Little: A Novel

by Edward Carey

  My master’s lawyer, Gibé, a vole of a man, was the person who told me that there was a will, and the details written therein. “Everything to one person,” he said, “to you.”

  To me? To Little? To Anne Marie Grosholtz? Are you sure? All of it? No, that is not right. Let me see the paper again. It cannot be. Tell me, now, are you not lying? I am very easy prey, you should not lie to me. It would be no great victory. Read it out, will you?

  “To Anne Marie Grosholtz, my equal in art.”

  Hand to my mouth.

  “That’s me! I’m her! I’ve been paid! I’ve been paid at last!”

  I had a home. Uncle gave me one.

  “There are,” said Gibé, “debts.”

  My master owed a doctor-surgeon, two tailors, a locksmith, wax wholesalers; he had not paid his previous year’s tax, a debt of fifty-five thousand livres in all. Such a sum, it didn’t seem possible. Such a sum you could drown in.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Portrait of A. M. Grosholtz (by Louis David, Year III).

  I am nearly at the end now, with small business to attend to. I looked around for anyone I knew; they were all gone. Once, it’s true, a pie was left upon the broken doorstep of the Monkey House. I knew Florence Biblot had left it there. Was that an apology? I kicked it into the mud. I never saw her or her pies again. I was the owner of a business, a person of note. I even had my portrait painted, by Jacques-Louis David, while he was imprisoned at the Luxembourg Palace.

  I was one of his few visitors; there was very little else for him to paint. I didn’t mind. A little woman dressed in black. I had Marta on my lap; it should have been little Marie Charlotte, but Marta would have to do. I insisted that I be shown with my hand over my face, I wasn’t quite ready to be looked at yet.

  He protested that he could not see me properly, that my face was covered up.

  “Ppppleashhhh!”

  I insisted. As blank as that doll on my lap. Any number of faces underneath it.

  So then: how to fill in the blank. Fifty thousand livres.

  I borrowed money. From the plaster wholesaler; his business was, after all, my business. It was not enough. I must be clever. I was thirty-four, with a business. It seemed that I should lose everything if I did not move fast. The Monkey House, crooked place, was not attractive to look at. I sold back the land either side of the old house; they hauled the rubble away. Given time, I thought, I could probably display some of the old people again, given time, their popularity might come back.

  I sat on my own, with a shop doll in Edmond’s shape. I thought, I shall keep this way. With my own cloth cap done up. But then, in the end, I am not like the widow. There was too much to be done, I was on my own. I could not keep still. Desperate people make bad decisions. And so.

  To save myself, I committed a common enough union: I married.

  Word had got about. People still supposed that Curtius must have been worth several fortunes. It wasn’t true, but he was worth one Monkey House, and now so was I. Men called for me; people were starving, opportunities scarce. One showed me figures in a notebook, and little architectural drawings spidered in ink. Perhaps.

  On the fifth of October, 1795, there was fighting on the streets again. On the twenty-sixth, Jacques-Louis David was given amnesty. On the twenty-eighth, at the Préfecture du Département de la Seine, Ville de Paris, in a dirty little room without any decoration, with lines of benches where the witnesses, the unadorned brides, and the unadorned grooms waited to be called upon to be registered, here were married Anne Marie Grosholtz and François Joseph Tussaud. “This is a business matter,” I said to Citizen Tussaud, and Citizen Tussaud, tucking his notebook inside his breast pocket, agreed.

  Citizen Tussaud, my husband. It is not a happy story. His parents are perhaps to blame. When he was a child they had taken him to the theater, and he had fallen in love with it. It made François dream, and François as he grew up did not manage to forget his dream. Like countless others who are taken in by stage landscapes and stage characters, he was slowly smashed by the prettiness and light. He never really knew what it was like behind the stage. He’d never troubled himself to go beyond the door marked PRIVATE. He loved cardboard theaters and played with them. A nice enough man, perhaps, but useless.

  I do not recall the feel of his mustache; I do not recall the sound of him on the corridor; I do not recall his knocking at my room door, the door of the room that once belonged to my master. I do recall viewing his bank figures and the horror of that. Simply, he had lied to me, and I had been stupid enough to believe him. A most unfortunate marriage.

  I lived through it somehow. I got up every day; I had to. Citizen Tussaud and I did not sleep in the same bedroom, but he lived in the Monkey House with me, and he came to me every now and then and, so help me, I did not send him away.

  He expected me to earn the money. He expected me to have money all the time. I gave him pocket money as parents do their children. He spent it on elaborate business cards. “Now,” he said, “all will go well, you’ll see.”

  François Joseph Tussaud

  L’architecte des théâtres

  Grand atelier, 20 Boulevard du Temple

  That too was made of cardboard. He went out in the morning full of great ideas, but came back in the afternoon defeated and drunk. And there was by then someone new growing inside me. I did not expect it to live, I gave it barely any thought at first, I didn’t dare. I rationed François, but he ran up further debts. I tried to instruct him in the making of wax people, but wax people were not interesting to him. He would not work for the Cabinet; he would only take its money. He found where I kept that money, no matter where I hid it—if he had a talent, that was it—and he spent it, and wept or bellowed in front of me afterward. The Monkey House needed more people, but people cost money. Perhaps I thought I should grow my own army. It was dangerous certainly at thirty-four to have children, but then it was dangerous at seven to have been left with Doctor Curtius, and it was dangerous of Doctor Curtius to have come to Paris.

  And then the new flame, the new incredible great luck. The new fire.

  One, and then, in time, two!

  {Little F.}

  Little François was born in 1798. Little Joseph came in 1800. They both had unmistakable Waltner noses and Grosholtz chins. Here was company again! I taught them, as Edmond and Curtius had taught me, what I knew of the world, what the widow taught me too. Citizen Tussaud wept and cooed at them; he was in love too. They moved, those little boys, and they made noise, and I nursed them in front of wax people.

  We were even happy for a little while with such new and splendid company. But the business was failing.

  The Monkey House had to be secured, and the children too. By the age of four Little François was already working for me, inserting hairs into wax heads, mixing plaster dust and water, setting up the fire as I had for Curtius.

  {Little J.}

  “He is only four,” Citizen Tussaud said.

  “He has to work,” I said. “You don’t mind, do you, Little F.?”

  “No, Mama, let us get to work, please.”

  Good little boy.

  “Where are we going, Mama?”

  “To the Tuileries Palace.”

  “Where Princesse Elisabeth was?”

  “Yes, for a short time, that is right. Well done, Little F.”

  “But it’s five in the morning,” Citizen Tussaud complained. “The child needs to sleep. Come, little man, back to bed.”

  “No, Citizen Tussaud,” said the little fellow to his father, “I’m going with Mama.”

  If he’d stayed in bed, he’d never have met Napoleon.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  My last French figure.

  I had a great plan, a plan as dangerous as the widow’s had been when she moved us to the Monkey House. I had not yet told anyone of it, but kept it growing inside me. Moving to the Monkey House was an inspired and outrageous thing to do; so was collecting all those people, famou
s and infamous. Be bold or be bankrupt. I started collecting again. I wanted the very best example of French people. And so I looked about me. There was only one name on my list—on anyone’s list. I called in favors to get Napoleon.

  The First Consul, for that was his title then, had married an acquaintance of mine, Weeping Rose from Carmes. I had written her a note, signing it Affectionately, Pug. It would not be easy, she replied; he had no time for such things. But he so loved Rose, though he preferred to call her Josephine.

  Rose kissed me and tapped Little François fondly on his nose. Fortune ran around us. And there was Consul Bonaparte.

  “Approach,” he said, and I did.

  “Not you,” he said, “the other one. The future of France.”

  I pushed Little François forward. He advanced, wrinkling his little beak. Napoleon Bonaparte came very close and put his hand on my son’s shoulder and looked down into him, and Little François stood very still, and then squealed, not with fear but with mirth. Little François found the strangest things funny.

  François, my first son though not my firstborn, would tell this story often. It is part of his mythology. He would boast of it to his classmates, though they wouldn’t believe a word.

  “Are you the mother?” Napoleon asked me.

  “I am, sir,” I said. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “He is brave. We need brave people. Get to your work.”

  I laid everything out. I explained exactly what would happen. His face should be completely covered in plaster. Little François came forward with the straws. He nodded.

  We went to our work.

  When it was done, he said, “You have me, in the plaster there?”

  “Yes, First Consul, an exact likeness.”

  “Be careful with it. It is a fine head.”

  “I never make any judgments on heads, First Consul,” I said. “I was taught not to. Some heads last forever, but that’s unusual. We never melted Franklin down, or Voltaire. But people have even forgotten the murderer Desrues. You never can tell, there’s no guarantee. But we keep at it, First Consul, we don’t stop, there’s always someone to make, there’s always someone to melt down.”

  “Little Pug,” said Rose, “how you talk.”

  “It is my business. I know my business. I don’t mind talking of it.”

  “Little Pug?” he asked.

  “It’s what I called her in prison, between visits from Fortune.”

  “There has been such a cast of exaggerated personages, lady face-taker,” Napoleon observed. “The Revolution has produced all sorts of oddities. Roux the screaming monk, Marat the doctor who only wanted people dead, Jacques Beauvisage the executioner.”

  “Have you seen him, First Consul? Jacques Beauvisage?” I asked.

  “Jacques Beauvisage is a story. ‘Have you heard how Jacques Beauvisage killed him?’ they say. ‘How he dispatched her?’ No one man could have done so much. He’d be the greatest monster ever known. Everything that was worst about the Revolution has been given to this one character.”

  “The greatest of all murderers,” I said.

  “I heard he was at Nantes drowning people,” said Rose.

  “I heard he sentenced people with Fouquier-Tinville,” said Napoleon.

  “I also heard,” said Rose, “that after the September Massacres, miserable with regret, he took himself to the Place de Grève, screaming and cursing, and a large crowd gathered around him, and when they were several hundred strong he murdered himself in front of them, a pistol shot to the head. Wild dogs, so the tale went, slept on the spot for many nights afterward.”

  “Is that true? Was that what happened?” I asked. “Poor Jacques.”

  “None of it is true,” said Napoleon. “All legend. A ridiculous name, Jacques Beauvisage. There never was such a person.”

  “Oh, but there was, sir. I knew him. He was with us first, sir, at the Cabinet of Curtius. We used to call him our guard dog. We grew up together.”

  “This story,” said Napoleon, “is a new one to me. Don’t expect me to believe it.”

  “We’ve looked for him so long. But he hasn’t come home.”

  “Another tale made out of the Revolution, to frighten children and adults. To add mystery, no doubt, to your business. Do you have proof of him? Was he cast in wax?”

  “No, he was not. Though he asked to be.”

  “Well. Are you done then, citizen?” said Napoleon.

  “Since the world is still interested in heads, I’ve still work to do.”

  “You have what you came for, then. Good day to you.”

  “Thank you, First Consul, I shall not need to come back. Good-bye, Rose, thank you. Good-bye, Fortune.”

  A year later, Fortune would be killed by Napoleon’s cook’s English bulldog.

  And we were out again. Others were waiting in the corridor; it seemed to be Consul Bonaparte’s morning for receiving artists. There was David, and Houdon the old sculptor looking very impoverished, and a young and handsome man I had never seen before. I wondered which of these would be admitted next.

  In time Houdon would make Napoleon into a lifesize bust, and that was nothing much. In time David would paint him crowning himself emperor on a canvas twenty feet by thirty-two feet: they were born for each other, David and Napoleon. The young man in the corridor would sculpt him in the finest marble, more than fourteen feet high, as Mars, god of war. That artist’s name was Antonio Canova.

  It was those two, David and Canova, among others, who made five foot seven into a colossus. And by then every artist in the city of Paris had only that one head to make, over again, the whole city one large factory of adoration. Who would come to a wax house filled with Napoleons when just such a head was seen all over the capital, from every angle, in every street, in every room, both public and private? They used to say, at his peak, that there were seven million people living in France and five million were sculptures of Napoleon. What waxworks could thrive under such circumstances?

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  And never come back.

  With Napoleon cast, I could at last reveal my plan. Not a new Monkey House. Something even bigger. A new country. A new city. London was the place to go. Paris was fragile; London was full of promise. In Paris the people were skin and bones; in London they were stout. In London there was future, in Paris only the past. In London, I had learned, magic-lantern men from the boulevard were making money showing slides of the guillotined.

  I had something better: I had heads. Tangible heads. And now Napoleon.

  I wrote letters, I transferred funds, I rented a room at the Lyceum Theatre. I’d live again. Little François and Little Joseph would grow up with those snouts of theirs. They’d sniff something good of their lives. They’d last.

  “London,” I announced. “Lon-don. Say Lon-don, Little F.”

  “Lon-don,” he said.

  I told Citizen Tussaud I’d be back, but I didn’t believe it; and why should he? He was a man built only of negative figures, a subtraction, a leaking pocket. I’d leave him the Monkey House, a chance to prove himself. It was up to him. I was saying good-bye to that house: good-bye to the widow, Doctor Curtius, Edmond. To Jacques Beauvisage too, who never came home, and whose story was never complete, but whose myths were never forgotten. They whisper tales of him in the boulevard even now, I’m told. Go to sleep, children are warned, or Jacques Beauvisage shall get you. Good-bye to it all.

  “I’m taking the children to England,” I said. “I’ll earn us some money.”

  Citizen François Tussaud, husband, not inhuman, had fallen in love with his children and fought for them. Torn with pain, he spent his pocket money on lawyers. The judge in our case—how our fortunes do climb and fall—was André Valentin. Still with one eye set eastward and the other west, getting on in the world, ascending the ladder.

  “Swiss. Still here?”

  “Leaving now.”

  “Where to?”

  “To London,” I said. “For
eigners are always welcome there.”

  Looking at me and Tussaud simultaneously, he declared that one child could go with the mother, but the other must stay with the father. There was nothing I could do. I still had a heart in there, choking up, spluttering and kicking. I was forced to leave Joseph with my husband, forced by the man who may have killed Edmond. But what could I do against a judge? André Valentin, still thieving.

  “Were you there?” I asked. “When Edmond fell? I think you were. Were you?”

  “I do not know what you are talking about.”

  “What happened, please?”

  “Shall I impound your papers?”

  “Did you? Edmond?”

  “Now, citizen, there are other cases than yours. To conclude: one child here, the other there.”

  The ship was called the Kingfisher. Later it came apart, breaking up against the Isles of Scilly, but first it took us to England; there are no waxwork personalities with seaweed beards in the deep dark of the Channel. On deck I held Little F., most precious, my future. Below was my past, a lifetime of things, my history, my people, my wax loves and hates, shifting in their crates. Edmond’s portrait of me in wood and hair and glass. A shop mannequin in his shape. I’d not leave them behind.

  I brought the history of France, carefully padded and crated, to the British Isles. Voltaire broke his nose on the journey, and Franklin lost an ear, and Jean-Paul Marat’s chest caved in. But these things could be fixed. I had the molds.

  I waved good-bye to Paris and all it held. I’m going to an island, I said. We shall be separated by the sea. Don’t follow me, don’t ever follow.

  Here I was, speeding across the English Channel, with love all about me, to tell the English our stories. You’ve heard of Bluebeard and Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots? Here’s another: the little woman who carried history on her back. You want blood? That I have. Palaces? Of course. Hovels? Certainly! Oh, and monsters? Yes, yes, I have monsters! Come and see, only come and see, let me show you how it was all done, let me tell you, how I can, what a human being is.