Little

by Edward Carey

  “And you!” I said to Curtius, and I turned and kicked him in the shins. “And you too. How much have I done for you? And what then have you done for me? If it wasn’t for me, you would never have had any murderers. I gave you that idea. I got you the royal heads. I am dirty? How could you ever scrub the dirt of guilt from your skins? How many years have I mopped your floors? How many years have I yes-sirred and no-madamed? And what have you done for me? Not even thanked. You could not even speak up for me. So difficult a thing that was for you. What little for Little? Once, woman, you saw a little happiness, a little love growing in your dolls’ house, and you snuffed it out without a thought. You’d smother anything beautiful with your mean thinking. And now this is the welcome I receive for saving Edmond. I can take so much, but no more.

  “You should thank me! I’ve earned my place! Look at you, red to bursting! Burst, then! You ruin everyone who comes your way. How you bullied Edmond into nothing more than a dishrag. You’ve reduced my master to a carcass, eaten up with love for you. While you sit around, so heavy with dead love, making such a meal of mourning—all for that dummy on the landing. Burn that thing and save us the agony! Stand back, Widow Picot! Stand back or I swear I’ll relieve you of your head!”

  “The bitch! The little bitch!” screamed the widow, trying to catch her breath. “Do something, Curtius! How dare she? Without me you’d all be on the streets. Without me there would be none of this. I do everything in this house. I keep it going. And do you know what a burden that is? Do you know how it is killing me?”

  “Die, then!” I shouted from the corridor, then marched to my workshop and slammed the door so hard I hoped the whole house would tumble in. I sat for a while, weeping in my bloody clothes. Then, once I had calmed, I started packing my things, certain now that I should be dismissed.

  At last Jacques came, carrying a bottle of wine. My master followed soon after.

  “Important documents, those heads,” said my master.

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “Well, Marie, you were very cruel.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Thank you, I think. Thank you?”

  “Anything else?”

  “The widow is with her son.”

  “Anything else?”

  “My shin hurts.”

  “Well, it would.”

  “I don’t know what came over you, but it shall not be ignored. You must apologize, but not yet. For now, leave her be.” He sighed. “That was not like you at all, Marie.”

  “Well, I’m waking up at last, I suppose.”

  “I’ve never seen such a thing. What is happening to us all?”

  “I was pushed to it.”

  “Marie,” he said, “will you help me now with the heads?”

  “Yes,” I said at last. “Yes, I will do that.”

  And we did. And there they were, all over again.

  “Sir,” I asked my master as we worked, “how was it there? At the Bastille.”

  “It was, I think, very terrible.”

  “You must have been very brave, sir.”

  “Yes. I must.”

  “Were you not frightened?”

  “Let us concentrate on our work.”

  “Missed it,” said Jacques. “Sorry to say. Should like to have seen it.”

  “You missed it, sir?”

  “Well, Marie, we were not far away.”

  “We was at the Café Robert,” said Jacques, “on the Quai Saint-Paul.”

  “Sir, is that true?”

  “Put him there,” said Jacques, “to keep him safe.”

  “Truly, sir?”

  “It’s heads I’m best at, Marie. The captaining business—I’m not made for it, I’m afraid. Heads, though, I’m quite at home with. It is where I belong, you do see?”

  “It was well done, Jacques.”

  “Though am sorry to have missed it.”

  “Heads, you see, like these.”

  Those two heads had provoked a newness in the house. They found my temper, and they split the widow’s lip and my knuckles, and they did another incredible thing: they brought Edmond down from the attic. The widow had him moved back to her own bedroom. She wouldn’t let me by him that night, but the next day I brought up a bundle containing some material, a little white linen, some thread, a needle, and a pair of scissors.

  “What are you doing here?” the widow demanded, blocking the door. Was there just a little bit of fear upon her?

  “These are for Edmond,” I said.

  “You do not belong on this corridor.”

  “I think he might like these.”

  “You cannot come in.”

  And then from inside the room: “Marie. Marie.”

  “He’s calling me. I hear him. Hello, Edmond.”

  “Marie. Marie.”

  “It’s all he ever says,” she admitted in her fluster. “He’s not right.”

  “He calls my name. He wants to see me.”

  “No, no, it’s just a noise. It has no meaning.”

  “It’s my noise. The noise that means me.”

  “Marie. Marie.”

  “He does call me. Hello, Edmond! I have brought something for you.”

  “Nonsense. He must not have them. He’ll hurt himself.”

  “I do not think he will.”

  “Who cares for your thoughts? When have you grown so bold and important?”

  “Since you shut me out.”

  “You’re an ugly little woman.”

  “Yes, madame? Is that your worst?”

  “You have nothing to do with my family.”

  “That is hardly true.”

  “Get downstairs.”

  “Yes, madame. But only because I decide to. Good-bye, Edmond, just for now. I am glad your mother has noticed you again.”

  And though she did not give him the bundle, she let him have some pieces of linen, and out of them Edmond formed a human figure, a new doll Edmond. That was something. He braved himself to the banister and dropped the doll into the hall so I should find it later. What in-house rebellions there were!

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  I am busy.

  Beyond our walls, unrest ruled the streets. Jacques Beauvisage took my master’s place patrolling the boulevard with Emile Melin and other muscles. Coming home, small blood on his shirt, he hugged us all and shouted, “All are citizens!” Soon he had proved himself so thorough in his business that he was appointed head of the National Guard for the boulevard section. My master retreated to the Monkey House until his brief tenure as captain was overturned, whereupon he returned to work in the Cabinet.

  Word had got around about our heads of de Flesselles and de Launay. Now, when a person was cut in unequal portions, we were known as the ones to call on to get a good copy, so that afterward, when passions had calmed and the sun had come up, the results might be judged with a more rational eye. In this atmosphere, I took command. Every person at Curtius’ was primed. Every one of us, no matter how great nor how small, played his or her role, handing buckets, scrubbing floors, mixing plaster, stirring wax, stitching in hairs, adjusting glass eyeballs, moving plinths, taking money.

  Though the widow still would not let me near Edmond, I was emboldened by his voice calling my name. I could do heads; I had proved it. So I did heads, and my master let me. He stood back while I lugged those heavy balls onto my lap—the ones that had come away from the body, and been left, late at night, in our care. No one else wanted the labor, and I didn’t mind. No, that’s not it: I was glad of it. I felt I was living, such great living. I’d never been in such need before. These were the most popular of my days. I quite impressed myself. I quite came into my own.

  “Truly, sir, may I do it?” I would ask Doctor Curtius.

  “Yes, yes, Marie, you m
ay.”

  “You do not want it for yourself?”

  “I confess I am a little tired.”

  “It is a fine head. Do look at the lips, the teeth within.”

  “I find I have not the appetite.”

  “You say that!” I couldn’t help but grin. “They’re just bodies, sir.”

  “Of course I know that.”

  “Entirely natural.”

  “But their ending was not, perhaps.”

  “Of course it was! Isn’t it a natural thing for a human to kill a human?” I stopped then, listening to myself. “But . . . yes, sir, yes. Poor man. Poor fellow. It is terrible, isn’t it, sir?”

  “Very terrible. Murder is, you see.”

  “Yes, sir. But I ought to do the head, oughtn’t I?”

  “Yes, I think you must.”

  “I do not mind the work.”

  The staff, all those new people, how they looked up to me! They nodded when I came near and kept their distance, such was their respect. I asked them to do things and they did. I’d never before had that experience. Georges was very busy working alongside me; he was not so talkative as before, but that was because there was so much to be done. And we were doing such important work, getting the heads down, putting them in the hall so people could come and see.

  Even if the widow did not let me see Edmond, she began to show me new respect. She stopped ordering me around, and soon withdrew from the Monkey House altogether during the day, spending her time with Edmond at the Palais-Royal. She left me alone.

  With all the incomings, there was also one outgoing. The young fellow of sixteen called André Valentin, the one with the wide-set eyes. It was not his eyes that got him thrown out but his character, for Martin discovered that Valentin was stealing from the cash box. The poor boy was terrified. The widow summoned us all into the great hall and asked Valentin if it was true. He tearfully nodded and begged to be given another chance. The widow stood before him for a moment, then she leaned forward and ripped the C rosette from his breast.

  “No! No!” the boy cried. “Sir, please!”

  Curtius only shook his head sadly.

  “Put him out,” the widow said.

  “Please! Another chance!” he cried, looking both this way and that.

  Jacques’ boy, Emile, marched him to the gates, shoved him to the other side.

  “This is not the end of André Valentin!” he screamed. “One day I shall return, and then I shall pull this house down!”

  I felt for him, poor boy, headed now toward the ditch. But I had no time to wonder over his poor fate. We had wax people to show. We had never been so popular. Men and women every day, hundreds of them, paying three sous each—reduced price for vainqueurs de la Bastille.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Some love stories.

  This is the story of a shop. The story of a business, of its high and its lows, of its staff coming and going, of profit and loss, and sometimes of the outside world and the people who came knocking on our doors. So then. Let me explain.

  The royal family, including Princesse Elisabeth—most especially my Elisabeth—were moved from Versailles to Paris. A vast mob of women from the markets had come to the palace demanding bread, and the king, surrounded, fearing for his life, was bullied by a great gathering of common folk. The palace was shut up. I would have been frightened for Elisabeth, but I knew nothing of the bloody upheaval until it was over. A head was brought to me—that was how I knew.

  A cloud of fishwives from Les Halles arrived on our doorstep with a parcel wrapped in an apron. They spilled it onto the table. One head, inexpertly severed.

  “Here,” a woman said. “I brought this specially.”

  “Well,” I said, “who is it, then?”

  “A guard from Versailles.”

  “A Swiss Guard?”

  “Yes, one of them.”

  “I don’t recognize this face. I doubt that his own mother would.”

  “Make it over in wax.”

  “It has been kicked, I think.”

  “Ddddd, ddddd.”

  That was Florence, the cook. Florence, among them!

  “Florence, have you been there? Did you go?”

  “Ddddd. Did. I did.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do it,” Florence said. “Make the head.”

  “I wish you had brought it to me before it was so tossed about.”

  “Do it.” No smile about her now, none at all.

  It was Florence who told me that Elisabeth had been moved. They were so proud of their work, those women.

  “Your old home has been shut up,” she said.

  What emptiness then. Has there ever been such emptiness as Versailles abandoned? And then: Where to put all the people who had lived there?

  “I am sorry to hear it.”

  “Sorry, are you?” asked Florence.

  “Well, for Elisabeth’s sake.”

  “Sorry? She says she is sorry?”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t be, can I? I’m just a servant. I only do what I’m told.”

  “Then do that head there.”

  “Yes, Florence.”

  “And later I’ll bake you something nice.”

  The next morning I went to the Tuileries Palace, where the royals had been taken. How my heart thumped as I walked through the gardens. There were Swiss Guards and soldiers in formation before the palace and a great thronging of Parisians hoping for an eyeful. I pushed my way to the front—children are allowed to do this, and I was still as small as a child—and confronted the guards. “I am a former servant of Madame Elisabeth,” I said, “a special servant.” A friend, even. Would they let me in? “Tell her that Marie Grosholtz,” I said, “her heart and her spleen, is waiting just outside.”

  “Go away, miss.”

  “Just tell her. My name. She’ll want to see me.”

  “No visitors. Get away!”

  Someone in the crowd spat at me then, and another shoved me, and then Georges was beside me, picking me up, come to fetch me because a new head had arrived. And so I hurried home, telling myself I’d be back later. Such unlikely things happened these days, after all: The people had challenged the royal family. I had challenged the Widow Picot. And this: Edmond was out of the attic. Elisabeth was closer. We lived in Paris, all three of us: he and she and I.

  “I shall go soon,” I told my master. “Make use of me now, while you still can. Once I’m gone, you shall have to take the heads and make them. I’ll have no more of it.”

  But Elisabeth was not quite ready for me yet. I returned to the Tuileries, but the guards would not even speak to me.

  Parisians spent money at the Cabinet of Doctor Curtius. They came to see the latest heads; they talked of citizens and liberty; they looked at each other and at the heads. So many people viewed the new displays of Parisian life; some wept at a distance, others couldn’t get close enough. Their money was taken upstairs to Martin Millot, entered in the book, and then into the strongbox. I saw it all, for I could walk into the great hall whenever I wished. When the widow went out into it, she came back a little redder of face, once or twice shaking her head, once even in tears, shouting at everyone.

  Beyond the Great Monkey House, there was to be a huge festival.

  “What men are these new Parisians, Little!” Mercier said. “A tableau of concord, of work, of peace. This is the greatest spectacle ever seen. All divisions of citizens are there, preparing for the Fête de la Fédération. The multitude of the city has come out to work selflessly in common cause, readying the Champ-de-Mars for the celebration. All are brothers and sisters, fishwives and aristocrats. Little, we have lived to see it: the perfectibility of man! All will come! All will cheer!”

  “Will Princesse Elisabeth be there?”

  “Everyone! Everyone!”
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  “How I should like to see her.”

  The rain fell in torrents on the Fête de la Fédération, but it did not matter. Thousands of people swarmed into the city, and many of these visited Curtius’ wax populace, marveling at the times they lived in. In that brief moment at the festival, people loved one another and shook hands and kissed their neighbors. A great lightness marked the city; these were miracle days when everyone was beautiful and young, when this city of Paris was briefly utopia. Even Jacques Beauvisage and his Emile thrived within it, roaming the streets, finding and feeding stray dogs, Great Danes and poodles, spaniels limping the thoroughfares, elegant dogs hastily abandoned by aristocratic owners. Curtius sat with the widow in her office, making her small wax ornaments of fruit or flowers. She did not display them, she kept them in a drawer, but she did not throw them out.

  On one of those strange days, in her wax distraction, she left Edmond alone in the yard of the Great Monkey House, and I quietly went to him. In the sunlight I saw his blue veins but also a chipped tooth, the mole on the back of his neck. I knew these spots of his: if he was in the sun for any time, freckles would appear on his lower eyelids and on the bridge of his nose, above his dear, uneven nostrils. And then I saw it: his ears began to redden.

  “Edmond?”

  “Marie.”

  “Edmond! Are you there?”

  “Marie . . . Here.”

  “Are you back? You are!”

  And then, so soon: “Edmond!” called the woman. “Edmond, where are you? Come at once!” His mother was alert, hollered for him once more, and to her he went. But he turned and waved.

  It was during that brief season that Curtius summoned me across into his workshop, almost blushing, some semblance of health upon him. “Do you know about such things, Little?” he said shyly. “Do you have any notion on this topic? Any thoughts? Any advice to give me?”

  “What is the subject, sir? You haven’t said.”

  “I haven’t? I thought I had. Well, love, Marie. Do you know anything about it?”