A Paris Apartment (11 page)

I split the fee with Aimée, who was pleased to earn something for her artifice. She was quite grateful for a full 50 percent considering she didn’t have to perform on the implied sexual contract. For my part, I didn’t mind sharing because the money was not why I brought Georges back to my room in the first place.

It was about the presents, of course! The wedding gifts of Madame Daudet née Hugo. In the end the poor fellow’s load was much heavier when he entered the building versus when he left. Sadly, there will be at least a few
cadeaux de Jeanne
that won’t make it into the newspaper registries. There will, however, be quite a number of exquisite wedding gifts featured in any one of the Montmartre pawnbrokerages! There will also be, among other things, a new barmaid’s gown for me.

Merci, ma chérie! Merci!

Things might work out after all.

Chapitre XVIII

Paris, 18 June 1891

The Folies Bergère is a sight! Even after a month of employment I cannot get over the spectacle. It’s an assault on the senses. Everywhere there are lights and mirrors and luxurious fabrics, to speak nothing of the luxurious women! “Overflowing” is the word. Everything is overflowing. Even the fountains in the garden! You cannot walk past without drenching the lower half of your skirt.

Each evening brings a steady wave of people, both men and women. The guests sweep through the front doors and take a seat wherever they please. Some promenade the galleries while animals and humans perform on stage. Already I’ve written about the elephant. Gérard still cannot get him to bend to his wishes and, even worse, the beast has helped himself to a seat upon many a
habitué
.

We have other animals, though. Animals that are a touch more compliant! There are monkeys and horses and even a tiger. It is not as dangerous as it sounds. Though Gérard claims otherwise, I am certain he drugs the cat. Instead of roaring ferociously the poor creature stumbles around the stage and nine times out of ten falls into the orchestra.

In addition to the animal shows, on any given night patrons can witness ballet, operetta, or acrobatics with special effects. More than one person has caught fire. And last night—last night! The scene almost defies description.

Imagine this: A glass chandelier dangles over the audience. It is massive, three tiers tall and bigger than most carriages. Now picture yourself sitting below this magnificent chandelier, the light dancing on your gloves and skirt. It’s a hallmark of the Folies, everyone has heard of the famous chandelier. Customers come to expect this display: the glittering lights, the dancing reflections, the polished crystal. It is so magical, so transcendent; depending on the dancer it can be the best part of the show.

Suppose you were one of our patrons last night. You sit down and notice there is something different about your skirt. It looks, somehow, less luminous. Its threads do not dance. Then you realize: the chandelier!
Mon dieu!
They forgot to light it! You glance up. You gasp! Because instead of rows of glass and lights you see rows of women—nude women. A chandelier of nipples and flesh!

The performers stayed like that for three hours, smiles plastered on their faces, dark, prominent nipples unfailingly erect, pointed outward. Some of our most famous cancan dancers were up there. It made me quite glad to be a barmaid. I enjoyed the sight but do not have the fortitude. Or the lack of modesty!

Aside from naked ladies hoisted in the sky, I’ve met many interesting people at my post—more interesting than if I’d been hanging nude from a lighting fixture, that’s for certain. There are, of course, the various Hugo relations. Thankfully Georges shows no sign of recognition when he and I interact. I also meet painters and poets and writers, even pseudowriters such as that gossipmonger Marcel Proust. He thinks himself a master of words when he does nothing more than write a society column. What a bore he is!

A fellow named Robert de Montesquiou pays me quite a lot of attention. He is supposedly a poet of some sort, though I’ve never heard of him. He certainly dresses poetically enough, his favorite a pistachio-colored suit with a white velvet waistcoat. Often he wears flowers in place of a necktie and he always sports a ring the size of an egg, inside which he claims to keep human tears. He is quite fond of the boys but once tried to woo Émilie with a bedpan. It belonged to Napoleon in his Waterloo days but nonetheless was still a bedpan. He is dangerously handsome but I don’t know what to make of him.

Despite the frequent amusements, my job can prove quite boring at times. It’s rather plebeian, and by the end of the day my hands are sore and my feet swollen. Don’t misunderstand! I mean not to complain. For the most part I enjoy it. I love looking at the dresses coming in, the dresses going out, the dresses coming off. Indeed, they come off!

Though I was being mouthy at the time, my assessment on that first day was not far off the mark. While the girls at the Folies Bergère are hardly the sickly creatures creeping out of the rue Le Peletier brothels on a nightly basis (God bless you, Aimée,
Je t’adore
!), they are not exactly virginal. There are special rooms. There are special women. There are not-so-special men who go with these women into these rooms and come out looking rather pleased.

I asked Émilie about this once. She demurred and pretended to not know. After baiting her multiple times (the dresses, they cannot afford those dresses on their wages, and what about the jewels? The rubies, the pearls, the diamonds!), she finally told me they were not prostitutes but instead demimondaines.
Les demimondaine
s. I am not sure precisely what this means but I aim to find out. It is a rather lovely word, isn’t it?
Demimondaine.
It sounds almost regal.

Part Deux

Chapitre XIX

Though April knew she was running late, she was still surprised to find Olivier already at the apartment. In Paris, New York City, and many less glamorous locales, April was always the first one in the office. Not that Marthe’s was merely a place of
business
, but April was a first-to-arrive-last-to-leave kind of person. Then again, it was rare for her to have jet lag, a mild hangover, and a century-old journal on loan so maybe these were somewhat extenuating circumstances.

“Bonjour,” April said as she tottered in on too-high heels. Given her questionable physical state and the jittery sugar rush, April should’ve stuck with her trusty flats. “How is everyone this morning?”

April extracted a napkin from her bag and set it, and her third coffee of the morning, atop the least-special-looking table in the room.

“Bonjour, Madame Vogt,” Olivier said. “Comment allez-vous?”

“Bien, et vous?”

“Bien.”

April glanced around and somehow, in the light of a different day, with a full night’s sleep behind her, the apartment appeared even more unwieldy. Yesterday April saw boundless treasures. She still saw the treasures, but they were mired in an impossible amount of work. Marthe must’ve quickly learned what a demimondaine was and put the knowledge to good use. April was not standing in the apartment of a barmaid.

“You look alarmed, Madame Vogt.”

“April. Please. Alarmed, no. It’s all a bit overwhelming, though.”

“Yes,” Olivier said. “We have a lot to accomplish.”

“To say the least. When do you plan to transfer the items to your office?” April flipped open her notepad. “What delivery service do you use? There’s one I used years ago; they were top-notch. I’ll have to see if they’re still around.”

Olivier shook his head.

“We won’t move anything until just prior to the viewings. We haven’t the room. Quite an astronomical number of things have come in over the past few months, and we don’t have space for Madame Quatremer’s belongings, too.”

Marthe’s belongings, April wanted to say. These were Marthe’s things. Madame Quatremer never wanted them, not for a single moment in all of seventy years.

“All right,” April said, unsure if this was good news or bad. “I guess we work here.”

The flat was beautiful, but haunting, inspiring, yet distracting. April was probably better off in the basement of an auction house, a place that did not have chandeliers upon which her brain might project areolas. Still, inefficiencies notwithstanding, April found she wanted to stay in the apartment as long as she could.

“If we’ve not expressed it before,” Olivier said. “We are quite grateful you made the journey over. We value your help. You certainly understand Continental furniture better than anyone in our office.”

“Merci beaucoup.” April said. “I’m glad to be here.”

Despite the compliment, April frowned. Distraction whirred around her head like crickets. Something was off. April’s brain felt thick, muddled, confused.

“Is it just me,” she started. “Or is the flat weird in some way…”

April looked over her shoulder and realized the problem with a jolt. The Boldini. It was missing.

“Where’s the painting?!” she gasped. “What happened to it?”

Olivier shrugged. “
That
we took back to the offices for assessment.”

April clutched her stomach, her body swayed. The thought of not seeing the portrait again made her downright sick. It was only the
chouquettes
, she told herself. Consumption of ten pastries in a one-hour span was inadvisable no matter how strong one’s constitution.

“But it’s not yet been authenticated,” April said, her breathing labored, as if all the dust from the apartment was now inside her lungs. “We need a plan to determine provenance before we start staging. I have some documents loaned to us by the estate that may help in this regard.”

Bring her back. Bring the damn painting back.

“Ne vous inquiétez pas,” Olivier said. “It’s all but taken care of. As it turns out Boldini’s wife wrote a biography that was never published. In it, she mentions the portrait. Sounds as though we have provenance fairly well settled.”

“Wow,” April said. “Okay. That’s great news. About the verification. Terrific. Lucky.”

It was all these things: great, terrific, lucky. Still, April felt as if she was lying. So that was it then? No more Folies Bergère or demimondaines or nipple chandeliers? It was good news for the auction, not so good for Luc’s so-called curious auctioneer.

“Madame Vogt,” Olivier said. “Is everything all right? Vous-êtes stressée.”

“No. Not stressed.”

Except
very
stressed. She wanted the portrait. April wanted the room to stay exactly as it had been the day before.

“Madame Vogt?”

“I’m … uh … I’m thinking about the auction itself. Do you have a preliminary timetable? We need to calendar it soon.”

Schedules. Calendars. These were the things April was supposed to worry about—not courtesans, frothy gowns, or the swindling of prominent republican family members. But Marthe deserved to be on the calendar too. She
was
the schedule. That this was a Boldini meant thousands would see Marthe’s face. April wanted them to see the rest of her too.

“This has the opportunity to be a very special auction,” April continued, ideas coalescing in her mind.

Maybe they could build something around Marthe de Florian herself, lend the woman a certain kind of posthumous fame, notoriety comparable to Jeanne Hugo’s—preferably exceeding Jeanne’s—April thought with a smirk.

“I’m envisioning a multiday exhibit,” she said. “The history is quite rich. Though the woman is unknown, even to us auction-house types, she consorted with Proust and Montesquiou and even the Hugo family. And of course Boldini himself! Think of the stories our pieces could tell.”

“Ah! Quite clever you are,” Olivier said.

April started to beam.

“Alas. Non,” he said. “It is already decided.”

“Decided…”

“Most of the assets will go into ‘Important French Furniture, Sculptures, and Works of Art’ in September. The rest shall fit with ‘Important European Silver, Gold Boxes, and Vertu.’ Which is”—he checked his phone—“in October.”

“What? That can’t be right?” April said, confused. “Filler pieces? That doesn’t make sense.”

“We were a little lacking this upcoming season, to be honest. So these items will round everything out quite nicely.”

At once April’s hopes for the auction were pummeled. Marthe had been locked up and stashed away for over seventy years. They’d made this tremendous discovery but once her pieces were broken up and scattered amongst other half-baked lots, it’d be like they never found her in the first place.

“You look a little peaked,” Olivier noted. “Do you need to sit down? It can get quite stuffy in here.”

“Olivier.” April inhaled deeply. “I implore you to reconsider. You flew me to Paris for my expertise and—”

“Indeed we did,” he said. “Alas, it’s been decided. I think it’s for the best. So, shall we get to work?”

Without waiting for an answer, Olivier turned and strode toward the kitchen, leaving April slack-jawed and staggering in the hallway. They couldn’t do this to Marthe. If she showed Olivier the journals, perhaps he’d change his mind. Or, worse, perhaps he wouldn’t.

“This is not happening,” April said as she hugged her purse to her chest, feeling the weight of Marthe’s journals through the leather. “You’re getting your own auction. Important French Furniture? C’est merdique.”

Strong words but the right ones.
C’est merdique
: It was shitty indeed.

Chapitre XX

April hunted Olivier down an hour later, which felt like the minimum length of time before she could reasonably accost him again. In the fifty-seven minutes (fifty-eight, fifty-nine) since Olivier dismissed her auction ideas, April had accomplished little, her brain too congested with frustration, with the goddamn furniture and vertu.

“Important European Silver.” That’s what you called a random piece from a random home you didn’t know what to do with, a piece whose catalog copy was uninspired, untied to something greater. Or as Birdie once joked upon trying to describe a mangled fork from a crumbling British castle, “It’s silver, dude, and from a castle, isn’t that enough?”