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She remembers how this started — she had been walking with a friend and he had looked at her, stopped, looked at her again, slowly raised his eyes to her face, and tipped his hat. It might have been nothing, but Musichetta knew better, and had not been surprised a moment later when some ragged child came pounding around the corner to hand her a card.
As a girl she had watched her mother toil at her sewing until the light at the window had turned grey, and then by the stub of a candle until her hands had become too numb to hold a needle, her knuckles swollen and red. Musichetta — which hadn’t been her name then — had sworn that that would never be her; she would never work until her fingers became crabbed and hooked for little more than a pittance that no one could live on anyway. She had a friend who knew how these things were done: how to flit with all mystery through the Latin Quarter, how to rest her cheek on her hand as she sits at a table, how to let her gaze linger for just long enough to snare a man’s heart. So when she had first been extended an invitation, she had gone, and gone willingly.
She’s learned to be a little more discerning since then — and, more importantly, that she can afford it. The streets are awash with students with allowances burning holes in their pockets, after all. If she says no to one there will be three more to take his place in practically no time at all; in fact, she has learned that saying no, not you, and not you, and not you… but maybe you will have the young man working twice as hard to win her and three times as hard to keep her, because he alone among his friends was the one she chose.
Despite her selective habits, the moment after she'd seen the man’s eyes travel the length of her body, her first thought had been, If he asks, I’ll say yes. She hadn’t known who he was then, of course, but it had been clear that he was not a student; she had imagined perhaps a banker or some other man of business, and had congratulated herself on moving up in the world. A man in command of his own fortune, rather than some boy still tethered with his parents’ purse strings — quite a catch, by anyone’s standards. She wonders now and then if she had known the truth of who he is and the position he holds whether it would have given her pause — before deciding no, it would not have made any difference at all.
*
“I will be late if I don’t leave now,” Monsieur Chabouillet says as he pulls away, straightening his cravat with something Musichetta believes is close to regret. She pouts a little, but her heart is not truly in it. Outside, the sun is bright, and she can think of any number of things to do on a day like today.
“Well, you will have to wait for me all the same,” she says, sitting up, winding a sheet around her breasts as she does so. She glances at him coyly. “Or do you intend to turn me out of doors as I am, for all the world to see?”
It is the first time she has woken up in his apartments — usually, when they are finished, she bathes, and he puts her into a fiacre to take her back to her room. This morning is a novelty, and she wants to test how far it can be pushed.
Chabouillet’s eyes — they are grey, and she has always been fond of grey eyes, she often tells him — flicker over her a moment, and she can see him thinking.
“I would be pleased if you were still here when I return home,” he says, turning away from her and reaching for his jacket, slipping inside it. “My housekeeper will come and lay out some food. She will not mind you if you do not mind her.”
She is surprised, she admits — the hope she had been cherishing that he might give her some money to go out and enjoy herself in the sunshine gives way to her amazement.
“Well — and what am I do to all day?” she asks, recovering herself quickly.
Chabouillet half-glances over his shoulder at her, a small smile on his lips. “You may go to the library and read a book,” he says, and then departs.
At first, Musichetta is incensed that he would be ironic about such a thing — true, she has never particularly enjoyed reading for its own sake, but her father had been a schoolmaster, and she has often surprised the young men she has spent time with with an allusion to some story or other, some poem she has heard. What is so difficult? It amazes and irritates her in equal measure how astonished they are when she quotes something she remembers from her childhood, as if she is a cat that has learned to walk on its hind legs. It is almost out of spite that she does in fact go to the library and find herself a little volume of poetry, which she reads while lolling in a chaise longue with his bed sheet still wrapped about her.
It’s easy to lose hours this way; when she is hungry she goes to the sitting room to find that a plate of food has indeed been laid out for her, and she takes it to the bedroom, absentmindedly nibbling on an apricot as she continues to read. But by late afternoon she finds her eyelids drooping; she did not get much sleep last night, after all.
It is dark when she next opens her eyes to find Monsieur Chabouillet leaning over her, lifting the book from where it rests on her chest and crinkling his brow at what remains of the food, sitting beside her on the pillow.
She is not perturbed; she merely stretches, dangling her foot from the edge of the bed. “You are home late, Monsieur,” she says, regarding him sleepily. “Or is this normal?”
Musichetta watches him and notes the tension in his shoulders; it befits her to note such things. However, he does not answer her question.
*
She does not see him again for some time after that — Oh, well, she tells herself as she makes her way lightly through the Latin Quarter, down the skeins of the alleys, wandering the hill of the Panthéon. It had been pleasant while it lasted, and she would have liked it to last a little longer, but this is what she gets, she supposes, for eating in the bed of a fastidious man. The students like her because she is as cruel as she is carefree, and for a while she finds it easier than usual to be cruel.
It is strange to Musichetta how different things seem now — there is tension in the air, and all the men she could once count on to watch her as she passed now seem to have their heads down over their wine, muttering darkly and mysteriously to each other before disappearing at random to who even knows where. Anything that hints of darkness or scandal has always intrigued her, and she is quite prepared to be fascinated, so she sits herself not far from where a gaggle of them are arguing over their wine and mutton cutlets. It’s not long until they wave her and her friends over, calling out that discussions are always so much more pleasant with a pretty girl or three at the table. They order her wine; they order her supper; and Musichetta sits, and waits to be enlightened.
“But surely you cannot say you mean to eradicate suffering,” one of the students is saying — he is not a young man, and neither is he comely, but he is well-dressed and has a fine head of hair. “Even if there could be a world without suffering, you cannot tell me that suffering does not enliven the soul. Without suffering we would be little more than beasts. No, listen to me — from suffering comes wisdom. It is pain that ennobles us, as it falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our will, wisdom comes to us, by the awful grace of God.”
Musichetta cannot help but giggle a little at this, and she honestly only means to brighten what is a fairly dreary conversation when she says, “That’s all well and good, but did Aeschylus ever have to live on twenty sous a day?”
There is a small silence before the students at the table begin to roar with laughter, and the one who had been speaking turns red to the tips of his ears, his eyes glittering darkly. Musichetta cannot say she cares, however, as the man beside her pours her another glass of wine and asks her if there is anything he can do for her. He is quite drunk, and would probably pledge her his life, if she asked.
Later, he tells her his name is Joly and his friend here is Laigle, but she should call him Bossuet, and that he is quite at her disposal from now until the end of time, should she ever have need of him.
“I hope I didn't humiliate your friend,” she says after the man leaves, far more quietly than he had come.
“Oh, him?” Joly says, shrugging indifferently. “He’s not our friend. Truth be told, we were sounding him out to see if he might be suitable for some of our other activities, but we hadn’t realised until tonight what a crushing bore he is. So I don’t think he’s someone we could rely on at all. You saved us all quite a bit of time.”
Musichetta is intrigued, and she lets herself be charmed, and at the end of the evening she feels quite pleased. At any rate, it has been a success — they are quite sweet, after all, these boys, and one of them is tolerably well-off, even if the other one has nothing, not even any hair.
She is almost annoyed, therefore, when she returns to her room later and finds some urchin hanging about by the corner who has obviously been there for some time, waiting to tell her that a gentleman who considers her a friend would be gratified to have her company tomorrow evening, if she pleases.
*
She goes, because of course she does — she is clear-eyed enough for that.
But she is surprised when he greets her with a kiss, and the words, “I missed you.”
Musichetta raises an eyebrow and tells him, “You needn’t have,” shrugging as if it’s all the same to her. If he wants her company it would be very easy for him to indulge himself, and she’s quite happy to play along. But somewhere beneath her flippancy, she is conscious that something within her is pleased to see him again, as if she too has missed him — and this is enough for her to pull back when he tries to draw her into his arms, laughing and saying, “Well, if you missed me so much, you can take me to dinner and make your amends later.”
*
“Do you spend time in the Latin Quarter?” he asks her some time later in the evening, when the only light is the golden glow of the quinquet.
“You know I do,” she says, propping herself up on her elbow, watching the way his eyes follow the fall of her dark hair over her shoulder. She smiles — there is a possessive, jealous streak in his nature, which she has played upon before. “There are many fine young men there.”
She sees a flash of something dark in his eyes, but then he smiles. “True, perhaps I am not young.”
Musichetta cannot help but laugh at this — he does, she has to admit, have a way of making her laugh.
“And I suppose you do not spend much time anywhere near Les Halles.”
Musichetta draws herself back slightly, on her guard at once. Now Chabouillet is skirting altogether too close to things she has been very careful to draw a veil over, the crumbling rooms where she had watched her mother work her fingers raw.
“Never, if I can help it.”
“No, I thought not,” he says almost musingly, as he leans back against the pillows. “Though that would have been more helpful.”
“Why do you ask?”
It is a long moment until he answers, and try as she might, Musichetta cannot see his thoughts in his face.
“Perhaps no reason,” he says finally. “Perhaps I had simply wondered if you had noticed any change there recently, or heard of anything strange. You know that men will sometimes run their mouths to women where they might show more caution with a man.”
Musichetta thinks of the peculiar frisson in the air when she walks through the streets, of the way the men have their heads bent down over their glasses these days, of the way they often disappear into back rooms after the meal is finished; she thinks of the nice young students she had met the evening before, and the way Joly had spoken openly of recruiting their boring friend to some clandestine operation. “Yes, I know,” she says.
*
So she goes along to the Café Musain, and she listens as they argue amongst themselves, drink too much wine and occasionally shout too loudly, but they never seem to say anything much of consequence — at least, not when she is present. Joly takes her hand and declares that he is hers all evening, but when it comes time for him to remove to the back room with his friends, he goes — he leaves her like a schoolboy returning to his books, but he goes.
“What on earth do you talk about back there?” she asks him one night as he unwinds his arms from around her waist. “Can I really not come with you? Or is it you’re sick of me, and trying to escape?”
Joly looks wounded, his whole heart in his eyes, but then he is drawn away by one of his companions. He calls out to her as he goes, promising he will make it up to her tomorrow night, but she simply flashes her eyes at him, frowning, and his head drops before he disappears into whatever happens in the room beyond.
After watching him go, Musichetta had patiently finished her wine, and had then stood and crept along the wall, pressing lightly against the door to the back room with a single finger — before the door had been flung open and the dish-washer had bustled through it, a rack of cleaned plates in her arms.
“You must be more careful,” Chabouillet says when she relates the story to him later, as she is preparing to depart. “This is not a game.”
She laughs at him, looking over her shoulder as she arranges her bodice, flicking at a curl of hair. “Be careful, he says. Ha! I’m hardly a child, Monsieur.”
His eyes are steady on hers as he says, “No, perhaps not.”
*
One morning as Musichetta arrives at Monsieur Chabouillet’s apartments, she passes a man on the steps who is going as she is coming — a tall man with dark hair, who does not acknowledge her as they pass.
“Who was the man who visited you just now?” she asks once she is inside — she is not especially curious, but Monsieur le Secrétaire seems preoccupied, and she wishes to draw him out.
“Hmm?” He turns to look at her. “Oh. No one you need concern yourself with.”
“He did not seem like the kind of man you usually have visit you,” she teases, flashing him a smile. “Not very grand at all. No one I can see being of any use in your career.”
“Looks can be deceiving, Mademoiselle,” he murmurs, finally drawing her into his arms. “And as you know, I am always interested in things other men may be too quick to discard.”
She pulls away from him. She is not truly offended though she knows she should be — but she understands the value of a well-timed sulk. “Really, Monsieur. What is it you want from me, then?”
Chabouillet catches her again, pulling her close and lowering his lips to the curve of her shoulder. “Various things.”
“You may as well not pretend,” she says, not giving in just yet. “I know you want the names I collected — you don’t need to go through such elaborate charades.”
She gives him the names, and tells him yet again that none of them have said anything within her hearing that might concern him. He only shrugs.
“Perhaps not, but you are not our only agent. We have others — and they are working to deflate this stupidity as fast as it can be whipped up. We have their names, and we know where they go, where they meet. It would be better if they simply gave up on this utter foolishness.”
Musichetta looks down over the list she had given him, frowning. “Then... you don’t think they will succeed?”
He sighs, rubbing his eyes with his fingers, and, for the first time since Musichetta has known him, he looks his age. “It is not my wish for these young men to come to harm,” Chabouillet says after a moment of silence. “I have no idea why they have involved themselves in this. Some of them come from very good families. They have educations. They could put them to some use if they chose, instead of throwing themselves away on this.”
He hasn’t answered her question, she thinks, but she is not sure she wants the answer after all.
*
The next evening she spends with Joly in his rooms; only Bossuet arrives home while she is still there, and they do not turn him away. It does not seem charitable, and such things do not surprise her.
“Perhaps I will catch cholera before anything can happen,” Joly says somewhat gloomily as they lie together. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
“If that’s your fate, then that’s your fate,” Bossuet tells him philosophically. “If it helps, I will consider you there in spirit, and fire enough bullets for both of us.”
“Don’t put on airs — I happen to know you won’t even show up if you happen to get a better offer on the day.”
Musichetta listens as they talk and laugh quietly, discussing where they would go and where would be the best place for a barricade, should it come to that.
“I think you are both being quite foolish,” she says, when she can stand it no longer. “Talking about shooting people and throwing up barricades. And what is it you hope to achieve? I don’t see how anything could possibly be worth it.”
Joly takes her hand and looks tenderly into her eyes as he says, “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say that was spoken like a perfect bourgeoisie, dear heart.”
Joly kisses her on one cheek and Bossuet on the other as they stand to depart for the evening. Musichetta watches them as they dress, blinking in the half-light, and the thought comes to her that they are brave, they have high ideals, they are often very kind, and they are going to die.
She decides to go with them, in the end — but she finds the Café Musain tremendously depressing this evening, for all that it is filled with laughter and wine. Joly and Bossuet talk and laugh, that ugly fellow who is forever drunk stares at her like a gorgon, and she eats her supper without tasting it. She is more annoyed than she wants to admit by what Joly had said to her. Had he wanted to insult her? Is it wrong to want her comfort? And she has found it, she fancies, and it has not cost her much. She feels these days as if there is a little needle of iron that sits within her heart at all times, something cold and hard and a little frightening, that she does not want to inspect too closely.
Her head hurts, and she wonders if she can leave without the others noticing. But as she creeps towards the door, another woman enters, and Musichetta is forced to wait. She watches as the woman lingers in the doorway a moment, and maybe her feet hurt because she sidles into a chair, pulling her shawl about her as if hoping to make herself invisible. She is not young, but Musichetta can see that she might once have been a beauty — it still clings to her now, despite her red, chapped cheeks, her thick waist and her swollen hands. She sighs, wiggling her feet in their dirty slippers, but no sooner has she sat down than one of the serving women begins to hiss at her, as if she is a stray cat. The woman ignores her, curling in on herself, but the hissing persists — and then another woman appears in the doorway, holding out a hand, saying, Dahlia, there is a gentleman here — and the woman stands, her shoulders drooping, and goes back out into the night.
The men clamour for more wine, and at last Musichetta can stand it no longer. She slips out of the café and into the street, walking until she can find a fiacre to take her to Monsieur Chabouillet’s apartments. He will give her back the money.
It is night, but she knows he will not mind her calling on him — she has done it before, and he has always been pleased.
He is so again tonight. Perhaps more so than she had expected.
“I was thinking of you this evening,” he tells her as he cuts open a pomegranate, the dark red arils spilling out onto the plate. He glances at her, his brow wrinkling. “Did you see them tonight?”
She can see his jealousy rising, but for once she does not wish to tease. “No,” she lies, coming to sit by him. Her heart hurts as well as her head, as she picks up a sticky aril with the tip of her finger. He watches her lips, his eyes dark in the lamplight. “I don’t want to see them again.”
“Perhaps you will not have to.”
She doesn’t ask what he means by that, and simply allows him to kiss her, the tart taste of the fruit still on her tongue.
*
She does not leave the next morning, or the morning after; she imagines she is in a cocoon, and the outside world cannot touch her. She reads in the library and picks at the fruit and meat the housekeeper lays out; in the evenings they have delicately poached chicken for supper and some sugary things she does not even know the name of for dessert.
On the third morning she finds that Monsieur Chabouillet has arisen early and dressed himself in black; he comes to her and smooths back her hair, before leaning down to kiss her.
“Where are you going?” she asks him, still half asleep, rubbing her eyes.
“To a funeral,” he tells her.
Later in the day, she hears gunshots from outside; Musichetta raises her head in wonderment, thinking she cannot possibly have heard correctly, before returning to her book.