A Paris Apartment (32 page)

The jokes that normally came so swiftly from Luc’s mouth now seemed to stutter and stop.

“We don’t need the four-to-five,” April said. “It’s for people who are being watched, not those free to do what they want.”

She slid her hands from Luc’s grasp and then wrapped both arms around his waist. They’d been close all night, but April could not believe she was this close now. She half expected him to jump back, in surprise if for no other reason. But he did not. Instead Luc pressed himself closer.

“I thought you were married,” he said. There was no smirking this time. “Le grand m’sieu and whatnot.”

“No,” she said. “There is no grand m’sieu. Not anymore.”

Chapitre L

Paris, 3 May 1896

I attended the
Bazar de la Charité
for the first time today.

It is the most fashionable event of the month, perhaps the entire spring! I can only hope I’ll get written up tomorrow. I worked hard enough on my dress and baubles … I worked hard enough loitering in the general vicinity of the
Figaro
gossips!

I’ve known of the
Bazar de la Charité
since my days in the convent. It is an annual charity event organized by the Parisian Catholic aristocracy, and given the convent girls and women were both Catholic and in need of charity, it stands to reason we would find it so appealing!

Sœur Marie used to bring me into the city to see the enormous wood-and-canvas structures erected on the Champs-Élyseés. Sometimes she was one of the nuns brought in to bless the proceedings. Either way, after the initial blessing, we stood together in awe of the grandness, the pomp, the red and white banners fluttering in the wind. We used to spend hours on a bench outside watching people come and go, dreaming up stories for each one.

Back then I pledged to enter the tents one day, not as a member of the assisted poor, but as a gracious lady donating time and treasure to the indigent. Sœur Marie said not to set my sights too high. Be happy with your station. Be happy for a warm bed (cough, cough) and regular meals, and make no grand designs on someone else’s life. I always gathered Sœur Marie hoped I’d make grand designs on following her life, but joining the convent was never a consideration for me. I wanted the tents, I wanted the salons, I wanted Paris.

For most the
Bazar de la Charité
is an annual event, something that arrives on the calendar along with Christmas and New Year’s Day and all the things a person can set her clocks or social calendar by. And maybe one day I will see it the same way. But today. Today. Today after eleven years on the outside (and, really, twenty-two if you think about it), I pushed open the tent. I walked through the turnstiles. I gaped at the hundreds of visitors, the coterie of women standing behind tables hawking novelties, the proceeds of which would go to help little girls like I once was.

“Already I’m bored,” Montesquiou said the second we walked in, before I had a chance to catch my breath or assess my surroundings. “Let’s find the Hall of Mirrors. I need to practice my technique.”

His “technique.”
Mon dieu
, his technique! The
Bazar
features not only goods for purchase but also performances such as those put on by ladies not quite ready for the Folies or even the exceedingly second-rate Moulin Rouge. It’s also a chance for members of the highest social stations to act out their theatrical aspirations without fear of disapprobation. It would never do for a baron or count or lady to step onstage and perform, but in the name of charity,
c’est d’autre chose
!

Robert didn’t plan to contort or bare a leg—though one couldn’t put it past him—but he did have it in his mind to treat visitors to one of his so-called famous mime sequences. The last time he did this the papers referred to him as “
Le Comte,
man of letters and sometimes miming” for months. It was fairly horrifying, but when it comes to Montesquiou there is a spectrum of horrification, and miming is at the very lesser end. His so-called orchestra of odors from two years past was worse. His flatulence is less charming than Pétomane’s.

Mime threats aside, Robert mostly behaved, but only because he was trying to impress Proust, his new protégé. Proust claims himself a writer but is little more than the city’s smallest rumor mill, and he follows Robert like whores used to follow Georges Hugo. He copies
Le Comte’s
every idiom, mannerism, and flourish, even the way Robert giggles like a girl after finishing a story. Then again, Proust acts like a female better than most girls around. He was created with the entirely wrong sexual organs!

I cannot write the term “sexual organs” without mentioning Boldini. The reference is in poor taste, admittedly, but if a woman can’t dabble in scandalous talk in her own diaries, where can she? In any case, as we promenaded through the
Bazar
I kept my eyes roaming for a glimpse of Boldini, though it was exactly the kind of place he’d never deign to enter. It’s not that I wanted to see him, though it could not hurt to have him see me look so exquisite. But more than that, I had a score to settle. After years of agonizing, after a hundred starts and stops, M. Boldini finally completed his rendition of
Le Comte
. How convenient! Now that I’ve taken up with the man, Boldini suddenly finds him easy to paint. I guess not all works were impaled on the Opéra spires.

The Affair of the Cane
, the papers called this portrait (and still do). According to Montesquiou, Boldini positively insisted on the inclusion of
Le Comte’s
beloved turquoise-handled cane in the portrait. He ordered Robert to hold it up near his mouth and gaze at it fondly, as one might an old lover one was glad to see again. Or as the always-naughty Marguérite declared, in the manner Robert usually reserved for admiring his manhood!

“Admit it,” Marguérite snickered. “The way he’s grasping the neck of that cane in his white gloved hand is exactly as he does to his member in the boudoir!”

“I wouldn’t know,” I snapped back. “When I’m there he has no need of his hand!”

Marguérite was not the only one who made jokes. Not even close! That damn portrait produced such a slew of jibes I wondered if the hilarity would ever stop. Just where do you plan to put the cane, Monsieur de Montesquiou? Et cetera.

As incensed as I was over the whole thing, Robert merely laughed and said, “It is better to be hated than unknown.” I strongly disagree. One must maintain a semblance of respectability because if you don’t have a solid reputation, then what do you have?

Though Robert believes Boldini intended no ill will, I am certain the blasted man wanted to show
Le Comte
at his worst: the man’s dandy essence magnified tenfold. The situation was exacerbated by the recent eruption of Boldini’s popularity. Conventional wisdom now states that anything he creates is both genius and true to life. Ergo, if it appears that the subject longs to shove a cane up his derrière, then it must be the case!

As shameful as the whole experience was, with Robert there will be no hiding. He continues to drag me to Maxim’s and the Opéra and even my old place of employ. A chorus of tittering follows our every step! At least
Le Comte
understands that I require recompense for the mortification. Never has he plied me with so many beautiful things. My flat does not seem as large as it once was!

Gifts aside, after one hour in the tents, Montesquiou miming around with that damn cane, it seemed positively crucial to locate Boldini and put him on the receiving end of my wrath. I’ve tried to fault Robert for the debacle, so stupid was he to let Boldini dictate the props, but he doesn’t seem to care.

As we wandered through the
Bazar
I stopped every one of Boldini’s associates to inquire after his whereabouts. I asked Gauguin and Bourget and even that midget. They all said he was there, perhaps but not for sure. So single-minded was I that when a harried, haggard woman careened into me I didn’t notice her face. At first.

“Please watch your step,” I said as she trampled over my shoes. “This place is crowded, and you can’t rush through like it’s a barn burning.”

I thought she was one of the poor, a penniless spinster there to help serve food and count change. But when my eyes finally took hold of the woman’s face, I saw it was Jeanne Hugo Daudet herself, standing before me with those ugly little children hanging off her skirt like trained monkeys.

“Watch yourself,” she snapped back.

“Oh, Madame Daudet. Bonjour.” A certain thrill crawled up my spine. “I did not notice you. It’s so very odd that wherever I am you turn up! Really quite peculiar, don’t you think, Madame Daudet?”

I used her former surname so as to emphasize Madame Daudet’s twice-married status. Marguérite reported that after Jeanne’s most recent wedding she showed up at the Folies and plunked down at her brother’s former table, now vacated since Georges ran off to Italy with his wife’s cousin. After downing two Pernods, Jeanne proceeded to sob into her handkerchief for the duration of the evening. She hated having a second marriage. She hated that she had to wear a suit of brown instead of a dress of white.

Alas, I will allow the woman this: Her new husband, Jean-Baptiste Charcot, seems a decent fellow. For better or worse, he is far more interested in adventures on mountaintops than in bedrooms or bordellos. I’d previously overheard him at the Folies, when I still worked there, and he spoke of little else than what peaks he’d scaled or wanted to scale and what gravity-defying objects he attempted to fly. Though he might fall off a cliff, at least he will not catch the clap.

“I’m not sure why you repeatedly use my former name,” Jeanne said, straightening her spine as visitors to the
Bazar
continued to bustle around us. “I’m not sure why you address me at all. I don’t believe we’ve met formally. If we had, you would certainly know my name. Unfortunately I cannot keep track of every impoverished person I’ve graciously helped along the way.”

“You are so amusing,” I replied, trying to mask my internal rage. “You should be careful, you know. There are rumors you’ve remarried. I told people it is not possible, so barely out of wedlock are you from Léon. I am not sure who is spreading such vicious lies, but you should find the source and stop them immediately!”

Jeanne Hugo Daudet Charcot smirked and lifted her eyebrows.

“Actually, I have recently married the most dashing fellow in all of Paris … in all of Europe, even! Although you know this, do you not? Your boy dandy worked so very hard to secure himself an invitation to the party.” She clicked her tongue. “We were so sad we could only invite the important people of Paris.”

I hastened to point out that, despite calling me a stranger mere seconds ago, Jeanne admitted to knowing both
Le Comte
and me. Yet the victory did not seem mine to take.

At that moment Robert marched up. I took the opportunity to “startle” and “accidentally” spill my newly purchased perfume oil across Jeanne’s dress. She screamed in horror, shielding her eyes as she fell to the ground, even though the liquid was nowhere near her face. It wasn’t even hot.

“Oh, Le Comte! You startled me. I am so very clumsy when alarmed! Poor Madame Hugo-Daudet…”

“
Madame Charcot!
” she spat between her teeth. Montesquiou tried to help her to stand, but she pushed him away.

“I’m so sorry to have ruined your gown.”

“You are a nasty woman,” she sneered, brushing off her backside.

“Well, you would know the species.”

“I don’t have time to entertain the likes of you!” she cried. “I cannot believe Montesquiou is fooled! He is the stupidest man alive, but even for him this is absurd!”

With that Jeanne lifted her skirts and plodded off in the other direction, those hideous chicken-children clucking behind her. I turned to Robert, at the ready with an excuse. But
Le Comte
was so busy studying his freshly manicured nails he did not have time to contemplate my erratic behavior.

We spent the balance of the afternoon stomping across hay and visiting the ladies selling their geegaws. Sometime after dusk, Robert and I returned to my flat. As he poured a drink I slid out of my shoes and gown. I felt exhausted, tired, and overwrought all at once.

Robert hummed and dripped golden liquid into a crystal glass as I sat contemplating how strange it was we’d been coupled for two years, across one Daudet and at the start of Charcot. It is a long stretch to be with the same person, at least in my world, and though I know
Le Comte
well, I also know him very little. These thoughts bounced around my mind as I watched him pour my drink. It all left me oddly confused. And confused I remain.

For the first time since arriving in Paris, I find my position, my future … it all seems so hazy and unclear. I have the apartment now. The gowns. The furnishings and the art. I am not married to Montesquiou, but am I supposed to stay with him forever?

“Drink or sexual congress first?”
Le Comte
asked, waggling his finger through the ice. Nausea crept into my gut.

I’d never not wanted him. Indeed I’m not always primed for his advances and sometimes have to work myself into an amorous condition. But right then the thought of his skin pressing against mine made me ill. It was nonsensical, I told myself, merely a by-product of the
Bazar
. Our surroundings can affect our moods, affect our desires, so much more than we’d like to admit. Truth be told, the whole affair let me down. It’s odd how something you’ve dreamed of half your life looks different once you get inside.

Part Quatre

Chapitre LI

Paris, 9 May 1897

What is it they say? The world can change in an instant? It happened to me. Like a spark to canvas, everything ignited and then burned away, the only thing left standing the structures, the ideas of how things once looked. This is both a metaphor and a strict interpretation of what happened.