Little

by Edward Carey

  “Come, come, my heart, we must be busy.”

  I grew older in Versailles. I shifted shape, I grew thinner, I grew sharper angles, I was quieter. I drew in my cupboard home by candlelight, and when I made mistakes—and I did still make mistakes—I rubbed the marks out with a ball of vegetable gum, the latest tool for the artist; Elisabeth always had the newest and best of objects. Good-bye, bread.

  Elisabeth and I dwelled together in rooms of body parts, within a vast many-organed home of wax flesh, our days filled with prayers made tangible.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Marie fecit or fourth heads.

  Sundays had by habit always been my freest day at the palace. On Sundays, Elisabeth was almost entirely with members of her family within the walls of one or another of God’s sacred barns and I was not required then.

  Most Sundays I spent an hour or so washing my cupboard and airing it out or having a little ale with Pallier. We spent time together discussing bodies, Pallier and I. One Sunday, when she was away because one of her relations was poorly (we prayed for him and made a wax esophagus), I was feeling a little lonely. Though I had not ventured out for so long, at last I went beyond Elisabeth’s rooms. Polignac’s servants, smirking, let me pass, and I was out and free. I found myself walking the same path toward that place of royal births, following a crowd of visiting Parisians hurrying in that direction. Having no other engagement, I decided to join them. We herded into a great queue by the King’s Guardroom and stopped in a bottleneck just outside the Queen’s Antechamber, a room also known as the Antechamber of the Grand Couvert. Here there were guards who would let us into the next room only after inspecting our dress. Having passed their scrutiny, in we went.

  At first the whole fuss seemed to be about nothing more than a circle of Swiss Guards, each with three white feathers in his hat. But then, when I peered between them, I spied a horseshoe-shaped table, surrounded by high-backed chairs, and upon those chairs was the entire royal family.

  They were eating.

  I wondered at first if these were not some expertly crafted clockwork versions of the royal people, so mechanical did they seem as they brought their soup spoons to their mouths, or cut their meat into pieces. Then I saw the queen blink. Then I saw the king swallow. Then I saw the Comte de Provence, the king’s younger brother, smile broadly, and the king’s youngest brother, the Comte d’Artois, smile back, and then these two, unlike anyone else, began to talk. There too I spied Elisabeth, who ate her food in fits and starts. Two older women sat either side of her, one thin and one fat; I took them to be the aunts. Most of the royal family were playing with their food rather than actually eating it, and behind them were other people to help the royal eaters with their royal eating. It was most clear that the royal family was not enjoying itself, that it did not appreciate being so stared at, but most of all, something else: that these royals were mere humans, and that watching them was fascinating.

  Soon enough we were pushed out of the room again.

  “That is the Grand Couvert,” Pallier told me. “Every Sunday it happens, did you not know?”

  “Every Sunday?”

  “Unless they’re away.”

  “And can just anyone go?”

  “You must be properly dressed. Men in sword and stockings and wig. But if you don’t have such things they can be hired at the gate when you come in.”

  “Everyone can see them?”

  “If properly dressed.”

  “But why?”

  “Louis XIV’s rule. He declared that the royal family should be seen once a week by an appropriately dressed public, as a family.”

  I went back the next Sunday. And every Sunday thereafter. At first I told myself it was in order to be closer to Elisabeth, but later I admitted that what I truly wanted was to see the whole royalty of France at feeding time. I would slip beyond Diane de Polignac’s ladies-in-waiting and rush along. We must all file past in a queue, our observations interrupted at regular intervals by the Swiss Guards, who served as the barrier between us, the common people, and them, the royal ones. I never tired of the ceremony, waited eagerly for Sunday to come, and soon I started taking paper and pencil with me, making quick sketches and pages of notes.

  Now, when I closed my eyes, I saw royal mastication. I saw food munched to a pulp, I saw swallowing, I saw crumbs on royal lips. The entire royal family did not take part; the queen’s gloves remained on her hands, and the plates put in front of her so carefully were never so much as looked at. How interested my master would be in all this, I thought.

  In my boredom, in my cupboard, I began to turn my notes into sketches for the heads of the royal family. I should not have done so, for soon, like my master before me, I began to yearn to make those heads. When I held a wax lung in my hands, I yearned to give it a nose; when I held a liver, I longed to give it a mouth.

  Once I had my idea, I could not stop myself: A group of people in a scene together. Whole figures. Close to one another. Reacting to one another. That had never been done at the Monkey House before; that was something new. And the scene? Why, “The Royal Family at Dinner.” Royal mouths open, royal cheeks bulging, royal jaws up and down, all those royal Adam’s apples bobbing.

  I sketched them every week. I never told anyone about it. Month after month after month. Until a pile grew up. Over time I began to worry that my master might not understand my markings, and that perhaps it would be wiser if I made the heads myself, just to be certain. They could, I reasoned, adjust or discard them later on, as they wished. In this way, I set out to make the royal family. In this way, I lied to myself.

  Once I had begun I could not stop; the heads took over my life. I did not tell Elisabeth about them, hiding my work in my cupboard. We grew very crowded in there. I helped myself to everything in our workshop. We’d gone through so much clay already that no one noticed me taking more. In time the same could be said for plaster and even for wax. I ordered more and it was always delivered promptly, without question. In truth, the people in the palace had no real sympathy for objects; they never properly considered them, leaving them here and there as if they should never run out. Of wax and its subtle talents, they were entirely ignorant. They never properly comprehended the dignity and sadness of a stick of candle. They never sat long hours with objects, quietly encouraging them. They didn’t know and couldn’t care.

  Head. By head. By head. Mouth by mouth. Swallow by swallow. I caught them. I moved the clay, went back each Sunday and checked and changed and started again, stopped and gave up and started again. And slowly the eaters came to me. Back again the king’s chin; back again the queen’s earlobes; back again the comte’s forehead. Back again, back again. Look, look harder, that’s not right, not yet, scrape it back, pull it all down again, look harder, concentrate. I’d never do it. I’d do it. I’d never do it.

  It took me months. No, it took me years. I worked when Elisabeth was away with her aunts and often while the palace slept. Only four at first: king, queen, king’s brothers. Four heads with armatures nailed into planks, damp cloths over them, hidden in my cupboard after my night’s work; after they grew too numerous, secreted in cupboards in our workroom. Just the heads. The bodies could be supplied later.

  The shape of each head came quickly enough, but then followed months of adjustments. Toward the end I might stare at the clay head for hours and make only a single small change, add only a single moist crumb of clay the size of a rice grain over two hours, then repair to bed to dream of clay heads. But their skin was clay skin, and clay skin smoothed down and finished is poreless, and human skin is pitted and pored: my spectacles insisted upon it. In order to make my royal family more real, then, I asked Elisabeth if I might eat some oranges in my cupboard and she had them sent up for me. Orange skin, like ours, has pores. By making a cast of an orange’s skin, I discovered, you may imprint the negative of that cast upon the clay flesh of royal heads, giv
ing their skin all the detail, all the small dents, of a truthful real head. I stood back. I clapped.

  In this way, I cast them. I covered those clay faces with the deadening plaster, as if I were murdering my own work, and ruined the clay heads taking the plaster away. I mixed the wax, poured it in the mold, and opened the mold—and there, there!, what had been clay was now wax flesh. Is that the queen? High forehead, pronounced lower lip? Close my eyes, open them again. Is that the queen, not cast from life but sculpted from observation? Close your eyes. Open them again. Yes, I thought it was. The very queen.

  These were my marks. On my own. These hands, these thoughts. There’s the queen, but not only she: there’s Marie Grosholtz too, both alive in that head. The moment I understood this, I couldn’t stop. It was all I wanted to do.

  I danced around the queen’s head. I made you. I did. Welcome.

  “What’s the noise? You’ll wake everyone!” There was Pallier. “What’s going on? What are you do— Why, that is the queen, isn’t it!”

  “Say it again.”

  “That is the queen!”

  “Once more, beautiful Pallier!”

  “That’s the queen!”

  It was, and then followed the king (once more), the Comte d’Artois, the Comte de Provence. My royal family. At night, or when Elisabeth was away, I sat with the royal heads and talked to them, as if I were a part of that family. I would rather spend time with my heads than with real people. For a while I kept them; they were so dear, my first heads. They would be greeted as a triumph at the Cabinet, my royal family, so I told myself in my cupboard. Once they had the heads, I thought, I would be allowed to stay here. I would ask my master again if I could be let go. That was what I told myself. I lied, of course. I wanted to be appreciated. Who does not? We all do.

  And so I betrayed myself.

  I sent the heads away.

  I wrote a letter explaining who each head was and enclosing my many sketches. Each wax head was placed inside its own mold, the halves of the mold were tied together with rope for protection, and they were crated up and sent to the boulevard. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine them opening up those heads. I was almost sad that I could not be there to witness it, but here was my home, here was where I belonged, in a cupboard, in the workshop with Elisabeth. I must forget about those royal heads now, I told myself, and concentrate upon the other human pieces I had so loved before. But how I missed them, how dull life was without them.

  A week later came a letter from my master:

  Dear Little Marie Grosholtz,

  The Widow Picot and I shall be at Versailles Sunday next to observe the Grand Couvert ourselves and to judge the likenesses. We expect you to meet us at the gate and to show us the subject of your long exile.

  I remind you that I am your master,

  Curtius

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  My family at Versailles.

  The coach discharged its passengers. There was no mistaking them. Versailles people obeyed rules and were very strict and though they wore many colors they were not necessarily colorful. Monkey House people were loud and triumphant and were noticed a good deal off. They didn’t suit Versailles; they weren’t made for palaces; it wasn’t the sort of architecture that should contain them. Before me were two worlds colliding.

  There was Doctor Curtius looking very stretched and strained, an old heron in a gleaming new suit, quite out of place for the palace, and with a large black spot on his left cheek.

  “Sir!” I cried. “Here I am!”

  “Is that you?” he said, a dear grin cracking his face apart. “It is! It is indeed! How old you are!”

  “Sir! Doctor Curtius!”

  “Marie, Little Marie.”

  “Little! Just Little it is,” came the booming voice.

  The widow, red-faced and agitated, striking out with a stick, awkward in a large hooped dress. She was smoking a cigar.

  “Madame!” I said.

  “What trouble you have put us to.”

  “Little!” came a bark.

  There was Jacques, hobbling, struggling in a waistcoat. “Yellow nankeen,” he said. “From Japan!”

  “Oh, Jacques,” I said. “Dear Jacques. What murders have there been since I last saw you? What hangings?”

  “Such! Many!”

  The whole family had come, except Edmond of course; he was neither present nor talked of. And there were other new people, boys all dressed identically in suits, all with a red rosette upon their jackets with a C embroidered in its center. Jacques had one who served under him, a rough-looking lout with a shaved head.

  “Who are these?” I asked.

  “Who indeed!” said the widow. “We have grown much since you left us and there are many more in our employ. We couldn’t wait for you to come back to us.”

  “Of course not, madame.”

  “We have another four and twenty, and not just the Monkey House either. We’ve grown buildings!”

  “Buildings! Good heavens!” I cried. And it seemed to me that the widow had kept up with this extraordinary growth of architecture herself, that her body had likewise developed real estate. “I never thought of it.”

  “You think of very little, as I recall. Isn’t that why you’re called Little?”

  Two of the boys were carrying heavy card boxes.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “Never you mind,” huffed the widow. “Come along, show us in, let us see it all. We have not come all this way to look at you. I should think not indeed!”

  I showed her which windows I had looked through, pointed up to the roof. Before long, the bells of the royal chapel sounded, and it was time to go inside. The widow’s eyes darted all around. My master was wearing a hired sword, and with it he looked like a greyhound with an excited tail.

  “Did you like my heads?” I asked.

  “It’s actually quite dirty,” she said.

  “It is so big, you see,” I said, “so very big that it’s hard to keep it all clean. There are wild cats. In my cupboard there was a mouse. My heads?”

  “Do they let just anyone in?” asked the widow, observing the crowd forming for the Grand Couvert. “Of course, we’re different,” she said in a loud voice, “our girl is artist in residence to the Princesse Elisabeth. What’s through this door?”

  “It is time,” I said, “for the Grand Couvert. We must hurry now.”

  “No one hurries me. Do they, Curtius?”

  “Oh no, Little, she will not be hurried.”

  In the guardroom where everyone else was waiting, the boys with boxes began to hurriedly unpack them. They contained, I saw, my wax heads of the king and the queen.

  “No, please!” I cried. “You should not take them in with you. You must not!”

  “We must,” the widow said, “to judge their accuracy.”

  I could not stop them. I never could. In they went. First the widow, then Curtius, then the boys with the wax heads, then Jacques and his boy. I did not press toward the Swiss Guards as usual, but kept close to the windows and so avoided most of the commotion that followed.

  Unlike my previous visits to the Grand Couvert, there was no timely passing of people from one room into the other; instead, a major block had formed before the horseshoe-shaped table. Now the talking was only on the public side of the Swiss Guards. On the other side, the royal side, there was only staring, not at the food but out at the common people.

  I saw the heads then, my heads, but I was not holding them. There they were, king and queen, and before them King and Queen. Likenesses doubled! Where first I had admitted happiness and ownership, however, now a sudden doubt crept in, spreading and infecting. The heads held up had no bodies to them; worse than that was their baldness, for they wore no wigs and so appeared scalped. They were terribly naked and unadorned. And where their eyes
should have been, there was nothing, just empty sockets. It was as if these heads had come straight from the dissection room, as if the king and queen were seeing their very own deaths. I hadn’t meant that. That wasn’t right. A terrible mistake. They should never have come together, my king and queen and the originals.

  Only then I heard a very definite clapping. It was from Curtius for certain. And I thought, How wonderful! How wonderful it was after all! But then there came a wail, a woman’s wailing, and then a bark, like a dog, and then cries and shrieks and screams.

  I ran away.

  I fled.

  I hid.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Closing the cupboard doors.

  Polignac’s bit-maids found me out at last, hiding in a courtyard where they kept the dogs. I was hurried back inside to Elisabeth’s rooms, pushed into my cupboard, the doors locked behind me. Perhaps an hour later, the doors were opened and Polignac herself pulled me out. Two servants tugged up my dress and Polignac lofted a cane and gave me twenty hard strikes. To be treated so like a child, though I was not so many years from thirty! When she was done I was put back in the cupboard, panting and stinging and pulsing.

  There in my cupboard, locked away with no candles, I lay in the darkness peering through the keyhole. No one ever stopped. Elisabeth came by once, running to the cupboard, but one of Polignac’s people was following her, and she was moved on before she could speak to me.