Little: A Novel

by Edward Carey

  At last my opportunity arose. There was a great commotion—not the birth moment, but a sudden scramble to secure the tapestry in the room, lest the crowd somehow dislodge it and send it toppling atop the queen. There was a deal of fussing, and almost everyone stood, and I seized the moment to borrow a chair and drag it over to the chest, where I added to my height by standing upon it. At last I managed to heave myself onto the roof of the chest. And there it was.

  A perfect uninhibited view.

  There were by now more than fifty inside the room, I could see them. The queen lay in her bed, surrounded by doctors and her family, talking a little and trying to pretend, I think, that there was no great crowd of people waiting for her to entertain them. And so we all waited, and we watched the region of that hot belly, which was covered at the moment by loose sheets, but still nothing happened. After a time my gaze wandered about the golden room, and I began to study the crowd of nobles beneath me. Cravats had been loosened; every forehead was clammy; ladies jerked fans about them; makeup began to run. The Princesse de Lamballe, in the second row, looked particularly agitated by the warmth. Then, quite close to the front, I saw someone I recognized: it was my friend, the palace locksmith! How wonderful, I thought, that this man so beloved by the people of Versailles should be permitted entrance to such an event.

  Then Queen Antoinette made a loud groan, and the real performance began.

  There was much activity and much noise from Antoinette, and much advice given by the doctors, and the Princesse de Lamballe began to look extremely white. People whispered to themselves, shifting about to attend better every gasp and moan, every push and wince, every strain and gasp of the queen. The poor woman puffed and panted and went very red in the face and heaved and yelled, and yet no child was forthcoming. The baby would not come out, indeed it stayed inside a good while longer, and during the intervening moments of quietness, as the poor queen lay panting, the audience sat down again and talked among themselves, only to be roused to their feet again by groans from the queen. So it went on, the audience rising and falling with the tides of the queen’s labor, until at last, sometime after eleven o’clock, a baby began to appear.

  Soon there was a whole red head, and then a pink-and-red body, and two arms and two legs. And with it, to much joy, came the baby’s first noise. Up there on the roof of a chest, I thought to myself, I know that: there’s the umbilical cord, just as Doctor Curtius said it would be, and there’s the mucus membrane he spoke of—and there, after a while, as my master had described, there was the placenta! How marvelous it was! What new lessons I was learning! What miracles may a woman perform: look, look at the new life come out of her!

  The room had grown fearfully hot and filled with an awful reek of vinegar and essences, on account of the doctors. I had undone my bonnet and loosened my dress, and many other people had made similar adjustments. During those last moments, as the baby came out into the world, the audience pressed farther and farther forward. But as soon as the child was free it was hurried out in cloths by the medical scrum; the king must have been among them, I suppose, though by the time I thought to look he was nowhere to be seen. Then, after the room had cleared a bit, I was able to see the queen once more. Suddenly she had become only the second most important person in the drama. She had grown appallingly white, I saw, and I wondered if she had perhaps died—there was certainly blood on the sheets—until she sat up and called out through the heat.

  And no one noticed.

  The audience was clapping and clapping, for nature is such an astonishing thing, especially when it applies itself to a queen. But then the audience began to worry, very much out loud, what sex the child was, whether a boy or a girl, a Dauphin or Dauphine. And the word began to go around in a whisper, a disappointed whisper: “a daughter, a daughter, a daughter, a daughter.”

  But no one noticed the queen.

  From my perch atop the chest, I waved to get people’s attention. “The queen!” I called out. “The queen!” For I could see, from my vantage point, that Her Majesty was having convulsions.

  And still no one noticed.

  In a moment, someone else had. The Princesse de Lamballe, always very pale, always on the brink of fainting, her hands flailing wildly about, had seen the queen, but traumatized as she was, she was unable to get the words out. Standing up, I suppose, to try to collar someone and alert them to the danger, Lamballe began to totter, and those great eyes began to go blank, and then she collapsed in a great swoon, falling backward and knocking into whatever was in her path, which was quite a lot, and which caused several loud crashes, and this had the result of centering everyone’s attention on the collapsed princess, distracting even further from the troubled queen.

  And so it was only after the Princesse de Lamballe was carried out, and I became quite desperate with my hand-waving, that at last someone noticed me. It was the locksmith. Standing right there, in the thick of the crowd, he couldn’t hear me through the deafening noise, but I caught his eye and pointed urgently to the queen. Seeing Her Majesty suffocating upon the maternity bed, he launched himself bravely through the crowd, but not in the direction of the queen; rather, he set out in the opposite way—perhaps this was all to do with their no-touching rule, and he could think of no other way to be useful—pushing people aside until he reached the windows, sealed like those in my corridor against the winter cold. With his brute strength, he started to strip the seals away, and at last the locksmith had them open and fresh air was coming in. Then many other people, of a lesser bravery and lesser strength, tugged other windows open, and December came hurrying. But those other people had no idea quite why the locksmith was ripping the windows open; they seemed to think it was to call out to the crowds in the courtyards below; and so now the heroic locksmith had to force himself back through the room to reach the queen where she lay still upon her bed, very white, sheets soaked with blood for all to see. And all did see then.

  Great commotion followed; hot water was called for but never arrived; the doctors prodded Her white Majesty, at first to no effect. They began to bleed her from her foot. They drew five saucers full, which I suppose was considered the correct amount, and at last the queen showed some life. And all this time the locksmith, hero of the moment, never left her side. There were tears, unmistakable tears, in his eyes. Was she dead? But at last the queen gasped, and all was well again. And the locksmith looked enormously relieved. He put his handkerchief to his face to hide his tears. It had all been very exciting indeed.

  When the locksmith stood up from the bed, people bowed to him, out of thanks, I supposed. Then I saw him turn around and look at me, and, very briefly, nod. The bowing continued, and it was only then that I began to understand something new, something incredible.

  The queen had married a locksmith.

  The locksmith she had married was called Louis XVI.

  I wanted to cheer. I wanted to tell someone. But who could I tell? I couldn’t tell Edmond. Who then? I made up my mind to write to my master to inform him, to tell Jacques about this very opposite of a hanging, but then came the worry: if I did write, Doctor Curtius would be reminded of me, and the widow would wonder why I had not yet secured permission to model the queen. Still, how marvelous it was: I knew the king! I did! Little! And so I did a little clap, just as Curtius would.

  This king I knew, this king I had almost shared pastry with, now called for the room to be cleared at once. The queen was to be left alone. Everyone was ushered out. This king, my roof companion, my umbrella sharer, had his servants rush everyone from the place and then rushed off himself, in his unsteady gait, to be with his little daughter. By the time I looked for her, taken as I was with my extraordinary discovery, I saw that Elisabeth and her ladies had already gone. They had left me there.

  When the nursemaids came in, the queen called out for her baby. They calmed her. The baby, they said, was perfectly healthy. She wished to see him, to see the new Bourbon, the heir to France she had produced. No, they
told her, not an heir, not at all, a girl, a daughter, not an heir, I’m afraid, yes, we are sure, madame, a girl, a very pink, healthy girl, but a girl all the same, yes, yes, we are quite certain. And then the queen, exhausted from the day and the crowds and the result, began to weep.

  I had a suspicion then that I no longer belonged in this room. It was becoming a private place. And yet I remained, the last member of a very noisy public. I thought to leave, and yet before me at last was the queen, and she was less busied now, things were getting quieter all the while, so I wondered if now, after all, might in fact be the time to approach her for a casting. Not to be done instantly, of course, but perhaps I could make an appointment for Doctor Curtius. These opportunities, after all, do not happen every day. The room was growing quieter and quieter, the queen’s sobbing grew more controlled, and I counted this a sign that the moment was propitious. I quietly clambered down, dropping the last few feet to the floor, with a little bump. This little bump caused the eyes of the queen to open and look at me. I smiled and took a few steps toward my goal, grinning now I suppose, almost laughing, but before I could make my gentle proposal, the queen opened her mouth and uttered these very inappropriate words:

  “A devil! A very devil!”

  And all hope was gone with me in an instant. I was frightened, and she increased this fright by screaming, and in a torment of upset, of cruel disappointment and horror, I rushed from the screaming locksmith’s wife through the doors, through the remaining people, all the way to my cupboard. I hurled myself inside, slammed the doors behind me, and hid under the blankets.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  A servant and a king.

  Far from the cramped darkness of my own cupboard, closer to the core of the palace even than the queen’s bedchamber, I found myself two days later. Never show your back, bow down, speak when spoken to, do not approach closer than three and a half feet, certainly do never touch. I had met the king before and had even felt quite relaxed on those occasions; I had conversed with him freely and had even once shared a portion of his overcoat; but then the king had simply been the palace locksmith, one of many in France, thousands I should imagine, since so many people insist on locking things away from other people. But there is only ever one king to a country. That is a rule. Otherwise bloodshed.

  I had seen portraits of the king; his profile was stamped upon every French coin. But the king’s head on coins and the king’s head eating pastry seemed to have very little resemblance, and so I had not known him.

  Nevertheless, at this moment, His Majesty the King of France Louis XVI by the Grace of God was sitting in a chair before me.

  “Well, Marie Grosholtz,” he said.

  “Your Majesty,” I said, bowing very low.

  “Well, I must say the queen is much better now. Next time it shan’t be like that. Next time we’ll have nobody present who isn’t strictly necessary. Nobody at all, for example, on top of the furniture. Next time: private.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, thinking all the while: those are the king’s lips, beyond them the king’s teeth and tongue all together in one royal cavern, and the king’s epiglottis, and the king’s salivary glands too, and a royal passageway called the king’s pharynx, deep down into the depths of the corpus majestic.

  “Tell me,” he demanded, “did you have no idea who I was?”

  “No, Your Majesty. I thought you were a locksmith.”

  “I am proud of it. But on the roof, the footman wore my livery.”

  “But your sister’s footmen wear blue also.”

  “Elisabeth’s very fond of you, isn’t she? She’s coming out of herself at last. We should never have allowed Madame Mackau to look after her. Our parents’ death was a terrible thing for her, our brother’s too. We were quite thrown together for a while. She can be, you see, a little nervous. Tears and things. But she’s better, I like to think, of late—better certainly. Which is another way of saying, well done. And thank you. For Elisabeth, and for your recent attentions on behalf of the queen. Is there anything in turn I might do for you?”

  Here was my opening, opened by the king himself.

  “Before I came here, Your Majesty,” I said, “I was employed with a wax modeler, a very gifted one, in Paris. I know that it would be the prize of his collection if Your Majesty should grant him permission to cast your face from life.”

  “Oh, I don’t like the sound of that at all.”

  “You would be most impressed with his art.”

  “Would I? I wonder. And you were his pupil?”

  “Yes, in Berne, in Switzerland, where I come from, he taught me.”

  “We have our guards from Switzerland, positioned around the palace inside and out, for personal protection. We should not do without them. I am not ignorant of Swiss, no indeed. Your master, was he a good teacher?”

  “Oh yes, quite wonderful.”

  “And were you a good student?”

  “I studied very hard and learned much.”

  “Well, then, you can model me yourself.”

  “I, Your Majesty?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “You cannot mean it.”

  “I absolutely do.”

  “No, no, I could not.”

  “You could not?”

  “Well, that is, I could, but I must not.”

  “Why must not?”

  “No, it wouldn’t be right at all.”

  “If I say it is right?”

  “But please, sire, it is for my master . . .”

  “I say it is for you.”

  “It would hurt him so.”

  “Then let him hurt.”

  “He would never forgive me.”

  “He will. You shall say it is the king’s word.”

  “It is so far above myself!”

  “Then grow, girl, do grow to it!”

  “It would be a crime, sire.”

  “It is now, Grosholtz, or it is never.”

  And so, so help me, I did it, myself.

  We were in one of the king’s private chambers, his little forge close by. At first we ate raspberry tartlets. The king took off his brocaded jacket and pulled on a simple frock coat. The room was bedecked with globes, and a great quantity of maps; there were scale models of strange-looking buildings, and a great many different ingenious devices: telescopes and microscopes and sextants and theodolites and orreries and all sorts of instruments I had never heard of. And around the room, between globes of the earth and of the planets, were hundreds of books, all in the correct order. Among these was the entirety of Diderot’s Encyclopédie and also—how I longed to tell him!—Paris in the Year 2440 by L.-S. Mercier.

  I cleaned the king’s face. I oiled his eyebrows, I patted them down. I put straws up that large and royal snout, I did it. I laid plaster on the face, I covered the face of the king as if blanking it out, I did it. How quiet everything was, just myself and the king. Alone in the world after all. I took off the plaster, cleaned his face. I took certain necessary measurements of him. Thickness of head from ear to ear: eighteen inches. Girth of neck: twenty-two and one-third. Marie measured.

  I had the king’s head, then, but not the queen’s. I feared to ask for more and yet I must.

  “Your Majesty, may I ask something else?”

  The king nodded.

  “I would be most obliged to you, Your Majesty, if you might help me get an appointment so that my master might make a cast of the queen’s head.”

  Of an instant, the king was overcome by a fury of protection. “The queen is not to be disturbed! The queen is not an object to be pushed and pinched, to be pried open at public will, to be gaped at. She’s not to be exposed. There’s no decency anymore. No, no, the queen is not to be disturbed.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “I won’t have it.”

  “No, Your Majesty.”

  “It upsets me.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I thank Your Majesty.”

  He looked around the
room, agitated, as though losing his bearings amidst so many globes. “We shall not have our talks again,” he declared, shaking his head. “That would hardly be right. Not at all correct. I was confused. When we first met, in my forge, you see, I thought you were my sister. I should have known it then by the spectacles, but I see now you are not. Not at all, you are a caricature of her. Perhaps you are not to blame. Well, it shall not happen again. I am the king, and you are merely Grosholtz. Good morning. Good morning.”

  I would not see the king up close again for several years.

  Later, in the workroom, I told Elisabeth all.

  “I, Anne Marie Grosholtz, have smelled the sweat of the king.”

  “You are very crude, heart. I should not have to remind you that you are my body, my body alone, not anyone else’s.”

  “I have cast the king, and must send the mold to my master in Paris.”

  “You are my body, aren’t you?”

  How easily she was made jealous.

  “Yes, dear Madame Elisabeth,” I was quick to reassure her. “Of course I am.”