Desiree by Annemarie Selinko
I was the only one in the coach who had never been to Paris before. That wheezing M. Blanc who got into the coach two days ago, going to Paris on business, took me to a hackney coach, and I showed the driver the slip of paper on which I had written Marie’s sister’s address. All the money I had left went on the fare, and then the driver was rude because I couldn’t give him a tip.
The address proved right, and, thank God, Marie’s relatives, Clapain by name, were at home. They live in the outbuildings of a house in the Rue du Bac. The Rue du Bac can’t be far from the Tuileries; we drove past the Palace and I recognised it from the pictures. I kept pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming but was really in Paris and had really run away from home.
Marie’s sister, Madame Clapain, was very kind to me. At first she was quite overcome at seeing the daughter of Marie’s mistress. But then I told her I had come in secret, to settle some business, and I had no money; Marie had said that perhaps—
At that Marie’s sister stopped being overcome and said I could stay with her. Was I hungry? And how long did I want to stay?
I said I was very hungry, and gave her my bread ration card because, on account of the bad harvest, bread is strictly rationed and food of any sort is dreadfully dear. As for how long I was going to stay I had no idea, perhaps a day or two, perhaps—
She gave me something to eat, and then Monsieur Clapain came home. He told me that their rooms were part of the outbuildings of a former aristocratic mansion. The mansion had been confiscated by the Government, but because of the housing shortage the municipality had divided the outbuildings up into small dwellings and let them to big families.
The Clapains are an enormously big family. Three small children were crawling about the floor, and two more came running in for something to eat. The kitchen where we had our meal was so full of babies’ nappies hanging up to dry that it was like being in a tent.
Immediately after the meal Madame Clapain said she was going for a walk with her husband. She could hardly ever do that, she said, because of the children. But now I was there she could put the children to bed and go out for a bit. When the children were all in bed, Madame Clapain put on a little hat with an ostrich feather rather the worse for wear, Monsieur Clapain scattered a whole little bag of powder over his almost bald head, and off they went.
All of a sudden I felt dreadfully alone in this huge town and so I rummaged in my travelling-bag, just for the company of my familiar possessions. At the last moment I had put in the diary, and now I took it out and turned the pages over, and read how everything had happened. After that I set to work, with a splayed quill which I found on the kitchen cupboard next to a dust-covered inkbottle, on this account of my running away from home.
It is a whole year since my last entry. But then, so very little happens to a grass widow – or rather to a grass fiancée, with her husband-to-be away in Paris. Etienne found me some cambric for handkerchiefs and nightdresses, damask for tablecloths, and linen for bedclothes, and took the cost out of my dowry. I stitched innumerable finely curved B’s, pricking my fingers times without number, and sometimes I visited Madame Letitia in her cellar dwelling, and sometimes Julie and Joseph in their charming little villa. But Madame Letitia could only talk about the way everything got dearer and dearer and how Napoleone hadn’t sent her any money for ages. And Julie and Joseph never did anything but look deep into each other’s eyes, and say things I could never understand, and giggle – evidently very happy but a bit idiotic. All the same, I went there quite often because Julie always wanted to know what Napoleone had written to me and gave me Napoleone’s letters to Joseph to read.
Unfortunately, Napoleone didn’t seem to be doing at all well in Paris. A year ago he arrived there with his two ADCs and Louis – he had taken that fat youngster with him at the last moment to help Madame Letitia. And of course there had been a tremendous fuss at the War Ministry because he hadn’t gone to the Vendée as he had been ordered to. He just talked about his Italian projects until, simply to get rid of him, the Ministry sent him to the Italian front, but only as an Inspector, not as Commander-in-Chief. To the Italian front he went, only to be cold-shouldered by most of the Generals or told not to interfere. At last he fell ill with malaria and returned to Paris. When he turned up again at the Ministry, the War Minister raged at him and showed him the door. After that Napoleone was on half pay for some months and then he was simply dismissed from the Service without a pension.
A dreadful situation! We just couldn’t imagine what he was living on. He pawned his father’s watch, but that couldn’t have lasted him longer than three days. He couldn’t keep Louis any more, and forced him to enter the army. At times Napoleone did some casual work in the War Ministry, drawing maps and damaging his eyesight. His torn trousers were a great worry to him and he tried to patch them up himself, but the seams kept on bursting. He applied for a new uniform, but the Government would not allot one to a dismissed General. In despair he went where everyone goes nowadays who wants something: to the ‘Chaumière’, the ‘thatched cottage’ of the beautiful Madame Tallien.
At the moment we have a Government called the Directory, nominally a council of five Directors. But Joseph maintains that only one of our Directors really counts – Director Barras.
Whatever happens in the country, Barras comes to the top. (Like filth floating in the harbour, I sometimes feel. But perhaps one shouldn’t talk like that about the Head of the Nation, or at any rate one of our five Heads.) This man Barras is an aristocrat by birth, but he managed to turn Jacobin in good time, and so he has been none the worse. Then, together with Tallien and a Deputy called Fouché, he overthrew Robespierre and saved the Republic from the ‘tyrant’. And after that he moved into an official residence at the Luxembourg Palace and became one of our five Directors. A Director has to see all the important people, and as he isn’t married Barras has asked Madame Tallien to throw open her house every afternoon to his guests, or, which comes to the same thing, to those of the French Republic.
A business friend of Etienne’s told us that at Madame Tallien’s champagne flows very freely indeed, and that her salon is always full of men who have grown rich through the war, and of speculators who buy up cheaply all the aristocratic mansions which the State has confiscated and then sell them at a huge profit to the nouveaux riches. There are also many entertaining ladies there, friends of Madame Tallien’s, said this man, but by far the most beautiful women are Madame Tallien herself and Josephine de Beauharnais.
Madame de Beauharnais is Barras’ mistress, and she wears a narrow red ribbon round her neck to show that she is related to a ‘victim of the guillotine’. That is no longer a disgrace but a high distinction. This Josephine is the widow of the General de Beauharnais who was beheaded, and that means that she is a former countess.
Mama asked Etienne’s friend whether there were any decent women left in Paris at all, and he answered:
‘Oh yes. But they are very expensive!’
He laughed, and Mama sent me to the kitchen for a glass of water.
One afternoon Napoleone called at Madame Tallien’s and introduced himself to Madame Tallien and Madame de Beauharnais. They both thought it dreadful that the War Minister would not give him a new command or even a new pair of trousers, and they both promised to get him the new trousers at all events. But first he would have to change his name a bit. Napoleone sat down at once and wrote to Joseph.
‘By the way, I have decided to change my name and I advise you to do likewise. No one in Paris can even pronounce Buonaparte, and from now on I am calling myself Bonaparte. And of course Napoleon instead of Napoleone! Please address my letters accordingly and tell the family of my decision. After all, we are French citizens, and I want my name to go down as a French name in the Book of History.’
So he was no longer Buonaparte but Bonaparte. His trousers were still torn, his father’s watch was pawned, but he still thinks of making history.
Joseph, like the ape
During the last few months Napoleon’s letters to me have become rare, though Joseph gets one twice a week. Yet at long last I have been able to send him the portrait he wanted. It is a dreadfully bad painting, I must say. It gives me a snub nose, and I don’t believe for a moment that mine is really like that. But I have had to pay the painter in advance, and so I took the painting and sent it to Paris.
He didn’t even thank me. His letters have become quite empty now. They still begin with Mia Carissima and end with a hug. But as to our wedding date, not a word! Not a word about my being almost sixteen! Meanwhile he writes pages and pages to Joseph about the fine ladies in Madame Tallien’s salon. ‘I have come to realise,’ he wrote in one letter, ‘the important part that really distinguished women play in a man’s life, women of experience, women of understanding, women of the great world.’ … Oh, how that hurt me!
A week ago Julie decided to join Joseph on a long business tour. Mama cried a lot because one of her children was going away on a real journey, so Etienne sent her to stay for a month with Uncle Somis, to give her a change. Mama packed seven travelling-bags, and I took her to the stage coach for her four hours’ journey to Uncle Somis’ place. At the same time Suzanne found she felt rather ‘run down’, and badgered Etienne into taking her to a spa. Thus it came about that Marie and I were left alone in the house.
One afternoon I was sitting with Marie in the summer-house: that was the afternoon of decision. It was one of those autumn days when the roses are all gone and the leaves are etched sharply against the pale blue sky, and you feel that something is fading away, dying. Perhaps that is why not only are silhouettes so sharp and clear but thoughts are too: anyhow, as I was stitching another ‘B’ on a napkin I suddenly dropped it and said:
‘I must go to Paris. I know it’s mad and the family would never hear of it. But I must go.’
‘If you must, then go,’ said Marie, who was shelling peas. She didn’t even look up.
Without taking it in, my eyes followed a green and golden insect crawling over the table.
‘What could be simpler?’ I said. ‘We’re alone in the house. I could take the mail coach to Paris to-morrow morning.’
‘You’ve got enough money, anyhow,’ said Marie, and exploded a thick pod of peas with her thumb. The little crack of the explosion did not disturb the insect on its way across the table.
‘Well, it’ll probably be enough for the journey if I stay only two nights at a hotel. The two other nights I might be able to spend in the parlours of the coaching inns. They might even have a bench or a sofa.’
Marie looked up at me for the first time.
‘I thought you had more money than that,’ she said, ‘under your nightgowns in the chest.’
I shook my head. ‘No I – I lent most of it to someone.’
‘And where are you going to stay in Paris?’
The insect had reached the edge of the table. I turned it round carefully and watched it crawling back the way it had come.
‘In Paris?’ I pondered. ‘I really hadn’t thought of that. It depends, doesn’t it?’
‘You have both promised your mother to wait for the wedding till you are sixteen. And in spite of that you want to go to Paris now?’
‘Marie,’ I blurted out, ‘if I can’t go now, it may be too late and there may be no wedding at all!’
For the first time I had said right out what until then I had hardly dared to think.
Marie went on bursting pea pods. Then she asked:
‘What’s her name?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don’t know, really. Perhaps it’s Madame Tallien, perhaps it’s the other one, Barras’ mistress, Josephine, who used to be a countess. I really couldn’t say. But, Marie, you mustn’t think any the worse of him for that. You see, he hasn’t seen me for ages. But – let him set eyes on me again!’
‘Yes,’ said Marie, ‘you’re right. You’ve got to go to Paris. Long ago my Pierre joined up and he never came back to me. And there I was with Little Pierre and no money at all, and so I had to go to the Clary family as a wet nurse. I wrote to Pierre and told him everything, and he didn’t even bother to answer. Yes, I should have tried to go and see him.’
I knew all about Marie’s sad story, she has told it to me so often.
‘He was too far away,’ I said, ‘you couldn’t have got to him.’
The green and golden insect had reached another edge of the table.
‘You go to Paris,’ said Marie. ‘You could spend the first few nights with my sister, and then we’ll see.’
‘Yes, we’ll see,’ I said, and getting up I put the insect down on the lawn. ‘I’m going to town now to ask about the mail coach to-morrow morning.’
The family had taken all the good travelling-bags and I only found an old and very shabby one. I packed it in the evening, and did not forget to put in the blue silk gown which I had been given for Julie’s wedding. It is my most beautiful frock. I’ll put it on, I thought, when I am going to call on Madame Tallien to see him again.
The next morning Marie went with me to the coach. I passed along the familiar road to town as in a dream, a very beautiful dream in which I knew I was doing the right and only possible thing.
At the last moment Marie gave me a big medallion made of gold. ‘I have no money,’ she murmured, ‘I need my wages for Little Pierre. Take the medallion, it’s real gold. It’s from your mother, the day I weaned you. You can easily sell it, Eugenie.’
‘Sell it? Whatever for?’
‘For the return journey,’ Marie said, and turned away quickly.
And so, for one, two, three, four endless days my bones were shaken in that wretched coach, along a never-ending dusty road, past fields and woods, through villages and towns. Every three hours there came a sudden jolt that threw me against the bony shoulder of the lady in mourning on my right. The jolt meant a change of horses. Then on and on again. And all the time I was thinking of how I would go to Madame Tallien’s and ask for General Bonaparte. And then I would say, ‘Napoleon, I know you haven’t the money to come to me, so I’ve come to you, because we belong together!’
This strange kitchen, Marie’s sister’s, is full of unfamiliar shadows. I haven’t seen the furniture by daylight, that’s why.
Will he be glad? Of course he will! He’ll take my arm and introduce me to his fine new friends, and then we’ll go away to be alone, walking about since we have no money to sit in a coffee-house. And perhaps he may know someone where he can put me up till we’ve had Mama’s consent to the wedding. And then we’ll get married, and then—
Ah, they are coming home, Monsieur and Madame Clapain. Let’s hope they have a reasonably good sofa on which I can stretch myself, and to-morrow – to-morrow, to-morrow, how I am looking forward to to-morrow!
Paris, twenty-four hours – no, an eternity later!
It’s night-time, and I’m sitting once again in Madame Clapain’s kitchen. Once again? Perhaps it isn’t ‘again’, perhaps it’s just ‘still’, and I haven’t been away at all from this house and the whole of this day was nothing but a bad dream and perhaps I may yet wake up. But did not the waters of the Seine close over my head? It was so near, I remember, the lights of Paris danced a minuet on the waves and in their dancing seemed to beckon me on, and I did bend over the cold stone side of the bridge and maybe I did die and float down the river, floating, floating and no longer feeling any more. Oh, if only I could die!
But no, I’m sitting at an unsteady kitchen table and my thoughts go round and round. Every word and every face comes back to me now whilst outside the rain beats against the w
It has been raining all day long. Before I had reached Madame Tallien’s house I was soaked through already. I had put on the beautiful blue silk gown. But walking through the Gardens of the Tuileries and then on along the Rue Honoré I discovered that by Parisian standards it was quite old-fashioned. Here the women wear dresses that look like shirts and are held together under the bosom by a silk ribbon. They don’t wear fichus either although it’s autumn now, and they only drape a flimsy scarf around their shoulders. My tight sleeves, which come down to the elbows and have laced edges, look quite impossible. Apparently one no longer wears sleeves, only shoulder-clasps. I felt ashamed because I looked like a real provincial.
It was not difficult to find the ‘Chaumière’ in the Rue des Veuves. Madame Clapain had told me exactly how to get there, and although in spite of my impatience I kept stopping and looking into the shop windows of the Rue Honoré I reached my goal within half an hour. To look at it from outside the house gives a rather modest impression. It’s hardly bigger than our villa at home, built in rural style and thatched. But through the windows you can see the sweep of brocade curtains.
It was early yet in the afternoon, but I wanted to have my surprise ready in good time and to be waiting in one of the reception rooms by the time Napoleon would arrive. I knew that Napoleon went there almost every afternoon, so that this was the best place to meet him. And I also knew that anybody could enter here where Madame de Thermidor keeps open house, because he wrote so to Joseph.
Outside the house a lot of people were hanging about who stared with critical eyes at everybody approaching the ‘Chaumière’. I looked neither left nor right but went straight to the gate, opened it, entered and ran right into the arms of a lackey. He wore a red silver-buttoned livery and looked exactly like any of the lackeys in the pre-Revolutionary aristocratic houses. It was new to me that the dignitaries of the Republic were allowed lackeys in livery. Which reminds me, by the way, that Deputy Tallien himself used to be a servant.