CHAPTER 11

Tallien was the hero of the hour and Theresa the heroine. When the prison doors were thrown wide he was there waiting for her, eyes filled with love and arms open, but she didn’t run into them. She left him waiting where he stood; it was as though she didn’t even see him.

“It’s good to be free, to walk in the sun again!” she sighed, ruffling her short-cropped hair and tilting her face up to the sun like a woman welcoming a kiss from her lover.

“Do you love him?” I asked her, discreetly tilting my head toward Tallien.

It occurred to me then that I had never heard her speak of him in terms of affection, let alone passion, except that which he felt for her. When she talked of Tallien, it was always of his usefulness, as though he were a human coatrack or umbrella stand, not a virile flesh-and-blood man.

“He serves a purpose . . . for now.” Theresa shrugged, smiling as she was suddenly lifted up high onto the shoulders of two strong men and the people surged around her, offering flowers and praising her as “our Lady of Liberty,” the one who had brought about Robespierre’s downfall. “She slew the dragon with love! Her love caused her knight to spring into action and save her!”

Laughing, blowing kisses, and waving, she was carried through the streets of Paris, with her legs bare and her breasts spilling out of her tattered and grimy bloodred peignoir. She was the one who was famous now.

But Theresa didn’t forget about me. She welcomed me into her world. And what a world it was! Though the killings had stopped, Paris was still the same city of desperate want, where the prices of the bare necessities were constantly rising and people fought tooth and nail over a loaf of bread. But there were still men with money. Paris was full of bankers, profiteers, moneylenders, black-market speculators, army suppliers, contractors, and the rising stars of the new government, and they were willing to pay a charming woman’s way.

Those of us who had lived beneath the shadow of the guillotine threw ourselves into a bacchanalian celebration of life. Life was motion, death was stillness, so the party never seemed to stop. As long as we could find a way to have fine clothes to wear, a decent roof over our heads, and a bed to sleep and make love in, we didn’t care if we still had to eat stale bread. Life was so precious to us now we could hardly bear to waste even a few precious hours of it sleeping.

* * *

Once I had been joyously reunited with Eugène, Hortense, and Fortune and we were all settled comfortably in our new little house, I began to go out every night with Theresa and her friends.

The Bals des Victimes were all the rage. Men and women with shorn hair, and thin red satin ribbons tied around their necks in remembrance of those who had died, and as a reminder of how close they had themselves come to death, danced and made love all night. Former prisons, including Les Carmes, were cleaned up and turned into macabre public ballrooms with bloodred walls, decorated with red glass globes on the lamps, crystal skulls, tables patterned like tombstones, and chair backs shaped like coffins and guillotines. Dances were even held in the cemetery of Saint-Sulpice, where people danced and brazenly made love on top of the tombstones, and an open-air dance floor had been erected amidst the ruins of the Bastille. The guillotine was immortalized in jewelry and dances with jerky, bobbing motions mimicking severed heads falling, and chemise and prison smock–style dresses in the pure white of innocence or garish bloodred were the height of fashion. Loose clothing and dim lighting made it so easy for us to spontaneously surrender to our great lust for life. The Revolution had taught us that life could change forever in an instant. We took that lesson to heart and vowed that we would live only in and for that instant and not think, or plan, for the future.

* * *

Theresa was the one who set the fashions now and I, having always found it easier to be a follower rather than a leader, went along with her. She found her inspiration in ancient Greece and Rome and began draping her splendid body in clinging, diaphanous gowns gathered by a ribbon or belt just beneath her breasts and flowing down, following every line and curve of her figure, to sweep the floor behind her in the slightest train. They were easy to whip off at the slightest provocation. Gone were the days of needing a maid to both don and doff one’s garments; one could be stark naked in seconds. Stays and petticoats were abolished, we wore nothing beneath our clothes, and Roman sandals with long ribbon straps winding about the ankles, sometimes all the way up to the knees, replaced shoes and stockings. Sometimes the dresses had no sleeves, just little straps clasped together with cameos; other times they had tiny puffed or caped sleeves. Flesh was no longer concealed but celebrated, dresses had to be sheer, and sometimes the boldest ladies wore their décolleté so low their breasts were left entirely bare, or gowns inspired by Roman togas fastened over a single shoulder, leaving one breast completely exposed. Skirts were sometimes split all the way up to the thigh.

We wore so little now that Theresa once won a bet that every stitch she had on, including her jewelry and sandals, did not weigh more than two gold pieces. She ordered servants to fetch the scales and then she stripped and won the wager. I had to laugh now every time I recalled my face-flaming shame when Aunt Edmée had dressed me in a pink lace negligee on my wedding night. Now I thought nothing of going out in a white gown so transparent that my nipples glowed through like embers—rouging them was second nature to me now—and the “little black forest” was fully on show. I shamelessly advertised everything I had to offer every time I went out my front door.

True to her word, Theresa hid the rat bites on her toes under jeweled rings; she became known as the lady with rings on her toes. We layered our bodies with bracelets, necklaces, and brooches inspired by ancient treasures. Sometimes we wore no jewels at all, only flowers. Rather than let it grow out again, we kept our hair short cropped in the popular coiffure à la Victime. Sometimes, just for the fun of it, we wore wigs, usually in wild, vibrant shades of orange, blue, purple, pink, yellow, or green, as well as more natural hues of blond, brunette, black, silver, and red. Between us, Theresa and I owned a collection of sixty, which we happily shared.

We had such fun seeing how outlandish we could be. One day we went out wearing big, curly powder-blue wigs to match the short spencer jackets we wore over our white muslin dresses that were slit up to the thigh to reveal our blue-and-white-striped stockings and black leather high-heeled shoes with huge silver buckles. Another day we went out sporting green wigs to match the green coins embroidered all over our yellow dresses and stockings. We adopted every fad and fancy from long nut-colored gloves to spraying our already sheer gowns with rosewater to make them even more clinging and transparent.

We often went out with our mutual friend Fortunée Hamelin and were collectively known as “The Three Graces.” Fortunée was a Creole like me. She had survived the Revolution with her long black curls still down to the small of her back and often crowned them with a bloodred, banana-yellow, or turquoise tignon with little black kiss curls framing her face and gold hoops in her ears. It called to mind the old island saying “La costume est une lutte”—the art of dress is a contest. We had such fun seeing who could best the other.

* * *

I became reacquainted with General Hoche at one of the Victims’ Balls. He hadn’t died after all; the Revolution deemed him too valuable, so he had merely to bide his time in another prison until it ended. Upon seeing each other, we were so overcome by passion that we fell into each other’s arms and made love leaning against the bloodred wall as the dancers swirled past us. But it was only the one time; he was adamant that he still loved his wife and would never leave her, even when I wept and told him that the new government was godless and a divorce was now very easy to obtain and it was a true, complete, and entire separation of the marital bond, leaving both partners free to remarry, unlike the years stuck in limbo I had endured with Alexandre. Theresa had in fact married Tallien because “the lock in wedlock is now so easy to pick; I’ll divorce him when I get bored or someone better comes along.” But Lazare didn’t care, he didn’t want a divorce, and he wasn’t interested in maintaining me as his mistress.

I tried so hard, but I couldn’t make him understand. All I wanted was for someone to take care of me, to keep me safe and never let harm touch me again. I wanted to laugh at fear from the safety of my lover’s arms. Why couldn’t Lazare Hoche be that man?