and more contacts) to locate the goods, and sell them at high prices to the colonels and supply officers. I had capable, ambitious young men—some of them my admirers—working alongside me. I was always on the watch for more such young men.
There was a rather odd-looking, dark little officer who I often saw with Barras. He wa
s small, almost puny, with a melancholy expression on his round young face and fierce, angry-looking eyes. Although his clothes were well made he looked ill at ease in them, and he carried himself badly; that he felt awkward and self-conscious in the company of older, more worldly people was very evident.
It amused me to watch him as he stood near Barras, trying in vain to look nonchalant. He bit his nails. He took a snuffbox from his waistband and extracted pinches of snuff, only to spill a good deal of it on the costly carpet before he could manage to inhale it. He scratched his wrists and his neck so frequently that I wondered if he had the itch. Unlike most of the other young men around Barras—the ones who were attracted to women, I mean—this odd little officer did not approach any of the women to talk to or flirt with. I wondered why.
One evening I approached him, partly from curiosity but mostly in hopes that he might be a good source of information about his regiment and its needs.
I smiled—careful not to show my teeth, as they had grown very brown and I had lost several of them, the result of eating too much sugar. I gave him my hand to kiss.
“General Buonaparte, at your service,” he said, and abruptly bent over and brushed his lips against my knuckles. He spoke with a very thick Italian accent. He did not look at me. He reeked of cologne.
“And do you know who I am?”
“Everyone of consequence does. You are the former Vicomtesse de Beauharnais. You are said to be one of the most desirable women in Paris, despite your age.”
“I don’t know whether to thank you or slap you.”
His features remained impassive. “I merely repeat what is being said.”
He suddenly reached up to scratch his neck.
“Filthy town, Toulon,” he muttered under his breath.
“What did you say?”
“Toulon. It’s a filthy place. I was stationed there. Everyone in the barracks came down with scabies.”
“I believe there are pills you can take to relieve it. I know a very good Polish physician who—”
“Never mind!” He cut me off rudely. “I abhor all medicines and all doctors. I find that barley-water, or strong lemonade, or if necessary leeches, will cure any ailment. And a strong will, of course.”
“Is that so? And what about a broken leg?”
He shrugged. “Broken bones, battle wounds—for those we call in the butchers—I mean the surgeons.” He smiled then, and it was as if the skies cleared and the sun broke through. His smile was full of merriment and charm. I thought, how could anyone resist it?
Suddenly he reached up to open the high collar of his velvet jacket, with a motion so violent that he tore off one of the gold buttons. He scratched his throat, and as he did so I saw that he was wearing an amulet, suspended from a gold chain.
“A good luck charm, general?”
“All soldiers are superstitious.”
“Perhaps you would like your fortune told. I read the cards.”
“I’ll save you the trouble. My fortune—” he began, his grey-blue eyes taking on a faraway look, his voice changing in tone, and becoming lower. “My fortune is to rival Charlemagne. To ride into battle among Turkish warriors, and capture Constantinople. To conquer India, with a million men and a hundred thousand elephants.”
He talked on, as if to himself, forgetting me entirely in his reverie. Eventually his attention returned to the room, and to me. I asked if his regiment was in need of eggs, or canvas for tents, or horse-collars.
He seemed to find my question amusing.
“Eggs? You are asking me if I or my men need eggs?”
“Among other things.”
“If we need eggs, we go to the farmers.”
“The farmers sell to me—or my contacts. I sell to the army.”
“You mean you cheat the army. I’m sorry to hear that such an attractive woman has such a venal heart.”
“There is nothing venal about making an honest profit, general. Or about helping to feed the armies of the Republic.”
“Rubbish! You profiteers, you and Barras and all your kind, make fortunes while we officers and our families starve.”
“You appear to be prosperous enough,” I retorted, looking at the expensive gold embroidery on his tight-fitting red velvet waistcoat.
“Any prosperity I enjoy is quite recent, I assure you. For years I was a struggling junior officer, hardly able to afford a decent pair of boots, much less to send money to my widowed mother and my sisters and brothers.”
He went on, telling me of his relatives and his hopes for them, of his courageous and beautiful mother, of his late father who died too young, of his own army service during the Revolution. We moved out onto the terrace as he talked, the night being warm.
“I proved myself at Toulon. My batteries held off the English fleet. They made me a brigadier-general at twenty-four.” Even in the moonlight I could see the flush of pleasure that saying these words gave him.
“And now?” I asked at length. “What now?”
“I am planning an invasion of Italy. To begin at the first thaw, at the end of winter.” His words became clipped, brusque. In imagination he was already on the battlefield, sending orders to his troops. I found the chameleonlike quality of his mind and emotions fascinating.
We talked for some time there on the terrace, in the summer evening. As time passed I felt there was something stirring between us. An intimacy that was not quite friendship, nor infatuation. A closeness for which I had no name.
Yet at the same time I felt on guard, as I never did with Scipion, or even with Paul. This young general, with his thick accent and blunt words, his vehement opinions and charming smile, both compelled and frightened me. I had never met anyone like him.
“Barras was wrong about you,” he said to me before we parted. “He told me you were hard. But you’re not. You’re soft. Quite gentle really. I suspect you have a kind heart—despite your acquisitive nature.”
“I hope we meet again soon, general,” was all I said in response. But I was thinking that young General Buonaparte, though unformed, was indeed hard, hard at the core. Will, drive, ambition flowed through his veins and his mind never stopped churning. He lacked polish, but possessed something of far greater value: pride. Not hauteur, like Alexandre, or self-satisfaction, like a dozen other men I could name, or a naked confidence in his own power like Paul. But pride in who he was and what he had it in him to do. In this we were alike, for by the time I met the young general I too felt proud of who I had become and how far my talents had taken me. I was ready to go further, if given the chance.
27
BUT OF COURSE LIFE INTERVENED, and the unexpected happened.
I was in the newly redecorated gold-and-rose sitting room of my house on the rue Chantereine, being served tea and cake by one of the maids when another maid came in to tell me that a gentleman was calling.
In walked Donovan.
It had been a long time since I last saw him, working as my father’s overseer at Les Trois-Ilets and commanding one of the local militias. He seemed taller and more lean, his jaw more set, his mouth firm. His mouth! I could still remember the feel of it on mine, his warm, full lips, his warm breath, the way he filled my senses until I reeled, overcome.
Seeing him, I felt an echo of those long-ago, faroff encounters. I felt a tingle along my skin, a jolt up my spine. He came up to me where I sat on the long sofa beside the fireplace. He bent down and kissed me, not on the cheek but on the mouth. There was possession in that kiss.
He sat beside me, opening his coat.
“It’s good to see you.” My words were trite, but sincerely meant. With him near me, my body responded, not only with desire, but with a sense of safety. I relaxed.
Then he reached for my hand, and I sensed at once that something was wrong. He was comforting me. Why?
“Rose, I am in Paris for two reasons, one sad, one, I hope, happy.” He paused, and looked directly into my eyes.
“Rose, I am so very sorry
to have to tell you that your father has died. I am here to try to settle his estate. He owes a great deal to moneylenders and bankers. Les Trois-Ilets has been seized by his creditors. I am trying to save something out of the estate for your mother and aunt.”
“I’ve been sending money to Martinique, quite a lot—”
“I know you have, Rose.”
“But I’ve heard nothing from anyone in my family for a long time.” My tears overflowed, and Donovan held me in his strong arms until I managed to recover myself.
“I’m so sorry, Rose. So very sorry,” he murmured as he stroked my hair. “It was difficult for letters to cross the ocean. We were blockaded, and then even after the blockade was lifted, few ships called at Fort-Royal. I could not get word to you.” He paused, then went on.
“Your father was good to me. He took me in and gave me a home, when I had none. I miss him.”
We consoled one another for a time, then he spoke again.
“Martinique has been in turmoil for years. The countryside was in chaos, Fort-Royal was held for many months by rebels. No one knew whom to trust. It was too much for your father. He died cursing his life.”
“Where are mother and Aunt Rosette now?” I asked presently.
“They live with your cousins at an estate near the Morne des Larmes. When I left they were in good health. They send their love. They want you to come home. It is what I want too.”
He kissed me then, a lover’s kiss, and I was aware of the deep, fierce hunger of my body for his, a hunger that had gone unsatisfied for so very long. When he touched me the craving intensified, the long unslaked appetite was unleashed. We were a banquet for each other, a banquet for all the senses. We took our fill, devouring, gorging, until, surfeited with desire and the assuaging of desire, we lay back on the silken pillows of my high carved bed, replete and joyful.
I felt made of air, my sorrows and burdens lifted, my entire body light and free. I lay there, content simply to be lying next to him, our bodies so close they seemed to form one body.
The Secret Life of Josephine: Napoleon's Bird of Paradise Page 14
