Little

by Edward Carey

  “I wonder. In some cases, death itself is the only remaining help.”

  “I must try to help. Heavens, my dear heart, what kind of soul was she?”

  “Only a woman.”

  “Oh! Horrid! What can I do? What can I do? The votives, more and more! Marie, I need your help.”

  As we returned to the palace, it seemed color had been restored to the world around us. I had never known the world to change so quickly.

  With each excursion, the walls of the side chapel in the nearby Church of Saint Cyr were slowly being furnished with waxen human bits. At first no one worried about these additions, never imagining how their number would grow. We brought kidneys and bladders and lungs, arms and eyes and hearts, livers and stomachs. Passing this wax or clay flesh back and forth, we once or twice touched hands ourselves, and felt, I thought, such a comradeship there, a great closeness among the body parts.

  Three months were gone already. I was to return to the Monkey House. But I was so nervous to leave; I should much rather stay with Elisabeth. When I told her that, she responded that it couldn’t be simpler: someone would write to them and tell them that I could not be spared. My master—or probably the widow in his stead—wrote back to say that, in that case, they must be further compensated for my absence. They were. I never saw that letter. I was so relieved not to go. I never wanted to go back, not then. It was too sad. The longer I lived in that cupboard, the easier it was to forget I had ever been anywhere else.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Up on the roof.

  I spent ever-longer days with Elisabeth modeling organs. I went into her bedroom as soon as she was awake; she told me all the business of her day, and asked me again and again if I was happy. Very happy, I said, very happy. And I was.

  After a while, my presence was credited with somehow giving comfort to the royal child, and I began to be sent for at different odd times of the day. Soon enough I was given the strictest instruction never to venture far from my cupboard, for I could be needed at any moment. Should I require something, I must only call out and one of the other servants would come to me. Sometimes I would sit in the corner of that disapproving room of hers while she and her ladies-in-waiting ate their evening meal. Bombe, I discovered, was the Marquise de Bombelles, Rage the Marquise de Raigecourt, and Démon was the Marquise des Monstiers-Mérinville. They were three pleasant enough young ladies, I understood now, the princess’s classmates; they smiled at me and slipped me a piece of chocolate or a biscuit or a lump of sugar and patted me on the head.

  Before Elisabeth was to enter some official gathering, I would be positioned nearby, standing very still, very upright; the knowledge that I was near, ready to be looked at, had the effect of lightening her terror. I would sometimes be positioned by a footman in the strangest of places, behind screens in great halls, so that once or twice an evening Elisabeth might quickly glance at me there, pinch my nose or take hold of my chin, and so be put at ease.

  One early evening I was rushed up to the roof of the palace by one of Elisabeth’s blue-liveried servants and told to wait there, at a certain spot, until called down. From where I stood—pressed against the balustrade, midway between two large stone vases, just above Madame Elisabeth’s rooms—I was in a perfect position to see the road to the Church of Saint Cyr, not to mention the Grand Canal of the palace gardens, stretching so far away, as if it were there to serve as a lesson in perspective. Although I lived in a cupboard, such vastness was no longer peculiar to me. I was instructed to keep to my position, so that Elisabeth going by in her coach on some official venture might pull down her window and see me up there, and be made happy because of it.

  I stayed at my post, as I was bidden, and watched people drift away from the vast garden. It began to drizzle, but still I remained, for that was my instruction. After a while dusk descended, until I could no longer see the canal or gardens so well, and soon enough I could hear little save for a few laughs and cheers from somewhere within the palace and the shrieking of a few cats down below. I was beginning to feel certain that I had been forgotten when I heard someone else walking on the roof, and coming closer. Whoever it was stopped nearby and leaned against the balustrade, holding on to one of the stone vases for support, staring downward. The figure began to busy himself with some sort of long rod. The next thing I heard nearly sent me over the balustrade to be dashed upon the cobbles: my rooftop companion had lifted and fired a gun, directly at the cats below. I heard a great bang, saw a burst of light, and heard a shriek, which I took to be that of a cat. Then, shortly after, a second shot, no second shriek. Fearful of being shot myself if he should mistake me for a cat, I called out, “Please, please, sir, I’m up here with you. Don’t shoot me! Don’t shoot.”

  “Who are you? Who’s there?”

  The gunman hobbled over to me, his large white face becoming more intelligible as it approached. It was my old friend the locksmith, dressed in a large overcoat.

  “It’s you!” I said. “I’m so glad. I’m sorry I haven’t brought you any pastries yet—I’m kept so busy.”

  “Oh!” he said when he was close enough to see who I was. “Oh, that’s all right.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t be sentimental. There are so many of them,” he said. “Cats everywhere. Hairs and smells in every corner of the palace. And so it falls to me, from time to time, to lessen the problem. Come and sit,” said the locksmith, patting the slope of the roof.

  “It’s beginning to rain,” I said. “I wonder if I should go down.”

  “Come, it’s just a little wet. I’ll wipe it myself. There. Come now, sit, sit. I insist!” And so I sat by him, and felt his warmth next to me. He shared his overcoat between us, and we sat, side by side, in the dark.

  “Do you like it up here?” he asked, and continued, “Well, I’ll tell you, I love it. I come here often. It’s really, I sometimes think, save for my forge, the only peaceful place in the whole pile. How I love moments like this. Ah!”

  “Ah,” I said, imitating his sigh.

  “Here we are. Up on the roof.”

  “Up on the roof,” I said, “and no one else anywhere near. We could pretend it was just us, that there’s no one else downstairs. Only us and the night.”

  “What an idea! I think I could do well indeed, if there weren’t any other people. I’m a very practical sort of fellow. Not at all bad with my hands. I think, on the whole, if I found myself on a deserted island I’d manage excellently. I might even be happy with no other people. I’d know what to do then. But there are always people. Never an end to them. There’s a wonderful book about life on a deserted island, I’ve read it countless times. Do you know it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner; who lived eight and twenty years, all alone in an un-inhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but himself. With an account of how he was at last as strangely delivered by pirates. Written by himself.”

  “That’s a long title.”

  “That’s a wonderful book.”

  “Let us pretend it is just us up here,” I ventured, “and the rest of the world is flooded.”

  “How marvelous.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Isn’t it.”

  “No laws, no battles, no meetings, no etiquette.”

  “Noah could not have done better.”

  “Of course, pastry might help, mightn’t it?”

  And so we sat, the pair of us, up there on the roof, quite alone, talking of empty islands, and of flour and butter and eggs combined and heated, and also of locks and springs, until a blue-liveried servant marred our peace a little by coming out with an umbrella. I thought at first that he had come to take me inside, bu
t it was a different servant who did not talk to us at all or even make eye contact but only held the umbrella over us both. I thought this unusual but soon enough I forgot he was there, and the locksmith and I chatted on. We were on the roof together for perhaps two hours before Elisabeth’s servant appeared. I had missed her coach returning. I said good night to the locksmith and left him there upon the bench upon the roof, with the liveried servant and the umbrella. And I thought, with the exception of missing the coach, what a very pleasant evening it had turned out to be.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Concerning women, horizontal and perpendicular.

  More people noticed that Madame Elisabeth was showing improvement in society. At the same time, old lady Mackau was increasingly retreating to her bed, where she affected many noisy maladies while eating her favorite almond biscuits. One day, Elisabeth and I visited her in her musty third-floor apartment. She greeted Elisabeth as her “wonderful loyal child,” thanked her for coming to see her “old friend,” but to me she said not a word. When Elisabeth asked her where she hurt exactly, she was confused and could not exactly explain. “All over,” was all she could manage, and that furiously. So Elisabeth entered those words into her book and we made an entire miniature wax woman and placed this beside the other objects in the chapel. We returned to her so that Elisabeth could inform her of this progress, but she only groaned and turned over in bed, showing us her back.

  “Illness,” she said, “knows no manners.”

  That was the summer of Elisabeth’s great freedom. Mackau’s reign was coming to an end; she sniffed and sweated through the last weeks of her office, always promising to return, but soon her bed became too persuasive to her. The heavy mattress cupped itself around the old lady and became her bones and support, until she could not be solid without it. It sucked her in, sucked her dry—it sucked, I do believe it, all the fatness from the old form—and as the woman began to ail in earnest, so the mattress grew in health, becoming greater and puffier. What a beastly mattress that was, expanding and inflating, leaching the old lady of her life.

  In Mackau’s absence, as the old lady was slowly surrendering to her mattress, we had continued our visits beyond the palace, and afterward made many more organs for the church. Once, when we asked if we might be allowed to enter a poor home, the wretched young man who lived there refused.

  “He is ashamed,” Elisabeth said. “That must be it.”

  “Or perhaps,” I said, “he simply does not want us inside.”

  “Doesn’t want? Why ever not? What’s wrong with us?”

  “It’s his home. He’s in charge of it.”

  “It belongs to my brother.”

  “Does it?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then your brother should have it fixed.”

  “My brother has the whole country to worry over. I go to the village. You know nothing about it. It is not your business.”

  She was very put out. She was always struggling over what was the best way to react. There were so many contradictions between what she was told and what she saw that she could only hesitatingly move forward, lacking, as she did, power and knowledge. She was a girl trying to make her way. We both were.

  In our great work of seeking out all the ill, we found, besides Madame Mackau, another patient inside the palace. One afternoon, Elisabeth herself opened my cupboard door. “De Lamballe! Come quickly, my heart! De Lamballe has fainted again!”

  “Yes, I’m coming! But who is de Lamballe?”

  “Oh, you know nobody, do you! She is a lovely lady, but so delicate. Her husband died young and she’s been a terrible fainter ever since. She once fainted because she happened to smell some violets. And once also for no greater reason than she saw a lobster in a painting. And when Antoinette complained she had a headache she fainted then too—in sympathy, it is supposed, for Antoinette. Simply everything makes her faint. Isn’t it awful?”

  “Will the queen be with her, do you think?”

  “She’s sure to be. Lamballe’s her favorite. Poor thing.”

  The collapsed fainter we discovered lay stretched out in some Versailles salon, still far gone. Her fellow women of court stood around her pale, limp form, whispering distractedly. I looked about.

  “Where’s the queen, Madame Elisabeth? Which one is the queen?”

  “The queen, dear heart? Oh, I do not see the queen anywhere.”

  A team of doctors milled around the slumped body, bleeding it. Elisabeth and I moved forward until one of the doctors stepped aside and we could get a better view. She was certainly still alive, her flat bosom was moving up and down. I leaned forward to have a good look. Here was the queen’s person. I saw the blood of Marie Thérèse, Princesse de Lamballe, in a little porcelain bowl that a doctor was staring into.

  “Where does it hurt her?” Elisabeth asked.

  “The nerves, madame. Her nerves are too easily alerted.”

  “Thank you,” Elisabeth said, trotting off. “That’s all we need for now.”

  “Excuse me,” I whispered to the doctors, “shall the queen be coming soon?”

  “The queen? What business is it of yours?”

  “I am with Madame Elisabeth,” I said. “It is Her young Majesty who wondered,” I lied.

  “The queen had wanted to stay,” said the doctor, “but I could not permit it. This unfortunate lady was seen to convulse, and convulsions bring about miscarriages, and so the queen, in her delicate state, was instantly removed.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Some five minutes.”

  “But five minutes!”

  “Come along, my heart!” called Elisabeth.

  We made a wax brain for de Lamballe, who recovered very shortly thereafter.

  In our private times, Elisabeth asked me about men and their bodies. I told her everything I knew, and made models so that she might understand better, and there were books brought up for consultation. I thought of Edmond again, though his body seemed so far away and as lifeless as cloth. I must be sensible, I told myself; I was brought up to be sensible; I must try to let the pain go. We went once to see a dog and bitch put in a pen together, but Elisabeth did not like that at all and it just made me feel ill and irritable. Still, she said, she was to be prepared for marriage, which she always insisted would be very soon.

  “Will you marry, my heart?” she asked.

  “No, madame, I doubt it very much.”

  “No, I didn’t think you would. I asked anyway, out of politeness. When I am married, I shall send for you. You’ll always be near.”

  She had me draw her a pair of male lips to practice kissing on.

  “No,” I said, “no, that is not right at all. You are pecking, madame. Have you never kissed a person before?”

  “Of course! Certainly! No, well, not in that way. Have you?”

  “Yes, I may say that I have.”

  “Oh, my heart, have you truly? Someone such as you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I will teach you.”

  {Lips for Practicing}

  I kissed her.

  “You kissed me!”

  “In instruction.”

  “Very well.”

  I kissed her again, more fully.

  {Lips of Madame Elisabeth}

  “Yes, that is how it is done,” I said.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Most certain.”

  “Horrid.”

  “Not really, no, it isn’t.”

  “Well, then, let us try once more.”

  And we did. And every now and then we tried again and kept our practice up behind closed doors. And sometimes too we should gently point and stroke the place about us where we kept our fellow organs.

  “Show me, madame, where I keep my heart. Touch there.”

  “Show m
e, my heart, where are my lungs, my womb.”

  What a royal body it was, and I, her twin almost, joyed in it. Our hearts, little women’s hearts, playing the same music to each other all alone.

  One morning, at long last, Madame Mackau was found quite suffocated upon the bloated mattress.

  Even after Mackau herself was taken away, a heartbeat seemed to linger in the mattress for a time, until it finally shrank from its obesity back into the modesty of its former days and was burned outside in a yard. And so, from the summer of Mackau’s illness, we entered the ghastly autumn of Madame de Guéméné.

  Guéméné the Rod, Guéméné the stickler, Guéméné matron of misery, her chin barely there at all—a lack of chin that must have made her furious all the time, for her scowl was perpetual, her attention continuous, her stare indelible. Pleasures were left behind then; Elisabeth was to be made into a woman, and this process, it was instantly clear, would hurt. Playthings: thrown out. Skipping ropes, balls, little dogs, miniature horses: all banished. “Sit up! Sit up!” was the call of those autumn days. Silly Bombe was forbidden access; when Elisabeth was caught whispering to her behind a door, what lecturing her misdemeanor caused. Simpering Rage could be seen but once a week. Insipid Démon could remain, if she was quiet, and she was; that was her role, always the silent one. My rival, plaster Jesus Christ, was out of his cupboard almost all the time. When Elisabeth lost her temper, and at first she did so a great deal, Guéméné allowed her to pound floors and kick furniture, but the chinless lady would not be beaten. A cane in female form, she opened wide the windows and invited my princess to bellow out, but no help ever came. Elisabeth, swollen-faced and miserable, had no choice but to quiet down. Once, when she bit Guéméné’s hand, she was slapped.

  “I am a princess!” she screamed.

  “Then be seen to behave like one.”

  Guéméné tugged out what joy there was inside the girl and replaced it with sitting upright, with quietness; before long Elisabeth could hardly join a conversation, terrified of being contradicted. Stowed away in my cupboard, called upon less frequently, I adapted to this new strict autumn, keeping my dress clean and curtsying at Guéméné whenever I could—and so I was allowed to remain, though the princess and I both feared that I would be sent away. In those autumn days of her last rebellions, and into the winter of her acquiescence, Elisabeth was never left alone. Someone was always sitting beside her, finding fault with the way she held a cup, or how much she ate, or how she carried herself. But at times, if I was careful, I still held her hand, or sneaked a hurried kiss in the modeling room. I told her often that I was her person, her body, that I should not be going away. As if in proof of this, I found my name printed in the new Almanach, the lowest member of her teaching faculty: