The Missing Italian Girl (18 page)

After the priest sprinkled holy water over the coffin, ending the ceremony, the two haulers picked up the wooden box, carried it out of the church, and tied it to the dray. Mme Guyot was too busy to make the long trip to the Batignolles cemetery. The men signaled for Maura and her mother to get in. Then they mounted the drivers’ seat and urged their mangy old horse forward. They, too, were in a hurry.

Weighed down by an almost unbearable heaviness in her chest, Maura flattened her hands on the wine-stained floor of the wagon and leaned against the coffin. Swaying to the rhythm of the horse as it clopped through the cobbled streets, she repeated to herself over and over again,
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
She closed her eyes, hoping to recapture the dream, when Pyotr and Angela were alive and beautiful, when the Russian girls were free and safe. But the dream would not come back. She was stuck in a nightmare. The wagon reeked with the acid smell of cheap wine. When she opened her eyes again, she saw humble men and women on their way to work take off their caps or make the sign of the cross as the dray passed by. The further they went toward the graveyard, which lay outside the city walls, the grayer everything became. Looking out at the hodgepodge of factories, forges, depots, and low hovels, Maura felt as if she were suffocating. The rough dray that transported Angela’s body to the grave seemed to be taking Maura on another kind of journey, foreshadowing the rest of her life: days filled with the gray pain of hard, dull labor and nights punctuated only by the queasy pleasures of cheap red wine.

5

W
HEN THE DAWN PEEKED THROUGH
the thinly curtained window, Maura, numb with fatigue and grief, quietly slid off her mother’s bed. For the first time in her memory, she had lain with her mother because they both needed to be close. Now Maura needed to get away. She did not want to wake Maman; she did not want to talk. She tiptoed over to the hooks that held their clothes. She chose her oldest, most tattered skirt and blouse. Today, at least, she would go to the laundry, because she could not think of anything else to do. It was as if all her hopes and dreams had been drained out of her on the way to Angela’s grave. Or, worse, that she had seen what little her life could hold. With a sigh, she pulled up her thin black stockings, then picked up the clogs she had disdained to wear for many years. At least, in the washhouse, being surrounded by the women, she would be safe.

After a last glance at her mother, Maura left the room and padded down the stairs to wait for Mme Guyot. Maura slipped past the laundress’s two-room apartment on the second floor, where she lived alone, having thrown out her feckless husband. To Maura’s mother, the washerwoman’s two rooms and little laundry business had seemed like the most that anyone could wish for, an undreamed-of attainment of prosperity and comfort. That was until she saw Barbereau’s three-room flat and believed all his promises. That he would marry Angela. That he would buy them a sewing machine. How could she have been so gullible? When Maura got to the courtyard, she leaned against the wall and thrust her feet into her clogs. Why were such terrible things happening to them? Was it because of her mother’s ambitions? Pyotr’s dreams of a better world? A stranger’s murderous revenge?

Shivering, she surveyed the courtyard to make sure no one was lurking. At first she looked for anyone who was out of place; but when she realized that she truly was alone, she raised her skirt and relieved herself in the drain that ran into the gutter. She had forgotten to do even this before coming downstairs. What was happening to her?

She didn’t have to wait long before the workmen started to come to open their shops and Mme Guyot descended from the stairs, ready to pick up her loads.

“Good,” she said, as soon as she saw Maura. “We have a lot today. And it’s payday. Of course, you know I can’t pay you for yesterday. I even lost half a day myself,” she explained, as if she were expecting an argument from Maura.

But arguing was the furthest thing from Maura’s mind. She merely nodded, then mumbled, “I can help you with the pick-ups, if you’d like.” Mme Guyot’s strength would surely protect her. And, God knows, the washwoman would do all the talking.

It took them almost an hour to solicit all of Mme Guyot’s usual customers. By the time they circled back to the rue Goutte-d’Or, the washhouse, which lay at the end of the street, was ready for business. The engine on the roof was loudly pumping steam into the three gray zinc water tanks that jutted up from the laundry’s roof. The tanks shared the upper level of the laundry with a drying room surrounded by slitted walls. The door to the vast washing shed below stood wide open. On any other day, Maura would have resented every step she took toward the drumming rhythm that echoed her sweated labors of beating and scrubbing. But not today. Today entering the hot, humid shed promised some comfort. By this time, she was eager to get away from Mme Guyot who had kept harping on about “poor Francesca” and “dear sweet Angela.” And she was tired of looking over her shoulder for a policeman or a murderer. At least listening to the other women shouting their stories to each other above the racket would give her something else to think about.

Maura already knew the routine. Mme Guyot commanded four zinc washtubs along the long central aisle of the glassed-in shed, three for her “girls” and one across the way, strategically located to keep an eye on them. She paid for the beaters, the scrub boards, the soap, the bicarbonate, the bleach, and the hot water, which only arrived at the final stage, for it cost one sou per bucket. Because of the steam engine, damp vapors pervaded the washhouse, fogging the ceiling-high windows, its only source of light, and adding a layer of moisture to the sweat and splashing water that doused the laundresses as they worked. Within the first few minutes of arrival, all the women hiked up their skirts and rolled their sleeves up to their shoulders. By midday lunch break, the heat would be unbearable.

As soon as they entered the washhouse, Mme Guyot went over to her two other girls and insisted that Maura take the tub between them. “Cheer her up, she’s had a bad turn, poor dear,” she told them before going to buy bleach and soap from the booth by the door.

Maura knew little about Mimi and Yvette, except that they loudly complained in the local wineshop about their boss being a slave driver. During Maura’s first days at the laundry they had ignored her, because she had so little “experience” in a place where love, sex and men were the major topics of enthusiastically bawdy conversation. Yet the two girls were not much older than she, perhaps, at most, nineteen or twenty. Both of them displayed the strong arms so necessary to their trade, but the resemblance ended there. Mimi was short, buxom and blond. Not as blond as Angela, a kind of dirty blond with hair so fine that it often strayed from the bun she wore on top of her head. She had soft brown eyes and a lovely full mouth. Yvette was taller, with crinkly red hair and freckles all up and down her arms as well as on her face, which was a bit crooked, because she had already lost some of her teeth.

It was Yvette who spoke first, leaning toward Maura. “’Twas your sister, no? The dead girl. How horrible.”

From the glimmer in Yvette’s cat-like gray eyes Maura sensed that she was more excited and curious than horrified. Maura nodded and pressed her lips together. She did not want to talk about Angela.

“Hey, Yve, we’re supposed to cheer her up, didn’t you hear?” Mimi shouted above the growing din echoing through the shed. “Let’s tell her what happened last night.”

As Maura listened, she realized that what happened last night was probably no different from the night before that, or before that. An encounter with the neighborhood men, drinks solicited and consumed, hands searching all over their bodies at the darkest spot in the street.

“We stick together just in case,” Yvette assured Maura. “You can’t trust ’em to always treat you nice, like the
ladies
we are,” she said with a hoot, as she beat the shirt she was washing with a special abandon.

“And you have to be careful about the married ones. See Colette over there, talking to Mme Guyot, she almost had acid thrown in her face by a jealous wife. Lucky she ran,” Mimi added.

Maura glanced across the aisle. She had heard cautionary tales about acid-throwing in the neighborhood for jealousy or revenge. But she had never known anyone who was actually involved. How scary. She bent her head over the scrub board. The water grew grayer and grayer as she worked. Part of her longed to be back in the calm idealistic atmosphere of the Russian girls’ room. But another part of her was enjoying the stories and the titillating possibility of attracting the admiration and largesse of strange men.

When the bell rang for lunch, Maura realized she had forgotten that too. But Yvette and Mimi convinced her that she could share their bread, sausages and rough red wine as they continued to recount their many adventures together. Huddled in their little circle, in the relative quiet of the noon hour, Yvette confided, “You know, Coupeau’s wineshop is only for in-between days. On paydays, like tonight, we usually go to Montmartre.”

Maura nodded, waiting to hear more, until Mimi, brushing away one of Maura’s errant curls, commented, “With that hair and your green eyes, I bet you could have some fun there too.”

“Oh, I’m not sure.” Once the opportunity to join them really presented itself, Maura felt a little afraid. Going outside the neighborhood at night was something she and Angela had never done. She picked up the bottle and took a swig. “I’ll think about it,” she said, after a hard swallow and a coughing fit. She did not want to seem to be a prig.

“You do that,” Yvette said as she gave Maura a pat on the back.

And, indeed, Maura did think about going with her new friends all afternoon as they scrubbed and rinsed, then, together, wrung out the sheets and hung them in the drying room on the second floor. Since leaving school at the age of thirteen, Maura hadn’t had any friends her age, except for Angela. The more she considered the invitation, the more she reasoned that she deserved to go out with some of the money she was earning. She’d divide it in three. Some for Maman, some to save for the day that she would apply to be a shop clerk, and some … for herself! After all, her mother still had some of the money Maura had collected in the morgue, plus the ten francs that that teacher had given to her. And Maura could not bear the thought of spending another night alone with her mother in their room.
Let Mme Guyot stay with Maman, I have to be able to go out sometime, I’m young, I’m not dead yet.
The “yet,” which had become so palpable since yesterday’s nightmare, reverberated in her mind. She decided to go. She wanted to be free.

The plan was simple. Wait until ten o’clock, for that’s when things really get started. Wear your best clothes, and meet outside the courtyard of the Goutte-d’Or tenement.

When Maura arrived home with cheese and a loaf of dark bread, her mother was still in bed. After urging her to eat, Maura told her that she was going out. “Do you want me to get Mme Guyot to stay with you?” she asked. She was relieved when her mother, who had barely spoken, shook her head. Maura did not want to have to explain to the laundress where she was going, or who she was going with.

“Be careful,” Maman said as she got up from the table to hold Maura’s face in her hands. “I can’t lose you too.”

“I’m only going into the neighborhood to be with some girls,” Maura lied. “Just to get out.”

When her mother nodded and started toward the bed, Maura sensed her resignation to all that had happened and all that might befall her: her slavish labors at the school, the loss of a husband, the death of a daughter, being left with only the wild, unfavored one. Maura frowned and turned away. She hated the way her mother passively accepted her fate.
I’ll never be like that,
she thought as she kicked her clogs across the floor and began to change her clothes.

Yvette and Mimi were already waiting when Maura slipped out of the courtyard. They linked their arms in hers and escorted her to the nearest gas lamp. “Let’s take a look at you,” Mimi said as she examined Maura. In that light, Maura saw that both of her friends had painted their faces. “Here, you need some more color,” Yvette said as she reached into the little sack hanging from her wrist and took out a small bottle of rouge. She stuck her long finger in it and smeared it on Maura’s lips and rubbed a little on her cheeks. “Rose Red!” she said, which almost brought Maura to her knees in a faint. It’s what they had called her in the morgue. She didn’t like being painted. She didn’t like being called some fairytale name. Most of all, she didn’t want to be reminded of Angela’s dead body.

“Now, what’s wrong with you?” Mimi asked, a look of shocked disapproval on her face. “Don’t you want to have some fun?”

“Yes, of course,” Maura blurted out before they could ask any more questions. “Let’s go.”

They headed off toward the big hospital, the deadest part of the outer boulevards, then on to Rochechouart, which was alive with noisy food venders in the streets. Maura wanted to stop for an ice and listen to a street singer who was passionately performing a love song. The bird-like woman stood next to an organ grinder, while a little boy tried to sell her lyrics to passers-by. But Yvette and Mimi did not want to pause. “Really, this is nothing,” Yvette confided, still gripping Maura’s arm. “Wait until we get to the Moulin Rouge. There are
famous
singers there, and we can get in for free.” A few blocks later, Maura understood. If Rochechouart at nighttime seemed bright and inviting, the next boulevard, Clichy, was even more
electric.

Taxis and omnibuses along the broad street seemed to be continually disgorging men in top hats and women in fancy satins and silks. More enchanting than the people were the lights. A myriad of colors flashed down one side of the street as far as the eye could see. Toward the end of the street, the bright red blades of the faux windmill, for which the Moulin Rouge was named, slowly rotated over its crimson entrance. Maura had seen the posters for this famous cabaret pasted on the sides of buildings and kiosks. And now she was here!