From thy cruel extravagance.
"When I am laid in earth
May my words create
Desolation in thy breast.
Forget me, ah! while I enjoy thy fate.
Count Falkenstein
A spring evening, 1777. Jeanne Bécu Du Barry's estate at Louveciennes. The moon is full and a light breeze is blowing. A perfect evening, in other words, were it not for the fact that the French economy is growing weaker by the minute, war is brewing in the Low Countries, and the King and Queen still haven't managed to consummate their marriage. The Queen's eldest brother, Joseph, recently arrived in Paris, is paying Madame Du Barry a visit. He's traveling incognito (in the guise of "Count Falkenstein"), liking to view himself as a cloak-wrapped stranger who appears from out of nowhere, performs good deeds, and only later is revealed to be Holy Roman Emperor. When the curtain rises Joseph can be seen looking out an open window, stage left, moonlight illuminating the serious expression on his face. He's wearing a toupee, and what's left of his own hair is in a long pigtail down his back; his eyes are protuberant, not unlike Eggplant's. Jeanne meanwhile reclines on a striped sofa, center stage. As buxom as her guest is rake-thin, she is bursting from a flowered dressing gown and has her hands literally full, eating a roast chicken.
JOSEPH: I tried reasoning with him. With both of them. It's like talking to a wall.
JEANNE, chewing: What did you say?
JOSEPH: That he has to have the operation. That their lives depend on producing an heir. His moronic brother, Artois, already has two, you know, and a third on the way. Also, she has to stop gambling. Gambling and flirting. Her debts come to almost five hundred thousand livres.
JEANNE: Does she love him?
JOSEPH: I don't know. Mercy told my mother she's got the King wrapped around her little finger. She's more like a mistress than a wife, he says.
J EANNE: You could do worse, believe me.
JOSEPH: I'm sorry. I didn't mean—
JEANNE: Please. Sit down. You're making me nervous. She rings a bell and her page appears, in his pink suit and snow white turban. Another bottle of champagne, Zamor, but this time it should be a whole lot colder. Ice-cold, my pet. Do you understand what I mean by that?
ZAMOR: Yes, Madame. He bows and exits, stage right.
JEANNE: He doesn't have a clue, but he's so nice to look at.
Joseph begins pacing back and, forth behind the sofa; Jeanne continues to devour the chicken, thoughtful, licking her fingers.
JEANNE: By the way, I think you're wrong.
JOSEPH: What?
JEANNE: About the operation. Wrong. Even if she loves him, which I don't think she does. Louis doesn't want to be King any more than your sister wants to be Queen. But once they produce an heir that'll be that — there'll be no turning back.
JOSEPH: You're joking.
JEANNE: I have no sense of humor, haven't you heard?
JOSEPH: And what do you suggest they do with the crown?
JEANNE: That's easy. Give it to someone else. Give it to Provence. Provence has had his eye on the crown since the day he was born. He's a bully. A pig. He'll make a wonderful King.
Joseph leaves the window and walks over to sit beside Jeanne.
JOSEPH: Even if I thought you were right, which I don't, I'd still have to try convincing Louis to have the operation. I promised my mother.
JEANNE, taking a last bite of the chicken, then turning to kiss him: Such a good little boy…
JOSEPH: The operation. The Queen's behavior. The alliance with Austria. Three things. I promised.
JEANNE: Shhh. Come here.
JJOSEPH: Her final request, really.
JJEANNE: Aren't you being a little melodramatic?
The Chamber of the Pendulum Clock
Tick tick tick tick. Twenty-two kilometers from Paris to Versailles. The season changing, the summer ending. August of Wheat, August of Oats. Deepening shadows, violet, indigo. The mill wheels turn, the mice move indoors.
Six hundred steps from the court to the entrance, fifty-eight steps from the door to the stairs. Tap tap tap tap. Shoes of soft leather, hard diamond heels. Where is the time gone? Who is the thief?
Where is the farmer who marks its passage, in hours long as the harvest allows? Mown fields unspool like bolts of dark velvet, snipped short at nightfall, rolled up and stored. The cat goes out hunting, the soul shuts its doors.
Transfiguration, the Feast of the Virgin. From Whitsun to All Saints', two hundred days. Down the longhall way, then left at the windows. Dice flung, a curse, in the chamber of clocks.
The Queen has grown restless. The Queen wants distraction. She's tired of sitting alone in her room, embroidering purses. Silk purse from a sow's ear, meaning the King. My dear, says Artois, what a pleasant surprise. Licking his lips as he scoops up the dice.
Tick tick tick tick. Shadows like water, flickering candles. The Clockmaker fixes the stars in their courses, planets and moons, a ruby, a pearl. From Easter to Whitsun, from All Saints' to Advent. From Advent to Christmas to darkest despair. The Baby's grown up, the Baby is dying, the Baby can't wait to be born once again.
Far far away in her garden retreat, the Queen's mother sits like a sack of sand. Snow on the mountaintops, eternal snow, her son in Bavaria, waging war. How old she's grown, old and ugly. France fighting England, no heir yet in sight. Madame my dear daughter, be prudent, take care. You might as well caution the sun not to rise. The King of Prussia rattles his saber, one eye on Austria, one eye on France.
In the chamber of clocks the gamblers play on. Clock of Creation, Clock of the Sphere. The Queen flings the dice across the green felt. A minute cracks open, a second comes out. Tiny, a bubble, its walls thin as hope.
And what is pleasure, really? If I lived for pleasure, what does that mean?
A lesser god than Eros, certainly. Not even a god, when you come to think about it. A kobold. An imp.
Louis finally consented to the operation, following my brother's visit. Early September, the time of the grape harvest, just before the Blessed Virgin's birthday. One little snip of Lassone's knife, that was all it took, and the next thing I knew the marriage was consummated. In the meantime Louis had a secret passage built between our two bedrooms, so he could tunnel his way through to me like an ardent mole, without attracting the attention of the well-wishers and curiosity-seekers hanging out in the Bull's Eye Chamber at all hours of the day and night.
"I am experiencing the most important happiness of my entire life," I wrote to tell my mother.
But pleasure?
In the absence of any impediment, I am sorry to say that my husband's caresses grew a trifle distant, rushed, even. Before, he'd worked so hard to drum up enthusiasm for the task at hand; now he pumped away with the same sort of frenzied single-mindedness I'd seen him use operating the bellows. An abstracted expression on his face, his mind elsewhere, imagining the final product perhaps, a lock so magnificent it could defeat the Evil One himself. Not a great lover, Louis.
Of course, he had no practice. Just as, pamphleteers to the contrary, I had no basis of comparison. Antoinette and Louis, as inept in bed as on the throne, though goodness knows we tried. That mattress, those hands. The sound of his breathing, the weight of his torso. Just the two of us, two human bodies reduced to the place where the one had come into the other, nudging, nudging…