The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (38 page)

. . . Haussmann's dismissal, how it had proceeded. The new opera house, which would have more than two thousand keys to unlock its every compartment, door, and secret (over the consommé, a brief argument over the exact number of keys). And then to the war. Dawn's rosy tinge had been shaken off the republican transition, reassuring us all of the quick hustle back to business. Order must be put to the appalling situation that Louis Napoleon had left behind, and the man assigned for the job was the Breton general Trochu, a career military man known for his dull and lengthy proclamations and his criticism of the army. Unpopular with the imperial rulers, he had since been installed as governor of Paris and charged with the capital's defense. Trochu's “Plan” was the talk of the boulevards and the papers . . . We talked of the sugar shortage. Money and how to make it, under the circumstances.

Heads swiveled as a startling, dark-skinned boy entered the room. He had almond eyes and a beardless chin, was dressed in a coat of sapphire silk and a close-wrapped head covering. He preceded a gentleman in a beautifully cut suit; Indian silk, in a European style. Giulia's mellifluous voice rang out from the other end of the table.

“Enough of this!
Monsieur le comte
is just in time. He will divert us with stories of India.” The boy, with the eerie air of a dream, pulled out a chair; he stared straight ahead as though none of us existed. A waiter circled with a dish of caviar on ice, offering servings from an ivory spoon as the man crossed to kiss Giulia's hand; nodding to others here, bending there. He caused a ripple in the room. Eyes like soot stains, full of sulky irony.

Hadn't I known all along? Whether the thousandth, or the ten-thousandth night; it was just a matter of time, of place, of one coincidence too many. Still, the shock shuddered up through the floorboards, flooded up my spine with a spinning chill.

“ . . . Near Chandannagar,” he was saying now. “An indigo concern.” Uproar of Russian laughter. “There is a reason it is called ‘the blue devil of Bengal.' Most of my Indian stories, I fear, you would find the opposite of diverting.”

Giulia called out, “Have you met the fakirs? Do they sit in the center of fires or bury themselves in sand up to the neck?”

“At Mozufferpore there
was
a fakir who stood on one leg for seven years,” said Stephan. The turbaned boy was holding his master's chair as though he had been standing for a decade himself.

“But
why?
” whined a woman in a saffron bodice.

“To show that the body's decay has no meaning.”

“How can that be?”

Speed the body's deterioration, release the pure spirit from its mortal envelope—perform miracles so the people will believe. But perhaps it is only a trick they do for alms .
.
 . Laughter.
“In fact it is no easier to find magic in India than in France, madame.”

He turned momentarily toward us, toward Giulietta and me; then murmured to the woman on his left, sharing a laugh. I did not move an eyelash, cry out, or faint. Just put my arm around Giulietta's shoulders, too bare for a child of her age; she was shivering with excitement. The girl picked at a plate of tiny silvery fish, stealing glances down the table at her mother, at everything: wide-eyed, taking in every word and color and sound, including the visage of the dark-skinned boy who must have been near her age, but who was so still, insensible almost, even as he listened—and he must have heard, even though he seemed to be attuned to distant music.

Monsieur le comte
was seated across the table, a few chairs away. His glance traveled past me to Giulietta, and returned, a flicker of recognition, a question, a hesitation; he faltered. Lost his syllable and fumbled with his fork, set it down.

Two waiters stepped to his side, and one to mine.

“Champagne, Madame Eugénie?”

“Water, if you would.”

The banquet room heated; became suffocating and stuffy. The long, silk-festooned windowpanes were fogged from the heat of food salvers, conversation, and the candle sconces and chandeliers. Finally, someone opened a window and a gust of cold air swept down the table, flickering the candles, which started to gutter and drip. Giulietta was shivering. I turned my eyes away; removed my shawl and wrapped it around the girl. The Indian boy was watching too. His eyes seemed to absorb light.

“Close the window,” someone called out. The party had divided—the raucous side toward the hostess's end, and the quieter toward where Giulietta and I were seated. Stephan made the fulcrum. One of the Russians, rather than draw it shut, flung it more widely open. A drunken “La Marseillaise” filtered up from the street. Shots went off.

“La Dame aux Camélias requests her pleasure!”

“What, Giulia wants the window open?” someone asked.

“But she is a Roman; she loathes the cold.”

“Mama,” Giulietta cried, her full attention now fixed on her mother. “You have a grippe!”

“What is going on?” asked a woman across from me. Giulia had pulled her seat in front of the tall window.

Stephan said, “It seems that the Russians are placing bets on how cold Giulia can get before she decides to close the window. She has taken them on and declares she will sit through the night.”

Giulia loved a bet and I felt sorry for anyone who wagered against her. She
would
sit there all night; she would strip naked and bathe in an ice bucket if she needed to.

“ . . . To perform a miracle, or for the alms?” someone joked.

“It is a game you know, monsieur?” I said, across the table.

“I was simply translating from the Russian,” said Stephan.

“Mama—don't sit by the window,” cried Giulietta, this time in Italian.

“Sidonie, take her home,” called Giulia down the table to her maid. “This is no place for a child.” A Russian was dropping ice where La Grande Puttana's
last string of pearls stopped. Waiters swirled in black and white, tapers guttered, and the wind fluttered camellia petals like snow.

“What do you say? Thirty minutes, an hour, until dessert? Or can La Benini, La Grande Puttana, sit here until morning? I will bet with her that she cannot die; the blood of her heart is ice already, her lungs are the lungs of a Siberian sturgeon.”

“Place your wagers, gentlemen.” The laughter went on; a woman snapped her fan and rose . . . Courses came and went in quick succession. Wine was poured, and poured, and poured again.

. . . And why this night of all nights, why now? With the provinces invading Paris; sheep grazing in the Tuileries; Normandy apples and Cantal cheeses thundering through the gates, and carcasses swinging from hooks on uncurtained wagons, the entire line of food supply stripped naked, revealed to all? When the empire was now a stage set torn down, its costumes shivered off? Or because I had finally learned that in Paris, night was day, daylight was darkness; mortal flesh was money, and to love was to kill yourself. When I had achieved my own footing, on that rotted ground.

Strands of Giulia's hair had fallen down over her shoulders. One of the Russians had seized a bottle of seltzer and used it to drench the hostess. This encouraged further sport and an entire pitcher of ice water was dumped over her head. Giulia's beautiful gown was by now almost transparent, clinging to her skin like drapery carved into marble. Water ran in rivulets over her neck and shoulders, soaked the notes and bills scattered around her, the camellia petals and gold coins on the floor around her chair. Her face was icy, then ashen; expressionless, she was as a white statue, cold, perfect, uncracked. It was vile, but I'd seen worse at these affairs.

Guests put down their knives and forks even though the courses were still coming, and a few departed, leaving a gap where conversation had been. Across the table, my one-time lover allowed a waiter to refold his napkin. He looked uncomfortable.

“You are perhaps unfamiliar with this sort of performance, monsieur,” I said.

“It is not my preferred form of entertainment.”

“Then you have not been in Paris very long, for it is hardly rare here.”

Next to me, Giulietta started to cry, silent tears running down her reddened cheeks, and she needed a handkerchief. “Mama has the grippe,” she gulped. “But she told me not to move from my chair, whatever I did.”

I looked around for Sidonie. “Don't worry,” I said. “Your mama is just playing a game. It's not a good game, but it will end soon.” I spotted the maid, and beckoned to her. “Sidonie! Aren't you taking her home?”

“She coughs up
blood,
” sobbed Giulietta.

Stephan said, “In the Indian scriptures it is said that he who forgets the suffering of women shall be born in the body of an owl for three separate lifetimes. A room full of owls, then, in a hundred years, don't you think?”

“Why,
your
old place was hooting with them, wasn't it, monsieur?”

Stephan stood up halfway, pushing aside some lemon-colored dessert. His face turned bone-white; his gaze went again, immediately, to the girl. The boy in blue silk turned and stepped ahead. I hugged Giulietta, handing her off to Sidonie.

“She is Giulia's daughter,” I said calmly. “Lovely, isn't she?”

“I am sorry for her,” he said abruptly, and turned away.

Behind me, coffee was being served and some of the party had lost interest in the betting; they had gone off to smoke. Giulia sat alone with a small hubbub around her; she looked less like marble now; colder and more wretched. I went to her and closed the window, kneeled at her side.

“Giulietta has gone with Sidonie,” I said. “But I promised her that the game would be over soon, Giulia. If you get up now, cross the room, and leave by the side door, I will embarrass these Russian
faiblards
into paying up. My driver is outside. Use him; I will get a cab.” Giulia did not keep a driver in Paris. My friend did not answer; she was in some sort of trance. I had never seen anyone so still.

Finally Giulia's chest heaved in a trembling sigh and she tried to stand. I took her arm and steadied her. But I wanted her to leave that room on her own, splendidly dripping ice, past the Russians and out. I kept my hand on her back until she could. Then drew the Russians' ringleader aside. Stephan was gone.
Damn them all.

Later, hurtling over the broken cobbles in a cab, the driver spurred the horses. Narrow streets, high walls. Broken panes stuffed with rags.
VINS. RESTAURANT. BOULANGERIE. CHAMBRES à LOUER,
rooms to rent. Rooms, rooms. Always rooms and nothing there. My head rolled back against the seat of the cab, against the cracked black leather, and I steadied myself against the sharp jolts and turns. The carriage pulled up; the door swung again. There, just in front of where I stood on the corner of the rue Montmartre, was a flock of ghostly geese pecking the dust. Escapees from a farmer's cart, newly pulled in through the Paris gates. And there, for all the world like another ghost, was a ragged, wraithlike goose-girl, her arms wrapped around an enormous bird like she was holding its wings for dear life.

T
HE QUIET WAS LEADEN
and the room cold; no fire had been lit. A heaviness like an invisible cat weighed down the Marseille quilt bunched up around my neck. A dream stuck like fog; that Lili was examining my teeth and giving me saffron-colored flower petals to chew, saying that the stains they left would show where my teeth were weak. My head was pounding from the after effects of vodka and champagne.
Giulia, Russians. Stephan.
I huddled under the quilt and shivered. It was cold enough now for the gray goose-feather duvets to be brought out. Finette must learn how to clean out a hearth without spreading ashes on the carpet; to place saucers under coffee cups. The cold brew left on my bedside table was bitter.

Finally I threw back the bedclothes and went to my desk, tugged at the blue ormolu bell pull. In the compartments were scrolls of outdated correspondence, Noël's overflow (such is the fate of the functionary; it doesn't matter that one is dead).

 

Do not, M. le Préfet, deny me the consolation that an afflicted mother so much needs . . . My son, dead in honorable service to France on the battlefield at Sedan, now I beg of you not to refuse me an honest means of living, a license to open a tolerated house . . .

 

What to reply?
Not only is your son dead, but also monsieur to whom you write, along with a good number of your prospective customers .
.
 .
Request for a loan of funds. Letter of introduction needed. The usual, from Deux Soeurs, an urgent request for three new girls. (How did I become their avenue of first resort?) Two more required at another house, “European languages preferred.” (How to interpret that—fluency in German, in preparation for an occupation?) One candidate “of excellent quality” required at the discreet and expensive meat rack tucked behind the Louvre . . . Stacks of letters.

Nathalie Jouffroy had surfaced—in the form of a sheet of stationery from the Hôtel Royal Champagne at Rheims, where she presided amid green-topped gaming tables and black-and-white roulette, doubtless consorting with the Prussian generals. And suddenly I understood, in a slow-headed haze, where my maid had gone—no one but Nathalie could have made Sévérine jump so quickly!
Nathalie must have made a flying trip back into Paris to pack her things and corral the most reliable hand to be found, Sévérine. How many errands had I sent the girl on to Deux Soeurs, back and forth. Nathalie had had ample time to assess my maid—I was surprised, now, that she had stayed with me so long. In fact Sévérine had been loyal to a fault, given what Nathalie would pay her.

Of course, at Rheims Jouffroy needed a capable hand to assist and cater to “the Blackamoor,” as Noël had liked to call her—the Spanish African beauty, Nathalie's precious investment—a registered girl raised from the obscurity of Salon Trois, up through the ranks, to become one of the most highly desired courtesans in Europe; and her billets-doux and appointment book and sheaves of roses must be expertly managed. Nathalie would fly to the moon for “Camille,” as she was known. And Jouffroy's own newspapers, her financial pages, must be managed just as she liked; her café au lait served tepid, so she could sip it slowly, without any change in its temperature. She had abandoned Paris with her jewel just as Giulia was preparing to do, and the city would close like a trap.