by Linda Urbach
Still, over time, she became better and better at her job at the mill. She could almost anticipate the threads breaking before they did. She developed a method of moving up and down the spinning machine and quickly tying the broken threads without breaking her stride. Soon, she became lost in the rhythm of the work and in her daydreams.
Late one afternoon she was distracted by Antoine ducking under the carriage of her machine to pick up the loose cotton. She still hadn’t gotten used to the sight of his small body so dangerously exposed to the heavy moving machinery. He kept himself as close to the floor as possible. Using a short-handled broom, he swept the fallen cotton out as the knitting machine passed noisily back and forth over his head. The look on his face told her he was in a constant state of terror. It was only minutes later when she heard the cry.
Antoine had apparently lifted his head too high. A piece of his curly blond hair was caught up in the moving wheel.
“Help! Help me!” he yelled out in terrible pain and fear.
“Turn off the machine!” Berthe screamed
“Turn off the machine! Turn off the machine! Someone turn off the bloody machine!” echoed one of the men who had been tightening the bolts on a nearby spinning machine. Antoine reached up a hand in an effort to untangle his hair from the hold of the revolving machinery. Berthe ran to the boy. His hair was being ripped from his scalp, and his scalp was being ripped from his head. Blood was running out all over his face. The next thing that happened was too horrible to imagine. The machine caught his hand and then his arm and kept moving forward. His shrieks of pain filled the air. Berthe grabbed his foot, but he was being pulled in the opposite direction.
“Turn it off! Turn off the machine!” she cried.
“For Jesus’ sake, man, stop the machine!” shouted Marnet the Overlooker.
The Master Carder quickly climbed down from his platform and pulled a lever, but by that time it was too late. The poor boy lay under the machine, his arm mangled beyond recognition, his face frozen in agony and horror, blood pulsing out onto the floor. He was already dead.
Berthe continued to hear the clack-clack of the machinery before her brain registered the fact that all the machines had been turned off. The sound of the silence was almost as deafening. With a cold efficiency, two of the men removed Antoine’s poor broken body, washed the floor, and cleaned the machine. The Master Carder bade everyone to return to work. Berthe, numb, stepped back to her position by the stretch of threads. As she did, she noticed something on the floor near where Antoine had lain. She bent down and picked it up. It was the filigree button she had given him for good luck. Some luck, she thought, as tears poured down her cheeks.
“You ain’t comin’ to dinner?” Hélène asked that night.
“How can you eat?” Berthe shook her head. She lay in bed, the gray blankets pulled up to her chin. She felt a great guilt and responsibility. She had taken Antoine’s place as Piecer, forcing him to return to a job that had ultimately led to his death. She didn’t know how she had even managed to finish the day as the boy’s cries of pain kept echoing in her mind.
“Well, with Madame Lisette’s soup, it ain’t easy. But when you’re hungry, anything’ll do.”
“No, I mean how can you eat after what happened to poor Antoine?”
“What?” Hélène scoffed. “You never saw a bit of blood before?”
“My father was a doctor. I’ve seen blood. But not coming from one little boy.”
“One stupid little boy,” said Hélène. “I had that job when I first started. It was a piece a cake. Alls you had to do was keep your head down. I used to take myself nice naps underneath the machinery. Course every once in a while I got a beating for layin’ down on the job, but it was worth it.”
When Berthe finally drifted off to sleep shortly before dawn she had a dream. She was at the mill, working as a Piecer. Her job required her to tie the braids from one small girl’s head to another girl’s. Then she bade the two children to lie down side by side, and she pulled a lever. Seconds later the platform on which they were lying moved forward into a machine that contained many sharp teeth. The little girls were turned into long shredded strips of flesh, which were then woven into bolts of blood-soaked fabric. The entire process went on without a sound. In the dream she wondered why there was no screaming. Someone should be screaming, she thought to herself. And then she heard it: a high-pitched, horrified “Nooooooooo!” She awoke to the sound of her own voice.
“Can we have a bit of quiet?” grumbled Hélène. “You been moanin’ and yellin’ for the past hour. How’m I supposed to get any sleep?”
Berthe had the same dream with slight variations every night for the next week. Finally, she knew she had to get out of the mill. Her fear of hearing the screams of another injured child or being hurt herself overwhelmed her during the day and haunted her even in her sleep. More and more she began to dread going to work.
She looked under her narrow bed. There were her beautiful new boots. And next to them the picture of her dress. She unfolded the paper and stared at the illustration.
She remembered not so very long ago how excited she had been about beginning her job at the mill. She had actually thought she would be making beautiful things out of cotton. She forgot for a moment the drudgery of her job at Rappelais et Fils and her imagination took her to a vision of owning her own mill. She would control the manufacturing of the fabric from beginning to end. And her mill would not make just plain cotton but she would weave fantastic fabrics of silk and satin in every imaginable color. And she would free all the workers from their awful servitude. She would give the poor children shorter hours, more food, a longer supper break, real sweets, and lots of money at Christmas, Easter, and even All Saints’ Day. Berthe sighed. It was a grand dream, but one that would have to wait for another day.
Stop dreaming, you fool. Nothing was going to happen unless she took action and made a change. She suddenly made a decision. The boots were a reminder that better things and another life was possible. No one ever should have to live—or die—like Antoine.
“Excuse me, Monsieur Roucher.” It was during the supper break the next day when she tapped on the manager’s office door.
“What is it? Why aren’t you eating your supper?” He glanced at his pocket watch. “You only have three minutes left.”
“I was wondering if the position is still open.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
“What position is that?” He turned back to his ledger and entered several numbers in a column.
“The one in Monsieur Rappelais’s household in Paris.”
“Oh.” He chuckled. “I very much doubt it. Half of Paris would give their right arm to work in that distinguished house.” Berthe shuddered at his reference to right arms. “No, I’m sorry. She who hesitates is—”
“Could you please write and ask if it is still available?” she interrupted him. “Please, monsieur.” She hated the idea of having to beg him.
“Who do you think I am, your personal secretary?” he barked. “You already have a perfectly fine ‘position,’ Bovary. One that you will not keep very much longer if you keep dawdling and wasting both my time and yours. Now, get back to work.”
Berthe started to leave and stopped.
“I had understood that Monsieur Rappelais wanted me to work as a maid in his household. I think he would be very annoyed if he were to discover you were unwilling to inform him that I had accepted the position.” She smiled sweetly.
“You had your chance,” he hissed, leaning forward in his chair. “I recall you turned it down.”
“Well, I changed my mind,” said Berthe, still smiling. He glared at her. “You’ll write the letter, then?” He didn’t answer. His face was red.
“Actually, I can write him myself. I can write, you know,” she said, squaring her shoulders.
“I’ll write your cursed letter. Now, get back to work.” He yanked open a drawer and pulled out a piece of stationery.
; Within a week she had the answer. She was to proceed to Paris immediately.
The morning Berthe was to leave she woke to the sight of Hélène lacing up Berthe’s new boots.
“What are you doing with my boots?” Berthe said, rubbing her eyes.
“I’m stealing them, what do you think?” said Hélène, not looking up.
“But I thought I was your friend. How can you steal from a friend?”
“I’m a thief. That’s what thieves do,” Hélène said, nonplussed. She finished lacing the boots, stood, and bounced on the toes of her feet as if testing them out.
“Give me back my boots, or I will turn you in to the gendarmes.”
Hélène looked down at the boots fondly. “You can get others when you’re in Paris. At least leave me something to remember you by,” she said.
“My boots, if you please,” Berthe said. She held out her hand. Hélène sat down, slowly unlaced the boots, and kicked them across the floor toward Berthe.
“Well, good luck to you, then. I s’pose you’ll be having your choice of footwear livin’ the grand life in Paris.”
“I suppose I will,” said Berthe.
“Think of your old friend once in a while, will you?” Hélène said, flashing a smile. “Maybe I’ll come and visit you one of these days, and you and me can make a run of the fancy shops. Pick us up a few things.”
“You take care,” said Berthe, hugging her.
“No, you take care,” said Hélène, returning the hug. “You’re the one walkin’ into the Devil’s den.”
CHAPTER 14
The Convent
ROUEN, 1856
BERTHE HAD TURNED SIXTEEN YEARS OLD A FEW WEEKS earlier and was now starting over again for the third time. The carriage that was to take her to Paris had a one-day stopover in Rouen to change horses and pick up new passengers. Rouen, she thought as she stepped down from the carriage. Then it came to her. This was the place her father had been sent to school as a young boy. She remembered him telling her how he was dragged away from the fields he loved in order to be educated. It had been his mother’s wish that he achieve his place in the world as a professional man. Berthe had the feeling that once he had embarked on this “city life” he had never been completely happy again.
Berthe was seeing for the first time where it all began for her mother and father. It was in nearby Tostes where her father first laid eyes on his bride-to-be at her father’s farm. The Ursuline convent in the town of Rouen was where Emma Bovary had been schooled.
“It was at the convent where I spent two of my best years,” Emma had once told Berthe. “It was a wonderful place for a young girl. I would have been happy to spend the rest of my life there.” Berthe had a difficult time imagining her mother locked away inside a nunnery. Suddenly, she wanted to see the place that had been such a source of joy for her mother.
The convent wasn’t difficult to find. It was a sixteenth-century two-story stucco structure surrounded by an ivy-covered wall located near the center of town. The tall arched doorway made it seem both inviting and intimidating. Instead of going directly in, Berthe followed the vaulted cloister path that bordered the garden. The garden was abloom in tender white peonies. Setting down her valise, she was bending to inhale the delicate fragrance when she heard a voice behind her.
“May I help you, mademoiselle?” It was a young nun. She seemed hardly older than Berthe herself. Her round pink face was made even rounder by the stiff white bandeau and coif. Her eyes shone like two bright coins as if Berthe’s unannounced visit was a cause for celebration.
“My mother once attended school here and I …” Berthe said, struggling for more of an explanation.
“Oh, then you’ll want to see Mother Superior. Come,” the nun said, easing Berthe over her awkward hesitation.
Berthe followed her into the convent itself. Instead of the dark interior she expected she was surprised to see how light and airy the hallways were. The smiling nun led her to a large vaulted room. One wall was taken up by huge gold-framed oil paintings. On the opposite wall were French doors that opened out onto the garden. At the end of the room was a shoulder-high fireplace. On either side of the fireplace were two huge double doors.
“Wait here,” the nun said. “I’ll fetch Mother. You can put your valise in the corner.”
“I don’t want to disturb her,” said Berthe, nervously fingering the fringe of her shawl.
“She likes being disturbed.”
While she waited for the Mother Superior, Berthe studied the paintings. One was more distressing than the next. She read the title plates underneath each picture. The Martyrdom of Saint Stanislaus, a poor figure in full armor apparently newly slain by a sword. The Penitent Mary Magdalene, a beautiful woman clutching her breast, looking as if she had just lost her last friend on earth. Christ appearing to Saint Anthony during his Temptation. Again anguish, pain, and fear. Christ himself appearing to Saint Peter on the Appian Way, bent under the weight of an enormous wooden cross. And Christ on the cross, thorn-crowned, head bowed, bleeding from nail-pierced hands and feet. But the final painting gave Berthe some relief. It was of a young Jesus dressed in long white robes and holding a baby lamb in his lap. How handsome and happy he seemed.
An elderly woman in a nun’s habit entered from the doorway on the left of the fireplace. She approached Berthe with open arms, spreading the folds of her habit as if they were wings. A wide toothless smile lifted the wrinkles of her face.
“Why, it’s dear Mademoiselle Rouault,” she lisped. “Why aren’t you in Chapel?”
“No, Mother, I am her daughter, Berthe.” The Mother Superior clutched Berthe’s hand with cold, clawlike fingers.
“Her daughter, of course. I’m afraid my age has robbed me of my senses,” she said, peering up at Berthe’s face from underneath her coif. “I remember your mother well. Always reading a book. And never the right book,” she added, chuckling.
Berthe, of course, had the same memory of her mother always reading. Once, as a very small child, she tried to climb onto her mother’s lap to literally squeeze between Emma and the book she was so engrossed in.
“Not now; they are slaying the dragon,” her mother had said, turning the page as she pushed Berthe away.
“Didn’t she have to read the Bible?” Berthe asked.
“I’m afraid Sir Walter Scott was her Bible,” the Mother Superior said, smiling and shaking her head. “She was not our usual student. No, in all honesty, she really didn’t belong here.”
“But my mother always said this was the happiest time of her life,” said Berthe.
“I’m not surprised. Oh, she loved it here. But not as most of our girls love the convent. She loved the beautiful trappings. Not the spiritual benefits. No, she was certainly not suited to the life of seclusion and meditation. She was far too free a spirit, that one.”
Berthe looked around the room, taking in the stained-glass windows, the mosaic floor tiles, the ornately carved mahogany window frames and moldings. “You know what she once said to one of the sisters?” the Mother Superior continued. “She said that this was a waste of a grand home on a God who wasn’t here to enjoy it. Can you imagine? She was a handful. But we did love her spirit. We were sorry to see her go,” she said, gazing up at Jesus and the lamb. She turned to look at Berthe. “And how is your beautiful mother? Still with her head in the clouds?”
“Actually, all of her is in the clouds now, Mother. She died over three years ago.”
“Oh, I am sorry.” The old nun crossed herself. “So you have come here to make a pilgrimage to where your dear mother attended school?”
Berthe nodded. “I am on my way to Paris, but when the coach stopped in Rouen I remembered that my mother’s school was here and I thought …” Suddenly, Berthe’s voice broke with an unexpected emotion. She could never understand why her husband’s and daughter’s love hadn’t been enough for her mother. But this place, this convent had clearly made Emma Bovary feel loved.
“
Of course, it is only natural that you would want to visit the places that were meaningful to your mother,” said the Mother Superior, patting Berthe gently on the shoulder. “But wait, if you want to learn more of her you can talk to Madame Blanquet. She was here when your mother was an adolescent and she still does our linens every month. She can tell you all about your mother as a young girl. Between you and me, I believe she is the one responsible for corrupting her,” she said with a laugh.
Carrying her valise, Berthe followed the Mother Superior down a long passageway into the basement of the convent. The stone walls gave off a cold, musty smell. In the dim light she could make out an old woman sitting at a table that was piled high with folded linens. She was mending a hem on a pillowcase.
“Madame Blanquet, you will never guess who I have here,” said the Mother Superior in an overly loud voice. The old woman looked up, a confused expression on her face. “Here is our dear Mademoiselle Rouault’s daughter, Mademoiselle Bovary. Do you remember Mademoiselle Rouault from so many years ago?” she said. “Well, I’m sure you both have much to talk about. Come and see me before you leave,” she said to Berthe.
Madame Blanquet put down her sewing. Berthe thought she must be almost one hundred years old. The hands that held the mending were so bent and thickened with arthritis and age that Berthe wondered at the fact that she could even hold a needle. Her watery eyes seemed almost sightless.
“Mon Dieu, it is my chère Mademoiselle Rouault. Come sit down. Where have you been, you naughty girl?”
“Madame, I am Berthe Bovary. Emma Rouault was my mother.”
The old woman stretched out her knobby hand and grabbed Berthe by the chin, turning her face this way and that. “Ah, yes. Now I see. The hair is a different color. And how is your mother? Your naughty, naughty mother?”
“She is dead,” Berthe whispered, again embarrassed by the sudden emotion she felt. Her mother’s presence in this place was almost unendurable.
“Of course she is dead,” said the old woman, nodding her head and smiling. “She must have died tragic and young, with her hair spread out upon her pillow and a red rose clutched to her breast. Am I right?”
