The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre (25 page)

Louis made his first trip into the bowels of the catacombs, passing down a long, winding staircase. He carried two portraits and a torch and took the steps two at a time. The air was thick with the chalky smell of lime powder. At the bottom of the stairs, he reached a kind of anteroom. There were entrances to stone tunnels in five directions, each with a Roman numeral inscribed above the portal. Between two of the entrances stood a small shrine to Cassini. Far from being an informal tribute, it was a gilded coffin with an observation window, so Louis could see that the dead man was wearing a shroud worthy of a medieval prophet. The body and the face had evidently been lacquered or varnished, because in places where more than bone was visible, the skin appeared chipped. Behind the coffin was another small alcove, and it was here that Louis leaned his portraits up against the relatively dry walls.

He made a dozen trips up and down the stairs until all his portraits were in the alcove. He stood before them. The edge of a plate poked out from a frayed corner of hessian. It was his rooftop portrait of Pigeon, and as he attempted to reseal it, he was overcome with a desire to keep it. He unwrapped it entirely and looked at it under the reddish light of the torch. The snow was a coppery vanilla, her pale shoulders and breasts the color and texture of bone shank. He wrapped the portrait and put it under his arm, certain that he would die holding it as a battle shield. He climbed the last flight of stairs and emerged breathless and heaving into the gun-smoke clamor of the street. Night was everywhere.

The section of Montmartre where Pigeon lived and worked had been spared the worst of the rioting. Louis brought his carriage into the head of her street and was surprised by the relative tranquility. The bells of Notre Dame rang incessantly like a storm warning, but the storm itself had come no closer. A branch of lightning appeared in the south. Louis pulled up in front of Pigeon’s apartment. He knocked on her door, but there was no answer. He looked over at the veranda of the brothel, where all manner of dandies and whores smoked in the first hour of darkness. Yellow paper lanterns swayed in the breeze, and every now and then a waft of cannon smoke blew up from the garrets. Louis called out to a man who was wearing nothing but a stocking cap. “Has anyone seen Pigeon?”

The man looked over blearily and shrugged. Louis was forced to take the stairs, and as soon as he reached the top, three ladies took his arms.

“Everything’s half price,” one of them whispered into his ear.

“Good God,” said Louis. “This is how Paris dies? At the feet of a whore?”

“No,” said another, “not the feet.”

“I’m looking for Pigeon. Have you seen her?”

One of the women pointed inside, and Louis walked through the double doors. He was in a sitting room of soft lighting, with sultry accordion music coming from an unknown source. Half a dozen men sat upright and stiff on a divan. Louis walked past them without eye contact and down a hallway of crimson velvet wallpaper. There was an unbroken line of closed doors on both sides of the hallway. He had not permitted his entry into Pigeon’s house of employment before, so he would tell himself various conceits and lies about what she did—she was a mere companion, someone to draw a bath for a weary man. Now, as he walked past each door and heard female panting, the delirious name calling, the catcalls and whistles, the shuddering wrought-iron beds, the grit-toothed noises of men on the verge, there was little room for doubt about what she really did to pay her rent. A blond woman in a brassiere emerged from a room at the end of the hall and saw Louis standing, hands across his chest, stupefied by the sexual cacophony.

“Have to see the madam first,” she said, ushering him back to the sitting room. “Go wait with the rest of them.”

“No, you don’t understand. I am here to see Pigeon.”

“You and half the men in Paris. Now, see the madam.”

“No. I am her friend. I am Louis Daguerre,” he said, sputtering slightly.

“I don’t care if you’re Louis the Fifteenth back from the fucking dead. Everyone’s got to see the lady of the house and wait in the sitting room.”

At that moment a voice called out from farther down the hallway: “It’s all right. He can talk to me.”

The woman in the brassiere huffed past Louis and into the sitting room to collect her next client. Louis turned around to see Pigeon peeking from a half-open doorway.

He took a few steps down the hallway. “Pigeon, we must leave at once. The day is here, and we have something of magnitude to perform. There isn’t much time.”

She continued to speak through the crack in the door. “What’s the point? I intend to cash in on the revolution this time. I’ll service both sides, the army and the rebels, and together they will buy me a little house in the country. I want a garden, Louis.”

“Stupid child, this is not a revolution. Have you not seen the warnings?”

“Call it what you will, but there is money to be made.”

Louis walked slowly towards the door. He stood a few feet away and could see part of a man’s figure lying on the bed. A sheet was draped in front of his lap, and he reclined against pillows.

“Who is it, for God’s sake?” called the man.

“Keep quiet,” Pigeon told him. She turned back to Louis. “I will be finished in a short time, and then we can talk.”

Louis pinched his eyes shut. “No, you don’t understand. We must leave now.”

The man’s voice came more strongly. “Come on, my little raspberry. I’m withering in here.” The word
raspberry.
Louis felt his back tighten and his hands curl into fists. He could see the whites of Pigeon’s eyes. She instinctively closed and locked the door, leaving Louis in the dim hallway by himself.

“I am sorry, Louis,” she called. “This is my business.”

“Please step away from the door,” Louis shouted.

“Jesus and Mary, is that Daguerre?” came Baudelaire’s voice.

“Don’t be rash,” called Pigeon.

Louis scanned the hallway for weapons. Nearby was a side table piled with postcards from America and Greece, the well wishes from wealthy clients abroad. Louis swept the postcards to the floor. He dragged the table in front of Pigeon’s door. He took a few steps back, reared the table, and made a fumbling assault. The table slid out of his hands and fell to the floor. Several of the men from the sitting room, roused from their prefornication vigil on the divan, gathered at the end of the hallway.

“What do you intend with that, brother?” called one of them.

Louis looked to his side but couldn’t make out any of their faces. “That is my daughter on the other side of this door. Will you boys help me?”

A rabble began down the hallway, three of them pounding walls with their fists. The idea of a man’s daughter in this place galvanized them into an evangelical thunder. A big man in a dun-colored coat took the side table from a shaking Louis and set it on its end. He then positioned himself in front of the door and shouldered it with one sudden movement. The door snapped open to reveal a half-dressed Baudelaire and a fully dressed Pigeon. Baudelaire looked at Louis and knew in an instant that his apocalypse had arrived. Baudelaire smiled faintly. “Louis, what a surprise.”

“If Pigeon stays here, I will instruct these men to help me murder you,” Louis said. He could feel his hands shake.

“For the love of God, calm yourself, Daguerre.”

“Louis, stop it,” said Pigeon.

“My carriage is outside. We have somewhere to go, Chloe,” said Louis.

The mention of Pigeon’s real name changed the atmosphere in the room. The men found this further proof of the familial relationship between father and daughter and assessed Baudelaire as a man in leg irons.

Louis said, “Baudelaire, I suggest you leave and go fight for your life with the devil.”

“Louis,” the poet said imploringly.

But Louis had already turned away.

“Please leave,” said Pigeon to Baudelaire.

“Very well. Good day, gentlemen.” Baudelaire, shirtless, a dragon-green cravat over his shoulder, stepped gingerly through the rabble of men. Louis heard the sound of Baudelaire’s brogues in the hallway and folded his arms. The three men took this as their cue to exit. Louis regained composure and turned to face Pigeon.

“Don’t worry about packing a bag,” he said. “We must leave at once.”

“I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Your mother will be dead by morning.” He said it without any hint of melodrama. “I assume you would like to make peace with her before it is too late.”

Pigeon waited for further explanation. Her forehead gathered toward a single knot. Louis turned for the door and said, “I will wait for you outside.” As he passed through the sitting room, he noticed that the men who had helped him had quit the brothel, their lust no doubt killed by a display of righteousness.

When Pigeon plunked down into the carriage, she said only one word: “Orléans.” It made perfect sense—Isobel had returned to the countryside of her youth. Louis rode along the back roads south of Paris. The way was littered with small proofs that this was, in fact, the first day of another French revolution rather than the last day of man’s tenure on earth. If he’d had the eyes to see it, Louis might have noticed that the storm had evaporated into the cobalt night; that men were shooting at one another and not at the clouds; that the king’s soldiers were deserting not in celestial fear but in solidarity with their peasant brothers. They rode out past burning churches and boarded-up shopfronts. Every now and then the night came alive with the phosphor of pistol fire. Burning projectiles—lit rags in wine bottles—were hurled from windows. A dead quiet settled over the hamlets and villages. Candles glowed from basement windows; root cellars were nailed shut. Pigeon and Louis traveled along in silence, the carriage horses barreling them towards the Loire Valley.

About two hours from Paris, there was evidence of skirmishes between the National Guard and the peasants. The charred remains of carriage blockades smoked through the darkness, piles of wheels and ravaged timbers. Peasants were fortifying the squares, black-clad and nimble—an army of dairy hands and blacksmiths, petty clerks and town criers. Louis assumed these men were battening down for the apocalypse, sheltering from the storm, even as they yelled revolutionary warnings at his passing carriage.

Pigeon finally broke the silence. “You had better tell me what you know of my mother.” She looked straight ahead at the road, into the narrow cone of illumination from the carriage lantern.

Louis, in finery besmirched with ash and dirt, regripped the reins. The horses were slowing; they would need to water before long. He turned back to check on the dog; somehow it dozed happily beneath a blanket on the flatbed. He didn’t know how to answer Pigeon’s question. “I knew your mother from before you were born.”

“I see,” she said. “You’ve lied to me this whole time. Digging for information about her.”

“Partly,” said Louis. “The other part was that I really did need a nude model.”

Pigeon angled her chin and then her eyes at him. “What were you to her?” she said flatly.

“A friend.”

“And what else?”

“She was my maid when I lived on an estate outside of Orléans.” Three shots rang out across a meadow. They both turned to look in that direction. “I was in love with her. But she married your father instead.”

Pigeon nodded. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t she love you back?”

“Because I was fourteen and she was seventeen.”

The simplicity of it stung him. Of course she had been unable to love him back. Had he spent his life puzzled by such a straightforward matter? But even when she was twenty-two and he nineteen, and the age gap had become more respectable, it was still no use. The finality of Pigeon’s existence had separated them for life.

“It’s possible I have loved your mother for forty years,” Louis said, squinting at the dark road.

“She is not who you think she is,” Pigeon said.

“I knew her before she changed.”

“The woman you’ll meet tonight is a stranger to love. Prepare yourself for that.”

“I simply wish to spend these final hours with her.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. The revolution will come and go, the king will be overthrown. We’ll get some socialist bandits at the helm for a while. The cost of bread will go down for a few months.”

Louis knew that he had to tell her of the dark angels. Who knew what was going on right now? Judgment Day surely had an administrative side, the weighing of evidence, the examination of sins and good deeds. Somewhere angels were performing inquisitions, scanning the clamor of Paris for the light rim of a good and noble soul. Just as Louis lost himself to this line of speculation, they passed a small band of peasants who stood hollering by the roadside, weapons held aloft.

“You’d better stop,” said Pigeon.

“They’ll kill us. Things are desperate now.”

A loud voice called from behind. “The road’s closed!”

Louis kept their course. Several men mounted their horses and came in pursuit. Pigeon turned and yelled, “We are socialists on our way to see my dying mother.” But her words were broken off, lost to the chill night.

“I will not be detained,” said Louis. “Not by some shit-pants peasant with a riding crop.” He bellowed a cattleman’s yell and the beleaguered horses rushed on.

Pigeon turned to see one of the horsemen galloping nearer, his white horse snorting smoke in the cold air. The man, bald and bearded, swiveled his torso to the side and reached beside his saddle. He was no more than twenty feet behind them.

“Stop in the name of the revolution!” he cried.

Louis hunched forward, eyes down. The night cracked open around him. He looked out at the dark furrows packed with snow, the transepts of the pasture fences, the unlit pine-board houses, the road ditches stippled with dead weeds. He thought of the old country, the France of his father; had it been a sylvan province beyond God’s scorn? He was faint, dry-mouthed. Pigeon’s voice beside him—
errant girl
—a dog barking from a dell.
Grant me the rectitude of the great.
The lather and fetor of horse sweat, the whitened eyes. The tremor started, as always, in his hands. He felt it mount. He thought, oddly, of cats sleeping behind cheese-shop windows. He thought of animal eyes—the haunting irises of his horses like twin bronze discs, the glazen contempt in the stare of a wolfhound. The animals had known all along, he thought, the little bastard spies of the apocalypse. Something sharp from behind; a tenterhook in his shoulders. Now the teeth, the taste of bone in his mouth.