I Am Madame X (17 page)

I walked toward them, as if on my way to an appointment, as if just by coincidence I was on the street at the same moment as these medical men. My heart beat faster as I passed the white-coated group. I shot a glance at Dr. Pozzi. He was talking to his colleagues, his hands thrust in his pockets. I had gone halfway up the block when I heard my name.

“Mademoiselle Avegno!” Dr. Pozzi jogged toward me.

“Dr. Pozzi!” I tried to sound surprised.

“What are you doing all the way up here?” He stood with his hands folded across his chest, smiling broadly.

“I’m paying a call on a friend of Mama’s.”

I worried that he’d ask me who, and I planned to invent a name. Instead he said, “I’ve been meaning to write to you. But I’ve been terribly busy. And I’ve moved.” He pulled a silver case from his coat pocket, removed a card, and handed it to me. He looked over his shoulder at the hospital entrance. His colleagues had gone inside.

“Listen, I must dash. Can you meet me in two hours at my apartment for a late lunch? I don’t have time to go to restaurants anymore. My housekeeper is a wonderful cook.”

“Well…”

“Please. You must give me a chance to explain why I haven’t been in touch.”

“All right. But I can’t stay long.”

“Wonderful!” Dr. Pozzi bowed slightly, then ran toward the hospital entrance.

I looked at his card: D
R
. S
AMUEL
-J
EAN
P
OZZI
. 131,
BOULEVARD
S
AINT
-G
ERMAIN
. F
IFTH
F
LOOR
. I took a cab to the carrefour de Buci, bought copies of
L’Illustration
and
La Mode illustrée
at a newspaper kiosk, and settled into a wicker chair on the terrace of a café. I flipped through the magazines but couldn’t concentrate on any of the articles or pictures. I fantasized that Dr. Pozzi would beg my forgiveness and declare his love for me. I would treat him with icy contempt, wounding him as he had wounded me.

At two o’clock, I paid the bill and walked toward the exit.
“Un sou pour le garçon!”
the waiter shouted after me. In my self-absorption, I had forgotten to leave a tip. Flushed with embarrassment, I went back and left a few coins on the table. Then I exited the restaurant and headed north. As I reached the rue de Seine, thunderclaps pierced the air, and a moment later a hard rain showered the neighborhood.

I’m insane to visit him in his rooms,
I thought as I covered my head with
La Mode illustrée
and ran past the stone facades and iron balconies of the tall new buildings.
I’m only going to talk to him for a few minutes and then be on my way.

By the time I reached Number 131, I was dripping wet. I was about to ring the bell, when Dr. Pozzi appeared at my side under an enormous black umbrella.

“Hello, Mademoiselle,” he said softly. “Don’t you believe in umbrellas?” His smile looked slightly sinister. But he was so beautiful, I felt my heart soften.

“This is a bad idea,” I said. “I should leave.”

“Don’t be a little fool. At least come up until it stops raining.”

Dr. Pozzi took a key from his pocket and opened the door. We entered a small dark foyer. “I’m afraid it’s a long way to the top,” he said, nodding toward a narrow staircase.

We said nothing to each other as we climbed the creaking stairs. On the fifth floor, Dr. Pozzi pulled another key from his pocket and opened the door.

I stepped into a small salon. The burgundy brocaded walls were hung with colorful paintings in beautiful gilt frames. Sophie Tranchevent’s portrait of a young woman bathing had pride of place over the mantel. A small landscape by Filomena Seguette hung on the opposite wall over a table displaying a collection of Greek coins.

My bodice was soaked through to the skin, and I shuddered from chill and nervousness.

“I’ll get you a wrap,” Dr. Pozzi said. He disappeared into the bedroom and returned a minute later with a black wool shawl. “I want to explain why I haven’t written to you,” he said, draping the shawl across my shoulders. My heart quickened at his touch.

He took me by the hand and pulled me toward the settee. “You can’t imagine how busy I’ve been. I’m a slave to the Central Bureau. All the young surgeons are. We must wait until someone dies or retires before we can get regular posts at one of the hospitals. Until then, we’re on call to go wherever and whenever someone needs an operation. And for some reason I get the most difficult cases. Today I removed a fibroid tumor the size of a pumpkin from a woman’s uterus.” He searched my eyes for a reaction.

I was filled with longing for him but tried to fix my face in a blank mask. I’ve always been good at hiding my emotions—my daughter, Louise, would later call me
le visage impassible,
the poker face, and I was succeeding now with Dr. Pozzi.

He leaned over and stared deeply into my eyes. “My God, you are beautiful,” he whispered. “The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.” The next thing I knew, his mouth was crushing mine. He undid the buttons of my bodice and his hands moved over my breasts. Lifting my skirts over my hips, he lay me on my back and moved on top of me.

After we had made love, Dr. Pozzi stepped out to the balcony to smoke a cigar. I sat up on the settee and began buttoning my bodice. I considered removing it completely and retying my corset—one of the stays was pinching my skin—but just then I heard a key in the lock. The door creaked open, and a stout middle-aged woman walked in carrying several parcels—the maid.

“Good afternoon, Mademoiselle,” she said. If she was surprised to see me, she didn’t show it.

“Good day,” I answered. I smoothed my skirts, and when the maid passed to the kitchen, I ran to the balcony. The rain had stopped, and a shimmering rainbow rose in the sky. Dr. Pozzi puffed on his cigar and looked out over the carrefour de Buci with its bustling arcaded shops beneath eighteenth-century apartments.

“Your maid is here,” I said.

“Oh, good. Did she bring lunch?” He turned and, leaning against the rain-slicked iron railing, smiled at me. His calm manner was infuriating.

“If she’d arrived five minutes earlier, she’d have walked in on us!”

“But she didn’t, darling.” Dr. Pozzi blew a ring of blue smoke into the clean air. “Now, my love, let’s have something to eat.”

“I really should go.” I wanted to stay, but I was too embarrassed to face the maid.

“Will you come back on Thursday, same time?”

“Perhaps.” I ran through the apartment, not giving the maid a chance to speak to me, and out the door.

I did return the following Thursday, and every Tuesday and Thursday after that, for ten months. Soon I was no longer self-conscious around Dr. Pozzi’s maid, a kind, sturdy Breton woman who always behaved toward me with motherly concern. Indeed, she sometimes helped me lace my corset, and once she mended a skirt I had torn getting out of a cab in front of Dr. Pozzi’s building.

Dr. Pozzi always treated me tenderly, but looking back on that time, I see he wasn’t very interested in me when we weren’t making love. He chattered as much as an old peasant woman—I rarely got a chance to say anything—but the talk was all about himself.

He told me a great deal about his childhood. The eldest of two sons of a minister and his fragile wife, Dr. Pozzi had grown up in bourgeois comfort in a large house in Bordeaux. He lost his mother at ten, a tragedy which was one of the few things he didn’t want to talk about. He had three sisters, but Dr. Pozzi was the beauty of the family, tall and slender with creamy olive skin, delicate, even features, and masses of wavy dark hair. His friends called him
la Sirène.

He was as brilliant as he was gorgeous, and at eighteen he moved to Paris to begin medical studies at the Hôpital de la Pitié. For a while, he lived with his wealthy cousin, a doctor who treated many of the Napoleonic royalty. The cousin introduced Dr. Pozzi to Princess Mathilde, his prize patient. She was charmed by the handsome young man, and he quickly became part of her inner circle.

When I met Dr. Pozzi in 1870, he was only twenty-five but was already known for his surgical prowess. He specialized in treating female maladies, and if you thought that his ardor for women would be squelched by looking all day at female private parts, you’d be wrong. Dr. Pozzi was as famous for romance as he was for his looks and brilliance. Among his rumored conquests were several married noblewomen and Sarah Bernhardt, who called him Doctor Dieu.

Dr. Pozzi never mentioned his other women, and though it’s hard to believe I was once so naive, I assumed he had given up everyone else for me. I actually believed that we’d be married when I was older and he had received his surgeon’s title. He gave me a gold ring with six small diamonds, which I didn’t dare wear, fearing the questions it would raise with Mama and Julie. During the day, I kept it under my pillows. I wore it only while I slept. Though Dr. Pozzi didn’t speak of marriage, I regarded the ring as a sign of his honorable intentions. In return, I gave him a copy of Baudelaire’s poems bound in embroidered blue silk from a chemise of mine he had once ripped in a moment of passion.

Mama and Julie were never home when I left for Dr. Pozzi’s apartment at midday, or when I returned in late afternoon. Julie went to her studio every morning before eight. Mama usually left the house at nine, carrying a large case of calling cards. After paying a few visits, she’d have lunch at Bignon’s or Tortoni’s, followed by a little browsing in the shops. Typically, she returned at five. I always beat her home by at least an hour. Julie never returned before six.

That spring, my aunt had a painting accepted for the first time at the annual Salon. Her portrait of a young woman brushing her hair in front of a light-filled window was a superb example of Julie’s talent for color and composition, and she had high hopes it would win a first-, second-, or third-class medal—the top prize, the Salon Medal of Honor, was reserved for French artists.

On varnishing day, Julie left the house early to join her friends for breakfast in the restaurant adjoining the Palais de l’Industrie. Mama and I followed two hours later. It was a beautiful spring day, fresh and clear. A warm breeze swirled the air, and white puffs of clouds drifted in the sky. We arrived at the Champs-Elysées as hundreds of men and women streamed under the Palais’s massive arcade. The cavernous entrance hall was mobbed, and a great symphony of footsteps echoed on the cold flagstone floor. Mama and I pushed our way through the crowd to the fourth gallery on the left, where the program told us we’d find the “T’s”—the artists’ pictures were grouped alphabetically. Thousands of paintings, stacked row upon row, reached up twenty feet to the ceiling. White cotton had been stretched under the skylights to block the sun’s glare, and a diffused light filtered in, bathing the canvases in a soft, dusty glow.

We found Julie in the fourth gallery with Sophie Tranchevent, Filomena Seguette, Carolus-Duran, and several men I had never seen before. Dressed in a new pink silk gown with a green moiré sash, her fine hair piled on her head and held in place with two shell combs, Julie stood without her cane as Sophie and Filomena supported her elbows.

Directly to Julie’s left hung her painting. It had been placed “on line”—that is, at eye level—where the Salon committee hung those works it judged to be of the highest quality.

“Virginie! Mimi!” Julie cried as we approached.

“There’s been a crowd around her painting all morning,” said Filomena, beaming. Her own picture, a large canvas depicting a battle scene from the 1848 Revolution, was in a special gallery for previous medal winners.

“I guess I’m the failure of the group,” moaned Sophie. “I’ve been skyed.” She pointed toward the ceiling, where her picture of a reclining nude was barely visible, lost in a sea of similar nudes.

“The committee was in a bad temper when they looked at your picture,” consoled Julie. “We all think it’s striking. The best thing you’ve done.”

“It’s so exciting,” Julie said, turning to Mama and me. “I’ve been standing next to the picture so I can hear people’s comments. One man was complaining that Carolus must have worked on it. ‘No woman is that good,’ he bellowed.”

Soon I was aware of someone standing behind me. I turned to see a willowy dark-haired woman expensively dressed in peach satin. She glared at me with black almond-shaped eyes. I stared back and scowled until she walked away. Then I forgot about her.

Julie had given Mama and me a list of ten paintings to see, and, armed with a program, we made our way through the galleries. There were pictures in every imaginable style—classical scenes, landscapes, history paintings, portraits. But the galleries were so packed with people—in some it was impossible to move from one end to the other—that we managed to find only four of the works on Julie’s list.

“Mama, I’m exhausted. Can we go?” I asked after we had looked around for two hours.

“Yes! My head is spinning. I was only staying because I thought you wanted to,” Mama said. “Let’s have lunch at Magny’s.”

We left the galleries and walked through the entrance hall toward the exit. Standing at the ticket gate was the black-haired woman who had glared at me earlier.

“Do you know who
she
is?” I asked Mama, nodding toward the woman.

“The one in peach satin?” Mama narrowed her eyes to focus better. “Why, that’s Marguerite Orléans!”

“Who’s she?”

“One of the great whores of the Second Empire,” Mama snickered. “A favorite of the Emperor’s. Pierre pointed her out to me one night at the Bal Mabille.”

Mademoiselle Orléans couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but her narrow face looked hard and worn. I don’t think she had ever been beautiful. Over the years, I’ve met many of the grand
horizontales,
and few of them were even pretty, despite their reputation for glamour. Most of them had good figures, of course, and they disguised their ordinary faces with makeup and well-dressed hair. Mean and often stupid, they were old by forty, dead by fifty.