Kathryn Davis - Versailles

Magpie. Needle. Fructidor. Vendémiaire.

Four turns to the right, and the Austrian army would take me back to Vienna.

Four turns to the left, and the box would fill with ghosts.

My hearing was still good. I could hear the nearby bells of Sainte-Chapelle perfectly, but my vision was failing, my eyes starved either for things to look at or for food. By then I was eating nothing, though I'd still say grâce. Preparing to vanish, either out a door or up a chimney, which reminded me of how the old King used to climb onto the roof at Versailles and whisper down the chimney flues.

"Who are you?"

"I was called Marie Antoinette de Lorraine d'Autriche."

"Do you want counsel?"

"Yes."

When they finally brought me before the Revolutionary Tribunal I could scarcely see a thing. A huge dark hall, two candles, twelve jurors: a wigmaker, a cobbler, a cafe proprietor, a hatter, a printer, a musician, a lemonade seller, two carpenters, a surgeon, an ex-priest, a former marquis. Forty-one witnesses.

Who are you?

I was called Maria Antonia Josephina Johanna.

Do you want counsel?

I want my family.

My eyes failing but my ears still perfect — I could hear every whisper. Oho, look at her now, the bitch. That'll teach her to steal our food. But why is she drumming like that on the arm of the chair?

My mother stifling a yawn as my fingers flew across the keys of the clavichord. Les Barricades Mystérieuses. François Couperin. Sit straighter, Antonia. Do you want to end up with a hump?

To which the answer of course is no no no no no, unless to avoid it you have to die before the age of forty.

"Do you believe Kings are necessary for a people's happiness?"

"An individual cannot make such a decision."

The trial lasted two days. Among other things, I was accused of conspiring with my brother against France, of forcing my husband out the door and into a carriage bound for Varennes, of appointing perverse ministers, of engineering famine, of keeping the Swiss Guard in a state of perpetual drunkenness, of printing slanderous pamphlets about myself to arouse sympathy abroad, of having sex with my own son.

"Human nature cannot answer such a charge against a mother," I said. "I appeal to all the mothers in the room" — at which even the most crazed of the tricoteuses stood up in their red bonnets and cheered.

Naturally it didn't matter what I said.

Naturally I was found guilty.

Then it was Vendémiaire, the Feast Day of Saint Theresa, sacred to my mother, my daughter. Then it was Amaryllis, in the new calendar. A fine fresh day, a little mist, the sun trying to shine, and all the birds singing. Two hundred thousand people have fallen in love with you, said the Maréchal de Brissac twenty years earlier, when I made my triumphal entry into this same Parisian square. On that day, as now, people were selling cakes and lemonade. On that day, as now, everyone was in a state of high excitement.

October 16. Theresa, Amaryllis. I combed and powdered my hair. So thin, so white but with hints of fire, of who I used to be. My hair used to be beautiful. Also my eyes, also my mouth. I removed the bloody rag from be tween my legs, rolled it up and stuffed it in a chink in the wall. For posterity, I told myself, but I admit I was angry. Let posterity make what it would of menstrual blood. Rosalie was sobbing and to please her I ate a little bouillon. I dressed myself for the last time, in a gown of white piqué, a black slip, a muslin shawl, and my plum-colored high-heeled shoes.

When they went to bind my wrists, I put up a fight. You didn't bind my husband's wrists, I said. But when I saw the tumbril, I fell apart. My husband rode in a carriage, I told them. I squatted in the Mouse's Corner and relieved myself.

I was going. I was going.

Antonia, SIT UP STRAIGHT!

In the tumbril, riding backward, leaves and nuts raining from the trees. The sky blue now, dotted with clouds. Blue. Blue and white.

Though the soul has no spine. THE SOUL NO SPINE.

Antoinette. Antoinette.

He cut my hair, I stepped on his foot.

When you look up, clouds; when you look down, the same. Blue sky and clouds and, suddenly, water. Suddenly against the blue sky a spray of jewels.

Pardon, monsieur, I said. I did not mean to do it.

It cuts through.

Once upon a time, that's how it was. The chandelier's facets were unpolished stone. The fountain's water was sludge in a swamp.

From the ceiling, against the sky. The shining thing cuts through. A light blooms, a current tugs, the human body works to escape its tether.

You can feel it tugging. Not love, not hope. The opposite of hope, really. There's no future in Eros, only this. Behind pleasure, the body moves backward.

On the palace floor a pattern of light and shadow. On the water in the basin a flicker of sun and shade.

Backward, the body says. You feel it pulling.

Through the door and up the Queen's Staircase, tap tap tap up forty-two steps. TAP TAP TAP the echo comes back, in golden rings, in rings of gold. A thin layer of dust lies everywhere. Also cobwebs, though spiders have trouble making their thread stick to marble. They have to be patient.

Patient as a spider in a mausoleum. Patient as a cat whose paws are being grilled. Over hill and dale, over moor and meadow, a million miles and a million to go. Late autumn light spills from the second-floor loggia, the smell of burning leaves, of burning houses. The planet tilts, plane trees drop their leaves; earth and clouds stream by.

It's Allhallows, it's All Souls', it's the Day Between the Years. Brumaire. BRRRRRR. It's time to fatten the pigs with acorns. It's the end of the world, where the world stops in a point like a tail.

The Room of the Queen's Guard, the Queen's Antechamber, the Salon of the Nobles, the Apartments of the Queen. Over river and stream, over valley and mountain, a million miles to the end of the world.

Meanwhile in Paris they're making things pure. Meanwhile in Paris the cats are eating the cats. Sssssss-boom. Sssssss-boom. Saint Guillotine. The Black Widow. Wasn't it Mirabeau who said that liberty is a bitch who likes to be bedded on a mattress of cadavers?

Try to be nice, though, try to be nice. It's the Reign of Purity, after all, also known as the Reign of Terror. Most people look better painted on walls. The Sun King, risen like a god to the ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors, surrounded by blue sky, clouds, the sun breaking through.

From the Salon of Peace to the Hall of Mirrors, in its seventeen windows the sun breaking through.

Seventeen windows, forty-four panes of glass each. Seven hundred forty-eight panes of glass and through them all the November sun shines on poor lonely Latona and her frog companions, the fountain dry as a bone, the basin full of leaves and in the distance the Grand Canal like a long gray finger pointing at a pair of nondescript poplars.

Tap tap tap on the parquet floor. TAP TAP TAP the echo comes back. Gold November sun, thick with dust and the illusion of heat, dripping off the crystal pendants of the chandeliers. Raindrops, teardrops. Twenty-two chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, twenty-four on pedestals along the walls. Forty-six chandeliers in all.

Spades and hearts, power and courage; clubs and diamonds, money and pleasure. Bacchus and Venus and Hermes and Modesty. If only we knew how to see green things, see them as though in bloom, in their wonder! A cord from the center of the heart, a cloud of birds from the corners of the sky.

Over earth and sea, over moon and sun. Two poplars, a million birds.

Two hundred twenty steps, a million miles. From the Salon of Peace to the Salon of War, from the root to the crown, from the rock to the spring. From Versailles to Paris, from heaven to earth.