The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (26 page)

“You'll see. Lucre makes legal—the laws will have to catch up. These fellows up at the Hôtel de Ville cling to the tolerated houses, their silly rules, uniformed officers arresting women to a fare-thee-well. Meanwhile, ‘respectable' fashion follows the
cocotte,
because you have men of every class throwing cash at women to whom they are not married,” said Odette. “Count the carriages in the Bois, of an afternoon. Love, sex, and money all going around like a carousel, and like as not the women are driving, married or not. Already the gray coats can't keep up with how the styles change—we've got them on the run. It's only a matter of time.”

“Odette got lucky early on,” remarked Jolie. “She found a ship's captain and sank him.”

“Sank himself, just helped me in the meantime,” Odette retorted.

Louise said, “Louis Napoleon has bloated Paris with debt and floated it on profits from the
tolérances.
The proceeds from the regulated houses drive up rents past any price a normal market would bear—that's how the speculators are getting rich, on inflated property values, and they are gunning them until they crash.”

Irritated, I said, “Meanwhile, until one learns to manipulate rather than to love—the Brigade, the doctors, and the madames make a ransom off our backs?”

“Oh,
love,
” said Jolie. “Eugénie, are you still puzzling over that?”

“I'm not puzzled, no.”

“If she is, she's not alone,” said Odette.

Louise said, “And what about you, Jolie, did you get ‘lucky'?”

“
I
am out of service at least until March. And this one here”­— Jolie's hand floated in my direction—“never did learn how to ply her
carte
without cracking a rib; now she has a broken heart from the loss of two
amours—
well, I think it is two—and a baby.”

“A baby?” said Louise, looking at me. I closed my eyes.

“And where is the ‘author of the child,' as the law calls him?”

“Well, where do you think, Louise?” said Jolie.

“Have you considered bringing a case? Of course you cannot claim paternity directly, but you might be able to get a judgment for damages to your person, reputation, your ability to earn an honest living.”

“Really?” said Jolie, incredulous.

“The Code Civil was framed to protect legitimate children and family bloodlines. Seduction and abandonment of young women en masse was not the desired result.”

“I think it serves their purposes nicely,” said Odette. “Plenty of bastards for the army, cheap labor for the factories, girls who are dumb and willing—”

“There have been precedents in law for support,” said Louise firmly.

“Even if you're on the Register?” said Jolie. “What judge would believe one of us pointing the finger?”

“What better argument than that a woman's other prospects have been ruined?”

Jolie snorted.

“Certainly, a lawyer would have to prepare a clear case,” said Louise.

“Lawyers have to be paid, or so I hear,” said Odette drily.

Jolie said, “Shall we dine? Odette, this bird smells like heaven!”

 

“So, now that you've jumped out a window, are you finally ready to move up in the world,
minouche
?” asked Odette as we drew our chairs around the table to a meal that, at least for Jolie and me, was Balthazar's Feast.

Jolie laughed. “Is that possible?” To Louise, she said, “I'm the only guttersnipe here, picking out my alphabet. These two have gone to school; they can carry on with whom they please. You'll have to take us as we are, Louise.”

“You knew enough to get yourself out of Saint-Lazare,” said Louise, and I wondered, not for the first time, why she was here and what she wanted from Jolie. What everyone else did, or something else?

“What those nuns taught I could write on a thumbnail,” said Odette, pouring again. “I learned everything I know from my old man's library.”

Jolie helped herself to salad and a leg. “A band of thieves raised me—I was the little one who took care of them. Iced their lumps and black eyes with what I scraped up from the fishmonger. My first trip inside, I'd been picked up for stealing ice. At the
poissonnière.”

“It's a favorite spot with the gray coats,” I said. “Even Odette prefers chicken.”

“You should have seen the two of them, Jolie and her brother, Henri. Pierrot and Pierrette of the bandits,” said Odette.

“But oh, the girls at Saint-Lazare back then! The packages they got, the flowers—from their madames and lovers. And they acted like being inside was nothing. While I, flea-bitten and half-starved—and I thought myself tough—cried like a baby. And I'd put up with a lot by then. But when I saw
them
cry, it seemed like an adventure—maybe they were crying over a
lover.
Where does a kid get those ideas? I never even bothered to look at the old women, of course. Dead sticks in the corner.”

“And what happened?” asked Louise.

“I made friends with a girl who was a bit older. She told me that when I got out, she could get me better work than thieving, and I'd walk on a carpet and wear a pretty dress. I'd never seen one.”

“A dress?” said Odette, munching on a thigh.

“A
carpet.
”

“When I met Jolie we were both living on Vertus, and she did wear trousers from time to time. To think she signed away her life for a rug!”

“A cheap copy from a Paris factory, in the first dump I worked. And not much in the way of a dress.” Jolie chuckled. “But
this
time—this last time at Saint-Lazare, Nathalie Jouffroy found out I was there and sent a box to me—so I was the one passing out sweets. But do you want to know something—out of the corner of my eye, I could see only the older women now. As if I'd opened the closet door and found them, like Bluebeard's wives. But still breathing; that's the curse. When you're young, you can't see where things lead, and why is that?”

“No education is complete without ‘Bluebeard,'” remarked Louise wryly.

“What drags us down, in the end,” Odette mused, “is taking care of everyone else when we can't scrape up enough for ourselves. How is it that we think we can
be
and
do
and
care
for everyone else without being able to take care of ourselves first? Not in this world.” She looked across the table, nodded at me. “You may have loved that baby, Eugénie, but soon you'd have been afraid to keep her near you. The daughters just become what the mothers have been.”

A silence fell over the half-picked carcass, the empty jars, which Odette refilled . . . How could I ever have envied Odette? The woman was made of marble.

“And do you think that pretending you are a capitalist changes that?” Louise said finally to Odette, just short of acidic.

“I'm no better than my neighbors, Louise . . . Peel me a beet,
minouche
?”

Jolie wiped chicken grease from her mouth with the back of her hand. Speared a beet, stripped its charred skin off, made ruby slices. She dropped one on the white cloth, staining it. I looked down, felt tears well.
How long could I go on asking her to be strong for us both?

“Your heart is leaking and if you don't stop it up, you're going to bleed to death,
chouette.
All over the floor,” said my friend abruptly.

Louise sawed off the last chunks of meat and offered the plate around.

“Jolie and I have been studying the case of American slavery. I'd be interested to know how much each inscribed girl is worth to the city of Paris.”

“I saw sugar slaves in Barbados,” said Odette. “Are they worth very much?”

“For the price of a healthy young man you could probably build a chateau on your little plot of land.
That
is what the Confederacy is defending. Its wealth in slaves,” said Louise. “I don't believe that Paris will easily give up Regulation. Not until there is something else to put in its place. Or—the women refuse.”

“I don't see many refusing,” said Jolie. “I've never seen so much competition on the street.”

“Set them free and educate them,” said Louise. “
Then
you'll see.”

“I don't know what army would fight to free us,” I said.

“An army of the just,” said Louise. A brief silence fell over the onion skins. “Meanwhile, I wonder if you could organize a trade union. Negotiate for some basic rights.”

Odette yawned. She stared at the schoolteacher, a flicker in her pale eyes; the same twitch of the lips Berthe used when my father spoke. His Limoges notions, she called them; as if Limoges was as distant as China. Papa would give her a gentle, helpless glance. Jolie looked doubtful. I swallowed; closed my eyes. Metal, the taste of metal always now in my throat.

“Louise always gets to the point,” said Jolie, finally. “That's why I asked her to come. Is it time for chocolate?”

 

With the taste of
poulet rôti
and wine and now the bittersweet chocolate melting in our mouths (even Louise had liked the tart), the mood around the table mellowed. I said, under the rosy tinge of wine, “When I was young I wanted to mean something, to be important to someone, or to do something larger than myself. Once I thought
the point
was to be of use. And to care for those you love.”

“
Use
in the sense that you mean it is an eighteenth-century idea. Now the meaning has been corrupted, and it means the strong using the weak for their own gain; it has led to instrumentalism.” Louise nodded to Odette. “From your notion follows self-mechanization and the death of the soul. And yours”—she turned to me—“your conception of it foundered on the rocks of a new meaning. Living in the past has put you at the mercy of others.”

“That's what we've been trying to tell her,” said Jolie.

“I think she just falls in love with the wrong men,” said Odette.

“Oh, they're all wrong, Odette.”

I persisted. “So, what
is
the answer, Louise?”

“It is a weak society that depends on wars abroad and selling women's bodies at home. A sign of internal rot, like marrow disease.” She paused, gestured to Odette. “But I don't mean to moralize. Until society grows stronger and women can earn a decent living, the money you make should be yours. You should be able to have your furnishings and live in your flats any way you'd like.” Despite her brave words, Louise looked as though she was still mulling it over.

“Hear, hear,” said Jolie.

“Well—getting back to the point of the evening—first we need to figure how to keep any roof at all over these two pretty heads, and Clio in mackerel,” Odette said.

I'd drunk a lot of wine. A vinegary feeling coursed in my blood, a stubborn, full-stomach-and-gunpowder sensation. I leaned forward. “No, I want Louise to tell me the point of what she is saying. The point of—of
living.
For
us.
As we are
now.
If it is not just that we are wretched, meant to be endlessly punished to remedy a sin—to be held up as an example. If we are just being used for the profit of others, which is not what they say, that—that is—” I stopped, confused. “What are our lives
for?
”

“It's not such a mystery,” said the teacher, slowly. “Life's purpose is to learn and to grow. To be able to sit at the banquet the world offers, to eat and drink your fill, you as well as anyone else. You, Eugénie, and that other one, that so-called empress whose name you share—are not so different . . . You too have the right to a defense. Believing it is the first step.”

Odette sighed and pulled out a tiny lacquered snuffbox. Jolie's eyes were shadowed. I stared—perhaps unfairly, because no one had been more generous than Odette—at her plump caressing hands as she delicately mounded a pinch of aromatic tobacco between her left thumb and forefinger. She took a long sniff and said, “Louise, this revolution of yours—because that's what you're talking about? The rights of man, guns in the street, et cetera—I think
that
is the ‘eighteenth-century idea.' Finally a woman with her wits about her can live more or less unencumbered, and I mean to do it. Your ideas led to the guillotine.” Odette sniffed again and sat back. Her peacock earrings dangled, catching Clio's attention as she sprawled against the faded Perrault. The cat pricked up her ears. Jolie lit a cigarette. Looking over at her, I felt my heart give a stab.

“I would not actually call living by the
carte
unencumbered,” I muttered.

“The
carte
is an egregious insult. I've said so before . . . Care for a pinch?”

Louise shook her head. “For the moment, I was talking about trade unions. And litigation on behalf of fairness.” Looking at me, she said, “Be more generous with yourself. If you are not—who on this earth will be, for you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, low-voiced as Louise. The table was covered with bones and cups and crumbs.
“
How?
”

Odette cast me a sad glance. As though I was naive and rustic; as, in fact, I was.

Louise said, “That gold you must find for yourself.” She rose and plucked a label from the line. Turned it over and scribbled on the back. “Come and talk it over with others who are also asking the same questions, if you'd like. Jolie knows where the school is.” She left it, got up for her shawl. “Now, my friends—I am due at a meeting. So it is good night, for now.”

We listened to her boots echo down the stairs.

“School indeed,” said Odette, raising her glass. “To the Bastille, more like.”

“You're going to be short a bergamot,” I said, turning over the paper on which Louise had written.