The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (34 page)

My career had progressed. It consisted of servicing and administering the empire's appetites; feeding the dragon's maw and avoiding the flames myself within a system ill-founded and corrupt to its heights. Voluptuousness, beauty, and certain other qualities were desired in great variety—a thousand versions of the game were played, but in fact there was only one—inking the uninscribed. Fishing up young migrants; siphoning off from the thirty thousand–odd Parisian “freelancers” some number to augment the Préfecture's bulging Register, clearing the streets for tourists, and assisting the tax office. After the Préfecture had stamped cards and doctors had examined eyes, mouths, fingernails, and hair, and prodded at nether regions, I picked and chose for Deux Soeurs and its competitors; took what was raw, naive, unformed, and ignorant—contoured and shaped that rough material, that feminine clay, for use, for admiration, for profit. I did not pretend that these efforts served the “public good.” For any girl, inscription meant erasure from the world of possibility, her head pushed beneath the dark waves, and I was Charon at the riverside, plying the ferry into oblivion—one of many boats for those who seemed as determined to throw themselves into hell as hell was to have them. Sometimes, temples throbbing, stomach queasy, I wanted to say
“Run, run”
to the girls I met. But most had run already, and this, here, was the place they had reached.

For each who found a place in the pantheon of poisoned goddesses, though, hundreds were swept aside: back to empty
garni
rooms; into service, or to relatives who did not want them; they were banished to the provinces, to the nunnery; to the bridges and to the madhouse. Back to make their way as best they could; back to nothing and worse. And I didn't know to whom I was doing the greater favor or the lesser. I had carved out my niche; even surpassed the likes of Françoise, who had never made it past submistress before she left to marry herself off to a second cousin.

Dimly, perhaps, I was aware of having lost the thread of the real, but what was real—and if one decided, what was to be done about it?

A (pseudonymous) gossip columnist once described a few of my first-class passengers thus:
“Mlle. Julie, a brunette with sparking eyes and a Spanish foot. Mlle. Dina, an intrepid rider of the Bois de Boulogne, possessed of a rosy mouth, embellished with pearls. Annette M—, an English milliner, fair complexioned, with rosy ringlets and black eyes. Gabrielle La B—, a Creole retrieved from a host of angels, fallen to earth. We must applaud a certain ‘unknown hand' for bringing a sparkle to the foothills of Montmartre and to the better of the
tolérances
.
.
 .”

“Well done, my dear; I can see your stamp on this,” Nathalie Jouffroy would say of a season's lineup of the willing and warm-fleshed. She appreciated my seriousness about the “refurbished” although she preferred to spend fortunes on “starts” at Brussels—acquisitions that often ended in a mountain of debt and urgent trades down the line. But that is what kept her in the footlights of the half-world; in the adored swirl of intrigue. Émilie Trois was always there to pick up the pieces. Trois would assess the line and say, “But now you must find us some merchandise as well. After all, we're not entertaining Olympus here. The human animal just wants to be fed.” And so I went down to the previous night's trawls at the Préfecture, negotiated the raw materials, then brushed up and refitted them for the Deux Soeurs salons. As for spying on my own kind—that popular empire occupation of tipping off the Préfecture that Mademoiselle So-and-So was down on protection and ripe for the Register . . . information was conveyed, but never out of revenge, and my friends knew they could trust me.

 

On the writing desk Beausoleil had bought me, an overflow of correspondence; pens and blotters; ink and seals.

 

To Monsieur le Préfet: Mademoiselle D— wishes to convey that cruel reversals of fortune have driven her close to the final act of despair. If she had not been kept back by religious feeling she would have succumbed . . . Her circumspect conduct, the care that she has bestowed on her parents, and that which she lavishes on her children have been deserving of the esteem and consideration of all worthy people; not being able to work, she begs for authorization to receive into her house six women of quality . . .

 

To Madame Jouffroy of the Maison des Deux Soeurs: I take the liberty of writing to you to ask if you are willing to enter into business relations, and to know if you want any English girls of the age of seventeen. —Albert, hairdresser, Leicester Square, London

 

And a hundred more like them. I had learned to exhaust my energies at such work. When it was finished, for a day, a week, or a season—such fearsome effort at my little walnut-inlaid writing desk, or rattling around Paris at night—I harbored a further ambition, a secret, poisonous dream: that my service to the Préfecture would, at last, have amassed enough chits and credits that I might request my own erasure from the Register. After all, I had not practiced my “trade” for years, even while I was young enough to have a future. That summer, with business proceeding briskly (even though tourists had drained from the boulevards as though a plug had been pulled) and with the empire's functionaries cemented into their secure and lucrative positions—my intention was to get myself erased from the Register before the year was out.

 

Under the potted palms around the card table at the rue du Mail, Francisque fanned out the hand she'd been dealt with a lacquered fingertip.

“Odette has not been with us for three weeks! Is she in love?”

“Or in trouble?” Amélie shook out her chestnut curls, sending hairpins scattering.

Francisque gave her a dark look. “Lili, what do you think of holding another dental clinic for molar distress?”

“I've got my eye on an excellent instrument case at the Mont.” Lili was thumbing through a used textbook on horse anatomy. Her latest passion was veterinary science, a field she swore was expanding too quickly for men to keep up.

“No, really,” said Amé. “What if she is?” She raised her bid and played the Fool, which won wry comments all around; then caught my eye.

“I'll see what I can learn,” I murmured.

It was true that something had taken hold of Odette, the strategist prepared for every new hand. Neither too loyal nor too fickle, she never lost her heart nor gave it away. Every one of her lovers felt lucky to have her, and their protection usually outlasted the duration of the affair, which is how she stayed afloat—that, and market tips. Such a career required endless diplomacy and vigilance and Odette seemed immune to fatigue. But her last affair had ended badly; I suspected she had allowed herself expectations. Or loved him a little more. It was an odd point for her to stumble upon—so obvious, like a stairstep one has gone up and down a thousand times before.

Again the next week she failed to appear at the green baize table. The air was charged and torpid; pent up. The kind of evening when the storm threatens but never breaks, and even Sévérine, usually so placid, walked around like a thundercloud, spilling a drink without a murmur of apology.

“No word at all?” said Amé. “Eugénie, have you heard anything?”

“Yes, I believe she was . . . detained.” Jérome Noël, the original agent of my inscription and still Nathalie Jouffroy's close connection at the Préfecture, was out with a summer grippe. I'd made delicate inquiries via his deputy, Coué—a real stiffneck who was always haunting the arcades or hauling in trembling milliners and ladies out shopping
sans chaperone.

“Monsieur Hibiscus, I'm afraid.” Francisque turned white.

“Catastrophe,” gasped Amélie. “He denounced her!”

“Coué didn't say as much, but he wouldn't.”

“Monsieur Hibiscus” was an importer of exotics and dwarf palms who had been courting Odette for months, showing up at her door with giant bouquets, a parakeet in a gilded cage, and once even an iguana. Her dance of innuendo and resistance had occupied much of the spring; he did not meet her standards, and besides, he lived nearby and therefore was a risk. When we'd last seen Odette, she was determined to confront him directly.

“She's retained a lawyer,” I said.

“You've got to be joking,” said Francisque. “She wants to bring a case against this
frotteur
?”

“Against the police, actually. For violation of privacy,” I said drily. “I gather she gave them a list of protectors as long as her arm. Under duress.”

“I would have liked to hear the names on that list,” said Francisque. Odette was not one to identify her lovers.

“Is it
possible
to sue the Préfecture?” asked Lili.

“Even
La Lanterne
doesn't go that far,” said Amélie.

“What lawyer in his right mind would take the case?

“I hate to think what it will cost her,” I said.

“Goodness, it's hot,” said Amé. “Where is Sévérine with the drinks?”

We had not even begun the diversions of
manille
when one of Francisque's officers arrived, a
chasseur
in the Imperial Guard—de Ligneville, I think it was; his picture was popular on
cartes de visite
and that evening he looked as though he had just sat for his photograph, tightly buttoned, sashed, and braided into his uniform; boots polished and saber at his side. He declined to sit; we suspended our conversation; turned our sunflower heads toward his bright armor.

“Let me be the first to tell you,” he said. “The government of France has declared war.”

“War?” said Francisque, and her milky skin paled perceptibly.

“The breach is caused by the Prussians' absurd idea that a Hohenzollern could ascend to the Spanish throne.”

Lili looked startled and put down her textbook. “But Prince Leopold was withdrawn!”

“Bismarck brushed off France's demand for an absolute guarantee that he would stay out of Spain. So it is an excellent opportunity at last to drive the message home. Put the German question to rest once and for all.”

“So much for the finer points of diplomacy,” said Amélie. “Whatever happened to
Il ne faut rien brusquer
?”

“I thought that the whole issue of the Hohenzollern candidacy in Spain was nothing but a tactic,” I said. “A—kind of Prussian taunt, to see if France would take the bait?”

Amélie said, “Any trifle can be made serious when men want to go to war.” She looked pensive. She too had been prickly of late, and I wondered why.

“There, you're wrong,” said Lili. “It is the empress who wants this.”

The officer laughed. “Yes, she says, ‘I shall go to bed French and wake up German if this is allowed to continue!' You will see,” he said smartly. “It will be brisk, victorious, and very good for us all.” Francisque pulled on her gloves. We picked up the cards and dealt, three-handed.

 

The next day, as it may be remembered, if anyone cares to recall—the imperial curtain rose on its last spectacular show. The declaration was complete with costumes, wigs, and makeup. Caricatures of Germans with drooping mustaches and long pipes appeared in the papers; French soldiers, decked out with flags and plumes, paraded with trumpets; parrots were trained overnight to squawk
“To Berlin!”
The major papers were bellicose and frantic over the notion of a France encircled; gassily inflated it to the level of an international incident, one to be quickly avenged. It sounded more like a duel than a war, with the French army eager to prove its mettle, and I remember my initial surge of irritation, a helpless sense of the absurd nature of the thing—even as the boulevards filled with marching troops in brilliant colors and excited little boys jumped from foot to foot. Tempers were touchy; the weather too hot. Some critics ventured to suggest that despite outward appearances, our army was not prepared for a conflict with the Prussians, but these voices of reason were rapidly denounced as traitors, as was anyone else who opposed the war. The Bourse soared. Francisque relaxed and dined out every night, generally at the Jockey Club. Lili procured her dentistry kit; Amélie, between engagements, took to reading all the leftist papers. I felt uneasy, unable to concentrate on the great volume of paperwork on my desk. Still no word from Odette, but I had a few scrawled words from Jolie, proposing dinner. Since Trouville, we'd gotten together only a handful of times, which Jolie attributed to her employer's demands.

 

In late July, Louis Napoleon and his son, the prince imperial, age fifteen, embarked from Saint-Cloud to the front lines. Soon the papers and broadsheets were shouting about the “invasion of Germany” and proclaimed that the prince had retrieved a bullet from the victory battlefield in his hand. Badinguet knew what kept the
quibuses
in their seats.

Should one blame the long-throttled journalists? Their censored pens spewed only the flimsiest tittle-tattle, copied out messages from the imperial press office, and blared them at a loud, incessant pitch. Even the best among us were distressed, distracted. To live under the empire was to be blinded by the flare of gaslight, diverted by a thousand glittering inventions and the clatter of trains. Preoccupied by the movements of the Bourse, the building up of the bank account. The full-bellied and fur-lined looked over their shoulder, feared the rising tide of the dispossessed, and soaked their hearts in champagne. The poor were ill and dreaded the landlord's boot and the Brigade; they were happy for military conscription, the higher wages of war, and the ability to direct their misery at an enemy at last. It was what we knew: to be childish, credulous concerning our leaders, zealous, and unprepared; to rely on compromises, however shabby and inadequate. The abyss between poverty and plenty was decorated, façaded, landscaped, and policed, but still it loomed ever larger; the brisk whirl of commerce—dizzying, maddening, unnatural—was our chosen distraction. But the number of Parisians who could with certainty find Saarbrücken on a map in July was roughly equal to the quantity of fresh eggs inside the city walls six months later.