“How would you be any different than Marie?”
“I would have earned that place. I would slip into her petticoat. I would slip into her stockings. I would slip into her dress. I would slip into her shoes. We have to find whoever has stolen your place. And you have to take it back. For each of us living in the shadows, there is someone who has the same shape as them standing directly in their sunlight.”
“You can’t actually be talking about killing her. What’s the point? We have to change the structures of factories. A new owner will take her place and do all the same things. There will always be another Marie.”
“Then you must keep killing Marie until you are sure you have the real one and not the replica.”
George could not be sure when Mary was speaking in metaphors. Then at one point she realized it didn’t matter.
Mary took the last gulp of her soup. “Right now all Marie can do is think about me. I have invaded her thoughts. When she sits in front of an orchestra, it will be me hearing the music. When she watches a play, I am the one who follows the plot. When she eats ice cream, I am the one who tastes sweetness. All she tastes is ashes. Everything she touches will turn to death.”
“When you talk like that, you sound bloody mad.”
“What do you know about it?” Mary said to George. “You have all your fingers.”
And she smiled. George had an irrational annoyance whenever Mary mentioned her missing finger. She didn’t feel as if Mary had lost her finger in the same way other girls had. When Mary would mention her finger, George’s sense of danger and suspicion would flare up. She wanted to grab Mary by her coat lapels and yell, “I am on to you, you sham!”
George was upset when Mary began to preach violence against women of the upper classes. This was unacceptable to her because she saw all women as being in the same boat. It was men who were oppressing them; they should not turn against one another.
“That’s an interesting statement coming from you, as it was your diatribes against Marie Antoine that gained you your podium,” said Mary.
“When I realize that was motivated by my petty ideas, I changed that around, right away.”
Mary shrugged. “I deserve more. I deserve what they have.”
Mary walked into her bakery. She turned on the lamp in the kitchen. It made a stuttering, buzzing noise. It was as though there were a firefly inside it being exploited.
* * *
Despite their differences, the young women continued to give speeches together. George looked at all the eyes of the women in a crowd and she wanted the best for them. She felt so much empathy. Ever since the beautiful strawberry-blond girl had died, George had been looking for a way to help women, to actually change their lives. She had seen their vulnerability since she was so little. She had seen them when they first arrived at the brothel. They were skinny and angular. Their eyes popped out of their heads. They were terrified. They were beaten. They had lice. They hated themselves.
George wanted girls to have better lives. She wanted them to be paid more at the factories. Then it would be possible for them to marry who they wanted. They wouldn’t have to marry at all. If they had terrible husbands, they would be able to leave them.
She wanted to go up to each one of them and tell them they were wonderful. And plant a dozen kisses on their faces. She wished she could give them each a portmanteau with an embroidered green rose on it filled with money and tell them all their dreams could come true. She wanted to babysit their children so they could go dancing all night. She wanted to put them on a train and tell them to see more than this mile of rotten houses they had been born into. She wanted to sit next to them on a beach while their hair dried, and feed them cake and tell them they were beautiful even if nobody else thought they were.
She had to make them believe they were valuable. What they wanted was worth fighting for. She wanted to tell them their desires were not little. They were monumental. That if they were squashed, it was a tragedy. If they wanted to have time to read a book in the evenings, that was as important as any of Napoleon’s ambitions. Because what a triumph it was for any woman to have time for herself—and to be able to do something that benefitted her imagination alone.
How to do all this? she wondered. How to do all this?
When Mary looked at the crowd, she saw a group of identical faces. She blinked for a moment and it was as if every woman in the crowd had her face. There were a thousand of her, watching and waiting for what she was going to say. She knew she had their attention. She knew they were transfixed. She had put a spell on them.
They were looking at her, their heads as empty as Easter eggs, waiting for her to fill them with her thoughts. Their souls were as empty as pillowcases needing to be stuffed with goose feathers.
When she was happy, they would be happy. If she decided to be sad, so would they. If she was angry, they would be too.
She had so many fingers at her disposal now. She had been so right to give away one. Look how many she had in exchange. She could do anything with them. She could pick locks, she could slit throats, she could light fires. With enough fingers, she could pull a building to the ground.
They didn’t know there was something wrong with their lives. They suspected it. But some of them weren’t sure it could be better. One of them was probably worried she might lose the chocolat chaud she drank every Friday night. That the revolution was not worth jeopardizing that. They had to be rallied together in order to form a dragon of sorts, with Mary as the brain.
She would lead them into a revolution and a fight for equality even if they weren’t ready for it. Because she was ready for it. And if you have a massive will, it is normal for you to build an army, for you to direct those with lesser wills to support your own. Some good would come of it for them. They would get the spoils of victory. If her goals were achieved, their rights would more or less inevitably be supported too.
She and Marie had the same father. They deserved the same life. Why had Marie been born with so much while she had been born with so little? That question, as it applied to her and Marie, could also be asked of the whole city. Why had the people in the Golden Mile been born with such wealth and privilege while those in the Squalid Mile had been born with nothing?
She made her personal situation into a universal one, and all the fingers in the crowd began wiggling, crawling off to do her bidding. And ironically, she didn’t even have to make Marie the face of their collective rage because George had done it for her.
CHAPTER 42
The Revolution