Marie, naturally, had no idea how to answer this question. A white swirl of steam rose up off the tea like a naked girl climbing out of a bathtub.
“Let me tell you a story, since you seem to like stories,” Mary said. “This is a story about us, two little girls who looked exactly the same. One of us was chosen. And one of us was buried. One of us was pampered. And one of us was crushed. One of us wore beautiful dresses and one of us wore rags. One of us ate cakes and sweets. The other stayed up through the night making them more and more delicious. One demanded the cakes be more and more delicious. And the other complied. One wore beautiful rings on her hands. The other cut off her finger to be able to pay for a future. The whole time we thought the one who lived in the light was the one who was chosen. But this was not true. The one who was thrown in the dark was the one who had been chosen for a marvelous journey.”
“No,” Marie said assertively. “You saw me once. And you saw there was a resemblance between us. You are covetous by nature, and now you want what I have, but it isn’t yours. It will never be yours. You think there’s a way we could change places. That isn’t true at all. We are nothing alike. I have worked for what I have. You don’t have the character for it. You sneak around taking advantage of people. You tricked my father into giving you a bakery through your macabre antics. You might have convinced him you were his child. But I see you for what you are. A fake who wants to steal what isn’t yours. You wouldn’t even know what to do with it if you had it.”
Marie stood up and left the apartment. She had no intention of listening to this nonsense anymore.
* * *
After leaving, Marie understood why Mary Robespierre had upset her so much. She had suspected the truth from the moment she had laid eyes on her but hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself.
Her father had been irresponsible. Her father had always had women in his bedroom. Of course he would have had other progeny. She hated that she was not his only child. There were so many people in the Squalid Mile who looked and acted like her and her father, and they fit right in. She had more in common with people of the Squalid Mile than with anyone in the Golden one. She could not stand that these people had an affinity with her. She blocked it out.
She had always looked down on that class. Her father had always shuddered and felt a great sense of unease whenever he was around factory workers. He would have a bad mood like a storm cloud follow him around the whole day after he had been with them. The cloud would then dissipate and he would be in a sunny mood again. What had affected him was seeing himself in those people and their sordid lots.
Marie had never experienced even an inkling of this. But now she knew exactly the feeling her father had fled from all those years before. She had seen her reflection in the Squalid Mile. She did not want to empathize with those people. She did not want to imagine what it felt like to be in a vermin-infested home. She did not want to know what it was like to have multiple children in her home. She didn’t want to know what it was like to work in one of her factories.
These sensations were like cantankerous workers who tried to get her attention. But they were much more insidious. They snuck in underneath the doors. There was nothing that could be done to keep them out. They came through the walls. She felt as though she were being haunted. It took her a week to get the ghosts out of her head.
Part Three
CHAPTER 35
Justine and Juliette
Sadie had written through the winter. George sat beside her with holes in the fingertips of her gloves crafting and editing the book. Sadie had little time to actually make love. She implied to George that once the book was done they would take some time off and engage in a real-life sexual escapade of their own. It put a joyous impetus in George’s editing as she rewrote Sadie’s madcap pages into a coherent narrative. It was as though they were a beast with two heads and four arms who together were creating something that surpassed the imaginations of any solitary, ordinary mortal. And in the spring of 1886, the book was done. The printer knew immediately he had a hit with the pornographic work Sadie handed to him.
* * *
Of course, once the books were printed, there was still the question of selling them. Sadie’s father had been campaigning so hard against immorality in Montreal, it was impossible to publish it with a legitimate publisher who would put it in bookshops. Madame was very willing to sell the books from the brothel. But George wanted to make them available to people who would not feel comfortable stepping foot in a brothel—namely, young girls.
George knew how everything worked in the underworld. Madame had her tentacles in all the different illegal enterprises of the city. They were all interconnected.
Having been sent everywhere on errands as a child, George had known everybody on the criminal side of the city since she was a little girl. She knew who was willing to sell contraband items. She went to the stores that were already involved in some sort of illegal activity. They were professionals in being clandestine.
She went to the bookie in his little shop with a slanted ceiling. He was a tall man with a gold tooth and a scar under his eye. When George was little, he let her sit on his knee and roll dice for him while he bit her ear. Because he considered her lucky. He had never imagined that he would ever have anything to do with the literary world.
She went to the saloon. The owner had a bulbous nose covered in veins. It looked like a broken teacup that had been glued back together. He had a cane with a swan head behind the counter that he would beat people with whenever they would get rowdy. The owner once gave her a shot of whiskey on her sixteenth birthday. She had fallen asleep almost immediately and had fallen off the barstool. He had had a soft spot for her since then. And said he would, of course, sell her books.
There was an apple merchant who was a regular at the brothel and well liked by all the whores. He always brought an apple along to give to the whore he was making love to. He liked the way girls’ mouths tasted after they bit into apples. He showed George how to juggle apples when she was a girl and as she was tossing them in the air, one fell on her nose and broke it. He said he would sell them at his cart.
She still wasn’t sure that young girls would feel comfortable buying books from any of these men. Then she thought of Jeanne-Pauline Marat’s pharmacy. She went to see her.
“I’ve a book I’m going to publish. Will you sell it at your store?”
“That’s an odd request. This isn’t a bookstore.”
“I’ll leave you a copy, then, and you can decide.”
Jeanne-Pauline picked up the book and stroked the cover with admiration.
“Oh my, George, you are meant for great and terrible things. You don’t even realize it.”
* * *