The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (54 page)

“My papa was traveling in the region, he saw her—noticed her at once, she was so much prettier, with her long hair. Your grandfather, Jean-Louis, was a monsieur himself, one of the bourgeoisie, but he had buried his fortune in the ground and they married because it was a good Revolutionary act for him to marry a peasant girl. They settled at Auch in a hovel in the lower city as if they were poor, and my two brothers were born, Louis and Charles. Their third child was a girl. Not me. She fell all the way to the bottom of the Poustrelle des Houmettos, split her skull, and died.

“By the time I came they had moved to the upper city. Oh, my mother loved me too when I was born, but it was never the same. My sister had been pale, like a fairy, but I had red cheeks and strong legs and liked to run with the boys! But that was not allowed, lest I fall like she had. Maman didn't let me out of the house and I watched my brothers come and go. We used to visit the country, the old farm. I climbed the apple trees, followed my brothers wherever they'd let me.

“Happiness, all that happiness, ended—when did it end? I wanted to traipse the countryside with my books and paints—but they had in the gentlemen, one after another. I made sure not to like any of them, and finally they agreed to send me to the country for the summer, to Maman's people—to help out picking apples for the eau de vie.

“My mother became ill while I was gone. A disease of the brain, from a bump on the head. It was a box of my dead sister's things from the top of the armoire. They never let me know how ill she was, and I never forgave them. Oh, she was all love, all made of love—my mother. She had especially loved Rigault, the one who was to become my husband. With all his big ideas he reminded her of the real revolutionaries, the ones who wanted to do good for the people, before they set up the guillotine and beheaded anyone with an education. Rigault was from the country too. They understood each other, they used to laugh together at your stern
grandpère.
And then, my father was onto a mistress of his own. In Toulouse. That far! And so when she died, I married Rigault. I loved him, yes—I loved him then. Even though my idea of salting a goose was to use the salt meant for the whole winter, and in Tillac no one treated me like a little princess. It wasn't the life I'd been meant for. I wanted to go to Paris to paint.

“Then came the troubles in 'forty-eight. When 'forty-eight roared in like a storm, you didn't know who to bar your door against. We were considered rich by someone's standards, and a band of them climbed on the roof, pulled down the weathervane, and waved firebrands around that straw. That's why we eventually put tiles up there. Oh, they were silly, not serious like the first time, but I didn't know that. Eugénie was just three years old, she held on to my hands and cried. I'd heard my
maman
's stories, I thought they were going to murder us. We went down to the root cellar and waited with the vinegar.

“I was young. And it changed for me, the countryside. Always afraid after 'forty-eight. No matter what Rigault said, I had nightmares that they would come for me, for my little girl. I began to make trips back to Auch, to Papa and my brothers. Rigault would take me there and one of my brothers would bring me back. I stayed longer and longer.

“A married woman without a husband along—only your uncles—it was quite unusual. No one knew what to make of it. I caught on to that, quickly enough; felt like I'd fallen out of a tree! I realized that being married, but not with my husband, was to be at liberty. Just free enough to do what I wished.” She glanced at me; her sly madwoman's smile; she knew. Saw right through me, Berthe.

Christiane came into the room, rustling in her voluminous starched skirts.

“Berthe, it's enough talking now. Don't you want some
soupe,
and some of the drops; the doctor left a bottle of your special drops.” She glanced at Jean-Louis. “Jean, will you go down? . . . She rambles,” said Christiane to me, apologetically. “She makes up nonsense.”

But I leaned forward, and Jean-Louis stayed where he was; and Christiane sighed and left the room and Berthe continued as if there had been no interruption.

“ . . . Oh, I made the devil's bargain. I pleaded with my angels—just a tiny swallow, I said—just a small crumb of happiness after all of that fear. I'd met someone, you see. A devil who gave me all the excitement I had missed, riding in carriages late at night—secrets and tricks, whatever was needed to pull the wool over Papa's eyes, or my brothers'—Rigault never knew. To think of him, back in that stone house, laying in the tiles for the roof, shoring up the foundation—with Daudet money, of course. I was revenging myself on my father, for his trips to Toulouse; and showing my brothers
la petite.
Getting back at them because they had never let me be as they were.” She paused. Jean-Louis poured some water. I could not tell if he was interested, had heard this tale before. Unlike him I had been a naive witness to these events.

“It ended,” she said. “Two years after it began. He arrived at our meeting point, in his carriage—the Poustrelle des Houmettos, the same place my sister fell down. He told me that our
affaire de coeur
was over—that I should go back to my husband and become a good wife . . . Oh, I shed my tears—plenty of them—but in the end I did just as he said.

“I don't know when I first had the thought. Terrible, joining in with all those other fears. I no longer loved my husband and I had harmed my daughter in sinning. She was so pure, so innocent, and I had shamed myself and my marriage; it was nothing I could confess to any priest. I sent Eugénie to school, finally, and prayed she would be good.

“And then, what was worse yet—I went back to him. I knew how to find him and I did. I pretended I was coming to visit my old nuns and my daughter, coming for painting lessons. I cared even less than before. Oh, I found him, and I debased myself for him to love me again. He had business in Nérac and I met him there. Threw caution to the winds! But someone in Tillac had a long nose and sent Rigault after us.

“I thought Rigault would die of a broken heart; in the end I suppose he did. He came after the devil with a pistol. And by then, I was glad! I goaded him on. Painted a black picture of what had occurred—and Rigault, who was always such a peaceful, quiet man, who would have brought down the moon for me if I'd asked it—shot him in the leg. And so the devil had to stay in Nérac to heal. I always thought that the Nérac fire started from that devil's pipe, ember to the straw. He was very careless with a pipe, that man.”

Careless with a pipe? So is that what had set the fires?

“ . . . When they found Jean-Jacques's body on the Nérac road, I never knew—I still do not know. Had the two of them met? Or was it something else.” Something else—that had taken Papa—brought Stephan—driven me to Paris? I glanced over at Jean-Louis. He did not know those things; knew less of life than he pretended. Who was his father? Our mother had stopped short of that subject. Telling her story to her own satisfaction, but with an ear to the audience. Artist to the end.

“You,” she said, twisting her head toward me, her poor swollen face on a neck once so long and white, that had bent over a magnifier to perfect the smallest detail. Her eyes were unfocused, soft. She now seemed to address Christiane, who had come back to the sickroom with a tureen and was making movements to end Berthe's monologue.

“This is my daughter, Eugénie Louise,” she said. “I don't care what she calls herself. She is a woman now. All grown! An independent woman, just like Madame Sand, the writer. I met her once, you know?
Aurore.
She called herself Aurore . . . So my daughter can call herself Madame–anything she likes.” Her voice momentarily so bright and strong that Christiane dropped the napkin she was unfolding, took her hand, and stared up; Jean-Louis leaned in, concerned. Berthe looked up, suddenly, as though a ghost had passed.

“The way I loved that little girl, you know. I used to watch her. She amazed me, every day. Nothing else on earth—
nothing.
And Charles Jean-Louis, you must
paint.
” Then she closed her own eyes, as if to sleep.

And that is how my mother died. Passed out of this life telling her story; finessing the details. Maybe forgiving herself a little? Maybe forgiving me.

 

To wear mourning is not necessarily to mourn. To walk at the head of the procession, to bow one's head over the grave is not necessarily to understand the weight and change of death. Silk or crepe, leather or kid gloves, paste or true jewels . . . a mix of gray and lavender in half a year, or scarlet in a week, whatever the latest fashion codes dictated—none of it is to mourn; for me, it was a reawakening. At the Basilique Sainte-Marie, the priest swung the censer over my mother's casketed body—frankincense, the scent that made you remember too much—and intoned the liturgy; the choirboys opened their mouths in great O's of song, and we rose from our seats at the blessing. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed my own epitaph. No one had taken it down; and indeed, explanations would have been awkward . . . So give the old black hoods something to gossip about. Uncle Charles would have it removed later, quietly.

After the funeral I spoke to Jean-Louis. Told him to write, to come to Paris when he was ready. I found my uncles; kissed their bald heads; said my goodbyes to Christiane and Susanne and Sabine. And then returned to the Hôtel de Gascogne for my trunk and a driver to take me to the coach station. Jingling a small ring of keys, feeling for my uncle's letter to the caretaker. My father's house had not been sold; Berthe had never agreed to sell it. It had stood empty these past few years.

As I was leaving, passing from the upper to the lower city of Auch, an old woman was stretched against the brick of a narrow passage, dressed in bottle-fly green. She was old, so rouged and painted, there were cracks in her cheeks, but she still looked up from the
ville basse
as from some great height of her own, full of
amour-propre.

I slipped off my Limoges band, Madame Maillard's counterfeit identity. Enough of
her.
I caught the eye of the old woman. Tossed the ring from the cab's window; watched it arc through the air and land at her feet. She stooped to pick it up; bit the gold, tipped up her head, and gave me a wave; and I felt freer than in all my life. The driver could think I was mad, for all I cared.

But when we arrived at the coach station I saw a newspaper—not from Paris, but with an account of the events in Paris. And everything else turned to dust.

P
ARIS,
1873

The rooms on the rue du Mail have a slightly musty smell. Of closed windows, the stiff strangeness of other peoples' lives, the contours of their difference in a place that is familiar. The flat had been let to a young couple, a professor and his wife who had lost everything. I had been able to arrange it when the dust settled and there were letters from Paris again. In a cupboard, now, tinned cherries and the remains of some Belgian chocolate folded in its paper. A scrap of foreign soap, a bottle of bitters. An empty feeling, of the hasty wiping of surfaces. An old pen, unmarked keys; wineglasses with lip prints. The drinks drunk; the selves, mingled in the sheets, sloughing, building, sleeping, waking—day after day, night after night, and what collects around them.

On the veranda the old persimmon has become a wicket of brown husks with one pale green shoot. The rugs feel thinner over the floorboards, faded by another season of sun pouring in through the tall windows. The walnut desk and tabletops are dry under my palm, needing wax and oil, and close brushing on the grain. My old bed linens, hastily bundled into a drawstring bag, are still tumbled on a high shelf. La Tigre is still here—she stayed through it all—but everyone else left in a hurry, and I don't recognize my neighbors.

Smooth sheets on a strange-but-familiar bed.
The unfolding of present time and the sense of not knowing what the next moment will bring.
The sketch Pierre did on our last day together, with a nub of charcoal during the bombardment. Clasped hands reaching up to a blank sky.

 

. . . It is summer again. Warm. I hear the sound of horses clopping, from below, in the street. And heat rises, not from the earth, but the tar-dripped macadam. Bodies are buried under those new-paved streets and the city reconstitutes itself above them. At sunset, now, it is not the birds and night creatures that I hear, but shouts and bells and city sounds. A man strolls at midnight as though it was full daylight, newspaper tucked under his arm. Two girls, dressed in all their finery, giggling and bright-eyed, sway their hips on their way up the hill. What about Finette? I wonder.

When I left, I wished for the luck of the dead: to leave it all behind—the tired silks, bent-toed shoes, and overtaxed chemises; gray-edged corsets and tired stays. A cherry waist; fifty francs' worth of India silk from Stephan (never worn); a ticket stub in a pocket, to Trouville, the beach. A white silk scarf forgotten. The weather had been warm when I wore it—brilliant in the morning; the scrap of fabric exhausted, damp, and gritty by day's end. These skirts, waists, dresses smell of must and need an airing; I hang them by the balcony window . . . Another box, lace collars. What is not discarded, apparently, remains—even though you have long forgotten it. Appointment books, bills, ledgers, notes piled in drawers. Letters, tied with a piece of string; ragged edges of torn envelopes. A wild, freakish wind, gusting like a dervish, comes twisting off the streets, whips at the balcony, and sends the dresses swinging. One crumples all the way down like a deflated balloon.

The wind does not stop but whirls up to the peak of Montmartre, all through the evening while I lean over the balcony and watch the flicker of the gas lamps. To return to a known place, when one has changed—and all has changed.