by Edward Carey
“I do, sir, I do. It is my greatest subject.”
“But do you think, Marie, as a person, you are a person, do you suppose it might be possible that such as I might love?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“But do you think that it might happen that such as I might be loved?”
“I do think it possible, sir.”
“You see, since the recent great changes in business, there has come likewise a change over her. I have noted it. Charlotte, dear Charlotte. Before she needed me only for business, but now I think there is a different need. I do not imagine it. No. Love,” he whispered, “love. What is it? To see that on a face. To capture that in wax. It would be something.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Reductions in the family.
She did a very stupid thing, Elisabeth did. She tried to get away. I was so angry with her. To think she’d have left without saying good-bye. To think she’d have risked her life.
On the night of the twentieth of June, the king, the queen, their two surviving children, and my Elisabeth—all dressed as assorted servants and footmen and governesses, roles they could never convincingly play—fled Paris in a burdensome carriage. At eleven o’clock the following night, the longest day of the year, the fugitives were apprehended in the countryside and brought back to the capital. The whole affronted city came out to watch: the people clogged the streets, filled the windows, climbed the roofs, all watching the impossible sight of the clumsy royal carriage returning at footpace to the Tuileries. The Assembly had mounted signs of warning:
ANYONE WHO APPLAUDS THE KING WILL BE BEATEN
ANYONE WHO INSULTS THE KING WILL BE HANGED
The crowds kept their hats on as the king passed by. They peered in the windows of the carriage; they stared so close. I was there in that crowd; I tried to see her, but I couldn’t get close enough. For just a moment I thought I saw the back of her head, her cap, a little of her blond hair. My Elisabeth. She nearly went away, I told myself, but she’s come back, and I shall see her again one day soon, when she calls for me. She’s sure to call now.
The other royal family, my family of wax, were trundled in a cart in the opposite direction, moved from the Palais-Royal to the Great Monkey House. I was so happy to have them, but they had been sent now to be exhibited with all the sawn-off heads, with the felons and the guilty. They were no longer displayed in a re-creation of the Grand Couvert, but rather placed around a simple table with a man in National Guard uniform rushing in upon them as if reenacting the moment when they were apprehended, at a place called Varennes. There was no time to make a fresh head for the guard, so they found that of a lesser-known poisoner, withdrawn from exhibition long ago, and disguised him with a new black wig. The only royal countenance missing was that of Elisabeth, because I had never modeled her. As if I’d saved her from the scene.
On the seventeenth of July, the National Guard, under the command of Lafayette, fired on a massing of demonstrators, killing fifty. And so the wax Lafayette was brought in to join the criminals on the boulevard, leaving the widow ever lonelier in her dwindling Palais-Royal. The former mayor Monsieur Bailly took the same journey, as did Calonne and Mirabeau; all the waxworks were coming home. On the first of April, the widow herself finally abandoned the Palais-Royal. It was almost empty by then, just a smattering of worthies: Voltaire and Rousseau, Gluck and Franklin and the Montgolfier brothers. Edmond was returned to the Monkey House, though kept upstairs.
On the twentieth of April, fearing invasion, France declared war against Austria and Prussia. On the twenty-fifth, the highwayman Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier was executed in a very new way, using a machine designed by Monsieur Louis. The louisette, as it was called, involved a tall wooden frame and a large angled blade; when a lever was released, the blade was dropped from a height directly onto Monsieur Pelletier’s neck, causing his head to leap away from his body. Jacques and Emile were there to see it. They came back very disappointed.
“Couldn’t see anything,” said Jacques. “Too fast. Off before you knew it.”
And the shop went about its business, busier than ever. What industry was found within this factory, what a machine for reproducing recent history! None of us had a large understanding of the tides of man; each knew only his little portion. For some it was hair, for others teeth; one concentrated on eyes, another on paint; one mixed the wax, another prepared the plaster. No one could see beyond his own individual station. Only together did we make the anatomy of a city in change; only together did we render things legible to all.
The widow in her office smoked cigars and sucked at quills, wondering if she had missed this or that, fretting over decisions, no longer quite sure which way to turn. She stitched a red Phrygian cap for the head of Louis XVI; when that was over, she worked on the new uniforms for the Cabinet’s front-of-house staff. Once these had been dressed as National Guardsmen, but the Guardsmen had lost their popularity after they fired upon citizens in July, so now the boys were to be dressed as sans-culottes, the clothing of the working class: striped trousers and loose shirts and simple jackets. They still wore the Curtius rosette, but to this was added a tricolor cockade: red and blue, the old colors of Paris, and white, the color of the royal family.
Farther down the corridor, I toiled away in the main workshop, opening the molds and freeing wax heads. With me was Georges Offroy, ready with a palette of pinks and reds. In my old workshop next door was the business of hair implantations and teeth and eyes. On the public floor at the cash box was Martin Millot. We lowered our entrance fees, but the public made up the difference, flocking to us in greater multitudes. Children came quoting loudly from the Rights of Man and Citizen. Young maids spat at our wax Lafayette, calling him Corrupter. Old men came, speaking only of the fatherland. To visit Curtius’ in those days was to be patriotic.
On the night of August first, no great national event but one of significance in our home: I heard Curtius and the widow upon the landing. My master had hold of Henri.
“It’s time to put him away, Charlotte. He’s dead! He’s dead! Come out with me.”
“I can’t!” she said, and there were tears in her voice. “Be gentle! A little at a time. I’ll take away his clothes, but no more. He’s my prop. I could have done none of it without him. You never knew him. He’s a greater man than you’ll ever be.”
“But I am alive!”
“Please, Philippe. I am learning.”
The next morning, Henri was naked upon the landing.
On August tenth, there was an enormous gathering of citizens demanding the abdication of the king. From the Great Monkey House we heard the shot and cannon of the Swiss Guards defending the Tuileries. Elisabeth! I thought. She is inside there. I went to my workroom and took out the heart and the spleen. “Be safe, be safe, be safe.”
The Monkey House was locked and shuttered up, like all the other houses around the city. We could not go out; people who did were shot. In the great hall, the hollow people shook a little to the loud report of the guns, Bailly trembled, the members of the royal family tableau jostled in their seats. We lay some of the wax people down upon the ground so that they might not damage themselves should they fall. Everything trembled to the noise of the cannon.
“Please be safe, be safe, please be safe.”
Henri Picot’s bell rang out. When the bolts were pulled back and the doors opened we saw Jacques Beauvisage at the gates and with him his Emile. Emile was very slouched, his face very gray, his eyes closed. He was not standing up by himself. And then Jacques Beauvisage, chronicler of the very best murderers, lifted his crop-headed child over the threshold and it was certain that Emile Melin was no longer living. Jacques had at last seen a murder at firsthand.
“Jacques, what has happened?” called my master.
“Murder! Murder, murder, murder! Killed my boy. My little boy!”
“Oh, Jacques!” I cried.
“Poor dear Jacques!”
“BOY!” roared Jacques.
By now, the whole city was shut down. Men rode from street to street announcing a penalty of death for harboring any Swiss Guard from the Tuileries Palace. Searches went on through the night. The whole city was shaken upside down in the hunt. If the Swiss Guards were gone, then the barrier between the common and the royal was dissolved, and all must spill together in a general confusion of flesh. I did not know if Elisabeth was alive or dead.
“Help,” wept Jacques. “Oh, help!”
In the hot late morning afterward, in my workroom, it suddenly grew very dark. I went to the window, pushed it open, and there came a horrible buzzing. It was flies on the window glass blocking the light. Thick black clouds of flies moved along the boulevard. There were so many bodies then, all over the city.
Officers wearing tricolor sashes banged on the door and demanded to know my master’s nationality. “He is Curtius!” the widow yelled. “Curtius himself.” But the men did not seem to listen. They asked my master again, and he responded that he had been born in Switzerland. Then they asked if anyone else in the building was Swiss, and my master said that yes, his longest-serving assistant, a woman, happened also to be Swiss.
“Two Swiss,” the men said. “It has been noted.”
“They are loyal citizens of France,” the widow said, “both of them.”
“They are from Switzerland.”
“This is their home.”
“They are Swiss. Switzerland is their home.”
“They have done nothing wrong.”
“We shall see. Two Swiss. It is noted.”
When they left the widow was shaking. “You will be safe. I swear it. Even her.”
“Thank you!” I cried. I had expected no such promise from the widow.
“Enough. I don’t wish to hear it.”
“But I do thank you. These are the first kind words you have uttered to me.”
“The first? Well. Enough. You have been useful.”
I could not believe it. “Useful, am I?”
“And, Little,” the widow said, “one thing further, while I may: you’ll want to know. Your princess is safe. They’re all alive, kept in the temple. Prisoners, but all alive. This news came several hours ago. You’ll want to know.”
“Oh! Thank you!”
“Now, get out of my sight.”
“Yes, I shall, I shall.”
“Then do it.”
To my master she said, “I don’t know the rules anymore, they change so fast. I can’t guess. She does. She knows more than I! Only she can make anything from these days. Only a creature such as that.”
What had come upon her for her to crack open like this? What danger must we be in, for her wind to be so blown out? She must fear our extinction, I thought. She must fear it very much.
Our welcome on the boulevard, it seemed, was swiftly running out. Florence Biblot, our cook, left us that morning. She said she’d never work for any Swiss. The next day other men came and asked many questions, and wished to see around the building and made many notes, and called my master “Swiss Curtius from Berne,” and no longer patriot or citizen. It was only because Jacques vouched for him that he was not taken away instantly.
Agents returned to the Monkey House daily, searching our rooms, looking for evidence.
“We’ve done nothing wrong!” cried the widow.
“You harbor Swiss.”
The Great Monkey House was reopened. The louisette had become the favored mode of execution throughout the country; an entire factory on the Rue Mouffetard was devoted to producing the machine. By now its name had been changed: when louisette reminded too many of the disgraced king, it was renamed the guillotine, after a doctor who had sought for many years a humane device of death-entering for criminals.
To deflect suspicion, the widow and my master put the most reviled figures together in the same part of the hall. The royal family was relegated to the old cage that had once held Lazare the baboon.
My master, on notice with official Paris, still longed to be seen in the Monkey House. “She’ll come to me, Marie, very soon now. She shall come to me. She needs me. Charlotte. Any day now, just knock, here I am. The walls are coming down.”
“I’m pleased for you, sir. She is most changed indeed.”
Leaving my workshop one night to visit the people who lived silently in the hall, I surprised the widow, kneeling beside the dummy of her late husband, sewing him up. When she saw me she grew agitated, and cursed me for prying; as she got to her feet she jostled the dummy, and it seemed to me I heard him clink.
One morning, I saw André Valentin, the young man with the squinty eyes, back on the boulevard, talking to Martin Millot through the gate. When I approached them, Valentin slunk off.
“What did he want?” I asked.
“Money, of course,” Martin replied. “Always money.”
“Is he starving?”
“He is hungry.”
“It is best to leave him alone. He is not to be trusted.”
“He is a Frenchman, nevertheless.”
On August twenty-fifth we lost five of our staff. They all went off to war, my brave Georges among them, along with thirty thousand others summoned by the Provisional Executive Committee to join the army. We waved them off, so many young men marching out of Paris, drums throughout the city. They never came back.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
“Model me.”
They’re killing them in the prisons.” Mercier had come to give us the latest installment from the city of Paris. “This very evening. As I speak to you now, prisoners are being brought forward, and are butchered, without trial, without mercy. These bloodied shoes turned me about and sent me running to you. You will shortly no doubt have many heads, Little.” There was such bitterness in his voice. We were sitting together in the hall, all of us, even Edmond.
“And Princesse Elisabeth?” I asked.
“Not the royal family, no. Priests, mostly, it is.”
“Really?” I said. “Thank you. I had better make ready.”
Edmond looked at me. I could not tell what he was thinking.
“Sit down, Sébastien,” said my master. “Drink some wine. We are glad you are here. There has been, in truth, a reduction in visitors of late.”
“Let me tell you about one person in particular,” Mercier continued. “Upon his body are the bleedings of many men. I do not think even he could say the exact number. He’s pulling them apart, hacking into them. Priests and aristocrats. His arms are aching.”
“Mercier, you make no sense,” said the widow. “Who are you talking of?”
“Doctor Curtius and Widow Picot, may I ask you: Where is Jacques Beauvisage?”
“Guarding the district,” said the widow.
“No,” said Mercier. “I’m afraid not, Widow Picot. Beauvisage is murdering priests who won’t submit to the Civil Constitution. He’s cutting them open. The life comes pouring out!”
“You must be mistaken,” said my master.
“Your bloody Jacques. I saw him.”
“No, no, I don’t think so.”
“He drinks much wine,” he said, setting his own glass aside. “He’s so thirsty, you see. It is hard labor murdering men.”
“I don’t think it can be true,” said my master.
“This place,” said Mercier, observing the wax physiognomies, “is a school for murderers.”
My master blanched. “We show only what is beyond our gates,” he said.
“But you don’t have to show it, do you?”
“We do! We must. The people demand it!”
“These heads will bring on more heads. You must cover them up! Put them all away! You must not show them. You must change this new statuary.”
“They are only
what has happened outside, in the city.”
“You cheer it!”
“We observe it.”
“You duplicate it! You hold up the worst and keep it there!”
“There’s nothing more honest than wax. Everyone knows that. It can’t lie.”
That is truth. Wax never lies—not like those oil portraits in gilt frames I had seen all about the palace. Wax was ever the most honest of substances.
“Cover them up, I beg you!”
“But that would be lying.”
Mercier let out a sorrowful groan. “This city shall explode.”
Noise outside. The bell rang. A clot of people again. A different clot, but mobs always look the same. Another head had been brought for me, set upon the table, standing upright upon its neck stump. Blond hair! White skin! Pale gray eyes!
“Oh!” I said in shock. “This is something else. I knew this head! I spoke to it when it was living!”
“Hush, Little. Marie. Girl,” said the widow as quietly as she could, “cast it. You don’t know it. They’ll kill you for knowing it.”
“Is it . . .” said my master, helping me with the plaster. “Is it Elisabeth?”
“At first I saw just the blond hair.”
“Is it?”
“And oh, sir, I thought it was.”
“It is?”
“No. This was—this is some of the Princesse de Lamballe.”
“Oh, it isn’t, then. I’m happy for that. That’s something surely.”
“Her skin is almost pure white.”
“Think of it then as marble, if that helps.”
“But to know a head, sir!”
“On we go.”
“I’ve never known a head before! As if we’re getting closer and closer to them.”
“Come now, Marie, lift up the head.”
“There’s the weight.”
“Good girl.”
Edmond watched us, busy with the head, and did not look away. His eyes were very wide but he was not crying. He was sitting very upright and holding on to his seat. When our work was done and they’d taken the head out from the Monkey House, I saw Mercier seated in the corner. He was the one weeping.
