Authors: Tatiana de Rosnay
As I let my eyes roam over the now-empty room, I remember the happy times with the little boy. You had decided get the house repaired, to mend all its various problems: leaks in the roof, various cracks, general wear and tear. Every nook and cranny was inspected. A team of workers came steadfastly, and the house was repainted, woodwork repaired, floors repolished. They were a cheerful, good-natured lot, and we grew to know them well. There was Monsieur Alphonse, the foreman, with his black beard and loud voice, and there was Ernest, his ginger-haired attendant. Groups of different workers came every week, hired for their specific skills. Every Monday you would note the progress and discuss various elements of it with the foreman. It took up a great deal of your time, and you were most earnest about the entire matter. You wanted the house to look its best. Your father and your grandfather had not done much to it, and you took it upon yourself to refurbish it.
Even while there was work being done in the house, we had friends to stay, friends to dinner. I recall that it took up much of my time, those menus to work out, the seating of guests, and which room needed freshening for a new arrival. I took those tasks most seriously. Each menu was carefully written out in a special book so that I would never serve the same meal twice to my guests. How proud I was of our house, how cozy and pretty it looked on those winter evenings, with the fire blazing in the chimney, and the soft light of the lamps. Happy times.
Over that blessed decade, Violette turned into a silent, self-centered young girl. She was a good learner, and she was serious, but we shared so little. We had nothing in common, like my mother and I. She talked more with you, I believe, but she was not close to you either. As for Baptiste, she had little interest in him. There was a nine-year difference between her brother and her. She was like the moon, silvery, cold and distant, and he was a triumphant golden sun, all blaze, all fire.
Baptiste was a child touched by grace. His birth had been short and painless, which astounded me, as I had geared myself up for the ordeal I had endured with Violette. There he was, this splendid child, healthy, pink and energetic, his eyes already wide open to the world. How I wished Maman Odette could have seen her grandson, but she had already left us four years earlier. Yes, that decade was a golden one, as gold as our son’s hair. He was a simple, happy child. He never complained, or if he did, he did it with such charm that he’d melt anyone’s heart. He liked to build little houses with colored bricks made of wood that you gave him for his birthday. For hours he would carefully construct a house, room by room.
“That is your bedroom, Maman,” he would proudly state. “And the sun shines in, just the way you like it. And Père will have a study right here, with a big desk so he can set all his papers down and do his important work.”
This is so difficult to write, Armand. I fear the power of words, how they may wound you, like the stab of a knife. The candlelight flickers over the bare walls. I am afraid. Afraid of what I must say. Many times, during confession with Père Levasque, I tried to unburden myself. But it was impossible. I never did.
I feared the Lord would take my son, that my time with him was counted. Every moment with him was a delight. A delight tainted with fear. Another revolution had stormed our city in February. This time I was not bedridden, and I saw it all. I was forty years old, still sturdy, still strong, despite my years. The riots broke out in the poorer quarters of the city, and barricades went up, barring the streets with iron grillwork, overturned carriages, furniture, tree trunks. You explained that the King had failed to end political corruption, that the economic crisis that raged was without precedent. This had not concerned me, as my daily life as a mother and wife had not altered. It is true that the prices at the market had soared, but our meals were still abundant. Our life was still the same. For the moment.
1849. BAPTISTE WAS TEN
years old. The year the Prefect and the Emperor met for the first time. The year after the barricades and the February Revolution. Nearly twenty years ago, and my heart still bleeds as I write this. He moved like a little pixie always on the go, spry, fast as lightning. His laugh echoed through the house. Sometimes, you know, I still hear it.
There were early murmurs of the disease. I was first aware of them at the market. The last epidemic breakout was just after Violette was born, ten years before. Thousands of people had died. One had to be very careful with the water. Baptiste enjoyed playing at the fountain on the rue Erfurth. I could see him from the window, the governess watching over him. I had warned him, you did too, but he had a mind of his own.
It happened very fast. The papers were already full of the oncoming deaths, the toll was rising day after day. The dreadful word sent terror into our homes. Cholera. A lady on the rue de l’Echaudé had succumbed. Every morning a new death was announced. Fear gripped our street.
And then, one morning, in the kitchen, Baptiste collapsed. He fell to the floor with a shriek of pain, crying out that he had a cramp in his leg. I rushed to him.
“What is it, my darling, my sweet?” I murmured as he fretted, twisting and turning in my arms. Germaine suggested we pull up his breeches to see what was wrong with his leg. My fingers clumsily worked the buttons.
“Maman,” muttered my son, “it hurts…” How I remember his thin, weak voice, a voice that tugged at my heart.
There appeared to be nothing wrong with his shin or thigh. I soothed him as best as I could. His forehead felt hot and clammy. He began to sob, wincing with pain. A horrid gurgle was heard, coming from his abdomen. I said to myself that this could not be happening. No, not to my son, not to my adored son. Not this. I remember screaming out for you, screaming your name up the stairs.
You heard my shriek and you rushed down, your face white as a sheet. Yes, I can still hear your footsteps pounding down the steps. You had a book in one hand, your spectacles clutched in the other. Violette followed in your wake, her eyes wide.
“Rose, what on earth…?”
Then you saw our son and the objects clasped in your fingers clattered to the floor. Violette screamed. Remember how we carried him up to his room, you and I, and Germaine rushed to summon the doctor? But it was too late. I could tell by your face that you knew, but you were not telling me. In a mere couple of hours, hours that spelt doom and death with every click of the minutes gliding past, all liquids left his burning, twisting body. They poured out of him, oozed from him and we could only watch with horror.
“Do something!” I pleaded to the doctor. “You must save my son!”
All day long, young Docteur Nonant wrapped my son’s loins in strips of clean sheets, slid clear water down his throat, but to no avail. Baptiste’s hands and feet seemed to have been dipped in black paint. His pink little face, dry and waxen, had gone a monstrous bluish color. The round cheeks had caved in to leave in their wake the disturbing pointed mask of a wizened creature I no longer recognized. His sunken eyes cried no more tears. The sheets thickened with all he was bringing up, soiled rivulets that gushed from his body in a never-ending, stinking flux.
“We must all pray at present,” murmured Père Levasque, whom you had sent for in the last, dreadful moments when we finally understood that there was no more hope. Candles were lit, and the fervent mutter of prayers filled the room.
When I look at the room now, that is what I remember: the stench, the candles and the prayers, over and over again, Germaine’s gentle sobbing, Violette’s cough. You sat very straight and silent by my side, and sometimes you took my hand and squeezed it gently. I was so beside myself with grief that I could not understand your calm. I remember thinking: Faced with the death of a child, are men stronger than women because they do not give birth, because they do not know what it means to carry life within one and to bring a baby into the world? Are mothers not linked to their offspring by a secret, intimate and physical link that fathers cannot experience?
That night, in that house, I saw my beloved son die and I felt my life become a meaningless void.
The year after, Violette married Laurent Pesquet, her fiancé, and left home to live in Tours. Nothing touched me anymore since the little boy’s death.
I watched the events of my life unfold from very far away. I went about my existence in a sort of dazed numbness. I remember you talking about me with Docteur Nonant. He had come to visit me. At forty-one, I was too old to have another child. And no other child could ever replace Baptiste.
But I knew why the Lord had reclaimed my child. I shake as I write this, and it is no longer the cold.
Forgive me.
Rue Childebert, August 20th, 1850
Rose of my heart,
I cannot bear your pain, your sorrow. He was the loveliest child, the most delightful boy, but alas God decided to call him back to Him and we must respect His choice, there is nothing else we can do, my love. I write this by the fireplace, as the candle flickers through the quiet night. You are upstairs, in our room, trying to find rest. I do not know how to help you and I feel useless. It is a loathsome feeling. I wish Maman Odette were here to console you. But she has been gone so long now, and she never knew the little boy. Yet she would have surrounded you with her love and her tenderness in these agonizing moments. Why are we men so hopeless at this sort of thing? Why do we not know how to soothe, how to bestow our care? I am furious with myself as I sit here and write this to you. I am but a worthless husband, as I cannot bring you solace.
Since he left us, last year, you are the ghost of your former self. You have become gaunt and white, you no longer smile. Even at our daughter’s recent wedding, on that gorgeous day by the river, you did not smile once. Everyone noticed and of course everyone spoke to me about it, your brother, very worried, and even your mother, who never notices what state you are in, and your new son-in-law, a young doctor, had a quiet word with me about you. Some of them suggested a trip down south, by the sea, to seek the sun and warmth. Others said to rest, to eat nourishing food, to exercise.
Your eyes are empty and sad, it breaks my heart. Oh, what am I to do? Today I walked about our neighborhood and I tried to find you a trinket that would cheer you up. I came back empty-handed. I sat down at the café on the place Gozlin, near where you grew up, and read the newspapers, all full of Balzac’s death. As you know, he is one of my favorite writers, and somehow, because of what you are enduring, your acute pain, I simply cannot feel sadness at Monsieur de Balzac’s passing away. The poor fellow was more or less my age. And he too had a wife he loved passionately, as I love you with a passion that inflames my entire life.
Rose, my love, I am a wistful gardener who no longer knows how to make his lovely plant come into full, promising bloom. Rose, you are now frozen, as if you no longer dared to burst into flower, no longer dared to offer yourself to me, to let your enticing perfume bewitch me as those delicious petals open up one by one. Is the gardener to blame? Our beloved son is gone, and with him, a part of our life. But our love is still powerful, is it not, and it is our greatest strength, it is what we need to cherish in order to be able to survive. Remember how our love preceded our child, how our love gave birth to him. We must treasure it, nurture it and revel in it. I share your sorrow, I respect and mourn our son as a father, as a parent, but can we not mourn him as lovers? For after all, was he not born of two splendid lovers? I long for the sweet scent of your skin, my hands yearn to caress the curves of your beloved body, my lips burn to bestow thousands of kisses on the secret places that only I know of and adore. I want to feel you undulate against me under the softness of my caresses, under the sweet violence of my embrace; I hunger for your love, I want to taste the sweetness of your flesh, your womanly intimacy, I want to go back to the feverish ecstasy we shared as lovers, as a husband and a wife deeply, truly in love, up there in the quiet kingdom of our bedroom.
You are my priority, Rose, and I shall fight with all my might to restore your faith in our love, in our life.
Yours forever,
Armand, your husband
I FELT THE OVERPOWERING
need to take a pause and could no longer write for a short while. But now, as my quill once more slides along the paper, I am connected with you again. I did not write you very many letters. We never separated, did we? I have also kept all your little poems. They are not really poems, are they? Little sentences of love that you would leave here and there for me to find. How I miss them. When the longing becomes too great, I give in, and reach for them. I keep them in a small leather pouch with your wedding ring and your reading glasses. “Rose, dear Rose, the light in your eyes is like the dawn, but only for me to behold.” And this one: “Rose, enchanting Rose, no thorns on your stem, only buds of sweetness and love.” No doubt a stranger would find them puerile. I do not care.
When I read them, I can still hear your lovely, deep voice. Armand, I miss your voice, above all. Why can’t the dead come back and talk to us? You could whisper to me as I take my tea in the mornings, and you would murmur more words at night, when I lie awake in the silence. And I would like to hear Maman Odette’s laugh, and my son’s babble. My mother’s voice? No, not in the least. I do not miss it whatsoever. When she died, of ripe old age, in her bed, at place Gozlin, I felt nothing, not even a twinge of sadness. You were standing beside me and Émile, and you kept looking at me, as if you read something on my face. I wanted to tell you that it was not my mother I missed, no, it was still yours, Maman Odette, who had died nearly twenty years before. I think you knew. And I was still mourning my son. For years after his death, I went to his grave every other day, walking all the way to the Cimetière du Sud, by the Montparnasse barrier. Sometimes you came with me. But most often I went alone.