The Painted Girls Read online

  I loop around the first landing of the staircase and see Monsieur Degas at the foot of the next flight, sitting on a little bench. For a moment my breath is gone and I remember Antoinette telling me not to loiter and all the mothers with their watchful eyes. The trick will be not to stop, to take the steps three at a time. I have done it before, soaring down the flights, when I was bursting with the news of being put up with Madame Dominique.

  The scuffing of my flying feet draws Monsieur Degas’s weary eyes, and as I round the landing with the bench, he calls out, “Mademoiselle van Goethem,” and I do not like it that he knows my family name when Madame Dominique always calls me Mademoiselle Marie. “Please stop!”

  He stays put, his backside planted on the bench, and unaccustomed to defying gentlemen, I come to a halt halfway down the flight of stairs, a decent head start.

  He gets to his feet, and with me sidling two steps lower, he plops himself right back on the bench. His hands, palms facing down, make a tiny shuddering movement, a gesture meant to still.

  “I’m called Monsieur Degas,” he says, putting his hands in his lap. “I’m a painter.”

  “I know,” I say. “Ballet girls scratching their backs.”

  Even with his bushy beard, I can tell by his eyes, he is swallowing so as not to laugh. “Will you take my card?” he says, pulling one from the pocket of his rumpled waistcoat. “I’d like you to model. My address is there. I pay six francs for four hours.”

  “Perot won’t do it?” I say, thinking of her small, white teeth in a perfect row.

  “Perot?” His brow wrinkles up.

  “Josephine is pretty, but her mother says she isn’t to speak to you.”

  His eyes flicker closed, then open again, wearier. “Your face is interesting,” he says. “And your back. Your shoulder blades are like sprouting wings.”

  “I’m skinny.”

  He pushes aside my skinniness with a wave of his hand, and I wonder about a sash the color of a robin’s egg. He leans forward, holding out a card. “You’ll take it?”

  I climb three steps, pass my hand between the spindles guarding me from him and take the card. He is in the rue Fontaine, number nineteen, as close as the pork butcher and the fruiterer.

  “You can read?” he says.

  “Of course.” I say it haughtily.

  “Come after your Thursday class, one o’clock.”

  “I’ll see if Papa allows it.” And then, imagining the most brutish fathers are the ones who lift barrels all day long, I add, “Once he gets home from the coopery.” Immediately I suck in my bottom lip, clamp down with my teeth. Have I learned nothing about lying from Antoinette?

  Monsieur Degas’s weary eyes tighten a notch. He knows I do not have a father, except one buried in the ground.

  LE FIGARO

  19 NOVEMBER 1878

  ÉMILE ZOLA AND L’ASSOMMOIR

  In spite of the fact that we are fed up with L’Assommoir, the novel that Émile Zola dipped his quill into the chamber pot to write, we are forced to talk about it, since everyone talks about it, since it is a topic of conversation from the tavern to the salon.

  Zola claims serious scientific aims in writing the story. He calls it a naturalist novel, literature of our scientific age, a novel of observation, a work of truth, the first novel of the common people that does not lie about their authentic smell. He has conducted an experiment, he insists, by placing into a certain milieu a young laundress of a certain temperament. From there, the story advances according to the rules of science rather than his own fanciful whims. It turns out the way it must, given the twin forces of heredity and environment, their authority in determining the young laundress’s fate.

  L’Assommoir has been attacked with unparalleled brutality, accused of every crime—with good reason. Zola has taken an unworthy corner of life, catalogued every detail of it, placed a woman of poor character there. The kindest comment I can offer on the result: It is tedious as rain. The harshest: It is pornography. There is far too much brute fact in L’Assommoir—pages describing sexual and digestive functions, pages devoted to vulgar language, pages detailing brutality and drunkenness. We should sooner introduce smallpox into our homes than permit this unclean volume to come into contact with our pure-minded maidens and innocent youth.

  Antoinette

  I was looking for Émile Abadie since the springtime when the trees were all loaded with blossoms and new grass was underfoot and there was rain enough to make me want to cry every day that passed without seeing that scrub-brushy hair of his, those stout fingers that put the plumpest of the mussels into my mouth. The scorching pavements and bleaching sun of summertime were come and gone; and the trees were stripped bare, waiting for the mantle of winter to set in, when finally I set eyes upon that boy.

  Earlier I was at the Opéra where I bothered to climb the million stairs and poke my head into the practice room of Madame Dominique. There was Marie, looking like one of the graces, even in that greying skirt. The way she was holding her neck long and floating her arms from one position to the next and arching her back better than any of those other girls, it made me ashamed that I ever held a speck of doubt. It put a lump in my throat, thinking of her someday upon the stage and elevated beyond the second set of the quadrille. For a tiny moment, I wished I was not so quick to snap at old Pluque, but then I remembered doing a thousand retirés, all for the sole purpose of learning the exact position of the toe against the opposite leg, and that bit of longing was gone quicker than a swatted fly. I went next to the practice room of Madame Théodore and held open the door but only a little bit. Charlotte was getting flayed for replacing a changement—the simple jump Madame Théodore asked for—with a trickier jump called an entrechat. I would have to say to Charlotte again about doing what she is told, about showing off, about her talent shining through without embellishments, without an entrechat stealing the place of a changement. Then it was off to see Monsieur Leroy and getting myself signed up for another month’s worth of afternoons blocking, another week’s worth of evenings holding my head bowed and gliding silently across the stage, pretending to be a nun in the opera Robert le Diable.

  Afterward I headed to the Ambigu Theater, where the word was a group of gentlemen were putting on a play about the common people and wanting actors from the working class for all but the starring roles. They claimed such hiring would guarantee a production steeped in truth, but with the way they were touting the authentic actors, promising them to be of the like theatergoers had never before seen, I did not doubt the idea was hatched more as a stunt to draw attention than a wish to show the common people as they truly are. Either way, with one of my eyeteeth turning brown and my skirts so threadbare that I wear two at a time, I figured I was common enough to get myself a part.

  The Ambigu was a half-hour walk past the Opéra, going east, first along the rue Poissonnière and then the boulevard Saint-Martin, but I deviated a block or two from that straight line. Arriving at the tavern where I drank cassis and red wine, those happy hours with Émile, I opened the door, peering into the gloom, waiting for my eyes to adjust. But just like always there was no Émile slouching on a high-backed bench.

  It was back to the rue Poissonnière and feeling the weight of the day, the harshness of the wind. And like so many times before, I began recounting that months-ago afternoon—the way he said my eyes were like chocolate pools, the way he said “We’re having such a lovely time,” the way he was desiring me, the way I shoved him off.

  When I got to the theater, my eyes wandered over the four stories, taking in the arched windows, the double columns, the statuary, nothing as grand as the Opéra. I was loitering, putting off going inside and finding whoever was in charge and proving myself to be of the like theatergoers had never before seen, when a wagon pulled up. My eyes went from face to face, taking in the sagging cheeks, the stringy hair, the home-rolled smokes, the black gaps where there used to be teeth. Authentic actors, sure as sure, rounded up in the faubourgs and
brought to the Ambigu. I was about to dodge and find the lineup sure to soon grow long, but before I turned, my gawking gaze lit upon scrub-brushy hair creeping low on a forehead, black eyes sinking beneath the ridge of a brow. I was on the edge of calling out his name, but already Émile Abadie was leaping over the side of the wagon and loping over to me.

  “Antoinette van Goethem,” he said. “Been looking all over Paris for you.”

  With the jolt of it, I slipped to my saucy self. “Guess you didn’t think to look at the Opéra.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “On account of you,” he said.

  I crossed my arms.

  “I went three times,” he said. “That goat they got guarding the rear entrance, she wouldn’t say where you live.”

  “Madame Gagnon,” I say, my voice flat.

  “Paid her ten francs to say you lived in the rue Saint-Séverin, and I waited there, watching steady for two days, before I knew it was a lie. I went back to the Opéra after that and she starts screaming, and the sergeant comes running from his post and she says I put my hand on her neck, and that sergeant, he says he’ll be watching, that if he catches sight of me, I’ll be getting a pair of shackles and La Roquette.”

  “Not worth a few days at La Roquette?” I said.

  He lit a home roll and poked the butt end toward me.

  “Still don’t smoke,” I said, holding my face from showing disappointment that lingering on every detail of our afternoon was not a habit for him. “And what are you doing here, Émile Abadie? Can it be an entire wagonload of riffraff is getting parts in the play?”

  “They say they want the production truthful.” He jutted his chin toward three gentlemen in good silk hats, all huddling over an open book just outside the entrance to the Ambigu. “Better me playing a low-ranking drudge than some actor with filed fingernails.”

  “I come to see about a part myself.”

  Then he was tugging me by the arm and hauling me over to those three men and saying, “That’s the one in charge of casting, wearing the gloves. Don’t say nothing about the Opéra though. They want us amateurs.”

  With not one of those three important gentlemen lifting his eyes from the book, Émile cleared his throat. “Monsieur Martin,” he said and dipped his chin to him. “This is Antoinette van Goethem. She is wanting a part in the play.”

  With those other two now looking me up and down, Monsieur Martin said, “Mademoiselle van Goethem, allow me to introduce Monsieur Zola and Monsieur Busnach.”

  There was nothing snobbish-looking about the one called Zola. No, his face was large and fleshy and would not be out of place amid those making up the wagonload. His eyes were kind, and he dipped his chin. The one called Busnach, without the smallest pause, said, “She’s perfect. Face of a laundress,” meaning my looks were well suited to working half-undressed in steamy heat and entering bachelors’ quarters to gather up what is soiled and scrubbing back to brightness the filthiest of underclothes. I lifted my chin, set my jaw, and old Busnach, he glanced away.

  I saw the harsh look Monsieur Zola threw him, and after that the rolled eyes old Busnach gave him in response. Then Monsieur Martin got down to the business of laying out the wages and the schedule, which conflicted in every way with all I’d agreed to with Monsieur Leroy not an hour earlier. Monsieur Busnach saw the fidgeting of a girl trying to decide and said, “Tell me, Mademoiselle van Goethem, are we wasting our time?”

  I stood silent, parting my lips to give them the idea that any second I would speak. Émile leaned close, said, “A bit of fun,” into my ear, and I said, “Nothing wasted,” to those three gentlemen. “You’ll be happy to hear, I make a habit of being on time.”

  It is how I got to be a laundress in a play called L’Assommoir. Marie says the story is from a book Monsieur Zola wrote and got herself in a tizzy when I said about meeting him and then a further tizzy when I said I never heard of his book.

  “Antoinette,” she said, hands on her hips, chest all puffed up, “they wouldn’t know how to fill up the newspapers without L’Assommoir.”

  I gave that girl a fierce look, one to warn her off gloating when, all those years she was busy with Sister Evangeline, I was off earning a wage.

  “It’s about a laundress called Gervaise, over in the Goutte-d’Or,” she said.

  I knew the neighborhood, not fifteen minutes away, a place where the lodging houses were at least as shabby as our own. I looked at Marie, about to say maybe I was appearing in a play about our own lives, but already her nerves were twitching. She shifted a hand to atop her belly, settling the flip-flopping beneath.

  On my way to the Ambigu there is a bit a snow drifting down, melting to nothing on the pavements. I hold out my tongue, tilt my head back, catch a few flakes and laugh. I’ve got myself a sweetheart waiting at the Ambigu. We’d been rehearsing close to a month and still I was not entirely sure, but then a week ago, with a bunch of us authentic actors idling out front of the theater, having a few laughs after finishing up, I knew. Émile was there beside me and then his arm was around my neck and his wrist resting on my shoulder. With that arm of his staying put, I leaned into him a tiny bit and he shifted his weight in such a way that it was not possible to be closer than we were. I looked up at him after that, and he gave me a little wink, and anyone who saw would have been thinking, Émile Abadie is sweet on that Antoinette. His arm upon me, he was telling all the world.

  There’d been a bit of groping and kissing before, even his hand beneath my blouse, nothing more, not until that day he put his arm around my neck in front of anyone who cared to look. An hour earlier we were sitting a ways off from the others in the dingy house seats of the Ambigu. He took my hand and put it on his trousers, the hard ridge beneath the buttons of his fly. A girl knows what to do, and I did it but only over his trousers and only a single stroke before I took my hand away. “Don’t know about that, Émile.”

  “But you’re my sweetheart.”

  I made my lips pouty, gave a tiny shrug, letting him know it was not near enough apparent to me.

  Émile is out front of the Ambigu, waving me over and smoking with Pierre Gille, a boy I don’t much like. He is always creeping up on the laundresses, putting his hands where they don’t belong. His trap is filthy, a jolt, considering his delicate lips, his pale eyes and blond locks, the pretty dimple in his chin. Like Émile and the rest from the wagon, he is acting the role of a boozing laborer, but with those angel looks of his, I don’t see how he got himself the part.

  Émile puts icy fingers on my throat and looking proud like a rooster, says, “You going to warm me up, Mademoiselle Antoinette?”

  “I got no use for chilly fingertips.” I bat at his hand, give a pouty smile. Pierre Gille is standing there, smoking, seeing how it is with Émile and me. It won’t make a difference though, won’t put an end to the hushed, lowly words of Pierre Gille. “Your fig still throbbing, Antoinette? That slit of yours aching for meat?”

  Émile drops the butt of his smoke, grinds it into the ground. He holds his arm out in such a way that I know it is for me to take and be promenaded like a lady in the Champs-Élysées. I link my arm with his, and a few steps away I say, “Those snowflakes falling down are a pretty sight.”

  “I watched you catching them on your tongue,” he says. “Prettiest thing I seen all week.”

  Those sweet words hanging there, I go quiet, shy. I want to say something back, and last night I was lying awake, wanting to clobber snoring Maman and thinking up some sweet words for Émile. I came up with “I like that scrub-brushy hair of yours, tickling at my nose,” but it was not good enough, not when the other day he pulled back from kissing my shoulders, lapping at my neck and put those stout fingers of his on that sunken spot between the ends of my collarbones. “This little hollow,” he said, “tenderest place in all the world.”

  I halt a little, still hanging on to his arm, and look up into those two black eyes. “You’re the prettiest thing in
all my life.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Sure.”

  “I got the face of an ape,” he says, and it reminds me of all the nonsense talk of Marie. It makes me ache, such thinking, same ache as when I saw the rims of Charlotte’s eyes shining wet over losing her silk rose, same as when I came upon Marie, bawling into her mattress over whether Madame Dominique was lumping her in with the ogres of the classroom instead of the sylphs.

  “I wouldn’t change a single thing,” I say, putting my hand upon his stubbly cheek.

  Inside the Ambigu the authentic actors lounge in the house seats, chatting, snoozing, doling out the cards for a game of bezique. It is what we been told to do until the play moves to the tableau preceding the one where we are onstage. Then it is off to the green room and keeping our mouths shut until the stage manager shoos us to the wings. The washhouse tableau, the one where I appear, comes second, but afterward, even with most of the other laundresses calling out their good-byes, today, like every day, I stay put in the theater. Émile goes on in the third tableau and again in the seventh, and with more than an hour in between, I wait and then the two of us slink away to our own little spot at the back of the house.

  Émile says all the rules are meant to keep us from roaming and pulling the wool padding out of chairs and tugging lamps off walls and collecting what we can to pawn. He is always explaining what I can see just fine on my own. “Opening up your eyes,” he says, and I keep my face looking interested. I nod. Why not, when it gives him pleasure, a feeling of such cleverness about the world? Lately those two sentinels they’ve got keeping watch been loosening up, and for two days now, Émile’s been whispering in my ear about knowing a place, a storeroom with a lonely old chaise. “Such a lovely time,” he says.