I Am Madame X (15 page)

Many of the bourgeoisie had fled to their country homes at the start of the fighting. But by the time we thought of leaving, the city exits were blocked. The fighting escalated throughout the spring. Thousands of soldiers and Communards died, as well as innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of Frenchmen fighting Frenchmen.

Thanks to a greenhouse garden and a chicken coop in our stable that provided a daily supply of eggs, we had more food than most of our friends. We had guests for dinner nearly every night. Sophie Tranchevent and Filomena Seguette came several times; and one night, Julie invited Carolus-Duran.

As the maids brought in steaming platters of omelettes and potatoes, our driver, an elderly man named Antoine, burst into the dining room with horrific news he had just heard from a neighbor’s coachman: the Communards had set fire to the home of Duc de la Palletière on the boulevard Malesherbes. The duke, his wife, and their three children were found burned to death in their parlor.

“I wish we had left Paris when we had the chance,” said Mama. Ever ready to cry or faint, she clutched a handkerchief in one hand and held a bottle of smelling salts to her nose with the other.

“I wouldn’t worry, dear,” said Pierre. “The Communards are only interested in destroying the property of French aristocrats. They will not touch the home of three lovely American women.”

“Haven’t you heard of accidents, Pierre? If they’re aiming at the
hôtel
of the Vicomte Varlet across the street, they might just as well hit us!”

“I know, Madame. It’s terrible,” cried Carolus-Duran. “Our beautiful city and its treasures will be destroyed. The employees of the Louvre are extremely worried. They’ve taken some measures to save the greatest masterpieces, of course.” He leaned his bulk against the edge of the table and lowered his voice. “The Venus de Milo is hidden under a trapdoor in the basement at the Prefecture of Police, beneath a pile of old dossiers. Some of the Ingreses, Rembrandts, and Titians have been taken out of their frames, rolled up, and stashed in vaults around the city. Sam Pozzi has Delacroix’s
Women of Algiers
in the safe at Necker Hospital.”

At the mention of Dr. Pozzi’s name, my throat tightened. I hadn’t heard from him since his letter inviting me to lunch.

“How is Dr. Pozzi?” I asked, trying to make my voice sound as flat as possible.

“Still with the Santé Militaire,” answered Carolus-Duran. “For a while, he was following the army around. At Metz, he was knocked over by a horse that was lugging a wagonful of wounded men, and while he was on the ground, one of the wagon wheels rolled over his left leg. The wound was nothing serious, but he couldn’t get around too well, so his unit commander sent him back to Paris. For a couple of weeks, he was at the Gare de l’Est treating the wounded and sick who were evacuated from the provinces. Now he’s working at the ambulance in the Palais de l’Industrie.”

“Oh, yes,” said Julie. “Sophie Tranchevent and her sister have been going there every day.”

I knew that temporary hospitals had been set up throughout the city, in theaters, restaurants, and private homes. But I did not know that the Palais de l’Industrie, the immense exhibition hall where the city’s annual Fine Arts Salon was held, was being used for this purpose. The Palais was a fifteen-minute walk from our house.

I waited three days, sufficient time, I figured, for the dinner conversation to have faded in Mama’s mind; then, before breakfast on the fourth morning, I knocked on Mama’s door, praying that she wouldn’t connect Sam Pozzi to what I was about to ask.

“Come in!” Mama called. She was dressed in her white morning gown, writing letters at her desk.

“I’m going out of my mind, being cooped up in the house,” I said.

“I know. I am, too, dear. Go for a walk, if you must. Just stay in the neighborhood, please.”

“I’d like to help at the ambulance in the Palais, like Sophie Tranchevent. It’s only a short walk to the Champs-Elysées, and there’s no fighting in the area now.”

Mama rose from her chair and walked toward me. I expected a storm of protest. Instead, she put her arms around me and hugged me. “Oh, Mimi, I think it’s a wonderful idea for you to do something useful. Just make sure you’re back before dark.” Her pleasure at my interest in good works outweighed her worries about my safety.

An hour later, I was ready to leave. As soon as I opened the door, I heard the distant spluttering of gunfire. I took a deep breath, checked my pocket to make sure I had my
billet de circulation,
a street pass signed by the American ambassador, and stepped outside.

As I turned the corner onto the boulevard Saint-Honoré, a loud pack of Communards marched by. The men had fastened leaves to their peaked caps, and some of the women, coarse-looking creatures in stained, ripped dresses, carried branches. A few of them waved red flags and shouted, “The Commune forever!”

I crossed the rue de Rivoli to the Tuileries. The large gilt “N’s” on the towering wrought-iron gates had been covered in newspapers. The Napoleonic eagles had been ripped off; in their place hung two wreathes of
immortelles.

At the place de la Concorde, the Communards had erected a huge barricade of barrels and cobblestones. Before it stood a line of cannon. I started to walk around the barricade, when a short, swarthy man in a threadbare National Guard uniform stepped in front of me. He held his rifle out to block my way. With one arm, he opened his coat, displaying a shiny badge. “I am an agent of the Commune’s Public Safety Committee,” he announced arrogantly. “Do you have a pass to be walking the streets?”

I fumbled in my pocket for my
billet de circulation
and held it out to him with a trembling hand.

The Communard glanced at it, then looked at me.

“Well, what do we have here? A pretty American redhead.” He brought his leering face close to mine, and I could smell his burgundy wine breath. “Perhaps you’d like to help us build a barricade, Mademoiselle. Or maybe you don’t approve of the Commune?”

“I have no feelings about the Commune,” I said. “But I will ask the American ambassador, Mr. Washburne, how he feels, when I see him. I am on my way to his office now.” I gave the Communard my fiercest look.

His unshaven, deeply-lined face slackened. “Americans!” he grumbled. “You want to live in our city, but you don’t want to suffer with us.” He spat on the pavement. “Fine! Walk on!”

Heart thumping, cold beads of sweat sprouting on my forehead, I ran across the Champs-Elysées to the Palais de l’Industrie and dashed through its lofty arcade. Inside the cavernous entrance hall, medical orderlies in white smocks with red crosses embroidered on their sleeves carried stretchers with groaning patients. Sophie Tranchevent and a group of women, all dressed in plain black bombazine, were standing in a corner folding sheets. Dirty laundry was piled on the grand marble staircase. Shirts and stockings hung to dry on the railings.

The first exhibition hall on the left had been turned into a hospital ward with rows of cots lining the walls. Dr. Pozzi was at the far end, bent over a small boy. He noticed me as soon as I entered, and he rushed to greet me.

“Mademoiselle Avegno!” he cried. “How wonderful of you to help us.” His face looked leaner and his eyes darker than I had remembered them. He smelled of shaving soap and starched linen.

Though my heart was beating wildly against my chest, I tried to look nonchalant. “It’s good to see you again,” I said.

Dr. Pozzi’s eyes wandered over me, lingering on the swell of bosom peaking from the décolleté neckline of my gray satin bodice. He looked pleased. His expression changed, however, as he took in my fur-trimmed skirt, gray suede gloves, and black high heels.

“My dear, that’s a lovely costume,” he said. “But I’m afraid it won’t do for this kind of work. Ask one of the nurses to find an apron for you.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“That boy over there needs some attention. He’s from Belgium, a boarding student at the Lycée Condorcet. He was hit by a shell near the Parc Monceau this morning.”

Dr. Pozzi pointed to the cot of the boy he had just been examining. The thin brown-haired child lay under several blankets, his chest and right arm wrapped in blood-stained bandages.

As I approached his cot, the boy’s face brightened. “Hello. I’m Georges Bourdin,” he said.

“I’m Virginie Avegno.”

“Enchanted, Mademoiselle.” He spoke with the odd formality children often adopt when speaking to their elders.

I pulled a chair to his bedside. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I’d be very grateful if you would take down a letter to my mother. I saw some paper and pens over there.” He nodded toward a table across the room.

When I had retrieved the writing materials, Georges began dictating:

When he had finished dictating, Georges dropped his head onto his pillow in exhaustion.

“Yoicks is my dog,” he said feebly.

“So I assumed.”

“He’s an English spaniel. That’s why we call him Yoicks. It’s an English word. Well, it’s not really a word. It’s what hunters say when they spot birds in the sky. They go, ‘Yoicks, yoicks,’ and their dogs run after the birds. My Yoicks isn’t a hunting dog, but I like the name.”

“We had lots of dogs on the plantation where I grew up, in Louisiana.”

“You’re American?”

“I am.”

“Do you know any Indians?”

“Never met one. Now, Georges, you must rest. We can talk more tomorrow.”

I spent the rest of the day in a corner of the entry hall helping several women sort through the boxes of blankets and pajamas that had been donated to the ambulance. I think Dr. Pozzi was looking for excuses to talk to me, because he came by several times and asked us how we were getting on.

I returned to the ambulance the next day and every day for two weeks afterward. Though Georges continued to be weak and pale, his fever went down, and his brown eyes became clearer. One morning, I brought
La Belle histoire de Leuk-le-Lièvre,
and read a chapter of it to him every day. It had been Valentine’s favorite book, one of several possessions of hers I had brought to Paris from Louisiana to remember her by.

Georges was nine, the age my sister would have been had she lived, and every time I saw him I thought of her. Like Valentine, he was sweet-tempered and bright, and when he looked at me I imagined I saw Valentine’s spirit in his eyes. Ordinarily I’m not a superstitious person, or even very religious. Still, I became obsessed with the idea that Valentine was somehow alive in Georges. I began fantasizing that Mama, Julie, and I would adopt him. Of course, it was absurd. He had parents who adored him and would be horrified by the idea.

A few days after I met Georges, French troops marched into Paris and violent street fighting broke out between the Communards and the Republic’s official army. At the same time, French troops continued shelling the Left Bank from the forts surrounding the city. The Prussians, meanwhile, waited on their side of the Rhine, ready to move in and support the Versailles troops if the need arose.

One evening, Mama, Julie, Pierre, and I watched through the windows of the maids’ garret as a band of Communards dug up the cobbles on the rue des Capucines and carted them away in barrels to a barricade they were building at the corner of our street.

“Civil war in the streets of Paris. I never thought I’d see the day,” said Pierre, shaking his head.

“What if they start fighting outside our door? We’ll all be killed,” Mama moaned.

“Now, Virginie, that’s not going to happen.” Pierre slid his arm around Mama’s shoulder and patted it consolingly. Then Mama turned to me. “Virginie, you mustn’t go to the Palais anymore. It’s just too dangerous to go out.”

As we made our way back down the narrow servants’ stairs to the parlor, Julie whispered to me, “Promise me,
chérie,
you won’t leave the house again. Your mother is right. It’s too dangerous.”

“I won’t. I’ll stay home,” I said.

I went to bed that night fully intending to keep my promise. But before dawn, I was awakened by thundering cannons—so loud I felt the reverberations in my stomach—and couldn’t go back to sleep. I got out of bed and dressed quickly, standing by the window in shards of light floating through the shutter slats from the street lamps outside. Then I wrote a note to Mama, telling her that I had gone to the ambulance at the Palais and not to worry.

Grasping the banister, I made my way down the steps to the hall. I left the note on the table, then crossed the parquet through the vestibule and went into the night.

Burned-out omnibuses and dead horses lay in the streets. The rue Saint-Honoré was a wall of flame, so I turned around and took the rue Duphot, past the Madeleine. I ducked under the ropes that had been stretched across the street to stop the French army, just as a shell whirred above my head. Had I been standing, I would have been hit.

Now I regretted having left the house. I thought of going back, but I was frightened by a group of men who were running up the street behind me, waving rifles. Just as I was crossing the rue de Rivoli, the stone facade of the Marine Ministry collapsed from a bomb, and huge chunks of its arcades crumbled and scattered into the street. I ran as fast as I could to the Palais and dashed under the immense archway and into the main exhibition hall.

Dr. Pozzi was examining a patient in the farthest row of cots. I saw that two screens had been drawn around Georges’s bed. I knew what that meant. During the night, his fever had worsened, and his body had succumbed to infection. Georges was dead.