I thought it was only a passing fancy, this passion for revolution, but I was wrong. It tightened its grip on the city every day until Paris, my bright, brilliant city, became as tedious as a circus girl who’d gone into a convent.
There was one place that hadn’t changed, though—the Palais-Royal. Always a home for rogues and rebels, it now served as a meeting place for the most radical voices of the revolution. Desmoulins was often there, drinking coffee at the Foy. Danton, too. He was anywhere that boasted good food and pretty women. I saw Marat and Hébert there, handing out their gutter rags, whispering to this one and pointing at that one. One could say whatever one wished there. One could go too far—call the king an ass and the queen a slut—and none could do aught about it, for the Palais belonged to the rich and powerful Duc d’Orléans and Orléans answered to none.
I knew I could make money there by giving speeches from Molière, Voltaire, and Shakespeare, but for a long time I did not go. I remembered Orléans sitting in the grove at Versailles, a man in a wolf’s mask. I remembered his warning to me and his eyes, dark as midnight, and I stayed away, for I did not wish to look into those eyes ever again. But then Bette and her baby took ill, and my mother, too, and all the money we’d earned at Versailles went to pay doctors, and there was no choice.
I found the Palais as lawless as ever, full of freaks and firebreathers, gamblers, whores, and dandies. I performed in the courtyards there every night in my britches and cap. Like a hunter, I would sight my quarry and pursue it. I avoided all smiling persons, left drunks and lovers to their revels. Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?
I changed my roles to suit my audience. I spoke Hamlet for brooding lawyers. Figaro for thrusting clerks. Tartuffe’s words I once gave out as I followed a bishop into a brothel, and they earned me a shower of coins from the ladies within.
Another time, a hoary sir in mourning dress approached the corner where I was reciting. His eyes were downcast, his shoulders hunched. I stopped spouting Molière and gave him Lear’s rat speech—the one he makes after his beloved Cordelia dies. At first he tried to sidestep me, but then he stopped and listened, wooed by the words. His old face creased with grief. Tears filled his milky eyes. When I finished, he rained coins into my cap.
Another time, a girl came out of Gaudet’s, a shoemaker’s. Two women—her mother and aunt, by the looks of them—walked on either side of her like jailers. The girl’s eyes were downcast, her face a stiff mask. She carried a pretty box in her gloved hands. A pair of satin slippers to wear under her wedding dress, I guessed. She was no more than fifteen, probably not long out of the convent. In love with her handsome music master but betrothed to a sausage-fingered lecher three times her age.
I loosed my hair, tucked a flower behind my ear, and I was Juliet. I ran to the girl. The mother tried to swat me away but I dodged her hands. Give me my Romeo, I said, and when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.
At these words, the girl’s face crumpled. Before her gargoyle mother could stop her, she dipped her hand into her purse and tossed me a coin. It was an act of rebellion. Her one and only. I snatched the coin and bowed to her. She smiled at me through her tears, and I knew the words I’d spoken to her would stay with her always and that years hence—while the old man she’d married slumbered next to her, snoring and farting and muttering about his accounts—she would look at the stars through her bedroom window and think on them.
The coins I earned bought bread and butter. They bought onions, wine, chickens—and the wood to cook them. They bought herbs to cool fevers, rout pain, and clear pus. My mother survived her illness. My sister, too, though her child did not.
November gave way to December and December to the new year—1790. There were nights when I got nothing, not a sou, for it was cold and miserable and people stayed inside. But on those nights, I still played. With no one to hear me and no one to pay me, and it did not matter.
On those nights, the words were for me alone. They came up unbidden from my heart. They slipped over my tongue and spilled from my mouth. And because of them I, who was nothing and nobody, was a prince of Denmark, a maid of Verona, a queen of Egypt. I was a sour misanthrope, a beetling hypocrite, a conjurer’s daughter, a mad and murderous king.
It was dark and it was cold on those nights. The world was harsh and I was hungry. Yet I had such joy from the words. Such joy.
There were times when I lifted my face to the sky, stretched my arms wide to the winter night, and laughed out loud, so happy was I.
The memory of it makes me laugh now, but not from happiness.
Be careful what you show the world.
You never know when the wolf is watching.
I put down the diary because I see her again. Alex. She’s playing Hamlet and Juliet and Cleopatra in an empty court on a dark, cold night. For no one but herself. Her breath steams in the air as she fences to the death with Laertes or dances with Romeo. Her pale cheeks glow. She’s thin and ragged, but she shines so brightly.
I touch her words with my fingers. Words written quickly. Written on the run. Written when she was hurt and scared and hiding in the catacombs.
What was it like to be down there? Alone and afraid in the cold and dark, with nothing and no one but the dead all around her. I’ve never been in the catacombs. I don’t know if the tunnels are wide or narrow. If you can stand straight in them or if you have to crouch.
And suddenly, I want to be there. In the catacombs. I want to be where she was. Like I wanted to be in Truman’s room after he died. Sitting on his bed and looking at his things. Like I wanted to be in my father’s study after he left, listening to the ticking of the clock on his desk. Like I wanted to stand in the kitchen after my mother stopped talking and press her apron to my face.
I wonder if Alex died there, in the catacombs. G said the worker, the man who found the old guitar, found it under a pile of skeletons. Was one of them hers? How did it end for her? Did it end in the dark tunnels of the catacombs? At the guillotine? Or did she escape?
A small, quick movement catches my eye. I look up. A sparrow has landed on the table next to mine. It cocks its head, staring at me with its bright black eyes, until the woman sitting there, yapping on her cell phone, notices it and swats at it with a menu. It flies off.
“Will there be anything else, miss?” the waiter asks. “A croissant? Tartine?”
“No thanks,” I say, getting my wallet out of my bag and standing up.
I need to make tracks. The entrance to the catacombs is on the other side of the river. I’ve got to get all the way over there, go through the tunnels, and still make it back to the library in time to talk Yves Bonnard into letting me back in. I put the diary in my bag, take two euros from my wallet, and hand them to the waiter. Then I grab my stuff and head. From somewhere high above me, I hear a bird singing.
37
They’re not so easy to find, the catacombs. They feel like a secret.
I came up out of the Denfert-Rochereau station and walked around for ten minutes before I saw a small sign pointing the way. Then I had to sprint across a traffic circle and walk some more, around a park, until I found the entrance. The line to get in is pretty long. I don’t know why. I mean, it’s not like Jim Morrison is buried here. He’s over in the Père Lachaise.
I take my place behind a talky American family. There are five of them: mom and dad, two teenaged girls, and a boy of eleven or twelve. They’re scrubbed and shiny. Their sneakers are spotless. They have fanny packs, water bottles, maps, and Luna Bars. They look like they’re prepared for anything in their ripstop, water-repellant, windproof jackets—Mr. and Mrs. EverReady and their kids.
The son is reading from a guidebook. He tells his family that the city cemeteries became seriously overcrowded by the late eighteenth century and
that the decomposing bodies posed a major health threat. Disease bred in the graveyards and so did rats. The stench was terrible. Churchyard walls sometimes gave way, spilling bodies into the streets. Complaints by citizens increased until city officials decided to dig up all the graves and transfer their occupants to the empty limestone quarries under Paris.
The dead were piled in carts and rolled through the city in the middle of the night. The carts were draped in black and attended by priests, who chanted burial masses along the way.
The kid keeps talking. The line moves slowly. I take out Alex’s diary.
7 May 1795
I felt eyes upon me.
But whose? When I turned to look, no one was there.
It was nearly midnight. Fog drifted through the empty courts of the Palais-Royal. I’d been playing Voltaire to a straggling drunk but he’d abandoned my dramas for a work of friction read him by a thin whore under the colonnade.
The clock struck the hour. I bent down to pick up my cap, and the coins in it, when I saw it—a shining gold Louis amongst the dull and dirty sous. I looked about. The man who’d thrown it would be nearby, leering and beckoning. It had happened before. Players and whores are oft confused. But again, no one was there.
I thought of all the things it would buy, that coin—a dish of roast duckling, coffee, wool stockings, an ounce of cloves to chew. These thoughts should’ve warmed me. Instead, I shivered. I pocketed my earnings and hurried off, out of the Palais, into the streets.
I walked down St-Honoré for a bit, then turned onto Ste-Anne. The fog curled its pale fingers around the streetlamps, muting their glow. I passed the Jacobin Club, shuttered for the night, then turned onto Mill, a narrow street, no wider than an ox cart.
And that’s when I heard them. Footsteps. Behind me in the dark.
It was him—the one who’d thrown the Louis—wanting value for his money. I was sure of it. I spun around, ready to fight him off.
Who’s there? Who are you? I shouted.
There was no answer.
It’s that tosspot Benôit, a kitchen boy at the Foy, playing tricks, I told myself.
Benno?
Again, no answer. Only the footsteps. Measured. Unhurried. Confident of their quarry.
If not tonight, they said, tomorrow. If not tomorrow, soon.
Even then, he was watching me.
Weighing me.
Waiting.
Even then.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. “Shit!” I yelp, nearly dropping the diary.
It’s the kid. EverReady Jr. Looking like he’s never heard that word before.
“Sorry,” I say. “What?”
“He wants you,” he says, pointing to the street. “He’s been honking and waving.”
I look to where he’s pointing and see a beat-up blue Renault stopped at a light. A guy’s hanging out the driver’s side window, motioning me to the curb. It’s Virgil. Virgil with his warm coffee eyes and his beautiful face and his velvet voice. Jules is with him. I tell myself to be cool, but it’s hard when your heart’s hammering in 6/8 time.
“I’ll save your place,” the kid says. He’s probably like an Eagle Scout or something.
I head for the curb, but I’m still a few feet from the Renault when Virgil yells “Catch!” and then a clear plastic square comes whizzing through the air. I dive for it.
“What is it?” I ask him.
“The best rhymes you’ve ever heard.”
“Yours?” I say. Stupidly. Virgil rolls his eyes. Jules cracks up.
“How about my iPod?” I say.
“I left it home. Sorry. I’ll bring it by your place. I swear. You taking a tour of the catacombs?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool,” Virgil says.
Jules starts making spooky noises. The light changes. The cars start to move forward. All except for Virgil’s. Horns start honking.
“You coming to Rémy’s?” Jules shouts over the noise.
I shake my head. “My flight’s on Sunday,” I shout back.
“So cancel it!” he yells.
“I … I can’t.” I’m trying to sound regretful, but the words come out sounding desperate and I’m looking at Virgil as I say them, not Jules.
The honking’s getting louder. The guy behind Virgil leans out of his window and curses at him. Virgil flips him off. So the guy starts swearing. At me. I don’t want to be standing on a curb in the middle of Paris, shouting over horns and getting cursed out. I want to be somewhere else. Somewhere quiet and safe. With Virgil. I want to close my eyes and hear his voice, soft and low.
He’s looking at me, too. And his eyes seem to say that he wants the same thing. Or maybe it’s just that I so much want them to.
“Call me,” he says. “Tonight, okay?” I nod. He makes a fist, holds it out. I bump it. Jules waves. And they’re gone.
“Thanks,” I say to the kid as I get back in line. It hasn’t moved much. I tuck the CD into my bag, try to slow my heart down, and start to read again.
38
8 May 1795
I stole. Food, mostly. Or things I could trade for food. I stole like a raven. It was the fall of 1790. My mother was sick again. We had no money.
I stole potatoes off a peddler’s cart. Sausages from a market stall. I filched fans and snuffboxes from the shop counters and café tables where unmindful owners had left them. I took gloves from hectic ladies, cut purses from drunks. I snatched small dogs and returned them for reward money. I cut off horses’ tails and sold them to wig makers.
I was half-dead with hunger one night, else I might have left it alone—a purse, small and brown, bulging like a dead rat.
I was on my way home from the Palais, props in my satchel, not a sou in my pocket, when I spotted it. Its owner was disputing with a waiter. He had set it upon his table and turned his back upon it. It would be nothing to sweep it off as I passed.
I looked about. The Palais guards were nowhere to be seen. I moved slowly, content for once to be only what I was—a poor street player, a ragamuffin at whom no one looks twice. As I passed the table, I slid the purse off it. It was in my palm, wondrous heavy, then down the front of my shirt.
A few seconds later, I was halfway down the colonnade. I was nearly on the street when they grabbed me. One tore my satchel from my arms. Another shoved me into a wall. My head smacked hard against the stones. Fireworks exploded inside it.
I tried to run but was caught and slammed back into the wall. One of the guards pinned me to it by my throat. Another ripped open my shirt and grabbed the purse. Not a boy at all, this one, he said, leering at me. I kicked at him, but he only laughed. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were bursting. The fireworks inside my head were fading. All was turning black.
And then I heard a new voice. His voice.
Enough.
The guard let go. I fell to my knees, gasping for air.
Come with me, sparrow.
I looked up. There was a man standing in front of me. He wore his black hair bound. A gold ring hung from one ear. His eyes were the color of midnight.
And if I will not? I said, trying to keep the fear from my voice.
Then you can go with them—he nodded at the guards—to the Ste-Pélagie.
The Ste-Pélagie, the worst prison in Paris. I looked at the guard, the one who’d ripped my shirt. From the way he leered at me, I knew there would be a detour first. Four of them in some filthy alley.
I heard my grandmother’s voice then, in my head. I used to wander when I was a child. Down one street and up the next. To the river. Sometimes past the city gates. To the fields. The woods.
One day you’ll go walking with the devil, my girl, she told me, and you won’t come back at all.
Still on my knees, I reached for my satchel.
Leave it. You won’t need it anymore, Orléans said.
And I knew that day had come.
10 May 1795
He took me to his rooms.
Rooms? They were a pal
ace made small. Like the inside of a djinn’s lamp. Everywhere there was gilt and mirror glass, crystal and silver, all of it reflecting the light of a hundred candles. Myrrh wafted in the air. Music played from far off.
He threw his cloak at one man, then barked at another for food and wine. He led me through a foyer as large as a market hall, past withdrawing rooms, three libraries, two gaming rooms, and a ballroom, into a dining room.
I stole a silver knife, palming it off the table and up my sleeve while his back was turned.
Fool. You won’t achieve much in this world if you content yourself with such low-hanging fruit, he said.
How had he seen? He was turned away from me, unstoppering a decanter.
It’s only plate, he said.