Les Années Folles

“Hé, réveille-toi”

The words swirled around like smoke, hung for a minute and dissolved into the sunlight, beams of which came streaming in through the dilapidated windows, the threadbare curtains no better than them. I sat up clutching my head. It hurt, but I was myself to blame. The firewater had done it.

As I stretched myself, my feet taking a firm grip of the wooden floor, giggles erupted, and I remembered I wasn’t wearing any clothes. It was Francine and her little friend, Marie.

“What’s there to laugh about?” I retorted.

Marie kept giggling, but Francine came forward, and handed me my trousers.

“She says you looked huge yesterday, and now, it’s like a schoolboy’s.” Francine was nonchalant as she nodded towards Marie, who ran off, a midget of a girl. I remembered caressing her petite frame and perky breasts the last night. Francine had given me the best times of my life, and these women deserved a better place than in the coop at the ‘Maison d’abattage’. I sometimes bought gifts for them, but ended up drinking more liquor than what I paid. Francine covered up for me, always. Dutifully, and with love. This was a different kind of love, unlike what I write about.

Francine often asks me when I’m going to complete my debut novel about a girl named Chloé, who chose to walk her own walk in the City of Love, amid the tumult of the Great War and after it. Her gradual admission to Gertrude Stein’s Les Années Folles. That was my dream project; I knew how Chloé looked, how she smelled, the colour of her hair, and the valley of her breasts. But she somehow eluded me after I’d completed the first chapter with flourish. Chloé of my dreams was being scattered to the winds, by the damn harshness of life.

Taking her place was Madame La Motte, whose sprawling mansion and serpentine passages were described in my twenty-second novel the same way as I’ve described the nooks and crannies of the bodies of my heroines. To think that the thin pages would reek with the stench of sweat, sex and semen, in a few days, was the only trophy I expected for my work. I imagined men sweating, holding my book in their hand, the other one busy in its own right.

The worn-out coat was stinking of my own sweat; I realized I hadn’t washed it in a while. There were stains left behind by a blob of egg-yolk the last time I’d eaten an egg. It must have been weeks ago. A wry smile crossed my face, as I looked into the mirror. Here was a lost man, a writer who wanted to be honest and ingenious and meaningful, but who was broke, vulnerable and suffered from a drinking problem, barely managing to scrape a living out of his filthy profession of writing erotica. Only that I knew this was trash. I could die before I even called myself a writer, but this wasn’t me.

I’d evaded the grumpy landlady for three nights in a row, but this was a Saturday night, and Francine would have other appointments. I saw my knuckles growing white, even as I considered her laying in someone else’s arms.

Breathe in…out…

Calm… steady… This wasn’t a relationship that required possessiveness.

I imagined Marie’s nipples touch my lips, as she slithered all over me, while Francine kept doing incredible things to me…

*

Madame Camille La Motte peeked into the chamber where she’d often seen Hans the Boor making love to La Petite. She seethed as she saw them moving in unison; it killed her inside. The shiny black skin glistening with sweat, the soft moans escaping the girl’s throat, and the creaking noise of the wooden cot. La Motte almost hoped that the woodwork gave way and it splintered to a thousand pieces. But it was not to be; the old wood was as stubborn as Hans. The giant hands that caressed the white porcelain skin of Celia’s bosom, the rapidly rising tempo… Madame La Motte almost bit her tongue to repress a moan of pleasure herself. She felt wet. The bitch, this woman Celia; she had to go. Hans had spurned Camille for her.

A niece of her late husband’s, Celia had taken to the aristocratic bearings pretty fast. Nobody could say that she was a parasite who thrived on Jean’s fortune, which he’d bequeathed to his young niece. Pretty and lascivious. La Motte detested every bit of the young woman; she felt jealous of her beauty, her youth and her innocent demeanour. She despised the way she acted in front of others, deliberately belittling her. It was strange that nobody could discern the little mixture of meanness in her large eyes. Camille fumed.

She walked fast, past the study on the ground floor, where she saw Ines dusting. She ran fast, indignation boiling her blood, and desire churning her inside. She’d exact her revenge in the most gruesome way possible. She went to her bedroom, pulled shut the curtains, slammed the heavy door, and thrust in a finger. An animal scream escaped her mouth; her scream was as savage as the orgasm that racked her body. Then she fell down in a heap.

*

The silence engulfing the Vallée Suisse was deafening. It was a bad time for libertines, the German propaganda said. Hitler had in Mein Kampf, spoken about the prostitution as the primary cause of moral and physical corruption of society and the people, and yet, Germany, during the Third Reich period, had flourished in the trade much more than earlier times. Salons had sprung up at different places. The French were so ill-equipped for the Second War that when Germany took over Paris, the women, who’d come up front, having lost their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, to the earlier war, got into the line that grew longer each day. This looked like it had become a pastime for women who wanted their fathers back from the jail, or wanted a job for their crippled husbands.

Among them, the city pulsated and thrived; as it had done after the First War, drawing in a new horde of writers, who quickly established the name of this city once again, this time in the field of modern American literature, and in new forms of art. Along with it came the liberalisation of sexuality. Stein herself stayed with her life partner, another woman, and this, obviously was tantamount to blasphemy for the puritans. It didn’t help that Hitler wanted to portray a puritanical image of himself, and relied on it heavily, as his political advantage.

Every now and then, there were news of German troops storming through the city, attacking people with apparently low moral values. There were of course the homosexuals, the lesbians, transgender, the gypsies, and the prostitutes who dared work without proper licence. Thus the advent of the term, ‘Maison d’abattage’, meaning Slaughterhouses. The women serviced more than three score customers each day. The public with their tickets, awaited their turns. There would be stray news of another dead girl, who, people would assume, was killed by a member of the ‘Brigade de repression du proxénétisme’. Death had become cheaper and morality policing was the call of the day.

“I feel lonely and lost, looking up at the stars that smile down as if nothing has really happened to the world and all’s well. My heart yearns for the city I once knew; it may have impoverished me, even made a pittance of a cheap writer of me, but it never hitherto scared me the way it was doing now.”

Where were the girls, I thought, slamming shut the notebook. Chloe simply refused to come to me any longer. Not when I don’t meet Francine. But how could a noble woman like Chloé be inspired by someone like Francine? Deep inside, I knew the answer all along.

Sauntering the path from Jardin des Champs Élysées along the most romantic and most expensive avenue in the world, must have left me looking like a fool. Even as I cast an eye at the cabaret houses dotting the path ahead of me, a gentle touch nudged me back to my senses.

“Monsieur Blanc?”

The speaker was a girl, who looked not more than fourteen, and had the kind of seductive eyes that could send a grand guignol artiste go begging for alms, or it may have been the night that made her ruby red lips look so alluring and her beseeching liquid eyes look so enticing.

“Oui.”

I was automatically drawn to her fragrance. She seemed like a stroke of liquid happiness that could take over any man, heady and mind-boggling… the night seemed inky black, and the stars like glittering diamonds.

*

Chloé traversed the path between Montmartre and Montparnasse holding on to her paper bag that had her paintbrushes and tubes of colours. She looked back a few times, but couldn’t discern what comprised her ill-feeling. She thought someone was following her. She realized with a jolt that she hadn’t asked Genevieve to return her pendant. Monsieur Pierrot would be so upset. She didn’t even know how to find that girl again, but her body ached with pleasure as she imagined the soft afternoon sun hitting her svelte frame, as she posed for her.

Her liquid eyes and ruby red lips were so inviting; she had laid a kiss on her toe so softly at first, and then had pleadingly held on…

She didn’t realize that this was the kind of liberty Les Années Folles had spoken about. No matter, there sprung up around where she stood, a new variety of parlours. Not the destitute artistes toiling with their paintbrushes, but more like refined men and women who came together to share their views, their bodies and their souls to the concepts of new-age liberty. Maybe, they ended up being broken and demented, but it was a high, unlike what anything else could provide. Sheer happiness came wrapped up in such new-age works. Hemingway, Picasso, Stein… they all broke the moulds of the societal norms.

As Chloé realized this was why she’d been feeling so dissatisfied with herself ever since her marriage with Pierrot, Genevieve had whispered into her ear –

“Vendez votre âme au diable”.

She knew she didn’t care if she was selling her soul to the devil, but she wanted to savour Genevieve’s youth, drink her beauty. She closed her eyes as she took in Genevieve’s lips in hers. It was a strange dizziness taking her, and she felt inebriated. That is when she felt a strange coldness creep into her very being; she opened her eyes and she found Genevieve biting her on the neck, passionately, slowly and licking her ruby red lips. But only, they seemed redder now…

*

Her name was Chloé too. She mounted me, her beautiful face framed by her locks, golden and hanging in curls around it. I mentally made a note about writing this experience in my novel about Madame Camille La Motte. The problem was that Chloé kept returning to me in bursts, and she took away bits and pieces of Madame Camille. It was as if they both couldn’t exist simultaneously. Neither of the books were anywhere near completion, and I’d literally started living out the life of a tramp, not returning to my Spartan dwelling for days on end. I had no money to pay the landlady my rent, which was already due for the last four months’ time.

The villa was beautiful. The Seine glistened in the distance like a ribbon of light. I wondered why it had seemed so dark when Chloé had approached me on the road. It also irritated me that the lights dotting the avenue kept shining as if the world wasn’t going to pieces, as if the city had decided to turn a blind eye to the swarming sea of feldgrau that now lined along all major avenues. So many people had been persecuted around the city that I could hear the Seine weep for the lost souls in the dead of the night.

Yet, I traced my steps along the alleyways, the cobbled by-streets, trying not to look at piles of rubble here and there, trying to imitate the others who feigned ignorance about a generation that was dying a pathetic death. I had already begun making a living by writing by pen name, rather than my own, because I knew that today or tomorrow, filthy scoundrels like me were going to be crucified too. I looked at the clock that ticked obediently. It was nearly midnight; Chloé had been going down on me like there was no tomorrow.

Another hour later, I heard the soft rhythm of her breath as she gradually slipped into a peaceful sleep. I took out my notebook with the red cover. I now carried both with me; the red one for my erotica, the other one with a brown cover for Chloé.

*

I knew the ending now; it simply couldn’t have been anything else. Madame La Motte would have to kill Hans. He was a servant, a bloody servant, and to think of his temerity… he’d refused the mistress of the house for a parasite. A beautiful young girl, all the same.

Madame La Motte brought her fingers to her lips; they tasted alkaline. She imagined it was the taste of hatred. They were wet and slippery; she ached for Hans, and licked her lips as she reiterated the scene from the other days; his muscular back rippling with the effort, the soft moans from Celia gradually escalating as her white and slender fingers dug at Hans’ back.

Madame La Motte had sent her chambermaid to bring Hans to her. She’d said that she wanted to hand him his termination, but in her heart of hearts she knew it would be dagger now. The dagger she’d lovingly presented to Jacques on her wedding night. She was a rather unusual woman.

“Mon ami! You write so well.”

I started to find Chloé standing behind me. She pulled me to her, flinging away the notebook that fell with a thud.

*

It was past midnight when I sauntered into the brothel. I needed to speak to Francine. I wanted to take her away from there. I guessed this was my best bet at love.

I peered into the room where I’d so often sneaked in. There was no one there.

I kept looking into all the rooms. No signs of Francine. I asked a girl who said she didn’t know where Francine was, nor Marie.

I approached Perle, the Madame of the house. She looked perplexed. Then she nodded.

“We don’t have anyone named Francine here.”

“What about Marie?”

She nodded denying knowing about any Marie either.

I began getting angry. I knew she didn’t want us to be together, the whore that she was.

“Used to be girls by that name a few years back. They went away one night last autumn to the German quarters and never returned.”

I stood bewildered….

Madame continued.

“We never went to enquire; there are so many girls who don’t have a permit. So, we just let it be. By the way, was your Francine a red-head?” The words kept getting blurred…

*

I reached Chloé’s house around two in the morning. She opened the door, her perfect teeth glistening, her lips inviting, but I was in no mood for it. Neither did she appear to be.

She took me by my fingers and took me to the desk by the window, on which I’d sat writing the other day.

“Finish your story” she said.

“Madame La Motte should actually slit Hans’ throat, and taste his blood. She can always say he’d wanted to rape her. After all, he is black, isn’t he? Your Chloé needs closure too. Genevieve’s lips are so ruby red because La Motte brings the dagger to her mouth, tasting Hans’ blood. She devours him…

That’s love.”

I was bewildered. How did this girl know the names of all the characters from my story? The page I’d been writing never mentioned that Hans was black. Also, how could she know about Chloé?

My head was pounding. I feverishly took out my pen, scribbling on the pages.

Chloé came to me, and whispered into my ears…

“Vendez votre âme au diable” This is going to be new religion of love, mon ami. Unlike this city, and the society that devours a generation. The lost generation. Isn’t that beautiful? Only you and I know how the underbelly of the city of love stinks of madness and fear and death, mon ami. Come to me!”

I felt a sudden coldness creep into my skin. I knew my masterpiece had been completed….

****