The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (21 page)

I started to cry. “Don't leave, but DO find Mathilde!”

“Sure, sure. I'll have her right back here.” His boots clattered down the stairs, echoing like a bucket dropped down a dry well.

The windows were open; gusts of wind blew the ragged lace. The wind had come up suddenly, and it even felt cold, strangely cold, without a fire. I lit all the candles I could find. The pains were on me for real now, one after another in waves. I uncorked the absinthe and drank straight from the lip, and barely tasted it going down. My head lolled back against the chaise; the pains rolled me forward—

Stay conscious, stay awake, just hang on—
I crouched on the chaise as well as I could, pulling the sheet over me, shivering.
Mathilde, where was she—?
Blackness like icy water closed over my head and I gave in, let it close over me before struggling back to the surface. My breath came in gasps.
Breathe,
the midwife had said.

It was more like drowning, though, gasping for the surface—and nausea, green-bottled, long-necked nausea clutched in one hand, Jolie's knife in the other. I eased myself down to the floor, braced my back against the chaise. Clio had retreated, her fur tangerine-orange against Jolie's purple shawl on the bed. She licked her white belly, licked and licked, her pink tongue bobbing; just a cat performing her ablutions. The minutes clicked past on the white-faced clock; the hands moved past the numerals.

“Jacques!” The moan did not seem to come from me. But Jacques became Jolie and Jolie Stephan, and Stephan Pierre, and Pierre . . . Mademoiselle C . . . and a girl with long fingers and rat's teeth. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes; half an hour, an hour . . . I was cold, it was freezing in the room, and the pains came one on top of the next; finally, and finally, I knew no one would come, not Mathilde, or Stephan, or Pierre, or Jacques or Jolie; no one, no one at all would come to assist this birth.
Even if I cried out Stephan's name, as women were said to do—that grave declaration in extremis that could be nothing but the truth—no one would hear it.

Then another, a new kind of pain, the most immense of them all, making the others measurelessly small in comparison—this cut through the opium, the absinthe, slashed through my abdomen like a jagged knife edge. This pain was a bolt forking down into the furrows, it ripped me from the earth, uprooted me, held me, strangling and naked, white, tender, earthbound roots, straggling legs hanging in the air—it was enormous, that pain, it was everything I'd ever feared, and hungered for.

The cry was a thin sound, but too far away . . . I started to sob when I saw, finally, the crown of the small head, the tiny heaving chest—eyes screwed shut, a mouth open in an O, to bellow . . . held the tiny, fragile, blood-and-mucus-charged pith of my bones. I struggled to pull myself up, to turn the small infant body toward mine. It—
she—
was a girl.

A girl. Poor wailing scrap of a thing, jinxed in the womb—my vision went black, and I breathed. I had made her, alone; nourished her with my body, had given birth to her, alone.
Alone. My daughter.
Pain echoed through my body like a bell tolling, tolling, and tolling. The storm had rolled by but in its wake, fires . . . the blackened spires at the forest edge; and women coming down the road with bundles bound to their backs with ropes, with cord.

Jolie's knife was still clenched in my fist, and the throbbing, blood-charged, still-live umbilicus bound this infant, this daughter to me. I found it, wrapped it around my hand.
When do I cut it—now? when?
It seemed she would die if I cut too soon, cut her off from me, from my body, from everything—the cord, quivering, wet, pulsing with my dark blood, cries of the infant—cries,
Oh please, be quiet.

I shut my eyes tight and pressed forward with the blade. It did not want to cut through; the knife trembled, I was not strong enough . . .
Please, God, let this be all right, let me not kill her, let Mathilde come.
It slipped through, finally; severed us, the knife trembling—and for God's sake, what now?

Wrap her, clean her, she must be wrapped, swaddled—what to put around her, all the linens were with Mathilde—
Mathilde, damn her—
but my shawl, my shawl—it was somewhere here. The room began to turn; slowly I shook myself, I felt ill, was going to black out; she was crying, but wait, she had to be covered.

Was she dying?

The shawl, when I found it, was not the plain one I had pulled around myself at the rue Jacob; the shawl, as I wound it around my daughter, was different, much more beautiful; it was like a living thing, a whole garden, it was twined with roses in a delicate pattern, in red and gold and purple, with green, winding thorns.

“
Isn't it lovely against the black?”
Berthe's face turned toward me, pale in the candlelight, fiery in the mirror.

The infant stopped crying then, as though the ghost of her grandmother had come into the room and taken away her fierce little wails.
Is my mother dead, then? Has she forgiven me?
Standing on the stairs, face turned toward Auch, palette box under her arm; Charles's arms wrapped around his wet nurse, Virginie. Berthe's gloved hand resting on his head, and mine, bare, red with my daughter's blood. The infant was quiet at last as I slipped under the black waters, and all I could think was
I already love her too much.

 

Sunlight glared through the high window, poured in onto the rose-colored upholstery of the chaise. Black flies buzzed in the heat. The clock's hands said three and all was very still. The heat had finally returned; it wasn't cold anymore. The
thwap, thwap
of a cat's paws on the floor; Clio meowed, slapped her tail against my face, and went to sit next to her bowl. The world was a remote, sunny, quiet place, and I had been gone for a very long time. If I moved, even a little, a point of pain throbbed on my forehead.

It pulsed. It grew, that pain. In my head, as it did after I'd come into the Porte Maillot, and everything went black—and then, lower down. I was lying on the chaise, under a cover. Felt down cautiously for a stiff, bloody gown, but no, what I encountered was soft. The sheets were damp. I pushed back the cover and looked down for the dried mess of blood—yet there was nothing but the folds of a fresh white nightgown, a garment I'd never seen. I moved and felt some bandaging, bulky between my legs. There was no blood anywhere; the chaise had been made up with clean sheets. The pain in my head gave an awful cold-edged stab, the room went bleary then, and everything was fogged.
It was quiet
.
 .
.
too quiet .
.
 . why?
I remembered, clearly enough, cutting the cord—what had happened after? Where was the baby; had I harmed her? Should she not have been nursed by now? Or had Mathilde emerged like a lost devil, to take her to the
tour d'abandon
—

“Jolie?” I called, my voice weak and hoarse with panic.
“Jolie!”

Clio stared at me golden-eyed from across the room, her tail twitching . . . No Jolie, no baby, no blood.

 

“Madame Eugénie?”

I lifted my legs over the side of the chaise, pressed my feet tentatively against the floor. They were puffy, swollen, useless things. Braced my knees and rose a little, unsteady, until a ragged pain tore from below.

“Madame Eugénie—oh, thank goodness you're awake.” Mathilde appeared, breathless and flushed.

“Mathilde, you didn't—I swear, if you took her to the
tour
—”

She stood in the door with a small bundle in her arms. “No, madame.” (I was madame, now that I'd given birth.) “You told me no, so I took the baby so you could sleep. She is a lovely little thing; hold her! I'm sure you are right to keep her, but—well, La Cacheuse told me to do everything to change your mind; it is so difficult to have a baby all on your own with no husband—”

“Shush now, Mathilde.” I held out my arms.

“Where is Jolie? What happened—?”

“What happened? What
didn't
happen! But there was a back door and I got out in the smoke!”

What Mathilde said, in essence, jumbled together with apologies and a few more attempts to convince me to follow her employer's advice, was that after Jolie had set the draperies on fire, and the police had stormed in, and everyone was coughing and confused as the police were trying to make arrests—Jolie had jumped out the window. “Gone out” was the way Mathilde put it. They all heard a sickening crack, and leaned out and saw her dress in flames on a glass roof one story below.

“Oh, God,” I said. “And now she's at Saint-Lazare.”

“I believe it, madame.”

The red-faced scrap slept in my arms, eyes squeezed shut. Eyelashes finer than the hairs of Maman's tiniest brush. Pink-bow lips, the faintest dark smudge of an eyebrow, as if smoke had touched her brow. Tiny fists, fingernails.

“You've had an eventful entry,” I murmured, and then asked Mathilde if the cord was all right.

“Oh, it's fine—I fixed it up a bit. And look what I brought.” She reached into her apron pocket, an ample one, and pulled out the blanket Jolie had knitted and a few of the trinkets from the rue Jacob, all wrapped in the colorful scarf that had lain on the floor, and a set of clothes for swaddling, a donation from her mistress. An envelope stuffed with the bet money. The scarf had a burned edge, and smelled of smoke. And I forgave Mathilde a little.

“What are you going to name her, madame?”

Berthe,
I said to myself, softly. Closing my eyes, burying my head in her shoulder, I inhaled the sweet, worldless perfume of an infant.

S
HE SLEPT IN A SMALL
orange crate, lined with scarves and scraps of fabric, like a gypsy child. When she woke, I nursed her. Mathilde visited to pronounce that she was doing well, to bring us a half-loaf and a bunch of red-and-white radishes, and to tell me she had found an
abéqueuse.
Every mother in Paris had an
abéqueuse,
even if she could not afford one. I told Mathilde that this “madame” would not engage a wet nurse, and she looked troubled. She removed the bandaging from between my thighs and my body felt tentative, afraid of movement. Exhausted past all remembering, until Berthe's cries roused it again.

I ate the entire bunch of radishes, even the leaves, with the salt that was left.

Berthe wailed; I lifted her from the crate. She was hot, the little one, and no wonder; it was sweltering under the eaves, it had not rained in weeks. The Seine was not much more than a muddy rivulet, ebbing and sucking at its stone bed. The cries of water sellers were heard more and more from the street. With her lips clamped around my swollen nipple, her warm, silky head cradled in the crook of my arm, I tucked my feet up on the chaise and dropped into a kind of drowsy quiet, taking her rhythms, the tiny suckling movements, deep into my body . . . saw that she had his eyes, his brow; his ears, nose, and lips.

He was written all over her. Stephan.

When she was quiet, all I wanted was to sit with the blinds down and a piece of cool wet cloth around my head, hands cupped around my still-swollen belly. My mind, usually so full of racket, emptied, stilled, and lit, again and again, on an image: pollen-heavy stamens; flitting insects. Some notion, some scent; roses, lilies nodding on their stems. Gardens. A mirrored pool. I suppose it was inevitable that my thoughts would finally circle back and rest there: the garden, with the roses, lavender and yellow and pink, the buzzing insects, the water splashing lightly in the fountain. The gardens, the roses. Berthe in her cradle. Stephan beside us.
Peace.
Peace,
rue de la Paix.
It was different now; everything had changed. Now we were closer. She was here.

 

My earthly possessions now consisted of the indigo dress and the sepia-brown curtain-muslin skirt, two chemises and a good skirt and top; a variety of underthings, a pair of calfskin boots, worn at the heels; two pairs of stockings, a hair ribbon, four petticoats; a set of stays and two combs. Berthe possessed Jolie's knitted blanket, one set of swaddling cloths, one silverplate baby rattle, one pewter baby spoon, two ribbons, a cloth, and two pink, flowery notes. The betting wins, amounting to about seventy francs. Aside from that, a few notes and coins, loose among the mismatched pewter and silver, remained from Jolie's hoard, the rest having gone for celebratory provisions.

In the drawers of Jolie's flat I discovered packs of cards and a fist-sized ball of dirty wax. Aside from a few books lent by Louise, Jolie's sometime-teacher from the rue Hautefeuille, there was only one item of value: the man's pocket watch that Jolie had looked at, the very first time I'd met her, the very first night, at Deux Soeurs.

 

Pinkish gold and buttery smooth, the winding knob made a soft
tick-tick-tick
. The lid was engraved with a design of twining curlicues and ribbons, and folded open on a thick hinge to reveal a moon-round face with gold filigree hands and black numbers. It was a rich thing, heavy and old and fine. How might she have come to have it, I wondered. Could it have been a sentimental gift, a payment of some kind—or was it something Henri had filched?

In the orange crate, Berthe slept; Clio kept watch from the chaise, flicking her tail at slow-buzzing flies, casting green-eyed cat gazes down at Berthe, of whose small life she seemed to have appointed herself guardian. I closed my eyes.

My feelings for Jolie had thickened over these months together. I had, more than I'd admitted, waited for her while she was gone; watched her dress and brush out her hair; was jealous of the time she spent with Louise (and suspected their meetings were about more than learning to read). But she was slippery as an eel. I thought that she cared for me; but if she moved toward me (and at moments, she did), she would soon retreat; slide away into the world of her friends and lovers. I would never fit there, no matter how much I might wish to, how hard I might try. Jolie could keep others off balance if she wanted to; play one off the other, leave confusion and yearning in her wake; it was how she had learned to live. A heart thief; a thief. But—was that fair? She also had a fierce sense of justice, was loyal to a fault. The two braided together and you never knew which side would turn up.