35

L’Inconnue

Paris, 1899

I hadn’t, after all, the courage to end you. You were a strong force, and you sensed you might not get your chance in this world. Any thoughts I had of pennyroyal or arsenic or tossing myself down a flight of stairs, and you became a flurry of hiccups and elbows and heels.

By June, there was no more hiding. My belly swelled outwards from the rest of my body, part of me and also not part of me. Every time I stood, I felt the weight of you pulsing on my thighs and undercarriage. Delicate purple veins laced across my chest and enlarged breasts, and thick blue veins bulged up against the skin of my thighs, twisted like worms. My calf muscles spasmed inexplicably in the middle of the night, so painful I would call out, and I had to urinate all the time. There was no more peace in sleep. Most of the day my stomach was contracted into a dense, tight ball, which made breathing difficult.

Madame Debord no longer trusted me, and all talk of Nice came to an end. She stayed by my side though, accompanying me outside the flat, walking with her arm linked through mine past the desk of Monsieur Muller, smug in his stiff, high collar. People could get used to (or grow bored of ) anything, and even those who knew us – the office workers and milliners’ girls in the courtyard, the butcher – lost interest soon enough.

Madame did what she could, even paying for a doctor. And though he pooh-poohed most of her ideas and superstitions pertaining to the confined, he was kind enough. At least, he pretended to believe us when we told him the father of the child had died. I was sure he could sense no man had lived in that apartment for a very long time.

Camille. You were born on the last Tuesday in July, 1899. The twenty-fifth. In the sky, a gibbous moon. Early that morning, I was woken in the dark by a pulsating starburst of pressure in my lower back and anus. The pain subsided as quickly as it had arrived, leaving me with the most urgent need to evacuate my bowels. Which I did, and on my way back to my bed, the pain shot through me again. And perhaps twenty minutes later, again. I had spent my whole life believing that childbirth was a dark and bloody, potentially lethal ordeal, and so I was prepared to die if it came to that. And maybe it was you or maybe it was me, but as soon as the birthing began that morning, in the dark, I wanted only one thing: to bring you safely into the world.

After a few hours of increasing discomfort, as the sun cast its light across my bedroom floor, the pains became a clenching vice-grip. I called for Madame and she called for Audette and Audette sent her mother for the doctor. I crouched in my bed while Madame and Audette prepared the apartment. Audette built a large fire in the bedroom and also in the salon to keep away any cold, because you and I both would be prone to the flux. She also closed all the windows and shutters and bolted the front door.