by Edward Carey
Nicolet and Audinot owned the only two brick properties upon the boulevard; all the others were made of wood. When the wind rose upon the boulevard, how the wooden places groaned and shrieked. The Monkey House creaked particularly. The attic space, the most vulnerable part of the house, complained all night long; it had loud conversations with itself, all full of misery and recriminations. One day, while she was exploring that space, the widow slipped and fell and a whole widow leg came through the ceiling on the first floor. From then on, she proclaimed the place too dangerous to enter, and the attic door was kept closed. But the attic would not be forgotten. It called to us, it muttered and chattered and implored us to remember it.
The atelier in the Monkey House was upstairs in a large chamber formerly occupied by a pair of piebald chimpanzees and so I, in the kitchen downstairs, was kept far away from it. Exploring it at night involved climbing the main staircase—and, so doing, letting off barks and whoops from the wooden steps—so I had mostly to wait until everyone had left the house to go up and look.
When I could, I watched all the boulevard at their many works. Our neighboring building to the right was a small chess café; to the left was THE LITTLE WORLD THEATER of MARCEL MONTON. The residents of these two establishments did not, I think, welcome us between them. When Doctor Curtius bowed to them, they looked the other way. When I could, I watched the people of the boulevard in their leisure hours. I saw a man without legs, progressing up and down in his cart, overtaking many. Another walking a pack of muzzled bulldogs. One taking his four dwarves for a stroll, one out with his lumbering bear. I saw the redhead Doctor Graham again, flamboyantly attired, smoking a cigar, always accompanied by a different beautiful lady. What strange and varied life there was here! I should never have seen all these things, never have imagined them, if I had stayed in the village of my birth.
Amidst the characters upon the boulevard, I soon became aware of a certain conspicuous, ugly bully of a child, a vagrant whose principal friends appeared to be feral dogs. I saw him playing with them, snapping at them, howling with them, searching for food beside them. When I pointed the boy out to my master he was astonished; he stared with wonder at the boy’s broken skin, his matted hair and filthy clothes.
“This, even this, Marie, though brought so low, this too is a Parisian.”
I knew he would find the filthy boy interesting. I knew the sort of head that would move my master. The widow was always telling him that we must concern ourselves with noble heads, heads of distinction, but my master saw nobility in gutterfolk. If he had a passion for a certain head, it was hard for him to shake it. I saw him several times looking at this wild boy, his hands moving hurriedly in the air as if modeling his face. In my turn, in the night, for the briefest moment, I put my own hand out and touched Edmond’s face.
“Ow! Do not do that.”
He had come down to me again. He came sometimes twice a week, learning to be very soft on the stairs. He was so unhappy in the new place he needed someone to talk to. That was when Edmond slowly, tentatively, made sound. He lived his life working around his mother’s louder volume, hushed under her daily clamor. We spoke in whispers, and in those hushed sounds, in that delicate noise, he let more of himself out.
“Am I so quiet, am I, Marie? I don’t think I always was. I used to run around at school and be very loud, I had many friends, but when Father grew ill I stopped school to help him with his work. I suppose I was quieter then, as Father grew louder and made noises in his illness; they were not happy sounds. Mother insisted I be quiet, so that I should not disturb him. And so I learned my quietness, until I spoke only in a whisper. I don’t mind whispering, in fact I prefer it, everyone else being so loud.”
“What more, Edmond? What more can you tell me?”
“Nothing, nothing at all.”
“What do you hope for?”
“One day to be a very fine tailor.”
“That is your mother speaking.”
“No, no, it is my deepest wish.”
“And I, Edmond? What shall I be, I wonder?”
“A servant, I suppose. Whatever else?”
“I know how to draw. I can mix colors, prepare faces, ready the wax.”
“Not that again, Marie. Mother will never have it. You must learn your place.”
“But what if I don’t like my place?”
“Mother will toss you out with barely a thought.”
“She’ll have to pay me first.”
“Be good, Marie.”
“Though I hate it.”
“You are fed. You have shelter.”
“I’m glad you come to me. I should forget myself if you didn’t.”
“I don’t mind coming down sometimes.”
“I look forward to it.”
“But you shouldn’t expect things, Marie. It’s not your place.”
“You’ll come again?”
“I may. But you shouldn’t expect it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sounds of the outside falling in.
One afternoon, when the wild feral boy of the boulevard was sleeping nearby, propped up against a poplar tree, my master stepped out to have a better look at him.
There was no harm in that, perhaps, but then the boy opened his eyes and those open eyes watched my master. Curtius quickly began to walk back toward the Monkey House. When he turned ’round, after a few steps, the boy was no longer there at the tree. When he stepped into the Monkey House, he saw the boy had been following him, was sitting across the way now by Doctor Graham’s establishment. The boy pulled a sausage from his pocket, wiped it with his grimy hands, took a good-sized bite, and aggressively began to chew. When I checked later, at my master’s request, the boy was still there. He lingered near the Monkey House all evening. Once he had seen Curtius, had seen how thin and fragile he was, I believe he began to consider what a vulnerable place the Monkey House was. Unnerved by the wild boy’s closeness, Edmond kept to his room at night, fearing to disturb the boy, who had taken up the habit of sleeping on the Monkey House steps. I dared not go upstairs to look for him, for the one time I had tried, the noise I made upon the fifth stair caused the widow to shout, “Who’s there? I hear you!” My master and the widow were likewise not themselves. The wild boy followed Curtius whenever he went out, always just a few steps behind. It was as if our house and our lives were under siege.
“He’s always there,” Curtius moaned.
“Ignore him,” said the widow. “If you do, he’ll go away.”
“I begin to fear, Widow Picot, that you do not know everything.”
Edmond was dressed smartly and sent out into the streets to distribute the widow’s newly commissioned bill sheets. He handed them to people in the parks, on the better streets, in appropriate gatherings.
FAMOUS FOREIGN SCULPTOR, DOCTOR CURTIUS, GENIUS OF WAX, GREATEST PORTRAITIST IN PARIS, LIKENESSES TRULY REMARKABLE. CUSTOMERS AMAZED!
SCULPTOR OF ROUSSEAU, DIDEROT, D’ALEMBERT &c.
DARE TO SEE YOURSELF, YOUR LOVED ONES, WIVES, DAUGHTERS, SONS, GRANDSONS, AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME.
(For a reasonable fee.)
In response came not only boulevard heroes and celebrated philosophers, but also something new: women. Women to be talked to, women to be modeled. They entered the hall and were seated upon our chairs. Such women! Paris women. With women’s skin, soft, wrinkled, windswept, tough, blistered, greasy, clean, sweet-smelling, rancid, stinking of onions and of flour and of chocolate and of strawberries. Curtius touched them all. And as his digits descended onto female flesh, he hesitated and his eyes flooded, but sometimes, so very close to a customer’s female face, his hands met together in a silent clap. Surrounded as he was by so much femininity, I considered, perhaps my master’s widowish affection might fall away. In one such rare moment, he came to tell me.
“Oh, the nose! These noses! Oh freckles on foreheads. Oh creases on lips, so perfect, so chapped, so wine-marked. Oh curls of eyelashes! Oh dimples! Oh cheekbones!
Such moles, such redness, such whiteness and greenness. Oh pinks, oh reds, oh you blues and yellows! I am moved! Necks! How I have cried over the napes of necks! Lips! Lips, again!” he said in wonder. “Happy! Oh, happy! Alive!”
Curtius made skin. The widow covered it up. Edmond sewed buttons. I scrubbed floors.
The rough boy slept on the steps.
On the second week of the wild boy’s proximity, Edmond at last came down again. I heard him upon the stairs, making such slow progress. I listened out: it was certainly him, for I could just hear the widow’s heavy slumber and also my master in his sleep-muttering. Edmond’s small footsteps, coming with such deliberation, closer and closer. I got out of bed and stood by the door, waiting and waiting. There was a noise outside on the steps: the wild boy, certainly, shifting. I listened out again for the noise of Edmond’s coming; he had stopped, there was no sound, not for a bit—but then, tiniest of creaks, there he was again. I reached for the handle; I opened the door; the door pronounced its opening, just a little. The advance of Edmond paused. There were sounds on the outside steps. Edmond continued. Creak. I pushed the door open a little more. Creak. Someone outside stood upon the steps. Crack.
I could see Edmond now, and he could see me, through the small early-morning light coming through the shutters. We were perhaps just twenty yards from each other. But we stayed in our places. Crack. Another sound from the steps outside. Then silence again.
“Marie,” Edmond whispered, almost no sound to it at all.
“Edmond,” came my smallest answer.
Silence.
“At last you’ve come,” I said.
“WHO’S THERE?” Such loud words suddenly! Such a deep voice! Calling from outside.
We kept very still.
“WHO’S THERE, I SAY? WHAT’S INSIDE? WHAT HAVE YOU GOT IN THERE? UNLOCK YOURSELF!”
And then the front door was knocked and shaken. Someone outside was trying to get in. Then a roar of fury from outside the door, as if by being so lawlessly out of bed we’d awoken a monster. How the door was hammered then!
“Help!” whispered Edmond. “The whole house will come down upon us.”
He ran to me then and I held on to him, my arms around him tight.
“LEAVE ME BE! UNHAND ME!” the voice outside bellowed now in fury.
“Who’s there?” Another call, a different call, from upstairs—the widow!
“Mother?” cried Edmond.
“Edmond!” she snapped back. “What’s going on? Why are you up? Who’s there with you?”
“The sounds, Mother. It was the sounds.”
“Little? Little!” she cried. “What are you doing?”
I let go then.
“Do you not hear it, madame?” I whispered. “There is something beyond.”
Another noise outside, the door being smashed upon, and then an enormous scream. And as that scream, a hurt beast’s yell, so shocked us from outside, so it was echoed inside, for the widow screamed, a low mounting call like something bovine in distress. Edmond’s cry followed—his own much higher, like a rabbit in a trap—and then it was picked up and followed on by another, this from my master at the top of the stairs, a horse’s whinny, and the house screamed and chattered, yelped and growled like a great menagerie of all beasts at once. In that noise, I could not help but insert my own small sound among the others, a small mouse wail, a shrew’s.
But suddenly the hammering and thumping ceased, leaving just a whimpering and a scuttling, as of someone hurrying away. We stood all four of us, each his own island, not daring to make sound, until at last from our entrance steps came a deep snoring, as of some great mastiff. Then, shaken and pale, we returned in muffled terror to our sleepless beds, in hope that the morning and the sun would bleach away our agony.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In which the Cabinet gets its guard dog.
With daylight came an explanation. Someone, it seemed—some drunk fellow—had been snooping about the Monkey House, hoping to upset us by rattling the door, when he had accidentally trod upon the wild boy. He had had no reward but pain for his mischief, nor would two of his teeth ever grow back.
My master stood at the window and watched the bully still asleep upon the third step. “I think,” he said, “I think we must thank him.” I watched by the kitchen door as he opened the front door and cleared his throat.
“I don’t suppose you slept very well,” he said. “None of us did.”
We all came a little closer then, to see what happened next.
The wild boy slowly sat up, curled his lip, but Curtius did not come back indoors. The boy moved up a step, but Curtius stayed where he was. The boy climbed to the top step, and so Curtius did the only thing left for him to do: he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket and tugged out a coin. The wild boy took it. And, having taken it, he ceased his growling at once. My master looked very brave then, brave in front of the widow. She, unused to such a turnabout, stammered and huffed but could find no obvious path.
“This creature is the lowest of the low,” the widow said. “He’s not to come inside.”
“You’re a good fellow,” said this new Curtius. “I like you, but you are rough. And inside are some delicate things. So keep outside, bellow and thump there by all means, for you’re made for the outdoors, aren’t you? You’re not to be limited by architecture. But, no, don’t come in.”
“In fact,” said the widow, “keep out.”
Turning about in her exasperation, finding me too close for comfort, she recalled something else from the shadows the night before.
“Last night, Edmond, I saw you!”
“Yes, Mother, and I you. What a fright we have all had.”
“You were in the closest proximity with the servant.”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Do you deny it?”
“No, Mother, I cannot.”
“You cannot lie to your mother!”
“No, Mother. I never could.”
“Why then such communication?”
“I was frightened, Mother. She was . . . near.”
“Edmond! Learn your place; it is not, it never was, with the kitchen rat.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“You seek comfort? Come to me, I’ll comfort you.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“And you, Little, scum, boil, dropping, touch my son and you shall find yourself in the gutter!”
“Yes, madame. Certainly, madame.”
I long for you to die in agonies, I thought, and I could almost picture it. Why was she always so cruel, I wondered, even after I had worked so hard for her? Perhaps she needed someone beneath her to know for certain that she was not on the bottom rung. Perhaps being cruel was proof of her success.
I was certain that with this latest proclamation there would be no more creak upon the stairs. That I should remain alone in the kitchen, and be taken over by that place.
“It disgusts me!” she concluded. “Just because this vagrant makes a little row on our steps, it is no cause for all society to be overturned. We must hope that that breathing rubbish shall tire of us very soon and then all shall be returned as it was before.”
But that was not what happened.
Once the wild boy had conquered the Monkey House steps, neither he nor my master could be stopped. Not only did the boy spend his nights upon the steps, but he remained during the day, and soon he began to serve my master’s Cabinet on various small errands.
The rough boy did not merely attach himself to Curtius. He sent out messengers of his personality in the form of fleas. There were small pimples on Edmond’s forearms; I saw him though the kitchen door, scratching them. The widow discovered a tick upon the back of her neck. How Curtius respected that tick, made its removal into a great drama. I was summoned—such was the trauma—to bring a basin of hot water.
“Why must you see my shoulders?” the widow squawked. “The creature is on my neck. No, I shall not loosen my jacket!”
These medical attentions of Curtius must also be put down to the advent of the rough boy, for my master should never have dared touch the widow’s neck without the help of the rough boy’s tick, and here he was pinching and squeezing it. Curtius would keep that dead tick in a little box, resting on red velvet, upon the mantelpiece in his bedroom. I saw it when I came to empty the chamber pots.
Some people will leave their dogs outside in the cold; others will have them indoors on their laps or on their beds. You can tell a person’s character by how he treats his dogs. Here is an indication of my master’s character: Curtius not only insisted on letting the boy sleep on the steps, as if he could stop him, he even gave him a rug from his own bed.
Finally, Curtius asked the boy his name. In response, the boy forced a sound out from deep within, more a bark than a name.
“What was that?” Curtius asked. “Try again. Once more.”
This time, I seemed to hear words: Jacques, that much I felt confident about. Of the second word, I could make nothing.
“Visage? Oh—Beauvisage!” exclaimed the widow.
Beauvisage? Pretty face?
“Jacques Beauvisage,” he growled, and nodded.
And Curtius, those syllables splattered upon his face, was enraptured. Such a name for such a creature! Rather than laugh at the beast, Curtius just smiled. “Indeed, so you are, Beauvisage.”
With the coming of bad weather, Curtius’ character showed itself again. After much behind-doors negotiation with the stunned widow, he invited Jacques to sleep inside, curled up by the door. Now I was certain Edmond would never come down again. In desperation, I passed him a note. It said only:
HALLO, EDMOND! From Marie.
He looked shocked to receive such a thing, and scrunched it up very quickly, but his ears, I noted, had gone their reddest.
Jacques Beauvisage was instructed to remain by the front door and ordered never to touch the wax heads. But it was already too late by then: Once you let a dog sleep inside, you cannot expect to turn it out again. You must never bring a wild thing into your home. His old friends, the boulevard’s stray dogs, came to the steps, whining for him, but in the end they slunk off confused. And the wild child was left friendless in the Monkey House.
