Nevers

by Sara Cassidy

  Mme Geneviève doesn’t stir. Renard takes hold of her shoulder and shakes, but the old woman remains deeply, impossibly asleep.

  As Anneline and Renard grouse about muddleheaded old people and how disgustingly they snore, Odette gives the oxen a handful of forage. Mme Geneviève clicks her tongue between snores, and when Odette looks up she is startled to see that the old woman’s eyes are half open. Odette is being studied. “Au revoir, madame,” she whispers.

  Mme Geneviève shuts her eyes again.

  Outside, Renard helps Anneline onto his horse. “I will take you home, most attractive one.” He climbs onto the saddle in front of her. Anneline puts her arms around his waist as he shakes the reins and clicks his tongue.

  Odette walks home alone.

  Seventeen

  “Odette!” Niçois calls up from the street with urgency. “This instant! In Rue Casse-Cou. The lady is having her eighth baby. Mother says she’s frightened.”

  Odette hurries to the window. “Frightened?”

  “The lady’s mother died when she delivered her eighth child, which was the lady herself. I’ll show you the way. Don’t forget the wax!”

  Odette pats her apron. “I have it.”

  As Niçois leads her through the narrow streets of Nevers, he tells her quickly what he knows about childbirth. “Keep the room dark and warm. A wet cloth on the mother’s forehead is nice. She may want to bite it. Stay calm.”

  They arrive at an alley filled with fretful wailing.

  “That’s her,” Niçois says. Odette gulps. Niçois squeezes her hand and leads her to a stairwell. At the top is a battered door. “Knock three times. No more. Or Mother will think it’s the devil. And make sure to tell the woman that all will be well.”

  “But I don’t know that it will be.”

  “It will be,” Niçois says.

  Odette climbs the stairs as quickly as she can, her body stiff with fear. She knocks three times at the door. The woman who answers is wholly unlike Anneline. She is solid and ruddy, as if she works in the fields. Her eyes are lively. She stands with her feet apart and her hands on her hips and sizes up Odette. Her smile shows off large, crooked teeth.

  “You look steady and sincere,” she tells Odette. “I think you will be a good help. Now you need to know, when a baby is being born nothing can stop it. Every moment matters. You will see. Time slows down, but every second is filled to the brim. Your first job is to fill each keyhole in the apartment with wax to stop the devil getting through. Next untie all the knots in this home so the baby can sail easily into the world. Can you manage that?”

  Odette nods.

  “Then you will be by my side with clean rags and fresh water and anything else I ask you for. You may have to shoo the others away—the children and the husband.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “Please call me Marie-Claire. And try to smile a little.”

  Odette obediently shapes her lips so that the corners turn upward.

  “Not bad.”

  Marie-Claire leads Odette into a small room where children of all sizes, some wearing pants but no shirt, others wearing shirts but no pants, jostle around a bed that smells of rotten hay. The woman in the bed moans to the man kneeling beside her, “I won’t make it this time, Henri.”

  “You’ll have to!” the man says cheerfully. “Who will make the soup if you don’t?”

  “Henri. I mean it,” the woman says. “God is calling me.”

  “Then I don’t believe in God,” Henri says.

  The children suck in their breaths. “Henri!” the woman admonishes. But the fear washes from her face.

  “Now, now,” Marie-Claire says. She glances at Odette and quietly points to the frayed ribbons in the woman’s hair. “God is all around us, and God is helping you.”

  Odette unknots the woman’s hair and lays out the hair ribbons in neat pink lines along the windowsill. The curtain is held back with a length of hemp rope—Odette undoes this too. Some of the children’s shirts are tied shut at the neck, so Odette undoes these strings while the children stand patiently. They have been through this before.

  In the kitchen a rope of garlic bulbs hangs from the ceiling, their stems braided together. Are braids knots? To be certain, Odette removes the garlic from its hook and unwinds the stems, laying each bulb separately on the kitchen table, the long stems parallel to each other. She then undoes her own braid and winds her hair into a chignon.

  Then she is called by Marie-Claire to stroke the woman’s head and hum to her. When at last Marie-Claire says the baby’s arrival is imminent, the oldest child hands Odette a length of white linen, saying it was washed that morning and has flapped on the clothesline all day in the sunshine, and that every one of her mother’s babies has been caught in this same cloth. “Including me.”

  It is the finest linen Odette has ever touched. It is like holding air. She has been in houses with good cotton and expensive linens, with long curtains and lacy tablecloths, houses free of clamor, so it is strange to touch the finest cloth here in this chaotic place. She looks at the mother, who is tearful, terrified, and at the woman’s husband, who murmurs in a bossy way that the woman seems to need. “You will let this baby into the world. And you will remain here with her. And with us.”

  The children are finally still. They promise to be quiet and are allowed to stand around the bed. Each grips someone else’s hand. Odette is unsure whether they hold hands to give or receive comfort. With a jolt she realizes that it is both at once—like a river flowing in two directions. As if they all share a heart.

  There is warmth and calm in the room, a gentle pulse that Odette recognizes. From where though? She thinks of Félix. She nearly smells dirt. Yes. It is what passed between her and Félix when it was just the two of them talking in the graveyard, or singing together as they walked home, she on his shoulders. Funny that now, in a room where life is about to find light for the first time, she would remember Félix, who was so often waist deep in the dark earth, preparing an “upside-down bed,” as he called a grave.

  Life enters. Out of the dark and wet, from between the woman’s legs, like a flower’s shoot in spring, head first. To Odette, though, the silence is terrible. Marie-Claire takes the small bluish bulb in her hands and turns it, pulling gently, until, like a tassel unfurling, the rest of the baby—shoulders, chest, arms, legs—spirals out of its mother’s body. The babe is wet and glistening, like a pit squeezed from a peach. No, Odette thinks, like a peach squeezed from a peach. A miracle.

  The baby gasps for breath. Odette lets out her own with great relief. Marie-Claire holds the baby up for all to see, and there, high in the air, the baby finally wails. Everyone cheers. Marie-Claire lowers the baby to its mother’s heart, and its pink mouth, small as two rose petals, latches quickly onto its mother’s nipple. The baby sucks and whistle-breathes through its tiny nostrils, then gulps and sighs sweetly.

  The father, Henri, counts the baby’s toes—“un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix”—then bustles across the room, opens the bedroom window and shouts into the night, “New feet! New feet! To run the streets of Nevers!”

  A couple of men wandering late in the streets shout up, “Félicitations!” As if in response, Anne’s brays wind through the streets. The children of the family laugh.

  “He’s happy too,” one says. But Odette knows the truth. Anne, as usual, is only complaining about his lot.

  Blattae liberiores quam me sunt! “Moths have more freedom than me!”

  “It is a girl,” Marie-Claire announces, and then she mouths across the room to Odette, “Maybe.”

  They leave the family to rejoice together, and as they organize Marie-Claire’s bags for the walk home, Marie-Claire explains that the baby is not a usual girl. “It happens every thousand births or so that a child has genitals for both a girl and a boy, or some of one and a few of the other. In some towns such a child is sent away and never seen again. But I fight for them,” Marie-Claire says.
“Guess why?”

  Odette has never heard of such a thing. She doesn’t know what to say.

  Marie-Claire smiles. “I’m one myself. For some reason, I was lucky. My parents treasured me. They said it didn’t matter to them—that they knew nothing of the ways of God and wouldn’t presume to. My husband loved the way I am. He was not a bore. He knew that everyone was equal but different.” Marie-Claire sighs. “Stoke the fire in the kitchen, please, and put some broth on. The mother will need her strength.”

  Odette adds coals to the fire and hangs a pot above it that she has filled with water, carrots, potatoes and onions. She returns to the bedroom, where Marie-Claire is explaining about the new baby. “We will say she is a girl today, but one day she may want to be a boy. That is her power.”

  The family, overjoyed that the mother has not died in childbirth, accepts the baby readily.

  Odette watches as Marie-Claire feels the woman’s forehead. She pinches the mother’s arms and cheeks to make the color return. She gives the family instructions: broth and rest for the mother, and a daily dusting of the baby’s belly button with powdered cumin.

  On their way out the midwife spies the garlic bulbs laid out with precision on the kitchen table. Laughing a little, she grips Odette by the shoulders and says, “Maybe that’s why we had such a perfect birth. I believe you will be good for the babies of Nevers.”

  It is nearing dawn when Odette and Marie-Claire finally step out into the street. The dark sky richens with blue. Marie-Claire hands Odette a small basket. A chill ripples through her. It is not just any basket. It looks exactly the same as the one carried by the girl on the faïence plate.

  “The afterbirth is inside,” Marie-Claire tells her. “You saw it come out after the baby? The placenta. An entire organ that grows to feed a baby while it is in the womb. It is the baby’s first mother, some like to say. Take it to one of the monks at the cathedral. He will bless it and burn it and then have the ashes scattered in the church graveyard. Have you seen how beautifully the trees grow there?”

  Eighteen

  Odette decides she will visit Anne again on her way back from the cathedral. But as she approaches, a very large chicken crests the hill from the opposite direction. It is M. Gustave in his feathered cape. It looks to Odette as though he has drunk a lot of wine. She ducks behind the nearby fountain as M. Gustave hurries toward Anne.

  “Hello, donkey,” he burbles. “Hello, hello, hello. Such a moon last night. A glowing egg. Now for the sun to arrive, the glorious yolk.”

  M. Gustave is speaking so loudly that Odette can hear every word. “Like a great petal, your ear,” he says to Anne, “the petal of a great, gray flower.” Anne tries to step sideways, but M. Gustave puts a heavy arm around the donkey’s neck and holds him fast.

  Odette listens, horrified, as the large man pours out his secrets.

  “I did not bathe once this year,” M. Gustave confides. “I am lonelier than an unhatched chick. By mistake last night I relieved my bladder into my chamber pot. You know that’s where I keep my coins. Now they will rust. Normally I stand at my window if I need to release in the night. The old people tease me about the dark streak along the slates and the strange moss that grows there.”

  Odette pulls her apron over her head to hide her face and prepares to dart. But M. Gustave’s next words freeze her in place. “Recently a stranger with hair like straw paid me sous to relay a message to a girl and her mother.”

  Odette’s ears burn.

  “The girl and her mother are new to town. They live in the house that floats over Rue de la Porte de Croux. I said it was mine, and now they pay me rent. The mother is beautiful. I don’t normally notice women, beautiful or otherwise. I love hens. It has been that way for a long time. Hens are sleek and busy and easy to pick up. They are warm under the arm. They are better than a bed warmer, I have discovered. Yes, they foul the bed, but it is dry by morning. It is a joy to lie there and stroke their soft feathers as their eyes eclipse with sleep. They purr, you know. Better than a cat…

  “The man paid me to deliver dull news, that is all. That someone wanted to see the beautiful woman and her daughter. The coins he placed in my hand were sticky, which made me wonder how he earned them. He was not gentle. He looked like a gentleman, but he was not gentle. Do not mention me, the stranger growled. Do not describe me to anyone…”

  Odette hears the baker pushing his car through the streets, calling out, “Baguette, brioche!”

  M. Gustave is winding up, and he speaks quickly. “I have wanted to be a chicken since I was a boy. I practice. I make my eyes as small as I can. I eat corn. For a long time I swallowed a spoonful each day of the oyster shells I feed my hens to make their eggs strong. Lately I have been eating pebbles. I pray at the cathedral. I light a candle if I have a coin and say, Dear God, if you have pity, bless me with a gizzard.”

  M. Gustave strokes Anne’s neck with a trembling hand, whispers, “Farewell, brother,” then chases after the baker. Odette hears him call, “I hope you won’t mind that my coins are a little damp.”

  She is exhausted after the long night and decides to visit Anne later. She had better head home. Anneline will be needing her. Anne, surprised by Odette’s sudden emergence from behind the fountain, stares after her with surprising feeling, as though his large gray donkey heart were flushing red.

  Nineteen

  Anneline’s fever is down, but although she is nearly over her flu, she still isn’t eating much, because she is in love. Odette is discouraged to see the signs she has so often seen before. Anneline spends the morning brushing her hair and reading Aline et Valcour, sighing, “Renard, Renard, Renard.” Anneline asks Odette to launder her clothes because Renard is taking her for an afternoon stroll.

  As she scrubs her mother’s dress and bloomers against the rocks at the edge of the river, Odette tries not to think about the waterlogged bones of the Roman soldiers below—or of those of Niçois’s father. She wrings out the clothes and lays them on the grass. With the coins from helping Marie-Claire with the previous night’s birth, she has bought a large ball of wool. Now, sitting in the spring sunshine, facing the river, she starts to knit a blanket.

  “I will bet that your hands smell like lanolin,” a voice chimes behind her. Lanolin, Odette knows, is the wax that oozes from sheep. Wool is sticky with it. “And of hickory. Or perhaps those needles are carved from cherry wood?” M. Mains swoops toward Odette’s hands, but she quickly drops her knitting and sits on them.

  “Apologies,” M. Mains murmurs. He joins her on the grass. “I really should ask permission. But I am excited. I have had an excellent few days of research.

  “Early this morning the boy who guides carriages at night let me smell his hands. The hand that holds the lantern smelled of the oily smoke that rises from the wick. But the other hand smelled of night air, from the boy’s beckoning the driver along—night air and a bitter smell, the coins that are the coach driver’s payment. I also smelled the fishmonger’s hands. One smelled of fish, the other of his knife’s oaken handle. I plan to write a new treatise about the kinds of occupations for which one hand smells different from the other.”

  Odette is wary of M. Mains, but as someone whose own hands are often busy, she can’t help being fascinated by his reports.

  “Later I smelled the mayor’s hands. I thought they would smell of ink and paper, but they smelled of claret! And I finally smelled the formidable Mme Source’s hands. She is the woman who lives on the edge of town, her hair a perfectly engineered beehive? If a well is to be built, Mme Source finds the water. She divines. She is beautiful.” M. Mains blushes. “I mean in an academic way. I have long wanted to smell her palms. They smell of beef, mushrooms, red wine and pearl onions. You know what that all adds up to, don’t you? Our city’s most famous recipe. Boeuf bourguignon. The same as my mother’s hands. The smell of home.”

  Odette thought of the lanolin on her hands. What other smells would there be? Cumin. Garlic. Bone broth. Elm l
eaf. Fresh grass. The smells of work. Yes. As she suspected, she is made of work.

  “On my way back to town,” M. Mains continues, “I knocked on some cottage doors, and in one house I met a very interesting woman. Her hands smelled of wax and oxen. And sunlight! She told me she has been trying to make a liquid that will capture sunlight. An amazing idea.”

  “Mme Geneviève!” Odette exclaims.

  “That was her name, yes. She gave me a letter to deliver. No, not a letter. She called it a message. She wanted me to be sure to tell the recipient that it was a message, not a letter. It is for a young girl named Odette. Do you know her?”

  “I am her!”

  “This is a coincidence then,” M. Mains says. “Well, not really, if I am forced to think about it like a scholar. I’ve talked to thirty girls your age already, and every one of them had a different name from yours. Not one of them let me smell their hands either.”

  “May I have the letter?”

  “Yes, of course.” M. Main produces a damp, wrinkled page from his vest pocket. “But it’s a message. Not a letter. She really wanted me to explain that.” He studies Odette, taking in her torn skirt and dirty apron. “I can read it to you, if you—can’t.”

  “I can read,” Odette answers between clenched teeth.

  Félix taught her. He had first taken her small finger and run it along the grooves chiseled in the headstones. “A,” he would say. “Shaped like an animal with a triangular head and two legs. F. A flower with two petals. V. Shaped like a valley.” Then he would send her among the gravestones to find the letters she had learned. She would mark the stones with dandelions, then lead Félix to them. He would read all the words on the gravestone aloud, emphasizing the letters she had found.

  One day he had asked her something new. “Look for N and É together. NÉ.” Later he instructed Odette, “Find the letters M, O, R and T all in a row beside each other.”