The Fan-Maker's Inquisition (9 page)

Citizens, as you know well, I spend my days and nights wandering the streets of my beloved Paris, peeking in here, listening there; why, I am the eyes and ears of Paris! And my Paris is the people’s Paris; I move among those inspired and generous souls, those fearless souls who have seized the day and made it theirs. I am proud—you know me well—to consider myself one of you and your equal
.

But what of the women of Paris? But what of those women who belong not in our dreams, our hearts, but who instead haunt our worst nightmares? What of them? This, citizens, is what I have, in my most recent peregrinations, seen:

A woman who continued to make a very good living indeed, sewing pearls to velvet slippers and gold lace to silk sleeves—in the old manner (for yes! there are still clients for such fripperies as these!)—and who spent her nights in the arms of a foreign merchant. In cruder terms: A bit of pork disguised, was, just the other day, routed from her
atelier
by a band of patriotes who had had enough of the creature’s haughty ways, routed from her
atelier, I
say, like a weasel from its hole, and given a public thrashing to put the fear into a bison! To my mind they were generous: The trollop deserved more
.

What is worse, all the time she continued her miserable and useless trade, carousing with strangers, eating chicken in delicate sauces while the rest of Paris starves, she openly mocked the people, mocked their callused hands and rough ways. “Let them wield their washtubs and pitchforks!” said she. “I shall continue to thread my needle!” Well! She will have to thread it standing up for a good time to come!

Another example: A loudmouth, a so-called woman of sense and lover of liberty, was daily infecting the galleries and podium of the National Assembly with her strident cries for “feminine freedoms,” while her husband, a combatant who had lost a leg, was left alone at home in a filthy bed without a kind word or a spoonful of soup. Passing by his house, I heard his call for aid, and entering a squalid place that surely had never been swept, I made the poor soul a tisane. (I always carry a little pouch of herbs on my person for such occasions.) Hearing weeping from a dark and dismal corner of the hovel, I found two little ones, one in fever crying piteously for her mother, and both half dead with hunger. I quieted them as best I could, and cooled the elder’s fever—she was no more than five—with a compress of cold water I fetched from the public fountain a good way down the street. (There was no water in the house, nor was there anything to eat!) Then, fetching fresh eggs and butter from a grocer, I fed the little family. I did not leave them until I was satisfied as to their comfort, and had promised to find the wayward trollop who—all the while she was spouting the word “Liberty”—kept her family in misery
.

I took myself to the Assembly—she was not there—but found her, at long last, at one of the hermaphrodite clubs that have sprung up all over Paris like lethal mushrooms
.

“I’m looking for Madame L-,” I said to the creature who opened the door, and in a moment found myself confronted with a very ugly woman in trousers, her mouth deformed by a pipe
.

“Madame,” I said with feigned civility, “I have only just left your husband and children. Your house is in ruins, your elder child is in fever, your husband is in pain—his leg is gangrenous—the baby is in tears.” I saw that our monster looked at me with surprise; she was, despite her inebriation, attentive to my words
.

“You have seen them?” she asked, astonished
.

“Not only have I seen them,” I replied, “but I have fed them, dressed your husband’s leg, and soothed the child’s fever.” These words touched the witch’s heart, and she fell to her knees, sobbing
.

“Ah! Thank you, monsieur!” she said when she could. “But why have you been so generous? Are you a friend of my husband’s?”

“I never saw him before in my life,” I said. “But yes, I am his friend; I am friend to all men who have been left to rot by their wives—wives who have no place in the violent discussions of the Convention nor in illicit cafés! Wives who belong at home, looking after the men who defend our Nation; looking after the future citizens of France!”

“What you say is true!” she exclaimed, wetting my sleeves with her tears. “And wise! I will go to them at once!” As she hurried off, I saw her toss her pipe to the street, where it shattered
.

Citizens, my tale has surely dismayed you, but it has warmed you, too. However, my tales do not always comfort the soul. Here is my third example:

A certain fan-maker—

A certain fan-maker, who continues to find clients who can afford taffeta and ivory, was seen with the notorious Olympe de Gouges in the botanical gardens, kissing in full view of everyone—including some very small boys who, in their dismay, thrust their little faces into their hands and sobbed, and a little girl whose virginal nurse, equally upset, picked her up to make a hasty retreat. Now, it may well be—surely it is so—that women belong to the human community, as Olympe de Gouges insists, that they are capable of reason and deserve to be included in the Declaration of Rights. It is, however, one thing to be capable of reason, another to be reasonable. Is it reasonable, I asked myself, to flaunt perversity in public?

Finding a large bucket of rainwater, I used this to cool the
lesbiennes’
ardor
.

“How dare you!” they cried, leaping to their feet, as sopping wet as at the instant of their birth
.

“How dare you
, mesdames,”
I replied, “deprive the New Nation of citizens?”

Sade, mon ami,

There are not many ways for a woman to respond to inhumanity. One may, as Théroigne de Méricourt, he driven mad by a public spanking and finish one’s days shitting and sleeping on a pallet of rotten straw. Or, like the inimitable Charlotte Corday, coiffed and dressed in Indian muslin, choose to plunge a new knife into the heart of a butcher. One may also, as so many have these past months, take one’s life. Incapable of murder, refusing suicide and insanity—as tempting as they are—I shall do as you have done. I shall write a letter
.

I believe this is to be my last night. To exorcise my anguish, I shall write to you. To exorcise my anguish and to conjure Olympe de Gouges, who—it occurs to me—is just moments away. If those moments were ahead rather than behind me, I could dream of seeing her again. And you, in your tower, tearing the world to shreds and putting it back together in radical conformations unlike any imagined before: You, too, are moments away. If I cannot dream of seeing you either, at least I can offer you this night. It is a moonless night. It is also very, very cold; my cell is not provided with a stove
.

It is hard
, mon ami,
so hard not to tremble!

The lens of memory is often cloudy; it may be stained with tears or blood, grow dull with neglect; it may shatter. But these things I choose to describe to you—for it is not impossible that you shall be the one to survive all this—could not be more tangible. That first night opens out before my mind’s eye like a fan of silver painted with one of those marvelous Italian landscapes that are not rough approximations of the truth, but instead evoke the softness of the air and the scent of roses. With eagerness one is made to gaze upon a fictive horizon and dream. (What I would not give to hold such a fan tonight! To paint one!)

But for now, just imagine:

A Portrait of Olympe de Gouges
(painted on a fan of silver, its
panaches
of fine ivory)

A black felt hat perched with provocation on her mane of black curls, a bewitching cast over one eye, her breasts balanced beneath her collarbones like bubbles of glass—she sweeps into the
atelier
on a winter’s afternoon. The year is 1789, and the Revolution holds such promise! In the background, La Fentine is speaking to a customer, and I am painting a border of grapes and vines
.

You would like her. You would call her
“une amazone,” “une noire.”
You would admire her unique brand of heresy, her eccentricity. Olympe is vain, generous, voluptuous, and unstoppable. She is capable of dictating a play in four hours. She believes that life is tragic, liberty worth its intrinsic risks, and the Marvelous the greatest treasure of the sovereign imagination. Like you, she insists on the necessity of pleasure. And she entertains a passion for erotic imagery; this is what brings us together. The little series you inspired, those “illicit” delights, are combusting in the hands of courtesans and
mondaines
in such quantities that not an afternoon passes without a girl in red skirts storming the
atelier
for a purchase
.

“I’ll take this one,” says Olympe (and her voice is the voice of a child), snapping open a scene of fellatio into the startled face of a prude who leaves the shop in a huff. “The only difference between a prude and a hussy,” Olympe declares, the dimple on her cheek attracting my immediate attention, “is the same difference one remarks between the artist and the amateur. “What a talker! For a moment she gazes into my face
.

“You have a rare radiance,” she declares, causing me to laugh with surprise. “I will call you Solaire.”

“Call me Solaire,” I say, put off by her presumption, “and I will call you La Grande Folle.”

“Fan-maker,” she says with wounded eyes, “do not be unkind.” It seems I have hurt her to the quick. “I wish for us to dine together,” she whispers, pressing her card into the palm of my hand. “Tonight. “The black plume on her hat trembles. “Unless you are a capitalist? I do not dine with capitalists!” Again, I burst out laughing. “No,” she decides, one eyebrow raised, her smile searching, ironical, and sweet all together. “No. Clearly you are not a capitalist!” Her purchase pressed to her bosom, she whispers: “Nine.” When the door rattles shut behind her, the bell all a-jangle, the room bubbles over with La Fentine’s laughter
.

“I won’t go!” I decide, furiously blushing. “Anyone can see she’s spoiled! Anyone can see she’s used to getting her way!” But La Fentine only laughs more merrily. “Don’t be such a tight ass!” she says
.

• a small bronze statue of a hermaphrodite bought in Florence in my youth (my last
objet
d’art!)

• an incomplete manuscript describing the sexual initiation of a young Cathar into the inspired art of buggery

• a packet of chocolate saved against a day of deepest misery

• an entire year’s worth of nail parings, the object of an (as it turned out not especially interesting) experiment