Pam Rosenthal

by The Bookseller's Daughter

  “Give me your hand, I want to take your pulse. Yes, it’s too fast. And you’ve been dizzy as well these past few days, non? Blurred vision sometimes too? I thought so. Well, come along. Jeanne, I’m putting Marie-Laure to bed. That’s all right, you stay with Monsieur du Plessix.

  “Georges,” she called to a footman, “go get Doctor Raspail, and tell him Madame la Marquise’s houseguest may have toxemia.

  “Yes, that’s tox-eem-i-a.” She shaped the syllables with great elegance, as though they were a pretty speech by Marivaux, and Marie-Laure began to understand how the shadings and tonalities of that voice might fill, and captivate, a theater. She took Marie-Laure’s elbow, to help her out of her chair. But what was this toxemia? Was the baby in danger?

  “I’ll give you a little pull to help you onto your feet, good, that’s it. You’ll be much more comfortable in bed. That’s it, come this way.” She chuckled as Marie-Laure directed a hesitant farewell curtsy in the Marquise’s direction.

  “Don’t trip on Figaro here,” she added, for it seemed the pug was coming with them. “And don’t worry so much about propriety. Jeanne is a snob, but an inconsistent one. She won’t mind if you miss a curtsy now and then.

  “My mother’s a retired midwife. I helped her with hundreds of births when I was a girl,” she told Marie-Laure as she helped her off with her clothes in the spacious blue-and-white bedroom. The walls were covered in fine, shiny cotton, printed in robin’s egg blue with harlequins, columbines, and girls kicking up their petticoats in garlanded garden swings. The rugs were a deeper blue, with designs of lilies around their borders, and the armchairs and chaise longue were pale blue satin damask. Even the tin bathtub by the hearth was enameled in slate blue. “It’s still warm enough,” Mademoiselle murmured, dipping her fingers into the water, “from the fire.”

  It felt good to get out of the clothes. And even better to feel Mademoiselle Beauvoisin’s small but surprisingly strong hands gently scrubbing her back and belly and then drying her with towels that had also been heated by the fire.

  “But you’ve gotten your lovely gown all wet.”

  Mademoiselle Beauvoisin shrugged. “I have others. Come on, we don’t want you catching a chill.”

  There was a nightgown spread out on the bedcover, a simple, voluminous garment of fine muslin, with rows of intricate smocking at the top.

  “It’s Jeanne’s,” Mademoiselle Beauvoisin explained as she pulled it over Marie-Laure’s head. “She does the smocking herself. Learned to do it at school and still does it to relax; don’t let on that I told you.

  “Of course it’s vastly too large, but I thought it would be comfortable, since there’s no lace or ribbon or much in the way of detail. Now slide under the covers. Are you warm enough? I’ll put another log on the fire. And I want you to lie on your left side, with your feet on these pillows, oui, comme ça—it will help your baby breathe more easily.”

  She leaned over to stroke Figaro, who’d installed himself on the bed, curling into a tight little ball at the small of Marie-Laure’s back as though to remind her to continue lying on her side.

  Her face grew serious.

  “But you’re frightened, aren’t you? And here I’ve been chattering like a magpie.”

  She sat in a small chair over to the side of the bed and took Marie-Laure’s hand.

  “No one knows what causes toxemia,” she said, “or really how to stop it. But according to Mamma—and her experience is prodigious—mothers who are lucky enough to be able to spend the remainders of their pregnancies in bed are likely to do perfectly well. So please try not to worry.”

  Marie-Laure nodded. She’d try. She felt warm and comfortable. And she’d never in her life lain between such smooth, finely woven sheets.

  “But Joseph,” she asked, suddenly tormented by the image of him lying on a pile of straw in a musty dungeon, “is he cold and hungry in the Bastille?”

  Peals of silvery laughter greeted her question.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m being awfully tactless, aren’t I? But if you’d only seen the little procession of wagons that Jeanne dispatched to the Bastille the day after they took him away. Rugs, chairs, tapestries, even a painting or two… And the baskets of food her footman drags in every week when she visits him—the cheeses and pâtés and roasts and casseroles, not to mention the wines and pastries, and bread still warm from the baker. I tease her that she’ll make him fat, but most of the food gets gobbled up by a prisoner he often dines with, one Marquis de Sade, he’s also a Provençal nobleman, oddly enough. Very depraved, Joseph says, and also very witty and learned.

  “He’s quite comfortable, Marie-Laure, you needn’t concern yourself about that. But I’ll be honest: he’s in serious danger of being convicted.”

  Marie-Laure nodded, resolving to be equally honest, even if it meant finding out something she didn’t want to know. Focusing her wavering vision on Mademoiselle Beauvoisin’s eyes and smile, she grasped the little hand that held her own so comfortingly.

  “But how…why…is his mistress being so kind to me?” For a moment, her question drew only an uncomprehending aquamarine stare, followed by a dazzling gleam of understanding, as though the sun had suddenly turned the sea to diamonds.

  “You read one of the fashion magazines, didn’t you? But how did you get hold of that trash, tucked so far away in Provence as you were?”

  “The Duchesse, his sister-in-law, receives them every week by post. She…she cut out the pages for me.”

  “Ah, the sister-in-law.” The rosebud lips curled in delicate distaste, as though sipping chocolate made from milk that had gone sour.

  “Marie-Laure, you must believe me that those stories were all lies, categorical untruths told by journalists who wrote what they were paid to write. No, chérie, I promise you. I have never been Joseph’s mistress.”

  Mademoiselle Beauvoisin turned her head at the sound of a step in the doorway.

  “She’s read The Ladies’ Journal, Jeanne,” she called. “Or perhaps it was Paris à la Mode. That bitch of a belle-soeur did her the service of sharing the little fictions we concocted.”

  “Merde, the sister-in-law.” The Marquise deposited a pile of beautifully bound books on the bedside table. “I thought you might learn a bit about your new city from Rétif’s Paris Nights. But if you don’t care for it, there’s always Richardson. In English.”

  Joseph must have told her I know English, Marie-Laure thought. How good of her to remember. And what lovely, welcoming words: “your new city.”

  But she’d think about all that later. She turned her attention back to the two women.

  “So she doesn’t know?” the actress was saying.

  “No, not yet. A pity Joseph didn’t tell her, but he worried that she might be a bit too conventional to understand; he thought it would be better to wait until she arrived.”

  “Doesn’t know what?” Marie-Laure blushed at how peremptory her voice sounded.

  The Marquise laughed.

  “Well, it did seem like a perfect cover story. All of Paris was delighted to laugh at the ridiculous Marquise—fat, foolish, a bluestocking, and too rich by half—who introduced her handsome husband to a siren of an actress. Give people a chance to sneer at you and they’ll believe anything.”

  “Though the truth is that Joseph introduced us to each other years ago.” Mademoiselle Beauvoisin smiled. “And very prettily too.”

  “Which was exactly the sort of thing that my uncle was frantic that we cover up,” the Marquise added. “For people were beginning to talk, prejudices are becoming stronger these days, and we needed a decent scandal to cover up the indecent one we’re always in danger of creating.”

  She stood behind Mademoiselle Beauvoisin’s chair, her wide, square hands on the damask upholstery, a beringed index finger carelessly coming to rest in the rounded hollow of a naked, delicate shoulder. As the finger made small, practiced circles, gently smoothing a tiny tense muscle, Mademoiselle Beauvoisin’s eyes
became softer; her dimples just a bit deeper.

  “I love Joseph as a brother,” she said. “Jeanne and I both do. But,” and Marie-Laure knew that this soft, warm, exquisitely shaded voice could have soared, as on angel wings, up to the highest seats in the largest theater in Paris, “he is not my lover, Marie-Laure.”

  “Thank you,” Marie-Laure whispered to the two women at her bedside.

  She felt strangely honored by the understanding they’d conferred on her, though just an hour ago she’d dismissed the very possibility as too vile to consider. Joseph had been right: there were ways in which she was very conventional. But she trusted her instinct—the inner compass that told her a passionate, caring, and deeply shared love could never be vile or wrong.

  “Thank you,” she spoke up more clearly this time. “Thank you both for everything. And especially for trusting me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Mon amour,

  If you receive this, it’s because I’ll have succeeded in performing a bit of sleight of hand, befuddling the guard’s eye as I substitute it at the last minute for a list of foods I’ll demand that Jeanne bring me on her next visit.

  And even if it doesn’t work, and for punishment they take away my exercise walks in the courtyard for a week or two, it will have been worth it, just for the pleasure of writing again and telling you again how much I love you. Je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime.

  I’m sure Jeanne has told you about my daily routines here. It’s comfortable enough, especially for someone who spent his childhood in a drafty chateau. I’m undoubtedly more at ease than you were in your garret, so please don’t worry.

  Sade is a witty companion, though he chides me mercilessly—and enviously—about my “harem” back at the Hôtel Mélicourt. Of course he understands the true facts of the situation; Jeanne and Adriane’s liaison could hardly shock him. But he prefers to reshape things after his own fancies. Well, he’s been in prison for years now [a thick line of ink obscured whatever he’d written here]

  In truth, I think my unusual marriage has changed me for the better. Living in fraternal harmony with two women for whom I was entirely superfluous (at least in one critical way) was a most enlightening experience. It’s one I recommend to all Frenchmen, noble or not, who may have too high an opinion of themselves.

  And now that you’re with these dear friends who’ve taken such good care of me you must let them take care of you as well.

  I marvel that you’re less than a league away—so terribly, wonderfully close that I feel I can touch you through these walls. And so I do. I use my hands, my lips—all my senses and my imagination too—to learn and try to understand the mysteries of what’s happening inside you.

  But the cruel truth is that I am entirely dependent upon my imagination.

  And so you must help me. You must write to me and describe how you look these days. Tell me what it would be like to touch you all over, experience all the new shapes and tastes and textures of you.

  I understand the profundity of what I’m asking, chérie. I know that finding the right words for very physical things isn’t easily done. I can see your lip curling sardonically even as you read this. Well, you think, now this lubricious, decadent libertine has gone too far!

  I plead guilty—to that, at any rate. I throw myself on your mercy, be generous to me in my excess of desire.

  And in return, I’ll help you.

  We shall begin very simply. Just follow my finger—no, not even my finger, merely my fingertip. It traces the curve of your lip, caresses the line of your jaw and—very slowly now, very lightly—it has moved to the hollow of your neck.

  You love that. You arch your back when I touch certain places on your neck.

  And I love that. Well, of course I do, because when you arch and bend like that I know you want me to play with your breasts.

  I touch a nipple. I draw a little circle around it with that same fingertip, watching the flesh darken, pucker, stiffen.

  I want to do a great deal more. I want to tongue your flesh, suck it, squeeze it—no, not just the little bit of you that I’m touching, but your whole breast now, both breasts, I want to put my face between them. But for the sake of this fiction, I do none of these things.

  I simply touch the tip of your breast and marvel at it.

  And you must tell me what I see.

  You must introduce me to your body as it is at this moment. You must help me to see it, tell me how to touch it. To touch you.

  Tell me, Marie-Laure. Touch me, mon amour:

  With all my heart,

  Joseph

  Mon cher Joseph,

  I have to lie on my side, you know, to help the baby breathe. What extraordinary luxury. Just to lie in this big, beautiful bedchamber and do—nothing. Of course, I can read f I want to. Or write to you, resting the paper on a little oak box that serves as a bed desk.

  I can toss a ball for Figaro to chase or eat the lovely meals that are brought to me.

  Or I can worry—for example, that something will go wrong and you won’t receive this letter wrapped around an apple tart in Madame la Marquise’s latest food package to you.

  Or better to try not to worry about such things. And instead to fret about more immediate matters, like, however shall I manage to write the things you’ve asked of me?

  Well, if I make a botch of it, I can throw this letter into the fire, and begin a fresh new sheet (another astonishing luxury), from the stack of paper the Marquise has given me.

  All right. I shall try. Don’t laugh at me.

  [She’d paused here, but you couldn’t see the pause on the paper. In fact, her handwriting had continued firmer, more resolute than before.]

  When you trace the shape of my mouth with your finger, you make me smile. A little smile at first, but then a wider one, and soon I find that I must part my lips and kiss your fingertip—touch the tip of my tongue to it, or even bite it, very lightly of course, and catch my breath, rubbing my jaw against the back of your hand like a lazy, spoiled cat in front of a fire.

  Do you hear me purring? It’s not very loud, but you’re stroking the slope of my throat now, and I know you can feel the happy vibrations.

  Do I always arch my back when you touch my neck like that? (Yes, I know just the places you mean.) Do I always throw back my head and offer you my breasts?

  I didn’t know. Well, how could I know, when you so confound me with pleasure that I can’t know what I’m doing?

  Ah yes, please, bury your face between my breasts—and you truly can bury it; they’re quite formidable these days, you’d be astonished.

  They’re heavy. The neck of this nightdress is too loose, I can reach inside it. I can hold a breast in my hand. Yes, there’s a definite heft to it. And the veins are more prominent and bluer.

  Is it my finger or yours now, that makes such small, precise circles around the dark spot surrounding the nipple? But that’s not so small either nowadays. It’s darker and wider, a kind of purplish brown, and the nipple is thicker, less girlish…would you think it pretty, I wonder?

  I’m blushing now, scandalized by what I’ve written. If I don’t stop I shall probably throw this sheet of paper into the fire.

  But in fact I must stop, for I hear Dr. Raspail. It’s time for his regular visit. He doesn’t esteem me very highly; he’s a bit offended to be treating a body that doesn’t have a title attached to it, though he couldn’t refuse the Marquise’s guest.

  But though I lack a title, I still maintain certain standards. And chief among them is that I don’t want anyone examining me while I’m still at the mercy of your very dear gentle, and oh-so-provocative fingertip.

  So I must compose myself. Breathe, Marie-Laure, as Madame Rachel never fails to insist. She’s Mademoiselle Beauvoisin’s mother, you know, and very wise and reassuring. Breathe slowly and deeply, she says.

  And so, in and out, with every steady heartbeat, I breathe you. Adieu, Joseph. Be well. I love you.

>   Adieu. Be well. I love you.

  Marie-Laure

  Confirming upon his first examination that she suffered from toxemia, Dr. Raspail had consigned her to total bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.

  “Keep a footman at her door,” he’d instructed the Marquise, “in case convulsions develop.”

  He’d considered bleeding her as well. “But let’s start with medication and bed rest,” he decided, to Marie-Laure’s great relief. To relax her, he prescribed a draught of medicine, to be taken every morning and evening. It had opium in it, he said.

  “And as for her keeping to her left side,” he added peevishly, “well, I don’t see what good it could do, but I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

  “It offends him to defer to Mamma’s experience,” Mademoiselle Beauvoisin had explained, “but he’s prudent enough to take her advice into account, for he knows there isn’t a scientific explanation for your condition.”

  In any case—and for whatever reason—the headaches and blurred vision had eased, and even sometimes disappeared for hours at a time.

  Joseph replied the next week.

  I was charmed and delighted by your letter, mon amour, but you must have more confidence in me. Yes, of course, I find that thicker less girlish nipple pretty—pretty! I’m quite beside myself. I held it in my hand all night. Kissed it, fondled it, flicked my tongue over it while you moaned and gasped. I flatter myself that you screamed with pleasure, and that together we made an absolute chaos of the bedclothes.

  But then I realized I didn’t know how to envision our two bodies among that rat’s nest of sheets and pillows. For I’d imagined myself on top of you, and perhaps that isn’t comfortable for you any longer.

  Yes, the more I think of it the surer I am. You must sit astride me, while I lie back and gaze at the belly that overwhelms me with pride and desire. And which you must describe to me.