The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (22 page)

It was sickening to think of her at Saint-Lazare.

Clio looked up at me and meowed; she knew it was about time for the mackerel woman to send up her call from the street. The knife slid easily into the fish's belly. Jolie's knife could cut an apple, an umbilicus, or a throat. A knife of Balzac, and the boulevard stories in
Paris Illustré.
Later, after Berthe had nursed, and Clio and I had shared a mackerel, I sat down again by the window; counted again the money from the drawers, what was left from the bets at the rue Jacob. The gold watch ticked; I briefly considered pawning it but decided against that. Who knew what the watch meant to Jolie, and when I could redeem it? Eventually, between the hypnotic rounds of feeding and drowsing, I decided upon a plan.

***

With the first jolting lurch of the train out of Saint-Lazare Station, it was an uncoiling, an unwinding, a returning to rights. My body let go from my ankles to my neck into the cupped palm of the train seat. The rocking motion suited Berthe, and my own spirit lightened as soon as we passed through the
enceinte.
It was the exact reverse of the trip we'd made together when she was—oh, had I but known it, would I have made the journey at all? By Versailles she was sound asleep.

One had become two, two would soon be three. Mother, daughter, father. Somewhat out of the usual order, but so be it. The garish images and smells, the ghosts and cries of the city retreated behind us with every ticking turn of the wheels.

We disembarked at the tiny station west of Le Mans.
“Last stop,”
the coachman was saying. “Last stop!”
He swung the door open and extended a hairy arm to hand me down. No porters here. No horses or mules. Just dusty grass, unhitched carriages, and stable boys leading the horses to feed in a tumbledown barn.
A thousand leagues from Paris and all the better for it.
Tufts of soft grass grew between the rugged ties of the railroad tracks; the station itself was built on a human scale, with a small single platform, a waiting area, benches of drowsing old men in place of the vaulted ceilings and turbulent crowds. As the passengers alighted, loved ones embraced them; carriages were waiting. The coachman hoisted my bag down from the top. Berthe was crying in her basket. Only we two remained, and all was still. It was near dusk.

 

“
Where you heading for, madame? You and the little one—”

“For La Vrillette. The big chateau?”

“La—what? Near here?” His expression was blank. Not a local, then.

I took the road that forked to the right; my feet recalled the turning. The sun had begun its descent and the sky over the vineyards was purple now, at its height; rose and lavender where it met the tips of the cigar-shaped trees. The very air seemed to vibrate, holding the shapes in its substance, sky and land, and the heat of the earth had softened. Tall purple flowers by the roadside; a warm, sun-baked scent, my feet picking among the ruts as if they knew the pattern . . . ruts, those deep ones in the Gers, in my sabots.

No sabots now, but dusty leather-soled boots made for walking on cobbles. And we were alone on a precarious road.
Our
road. I saw the wizened old farmer from whom Stephan and I had gotten our milk. He stared—his eyes falling, briefly, to the infant in my arms—as though we were two ghosts. The sky had gone from purple to gray, and the moon was a pale, full circle against the horizon. And then, the gates of La Vrillette, the drive; the crunch of gravel underfoot. There it was, just as I had dreamed and remembered.

In the half-twilight, the long rectangle of the mirror pool was overgrown with a carpet of lily pads, their long stems invisibly trailing under water like tangled hair. Black-winged insects darted and skated over the waxy tops; dragonflies and wasps circled. The front gardens had gone to seed. The grasses looked as though they had not been cut back for a year; the drive was choked. La Vrillette looked as if it had not been inhabited since the day I left.

Winter, spring, summer, and nearly another fall; rain had beat down, the sun had shone, and the turrets still stood out in the soft dusk, lavender on slate. But the house had closed its eyes; its shutters were fastened; the front entrance padlocked with a chain. I lifted it and let it drop, with a heavy clank. Berthe was quiet; I shifted her to my other hip.

In the back gardens, the roses were still in bloom; a frowsy, gnawed-petal bloom. Only one bush appeared untouched: a miniature rosebush with partially opened flowers and tiny pink buds, clenched tight like Berthe's little fists. As I moved closer, I could see that some of the petals were brown-edged, perhaps from the heat—but no. Each tiny rose, perfect from a distance, had a black, writhing center. Burrowed deeply in each flower was a black, shiny-winged, red-spotted beetle, a living toothed thing, head buried in the center of the flower, legs pushing inward, sucking at that rose-sweetness, working at every wilting bloom, destroying it from the heart.

The stone benches that framed the pool were covered with stiff lichen; rough to the touch, pale green against gray stone. I remembered wondering how this scabrous covering, like a disease of the stone, appeared so lifeless, yet was living still. Taking its nourishment, somehow, from sun and wind and stone. Berthe's tiny hand reached up for me. Her tiny bow lips found their site, and sucked.

My thoughts drifted; the sun fell.

. . . Stirring our soup on the little coal stove in the hall on the rue Serpente, next to the stairs, with the stink of the latrine close by. Staring at the soot-blackened walls, waiting my turn to cook, while our neighbors, Madame Boudet, or the old monsieur to whom Jolie brought tobacco—boiled their cabbage or fried their onions in oil. And then, further back—that other part of my life, the part I held back—that stain, that beetle-gnawed blight on my soul.

. . . Ebony cane, silk waistcoat. The one who said “
Relieve me of myself, mademoiselle,”
before plunging. The ones who laughed, pulled me close, reached around my shoulders for a glass of champagne. And: playing to their moods; laughing at what I did not find amusing; keeping things moving until coin rang on marble, and the rubber bulb swooshed, everything trickling back down my thigh.

It was the same with him,
a voice said. Her taunting contempt.

No—!

Where is your Stephan, then?
Not in
this bolted, abandoned place in which you find yourself, and a baby, and no one else?

Darkness fell, and Berthe's mouth slipped. How she could give herself up to oblivion in my arms. I dipped a cloth in the pool, wrung it, and in the soft light, wiped her face, the muddy smudges of travel clinging to her. Her legs had filled out; her chest, when it moved, was a shade less fragile; her skin, touched with moonlight, was whiter, more opaque; the blue veins, which had been faint as though painted by a tiny brush, had receded behind milk-fed flesh. The umbilicus had begun, already, to heal. So small and perfect she was. Baptized now by the waters of La Vrillette and caught in a web of the past; her small life charged, already, with her mother's burden. If she were a rose, the dark beetle already hummed and circled; it lit and waited, pulsing, hungry, for her center to open. I walked again through the detritus, through the tangled gardens. Berthe in my arms, as the moon rose high and bright.

. . . Better, then, if they were going to live so briefly, to weave their images into a shawl, paint them on canvas, carve their shapes into crystal. Inanimate, impregnable, frozen. Safe.
Sain et sauf.
Let's have a picture and prefer not what breathes and dies. I slipped from the bench, made a blanket with my cloak, and took Berthe from her basket. And we slept that night under moonlight, my body cupped around hers. Peltless animals. Naked and shivering.

I dreamed I was on a sea journey. The waves were black and choppy; clouds massed in the sky. I stood at the side of the ship, my hands clenched around the iron rail. A woman, one of the passengers, had fallen ill. She had slipped past consciousness and had to be taken off the ship. Two seamen eased a small wooden rescue boat from the deck, on thick ropes; dropped it, dangling, toward the rocking waves, down to the water. I and another were to take her. We descended by a rope, into the boat, and the sleeping woman was lowered last.

The little boat's planking was old, honey-colored wood. Deep grooves, tobacco-brown, worn between the boards. The sick woman lay in the center of the boat, stretched along its spine, her face to the sky. My companion was in the prow, oars dipping, down and up again. My own oars were light in my hands—too light, as if pushing back the waters with a feather. I didn't want them to cut the ropes to the big ship—but they must, they must cut them; the ropes were already frayed.

“I am not strong enough!”
I called up to the sailors.

“Let go!” the other rower shouted, her voice nearly lost on the wind. Gold-red hair blowing over her shoulders.

“Let go! Let go!” They were all shouting now, coiling the ropes back up onto the deck.

The wind whipped through my hair, blew my shawl, which was nothing against the cold—I pulled, pulled with all my strength, and the little boat moved into the waves.

I woke to the sun, with Berthe's blanket wet with dew.

The morning light shone on two things. A stone garden statue of a woman: sinuous, rounded, nestled in a patch of weeds, riding a feline beast, like nothing to be seen in Paris. And it had not been there before, when Stephan and I had stayed at the chateau. The second was the face of a pale, obedient girl: the one who had laid our fires, brought our provisions. Léonie carried a basket over her arm and looked astonished.

“Mademoiselle—madame?” Berthe stirred in my arms, then screwed up her face to wail. Our former serving girl, arms folded, looked from me to my daughter.

“What is this statue?” I asked, as though Léonie had just brought the eggs, laid the fire.

“It was a present for the birth of his nephew. For the child of Madame Sophie, from Monsieur Stephan. My father put it in the roses.”

“This garden is crawling with beetles.”

“Yes, they came thickly this year. Is she—is she yours, madame? She is beautiful, just like a rose.”

“Where is Monsieur Stephan, Léonie, do you know?”

She looked up from under her lashes, her eyes flicked over me, frankly assessing. She backed away. “Why have you come here, madame?”

The third thing I saw that morning was a memory of green eyes and tangled red-gold hair; a pair of efficient hands, tying coins into a knotted handkerchief; spiriting the indigo dress out of a creaking armoire; defeating Françoise. Hands that had soothed my aching flesh; fingers that had knitted in anticipation of an infant, lips that had not betrayed their word. Jolie had held me when I cried, found a midwife, thrown a party, paid off the Brigade (I suspected) so I could stay with her on the rue Serpente, and jumped out of a window so Berthe could be born outside the walls of Saint-Lazare.

The road home was not easy. But it was our road. Mine, and Berthe's.

B
ACK IN PARIS,
the rue Hautefeuille was a bustle of evening, of women carrying loaves and packages, men with newspapers rolled under their arms. Hooves clopped on the cobbles, and the screeches of the oysterman mingled with cries of newsboys. A close damp saturated the air, a portent of evening rain. At the florist's, tall stalks of red and purple flowers stood in buckets next to long-stemmed roses—red, pink, yellow—and small pots of tender-leafed ivy. Next door in the butcher's window, plump, white chickens for roasting and stewing, nestled on beds of green. My reflection before them was swaybacked and pale, a wavering liquid in the glass; the bodice of my dress dark-stained from too many hours away from Berthe. My blood was weak and needed meat; I dug to the bottom of my purse and left the shop quickly with the bloody, soft parcel—cuttings of tripe and brains, the cheapest of the lot. Leaned against a street lamp.
Nausea.

The first of the raindrops pelted against my packages, and pinkish liquid seeped through the parcel, mingling with the milk stains on my dress. Carriages passed; their wheels dipped into the ruts between the cobbles, spewing up muddy water. The kiosk on the corner of the rue Serpente had pulled its shutters but still allowed purchase of a copy of
Le Boulevard
for small change. Mathilde's flutey voice carried all the way to the first landing, Berthe wailing in her arms. Mathilde was waving a sheet of paper, the birth certificate from the
mairie.
Our household was full up with fresh certifications; I'd gotten my own when I re-registered at the Préfecture. It wasn't hard, once I located the right line and followed the girl in front of me, asking no questions. I was paid up, thanks to Vollard; and the Dab on duty at the Préfecture confirmed that I had recently given birth (so my lapse in adhering to the schedule for the
visite sanitaire
was accounted for). They required only a birth certificate for Berthe, for which Mathilde, as the midwife in attendance, could file. I was now, after a few weeks, within the law and in possession of the
carte,
which was how I was able to keep my key in the latch and tripe on the table at Jolie's flat. It was remarkable what I could do—for Berthe.

“Mathilde, let me get up these stairs and I'll take her—”

“The young woman may be
père inconnu,
but she's legal tender; that's a cause for celebration,” called a second voice from within. Odette sat on the divan, draped in a paisley cashmere shawl and pouring absinthe from a flask, her lovely oval face cool and smooth as alabaster. She took her drink almost neat, adding only enough water to make the green stuff drinkable. Odette's luck, as Jolie said, always turned like a sunflower, and she'd escaped unscathed from the incident at the rue Jacob.