The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (24 page)

“
Don't worry so, my dear.” My own voice comforted the body.
Or was it another voice, comforting me? “But I am a mother!” I wailed. And to be that was to be a thing of blood and matter and gravity; congealed, stuck to the earth—as though I had flown to the moon and come down, down and down again .
.
 .
A silvery cascade shivered through me; images, poetry, strange words as in a dream.

It may have lasted just seconds, a minute. A cry—a piercing child's wail—Berthe's, or my own? Flash of pain, silvery, an ethereal cord to the body below, pulled me back down, back and back and down. Fingernails bit into the flesh of clenched fists, stiff linen scraped my cheek; knees pressed into the ticking. I cried out from within my own throat; the man grunted and stopped. In that moment I moved enough to twist and reach for the bell pull, the bell that would bring the concierge or someone else—because even at La Ratière we had a bell pull. But help did not come quickly, not at Picot's.

. . . Catch of a buckle; snap of suspenders. Chink of coin on marble. A shadow standing over, briefly, hesitating maybe, because her body had stopped moving again, didn't come to, and he didn't really know what to do about it, did he? Finally, the door pulled to; his boots echoed down the hall. I rolled to my side without breathing and tried to slide my feet back on the floor. Sharp pain stabbed under my ribs; I coughed and felt a terrible pain somewhere beneath my armpits, and the taste of metal. I spat blood onto the coverlet and, shaking, lay back down. Blood from my tongue, where I'd bitten it, not from my throat. That was good. Sometime later the knock came.

“Problem?” said the concierge.

“Just help me stand.” Knees shaking. Salt of tears. Tang of iron on the tongue. Love congealed to matter, brought life from the heavens to earth; love, here, was abandoned and betrayed. Berthe was too little, love was merely nourishment, is that all it ever was? My thoughts were confused and the concierge was waiting, and not for me to stand on my own. I shoved my chin toward the coins. He collected his tariff. I made my way down. Numbness set in, to help.

 

On the street, the wind had picked up. The damp, rain-scented breeze turned chilly, reaching from my heart to my knees to the marrow center, to the last part of me that held any warmth. Something rose, licked at my guts.
The way his eyes went to my milk-heavy breasts.
The filth of him, the disease, the ooze inside me still, and the shadows of all the rest of them. The filth of him—of all of them—sick on everything inside me.
Only a narrow rectangle's width in front of me, a small square, blackness pulling at every edge. I walked that narrow width, black-bordered, like mourning.

It was late when I reached the rue Serpente, took Berthe, and put off Mathilde's questions; she gave me a reproachful look and hurried off. Berthe's brow wrinkled in a wail; her cries pierced the air and undid what was left of me. I did my best to cool her head; bathe her hot little body, the anesthetic of urgency deadening me enough to get her wrapped in her blanket. I stumbled against the table, still strewn with the detritus of last night's feast. Newspapers. Bills in dirty envelopes, no sooner emptied than re-sent again. Underneath, a letter to Stephan—begun, not finished; the pen had leaked and ink dripped blackly down the page. My breath came shallow and fast and the pain pulsed fiercely. Scrabbling through the pile I found a blessed thing—Odette's flask; silver and oval shaped—and half-full of the green stuff. I longed to be like Odette, with her lovers and adventures. I tipped it back, its taste raw and bitter and unsugared, but I nearly retched.
Your situation is precarious enough!

From the hall came the rattle of the stove, probably the movements of our neighbor, old Madame Boudet. I managed to open the door a crack, to let in some warmth from her fire. Looked over at Berthe in her crate and my numb heart flooded. I could hardly bend to rest my hand on her eggshell-thin skull. Its soft spot on top, barely covered with membrane, the blue veins pulsing, beating with the blood I'd given her. She stirred and made sucking movements with her tiny rosebud lips; flailed her little hand in the direction of my breasts. Her cheeks flared, rosy. She didn't understand how she felt, the little scrap of a thing.

“You'll feel better tomorrow,” I whispered, then eased back on my heels. I felt feverish myself, weak, nearly out of my body still, with shuddering flashes of the man at La Ratière
.
I felt my own forehead, damp with sweat. If I had been infected—by this one, by some other—I would poison the very air my daughter breathed, the milk she sucked. Pass disease to her as surely as I gave her the blood of my veins, the milk of my breasts. And if I had a broken rib, it would be impossible to lift her.

I let my heavy head fall onto the table, roll over on one arm.
Le Boulevard
on another page showed pen-and-ink figures of a man and woman standing before a dark, square opening in the wall. Her hair bound in a scarf, like a working girl's; he looked sorrowfully on. The cutaway showed the arch of a cloister and the peaked cap of a nun receiving their bundled infant through the turnstile; and a row of cribs. Hospice des Enfants Trouvés.

 

Berthe woke. I took her from the crate and fastened her lips to my breast, but she fell away. Her lips slipped off the nipple and her back arced; she began to wail in earnest; her whole body stiff with heaving sobs, as if she knew what had been there earlier, where I had been; and something in her feverish body resisted . . . the infant's flesh was nearly translucent, white, milky pale as a candle. As I stared down at her, I saw through the skin to the bones behind it; the eye sockets, the nose, the eggshell skull; Berthe's little head; and the green stuff spoke for me
.
.
 . You think your eggs are on the fire when only the shells are left!

From the hall, Madame Boudet's stale cabbage lingered.

For a bare moment, the ink-blotted letter paper lay across the fire as though capable of resisting flame. But slowly, at its leisure—the coral edges of nearly spent coal sucked at its corners. Line by line, blackened and devoured. The question
Why did you not love me?—
sparkles and fades. Then the paper turns silky, like petticoat layers, like tulle; crumbles like an old dry rose. Disintegrates into fine flakes of pure white ash. One wants to burn more and more, just for sheer satisfaction. One wants to burn—
everything.
From within the anesthetic of absinthe my thoughts began to line up, cold-cut like stones.

Of the two of us, my case did not warrant assistance, but hers did. Berthe had the right to be nursed by those mandated by church and state; clothed; cared for. Once I was rested, better, back from the dead—when Jolie was out—perhaps then. Between the two of us we might find a way. If Jolie didn't go back to Deux Soeurs. I filled the pen again.

This child,
I began, on a fresh sheet; then struck it out.

My daughter's name is Berthe Sophia Louise. She is feverish, and she will not take my milk; as I cannot care—I am afraid that I cannot care for her and that she will die. I will come back for her as soon as I am able.
She is my only star in a dark sky.

I folded the note in four, made a small parcel: cap, blanket, spoon, bonnet; slipped a small bracelet from my wrist, bone beads and coral, and put that with her too. I unfolded the certificate from the
mairie
and stared at it.
Berthe Sophia Louise Rigault
was listed as having been born on August 28, 1861, Paris, third arrondissement, under the care of Mathilde Sainte-Anne, midwife. My name was on it; and Stephan's.
The truth.
The illegal, Code-defying truth of the matter.

Berthe was wailing again, her small chest heaving with sobs. A sharp pain, stronger than absinthe and delusion, tore at my ribs. Should I strike Stephan's name, blot it out? Let it stand? Keep the certificate, not leave it with Berthe? But that did not seem safe for her, to be without an identity, lost among other lost infants in this vast city. And without the certificate to identify her, how would I ever reclaim her? So I folded the certificate as it was; tucked it into the bundle.

I'd not be able to make it on foot, not as I was. I would have to take a cab.

“A direct train for Charenton,”
Jolie's voice echoed, somewhere behind my ear. She always said that absinthe took you straight to the asylum for lunatics and brain-rotted drinkers. On the street a gas lamp's watery light shone on a colored image affixed to the side of the building on the corner of the rue Serpente, a huge playing card, the ten of hearts.
GRAND ESTAMINET 4 BILLIARDS
read the advertisement, but now the red hearts seemed to be jumping off the card, as though on springs; leaping down to the street. Heart after heart, one leapt and the next came after, as though when one tumbled, the next naturally followed; they had no independent will, these hearts. They filled my arms like red flowers, a sheaf of tulips. My dress was an apron, and I caught them as they fell. Berthe was a sobbing sheaf of tulips in my arms.

The red flowers had become hearts again, shrunken, wrinkled little hearts, and now they covered her face like blotches. Not hearts but chancres like the one on the man at La Ratière, covering her cheeks, her little hands. Her chest rose and fell too fast, with shallow, heaving heat that rose through the shawl, and I clutched her. The driver raised his whip; brought it down like the hammer of an auctioneer. Going.
Gone
 . . . Absinthe could do funny things; now it was doing them to me.

 

The latched wooden door covered a small opening set into the seam of the wall; inside was a wooden basin like the kind in which bread dough rises. No blanket to make it soft, not even straw. I wrapped Berthe and squeezed her small warm body, nuzzled the soft fold of her neck where the blanket gaped. She had been crying all day and all night; now she was quiet. Was it her way of telling me that she was ready, that others could take better care of her? She stared the way animals stared—quiet, waiting for a feed bucket. Empty or full?
They
didn't know. Only the bearer knew what she could, or could not, provide. I closed my eyes. A final clutch at pity; an Intervention, the Divine Hand. But not a tingle, not a whisper; not a brush from the fingertip of fate. No voice at all, not even a mocking one; nor a reproach.

It began to rain. Lightly at first, then a steady chilling downpour. I had spent my last sous; nothing was left for a fare home. Berthe's blanket dampened; fat drops splashed her hot brow, soaked the brim of her bonnet. The wormwood wore thin and my chest and ribs began a stabbing beat of pain. I wouldn't be able to carry her far.

Colder in the night air, I pressed against the stone wall. The rain came harder, Berthe stayed quiet, waiting. I began to cry . . . After all, I could come back and get her; I could come back—even Mathilde had said something like that; at least I thought she had.

Berthe just fit inside the small opening, with her blanket and her bonnet, but the rain started to fall in, so I closed the hatch to keep her dry.

In this way I blamed the rain.

Water, water.
The night my waters had broken for her . . . and she emerged, drenched and stunning us both; now she was passing through a womb of stone to what waited on the other side.
Dry linens; the arms of nuns.
One of us, tonight, could be dry and warm . . . I grasped the handle, smooth under my fingers. Its mechanism moved easily, worn by many such turns. Then I waited, ear pressed to the small wooden door. Nothing from within, no cry. No creak, nor wheeze of hinges from the opposite side. Alarmed, I turned again, now in the opposite direction. Would she suffocate? And I had forgotten to kiss her goodbye—how had I neglected that? I needed to cover her head with kisses! But the device did not turn that way. I rattled the wooden door, then pounded. Oh, on how many doors had I slammed my fists, before and since, but none like that one. Then I realized with horror that Berthe's crumpled birth certificate from the
mairie
of the arrondissement, the one signed by Mathilde, and with Stephan's name on it, in violation of the law—remained in my hand. A sick feeling gripped my guts.
Please. I have made a mistake!
I pounded again, and sobbed.

The rain fell, as rain does. My arms were empty, the new weightlessness as unbearable as their burden had been. The night guard had been off taking a smoke. He returned. I shoved the paper in his hand. And then I walked.

. . . Zigzagged alongside the spikes of the padlocked Luxembourg, past Saint-Sulpice and over the rue Bonaparte where the models waited; past the École des Beaux-Arts where Pierre had studied; all the way to the quai Malaquais overlooking the Seine, where the stone parapet was cold and damp. The Seine was too low to drown in just there; the current not swift enough, people said. If you wanted to do it, better travel upstream. But they also said you could drown in a teacup, if you wanted to.

How easy it would be to lift my body over, slip down the other side! The water would break with a quiet splash; and it would be cold, the current swift and strong . . . God help me, I had died a hundred nights; I was used to dying; now I just wanted to make it stick.

 

When I awakened—if you can call it awakening—I was back in the garret, face-down on the floor in a glare of sunlight. My head a rain of a thousand hammers; hands so swollen my fingers would not bend. They laid pale against the stained planking, nails broken and ragged as if they'd scraped on stone. My body throbbed and the damp fabric of my dress was clammy. Something stirred. Clio?

“Mathilde?”

“Are you back among the living?”

I rose as if a string pulled me up, but my chest and ribs wrenched sharply, and I caught my breath fast. The light hurt, as though I was staring into the sun. Jolie was on the chaise, filing her nails. Crutches on the floor. Her eyes shadowed underneath and her long, red-gold hair was scalp stubble, shorn like a fallow field.