Little: A Novel

by Edward Carey

  “De Launay, governor of the Bastille.”

  “Ex-governor.”

  “He shot at us!”

  “Won’t anymore.”

  Boys came running, carrying wax. I cut some off and started rubbing it along the bars, around Edmond’s ears. The widow pushed me out of the way.

  “I’m here, Edmond! I’m here,” she cried.

  “And this here’s de Flesselles—he made the people starve.”

  The crowd dangled the other head before Edmond. How he recoiled.

  “There’ll be no more starving!”

  “Fat merchant!”

  “We tugged out his stuffing.”

  I’d never seen a murder before, never in my life. I’d never even seen the heads before they were cast. But now here we were, of a sudden, so close to them. So close to some new truth. I couldn’t bear to look, but then I couldn’t bear to look away. And still, poor howling Edmond, in such dismal company, would not come free.

  Wax will do it, I prayed. Wax will. Wax must.

  “You should have our heads in wax,” some voice shouted at the widow.

  “Go, please go along, leave us in peace,” she groaned.

  “Not yet. Not until you’ve done the heads. Take these heads. Do them. In wax.”

  “No! No, please go!”

  “Don’t tell us what to do.”

  “We’ll not stop. Not unless you want us to have three heads on pikes.”

  “Cut it! Cut it! Slit his throat.”

  Edmond screamed again, now with new reason. What a sound he made.

  “Marie!” he said. “MARIE! MARIE!” Real words! His own words, again and again—my name, over and over! “MARIE! MARIE!”

  “I’m here,” said the widow. “Right here, Edmond, your mother.”

  “MARIE! MARIE!”

  There was nothing else to be done. “I’ll cast the heads for you,” I said at last. “Follow me down the railing, come along, bring the heads to me.”

  “MARIE!”

  “Run, boys, get Curtius’ case. Run!”

  “How long will it take?” someone asked.

  “Minutes,” I said, “a few minutes, just time for the plaster to dry. I shall be very quick and then you may be on your way.”

  “Better had, or we’ll add to our collection.”

  “No need,” I said. “No need for that.”

  My master’s bag, always packed by the side door, was hurried out.

  “I am ready,” I said.

  A man clambered onto the shoulders of a companion and passed a head, still on its pike, over the gate to my side. I was so surprised by the weight that I nearly dropped it. I must cover this item with plaster. Just the face.

  “It will not take as long to cast these two heads as usual,” I said. “They need no straws in their nostrils to breathe through the plaster, and if handled roughly they can be guaranteed not to complain.”

  Right there in the Monkey House yard, I set about my work. Martin Millot helped me, his hands shaking.

  “Some soft soap,” I said.

  The head in my lap was the merchant de Flesselles. He seemed to look at me with foggy eyes. I knew I should not be holding this head, that I should probably hurl it from me. Was it rubbish, was it filth? How could it be filth when only a moment ago it was the thinking, seeing, hearing, tasting, chewing ball on top of a human body? Are we instantly filth, then, as soon as we die? The unhappy object so missed what so recently was beneath it. How striking we are when fractioned, how odd-looking. And—oh!—the horrible sad heft of a human head. A weight that should never be learned. Poor sphere. I was not cruel to it. For Edmond’s sake, for its own.

  The second head was that of the Marquis de Launay, governor of the Bastille. This was not in such good condition as the last, though it was the more recently acquired. My lap was soon very damp. Order, I told myself, order. Say it like your master would. Don’t miss a thing. Like when you were in Berne. Show your training, boast of it.

  “The Marquis de Launay’s neck,” I said out loud as the widow applied more wax around her son’s neck and head, “is cut in jagged lines. There is a rent across his right temporal fascia; the muscles around the inferior maxillary region are badly slashed. The cartilaginous framework of his nose is very collapsed; the whole of that organ is bloody and pushed over to one side; a shard of shattered cartilage is peeking out from the left nostril. The point of the pike has been driven right through the hole, the foramen magnum, at the base of the skull, and has progressed considerably into the skull case until it could go no farther. The very tip of the pike now rests on the very interior apex of the parietal bones, that is to say at the superior sagittal suture—this fact confirmed by a little cracking I feel just now, on the exterior of the skull, through the marquis’ scalp.”

  Thus I sat upon a stool just outside the Great Monkey House, casting two bodiless heavy heads for a wild audience just beyond the gates, while above me the sky grew grayer and grayer. And as I completed my work Edmond came free at last, and all of him was back within the gates of the Great Monkey House, exhausted in the panting widow’s great lap. The widow was sobbing. I’d seen a grouping like that before, it’s called a pietà.

  Saved, saved by wax.

  When the plaster was dry, Martin passed the two heads back over the gate and the crowd marched away at last, their excitement on the wane. My dress was covered in blood and gore and plaster; I turned aside and was suddenly sick upon the paving stones. I wish it hadn’t happened. I should have done better. They’re only bodies, after all; it’s perfectly natural. But my thoughts were slowing.

  “Edmond, Edmond!” I said. “You called me!” But he was already inside.

  It was beginning to rain. I was glad of it. I stayed there, being rained upon. What a thing to have done, I thought. Before long everyone else drifted inside, but I was happy to be alone awhile.

  When at last I returned to the Monkey House, all three doors were locked.

  “You’re not to come in,” the widow called. “I shan’t have you inside. Stay out! Unholy child!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Fleabite.

  For three hours I stayed in the courtyard in the rain. I shivered upon the doorstep until at last Doctor Curtius and Jacques returned. My master rang the bell and Millot came out, the widow standing behind him at the door.

  “She’s not to come in!” she bellowed. “I won’t have such a person in here. Disgusting! Unholy!”

  My master heard what had happened.

  “You cast these severed heads?”

  “She did! She did!” called the widow from the door.

  “To get the crowd away from Edmond. I thought it was right,” I said.

  “How could it be right?” she called.

  “It’s not right, Marie,” he said.

  “I had to give the crowd what it wanted,” I said. “What else could I do?”

  “That was a matter for me,” he said.

  It took a moment for me to understand him.

  “You were not here,” I said.

  “I should have been sent for.”

  “No one knew where you were.”

  “I could have been found.”

  “You were with the National Guard. You were needed there!”

  “Well . . . I am most upset,” my master said.

  “I am more upset,” the widow insisted. “She kept the murderers here at our gate, while Edmond’s own head was caught between the railings.”

  “I would never do anything to hurt Edmond,” I said. “I was trying—”

  “Filth! Vermin! Who do you think you are?” she cried.

  “A sculptor’s assistant.”

  “Vile, disgusting, dirty!” she spat.

  And I shouted back, “You do not frighten me, old woman.”

  “Both of you, please. Calm,” said my master.

  “How can I be calm,” cried the widow, “with that abomination before me?”

  “Come inside,” said C
urtius quietly. “Come inside and get dry.”

  “She must not!” screamed the widow. Then she came at me, slapping me about the face, with the front of her hand, with the back.

  I wouldn’t have that. Not after everything else. I swung my little fist around and struck back at the flesh of her face. That stopped the slapping. And then, in my sudden anger, I struck again. A jab of fist thrust in her face. I did it. I.

  I thought I must have pulverized my hand.

  What work! Blood on her lips. The shock of that. I did it. How good it was, the cut upon her lip, the cut on my knuckles from contact with her teeth.

  “Murder!” she screamed.

  “I could murder you,” I shouted, for there was no calming me then. “I’ve thought of it often enough. How I’ve imagined it!”

  “Marie! Little!” said my master. “Have a care! Poor Charlotte!”

  “I’ve taken as much from her as ever I’m going to. Maybe I will have her head on a stick. How many years have I listened to her small words? I shan’t anymore. I’ll be paid—oh, heavens, I’ll be paid now. This very day!”

  “Little, you must apologize. You know you must.”

  The widow had turned scarlet. “It’s just as Nicolet said: anarchy!” she yelled. “This is how it spreads, law turned upside down, rebellion in the home.”

  “You have a fat lip, madame!”

  “You must beg the widow’s forgiveness.”

  And then all my hurt over all the years boiled over and came vomiting forth. Those heads had done it: cannonballs of anger, of pain.

  “And you!” I said to Curtius, and I turned and kicked him in the shins. “And you too. How much have I done for you? And what then have you done for me? If it wasn’t for me, you would never have had any murderers. I gave you that idea. I got you the royal heads. I am dirty? How could you ever scrub the dirt of guilt from your skins? How many years have I mopped your floors? How many years have I yes-sirred and no-madamed? And what have you done for me? Not even thanked. You could not even speak up for me. So difficult a thing that was for you. What little for Little? Once, woman, you saw a little happiness, a little love growing in your dolls’ house, and you snuffed it out without a thought. You’d smother anything beautiful with your mean thinking. And now this is the welcome I receive for saving Edmond. I can take so much, but no more.

  “You should thank me! I’ve earned my place! Look at you, red to bursting! Burst, then! You ruin everyone who comes your way. How you bullied Edmond into nothing more than a dishrag. You’ve reduced my master to a carcass, eaten up with love for you. While you sit around, so heavy with dead love, making such a meal of mourning—all for that dummy on the landing. Burn that thing and save us the agony! Stand back, Widow Picot! Stand back or I swear I’ll relieve you of your head!”

  “The bitch! The little bitch!” screamed the widow, trying to catch her breath. “Do something, Curtius! How dare she? Without me you’d all be on the streets. Without me there would be none of this. I do everything in this house. I keep it going. And do you know what a burden that is? Do you know how it is killing me?”

  “Die, then!” I shouted from the corridor, then marched to my workshop and slammed the door so hard I hoped the whole house would tumble in. I sat for a while, weeping in my bloody clothes. Then, once I had calmed, I started packing my things, certain now that I should be dismissed.

  At last Jacques came, carrying a bottle of wine. My master followed soon after.

  “Important documents, those heads,” said my master.

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “Well, Marie, you were very cruel.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Thank you, I think. Thank you?”

  “Anything else?”

  “The widow is with her son.”

  “Anything else?”

  “My shin hurts.”

  “Well, it would.”

  “I don’t know what came over you, but it shall not be ignored. You must apologize, but not yet. For now, leave her be.” He sighed. “That was not like you at all, Marie.”

  “Well, I’m waking up at last, I suppose.”

  “I’ve never seen such a thing. What is happening to us all?”

  “I was pushed to it.”

  “Marie,” he said, “will you help me now with the heads?”

  “Yes,” I said at last. “Yes, I will do that.”

  And we did. And there they were, all over again.

  “Sir,” I asked my master as we worked, “how was it there? At the Bastille.”

  “It was, I think, very terrible.”

  “You must have been very brave, sir.”

  “Yes. I must.”

  “Were you not frightened?”

  “Let us concentrate on our work.”

  “Missed it,” said Jacques. “Sorry to say. Should like to have seen it.”

  “You missed it, sir?”

  “Well, Marie, we were not far away.”

  “We was at the Café Robert,” said Jacques, “on the Quai Saint-Paul.”

  “Sir, is that true?”

  “Put him there,” said Jacques, “to keep him safe.”

  “Truly, sir?”

  “It’s heads I’m best at, Marie. The captaining business—I’m not made for it, I’m afraid. Heads, though, I’m quite at home with. It is where I belong, you do see?”

  “It was well done, Jacques.”

  “Though am sorry to have missed it.”

  “Heads, you see, like these.”

  Those two heads had provoked a newness in the house. They found my temper, and they split the widow’s lip and my knuckles, and they did another incredible thing: they brought Edmond down from the attic. The widow had him moved back to her own bedroom. She wouldn’t let me by him that night, but the next day I brought up a bundle containing some material, a little white linen, some thread, a needle, and a pair of scissors.

  “What are you doing here?” the widow demanded, blocking the door. Was there just a little bit of fear upon her?

  “These are for Edmond,” I said.

  “You do not belong on this corridor.”

  “I think he might like these.”

  “You cannot come in.”

  And then from inside the room: “Marie. Marie.”

  “He’s calling me. I hear him. Hello, Edmond.”

  “Marie. Marie.”

  “It’s all he ever says,” she admitted in her fluster. “He’s not right.”

  “He calls my name. He wants to see me.”

  “No, no, it’s just a noise. It has no meaning.”

  “It’s my noise. The noise that means me.”

  “Marie. Marie.”

  “He does call me. Hello, Edmond! I have brought something for you.”

  “Nonsense. He must not have them. He’ll hurt himself.”

  “I do not think he will.”

  “Who cares for your thoughts? When have you grown so bold and important?”

  “Since you shut me out.”

  “You’re an ugly little woman.”

  “Yes, madame? Is that your worst?”

  “You have nothing to do with my family.”

  “That is hardly true.”

  “Get downstairs.”

  “Yes, madame. But only because I decide to. Good-bye, Edmond, just for now. I am glad your mother has noticed you again.”

  And though she did not give him the bundle, she let him have some pieces of linen, and out of them Edmond formed a human figure, a new doll Edmond. That was something. He braved himself to the banister and dropped the doll into the hall so I should find it later. What in-house rebellions there were!

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  I am busy.

  Beyond our walls, unrest ruled the streets. Jacques Beauvisage took my master’s place patrolling the boulevard with Emile Melin and other muscles. Coming home, small blood on his shirt, he hugged us all and shouted, “All are citizens!” Soon he had proved himself so thorough in his
business that he was appointed head of the National Guard for the boulevard section. My master retreated to the Monkey House until his brief tenure as captain was overturned, whereupon he returned to work in the Cabinet.

  Word had got around about our heads of de Flesselles and de Launay. Now, when a person was cut in unequal portions, we were known as the ones to call on to get a good copy, so that afterward, when passions had calmed and the sun had come up, the results might be judged with a more rational eye. In this atmosphere, I took command. Every person at Curtius’ was primed. Every one of us, no matter how great nor how small, played his or her role, handing buckets, scrubbing floors, mixing plaster, stirring wax, stitching in hairs, adjusting glass eyeballs, moving plinths, taking money.

  Though the widow still would not let me near Edmond, I was emboldened by his voice calling my name. I could do heads; I had proved it. So I did heads, and my master let me. He stood back while I lugged those heavy balls onto my lap—the ones that had come away from the body, and been left, late at night, in our care. No one else wanted the labor, and I didn’t mind. No, that’s not it: I was glad of it. I felt I was living, such great living. I’d never been in such need before. These were the most popular of my days. I quite impressed myself. I quite came into my own.

  “Truly, sir, may I do it?” I would ask Doctor Curtius.

  “Yes, yes, Marie, you may.”

  “You do not want it for yourself?”

  “I confess I am a little tired.”

  “It is a fine head. Do look at the lips, the teeth within.”

  “I find I have not the appetite.”

  “You say that!” I couldn’t help but grin. “They’re just bodies, sir.”

  “Of course I know that.”

  “Entirely natural.”

  “But their ending was not, perhaps.”

  “Of course it was! Isn’t it a natural thing for a human to kill a human?” I stopped then, listening to myself. “But . . . yes, sir, yes. Poor man. Poor fellow. It is terrible, isn’t it, sir?”

  “Very terrible. Murder is, you see.”

  “Yes, sir. But I ought to do the head, oughtn’t I?”