The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (3 page)

It was soon clear that the Tivoli was not a pleasant place to spend time. For one, the clerk who frequently replaced Madame at the desk pretended not to notice my presence, while I knew that he had. When he appeared I lowered my head as the sheep to the dog. Only once in the corridors had I seen a guest anything like myself—a blonde, pale-browed girl in indiscriminate garb—“neither fish nor fowl,” as Maman would say, and not to flatter. The girl appeared only briefly; when I looked for her again she was gone. With my diminishing clutch of bank notes the initial charms of the capital were already, by the third day, wearing thin. Dingy swells of working girls coming and going, knots of beggars in the shadows of Notre Dame, the tides of workmen with their spades; and unapproachably extravagant shops on the rue de la Paix—all were becoming tainted with vinegar, like wine going off. Omnibuses passed up and down the rue Saint-Lazare while I walked endlessly and without destination in shoes not meant for cobbles; in a veil that trapped the street dirt in my eyes. (My old sabots, woolen dress, and thick winter cloak would have stood up better to the conditions, but those things had vanished as though they never were.)

By the time dusk fell, the working girls in sparrow brown and the cinched and silk-clad shoppers alike disappeared behind gates and doors, the battered clang and the turn of latchkeys echoing behind them. I hurried to make it back to the hotel by curfew, with no idea of what would happen if I was late—would I be stopped by a gray-coated police officer, like those patrolling the perimeter of the Luxembourg Gardens? Scolded by Madame, thrown in prison, taken before a court? So every evening I returned helplessly to dwindling provisions laid in for this siege of waiting.

Across the street from the Tivoli, the crinoline shop's empty bells swayed, knocking dully against one another in the sharp gusts.

On day five, the baker on the farther end of the Passage Tivoli cut bread into squares and put the samples out in a basket. A woman at the counter (wrapped in a blue shawl too good for the dress underneath) moved her hand cautiously from basket to mouth and back again, slowly moving her jaw as though trying to make the chewing movements small and invisible. Out of kindness, the baker had turned his back.

 

And now I missed Stephan terribly. No response had come to four nights of notepaper beset with inky, faithful marks and envelopes stamped boldly with the hotel's address. Each morning, Madame sorted letters on the mahogany desk—her usual method was to extract some few and mysteriously disappear with them while I stared at the newspapers and waited for the shadow indicating her return. Eventually she proceeded to sort the mail into pigeonholes by guestroom, her bulk eclipsing the whole project. From no place in the lobby was it possible to discern whether an envelope had found its way into pigeonhole number 12, and so I was ignorant of my fate until the whole abysmal task was complete. Then, empty-handed and with a hole in my heart, I went out to walk.

Around the supper hour the lamps flared to life; my stomach pinged, and the trousered portion of the citizenry and those on their arms proceeded to conviviality and dinner. I lingered before a chalked board in front of the restaurant Trap a short way up the rue Saint-Lazare.

 

Potage aux Croutons

Spécialité du Jour: Fricandeau

Potage de Fantasie

Bouilli Ordinaire

Dessert: Tartes Sucrées

 

The parted curtains exhaled warmth and the scent of mussels and garlic; the
chink
of cutlery and the music of glassware floated out to the street. On one of these evenings, the barman appeared with a cloth flung over his shoulder.

“The
soupe du jour
is good tonight, the
boeuf à la mode
like butter. And some very nice oysters grilled in their shells.” He nodded at a pile of bricks and rubble. “They won't cease over there, will they? Pulling people's houses down around their ears. The dust today was terrible. Why don't you come in? The wolves are kind at the Trap.” When he squinted, creases feathered around his eyes, but he was not an old man.

But I shook my head and hurried back up the Passage.

By seven on the Friday of my first week in Paris, I was pacing my room and rationing candle ends—cheap, fast-burning tapers bought from a sundries shop. A bottle of spot remover, cheap stationery and broken pen nibs, and the remains of my own dinner, chocolate crumbs wrapped in paper, were crowded on the small candle stand. Like the worn-out carpet, flat pillows, and meager walls, life itself had thinned, and I dwelt on what, in the recent months with Stephan, had been thick and fat: rugs and rose petals; framed pictures; pillows and featherbeds that were fluffed and tucked into place every morning. Cream in coffee, the glistening edge of the meat. Hours marked by chimes, heavy and honey-laden, like dusty bottles of Sauternes in a cellar; not least, Stephan's presence, around which I could wind my self and soul. It had begun to seem like a dream as I flopped onto the flat, prickly mattress and faced the ceiling cracks, seeking the connection between these forking lines in the plaster and the events that had led me to stare at them now. A plausible story to wrap around my situation. Smuggled up from the lobby was the evening's entertainment, a copy of
Paris Illustré,
with its society events, brief anecdotes, and gossip.

From this source I learned that on the contract day of her marriage, Mademoiselle de Gr—'s engagement gifts from her equally aristocratic fiancé, Monsieur de T—, included antique lace, an ivory fan, a candy box inlaid with semiprecious stones, two cashmere shawls, and a purse of gold coins for charity . . . Also, that residents of the rue Saint-Jacques would miss a familiar figure, a tall gray-clad lady who had wandered the neighborhood carrying a shredded umbrella and a zinc pail into which tourists dropped coins. She had been found dead in her lodgings (asphyxiation by fumes from a coal stove, a suicide). She was in such poverty that she made her bed in a soap crate, but in a metal box inside her chimneypiece was a fortune in bank notes, along with a letter asking that the funds be used to fly her to the moon. Her one-time love had gone there already, she wrote—a soap magnate who had lost his fortune . . . And that it was now possible to find twenty-nine varieties of mustard in the capital, among them Red, Powdered, Flavored with Garlic, with Capers, or Anchovies; with Lemon, Tarragon, Fines Herbes. Truffled, prepared for the empress in honor of a marquise; Tomato, Black, Green, Roman, and “For the Health”; this last, though prized as a condiment, was also known for the treatment of—

Next to my ear I heard a sighing sizzle, and the last of the candle ends snuffed out: then, silence. In the darkness, afterimages of the newsprint floated.

 

EMPEROR EMPLOYS GAS IN PALACES, DISAPPROVES OF ELECTRICAL LIGHTING INDOORS.

CONSTRUCTION WORK ON THE RUE DE RIVOLI TO PROCEED AT NIGHT: FEMALE VIEWERS, ESPECIALLY FOREIGN TOURISTS, WISE TO BE ESCORTED.

RENTS SOAR: LODGINGS IN PARIS IN SHORT SUPPLY. ARTISTS AND STUDENTS REVOLT.

PLAGUES OF RATS AND LICE.

GREATER NUMBERS SEEN IN THE UNRULY FEMALE POPULATION; MORALS BRIGADE TO ADD OFFICERS.

EMPRESS TO HOLD USUAL WINTER ENTERTAINMENTS.

 

What I had gleaned, these emptied-out evenings, was that an intricate web of law and social relations spread out over the capital like a giant net. From cradle cap to mourning veil, fashion, rumor, and gossip suggested what was good and bad, frowned on or approved. Columns and anecdotes hinted, critiqued, and applauded like great crowds pointing and chattering on every corner, making oblique references to the Code Civil. I knew about the Code Napoleon and how it had abolished a piecework of old feudal laws and practices, organized the legal system—but I wished that the rules of Paris—
“law unto itself!”—
had been spelled out. (Of course, if they had I would have been confronted with the fact that the Code Civil had also been written to organize out of society exactly the behavior that had thus far characterized my path—that is, passionate flight and a love affair with a man not my social equal—though of course, this was not how I viewed it at the time.) Instead, I could draw my conclusions only from the mysterious rules about hotel rooms, reports of old women who slept in soap crates, and the information that a poor girl whose virtue had been compromised might stick her arm full of darning needles and find a career as a hysteric at La Salpêtrière.

If Stephan were here we would have discussed it all, and he would have laughed and said that neither love nor money should drive you mad. But—where
was
Stephan? Why had he not arrived? I was about as equipped to manage Paris alone as to fly to the moon myself. A queasy wash of anxiety swung my feet to the floor.

Downstairs, the desk was unattended and the lobby empty but for a single man wearing a pince-nez. He glanced up from his papers, frowning as I headed past without looking to the left or right; and the hotel door swung wildly open, gale-force winds seizing it. The latch fell to; a gust caught my skirts at the mouth of the Passage.

The Trap's draperies billowed with a moist, fragrant breeze. At this hour, the early crowd had gone and had been replaced by a loud, convivial group. A hundred pairs of eyes flew in my direction and lit like beetles, as waiters in blue aprons carried zinc trays aloft, unloaded plates of food, uncorked bottles, poured, and bent to hear their customers over the din.

With a gesture of pleased surprise, the barman (whose name I learned was Claude) settled me at a small table in a corner. I did not know whether to remove my hat and gloves or where to look, so I just stared at the bread and butter, served on a saucer. The butter was pressed with the letters
REST TRAP
. A carafe appeared.

“
Bouilli ordinaire?
” I said; the most modest of the chalked offerings. Then waited, hands twisting in my lap; finally, with gloves on, lifting the veil to put each morsel between my lips, and nibbling. A few women were dining with companions at neighboring tables, and they were not eating with their gloves and veils in place.

When the barman reappeared he removed, with a flourish, the lid from a steaming copper pot. “
Potage de Fantasie,
mademoiselle,” said Claude, ladling it into a generous white bowl. “Ham, a good cut of veal, yolk of eggs, sweet almonds. Last portion; I'm about to wipe it off the board.” And he broke into a crinkled smile, refilling my glass. I lifted the spots from my eyes and spoon-by-spooned every last glorious speck, and at the end of the meal the bill read only
bouilli, vin.
Claude told me to come again when I liked, though he could not promise the
Fantasie,
and saw me to the door. So: glancing up and down the rue Saint-Lazare for gray-coated gendarmes (for it was they who enforced the Code and curfew) and seeing none, I half-ran all the way back to the Tivoli, getting in on the coattails of the pince-nez, who had a key.

 

“What about
soupe
tonight, but just a very plain one?” The next evening, the clock's hands again stood past six, my luck had not changed; once again I was hungry.

Claude smiled and gestured toward the bar, where a man was half-sprawled. “Look—he's not a bad fellow, likes his abs but he's no
bibard,
and doesn't need to be killing himself. He's been here since four. Get him into a cab for me and
soupe
is on the house.”

Long, strong fingers wrapped loose around a glass; an immense length of leg in tight black trousers, great knobs of knees, an old pair of boots spattered with color. He had fine gold-brown hair and great calf's eyes too large for his face; an arm done up in a bandage made of a bar towel. Tall, gangly lope of a man.

Before him on the bar was an array of objects—a tall, narrow-necked green bottle with a flowery label; a pitcher of water and a bowl heaped with lumps of sugar; a small, spade-shaped filigree spoon, a glass. He poured a measure from the green bottle, balanced the spoon on the glass's rim; reached for the sugar bowl, but then knocked over the whole setup. Liquid pooled, a pale silvery green stain; ice slithered over the zinc. He swore and swiped at the mess.

“Pierre Chasseloup. He won't bite,” Claude encouraged.

“‘If a man be bitten or stung by a hornet, a scorpion, wormwood gives you a present cure.' That's from—well, at the moment I can't remember where it's from. But it's good for what's killing you.”

“You've been bitten all right, Chasseloup,” said Claude.

“Help a man get a drink, would you?” He turned in my direction. “Spanish wormwood,
Artemisia absinthium,
and Swiss herbs. You can't get this bottle in Paris and I won't have another drop spilled. Do you have a steady hand, mademoiselle? I have just been all day with medical men, but I am better off here. Two fingers of the green stuff—that's right—a lump on the spoon, my luckiest of evil spoons, pour water over—that's it—slowly, slowly! Let it trickle. Now, water well, but not too well. Claude, ice!”

He lifted the spoon from the glass's rim and took a delicate sip, closing his eyes and inhaling. “Now I have drunk an opal.”

The drapes billowed again, blowing the cold and the cobbles through anise and beer, mussels and garlic; a waiter's starched apron flew up. My stomach clenched; it was six forty-five.

“Have you been in an accident?” I asked, looking at his arm.

“Without a doubt! A social accident, with Badinguet pulling the strings. How fast can we run the trains without knocking off too many in first class? And then, we poor souls don't even know what hit us. Dizziness—a numbness of the extremities—headaches, forgetfulness? Unusual behavior? Bouts of crying, waking in the night? What do you think? Is it a case of railway spine? This is what the medical men are interested in, to the extent that they can bill you for it . . . Paris is a powder keg.
‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Through these gates you pass into the city of woe—'
To hell with a broken arm; I have Claude for that.” He tipped up his glass, swallowed, and closed his eyes. “The entire railway concept is a wreck of human consciousness, of our conception of time. Barman, a glass for mademoiselle! Mademoiselle—?”