The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (39 page)

 

Somewhere in the depths of my desk was what I was actually looking for: the sheaf of correspondence from the lawyers, a summary of where my case stood with the de Chaveignes. My lawyer recommended that I agree to drop any claim of paternity in exchange for my liberty. But I had developed a sharper taste for justice and had requested another solution: damages, reparations. In short, a payoff.

In reply, my representative had stated that because of my status on the Register,
not a judge in Paris would rule in my favor. Pursuing it, I would spend more and gain less. He then suggested I publish a memoir full of salacious details.

At the bottom of this detritus was another sheaf of loose papers: stained and blotted notebooks. Diaries and letters begun long ago, on hesitant afternoons and empty evenings. I had examined these in light of his suggestion—but the tone was naive, angry, lacking insight. I was unable to step away from the events of my life and refashion them; instead, my old ink-stained wounds thrust me into a labyrinth of doubt.

I had put down my stricken pages with the haste of a convict tripping over herself to please her jailer, pursuing chits for favors with the Préfecture, securing myself against arrest, and nursing the vain, tenuous hope of the
inscrit
—that once off the Register, with all record of my existence there expunged, and with a perfect record of hospice visits, at least I could reclaim Berthe and my own good name. Even this, I saw, had been a fictional bargain with a nonexistent judge and jury. However, with Noël dead at Sedan, Coué polishing his desk ornaments—Nathalie at Rheims and the Prussians on the doorstep—it had all, perhaps, come to a fitting end. Thus the world taught its lessons.

Ah, and here—in with some hairpins and a pile of dust—was my
carte.
It bore no recent record of medical inspections, no stamps of renewal; was never requested by the police. A relic except for the bare fact of its existence, the lingering, poisonous fact of it, and the chain of consequence to which it had led.

 

“Madame?” A soft knock. Finette, looking surprisingly demure with her hair pulled back, wearing a hand-me-down of Sévérine's, and precariously carrying a fresh pot of hot coffee and some warm milk. I sighed.

“Yes. Good morning. What is it?”

“You rang the bell and La Tigre told me to come up.”

“Can you ask her to show you, please, about the bed linens and the hearth. And I will have a letter shortly.”

“Yes, madame. But she sent me to tell you also that you must get out for provisions soon, before everything is gone. The others, Madame Francisque and Mademoiselle Amélie and she have gone out, hours ago. I went with them to carry parcels. So—now may I finish the hearth? I have brought some spent tea leaves; otherwise the ashes scatter.” I blinked. La Tigre had created a miracle, or else the girl had finally realized her good luck.

The others had gone for provisions. That explained why everything was so quiet.

 

Across the street, lines for the Mont de Piété snaked down the block; a steady stream of birdcages and kettles, mattresses carried on backs; bedsteads dragged behind cartloads of chairs and tables. Every last citizen of Paris, in addition to the hordes of bewildered newcomers, was exchanging whatever he or she could lay hold of to trade for ready cash, to make purchases on the black market. The flying rumors did not concern battles lost or won any longer, but food. What was where? Who had it, and at what cost? How much was stored for absolute emergency? A peace agreement was expected, but days passed, then weeks. Every morning we rushed out to examine the pronouncements plastered to the walls, hoping for an armistice, and each succeeding day offered no news—only the new government's lukewarm assurance that provisions for a city of two million souls could last for an indeterminate period of time. But at Strasbourg, the people were starving to death. And the march of the Prussians toward Paris had already reached Versailles.

At an under-the-counter up Montparnasse was a long, shifting line of the well- and better-dressed. We all watched one another, darting our eyes at whoever stepped past with parcels and packages, as though the quantity of goods carted away by anyone in particular was an indication of what was to come. Certainly it was as good a measure as any: the papers argued and said nothing.

“Her husband was an empire man, and she's got only one salted ham—maybe old Badinguet still has something up his sleeve,” a man behind me whispered.

“Oh, it's all just a precaution. We'll be handing out hams on the street at Noël.”

“Or shooting horses by then.”

“Trochu has a plan, you can count on it.”
(A plan, a plan. The man has a plan! PLAN, PLAN, PLAN! Mon DIEU, what a fine Pla-a-n! Thanks to him, nothing is lost.
That's what they sang in the streets, with mocking, eerie prescience.)

“If Châtillon is lost we will be girdled tighter than Mademoiselle Thérèse after dinner.” The present worry was that if the Prussian army established itself on the Châtillon plateau to the south of the city, three of the forts protecting the capital would be vulnerable. And from Châtillon, shells launched by the Krupp cannon, which had been admired so recently at the Great Exhibition, could reach the heart of Paris.

“Trochu will defend Châtillon to the last gun. He's not mad, just a Breton.”

“Yes, and a Catholic, and a soldier, as he is fond of saying—and a pessimist and a procrastinator! My money is on Gambetta, now there's some fire!” Léon Gambetta had proclaimed the republic from the windows of the Hôtel de Ville; some thought he was the only Frenchman capable of raising a defense of Paris. His handsome profile made Amélie swoon, although Francisque declared him common. General Trochu, head of the new Government of National Defense, was monklike and forbidding as a toad, and favored by none of the women—though we certainly hoped he could save us, just like the old
muffes
we couldn't afford to hate.

“It is Belleville Trochu is afraid of. He'd rather answer to a German than to the mob.”

“Madame P, have you taken all the fish heads, as well as the fish?”

Boxed English biscuits, strings of dried fish, sardines, salted beef, and confit; Liebig's meat extract, “Extractum carnis Liebig”; parcels of Chollet's desiccated vegetables. Rounds of waxed Dutch cheese. Tea. Coffee. Sugar (very expensive, as was salt—they had run out of salt at Strasbourg, it was rumored, and could not make a decent sauce to cover the rats). Flour and rice. Casks of wine and one of Armagnac. I opted for a generous supply, took a few parcels, and ordered the rest for delivery.

On the way back, boulevard traffic was slow, and several of us from the queue shared a cab. Then the carriages were diverted and re-routed—another parade approaching? But the republic was less taken with parades than the empire had been, and this one advanced without fanfare. The gentleman beside me, supplies captive on his lap, drew out a small spyglass. Many carried these devices now, either to look at their neighbors or to go up to the heights and study the fortifications.

“I think these marchers have come from Châtillon.” After looking, he passed it along, and we took turns watching the columns of soldiers—lines and lines of infantry marching toward us. Some ramrod straight, with placards on their chests—others barely shuffling, like sleepwalkers, or with an attitude of sulky defiance rather than the customary bravado. Their soldier's caps were reversed, and coats and trousers turned inside-out—even those of the proud Zouaves—and if they were armed, we could not see it.

“They must be deserters.” The first of the ranks were now passing quite near. I craned my neck to see that one soldier had broken from the line and was moving from carriage to carriage, shouting. When he reached ours he stared at each of us in turn.

“
NOUS SOMMES TRAHIS!”
he said, and then again, hoarse and urgent—as if I had not heard, or as though he expected an answer, he repeated the words.
We are betrayed.

“Why is he saying that?” asked Madame P, with her stock of dried fish heads, which she said were for her cat. “What does it mean?”

“Trochu betray the French army? Never! These deserters all love to claim they are betrayed,” said the spyglass.

To look into their eyes, though, was to feel the creep of something familiar. Of deals made far above one's head, out of one's view; destiny on the chopping block.

***

Rumors were whispered, although not among the likes of those in the black-market line. Some said that in the wake of the failure to produce an armistice, Trochu's “Plan” was not to fight but to capitulate to Bismarck; but that he could not do it too soon, for fear of a popular uprising. Even now, some murmured that the police were not safe on the streets in the working districts of Belleville and Ménilmontant, where men (and women as well) were all for taking up arms against the Prussians themselves. So the French army was being trickled out in its insufficient numbers, with few supplies and no defensive strategy; an army of show to appease the population and keep them busy in the
ambulances
, the makeshift hospitals that had sprung up all over the city to take in the wounded (which were few) while the government dithered and debated. But looking at their faces, it was difficult to believe these soldiers were deserters. I wasn't sure what it meant; no one was.

“So what is going to happen
now,
” asked Mademoiselle Fish Heads, whose simpering was beginning to steam the windows.

“I would prepare to walk, if I were you, mademoiselle,” said the gentleman with the spyglass, gathering up his parcels to disembark. “It will get you into condition for the time, God forbid, when we have eaten all of the cab horses in the capital.”

 

Something terrible had certainly happened. At the rue du Mail, my neighbors were up in the atelier with telescopes—palm glued over one eye, as children will do. The roof gave a view all the way out to the Fort de l'Est. On the horizon appeared bursts of white smoke, each vanishing in a puff. We watched until dusk; the lights from the fortifications flickered like gas jets; and cannon fire sounded hollow and dull—just, as one diarist would later describe it, like the
clunk
made by an oar as it struck the side of a boat. We waited; watched. In the streets, people gathered uneasily at the kiosks for any news, even opposing reports. But now there was nothing. No word. During that brief, uneasy interlude between
now
and
forever,
the flicker of doubt replaced the lick of gaslight. Now the thunder that we heard signified no storm; it was the sound of many keys turning in many locks, the distant tumult as bridges exploded over the Seine, and the rattling closures of the gates. The capital was being cut off from the rest of France. Châtillon had been abandoned; it was now held by the Prussian crown prince.

In the following days, usual activities were suspended. Theaters remained dark, orchestras silent. Mail and news from outside ceased and the usual chatterers seemed to be stunned mute. The landlords had fled like rats off a ship, so no one was collecting rent, which changed the tenor of certain things. At the Préfecture, most of the Morals Brigade had been conscripted for the army—even Coué was hurriedly recommissioned. Without the police, no distinction existed between
inscrit
and
non-inscrit;
everyone stood where they pleased in all of the old off-limits places: the Champs-Élysées, the Tuileries. Girls smoked, drank beer, undid their bodices, and headed out to the ramparts at midday because the National Guards made one and a half francs per day and were virtually idle, although no one understood exactly why. The Prussians did not advance; our army did not engage them. Opinions flew: that the Prussians did not dare attack Paris, the “beating heart of Europe, the city of cities; the city of men,” as Victor Hugo had gustily written earlier that September. Or Trochu was negotiating to capitulate; or the Prussians had suspended their advance because they were so stunned that the French had not mounted a sturdier defense of Châtillon. Or we were all waiting for Gambetta to take charge and change tactics. With hardly any news to print, the papers turned to accusing the girls. In fact, from the very beginning of the conflict, the helpings of blame were generous: it was courtesans from the top, boulevard girls from the bottom, who had rotted the empire and debilitated the fighting forces of France.

With nothing else to do, Amélie and Francisque and I sorted through our gowns. Conclusion: none appropriate. Cherry satin, violet moiré shot with orange, sea and emerald velvets were bundled into the armoires, and only my drab cloaks, suitable for incognito trips to the Préfecture, were kept in use. Amélie volunteered for the women's battalion, the “Amazons of the Seine,” but was turned away at the rue de Turbigo for lack of an escort to attest to her character. (Trochu later trounced the idea of a battalion funded by rich women's jewelry, disappointing fifteen hundred applicants.) Undaunted, Amélie set out to sew silk into balloons at a factory in the Impasse du Cadran. Our hopes now were set on the hot-air balloons launched from the buttes, sending military intelligence, mail, and messengers out of the capital. Léon Gambetta himself was to be ballooned out to raise an army in the provinces. These airborne vehicles were a bold and unlikely idea—but the only one proposed. And so we waited. As the last days of September crept by, Strasbourg capitulated.

In early October, the ration card was introduced. It was only a precaution, said the pronouncements on the walls; but the line leading to the
mairie
of the second arrondissement snaked down the block, and you would be surprised at who was standing there, waiting to get a card. It was stiff and blue, marked off by the days, and could be used in exchange for a single ration at the municipal butcher or two portions at a city canteen. It also specified the composition of one's household, and one's profession. (Francisque asked, “Do you think that they will have cross-referenced the Register with the ration cards?”—which made me pause, because who would think Francisque worried about the Register?)