Marie was treating the balcony as though it were a stage. An observer might think she was unskilled and that she wasn’t doing anything other than being herself. But Mary, having exactly the same body to work with, knew just how skilled Marie was. Mary was suddenly very envious. That was the thing she loved the most. Admiration. She could never get that kind of sycophantic love from baking. What must it be like to be admired and revered entirely for being yourself?
The nineteenth-century city was a squalid, infectious mess. Everyone was dropping dead all the time. There had been a great wave of people shitting themselves to death the year before. So you might think Louis having a heart attack and dropping dead was not the type of event that would raise any sort of sensation in this crowd. But when Marie described her father’s passing, tears came to their eyes. They were devastated for Marie. They did not like to see her sad at all. At that moment, everyone in the factory felt Marie’s life was more important than theirs. Her problems were grander and more epic. They were living her life vicariously. They gave up their entire identities at that moment to experience hers.
Mary could see it go to Marie’s head almost immediately. Whatever Marie had been looking for in the crowd, she had gotten more than she expected.
Mary Robespierre could feel the electricity from the swell of emotions of the factory workers. It made her want to vomit from the intensity of it. If she were a doctor and placed a stethoscope against their chests, she would find their hearts were beating in rhythm. The power of a mob feeling the same emotion was hard to contain. It was like riding a temperamental stallion who had only recently been broken. You could lose control any minute. And he could crush you under his hooves. She wondered whether Marie understood that it could turn against her.
In any case, the feeling of affection would not turn that day. There was a feeling through the factory that now that Marie was their boss, all their problems were about to go away. They thought they might receive a slight increase in pay. Their minds couldn’t help but wonder happily what that extra pay would allow them to buy. For a poor person, a penny is like a magic bean planted in their heads and from it springs the most incredible, almost preposterous, ideas.
* * *
Nothing at all changed at the factory for six months. And then in the summer and through the next winter, the changes began. Salaries were slashed, jobs made redundant, quotas pushed up. And most alarming, the machines were sped up. When she brought her cakes in, Mary began to notice the changes at the factory. She noticed the effects the extra workload was having on the women employed there. It was as though they were suffering from shock. There was a girl standing outside twitching. She kept raising her shoulders and allowing them to fall. There was a girl walking toward home from the factory who kept wiggling her fingers as though she were sewing.
There was a lot more yelling going on. Girls were getting into trouble because they weren’t moving as fast as they could. Mary saw one of the overseers yelling at a girl. She couldn’t hear the content of the argument because the noise of the machines drowned out their voices. But she could tell from their body language exactly what was transpiring, as though it were an excellent pantomime being performed onstage. The overseer was waving his arms and his lips were opening and closing, while the girl was cringing. His words were affecting her physically. They were like punches.
Mary thought about how language could crush a person. Particularly women. She recalled what it was like to be spoken down to. It hit you on the head like a hammer hitting a nail until you were nothing, only a piece of dirt on the ground. He wasn’t even going to fire her, he was just getting her to be crushed and work in a state of humbled servility. The way women did at home.
It was usual for women to suffer abuse at home. There were no laws against it. It wasn’t exactly socially acceptable, but everybody did it. But now here were girls who were being made to feel the way they did at home, at work. There was no difference between public and private worlds as far as girls were concerned. They were treated by everybody as though they were their daughters; you could say or do anything you wanted to them. They lived in a permanent state of humiliation.
Mary arrived at the factory very early one day to provide hot buns for a breakfast meeting. There were five girls all sitting outside the office of one of the foremen. They had been sent there to be reprimanded. They were hysterical about it. One got on her knees the moment the foreman walked out, begging his forgiveness for taking too long on a smoke break. She grabbed the foreman’s ankles and he was visibly disconcerted. One took her boots off and hit herself on the head with them. It was rather extraordinary. Their mood was affecting everyone in the office. Mary considered perhaps on some level the girls knew what they were doing. They were performing their victimhood in a manner that upset the workings of the factory. If they didn’t settle down, who knew what they were capable of?
Afterward, Mary felt the need to discuss the disturbing sights with someone. So she went off to see Jeanne-Pauline at the pharmacy. She found Jeanne-Pauline counting pills and putting them in containers.
“How are things?” Jeanne-Pauline asked without looking up.
“It’s a mess over at the factory,” Mary answered. “The women are in a particular fit. They are going mad. But they don’t know they are going mad. They are acting in peculiar ways. They don’t understand what they are doing. But I think this madness means that they are resisting.” Mary warmed to her own idea. “Yes, they think they are getting sick. But they are resisting. They think all of their limbs are refusing to move. But that is their body resisting. They are throwing up their food. But that is their stomach resisting. They think they are suffocating their babies in their sleep. But they are just resisting. They are having sex in alleys, but they are just resisting. When they have nothing left, when they are all alone and broken down, then they might realize: Ah, I was resisting.”
“Bravo, Mary. You have felt the revolutionary pulse in the skinny arms of women workers. And you will never be able to ignore it now.”
After Mary left the store, Jeanne-Pauline reflected on how Mary had a wonderful way of thinking and a wonderful way of speaking. It was more revolutionary and violent than the girl herself was probably aware. She wondered what use she would make of it. She had the sort of violence needed for change. She had sacrificed a finger for her own personal cause. And it hadn’t seemed to faze her whatsoever.
She made a note to herself that she would perhaps have reason to call on Mary’s speaking skills sometime in the future.
CHAPTER 28
A Collaboration