Little: A Novel

by Edward Carey

I was part of the family, you see.

  When we reached home, I saw that the door marked OUT and one of the gates were open. Martin Millot, I considered, must have left them open for us. I called out to him, but he didn’t come. Inside, all was just as before: those heads on sticks, all those personalities thrown over. Curtius put the bag down on the floor, but that didn’t seem right; the widow put it on a table. I took the molds out of the bag and left them on the table with the order from the National Assembly so that everything would be in its place when they were called for. Curtius’ bag must always be prepared: I went into the workshop, replaced the plaster supply and the pomade, and left it by the back door so it would be ready for the next time.

  When I returned to the great hall, Martin still hadn’t come down, so I went to fetch him. He wasn’t at his tall stool in the counting room, the desk was empty. I saw that the door of the strongbox was slightly open. That’s unlike Martin, I thought, to keep it open; he’s usually so strict on such things. I was just going to push it closed when I looked in and saw that the strongbox was empty. There was nothing on the shelves except a single piece of paper.

  Which I took, and ran back downstairs, screaming as I ran. I screamed as I thrust the paper in the widow’s hands. I was still screaming as she took it.

  She was seated with Curtius on the bench in the great hall, lottery winner Cyprien Bouchard between them. Her head bent down to read it:

  I have taken 17,675 assignats.

  I have taken 12,364 Louis d’or.

  I have taken the 9,000 livres the Widow Picot keeps in her husband.

  This dirty business is over. I finish it.

  By the time you return home the gates will be open long since and I will be gone.

  In signature, Martin Millot

  The widow’s head stayed down, reading the note. It stayed down, but I knew it would come rising up again. She always knew what to do. The widow’s head stayed down, but any moment now, any moment, it should come up. This was a hard blow, certainly, but she’d fix it. She always knew what to do. We relied on her. The widow’s head stayed down. Any moment now, any moment.

  The widow’s head stayed down.

  It stayed down.

  It did not come up again.

  BOOK SIX

  1793–1794

  QUIET HOUSE

  My years thirty-two and thirty-three.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Quiet House on Quiet Street.

  Where were the people arriving in their droves after the end of work? They were not here. They were not coming. Who had money to spend on entertainment, now that bread and candles and cloth had tripled in price? The boulevard entertainers had moved on, packed up, taking entertainment elsewhere. Doctor Graham’s establishment had a sign tacked across its door: TO LET. All gone, all gone. What a tumble, what a loss. Not a firework. Not a spark. The Boulevard du Temple had gone out, renamed Quiet Street.

  The Great Monkey House appeared abandoned; the front gate Martin Millot had left open, never closed since, now slouched toward the ground. Had Martin robbed us on his own, or did he have help? It seemed so unlike him. Someone surely must have assisted. Weeds grew through the cracks in the yard; children played upon the flagstones and no one shooed them away. The rusted bell on the twisted gate was mute. When the widow couldn’t raise her head, the Cabinet had simply stopped. It had lost its head.

  Not that the house was empty. You shouldn’t know it, but there were people inside. Four hearts still beating. One faintly perhaps, but another speeding up, as if in compensation.

  “I am a doctor,” Curtius said, “and you, Edmond, are the son, and you, Marie, are—well, you are Little. Now there shall be nothing but facts, only facts. Nothing but truth, Charlotte. Dear Charlotte: apoplexy.”

  Edmond and I gathered straws from the workshop, the same ones that had been used to help people breathe as they were cast. Now they went into the widow’s twisted mouth, to help her feed.

  “Apoplexy, I’d almost swear to it,” Curtius said. “Ligature around the neck, perhaps, a congestion of the brain. Hemiplegia, a fifty percent palsy. Or an aneurysm? Are you sensible, Charlotte? Are you understanding what is going on? Will you make a sign? If I could see inside,” he said, lightly stroking her mobcap with the tips of his fingers, “I’d know instantly. If I could just have a look. Is there clotting? Is there swelling? A crack somewhere? I mustn’t look in, though you’re keeping the secret from us. Have you had an accident in your head? Help me. I don’t know what to do. Charlotte, don’t stop. Please, I beg you, do not stop.”

  She would only stare at the ceiling. She drank and that was good, though Curtius had to persuade her by holding her nose. She breathed on, and that, he said, was the essential point.

  “I’ll always be here,” he told her, patting her hand.

  A little dribble fell from her mouth down her chin. He dried it.

  “Do you need changing?” he said with a sniff. “You do. I shall change you. Now, Marie, Edmond, off you go, please, this is my business. I must shift your mother, Edmond. I must move this great lady, Marie, who has been so much to you. Come back in a little while. I can manage on my own. I’m growing muscles for you, Charlotte. I’m growing very strong. No, Charlotte, I do not miss those other heads. No, I don’t care for them at all. I’ve all I need here. And am much the richer for it.”

  Doctor Curtius’ new days were days of love. He loved the labor, he loved her sweat and spittle, he loved whatever her body made. Even her groans were not unlovely to his ears, for they were hers. Feeling brave, he would whisper:

  “Oh, I love you, I love you. I love you. Did I never say?”

  And since no one stopped him, he no longer whispered it, but announced it quite loudly to the right side of her and to the left, so that she might hear. He declared it as often as he could. Sometimes he sat at the broken side of her, looking with sorrow at her drooped face, at the arm and leg that never moved, the slug-shaped portion of the mouth, the eye with the sagging lid.

  “Let me tell you about yourself,” he said. “You’re big and moley and hairy, yes, you are. There’s Charlotte the director of business with her cigar; what a success she is, how proud we are of her. You’re many shades of wonder. There’s Charlotte the mother; what a fine boy. There’s Charlotte the head of household; what attentions you give. There’s Charlotte the widow too; we must not forget her, a smaller Charlotte than the others. That one can go, perhaps, that one’s Charlotte the past. There’s Charlotte the present too, isn’t there? After all, here she is in her bed. One side leans backward, the other, I think, still holds on, doesn’t it? A little forward? Yes! There she is, Charlotte the future. Perhaps the best of all possible Charlottes.”

  IN and OUT were closed. The plaster mold of the head of the executed monarch awaited its summons from the National Assembly. It never came. No one seemed to want it. There it lay, two halves of a mold tied together. In that hollow space inside the plaster shell was a space that represented enormous history. We were its guardian.

  In those days, Edmond and I were suddenly together. There was no one to stop us. And being together after so long, at first we had no words for each other. We just stood near each other, never leaving each other’s side but not knowing quite what to do in this strange freedom. Sometimes we left the Great Monkey House, going out upon Quiet Street for small rations: hours in the bread queue, our former neighbors looking at us, not without pleasure to see us so disheveled now. Sometimes, when we were nearly at the front of the queue, we were sent to the back; sometimes, when we got to the front again, there was nothing left. One day, it was a young man with fishlike eyes who pulled us out, dressed in new clothes, a fine saber at his side.

  “Dead yet?” he asked.

  “No, André Valentin,” I said, for it was he. “She seems a little better today.”

  “So much the worse. Where are your papers? I’ll see them again.”

  “We’ve already shown them.” In those days, our papers w
ere always with us.

  “I’ll see them again—I’ll see them whenever I choose. Swiss! Do you know what we do with Swiss? We arrest Swiss. And we cut off their heads. I wonder how many Swiss there are remaining in Paris these days. The number must be very small, ever shrinking.”

  “How did you get your sword, citizen?”

  “I earned it. Tell me, how’s business?”

  “It is slow of late.”

  “Yes, yes, I know it is! What a shame for you now that you’ve thrown poor Valentin out upon the streets. Off with you, back of the line.”

  After André Valentin was left on the boulevard, on the other side of the gates, blood coming from his nose, he had not been idle. He’d shaken his fist at the Great Monkey House, and other people seeing him had joined in. What a deal of fist-shaking there was. Valentin had turned to his brother and sister fists and told them what a terrible place it was, and they had said, “Could you tell us more?” “Yes, much more! How long do you have?” So they took him in, and for food and wine he told them terrible tales, and in this way André Valentin survived. I believe it was dreams of destroying the Monkey House that kept him among the living.

  After Jacques Beauvisage disappeared, Valentin had found himself a job policing the district, looking into other people’s property with his eyes, which viewed things at strange angles, and he found there evidence that others had overlooked. He pulled open a woman’s dress and found dangling from her neck a locket; opened, it showed a picture of the king, and so she was executed. He found a Swiss Guard in the sewers, and he was drowned on the spot. He found a child with a doll of the queen, and the child and the child’s mother were imprisoned. And recently, somehow, he had come into money, enough to buy himself advantages here and there; we had our suspicions about that money, but we had no evidence, and no one would support a foreigner’s claims against those of a patriotic citizen. André Valentin had grown official, strutting back and forth with a fat tricolor ribbon upon his chest, and we could do little to stop him. He was one of a new tribe of men grown so loud in those days, not in himself longing for liberty but finding such advancement among those who proclaimed it.

  Edmond and I came back from the markets with very little, sometimes nothing at all. Once, we returned home to a terrible noise above. Rushing upstairs, we found my master heaving things about.

  “Sir! Sir, what are you doing?”

  “Help! Give me some help.”

  “Oh,” said Edmond.

  “I’m moving my bed. We’re moving in together.”

  “Oh,” said Edmond, desperate. “Oh dear!”

  “If you won’t help, go away!”

  So his mattress lay beside her bed, on the healthy side.

  “This is my happiness, there in that bed. My happiness. My life. Prop it up. The left side is weakness, but the right side is sound. I’ll have it all, Marie, left and right.”

  She lay still in a heap, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, while around us the rooms fell into ruin.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  The Celestial Bed of Doctor James Graham.

  Some buildings, no matter what befalls them, whether they are abandoned or painted over, whether left alone or leased to new and destructive lodgers, still retain their characters. The establishment vacated by Doctor James Graham was just such a place. Gone from the boulevard was Doctor Graham, fled back to Scotland, and yet some portion, some scent, some essential deposit of this doctor remained. Perhaps it was longing; perhaps it was lust; whatever it was, something of him persisted when he departed, and whatever it was could not get out of the house. DOCTOR GRAHAM’S CELESTIAL BED—TO LET was across the boulevard from us, and in those long mornings and afternoons I took to looking out of the window at the abandoned building.

  Upon the outer walls were the flaking remains of two silhouettes, one a man, the other a woman, neither enrobed in any way. I watched those ghostly forms. Edmond came and sat beside me. He was in the light then.

  “Edmond,” I said. “Edmond, I see you very clearly now.”

  “Marie,” he said. “Yes, Marie. I am glad it’s you.”

  He held my hand. Sitting together at the window, he very close to me, we observed the place of Doctor Graham’s. We watched the house opposite. I wondered how it should be to stand inside.

  Upon a foggy and scarcely populated evening we approached Doctor Graham’s house. We crossed the muddy safe zone between our building and his, led on by those silhouettes. We stood on tiptoes and tried to look in, and at first we saw nothing. Just darkness. Around the back was a door that we discovered could be easily jimmied open, and we stepped inside. We dared to light a candle. Having come in the back way, we entered now the part of the property that we immediately understood was not for the general public. We had come, Edmond and I, upon the dressing rooms of Doctor Graham’s house. Cracked mirrors, a frayed underskirt upon the floor, a stale message inscribed on a piece of yellowing card: Meet me at Ramponeau’s Café? The usual time? and signed Famished Victor.

  We traveled along a plain corridor into the belly of the house. Why did the air feel so thick in there? And what was the smell of the place? Some musk or spice I did not know. We reached now the entrance hall and stopped there awhile to read a notice painted upon the wall:

  Welcome to the temple of Doctor Graham, constructed for the propagation of beings rational, and more beautiful in mental as well as bodily endowment than the present puny, feeble, and nonsensical race of probationary mortals, which crawl, fret, and politely lay at cutting one another’s throats for nothing at all on most parts of this terraqueous globe. Welcome inside, welcome indeed. You shall not be disappointed here, but henceforth be CHANGED. Step in, open yourselves to greater influences. Only step in. Step in.

  “Edmond,” I said, “shall we not take this tour ourselves, step by step, as it is written? Let us follow it as if this place were once again open to the evening’s crowd.”

  “Yes, Marie,” he said.

  “Good,” I said, and read the new words out aloud: “‘Proceed, under the new influence of unfettering music and balmy odors.’”

  We moved into a chamber where the walls were painted with naked figures very close together; illuminated by Edmond’s flickering candle, they seemed to be moving. MUSIC SOFTENS THE MIND OF A HAPPY COUPLE, MAKES THEM ALL LOVE, ALL HARMONY, said one banner painted overhead.

  “We must imagine that there is music, Edmond.”

  “Yes, Marie,” he whispered. “I can almost hear it.”

  Up the stairs we went, holding banisters padded in stuffed silk. At the top of the stairs was a large door, this too with writing upon it:

  Inside will be found THE CELESTIAL BED OF DOCTOR GRAHAM. Neither myself nor any of my servants need ever see or know who the parties are in repose in this chamber, which I call the SANCTUM SANCTORUM! The CELESTIAL BED OF DOCTOR GRAHAM. The whole of the apparatus in this apartment, of which I can give little idea in words, has been fitted up at great expense, the result of a long and intense study. Now. Open the door!

  Edmond did so. But we stood not before the Celestial Bed of Doctor Graham but before an antechamber. Another door faced us, with another legend emblazoned above it:

  THE TEMPLE OF HYMEN

  There were further instructions: Do you now allow my servants to take from you your possessions which shall be returned to you, more sweetly smelling when all is done. HUSH NOW! Do not speak a word!

  Edmond’s candle was shaking increasingly, I saw—but as I was about to put out my hand to steady him, I found mine too was shaking. We read on:

  It is entirely sensible and proper for initiates, should they feel the need, which shall always be encouraged, to help the partner with the shedding of society’s lent things. No shoes within. No jacket. No bonnet. No wig. No dress. No breeches. No shirt. No corset. No underdress. No underclothes. No thing. No thing at all.

  And the words were of such a commanding nature that, shaking though we were, we obeyed and began, as if in a trance, th
e business of undressing each other: fumbling with each other’s garments, loosening everything and letting it fall to the floor in a pile, all the while gasping for air. The covered part of Edmond was uncovered now. And he whispered to me:

  “Marie, your nipples are very small and very pointy. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  And I said nothing.

  And Edmond said, “They are very nice.”

  And then I gently said, “Shhh,” for there was another sign: NO WORDS. NO WORDS AT ALL. ONLY MUSIC. LISTEN UNTO THE MUSIC.

  But all the music we could hear was the drumming of our hearts.

  Now Edmond, moving before me, opened the door to reveal a great silk curtain in front of us on which had been painted the commanding words: PROCUL! O PROCUL ESTE PROFANI! We found the opening in the curtain, and we went through it, and Edmond whispered:

  “The Celestial Bed of Doctor James Graham!”

  There was no doubting it, for no other object in the history of objects constructed for horizontal humans ever resembled it. It measured a whole twenty feet by fifteen, and suspended above this considerable surface was a large dome, with a circular mirror inside that reflected perfectly the ruffled silken sheets below. Beneath the dome was the colossal headboard, with yet another instruction from Doctor Graham:

  BE FRUITFUL. MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH THE EARTH.

  Edmond and I were so small before it. There were not even steps to climb up. Had we been introduced to a simple bed of a quiet and retiring nature, had we entered into an honest, unassuming, and sympathetic location, we might perhaps have been more at ease with each other, but faced with this palatial structure, built for titans, we were very small and uncertain.

  I felt watched by that strange chamber, as if I myself were a wax person to be considered from all angles. Thirty-two years old. A diminutive woman. I climbed up onto the bed and pulled the dusty sheets over me. After a moment Edmond followed.