The House I Loved (3 page)

“So my landlady approves of the pink?” she murmured, rearranging bouquets with quick, deft fingers.

“It is lovely, mademoiselle … Lovely pink,” I mumbled.

I did not know how to treat this haughty, prickly young lady. I felt shy in her presence, at first.

It was not until a full week later that Germaine came into the drawing room with a card for me. Pink, of course. And the most delicate scent emanated from it.
Would Madame Rose care to drop in for a cup of tea? AW.
And that is how our wonderful friendship started, nearly a decade ago. Over a cup of tea and roses.

I SLEEP NOT TOO
badly down here. But even on the good nights, the same dream awakens me. It is a brief but hellish moment, when I am brought back to an agonizing instant I still cannot bring myself to voice and that you know nothing about.

I have been prey to this precise nightmare for the past thirty years. I must lie very still, wait for my beating heart to calm down. Sometimes I feel so weak that I need to reach for a glass of water. My mouth is parched and dry. This nightmare happened in your day, whilst I slept by your side, but I always managed to hide it from you.

Year after year, the same images come back, relentless. It is difficult to describe them without the fear sliding back to me. I see the hands prying the shutters open, the silhouette slithering in, the crack of the stairs. He is in the house. Oh, Lord, he is in the house. And the scream wells up inside of me, monstrous.

BACK TO THE DAY
the letter came, last year. Alexandrine wanted to know of my intentions. She bombarded me with questions as I sat quietly in my chair, my embroidery in my lap.

“But where are you going to go?” she asked worriedly. “To your daughter’s? That is certainly the wisest move. When do you envisage your departure? Can I be of any help?”

I went on embroidering, calmly, trying not to let her guess the turmoil within me, the flutter of my heart. She put her hand on my arm, forcing me to look at her. Yes, she was that kind of person, you see, she demanded full attention.

“Madame Rose, I will surely find another position along the new boulevard, I am not afraid. It could take a while, as I am not as young as all that, getting on for thirty, am I not, and husbandless to boot!”

I had to smile at that. I knew she had enough energy within her to start all over, husband or no husband. She sighed, plucking at a loose curl of hair.

“I’m so fed up of people asking why I have no husband,” she muttered fiercely, lowering her voice so that Germaine could not hear from the next room. “Really, people should stop nagging about why I am not married. Being an old maid does not bother me in the least, I have my flowers, and I have you, Madame Rose.”

I listened to her, as I always did. I had become accustomed to her shrill voice. I rather liked it. When she stopped talking at last, I told her quietly I had no intention of moving. She gasped.

“No,” I went on, impervious to her rising agitation, “I am staying right here. In this house.”

And thus I told her, Armand, about what this house meant to you. I explained you were born here, as your father was before you. And his father, too. I told her this house was nearly a hundred and fifty years old, and had seen several generations of Bazelets. No one else but the Bazelet family had lived between these walls built in 1715, when the rue Childebert was created.

These past years, Alexandrine has often asked about you and I have shown her the two photographs I possess and that never leave me. The one of you on your deathbed, and the last one of you and me a couple of years before your passing away, taken by the photographer on the rue Taranne. In that one, you have your hand on my shoulder, you look terribly solemn, I am wearing a coatdress and sitting in front of you.

She knows you were tall and well built, with chestnut hair, and dark eyes, and powerful hands. I have told her how charming you were, how gentle yet strong, how your soft laugh filled me with delight. I have told her how you used to write little poems for me, how you would slip them beneath my pillow, or in my ribbons and brooches, and how I treasured them. I have told her about your fidelity, your honesty, and that I had never heard you utter a lie. I have told her about your illness, how it came upon us and how gradually it took its hold, like an insect eating away at a flower, ever so slowly.

That evening, I told her for the first time how the house gave you hope during those last, difficult years. Being in the house was the only way to help you feel sheltered. You could not envisage leaving it even for an instant. And now, a decade after your death, I perceive that the house holds the same allurement over me. Do you understand, I tell her, do you see now that these very walls mean so much more to me than a sum I am to be given by the Préfecture?

And, as ever, whenever I mention the Prefect’s name, I give full vent to my withering contempt. Tearing up the Ile de la Cité, heedlessly destroying six churches in the process, ripping apart the Latin Quarter, all for those straight lines, those endless, monotonous boulevards, all the same, high, butter-colored buildings, identical, a ghastly combination of vulgarity and shallow luxury. The luxury and emptiness that the Emperor wallows in and that I abhor.

Alexandrine rose to the bait, of course, as she always did. How could I not see that the great works being done to our city were necessary? The Prefect and the Emperor had imagined a clean and modern town, with proper sewers, and public lighting, and germ-free water, how could I not see that, how could I not agree with progress, with cleanliness, sanitary matters, no more cholera. (At that very word, oh, my dearest, I flinched, but said nothing, my heart fluttering…) She went on and on, the new hospitals, the new train stations, a new opera being built, the city halls, the parks, and the annexation of the districts, how could I be blind to all that? How many times did she use the word “new”?

I stopped listening to her after a moment, and she finally took her leave, as irritated as I was.

“You are too young to understand how I feel about this house,” I said on the threshold. I could tell she wanted to say something, for she bit her lip and thus prevented herself from uttering a single word. But I knew what it was. I could hear her unspoken sentence floating in the air.
And you are too old.

She was right, of course. I am too old. But not too old to give up the fight. Not too old to fight back.

THE LOUD NOISES OUTSIDE
have stopped for the moment. I can creep around safely. But the men will soon be back. My hands tremble as I handle the coal, the water. I feel fragile this morning, Armand. I know I do not have much time. I am afraid. Not afraid of the end, my love. Afraid of all I need to tell you in this letter. I have waited too long. I have been cowardly. I despise myself for it.

As I write this to you in our icy, empty house, my breath streams out of my nostrils like smoke. The quill on the paper makes a delicate scraping sound. The black ink gleams. I see my hand, its leathered, puckered skin. The wedding ring on my left hand that you put there and that I have never taken off. The movement of my wrist. The loops of each letter. Time seems to slip by, endless, yet I am aware that each minute, each second, is counted.

Where do I begin, Armand? How do I start? What do you remember? Toward the end, you did not recognize my face. Docteur Nonant had said not to fret, that this meant nothing, but it was a slow agony, for you, beloved, and also for me. That gentle look of surprise whenever you heard my voice—“Who is that woman?” I heard you mumble, over and over again, gesturing toward me as I sat stiff-backed near the bed, and Germaine holding your dinner tray would look away, crimson-faced.

When I think of you, I will not drag that gradual decline back to me. I want to think about the happy days. The days when this house was full of life, love and light. Those days when we were still young, in body and in spirit. When our city had not been tampered with.

I am colder than ever. What will happen if I catch a chill? If I fall ill? I am careful as I move about the room. No one must see me. Lord knows who is outside, lurking. As I sip the hot beverage, I think of the fateful day the Emperor met the Prefect, for the first time. 1849. Yes, it was that year. That same terrible year, my love. A year of horror for us two, for other reasons. No, I shall not linger on that precise year at present. But I shall return to it when I feel I have mustered enough courage.

I read a while ago, in the newspaper, that the Emperor and the Prefect met for the first time in one of the presidential palaces, and I cannot help but think what an interesting contrast they must have made. The Prefect and his towering, imposing stature, those wide shoulders, that bearded chin and those piercing blue eyes. The Emperor, pale and sickly, his slight figure, his dark hair, his mustache barring his upper lip. I read that a map of Paris took up an entire wall with blue, green and yellow lines cutting through the streets like arteries. A necessary progress, we were all informed.

It was nearly twenty years ago that the embellishments of our city were imagined, thought out, planned out. The Emperor and his dream of a new city, modeled, you had pointed out over your newspaper, on London and its large avenues. You and I had never been to London. We did not know what the Emperor meant. You and I loved our city as it was. We were Parisians, both of us. Born and bred. You drew your first breath on the rue Childebert, and I, eight years later, on the nearby rue Sainte-Marguerite. We rarely traveled, rarely left the city, rarely left our area. The Luxembourg Gardens were our kingdom.

Seven years ago, Alexandrine and I, and most of our neighbors, walked all the way, over the river, to the place de la Madeleine, for the opening of the new boulevard Malesherbes. You had been gone for three years. You cannot imagine the pomp and ceremony of that event. I believe it would have made you very angry. It was a broiling summer day, full of dust, and the crowd was immense. People were sweating under their finery. For hours we were pushed and crushed against the Imperial Guard lining the premises. I longed to go home, but Alexandrine whispered to me that this was an important scene to witness, as a Parisian.

The Emperor arrived at last in his carriage. Such a puny man, I noted, and even from afar his skin had a yellowish, unhealthy hue. This was not the first time I laid eyes on our Emperor, as you will recall. Remember those flower-strewn streets after his coup d’état? Meanwhile, the Prefect awaited patiently in an enormous tent under the merciless sun. This was not the first time I had seen him either. He too, like the Emperor, was fond of parading, of having his portrait printed in every single newspaper. After eight solid years of demolitions, we all knew, as Parisians, exactly what our Prefect looked like. Or the Baron, as you preferred to call him. Despite the grueling heat, endless self-congratulatory speeches were given. The two men bowed to each other over and over again, and other men were called to the tent and made to feel most important. The oversized curtain masking the opening of the new boulevard swung open majestically. The audience cheered and clapped. But not I.

I already knew, then and there, that that tall bearded man with the redoubtable chin was to become my bitterest enemy.

I BECAME SO CARRIED
away writing all this to you that I did not hear Gilbert’s knock. His is a coded one, two fast blows and one long scratch with the end of his hook. I do not believe you ever laid eyes on this particular fellow, although I recall you did enjoy conversing with a couple of ragpickers by the marketplace in the days when our daughter was small. I get up to unlock the door for him, ever so carefully, lest we should be seen. It is past noon now and the men will soon be back with the thunderous noises of their murderous enterprise. The door creaks, as it always does, as it has since the first day I set foot in this house, with you, all those years ago.

He is frightening to behold, at first. Tall, emaciated, blackened with grime and soot, his hair a tangled mess, his face a flurry of gnarled lines like the bark of a withered tree. The yellow of rare teeth, the green gleam of his eyes. He slips in, and brings his stench in with him, but I am accustomed to it now, an odd comforting mixture of eau de vie, tobacco and sweat. His long black overcoat is in tatters and sweeps the floor. His back is straight, despite the heavy wicker basket strapped to it. I know he stores all his treasures in there, all the bits and pieces he carefully scavenges in the streets at dawn, lantern in one hand, hook in the other: string, old ribbons, coins, metal, copper, cigar stumps, the rinds of fruits and vegetables, pins, strands of papers, dried-out flowers. And food, of course. As well as water.

I have learned not to turn up my nose at what he brings me. We share a hasty meal we eat with our fingers. No, not very daintily. Only one meal a day. As the winter deepens, it is less easy to find the coal to heat our frugal feast. I wonder where he gets the food, how he brings it back to me in our area that must now resemble a war terrain. When I ask him, he never answers. Sometimes I give him a few coins, from the little velvet purse I keep on me at all times, preciously, and which holds everything I own.

Gilbert’s hands are dirty but exceptionally elegant, like a pianist’s, with long tapered fingers. He never talks about himself, his past, how he has ended up on the streets. I have no idea how old he is. Lord knows where he sleeps, or for how long he has been leading this life. I met him five or six years ago. I believe he lives near the Montparnasse barrier, where ragpickers camp in a no-man’s-land of shanty huts, and they make their way daily down to the Saint-Sulpice market through the Luxembourg Gardens.

I first noticed him because of his height and his strange top hat, obviously discarded by a gentleman, a battered and pockmarked affair, balancing on the summit of his head like a wounded bat. He had stretched out his vast palm for a sou, throwing me a toothless grin and a flash of those green eyes. There was something friendly and respectful about him, which was a surprise, as those lads can be surly and rude, as you know. His polite benevolence appealed to me. So I gave him a few coins, and walked home.