When we lost our heads, p.26
When We Lost Our Heads, page 26
She always kept the women in the store for several minutes before allowing them to leave with the book. If there was too much coming and going, it was bound to draw attention from the authorities. They didn’t like to see women engaged in any furtive activity. They would by their nature be alarmed by women making money. “You really shouldn’t be afraid of masturbating. It’s a glorious thing. It’s very soothing. It’s a prescription for headaches,” she would say to them.
* * *
Every person who had agreed to sell the book contacted George within two weeks of its publication, asking for more copies. George found herself going to and from the printer on a weekly basis. They could barely keep up with the demand. Word of the book spread through the city, and everyone seemed to want a copy. Sadie loved to spot copies of Justine and Juliette on the street. It was surprising to her that women from all different walks of life would read it. She saw a woman sitting next to a perambulator and reading it on a park bench. The twins inside the carriage were wrapped in each other’s arms and her six-year-old was up in a tree.
She saw a girl in the back pew at a church. Her head was down and her lips were moving as she read. She wasn’t reading the Bible, however. She had a copy of Sadie’s book in her lap. She saw two girls on the trolley seated next to each other and sharing the book. One would try to turn the page, and the other would hold her hand up. They almost missed their stop.
She saw a young girl wink at a cat. She was holding Sadie’s book under her arm. She saw a girl riding a bicycle and whistling. She saw the book in her basket. The girl was wearing a violet tailcoat that flew up behind her as she rode like a pair of racing sea otters.
Sadie thought she could tell when a woman had read her book. The woman seemed a little more bold. There was a skip in her step. Sadie wondered if it was a livelier type of girl who picked up the book to begin with, or if the book itself had the effect of making the reader livelier.
It wasn’t just the fact that the book made a girl have an orgasm so intense that it made her more animated and bolder. It was the impression the characters in the book made on its female readers.
Justine and Juliette weren’t at all interested in men. They were fascinated with each other and being free. This was a book that was telling readers they had a right to a different kind of drive.
They didn’t have to become wives and mothers. Their desires might take them someplace else entirely.
One of the prostitutes had a sister who worked at the factory. She told Sadie there were girls at the factory who passed the book from one to the other. One girl began to hide a portion of her earnings in her boot. One girl refused to let her brother abuse her anymore. One girl ran away from home and no one knew where she went. It was said she had joined a traveling circus. Something inside her told her she would look good on the back of a horse after reading the book. One girl decided to go to college to be a doctor.
They often went back for second copies of the book to buy for friends so they, too, could experience this weird transformation. Others had seen the effects of the book on friends and came to get a copy of it for themselves, hoping it would also give them the courage to enact unique transgressions.
Other girls bought the book because they were simply horny and had no idea of the book’s possibilities. It turned out that sexual awareness did not lead women to iniquity but toward empowerment.
* * *
Sadie was now truly a writer. Her original manuscript could not be taken away from her. It lived in the minds of others. The books would no doubt be decimated all over the city. But even if there was an attempt to burn them, there would always be one or two that survived. Books were very much like rats. They went into the walls and hiding places. They proliferated in a secret way that was invisible. A single book could be passed around to twenty people. And when those people read the book, a copy existed in their head. And once a book is in someone’s head, it has a way of spreading through ideas and conversation. And when someone who has read your book speaks to someone who hasn’t, they transmit the world of the book without even knowing it.
As a runaway and then prostitute, Sadie had existed very much on the fringes, her name spoken in whispers in respectable company. But now she would be public again. Her name was all over the city. She felt a life change coming on, in the way a person feels an inevitable storm approaching.
Names often became common nouns instead of proper ones. The name Arnett was recognizable because of her father and brother’s continuous involvement in city politics. She would change that. The name would belong to her. And when people heard the name, they would think of all her proclivities and inclinations and thoughts.
Although the name Arnett had connoted opposing decadence in art, now it would come to be that which it opposed. Thus the name would doubly be associated with naughtiness in art and the secret delight of perversion. Every family has a seed of its own destruction in it.
Anything Mr. Arnett proposed at public meetings would be met with snickers and derision. What in the world was weaker than not being able to control your own daughter? Fathers not being able to control their daughters was a much greater sign the moral fabric of society was slipping than the ribaldry of the theater. Her brother would be considered to be cut from the same cloth. And her mother, Sadie thought with delight, would no longer be able to pretend she didn’t exist. In fact, her mother would be thinking about Sadie’s existence every moment of her now wretched day.
* * *
Despite being published under the name Sadie Arnett, George felt very much ownership toward the book. She and Sadie began to make love more frequently. When they were spent, they liked to lie next to each other and spend hours describing what they had achieved. They were pleased with themselves. But the rush and pleasure of it was so great, it immediately made them terrified of it slipping through their fingers and them losing it. They needed more of this feeling. Suddenly all other epicurean delights paled in comparison to this one. Nothing tasted as sweet, music didn’t move them in the same way. They were ready to start working on another novel.
Sadie stuck her quill into the inkpot. It drew up the ink like a feasting mosquito. She began scratching on her blank paper.
George liked that Sadie was writing books that shocked and provoked. But the tone was so aristocratic. The meanings were lost because of all the smut in the pages. She knew people read them to be titillated. And because they were filled with aspects of the taboo, they gave whoever owned them a thrill because they were carrying around a secret. Because they were filling their brains with things they shouldn’t be filling them with.
But at the same time, George didn’t believe they addressed the inequalities that women faced, and they didn’t show them practical ways they could pursue the desire and joie de vivre the books had evoked in them. She wished there was a book everyone would read that delved into the way ordinary women lived. And how they were mistreated by everyone. How they were having their right to be happy exploited by the rich. A book about how women were exploited by their husbands. And their families. And society at large. How all girls were preyed upon, how a girl’s talents were so unfulfilled and undermined in society.
CHAPTER 36
Read This Novel Naked
One afternoon, Marie looked out the window of her office into the backyard. It was the first day in spring that was warm enough for people to linger outside comfortably. She saw a maid sitting on an upside-down mop bucket. She was reading a book and was utterly transfixed. The wind kept trying to turn the page of her book, as though it were reading ahead of her and was eager to get to the next page. Another maid carried a mop bucket over to her, turned it upside down, and sat on it. And began to read over the other maid’s shoulder.
Marie didn’t read novels herself. Neither did she keep up to date on what was being published or causing a wave. She did, however, read the newspapers. She had every one of them delivered to her home in the morning. She read the pile with her coffee and her egg. She needed to keep abreast of everything happening in the city and country. She read with a large pair of scissors at her side. When she came across an article of interest to her or her business, she snipped it out.
But she was curious about the book the maids were reading. She kept watching them read. They were reading it with a fervid devotion, as though it were a romance novel. But at the same time there was a look of bemused intelligence to their expressions. They were engaging with the book in a way that was unusual in its intensity.
She called the first maid in later in the day. The maid stood in front of Marie’s desk. She was a beautiful mixed-race girl.
“What was that book you were reading earlier?” Marie asked.
“What book is that, ma’am?” the maid asked, looking flustered.
“You were reading a book while sitting outside. I saw you from my window.”
“I was on my break.”
“Yes, I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“I decided to read on my break. I did everything I was supposed to. I very much like working here. I like it so much better than the house where I worked when I was younger. If you don’t want me to read, then I will not.”
“We are having two different conversations. I don’t care that you were reading. I want to know the title of the book.”
The girl’s cheeks turned a bright red. She looked down at her feet and then at Marie and then at the floor again.
“It’s Justine and Juliette, ma’am,” she answered with her eyes cast downward. “I was curious. I didn’t know how many inappropriate things were in it until I read it. I had no idea.”
“I’ve never heard of the book. Who is it by?”
“Sadie Arnett, ma’am.”
Marie felt her eyes grow three sizes bigger. She always had that sensation when she was taken off guard. She never knew whether other people were able to notice. How could she not have known Sadie had written a book? How could she have missed the most important thing going on in Sadie’s life? This was almost unbearably exciting news. She was feeling so many vulnerable and surprising feelings, she wanted to be alone. Even though she was quite good at keeping her emotions to herself, she might not be able to in this case.
And anyway, she wanted to feel these emotions to their fullest. She wanted to let her body shake and quake. She didn’t want to make it hold back.
“Will you go to the bookstore at once and get me a copy?”
Marie reached into her pocket and took out a bill. It was enough to buy ten books. But naturally, it didn’t matter to her. She would have given up her entire fortune, her house, to have a copy of that book in her hands.
“No, ma’am, you can’t get it at a bookstore. It’s a dirty book. It’s illegal.”
“Well, keep the money for yourself and give me your copy.”
The maid had trouble suppressing her smile, knowing it was a tiny fortune she had just come by.
“I’ll go get it from Lucy. She borrowed it from Rachel. I gave it to Sally to read and she was supposed to give it right back the instant she was done with it. But she gave it to Rachel. Never mind. You don’t need to know this. I’m going to go find you the book!”
The maid turned and darted out of the room. Marie sat doing absolutely nothing, waiting for the maid to return. She could almost hear the girls scuffling about, as though she were listening to mice moving about in the walls. She tried to visualize where the maid might be. She was imagining her quite on the other side of the house. And she was startled when the maid appeared in the doorway with the book in hand.
The maid placed it gently on the table with an odd amount of ceremony.
Then as she was about to leave, she hesitated one more moment and said, “I don’t think the character of Justine is much like you at all.” She made a quick curtsy and rushed out the door.
Marie had no idea what to make of this statement. She opened the book and started reading. And suffice it to say, it was the rare afternoon during which Marie did not think of the factory at all.
* * *
Marie’s first impulse upon reading the book was to reach out to Sadie. For her, the book was a declaration of love. Sadie had been so disappointed in her when she had returned from England. How could she not be! Marie hadn’t been bold enough then to forge a path on her own.
She wanted to rush down to the brothel and see Sadie. But she had made such a point on the phone about never speaking to her again, she felt she could not just show up. Perhaps Sadie would think she was star-struck and wanted to associate with her now that she was a famous author. And yes, of course this was true. But there was so, so, so much more to it!
They were both living out their dream now. And weren’t both their dreams a shared one?
* * *
After the publication of Justine and Juliette, the Golden Mile began gossiping about Marie Antoine all over again. It was very clear to them who the Justine figure was meant to be. She was almost glad to give them something to talk about other than her being a megalomaniacal business tycoon. It made her feel something akin to pride. Marie felt she was meant to be the hero of a book. This was why she was lonely and couldn’t relate to anybody. Her emotional life was meant to take place inside of a book. How could she ever have a true passionate love life in this stifling society? Instead, Sadie had created one for her in fiction.
Marie read the book three times. Funnily enough, even though everyone else thought of the book as pornographic, or at least transgressive, or at the very, very least adventurous, Marie found it to be a thing of great beauty. While Marie was busy rereading the book, there were so many people who began to object to its existence, declaring it obscene. The book was condemned by the morality police. This, of course, had the effect of making the book even more wildly popular. Marie kept abreast of the developments in the newspapers.
Naturally, the Arnetts had no intention of letting Sadie destroy their name without a fight. Sadie’s father and brother began campaigning ruthlessly for the suppression of the book and the arrest of Sadie Arnett. They leveraged all the political power they had accumulated over the years into this cause. And Sadie Arnett found herself being dragged from the brothel while a huge crowd quickly converged to watch the arrest of this beautiful, notorious whore.
Per her request, Marie was notified immediately the morning Sadie was arrested for infringing on morality laws. Marie burst into action. Marie shifted an incredible amount of money around, and quickly.
The forces of corruption and anti-corruption were always at odds in the city. They were never won by any moral factor but instead by whoever could pay the most. Morality had been coopted by capitalism. Montreal was forever susceptible to bribery and corruption and fraud.
Marie bribed the official to drop the charges against Sadie. And also to make sure she was never held accountable for indecency again. Her books would be allowed to be published and sold in bookstores. Those who were shocked by the indecency in the book would be told they were ignorant, that the book was an allegory for struggle and strength. It was like a Roman statue of a nude. Its beauty transcended vulgarity.
No one would understand how Sadie Arnett had had her charges dropped and was released from jail without a trial. And people sometimes looked to the decision to allow Justine and Juliette to be sold in bookstores as the moment the city had turned completely mad: When a book about two amoral, promiscuous women would be deemed as having literary merit and people were too intimidated to criticize it.
Marie had paid everyone off before the Arnetts knew what was happening. Marie was also aware that freeing Sadie and allowing her words to be published freely would destroy the Arnetts. There were so many advantages to this move. She smiled when she thought of it. She had been waiting for the moment she would strike against them. She had waited until she had more power and she could take everything the Arnetts held dear away from them. What did they hold dear? It was their reputation. They wanted others to believe they were better, purer. They couldn’t do it through money, so they were doing it through morality.
Marie went down to the police station herself to collect Sadie.
CHAPTER 37
Stockings
Sadie was sitting in a prison cell. There were pigeons on the cell’s windowsill. They were rustling their wings, making the sound of someone tearing through books. One of the guards had given her a cigarette in exchange for her flashing her breasts at him. She inhaled and considered her situation. She had taken a risk. She would normally be outraged and terrified by her imprisonment. But, as she knew this arrest would be good for book sales, it was something an author had to endure. They couldn’t keep her there very long. She knew Madame had strings she could pull to get her out.
Sadie began to pace in the cell. She would have felt better if they’d allowed her a notebook and pen to write with. Opening a notebook was like throwing open the shutters of a huge window and seeing crowds of people outside on the street. Being unable to write made the thoughts crowd in her head like a group of people trying to exit a theater on fire.
She waited. She waited.
It was the unknowing that was driving her crazy. She tried not to think about how she was always being punished for something she didn’t consider a crime. Was it a crime to put into words how she felt about Marie? Her relationship with Marie was the purest, most innocent part of her life. The period when she really had a connection with someone. She had liked Marie so much as a child, she would be chronically anxious about whether Marie liked her back. She couldn’t imagine feeling like that again. It was the only time in her life she had made herself so vulnerable.
