“Covering things up only makes it worse.”
Mouse was so very wise. “That could be a Nasty,” I suggested.
Nasties were things we Fearsomes found miserable or simply annoying. Most of our Nasties had to do with things like when a buzzing insect got caught in your ear, or putting your foot in a boot that had a beetle in it, but sometimes we ventured into seriously awful Nasties, like one I wrote about being cornered by a pack of dogs in Paris, gone wild after their owners had been executed.
Mouse nodded, writing in the margin of her drawing. “Nasty: When people lie to cover up the truth.”
“Like the way we have to pretend about Nelly,” I said, my heart aching. I could hear girls playing Prisoner’s Base down below. Nelly had loved to watch us play. She would jump up and down whenever I was rescued. It didn’t seem right that life just went on and on. “Do you ever wonder if there is an afterlife?”
“I’m sure there is,” Mouse said, sniffing a little.
“But then wouldn’t it follow that there are also ghosts?” It puzzled me that the younger students continued to think that the Institute was haunted.
“My aunt says there is no such thing.” Mouse put down her charcoal and smudged the lines with her index finger to make them soft.
“I know.” But what about a person’s spirit? Did it disappear, like a candle flame blown out?
“Listen,” Mouse said, touching my arm.
Someone had begun to play the pianoforte—or was it the piano?
Which reminded me! “Will you be all right up here alone?” I asked, packing up my supplies. It was unlike me to be late, but since the news of Nelly’s death I’d been forgetful.
CITOYEN JADIN
The theater was cold and smelled faintly of rat. (The school cats had not been doing their job.) All the chairs and benches were covered with cloths—rags, really, gray bed sheets worn thin from use.
A single candle on the piano illuminated the moving form of Citoyen Jadin, his face contorted, his fingers a blur as they raced up and down the keys, the music violently passionate, then lyrical, and yet with the odd occasional dissonance.
Maîtresse and I waited in the shadows. But for the island of light on the stage, it seemed a desolate place.
I could hear birdsong outside, girls shrieking, the sound of the gardener’s dogcart on the gravel. This was a mistake, I thought. I had a madcap urge to run.
“Citoyen Jadin,” Maîtresse called out, announcing our presence.
His hands slipped lifeless from the keys. “Yes?” he said, without turning to face us. He sounded sad, bereft.
“I have a student to introduce to you,” she said, taking my hand and pulling me toward the stage.
He stood, tugging at his sleeves. His patched jacket was small for him.
“That was a beautiful piece.” Maîtresse had a firm grip on my hand, as if she knew I might bolt.
“But flawed,” he said.
He was slight in figure, about my height. I felt I could knock him over with a touch. I began to feel less afraid.
“I’d like to introduce you to Citoyenne Hortense Beauharnais, stepdaughter of General Bonaparte. Hortense, this is Citoyen Hyacinthe Jadin.”
Jadin made a solemn bow and I curtsied in return. He seemed younger than twenty and two, perhaps because of his light hair, which fell in wispy curls. How could someone so young be a teacher? For that matter, how could someone so young have created the piece he’d just played? And how could he play like that, with the skill of a master? Was he a genius, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who had begun composing when he was only five? I’d heard of prodigies, but I’d never actually met one.
“I’ve mentioned her to you,” Maîtresse said. She still had hold of my hand.
Citoyen Jadin looked dazed for a minute, blinking. He might have been a genius, I thought, but he was acting like a dolt.
“She is uncommonly talented musically, but, more importantly, she’s . . .” Maîtresse glanced at me appraisingly. “She’s driven,” she told him, her voice low.
I could feel the heat in my cheeks. “Driven” wasn’t the type of thing a girl should be.
“Ah,” Citoyen Jadin said, as if waking. “Are you good?”
“I’m passable,” I admitted.
“She’s modest by nature,” Maîtresse said. “In truth, she is brilliant.”
I liked being praised, but I wasn’t being falsely modest. “It depends,” I told him. “Some pieces are really hard to get right.”
“Such as?”
I could have named quite a few. “Scarlatti’s Sonata in G major,” I said as the pendulum clock sounded the hour.
“Citoyen Jadin, it’s three o’clock. I’m afraid I must go,” Maîtresse said, interrupting. “Let me know if you are willing to accept Citoyenne Beauharnais as one of your students.”
* * *
—
Citoyen Jadin pulled out the stool for me. The piano looked very much like a pianoforte, only with more keys. “I’ve never played this instrument,” I said.
“That’s of little relevance,” he said, shuffling through a portfolio. He handed me a score. It was hard to see in the dim light. I moved the candlestick closer. It was Scarlatti’s Sonata in G major. How mean of him!
“Begin,” he commanded.
Fumbling, I played, wincing at my errors. It was challenging in any case, but the more so because I’d never played a piano before. The feel was different, softer to the touch, yet the effect could be surprisingly loud.
“Enough!”
I sat motionless.
“That was terrible.”
“I know,” I snapped.
“Play a piece you’ve mastered, one you can perform without reading a score. Can you do that?”
“Of course I can.” Any schoolgirl could. “But what would be the point?” We were off to a terrible start.
“You are not to question me. Do as I say.”
So, I played Mozart’s Sonata No. 11 in A Major—but played it pounding and loud. I crashed into the finale and sat trembling in the silence, awaiting condemnation.
“You are driven,” he said with a smile in his voice.
* * *
—
Citoyen Jadin agreed to take me on, and I—at Maîtresse’s insistence—consented. Not surprisingly, he proved to be a demanding and difficult teacher, yet in the time after Nelly’s death I found solace in the challenge.
I still aspired to compose a piece of my own, so on impulse, after a lesson one crisp fall afternoon, I resolved to speak up. Standing at the door, I cleared my throat.
“Citoyen Jadin?”
He had moved back to the piano stool, his hands on the keys. He looked up, surprised to see me still there. “What?” he demanded, muffled in a gray woolen shawl. I was intruding on his time.
My heart was pounding in my chest. “I want to learn how to compose,” I said, hugging my schoolbag.
He frowned, squinting. (I wondered if he might have trouble seeing things at a distance.)
I raised my voice. “I said I want to learn how to compose.” I stepped closer. “Original pieces. Of my own.” I sounded stupid. “Like you do,” I added, only making things worse.
“There are no female composers,” he said evenly.
“What about Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre? What about Françoise-Charlotte de Senneterre Ménétou?” I’d been doing my homework.
“Correction: there are no women composers of note.”
I must have looked discouraged, for he said, “Look, Citoyenne Beauharnais,” more kindly now, “composing is a hundred times harder than playing. It would be futile, a waste of your time—and mine, and I don’t take that lightly.”
I took a breath to strengthen my resolve. “How did you learn to compose?” He had five brothers, and they were
all said to be excellent musicians. Perhaps he’d had no need to learn. Perhaps it was a talent he and his brothers had been born with. “Did you have a teacher?”
“Yes, of course. He began by having me write out all of Haydn’s work.”
“Just copy it, you mean?”
“Your tone implies that it was an easy task. How long do you think it took me?”
“A few months, maybe?”
His smile was mocking. “It took well over a year.”
He must have sensed that I doubted him. “A full year, Citoyenne, for at least three hours a day, writing the scores out note by note.”
“And that taught you how to compose music?”
“It taught me a great deal. Johann Sebastian Bach perfected his craft by copying out the work of a number of composers, including Lully.”
I looked away. He was right. I didn’t have the patience. It would be futile. “Sorry to bother you,” I said, heavyhearted.
I recalled Maîtresse’s inspirational message on finding the confidence to dream big dreams and having the courage to fail. I dreamt big dreams, but did I have the courage to fail?
* * *
—
In spite of my doubts, I began. I couldn’t resist at least trying. I made a large notebook for copying out musical scores. It took time to draw in the lines, inking them all perfectly. Then I had to decide which score to copy. After going through Pièces de Clavecin in Maîtresse’s music library, I chose Lully’s “Ouverture de Cadmus.” It inspired me to think that it may have been one that Johann Sebastian Bach had learned from.
I discovered that copying out a score was arduous work, but I began to understand how one learned from such an exercise. After a time, it was all I wanted to do. Perhaps it was true, I thought. Perhaps I was driven. But was that so very bad?
HAUNTINGS
Poor Ém and Mouse. I woke them that night with my screams, but try as they might they couldn’t rouse me from the horror of my dream.
Maîtresse came running in her nightdress and shawl. She held me close, trying to calm me.
“Why?” I wept. Was Father trying to tell me something—something terrible? Something about Eugène?
Maîtresse stroked my back. “It’s only a dream, angel.”
I took a shaky breath. Maman and Mimi believed bad dreams were put in a person’s head by demons. It was one of their Creole beliefs—just a superstition, I always thought, although I couldn’t help but wonder if there might really be demons in our room.
It didn’t help—at all—that at that moment someone pounded on our door, which flew open with a crash, making us gasp in fright.
The shadowy form of young Eliza stood before us holding a candle. “I heard a fearful utterance.”
“What are you doing up at this hour, Eliza?” Maîtresse demanded, her hands over her heart. “Never knock on a door like that. You will wake the dead.” She took the candle from her and set it on the bureau. “And you’re dripping wax.”
“I am not to strike a door in order to report that I am present?” Eliza asked, pushing up her ruffled nightcap, which had slipped down over one eye. “I must enter directly?”
“No, of course not,” Maîtresse said. “Always knock before entering a room—but softly, child.”
“You scared us, Eliza,” Mouse said, her voice tremulous.
“For the reason I smote the door?”
“Because you banged on it,” Ém said.
“That made you timorous?”
It was impossible to explain. Eliza would never understand the horror of that sound, the pounding on a door in the dead of night. She hadn’t been in France during the Terror.
“But why the fearful utterance?” Eliza asked.
Ah—but of course. She thought I screamed because I saw the ghost. “I had a dream,” I said, “a bad one.” A dream I still couldn’t shake.
“Not because of the spiritus?”
“Spiritus?” Maîtresse frowned.
“She means the ghost the younger girls talk about,” I explained. “They’re convinced the Institute is haunted.”
“There is no such thing as ghosts,” Maîtresse told Eliza. “That’s folklore nonsense.”
“But no! I saw four in a spectacle in the city,” Eliza insisted.
“You saw ghosts?” I asked. My dream had truly shaken me. I’d begun to think that anything was possible.
“At Fan-tas-ma-go-ree.” Eliza sounded out the long name slowly.
“Phantasmagoria,” Maîtresse corrected, ever an instructor, even in the dead of night. “That’s Greek, meaning an assembly of phantasms.”
“No, Fan-tas-ma-go-ree,” Eliza persisted.
“She’s referring to a popular show they have in Paris, Maîtresse Campan,” I said. I’d heard that it terrified people half to death, yet they lined up day after day to go in hopes of seeing spirits and flying skeletons. Not that ghosts existed. “It’s held in the crypt of a Capuchin monastery near the Place Vendôme.”
“In a crypt?” Ém asked.
“How frightful,” Mouse said.
Eliza nodded, sensing that she had gained status with this revelation. “It petrified my mother delightfully.”
“Were the ghosts real?” Mouse’s voice was tremulous.
“Of course they were not.” Maîtresse stood and smoothed her nightdress. “It’s a show, only that,” she said, pulling her shawl over her shoulders, “an ingenious use of illusion devised to exploit the needy, a way to play upon the public’s gullibility, inducing the naïve to part with coin that would be better spent on food.” She opened the door. “Eliza, back to bed. Careful with that candle. Girls, no more talk of spirits. Sleep.”
“Yes, Maîtresse,” we chimed.
The door closed and we were plunged into darkness.
“Mouse?” I whispered after a time. I’d heard her restless tossing.
“I’m awake,” she answered softly.
“Me too,” Ém chimed in, her voice low and melodious. “I keep thinking of the Fantasmagorie. I’ve heard that there is one in town.”
“Here? In Montagne-du-Bon-Air?” I asked.
“Nana’s maid Perrine went,” Ém said. “I was in the kitchen getting laudanum drops for Nana and she told me about it. She’d gone the night before, though it costs five sous per person. It’s held in the abandoned convent.”
“That’s not far at all.”
“Did the maid really see a ghost?” Mouse asked.
“She said everyone was screaming and crying, calling out to their loved ones.”
Aïe. “But they saw actual spirits?” I asked, my voice shaky.
“Apparently. She claimed to have seen the ghost of her uncle, killed in one of the riots during the Terror.”
Heavens! I snuggled down under my blankets.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Mouse said.
“I feared it might disturb you,” Ém said.
Disturb Mouse, she meant.
“I have the shivers just thinking of it,” Mouse admitted.
“If you could talk to someone who had died,” I said, “someone you loved very much, would you want to?”
“More than anything,” Mouse said, with obvious longing for her mother.
“I don’t know if I’d have the courage,” I said. What if Father appeared headless? I would die! But then, too, what if he appeared whole? Would I be able to seek his forgiveness? Would my night-frights end?
FEARS AND TEARS
24 Brumaire, An 7
The Institute
Dear Eugène,
Still no news of you, or anyone. I try not to think of what I’ve read, of the barbaric tribes in Egypt, of all the awful things that could be happening to you there. Yet the more I try not to think of such things, the more the horrifying thoughts come, so maybe Maître
sse is right, maybe it would help to write down my thoughts and fears.
Your little sister Chouchoute, who loves you very much
* * *
—
“Your playing is stilted today,” Citoyen Jadin observed. “What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting forward.
I wiped my damp hands on my skirt. There had been rumors. “Our men in Egypt are . . . I heard that they’re surrounded.” I closed my eyes, but that only made the images in my mind clearer, images of slaughter.
“That’s alarming. Are you sure?”
I shook my head, staring down at the keys.
“Being unsure is its own torture, isn’t it?” he said kindly.
My eyes stung.
“Play what you’re feeling, Citoyenne.”
“I . . . I can’t. I’m sorry.” Music could be so emotional, it frightened me.
“Trust me.”
And so I did, hesitatingly at first, but then I put my heart into it, my fears and my tears. In the silence after—that heavy, poignant silence that hovers after a piece has been played—I saw that he was weeping.
* * *
—
In Paris, at Maman’s house for our usual décadi together, I confessed to her how frightened I was, how my thoughts ran away with me, imagining Eugène injured, or worse. “I can’t sleep,” I said, breaking down. I was having trouble concentrating on my schoolwork.
“Your prayers keep your brother safe.”
“But he’s not safe,” I said, telling her what I’d heard, that our soldiers were losing, that they were surrounded.
“Dear heart, those rumors are false.”
“How do you know?”
“I am the wife of the General,” she said, crossing her arms. “I would have been informed.”
I must have looked doubtful, for she said, “Hortense, people will be watching us. Hold your head high. Always. Show by your expression that you know that Bonaparte is victorious.”
I stared down at the floor. It was all just an act.