by Perrat, Liza
‘But however are we to get away?’
‘Unfortunately, ma chère, we are bound to remain here over the winter. Our chance will come again at la fête de Carnaval.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘And this time, my plan will not fail.’
‘Carnival? As if we, in the asylum, will be allowed to celebrate that!’
‘Indeed, Victoire. In a recent conversation, our new, well-connected Sister Superior informed me she is to hold a Carnival ball here at la Salpêtrière, before the penitential dullness of Lent.’
‘A ball for us — the criminals, the poor, the insane? I can hardly believe such a thing.’
Jeanne shook her head. ‘Of course not. Sister Superior would never risk her precious Parisian public mingling with us idiotes, maniaques and hystériques. Apparently though, she wishes for the most presentable of the mad and criminal fiends to be present. She wants to boast to her hierarchy; her fawning society, what a marvellous job she’s doing here at la Salpêtrière; how well we are treated, how graciously we are reformed.’ She laughed. ‘Reform, what a joke! Though I am certain of one thing, Victoire. Sister Superior will make an exception for you and me — for all prisoners offering healthy donations.’
‘You can get tickets for us? For me? But aren’t they worried about prisoners escaping?’
‘Of course,’ Jeanne said with a nod. ‘Sister Superior will take every precaution to thwart escapees who might try and take advantage of the festivities — the usual mounted guard of two corporals and eight soldiers will be increased two-fold. She’ll hire extra keepers, spies and so on, but I know she wants this ball to be a special celebration. I think she sees it as the beginning of an enlightened-thinking annual ritual that will mark her as new head of la Salpêtrière.’
I helped Jeanne slip on her shoes. ‘The curious public will buy tickets at exorbitant prices,’ she went on. ‘With the money, Sister Superior claims she will improve the asylum, get rid of the dungeons and set up proper medical care.’ Her fingertips felt like feathers on my cheek. ‘Of course, she really only wants to impress people in high places so they compliment her and continue paying her fine salary.’
Jeanne traced around my lips with her index finger. ‘This ball is already the talk of the capital, ma chère — marquises, countesses, the idle wives of bankers, lawyers and doctors — awaiting this one special soirée to escape their dull daily lives. The one night their cheeks will blush, not with modesty or shyness, but with heat and longing.’ Her bright gaze held mine.
‘The night they can play at being chameleons — throwing aside modesty and pretension — to dance for hours, and speak of men, love and sex. And, as they experience their most depraved desires, they will amass a mind full of memories and pleasures because, Victoire, the night is short. Too soon morning will come and they’ll be back to their stifled lives.’
‘But however will we escape?’ I said.
‘Well.’ Jeanne’s face crimped in a wide smile. ‘Fortunately for us, Sister Superior’s grand spectacle is to be none other than a masquerade ball.’
27
Jeanne fingered the pale green gown she’d had made for me by a renowned seamstress on the rue de Richelieu. She took a few paces back. ‘Always wear this shade, Victoire, with your hair and eyes. Now, you have everything — your letters, your new identity?’
I nodded and finished helping Jeanne dress, running my trembling hands through her silk gown of dark turquoise, shot with gold embroidery.
‘Exquisite as ever,’ I said, a tingle sliding down the cleft of my breasts. ‘Of course,’ I went on with a wry smile, ‘the countess Jeanne is only too aware of how her costume ripples about her like some gentle sea against the ivory sands of her skin.’
Jeanne laughed and brushed my lips with hers. ‘Oh là là, ma chère, I did say you’d be the next Voltaire, didn’t I? Now remember, all you have to do is employ everything I’ve taught you and, above all, forget you were a peasant from the poor provinces. Dressed as we are, nobody will mistake us for anything but groomed Parisian ladies out for a night of fun.’
She fixed her peacock mask in place. ‘Think of it as a final dress rehearsal for your new bourgeois life. Now hurry, Victoire, put your mask on and let’s go and dance with the devil.’
We linked arms and stepped out into the cold February evening. We crossed courtyards, hurrying by the different buildings of la Salpêtrière rising so grandly — the gilt dome and marble facades that splendidly belied the catacomb of living bones. By the time we reached the ballroom entrance, I was quivering.
Jeanne squeezed my arm. ‘Relax, the night will be unforgettable.’
I inhaled as deeply as my stays would permit, as we strolled along the entrance hallway, through the dim light flickering from gold-painted leaf sconces.
Once inside the ballroom, my mouth dropped open. Black velvet tapestries covered the ceiling and fell in heavy folds to a plush carpet the same bloody hue the windowpanes had been tinted. Six cloth-clad caryatids, one breast exposed, formed a rectangle around the perimeter of the room. Each brandished a burning flambeau.
‘Never have I seen anything so magnificent,’ I said.
‘Yes, Victoire, so bold, so … fiery!’
The chandeliers drew my gaze upwards. Throwing the gaudy masqueraders’ costumes into a fantasy of angular shadows, the golden light cast its magic on the women’s diamonds and rubies.
‘Oh là là, such a graceful, macabre lustre Sister Superior has created,’ Jeanne said. ‘Sometimes I think that woman is madder than half the women here. Come, Victoire, we need sustenance.’ She led me through the crowd to the grand buffet at the end of the room.
‘I’m sure I’ll gorge myself silly on all this food,’ I said.
‘Tonight is an exception, ma chère. Everybody gets to eat the same food, but Sister Superior has planned it all cleverly.’ Jeanne nodded at the people behind the buffet table.
‘Those women dressed as maids, in white tulle caps, serving drinks, are all sister officers. And those,’ she pointed towards the chefs offering sweets and cakes, ‘are keepers, watching to make sure we prisoners don’t stuff ourselves, or hide food within the folds of our clothes, to remove to our cells.’
‘There are the keepers who stopped us escaping,’ I hissed. ‘The one who made your lip bleed.’
‘Eh oui, ma chère, I haven’t forgotten them.’
‘But how welcoming they all are,’ I said. ‘What a turnaround.’
‘Don’t fool yourself, it is nothing but an illusion,’ Jeanne said, as we found places alongside other guests, on the bench seats lining the walls. ‘Tomorrow those smiling keepers and sister officers will be as evil and nasty as ever.’ She sipped her wine and bit into her cake.
‘Not that we care what happens tomorrow, eh?’ she whispered, beneath the cadenced murmur filling the room.
The crowd fell silent as Sister Superior appeared, the hem of her rose-coloured silk gown sweeping across the floor like the sound of rain.
‘Merci à tous,’ she announced. ‘With immense pleasure I declare the ball open. Let this spectacle begin — eat, drink, dance and enjoy! And don’t forget the mask game. We all must try to guess the identity of each and every guest.’
The orchestra started playing and people began to dance in a swirl of fabric, which glittered and shivered like spring water. The music quickly mesmerised me, as Jeanne swept me onto the shiny floor and I played out all the dance steps we’d practised together — le menuet, l’allemande, le cotillon — for when I was a free woman.
We danced on, Jeanne taking the male role, like many of the women, who vastly outnumbered the men.
‘The wine, the music, is making me giddy,’ I said.
‘Keep a clear head,’ Jeanne said as yet more people approached us, trying to guess our identities. Jeanne turned away each time, laughing and dismissing the person with some vague excuse.
‘Do not remove your mask … for anybody,’ she said.
I was breathless, almost delirio
us, as we spun faster and faster amid the swirling mass. Snakes, bats, felines, sorceresses, princesses, Romans, Egyptians, milk maids and peasants: wealthy Parisians and wealthy prisoners brought together for this night of dreams.
‘Nobody can tell who the crazies are. How to guess who is folle and who is not?’ Jeanne said as we rested on a bench seat with glasses of squash. ‘Isn’t that quite the bizarre irony of Carnival?’
‘Perhaps we’re all a bit mad,’ I said. ‘When we least expect it, the madness hits us as quickly as lightning strikes a peasant cottage and burns it to the ground. So vulnerable we are, to the caprices of la mélancolie — helpless to master wherever it takes us; whatever it makes us do.’
‘You’re right, ma chère, but don’t think of such things now. This is the first night of our happier, brighter lives.’ She took my hand. ‘Let’s get away from this crowd for a moment. Come and see some fun things.’
‘What things?’
‘Oh, Victoire, this is Carnival — a holiday, a game in which we oppose that ridiculous, ecclesiastical ritual of Lent,’ Jeanne said with a wave of her arm. ‘A time of ecstasy, of liberation. Sister Superior has promised her guests such dens of pleasure and debauchery you could never imagine!’
I followed her down a hallway with several private rooms off to each side. Jeanne went to open the door of the first one.
I laid my hand over hers. ‘Must we, really? You said we were to leave tonight. What of the plan, Jeanne, why are we still here?’
‘Because, ma chère, we must choose the perfect moment. It will come soon enough, just enjoy the ball for now.’
Jeanne opened the door and pulled me inside after her. ‘Come on, it will be most entertaining to watch the demons play.’
Muted in sallow candlelight, a tangled silhouette of naked men and women lay sprawled across a Turkish rug, limbs entwined, hands searching, fingers and mouths exploring any available orifice.
From rose and lavender-perfumed incense, smoke curled into the amber gloom. In a darkened corner, three men wearing bull masks bucked, thrust and groaned as horns dug into the soft flesh of their shoulders, their backs.
‘Welcome ladies, come and join us,’ said a fat woman, fondling the penis of a young boy draped in nothing but a snake stole. ‘Keep your masks if you wish, but remove your clothes.’ The woman cackled and winked at me as she widened her crimson lips and took the length of the youth’s penis in her mouth.
The Marquis of Saint-Germain and the keepers from Jeanne’s cell flashed through my mind. I turned and fled from that feverish beat of vice.
I leaned against the wall, my breathing fast and shallow. ‘I cannot watch those things, Jeanne. It makes me feel dirty … ashamed.’ I lowered my eyes, shuffling the toe of my slipper through the thick red fibres. ‘But at the same time, never have I feasted upon such phantasm, or felt such zest. What sort of a person have I become?’
Jeanne placed her hands on my hips. She kissed my ear, her tongue flicking in and out. ‘A warm, very lovely woman, ma chère. Don’t be anxious, it is only a game.’
We returned to the ballroom. The orchestra was taking a break, so we moved to the buffet area for more food and drink.
‘I was told she would be here tonight,’ we overheard a woman say, who was dressed in an arabesque outfit of flowers and foliage. ‘Which one do you think she is?’
‘Well, my dear,’ a lady dressed as a Spanish dancer answered. ‘Nobody has yet unmasked the famous Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, but I am sure we’ll know who she is by the end of the night.’ The women glanced about furtively.
‘As if, in this huge crowd, la Salpêtrière’s most celebrated prisoner might be standing right next to them,’ Jeanne whispered. We threw our masked heads back and laughed.
‘They say she has hidden many of the diamonds, and uses the fortune from the ones she’s sold to bribe Sister Superior,’ the first woman said, adjusting her hat — an elaborate birdcage in which two canaries twittered. ‘Apparently she lives in relative luxury here in the prison building.’
‘You heard she tried to escape?’ the Spanish dancer said, sipping her wine. ‘As if anybody could escape this asylum. I ask you, whatever was the woman thinking?’
Jeanne leaned towards the Spanish dancer. ‘Oh là là, what a thought,’ she said. ‘To try and flee la Salpêtrière!’
The woman turned to us, wordless. I tried not to gape at Jeanne’s audacity, her nerve. As she giggled, took my arm and pranced off into the crowd, I wished I too could treat everything as some frivolous game, relishing the dangerous risks.
***
We danced again. We ate, drank, laughed and kept our masks in place. Finally, the mahogany wall clock began to chime the hour of midnight, its pendulum swinging back and forth with the strangest, deepest clang. So peculiar it was that everyone stopped and listened.
The orchestra paused. I sensed a hesitation; an uneasy break in the revelry, as if nobody really knew why everything had stopped so abruptly. It seemed we were all waiting for something to happen.
‘Perhaps the bewitching hour has truly entranced us all?’ Jeanne said.
A tall figure wearing an ankle-length black cloak entered the room. Beneath the hood, there appeared not a face, but a dark cowl with white pinpoints flashing from eye hollows. Within its cloak, the figure resembled a skeleton.
I wondered how the costume had been fashioned. Perhaps the skeleton was sewn onto the outside of some dark, body-hugging outfit. So curious was I about the costume that I barely registered the beautifully-carved scythe the figure clutched in one hand.
‘Isn’t it frightening?’ Jeanne whispered, laughing softly, nudging me towards the doors.
‘What is it?’
‘That, ma chère, is la faucheuse. The angel of death. Hard to believe it’s only a simple dress-up thing, isn’t it?’
All eyes had turned to that spectral angel of death, strolling amongst the ball guests as if searching for someone in particular.
Nobody took any notice of a regal lady in a peacock mask, leading another, clad in emerald green, towards the doors.
As the hooded skeleton stalked in beat to the clock chimes — solemn, constant and deliberate — I sensed the revellers did not know whether it interested, excited, or terrified them. They stood still, their whispers lost in the boom of the striking clock.
As the small hand of the clock made its last circuit, a low murmuring rose from the crowd and hundreds of feet began to shuffle on the spot. All eyes stayed fixed on the angel of death, slinking through the crowd.
The black drapes swallowed the dying echoes of the chimes. The angel of death had reached the buffet table, and there it stopped, turned, and faced the line of keepers dressed as chefs. It looked them all up and down, studying each face one by one. I barely had time to recognise them as the men from Jeanne’s cell, before I reeled in horror as the figure lifted its scythe and sliced the keepers’ heads off in a single swoop.
In the seconds of shock as blood splattered the finery, and the heads and their sappy gore stained the carpet a darker red, the angel of death was gone — simply another masquerader disappearing into the night.
In its mysterious wake, before anyone had the chance to react, Jeanne was rushing me from the building.
Thankfully, thick clouds obscured the moon, shrouding us in darkness, as we gripped each other’s hands and hurried across the damp cobblestones, further and further from the ballroom affray.
I soon heard the shouts behind us. ‘Quick, catch him!’
Then followed a mass shriek from inside the ballroom. I kept glancing back as I ran. In the distance, people were streaming from the building, stumbling and falling over each other in their hysteria.
Jeanne and I reached the asylum entrance just as the soldier guard must have learned of the ballroom melee. Breathless, we kept ourselves hidden behind a thick stone column.
‘We haven’t seen him leave via the front gate,’ one of the soldiers said to his group.
‘He must still be in the grounds then,’ another cried.
‘Allez, we will find this murderous creature!’
‘Not likely.’ Jeanne stifled a giggle. ‘He’ll have long discarded his costume by now.’
The soldiers began rushing in all directions, around the vast expanse of buildings. Whilst the tumult and confusion reached its height, Jeanne and I slipped through the unmanned entrance of la Salpêtrière asylum.
Once outside we slowed down.
‘Fool, I only paid him to scare the keepers and divert the crowd’s attention,’ Jeanne said. ‘Not to actually slice their silly heads off.’ She fingered her lip, which the keeper had made bleed and swell. ‘Never mind, we’ll lose no sleep over them, eh, ma chère? Besides, no time to think of that, we must be gone.’
‘I can hardly believe we’re out, Jeanne. I am afraid it is a dream and I’ll wake any moment, back on my straw mattress.’
‘Well you might, Victoire, if we don’t hurry.’
A faint breeze displaced the cloud, and the moon’s gleaming nakedness illuminated two coaches waiting on the street.
Jeanne pushed her rose-perfumed pomade into one of my hands, a slip of paper into the other. ‘Give this address to the coachman. Once I have reached the safety of English shores, I will write to you.’
Jeanne wrapped her arms around me. Moonlight streaming onto our faces, her lips met mine, but she drew away quickly, her kiss brief and passionless.
‘No time for long goodbyes, ma chère. No, you must not be sad.’ She took my hand again, placed a small leather bag in my palm and closed my fingers over it. ‘And remember, bene qui latuit, bene vixit. My favourite Latin motto: one who lives well, lives unnoticed.’
Without a backward glance, Jeanne hurried into the first coach. The horses’ hooves clomped off down the street. They picked up pace. Quicker, fainter, and finally soundless. Jeanne was gone.
My blood beat hard. Everything had changed. I was no longer the shy, ignorant peasant girl. Jeanne de Valois had dragged the flesh from me, tearing it back to the quick, opening me up, and reshaping me into someone new. She had awakened the life in me.
