The Painted Girls Read online

  “You went off, shirking work for that boy.” Her eyes shifted from weary to stone-cold. Already, even without the news of Mazas, she was poisoned against Émile, poisoned by Marie.

  I took the hands of that small girl. I could not endure the questions of Marie, the brutality of Maman if I was forced to tell the true message of Michel Knobloch. Not tonight. Not after such a day. “Just this once.”

  “I want a new sash—scarlet,” she said back; and later, in the evening, with her spinning a story of collapsing at the barre and getting a pastille to suck from Madame Théodore and then answering the queries of Maman without stumbling a single time, I felt not a bit proud about the lying of that small girl being an equal match to my own.

  Émile sits with those burly thighs of his a little parted, those brawny hands clutching just above his knees. He leans in from the waist, forehead almost touching the iron grate, eyes peering out steadier than a flat rock. There is no twitching, scratching, swallowing. No glancing away. “I had no part in the butchering,” he says.

  The day after Michel Knobloch brought the news of Mazas, I opened up the door of our lodging room in the evening to Marie sitting at our small table, bent over a newspaper, and I knew that somewhere between the Opéra and the rue de Douai she came upon a news seller hollering the names of Émile Abadie and Pierre Gille. “Antoinette,” she said, hopping up. “Sit down. A glass of water? Maman, pour a glass for Antoinette.”

  Maman said, “You’re pale as bleached linen.”

  “Émile is in Mazas,” Marie said, “arrested for robbing and murdering the tavern owner in Montreuil.” She put a hand to her heart, and I saw the rawness where, worse than ever, the flesh of her thumb was picked away.

  Maman fell onto a chair. I watched her hand twitch, longing for the flask in the pocket of her skirt.

  “I already know,” I said. Marie’s hand dropped to her side and ease came to her face.

  “That boy who keeps you out half the night?” Maman said.

  “Wasn’t Émile,” I said.

  Marie touched the newspaper, quiet as a mouse. “Witnesses saw him going into the tavern. Two of them.”

  “It was the other boy, Pierre Gille, slit the neck,” I said.

  “Émile Abadie told you that?” Marie said.

  “It’s what I know to be true.” I lifted my chin, looked hard at Maman and then Marie. “I saw it in a vision. It was the hand of Pierre Gille upon the knife.”

  The mouth of Marie gapes open, then closed, like a fish.

  “Spit it out, whatever it is you got to say.”

  Again she touches the newspaper. “It says right here Émile Abadie was the lover of the woman Bazengeaud,” she said. Maman took the flask from her pocket, slugged good and long, licked the shine of the absinthe from her lips.

  The face of Émile collapses into his cupped hands. He rattles his head. “I only wanted money,” he says, and face still hanging, adds, “Not a single sou saved. Always spending what’s in my pocket.”

  Better than anyone I know his generosity, but I say no such thing.

  “I got to be such a disappointment.” From beneath his eyebrows he looks between his fingers, waiting. Waiting for what? A choked no from me? A head shook? I feel a tiny tug, the slack of a leash taken up. But, no, he’s got to say about the woman Bazengeaud, whether all those times on the chaise, in the stairwell, pushed up against a stone wall with me were not even real.

  He drops his hands, and his eyes lock onto my own. “I found my pockets empty one night. My belly was aching and rumbling for food.” He licks his lips. “Gille, he was going on about how he collected fifty francs from his mother’s old housemaid, all for keeping quiet about her lowering her drawers for him.”

  He tells me how pretty soon he and Pierre Gille were galloping over to Montreuil, all feverish with the idea of threatening the woman Bazengeaud. One hundred francs she would pay him, that, or Émile would squawk to her husband about the whore she truly was.

  “Always she was pulling up a chair beside me, groping at the buttons of my trousers, stroking, bringing me a cognac on the house,” he says. “But, Antoinette, what you got to know is that every scrap of that toying was before you. Rest assured. A long time ago.”

  I breathe deep, slow, think about Marie as a tiny fly creeping along the wall. That fly, with its doubting mind and wary eyes, even it would see the way each detail meshes with those plucked from the newspaper. And didn’t he say about carrying on with the woman Bazengeaud without a bit of prodding from me? That fly would see the way it points to the truth of his words. The gas lamps flare a moment, licking bright the dull plaster of the walls. “You’re not a disappointment,” I say.

  “I got it in my head you were going to find another sweetheart, Antoinette. You are always saying about a lodging room of our own, and that little drawstring pouch you’re keeping safe, I saw a chance to triple the weight.”

  He goes on to tell me it turned out the woman Bazengeaud only smirked and snapped her cleaning rag against his chest. “Wouldn’t have bothered with a boy, now, would I, if I had a husband cared in the least?” she said. “You go ahead, Émile. Tell him whatever you please.”

  She topped up his cognac, told Pierre Gille to pay up if he wanted a drop more. She was off, wiping down the counter, when Pierre Gille pounded a fist against the tabletop and spat low words about not coming all the way to Montreuil for a thimbleful of swill, about the strongbox yawning open not five steps away.

  “There wasn’t a speck of fondness in me for the old hag,” Émile says, “but I got more decency than to rob a woman just topped up my glass.”

  He drained the last of the cognac down, and left Pierre Gille railing and fuming and calling Émile skittish as a wet cat.

  The clacking heels of the patrolling jailer grow close, and the two of us shift to sitting straight, away from the iron grate, until he is past. Then Émile rocks onto the hind legs of his chair. “Gille told me it’d be easy,” he says, staring at the blankness of the ceiling above.

  “The blackmailing?”

  He tips back to upright. “Course the blackmailing. I wouldn’t never have gone along if I knew he had a knife. I swear to you, Antoinette, it was Gille slit the throat.”

  I make a tiny nod, feel my elbows, drawn tight against my sides, turn slack. “I know it’s true.”

  And then for the first time in all my days, I see the eyes of Émile Abadie grow damp. A noise—like the sash of a window getting unstuck—comes up from the back of his throat and then he is wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. “You’re all I got in the world, Antoinette.”

  I want to fix what is broke, to say about the court hearing both sides, those great minds all trained on learning the truth, but I remember him being put with the butcher from the rue Flandre, the Italian with the brother pierced full of holes, and even with the door behind me tight against the jamb, I feel a waft of cold breath upon the back of my neck.

  He strokes the weighty ridge of his brow, wagging his head from side to side. “When we first come to Mazas,” he says, “Gille was in front, with an inspector, and me following behind.” He shuts his eyes. “The inspector, he said to Gille, loud enough to ensure I was hearing the words, ‘Come on, Gille. You look honest enough. You couldn’t have committed a murder. You were led by Abadie, in which case, you should tell us everything. We’ll keep your honesty in mind. Be sure of that.’”

  Behind me there is the sound of metal against metal, a key turning in the lock, and then the voice of the jailer who brought me to my cell saying, “Your thirty minutes are up.”

  “I just finished sitting down,” Émile says from behind both my grate and his.

  The jailer smirks, folds his arms across his puffed-up chest. “Shouldn’t have finished that smoke.” He takes my arm, hauls me to my feet.

  “Tomorrow, Antoinette? You’ll come?”

  Tomorrow is Sunday and already I arranged it with the jailers Sunday would be my regular visiting day. I nod
, looking over my shoulder as I get hauled from the cell. “Tomorrow.”

  We are a dozen steps away when the called-out words of Émile echo in the passageway: “All I got in the world.”

  My hand goes to my heart, and I think of that boy counting on me above everybody else, loving me the most.

  The jailer loosens his grip on my arm, says, “It’ll be the guillotine for him.”

  I suck the inside of my cheeks, land the gob of collected spit on his polished boot. I crumple with the blow that comes. On my knees, I grip my aching ribs, gulp dank air.

  Marie

  I feel the smallest creature in the world, leaning a shoulder into the massive door of the Foyer de la Danse, budging it open just enough, passing through into a place reserved for the abonnés and the senior-ranking ballet girls they come to admire. Always it is off-limits to the petits rats, nothing we are allowed to taste, always except today.

  I stand there, neck craned, feet shuffling in a slow circle. No doubt each of the girls already limbering at the barre did the same on seeing the glory for the first time. Every bit of ceiling is painted or carved with cherubs and flowers and scrolls. The walls are gold and glittering, lined with velvet banquettes, lit with a chandelier dripping crystal, ringed at the highest reaches with a garland of medallions, each framing a portrait of an étoile. Will I ever be deserving of the glory of this place? It is a question we are meant to ask ourselves today, the reason we were told to gather here, awaiting our names, called one by one, our moment upon the stage, our moment of proving ourselves capable of flitting and fluttering and hovering over the earth, of otherworldliness and grace.

  Around me mothers fluff perfect tarlatan, new skirts bought for fifteen francs, and tie bright sashes costing a further six, and pin into place silk flowers paid for with the last of the sous they scrimped to put aside. All of it is doubled by a looking glass taking up the space of an entire wall. I glimpse myself reflected there—my monkey face, the hair Antoinette did not put up—a worm among peaches, well, except for my new slippers and the scarlet sash Charlotte wrung from Antoinette. Charlotte had me begging to borrow it in the morning. How could she be so ungrateful, considering the bakery wages, the baguettes, the buckets of water I haul? I did not mind too much, though, not when it gave me a chance to say out loud about the importance of the day. “Oh, Christ,” Antoinette said, fingers thumping her brow. “I meant to do your hair. I really did. And now it’s too late.”

  It was true she had turned forgetful about little things like asking how was my day or was my allegro coming along or was Blanche being nice. Still, allowing something as momentous as my examination day to slip her mind was new.

  She stepped between me and Charlotte, who was still gripping her sash behind her back. A hand on each of my shoulders, Antoinette said, “Let the music fill up your head. Let the music push away the fear. You’re ready, Marie. Not a speck of doubt.” She whirled around then and faced Charlotte. “You got one second to hand that sash over to Marie, or it won’t take me but a further second to tear it in half.”

  I tell Lucille that her flowers are the prettiest of all, Ila that her sash is the pale pink of a cherry blossom, Perot that a skirt so white shows the creaminess of her skin. And they say they wish they had backs as supple as my own, that we are sure to be asked for fouettés en tournant, that mine are the steadiest of all. Blanche holds me tight, and I look firm into her eyes and say, “Together, soon enough, upon the stage,” and we touch a post holding up the barre because maybe it is iron underneath the gilt. It is how we are today—golden, good.

  Madame Dominique had gone over exactly what to expect, how each of us will stand, alone, front and center, upon the Opéra stage, awaiting the instructions called out by Monsieur Pluque. He will be seated in the first row of the orchestra stalls, she told us, alongside Monsieur Vaucorbeil, the director of all the Opéra, and Monsieur Mérante, the ballet master. She and Madame Théodore will be just behind them, in the second row.

  A good way back from the examination board, in the boxes of the first balcony, will be any abonnés or senior-ranking dancers caring to watch, also the mothers—crossing fingers, pinching the crucifixes hanging from their necks, their knitting needles for once left quiet in their bags. Every mother will be there, except my own, which is what I prefer. I have worries enough without fearing her calling out to me upon the stage or deciding she might have a bit of sway with Monsieur Pluque or thinking she is whispering to the other mothers when she is cackling worse than a hen laying an egg.

  Monsieur Pluque will call out a series of adagio steps, slow movements like taking sixteen bars of music to rise up onto the toes of one foot and make a grand rond de jambe en l’air. There will be a pianist in the orchestra pit, accompanying the movements, which means the tempo is up to someone who cannot even see whether a girl is teetering and wanting the adagio over and done with before she topples from her toes. It is not the part I fear most, though. Madame Dominique says I have the balance of clockwork and the suppleness of a green twig. It is the allegro combinations that fill me with dread. Feet flying, beating together in the air, slip-sliding across the floor, then up in the air again but this time toe to knee and remembering to land in fifth position, right foot behind. On and on and on. My mind races. My shoulders inch ever higher. It is what happens when I think too hard about my feet, that and Madame Dominique thwacking her cane upon the ground. “Two entrechats,” she said just the other day, holding up two fingers, like it might help me count. “Then a single glissade—just one—before the saut de chat.” She nodded to the violinist, starting up the music again, and turned away, her focus on another girl. And getting the steps right is not even enough. “Each step must be given a particular character, your hallmark as a dancer,” Madame Dominique says. “That’s what will earn you a position in the quadrille.”

  With the girls called in an order decided by the lengths of drawn straws, I will be the very last in front of the examination board. Like every other waiting girl, I labor to keep my muscles limber, making pliés deep and slow with feet wide apart in second position, laying my torso flat over the leg propped upon a barre. I join the others in calling out good luck when a girl leaves and searching her face for some sign when she comes back. Sometimes there are tears—the pianist did not keep an even tempo, Monsieur Vaucorbeil twisted around in his seat before even three bars of the adagio were done, she forgot to grind a bit of rosin beneath her slippers and slid on landing a grand jeté. We nod, lips tight and brows knit, cloaking any gladness at our own chances improved.

  I stand stock-still upon the Opéra stage, feet in fifth position, arms en repos, waiting for Monsieur Mérante to look up from his notebook and give the tiny nod signaling Monsieur Pluque to call out the last of the steps. My gaze moves beyond the examination board, across the stalls of the main floor, to the four rows of balconies, all of it plush red velvet and elaborately carved gold and veiled in dusk with only three gas lamps lit, two upon the stage and the third casting a halo of light around the examination board and also Monsieur Degas, hunched over his drawing pad three rows behind.

  I ache to hear the step, the piano cleaving the air and coaxing the place behind my heart, filling me from inside out. I want to dance again, to feel the music lifting my limbs, arching my back, streaming from my fingertips, my toes. Grace is with me today, also steadiness and lightness and speed. I have seen Madame Dominique’s quiet smile, Monsieur Mérante’s lifted eyebrows, Monsieur Pluque’s bewildered gaze.

  “Four fouettés en tournant,” says Monsieur Pluque, pushing himself up in his seat. “Eight, if you can manage it.”

  I swallow the smile that appears with being asked for the turns that have come so easy to me ever since Antoinette told me the trick of an imagined string pulling me up from the crown of my head. It is the step I wished for when I stroked the horseshoe on the small table in front of the stage-door keeper’s loge. I ready myself in fourth position, conjure up the string, fix my gaze upon Madame Th�
�odore’s orange head scarf, the spot where my focus will linger even as my body turns and then snap to again each time I return to facing downstage. Spotting adds sharpness to a turn, but more important, it stops the giddiness that comes from whirling like a top. I breathe in a single bar of music before rising onto the toes of my left foot and whipping around fast, not four times. Not eight. But sixteen. Sixteen fouettés en tournant. I land quietly, steadily, feet in a perfect fourth croisé, and I hold myself still, feeling the joy of a step perfectly done rolling through me like a wave.

  Madame Dominique’s smile is wide, so much so that until she leans her mouth against her fist, I think she will laugh. After a bit of whispering and head tilting and nodding among the examination board, Monsieur Pluque calls out, “If you please, Mademoiselle van Goethem, a révérence.”

  I make a révérence, arms reaching out in front to the examination board and then opening wide. My gaze, solemn as ever, moves from face to face—Monsieur Vaucorbeil, Monsieur Mérante, Monsieur Pluque, Madame Dominique, Madame Théodore. I spend the final seconds of the révérence honoring Monsieur Degas.

  Yesterday I climbed the stairs to Madame Dominique’s practice room—one last class before facing the examination board. I went to the very spot where every day I began the chore of loosening my back. But there, dangling from the barre by the ribbons, I found a pair of ballet slippers without a single scuff. A small tag was attached: Mademoiselle van Goethem, so your feet will shine. Monsieur Degas knew my spot at the barre. Only his burning gaze could be as accurate as a ruler in measuring my feet.

  Outside the Opéra there is a moment of pure joy, bliss, and I bound across the courtyard to the back gate, hanging on to that moment, but hanging on so hard I give shape to the thought I wanted to keep away: With the quadrille comes the stage in the evenings and late nights, an end to my early morning laboring at the bakery, the wages I need, no different than I need air. I slow to walking, and when I look up it is to see Monsieur Lefebvre’s carriage glinting in the sunshine of the day. The plumed horses whinny and bluster and stamp, their tails whisking away the flies gathering with the warmth. “Mademoiselle van Goethem,” Monsieur Lefebvre calls out, leaning from the carriage, beckoning for me to come.