The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (46 page)

We angled away from the center, climbed higher through the streets, up to the buttes, and stopped at a point where we could see the capital spread below. On Montmartre's flat plain, where we now stood, cannon were set in neat rows. A few days earlier, before the Germans were scheduled to march through, members of the National Guard from the working-class districts had dragged this artillery from various parts of the city and up the side of the hill. They did it themselves—without aid of horses—in order to keep the guns from falling into enemy hands, and to preserve some vestige of their honor. These guardsmen had banded together and named themselves the Fédérés.

Henri said, close to my ear, “These guns belong to the people. Each and every one bought and paid for by subscription, by the sweat of the brow, by brothers and sisters in every
quartier,
to defend Paris. By right they belong to us.”

“To be pointed at whom? The Germans?”

“We want our city back—every wall, every cesspool, every cobblestone. Every blade of grass in the Luxembourg and every branch left on every tree. How long were we robbed under the empire? Our streets redrawn for the cannon to roll down; our friends and neighbors driven like animals from their homes? The autocrats wanted to turn Paris into a factory, a living machine to churn out profits for them. When they failed, they staged a corrupt tourney with the Prussians, then betrayed us with a general who never had a plan to defend his country. And now they want the working people, who built this city—and to whom they turned for their defense—to buy them a rancid, fraudulent peace. Five hundred million francs—to be paid, by whom? And how?” The sinews tightened in his neck; he looked off into the distance. On the plain beneath us, guardsmen pulled up their hoods, adjusted the straps on their rifles, prepared to change shifts for evening. “What can we do but refuse?” Henri was windblown, clear-eyed. Dark, flickering like a banked hearth. A map in his hand, with positions on it. I looked over his shoulder.

“No, we are not going to fire upon the Germans. But upon the standing government, and drive them out—the bloodsucking traitors and their hangers-on, their
cocottes
and their police and their bankers with them. And we are going to turn Paris back over to the working man and woman. The teachers and artists, the families and children and plenty more than that. But the Commune is for order. I wanted you to see for yourself.”

And then he kissed me.

.
 .
.
Nous sommes trahis.
We are all betrayed. We betray one another.

Be more generous with yourself,
Louise had said to me, long ago.
If you will not, who will be for you?
Up on Montmartre, with the Germans strolling on the boulevards below, I crossed a line within. Perhaps to join the banquet of life at last. I kissed the Communard up on that hill. Kissed him back. Several times.

When we got back to the rue du Mail, later that evening, La Tigre had apparently considered the possibility of a banquet as well—a fire was lit in the grate; my good bed linens refreshed and turned back.

“We don't sleep with our feet to the fire here, as in a Prussian camp,” I said—only a little apprehensive, because the man had clearly done a few things other than thieve, protect, and fight—his lips told me that much.

“I've seen bed linens,” he said, bemused.

“Oh? How is that?”

“A certain Russian . . . a countess. A dacha outside Moscow. I was there with the old man—Blanqui. My first experience of bed linens.” Henri was standing with his back to the fire, his tall shadow leaning into the room. He smelled of gunpowder and iron; and I wanted the taste of wine in my mouth but recalled he didn't drink it. I also wanted to ask him questions, but he didn't answer many. Henri was tight-lipped and silent as the grave about his affiliations.

“Thank goodness. So you don't choose your bed companions by their politics?”

“Not generally. Nor by their linens.”

Still shivering from the raw weather, we warmed our hands in front of the fire.

“Henri, do you think there is something—larger than the Commune, the assembly, all of these politics, these—arguments swirling around our heads?”

“Larger? Of course. God is . . . Love is larger.”

“I thought the Commune had taken against God.”

“No, only the atrocities committed by the church in the name of God. The abuse of the people's trust—”

“Yes, yes. But to many people it is the same thing, when they see you turning churches into podiums and shouting that nuns should be put in Saint-Lazare, and worse for the priests. They feel you are using their cherished beliefs against them—denying them hope and putting yourselves in its place.”

“Probably love and God are one and the same, but neither science nor philosophy will prove it, and men have little vocabulary for it, so we stick to what we know. Some stick to the past. Others try to set up structures of society that can allow the larger matters to take root. The generations will follow what is right. That is our true hope, justice embedded in the structure of society, not promised after death by a God for whom only the archbishop can speak. To carry on what others began.”

“So—your duty as a soldier of this army is to die for that?”

“Women bear children, and men must die in numbers to make a better world . . . Oh, perhaps not! Perhaps some will live to see it. I am not intent on dying.”

“I'm glad, Henri. Enough death.”

“Indeed.”

He shed his gunner's coat; washed his blackened hands in the basin. Held them out, laughing, because he hesitated to sully my white damask. I took them, wet, and examined them, turned them over. His palms were callused from the guns. I dried his hands, finger by finger.

“You are a working man, Henri. I can see it in your palms.”

He laughed. Poured a glass of water from the pitcher, and drank.

 

Later I would dream of that night. His body, the shock of recognition; how we desired each other and suddenly were together, tangled in sheets, twilight pouring through the balcony window. Henri a rare lover, his hard edges melting in my soft . . . And afterward we lay together, bodies floating and content.

Slowly then, in my dream, he pulls himself up, out of my arms. Crosses the room, pours water into a glass, drinks again, deeply. Next he must reach for his shirt, shoes, trousers, move to the door. But he does not. He stands, glass in hand, looking out the window. What does he intend? Then comes another shock, the realization. Not words, but something else; some foreign gesture, a language I recognize as if it were my own, but it is not. This place where he stands, he is entirely present. When he drinks water it satisfies his thirst. When he makes love, he loves. His love is not complicated.

But this is alien territory, too soon entered: this game laid out on the table is not one I know, and the stakes, I fear, are high. I have lived in a world I cannot describe to him. A nomad well adjusted to desert life, happening upon an oasis long forgotten.

T
HE STANDING GOVERNMENT,
it was learned, would not wait it out with the Paris rabble but instead decamp to Versailles (recently vacated by the occupying German commanders) and take much of high society with it. For that reason, and because it was announced that rent was due, with arrears for the entire period of the siege, the rue du Mail corridors filled with packing trunks. Their lids gaped open, as did the tops of the dress boxes, lined up in the halls like coffins; and round hatboxes and a rainbow of textiles: watered silks, lace, cashmere. Sylvie (who had managed to sit out the siege in Vienna, having quite a high time of it) and Francisque were up to their elbows in panniers and dresses, guessing as to what migh next transpire.

“I've been promised a
laissez-passer,
” said Francisque, who was hedging her bets and trying to keep up her residence in both locations. All things considered, she had fared better than many—pale and fine-boned to begin with, her porcelain beauty had taken on an ethereal quality; her skin was almost translucent. Sylvie, fattened on sausages and sacher torte all winter, was plump and ruddy by comparison, even though she always watched her figure.

“It's that moiré from last season that's passé. I hope you're not planning to break hearts in Versailles wearing that.”

“Certainly the French army has had nothing to do but recall every flounce of my dress.”

“If you greet them with shouts of ‘July 1870!' they will remember it,” said Amélie, who was looking on.

“July 1870 has been ripped apart for bandages.”

“The Prussian army is there as well,” said Sylvie. “You'll find them politer, at least in the streets.” She had had her piano tuned and begun practicing scales again, her voice bent flat in the upper ranges, groping against the chords. Out of practice. “They say the opera will begin again, at Versailles.”

“With a lot of German music? . . . They say a lot of things,” said Amélie. “
Manille, manille.
Twenty-four ways of playing it and it's all the same game.”

“Working at the balloon factory has changed
your
tune, my girl,” I said. Amélie had not lifted a finger to pack.

“That, and watching the world unravel.”

Francisque said, “I don't have much patience for Versailles, either—I suspect it will be boorish and dull, with everyone's nerves on edge, all wishing they were back in Paris. But how else will I manage two thousand francs to the landlord for not having starved to death?” Her beau, de Ligneville, was still a prisoner of war at Sedan, along with the former emperor.

Amé said, “I read in
Le Rappel
that there are no lodgings to be had; even ministers are sleeping in chairs in the Hall of Mirrors, using the drapes to cover themselves. Or paying ten francs a night to sleep on straw in a cellar.”

“I'm not a minister, darling!” said Francisque. “La Tigre knows a woman there. But I will be dancing, not sleeping. How are
you
paying the rent?”

“I'm not planning to,” retorted Amé. “Let them try to throw me out.”

Sylvie added, “Besides, the Commune will have us all sewing uniforms and filling sandbags any day now.”

Amé said, “You should all stay and join the Women's Union. I am going to stand, for once, not follow the rats.”

“We've eaten the rats,” snapped Francisque, edgy with nerves.

“Well. You don't want the ones that are left to eat you.”

Sylvie said, “I've been to the Women's Union. The agenda never ends until you are falling asleep in your seat. Should we form work cooperatives, or plan to march on Versailles with kitchen knives like the Bread March in 1789; or is it better to march peacefully? No, we must take up arms, make cartridges on the avenue Rapp, threaten to leave our husbands if they refuse to join the National Guard. As for divorce, we wanted it once, got it, lost it again. What now? The fine men on the Left have rejected divorce. So, no divorce. Now it is down to whether or not to wear the red sash. But no! We must get rid of silly fashions, of fashion entirely. But. That would put the seamstresses out of work, the one profession we can stick to! At any rate, we must prepare to fight and die for justice. And then, everything is tabled until the next time.”

“It's always suspicious when they ask us to die for justice, if you ask me,” said Francisque, shaking out a length of berry-colored cashmere. “What do you think—too Red?”

“I think it is a breath of fresh air, hearing what everyone has to say. You can't be so impatient. I can tell you that women would have cast their votes for Gambetta, not that old toad Thiers. Think of our daughters and their daughters!”

“I didn't know you had a daughter, Amé,” said Sylvie drily.

“It's a manner of speaking.”

“And if everyone speaks and no one listens, what then?” said Francisque.

There was a brief silence. Then Sylvie said, “What about you, Eugénie?”

“I haven't the stomach for Versailles, at the moment.”

“More for a bite of a Communard, I'd say,” said Francisque. “But what about Monsieur de Chaveignes?
He
must be going. I'll never forget how he looked in that uniform, the day of the
sortie torrentielle.”

“Has anyone seen Finette? I'm dying for some hot water,” I said, ignoring the question, but not without a pang . . . Stephan bending down in military colors, pressing his cheek against my hand while I was delirious with fever before the Great Sortie. Promising that he would bring us Prussian souvenirs. And freedom.

“Oh, that's the other thing,” said Francisque. “The girl has vanished. My guess is up the hill.” Whatever else was going on, a few dance halls had opened on Montmartre, alongside the cannon.

 

In March, just after the gates opened, another late snow and a blast of icy cold arrived. Gas was a flicker, coal still a luxury; and the demands had now been levied. The new assembly needed to pay the first sums due to Germany under the peace agreement; and Paris must be put back on its feet—but how? The vast numbers of pawned items at the Mont de Piété were the tools of the citizens' trades—from spades to sewing machines; and the government decreed that all of them were to be sold instead of returned, or made redeemable to, their original owners. It was all put up for sale, down to the last chamber pot.

Placards went up, exhorting Parisians to return to regular work, but for most it was impossible—we lacked shoes, cooking pots—furnishings, which had been burned for fuel—all the essentials for living. But any civil “disturbances” would be put down, the walls proclaimed.
THERE WILL BE NO COUP D'éTAT
. No more pictures of Thiers as the “Laughing Man” appeared; the assembly had called back the censors to suppress dissenting papers, which gave the new-minted assembly a stale, empire stink. People gathered on street corners, whispered. In droves, by the dozen and the horde, they made any plan they could to leave Paris; waiting in endless lines for the few trains out.