by Edward Carey
Through the keyhole I saw the workroom of Madame Elisabeth being emptied out. All the wax and paint, the jars of turpentine and oil, all the tools, they were taken away. I called out and banged my feet against the cupboard door, but no one came.
When the doors were unlocked at last, Pallier was there, telling me kindly not to speak. How strange that was coming from her. Then I noticed something hanging from my cupboard door: a wax object, suspended from a string. Elisabeth had come not to talk to me, as I had thought, but to pin something to my door. It was a single, well-modeled object.
“I am a fine teacher,” I said. “There is no doubting it.”
The sign beneath the wax organ said:
INSIDE THIS CUPBOARD
IS THE SPLEEN
OF PRINCESSE ELISABETH
DO NOT DISTURB
Pallier whispered that Elisabeth would see me now.
In I went. The room, disapproving at best, seemed especially vehement now.
“You’re going home,” Elisabeth said.
“This is my home,” I said.
“I was only lent you, for a time, and now that time is over.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your master has need of you.”
“But I don’t want to go.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“I should stay here with you.”
“You’re not mine.”
“I have much more to teach. There’s so much more.”
“All done.”
“But I can come back once a week? I can visit you?”
“Grosholtz, listen, my body, listen. I will never see you again.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Those terrible heads, bald and eyeless. The queen was deeply upset. Faces with mouths agape, cheeks stuffed. Like people in a common tavern.”
“It was not my intention—”
“It was not yours indeed, it was never yours. You never asked. You took. Your employer has been fined. It was only because I intervened that they were not locked up. One of your people was quite violent and had to be suppressed. We looked after you, we fed you, we were ever-loving and attentive. And in return you showed us as pigs in a sty.”
“No, just as you were. Just exactly as you were.”
“It is not for you to judge us.”
“I did not.”
“You must not look at us. A servant may not look upon a king and a queen. What a thing to have done, Marie. How could you have made those heads?”
“Please, Elisabeth, please believe me. I could not stop myself. I am sorry for it now, very sorry, but when I was working, I had such a need for it that I could not stop myself. I shall not do it again.”
“No, you shall not.”
“I do promise.”
“It is too late.”
“My place is with you.”
“No, no longer.”
“Madame Elisabeth, you are not throwing me out?”
“Marie Grosholtz, it is not just your master who insists you leave. I have to be grown-up now. I have to put you away. I’m not going to see you anymore. I’ve done with playing. They are saying I have been left too long to myself.”
“To yourself? I was with you!”
“It does no good to be alone so long. I am to spend more time with my aunts now. Good-bye, Marie Grosholtz. Think of me. No, no, you must not touch. You must not.”
“It’s me, your heart speaking. Listen to me, I beg you. I want to be with you.”
“No, I won’t cry today, I’ve lost the trick of it.”
“I’m crying.”
“Servants should not have feelings. It is a cold you have. I’ll pray it improves. Whatever you feel, master it, keep it inside. It mustn’t be seen. How odd-looking you are. Were you always this uncomely? Perhaps you were. I must have become used to it.”
“How shall you manage? What will become of you?”
“To think you once thought we looked alike. No one should say that now.”
“You’ll be an old aunt by the end of the week.”
“Good-bye, Marie.”
“You’ll call for me. You always said you’d call for me. I shall be waiting.”
“Good-bye. Good-bye.”
“Can’t I say sorry? Can’t you see I’m so, so sorry?”
Her final gift to me was the wax spleen.
“Elisabeth!”
So I learned not only that your loved one may be forbidden you, given away to someone else, but also that though you love someone they may run from you, and you may open your arms but they shall not come in. The Elisabeth I loved was no longer. What was left was a shell, a plaster personage. Hollow. Inside was nothing but stale air unable to get out. How I wished to crack her open.
I was allowed to empty my shelves.
I am tucked in the world, into the smaller parts of it. I do not impose myself in any grandiose way. I find the gaps and inhabit them. Now another gap had closed.
I put my things neatly in my trunk. The trunk was taken down. I opened the door to her bedroom and saw the home of the cupboard Jesus.
“You’re coming with me,” I said. “Be careful not to fall from a high window.” But when I opened his velvet-lined cupboard, he was not inside, he was out with her. He had beaten me. An hour later, when I went to say good-bye to Elisabeth, there were footmen guarding the room where all her furious objects were kept, and I was not permitted entrance. I needed one last head; I could not leave without it.
“Madame Elisabeth! Madame Elisabeth!” I called out. “Please, Madame Elisabeth, I never took your likeness. I must have your likeness—not for anyone else, only for myself. Oh, please. Madame Elisabeth, it’s your heart calling for you! Your spleen if you must. Do but answer me!”
A lady-in-waiting came.
“Démon! Démon! Thank heavens it’s you. Let me in, will you?”
“My name, please to note, is the Marquise des Monstiers-Mérinville,” she said. “We do not know you. Was there ever such a person in Versailles?”
“Please, Démon . . .”
“Do not address me.”
“Please, I must say good-bye to Madame Elisabeth.”
“You are no longer required.”
“Can I see her face? Just for a moment.”
“You must go now. This was not the place for you.”
She turned away, Démon did. So solid, as I had not seen her before, quite an adult. The final favorites, Démon and the painted plasterman. Servants took me downstairs, one at each arm, escorting me out in a rush.
As I was hastened along the corridors, I saw that I was not the only person packing up and leaving. The corridors were littered with trunks and servants running here and there with objects wrapped in linen. “Where are they all going?” I asked. “Why are they all leaving?” But I was not answered.
Jacques was waiting for me at the gates. I was glad to see him, but he had two black eyes and a cut on his forehead, and he was stiff and awkward with me. His fierce-looking boy was beside him, similarly bruised.
“Did they hurt you, Jacques? Oh Jacques, I’m very sorry if they hurt you.”
“Can’t hurt Jacques,” he said. “Can’t be done.”
As the coach began to move, I thought only of love. I had loved Edmond Picot before he was taken away from me. Now I had a heart in one pocket and in the other a spleen. And that was all the proof I needed. I had imposed myself upon the world. I had left little marks in wax. She will send for me, I thought, she is certain to send for me.
“My cupboard!” I called. “I want my cupboard!”
But my cupboard was locked from me, and I could never get it back.
BOOK FIVE
1789–1793
THE PALACE OF PEOPLE
When I was twenty
-eight, until I was thirty-two.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
In and out.
Jacques stared at me as we journeyed back into Paris, likewise his crop-haired boy. If there was to be any conversation, I saw, I must be the one to make it.
“Who’s your friend, Jacques?”
“This is my boy. This is Emile.”
“Hello, Emile, I’m very happy to meet you. I’m Marie.”
Emile curled his lip.
“He’s just like you!” I exclaimed. “You used to do that!”
“He does copy me a bit. I don’t mind. He’s my boy, he’s paid to help me out.”
“He’s paid, is he?”
“We all are.”
“What changes there must be, and so many new people.”
“Oh yes, it’s much bigger than before, and I have my Emile, and we do get along wonderful well.”
Emile growled at me.
“She’s all right, Emile, she’s a friend. Been gone so long.”
“I’m here now.”
“Yes. There you are.”
I thought at first that Jacques Beauvisage had put on weight, but it was not fat he had accumulated, I think it was fondness. He had grown an attachment; parenthood had put a tiny touch of softness to his face. In my absence he had found somewhere else to put his love; it was only fitting, I suppose, but still it smarted.
Back into Paris we went, along the crooked, crowded streets, more dismal than I remembered, all the way unto the boulevard. And there it was.
The Monkey House, grown so large in my absence.
I was shy of it. It was like seeing an old friend after a decade, once slender but now gone over to corpulence. Once young, now middle-aged and thick with it.
There was not one but two great doors at the front, one labeled IN, the other OUT. Our old neighbor on the boulevard, the Little World Theater, had been pulled down and onto its land the Monkey House had spread. To the right, on the fallow ground where the chess café had once stood, more additions had been built. All this progress was protected by tall metal fencing and a large spiked gate, which Jacques ushered me through. High atop the gate was hung the old bell of Henri Picot. I walked toward the door marked IN, but before I climbed the steps Jacques took my arm.
“Back way, Little. Come through the back.”
I followed him to a side door and entered territory unfamiliar to me: plain walls, dirt floors, boys running back and forth deep in business. Near this back entrance were several stacked shop dummies. I knew these! They were the last remnants of dear Edmond Picot, gone over to the Ticre printworks. One of the mannequins had a mustache. I was shocked to see them. Jacques tugged me on.
“To come this way,” he said. “Now to come. Must not keep them waiting.”
There was Florence Biblot in the kitchen, still shiny and now with more folds and creases, and with a small, thin girl in an apron helping her.
“Hello, Florence!” I called. “Do you remember me? How I have missed your cooking!”
“Ddddd, dddd,” she said, giving her little laugh, just as before.
“Now, Little, come fast. Must not upset them.”
I was taken into a study. The floor was dotted with metal pails, many of them filled with cigar ash and stubs; the walls and the large desk in the center were covered with prints, portraits of different people. Jacques told me to wait there and was gone.
I’ve done this before, I thought; it’s like my first day at Versailles. Only what a different place this was, what a different room. A moment later, the heads on the papers seemed to shiver in terror as the door opened and the Widow Picot entered. She was massive and mole-ridden, proudly hairy, profligate of eyebrow and of lip, a great handsome toad in a pretty dress, indomitable, brutish, and bad-tempered. Her hair remained tied up, out of sight beneath her great lace bonnet, but her clothes, I noticed now, looked a little dirty and careworn.
“What a nerve to show your face,” she said. “Why should we have what the palace spurns?”
“I want to go back,” I said. “I’d rather not stay.”
“But you never can go back, spit, so buck up.”
The door opened once more, the heads on the pages shivered again, and here, done up in silk and powder, came the cadaverous form of my own dear master, quite wasted away, his clothes and jewelry new and shining but cloaking something old and hurting. The beauty spot, now migrated to his chin, did little to improve the spectacle.
“Dear Widow Picot,” he said.
“Doctor Curtius.” She nodded.
“Quite well?”
“Fit! Fit!”
“I prosper myself.”
“I am glad of it.”
From which I understood that the widow and my master did not see each other every day.
“She is come back.”
“I wish to return to Versailles,” I said.
“But they won’t have you, Marie,” my master said. “They sent you home.”
“I’ve told her already. She wouldn’t believe me.”
“Elisabeth will call for me,” I said.
“What trouble you have caused,” chimed in the widow. “It was Swiss Guards that hit Jacques. His head was bleeding. People from your country!”
“I am sorry for it.”
“I should think so!” she said.
“Am I to do the hairs, as before?” I asked.
“You shall do what you are told,” said the widow. “You may have come from a palace, but here’s another, one called the Great Monkey House. I don’t want to hear anything about any other.”
“No, madame.”
“I’m afraid you cannot have a key to the wax cupboard, Marie,” Curtius added.
“Certainly not,” confirmed the widow.
“There is still more for you to learn, Marie, but there are so many heads and hands to be made that you must be thrust into service.”
“I must?” I asked. “Thank you, sir. I do thank you for that.”
“Don’t get above yourself,” added the widow, “and don’t go where you’re not needed. The attic is dangerous, the rooms are not safe. Step up there and you’ll fall to your death. The architects of the Great Monkey House have advised us never to let anyone step up there.”
“No, madame. Please, sir, madame, may I ask something? Will you be showing the royal family at dinner?”
A silence before the widow muttered, “There must be some compensation for Jacques.”
“You will, then?” I whispered. “You will!”
“I don’t like her noise, I never did.”
“And I shall be paid like anyone else. Now I shall be paid?”
“I am done with this interview,” said the widow. “I was not looking forward to it, and it has put me in a foul temper. I’m stepping out. I’ll return this evening. It may not be until late. Send a boy if you need me. I’ll be with the better people.”
She left, taking words away with her. My master and I stood looking at each other, neither knowing what to say. At last my master, stroking his beauty spot, muttered, “She’s gone to the Palais-Royal. She has rooms there. She is blessed by the Duc d’Orléans himself, who gave his permission.” I said nothing. He continued. “She’s mostly there these days, smoking her cigars. We keep all the best waxes there, all the good humans in polite society. It’s very grand, actually. Such an address and such rent! While here we have all the criminal and dreadful countenances. You see? Only the bad here, all the good there. She looks over the good people and I master the other tribe. It’s an accommodation, you see. It’s how we live these days: divided.”
“It has all grown very much since I left, sir.”
“Yes,” he said dolefully, “we do prosper.”
“Excuse me, sir, I can’t help noticing. There’s something on your chin.”
> “Is there?’” he murmured, touching the dark circle. “Oh yes, I quite forget it’s there sometimes. It’s supposed to make me look more attractive.”
“And does it, sir?”
“I wear it for her. Do you know, Little, it cost me thirty-five livres? It’s the very best quality, you see, black taffeta. I’m never quite sure where to put it. Sometimes I have it on a cheek, at others upon my upper lip. Recently it has come to rest upon my chin, where I think it is happiest. But it’s scarcely worth the bother, Marie, for she never notices.”
He went silent again, then let out a long melancholy sigh, shaking himself a little. “Come with me, then.”
As we walked, not into the old Monkey House but through a part of that swollen building I had not known before, I asked him, “Did you like the heads? My heads? A little?”
“I am a collection of pains and twitches.”
“We’ve come a long way from Berne, sir.”
“Berne? I do remember it, Little. Yes, a long way—and yes! I have come so far.” He was walking faster now, as though we were being chased. “May I tell you something, Marie? I have been discovered. I am the great leveler. I equalize the people, you see. People have written about me—and I have read it!—and that is what they call me, Little, the great leveler.” Then his eyes fell back on me, and it was as though he were waking from a dream. “Oh! Dear Marie,” he said, looking me in the eyes and smiling at me for the first time, “I should not say it in front of her, she is so mighty, but I am happy you’re home.”
“I am glad to see you too, sir. But, also, I will say that I am sorry to leave the palace. I grew so fond of Elisabeth and she of me. I think I must go back again, very soon probably. You will spare me, won’t you?”
“Versailles is being emptied, Marie. The aristocrats are packing up.”
“Are they? Are you sure? Why would they? I don’t understand.”
