by Anthony Roesch
They ran out the doors with stolen mason jars in hand. Dressed identically: white-collared blouses and navy-pleated skirts, they ran around the fountain with the statue of the Virgin Mary. They were best friends and roommates at the Ecoles Des Capucines on the Rue de la Mairie located just outside of Pairs in Charenton le Pont. And like a couple of gazelles, they raced out of the iron gates and around the Place de Valois.
Heading to the park, one of the girls, Renée, suddenly stopped. A pushcart of brightly colored flowers with the redolence sweet fragrances, she called out, “You must look at all the pretty flowers.”
The other girl, Eva, panting out of breath, insisted that they not waste any time. That morning, the girls skipped class to do a science project on butterflies. And not only were they leaving the school without permission, but they had also stolen the mason jars from the kitchen panty.
There was little time to waste. If Sister Monique catches them, they’d have to recite a litany of Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s while she’d count off. However, Renée could not resist. The vendor held out a paper cone of red carnations. She thought how much her mother would have loved their sweet aroma. Which triggered how much Renée missed her mother. How she’d loved the springtime with its brightly colored flowers, and in Rouen, the birthplace of Gustave Flaubert, and where Renée had grown up, would be blanketed in marsh orchids, water crowfoots, and pondweed, and even after her mother passed, Renée and her father would stroll the fields for hours. He’d make her name all the flowers just with her with nose. She’d learned to name them all and pluck the brightest colors for her mother’s grave. At the headstone, she’d place them, and whisper their names: Corcus, Hyacinth, Iris, as if whispering the names of children.
Once in the park, there seemed to be thousands of the speckle-winged creatures. Pinks and blues, yellows and oranges, spotted white, black, purple with stripes and circles, all bouncing and fluttering to a ragtime playing inside their heads.
The girls would have to sneak up on the butterflies, lolloping rose-to-rose, flower-to-flower. With lids removed, they’d chase the speckled creatures through the grassy arboretum of goldenrod and cattail. On the park benches, old people, les vieux gens, watched with soured dispositions and aging hands propped on canes.
Then when a brightly spotted Peacock landed on Renée’s hand she quickly trapped it in her jar. After each had finally caught an adult specimen, they headed back to school, perspiring under the lining of their muslin blouses.
On the way back, Eva began schooling Renée on the plight of the butterfly. Metamorphosis, she called it and started rattling off the names of species. “There are Blues, Fritillaries, and Pyrgus, which look like moths,” and looking nearly cross-eyed at her butterfly inside the jar, she added, “And this one is a Marble, no, a Two-point Blue.”
Eva was of four siblings and wanted to be a nun like an aunt of hers in Italy. She was smart: thin, lanky limbs, faint red hair, fair skin, with the smallest freckles pinpricked across her nose and cheeks. She wore round, thick eyeglasses, and kept pebbles in her shoes to remind her of sacrifice, and, holding up her mason jar, while tapping on the glass, she said, “We must get back.”
As for Renée, she wanted to strip off all her sweaty clothing and bathe in the coolness of the breeze. At fourteen years old and an only child, she could never match the knowledge or devotion displayed by Eva. Then suddenly, a cool breeze lit up her skirt and cooled her flesh. She was aroused by more than the thought of him and could not hold back something as wonderful as the feelings she’d felt at that moment. “Have you ever been in love?” Renée asked.
Eva stopped. “Of course. God.”
“No, I mean a real man.”
Renée hadn’t told anyone. But she’d met a man in Rouen, an acquaintance of her father’s. He was twice her age. Handsome. A slender man with long, black sideburns and an elegant top hat.
“That’s a sin,” said Eva, gazing at her specimen.
“How can love be a sin?” Renée countered and she went on telling Eva how she met this man in Rouen, how he looked at her, how she felt, leaving out the fantasies, which were the reasons for her prolonging her confession, which were also the reasons why she’d felt that way she did.
Eva turned abruptly, and in doing so, her jar slipped out of her hands. Shattering into pieces, she shrieked as her butterfly escaped, fluttering around her head until landing in her hair. Eva, still shrieking, shouted at Renée, “Look what you made me do.” She then started picking up the pieces of broken glass. And in her haste, cut her finger. “I’m bleeding,” she screamed, and crying so hard, she nearly knocked her eyeglasses off her nose.
“Let me see,” Renée said.
“No, you’ve done enough,” Eva sounded, and bleeding from her finger, she cried, “And you’ve completely ruined our experiment.” She then ran back to school, hobbling in anguish from the pebbles in her shoes.
The glass fragments, in the bright sunlight, looked to Renée like a kind of jigsaw puzzle, pieces once part of something, but now, incomprehensible. After throwing them all away, she returned to the field to release her butterfly.
Afternoon tea, young debutantes stirred their cream and sugar into their demitasse cups with a synchronicity of clocks. When Renée entered, they all stopped. Eva sat with a troupe of girls. Her arms folded and finger bandaged, and once the stirring resumed, Eva smirked as if on the mend.
The school was divided into two factions: the Edwardians, which consisted of the purists, like Eva; and the Elizabethans, which consisted of the romantics, like Renée. But there was one other girl—a tall girl neither Edwardian or Elizabethan, a girl more likely from Pigelle than Auteuil, a girl all respected and hated because they all knew that they were inferior to her—and despite all the gossip that surrounded her—Renée found this girl, Emma de Fontenelle, to be as honest as the day’s long.
Renée asked Emma if she could sit with her. Emma nodded. “Merci,” Renee said taking a seat across from Emma.
Sister Monique, unbeknownst to what was going on, carried a tray with tea cakes. There were secrets. Forbidden poems. And books of promiscuity carried beneath large square collars and passed around girl-to-girl; Shelley or Byron slid under doors like desperate messages; and clearly, a girl like Emma was straight from Flaubert’s, Madame Bovary, sublime and erotic.
The Ecoles Des Capucines was an all-girl school with a reputation of being stern, but not overly ecclesiastic. Next to the Gospels the girls read the likes of Voltaire and Dickens, along with Isaac Newton and St. Augustine, and each morning, recite the Lord’s Prayer in both Latin and French. In class they’d discuss the morals of the war and the faith of Devine Revelation; in the chapel they’d pray in unison the Morning Prayer, and in the afternoons they’d discuss literary readings from Troyes to Poe, and put on plays, like Les Burgraves.
After tea, Renée stopped Emma in the hallway. She asked her what is it like? “What’s what like?” Emma asked.
She was beautiful. A beauty with little innocence, though; her eyes dark and attentive; her light hair cut short to a modified boy’s cut, but soft, powder skin, and long, curling eyelashes whose tips she’d accentuate with a smear of petroleum jelly. Taller than most of the girls, she wore rouge on her lips and somehow would get away with it. Even on weekends when Emma would pack a small bag of toiletries, and with all nuns and girls secretively watching from cracks in doors or bedroom windows, get into a car and drive off with a man that wasn’t her father or brother or even an uncle.
Renée had befriended Emma not because of curiosity, but because Renée wanted to her—to experience all that Emma had experienced—and in particular, men. She replied, “To be the way you are.”
Emma replied, “You just have to know how to swank it.”
“Qu’est-ce que c’est, ‘Swank’?” asked Renée.
Emma raised her skirt and stuck out her white, silken behind. Then slapped it. “Swank,” she laughed.
Later, a knock came on Renée’s door. Emma, cautiously entering, asked “Where is the little fake?”
“She’s cleaning the rectory,” Renée replied.
“Good,” Emma said, “I have something for you to read,” and she handed Renée a book. It was Baudelaire’s erotic love poems, Les Fleurs du mal. “It’s banished almost everywhere, but it was given to me as a gift.”
Renée didn’t know what to say feeling a trembling sensation.
“But I warn you,” Emma said, “You shouldn’t let anyone see you reading it.” Still skeptical that Eva wasn’t hiding somewhere such as under the bed, Emma lowered her voice. “Certainly, anyone with this book would be expelled from here.” Renée rippled through the pages. Emma sat on the edge of Eva’s bed, crossing her shapely legs. “I needn’t tell you,” Emma said, “but when someone becomes obsessed with love, scrutiny follows.” She then added, “This man that brings you so much grief, is he good to you?”
Renée swallowed hard. “I’m not sure.”
“You must then confront your lover,” she said, “It’s too important.”
“But how?” Renée eagerly asked.
Emma stood up. “What I’ve learned,” she said, “When you’re crossing the tight rope, you don’t look down.” She went to the door, peaked out, then, looking back, said, “Enjoy the book, ma chérie.”
Renée, settling in bed, opened the book. Inside the cover there was a note from Emma. It was a sentiment written as if she’d dedicated the book to her: You are a sky autumn, pale and rose.
Renée shut the book. She asked herself, “What latitudes are given to her own touch. . . What rock of virtue would crumple if she didn’t lie down with her arms straight to her side? Could love to be a terrible sin, not only against her body but all of society? Didn’t young Queen Elizabeth brandish a sword over her laced petticoats? Didn’t Victor Hugo write, the dawn is smiling on the dew that covers the tearful rose?” She opened the book and the more she’d read, the more confused she’d become. “Is virtue better seen through the mournful eyes of the Virgin Mary or the hopeful ones of Mary Magdalene? Is there a difference? If so, what? And is there nothing more contentious than hearing the word virtue repeated seven or seventy-seven times?”
Then when Eva opened the door, Renée quickly hid the book under her mattress. Not speaking, Eva began to undress for bed. There was the quite rustle of Eva removing her clothing, only followed by the methodical buttoning of her nightgown high up her neck.
Renée was still not sure if she was right or wrong to read the book, yet, to ignore her feelings was to put all the world into question.
Eva, crawling into bed had finally broken her silence. Her voice was a faint yet clear, and within the first few sentences, she had reiterated God’s love at least twice. As if she’d rehearsed this moment, Eva proclaimed against all the poets and writers. Particularly, she said, all the Emma Le Fontenelles of the world. Then, with a wide yawn, she prophetically proclaimed that God’s love wasn’t a choice but a commandment. She then turned off her nightlight.
Renée had believed in Charlemagne. In men in shining armor who carried swords of fate and shields of chivalry. And now, she questioned that belief. In truth, men wore wool suits and tall hats and carried bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolate.
The next morning, like clockwork, all the girls were at their bedroom windows. Renée watched on her knees from bed, and Eva, on her bed, stretched her neck, straining to see out her window.
Soon Emma appeared. A silk toiletry bag hung from her wrist. All eyes were upon her. She looked up, but her bonnet shaded her face. She got into a car that drove once around the fountain with the statue of the Virgin Mary. Then out the gate.
Eva, with her back against her headboard, sighed heavily. “She will not come back this time,” she said, unwrapping the gauze around her finger.
“Why do you say that?” Renée asked.
“Because,” Eva said, examining the scab of her cut. “I just know.”
Sensing Eva’s reticence, Renée wondered aloud, “Did you ever confess to Father Pietro of breaking the jar?”
Eva looked at her stressfully. Then said that she must tend to her cut and left the room.
Renée folded her knees to her chest. She didn’t hold it against Eva. She was no different than any of them. And Renée remembered what Emma had told her: “When you’re crossing the tight rope, you don’t look down.”
The sun rose higher. Shadows receded. Renée, getting out of bed, removed the Baudelaire from under her mattress. Voices in the hallway began to carry through the door, and she quickly dashed over to Eva’s bed.
Voices grew louder. The knob jiggled. Renée on her knees.
—And quickly, she slipped the book under the mattress.