Madame Tussaud

That our dead are buried the same day they die—in mass graves—because there is no longer room and even gravediggers are not allowed outside the city gates. And so we all must pretend to embrace this new calendar. Those who do not use it are branded enemies of the patrie.

“Repeat the names,” my mother instructs, and we listen while Paschal recites the names of the months.

“Vintage, Fog, Frost, Snow, Rain …” He hesitates on the sixth month.

“Wind,” she says helpfully. We are all sitting at the caissier’s desk, and it is very important he get this right.

“Wind,” he repeats after her. “Seed, Blossoms, M-Mead—”

“Meadows,” I say.

“Meadows, Harvesting, Heat, and Fruit.”

Isabel claps. “Very good.”

“And what year is this?” my mother asks.

Paschal frowns. “Seventeen ninety-three?”

“No,” Isabel says forcefully. “It is Year Two.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“The first year began on September twenty-second, seventeen ninety-two.” The day France declared itself the First Republic.

“But how?” He doesn’t see how he could have been alive before time began.

“That is the decree of the Convention,” she explains.

“But it doesn’t make sense.” He is frustrated.

“It doesn’t have to,” I tell him. “You must simply learn the rules and obey.”

“Is that what liberty means?” he asks earnestly.

The three of us are silent.

“No,” I say. “That is what tyranny means,” but I don’t explain.

Paschal repeats the names of the months again, but we do not ask him to memorize the fruits, animals, and minerals associated with each day. Now that the Convention has declared the Church an enemy of the patrie, no day shall ever be associated with a saint again. Instead, on the twenty-second of September, we are to all praise the grape. On the fifteenth of March we must remember the tuna. The twenty- second of April is reserved for the fern, and we shall not forget the onion on the twenty-first of June. In a similar fashion, all Christian holidays have now been abolished. Despite the fact that the Jacobins have called Jesus our world’s first sans-culotte, we are to celebrate the glorious attributes of the canine instead of Christ’s birthday on the twenty-fifth of December. But these are things that are impossible to explain to an eight-year-old child.

On October 21, however, Paschal’s questions are impossible to avoid. The street criers are shouting that the Cult of Reason is now to replace Catholicism and that the first celebration will be held tonight in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in praise of the Goddess of Reason.

“Who is the Goddess of Reason?” Paschal asks. “Is she real?”

My mother clenches her jaw. “No. She is blasphemy.”

“Maman!” I exclaim. There are patrons in the Salon, and we are sitting at the caissier’s desk.

“I don’t care!” she shouts.

“Yes. You do.”

There are tears in her eyes. I leave the desk to buy a newspaper, and when I return, I read it to her in German. She must understand the seriousness of this. All deaths, marriages, and births are now to be registered under the civil registration law and not in the Church. And all saints and images of worship are to be taken down. Only statues of Citizen Jesus may remain. Synagogues have been closed down, and Jews who wear their peyos long must cut them off. From this day forward, all churches will be turned into Temples of Reason, and any person found harboring priests or rabbis will be killed.

My mother is silent, listening.

“What is it, Grand-mere? Is it very bad news?”

My mother takes Paschal’s hand in hers. “Yes. May God help us,” she whispers.

Chapter 54

FEBRUARY

17, 1793

The tocsin you hear today is not an alarm but an alert: it sounds the charge against our enemies.

—GEORGES DANTON, REVOLUTIONARY LEADER

HE HAS HEARD THAT I AM THE ANGEL OF DEATH, RESURRECTING those who have gone before us, so he has come to me. He looks exactly as I have sculpted him for our National Convention tableau, with a firm jaw and a chest so wide that Curtius had to use extra horsehair for his model. I should send him away. This is the man who, alongside Marat, called for the massacre of the Swiss Guards. Now is the time to exact my revenge.

“I have ridden nonstop for three days,” he says. His clothes are filthy and worn. “Please. She is in the Madeleine Cemetery. They say you are there every night.”

“For the dead,” I reply harshly. “Not for the buried.”

“I have unburied her! Please,” Danton begs. “She is in her coffin. I have opened the lid and she is perfectly preserved. She died while I was at the front.” He cries into his hands, and although I should detest him, I am sorry for his loss. I think of my mother, torn apart by the deaths of Johann and Edmund. She would want me to turn Danton away. No, she would order it. But then I think of what Madame Elisabeth would do. “I will get my bag and shawl,” I say.

I go upstairs, and Isabel asks if she should come with me. “Not this time.”

“You are going alone?”

“With a man from the Convention.”

She is wise enough not to ask who he is. My mother is in the next room.

I follow Danton through the streets and down the familiar path to the Madeleine Cemetery. The air is dank and smells of coming rain. I should have brought more than a shawl. A heavy white mist has settled over the trees, and only the burnished glow of Danton’s lantern lights the way. We pass through the cemetery’s iron gates, and the guard calls for us to stop. When he sees who I am, he tips his hat to me. I have become as familiar as the gravediggers in this place.

“We’re here for Gabrielle Danton,” I say.

The old man nods. “You know the way?”

“Yes,” Danton replies.

I follow while Danton navigates a path between the markers. Although others are tossed into paupers’ pits, Gabrielle has been granted her own place in the earth. I wonder if her death was punishment from God for the sins Danton committed against innocent men. Do blameless women die for their husbands’ deeds? Is that how God works? Or is He merciful and forgiving, like our sans-culotte Jesus?

Danton stops before a gravestone bearing the name of Gabrielle Danton. A pair of shovels rest against a fresh mound of dirt, and next to the frightening hole in the earth is a wooden coffin. “Gabrielle,” he whispers.

This is my moment for revenge. As he pries back the lid, I consider telling him that she is too far gone for a mask. But then I close my eyes briefly and think of his pain. He is weeping openly over her corpse. I know I should be afraid. After all, these are the scenes that nightmares are made of. But I have seen such death these past three months that nothing frightens me anymore.

I kneel over her coffin and look into the face of a beautiful woman the same age as I am. Her black hair covers her shoulders, and she has been dressed in a handsome taffeta gown. There is no sign of injury to her face and no way of telling that she is dead and not sleeping. “How long has she been gone?” I whisper.