Little

by Edward Carey

  “It is slow of late.”

  “Yes, yes, I know it is! What a shame for you now that you’ve thrown poor Valentin out upon the streets. Off with you, back of the line.”

  After André Valentin was left on the boulevard, on the other side of the gates, blood coming from his nose, he had not been idle. He’d shaken his fist at the Great Monkey House, and other people seeing him had joined in. What a deal of fist-shaking there was. Valentin had turned to his brother and sister fists and told them what a terrible place it was, and they had said, “Could you tell us more?” “Yes, much more! How long do you have?” So they took him in, and for food and wine he told them terrible tales, and in this way André Valentin survived. I believe it was dreams of destroying the Monkey House that kept him among the living.

  After Jacques Beauvisage disappeared, Valentin had found himself a job policing the district, looking into other people’s property with his eyes, which viewed things at strange angles, and he found there evidence that others had overlooked. He pulled open a woman’s dress and found dangling from her neck a locket; opened, it showed a picture of the king, and so she was executed. He found a Swiss Guard in the sewers, and he was drowned on the spot. He found a child with a doll of the queen, and the child and the child’s mother were imprisoned. And recently, somehow, he had come into money, enough to buy himself advantages here and there; we had our suspicions about that money, but we had no evidence, and no one would support a foreigner’s claims against those of a patriotic citizen. André Valentin had grown official, strutting back and forth with a fat tricolor ribbon upon his chest, and we could do little to stop him. He was one of a new tribe of men grown so loud in those days, not in himself longing for liberty but finding such advancement among those who proclaimed it.

  Edmond and I came back from the markets with very little, sometimes nothing at all. Once, we returned home to a terrible noise above. Rushing upstairs, we found my master heaving things about.

  “Sir! Sir, what are you doing?”

  “Help! Give me some help.”

  “Oh,” said Edmond.

  “I’m moving my bed. We’re moving in together.”

  “Oh,” said Edmond, desperate. “Oh dear!”

  “If you won’t help, go away!”

  So his mattress lay beside her bed, on the healthy side.

  “This is my happiness, there in that bed. My happiness. My life. Prop it up. The left side is weakness, but the right side is sound. I’ll have it all, Marie, left and right.”

  She lay still in a heap, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, while around us the rooms fell into ruin.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  The Celestial Bed of Doctor James Graham.

  Some buildings, no matter what befalls them, whether they are abandoned or painted over, whether left alone or leased to new and destructive lodgers, still retain their characters. The establishment vacated by Doctor James Graham was just such a place. Gone from the boulevard was Doctor Graham, fled back to Scotland, and yet some portion, some scent, some essential deposit of this doctor remained. Perhaps it was longing; perhaps it was lust; whatever it was, something of him persisted when he departed, and whatever it was could not get out of the house. DOCTOR GRAHAM’S CELESTIAL BED—TO LET was across the boulevard from us, and in those long mornings and afternoons I took to looking out of the window at the abandoned building.

  Upon the outer walls were the flaking remains of two silhouettes, one a man, the other a woman, neither enrobed in any way. I watched those ghostly forms. Edmond came and sat beside me. He was in the light then.

  “Edmond,” I said. “Edmond, I see you very clearly now.”

  “Marie,” he said. “Yes, Marie. I am glad it’s you.”

  He held my hand. Sitting together at the window, he very close to me, we observed the place of Doctor Graham’s. We watched the house opposite. I wondered how it should be to stand inside.

  Upon a foggy and scarcely populated evening we approached Doctor Graham’s house. We crossed the muddy safe zone between our building and his, led on by those silhouettes. We stood on tiptoes and tried to look in, and at first we saw nothing. Just darkness. Around the back was a door that we discovered could be easily jimmied open, and we stepped inside. We dared to light a candle. Having come in the back way, we entered now the part of the property that we immediately understood was not for the general public. We had come, Edmond and I, upon the dressing rooms of Doctor Graham’s house. Cracked mirrors, a frayed underskirt upon the floor, a stale message inscribed on a piece of yellowing card: Meet me at Ramponeau’s Café? The usual time? and signed Famished Victor.

  We traveled along a plain corridor into the belly of the house. Why did the air feel so thick in there? And what was the smell of the place? Some musk or spice I did not know. We reached now the entrance hall and stopped there awhile to read a notice painted upon the wall:

  Welcome to the temple of Doctor Graham, constructed for the propagation of beings rational, and more beautiful in mental as well as bodily endowment than the present puny, feeble, and nonsensical race of probationary mortals, which crawl, fret, and politely lay at cutting one another’s throats for nothing at all on most parts of this terraqueous globe. Welcome inside, welcome indeed. You shall not be disappointed here, but henceforth be CHANGED. Step in, open yourselves to greater influences. Only step in. Step in.

  “Edmond,” I said, “shall we not take this tour ourselves, step by step, as it is written? Let us follow it as if this place were once again open to the evening’s crowd.”

  “Yes, Marie,” he said.

  “Good,” I said, and read the new words out aloud: “‘Proceed, under the new influence of unfettering music and balmy odors.’”

  We moved into a chamber where the walls were painted with naked figures very close together; illuminated by Edmond’s flickering candle, they seemed to be moving. MUSIC SOFTENS THE MIND OF A HAPPY COUPLE, MAKES THEM ALL LOVE, ALL HARMONY, said one banner painted overhead.

  “We must imagine that there is music, Edmond.”

  “Yes, Marie,” he whispered. “I can almost hear it.”

  Up the stairs we went, holding banisters padded in stuffed silk. At the top of the stairs was a large door, this too with writing upon it:

  Inside will be found THE CELESTIAL BED OF DOCTOR GRAHAM. Neither myself nor any of my servants need ever see or know who the parties are in repose in this chamber, which I call the SANCTUM SANCTORUM! The CELESTIAL BED OF DOCTOR GRAHAM. The whole of the apparatus in this apartment, of which I can give little idea in words, has been fitted up at great expense, the result of a long and intense study. Now. Open the door!

  Edmond did so. But we stood not before the Celestial Bed of Doctor Graham but before an antechamber. Another door faced us, with another legend emblazoned above it:

  THE TEMPLE OF HYMEN

  There were further instructions: Do you now allow my servants to take from you your possessions which shall be returned to you, more sweetly smelling when all is done. HUSH NOW! Do not speak a word!

  Edmond’s candle was shaking increasingly, I saw—but as I was about to put out my hand to steady him, I found mine too was shaking. We read on:

  It is entirely sensible and proper for initiates, should they feel the need, which shall always be encouraged, to help the partner with the shedding of society’s lent things. No shoes within. No jacket. No bonnet. No wig. No dress. No breeches. No shirt. No corset. No underdress. No underclothes. No thing. No thing at all.

  And the words were of such a commanding nature that, shaking though we were, we obeyed and began, as if in a trance, the business of undressing each other: fumbling with each other’s garments, loosening everything and letting it fall to the floor in a pile, all the while gasping for air. The covered part of Edmond was uncovered now. And he whispered to me:

  “Marie, your nipples are very small and very pointy. I
hadn’t thought of that.”

  And I said nothing.

  And Edmond said, “They are very nice.”

  And then I gently said, “Shhh,” for there was another sign: NO WORDS. NO WORDS AT ALL. ONLY MUSIC. LISTEN UNTO THE MUSIC.

  But all the music we could hear was the drumming of our hearts.

  Now Edmond, moving before me, opened the door to reveal a great silk curtain in front of us on which had been painted the commanding words: PROCUL! O PROCUL ESTE PROFANI! We found the opening in the curtain, and we went through it, and Edmond whispered:

  “The Celestial Bed of Doctor James Graham!”

  There was no doubting it, for no other object in the history of objects constructed for horizontal humans ever resembled it. It measured a whole twenty feet by fifteen, and suspended above this considerable surface was a large dome, with a circular mirror inside that reflected perfectly the ruffled silken sheets below. Beneath the dome was the colossal headboard, with yet another instruction from Doctor Graham:

  BE FRUITFUL. MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH THE EARTH.

  Edmond and I were so small before it. There were not even steps to climb up. Had we been introduced to a simple bed of a quiet and retiring nature, had we entered into an honest, unassuming, and sympathetic location, we might perhaps have been more at ease with each other, but faced with this palatial structure, built for titans, we were very small and uncertain.

  I felt watched by that strange chamber, as if I myself were a wax person to be considered from all angles. Thirty-two years old. A diminutive woman. I climbed up onto the bed and pulled the dusty sheets over me. After a moment Edmond followed.

  He put his lips on mine, very dry lips at first, and then he kissed me on my cheeks and my neck. Edmond made a sighing noise as if he were very sleepy, and then I was gently pushed onto my back and then he continued kissing from the neck downward, his lips not so dry now. There was a gentle kissing on my shoulder. I felt him descending still farther, and he arrived shortly after at my breasts, which were touched by his fingers and then kissed. “Your back arched,” he whispered then. “You gasped!”

  Very shortly afterward, Edmond Henri Picot pushed himself into me, and filled me, and I was held and rocked. I closed my eyes, and in the darkness there was Edmond again.

  “I am Edmond Henri Picot,” he said, “and you are Marie Grosholtz, known as Little, and that is just how it ought to be, and should have been a long, long time ago.”

  And so. Once there was an impenetrable girl called Marie Grosholtz, until one afternoon she was cracked open and another Marie Grosholtz was discovered beneath, a painful skinless person, who was existing just beneath the surface. And would not be covered up anymore.

  That was living. That was such living. I was in love.

  In love with Edmond.

  Afterward, we both of us felt our yearnings, at many odd moments, to slip across the boulevard and bring ourselves together upon Doctor Graham’s broken bed. Sometimes we were in such a rush for it that I would remain in my dress and Edmond would trip over his fallen breeches and his stockings, all wrinkled around his feet. And it did not matter that we were the only genuine thing in that abandoned property, we made it live again. For me, for my life, it was this body of all bodies, the one that was Edmond Henri Picot, that was mine. I became the greatest expert of Edmond Henri Picot and was enormously proud of my scholarship. We truly fitted together, ulna to radius, fibula to tibia. And always, at the end, there was Edmond, staring at me so intently, laying his head upon my chest.

  This life, I thought, goes on and keeps surprising.

  This little box, this chapter, ends here, sealed tight from those others that surround it, so that those other people of different chapters may not come in here and disturb, so that its vault may be sealed up, never spilling beyond its boundaries but kept tight shut and precious, and Godly and triumphant, and wonderful too. But remain only itself. Wax, also, is privacy. Wax seals letters. Wax keeps all the world’s words where they should be, until the right hands come to let them out.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Sixth heads.

  In the line for bread, I said to some confused stranger, “Edmond Picot’s unpeeled me.” Walking home, I stopped an old man to announce with joy, “I am unbuttoned!” I told a young mother, “I am loved! I am!” Those were our days, Edmond’s and mine, with occasional interruptions from my master. When we were not considering ourselves, when we had my master’s company, we looked about us and considered everyday things—windows and shutters, lintels, doors and their handles—and were grateful for them. Buildings kept upright, so that we might live inside them. We said our good mornings and good evenings to each other. These days we sat at table not in the dining room, for we had seen a rat opening a cupboard there, but in the old kitchen. A setting for the widow was always laid. Children played outside on the broken paving stones, their sounds disturbing our brittle home.

  The wax population grew dusty. The king’s severed head remained made of air. When we visited the figures, removing certain among them that were no longer safe to display, our feet left tracks in dust. So many likenesses had become dangerous. You must not have a face that resembles Mirabeau; you must not have a Lafayette; there must be no evidence that such a person ever had a face. The royal family—most of all the royal family—were not to be at your home, not at dinner, not even in a cage.

  Like her king, the queen was executed; we stayed inside that day, though we still heard the cheers. But Elisabeth was still alive, kept prisoner in the temple. And I knew I must not visit her, for such a thing would threaten all our lives. I satisfied myself by walking by the building once a week. I must wait, I thought. They’ll be satisfied now they’ve taken the queen. They’ll be quite full up now.

  Our footprints in the dust of the great hall resembled a history of the French people, as we dragged the forbidden ones into back rooms and there undressed them—first of their clothes, then of their heads. The bodies remained in one piece; only the heads were dangerous. We lifted the forbidden heads, Edmond and I, high above our shoulders and then we hurled them to the floor, smashed them one by one, until they all were mixed in together. Edmond handed me the heads of the royal family. It was my privilege since I had made them. And down they tumbled. A nose of the queen muddled up with the ear of her husband or the chin of her brother-in-law, or with a piece of Mirabeau’s pitted cheek, or Bailly’s empty eye sockets. (Eyes were saved because they could be used again.) We walked upon all those yesterday heads, crunching them underfoot, then swept up all those fractions and dropped them, every last crumb, in our great brass bowl. Then we lit the fire and melted them all together.

  Once they had liquefied, and we’d put out the fire, Curtius stood over the bowl with great dignity to perform the rite. Putting his hands over the cooling substance, feeling its last heat, he muttered:

  “Man that is born of wax hath but a short time to live.”

  Half an hour later, we upturned the big pan and, with a little help from a palette knife, freed the contents. With a thump it fell upon the table, a large half-sphere of melted time, utterly illegible. Heads lost. Surfaces forgotten.

  I sat down next to my master, quiet now. The widow was sleeping upstairs.

  “So much work,” I said.

  “Some fine work, some not so fine.”

  “All gone. Lost forever.”

  “And yet,” he said.

  “And yet, sir?”

  “We have the molds. Not quite forgotten after all. Only invisible.”

  There we were, Edmond and I, holding hands in the back rooms of the Great Monkey House. There was Doctor Curtius, busying himself around the Widow Picot, whose merest noise would prompt him to marvel: “Listen to her! What spirit!”

  But our life could not continue undisturbed. Late one night, near midnight—we had been asleep—a sound rang through the hall. We barely unde
rstood it at first; we had forgotten what it was.

  Someone was ringing Henri Picot’s bell.

  Ten men. Coming past the rusting fence, banging upon IN, banging upon OUT.

  “They won’t go away,” I said. “I’ll tell them we’re closed.”

  “I can’t go down,” said Curtius. “I mustn’t leave her.”

  “Perhaps they’ve come for the king at last.”

  I went down. Edmond came too.

  “Is it only you?” they asked.

  “Yes,” I said quickly, “just us here.”

  “Where’s the master?”

  “Not available,” I said.

  “Do you have equipment?”

  “Do you mean for casting?” I asked, surprised. “Yes?”

  They said we had better come at once, that we should bring our equipment. They took us across the river. Hurry, hurry, they said. To a small house with a great crowding around it. People weeping. Our escort pushed us through. We went up to the first-floor apartment, where we were led along a corridor filled with men all gathered around a single woman in a striped dress, slightly ripped, whom they would not let go.

  “What has she done?” I asked.

  “Murder,” was the reply.

  We were ushered into a crowded bedroom. The crowd parted, revealing a man upon the bed, naked save for an old dressing gown, a sort of white turban wrapped around his head. The face was moon-shaped and very pitted, the large eyelids were not quite closed, the wide mouth was open, the tongue sticking out a little of a corner, the skin was diseased, sores, scabs, broken wheals. There was a great hole in the chest, a deep, dark mouth; you could see right down its throat. The man had begun to congeal; the liquids inside had steadied and started their darkening.

  “Are you all right, Edmond?” I asked.

  “Yes, thank you, Marie,” he said. “Do not worry about me. I’m very strong. I’m made of tough stuff. You tell me what to do, and I’ll be doing it right beside you. There, I quite surprise myself! There, I looked at him again. A dead, murdered man.”