Authors: Tatiana de Rosnay
Madame Rose, how I miss my clients, their chatter, their fidelity, their whims. Even the odd ones. Even the respectable gentlemen who took young lasses up for a quick tumble when I looked the other way. Do you remember Monsieur and Madame Roche, who came every June for their wedding anniversary? And Mademoiselle Brunerie, the charming old maid, who always reserved the room on the top floor, the one that gave on to the church’s roof? She said it made her feel closer to God. I sometimes wonder how it is possible that a place in which I felt so secure, which I called home, but which was also how I earned money, which brought us our income, could be so easily erased from the face of the earth.
As you know, I chose to leave before the rue Childebert was demolished. I am now writing to you from my sister’s house in Sens, where I am trying to set up a pension de famille, and not being very successful about it. I remember how we fought till the bitter end, especially you, I and Docteur Nonant. It seemed to me that the other inhabitants of the street accepted their fate with ease. Perhaps they had less to lose. Perhaps they even looked forward to starting a new life elsewhere. I sometimes wonder what they have all become.
I know we will probably never see our neighbors again. Such an odd thought, as every single morning of our lives we would greet each other. All those familiar faces, those familiar buildings and shops. Monsieur Jubert admonishing his team, Monsieur Horace already pink-nosed at nine in the morning, Madame Godfin and Mademoiselle Vazembert at it like a pair of squabbling hens, Monsieur Bougrelle chatting with Monsieur Zamaretti, and the rich, marvelous chocolate smell wafting from Monsieur Monthier’s boutique. I have lived so very many years in the rue Childebert, perhaps forty, nay, forty-five, and I cannot envisage that the street no longer exists. I do not want to lay eyes on the modern boulevard that swallowed it up. Ever.
Have you decided to move to your daughter’s home, Madame Rose? Please give me some news from time to time. Should you care to visit me here in Sens, let me know. The town is pleasant enough. A welcome rest from the endless works, dust and noise of Paris. I take comfort in the fact that my clients still write to me and tell me how much they miss the hotel. You know how I pampered them. Each room was spotless, decorated with simplicity and good taste, and Mademoiselle Alexandrine delivered fresh flowers every day, not to mention the chocolates from Monsieur Monthier.
How I miss standing at the reception area and greeting my clients. Such an international crowd too. How maddening to have to close down in the middle of the Exposition Universelle. And how atrocious to have to accept the total destruction of so many years of work.
I think of you often, Madame Rose. Your grace and kindness to everyone on the street; your great courage when your husband passed away. He was such a gentleman, Monsieur Bazelet. I know he would have hated seeing his beloved home destroyed. I remember the two of you walking down the street, before his illness took over. What a fine pair you made. Gorgeous, good-looking and so charming, both of you. And I remember, Lord have mercy, the little boy. Madame Rose, no one will ever forget your little boy. God bless him and you. I hope you are happy with your daughter, I seem to recall you were not that close to her. Maybe this ordeal will bring you closer at last. I send you my friendship and my prayers and hope that we may meet again.
Micheline Paccard
MY BOOKS, DOWN HERE
with me. Fine ones, beautifully bound, in all different colors. I do not wish to ever separate myself from them.
Madame Bovary
, of course, the one that opened the door to the bewitching world of reading. Baudelaire’s
Les Fleurs du Mal
, which I pick up from time to time as the hours glide by. The fascinating aspect about poems, as opposed to novels, is that one can read just a couple, and a few more later on, like a sort of continuous treat that one nibbles at. Monsieur Baudelaire’s poems are strange and haunting. They are full of images, sounds and colors, sometimes disturbing.
Would you have liked them? I suspect so. They play on one’s nerves and senses. My favorite one is “The Perfume Flask.” It is about scents harboring memories, and how a perfume can bring back one’s past. I know the smell of roses will always remind me of Alexandrine and the Baronne. Cologne water and talcum powder are you, my love. Hot milk and honey are Baptiste. Verbena and lavender are Maman Odette. Had you still been here, I would no doubt have read this poem to you, over and over again.
Sometimes reading a book leads one to another book. Did you not experience that? I am sure you did. I discovered that rather quickly. Monsieur Zamaretti let me roam about the rows in his shop. I even climbed up the ladder to reach up higher. You see, Armand, there was a new hunger within me, and on some days I can assure you I felt fairly ravenous. The need to read took over me, a delicious and exhilarating hold. The more I read, the hungrier I became. Each book seemed promising, each page I turned offered an escapade, the allure of another world, other destinies, other dreams. So what did I read? you may well ask.
Charles Baudelaire led me to an author, American I believe, named Edgar Allan Poe. How could I resist the fact that Monsieur Baudelaire himself had translated those stories? It gave the whole matter an added attraction. When my favorite poet died last year, I read he was buried in our very own cemetery, in Montparnasse. Yes, Charles Baudelaire’s eternal resting place is just a couple of alleys away from you, Baptiste and Maman Odette. I have been too tired of late to go there, but the last time I went, I visited his tomb. There was a letter placed on his grave. It had been rained on, the ink had spread over the paper like a large black flower.
In Monsieur Poe’s stories I found the same haunting, powerful themes that appealed to me so deeply. And I could see, so very clearly, why Monsieur Baudelaire had chosen to translate his work. They had the same scope, the same vision. Yes, you could say they were macabre, thick with mystery, lush with imagination. Are you perplexed by your mild Rose’s astonishing literary tastes? The story I prefer is called “The Fall of the House of Usher.” It takes place in a gloomy, ivy-covered mansion overlooking a dark and silent tarn. The narrator is summoned by an old friend undergoing a nameless illness and who needs his help. I cannot begin to describe what a thrill I experienced when I first read that story. I felt chills running up and down my spine. Such a climate of malevolence, of fear, of otherworldly forces contriving toward doom. At times I had to pause to catch my breath, at times I felt I could not go on reading, that this stuff was too strong a potion, that it would overcome me. I could not breathe. And yet, I had to rush back to the page, no one and nothing could tear me away from Roderick Usher’s ghastly secret, from the spectral apparition of Madeline in her blood-stained dress, from the entire mansion crumbling into the tarn. Monsieur Poe knew how to wield his magic.
THIS MORNING THE NOISES
have taken up again, despite the prevailing cold. It will not be long now. I do not have much time, so I will resume my story. There is so much I need to tell you, still. Six months ago, Madame Paccard, Docteur Nonant and myself decided to go to the Hôtel de Ville to protest against the destruction of our street. Our numerous letters had been answered by office clerks who, as you can imagine, merely repeated that the decision was irrevocable, but that one could expect to negotiate the sum of money that was being allotted to us. But for the three of us, money was not the issue. We wanted to keep our premises.
So you must imagine the three of us, on that June day. Most determined we were, Madame Paccard and her quivering bun, Docteur Nonant with his grave whiskered face, and your Rose, in her best claret-colored silk coat and a veiled bonnet. We crossed the river on a clear warm morning, and I was impressed, as always, by the formidable Renaissance-style building that awaited us on the other side of the bridge. Nervousness clenched at my stomach and I felt almost dizzy with anticipation as we neared the huge stone façade. Were we not mad to envisage even one instant that we would see the man himself? And would he ever listen to us? I was relieved not to be alone, to have my two companions by my side. They appeared much more assured than I did.
In the enormous entrance, in which I had never been, I noticed a fountain tinkling under wide, circling stairs. Clusters of people were ambling about the great hall, awed by the ornate ceilings, the grandeur of the place. So this was where he lived and worked, him, that man, whose name I still cannot bring myself to write. He and his family (that mouselike wife, Octavie, who apparently loathes mundane life, those two daughters, Henriette and Valentine, pink, buxom and golden-haired, trussed up like prize cows) slept under this tremendous roof, somewhere in the labyrinthine recesses of this grandiose place.
Oh, we had read in the papers all about the sumptuous, lavish parties held here, with such pomp that one would think he were the Sun King himself. Baronne de Vresse had been to the party thrown for the Tsar and the King of Prussia a year ago, with three orchestras and a thousand guests. She had also attended the reception in honor of Franz Josef of Austria the following October, with four hundred guests served by three hundred footmen. She had described the seven-course meal, the vast amounts of flowers, the crystal glasses and fine porcelain, the fifty giant candelabras. The Empress wore a taffeta dress fringed with rubies and diamonds. (Alexandrine gaped at this, and I had remained stonily silent.) All Parisians knew about the Prefect’s wine cellar, the finest in the city. All Parisians knew that if one passed by the rue de Rivoli in the early hours, the only light to be seen burning in a single window of the Hôtel de Ville would be that of the Prefect, slaving away only in order to dispatch his army of pickaxes over our city.
As we did not have a rendezvous with anyone in particular, we were told to make our way to the first floor, to the Bureau of Domains and Expropriations. When we got there, we saw with sinking hearts a long line of people also waiting. We took our turn in the queue, as patiently as possible. I wondered who all these people were and what sort of claims they were going to make. The lady next to me was my age, with a weary face and untidy clothes. But the rings on her fingers were fine and precious. By her side was a bearded man, unsmiling and impatient, tapping his feet, staring at his watch every ten minutes. There was also a family, two young parents, very proper, with a fretful baby and a bored little girl.
Everyone waited. From time to time a door would open and a clerk would come to take down the names of the new arrivals. I felt it would last forever. When our turn finally came, we were not allowed to go in together, but one by one. No wonder the whole matter took so long! We let Madame Paccard go first.
The minutes dragged by. When she came out at last, her face seemed to have sagged even more. She muttered something I did not catch and sank down into her seat, her head in her hands. Docteur Nonant and I watched anxiously. The lady with the rumpled clothes then also emerged in the same state, tears running down her face. I began to feel most nervous. I let Docteur Nonant go before me, as I felt I needed to stretch my legs for a while. The room felt stuffy and clammy, full of other people’s smell and anguish.
I went outside into the large corridor and paced up and down. The place was a beehive of activity. It was here that it all happened, you see. The slow destruction of our city was born here. All the busy men rushing around with papers and folders had something to do with the work. Which of them had decided that the boulevard would pass just by the church, which of them had sketched the actual plans, which of them had drawn the first lethal line?
We had read all about the Prefect’s splendid team. We knew their faces, as they had each become famous. The crème de la crème of the intelligentsia of our country, all brilliant engineers with the highest diplomas, from Polytechnique, from the Ponts and Chaussées. Monsieur Victor Baltard, the “iron man,” builder of the gigantic marketplace I was telling you about. Monsieur Jean-Charles Alphand, the “gardener,” famed for giving our city its new lungs. Monsieur Eugène Belgrand, the notorious “water man,” obsessed with our sewers. Monsieur Gabriel Davioud, who designed the two theaters on the place du Châtelet, but also that unfortunate, oversized fountain at Saint-Michel. Each of these gentlemen had his grandiose role to play, basking in the glory.
And the Emperor, of course, watching it all from the high golden haven of his palaces, far from the rubble, the dust, the tragedy.
When I was at last called in, I found myself sitting in front of a fair young man who could have been my grandson. He had long wavy hair that he seemed inordinately proud of, an immaculate dark suit of the latest fashion and shiny shoes. His face was smooth, with the delicate complexion of a young girl. His desk was piled high with files and binders. Behind him an older bespectacled gentleman scribbled away, huddled over his work. The young man flickered lazy, arrogant eyes over me, glancing at his watch. He lit a small cigar, puffed away importantly and then asked me to voice my complaint. I replied calmly that I was firmly opposed to the destruction of my family home. He asked me for my name and address, opened a thick book, slid a finger down a couple of pages. Then he muttered:
“Cadoux, Rose, widow of Armand Bazelet, six rue Childebert.”
“Yes, monsieur,” I said, “that is I.”
“You do not agree with the sum of money proposed by the Préfecture, I presume?”
He said this with boredom, tinged with despicable nonchalance, glancing at his nails as he spoke. How old was this arrogant brat? I thought, seething. No doubt he had other, more pleasurable topics on his mind, a luncheon with a young lady, or a gala evening tonight. What suit should he wear? The brown, the blue? And would he have time to have his hair curled before nightfall? I said nothing as I sat there in front of him, one hand laid out flat on the desk that separated us.